body:
> What seems clear is that Mark has been consistently argumentative,
> facetious, and fallacious; and even more so since this post.

Hah.

> Not satisfied with trying to start a "row", he wants to ban me for not
> agreeing with him.

Ban you? No, that was someone else. I just want you to leave
peacefully, or quit being a troll.

> I think he is coming across as needlessly aggressive and pompous.

Likewise. Have you read any of your own e-mails? To say that you don't
like reading American English words, and that it troubles you, is one
thing, but to go around saying that American English is wrong, ugly,
etc, etc, etc, and then to call all non-Americans who agree with
current policy "Americanised", is nothing less than trolling for
suckers.

> However wrong or stupid anyone thinks my posts are, vomiting bile through
> the keyboard is out of order.

Maybe, before saying such things, you should take your own advice?

> Mark clearly didn't check his facts before digging his troll-hole, and now
> looks silly, that's not my fault. I apologise for using caps, I did it to
> distinguish my text from his, not for any other reason, Mark's drivel didn't
> get me remotely excited or annoyed - clearly you can't tell teh emotional
> content of everything in text form.

Before criticising teh other variants of teh English, perhaps you
should take a look at your own English? Don't tell teh Americans how
they misspell things when your own spelling isn't perfect. Teh teh teh
teh teh. Now, there is a time and a place for teh, as in "teh
internets", or "teh intarweb", or "teh website".

I will put up with misspellings from most people, as they're perfectly
natural. But for a pompous, stuck-up person like you, who insists that
they can spell better than a nation of over 300 million people, I am
willing to make an exception.

> Anyway, You can't just label everyone you disagree with a troll or make
> trollish statements like "x is so obviously trolling us" and not expect a
> negative response, if you don't understand what a troll is, search
> wikipedia.

Have I labelled everyone I disagree with a troll? I have disagreed
with people such as Fuzheado, Wouter Steenbeek, Walter van Kalken,
Lars Aronsson, and many others. At times, it has gotten quite ugly. I
have been called a troll before, and I've also seen some noteworthy
praise. But you are the first person _I've_ ever called a troll. And
for good reason.

When Mark Williamson calls you a troll, you must really be one, I
think. Especially if Jimbo Wales agrees.

>  I came here not to spend time arguing with impulsive, petulent,
> self-important twats like Mark, but to try and get a change that someone
> else proposed, in fact.

Ahh, so it's not OK for me to call you a troll and tell you you're
barking mad, but it IS aux quay for you to call me an impulsive,
petulant, self-important twat? Wow, Jack, you are really an impulsive,
petulant, self-important twat.

>  If you look trough Wikipedia, there is stuff on Commonwealth English, and
> on the differences.

There are differences. Nobody disputes that. You just seem to be the
only person to think that they're significant enough to merit a
separate Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of
articles. All of them should be easily comprehensible to all English
speakers.

Aubergine/eggplant might be a problem. But it's one article.

If you can link a few articles which you can't understand, then
perhaps people will be more receptive to your tro... err... ideas.

>  What's abundantly clear is that the language of the USA is markedly
> different to that of the British Isles. In Grammar, vocabulary, spelling,
> and semantics; and this means that it can make it unintelligible to non-US
> English speakers. It IS legitimate and accurate to call it a foreign
> language from the perspective of an English speaker from England and the
> British Isles in general, because a large amount of commonly used vocab,
> grammar, syntax and semantics are both unintelligible (to varying degrees);
> and simply not accepted as the way to speak the language (more than just
> spelling).

Occasionally unintelligible. But the very fact that you, a Scotsman
(or, perhaps, a Commonwealther), and I, an American, are having a
heated exchange of insulting e-mails is proof enough for me that
American and British English are mutually intelligible enough so as to
NOT warrant separate Wikipedias.

> Evidence has been posted (not by me) on this list (see the Wiktionary posts)
> that AmE and BrE (OED terms) have distinct orthographies.

No kidding!?

> Would anybody on this list disagree that AmE is a clearly distinct dialect
> of English? It would appear not.

Yes, but then, many people here are also arguing that BrE is a
distinct dialect of English. You, on the other hand, seem to feel that
one is a dialect of the other, which is a linguistic impossibility.

> These two factors alone seem to be enough for other dialects to get a
> Wikipedia.

Such have been considered carefully on a case-by-case basis, and in
such cases there was a consensus of ALL native users of that variety
that there should be a separate Wikipedia. So far, the vast number of
Brits to disagree with you has shown that this is not the case here.

> Whether "British English" gets it's own Wiki is up to British people
> contributing.

Yes. And besides you, nobody really seems to want that. Ahh, and Mr
My-English-is-better-than-yours, it's "its" (as a posessive).

>  Rowan's suggestion of a machine translation solution to the problem is
> worth looking at to satisfy Wikipedia "Unionists", but the needs of
> Wikipedia "Nationalists"can't be bullied and ostracised as "trolls".

So, are you calling Jimbo Wales a bully and an ostracist?

Mark


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thank you from AJ Jacobs at Esquire

body:
On 9/23/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Presumably GFDL will apply when he publishes this in Esquire.
>
> Ec
>

No. All text on that page was PD.
--
geni


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alphax

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
<snip>
>>> "car" vs "automobile" -- we usually just say "car" here. only people
>>> like you say "automobile".
>>>
>>
>> I say good sir, that's a horseless carriage, and I shall dual any many
>> who
>> should say otherwise!
>>
> Go ahead and duel him, but I would prefer not to have a second copy of him.
>

Bah, tyop ;)

> These differences add to the richness of the language.  For those of us
> with a capacity to find the wrong meaning at the right time it fertile
> nightsoil for endless puns.
>

It be much fun :)

--
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> Well, here we just have ducks.
>
> But I've seen two kinds of deer ("standing deer" and "kicking deer").
> Apparently in San Francisco, they have crossings for California Quail.
> And I think that in Australia, they have them for kangaroos.
>

And koalas, horses, and cyclists :)

And sometimes you see a sign which simply says "GRID".

--
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>>Who else agrees that he's a troll?
>>
>>
>Lars Aronsson and Ray Santonge do, at least as far as I know, and I'd
>be very surprised if nobody else did.
>
Please don't misinterpret me this way.  IIRC I did respond to Lars, and
I did suggest that If someone considered Jack to be a troll they should
stop feeding him.  I've never even called you a troll even though you
have been making debatable comments on this list much longer than Jack.

Ray


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
On 23/09/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Phil Boswell wrote:
>
> >Can you embed links in that? ...and shouldn't it be en-uk rather than en-br?
> >e.g.:
> >
> >-{en-us: [[pants]]; en-uk: [[trousers]]}-
>
> After running, a person trousers until he catches his breath.

I saw a man trouser some trousers the other day, and run. The shop
assistant ran after him, but didn't catch him; he came back exhausted.
"What did he take?" says the manager.
"Pants," pants the assistant.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" abuse on user pages

body:
I didn't find the previous system difficult at all, personally.

On 9/23/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/23/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > There *was* such a flow chart at one point, or an equivalent of one
> > (if it has this, go to B, if not, go to C; and in the end you'd end up
> > with "can use it" or "can't"). The problem was that it was confusing
> > and rarely ever used.
> >
> > Thus was my impetus to re-write the tags so that they would be
> > self-defining. When incorrectly used they make it clear as such. It
> > seems to have been having some small effect, I've been told, but it's
> > hard to know for sure.
>
>
> Maybe it's just me, but when someone is completely oblivious with regard to
> > copyright law, how are they going to find out which tag to use if they need
> > to read the tag to find out if it fits? Now we've got the automated license
> > selector in the upload process, we should have some easy way for noobs to
> > determine which one to choose. If the previous system was confusing and
> > rarely used, it should've been rewritten to make things easier (as much as
> > it's possible with law-related text) and its use should be encouraged more.
> > Not having an easy to understand quick read about licenses is the excuse
> > people use to upload loads of abusive fair use claimed images. Having such a
> > system return makes excuses impossible.
>
>   Mgm
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Assume good faith

body:
I've always seen [[WP:NPOV]] as the most important rule that Wikipedia
relies on.

I've always seen [[WP:BOLD]] as the most important rule that the
community relies on.

I've also seen in recent weeks an increasing reliance on [[WP:IAR]] to
justify certain controversial decisions.

But something that has been sorely missing is what I've always taken to
heart whenever I've dropped a note on someone's talk page:

[[WP:FAITH]]

Please, before you decide that you're going to ban someone, delete
something, claim that someone's in the^W^W^Wthere is a^W^W^Wconspiring
against you, just take a deep breath, and do the following:

Assume Good Faith.

That's it. And once you've assumed good faith, leave a note on their
talk page, and walk away. If someone else wants to take it up, they can
see that you've assumed good faith, and make a decision based on that
assumption. If you were right, no harm done. If you were wrong, whoever
takes action will be justified in that action.

But I warn you, whoever takes action without assuming good faith (or
seeing that the assumption has been disproved), it shall be on your head.

--
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list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Wikicommerce

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Corum O' Fallamhain <corumsmail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikitrade
>> I have proposed a new Wiki site called Wikitrade, Wikicommerce, Wikimoney,
>>or WIkibusiness. A while ago, a number of proposals were made (Wikiproducts,
>>Wikineur, and Trade Standard) that had a similar notion. Then I had an idea:
>>why don't we have a Wiki (NPOV, of course) devoted to all aspects of trade
>>and commerce? This could incorporate issues related to globalisation and
>>serve as a source of information about consumer products, stock markets, and
>>commodity prices, etc. It could also serve as a source of information about
>>investment conditions in a given country.
>>
>>
>And having all that in Wikipedia would be a bad idea why?
>
>
What would the SEC think of using wikis to trade securities? :-)

Ec


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Wikicommerce


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Equality

body:
Alphax wrote:
>Zephram Stark wrote:

>> The above is a bold statement that would require considerable risk to
>> implement, but it is exactly the same concept that the founders of my
>> country pledged their "Lives," "Fortunes," and "sacred Honor" to
>> protect.  I submit that my nation, the United States of America, is a
>> success because they did so.

>I submit that trolls who have been banned from Wikipedia have no place
>on the mailing list, either.

That's not strictly true because wikien-l is in fact the official
sewage pipe for en: Wikipedia. We chuck 'em if they get *really* bad
(Enviroknot trolling under whatever names) or stupid or obnoxious
(Skyring, who did the one thing he was asked not to do). Zephraim is
still on moderation, though.

- d.


from_name: shizhao

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Frapper map of wikipedians

body:
Frapper map of wikipedians:

http://www.risingconcepts.com/frapper/wikipedia

Welcome join!

[[zh:user:shizhao]]


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 9/22/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>I would appreciate it if you would take the trouble to see whether
>>an image was uploaded in anticipation of article use. For instance,
>>I often upload postage stamp scans in batches, and it may be a period
>>of weeks before I write all the articles that will use the uploaded
>>scans. You're not doing anybody a service by deleting these beforehand,
>>nor are you incentivizing me to create the articles more quickly or
>>to write first and upload later - more likely I'll just stop writing.
>>
>
>The policy Jimbo set out allowed a seven day window for a use to be
>found for a nonfree image.  If you need an image held longer, I
>suggest putting a comment on the image description page so that
>patrollers know that is what's going on.
>
I've pondered on this a bit, and it occurred to me that there is an
easy expedient that I think could be raised to the level of policy -
namely, to have the image description page contain wikilinks to every
article that the fair use image is intended to illustrate. Reviewers
can then compare those to the image's "what links here" to see that
they match, while as-yet-unwritten articles appear as red links.

To take an example, suppose we have an Israeli stamp depicting
Ben-Gurion. Fair use might mean that we can use it to illustrate
articles on Israeli philately, but not as a substitute for a free
photo in Ben-Gurion's bio. So we make the description page have a link
to [[Stamps of Israel]]; if the article is yet to be written, the link
is red indicating that it's a future plan. If the link is blue but the
page doesn't show up in "links here", or vice versa, something is wrong;
the image is used in an article where it shouldn't be allowed, or
perhaps the article has been edited to take out the legitimate usage -
maybe a free image is now available, in case we can safely discard
the fair use version, or maybe the article has been vandalized, and we
want to respond by fixing the article, rather than deleting the
apparently-orphaned image.

With a bit of formalized structure for this data, it might even be
possible to write a script that verifies correct usage, and only
warns about suspicious "fair" uses.

Stan


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:
> I think it's important that when I type in words like:
>  "colour"
>  That I get "colour" and not "color". I don't see why I need to know the
> spelling of the word in what to me is a foreign language when I'm looking up
> a word in a dictionary of my language.

"foreign language"

I think if you didn't say such ridiculous things, your _valid_ points
(when you make them) would be taken much much more seriously.

It _is_ of course important that issues like 'colour vs color' be
thought about carefully.  But inflammatory and patently false claims are
 likely to be taken as _trolling_ (deliberately trying to annoy people)
rather than serious commentary.

Knock it off.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] The Wikinews Licensure Poll is closed

body:
As for myself, I will read the various feedback from opposers to WNL 0.2
and modify it to answer their remarks.

I guess Amgine will help me on this.

Dariusz Siedlecki a ?crit :
> After two weeks of voting, the Wikinews community has chosen which
> license they'd like for their project. I won't post the full results
> here, but you can view them on Meta -
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Licensure_Poll
>
> Now... The winner is CC-By 2.5, with the attribution to the Wiki. The
> license is one-way-compatible with the GFDL. It gained 27 votes of
> support from Wikinewsies with only four votes against.
>
> It needs to be mentioned, that the GFDL gained 11 opposing votes from
> Wikinewsies, with only one vote of support. But the combination of
> GFDL and CC-By 2.5 gained 8 votes of support, with only one opposing
> vote.
>
> The Wikinews License 0.2, based on the BSD license, gained 14 votes of
> support, but 8 people were against it.
>
> Not many people were interested in the other licenses, so... I think
> that's it. The Wikinews community choosed CC-By 2.5 for the Wikinews
> project. Now it's up to the Board to decide on the project license.
> So... What does everyone say?
>


from_name: Arbeo M

subject: [Wikipedia-l] No more new Wikipedias !

body:
... at least not for the past three months or so.

In the past you only had to drop the name of some
language you'd heard of and a new wiki for that
language was created right away. This surely wasn't a
very intelligent approach, for it left us with quite a
number of inactive Wikipedias.

Nowadays, it's the opposite extreme: there are heaps
of requests that have been discussed very thoroughly
by the community (cf.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages).
Some of them are pretty well-qualified and supported
by numerous native speakers willing to contribute.
However, not a single new Wikipedia has been set up
for quite a while now.

Some time ago there had been a remark that it was hard
for our developers to recognize which new language
proposals can be considered as accepeted by the
community (and therefore created). That's why I made a
separate page intended to list languages that
unambiguously qualify for a new wiki (cf.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages).
Since this can be a controversial question I only
placed those cases there that are 100 % unequivocal
(at least 5 supporters, at least 2 native speakers,
ISO code, no objections, etc.).

I then also mailed to wikitech-I asking for the
creation of the Neapolitan WP (in which I have no
personal interest whatsoever), just to start with the
one that seems to have the highest number of editors
waiting to get started. I got only one reply and that
one was not really helpful.

A few days ago, user ILVI filed his request for the
installation of the Ladino Wikipedia (another one that
qualifies without any doubt) at wikitech-l. He got no
reply at all.

Before any misunderstandings might arise: I know that
our developers are extremely busy (and AFAIK unpaid,
too - good gosh...). I was just wondering if somebody
has an idea how we could remedy this situation and
maybe have, like, one new WP per month (so we don't
lose too many potential new contributors)?

Regards,

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] {{fullurl:}} and {{fullurle:}}

body:
On 23/09/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> solution used in the MediaWiki API is to use the Title::getFullURL()
> function. Accordingly, I've implemented an interface to this function,
> {{fullurl:}}. So instead of the above, you can use:

I've updated http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Variable to mention
this new variable; ugly page, but it might as well be up to date ish
;) [It might be an idea to mention which versions this works on; have
you only committed it to head, or will it work on updates to 1.5 or
1.4 as well?]

> For completeness, I also implemented {{fullurle:}}, but it has no
> practical applications that I can think of. Please use {{fullurl:}} and
> {{localurl:}} in wikitext, not the escaped counterparts. Escaped URLs
> only work in wikitext because of an ugly backwards-compatibility hack.

I've tried to mention this in the Help page too, because people have
been wondering about it.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] LZMA compression for dumps?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> While it's not any official or de-facto standard that we know of, the
> code is open source (LGPL, CPL) and a basic command-line archiver is
> available for most Unix-like platforms as well as Windows so it should
> be free to use (in the absence of surprise patents):
> http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html

I've had good experiences with 7-zip under Windows; didn't know there
was a *nix tool, which kept me from using it more often.

>
> I'm probably going to try to work LZMA compression into the dump process
> to supplement the gzipped files; and/or we could switch from gzip back
> to bzip2, which provides a still respectable improvement in compression
> and is a bit more standard.

Which reminds me: Why do people have to download the whole "XML'd"
database every time they want to update? There should be a way to make
smaller packages (like "pre-2003" or "2005-01") for all revisions
created in that timeframe. These could then be patched together and
updated with the latest package for those who need the old revisions at
home :-)

Taking this idea further, the database seems to hold up fine right now,
but with expotential growth come lots'o'revisions. At some point, we
might want to add a "rev_on_disk" field to the revisions table, and move
the text of revisions older than, say, 3 month to the file system (file
name generated through article and revision ID). That would save lots of
space in the database, and not interfere with important ongoing
operations like revert wars :-) and still keep the "really old" versions
accessible.

Not making much sense, am I? I need more coffee...

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> I'm not so sure it's needed.
>
> Unlike Serbian or Chinese, rather than using different writing systems
> we just have slightly different spellings.

And the occassional different words.  And somewhat more rarely (and more
subtly) occassionally minor differences of grammar.

But the key test that we use, and should use, is whether or not it is
mutually intelligible.  The valid point that Jack and Naree would be
making if they weren't so obviously trolling us, is that we can and
should be sensitive to these language differences and try to make sure
that our articles are mutually intelligible to everyone.

I have proposed in the past that we could have a form of redirect which
I would call a 'hard link'.  This is an analogy to Unix-style "symlinks"
versus "hard links".  There are some reasons this would be good, and
some reasons why this would be bad, and in any event, the idea has never
gained much support.

Right now, 'aubergine' (British English) redirects to 'eggplant'
(American English), while 'rapelling' (American) redirects to
'abseiling' (British).

courgette -> zucchini
but
checkers -> draughts

There is no particular rhyme or reason to which direction we go,
although it does seem that the Americans have achieved a sort of
dominate in the vegetables, while losing out in the sports/games area.

--Jimbo


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
> I'm going to respond to you, because I think you're crying out for help
> (...and because I want to try to adhere to Wikipedia ettiquette and repair
> any damage).

No, I think it's more likely you're responding directly to me because
you don't want it to be known to the list that you said "fuckwit".

> You don't sound remotely calm or considered.

I never said I did. But then, you don't either.

> I think you ought to re-read this post to me, and think about it.

No thanks. I don't feel like taking a trans-atlantic flight just to
read a post out to you.

> It's no surprise that you decide to focus on the fact that I submit "teh" as
> "the" without correcting it; it strikes me you do it to feel better about
> yourself.

Right. You just keep telling yourself that.

> That is an example of troll behaviour. If you were interested in debating
> properly you wouldn't pump out such childish shit. I'm at fault for
> responding to it similarly, out of annoyance.

...

> I have read what I've sent. I have made errors. I have conceded, apologised,
> and corrected myself.

There is nothing wrong with making errors. However, when you assert,
as you do, that your orthography is the only "correct" spelling, it
deserves special notice when you make mistakes. This has been noted by
others on this list.

> You have simply had an air of a superiority complex right from the first
> reply.

And you haven't?

> The things you've just ranted about "American English is ugly" - where did
> say that? I didn't.
> "...Americanised" - I made a case for it, not refuted.
> "..spell better.." - Wrong again, I never said or suggested that, more of
> your consistent bollocks.

I like how you spew and spew and spew, and then later claim it's me
who is emitting consistant bollocks. You said a number of times that
Americans are bad at spelling and similar things. Or at least someone
using your e-mail address did.

> ...and no, (to add to the list of things I also never said) I didn't say
> it's not OK for you to call me xyz, several others said that.

Don't remember that.

> Frankly, you
> should know better.

I like how you call me an impulsive, petulant, self-important twat,
and then lecture me on what I should know better than to do.

Jimbo Wales has called you a troll. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimbo_Wales

Despite the fact that nobody so far besides yourself seems to agree
with the idea of separate Wikipedias, you continue to make it sound as
if there is some sort of oppressed minority here.

>  I'm not impulsive in calling you an impulsive, petulant, self-important
> twat. I've thought about it; I've read your crap; and you are definitely all
> of those things, and you're proving it now, and I'd be happy to scibble it
> all over your face.

And you're none of those things? You like to call me a troll, yet
somehow you're not one, even though in this thread alone more people
have called you a troll than have called me a troll in the past month.

>  You're regularly being impulsive with your hurried replies making
> accusations you haven't checked the facts of, and it shows in your frantic
> style of writing; you're being petulant because of your frantic desperation
> to prove yourself right and "win", in addition to your general unreasoned,
> un-backed-up hostility right from the kick off; you're self-importance shows
> in the way you constantly write and mock as though you believe you are an
> ultimate authority, e.g.: "When Mark Wiliamson calls you a troll, you must
> be one, I think" - I bet you wrote the book on self-importance; it all adds
> up to being a twat, and your comebacks are hopeless.
>  As far as "nettiquette" goes, there's one rule I know: "Don't say anything
> you're not prepared to say to someone's face." I doubt very much you and or
> chums have a cock and balls between you, except your boyfriend's.

Well, assuming you didn't read my userpage, that was a cheap shot, and
I think it's a good thing I'm forwarding this to the list. Remember
that private e-mails don't always remain private.

And I am prepared to say all of that to your face, although perhaps
not scribble it on you because that is something that only people who
are, well, barking mad would do.

Of course, it's generally bad netiquette to forward private e-mails to
a public mailinglist, however people seem to accept it if the author
of the original e-mail has acted abusive.

You did not confide in me, so I'm not breaking some sort of sworn
confidence; I did not guarantee you I wouldn't forward your message;
in addition you have said some pretty abusive things here.

>  I am not the only person who feels dissatisfied with the Americanisation of
> Wikipedia. Someone else proposed this, I merely support it.

And who might that be? As far as I can tell, the first person in this
thread is you, who sent the message "Wikipedia Scot's English?
Wikipedia Simple English? I want Wikipedia English English!!".

>  Aubergine, as you must know, unless you're a complete fuckwit, is merely an
> example of one of the kinds of unintelligibility and linguistic preference
> problems. There are Wiki pages already listing unintellibilities between the
> two dialects, which are nowhere near completed; they will get much longer.

Yes, but as I and many others have said, they are small enough that
mutual intelligibility is USUALLY not a problem. If it were, neither
of us would be capable of having this, well, whatever it is.

> The fact that we are having a heated row about this is no evidence of
> intelligibility; it may actually turn out to be evidence of the opposite. Do
> you actually know what evidence is?
> The instance I gave my encounter with an American over "What's Up"
> illustrates how identical vocab, grammar, and syntax does not equal
> identical semantics, it can be unintelligible.
> Do you remember what you responded with? I doubt it - too busy patting
> yourself on the back for your "witty" Trollish quips.

Whatever. "Can be unintelligible" is very different from "is usually
unintelligible".

> The idea that American-English is an offshoot of English is actually a
> semantic issue.
> I am stating that the name "English" has already been used (like a domain
> name), and I'm talking about the written word as standardised in England, so
> arguing the toss over dialects inside England, and in people's living rooms
> is a red herring. You can argue that the term "English" be reappointed to
> name a genus of dialects, but I'm arguing that that particular name applies
> most aptly to the dialect that has developed in the same geographical place,
> among the same ethnolinguistic group where it autochthonously evolved from
> Anglo-Saxon into what we know today.
> That particular debate is over what names apply to what. Americans call what
> we speak "British English", but if you go to the wiki article, you'll see
> that that term is not accepted in Britain or England; people feel, and in my
> view, rightly, that the prefix is unwarranted. It's a result of having a
> country made up of countries.
> I've never said my English is better than yours; I've said that too much of
> the stuff called English in Wikipedia is not recognisable English in England
> and plenty of other places.

Have you read any of your e-mails? Perhaps you're not the real author of them?

> The main part of what pisses me (and others) off, is the fact that most of
> the English is American, and non-English speakers are going to read articles
> written in American, and think that that is the standard form. I want them
> to know that it isn't; that it's the standard form for a dialect of English
> called American English - that's what the OED calls it, so should Wikipedia,
> in the name of accuracy, accessibility, inclusivity and fairness.
> .

There is no internationally-recognised "standard English". There are
two varieties which are both used by millions of people. You, and
anybody else who edits Wikipedia, are welcome to use either.

> Finally, no, I'm calling you a bully and an ostracist.
> Your silly absolutist playground statements like "nobody agrees with you
> about xyz" are fluent trollish; plenty of people here are intelligent enough
> to pick and choose for themselves what they do and don't agree with, without
> your rather de-legitimised recommendations.

...

> You can't even respond positively to any constructive comments, you have to
> run for the cover of your "innernet buddies".

...

> How anyone as ridiculous as you can call me anything is beyond
> comprehension.

Umm... right.

Mark


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] No more new Wikipedias !

body:
Hi Arbeo,

>I then also mailed to wikitech-I asking for the
>creation of the Neapolitan WP (in which I have no
>personal interest whatsoever), just to start with the
>one that seems to have the highest number of editors
>waiting to get started. I got only one reply and that
>one was not really helpful.
>
>
Thank you for having done this - I was so down under with work these
days that I really was not able to care about this. Anyway: just today
on the Napulitano mailing list, where we talk about Neapolitan, the
wikipedia etc. I received the question by a list member that is not even
among the supporters (at least as much as I know - if he hides behind
one of the names I don't know well, that's another thingie).

So yes, we very much want it - I have the first part of terms in
Neapolitan for the UI.

So I hope that is is going to be created soon, since all of us can then
start to contribute - and even if everyone of us makes just one edit a
day we will reach our goal :-) normally people get addicted and so one
edit a day is really just an example :-)

>A few days ago, user ILVI filed his request for the
>installation of the Ladino Wikipedia (another one that
>qualifies without any doubt) at wikitech-l. He got no
>reply at all.
>
>Before any misunderstandings might arise: I know that
>our developers are extremely busy (and AFAIK unpaid,
>too - good gosh...). I was just wondering if somebody
>has an idea how we could remedy this situation and
>maybe have, like, one new WP per month (so we don't
>lose too many potential new contributors)?
>
>
>
Well, installing a wiki is not soooo difficult - and I would say that it
makes more sense to install some wikis at a time instead of doing one at
a time. I suppose it is easier for them to do it in one rush instead of
creating one new wiki at a time and that they are waiting to reach a
certain number. Really I don't know.

Unfortunately I myself don't have the time to do that - otherwise I'd
just say: give me the access data and show me one time what needs to be
changed manually in the configuration and I just install them - but
maybe we can find a helping hand that just cares about such things? -
Really I don't even know if that is possible ... just take someone,
teach how to do things and let them do ... this is something to be asked
for.

Thanks again for asking for Neapolitan :-)

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
>>>Who else agrees that he's a troll?
>>
>>Lars Aronsson and Ray Santoinge do, at least as far as I know, and I'd
>>be very surprised if nobody else did.
>>Mark
>
>
> I certainly do.

Yes, of course.

The only thing I would say in addition is that there are serious
questions underlying this.  Given that English is a global language,
spoken and written in several subtle shades worldwise, and given _as
well_ that forking into "English English" and "American English" is a
proposal so preposterous as to not be worthy of consideration, we do
need to be careful to be thoughtful about the real issues.

--Jimbo


body:
Ray, I sincerely apologise for misinterpreting what you've said.

On a slightly related note, Jack and/or Naree can add Ronald Chmara
and Jimbo Wales to the list of people who have called or at least
implied that he and/or she is a troll.

Mark

On 23/09/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >>Who else agrees that he's a troll?
> >>
> >>
> >Lars Aronsson and Ray Santonge do, at least as far as I know, and I'd
> >be very surprised if nobody else did.
> >
> Please don't misinterpret me this way.  IIRC I did respond to Lars, and
> I did suggest that If someone considered Jack to be a troll they should
> stop feeding him.  I've never even called you a troll even though you
> have been making debatable comments on this list much longer than Jack.
>
> Ray


body:
That's cool, but it seems to have a limited database of zip codes. It
said mine, and one for a town 15 minutes away were both invalid. So, I
put in one for a place like an hour away, and it worked. *shrug*

On 9/23/05, shizhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:
> Frapper map of wikipedians:
>
> http://www.risingconcepts.com/frapper/wikipedia
>
> Welcome join!
>
> [[zh:user:shizhao]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6

body:
Since it's now been 4 days over 2 weeks since a posting about this was
made at the zhwiki village pump, as Angela proposed, and the voting is
currently at 44-15, still a large margin of "support" votes.

Therefore, I am re-submitting the request.

Mark

On 05/09/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > All political, sociolinguistic, and practical arguments aside, there
> > are currently 29 votes in support of a separate Cantonese Wikipedia
> > and 6 against (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_for_Sinitic_linguistic_policy#Vote_-_.E6.8A.95.E7.A5.A8).
>
> Since this hasn't yet been advertised on the Chinese Wikipedia, I
> suggest we leave the vote open for another couple of weeks. I have
> just posted details about on the Chinese mailing list, and hopefully
> someone there will be able to translate it to advertise the vote on
> our existing Chinese language wikis. I think it is only fair to allow
> the people on those projects to at least be aware of a proposal which
> is liable to take away editors from their own wiki.
>
> Angela.
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Jack & Naree

body:
Dear Mr "I'm not a Troll",
 See if you can pass the Troll test:
*If you're a troll, send me a reply.*
*If you're not, don't.*

It takes two to Troll. "*So shut the fuck up already!*". Get it?


body:
 On 23/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> OK, after that e-mail, I think you really need to leave.
>
> Arguing and trolling is one thing, but writing a response in all-caps
> is another.
>
> Not only does nobody here agree with you, but you don't seem to be
> willing to start a poll on the matter, and you can't even cite a
> single other Wiki-an who supports you.
>
> Go fork off from Wikipedia by yourself.
>
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>    Jack & Naree   to Mark, wikipedia-l
 More options 16:09 (10 minutes ago)  Dear Mr "I'm not a Troll",
 See if you can pass the Troll test:
*If you're a troll, send me a reply.*
*If you're not, don't.*

It takes two to Troll. "*So shut the fuck up already!*". Get it?

  ReplyForward

  Looks like he failed...

>


body:
On 23/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Arguing and trolling is one thing, but writing a response in all-caps
> is another.

Yes, so much worse than calling somebody you don't agree with "barking
mad", only to find that the examples you are objecting to are verified
by a number of other users. Hm...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Funky tricks on de

body:
It would be good to make sure it works on all major browsers, first,
or at least fails gracefully/unnoticeably. Though I certainly support
a Wikipedia which doesn't dumb down to the lowest common technological
denominator on its default skin, I think it's important to remember
that many of our users (esp. those at schools and libraries) may not
be using very new technology (and there's no reason to construct a
technological/economic hurdle). This of course applies in general, not
just this to instance.

(I'm aware they could change the skin settings, but for the *default*
skin, I think this sort of thing needs to be taken into consideration
explicitly with all "neat tricks")

FF

On 9/22/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's really cool. Is there any reason we shouldn't be bold and implement it?
>
> On 9/22/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That is nifty! It seems to be a relatively straigtforward change to
> > monobook.js, and then use a version of the
> > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Navigationsleiste_ohne_Bild (that
> > might lead to some heavy transclusion though).
> >
> > --gkhan
> >
> > PS. I'm crap at these things really, so please someone else comment :P
> >
> > On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> > > On the German Wikipedia, I've noticed they've got a nifty trick with
> > > templates whereby you can include a button to hide an infobox, in the same
> > > way as you can hide a contents box.  See an example down at the bottom of
> > > this page:
> > >
> > > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematische_Navigation_Deutschsprachige_L%C3%A4nder
> > >
> > > I don't know of any templates to do the same thing on en:, and when I
> > > tried to replicate the code on the German templates it didn't work.  Does
> > > anyone know how one might get something similar working on en:?
> > >
> > > WT
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


body:
Thank you.

On 23/09/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 23/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Arguing and trolling is one thing, but writing a response in all-caps
> > is another.
>
> Yes, so much worse than calling somebody you don't agree with "barking
> mad", only to find that the examples you are objecting to are verified
> by a number of other users. Hm...
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a new
	project: Wikisomething)

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> I want to propose a new idea for a new project: Wikisomething.
> Wikisomething is dedicated to contain multilingual somethings of all
> different sorts, therefore it spares us the need to found any new
> different projects for speficic things. Moreover, we could also
> integrate our current projects into Wikisomething.
>
> cordially,
> Elian

I know this was in jest, but I would like to know if people on this
mailing are fed up with all of these sort of proposals or if they need
to be encouraged more.  I've been vocal about this in the past, but my
impression is that no new major project will ever be started.  Period.
 If you take a look at the "No" votes for Wikiversity, for example

(see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Vote )

the #1 reason I find credible is that there are some technical issues
that seem to be preventing new projects from being started.  What are
those incredible technical issues that are going to force any new
project from starting for more than a year from now?  Is there any
reason at all to even encourage anybody to start a new project of any
kind?  Is a general concensus that new proposals should not even be
brought up on Foundation-l?

I do believe that at the very least there needs to be a few more steps
in the development process of a new project proposal before it gets to
Foundation-l.  I've been a regular contributor to this mailing list now
for close to a year, and I've seen a dozen or so new project proposals
get posted, most by very well-meaning people and some of them are very
well thought out.  There are some proposals that are "not ready for
prime-time" and perhaps they should be more thought out before they come
up here.  For most new project ideas, Foundation-l is the very last
place that anything will be heard about the idea, not the first.

Another related issue is more along the lines of how to publicize the
kernel of an idea that may be useful but needs a bit more work, such as
the Wikimemory proposal that has been debated recently.  Requesting help
for such proposals on this mailing list is throwing the idea before a
very hostile audience, perhaps unwittingly and certainly without the
knowledge of new Wikimedia users who happen to come across this mailing
list as suggested by the New Project Policy.  Perhaps instead of
announcing the formal new project proposal here, there should be some
development effort at some Wikiproject or some other sub-community of
Wikimedia users that are much more receptive of the idea, and can give
some depth to the idea before it comes here.

At the very least, if there is to be a moritorium on new sister
projects, please make that official policy on the part of the Wikimedia
Foundation Board and get that stated on the New Project page, and
perhaps even on the front page of Meta as well.  On the other hand, if
the board does intend to allow some new projects to be started if they
are well thought out and have a support community behind them, there
should be an official policy to silence the critics who seem to speak in
a semi-official capacity on behalf of the board (even though I know they
are not board members).

If there are genuine technical issues that need to be addressed so that
starting en.wikiversity.org is somehow harder than to.wikibooks.org, I
would like to know what those issues are that developers seem to be
screaming about.  Get technical and don't sugar coat it either, and if
possible give hard examples.  If the concern is purely social and
getting the new project community organized, that may be a legitimate
concern.  I don't think it is in as many cases as the critics seems to
believe it may be, and most new projects tend to recruit more people
than would normally be participating with Wikipedia alone, so I don't
think it necessarily bleeds other projects dry from volunteers.  This is
also an issue I would be more than willing to debate as well.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

> Jack & Naree wrote:
>
>>What seems clear is that Mark has been consistently argumentative,
>>facetious, and fallacious; and even more so since this post.
>>
>>
>Hah.
>
>
>>Not satisfied with trying to start a "row", he wants to ban me for not
>>agreeing with him.
>>
>>
>Ban you? No, that was someone else. I just want you to leave
>peacefully, or quit being a troll.
>
Hi. Could somebody please remove the pots and kettles (whether black or
any other colour/color) from the cooker/stove and deposit them in the
dustbin/trashcan, and end this discussion?

--Michael Snow


from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
On 9/23/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually, Andrew was closer: it's en-gb, because RFC 3066 defines it
> as an ISO 639 language code (en for English) plus an ISO 3166 country
> code (GB meaning, confusingly, the UK; I'm glad the IANA ignored this
> and gave us .uk for our domains)

To be somewhat more pedantic, it should be "en-GB", since IIRC the
second ISO code is supposed to be written in uppercase.  This is
actually the system used for localization of Firefox in foreign
languages (e.g. fr-CA and fr-FR for the French of Canada and France,
respectively).

Steve


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: AfD Threshold being Revised Downward Again?

body:
Zephram Stark wrote

>The only efficient way to keep Wikipedia going at this point in our growth,
>is to make it self-manageable.

WP is unmanageable, and has been for a couple of years.  No one has any
levers to pull.  What's new?

Charles

PS This is a high-traffic list - any chance you could post more concisely?


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 03:45:05PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Which reminds me: Why do people have to download the whole "XML'd"
> database every time they want to update?

See posts about xdelta a few weeks ago.


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] [ANNOUCNE] Graph extension updated

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

didn't post for a long time, but some of you may remember my <graph>
extension, generating HTML and ASCII output. Over the time the software
has evolved quite a bit and I am now proud to announce a new release.

(Graph::Easy 0.30 and wikimedia-graph 0.12 are the latest now)

It can now generate HTML, ASCII, SVG and graphviz code. The latter
allows .png, .ps etc output via external programs like dot.

You can now also specify the output format in the graph code itself, so
forcing a particular graph to render as ASCII/HTML etc from the wiki page
itself.

The software is much faster, more stable, needs less prerequisites and
less memory. It also has now many of the planned features implemented,
and a few more. The syntax also has now settled down and the attribute
set is strictly enforced (catching these dang typos :-D

There is a comprehensive online manual (with examples etc) and a website
about the project online at my server. I als created a little demo page
where you can play live with it:

	http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/manual/		Manual
	http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/				Project Site
	http://bloodgate.com/graph-demo/			Live demo

The live demo shows it without MediaWiki integration, since I do not have
a wiki on my server yet. (It also does not render PNG since dot/graphviz
is not installed - if somebody knows how to compile graphviz on FreeBSD
4.8 please contact me off-list).

Hope you enjoy it.

Please write me critics/praise/feedback/feature-wishes etc. I do have some
limited email writing/reading capabilities over the next two weeks, but
rest assured I will read all your responses and answer them :)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Fri Sep 23 17:38:38 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "I can imagine what you're thinking though: this girl keeps her brains
 in her backside! But actually only the more primitive parts of my brain
 are in my butt. The more interesting parts are kept in a PC - my spinal
 cord is actually an RS232 lead!" - Lucy, the OrangUtan Robot Girl
 http://tinyurl.com/3fv6z

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from_name: Innocenti Maresin

subject: [Wikitech-l] feature request: lingual fallback

body:
Hello, All!

As you know,
not all languages presented in Wikipedia
by comparable amount of articles.
There are "rich" languages as English and German,
and there are not-so-rich as Russian, for example.
It is not good, but it is also not bad.  It's just the fact.
Some language sections lacks terms already defined in many others.
Also, in Russian there is many notions,
mostly very modern Hi-Tech-related,
which lacks "canonical" translation to Russian,
but have a well-established form in English.
I am sure that in other languages the problem exists too.
Wiki propose no means, AFAIK, how to deal with notion
having no canonical term to represent it in some language.
Even existing ways known to me to circumvent the obstacle
are not convenient (see below).

Let us consider some not-so-rich language,
which will be denoted as "current" from here and below.
Suppose that its Wiki section is actively developping.
What an article editor should do if he has to use a notion
that should be defined, but no article on that notion exist
in _current_ language section?
An editor may have no time to make a new article,
he may doubt in desired article's title
because he do not know the most correct term,
or even if he is sure in the word used in the place,
he could be unsure in title of the _nest_
to which this word has to be belong
(there are situations where making separate articles per word is bad).
There are now only 3 ways:
use some words but skip definitions (which is poor),
make a new stub article (which is time consuming
  and could cause future conflicts),
make some "external" link at least to another Wiki language section.

Now I propose a new feature that will aid
to exploit existance of other Wiki languages,
but not just with a [[:lang:term]] link.
Like [[:lang:term]], we should select a "default" language to fallback,
but this default will be used more sophisticately
than merely redirect the reader to the article denoted.
Suppose a construction similar to [[:lang:term]], like
 [[:&en:some rare term|non-English term]]
( with English as "default" in this case ),
which, in case of browsing,
has to be interpreted in the following manner:

* Compose some special URL for a "lingual fallback" href;

* When such URL GET, retrieve specified article in "default" language;

* Extract from there the trailing list of interwiki links,

* When detecting a link to the current language, consider this fallback obsolete,
  start some automated process replacing such fallbacks by "normal" links,
  and end up redirecting browser to this "normal" article;

* Otherwise, give to the browser
  the list of interwiki links plus the link to "default" language article,
  means the list of languages where desired notion is defined by now;

* Also give a prompt to create the missing article
  under some _suggested_ title (e.g. link text where the fallback originates from),
  but not a _fixed_ title choosen earlier.

* Let user make his choice manually;

* Maybe, add a delayed browser redirect to one of these links,
  possibly to default language's one,
  but generally respecting user's preferences.

I'm quite new to the Wikipedia project as contributor.
I tried to read Wiki's FAQs about multi-language coordination,
but found there only trivial instructions.
May be, some techinque already exist I'm not aware of,
but the proposed scheme has the following advantages:

* Fallback creator will not be forced to choose the *future* name
  of the missing article in current language
  ( comparing to leaving a link to unborn article );

* User has not to load texts in foreign languages,
  which he may be unable to display or to understand,
  or which may be excessive if article in current language exist
  ( comparing to making foreign links [[:lang:term]] );

* User will be prompted, but not obliged,
  to start the missing article, probably using existing foreign analogs,
  and already equipped with interwiki links.

* Fallback creator should select, among article versions in many languages,
  a "default" fallback language for a link,
  possible based on its proximity to current language,
  spread in current-language-speaking countries,
  content quality and relevance, or some weighted sum of these factors.

Regards,

--
qq~~~~\	[ ?? IP ??? ??????? ]
/ /\   \	[ inCTV News ]  news://news1.inCTV.ru/
\  /_/ /
 \____/


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
> (file name generated through article and revision ID). That would save
> lots of space in the database, and not interfere with important ongoing
> operations like revert wars :-) and still keep the "really old" versions accessible.

Welcome, Magnus, to Wikimedia. We've been holding our
archives on ExternalStore servers, which are cheapo Apache
boxes. Migration is done by compressOld.

Domas


from_name: Corum O' Fallamhain

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Wikicommerce

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikitrade
 I have proposed a new Wiki site called Wikitrade, Wikicommerce, Wikimoney,
or WIkibusiness. A while ago, a number of proposals were made (Wikiproducts,
Wikineur, and Trade Standard) that had a similar notion. Then I had an idea:
why don't we have a Wiki (NPOV, of course) devoted to all aspects of trade
and commerce? This could incorporate issues related to globalisation and
serve as a source of information about consumer products, stock markets, and
commodity prices, etc. It could also serve as a source of information about
investment conditions in a given country.
 Good idea, no?
 Ce_garcon
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ce_garcon


subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Wikicommerce


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
I understand, but how does the auto-blocker help w that?

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 9/23/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com>
> >
> > > In general, some form of autoblocking is necessary or blocked
> > > users will be able to simply log out and conitnue editing.
> > >  Carbonite
> >
> >If they do, they can be blocked again, or their IP blocked.
>
> Assuming you know for sure that it is them.  But of course, you can't know
> that if you don't know their IP, or if they use a sockpuppet.  And not
> everyone is an admin to be able to block sockpuppets when they show up.
>
> >Frankly, I am confused
> >as to what the upside in all this is.If a user sneakilly logs in
> >anonymously and makes acceptable edits, who cares? And if they resume
> >where they left off or otherwise make trouble, that will be pretty
> >obvious, won't it? They can simply be blocked then, and their IP
> >blocked if there appears a need.
>
> You'd think, wouldn't you?  And yet, that's not always the case; quite often
> all sorts of IPs and new accounts show up to revert for someone who is
> blocked, all insisting that they are not sockpuppets at all, but merely
> disintersted third parties who happened to stumble on to the conflict and
> decided that their first edit should be a revert.  One person who has been
> consistently e-mailing this list (including today) was involved in exactly
> such a war, and insists to this day that none of the IPs and new accounts
> were sockpuppets.
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gerrit Holl

body:
shizhao wrote:
> Frapper map of wikipedians:
>
> http://www.risingconcepts.com/frapper/wikipedia
>
> Welcome join!

Lule?
"Invalid City. Please try again"

Can I just click on my location somehow?

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-23 18:29:57   13.1 degrees Celsius ( 55.6F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Equality

body:
While I don't agree w his sympathy for vandals, I do agree that the
position of admins is contrary to the project goals, and should be
eliminated and replaced w something more meritocratic and efficient.

Jack (Sam Spade)


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> 1) I don't call people I disagree with barking mad, unless they really
> are barking mad. I believe this is the first time in a few months I've
> called anyone barking mad, and in the intervening time there have been
> plenty of people with whom I've had disagreements. I think most people
> on this list would agree that Mr Jack and Naree is "barking mad".

I disagree.

> 3) Mr. Jack & Naree's most recent message is a bit daft ("looks like
> he failed"). If he had the sense to check, he would see that that
> message was not, in fact, a response to his "troll test" e-mail but
> rather to his earlier e-mail which was written in all-caps. And, if it
> takes two to troll, why is just about everybody else on this list
> calling him a troll? Does that mean that they're all trolls too? And,
> of course, this isn't a response to him, but a note to you which is
> related to but not in response to his message. And if anyone so
> wishes, I invite them to inform Mr Macdaddy that the troll test, from
> now on, applies to him as well: if he IS a troll, he'll make another
> post to this or related threads; if he ISN'T a troll, he won't.

Who else agrees that he's a troll?

> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

A signature in allcaps... Hmm...

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-23 18:39:46   12.6 degrees Celsius ( 54.6F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


from_name: Phroziac

body: You know Kim Jong-Il?


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: mirror the talks in a mailing list?

body:
>>>>> "Ashar" == Ashar Voultoiz
>>>>> <hashar at altern.org> writes:

   Ashar> Uwe Brauer wrote:

   Ashar> Talk pages are considered as one block of text and nothing
   Ashar> in the database store them as separate messages. Any new
   Ashar> modification can add several replies and even modify an
   Ashar> existing message. Looks a bit hard to
Hm, I am new to wikipedia, but this sounds a little strange. Do I
understand correctly that I could change an existing message? I
thought like any free/open project wikipedia is under some sort of
version control, because otherwise things could be easily lost.

   Ashar> implement that actually (need parsing, ability to changes
   Ashar> previous messages in nntp / cancel messages etc..).

But you would agree that this form of communication (via email or
pseudo email) would greatly improve the convenience?  Also that seems
to be a different topic, but right now there exit software for so
called virtual campus (in order to present students a unified support
for an academic course; WEBCT and its free counterparts like moodle)
In this environment it is possible to have a sort of local mailing
list for discussions between lecturer and students. May such an
approach could be used for wikipedia?

   Ashar> In preferences: "Editing" > check "Use external editor by
   Ashar> default" , will send you the file for editing in whatever
   Ashar> editor. Not sure how it works exactly though ;)

Ok that is of course another solution. I will try out.
Thanks

Uwe Brauer


references:
<871x3p9vqy.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <dgjfki$hq2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<873bnvsp9e.fsf@mat.ucm.es>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Friday 23 September 2005 18:49, Uwe Brauer wrote:
> >>>>> "Ashar" == Ashar Voultoiz
> >>>>> <hashar at altern.org> writes:
>
>    Ashar> Uwe Brauer wrote:
>
>    Ashar> Talk pages are considered as one block of text and nothing
>    Ashar> in the database store them as separate messages. Any new
>    Ashar> modification can add several replies and even modify an
>    Ashar> existing message. Looks a bit hard to
> Hm, I am new to wikipedia, but this sounds a little strange. Do I
> understand correctly that I could change an existing message?

Basically, yes.

> I thought like any free/open project wikipedia is under some sort of
> version control, because otherwise things could be easily lost.

The changes are preserved as revisions, so one could see that you edited
another message. However, when reading only  the latest revision, things
can be confusing. I think that it is frowned upon editing other people's
messages (or personal pages), but this is not strictly enforced.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Fri Sep 23 18:56:35 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 This email violates U.S. patent #5,978,791 <http://tinyurl.com/5t6ft>

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from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 9/23/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it *would* be very nice to have a robot which would scour the
> "fair use" categories for orphaned images, and mark them with a little
> remark which said, "If this image is not used in a week, it will be
> deleted. If you object to this, simply edit this image description --
> if this robot is not the last editor of the image description, it will
> just be flagged for review." or something like that.

I've started writing that robot, but ran into a problem with the
pywikipedia framework and [[Category:Fair use images]].  It seems that
there are more than 200 images in the category indexed under "Upload"
(due to a now-fixed bug in MediaWiki from last April and May), which
causes the category enumerator in pywikipedia to loop endlessly.  Once
I've manually touched enough of the images which are indexed under
"Upload" to drop that count below 200, the bug will clear and I'll be
able to use the robot to enumerate the category and do the orphan
check on a periodic basis.

If you want to help, go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Fair_use_images&from=Upload
and make null edits on the images listed therein.  This will cause
them to be reindexed properly and fix the indexing problem with the
Category.  There's a lot of them.

Kelly


body:
Well, this is the hope of the "verified use" template -- it would list
specifically *which* articles were independently confirmed as "fair"
uses. But of course this would only come up on contentious uses (that
is, when there was a complaint or a request for review). It's hard for
me to imagine anything else along these lines which would be practical
-- I have a hard time imagining a good hardware solution to this which
wouldn't involve radically rewriting the code or requiring armies of
human monitors.

I think it *would* be very nice to have a robot which would scour the
"fair use" categories for orphaned images, and mark them with a little
remark which said, "If this image is not used in a week, it will be
deleted. If you object to this, simply edit this image description --
if this robot is not the last editor of the image description, it will
just be flagged for review." or something like that. After a week the
image would go through the list again, delete as noted, or flag as
noted. It would clean up the categories quite a bit, I think. Perhaps
I'll propose this on one of those bot-related pages, see if one of the
existing bot scripts could be adapted by someone knowledgeable in the
art of bots...

FF

On 9/23/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Kelly Martin wrote:
>
> >On 9/22/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> >
> >>I would appreciate it if you would take the trouble to see whether
> >>an image was uploaded in anticipation of article use. For instance,
> >>I often upload postage stamp scans in batches, and it may be a period
> >>of weeks before I write all the articles that will use the uploaded
> >>scans. You're not doing anybody a service by deleting these beforehand,
> >>nor are you incentivizing me to create the articles more quickly or
> >>to write first and upload later - more likely I'll just stop writing.
> >>
> >
> >The policy Jimbo set out allowed a seven day window for a use to be
> >found for a nonfree image.  If you need an image held longer, I
> >suggest putting a comment on the image description page so that
> >patrollers know that is what's going on.
> >
> I've pondered on this a bit, and it occurred to me that there is an
> easy expedient that I think could be raised to the level of policy -
> namely, to have the image description page contain wikilinks to every
> article that the fair use image is intended to illustrate. Reviewers
> can then compare those to the image's "what links here" to see that
> they match, while as-yet-unwritten articles appear as red links.
>
> To take an example, suppose we have an Israeli stamp depicting
> Ben-Gurion. Fair use might mean that we can use it to illustrate
> articles on Israeli philately, but not as a substitute for a free
> photo in Ben-Gurion's bio. So we make the description page have a link
> to [[Stamps of Israel]]; if the article is yet to be written, the link
> is red indicating that it's a future plan. If the link is blue but the
> page doesn't show up in "links here", or vice versa, something is wrong;
> the image is used in an article where it shouldn't be allowed, or
> perhaps the article has been edited to take out the legitimate usage -
> maybe a free image is now available, in case we can safely discard
> the fair use version, or maybe the article has been vandalized, and we
> want to respond by fixing the article, rather than deleting the
> apparently-orphaned image.
>
> With a bit of formalized structure for this data, it might even be
> possible to write a script that verifies correct usage, and only
> warns about suspicious "fair" uses.
>
> Stan
>
>


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 23/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) I don't call people I disagree with barking mad, unless they really
> are barking mad.

I didn't say you "always" or "often" did it. I merely pointed out that
it seemed rather hypocritical to complain that somebody was emotional
enough to [presumably deliberately] use all caps in an e-mail, when
you yourself had just got emotional (and personal) enough to accuse
that person of being "barking mad".

> 2) Yes, but how many of them? I never said with absolute certainty
> that all of those were BS examples, only that much of the list was BS.

No, but you did confidently state that "The vast majority of those
aren't even real differences", followed by a set of examples, which
were, presumably, among those which you thought were in fact "BS" -
otherwise what are they examples of? That many of the examples you
picked were then confirmed as differences by other users considerably
weakens your position, does it not?

> None of the examples which I made it clear I was fairly certain were
> universal were objected to

So, the lists linked to weren't 100% brilliant. Perhaps a comment that
"I'm not sure all those examples are accurate" would have been a
better comment? And remember, nobody on this list [as far as we know]
actually *wrote* either of those lists, they just pointed them out as
a convenient example.

> even many of the ones which were
> objected to proved a point, for example "autumn" vs "fall": there's
> one variant that's understood in both places, and another that is only
> understood in one. Which one should be chosen?

That's not proof that there's no difference (which you were, to put it
charitably, strongly implying); it's proof that there is a difference
for which a compromise solution exists. An interesting point, but not
one which warrants labelling anyone "barking mad".

To respond to the implied suggestion that we always use "autumn", I'd
guess it would more of a reader-oriented policy than a writer-oriented
one. In my experience, US writers tend to more commonly and naturally
use "fall", so even if they'd understand "autumn" easily enough, it
might require conscious thought (or correction by other users) to
always *write* it. Not that that's a fatal flaw, just a thought for
discussion.

[I'm not sure arguing about definitions of "troll" gets us anywhere,
so I shall pass over that part of the discussion]
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
My thought is that those who do this and are disruptive will likely
have the new account blocked. If their not disruptive or revert
waring, its no big deal (blocks are ment for punishment, are they?),
but if someone starts creating loads of accounts, and is shown to have
been using sockpuppets, the are a rather large problem, and
arbitration / blocking that IP would seem waranted.

Normally were talking about users who've gotten a bit too excitable w
reverts, or spoke in hasty anger and etc..., not some sort of internet
terrorist out to wreck meyhem.

What I'm saying is their arn't ''many'' concievable benefits to the
auto-blocker (I agree there are some), but their are alot of obvious
downsides. Being blocked is hard enough on an editor, but the
autoblocker adds insult and injury both.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 9/23/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com>
> >
> >I understand, but how does the auto-blocker help w that?
>
> Well, you're right in that it doesn't help with those sophisticated enough
> to have a bunch of different "independent" IPs show up to revert for them.
> However, it does help with those who simply create a new account when
> blocked (assuming the don't change IP as well, which many don't do).
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal for a new project: Wikisomething

body:
I want to propose a new idea for a new project: Wikisomething.
Wikisomething is dedicated to contain multilingual somethings of all
different sorts, therefore it spares us the need to found any new
different projects for speficic things. Moreover, we could also
integrate our current projects into Wikisomething.

Please vote for wikisomething on Meta-Wiki and lend the new project your
support:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikisomething

cordially,
Elian


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > > 1) I don't call people I disagree with barking mad, unless they really
> > > are barking mad. I believe this is the first time in a few months I've
> > > called anyone barking mad, and in the intervening time there have been
> > > plenty of people with whom I've had disagreements. I think most people
> > > on this list would agree that Mr Jack and Naree is "barking mad".
> >
> > I disagree.
>
> Yes, but you're not most people...

I disagree with your estimate that most people would agree.
He has a strong opinion, a radical opinion, and therefore he is in a
small minority, naturally. That doesn't make him mad, let alone 'barking
mad'. Nobody is helped by calling him 'barking mad', though. Why do you
believe he is 'barking mad'?

I have radical opinions as well. I'm pretty sure I have some radical
opinions about how Wikipedia should really be implemented, but I can't
think of any at the moment. But it might be enough to be called barking
mad - or mightn't it?

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-23 19:39:54   11.6 degrees Celsius ( 52.9F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


body:
hi,

Mark Williamson wrote:
> I got an e-mail from my good friend Kim Jong-Il about this, too.
> Apparently when he tried to add himself to the Bambi-lovers' frapper
> map, it told him that  "Pyongyang, Korea" was invalid. He then tried
> "Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea", and it told him
> that "Pyongyang, People" was invalid even though that isn't what he
> entered. He then tried "Pyongyang, North Korea", since due to its
> being hosted in the US, the Frapper site would most likely be under
> the control of Southern Korean seperatist propaganda trying to
> convince it that there were two Koreas. That was invalid. Eventually,
> he figured out that it was to be "Pyongyang, Korea (North)". How
> counterintuitive was that?

Very counterintuitive - North Korea does not have any internet
connection.

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-23 19:49:58   11.6 degrees Celsius ( 52.9F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 23/09/05, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> Well, I would say that if a word exists that is understandable on both
> sides of the Ocean, even if used not as often as other forms, it
> should be preferred. Other than that, however, I see nothing wrong
> with using either British, American, Canadian, Australian in any
> article.

There are some phrases that need stamped out, ones which can be easily
made "mid-atlantic English". It might be useful to figure out a way of
finding these and rephrasing them - yes, policy says not to go around
"fixing" spellings, but this doesn't mean we can't change "he wrote
his mother about this" to something which looks "good English" to all
readers. Unfortunately, that very case is probably the hardest one to
search out...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 23/09/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I have proposed in the past that we could have a form of redirect which
> I would call a 'hard link'.  This is an analogy to Unix-style "symlinks"
> versus "hard links".  There are some reasons this would be good, and
> some reasons why this would be bad, and in any event, the idea has never
> gained much support.

Yes, I was about to post something about that very issue - one of the
main issues, underneath the heated debating, seems to be that if you
search for/visit/follow a link to the page "aubergine", you get a
large heading saying "Eggplant", which seems to bias the page towards
that name. I don't think there really *is* such a bias, and all
variants of the term are bolded in the first sentence of the article,
but it is annoying that one should take precedence in the title
itself.

The problem with the "hard link" concept (a fairly neat analogy; the
point for those less UNIX-savvy being that both titles have equal
status, neither "redirecting to" the other) is that if linking to
"aubergine" displayed "Aubergine" as the header, it would actually
become *more* of an issue which term was used in *other* articles.
That is, the difference in *effect* between the two links
[[aubergine]] and [[eggplant]] would be that much more noticeable.

Of course, this would be a non-issue if we adopted the habit of always
mentionning all synonyms whenever we linked to the article (which I
personally think would be unwieldy and ugly); or, indeed, if we had an
automatic converter (which I'm currently rather sceptical of working).
But even with neither of those, it would perhaps be an improvement on
current practice.

And it would *definitely* be better than having two articles with the
same content but for a copy-and-paste - which I see absolutely no
reason we would not end up with if we implemented a split-article or
split-wiki solution. Thinking about it, in an ideal world, all
"Wikipedias" would actually have the same content - it's really a
shame that so few people are multilingual that they have eached
developed into such separate entities.

In practise, I would say there are two main reasons why, say, the
French article on aubergines contains different content from the
English one:
1) Not enough people capable of and willing to translate between the two
2) Slightly different policies (e.g. the French allow recipes) because
the difficulty of holding together a single multi-lingual community
has led to what might be described as a "highly federal" structure...
Oh and, of course,
3) Laziness.  ;)

The practical application of which thought is that neither (1) nor (2)
would present a barrier between en-us and en-gb [or "en-commonwealth"
or whatever] wikis, because nearly all users of either would in fact
be "bilingual", with merely a preference for one or the other. (3), of
course, would still play a part, but given the number of people
willing to correct interwiki links, by-pass disambig pages, etc, I can
well imagine a group of "translators" (armed with bots) springing up
to keep the two in sync. It does seem rather a waste of their time,
though - since the end result would be two copies of exactly the same
article, with for the most part only subtle linguistic differences.

> although it does seem that the Americans have achieved a sort of
> dominate in the vegetables, while losing out in the sports/games area.

I'm not sure why, but that rather made me laugh.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
There was recently an album cover on [[Red hair]]. Argh. I completely
agree with you Kelly, I happen to think that's a great idea. (As
usual....usually)

On 9/23/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/23/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm really not
> > in favor of putting "fair use" at all as an option on the auto-license
> > selector -- if you're new enough to not be able to navigate WP:ICT and
> > make sense of it, you shouldn't be uploading copyrighted material yet,
> > period. In my opinion.
>
> I'm strongly opposed to having any "license" options that state,
> imply, or suggest that the image is being used on Wikipedia *as a
> whole* as "fair use".  The license listed for images which can only be
> used on Wikipedia as fair use should be called "nonfree" (or something
> equivalent) or even "unlicensed" and should state that the image is
> not licensed for use on Wikipedia.  A separate tag should then be
> added to indicate that the image's use *on a specific article* is fair
> use.
>
> Too many people have the blanket attitude that, e.g., "bookcovers are
> fair use" or that "DVD covers are fair use", and that's just not
> right.  Having "fair use" as a license option encourages this wrongful
> and problematic thinking.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Fastfission

body:
I didn't realize that, but that's understandable. You could replace
"delete" with "list for deletion" and it would work probably just the
same, without admin ability. I actually hadn't really thought about
the mechanics of actually deleting the images, it was more of an
abstract notion.

FF

On 9/23/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/24/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps
> > I'll propose this on one of those bot-related pages, see if one of the
> > existing bot scripts could be adapted by someone knowledgeable in the
> > art of bots...
> >
> > FF
>
> Could be done in theory but there is no way you are going to get
> support for a bot able to delete images. There is at the current time
> one bot on wikipedia that uses admin powers and that one only gets
> away with it because we were out of other options.
> --
> geni
>


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
Well, I would say that if a word exists that is understandable on both
sides of the Ocean, even if used not as often as other forms, it
should be preferred. Other than that, however, I see nothing wrong
with using either British, American, Canadian, Australian in any
article.

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


body:
>> Who else agrees that he's a troll?
> Lars Aronsson and Ray Santoinge do, at least as far as I know, and I'd
> be very surprised if nobody else did.
> Mark

I certainly do.

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


from_name: Jack & Naree

body:
What seems clear is that Mark has been consistently argumentative,
facetious, and fallacious; and even more so since this post.
Not satisfied with trying to start a "row", he wants to ban me for not
agreeing with him.
I think he is coming across as needlessly aggressive and pompous.
However wrong or stupid anyone thinks my posts are, vomiting bile through
the keyboard is out of order.
Mark clearly didn't check his facts before digging his troll-hole, and now
looks silly, that's not my fault. I apologise for using caps, I did it to
distinguish my text from his, not for any other reason, Mark's drivel didn't
get me remotely excited or annoyed - clearly you can't tell teh emotional
content of everything in text form.
Anyway, You can't just label everyone you disagree with a troll or make
trollish statements like "x is so obviously trolling us" and not expect a
negative response, if you don't understand what a troll is, search
wikipedia.
 I came here not to spend time arguing with impulsive, petulent,
self-important twats like Mark, but to try and get a change that someone
else proposed, in fact.
 If you look trough Wikipedia, there is stuff on Commonwealth English, and
on the differences.
 In the article it is recognised that some Canadians use a lot of
Americanisms; however a lot of Canadians resent being mistaken for
Americans, and like to align themselves with the Commonwealth.
So some may find the term suits them.
 What's abundantly clear is that the language of the USA is markedly
different to that of the British Isles. In Grammar, vocabulary, spelling,
and semantics; and this means that it can make it unintelligible to non-US
English speakers. It IS legitimate and accurate to call it a foreign
language from the perspective of an English speaker from England and the
British Isles in general, because a large amount of commonly used vocab,
grammar, syntax and semantics are both unintelligible (to varying degrees);
and simply not accepted as the way to speak the language (more than just
spelling).
Evidence has been posted (not by me) on this list (see the Wictionary posts)
that AmE and BrE (OED terms) have distinct orthographies.
Would anybody on this list disagree that AmE is a clearly distinct dialect
of English? It would appear not.
These two factors alone seem to be enough for other dialects to get a
Wikipedia.
Whether "British English" gets it's own Wiki is up to British people
contributing. The problem is having an "English Wikipedia" that's mostly
American-English, and a "British English" one. It's like splitting
Portuguese into a "Portuguese Wikipedia" that's actually
Brazilian-Portuguese, and having a "Lusitanian Portuguese" one for
Portuguese Portuguese; as has also been noted, this issue is not simply one
about English.
 Rowan's suggestion of a machine translation solution to the problem is
worth looking at to satisfy Wikipedia "Unionists", but the needs of
Wikipedia "Nationalists"can't be bullied and ostracised as "trolls".
 On 23/09/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 23/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 1) I don't call people I disagree with barking mad, unless they really
> > are barking mad.
>
> I didn't say you "always" or "often" did it. I merely pointed out that
> it seemed rather hypocritical to complain that somebody was emotional
> enough to [presumably deliberately] use all caps in an e-mail, when
> you yourself had just got emotional (and personal) enough to accuse
> that person of being "barking mad".
>
> > 2) Yes, but how many of them? I never said with absolute certainty
> > that all of those were BS examples, only that much of the list was BS.
>
> No, but you did confidently state that "The vast majority of those
> aren't even real differences", followed by a set of examples, which
> were, presumably, among those which you thought were in fact "BS" -
> otherwise what are they examples of? That many of the examples you
> picked were then confirmed as differences by other users considerably
> weakens your position, does it not?
>
> > None of the examples which I made it clear I was fairly certain were
> > universal were objected to
>
> So, the lists linked to weren't 100% brilliant. Perhaps a comment that
> "I'm not sure all those examples are accurate" would have been a
> better comment? And remember, nobody on this list [as far as we know]
> actually *wrote* either of those lists, they just pointed them out as
> a convenient example.
>
> > even many of the ones which were
> > objected to proved a point, for example "autumn" vs "fall": there's
> > one variant that's understood in both places, and another that is only
> > understood in one. Which one should be chosen?
>
> That's not proof that there's no difference (which you were, to put it
> charitably, strongly implying); it's proof that there is a difference
> for which a compromise solution exists. An interesting point, but not
> one which warrants labelling anyone "barking mad".
>
> To respond to the implied suggestion that we always use "autumn", I'd
> guess it would more of a reader-oriented policy than a writer-oriented
> one. In my experience, US writers tend to more commonly and naturally
> use "fall", so even if they'd understand "autumn" easily enough, it
> might require conscious thought (or correction by other users) to
> always *write* it. Not that that's a fatal flaw, just a thought for
> discussion.
>
>
> [I'm not sure arguing about definitions of "troll" gets us anywhere,
> so I shall pass over that part of the discussion]
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On 23/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What seems clear is that Mark has been consistently argumentative,
> facetious, and fallacious; and even more so since this post.
> Not satisfied with trying to start a "row", he wants to ban me for not
> agreeing with him.
> I think he is coming across as needlessly aggressive and pompous.
> However wrong or stupid anyone thinks my posts are, vomiting bile through
> the keyboard is out of order.
> Mark clearly didn't check his facts before digging his troll-hole, and now
> looks silly, that's not my fault. I apologise for using caps, I did it to
> distinguish my text from his, not for any other reason, Mark's drivel didn't
> get me remotely excited or annoyed - clearly you can't tell teh emotional
> content of everything in text form.
> Anyway, You can't just label everyone you disagree with a troll or make
> trollish statements like "x is so obviously trolling us" and not expect a
> negative response, if you don't understand what a troll is, search
> wikipedia.
>  I came here not to spend time arguing with impulsive, petulent,
> self-important twats like Mark, but to try and get a change that someone
> else proposed, in fact.
>  If you look trough Wikipedia, there is stuff on Commonwealth English, and
> on the differences.
>  In the article it is recognised that some Canadians use a lot of
> Americanisms; however a lot of Canadians resent being mistaken for
> Americans, and like to align themselves with the Commonwealth.
> So some may find the term suits them.
>  What's abundantly clear is that the language of the USA is markedly
> different to that of the British Isles. In Grammar, vocabulary, spelling,
> and semantics; and this means that it can make it unintelligible to non-US
> English speakers. It IS legitimate and accurate to call it a foreign
> language from the perspective of an English speaker from England and the
> British Isles in general, because a large amount of commonly used vocab,
> grammar, syntax and semantics are both unintelligible (to varying degrees);
> and simply not accepted as the way to speak the language (more than just
> spelling).
> Evidence has been posted (not by me) on this list (see the Wictionary
> posts) that AmE and BrE (OED terms) have distinct orthographies.
> Would anybody on this list disagree that AmE is a clearly distinct dialect
> of English? It would appear not.
> These two factors alone seem to be enough for other dialects to get a
> Wikipedia.
> Whether "British English" gets it's own Wiki is up to British people
> contributing. The problem is having an "English Wikipedia" that's mostly
> American-English, and a "British English" one. It's like splitting
> Portuguese into a "Portuguese Wikipedia" that's actually
> Brazilian-Portuguese, and having a "Lusitanian Portuguese" one for
> Portuguese Portuguese; as has also been noted, this issue is not simply one
> about English.
>  Rowan's suggestion of a machine translation solution to the problem is
> worth looking at to satisfy Wikipedia "Unionists", but the needs of
> Wikipedia "Nationalists"can't be bullied and ostracised as "trolls".
>
 what's the betting somebody focusses on me not proofreading that last
sentence rather than the content - and you call *me* a troll!

  On 23/09/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 23/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 1) I don't call people I disagree with barking mad, unless they really
> >
> > > are barking mad.
> >
> > I didn't say you "always" or "often" did it. I merely pointed out that
> > it seemed rather hypocritical to complain that somebody was emotional
> > enough to [presumably deliberately] use all caps in an e-mail, when
> > you yourself had just got emotional (and personal) enough to accuse
> > that person of being "barking mad".
> >
> > > 2) Yes, but how many of them? I never said with absolute certainty
> > > that all of those were BS examples, only that much of the list was BS.
> >
> >
> > No, but you did confidently state that "The vast majority of those
> > aren't even real differences", followed by a set of examples, which
> > were, presumably, among those which you thought were in fact "BS" -
> > otherwise what are they examples of? That many of the examples you
> > picked were then confirmed as differences by other users considerably
> > weakens your position, does it not?
> >
> > > None of the examples which I made it clear I was fairly certain were
> > > universal were objected to
> >
> > So, the lists linked to weren't 100% brilliant. Perhaps a comment that
> > "I'm not sure all those examples are accurate" would have been a
> > better comment? And remember, nobody on this list [as far as we know]
> > actually *wrote* either of those lists, they just pointed them out as
> > a convenient example.
> >
> > > even many of the ones which were
> > > objected to proved a point, for example "autumn" vs "fall": there's
> > > one variant that's understood in both places, and another that is only
> > > understood in one. Which one should be chosen?
> >
> > That's not proof that there's no difference (which you were, to put it
> > charitably, strongly implying); it's proof that there is a difference
> > for which a compromise solution exists. An interesting point, but not
> > one which warrants labelling anyone "barking mad".
> >
> > To respond to the implied suggestion that we always use "autumn", I'd
> > guess it would more of a reader-oriented policy than a writer-oriented
> > one. In my experience, US writers tend to more commonly and naturally
> > use "fall", so even if they'd understand "autumn" easily enough, it
> > might require conscious thought (or correction by other users) to
> > always *write* it. Not that that's a fatal flaw, just a thought for
> > discussion.
> >
> >
> > [I'm not sure arguing about definitions of "troll" gets us anywhere,
> > so I shall pass over that part of the discussion]
> > --
> > Rowan Collins BSc
> > [IMSoP]
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
Elisabeth Bauer schrieb:

> I want to propose a new idea for a new project: Wikisomething.

'''strong support'''!

 > Moreover, we could also integrate our current projects into Wikisomething.

We should have done this from the begining. "One World - One Wiki!", doesn't
that sound much cooler than "The Free Encyclopedia" *yawn*?

Kurt

--
"Reading the Wikipedia is not a substitute for first aid training."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation

Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://www.jansson.de/