from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slashcode

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Instead of a wikipedia slash, what we need to implement is something more
>like the Yahoo! Groups, where the mailing list has a straightforward
>bulletin board interface, which should be hooked into the Wikipedia user
>database.Then we'd start getting somewhere.

I would like a threaded interface where replies are automatically fit in.
Yes, any good mail reader will provide a threader interface for reading.
Any any halfway decent mail reader will provide threading data when posting.
But there are still plenty of broken threads here because of missing headers.
And a WWW interface gives us the bonus of [[WikiWiki]]!

-- Toby


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Movie naming convention: proposed tweak for simplicity

body:
Maveric149 wrote:

>"Oftentimes movies share the same name as other movies, books or terms. When
>disambiguating a movie from something else use (movie) in the title when only
>one movie had that name and (YEAR) in the title when there are more than one
>movies by that name (example: [[Titanic (1997)]])."

And if there's also a miniseries called "Titanic" in 1997,
then we can use [[Titanic (1997 movie)]] again?
(There was such a miniseries, IIRC, although I'm not certain of its year;
it was unrelated to the movie, although capitalising on the movie's publicity.
OTOH, we naturally wouldn't count a novelisation of the movie,
which can be discussed on the movie's own page.)

I'm looking at how things could be complicated again;
but generally speaking, I think that you have the right idea.

-- Toby


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The world according to Helga

body:
Let's not forget Tanganyika, Togo, Namibia, and Nauru. Seized by the Allies
in WW1

Danny


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Problems getting to the recent changes page

body:
For the past couple of days, I've been having a problem getting to the Recent
Changes page. All that appears on the screen is the first line. Does anyone
have any solutions or ideas?

Danny


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] On the uselessness of stubs

body:
|From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at ualberta.ca>
|Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 17:49:45 -0600
|
|At 06:11 PM 27/08/02 +0100, Gareth Owen wrote:
|>Axel Boldt <axel at uni-paderborn.de> writes:
|>
|> > I can't see any possible use for stubs.
|>
|>I agree with everything Axel wrote in the above message.
|>Stubs are embarrassing.
|
|Hear hear! We say that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and then we go and
|have articles like [[Robert Braden]] and [[Ununpentium]] which would get
|laughed out of any half-decent dictionary as practically useless.
|
|I think Wikipedia would be better served by having edit links pointing to
|an empty page, rather than misleading people into thinking there's some
|kind of useful information there.
|

Robert Braden's mother must be so proud.

However, I stuck up for [[Ununennium]] in votes for deletion the other
day and even added a bit to it and I think it was useful information.
There will be an [[Ununpentium]] some day, for a microsecond, and
eventually it will pick up a better name, but in the meantime, it
seems to me that to understand the transuranic elements at all, you
have to understand that some of them don't exist yet.  But I'd have to
say that my article on [[Ununennium]] is much better than the one pn
[[Ununpentium]].  I did wonder, while writing it, how much is known
about a non-existent element before it exists, and suggested in my
Summary that someone more knowledgeable should take a look at it.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


body:
John Cate wrote:

>Since Helga hasn't taken the time to fully explain all of this, I decided to
>do it for her. Here's a complete list of all the nations that belong to the
>Germans, and why:

This is all very fun, but if Helga comes here as Jimbo has "insisted",
then I hope that it's over before she starts reading.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Restoring pre-January edit histories (was Re: Undelete...)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Is there still interest in restoring those old versions?

Didn't you ask this once before?

The answer is YES!!!

-- Toby


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] the borders of wikipedia (was: Re: September 11 articles)

body:
> > Or should we also list the 6 million
> > Jews, and millions of other people that died because of some kind of
> > artrocity? Have articles about each Palestinian killed by an Israeli
> > soldier?
>
> Yes, we should. The entries should be more complete, but yes, I do
think
> there should be entries on everyone. As long as they're entered by
hand,
> the numbers won't get out of hand.

That's an interesting point of view. In the German Wikipadia there has
been a discussion about the borders of Wikipedia a few times. And I
guess this has been discussed in the English Wikipedia much more often.
So, where are the borders of Wikipedia?
Cunc says there should be an article about everybody. So why not also
have an article about every website on the internet? etc. I think this
would be great!

BUT, how can we keep them NPOV? The problem is we don't have enough
people to do this. I'd like to write an encyclopedia article about me.
But my parents, my sister and my friends, they all don't participate in
Wikipedia (okay, my ex-girlfriend has been writing a bit, but her aricle
about me whouldn't be NPOV) - and I guess they never will.
We have articles about Yahoo, Google, E2, but refuse to have articles
about the ones people try to advertise in Wikipadia (I guess you have
the same problems as we). I think the only reason is, that although it
is possible to writen an encyclopedic article about them, we can't keep
them NPOV, because not enough Wikipedians know enough about them.

It's the same problem with infinite other special themes that only a few
dozen, or maybe a few thousand people know about. It is possible to
write encyclopedic articles about them, but we can't, or should at least
wait a few years.

Kurt

P.S.: Which word fits better here: border, edge, frontier or limit?


from_name: Tim Marklew

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Database queries + an apology

body:
>Tim Marklew wrote:
> > LDC - could you comment on how potentially dangerous this function is in
> > terms of slowing down the site for others?  If a query results in a big
> > table, this can slow down the server.  Is there an upper limit for how
> > long a query can take, or the size of a table, before it would time
> > out?  If so, how big is the limit?
Brion Vibber wrote:
>Umm, not that I know of....
>On that note; currently the MySQL server is running at 99.5% CPU.
>Whatever it's doing, it's slowing the wiki to a trickle; I can't even
>get a connection through.....
>The IP address on this query looks suspiciously like yours, Tim! Exactly
>what query did you run?

It looks like it was me that brought the server to a standstill yesterday.
I would like to apologise to everyone who was inconvenienced.

This at least unequivocally answers the question about how dangerous direct
database queries can be - it is quite possible for a sysop to bring
Wikipedia to a complete standstill by accidentally entering an inappropriate
database query.

That said, the direct database queries can be really useful when done right.
  I suggest that anyone who wants to experiment with them asks Lee Daniel
Crocker for sysop access on the Wikipedia test site
(http://www.piclab.com/newwiki/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page).  That way you
can test that things work as they should before trying them out on the main
Wikipedia site.

Again, sorry to everyone for any hassle caused.

Tim (Enchanter)

_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fw: Your message to Wikipedia-l awaits moderator approval

body:
What does that mean?

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: <wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com>
An: <jansson at gmx.net>
Gesendet: Dienstag, 27. August 2002 21:54
Betreff: Your message to Wikipedia-l awaits moderator approval

> Your mail to 'Wikipedia-l' with the subject
>
>     Re: [Wikipedia-l] Restoring pre-January edit histories (was Re:
> Undelete...)
>
> Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.
>
> The reason it is being held:
>
>     Message may contain administrivia
>
> Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive
> notification of the moderator's decision.
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gesell

body:
Eclecticology wrote:

>Gesell
>certainly did live and write.  Whether right or wrong some people were
>influenced by him; he was even Minister of Finance in a breakaway post
>WWI independent Bavarian state.

The Bolshevik-inspired (or Bolshevik-blamed) one?

-- Toby


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>Is there still interest in restoring those old versions?
>
> Didn't you ask this once before?
>
> The answer is YES!!!

I also asked before if anybody had the latest pre-conversion revision of
the database, and heard the same resounding silence that I currently am. :(

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>John Cate wrote:
>
>>Since Helga hasn't taken the time to fully explain all of this, I decided to
>>do it for her. Here's a complete list of all the nations that belong to the
>>Germans, and why:
>>
>This is all very fun, but if Helga comes here as Jimbo has "insisted",
>then I hope that it's over before she starts reading.
>
Agreed! Some of us, myself included, have been unkindly having fun at
her expense.  I sometimes find it hard to resist sarcastic comments.  In
reality the articles where I have done work have not co-incided with the
ones that have kept her busy, so I don't personally have any basis for
complaint.  That being said, I am putting this on record as an apology
to her for my own participation in the mockery..
Eclecticology


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Why oh why resurrect nonarticles????

body:
On Wednesday 28 August 2002 04:06 am, Karen wrote:
> Gibberish is not an article. Blank pages are not an article. And
> nonsense phrases posted by a casual passerby are not an article. They
> just take up space that a real article could use. If it was a real
> article it would say something like 'Kate Hudson is (blah blah blah)'.
> Leaving this doesn't encourage the writer to make real contributions -
> if anything it encourages them to leave more nonsense to clutter up the
> space!

I totally agree - and thank you for making the distinction between and
article and a mere page.

A BLANK OR GIBBERISH PAGE IS NOT AN ARTICLE. So there isn't any reason why it
shouldn't be voted for deletion if not deleted outright (of course, if it
looks like a non-malicious newbie experiment we shouldn't be harsh when we
delete the page -- at least say hi in the delete summary).

Stubs on encyclopedia or almanac topics that have decent definitions /should
not/ be deleted however -- these are the beginning of articles. So long as a
subject is adequately defined (something I find to be a non-trivial task --
"a large city in Texas" DOES NOT cut it though), then passer-bys can
incrementally build the definition into a proper stub and then into an
article based on their incomplete knowledge of the subject.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Useless stubs and a partial solution

body:
I today openned the list of short articles where the blank article on
[[Daithi ? Connaill]] caught my eye.  It is linked from a single article
on the [[Continuity Irish Republican Army]].  All the work on this has
been done by numbered workers.  The thing that struck me was that ?
Cnnaill's name and a few others look different.  On the edit page these
names had the usual double square brackets but beyond that each name was
enclosed in the HTML <code>, </code> instruction.  This may very well
the effort of a newbie who didn't yet trust the function of Wiki code.

This suggests the possibility that we could use this command to indicate
a useless link that needs to be worked on.
Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why oh why resurrect nonarticles????

body:
On Wednesday 28 August 2002 09:49 am, Karen wrote:
> Stubs like that one aren't any use to the wikipedia and
> they deserve to be deleted. True? Totally blank entries
> with no content confuse the issue and deserve to be
> deleted. True? Vandalism and gibberish deserve
> to be deleted. True? If you don't know for certain that a
> page deserves to go, but you think it does, we have a
> deletion queue to put it in. True?

Again I totally agree and I call a vote on these very points so that we can
be done with this (I'm personally sick of getting 3 Wikipedia-L digests a
day). This should be done on the talk page of the deletion policy. At:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Policy_on_permanent_deletion_of_pages

>On that note - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GIVE US
> BACK THE VOTE BUTTON!!!!!!! It made things so much
> simpler...

I agree. The current setup seems odd to me though; it is now much easier to
outright delete a page instead of listing it on the deletion queue. If a
sysop has any question whether a page should be deleted the sysop has to
perform /more/ work in order to list it on the deletion queue than to simply
delete it outright. That may be why some sysops are treading into the gray
area with deletions that should probably be listed on the vote for deletion
page for a few days first.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
> Is there still interest in restoring those old versions? I can work
> on adapting the import script to the new database format, but it might
> help if I had access to the old data!
>
> (I _think_ I have a backup from a few weeks before the conversion
> lying about somewhere, but I'd prefer the latest version.)

Maybe someone has some old German database tarballs/backups, too. That
would be great!

Kurt


from_name: tarquin

body:
When I go to the hospital, there's a sign in the waiting area that says
roughly "This is a teaching hospital. Students may be present at your
consultation".

In the same way, Wikipedia is not a ready-made, printed, paper
encyclopedia. It's a *working* encyclopedia.
Stubs are part of that on-going work


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fw: Your message to Wikipedia-l awaits moderatorapproval

body:
> Apparently you've somehow tripped this filter:
>
>    (Administrivia filter) Check postings and intercept ones that seem
to
>    be administrative requests?
>
>    If you activate this feature Mailman will check traffic for
>    administrative requests that have inadvertently been sent to the
list.
>    This will prevent the classic case of a user sending a note to the
>    entire list membership saying "unsubscribe."

I guess OE broke the text so that there was a "help" standing alone in
one line. Thank for the explanation.

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] How-tos

body:
On Wednesday 28 August 2002 09:49 am, Jeronimo wrote:
> These pages seem to violate [[What Wikipedia is not]] number four, in my
> opinion. Also, most of these articles can never be NPOV. [[How to cook
> pasta]] could be hotly debated by other cooks that have a slightly
> different method of cooking (even more so for the somewhat more
> complicated forms of cooking).

The  [[Wikipedia Cocktail Guide]], [[Wikipedia Cookbook]] and [[How-tos]]
were all largely created before I got here and reflect a time in which
wikipedia was still a bit undecided on what it really should be and was thus
taking in just about anything (this process led to the current  [[What
Wikipedia is not]], BTW).

I once brought this very question up on the cookbook's talk page and was told
that these pages are poplar for visitors and that Wikipedia is not paper.
That was enough for me. And we shouldn't be too concerned with the NPOVness
of a recipe. :-)

What's more is that I now see /very/ little by the way of current editing of
these pages or the creation of similar ones so I don't think their presense
sets any type of bad precedent.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
Brion wrote:

> Is there still interest in restoring those old versions?

YES! Restoring the history of contributors is required by the license
anyway.

Axel


body:
kq wrote:

>New rule!  "We will have only [[brilliant prose]] on this site.

No, there are lots of other ways to contribute, such as copyediting,
filling in the various lists and date pages, hunting for copyright
infringements and vandalism, NPOVing, educating newcomers etc. I just
don't think that creating more stubs helps the project in any way.

On the other hand, I completely agree with the gist of the rest
of your message: send your girlfriend, don't send your mother.

Axel


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
At 09:19 PM 27/08/02 -0400, Tom Parmenter wrote:
>|From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at ualberta.ca>
>|Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 17:49:45 -0600
>|Hear hear! We say that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and then we go and
>|have articles like [[Robert Braden]] and [[Ununpentium]] which would get
>|laughed out of any half-decent dictionary as practically useless.
>
>Robert Braden's mother must be so proud.

I'm not saying that Robert Braden shouldn't have an article in Wikipedia,
if he is indeed noteworthy. I am saying that an article which consists
solely of "Editor of RFC 1123.", and which is linked to only from a line in
the article [[RFC 1123]] which reads "Robert Braden (editor).", is a fairly
useless article all things considered. :)

The RFC 1123 article is itself pretty sparse on information, though not
quite as bad.

>  But I'd have to
>say that my article on [[Ununennium]] is much better than the one pn
>[[Ununpentium]].

Agreement, Ununennium looks pretty good.


body:
> > Is there still interest in restoring those old versions?
>
> YES! Restoring the history of contributors is required by the license
> anyway.

So the missing of article histories in the German Wikipedia isn't just a
sad incident that makes contacting authors of certain parts of articles
difficult, but might also be a juristic problem (theoretically)?

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion of Articles with No Content

body:
Mirwin wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Mirwin wrote:

>>>If it is a good title then it is an invitation
>>>for anyone who encounters it to add to it.

>>For somebody interested in writing content (which is what we want),
>>I think that a link of "?" is more inviting than a non"?" link.
>>If I know about a subject, then I'll follow "?" links but not non"?" ones.
>>If the non"?" link is to a contentless page, then this means
>>that I won't be writing articles that I otherwise would write!

>Ok.  I can see this might be a problem for writers oriented
>towards writing complete new stubs or articles.  Perhaps a
>list article page inversely sorted on article length such that
>the shortest show up first and the longest last would help
>address this.  This may be a current capability on the stub
>page, I have not been there for a while.

It's been a while since I've been on [[Special:Shortpages]];
I should go back.  Cleaning this out is part of the Wikipedians' job.
But in the meantime, active links that should be inactive "?"s do harm,
and I'm interested here in preventing further activation of these links.

Indeed, I don't intend now to argue for deletion of substandard stubs.
I brought up the idea, and others with much stronger feelings than mine
have taken up that cause.  I just want to prevent their creation.

>I think we also want tweaking experts and readers who will
>occasionally do some research and drop a sentence, paragraph,
>definition, or lengthy rambling explanation that can be tweaked
>into quality content.  A thousand readers occasionally tweaking
>equals how many dedicated Wikipedians?  A lot of highly educated
>people are also fairly busy.  While they may not choose to be
>regular contributors, the value of their tweaks should add up
>or something is seriously wrong with our project model.

I think that I understand what you mean by "twikification",
as a model for building Wikipedia.  Generally, I agree.
But I think that the creation of a new page is unusual,
because of how it impacts the presentation of pages that link to it.
(Change this impact, for example with a link coded to the page's size,
as another poster has suggested, and I may change my opinion accordingly.)

I strongly believe that new pages should never be tossed off lightly.
They shouldn't be created for the sake of writing 200 stubs in a weekend,
and a new page of nonsense or emptiness or copyright violation
should be deleted in preference to replacement with a lightly done stub.
OTOH, a stub with thought put into it is a very different matter.
I'm not against stubs, and I'm not against twikification;
I'm only against the combination of the two.

>>>I think that having the Wikipedia Guard or Militia
>>>routinely deleting empty good titled articles may
>>>only slow down the growth in breadth and depth of
>>>the Wikipedia.   Some people may like organizing
>>>the link structures and establishing good initial titles
>>>and interconnections.   Why should this contribution
>>>be routinely deleted?   How much subsequent work is
>>>then lost from contributors who while browsing may
>>>choose to add an easy paragraph but who will not
>>>undertake an entire stub and the effort required
>>>to link it appropriately into an entire encyclopedia?

>>I really have no idea how you think that this will work.
>>Do you have examples on Wikipedia?
>>(If I need to look in page histories to see
>>how this worked in the past, then that's fine too.)

>Some use the term twikification or wikification when they
>do a concise edit.  Tracing these from recent changes
>may illustrate the concept if you find a stub that has
>just become active or controversial.

I can't find "twikification" on [[Special:Recentchanges]] now,
but I'll look again later.

>Perhaps the index pages in the tree branch {main page},
>{technology},{space technology},{propulsion} would be
>illustrative.   I added space technology and alphabetized
>technology, IIRC approximately 6 months ago when I first
>arrived.  They have been slowly undergoing tweaks
>since then but are still pretty poor stubs.  They do
>however provide a substrate for tweaks to settle upon.

I don't think that any of these pages is a bad stub,
and I can't find any bad stubs in their histories.
I definitely think that creating all of these links
in lists in pages of this nature is a good idea.
These are initially "?" links, which is great,
and spurs people to write new articles about technology etc.

I don't want people to follow "?" links and write bad stubs;
I don't want newbies who follow "?" links and write
nothing, nonsense, or copyright violations
to have their material replaced with bad stubs.
I ''do'' want people to follow "?" links and write good stubs.

I saw one example, [[Technology]] -> [[Telemetry]],
where a newbie experimenter made a blank page and somebody
replaced it with a good stub (and that's an overly harsh term).
Perhaps this person (well, let's not be coy, it was you)
did this to keep the article from being deleted.
Fine!  Just don't put in a ''bad'' stub for that reason!

>I suspect (but certainly cannot prove) that if Wikipedia
>is: not a dictionary, not a tutorial, not a place for
>discussion of advanced material, not a place for video
>addicts, not a place for resolution of controversy and
>neutral presentation of all views, not an etc. etc. then
>it will have a hard time becoming and remaining an in depth,
>broad, reliable Wikipedia.

All of these are supposed to be contrasted to
that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia.
It is not a dictionary, but it must contain definitions,
when these serve the purpose of clarifying an encyclopaedia article.
It's not a place to resolve controversy, but controversy must be resolved
when this is necessary to writing an NPOV encyclopaedia article.

I think that we're essentially in agreement here, because even
"A large city in southern [[Arizona]]." is, in your opinion,
the beginning of a process that will result in an encyclopaedia article.
I oppose it because my opinion disagrees,
since I think that the loss of the "?" will inhibit article creation.
We may disagree on the best way to build an encyclopaedia,
but we agree, I think, that Wikipedia ''is'' an encyclopaedia.

>>But I think that links to articles with no content ''adds'' to this problem.
>>When the link doesn't have "?", things look even more complete.
>>But they are not complete, and "?"s will make things look properly incomplete!

To see what I'm getting at, consider Kajikit's recent post,
showing the result of 20 results from [[Special:Randompage]].
I hope that you agreed that the best result was,
first an article with a lot of material that could still be improved,
and next an article with a lot of active links and a few "?" links as well.
These both strike a good balance between presenting information to the reader
and enticing the potential writer to join us in building Wikipedia.
I don't want people to write stubs for the "?" links just to make them active.
I do want people thinking <Hey, I could write a paragraph on that!>
and writing a full paragraph.  A paragraph is still a stub,
but a full paragraph would have to be pretty badly written
before I thought that it was a ''bad'' stub.

Once that solid foundation is set, anything from major overhauls
to twikification can improve the new article (which ''is'' an article),
and if we can get a few new "?" links in the new article,
then the whole project is a resounding success.
"A large city in southern [[Arizona]]." falls short of that.

Mike, you've never done anything that I disagreed with
(at any rate not that I noticed was done by you).
I saw some "stub"s that you created in the [[Technology]] area,
and I thought that they were all clearly improvements.
So I don't think that I want you to change your practices.

What I want out of this discussion is:

1 It becomes clear that blank pages and nonsensical pages
  are candidate for summary deletion by anyone with that power,
  so long as they have no history (this clause is important).

2 Items voted for deletion won't be removed from the list
  just because they could be made into encyclopaedia articles;
  instead, they will either be made into articles first
  or else an argument will be made on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]].

3 Point 6 of [[Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages]]
  will be clarified to more clearly state that
  it (unlike points 2 through 5 and 7) doesn't ''forbid'' deletion,
  but instead ''authorises'' it (subject to the other rules).
  Some people regard this as a change in policy,
  but I think that it clearly already says this;
  it just needs to be made ''more'' clear.

4 As a result of the previous item (item 3),
  nobody will be able to say that you can't delete a page
  just because it could be made into an encyclopaedia article;
  instead, they'll have to follow item 2 to save it.

I don't think that any of the above entails a change in policy,
only a clarification.

And lest there be any confusion, here is something
that I ''don't'' want to result from this discussion:

0 It becomes OK to delete any page just because it isn't now an article.

OTC, there are many pages whose deletion is neither authorised by point 6
nor forbidden by points 2 through 5 and 7, and these must be discussed.
In fact, many of those authorised by point 6 should also be discussed,
lest there be any doubt that point 6 actually applies.

Although I've been playing the other side lately,
my natural sympathies are still "If in doubt, don't delete.".

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
Mirwin wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>># What should we do with a page that has a useless stub?
>>  I mean a page that gives only a definition and a WWW link, or less.
>>  This may give some information to some people, to be sure,
>>  but I think that it does more harm than good not to be linked with "?".

As mentioned in my last post, I'm not going to argue for deletion here,
since I only wanted to consider the idea and others are arguing it.
But I want to correct this misapprehension:

>Your argument here seems to be that the incomplete material
>is hard to find.   This may be true for a dedicated writer looking
>for new empty titles to write under.

It's not that it's hard to find empty titles to write.
There is still gobs of material that Wikipedia lacks,
and [[Special:Mostwanted]] is not growing shorter.
Rather, I'm thinking about spontaneous edits
made by a reader that might decide to become a writer
(possibly a new writer, or an old writer
that might or might not decide to write something right now).

Take me as an example (and see [[User:Toby Bartels/todo]]
if you think that I'm having trouble finding things to write).
As I read along, I sometimes spot an inactive "?" link.
Normally I pass this by, but depending on what I'm doing,
I might consider writing something on the subject.
I might put it on my watch list for future reference
(which doesn't work as well as it did under Phase II)
or add it to my todo list, or I might write it just then.
In any case, I'll know that the article hasn't been written,
and this will affect my future writing plans.
OTOH, if the link is active, then I'll assume that something is written.
This might be wrong!

So it's the reader/writer's ''interaction'' in real time
that I'm worried about here, not the "dedicated writer"
seeking out brand new material.  Looking for "?" links
isn't the best way to do that anyway.

>>And "A large city in southern [[Arizona]]." is not "work".

>So why should Wikipedia contribution be work?

Ask Fredbauder; he brought that up, I only denied it.

-- Toby


body:
> Based on its absence from the list I'm glad to see that Germany will
> continue to recognize the independace of Liechtenstein.

Hmm, Liechtenstein sounds quite German to me ...

I'd like to see a list which explains why Germany shouldn't be a country
of it's own, but belong to this and that country. And please don't
forget to cc it to Helga.

But this is getting quite off topic now - but nobody cares.
So I don't, too :-)

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Article" count on stats page

body:
There is a discussion on making the article count more conservative at:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Statistics

Please join in there.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Wednesday 28 August 2002 12:01 pm, you wrote:
> Hm, we talked about this briefly in April. ?I didn't remember that until I
> saw a comment I left on that page above. ?see the following for my
> question, Magnus' response, and Jimbo's:
>
> http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001763.html
> http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001765.html
> http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001787.html
>
> kq

Yeah, I remember that too and I'm pretty sure it was me who changed the
wording to reflect what I saw to be the policy change. However, the same
issue has cropped up again and is distracting us from other policy discussion
-- thus the call for a vote.  However, that will not be necessary if everyone
just drops the issue and accepts the current policies as written (it still
might be necessary to clarify some things).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Undelete...

body:
Oh.  I thought it was coming out in September, but I last checked in July.  I'll look for it too.  :-)

kq

>I read that your homonimous movie is out on dvd,
>so I'll probably rent it when I see it in my local
>video store.
>
>AN


body:
I just redeleted it.  really, that's /not/ an article.  I'm not suggesting that we keep gibberish, and I don't think anyone else is either (except, I guess, whoever requested it be restored.  And I would like to hear why it was requested restored; I must have missed something).

kq

You Wrote:
>'Kate Hudson' has no content. The previous version of it says 'hubba
>hubba hubba', and the history says it was deleted and restored by
>request. That is NOT an article. That is not even a pretense at an
>article. That is a piece of stupidity that deserves oblivion. Why on
>EARTH did someone request that that should be put back?
>
>Gibberish is not an article. Blank pages are not an article. And
>nonsense phrases posted by a casual passerby are not an article. They
>just take up space that a real article could use. If it was a real
>article it would say something like 'Kate Hudson is (blah blah blah)'.
>Leaving this doesn't encourage the writer to make real contributions -
>if anything it encourages them to leave more nonsense to clutter up the
>space!
>
>--
>
>Karen AKA Kajikit
>
>And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
>will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
>and so He made the kitten.
>
>Come and visit my part of the web:
>Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
>Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
>Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
>Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/
>
>Love and huggles to all!
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
I guess I can withstand anger better than you.  ;-)

Really, by that token, we should keep as "articles" pages with nothing more than "L3337 HAX0r 0WnZ u" and "x person is a jackass."  What's the point?  "Hubba hubba hubba" is an encyclopedia article exactly why?  /Any/ well-titled page vandalized to contain content, where it previously had none, could become an article just by virtue of the title.  So what?  I'm not against subpar work, which IMO can always be improved, but I am against deliberate dreck.

We certainly need to clarify that rule on deletion--does it condone it or not?  Why would it not?  (Suppose we get a scripted /vandalism/ attack?  Will we just blank all the pages?)

kq

Andre wrote:
>Someone got angry with me because I deleted subjects that could become
>articles. So I resurrected them. Now people get angry at me because I did
>that. So, what should I do then? It seems that the only way not to do
>something wrong is to do nothing at all.
>
>Please, either have a SINGLE set of rules that at least has no rules that
>are conflicting, or have no rules at all. This is making me angry and sick
>(literally).


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] May I temporarily block...

in_reply_to: <002401c24e0b$f3fb61a0$ad37a8c0@laptop>; from juleskemp@yahoo.com on Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 01:54:19PM -0700

body:
I'd say use your judgment, expect a firestorm of criticism, but do the right
thing.  Try not to block people, but don't hesitate when necessary.  :-)

How's that for a useless bunch of slogans masquerading as advice?  *smile*

Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:

> A new 24?  Not doing anything wrong, but probably needs to have a read
> before creating more really stubby pointless pages..
>
> Jules


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
I would like to see ISBNs linked to AddAll.com rather than Pricescan.com. I
think the selection of bookstores is better including used books and as
AddAll is devoted solely to books less of a distraction.

To test the two alternatives go to:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/creative_accounting

The book at the bottom of the page temporarily has two ISBN links, the top
one to AddAll, the bottom to Pricescan.

Fred Bauder


in_reply_to: <200208281104.g7SB40M21068@chakotay.uni-koblenz.de>; from engels@uni-koblenz.de on Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 01:03:59PM +0200

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Someone got angry with me because I deleted subjects that could become
> articles. So I resurrected them. Now people get angry at me because I did
> that. So, what should I do then? It seems that the only way not to do
> something wrong is to do nothing at all.
>
> Please, either have a SINGLE set of rules that at least has no rules that
> are conflicting, or have no rules at all. This is making me angry and sick
> (literally).

Andre, my only advice here is to remember that you are an equal to
everyone else, and so people have no reason to be angry with you
either way.  You're proceeding according to your best judgment, and
listening thoughtfully to others -- that's 100% wiki in spirit to me,
and I applaud you.

--Jimbo


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
"Andre Engels" <engels at uni-koblenz.de> wrote:
> Someone got angry with me because I deleted subjects that could become
> articles. So I resurrected them. Now people get angry at me because I
did
> that. So, what should I do then? It seems that the only way not to do
> something wrong is to do nothing at all.

For completeness's sake, I volunteer to get mad at Andre if he does
nothing at all -- get to work, man, don't just sit there!

--~~~

(I sure hope no one here is too humor-impaired to realize that this is a
joke.)


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Undelete...

body:
>"wiki pedista" <wikipedista at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I deleted the "September 11, 2201 Terrorist
>> Attack/World economic effects" page.
>> It had an history of one line, "script conversion",
>> and its content was "This page doesn't exist anymore"
>> or something like that (you can see the log).
>> Why can that be needed? Even if we want the article,
>> a link with a ? is more useful than that "article".
>> Should I have waited for a vote on "that"?

> Yes. Or something, because it caused unecessary consternation
> (in me) since I didn't know why the page was deleted. This
> page's history should be restored (go Brion Vibber!) so we can
> find out what happened to the article. It's definitely a worthy
> topic, in any case...
>
> Thanks for the explanation. There should be a better mechanism
> for explaining why a page like that is deleted.

I think you are alone in that response, Cunc.  The rest of us are
willing to put a little faith in the other sysops that when they
delete a page, it really deserved it, and there's no use agonizing
over what might have been.  I don't want sysops burdened with
having to explain themselves all the time, or having to put to vote
the simple deletion of complete nonsense.  We have work to do here.
Just do it, and don't look back.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Undelete...

body:
"wiki pedista" <wikipedista at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I deleted the "September 11, 2201 Terrorist
> Attack/World economic effects" page.
> It had an history of one line, "script conversion",
> and its content was "This page doesn't exist anymore"
> or something like that (you can see the log).
> Why can that be needed? Even if we want the article,
> a link with a ? is more useful than that "article".
> Should I have waited for a vote on "that"?

Yes. Or something, because it caused unecessary consternation (in me)
since I didn't know why the page was deleted. This page's history should
be restored (go Brion Vibber!) so we can find out what happened to the
article. It's definitely a worthy topic, in any case...

Thanks for the explanation. There should be a better mechanism for
explaining why a page like that is deleted.


body:
"Andre Engels" <engels at uni-koblenz.de> wrote:
> Someone got angry with me because I deleted subjects that could become
> articles. So I resurrected them. Now people get angry at me because I did
> that. So, what should I do then? It seems that the only way not to do
> something wrong is to do nothing at all.
>
> Please, either have a SINGLE set of rules that at least has no rules that
> are conflicting, or have no rules at all. This is making me angry and sick
> (literally).

I don't think anyone's angry at you. Don't take any of this personally.
Making a new entry with the same text as the last revision isn't restoring
the
article. Restoring the article means restoring the history.

It is certainly right that, especially with deletions, the only way not to
do something
wrong is to do nothing at all.

Again, the current policy on deletion is based on the old complete
irreversibility
of the act of deletion. Then erasing gibberish from an entry like [[Kate
Hudson]],
which one day will be a good entry, was a better option than deleting the
entry
entirely. Now that deletion is somewhat irreversible, the policy should be
somewhat
changed. Once deletion is made fully reversible, then the policy should be
fully
changed.


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> How about creating a page where one can put "prepackaged" database
> queries that can be simply cut-and-pasted into the query form? That
> would seem to me to be a nice compromise between the danger and
> complexity of full SQL access and asking the developers to add dozens
> and dozens of highly specialized special pages.

I already added two on [[wikipedia:Administrators]]. Feel free to move
these to a page of their own, and to add more.

Magnus


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Undelete...

in_reply_to:
<200208271908.g7RJ8eG08939@ross.bomis.com> from "lcrocker@nupedia.com"
 at "Aug 27, 2002 12:08:40 pm"

body:
>
> >> I didn't see an article with the second title in the archive.
> >> There's one just titled ".../World economic effects", but it has
> >> no content at all.
>
> > Did it use to have content? Or did that entry just hit the ether
> > and disappear?
>
> Deleting an article puts all its old versions in the archive; I
> see no evidence that this article ever had any content, so it may
> be that it was created under UseMod and the old versions, if any,
> are gone; or else it was created as a placeholder for future use
> and never filled in.

Then it's strange you did not find the page in the archive; it has
been on Wikipedia all the time until it was deleted.

In case TheCunctator, or anyone else, feels that the information on this
page should be restored, the text was (at least in the period from the
move in February until its deletion:

  "this page no longer exists

   See also : September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack"

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] How-tos

body:
> My first objection was at
> [[Common phrases in different languages]]
> "It's this entire page against [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]]?

I totally fail to see your point here.  It's not a dictionary
entry at all--it's an article that gives the flavor of a group
of languages.  I think it's a great article, and exactly the
kind of thing that should be in Wikipedia.  I think most paper
encyclopedias have articles like this as well.  It's nothing at
all like a dictionary entry.

> Stephen Gilbert next pointed me at the following page,
> [[How-tos]]. I found that page rather scary, as I discovered
> Wikipedia has articles like
> [[How to avoid cramps while swimming]] and
> [[How to make starch from frosted potatoes]]. AstroNomer then
> mentioned that there is also a [[Wikipedia Cookbook]] and a
> [[Wikipedia Cocktail Guide]].
> These pages seem to violate [[What Wikipedia is not]] number
> four, in my opinion.

Sorry, I don't see any resemblance there either.  The guideline
you mention is "wikipedia is not a usage guide.", and these
articles have nothing at all to do with language usage.

Besides which, I think you're taking "what Wikipedia is not"
far too seriously and literally.  Just because we don't want
Wikipedia to /become/ a dictionary, or a usage guide, or any
number of other things, that doesn't mean it can't /contain/
the occasional article that looks like those things, when that's
appropriate.  When it's appropriate is a matter of judgment.

> Also, most of these (how-to) articles can never be NPOV.

Firstly that's clearly not true (it's just as easy to attribute
opinions on a how-to page as anywhere else), and secondly such
articles are /expected/ to contain opinions or even outright
moral exhortation, as Larry himself wrote.  That's an important
function of how-tos.

Again, use some judgment instead of blindly following rules.
Are they good articles?  Are they interesting, well written?  Do
they provide useful information?


from_name: wojtek pobratyn

body:
| Bryan Derksen wrote:
|
| > How about creating a page where one can put "prepackaged" database
| > queries that can be simply cut-and-pasted into the query form? That
| > would seem to me to be a nice compromise between the danger and
| > complexity of full SQL access and asking the developers to add dozens
| > and dozens of highly specialized special pages.
|
| I already added two on [[wikipedia:Administrators]]. Feel free to move
| these to a page of their own, and to add more.
|
| Magnus

These are now at [[wikipedia:Database queries]].
wojpob


from_name: dze27 at yahoo.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article on Wikipedia

body:
Hello all,

I have some exciting news! I have written a short article
on Wikipedia that is to be published in "The Canadian
Writer's Guide 13th Edition", a reference for Canadian
writers. The publisher's page is at
http://www.canauthors.org/pubs.html, which describes the
12th edition. The book should be in print by the end of
September 2002.

The full text of the article is also available on my web
site at
http://jeays.net/files/wikipedia.htm. My angle was to
introduce Wikipedia as a way of practicing one's writing
skills while, as a happy side-effect, creating encyclopedia
articles. I tried to capture the flavour of Wikipedia
(including the NPOV, don't worry...) in 1100 words (not
easy!).

As with any Internet-related article there are a couple of
things that have changed over time (like the URL...except
www.wikipedia.com still works, and Larry Sanger's
involvement). This piece was written in early 2002 and the
book publishing process seems to take substantially longer
than the wiki process :)

Regards,

Mark Jeays ([[user:Dze27]])

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


body:
> | I already added two on [[wikipedia:Administrators]]. Feel free to move
> | these to a page of their own, and to add more.
>
> These are now at [[wikipedia:Database queries]].
> wojpob

I have put requests for further queries on the watch page.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] How-tos

body:
>I have one issue which I raised earlier and today on several talk pages
>that I would like to mention on the list as well.
>
>My first objection was at [[Common phrases in different languages]]:
>
>"It's this entire page against [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]]? If we
>shouldn't be adding English language dictionary entries, why would we be
>adding  _foreign_ language dictionary entries? While mildy interesting,
>it's hardly encyclopedia material as far as I'm concerned. I think
>putting a link on each website about a language to webpages containing
>"X for beginners" would be more than useful. Otherwise we may as well
>put other tutorials and lessons in here as well..."

Looked at this. Lots of people have worked on it and its a substantial
article. As you say mildly interesting...  I don't see any reason to change
it and lots of reasons not too, mainly that lots of people have worked on
it and the talk page is full too.

Fred Bauder


list: wikitech-l

from_name: James Graves

subject: [Wikitech-l] New installation issues

body:
Hello all,

I recently wanted to start up an internal wiki at work, and I wanted the
best and most powerful software, so naturally I downloaded the new
Wikipedia code base.

I ran into a couple problems with the installation, however, and thought
I'd share them with you.  I used Apache 1.3.26, PHP 4.2.2, and MySQL
2.23.52.

In the installation file, it should be mentioned that the
register_globals setting in the PHP configuration file (php.ini) needs
to be set 'On' for recent versions of PHP (4.2 and above, I believe).
There are security concerns with this, as I'm sure you're all aware.

There was also a problem creating the database tables.  The field
'rc_cur_time' was added to the 'recentchanges' table, but was not put in
the buildTables.inc script.  A patch is enclosed to fix this.

I had some issues with compiling and installing PHP, but other than
that, no major issues.  Most of the other problems were because of my
unfamiliarity with PHP and MySQL.

Take care,

James Graves
-------------- next part --------------
diff -u -r1.5 buildTables.inc
--- maintenance/buildTables.inc	24 Aug 2002 03:05:35 -0000	1.5
+++ maintenance/buildTables.inc	28 Aug 2002 15:37:58 -0000
@@ -174,6 +174,7 @@

 	$sql = "CREATE TABLE recentchanges (
   rc_timestamp varchar(14) binary NOT NULL default '',
+  rc_cur_time varchar(14) binary NOT NULL default '',
   rc_user int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
   rc_user_text varchar(255) binary NOT NULL default '',
   rc_namespace tinyint(3) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',


body:
| > | I already added two on [[wikipedia:Administrators]]. Feel free to move
| > | these to a page of their own, and to add more.
| >
| > These are now at [[wikipedia:Database queries]].
| > wojpob
|
| I have put requests for further queries on the watch page.
| Andre Engels

you probably meant the 'talk' page;-)
wojpob


body:
>Again I totally agree and I call a vote on these very points so that we can
>be done with this (I'm personally sick of getting 3 Wikipedia-L digests a
>day). This should be done on the talk page of the deletion policy. At:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Policy_on_permanent_deletion_of_pages

Hm, we talked about this briefly in April.  I didn't remember that until I saw a comment I left on that page above.  see the following for my question, Magnus' response, and Jimbo's:

http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001763.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001765.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001787.html

kq


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>On that note - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GIVE US
>>BACK THE VOTE BUTTON!!!!!!! It made things so much
>>simpler...
>>
>
>I agree. The current setup seems odd to me though; it is now much easier to
>outright delete a page instead of listing it on the deletion queue. If a
>sysop has any question whether a page should be deleted the sysop has to
>perform /more/ work in order to list it on the deletion queue than to simply
>delete it outright. That may be why some sysops are treading into the gray
>area with deletions that should probably be listed on the vote for deletion
>page for a few days first.
>
The vote button was a great idea, and would be even more useful if it
had both "yes" and "no".  It should likely only be available for
registered users.  It could be done with a drop down menu that would
allow for any number of votes on current issues.

Speaking of the drop down menu for special pages...  It now functions by
making your selection and clicking on "go".  Would it be any more
difficult to simply allow double clicking on a selection?

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] http://goatse.cx/hello.jpg

body:
Some vandal with rotating IPs is repeatedly placing links to the oh-so-famous
goatse.cx image to many articles.

CAN WE PLEASE NOT ALLOW EXTERNAL IMAGES TO BE DISPLAYED IN PAGES.

Sorry for the shouting, but this has been asked for before and I think it is
only reasonable (if this image is ever uploaded, deleting it will be a simple
matter and the histories of repaired articles with a link to that image will
just show a broken link).

If you don't know what this image is, just visit
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II_of_the_United_Kingdom and view
revision 11:13 Aug 26, 2002.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] How-tos

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Wednesday 28 August 2002 09:49 am, Jeronimo wrote:
>
>>These pages seem to violate [[What Wikipedia is not]] number four, in my
>>opinion. Also, most of these articles can never be NPOV. [[How to cook
>>pasta]] could be hotly debated by other cooks that have a slightly
>>different method of cooking (even more so for the somewhat more
>>complicated forms of cooking).
>>
>The  [[Wikipedia Cocktail Guide]], [[Wikipedia Cookbook]] and [[How-tos]]
>were all largely created before I got here and reflect a time in which
>wikipedia was still a bit undecided on what it really should be and was thus
>taking in just about anything (this process led to the current  [[What
>Wikipedia is not]], BTW).
>
>What's more is that I now see /very/ little by the way of current editing of
>these pages or the creation of similar ones so I don't think their presense
>sets any type of bad precedent.
>
The tendency has been that Wikipedia articles are most often of an
academic nature, but these others have value as well.  There is never
any guarantee that the recipes will work, or that your oven won't explode.

One thing about NPOV is that all articles can be presumed NPOV until
somebody objects.  (innocent until proven guilty)  That happens very
quickly in some areas; others can take years to be noticed.

An edit war on whether pasta should be cooked "al dente" or mushy,
 hmmm, that could be interesting!

Eclecticology


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Restoring pre-January edit histories

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> If actually amending the old histories to the current histories doesn't work
> or becomes a major bear, then perhaps a link to the older history from within
> the current history page would suffice?

That would give us history, and pre-history :)

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] German speakers, please test

body:
Your new software is up and running.  I think it looks o.k., but I'm often wrong
about such things.  :-)

If this goes well, then which language is next?  :-)


subject: [Wikitech-l] German speakers, please test


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article on Wikipedia

body:
dze27 at yahoo.com wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>I have some exciting news! I have written a short article
>on Wikipedia that is to be published in "The Canadian
>Writer's Guide 13th Edition", a reference for Canadian
>writers. The publisher's page is at
>http://www.canauthors.org/pubs.html, which describes the
>12th edition. The book should be in print by the end of
>September 2002.
>
>The full text of the article is also available on my web
>site at
>http://jeays.net/files/wikipedia.htm. My angle was to
>introduce Wikipedia as a way of practicing one's writing
>skills while, as a happy side-effect, creating encyclopedia
>articles. I tried to capture the flavour of Wikipedia
>(including the NPOV, don't worry...) in 1100 words (not
>easy!).
>
Interesting article, but I would have my concerns about calling it
"stress-free" writing.

If it works the project could be overrun by Canadians.  Fantastic!

Eclecticology


in_reply_to:
<3D6CA1E5.2F1C2E24@labyrinth.net.au> from Karen AKA Kajikit at "Aug
 28, 2002 08:11:49 pm"

body:
> 'Kate Hudson' has no content. The previous version of it says 'hubba
> hubba hubba', and the history says it was deleted and restored by
> request. That is NOT an article. That is not even a pretense at an
> article. That is a piece of stupidity that deserves oblivion. Why on
> EARTH did someone request that that should be put back?
>
> Gibberish is not an article. Blank pages are not an article. And
> nonsense phrases posted by a casual passerby are not an article. They
> just take up space that a real article could use. If it was a real
> article it would say something like 'Kate Hudson is (blah blah blah)'.
> Leaving this doesn't encourage the writer to make real contributions -
> if anything it encourages them to leave more nonsense to clutter up the
> space!

Someone got angry with me because I deleted subjects that could become
articles. So I resurrected them. Now people get angry at me because I did
that. So, what should I do then? It seems that the only way not to do
something wrong is to do nothing at all.

Please, either have a SINGLE set of rules that at least has no rules that
are conflicting, or have no rules at all. This is making me angry and sick
(literally).

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] German speakers, please test

body:
> Your new software is up and running.  I think it looks o.k.,
> but I'm often wrong about such things.  :-)
>
> If this goes well, then which language is next?  :-)

Astronomer already did most of the Spanish translation, so that
should be easy (especially since my Spanish is almost adequate to
make fixes in it as well).  I think the Polish guys are also hot
to get started, but I haven't seen anyone step up as possible
administrative help there.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

in_reply_to: <200208282137.RAA30093@TheWorld.com>; from tompar@world.std.com on Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 05:37:40PM -0400

body:
Maybe we should have both.

Tom Parmenter wrote:

> |From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> |Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 06:28:06 -0600
> |
> |I would like to see ISBNs linked to AddAll.com rather than Pricescan.com. I
> |think the selection of bookstores is better including used books and as
> |AddAll is devoted solely to books less of a distraction.
> |
> |To test the two alternatives go to:
> |
> |http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/creative_accounting
> |
> |The book at the bottom of the page temporarily has two ISBN links, the top
> |one to AddAll, the bottom to Pricescan.
> |
> |
>
> I prefer Pricescan.com.  It has stores that AddAll doesn't --
> alldirect, doublediscount, a1books, alltextbooks4less, page1book, then
> I stopped checking -- it allows sorting by book price and total cost,
> which helps, and, despite requiring an extra click, has a cleaner
> looking interface.
>
> Tom Parmenter
> Ortolan88
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Your new software is up and running.  I think it looks o.k., but I'm often wrong
> about such things.  :-)

It looks like the case-fixing script was not run. Examples:

Broken link on the main page to [[K?rper des Menschen]], article is
still at [[K?rper Des Menschen]].

Broken link on [[Wikipedia Beteiligen]] to [[Wikipedia Urheberrechte
beachten]], article is still at [[Wikipedia Urheberrechte Beachten]].

Probably plenty more of those.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
>It looks like the case-fixing script was not run. Examples:
>
>Broken link on the main page to [[K?rper des Menschen]], article is
>still at [[K?rper Des Menschen]].

I know I ran it; maybe I don't understand how it's supposed to work
and ran it at the wrong time or something.  How tricky would it be
for you to update to run against the new DB format?


body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>It looks like the case-fixing script was not run. Examples:
>>
>>Broken link on the main page to [[K?rper des Menschen]], article is
>>still at [[K?rper Des Menschen]].
>
> I know I ran it; maybe I don't understand how it's supposed to work
> and ran it at the wrong time or something.

Hmm, did it spit out a bunch of messages like "Renaming XXX to YYY...",
"Making redirect from XXX to YYY..." and "(don't need to rename XXX)"?

 >  How tricky would it be
> for you to update to run against the new DB format?

Shouldn't be too hard, I'll get right on that.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Undelete...

in_reply_to:
<001a01c24e8f$8dcff060$4547d63f@partners.org> from The Cunctator
 at "Aug 28, 2002 08:36:37 am"

body:
> "wiki pedista" <wikipedista at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I deleted the "September 11, 2201 Terrorist
> > Attack/World economic effects" page.
> > It had an history of one line, "script conversion",
> > and its content was "This page doesn't exist anymore"
> > or something like that (you can see the log).
> > Why can that be needed? Even if we want the article,
> > a link with a ? is more useful than that "article".
> > Should I have waited for a vote on "that"?
>
> Yes. Or something, because it caused unecessary consternation (in me)
> since I didn't know why the page was deleted. This page's history should
> be restored (go Brion Vibber!) so we can find out what happened to the
> article. It's definitely a worthy topic, in any case...

Restoring the history won't help; I checked it before asking for deletion
of the page, and it contained only one edit - namely the 'automatic\
conversion' of February.

Andre Engels


in_reply_to:
<200208281221.g7SCLtO32401@ross.bomis.com> from "koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com"
 at "Aug 28, 2002 05:21:55 am"

body:
> I just redeleted it.  really, that's /not/ an article.  I'm not suggesting
> that we keep gibberish, and I don't think anyone else is either (except, I
> guess, whoever requested it be restored.  And I would like to hear why it
> was requested restored; I must have missed something).

On my personal page, I found the following text:

 Dr. Engels: please review the criteria for deletion; namely the policy of not
 deleting page titles that may become valid entries. If you disagree with the
 policy, you should change the stated policy instead of violating it. Note that
 the current policy is the result of discussion of various points (some of
 which may have changed, because they were based partially on features of the
 software which may have changed). That is not to say that it can't be changed,
 but that there was serious consideration in coming up with the policy.

I give in that it does not exactly ask for restoring it, it does however
explicitly ask for not deleting it.

Andre Engels


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tracking use by a user with a changing IP

body:
Hey all -- is there any way of tracking contributions by the first three
IP number sets (triplets or triads or whatever they're called)?  One of
the people who makes really interesting, generally very good
contributions seems to be working off a dynamic IP (or maybe just
different terminals on a static network).  I'd like to be able to check
the contributions, but the last three numbers change regularly.  Any
ideas?

Jules
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body:
> I can't find the images. E.g.
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_am_Main
> references an image which can not be found.
> [[Spezial:Imagelist]] lists no images.

Ah, I see what happened.  For the English wiki conversion,
I changed all the external links to local images into
[[image:...]] references.  The external references to
wikipedia images on the German site really are external,
though, and they probably shouldn't have been translated.
On the other hand, those images really should be moved to
the new site so that the wikis are more independent, so I'm
inclined to think that leaving them "broken" is the right
thing to do, to encourage authors toput them into the new
site.  I'm open to other idea though.


body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> Ah, I see what happened.  For the English wiki conversion,
> I changed all the external links to local images into
> [[image:...]] references.  The external references to
> wikipedia images on the German site really are external,
> though, and they probably shouldn't have been translated.
> On the other hand, those images really should be moved to
> the new site so that the wikis are more independent, so I'm
> inclined to think that leaving them "broken" is the right
> thing to do, to encourage authors toput them into the new
> site.  I'm open to other idea though.

Any objection to batch-adding them? I was just starting on that now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
> Any objection to batch-adding them?
> I was just starting on that now.

I'd have no objection to a batch process that added images
that are already referenced to the new site, and properly
updated the database.  I wouldn't want to move images that
aren't referenced.


body:
> Some images should be on a wiki in a particular language (for
> instance the map of China and environs) and some should be on
> one wiki and usable by all (most chemical diagrams, pictures
> without words). How about [[en:image:foo.jpg]] to mean that an
> image is on the English wiki, even if  the link is on the German
> one?

I would generally prefer to encourage duplication; that way, the
whole German (or Spanish, etc.) wiki could be easily reproduced
from a database and image directory backup.  But since images are
kind of "external" anyway, and the links properly define where to
get them, I might be convinced that inter-wiki image links are OK.
I would think the simplest way to do it is to have [[image:...]]
reference the English wiki, and [[bild:...]] the German one.


body:
> French, French, French !!!

Choose a volunteer, then go to http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net .
Browse the new codebase in CVS, and look at the files
"Language.php" and "LanguageDe.php" for an example of what
needs to be done for the translation.  As soon as someone
makes me a "LanguageFr.php" that's reasonably complete, we
can move forward.


from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
Andre writes:

>Please, either have a SINGLE set of rules that at least has no rules
>that are conflicting, or have no rules at all. This is making me
>angry and sick (literally).

Don't take the rules too seriously; they are all just suggestions. If
somebody complains by pointing to section 2, paragraph 3, sentence 1
of rule 17b, then let them have a good dose of one of our first rules,
[[Wikipedia:Ignore all rules]]. And don't believe for a second that by
calling something a "policy" it mysteriously gains normative power: it
doesn't. Do what you think is right and have fun.

Axel


body:
Guillaume wrote:
>>Choose a volunteer, then go to http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net .
>>Browse the new codebase in CVS, and look at the files
>>"Language.php" and "LanguageDe.php" for an example of what
>>needs to be done for the translation.  As soon as someone
>>makes me a "LanguageFr.php" that's reasonably complete, we
>>can move forward.
>
>
> We finised translation some weeks ago.
> But it's seem the version we translated is not the more recent version...
> I'm waiting about Brion feedback.

Sorry, I haven't gotten a chance to work on it yet; I just finished the
Esperanto one. By all means, start work on converting the French!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
A few other oddities:

* Redirects with special pages don't work; something goes awry, and the
request goes to la-la land and fails. Example:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letzte_%C4nderungen/Test
(which should redirect to Spezial:Recentchanges) and
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Randompage

* The access log (/usr/local/apache/logs/de.wikipedia.org-access_log)
has stopped logging accesses to /w/wiki.phtml. This makes it a little
difficult to track what's going on!

I do see these show up in the generic error_log, though, whenever I
access a page on the German wiki:

Wed Aug 28 16:36:47 2002] [notice] child pid 4451 exit signal Illegal
instruction (4)

* Somebody commented out the rewrite rules I added that kept existing
links to the wiki intact. I put them back.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
|From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
|Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 06:28:06 -0600
|
|I would like to see ISBNs linked to AddAll.com rather than Pricescan.com. I
|think the selection of bookstores is better including used books and as
|AddAll is devoted solely to books less of a distraction.
|
|To test the two alternatives go to:
|
|http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/creative_accounting
|
|The book at the bottom of the page temporarily has two ISBN links, the top
|one to AddAll, the bottom to Pricescan.
|
|

I prefer Pricescan.com.  It has stores that AddAll doesn't --
alldirect, doublediscount, a1books, alltextbooks4less, page1book, then
I stopped checking -- it allows sorting by book price and total cost,
which helps, and, despite requiring an extra click, has a cleaner
looking interface.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article on Wikipedia

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Interesting article, but I would have my concerns about
> calling it
> "stress-free" writing.

I'm an occasional contributor so Wikipedia has never
stressed me out personally. I know some of the regulars get
a bit stressed but that's due to an obvious devotion to the
project.

> If it works the project could be overrun by Canadians.
> Fantastic!

We shall see... (although I doubt that... if a posting on
Slashdot didn't overrun Wikipedia I don't know what would)

Cheers,

Mark

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


body:
I wrote:
> * Redirects with special pages don't work; something goes awry, and the
> request goes to la-la land and fails.
...
> * The access log (/usr/local/apache/logs/de.wikipedia.org-access_log)
> has stopped logging accesses to /w/wiki.phtml.

Both fixed. Note: when in doubt, clear out the *_apc cache files.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
That's true; the policy does say that. However, I now
disagree with that particular part of the policy, and
so do many other people.

What we have to keep in mind is that Wikipedia policy
is not iron-clad law. It is determined by us
Wikipedians as we go about creating the encyclopedia.
If a policy is becoming a hinderance, it's time to
change it.

Stephen G.

--- Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de> wrote:
> > I just redeleted it.  really, that's /not/ an
> article.  I'm not suggesting
> > that we keep gibberish, and I don't think anyone
> else is either (except, I
> > guess, whoever requested it be restored.  And I
> would like to hear why it
> > was requested restored; I must have missed
> something).
>
> On my personal page, I found the following text:
>
>  Dr. Engels: please review the criteria for
> deletion; namely the policy of not
>  deleting page titles that may become valid entries.
> If you disagree with the
>  policy, you should change the stated policy instead
> of violating it. Note that
>  the current policy is the result of discussion of
> various points (some of
>  which may have changed, because they were based
> partially on features of the
>  software which may have changed). That is not to
> say that it can't be changed,
>  but that there was serious consideration in coming
> up with the policy.
>
> I give in that it does not exactly ask for restoring
> it, it does however
> explicitly ask for not deleting it.
>
> Andre Engels
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

subject: [Wikipedia-l] How-tos

body:
I have one issue which I raised earlier and today on several talk pages
that I would like to mention on the list as well.

My first objection was at [[Common phrases in different languages]]:

"It's this entire page against [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]]? If we
shouldn't be adding English language dictionary entries, why would we be
adding  _foreign_ language dictionary entries? While mildy interesting,
it's hardly encyclopedia material as far as I'm concerned. I think
putting a link on each website about a language to webpages containing
"X for beginners" would be more than useful. Otherwise we may as well
put other tutorials and lessons in here as well..."

Stephen Gilbert next pointed me at the following page, [[How-tos]]. I
found that page rather scary, as I discovered Wikipedia has articles
like [[How to avoid cramps while swimming]] and [[How to make starch
from frosted potatoes]]. AstroNomer then mentioned that there is also a
[[Wikipedia Cookbook]] and a [[Wikipedia Cocktail Guide]].

These pages seem to violate [[What Wikipedia is not]] number four, in my
opinion. Also, most of these articles can never be NPOV. [[How to cook
pasta]] could be hotly debated by other cooks that have a slightly
different method of cooking (even more so for the somewhat more
complicated forms of cooking).

I think some "procedural knowledge" (as it's called on [[How-tos]])
could be in Wikipedia, but it should be carefully selected. Otherwise we
could get [[How to avoid cramps just after swimming in a hot swimming
pool when eating an ice cream]] and [[How to make starch from defrosted
potatoes that have been refrosted three times]]...

I'd say we clean up this collection of pages a bit, or adjust our [[What
Wikipedia is not list]]. I personally hope the former happens, otherwise
you may see an article called [[How to write a really useless article
for Wikipedia]] appearing on the Recent Changes page soon...

Jeronimo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article on Wikipedia

body:
Nice work, Mark! I read the article; I think it's a
pretty good general introduction to the project. And,
since you've put it under the GFDL,I'm going to add it
to meta.wikipedia.com. :)

Stephen G.

--- dze27 at yahoo.com wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I have some exciting news! I have written a short
> article
> on Wikipedia that is to be published in "The
> Canadian
> Writer's Guide 13th Edition", a reference for
> Canadian
> writers. The publisher's page is at
> http://www.canauthors.org/pubs.html, which describes
> the
> 12th edition. The book should be in print by the end
> of
> September 2002.
>
> The full text of the article is also available on my
> web
> site at
> http://jeays.net/files/wikipedia.htm. My angle was
> to
> introduce Wikipedia as a way of practicing one's
> writing
> skills while, as a happy side-effect, creating
> encyclopedia
> articles. I tried to capture the flavour of
> Wikipedia
> (including the NPOV, don't worry...) in 1100 words
> (not
> easy!).
>
> As with any Internet-related article there are a
> couple of
> things that have changed over time (like the
> URL...except
> www.wikipedia.com still works, and Larry Sanger's
> involvement). This piece was written in early 2002
> and the
> book publishing process seems to take substantially
> longer
> than the wiki process :)
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark Jeays ([[user:Dze27]])

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
At 02:44 PM 8/28/02 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>Maybe we should have both.

The way it is now this coding "ISBN 0000000000" gives pricescan through the
wiki software. To create an AddAll link you have to create a special link
that works around the Wiki coding. What I want is to at least allow how to
create a wiki link be in the ISBN article, but at best putting AddAll into
the wiki coding instead of pricescan.

Fred

>
>Tom Parmenter wrote:
>
>> |From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
>> |Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 06:28:06 -0600
>> |
>> |I would like to see ISBNs linked to AddAll.com rather than
Pricescan.com. I
>> |think the selection of bookstores is better including used books and as
>> |AddAll is devoted solely to books less of a distraction.
>> |
>> |To test the two alternatives go to:
>> |
>> |http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/creative_accounting
>> |
>> |The book at the bottom of the page temporarily has two ISBN links, the top
>> |one to AddAll, the bottom to Pricescan.
>> |
>> |
>>
>> I prefer Pricescan.com.  It has stores that AddAll doesn't --
>> alldirect, doublediscount, a1books, alltextbooks4less, page1book, then
>> I stopped checking -- it allows sorting by book price and total cost,
>> which helps, and, despite requiring an extra click, has a cleaner
>> looking interface.
>>
>> Tom Parmenter
>> Ortolan88
>>
>> [Wikipedia-l]
>> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Wednesday 28 August 2002 15:29, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Your new software is up and running.  I think it looks o.k., but I'm often
> wrong about such things.  :-)
>
> If this goes well, then which language is next?  :-)

I'd like to see French.

phma


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

body:
> * Redirects with special pages don't work;

I'll take a look at that--that's a special piece of code
in Article.php.

> * Somebody commented out the rewrite rules I added that kept
> existing links to the wiki intact. I put them back.

That was me; I was just debugging something and I wasn't
sure what they did so I commented them out to make sure
they weren't causing my problem.  But if they work OK now,
they shoulud certainly be left in.


body:
On Wednesday 28 August 2002 19:25, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> Ah, I see what happened.  For the English wiki conversion,
> I changed all the external links to local images into
> [[image:...]] references.  The external references to
> wikipedia images on the German site really are external,
> though, and they probably shouldn't have been translated.
> On the other hand, those images really should be moved to
> the new site so that the wikis are more independent, so I'm
> inclined to think that leaving them "broken" is the right
> thing to do, to encourage authors toput them into the new
> site.  I'm open to other idea though.

Some images should be on a wiki in a particular language (for instance the
map of China and environs) and some should be on one wiki and usable by all
(most chemical diagrams, pictures without words). How about
[[en:image:foo.jpg]] to mean that an image is on the English wiki, even if
the link is on the German one?

phma


body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>Any objection to batch-adding them?
>>I was just starting on that now.
>
> I'd have no objection to a batch process that added images
> that are already referenced to the new site, and properly
> updated the database.  I wouldn't want to move images that
> aren't referenced.

The used images are copied over now, but just for future reference, the
conversion script needs to be changed to use the language-approriate
namespace instead of hardcoding "image" into the articles.

I'll run another little script to flip all the references over to "bild"
for now so that the links actually work!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
'Kate Hudson' has no content. The previous version of it says 'hubba
hubba hubba', and the history says it was deleted and restored by
request. That is NOT an article. That is not even a pretense at an
article. That is a piece of stupidity that deserves oblivion. Why on
EARTH did someone request that that should be put back?

Gibberish is not an article. Blank pages are not an article. And
nonsense phrases posted by a casual passerby are not an article. They
just take up space that a real article could use. If it was a real
article it would say something like 'Kate Hudson is (blah blah blah)'.
Leaving this doesn't encourage the writer to make real contributions -
if anything it encourages them to leave more nonsense to clutter up the
space!

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why external images should not be allowed

body:
> Now that we have the upload function, I'd agree that we don't
> need to render external images.

I'm absolutely in favor of eliminating inline-rendered external
images.  Totally apart from goatse.cx, it's also a minor security
issue, since such images can carry cookies and track usage.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] How-tos

body:
>
>
>From: lcrocker at nupedia.com
>
>I totally fail to see your point here.  It's not a dictionary
>entry at all--it's an article that gives the flavor of a group
>of languages.  I think it's a great article, and exactly the
>kind of thing that should be in Wikipedia.  I think most paper
>encyclopedias have articles like this as well.  It's nothing at
>all like a dictionary entry.
>
To me, an article that says: this word/phrase means this in language A,
B, C is pretty much a dictionary.

>Sorry, I don't see any resemblance there either.  The guideline
>you mention is "wikipedia is not a usage guide.", and these
>articles have nothing at all to do with language usage.
>
OK, I misunderstood the rule there, it apparently applies only to word
usage.

>Besides which, I think you're taking "what Wikipedia is not"
>far too seriously and literally.  Just because we don't want
>Wikipedia to /become/ a dictionary, or a usage guide, or any
>number of other things, that doesn't mean it can't /contain/
>the occasional article that looks like those things, when that's
>appropriate.  When it's appropriate is a matter of judgment.
>
I'm kind of puzzeled with that. On the list, we are regularly reminded
that "wikipedia has no rules". However, when I arrived, I was urged
(politely) to follow all kinds of policies, guidelines and conventions.
To become a sysop, it is even required to know about most of these
rules. Many of the sysops spend many times on making these rules.
However, when these are broken, the resulting reaction is not always the
same. Sometimes, we obey the rules and correct whatever went wrong, at
other times it is said "this article can stay this way because
(blabla)". To me, this suggests that something is wrong with these
rules. Maybe we should not have any rules at all, but I think it is
clear it become a big mess then. So if we have any
rules/guidelines/policies/conventions at all, we should obey them
regardless the article, the author or the topic. If we want to make
exceptions the rules should be rewritten so that everybody can see why
some is as it is, otherwise the same issues will be raised over and over
again.

>Again, use some judgment instead of blindly following rules.
>Are they good articles?  Are they interesting, well written?  Do
>they provide useful information?
>
I know many pieces of text that are all of the above, but wouldn't
qualify for Wikipedia.

Mav:

>I once brought this very question up on the cookbook's talk page and was told
>that these pages are poplar for visitors and that Wikipedia is not paper.
>That was enough for me. And we shouldn't be too concerned with the NPOVness
>of a recipe. :-)
>
Wikipedia is not paper. Great, so we have a lot of space. Then why are
dictionary entries, full-text articles and list of quotations and
external links NOT acceptable while, apparently, recipes are?

>What's more is that I now see /very/ little by the way of current editing of
>these pages or the creation of similar ones so I don't think their presense
>sets any type of bad precedent.
>
I'm not sure I understand what you say here...

Jeronimo


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> > Gibberish is not an article. Blank pages are not an article. And
> > nonsense phrases posted by a casual passerby are not an article. They
> > just take up space that a real article could use. If it was a real
> > article it would say something like 'Kate Hudson is (blah blah blah)'.
> > Leaving this doesn't encourage the writer to make real contributions -
> > if anything it encourages them to leave more nonsense to clutter up the
> > space!
>
> Someone got angry with me because I deleted subjects that could become
> articles. So I resurrected them. Now people get angry at me because I did
> that. So, what should I do then? It seems that the only way not to do
> something wrong is to do nothing at all.
>
> Please, either have a SINGLE set of rules that at least has no rules that
> are conflicting, or have no rules at all. This is making me angry and sick
> (literally).

Andre, I'm not angry at you!!!!!!! I agreed that every single one of
those articles you deleted thoroughly deserved oblivion. If I'd gotten
to them first I would have deleted them all myself! What annoys me is
the fact that we are quibbling over such a petty little thing when there
are so many more important jobs still waiting in the queue to do. I'm
truly sorry if you are upset about it... I wasn't trying to get at you,
just to make a point.

Stubs like that one aren't any use to the wikipedia and they deserve to
be deleted. True? Totally blank entries with no content confuse the
issue and deserve to be deleted. True? Vandalism and gibberish deserve
to be deleted. True? If you don't know for certain that a page deserves
to go, but you think it does, we have a deletion queue to put it in.
True? On that note - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GIVE US BACK THE VOTE
BUTTON!!!!!!! It made things so much simpler...

The problem with a cooperative community is that you have to come to a
consensus before you can actively do anything... where there is too much
disagreement then people get upset and hurt. I say that you are doing a
good job Andre and I would hope that you keep on doing it... and on that
point I don't care whether anyone else agrees with me!

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
> Your new software is up and running.  I think it looks o.k., but I'm
often wrong
> about such things.  :-)

I am getting redirected from www.wikipedia.de to de.wikipedia.org, which
is the english wikipedia, but maybe that'll change in the next minutes.

What I can see, is that
http://de-beta.wikipedia.org
has a new database, but still with the upper/lowercase problems. Has
someone saved the old bug reports, or have really all bugs been
corrected?

Kurt


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Pierre Abbat <phma at webjockey.net> wrote:
> On Wednesday 28 August 2002 15:29, Jimmy Wales
> wrote:
> > Your new software is up and running.  I think it
> looks o.k., but I'm often
> > wrong about such things.  :-)
> >
> > If this goes well, then which language is next?
> :-)
>
> I'd like to see French.
>
> phma
> [Wikipedia-l]

hum, I support Pierre "of course" :-)

We are ready for it
It is high time to benefit of some of the special
pages, especially watch list, new pages, stub pages,
orphaned and user contributions.
Several dedicated users will be available to test
Also, I think it is very high time we link the wikis
together. Quite a bunch of articles are beginning to
look rather good (in religion, egyptology, linguistic,
some technologies)... it would be nice to link them
with other language pages.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


body:
>> I would think the simplest way to do it is to have [[image:...]]
>> reference the English wiki, and [[bild:...]] the German one.

> So what do you call the French one? And isn't "bild" also in some
> other Germanic language?

The latter isn't a problem; it can link to local images in the
Dutch wikipedia as well--I didn't intend to be able to cross-link
from any language to any other, just to have "local" and "main"
images.  But your point about French is a good one.  I aleady do
accept links like "en:user:Fred", so "en:bild:Fred.jpg" isn't
much of a stretch.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
I can only guess it was that damned goatse site.  I'm confused as to why linking to it isn't yet punishable by death.

I wish I could forget it too.  :-/

kq

You Wrote:
>Some moron thought that it would be 'funny' to link a really revolting
>pornographic photograph into a random article, and unfortunately before
>I could remove it I had to LOOK at it.


body:
After all the countries are de-subpaged, I plan to go through and move over all the images.  I have proxomitron, which kills offsite images, and it's killing a lot of those too (I guess they've been uploaded to meta?)

kq

>I'm absolutely in favor of eliminating inline-rendered external
>images.  Totally apart from goatse.cx, it's also a minor security
>issue, since such images can carry cookies and track usage.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
|From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
|Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 18:20:50 -0600
|
|At 02:44 PM 8/28/02 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
|>Maybe we should have both.
|
|The way it is now this coding "ISBN 0000000000" gives pricescan through the
|wiki software. To create an AddAll link you have to create a special link
|that works around the Wiki coding. What I want is to at least allow how to
|create a wiki link be in the ISBN article, but at best putting AddAll into
|the wiki coding instead of pricescan.
|
|Fred

Other people should perform the comparison.  In addition to your
links, I tested both services with a fairly hard-to-find book, my big
Spanish dictionary, Clave Diccionario, and they were about the same
for new copies, but only AddAll had used copies, and at about 50%
of the new pricess they both listed, which were also way below list..

If AddAll *always* has used books and PriceScan *never* has used books,
then we should switch to AddAll as being more wiki.  If they *both* have
used books from time to time, PriceScan has a more useful interface.

I think they are both totally cool in terms of the speed and breadth
of their information.  The 21st century really has some things going.

Tom P.

|
|>
|>Tom Parmenter wrote:
|>
|>> |From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
|>> |Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 06:28:06 -0600
|>> |
|>> |I would like to see ISBNs linked to AddAll.com rather than
|Pricescan.com. I
|>> |think the selection of bookstores is better including used books and as
|>> |AddAll is devoted solely to books less of a distraction.
|>> |
|>> |To test the two alternatives go to:
|>> |
|>> |http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/creative_accounting
|>> |
|>> |The book at the bottom of the page temporarily has two ISBN links, the top
|>> |one to AddAll, the bottom to Pricescan.
|>> |
|>> |
|>>
|>> I prefer Pricescan.com.  It has stores that AddAll doesn't --
|>> alldirect, doublediscount, a1books, alltextbooks4less, page1book, then
|>> I stopped checking -- it allows sorting by book price and total cost,
|>> which helps, and, despite requiring an extra click, has a cleaner
|>> looking interface.
|>>
|>> Tom Parmenter
|>> Ortolan88
|>>
|>> [Wikipedia-l]
|>> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
|>> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|>[Wikipedia-l]
|>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
|>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|>
|
|[Wikipedia-l]
|To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
|http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
Now that we have the upload function, I'd agree that we don't need to
render external images.

It's odd that the guy did that, since we already have such a good entry
on [[goatse.cx]].


body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Okay, I just wanted to say "Thank you!" to everybody who made this
> possible: Lee, Brion, Magnus, and everybody else involved. The new
> software has a really nice "feel", and the features are just great. I
> knew the software from the English Wikipedia, but it's another thing to
> see it on "our own" wiki.

As the first non-English to get a production conversion, you're the
guinea pigs. Keep finding those problems for us. ;)

> I'd like to delete a few pages (empty ones, of course <g>), and make
> some database queries (yes, I'll be careful), so could someone please
> make me admin, sysop or whatever I need to be able to do this?

Poof, you're a sysop.

> It would be nice to have the old German usemod Wikipedia on a subdomain,
> just in case something got lost on the way to the new database (like the
> talk pages from our HomePage). If we do this, could we prevent google
> and others from indexing it?

I second this; the old stuff needs to be accessible, at least until
everyone's confident that large swathes of data aren't missing (anymore).

Which reminds me: how can I get at the old Usemod database for the
English wikipedia? I'd like to get the old revisions merged in at some
point, but I can't do it without the data!

> Google has indexed test-de.wikipedia.com and de-beta.wikipedia.com, so
> maybe we should redirect from there to www.wikipedia.de, if we don't
> already do this.

de-beta.wikipedia.org should already bring up the correct wiki;
test-de.wikipedia.com needs to be changed in the DNS. Jimbo, Jason?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 12:29:27PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Your new software is up and running.  I think it looks o.k., but I'm often wrong
> about such things.  :-)
>

Hi Jimmy,

I can't find the images. E.g. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_am_Main
references an image which can not be found. [[Spezial:Imagelist]] lists
no images.

	Regards,

		JeLuF


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Should Wikipedia:Help be protected?

body:
One of the pages hit by the latest vandal from Shaw Cable is Wikipedia:Help.
Should that be protected?

phma


body:
On Thursday 29 August 2002 00:04, Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
> I know that 24.70.159.4 is probably a random passerby with a perverted
> sense of humour, but it was gross and disgusting and made me physically
> ill. Oh... looking at recent changes the same person has been hitting a
> myriad of articles in the last fifteen minutes. I just blocked him, and
> I see I was the third person to do it.

No, you're the fourth. Any IP address beginning 24 is a cable modem, and
probably a dynamic IP, so the ISP should be alerted before he restarts dhcpcd
and splatters more goats across the Wiki. Here's the whois and nslookup info:

OrgName:    Shaw Fiberlink
OrgID:      FBCA

NetRange:   24.64.0.0 - 24.71.255.255
CIDR:       24.64.0.0/13
NetName:    FIBERLINK-CABLE
NetHandle:  NET-24-64-0-0-1
Parent:     NET-24-0-0-0-0
NetType:    Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS2SO.CG.SHAWCABLE.NET
NameServer: NS1SO.CG.SHAWCABLE.NET
Comment:
RegDate:    1996-06-03
Updated:    2002-08-12

TechHandle: ZS178-ARIN
TechName:   Shaw High-Speed Internet
TechPhone:  +1-403-750-7428
TechEmail:  ipadmin at sjrb.ca

Name:    h24-70-159-4.su.shawcable.net
Address:  24.70.159.4

phma


body:
On Wednesday 28 August 2002 20:03, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> I would think the simplest way to do it is to have [[image:...]]
> reference the English wiki, and [[bild:...]] the German one.

So what do you call the French one? And isn't "bild" also in some other
Germanic language?

phma


body:
On Thursday 29 August 2002 01:50, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> No, you're the fourth. Any IP address beginning 24 is a cable modem, and
> probably a dynamic IP, so the ISP should be alerted before he restarts
> dhcpcd and splatters more goats across the Wiki. Here's the whois and
> nslookup info:

Oops - sorry - the previous address was 24.70.158.248. But that just proves
my point - it's probably the same vandal at a different IP address.

phma


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> I'd say use your judgment, expect a firestorm of criticism, but do the right
> thing.  Try not to block people, but don't hesitate when necessary.  :-)
>
> How's that for a useless bunch of slogans masquerading as advice?  *smile*
>
> Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:
>
> > A new 24?  Not doing anything wrong, but probably needs to have a read
> > before creating more really stubby pointless pages..

Why not wait for something really wrong
before resorting to blocking?

Assuming problems a priori may simply
create them.

regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: Tesla Coil

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation - Altering Entry Titles?

body:
The Wikipedia entry for "Bloody Sunday" contains reference
to "Bloody Sunday - Northern Ireland," 30 January 1972, but
not Ireland's earlier "Bloody Sunday" of 20 November 1920.

While true that "Bloody Sunday" of 1972 is distinguished by
having occurred in *Northern* Ireland, standard practice in
indexing books of Irish history is to distinguish by year.

Without alteration of titles, one ends with entries perhaps:

"Bloody Sunday - Northern Ireland"
"Bloody Sunday - Ireland - 1920"

Which seems less optimal toward disambiguation than:

"Bloody Sunday - Ireland - 1920"
"Bloody Sunday - Ireland - 1972"

So, I'm new here.  How does one resolve such circumstance?


body:
On 29 Aug 2002, I wrote:
> not Ireland's earlier "Bloody Sunday" of 20 November 1920.

Typo: 21 November 1920.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article on Wikipedia

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>
> Nice work, Mark! I read the article; I think it's a
> pretty good general introduction to the project. And,
> since you've put it under the GFDL,I'm going to add it
> to meta.wikipedia.com. :)

Very nice!  I think we should add a link under one
of the FAQs "What is Wikipedia?" and perhaps in
"Answers to our Critics" as well.

Thanks for the excellent PR!

regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: wiki pedista

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Searches in wikipedia namespace

body:
I think it should be good to be able to make searches
in any on the namespaces, specially the wikipedia
namespace. In the meantime, could someone make a
list  of all the pages on the wikipedia namespace,
and put it somewhere visible? (Yes, I know that I
could do it myself with a SQL query, but I haven't
gotten into that yet).

AstroNomer

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
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