from_name: Paul Kippes

subject: [Wikitech-l] Repeated accesses when configured with index.php hiding

body:
I'm attempting to do a new install that makes use of rewriting the
URL to remove index.php.  If I use the IE browser, the page loads are
quick with each request generating 5 hits to the server.  But with
Firefox 1.0PR, the page loads are slow because the browser is making
40-45 hits to the server.  The page, once loaded, looks the same in
both browsers.

I'd be very grateful with any advice.  I've gone over Rewrite_Rules
and Apache_config numerous times, but still can't figure this out.
I'd be happy to update one of those pages to help others in the
situation.

I'm using Apache 1, PHP 4 (all current).  Apache was patched with the
ampersand patch.  Here is the portion of my httpd.conf and
LocalSettings.php.  Apache's error log has no errors.

DocumentRoot /home/domains/wiki.speedfc.com/htdocs
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(stylesheets|images|skins)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(redirect|texvc|index).php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/error/(40(1|3|4)|500).html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/favicon.ico
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt
RewriteMap ampescape int:ampescape
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /index.php?title=${ampescape:$1} [L,QSA]
-------------
$wgScriptPath       = "";
$wgScript           = "$wgScriptPath";
$wgRedirectScript   = "$wgScriptPath/redirect.php";
-------------

Here is my Apache access log when the IE request is made:

172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:06:58 -0500] "GET /Main_Page
HTTP/1.1" 304 26 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0
(compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; MyIE2; SV1; Feedreader)"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:06:58 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&gen=js HTTP/1.1" 302 38
"http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE
6.0; Windows NT 5.1; MyIE2; SV1; Feedreader)"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:06:58 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0
HTTP/1.1" 302 38 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0
(compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; MyIE2; SV1; Feedreader)"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:06:58 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&gen=css HTTP/1.1" 302 38
"http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE
6.0; Windows NT 5.1; MyIE2; SV1; Feedreader)"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:06:58 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fcss&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=css&oldid=0
HTTP/1.1" 302 38 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0
(compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; MyIE2; SV1; Feedreader)"
-------------

And here is portion of my Apache log when Firefox makes the request:

172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:08:28 -0500] "GET /Main_Page
HTTP/1.1" 304 26 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:08:28 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&gen=js HTTP/1.1" 302 38
"http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows
NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:08:29 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0
HTTP/1.1" 302 38 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:08:29 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0
HTTP/1.1" 302 38 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:08:29 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0
HTTP/1.1" 302 38 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:08:29 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0
HTTP/1.1" 302 38 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:08:29 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0
HTTP/1.1" 302 38 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:08:29 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0
HTTP/1.1" 302 38 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
172.25.32.32 - - [30/Oct/2004:02:08:29 -0500] "GET
/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0
HTTP/1.1" 302 38 "http://wiki.speedfc.com/Main_Page" "Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for new Wikipedia: Friulian

body:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 07:37:19 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
>
> I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is
> enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.

If you read it, you'll see that this person claims to have another
Friulian person interested in working on it.

> > This would be my third request for an Italian minority language
> > Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite
> > strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1.
> > Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
>
> Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of
> success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding
> whether another minority language should be started without a more
> significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.

Sardinian is admittedly a dud. Sicilian is still growing steadily, and
I'm sure they'd not appreciate the not-so-nice things you seem to
think of them.

> I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
> potential contributors before starting a new language. See
> http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy

Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles
started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience
alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000
articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm
sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.

Also, my definition of "potential contributors" means all the people
who speak the language and have Internet access, which in the case of
Friulian is well over 5.

And take a look, you'll notice Wikitravel only has 5 languages. Gee, I
wonder if this might have anything remotely to do with their policy?

If we require 5 people to commit to working on a new Wikipedia... why
not restrict individual article creation on en: by the same criterium?
That way, the number of mistakes in Wikipedia will be cut very
drastically. But, oh wait, what's that? Yes, inevitability?

At the beginning of this year, according to the sentiments of many,
the Kannada Wikipedia should have been deleted.

It is now growing steadily and much of the user interface is in
Kannada. And still, although there are more than 5 users, only around
3 of them are actually active.

And how many people speak Kannada? Is it a language with only a couple
hundred thousand speakers, like some of our active Wikipedias with
over 100 (or even 1000) articles? No... not really... Well, what about
under 1 million? No, not really. Under 10 million? Not really.

You see, Kannada is the mother tongue of heaps and heaps of people in
the Indian state of Karnataka (kannadaka). It is a Dravidian language.

How many of the Wikipedias we have today would exist now in their
present state had they not already existed when content was first
added?

Just as if we required people on en: to request a new article we would
have much fewer articles, it takes more time and effort and may be
confusing to some to figure out how to request a new language.

And how are they to know if there are already two people who would be
interested in the creation of such a Wikipedia?

If you are interested in multilingualism, internationalism, and
ultimately the building of an NPOV encyclopaedic resource in *any*
language, it makes no sense to advocate such restrictions.

For languages that are nobody's first language, such sentiment is
understandable to me.

But if we pursue such a policy, I do believe a fork with more liberal
policies regarding multilingualism is in order, not in the interest of
dividing Wikipedia but rather for the simple reason that by doing
this, we would be denying these people something that I do not
personally believe we should deny them. If we deny such an opportunity
to them, then I can no longer in good faith claim to support this
organisation fully and will consider creating a new site and a new
foundation with similar principles but with a stronger interest in
having policies more greatly favouring multilingualism than what you
have proposed.

--
mw


list: wikien-l

from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Full nice handbag

body:
Sorry, I don't understand - why would vanity pages be eligible for
deletion if the information therein was 100% verifiable and factual?
Delirium said that this isn't a strawman because *we get 100% verifiable
articles such as vanity pages which are deleted*. You argue in favour of
their deletion, because they are vanity pages - what constitutes a
vanity page? A page written by someone seeking glorification? But, why,
the information's verifiable! Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be a
compendium of human knowledge? I honestly don't understand your
paradoxical - dare I say, hypocritical - stance on this.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Mark Richards wrote:

>It's a straw man because you are taking the case in
>dispute (schools) and claiming that if we keep
>schools, we will have to keep an article on each
>school band member.
>
>There are existing rules to deal with vanity articles,
>and to the extent that we have a problem with them,
>they have been deleted as vanity.
>
>Let's not confuse the issues of schools with some
>hypothetical deluge of articles about cheerleaders or
>dead cats.
>
>If I have presented my case as an extreme one, then I
>have misrepresented my aims. I certainly do not
>support an article on each high school band member. I
>doubt that you could really write a verifiable and
>factual article on them that was not a vanity page
>anyway.
>
>It's not that these people are not notable, they
>certianly are to some people, it is the fact that
>these would be vanity articles, I am not proposing to
>remove this criteria for deletion.
>
>Mark
>
>--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Mark Richards wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Exactly - this is a straw man.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I don't see how it is a straw man at all.  You said
>>explicitly that
>>there are no criteria besides verifiability that are
>>acceptable.  The
>>entire contents of my local newspaper are
>>verifiable, as they keep
>>archives.  Therefore, *anything* in my encyclopedia
>>is a valid Wikipedia
>>article, and if on a whim I decide to add anything
>>from it, no matter
>>how non-notable, you have no basis to delete it,
>>because you reject
>>notability as a criterion.
>>
>>And there are many articles on Wikipedia like this
>>that get deleted.
>>There have been articles about college students who
>>made Dean's List,
>>which is verifiable from the University's website;
>>articles about
>>members of high school marching bands, which are
>>verifiable from
>>published lists of marching band members; etc.
>>These all get deleted
>>anyway, due to non-notability.
>>
>>-Mark
>>
>>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Repeated accesses when configured with index.php
	hiding

body:
On Oct 30, 2004, at 12:10 AM, Paul Kippes wrote:
> I'm attempting to do a new install that makes use of rewriting the
> URL to remove index.php.  If I use the IE browser, the page loads are
> quick with each request generating 5 hits to the server.  But with
> Firefox 1.0PR, the page loads are slow because the browser is making
> 40-45 hits to the server.  The page, once loaded, looks the same in
> both browsers.

Workaround is posted in comments of this bug:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=772

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 09:03:54 +0200, Thomas R. Koll <tomk32 at gmx.de> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 07:37:19AM +0100, Angela wrote:
>
> > I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
> > potential contributors before starting a new language. See
> > http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
>
> In contrast to the Italian government we should strongly support
> those minority languages. But five contributors is quite much for the
> beginning, maybe one very active (for the mediawiki strings and as press
> contact) and two other contributers?
> It would be nice to have a few pages on how to advertise a new wikipedia.
>
> ciao, tom
>
> --
> == Weblinks ==
> * http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
> * http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
> * http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have
generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are
scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing
Wikipedians.


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] Export options

body:
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 02:09:07AM +0300, NSK wrote:
> On Friday 29 October 2004 22:25, Andreas Voellmy wrote:
> > would like to select an article and export to pdf, word, or plain text
>
> I am working on it. If you can code we could work together. See
> http://maatworks.wikinerds.org/index.php/WikiAnt

I can't edit in your UNwiki so,
== Text-only printing ==
WikiAnt will allow the readers to print any page without its images
: Use css for that. img { display:none } and

== History enhancements ==

WikiAnt could allow the users to choose whether they want to create a new revision in history or just replace the current article without recording the change in the history. Drupal (http://www.drupal.org) does have this feature.

: Don't allow that for viral licenses like FDL. And prepare for mad accuses of censorship...

MonoBook does not display any edit link at the bottom of an article, so we will allow to the site owner to choose whether the edit link should be displayed on at the top or both at the top and at the bottom.
:True, but there's a howto for adding it via javascript. also there are keyboard shortcuts.

PS: Sorry for redistributing a few of your 'features'.

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


body:
I know that Sardinian has a couple of newspapers, although I don't
think they have good distribution.

I thought Friulian had a couple of newspapers, though I'm not sure.

Don't ask me, though, it'd probably be better to ask Mr Corraine at
the Ufitziu Limba Sarda about Sardinian media.

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:49:31 +0200 (MEST), Alfio Puglisi
<puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Oct 2004, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
>
> >On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 01:15:51AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> >
> >> I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have
> >> generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are
> >> scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing
> >> Wikipedians.
> >
> >Did you try local newspapers which are published in these langauges?
>
> There aren't, at least for sicilian, friulan and sardinian. They are
> mostly spoken, not written. If I am mistaken and they exist, I would be
> interested in getting a copy of thos newspapers.
>
> Alfio
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
The problem is that to do that, I need to be able to write a press
release in the target language.

I cannot, for example, write an article on Wikipedia in Manx.

I did however get a positive response from Brian Stowell (prominent
Mec Vannin activist) that gave me the impression he and/or other Manx
ultranationalists will soon turn gv: from dead to not-dead.

--node

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:24:49 +0200, Thomas R. Koll <tomk32 at gmx.de> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 01:15:51AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> > I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have
> > generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are
> > scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing
> > Wikipedians.
>
> Did you try local newspapers which are published in these langauges?
> Best would be to have an article (public domain is best for press releases)
> and visit the editorial staff.
> Make the press release a bit visionary, like "only (modern) encyclopedia
> in language XXX)" or "wikipedia XXX can be used by anyone to print it
> on paper".
>
>
>
> ciao, tom
>
> --
> == Weblinks ==
> * http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
> * http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
> * http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden
>


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] Export options

body:
On Friday 29 October 2004 22:25, Andreas Voellmy wrote:
> would like to select an article and export to pdf, word, or plain text

I am working on it. If you can code we could work together. See
http://maatworks.wikinerds.org/index.php/WikiAnt

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent server work update

body:
On Oct 30, 2004, at 2:05 AM, Kate Turner wrote:
> * 5 new servers were installed yesterday and are running memtest,
> results
> on monday (?)

On that note, we're muttering about setting up LDAP for easier
management of the servers' unix user accounts and whatnot. You can only
go so far by copying hosts & passwd files around by hand. ;)

If anyone has experience with this sort of thing, we'd love to hear
advice. Otherwise we'll bumble along and gain experience as we usually
do.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] whistleblowing on NSK

body:
On Friday 29 October 2004 17:38, Jens Ropers wrote:
> More advertising.

If I wanted to advertise I would add articles like [[Wikinerds]] [[NSK]]
[[JnanaBase]] [[MaatWorks]] [[Adapedia]] [[NerdyPC]] et cetera. I never did
that on en.wikipedia.org (since the Wikipedia community will soon write these
articles).

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Export options

body:
On Saturday 30 October 2004 02:20, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> : Use css for that. img { display:none } and

Thank you.

> PS: Sorry for redistributing a few of your 'features'.

It's not a problem. If anybody is interested I can make that page
CreativeCommons, as I do for my "programming notes" pages.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox

body:
Hello,

I am wondering if the foundation can help spread firefox ?

Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ) is a free and open
source internet browser which offer a good alternative to Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer has been barely updated for the last 2 years and is a
security risks. Moreover it is proprietary software.

The mozilla foundation is running a website / blog dedicated to
spreading firefox to as much people as possible:

	http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

They even opened a donation to buy a full page of advertisment in the
New York time newspapper.

I am wondering if we can get somewhere in the footer of the WikiMedia
websites a small "getfirefox" icon ? :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox


from_name: Angela

body:
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.

I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is
enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.

> This would be my third request for an Italian minority language
> Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite
> strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1.
> Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)

Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of
success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding
whether another minority language should be started without a more
significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.

I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
potential contributors before starting a new language. See
http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy

Angela.


body:
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 07:37:19AM +0100, Angela wrote:

> I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
> potential contributors before starting a new language. See
> http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy

In contrast to the Italian government we should strongly support
those minority languages. But five contributors is quite much for the
beginning, maybe one very active (for the mediawiki strings and as press
contact) and two other contributers?
It would be nice to have a few pages on how to advertise a new wikipedia.

ciao, tom

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


subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox

body:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 06:39:54 +0200, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am wondering if the foundation can help spread firefox ?

I think this comes too close to advertising for my liking. I'd be
interested to know if others find it appropriate though.

This was also discussed on wikitech last month:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-September/025581.html

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox


from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent server work update

body:
To keep everyone up to speed, this is a summary of the colo work
over the last few days:

* pliny and larousse are back, as well as two 4RU boxes (P3s) for testing
(sorry, i broke test1 and test2, so they need to be fixed when
jwales is at the colo, as does larousse on which the OS reinstall
wasn't finished).
* 5 new servers were installed yesterday and are running memtest, results
on monday (?)
* coronelli crashes on boot and is offline; moreri is offline for
unknown reasons.
(did someone put new RAM in coronelli?  was it taken out afterwards?  why
has it suddenly stopped working?  find out in next week's episode..)
* after discussion with the colo people, we will have a gigE "soon"
(next week?).
this needs an SFP module for the switch which has/has not been ordered
(delete as appropriate).  the existing "second uplink" was actually configured
on their end as a trunked port. no-one told us this.  this would explain why it
didn't work. back to 100mbit for now. we can change our two /27s into a /26
but this has to be coordinated with both the colo and bomis or things will stop
working.  this will give up the second /27's router IP as a usable address.
* many machines are now on the SCS, and most have console redirection;
* we have switch port assignment lists, but aaron will be recabling everything
next week anyway so they're useless.

Kate.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Compendium

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Mark Richards wrote:
>
>> So, to try to avoid the constant posturing for a
>> while, how does this help us to navigate the different
>> understandings of what should and should not go in?
>> Are you in favour or against schools, for example? I
>> can't really tell from your message.
>
> Why do you need to be able to tell? Part of the reason Dpbsmith's
> attempt at discussion is helpful is because he's trying to explore
> general principles _instead of_ "posturing" as either "for" or
> "against" schools.

I would never have guessed that.  After listing a number of possible
definitions for the word "knowledge" he promptly rejects one of the most
likely possibilities.  He gives six possibilities, quite properly
rejects "carnal knowledge" as totally irrelevant, but gives as his only
reason for rejecting another the proposition that "Inclusionists seem to
feel that it ought to mean" that.  He then concludes that an
encyclopedia is "book-larning" (sic!).  This might be phrased in other
words that an encyclopedia is limited to those concepts that put a
hillbilly in awe of the elite.  The important skills of the backwoods,
like distilling moonshine, would have no place in an encyclopedia.

> If all you're interested in knowing is whether someone is *for* or
> *against* whatever side you are on, it's no wonder this discussion is
> deteriorating into "inclusionist vs. deletionist" factionalism and
> moving no closer to consensus. Most of what I've seen for the past
> week in 90% of the messages on this list (and in spite of several
> attempts at calling a timeout to the flamewar) is people caricaturing
> their opponents in the debate in an attempt to ridicule them into
> changing sides. It should not be surprising that this is not an
> effective method of persuasion, and it also does very little to get
> undecided observers to support either side.

There's more to this than schools.  There are probably many criteria for
deletion that are accepted in common.  The arguments really focus on the
pompous concept of notability.

> If this sounds a lot like the current political dynamics in the United
> States, well ... but that's off the topic, so let's not go there.

Bush's foreign policy does a good job of epitomizing deletionism. :-)

Ec


body:
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 01:15:51AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:

> I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have
> generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are
> scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing
> Wikipedians.

Did you try local newspapers which are published in these langauges?
Best would be to have an article (public domain is best for press releases)
and visit the editorial staff.
Make the press release a bit visionary, like "only (modern) encyclopedia
in language XXX)" or "wikipedia XXX can be used by anyone to print it
on paper".

ciao, tom

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


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Solving the US-centrism problem

body:
Just a question...

Have you noticed NSK, that aside from the english wikipedia, there are
other languages buzzing with activity ?

Yes, there are.

And most of the bigger encyclopedia show a lot of activity to promote
wikipedia in other languages.

The german encyclopedia is especially successful for reaching media, the
french is beginning to have nice success as well, and the japanese seems
to do well.

We get new contributors everyday, and some of them trickle to the
english speaking encyclopedia; each trickle help to balance.

Note that I tried to reach north africa, largely french speaking, during
the last global press release, but we are not meeting much success right
now.

Anthere

NSK a ?crit:
> I have noticed that many people believe that a number of Wikipedia articles
> are very US-centric and I think in some occasions this is true. I would say
> that you might need more non-US contributors.
>
> Have you considered using geotargeting advertisement for solving this problem?
> For example, you could target ads to places like India, Japan, South Africa,
> UK, Brazil or Canada.
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Full nice handbag

body:
Not at (though I am only answering now for what I wrote).  I spoke of
defining different criteria.  Nowhere in my response did I use the word
"valid", not even for those that I do accept as valid.  Being able to
define a criterion is still a step short of determining its validity.
Ec

John Lee wrote:

> Then I believe both of you have just admitted that "notability" is a
> valid criteria for inclusion/deletion. After all, just try reading the
> definition of vanity according to Wikipedia Mark linked to.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> I see nothing wrong with his position.  There are multiple deletion
>> criteria available.  Each has its own definition.  We can define a
>> vanity page in terms of self-promotion or self-glorification.
>> Verifiability is a different and independent criterion.  Using the
>> description of one criterion to determine the applicability of a
>> different one is illogical.
>>
>> Ec
>>
>> John Lee wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry, I don't understand - why would vanity pages be eligible for
>>> deletion if the information therein was 100% verifiable and factual?
>>> Delirium said that this isn't a strawman because *we get 100%
>>> verifiable articles such as vanity pages which are deleted*. You
>>> argue in favour of their deletion, because they are vanity pages -
>>> what constitutes a vanity page? A page written by someone seeking
>>> glorification? But, why, the information's verifiable! Isn't
>>> Wikipedia supposed to be a compendium of human knowledge? I honestly
>>> don't understand your paradoxical - dare I say, hypocritical -
>>> stance on this.
>>>
>>> John Lee
>>> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>>>
>>> Mark Richards wrote:
>>>
>>>> It's a straw man because you are taking the case in
>>>> dispute (schools) and claiming that if we keep
>>>> schools, we will have to keep an article on each
>>>> school band member.
>>>>
>>>> There are existing rules to deal with vanity articles,
>>>> and to the extent that we have a problem with them,
>>>> they have been deleted as vanity.
>>>>
>>>> Let's not confuse the issues of schools with some
>>>> hypothetical deluge of articles about cheerleaders or
>>>> dead cats.
>>>>
>>>> If I have presented my case as an extreme one, then I
>>>> have misrepresented my aims. I certainly do not
>>>> support an article on each high school band member. I
>>>> doubt that you could really write a verifiable and
>>>> factual article on them that was not a vanity page
>>>> anyway.
>>>>
>>>> It's not that these people are not notable, they
>>>> certianly are to some people, it is the fact that
>>>> these would be vanity articles, I am not proposing to
>>>> remove this criteria for deletion.
>>>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> I have extreme interesting in national development of countries in Africa,
> South America and Asia: I am always thinking how I could help the people
> living there. How have you tried to reach north Africa, what is WMF's
> position on bringing free knowledge in the Third World and what do you think
> that residents of Europe, North America and Oceania can do via the Internet
> for the rest of the planet?

"Imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human
knowledge. That's what we're doing."

"...we are pursuing grants to fund the packaging and distribution of Wikimedia
content to places that do not have access to the Internet."

from http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising (linked from over 2
million pages across all Wikimedia projects)

At least one grant we are interested in would fund the printing of
as-yet-to-be-written high school biology textbooks in both English and French
that would be distributed to students in Africa. Content development for that
would happen on Wikibooks.

See also:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] whistleblowing on NSK

body:
--- NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> If I wanted to advertise I would add articles like [[Wikinerds]] [[NSK]]
> [[JnanaBase]] [[MaatWorks]] [[Adapedia]] [[NerdyPC]] et cetera. I never did
> that on en.wikipedia.org (since the Wikipedia community will soon write these

They will get deleted along with any other articles on any other non-famous
websites. So don't flatter yourself.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: spreading firefox

body:
Ashar Voultoiz a ?crit:
> Hello,
>
> I am wondering if the foundation can help spread firefox ?
>
> Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ) is a free and open
> source internet browser which offer a good alternative to Internet Explorer.
>
> Internet Explorer has been barely updated for the last 2 years and is a
> security risks. Moreover it is proprietary software.
>
>
> The mozilla foundation is running a website / blog dedicated to
> spreading firefox to as much people as possible:
>
>     http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
>
> They even opened a donation to buy a full page of advertisment in the
> New York time newspapper.
>
>
> I am wondering if we can get somewhere in the footer of the WikiMedia
> websites a small "getfirefox" icon ? :o)

Well, I have no opposition to firefox, but I just do not see why we
would do that...

perplexe


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: spreading firefox


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004, Thomas R. Koll wrote:

>On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 01:15:51AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>> I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have
>> generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are
>> scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing
>> Wikipedians.
>
>Did you try local newspapers which are published in these langauges?

There aren't, at least for sicilian, friulan and sardinian. They are
mostly spoken, not written. If I am mistaken and they exist, I would be
interested in getting a copy of thos newspapers.

Alfio


subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox

body:
On Saturday 30 October 2004 07:39, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> websites a small "getfirefox" icon ? :o)

Personally I wonder why Mozilla Organisation doesn't focus on Mozilla
Seamonkey and prefers Firefox. Seamonkey is a much superior product.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox


body:
On Saturday 30 October 2004 10:06, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Obviously I agree.

I propose to have a general Wikipedia where all minor languages can be put in
separate namespaces.

For example: http://otherlang.wikipedia.org where articles could be put this
way:

[[Sardinian:Main Page]]

[[Friulian:Main Page]]

[[Corsican:Main Page]]

[[Klinglon:Mai Page]]

et cetera.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] roles of sysop

body:
I found Fuz and Alfio answers most helpful.

 > The two terms (sysop and admin) are used interchangeably in the
 > Wikipedia user space. They both mean someone who as gone through
 > [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship]] successfully, and can delete and
 > protect pages, and block IPs/names.
 >
 > -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

 >I found that "admin" is easier to understand, since it's related to
 >similar non-wikipedia terms. Ironically "sysop" is a more accurate
 >description of the job, which is often limited to maintenance: the term
 >"administrator" suggets some power over the other users, while in
 >reality a sysop is just providing services to the others, and accepting
 >responsability for what he/she does.

 >Alfio

I think that whatever the name used to described the admin role (ie,
admin, sysop or moderator), we should insist that wikipedia is open to
anyone. I think that no editor, whatever his status, have more rights
than other

* in term of editing rights (eg, right to decide whether an article is
accurate, or neutral)
* in term of meta participation (eg, right to decide which categories
should be created, or to decide how the main page should look)
* in term of community building (eg, to decide rules for banning)

I believe there should be equality between sysops and non sysops, on all
projects. Sysops should only be at the service of the other editors. Not
decide for others, but apply decisions taken by all editors.

It does not matter which name we use. The sysops should not have power
over other users other than applying decisions made by all users.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: The WP project, was Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Solving the US-centrism problem

body:
NSK wrote

>... what is WMF's
> position on bringing free knowledge in the Third World and what do you
think
> that residents of Europe, North America and Oceania can do via the
Internet
> for the rest of the planet?

I wonder how well-informed you are on Wikipedia.  Jimbo Wales typically
mentions a whole-planet view when he is interviewed.  I would say that it is
a *given* in serious discussion of WP, that it is a vehicle to do just this;
if debates seem to be on 'knowledge' and 'implementation' it is because
there is less consensus on those. Unfortunately, defining knowledge (as if
we had to) seems to take up 95% of the bandwidth.

In perspective, Wikipedia has succeeded in under four years in drawing
together:

- an admirable tech support team that works for nothing
- a fundraising mechanism that has worked in some well-judged campaigns
- hardware that is only under pressure so much because the demand always
absorbs the supply on a timescale of weeks
- very good word-of-mouth publicity
- recently, some high-profile media publicity
- an effective program to break out of the linguistic monopoly of English
(barring some early troubles)
- the best interwiki solution ever (because it's simple and the problem in
general is hard)
- last but not least, a large community who write, edit and do admin chores,
some of whom are the kind of driven people who are needed to make a
voluntary project get somewhere.

I'm not quite sure what difficulty you see yourself addressing on this list.
Perhaps you could phrase it in terms that make more sense to those who share
my perspective.

Charles


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaZilla and Spam

body:
Padmanabhan V. Karthic wrote:
<snip>
> Also in the true wiki way of allowing anonymous contributions, there
> should be some way for someone who wants to report just one bug he/she
> happened to notice but doesn't want to continue with wikimedia
> projects, to report a bug without the overhead of creating an account.

Hello,

We want to be able to contact the bug reporter to get more informations
such as browser version / mediawiki configuration file ...

Sourceforge bug tracker was full of bugs for which we could not contact
the reporter :(

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 07:37:19 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
>>>
>>>
>>I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is
>>enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>If you read it, you'll see that this person claims to have another
>Friulian person interested in working on it.
>
The big problem here is that it's neither of these two people who are
carrying the advocacy.  Both supports appear passive.  These people are
likely to write a few very good articles, but they are not the people
who are likely to carry on to make the wiki operational for other
Friulian speakers.  I would feel much warmer to the idea if this request
were being made by a Friulian speaker.  Often if you ask someone whether
they would be willing to help with a project you will get a very polite
yes, but that does not easily translate into real work.

>>>This would be my third request for an Italian minority language
>>>Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite
>>>strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1.
>>>Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
>>>
>>>
>>Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of
>>success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding
>>whether another minority language should be started without a more
>>significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>Sardinian is admittedly a dud. Sicilian is still growing steadily, and
>I'm sure they'd not appreciate the not-so-nice things you seem to
>think of them.
>
Mark, how many articles have you contributed to either of these?

>>I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
>>potential contributors before starting a new language. See
>>http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
>>
>>
>Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles
>started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience
>alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000
>articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm
>sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.
>
I don't particularly think that the 5 contributor proposal is the best.
If they are all passive it will still get nowhere.  Having even just one
person who is both willing and able to do the work goes a lot further,
especially if that person has a proven track record in one of the other
wikis, perhaps even sysop experience.  And even so that should be the
person making the request, not Mark.

>Also, my definition of "potential contributors" means all the people
>who speak the language and have Internet access, which in the case of
>Friulian is well over 5.
>
What fraction of the world's English speaking population is currently
involved in the en:Wikipedia or any other English language sister project?

>And how many people speak Kannada? Is it a language with only a couple
>hundred thousand speakers, like some of our active Wikipedias with
>over 100 (or even 1000) articles? No... not really... Well, what about
>under 1 million? No, not really. Under 10 million? Not really.
>
Far more than speak Friulian.

>Just as if we required people on en: to request a new article we would
>have much fewer articles, it takes more time and effort and may be
>confusing to some to figure out how to request a new language.
>
Educated Friulians also speak Italian.  Educated Karnatakans also speak
English.

>And how are they to know if there are already two people who would be
>interested in the creation of such a Wikipedia?
>
By discussing it with the people they know.

>If you are interested in multilingualism, internationalism, and
>ultimately the building of an NPOV encyclopaedic resource in *any*
>language, it makes no sense to advocate such restrictions.
>
These "restrictions" are designed to promote the idea that a new wiki
should have a chance to succeed.

>But if we pursue such a policy, I do believe a fork with more liberal
>policies regarding multilingualism is in order
>
What makes you think that the operators of this hypothetical fork will
not face the same problems?

>If we deny such an opportunity
>to them, then I can no longer in good faith claim to support this
>organisation fully and will consider creating a new site and a new
>foundation with similar principles but with a stronger interest in
>having policies more greatly favouring multilingualism than what you
>have proposed.
>
>
You absolutely have that right, but I doubt that it will go beyond
"consider".  :-)

Ec


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

Le Saturday 30 October 2004 08:37, Angela a ?crit :
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is
> enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
>
> > This would be my third request for an Italian minority language
> > Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite
> > strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1.
> > Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
>
> Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of
> success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding
> whether another minority language should be started without a more
> significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
>
> I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
> potential contributors before starting a new language. See
> http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy

Yes, I think also that's a good policy.

> Angela.

Best wishes,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox

body:
Angela wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 06:39:54 +0200, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:

>>I am wondering if the foundation can help spread firefox ?

> I think this comes too close to advertising for my liking. I'd be
> interested to know if others find it appropriate though.

The current Firefox does include Wikipedia in 'Firefox Crew Picks' in
the default bookmarks of the current version, and there's a Wikipedia
search in the quicksearch bookmarks (which promptly hits our search
function directly, rather than, e.g., riding on Google).

> This was also discussed on wikitech last month:
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-September/025581.html

Yeah. I'm not sure we'll actually help ourselves declaring an explicit
allegiance to Mozilla. As much as I'd like an excuse too ;-)

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent server work update

body:
Hi Brion,

Le Saturday 30 October 2004 11:24, Brion Vibber a ?crit :

> On that note, we're muttering about setting up LDAP for easier
> management of the servers' unix user accounts and whatnot. You can only
> go so far by copying hosts & passwd files around by hand. ;)
>
> If anyone has experience with this sort of thing, we'd love to hear
> advice. Otherwise we'll bumble along and gain experience as we usually
> do.

I?did already set up such a system.

You need to install OpenLDAP and then
* configure the main LDAP?server,
* eventually set up a secondary LDAP?server for replication,
* create accounts with UnixAccount properties,
* and change PAM accordingly on clients.

http://www.openldap.org/doc/admin22/

> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


body:
NSK wrote:

>On Saturday 30 October 2004 11:33, Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Note that I tried to reach north africa, largely french speaking, during
>>
>>
>I have extreme interesting in national development of countries in Africa,
>South America and Asia: I am always thinking how I could help the people
>living there. How have you tried to reach north Africa, what is WMF's
>position on bringing free knowledge in the Third World and what do you think
>that residents of Europe, North America and Oceania can do via the Internet
>for the rest of the planet?
>
Finding computers for them would be a good start.  If people in the
developed world get bored with that they could try arranging for them to
have the electrical power for running the computers they were given. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Padmanabhan V. Karthic

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaZilla and Spam

body:
Hi,

I created an account in bugzilla hoping I'd be able to specify an
obfuscated email to be displayed in bugzilla pages (it's been a while
since I used bugzilla and there was a bug in bugzilla.mozilla.org
about obfuscating email addresses long ago). Since that's not the case
:-(, I'm forced to get another email address for bugzilla. Now it
looks like I cannot change my email address in mediazilla, though
other bugzillas allow this. Is there a way to change my email address
in mediazilla or do I have to spam mediazilla with another account
(aka "sock puppet")?

Also it'd be nice if we could use our usernames in a wikimedia project
instead of email addresses to log into bugzilla. MediaWiki allows
(depending on a pref) mail to be sent to us through the 'Mail this
user' link, so confirming that someone is not "gratuitously
subscribing someone else" should be possible. Or we could continue
with our (simpler) "separate logins for each project" approach and
have mediazilla accept an arbitrary username and an optional email
address specification.

Also in the true wiki way of allowing anonymous contributions, there
should be some way for someone who wants to report just one bug he/she
happened to notice but doesn't want to continue with wikimedia
projects, to report a bug without the overhead of creating an account.

~~~, er... I mean [[Wikipedia:en:User:Paddu|]]


body:
On Saturday 30 October 2004 11:33, Anthere wrote:
> Note that I tried to reach north africa, largely french speaking, during

I have extreme interesting in national development of countries in Africa,
South America and Asia: I am always thinking how I could help the people
living there. How have you tried to reach north Africa, what is WMF's
position on bringing free knowledge in the Third World and what do you think
that residents of Europe, North America and Oceania can do via the Internet
for the rest of the planet?

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaZilla and Spam

body:
On Saturday 30 October 2004 12:38, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Sourceforge bug tracker was full of bugs for which we could not contact
> the reporter :(

Is there any way to post bugs via the mailing list?

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 00:11:02 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
> > potential contributors before starting a new language. See
> > http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
>
> Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles
> started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience
> alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000
> articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm
> sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.

Looking at the statistics
(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansContributors.htm),
I find only 6 Wikipedia languages with 5 contributors in the first
month of their 'real' existence: en, he, fa, ast, be and tokipona. In
the second month this was reached by de, pl, fi, bg, ro, uk, ur. For
all other Wikipedias there was more difference between the time of
their first and their fifth user, although in reality there may be
some more because there might be non-registered users as well.

My own opinion is that a non-dead natural language with an ISO 639
code would in principle be okay for Wikipedia. There can of course be
exceptions, but to me at that moment the burden of proof lies with
those who disagree.

Andre Engels


subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox

body:
I would not be in favor of this; we should remain neutral as much as
possible. Internally I can however advise anyone to take Firefox - I
switched maybe half an hour ago, and I really can't imagine now how I
ever got by without tabbed browsing.

Andre Engels

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 06:39:54 +0200, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am wondering if the foundation can help spread firefox ?
>
> Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ) is a free and open
> source internet browser which offer a good alternative to Internet Explorer.
>
> Internet Explorer has been barely updated for the last 2 years and is a
> security risks. Moreover it is proprietary software.
>
> The mozilla foundation is running a website / blog dedicated to
> spreading firefox to as much people as possible:
>
>         http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
>
> They even opened a donation to buy a full page of advertisment in the
> New York time newspapper.
>
> I am wondering if we can get somewhere in the footer of the WikiMedia
> websites a small "getfirefox" icon ? :o)


subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons support enabled on all wikis

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>You can edit Commons image pages, but this should only be done for the
>purpose of describing the content. For licensing information, you can use
>MediaWiki:Sharedupload to insert an automatic backlink to the Commons. See
>the version on en: as an example:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sharedupload
>
>
Does this mean that there *shouldn't* be licensing information on the
Commons pages?  I thought it would make sense to have that at a
centralized location, rather than on each individual wiki.

-Mark


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaZilla and Spam

body:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 12:50:56 +0300, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On Saturday 30 October 2004 12:38, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> > Sourceforge bug tracker was full of bugs for which we could not contact
> > the reporter :(
>
> Is there any way to post bugs via the mailing list?

1) you can post anything you like to the mailing list, but people may
be rather annoyed at you for not using the Bugzilla interface, where
it can be labelled, searched, etc; I know of no mechanism for creating
or amending a bugzilla report just by e-mail. [Although I gather older
bug trackers, such as Debian's, use e-mail as their main interface,
not the web]

2) the mailing lists are all publically archived, with
not-very-obfuscated e-mail adresses (I don't think replacing "at" with
"@" is going to deter many harvesters). I was going to say you need to
sign up before you can send, too, but I seem to remember e-mails from
unsubscribed addresses are put in a "moderation" queue, rather than
outright deleted, so I guess that much is easier.

Other than suggesting people create a throw-away e-mail account for
bug discussion (as long as they are actually going to check it, so
they'll receive requests for clarification etc), I guess we can only
hope that someone will implement obfuscation/hiding of e-mail
addresses within bugzilla. [Or, of course, one of us can do it; but
having glanced at the source code, I'm not volunteering! ;)] After
all, only the software needs to know the address; as long as people
don't turn off all mailing, there should be no need for other humans
to know their address at all...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject:
[Wikitech-l] First attempt at concatenation-based history
	compression gives 82% compression

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> I just downloaded the old table for ca.wikipedia.org, and compressed
> it with my new concatenated gzip history compression feature. The idea
> is that by concatenating the text from adjacent revisions before
> compressing with gzip, the gzip algorithm can take advantage of
> similarities between revisions and thereby acheive a better
> compression ratio than it would by compressing individual revisions.

Out of curiosity, have you tried testing bzip2?  It's usually much
better than gzip with multi-megabyte text data; for example, source for
Linux kernel 2.6.9 is ~44 MB with gzip, and ~35 MB with bzip2.  I
believe it also uses similarities across files, so concatenation may not
be necessary.  It does use much more RAM and execute more slowly than
gzip, however.

-Mark


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Question/Proposal to all developers: LVR REPOSITORY --
 for last-visited revsions until they are visited

body:
Plse. skip this now, if you are not interested in improvements to
recent-changes and page-history behaviour.
------

References: http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=603
(delete/undelete cycle does not preserve oldid)
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 (Enotif 1.33)

Introducing an abbreviation: last-visited revision (LVR; lvr)

I would like to ask you something with respect to a suggestion to
improve the recent-changes and page-history behaviour.

Status:
======
As far as I understand the software and Brion, old_id is *not* a
permanent and fixed identifier for a certain revision of a page. It is
only valid for a while and under certain circumstances. However, the
Email-Notification patch (Enotif) and some users request a
"(diff-to-my-last-visited-revision)" (lvr-diff) link, which *is*
implemented in the recent Enotif 1.33 patch coming this weekend - based
on old_id - which works unless that lvr revision is deleted in the
databases e.g. by scheduled RC pruning.

Problems:
========
1) old_id cannot be used as 100%secure pointer to a certain revision
(eg. LVR) of a page.
2) Currently, any older revision of a page is deleted after a while

Question to you and proposal:
========================
Given, that the RC History may be pruned after a while and that old_id
can change due to a delete/undelete cycle of that page, I propose to
built an LVR-REPOSITORY (last-visited-revision), which can be compressed.

If a certain pageX is watched by a UserZ, I herewith propose to
permanently save the "last visited revision (lvr) of pageX". This is the
page revision just before the UserZ got an enotif, because someone else
edited the pageX to revision (lvr+1). Enotif 1.33 already has this
implemented and knows (lvr), but does currently not save the page
content. This pageX(lvr) must now neither be touched by regular RC
history pruning nor by delete/undelete cycles and must be saved. To free
memory resources, it needs theoretically only be saved *until* the
watching UserZ visits the *current* revision of page - as this action
automatically clears the notification flag (this mechanism being open
for further improvements).

In the worst case, we need a repository of size "total number of watched
pages of all watching users". For example, if 1.000 users have 50 pages
in each of their watchlists, we need a repository for 50.000 pages,
which stores the "last-visited-revisions" for all watched pages for all
users.

Please let me know, how you think about my proposal. Enotif could manage
the repository, as it keeps track of users visiting their watch-listed
pages. The repository can be a separate database or realized as flag in
the old and rc databases, which forbids the RC pruning or other routines
to manipulate (eg. delete) that certain LVR.

Invitation
=======
If you have another idea, or if I have overlooked something, which can
happen, please let me know this by mailto:mail at tgries.de?Subject=LVR .

Thanks in advance
Tom
Berlin


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Full nice handbag

body:
Then I believe both of you have just admitted that "notability" is a
valid criteria for inclusion/deletion. After all, just try reading the
definition of vanity according to Wikipedia Mark linked to.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I see nothing wrong with his position.  There are multiple deletion
> criteria available.  Each has its own definition.  We can define a
> vanity page in terms of self-promotion or self-glorification.
> Verifiability is a different and independent criterion.  Using the
> description of one criterion to determine the applicability of a
> different one is illogical.
>
> Ec
>
> John Lee wrote:
>
>> Sorry, I don't understand - why would vanity pages be eligible for
>> deletion if the information therein was 100% verifiable and factual?
>> Delirium said that this isn't a strawman because *we get 100%
>> verifiable articles such as vanity pages which are deleted*. You
>> argue in favour of their deletion, because they are vanity pages -
>> what constitutes a vanity page? A page written by someone seeking
>> glorification? But, why, the information's verifiable! Isn't
>> Wikipedia supposed to be a compendium of human knowledge? I honestly
>> don't understand your paradoxical - dare I say, hypocritical - stance
>> on this.
>>
>> John Lee
>> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>>
>> Mark Richards wrote:
>>
>>> It's a straw man because you are taking the case in
>>> dispute (schools) and claiming that if we keep
>>> schools, we will have to keep an article on each
>>> school band member.
>>>
>>> There are existing rules to deal with vanity articles,
>>> and to the extent that we have a problem with them,
>>> they have been deleted as vanity.
>>>
>>> Let's not confuse the issues of schools with some
>>> hypothetical deluge of articles about cheerleaders or
>>> dead cats.
>>>
>>> If I have presented my case as an extreme one, then I
>>> have misrepresented my aims. I certainly do not
>>> support an article on each high school band member. I
>>> doubt that you could really write a verifiable and
>>> factual article on them that was not a vanity page
>>> anyway.
>>>
>>> It's not that these people are not notable, they
>>> certianly are to some people, it is the fact that
>>> these would be vanity articles, I am not proposing to
>>> remove this criteria for deletion.
>>


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Compendium

body:
I disagree. I think starting from a definition of
compendium, and then extrapolating to extremes isn't
helpful. I think all of us want a criteria that
includes sensible articles that we think belong, not
one that arbitrarily throws out useful ones.

I want to know whether that definition includes
schools, because that is one test of whether it is a
'reasonable' one for me.
Mark

--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Mark Richards wrote:
>
> >So, to try to avoid the constant posturing for a
> >while, how does this help us to navigate the
> different
> >understandings of what should and should not go in?
> >Are you in favour or against schools, for example?
> I
> >can't really tell from your message.
> >
> Why do you need to be able to tell? Part of the
> reason Dpbsmith's
> attempt at discussion is helpful is because he's
> trying to explore
> general principles _instead of_ "posturing" as
> either "for" or "against"
> schools. If all you're interested in knowing is
> whether someone is *for*
> or *against* whatever side you are on, it's no
> wonder this discussion is
> deteriorating into "inclusionist vs. deletionist"
> factionalism and
> moving no closer to consensus. Most of what I've
> seen for the past week
> in 90% of the messages on this list (and in spite of
> several attempts at
> calling a timeout to the flamewar) is people
> caricaturing their
> opponents in the debate in an attempt to ridicule
> them into changing
> sides. It should not be surprising that this is not
> an effective method
> of persuasion, and it also does very little to get
> undecided observers
> to support either side.
>
> If this sounds a lot like the current political
> dynamics in the United
> States, well ... but that's off the topic, so let's
> not go there.
>
> --Michael Snow
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

_______________________________
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Express yourself with Y! Messenger! Free. Download now.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Full nice handbag

body:
The vanity criteria are well established and apply
only to biography. I don't see the connection at all.
I oppose taking criteria that were designed for
biography and applying them to places, buildings,
artwork, or other things.

Mark

--- John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:

> Then I believe both of you have just admitted that
> "notability" is a
> valid criteria for inclusion/deletion. After all,
> just try reading the
> definition of vanity according to Wikipedia Mark
> linked to.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > I see nothing wrong with his position.  There are
> multiple deletion
> > criteria available.  Each has its own definition.
> We can define a
> > vanity page in terms of self-promotion or
> self-glorification.
> > Verifiability is a different and independent
> criterion.  Using the
> > description of one criterion to determine the
> applicability of a
> > different one is illogical.
> >
> > Ec
> >
> > John Lee wrote:
> >
> >> Sorry, I don't understand - why would vanity
> pages be eligible for
> >> deletion if the information therein was 100%
> verifiable and factual?
> >> Delirium said that this isn't a strawman because
> *we get 100%
> >> verifiable articles such as vanity pages which
> are deleted*. You
> >> argue in favour of their deletion, because they
> are vanity pages -
> >> what constitutes a vanity page? A page written by
> someone seeking
> >> glorification? But, why, the information's
> verifiable! Isn't
> >> Wikipedia supposed to be a compendium of human
> knowledge? I honestly
> >> don't understand your paradoxical - dare I say,
> hypocritical - stance
> >> on this.
> >>
> >> John Lee
> >> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
> >>
> >> Mark Richards wrote:
> >>
> >>> It's a straw man because you are taking the case
> in
> >>> dispute (schools) and claiming that if we keep
> >>> schools, we will have to keep an article on each
> >>> school band member.
> >>>
> >>> There are existing rules to deal with vanity
> articles,
> >>> and to the extent that we have a problem with
> them,
> >>> they have been deleted as vanity.
> >>>
> >>> Let's not confuse the issues of schools with
> some
> >>> hypothetical deluge of articles about
> cheerleaders or
> >>> dead cats.
> >>>
> >>> If I have presented my case as an extreme one,
> then I
> >>> have misrepresented my aims. I certainly do not
> >>> support an article on each high school band
> member. I
> >>> doubt that you could really write a verifiable
> and
> >>> factual article on them that was not a vanity
> page
> >>> anyway.
> >>>
> >>> It's not that these people are not notable, they
> >>> certianly are to some people, it is the fact
> that
> >>> these would be vanity articles, I am not
> proposing to
> >>> remove this criteria for deletion.
> >>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Compendium

body:
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:

>
> com?pen?di?um, NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. com?pen?di?ums or
> com?pen?di?a (-d
> -
> ) 1. A short, complete summary; an abstract.  2. A list or collection
> of various items. ETYMOLOGY: Latin, a shortening, from  compendere, to
> weigh together :  com-, com- + pendere, to weigh.
>
> In other words, the word compendium implies some kind of distillation
> or selection.
>
Indeed the definition implies some kind of information pruning, but
it doesn't help much, because there are different ways to prune. For
instance, I generally take it to mean that we don't want articles
that reproduce every bit of content in research papers; for instance,
the encyclopedia article just needs to say that "barracudas eat
mostly fish", while a paper will enumerate the percentages of each
food species found in an examination of stomach contents (yuck!).
Interestingly, it's extremely rare for anyone to complain that a
WP science article "has too much detail", even though some have
considerable depth; but perhaps no one has tested the situation
by importing a really large body of research verbatim.

An ironic thing about schools vs species is that I could write an
article about a species that has only ever been observed by one
scientist, has only one paper about it in an obscure journal, and
only one specimen in a jar somewhere, and yet no one would dream of
deleting the article for non-notability (in fact we have a number
of such articles already), while an article about the largest high
school in Cleveland would probably cause a furious VfD debate. Is
the obscure species, which is of interest to maybe a few dozen
specialists, really more notable than the high school and its
thousands of students?

Another interesting exercise is to look at the 1911 encyclopedia
articles. Hundreds of obscure personages of ancient Rome each
have their own article, carefully documented and cited, but there
is no article for Standard Oil; it is briefly described in
Rockefeller's bio, and under Trusts, but there is no encyclopedic
description of the company itself, and ditto for the many other
companies of the time. Despite the evidence all around them that
corporations had come to be a significant part of their world,
it seems that the 1911EBers had the idea that corporations were
somehow "unencyclopedic", and to us today it looks like an odd
oversight in Britannica's coverage.

So yes, there is a place for elision and summarization; but let's
not make the mistakes of our predecessors. Everything can be fixed
later, if need be.

Stan


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Question/Proposal to all developers: LVR REPOSITORY --
 for last-visited revisions until they are visited -- UPDATE

body:
Plse. skip also this, if you are not interested in improvements to
recent-changes and page-history behaviour.
------
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=804

I have created a Bugzilla enhancement entry which helps to keep track of
the contributions.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Compendia, schools, and Rambot articles

body:
Your comments are fascinating, and I think they bring
into relief a very different vision of what wp should
be from mine. That is why I ask the question about
schools, to try to see what we can agree on in terms
of what the content of our 'ideal' wp would be.

I think the Rambot articles are a great start, and a
place to build from, yes, the tabular data is not
enough, but it is a springboard.

The same with schools - perhaps we need a schoolbot to
make all the schools with tabular data, then fill in
the rest by hand?

Mark

--- "Daniel P.B.Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:

> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Compendium
> >
> > So, to try to avoid the constant posturing for a
> > while, how does this help us to navigate the
> different
> > understandings of what should and should not go
> in?
> > Are you in favour or against schools, for example?
> I
> > can't really tell from your message.
>
> 1) That wasn't the purpose of the message. Someone
> had used the phrase
> "compendium of human knowledge" as if it meant
> "everything." I was
> pointing out that the word "compedium" implies
> _selection._ And I was
> pointing out that, while acknowledging Wikipedia is
> _different_ from
> other encyclopedias, the word _encyclopedia_ does
> imply an emphasis on
> certain kinds of "knowledge" over others.
>
> 2) If you frame the question in the form "are you in
> favor of or
> against schools" you would not be able to understand
> any answer I could
> give. Watch my behavior in VfD and make your own
> deductions.
>
> > It would seem that your definition would exclude
> many
> > RamBot articles?
>
> I'm a pragmatist. I don't think the Rambot articles
> on towns were a
> good idea, but I accept them as a fait accompli. No,
> I do not think
> they fall within even a loose definition of an
> encyclopedia. They are
> database tabular data that's been gussied up into
> pseudo-English.
> They're here. I'm not going to use any of my own
> psychic energy on a
> crusade to get rid of them. If someone else tries to
> get rid of them, I
> won't waste any of my own psychic energy trying to
> stop them. I believe
> these feelings of mine are fairly widely shared, by
> the way.
>
> The thing I hate most about the Rambot articles is
> people citing them
> as precedent for putting in other stuff that
> shouldn't go into
> Wikipedia.
>
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
> "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is
> now back in print!
> Sample chapter at
> http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> Buy it at
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Compendium

body:
I couldn't agree more. As encyclopedia writers change,
their ideas of notability change. We must not allow
our points of view to determine what information is
available to others.
Mark

--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:

> Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
>
> >
> > com?pen?di?um, NOUN: Inflected forms: pl.
> com?pen?di?ums or
> > com?pen?di?a (-d
> > -
> > ) 1. A short, complete summary; an abstract.  2. A
> list or collection
> > of various items. ETYMOLOGY: Latin, a shortening,
> from  compendere, to
> > weigh together :  com-, com- + pendere, to weigh.
> >
> > In other words, the word compendium implies some
> kind of distillation
> > or selection.
> >
> Indeed the definition implies some kind of
> information pruning, but
> it doesn't help much, because there are different
> ways to prune. For
> instance, I generally take it to mean that we don't
> want articles
> that reproduce every bit of content in research
> papers; for instance,
> the encyclopedia article just needs to say that
> "barracudas eat
> mostly fish", while a paper will enumerate the
> percentages of each
> food species found in an examination of stomach
> contents (yuck!).
> Interestingly, it's extremely rare for anyone to
> complain that a
> WP science article "has too much detail", even
> though some have
> considerable depth; but perhaps no one has tested
> the situation
> by importing a really large body of research
> verbatim.
>
> An ironic thing about schools vs species is that I
> could write an
> article about a species that has only ever been
> observed by one
> scientist, has only one paper about it in an obscure
> journal, and
> only one specimen in a jar somewhere, and yet no one
> would dream of
> deleting the article for non-notability (in fact we
> have a number
> of such articles already), while an article about
> the largest high
> school in Cleveland would probably cause a furious
> VfD debate. Is
> the obscure species, which is of interest to maybe a
> few dozen
> specialists, really more notable than the high
> school and its
> thousands of students?
>
> Another interesting exercise is to look at the 1911
> encyclopedia
> articles. Hundreds of obscure personages of ancient
> Rome each
> have their own article, carefully documented and
> cited, but there
> is no article for Standard Oil; it is briefly
> described in
> Rockefeller's bio, and under Trusts, but there is no
> encyclopedic
> description of the company itself, and ditto for the
> many other
> companies of the time. Despite the evidence all
> around them that
> corporations had come to be a significant part of
> their world,
> it seems that the 1911EBers had the idea that
> corporations were
> somehow "unencyclopedic", and to us today it looks
> like an odd
> oversight in Britannica's coverage.
>
> So yes, there is a place for elision and
> summarization; but let's
> not make the mistakes of our predecessors.
> Everything can be fixed
> later, if need be.
>
> Stan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
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from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

body:
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Compendium
>
> So, to try to avoid the constant posturing for a
> while, how does this help us to navigate the different
> understandings of what should and should not go in?
> Are you in favour or against schools, for example? I
> can't really tell from your message.

1) That wasn't the purpose of the message. Someone had used the phrase
"compendium of human knowledge" as if it meant "everything." I was
pointing out that the word "compedium" implies _selection._ And I was
pointing out that, while acknowledging Wikipedia is _different_ from
other encyclopedias, the word _encyclopedia_ does imply an emphasis on
certain kinds of "knowledge" over others.

2) If you frame the question in the form "are you in favor of or
against schools" you would not be able to understand any answer I could
give. Watch my behavior in VfD and make your own deductions.

> It would seem that your definition would exclude many
> RamBot articles?

I'm a pragmatist. I don't think the Rambot articles on towns were a
good idea, but I accept them as a fait accompli. No, I do not think
they fall within even a loose definition of an encyclopedia. They are
database tabular data that's been gussied up into pseudo-English.
They're here. I'm not going to use any of my own psychic energy on a
crusade to get rid of them. If someone else tries to get rid of them, I
won't waste any of my own psychic energy trying to stop them. I believe
these feelings of mine are fairly widely shared, by the way.

The thing I hate most about the Rambot articles is people citing them
as precedent for putting in other stuff that shouldn't go into
Wikipedia.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
I have just finished implementing, backporting, and enabling basic support
for transparently using content from the Wikimedia Commons on all
Wikimedia wikis.

An example for this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
=>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
=>
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
=>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
=>
http://ja.wikibooks.org/wiki/%E7%94%BB%E5%83%8F:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg

etc. etc.

Use a file from the Commons like you would any other, using [[Image:]] or
[[Media:]] links, with extended options or without. If the file does not
exist locally, we search the Commons. If it doesn't exist there either, we
show a "Missing image" notice.

You can edit Commons image pages, but this should only be done for the
purpose of describing the content. For licensing information, you can use
MediaWiki:Sharedupload to insert an automatic backlink to the Commons. See
the version on en: as an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sharedupload

This is not perfect yet. In the not so far future, the content of the
Commons description page should be directly transcluded on the using wiki.
It should also be possible to upload content directly to the Commons from
anywhere welse. In order to deal with issues like cross-wiki
authentication, and to have a shared database in place, I am waiting for
the single login transition before tackling this issue further.

And even these advanced features are just a mid term perspective. In the
long term, I would like it to be possible for any open content wiki using
our software to immediately start using Commons content (caching the
images, of course, and maybe even serving them as mirrors chosen in a
round-robin fashion).

In the meantime, please do start using the Commons, upload images and
sound files to it, and help organizing the growing number of them. Keep in
mind that the Commons is *only* for free content -- no fair use allowed.
Having to upload non-free images locally is a good disincentive, and helps
us to enforce individual wiki policies on non-free content.

All best,

Erik


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 11:57:42 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 07:37:19 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is
> >>enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
> >>
> >>
> >If you read it, you'll see that this person claims to have another
> >Friulian person interested in working on it.
> >
> The big problem here is that it's neither of these two people who are
> carrying the advocacy.  Both supports appear passive.  These people are
> likely to write a few very good articles, but they are not the people
> who are likely to carry on to make the wiki operational for other
> Friulian speakers.  I would feel much warmer to the idea if this request
> were being made by a Friulian speaker.  Often if you ask someone whether
> they would be willing to help with a project you will get a very polite
> yes, but that does not easily translate into real work.

That brings up another thing. What's the big problem if we have a
nearly empty Wikipedia for a while? How much space does that take up?
As long as we aren't having heaps of requests to such a degree that we
need a screening process so that we don't end up with 300 new
Wikipedias by the end of the year, what's the huge problem?

As Andre noted, Friulian is a natural language with thousands of
native speakers. There is no practical reason to not create a Friulian
Wikipedia, at least not that I can think of.

> >>>This would be my third request for an Italian minority language
> >>>Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite
> >>>strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1.
> >>>Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of
> >>success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding
> >>whether another minority language should be started without a more
> >>significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
> >>
> >>
> >Sardinian is admittedly a dud. Sicilian is still growing steadily, and
> >I'm sure they'd not appreciate the not-so-nice things you seem to
> >think of them.
> >
> Mark, how many articles have you contributed to either of these?

Why do you ask? To the Sardinian Wikipedia, I did the mainpage and
fixed some minor things in the few articles that were created by
others. If I spoke Sardinian myself, there would no doubt be at least
30 articles by now and probably more.

To the Sicilian Wikipedia, I've not actually created content although
I have provided constant support to Giuseppe d'Angelo.

> >>I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
> >>potential contributors before starting a new language. See
> >>http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
> >>
> >>
> >Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles
> >started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience
> >alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000
> >articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm
> >sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.
> >
> I don't particularly think that the 5 contributor proposal is the best.
> If they are all passive it will still get nowhere.  Having even just one
> person who is both willing and able to do the work goes a lot further,
> especially if that person has a proven track record in one of the other
> wikis, perhaps even sysop experience.  And even so that should be the
> person making the request, not Mark.

Note Andre's statistics:;

"Looking at the statistics
(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansContributors.htm),
I find only 6 Wikipedia languages with 5 contributors in the first
month of their 'real' existence: en, he, fa, ast, be and tokipona. In
the second month this was reached by de, pl, fi, bg, ro, uk, ur. For
all other Wikipedias there was more difference between the time of
their first and their fifth user, although in reality there may be
some more because there might be non-registered users as well."

If we were to adopt a policy as severe as WikiTravel's, or even more
severe as you are advocating, we might be without some of our largest
Wikipedias.

> >Also, my definition of "potential contributors" means all the people
> >who speak the language and have Internet access, which in the case of
> >Friulian is well over 5.
> >
> What fraction of the world's English speaking population is currently
> involved in the en:Wikipedia or any other English language sister project?

How is that relevant? We are talking about "potential contributors".

> >And how many people speak Kannada? Is it a language with only a couple
> >hundred thousand speakers, like some of our active Wikipedias with
> >over 100 (or even 1000) articles? No... not really... Well, what about
> >under 1 million? No, not really. Under 10 million? Not really.
> >
> Far more than speak Friulian.

How is that relevant? What I'm saying is that kn.wikipedia was
preexisting, and that it only had one or two people when it got off
the ground.

> >Just as if we required people on en: to request a new article we would
> >have much fewer articles, it takes more time and effort and may be
> >confusing to some to figure out how to request a new language.
> >
> Educated Friulians also speak Italian.  Educated Karnatakans also speak
> English.

And educated French people often speak English. Do you advocate that
we get rid of the French Wikipedia? I certainly don't.

> >And how are they to know if there are already two people who would be
> >interested in the creation of such a Wikipedia?
> >
> By discussing it with the people they know.

I meant, two people who have already supported it.

> >If you are interested in multilingualism, internationalism, and
> >ultimately the building of an NPOV encyclopaedic resource in *any*
> >language, it makes no sense to advocate such restrictions.
> >
> These "restrictions" are designed to promote the idea that a new wiki
> should have a chance to succeed.

Regardless of what they're designed to do, they do exactly the
opposite. See again Andre's statistics.

> >But if we pursue such a policy, I do believe a fork with more liberal
> >policies regarding multilingualism is in order
> >
> What makes you think that the operators of this hypothetical fork will
> not face the same problems?

What problems? What problems are preventing us from adding languages
like Friulian just because somebody requests them, especially when we
have (sometimes inactive) Wikipedias for Klingon, Latin, Sanskrit (it
has native speakers now though), Toki Pona, Lojban, Occidental?

Do you mean the problem of people objecting to the creations of new
Wikipedias? That would easily be solved by a pre-existing policy that
allowed for more liberal multilinguistic activity.

> >If we deny such an opportunity
> >to them, then I can no longer in good faith claim to support this
> >organisation fully and will consider creating a new site and a new
> >foundation with similar principles but with a stronger interest in
> >having policies more greatly favouring multilingualism than what you
> >have proposed.
> >
> >
> You absolutely have that right, but I doubt that it will go beyond
> "consider".  :-)

And I'm sure it _will_ go beyond "consider". In fact, I am currently
searching for a host for the project, and if I can't find somebody who
can host it for free, then I will spend my own money on good hosting
for it because this is something that matters to me.

mw


body:
Keep in mind that with that policy, gu.wikipedia would not currently exist.

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 12:12:59 +0200, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Le Saturday 30 October 2004 08:37, Angela a ?crit :
> > On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is
> > enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
> >
> > > This would be my third request for an Italian minority language
> > > Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite
> > > strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1.
> > > Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
> >
> > Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of
> > success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding
> > whether another minority language should be started without a more
> > significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
> >
> > I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
> > potential contributors before starting a new language. See
> > http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
>
> Yes, I think also that's a good policy.
>
> > Angela.
>
> Best wishes,
> Yann
> --
> http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
> http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
> http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

body:
This is a great feature Erik. Maybe the first real interwiki thingy. I've
made an announcement on Fr village pump.
Villy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2004 3:43 PM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons support enabled on all wikis

>I have just finished implementing, backporting, and enabling basic support
> for transparently using content from the Wikimedia Commons on all
> Wikimedia wikis.
>
> An example for this:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
> =>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
> =>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
> =>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
> =>
> http://ja.wikibooks.org/wiki/%E7%94%BB%E5%83%8F:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
>
> etc. etc.
>
> Use a file from the Commons like you would any other, using [[Image:]] or
> [[Media:]] links, with extended options or without. If the file does not
> exist locally, we search the Commons. If it doesn't exist there either, we
> show a "Missing image" notice.
>
> You can edit Commons image pages, but this should only be done for the
> purpose of describing the content. For licensing information, you can use
> MediaWiki:Sharedupload to insert an automatic backlink to the Commons. See
> the version on en: as an example:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sharedupload
>
> This is not perfect yet. In the not so far future, the content of the
> Commons description page should be directly transcluded on the using wiki.
> It should also be possible to upload content directly to the Commons from
> anywhere welse. In order to deal with issues like cross-wiki
> authentication, and to have a shared database in place, I am waiting for
> the single login transition before tackling this issue further.
>
> And even these advanced features are just a mid term perspective. In the
> long term, I would like it to be possible for any open content wiki using
> our software to immediately start using Commons content (caching the
> images, of course, and maybe even serving them as mirrors chosen in a
> round-robin fashion).
>
> In the meantime, please do start using the Commons, upload images and
> sound files to it, and help organizing the growing number of them. Keep in
> mind that the Commons is *only* for free content -- no fair use allowed.
> Having to upload non-free images locally is a good disincentive, and helps
> us to enforce individual wiki policies on non-free content.
>
> All best,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox

body:
Wikipedia exists to write an encyclopedia, not to distribute and/or
advocate open source software.
--Slowking Man

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 06:39:54 +0200, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am wondering if the foundation can help spread firefox ?
>
> Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ) is a free and open
> source internet browser which offer a good alternative to Internet Explorer.
>
> Internet Explorer has been barely updated for the last 2 years and is a
> security risks. Moreover it is proprietary software.
>
> The mozilla foundation is running a website / blog dedicated to
> spreading firefox to as much people as possible:
>
>        http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
>
> They even opened a donation to buy a full page of advertisment in the
> New York time newspapper.
>
> I am wondering if we can get somewhere in the footer of the WikiMedia
> websites a small "getfirefox" icon ? :o)
>
> --
> Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


subject: [Foundation-l] spreading firefox


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Sat, 2004-30-10 at 16:09 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:

> That brings up another thing. What's the big problem if we have a
> nearly empty Wikipedia for a while? How much space does that take up?
> As long as we aren't having heaps of requests to such a degree that we
> need a screening process so that we don't end up with 300 new
> Wikipedias by the end of the year, what's the huge problem?

The security of the computer running a wiki depends on having a healthy
and attentive community actively involved in the wiki. If there is no
community, the wiki software is a security risk. At the very least, it
is an eyesore -- and a poor advertisement for this project.

If you're interested in running a wiki apart from Wikimedia, you can
find lots of free Web hosting services that you can run it at. Here's a
list of PHP-enabled free Web hosting services:

    http://www.0php.com/free_PHP_hosting.php

Here's Yahoo!'s directory of free Web hosting services, some of which
might also be able to run wiki software:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Communications_and_Networking/Internet_and_World_Wide_Web/Network_Service_Providers/Hosting/Web_Site_Hosting/Free_Hosting/

If you decide to run a wiki on your own, you can either run MediaWiki,
the great software that makes all the Wikimedia sites run:

    http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/

...or you can try and use another Wiki engine. The canonical list is
here:

    http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines

There are a bunch that don't need MySQL behind them, which can make
things easier if you're looking for free hosting.

Good luck!

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou                  .O.
http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/       ..O
evan at bad.dynu.ca                OOO


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Compendium

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Another interesting exercise is to look at the 1911 encyclopedia
> articles. Hundreds of obscure personages of ancient Rome each
> have their own article, carefully documented and cited, but there
> is no article for Standard Oil; it is briefly described in
> Rockefeller's bio, and under Trusts, but there is no encyclopedic
> description of the company itself, and ditto for the many other
> companies of the time. Despite the evidence all around them that
> corporations had come to be a significant part of their world,
> it seems that the 1911EBers had the idea that corporations were
> somehow "unencyclopedic", and to us today it looks like an odd
> oversight in Britannica's coverage.

In their British Empire-centric view, the EB editors of 1911 looked
backward to empires of the past (especially Rome), and it's not
surprising that they didn't recognize the empires of the future that
would displace them. At the time, the concept of a commercial
corporation in most cases was still strongly tied to the individuals who
organized them, often as family firms, so it probably didn't seem
worthwhile to create another article that would simply duplicate
information already covered. Had they been using a wiki, they probably
would have created [[Standard Oil]] as a redirect to [[John D.
Rockefeller]].

--Michael Snow