from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> In the case of the Squids it wouldn't exactly be a case of 'survive on
> one'. A Pentium 2.4 or similar with 4Gigs of Ram will do at the very
> minimum 15 times the current traffic, i would bet it will do 25 times the
> current load.

Oh, o.k., I'm convinced then.  1 squid with a heartbeat friend ready to
takeover (and/or load balanced as well) is good.

> I'd propose to get going as soon as possible with at least 6 Apaches, 2
> Squids, 2 DBs and 2 Fileservers (propably one of them combined with DB?),
> plus mail/dns box. Once that's running we can add a third Squid and more
> Apaches or Dbs- depending on the load we observe.

I like the idea of 6 apaches.

I want to think more about fileservers today.  I'm assuming that those
are primarily for the images?  Can/should they be more or less the same
configuration as the 6 apaches?

I think there's enormous flexibility benefits of having lots of
identical hardware, *when it makes sense* to do so.  When it doesn't
make sense, it doesn't.  I.E. if we have 1 box that needs to be
'bigger' in some ways, there's no sense in spending money on 6 other
boxes just to make them all identical.

But if the requirements are roughly similar for different roles, then
we shouldn't try to overspecialize the hardware, I think.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Move of datacenter

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> will the new servers be installed directly to the new colo or
> go to California first?

Directly in the new colo, because moving them once they are in service
would be very difficult.  One of the things that has persuaded me to
move is that both Bomis and Wikimedia are about to undergo major
hardware upgrades, thus providing an easy opportuity for migration to
a new facility.

The main thing wrong with our current facility in San Diego is that
it's not staffed 24/7.  We have access 24/7, but only one person in my
organization lives in San Diego anymore, and he sometimes goes on
vacation.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: squid idea summary

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> It's very likely that we could get much more cpu power for the
> money by buying nine modest 2Ghz machines rather than five 2.6Ghz Pentium4
> with RAID.

Well, the lowest machines that I can find widely available are
2.4Ghz... the state of the art these days is 3.2Ghz.  Upgrading from a
2.4Ghz to 2.6ghz is only $28 per CPU (for the celerons).

Do you know of a vendor where I could buy 9 2Ghz machines for the
price of 5 2.6Ghz machines?  Or was that just a hypothetical example?

Someone offered to let me in on their deal with a vendor for
last-generation Pentium III boxes, at $800 each.  For simple
webserving, does it make sense to look at those?  Obviously we could
get twice as many of those for the money...

At some point, of course, the management of a lot of servers becomes a
hassle.  But I don't suppose there's much difference between managing
6 identical webservrs and 12.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: squid idea summary

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> No, I recommend the 2.6 Pentium, according to their web shop, the 2.6GHz
> version is cheaper than the 2.4GHz Pentium.

Oh, I see what you are saying now, and you're right.  That's curious,
isn't it?

> It provides a way to hit reset and power off/power on. But having
> remote helping hands, we perhaps won't need this.

*nod* We also have a remote power port now, donated.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Call for Configurations

body:
I think this is an excellent summary!

Jens Frank wrote:

> Gabriel, Jimbo, list,
>
> many arguments have been sent to the list. I've got the impression that
> there's consensus about:
>
> * Having squid+round robin DNS+heartbeat, we won't need linux director
>   for now.
> * One squid box of > 2GHz CPU and >=2GByte RAM is capable to host significantly
>   more than the current workload of all servers, even when assuming doubling
>   during the next year.
> * Redundancy is a must.
> * single host reliability can be "low" if the farm is available, so high end
>   features are not required.
> * Many similar boxes provide higher flexibility than many different boxes.
> * backup box for the DB should have same CPU architecture than geoffrin
>   (Well, perhaps no consensus here, but no one contradicted yet).
> * Current setup is a dual Athlon 1800 running apache and mysql and a
>   second, somewhat slower machine. Overall performance is slow.
>
> Is this canonical?
>
> I'd draw the conclusion that, after taking away anonymous pageviews from
> the apache's (handing them over to squid) and after reviving geoffrin,
> the current web servers would be performant enough to handle the current
> workload. Looking at the trouble we had with pliny's stability, I'd prefer
> to replace them. I think, this is also common understanding.
>
> The "squid class" servers are at 1810$ at Silicon Mechanics
> (2,6 GHz P4, 2*1GB Mem, 2*80GB SATA, no CD).
>
> A Opteron box for the DB Backup server would be 2,810$ at
> penguincomputing.com. (Dual Opteron 240, 4*512MB RAM, 2*80GB ATA, no CD)
>
> 6,430$ spent on these.
>
> = Configuration =
> The question is whether to use 4 of the "squid-class" single CPU servers
> or two of the "DB Backup class" dual opterons. 4 of the small boxes would
> cost 7,240$. Two of the big servers would be at 5,620$.
>
> We would apparantly want to have at least one machine on site as hot
> spare part and for testing. This would be another "web server class"
> server, resulting in 5 small or 3 big ones, prices 9,050$ or 8,430$.
> Not much of a difference, so money will not make the decision.
>
> 4 small ones sounds more reliable, if the squids work properly.
>
> So that's 15,480$ in total.
>
> Summary:
> 2*squid, small server
> 4*web server, small server,
> 1*hot spare/test, small server,
> 1*DB backup, Opteron box.
>
> Comments?
>
> Re: nine 2 GHz boxes instead: those are hard to get, and a 2,6GHz
> CPU isn't that expensive any more, some 200$. It's not Xeon we're
> talking about.
>
> Best regards,
>
> 	JeLuF
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Call for Configurations

body:
Gabriel, Jimbo, list,

many arguments have been sent to the list. I've got the impression that
there's consensus about:

* Having squid+round robin DNS+heartbeat, we won't need linux director
  for now.
* One squid box of > 2GHz CPU and >=2GByte RAM is capable to host significantly
  more than the current workload of all servers, even when assuming doubling
  during the next year.
* Redundancy is a must.
* single host reliability can be "low" if the farm is available, so high end
  features are not required.
* Many similar boxes provide higher flexibility than many different boxes.
* backup box for the DB should have same CPU architecture than geoffrin
  (Well, perhaps no consensus here, but no one contradicted yet).
* Current setup is a dual Athlon 1800 running apache and mysql and a
  second, somewhat slower machine. Overall performance is slow.

Is this canonical?

I'd draw the conclusion that, after taking away anonymous pageviews from
the apache's (handing them over to squid) and after reviving geoffrin,
the current web servers would be performant enough to handle the current
workload. Looking at the trouble we had with pliny's stability, I'd prefer
to replace them. I think, this is also common understanding.

The "squid class" servers are at 1810$ at Silicon Mechanics
(2,6 GHz P4, 2*1GB Mem, 2*80GB SATA, no CD).

A Opteron box for the DB Backup server would be 2,810$ at
penguincomputing.com. (Dual Opteron 240, 4*512MB RAM, 2*80GB ATA, no CD)

6,430$ spent on these.

= Configuration =
The question is whether to use 4 of the "squid-class" single CPU servers
or two of the "DB Backup class" dual opterons. 4 of the small boxes would
cost 7,240$. Two of the big servers would be at 5,620$.

We would apparantly want to have at least one machine on site as hot
spare part and for testing. This would be another "web server class"
server, resulting in 5 small or 3 big ones, prices 9,050$ or 8,430$.
Not much of a difference, so money will not make the decision.

4 small ones sounds more reliable, if the squids work properly.

So that's 15,480$ in total.

Summary:
2*squid, small server
4*web server, small server,
1*hot spare/test, small server,
1*DB backup, Opteron box.

Comments?

Re: nine 2 GHz boxes instead: those are hard to get, and a 2,6GHz
CPU isn't that expensive any more, some 200$. It's not Xeon we're
talking about.

Best regards,

	JeLuF


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

body:
No one needs to be banned over this, but it is obvious to me from a
review of the history that it is Danny and Zero0000 who have
misbehaved and ought to apologize and (more importantly) change their
editing strategy.

VfD is completely broken.  I say that here for emphasis because I
think we really should get rid of it entirely.

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> A while ago, [[Palestinian views of the peace process]] was placed
> on Votes for deletion and deleted.

I think that was obviously a mistake and is a good example of what's
broken about the VfD concept.  "Palestinian views of the peace
process" is absolutely a valid topic for an article, and the solution
to any alleged NPOV problems is not to delete it, but to fix it.

The result hoped for -- that deleting information you don't like from
Wikipedia will eliminate a controversy is clearly not happening.

> RK has insisted on keeping the material, so he placed it into
> [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]. It has been removed repeatedly by
> Zero and myself for NPOV violations--the same violations that caused
> it to be deleted as an independent article in the first place.

You are wrong to do this.  Here is an example of an edit of yours
that is wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Israeli-Palestinian_conflict&diff=2104428&oldid=2103857

You removed a huge section of text because you don't want people to
learn the information that it contains.

> I am saying this because I would ask that someone look at RK's edit
> history last night. Zero and I are listed in Vandalism in progress
> and RK is making ad hominem attacks against us. It is tiresome. It
> is also a statement that if you scream loud enough and bully enough
> people, you will get your way. I wonder whether this is the message
> that we want to get across to cranks.  Danny

You and Zero0000 are at least as guilty in this instance than RK.
Zero0000 did a mass deletion and called it "trash".  You called that
section of the article "biased POV rubbish" and alleged that RK merely
put it there to "support your rightwing agenda".  I see no material
difference between these allegations and what RK wrote, i.e. thinks
like "DO NOT just savagely delete huge amounts of Wikipedia beacuse
you have left-wing political views."

I think that RK is factually correct when he writes "Danny is
hysterically out of control."  It is wrong of him to use that sort of
language in an article dispute, even though you and Zero0000 started
it.  (Actually, reviewing the page history since Dec. 21, 2003, I see
that Zero0000 was the first to engage in personal attacks -- you just
piled on later.)

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK)

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> I think it was Jimbo who declared that RK was a "valued contributor".
>
> He should have been banned long ago. He just acts too ugly.

I think you should review that edit history more carefully.  RK is
primarily the victim here.  Danny has an agenda that he's pushing,
openly, and it's affecting his editing.

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Pliny etc

body:
I've tweaked pliny's apache config a bit; keepalive is now off and the
max connections setting is turned up to the max of 255. This should
keep connections from piling up and forcing new ones to queue up quite
so often.

Pliny's still having those 'bad sector' errors occasionally. Obviously
it's a little worrying. :) Someone suggested a nice thorough fsck could
get it appropriately marked bad and thus worked around; this could help
once we've got something to take over for pliny sensibly and we can
take it offline...

Ursula is still straining with the databases; this is mostly
disk-bound, on a slow disk. I don't really want to add the web serving
on top of it.

If we get geoffrin back online and working soon, ursula can take over
for pliny while it's being fixed.

And, of course, there's the New Machine; if the overheating problems
are resolved and it works in the near future, I'd like to get it to
replace larousse in serving en.wikipedia.org. This will get rid of the
need for en2 until we get an all-around server farm set up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I think it was Jimbo who declared that RK was a "valued contributor".

He should have been banned long ago. He just acts too ugly.

Fred

From: daniwo59 at aol.com
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 07:37:37 EST
To: wikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

A while ago, [[Palestinian views of the peace process]] was placed on Votes
for deletion and deleted. RK has insisted on keeping the material, so he
placed it into [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]. It has been removed
repeatedly by Zero and myself for NPOV violations--the same violations that
caused it to be deleted as an independent article in the first place. I am
saying this because I would ask that someone look at RK's edit history last
night. Zero and I are listed in Vandalism in progress and RK is making ad
hominem attacks against us. It is tiresome. It is also a statement that if
you scream loud enough and bully enough people, you will get your way. I
wonder whether this is the message that we want to get across to cranks.

Danny

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

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body:
Agreed, I was hasty. But you must admit a struggle to put forward  points of
view by partisan advocates is in progress. Deletion and thus silence is just
as much its expression as RK's overdone presentation.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 05:26:06 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK)
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> I think it was Jimbo who declared that RK was a "valued contributor".
>>
>> He should have been banned long ago. He just acts too ugly.
>
> I think you should review that edit history more carefully.  RK is
> primarily the victim here.  Danny has an agenda that he's pushing,
> openly, and it's affecting his editing.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> Agreed, I was hasty. But you must admit a struggle to put forward  points of
> view by partisan advocates is in progress. Deletion and thus silence is just
> as much its expression as RK's overdone presentation.

Can you be more specific about what is overdone about his
presentation?  I'm not sure what the word "overdone" means here.

Certainly, the material in question is too long and in detail for a
broad overview article -- but this only shows why it was a mistake to
delete the original article in the first place.

But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem.  There is no
question that a full understanding of the Palestinian situation
requires understanding what Palestinian views of the peace process
actually are.  There is no question that one point of contention is
whether Palestinian leaders, in particular, view the peace process as
"permanent and irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they view it
merely as a short-term negotiating tactic in a longterm effort to
destroy Israel.

Simply omitting information on that question is unacceptable.  This is
an important part of one of the major questions of our time.

I've read and re-read the passages in question -- they could use some
work, no doubt.  But the only arguments I've seen for deletion is that
the material is biased (though just how it is biased, I'm not sure).

I've been trying to find the original VfD entry, but Wikipedia is
painfully slow at the moment, so I've been unsuccessful.

--Jimbo


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

body:
A while ago, [[Palestinian views of the peace process]] was placed on Votes
for deletion and deleted. RK has insisted on keeping the material, so he placed
it into [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]. It has been removed repeatedly by
Zero and myself for NPOV violations--the same violations that caused it to be
deleted as an independent article in the first place. I am saying this because
I would ask that someone look at RK's edit history last night. Zero and I are
listed in Vandalism in progress and RK is making ad hominem attacks against
us. It is tiresome. It is also a statement that if you scream loud enough and
bully enough people, you will get your way. I wonder whether this is the message
that we want to get across to cranks.

Danny
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Call for Configurations

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> otherwise rackmount 1U:
> Dell PowerEdge 650
> Intel Pentium 4, 2.4GHz, 512K, 533MHz, with Floppy /CDROM
> 1.0GB DDR,266MHZ,2X512MB DIMM
> Price:$1,098.00

(I was unable to replicate your price.  I get $1498 for this
configuration, or $1298 for a Celeron 2.0.)

Very interesting.  Earlier I said rack space is not an issue, but we
are constrained to rackmount servers.

Replicating as close I can the configuration you have above, I
find:

Silicon Mechanics - $1179 P4 2.6, $1038 Celeron 2.4 - non-ECC ram
Penguin Computing - $1211 P4 2.66, $1102 Celeron 2.7 - ECC ram

(Penguin doesn't have the slower processors.)

Lots and lots of ram is usually good for webserving, though?
(Although I guess it's much more important for the squids?)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: squid idea summary

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> I'm not a hardware expert- should we avoid companies like Dell? Is
> there a quality problem with their hardware?

Dell is a bit expensive compared to smaller outfits that specialize in
server hardware.  I've used penguincomputing.com a lot in the past,
with good results.  I have 1 server from racksaver.com, it's a good
machine, but on their website the other day, they seem to be
specializing more in the cluster/beowulf world than commodity
webservers.  And finally, just recently the CEO of livejournal.com
recommended siliconmechanics to me.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: squid idea summary

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> Nooo- the opposite! Apaches don't use their disk but need a lot of cpu,
> the fileservers will need little cpu and a good RAID1. It's only about 2
> Gigs of pics at the moment (are there sound files yet?), let's just store
> them on the DB servers' filesystem. Those will be connected with heartbeat
> anyway, no extra work for failover. If wikipedia suddenly starts to use a
> lot of big media files we can easily move the files to separate servers.

I agree.  For now I will forget about separate fileserver machines.

--Jimbo


body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> We should really get information about the minimum ram needed for the
> Apaches!

Also, in the short term, if we get a ram configuration that's at least
acceptable, this is one of the easiest and likely cheapest possible
upgrades in the future.  If we start with 1 gig each in many boxes and
find that we're starting to strain a bit, then at that time, under
real world conditions, we could study the situation to determine if
more boxes (i.e. more cpu, etc.) is the answer, or just more ram.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Thanks to everyone

body:
I just really want to think everyone taking part in this discussion, I
think it's really valuable and very helpful to me in figuring out what
to do.  I know it takes a lot of time to mull this over and visit the
websites to look for configurations and actual pricing data, but wow,
it is very very valuable.

--Jimbo


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

body:
Fine.  I give up.  I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to Wikipedia.

RickK

"KNOTT, T" <TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk> wrote:

From: Jimmy Wales wrote:

>VfD is completely broken. I say that here for emphasis because I
>think we really should get rid of it entirely.

So do I. The very idea of deleting people's work, that they have freely
given, is insulting, off-putting to newbies, and non-collaborative. I
suggest that we delete VfD and use cleanup instead.

Theresa

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

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body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> I believe RK's material could and should probably be presented in several
> paragraphs. What he has done is a piece of original historical research,
> which by citing particular statements made by Palestinians builds a strong
> case that at least some Palestinian leaders are insincere.

I don't really see how it's original historical research in any way
shape or form.  Palestinian attitudes are well documented and
discussed -- except on Wikipedia, where people have chosen to delete
rather than work for neutrality.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

body:
Rick wrote:
> Fine.  I give up.  I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and
>I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to
>Wikipedia.

I don't think being huffy about it is very helpful.  Better, I think,
to work for a new system that doesn't make such egregious errors.

"Palestinian views of the peace process" is quite clearly an important
topic -- one of the most important topics in one of the most important
issues of our times.  And yet, rather than find a way to work for a
neutral presentation of that issue, VfD resulted in deletion.  That's
broken.  The material there may have been flawed in some ways (though
I find it to be pretty decent, as a first draft at least), but it was
hardly "vandalism".

On the other hand, deleting "any garbage that any vandals want to add
to wikipedia" is valuable.

Tying the two together is a mistake, I think.  When I say that the
current VfD process is broken, I am not thereby endorsing the notion
that we can't justifiably delete vandalism or nonsense.

--Jimbo


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Pliny etc

body:
>>>>> "BV" == Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

    BV> Pliny's still having those 'bad sector' errors
    BV> occasionally. Obviously it's a little worrying. :) Someone
    BV> suggested a nice thorough fsck could get it appropriately
    BV> marked bad and thus worked around; this could help once we've
    BV> got something to take over for pliny sensibly and we can take
    BV> it offline...

Gotta replace the disk. Modern hard disks mark bad sectors internally,
and remaps requests to "spare" sectors. Only when a disk runs out of
spare sectors will it report any sectors as "bad".

So, if you're getting bad sector errors, this means the disk has
seriously degraded, and it's time to replace it.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Jan 9, 2004, at 7:57 AM, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> A quote:
> Google's infrastructure: Google uses consumer-level hard disks and
> 'really cheap, unreliable memory.' ('If something fails, it's not
> you, it's probably the memory.') They have around 10,000
> commodity-level Linux computers set up in a parallel network ('the
> largest Linux cluster in the world'), and anticipate the death of 'a
> few machines every day.' Their network is set up to be able to route
> around a failed machine instantly.

Google also has a much larger hardware budget than we do, and a small
army of PhD developers working on their code.  ;)

> ... much pricing data follows ...

Do these Dell prices include support?  Ideally, it would be nice not to
have to worry about people having to drive all over the place to fix a
small hardware error.  That's the biggest reason (IMO) for buying a Dell
machine - if we're were not going to take advantage of their support
contracts, then we would probably be better off buying cheaper, faster
machines elsewhere.

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


body:
I believe RK's material could and should probably be presented in several
paragraphs. What he has done is a piece of original historical research,
which by citing particular statements made by Palestinians builds a strong
case that at least some Palestinian leaders are insincere. However due to my
experiences with him I would hesitate to rely on what he has done as he has
often composed this sort of lengthy detailed article which by framing the
debate in his terms and sytematically misrepresenting opposing positions
distorts the situation. (My big edit war with him was in Chiroractic
medicine which I do know something about. Your chiropratic medicine article
remains unrecognisable to chiropractic practitioners or their patients). I
would certainly never attempt to edit an article he was actively working on
in an aggressive way. (Silly to get upset over a hobby like Wikipedia).

On Vfd, just recently someone tried to delete [[Communist government]], but
had to give up. That article which is quite toned down after extensive
editing remains deeply offensive to apoligists, however they have their
[[Communist state]] article which presents a sanitized version of things.

Thing is, Wikipedia is to some extent an ideological battleground, a forum
for struggle.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 06:48:08 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK)
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Agreed, I was hasty. But you must admit a struggle to put forward  points of
>> view by partisan advocates is in progress. Deletion and thus silence is just
>> as much its expression as RK's overdone presentation.
>
> Can you be more specific about what is overdone about his
> presentation?  I'm not sure what the word "overdone" means here.
>
> Certainly, the material in question is too long and in detail for a
> broad overview article -- but this only shows why it was a mistake to
> delete the original article in the first place.
>
> But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem.  There is no
> question that a full understanding of the Palestinian situation
> requires understanding what Palestinian views of the peace process
> actually are.  There is no question that one point of contention is
> whether Palestinian leaders, in particular, view the peace process as
> "permanent and irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they view it
> merely as a short-term negotiating tactic in a longterm effort to
> destroy Israel.
>
> Simply omitting information on that question is unacceptable.  This is
> an important part of one of the major questions of our time.
>
> I've read and re-read the passages in question -- they could use some
> work, no doubt.  But the only arguments I've seen for deletion is that
> the material is biased (though just how it is biased, I'm not sure).
>
> I've been trying to find the original VfD entry, but Wikipedia is
> painfully slow at the moment, so I've been unsuccessful.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Viajero wrote:
> finally I thought the best thing would be to give the thing  a quick and
> decent burial. The vote if I recall correctly was nearly unanimous; six or
> eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a POV rant that was
> hopelessly beyond salvation, as you will see from the VfD vote. Sometimes
> it really is better to wipe the slate clean and begin anew.

I have as yet been unable to find the VfD vote, nor have I seen the
version of the article that was being voted on.  But the text that
Daniwo and Zero000 have been repeatedly deleting is *not* a POV rant.

It is not perfect, but then it is easy to understand why -- no one is
attempting to edit it, they just try to suppress the information by
deleting it and insulting RK.

If the original was a POV rant, it was still not appropriate to
*delete* the article -- deletion causes text to be completely
unavailable to future editors who are not sysops.  It would have been
much more sensible to just edit it down to a stub, and to ask RK to
substantiate everything that he wanted to add back in.

> At this point, I have neither the time, the energy, nor the scholarly
> resources to offer a detailed explanation as to why the material in that
> article was so bad: suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of
> quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context, obviously (to
> some of us at least) manipulated solely as a way of discrediting the
> Palestinian cause. It failed to take into consideration that there is a
> broad range of opinion among Palestinians; the
> radical/fundamentalist/militarist POV is but one.

The text in question gives considerable context for each quote, and
clearly indicates a broad range of opinion among Palestinians.  So
far, you are the first person to say that the quotes are "of dubious
origin", but they are generally referenced to reputable sources --
Washington Post, etc.

> The PLO -- representing the Palestinians but not necessarily reflecting
> ALL of Palestinian opinion -- did indeed at one time have as a goal the
> destruction of Israel. This goal was renounced at the PNC meeting in 1988
> if I recall correctly. Perhaps our coverage of the evolving Palestine
> perspective could be expanded in the main article or one of its offspring
> -- the issue is not "omitting" any information or censoring any POV -- it
> is presenting balanced (and balancing) viewpoints with the proper
> historical context, something the above-mentioned text failed utterly to
> do.

I don't agree.  (Again with the caveat that I have not seen the
original so that we may be talking about different things.)  The text
could be improved, of course.  But it is very good precisely becasue
it presents "balanced and balancing viewpoints with the proper
historical context".  The quotes are dated and exact references are
given.  Alternative views and background information is given.

> I support Danny and Zero on this one 100%. I find it particularly ironical
> and completely hypocritical that RK now positions himself as the
> "defender" of Palestinians from "censorship". Have you no shame RK?

But I think he's exactly right about that.  I think that's really
important to understand.

Many in the West are uncomfortable with this kind of information
because it doesn't comport well with the prevailing liberal view that
the Palestinians are solely victims.  Rationally, of course we can say
that Palestinians are indeed victims while simultaneously holding and
expressing reprehensible views.  What we must not do is simply omit
information about Palestinian attitudes because it doesn't match up
too our rosy view of noble rebels fighting a racist apartheid state.

What I'm primarily arguing, though, is not the content of the
material.  I think that the material is good, though not excellent,
but my real point is that it can in no way be characterized as
something that ought to be simply *deleted* outright.  It should be
*improved*.

In the present case, we see why deletion is bad.  We are left with a
horribly broken presentation in which readers are unable to discover
why it might be that, despite the PLO officially no longer calling for
the destruction of Israel, and Arafat himself announcing a right to
exist, the majority of Palestinians polled support the destruction of
Israel.

We can only come to understand that better when we come to understand
Arafat's duplicity, and the anti-Israel propaganda that is rampant in
the Palestinian culture.  But because some supporters of Palestine
are uncomfortable with that material, it is censored from Wikipedia.

No, I don't think censorship is too strong a word.

--Jimbo


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Partisanship and Neutrality (was: Effective bullying
	strategy)

body:
I am the first to admit that it's difficult to put forward
points of view /neutrally/ when one is a partisan.

That is why I am usually V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W to edit anything
relating to the [[Unification Church]]; I'm a member of it
and a passionate advocate of its theological and philosophical
views.

I'm also slow and careful (when I can be) on environmental
issues, but several times a year I seem to lose my temper, edit
too hastily, and have to apologize.

Some other respected contributors, recognizing the difficulty
they have writing neutrally on subjects they feel passionately
about, avoid those topics altogether. Daniel Mayer (Maveric)
sets the best example I'm aware of, in this respect.

The two best things I've found to help me avoid partisan
fighting at Wikipedia are:

1. Summarize the POV of my "opponent" /TO HIS SATISFACTION/ !!!
2. If one of my contributions is reverted (even once), take
   this as a signal that I'm NOT DOING AN ADEQUATE JOB of
   reflecting POVs other than my own.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


subject: [Wikitech-l] 3 add'l machines tomorrow

body:
If all goes well, Wikipedia will be able to use 3 add'l machines
tomorrow.

1.  Geoffrin is fixed, and Jason is stress testing it today.  We got a
new mobo from Penguin, no charge.

2.  'lb1' is an old bomis server -- it's a single Pentium 4 / IDE
machine.  Possibly not much help, but it has a gig of ram and can do
some reasonable webserving.  Possibly we should set this up as a
squid, to test the squid idea now, so we'll be ready to go in 2-3
weeks when I setup the new cluster?

3.  'other other new machine' -- this is the one I loaned Wikipedia
last time Jason went to SD, the one that fell off the net 30 minutes
after Brion started trying to copy stuff to it.  Jason things that the
problem was overheating and can be solved with a reapplication of
thermal paste.  Obviously, I don't consider this to be a reliable
machine, but it'll be there for us if we need it.

--Jimbo


from_name: Menchi

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Belief (Re: WikiLyrics

body:
"cprompt" <cprompt at tmbg.org> ???g???l???s?D
:1073618234.2414.9.camel at chai.snacksoft.com...
> I believe that lyrics should be under fair use, and I think that most
artists would agree with me.

We believe many things, few of which are legally true. Few!

Many artists claim that it is their recording company/publisher that are
territorial re: copyright, not themselves, that they are only open-minded
freewheeling artists! Apparently they're not open-minded enough to stand up
to their jefes anyway!

--
___________________________
Menchi


from_name: Nikos-Optim

subject: [Wikitech-l] 3 add'l machines tomorrow

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> If all goes well, Wikipedia will be able to use 3
> add'l machines
> tomorrow.

great news!

>
> 1.  Geoffrin is fixed, and Jason is stress testing
> it today.  We got a
> new mobo from Penguin, no charge.
>

good!

> 3.  'other other new machine' -- this is the one I
> loaned Wikipedia
> last time Jason went to SD, the one that fell off
> the net 30 minutes
> after Brion started trying to copy stuff to it.
> Jason things that the
> problem was overheating and can be solved with a
> reapplication of
> thermal paste.  Obviously, I don't consider this to
> be a reliable
> machine, but it'll be there for us if we need it.
>
> --Jimbo

Use the "Active Silver 5" thermal paste, obviously
with copper heatsink.

--Optim

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from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views

body:
Fred writes:
> I believe RK's material could and should probably be
> presented in several paragraphs. What he has done is a
> piece of original historical research,

Nonsense. I have done no original research at all. My only
"sin" is that I made available very well known quotes that
Danny and Zero want to hide. Thus the censorship.

These quotes were widely quoted on TV, radio, the web and
in Arab newspapers. Ironically, on this issue there is more
free speech in the Arab world than on Wikipedia.

> which by citing particular statements made by
> Palestinians builds a strong case that at least some
> Palestinian leaders are insincere.

Please re-read my contributions; Unlike others, I have
tried very hard to include _all_ points of view. I also
have shown statements from Palestinian leaders who think
that the peace process should be permanent and sincere.
Both views exist. I cannot imagine why it is controversial
to note this.

In an NPOV encyclopedia, we do not take sides with one
group or another. Rather, we show the range of positions
that exist, we document these positions with quotes and
sources, and allow readers to make up their own minds.

This text may need to be edited, sure. But no one can edit
it if it does not exist!

> However due to my experiences with him I would hesitate
> to rely on what he has done as he has often composed
> this sort of lengthy detailed article which by framing
> the debate in his terms and sytematically misrepresenting
> opposing positions distorts the situation.

Fred is clearly insinuating that they really don't have the
beliefs that they clearly say that they do, and that the
only way we can come to such conclusions is through my
"systematic misrepresentation".  Fred is wrong. His
position is only tenable if we assume that all Palestinians
constantly lie about all of their beliefs. Some do lie, on
occasion, but as these quotes show, the truth always shows
through.

In any case, Fred also totally misses the point...that
Palestinians have a number of points of view, not just one.
That is why I included multiple POVs. His claims to the
contrary are wrong. It is Fred and Danny who systematically
represent the Arab views by hiding all quotes they disagree
with, or denying their veracity.

Robert (RK)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Call for Configurations

body:
So, MediaWiki has internal code to differentiate read and write
database requests.

I'm not sufficiently familiar with mySQL replication to recommend or
anti-recommend it. But if it works as advertised, it seems like a good
configuration would be to have one master database server that takes all
write requests, and one slave database server per Web server for read
requests.

The slave DB server instances could live on the same machine as the
Web server, or on different machines. There's some metering to be done
to determine if the bandwidth advantages of having a DB server on the
same machine outweigh the disadvantages of sharing memory and CPU
resources.

In other words, the configuration would look something like this
(leaving out the Web load-balancing stuff):

   +--------+    +--------+      +--------+
   | Web 1  |    | Web 2  |      | Web 3  |
   +--------+    +--------+      +--------+
      |  |          |  |            |  |           +--------------+
      |  +-------------+---------------+-----------| DB Master    |
      |             |               |              +--------------+
   +--------+    +--------+      +---------+
   | DB 1   |    | DB 2   |      | DB 3    |
   +--------+    +--------+      +---------+

This would obviously put a lot of load on the DB master; it might be
preferable to have different master DB servers for the different
language versions and projects. Not doing _any_ read requests on the
master DB server should also reduce load on it.

At the same time, it's probably worth recognizing that we have about a
5:1 -- 10:1 ratio of views to edits. Edits aren't the only writes to
the DB, but it might be a good rough metric... The master may end up
being _underloaded_.

It might also be possible to share slave DB servers between Web
servers -- say, 2 or 3 Web servers using one slave DB server.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [Wikitech-l] Celeron vs. p4

body:
Can anyone give me some perspective on this celeron vs p4 issue?

For equivalent ghz, what's the difference likely to be *from
the perspective of webserving*?


body:
Gareth Owen wrote:
> Your original draft of this article was composed of as many of the
> former as you could muster, and none of the latter.  Then you
> represented these views as if they were the incontrovertible and
> steadfast beliefs of the entire Palestinian population (can you
> imagine an article entitled "US views of the Iraq Conflict" that
> suggested such a united front -- laughable.)

I can't speak on the original draft of the article, but in any event
we are not now arguing about the original draft, but an edit war
which broke out recently between Danny and Zero000 on the one hand,
and RK on the other hand, about a large block of text that does
not in any way meet the description that you give here.

> You did these things because you are -- like all of us -- are utterly
> incapable of being impartial in things that concern you closely.
>
> That's why it was POV.

But I think that this is unfair to RK (and all of us), and in
particular this is unfair to the specific block of text in question.
That block of text was not perfect, it could stand improvement, but we
must not imagine that the text was anything other than what it was.

Self-evidently, if you read it, it was exactly what RK has said it
was... a genuine effort to collect and present a variety of views that
have been expressed by prominent Palestinians.  For each quote, a
certain degree of context was provided.  For the entire set, care was
taken to note where views (of Arafat, say) have changed, and so on.

Danny, like you, has a problem with RK.  But in the current instance,
this portrayal of the particular text in question is wrong.  It isn't
a one-sided screed at all.  It cites reputable sources.  It presents
different viewpoints.  It shows clearly that Palestinian views are
diverse.

Maybe there are some egregious problems with the text that I haven't
understood yet.  But we should be careful to look at it with a fresh
eye, and not misunderstand what's going on here, which is Danny engaging
in deleting text repeatedly while refusing to work with someone who is
very much trying to write a balanced text.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Call for Configurations

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> That's non-ECC ram though and no cdrom. The rail costs 49$ at
> siliconmechanics.
> Newbie question: Is the rail like a drawer so that you can pull the server
> out of the rack? I've never physically seen my servers up to now...

Some are like that.  But the cheap ones are just 'mounting hardware'.
I think Dell comes without mounting hardware of any kind, which is
very bad obviously.  Something has to be done.

Penguin offers a variety of mounting hardware options.  Sliding rails
are nice, but usually a bit pricey considering how rarely servers need
to be taken out of the racks, and how relatively easy it is to do it
anyway.

I do think that will be buying a kvm/lcd/keyboard thingy for the colo,
though.  Those can be very very handy.

--Jimbo


subject:
Proposal for New VFD Policy (was: Re: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying
	strategy.)

body:
Hello,

I propose a new VfD system which uses Scientific
Management principles as described by Taylor, the
creator of Scientific Management:

(don't take it too seriously!)

The rules of the new system are:
1. When a Wikipedian proposes to delete a page and the
community says "NO" (as defined in Article 7), he or
she will be charged with an amount of X Wikis from his
WikiBank account. (PUNISHMENT)
2. When a Wikipedian proposes to delete a page and the
community says "YES" (as defined in Article 7), he or
she will earn an amount of X Wikis, added to his or
her WikiBank account. (REWARD)
3. When a Wikipedian proposes to delete a page and the
community is "UNDECIDED" or "NEUTRAL" (as defined in
Article 7), no change will occur to his or her
WikiBank account.
4. Only users with at least X Wikis on their WikiBank
account will be able to vote for deletion. However,
there will be an allowed overdraft of Y Wikis on all
WikiBank accounts. The user will be required to pay
the overdraft in a period of Z months by creating new
articles or fixing existing ones or providing another
service to the community.
5. Usual voters' WikiBank accounts will not be
affected. The punishment or reward will affect only
the Wikipedian who proposed a page to be deleted.
6. (intentionally left blank without any rational
reason). :)
7. Definition of the Community's Will: When a P
percentage of the voters say "YES", the Community Will
is considered to be "YES". When a P percentage of the
voters say "NO", the Community Will is considered to
be "NO". When there are no votes at all, the Community
Will is considered to be "NEUTRAL". In any other case
the Community Will is "UNDECIDED".
8. The real value of the variables X, Y, Z and P will
be defined by Jimbo, unless he nominates another
person or group to define these values. The definition
will be added to this rule-list as Article 9. :)
9. (Intentionally left blank for future use.)
10. A vote is:
10a. Positive if the Wikipedian wrote "DELETE!".
10b. Negative if the Wikipedian wrote "KEEP!".
10c. In all other cases it is a comment, not a vote,
even if the Wikipedian meant a positive or negative
vote by using other words.
10d. The "!" and the capital letters are included in
the definition of a vote. i.e. "delete!", "delete" and
"DELETE!" are considered different. :)

note: currently a P percentage of 2/3 is discussed on
the page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy

The main idea of the proposed system is to PUNISH
wikipedians who vote to delete a useful page and
REWARD wikipedians who help keeping Wikipedia clean
and usable by voting to delete unnecessary or harmful
pages. People will think twice before voting to delete
a page which may seen as useful by others, but at the
same time they will have a (wiki-monetary) incentive
to vote the deletion of pages which surely will not
yield negative votes, thus keeping Wikipedia clean,
usable and safe for its readers.

Background information:

For the definition of a "Wiki":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimoney

For the definition a "WikiBank Account":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiMoney_accounts

For what VfD is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion

The goal of VFD is to prevent trolls and vandals from
destroying Wikipedia and keep it clean, usable and
safe for its readers. Our readers are our masters and
we must serve them at the best of our ability. We
should never allow vandals to put gargabe, false
information (which, especially in cases about Health
or Law, may be dangerous), potentially offensive
material etc.

VFD should exist but not overused. Currently it is
overused, since most of the pages listed in VfD could
have been listed in Cleanup or Pages Needing
Attention.

My (serious) recommendation is that anyone who likes
to use VFD should read and have a deep understanding
of Ahimsa and WikiLove.

See:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikipediAhimsa

and:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLove

VFD is often destructive and contrary to Ahimsa.
Ahimsa is non-violence. However, Cleanup and Pages
Needing Attention are in harmony with the Ahimsa
principles. It is better first to use Cleanup and
Pages Needing Attention before using VFD.

VFD forces people to write either only good articles
or no articles at all. It uses the power of Fear to
control people's inclusion of stubs (small articles)
and gargage in Wikipedia. Using fear is psychological
violence, so it is against Ahimsa. In the end, VFD may
be useful (keeping Wikipedia clean), but VFD's means
are based on Violence. Of course I accept that it is
impossible or very difficult not to use Violence,
provided the current state of society and human
spirit.

It is sure that if we had unlimited time, we would
delete all Wikipedia articles in the end, because
everyone will find some soft or hard objection to any
of the existing articles. (this is an interesting
"infinite time experiment", isn't it?). Even the best
and most NPOV article may be seen as offensive by some
people. And it is known that in the human society, a
lot of mad persons found great support among the
people. If you can't think of any example, just open a
History textbook or browse Wikipedia for historical
figures and you will find many crazy trolls who were
able to influence the society in order to materialize
their craziness.

Thank you,
With Best Wishes for Peace Profound,
--Optim

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Rick wrote:
> > Fine.  I give up.  I will no longer list anything
> to be deleted, and
> >I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals
> want to add to
> >Wikipedia.
>
> I don't think being huffy about it is very helpful.
> Better, I think,
> to work for a new system that doesn't make such
> egregious errors.
>
> "Palestinian views of the peace process" is quite
> clearly an important
> topic -- one of the most important topics in one of
> the most important
> issues of our times.  And yet, rather than find a
> way to work for a
> neutral presentation of that issue, VfD resulted in
> deletion.  That's
> broken.  The material there may have been flawed in
> some ways (though
> I find it to be pretty decent, as a first draft at
> least), but it was
> hardly "vandalism".
>
> On the other hand, deleting "any garbage that any
> vandals want to add
> to wikipedia" is valuable.
>
> Tying the two together is a mistake, I think.  When
> I say that the
> current VfD process is broken, I am not thereby
> endorsing the notion
> that we can't justifiably delete vandalism or
> nonsense.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Celeron vs. p4

body:
my reccomendation is to use either AMD CPUs or Pentium
4's. I would never use Celerons. they have less cache
memory, and I consider cache as very important in a
Web Serving setting.

When I will have a little time I may give better
justification, but this is my opinion.

However, when there is a shortage of money and great
performance is not needed, Celeron (or AMD Athlon) is
ok.

--Optim

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Can anyone give me some perspective on this celeron
> vs p4 issue?
>
> For equivalent ghz, what's the difference likely to
> be *from
> the perspective of webserving*?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mirror of Dutch Wikipedia

body:
Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote:
>Yes, but they are not interested in the French version. :-)
>It's a Dutch ISP and they are copying the Dutch database.
>(Apparently via a Perl-script.)

D'oh! Dutch, French, what's the difference? Uh, actually a lot.

Sorry about that. :)

--mav


subject: [Wikipedia-l] mirror of Dutch Wikipedia

body:
Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote:
>Brion just informed me it seems to be *not* a mirror.
>Looks like it just fetches the requested page from our server,
>reformats it to their own liking, and displays it.

That's not very nice at all.

>As their server is not in production it hardly takes bandwith
>or CPU-capacity.

Not yet. But when they get a lot of hits that is going to slow our servers
down. In a sense our servers will be feeding content to a website that may
put adverts all around it and /not/ give us the correct credit.

That's just not nice. They need to use a backup dump and host the content
themselves while following our liberal interpretation of what the GNU FDL
requires.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
>      LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z.
>
> Uncle Ed

unfortunately I haven't watched the ongoings about
RK/palestinians/etc, but I generally agree to "LET THE
ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z".

Why have an edit war and not WikiHug each other
wishing everyone to have "peace profound"?

With Best Wishes For Peace Profound,
--Optim

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] mirror of Dutch Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:
>Oh, it's certainly a good idea, and doesn't hurt anything,
>to mention Wikipedia as the source.  But we can't *require*
>people to do so, and write them nasty letters if they don't,
>unless it actually is a legal requirement, which I don't think
>it is.

We may be able to argue that it is since we explicitly give people the option
of providing a link-back in lieu of the more strict author requirement of the
GNU FDL. Given our liberal interpretation of the GNU FDL I don't think that a
mention of our project's name is much to ask (even if it is just a request,
and not a mandate). As I said before this may even go beyond the GNU FDL and
get into proper referencing practices.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mirror of Dutch Wikipedia

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Delirium wrote:
>
>
>>I'm not entirely sure one of those points is necessary:
>>the statement that the article was retrieved from Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>Well, that is what the printable page says. So what if it goes over the bounds
>of what what is minimally needed for GNU FDL compliance? Another purpose of
>the message is for citation purposes. In those cases the name of the source
>and when the article was last edited are needed.
>
>
Oh, it's certainly a good idea, and doesn't hurt anything, to mention
Wikipedia as the source.  But we can't *require* people to do so, and
write them nasty letters if they don't, unless it actually is a legal
requirement, which I don't think it is.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Context and POV (was: Effective bullying strategy)

body:
Viajero,

List me as "abstaining" from the VfD vote: so it wasn't
unanimous, there was at least one abstention. If I thought
VfD was a helpful process, I'd have voted "keep".

I agree that the article wasn't well written, but I don't
think /voting to eliminate it/ is the answer. Perhaps
BLANKING the content and starting fresh, with a stub would
be better.

Part of the problem in politics is that advocates (like
Arafat) espouse various positions. Sometimes the change is
gradual over time, or sudden at a particular point. There
have even been claims that a politician will say different
things to different audiences on the same day!

The hardest political position to describe is one which the
advocate doesn't want to be "caught" advocating; he tells
his supporters one thing and his critics another. The so-
called "secret agenda". In American politics, some people
think Bush and Cheney have a secret agenda in Iraq, e.g.,
of self-enrichment via Haliburton. In Middle Eastern
politics, some people think Arafat seeks the full
elimination of Israel and talks peace only as means to that
end.

It's exceedingly difficult to figure out what a politician
is /really/ saying, in such a case. Is he telling the
truth, and his opponents are TWISTING his words? Or is he
speaking with forked tongue, and his opponents are
REVEALING the deception?

I don't think Wikipedia is called upon to make the ultimate
judgment. Rather, we should say things like:

* Former Israeli prime minister X believes that Arafat says
  one thing and does another
* Islamic leader Y believes that Arafat has always
  sincerely sought to live side by side in peace with Jews

If it's a question of statements being taken out of
context, we can help by quoting lengthier passages. But
it's up to the /reader/ to decide whether the man /really/
means what he says.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


body:
Fred has never edited the article.

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 10:13:00 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views
>
> It is Fred and Danny who systematically
> represent the Arab views by hiding all quotes they disagree
> with, or denying their veracity.


subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD

body:
Viajero wrote:
>...
>Sometimes it really is better to wipe the slate clean and begin anew.
>...

Yes - I agree. Jimbo really should take a look at the stuff added to VfD
before making a decree that VfD should be abolished. Ideals are all fine and
good, but it is us, not him, who are in the trenches. There is just too much
crap added on a daily basis for us to fix it all. Sorry Jimbo.

But I agree that VfD should not be the primary solution for bad content and
that Cleanup and its associated pages may not be used enough. However, most
of what is added to Wikipedia daily is already fixed via the wiki process -
/very/ little is actually removed or deleted. So maybe the lack of use of the
Cleanup pages compared to VfD isn't really that big of an issue after all.

Nothing wrong with separating the wheat from the chaff. That doesn't
necessarily mean deletion of a page, but if the page only contains chaff and
no wheat ...

Sometimes an edit link is more informative.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD

body:
I wouldn't be near as sore as I am if this was policy. Coming back and
finding good stuff gone is upsetting.

Fred

> From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: 09 Jan 2004 20:07:00 +0100
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD
>
> - improving VfD headers and communicating with users in cases where their
> pages have been listed


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and Viajero's claims

body:
Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> writes:
> I was the one who listed the original article,
> [[Palestinian views of the peace process]], on VfD in
> mid-December. I had encountered the article last
> summer and was appalled by it,

Yes, but only because it made available verified
Palestinian quotes that you wanted to hide. You could not
point out any POV problems; rather, you claimed that the
topic's mere *existence* was a POV violation. That, of
course, is not tenable.

In theory, I could have written editorials containing my
point of view about these Palestinian views; but as you can
see for yourselves, I did no such thing. I merely allowed
both groups of Palestinians to speak for themselves, in
their own words. That includes both those that are working
for a permanent peace with Israel, and those that view the
peace process as a "Trojan horse" (their own words) for
destroying Israel.  People can see the array of views and
draw their own conclusions. This is the very definition of
NPOV, precisely what we have been aiming for in all our
other articles.

> six or eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a
> POV rant that was hopelessly beyond salvation,

Six or eight people can write all the fiction they want.
But their claims cannot be made true by repeating them. As
you can see for yourself, that text contains zero points of
view _about_ the Palestinians; rather, it only presents
their own points of view, and allows readers to draw their
own conclusions. Your problem is that you do not want
readers to draw their own conclusions; you have your own
conclusion you are forcing on us.

> At this point, I have neither the time, the energy, nor
> the scholarly resources to offer a detailed explanation
> as to why the material in that article was so bad:

So we should delete entire articles just on your say so?
While Danny and Zero agree with you, I think most of us can
agree that this is silly.

> suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of
> quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context,

Sorry, but now you are making things up in an effort to
slander me. These quotes were presented in detail precisely
because left-wing Wikipedia readers kept denying their
existence. That is precisely why lenghty quotes were given;
so that no one could possibly see them as being out of
context.

Further, these quotes are representative of a much wider
Palestinian literature that is widely available both in the
original Arabic and English translation. Finally, these
quotes are well verified, and most significantly, the
Palestinians themselves do not deny them. In fact, they are
proud of them. The only problem is that some people are
uncomfortable with these views, and thus keep trying to
hide them. That is not worthy of an encyclopedia project.

Robert (RK)

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
>I believe RK's material could and should probably be
>presented in several paragraphs. What he has done
>is a piece of original historical research, which by
>citing particular statements made by Palestinians
>builds a strong case that at least some Palestinian
>leaders are insincere.

Well the allegation that Palestinian leaders often say one thing in English to
westerners and say another thing in Arabic to the Islamic world is not what I
would call new work.

But the long passage would definitely be improved by a great deal of
condensation at the very least. My first impression upon reading it was that
for the length of text it actually said very little. But I'm not prepared to
get into an edit war with RK over it - he seems to find it difficult to take
critical comments about his work.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who avoids editing these kind of articles
because of RK. Wrong or not on this particular issue, Danny was one of the
few people who would not back down to RK's bullying (yes, IMO, what RK does
when he does not get his way is bullying).

Sadly it now seems that Jimbo's declarative and  unmitigated comments have
resulted in Danny leaving the project. Jimbo should realize the great weight
his comments have and mix criticism with some sort of mitigating/less sharp
comments.

I don't think that Danny's absence serves the big picture goal of having NPOV
over many Middle-east subjects.

I am very sad to see him leave.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Celeron vs. p4

body:
On Jan 9, 2004, at 12:31 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Can anyone give me some perspective on this celeron vs p4 issue?
>
> For equivalent ghz, what's the difference likely to be *from
> the perspective of webserving*?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Well, it has more cache and a faster bus speed.  These two make a huge
difference in the overall speed and responsiveness of a computer
(especially as far as integer operations go, which is what web serving
is).  Percentage wise, it depends on the speed of the CPUs, but I would
hazard a guess of around 25%.

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


body:
Ed wrote:
>This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always the same:
>
>     LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z.

Exactly! This is why I think that [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] is so important.
Otherwise an article becomes a mix of opposing POVs of various Wikipedians
which, at best, masquerades as NPOV by sounding neutral.

--mav


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Delete vs salvage (was: Context and POV (was: Effective
	bullying strategy))

body:
Viajero wrote:
>It is fine in principal to be against deleting articles but that implies
>ACTION in concrete terms, but since we are a collection of volunteers,
>this doesn't always follow. While I have nothing against incomplete
>articles, of which there are obviously many in WP, I am strongly against
>have genuinely *bad* articles -- such as the Palestinian viewpoints
>article -- in the encyclopedia. They should be fixed immediately or
>deleted -- one or the other.

Nicely put! As a group of volunteers we can't expect that somebody will want
to fix a bad article. So giving a bad article exposure for one last chance to
at least become a stub is a good thing.

Furthermore, the mere existence of bad articles encourages more bad articles
to be added. Incomplete is one thing - that is relatively easy to fix - but
bad is another and if often much more difficult to fix.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] I've edited an article!

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_%27The_science_is_settled%27

I may have left some things out, or made some mistakes, but at least
until shown otherwise, I think this type of edit is a model of what we
ought to strive to do, i.e. find a way to characterize an issue in a
way that both sides to a dispute can agree to, and refrain to the
maximal extent possible from writing things that we know will only
inflame passions on the other side.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Thanks to everyone

body:
> --Ricky
>
> PS: Why hasn't anyone suggested quad xeon servers?
> :-)

because there are AMD Opteron servers available :)

--Optim.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


body:
I wrote
>> Danny has an agenda that he's pushing, openly, and it's affecting
>>his editing.

Viajero wrote:
> Danny has an agenda? This is laughable. What is it?

His agenda is that RK is a crank, and that his contribution on the
topic in question ought to be deleted rather than edited.

> That he is pro-Palestinian? I have yet to see a shred of evidence of
> this. His major failing appears to be that he is not uncritical
> enough of Israel in the Manichean worldview of RK and his ilk.

No, it has nothing to do with being pro-Palestinian.  It has to do
with summarily deleting perfectly good content, rather than working to
improve it.

Really, not much of the current dispute has anything to do with being
pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel.  RK has worked to present the varying
views of the Palestinians, and people who don't like the result just
delete it instead of work to improve it.

> In their own ways, both Danny and Zero are extremely well-informed
> and have a far subtler grasp of the complexities of the
> Israeli-Palestinian conflict than RK.

In that case, they ought to work to improve the article, not to censor
material that they don't like.

> And rightly so, they both strongly -- and at times inelegantly --
> resist RK's efforts to insert blatant anti-Palestinian propaganda in
> Wiki articles.

In the general case, there may be some truth to that.  But focussing
on the current example, it does not seem to be an accurate
representation of the text at hand.

It is _not_ "blatant anti-Palestinian propoganda" to give accurate,
verified, balanced quotes from a variety of sources in an effort to
illuminate Palestinian views on the peace process.  Is it?  It is
"blatant anti-Palestinian propaganda" to quote Arafat?  I don't see
how, particularly when he is quoted multiply to show how his
statements have changed over time.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] images/media files, sessions, nfs/replication?

body:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 12:25:05AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Jan 8, 2004, at 14:10, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >Gabriel Wicke wrote:
>
> Well, the idea I floated a while ago, which was somewhat unpopular, was
> to basically keep the "real" images as blobs in the database and let
> the web servers cache them to the local filesystem as needed.
>
> I should point out that the database holds far more data in the
> revision history than we have in uploaded images. en.wikipedia.org's
> uploads directory totals about 1.2GB, de's is <300MB. If we're talking
> about saving 14GB from the database by compressing old revisions, 2
> gigs or so of images seem a relatively minor burden.

Unpopular it was due to the already high load of the apaches and
databases. If the images are cached by the squids, it shouldn't be
a big difference whether they are stored in the DB or in the
filesystem from a performance point of view.

Putting them into the DB would save a lot of work: no need to have
redundant file servers.

Regards,

	JeLuF


body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Robert (RK) appears, in the eyes of some Wikipedians, to be making the
>following argument:
>
> * Palestinians say they want peace, but
> * Here is the proof that they really want to destroy Israel.

I understand that people think that, but I think that's more out of a
general view people have of RK than something that comes from this
particular text.  This particular text contains reports of quotes
tending in different directions.  As far as I know, a slim majority of
Palestinians does not recognize the right of Israel to exist, so
clearly both views are common there, and this is reflected in the
quotes.

I'm sure the passage could be improved, but there's really no way to
characterize it as "rubbish" or "trash" that needs to be summarily
deleted.

--Jimbo


body:
Part of the problem is the "authority and endorsement" issue.

Robert (RK) appears, in the eyes of some Wikipedians, to be making the
following argument:

* Palestinians say they want peace, but
* Here is the proof that they really want to destroy Israel.

Thus it appears that Robert is trying to get Wikipedia to endorse /his
personal POV/ that the Palestinians are lying. Hence the complaints that
he's "engaging in original research" or "writing from a POV".

I have occasionally had a similar problem with Sheldon and William. One
of us will try to find "proof" that scientists or politicians "really"
support or oppose a particular scientific hypothesis. Then one of us
will complain that it's just POV.

Well, the Wikipedia will never be a place to resolves political or
scientific disputes. Not until we depose our Philosopher King and
eliminate his NPOV policy.

Whatever the dispute is, the solution has always been -- and always will
be -- to /identify/ the advocates of the various sides and /attribute/
their stated POV to them.

If it's a dispute over whether a quote is authentic, then we can say:

* UPI quoted Arafat as desiring peaceful coexistence with Israel
* Jayson Blair, a reporter for the New York Times, hired an Arabic
translation who says Arafat's recent speech to Hezbollah and Herbrestah
is filled with repeated calls for the immediate and total destruction of
Israel.

That leaves the reader with the choice of believing UPI or Jayson Blair.
Wikipedia isn't going to tell him whom to believe.

Or if a contributor doesn't think UPI has any credibility, then how
about CNN or Fox News or the Washington Post or Al-Jazeera? Or how about
an historian or legal scholar? Or any other published source? I don't
care who says it, as long as you provide the identity of the speaker.
I'll decide for myself if I agree with them or not.

This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always the same:

     LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z.

Uncle Ed


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD

body:
Angela wrote:
> It was never deleted as two people on VfD suggested that at least
>some of the content was salvageable and ought to be merged elsewhere.

My mistake.  I was told that it was deleted, and found the redirect
but didn't realize that the page had not been actually deleted.

I would edit the last revision prior to the redirect and restore it,
but I wouldn't want people to think that this is some kind of
"official action" -- I already edited once today, which is scary
enough.  :-)

But perhaps if someone else did it, no one would freak out?  It seems
clear to me that this is a valuable topic.  I don't think that the
version that was there when the redirect happened was at all bad,
certainly much better than a lot of our articles.  Certainly, not so
bad that it had to be removed!

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Why can't I ban Michael on Meta?

body:
Tim wrote:
>Wikipedia will forever be haunted by problems such as these, since, at
>Anthere's request, I turned username blocking off by default. I'll turn
>it on at meta. Are there any other wikis you want it enabled at, while
>I'm at it? How about simple, wikibooks and wiktionary?

Oh, I thought it was the other way around. Might as well enable it on simple,
wikibooks and wiktionary.

-- mav


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Move of datacenter

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>Directly in the new colo, because moving them once they are in service
>would be very difficult.  One of the things that has persuaded me to
>move is that both Bomis and Wikimedia are about to undergo major
>hardware upgrades, thus providing an easy opportuity for migration to
>a new facility.

Where is the new colo going to be? IMO it should be less than an hour away
from Brion and/or Jason (preferably somewhere in-between where they both
live).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopedic knowledge

body:
No, but informative could be greatly improved, the academic definition of
knowledge, "a justifiable, actionable belief", is rather obtuse and
difficult to relate to.

Fred

> From: "Martin Harper" <martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk>
> Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 21:01:39 -0000
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopedic knowledge
>
> [[wikipedia:verifiable]]
>
> [[wikipedia:informative]]
>
> We're slowly and quietly amassing quite a wealth of information on how to
> decide
> what should and should not be deleted. (though I will probably now discover
> that one
> or both of these articles has been deleted!)


from_name: Ricky Beam

body:
On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
>I'm not a hardware expert- should we avoid companies like Dell? Is
>there a quality problem with their hardware?

There's no reason to avoid Dell.  Their machines work.  And when they
don't, Dell has a warehouse of parts to fix it.  And, they're hardware
isn't unreasonablly priced (esp. if you shop at their "outlet" web
store -- returns, refused orders, and other such dumb stuff that makes
things "not new".)

--Ricky


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD

body:
We have too many crucial, urgent pages about articles
and people. I can't follow all of them. I can't even
figure out how to use half of them.

All we need is vandalism in progress and pages
requiring attention.

The [[Wikipedia:Pages requiring attention]] article
should be for problems that YOU can't solve but want US
to solve for you:

* What was the name of the guy who said X?
* Could someone please speel czech this?
* Mediator needed at [[talk:Y]] (Heckle and Jeckle are
  at it again)
* Please help me describe Z neutrally.
* Someone posted their resume, and I'm not a sysop;
  please delete it for me.

If an article has a problem that is so unclear that we
want to debate it or vote on it, that's usually because
there is a genuine Policy Disagreement. It's not really
about the article in question; rather, the article is only
one example of a class of similar articles. So, let's take
it to the mailing list and hash out the /issue/.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


subject: [Wikitech-l] Thanks to everyone

body:
On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>I just really want to think everyone taking part in this discussion, I
>think it's really valuable and very helpful to me in figuring out what
>to do.  I know it takes a lot of time to mull this over and visit the
>websites to look for configurations and actual pricing data, but wow,
>it is very very valuable.

We'll make you a hardware guru before it's all over :-)

--Ricky

PS: Why hasn't anyone suggested quad xeon servers? :-)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Pliny etc

body:
On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Evan Prodromou wrote:
>Gotta replace the disk. Modern hard disks mark bad sectors internally,
>and remaps requests to "spare" sectors. Only when a disk runs out of
>spare sectors will it report any sectors as "bad".

Only for WRITES.  Read remapping is almost always disabled -- otherwise,
you'll never know the disk is failing or have a chance to repair damaged
data.  If the sector is readable without error, it's not an error and thus
never would be remapped. (See Also: The Chicken and the Egg.)

>So, if you're getting bad sector errors, this means the disk has
>seriously degraded, and it's time to replace it.

I doubt it.  I'd replace it as soon as possible, but a full surface
scan (e2fsck -c -c) will force those sectors to be remapped.  Of course,
one could also low-level format the drive and keep on truckin', but
that'll destory all the data on the drive and take like 3 hours.

(When the disk is out of spare space, it'll return a different error.
 And most drives have 2 spare sectors per physical track which amounts
 to a lot of space.)

--Ricky


subject: [Wikitech-l] Celeron vs. p4

body:
On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>For equivalent ghz, what's the difference likely to be *from
>the perspective of webserving*?

Very little.  Simple web serving is just reading crap from a disk and
putting out through the network.  There's not a lot of complex computation
involved.

--Ricky


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

body:
From: Jimmy Wales wrote:

>VfD is completely broken.  I say that here for emphasis because I
>think we really should get rid of it entirely.

So do I. The very idea of deleting people's work, that they have freely
given, is insulting, off-putting to newbies, and non-collaborative. I
suggest that we delete VfD and use cleanup instead.

Theresa


from_name: Erik van den Muijzenberg

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mirror of Dutch Wikipedia

body:
At 09:16 08-01-2004, Daniel Mayer wrote:

>They cannot say they are a partner with us because they are not. They cannot
>also use our logo without our consent, which they do not have.

I agree.

>>There is no link to the GNU-license, and the
>>pages are not stating they were copied from
>>Wikipedia.
>
>This is in clear breach of our license. Somebody should tell them what needs
>to be done in order to comply. Otherwise they cannot use any Wikipedia
>content.

Yes, I read in a list of more or less complying mirrors it
is in breach of the license.
I wrote a rough version of a polite letter, and one of our
sysops will send it to the ISP.

>>However they have a link to the original
>>page on the Wiki-server.
>
>That much is good. You may want to tell them that simply hosting the printable
>versions of the French Wikipedia will put them into GNU FDL compliance (there

Yes, but they are not interested in the French version. :-)
It's a Dutch ISP and they are copying the Dutch database.
(Apparently via a Perl-script.)

>should be a link-back, statement that the article was retrieved from
>Wikipedia, and link to the GNU FDL on each printable page).

So I understood. Strange enough, not everyone on our Dutch
mailinglist agrees. But  we will warn this Dutch ISP
nevertheless.

Thank you for your mail.

grtz,
Erik aka Muijz


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 04:59:46 +0100, Jens Frank wrote:

> * single host reliability can be "low" if the farm is available, so high end
>   features are not required.

+5 ;-)

An interesting links on Google's hardware strategy:
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,112891,00.asp

A quote:
Google's infrastructure: Google uses consumer-level hard disks and
'really cheap, unreliable memory.' ('If something fails, it's not
you, it's probably the memory.') They have around 10,000
commodity-level Linux computers set up in a parallel network ('the
largest Linux cluster in the world'), and anticipate the death of 'a
few machines every day.' Their network is set up to be able to route
around a failed machine instantly.

> * Many similar boxes provide higher flexibility than many different boxes.

To me this doesn't make that much sense- why spend a fair amount of extra
money on the idea of having flexibility with machines capable of doing
other tasks? If we save some money now by buying cheap yet more powerful
(more of them) Apaches we're extremely flexible to spend the remaining
money on whatever becomes necessary. And which major changes are
anticipated?

> = Configuration =
> The question is whether to use 4 of the "squid-class" single CPU servers
> or two of the "DB Backup class" dual opterons. 4 of the small boxes would
> cost 7,240$. Two of the big servers would be at 5,620$.

Both options are are a misfit for the Apaches.

* they have practically no disk access- no logging, no swapping, no data
  stored on the Apaches.  Only disk access on boot and when scaling
  images. Hence no raid, smallest/cheapest hd available.
* 'Low' reliability is ok, many machines

So time for some numbers.

== Apache ==
If we really wanted to go for
as-much-performance-for-the-money-as-we-can-get and there was space for
regular tower pcs in the colo:
Dell PowerEdge 600SC
Intel? Pentium?4 Processor at 2.4GHz
512MB DDR, SDRAM 2x256
40GB 7.2K RPM IDE Hard Drive
$797,-

otherwise rackmount 1U:
Dell PowerEdge 650
Intel Pentium 4, 2.4GHz, 512K, 533MHz, with Floppy /CDROM
1.0GB DDR,266MHZ,2X512MB DIMM
Price:$1,098.00

So it depends:
6 * PowerEdge 600SC = $4,782.00 (tower)
6 * PowerEdge 650   = $6,588.00 (rack 1U)

== Squids ==

Dell's pricing for 4Gigs ram is pretty bad:
PowerEdge 1750
Intel Xeon 2.4GHz w/512K Cache
4GB DDR,266MHz,4X1GB DIMMS
On-Board RAID 1, PERC4-DI, 128MB Battery Backed Cache, 1 Int 1 ext Ch-Embedded Raid
2 x 36GB,10K RPM, 1in (Ultra 320) SCSI Hot Plug Hard Drive
Price: $3,516.00

Better, but only 3 Gigs:
PowerEdge 650, Intel Pentium 4, 2.4GHz,
3.0GB DDR,266MHZ,3X1GB DIMM
2x 80Gb IDE RAID1
$2,885.00

The xeon isn't necessary, but 4 gigs on smaller cpus works out at the same
price at dell. So no business for dell here ;-)

I'm unshure about the opteron (Dell only lists Intel- a dual Xeon
2.4Ghz with 4Gigs and 2x 73GB 10K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI RAID1 would cost
$4,545.00).

So, cheap version (towers for Apaches), 6 instead of 4 P4s:

6 Apaches P4, 512Mb- 4,782$
1 Dual Xeon DB 4Gb - 4,545$
2 Squids P4, 3Gb   - 5,770$
-----------------------------
 15097$
-1000$ disc.   14097$

all rackmount:

6 Apaches P4, 1Gb  - 6,588$ (Dell)
else same as above
------------------------------
16,903$
-400$ disc.     16,503$

This doen't include Fileservers, it should be possible to use the DB
machines for this (or the old machines, if we don't want to use them as
spares).

Note that both options would buy significantly more power than Jens'
proposal.

2 Gigs for the Squids is something i'd really like to avoid, 3 Gigs might
be a compromise. The 4 Gig machines seem to be very expensive.
I'm not shure if it makes sense to use a dual Xeon for the DB- i'm
no expert there. The server has 6 ram slots, with four taken in this
config. Maximum ram possible is 12Gb.

--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikipedia-l] mirror of Dutch Wikipedia

body:
At 14:54 09-01-2004, Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote:

>Yes, but they are not interested in the French version. :-)
>It's a Dutch ISP and they are copying the Dutch database.
>(Apparently via a Perl-script.)

Brion just informed me it seems to be *not* a mirror.
Looks like it just fetches the requested page from our server,
reformats it to their own liking, and displays it.
As their server is not in production it hardly takes bandwith
or CPU-capacity.

Erik vdMb


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: images/media files, sessions, nfs/replication?

body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 13:54:28 +0100, Jens Frank wrote:

> Putting them into the DB would save a lot of work: no need to have
> redundant file servers.

We can use the DB servers for now and move the files to separate servers
if necessary.
I'm against placing them in the DB, this would create scaling problems in
the future. And it wouldn't be faster than nfs.
Also image scaling is easier when the files are already on the filesystem.
Setting up nfs is easy, i don't know about afs.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Pliny etc

body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 05:30:52 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Ursula is still straining with the databases; this is mostly
> disk-bound, on a slow disk. I don't really want to add the web serving
> on top of it.

We should get a lot of Ram for the new machines!

> If we get geoffrin back online and working soon, ursula can take over
> for pliny while it's being fixed.
>
> And, of course, there's the New Machine; if the overheating problems
> are resolved and it works in the near future, I'd like to get it to
> replace larousse in serving en.wikipedia.org. This will get rid of the
> need for en2 until we get an all-around server farm set up.

Great!

--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Celeron vs. p4

body:
> Not necessarily when the server concerned is running
> the PHP script.
> Celerons are crippled by design: don't use them.
>
> -- Neil

I participate in [[GIMPS]], a [[mathematical]]
[[research]] project which uses [[software]] to
perform some math calculations. Generally speaking we
tend to use [[Pentium 4]]'s (because of their SSE2
extensions) or [[AMD Athlon]]s. (damn, I am obsessed
with wikification)

SSE2 extensions are not useful in web serving, as far
as I can understand.

I would suggest either AMD Athlon MP or AMD Opteron
for webserving. if one wants to use Intel, only I
would say it's better to use Xeons or high-end
Pentium4's (with 800mhz FSB), but not Itanium2's. The
Pentium4 EE with three caches is seems yummy too, if
it is reliable. Of course my personal preference is
AMD (even my laptops are AMD and I haven't purchased
any Intel system from PentiumII's days).

It is true however that for very-low-traffic web sites
even a Pentium 150MHz will do the web-serving job very
well.

It is better *not* to use desktop CPUs and prefer the
server editions. The reason is that desktop CPUs are
often not reliable. One of the AMD Athlons I bought in
last summer was unable to do mathematical research,
although the CPU was working without problems for 2
months in a 24x7 server environment and never showed
any problems until I tried to use all of its power! My
point is, I am not surprised when I head about flacky
desktop chips. The same applies to cheap IDE/ATA disks
(but not on SerialATA ones). In general, whatever is
cheap has a higher probability of being flacky because
of inadequate Quality Assurance policies of the
manufacturer.

with wishes for peace profound
--.'.Optim.'.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Pliny etc

body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 05:30:52 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

Brion,

how much ram is taken up by Apache on Larousse and Pliny?
We won't need any disk buffering in the Apache cluster, the it's important
to know how much Apache/php itself takes up.

Do we need 512Mb or 1Gig on the Apaches?

--
Gabriel Wicke


body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 04:22:05 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> Well, the lowest machines that I can find widely available are
> 2.4Ghz... the state of the art these days is 3.2Ghz.  Upgrading from a
> 2.4Ghz to 2.6ghz is only $28 per CPU (for the celerons).

I've found the cpu to be much less of a price factor for the Apache-class
servers than the form factor and ram.

> Do you know of a vendor where I could buy 9 2Ghz machines for the
> price of 5 2.6Ghz machines?  Or was that just a hypothetical example?

Shure, dell for one ;-) Tower pcs might be impossible in the colo, but
they would save a lot of money while offering the same performance.
They're simply produced in different quantities than those 19" boxes.

> Someone offered to let me in on their deal with a vendor for
> last-generation Pentium III boxes, at $800 each.  For simple webserving,
> does it make sense to look at those?  Obviously we could get twice as
> many of those for the money...

See my post re call for configurations- we can get a P4 2.4 for that.

> At some point, of course, the management of a lot of servers becomes a
> hassle.  But I don't suppose there's much difference between managing 6
> identical webservrs and 12.

If we have many and one goes down, then does it really matter? We could
wait for another one to fail so it's worth the hassle. Spare parts would
be the same for all anyway (and commonly available).

I'm not a hardware expert- should we avoid companies like Dell? Is
there a quality problem with their hardware? I've only looked at their
website so far (because i don't know really cheap companies in the us). In
Germany there are other major hardware vendors that are cheaper than Dell
with the same support/warranty level.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Expert Determination (crossposting to the legal list)

body:
On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 02:55, Anthere wrote:

    I; (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen) wrote:
    > P.S. I hate to keep on harping on this matter, but there is a
    > possibility that a method
    > for resolving questions of fact may be needed down the line. The ideal
    > method for
    > this is neither arbitration nor mediation, but rather "expert
    > determination". This has
    > already been excercised informally in the Florentin Smarandache and
    > Neutrosophy
    > case, when a professor from outside Wikipedia was "enticed" to "fix" the
    > problem.
    >
    > Once we get more and more public exposure, it may well turn out that on
    > specific
    > tightly defined questions of fact, we may be able to get even notable
    > experts to
    > accept commissions to sort things out, in a context of both/all sides of
    > the
    > conflict accepting beforehand the expert enlisted makes the final call.
    > There are
    > attendant possibilities here, for generating publicity for both
    > Wikipedia and/or the
    > expert who accepts the commission (and we may even get a new convert from
    > the highest reaches of the particular field :-).

    hummmm, perhaps. Yeah, why not.

    But...let's say...if it is a purely factual point, expertise is nice.
    But usually, most conflicts are not exactly on purely factual points.
    More on some that involves interpretation.
    And...being an expert is no guarantee of neutrality
    rather far from that in fact :-)

<nod>

    Say...if we call for help upon an expert...I would say it is ok if this
    expert succeeds to *convince* us of the proper answer to the issue,
    provided that he gives us appropriate references.
    ?t is ok that he convinces us.
    It is not ok that he just tell us "this is the good answer".

Right. Any such expert would have to respect the fact that Wikipedia is
a
wiki, and any information that she provided would be edited ruthlessly,
as
always. The help she would be able to provide would consist solely of
providing an authoritative view from outside the wikipedia social
context.

    I mean...if we call help upon a "great" expert, that we agree on that
    expert, that this expert is indeed biaised in his answer, and makes a
    final call upon which someone disagree, how are we gonna get out of that
    ? and tell the guy from whom we requested help that "no, it is not
    acceptable".

I presume you mean that one or more of the combatants on the question
would
not accept the resulting answer to our query? I think then that person
would
have a very steep hill to climb to prove to the rest of wikipedians that
they
were not just trying to cause trouble.

    In short, I think a respectable number of us know an expert, who is just
    as experts as us on a topic, but with whom we disagree. I do not think
    it would be fair in the slightest that on wikipedia this expert vision
    is considered the right one, just because he was requested as an expert,
    if in the real world we fairly disagree.

    the idea is seducing, but dangerous :-)

I think your concerns are legitimate, and certainly would have to be
addressed
somehow. I am not quite sure how we should handle such a conflict,
although I
would hope that any expert we called upon would genuinely attempt to
arrive at
a neutral solution acceptable to all.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)

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from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Pliny etc

body:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 03:09:41PM +0100, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
>
> Brion,
>
> how much ram is taken up by Apache on Larousse and Pliny?
> We won't need any disk buffering in the Apache cluster, the it's important
> to know how much Apache/php itself takes up.
>
> Do we need 512Mb or 1Gig on the Apaches?
This is from larousse:
15:23 TimStarling:              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
15:23 TimStarling: Mem:       2065112    2000424      64688          0     361848     745996
15:23 TimStarling: -/+ buffers/cache:     892580    1172532
15:23 TimStarling: Swap:      1020088     506284     513804

So it's using 900 MB of real memory. Swap is used, but the vmstat's I've seen all
had very small si/so rates (0 most of the time, 5 maximum), so this is no issue.

Thinking of moving more things over to memcached, 1 GB seems to be the absolute
minimum to me, I'd prefer 2GB.

Regards,

	JeLuF


body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 04:13:57 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I want to think more about fileservers today.  I'm assuming that those
> are primarily for the images?  Can/should they be more or less the same
> configuration as the 6 apaches?

Nooo- the opposite! Apaches don't use their disk but need a lot of cpu,
the fileservers will need little cpu and a good RAID1. It's only about 2
Gigs of pics at the moment (are there sound files yet?), let's just store
them on the DB servers' filesystem. Those will be connected with heartbeat
anyway, no extra work for failover. If wikipedia suddenly starts to use a
lot of big media files we can easily move the files to separate servers.

> I think there's enormous flexibility benefits of having lots of
> identical hardware, *when it makes sense* to do so.  When it doesn't
> make sense, it doesn't.  I.E. if we have 1 box that needs to be
> 'bigger' in some ways, there's no sense in spending money on 6 other
> boxes just to make them all identical.

Especially for the Apaches- they'd cost at least double the necessary
price while still being unsuitable for DB or Squid.

> But if the requirements are roughly similar for different roles, then
> we shouldn't try to overspecialize the hardware, I think.

The only real specialization for the Apaches is no Raid. Easy to add (what
for, by the way?). We could stick more ram into the apaches and use them
as Squids, i don't think it's feasible to use them for the main DB.
Although- ram does wonders...

We should really get information about the minimum ram needed for the
Apaches!

--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Pliny etc

body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 15:30:50 +0100, Jens Frank wrote:

> So it's using 900 MB of real memory. Swap is used, but the vmstat's I've seen all
> had very small si/so rates (0 most of the time, 5 maximum), so this is no issue.

Ok, but this is on a dual Cpu- a single one apache would run fewer
threads. Would this halve Apaches's memory?

> Thinking of moving more things over to memcached, 1 GB seems to be the absolute
> minimum to me, I'd prefer 2GB.

What exactly does memcached do? If it's caching the full page- then we
have the Squids. If it caches common elements- then it won't need a lot of
ram. Each page should be produced once, and then randomly-picked by any of
the Apaches (especially if we move to ESI at some stage), so i don't see a
lot of gain in memcached. Shure it would be faster for a single machine,
but i doubt it will be faster than two small machines that cost the same.

>From the above i would expect 1Gb to be really on the safe side.

--
Gabriel Wicke