from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
On Thu, 5 May 2005, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
>Florida - 44-ish servers now, 20 more apache/squid machines to be
>installed within the next two weeks (10 already arrived and Chad will
>install very soon).  2 more database servers have been order, as well as
>a JBOD-thingy.

It seems that the major problem is Apache processing power... so, if
offered a choice of free hardware, go with the max CPU power/Unit
possible - dual CPUs, dual cores if available and OS support is
there (Intel/AMD chips were released a few days ago..). Cost per CPU goes
up though.

Split wikipedias between the major datacenters - English in Florida,
Japanese in South Korea, German in Europe, the rest go wherever they fit :-)
Each major colo should have a replicating system like the current Florida
setup - master DB, slave DBs, apaches, squids.

I second the other requests about better backups, the current strategy (a
backup every few weeks and relying on the slave DBs in case of problems)
seems quite weak.

Alfio


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>On 5/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>>slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 05:25]:
>>
>>
>>>Right. If he's named as a kook (or anything) somewhere vaguely
>>>reputable, we can use it. But we can't allow Usenet to determine who
>>>is or isn't notable.
>>>
>>On that basis, we wouldn't have articles about Usenet at all. We do,
>>therefore your assertion that Usenet notability is not notability at all
>>ever is evidently not the case.
>>
>
>I'm struggling to understand why people can't see the difference here
>between using something as a primary and a secondary source. We can
>use Usenet as a source of information about itself, and about its
>awards. What we can't do is use it as a secondary source of
>information about someone or something else. Even if it's true that
>John Smith won the KOM award, we shouldn't include Smith's name,
>because to do so is to use Usenet as a *source of information
>regarding a subject other than itself*. The sentence: "John Smith was
>honored as KOM," is about that Usenet group, but it is also about
>someone else.
>
Whoa, that's getting pretty epistemiologically twisty... "A person
named 'J-o-h-n S-m-i-t-h' was mentioned as KotM on Usenet, but we
make no claim as to who that designates in real life".

The irony is that Mr. Astrologer has directly informed us that
he's pretty sure that Usenet was referring to him. At least I
think so - what if the email is from somebody pretending to be
him? Or maybe the astrologer is actually John Perry Barlow having
a whole lot of fun playing a net kook? Has anyone actually seen
this guy and Barlow together at the same time??

At some point you have to fall back on common sense, or else
be confined to working on philosophy articles.

Another irony is that Usenet was once as revered as a source
of good information as Google is today - I suspect part of the
disconnect in the discussion is the difference in perception
between people for whom it was an important part of their
lives (in my case, 1982 to 1994 or so), vs those who've
never known it as anything other than a flame board.

Stan


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Sj

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Two projects: Official static mirror,
	historical backup log

body:
===In the spirit of redundancy and availability===
A project suggestion:

Develop a completely separate and redundant project to maintain our
own fast, quickly-updated static mirror of Wikipedia content.  We
could redirect visitors to this mirror, via DNS if necessary, in case
of any real catastrophe; it would also be useful when the primary site
is slow.
   Advantages: it's redundant.  Improves catastrophe protection.
Improves availability of data and discussions stored on-wiki. Further
search improvements?  '''Could be handled entirely separate from core
cluster work; offloaded onto non-core devs.'''
   Disadvantages: it's redundant. More work

===In the spirit of failsafes and backups===

A system to periodically store entire database snapshots (every
month?), to recover from subtle, undetected database corruption.  (my
impression was that this is not done already)

--
+sj+


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is Netscape a previously unlisted private proxy range?

body:
I've received communications on my user talk page leading me to the
conclusion that the range 207.200.64.0/18 (assigned to Netscape) may be an
AOL-style dynamic private proxy range.  If so, the boilerplate at
Special:Blockip should be updated to note this.
As you may know, Netscape is now owned by AOL.

Note on my user page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Tony_Sidaway#Why_are_you_blocking_me.3F.3F.3F.3F
I had blocked the IP 207.200.116.203 as part of the arbcom-imposed revert
implementation against Rovoam.  There is little doubt that Rovoam made the
edit in question, but my subsequent 24-hour block against that IP blocked
WBardwin, who must have had that IP assigned to him in a subsequent
session.  WBardwin says he didn't make that edit, and the pattern of edits
on that IP isn't similar to Rovoam's.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] URL changes

body:
Robert Jones wrote:
> How do I do that? Is it something within mediawiki or something I have to
> change with the server?

$wgServer = "http://blahblahblah.blah";

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc problems

body:
Roberto A. Santiago wrote:
> I am not sure if this is the right mailing list to post this to so my
> apologies ahead of time if it is not.  I have been working hard to get
> texvc working correctly on my installation of mediawiki.   It has
> compiled correctly and when used from a command line works entirely
> correctly.  But, when it is called from math.php it does not work
> properly.  It produces a tex file but nothing else.  The best that I can
> tell, it does not seem able to properly use latex, dvips and convert.  I
> am working on a shared server (freebsd and apache).  So this might
> provide some limitations on shell commands executed from PHP.  Any help
> would be greatly appreciated.

These are just general debugging suggestions, things you should always
check when having problems running external programs from a PHP web app:

Check permissions, check the error log output. If necessary ask your
hosting service for help in debugging (we can't read your Apache error log).

Confirm that PHP is set up to allow running external programs.

Confirm that the required programs are present.

Confirm that your web server is not running in a limited jail/chroot
environment without the software you thought you saw.

***Confirm that the web server and the server you log in to are the
same, or that you have accounted for all differences between them if
they are different.***

Confirm that the directories are writable by the web server user.

Confirm that texvc is being executed.

Check your PHP configuration. Check your PHP error messages. Check your
PHP error log.

Check the actual error message returned. Check the return values from
the execution.

etc

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>>Usenet is not a fixed and relied-upon source like a peer-reviewed journal,
>>but in the *vast* majority of cases, people are who they say they are and
>>made their posts.
>>
>
>You can't know this. Most people who post do so anonymously, and even
>if you know their real names, what does that tell you? They're not
>credible, published sources just because they post to Usenet.
>
It really depends on the era. If you have a John Mashey or Erik Fair
posting from 1983, it's almost certainly authentic and authoritative
(the kremvax hoax of 1984 was the first time that most of us were
even aware that forged postings were possible). Conversely, anybody
can print a credible-looking book these days, so one's analysis of
believability has to be based on context and content, not just the
mechanism of transport.

Stan


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com stated for the record:

> David, if you're saying Usenet is sometimes an acceptable source, and
> that we ought to judge its validity on a case-by-case basis (as a
> secondary source), I'll have to ask you to show me where in any of our
> policy documents that is stated or implied, because my understanding
> of all the relevant policies is that they are worded precisely so that
> these issues are *not* judged by individual editors on a case-by-case
> basis. Usenet is only allowed as primary-source material in articles
> about itself, and then only in very limited ways, carefully worded,
> balanced by other sources.

Frankly, an unthinking no-tolerance policy that material in, frex,
sci.space.moderated is somehow untouchable is a stupid policy, and I for
one will be bold and continue to ignore it.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in
  sean at epoptic.com | rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Two projects: Official static mirror,	historical
	backup log

body:
Sj wrote:
> ===In the spirit of redundancy and availability===
> A project suggestion:
>
> Develop a completely separate and redundant project to maintain our
> own fast, quickly-updated static mirror of Wikipedia content.  We
> could redirect visitors to this mirror, via DNS if necessary, in case
> of any real catastrophe; it would also be useful when the primary site
> is slow.
>    Advantages: it's redundant.  Improves catastrophe protection.
> Improves availability of data and discussions stored on-wiki. Further
> search improvements?  '''Could be handled entirely separate from core
> cluster work; offloaded onto non-core devs.'''
>    Disadvantages: it's redundant. More work

An entirely separate set will waste resources that could be keeping the
site running well at peak access hours.

What we *should* do however is have the infrastructure ready to switch
over to a good, complete read-only mode as fast as possible when the
core database servers explode. Historically the databases have always
been the sticking point when recovering from 'interesting' problems.

These extra off-site datacenters we'll be setting up soon will fit into
that; they can have local copies of data which they could run read-only
from.

> ===In the spirit of failsafes and backups===
>
> A system to periodically store entire database snapshots (every
> month?), to recover from subtle, undetected database corruption.  (my
> impression was that this is not done already)

Space requirements for this would be on the order of several hundred
gigabytes per year. The days when I could back up all of Wikipedia onto
one CD-R every month are long gone. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: URL changes

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Robert Jones wrote:
>
>> How do I do that?
>
>
> You simply edit LocalSettings.php and put something in it like:
>
>     $wgServer = 'www.URL';

$wgServer must include the protocol (eg 'http://').

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>On 5/6/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>>We can
>>>use Usenet as a source of information about itself, and about its
>>>awards. What we can't do is use it as a secondary source of
>>>information about someone or something else. Even if it's true that
>>>John Smith won the KOM award, we shouldn't include Smith's name,
>>>because to do so is to use Usenet as a *source of information
>>>regarding a subject other than itself*.
>>>
>>>
>>Whoa, that's getting pretty epistemiologically twisty... "A person
>>named 'J-o-h-n S-m-i-t-h' was mentioned as KotM on Usenet, but we
>>make no claim as to who that designates in real life".
>>
>
>That's not what I meant. I was using the name John Smith only as an
>example. My argument about Edmond is that we shouldn't name him at
>all, not that we should give him a pseudonym.
>
No, I was just echoing your use of "John Smith" as a generic example.

Another way to think about this is how you would write up policy.
Would you declare "Usenet is not credible"? Some of the postings
to it are authentic and authoritative though, so you'd have to
introduce some way to distinguish.  "No naming of non-notable
people?" Then you're just in the never-ending argument about
notability. "Have a sense of decency?" Nice, but too subjective
for WP editors to use, given how many of them seem to fall
outside the three-sigma range for human behavior... :-)

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc problems

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Roberto A. Santiago wrote:
>> am working on a shared server (freebsd and apache).  So this might
>
> These are just general debugging suggestions, things you should always
> check when having problems running external programs from a PHP web app:
[snip]

And in particular on FreeBSD, check the PATH environment variable *as it
is present in the web server and passed to the PHP program*. It very
likely does not contain /usr/local/bin, which is where many programs
installed via the ports system will be installed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 05:57]:
> > I'm struggling to understand why people can't see the difference here
> > between using something as a primary and a secondary source. We can
> > use Usenet as a source of information about itself, and about its
> > awards. What we can't do is use it as a secondary source of
> > information about someone or something else. Even if it's true that
>
> Perhaps because you appear to be alternating between the general case and
> this specific case and it isn't clear from each message which is the
> current context. In the general case, of course Usenet content is to be
> salted appropriately; in specific cases, we use editorial judgement. Case
> by case.

Look, the only reason I'm going on about this is that it touches on
some fairly fundamental issues about sticking to policy, about what
counts as a decent reference, and about being fair as well as
accurate. It also raises questions about the use of page protection to
settle content disputes. So in most of what I write, I'm referring to
cases in general, not this specific one, though I may use this one as
an example.

David, if you're saying Usenet is sometimes an acceptable source, and
that we ought to judge its validity on a case-by-case basis (as a
secondary source), I'll have to ask you to show me where in any of our
policy documents that is stated or implied, because my understanding
of all the relevant policies is that they are worded precisely so that
these issues are *not* judged by individual editors on a case-by-case
basis. Usenet is only allowed as primary-source material in articles
about itself, and then only in very limited ways, carefully worded,
balanced by other sources.
>
> In this specific case, not including Wollmann's name would be ridiculous.

I disagree. It wouldn't detract from the article at all to leave his
name out. Far more notable people than him have been given various
awards by this group.

> In addition, if he had not made his name a curse through assiduous effort
> on Usenet (spamming, personal attacks, abuse of ISP abuse processes to an
> actually remarkable degree) and outside Usenet (fraudulent behaviour, the
> attacks and abuse of complaint processes) to such a notable degree that
> people needed to document it searchably, there would be no negative
> consequences of bringing up his name at all. You do appear to be ignoring
> this.

No, I'm not ignoring it. I accept that he's made things a lot worse
for himself, and that he was the cause of the whole thing in the first
place. I accept that.
>
> Usenet is not a fixed and relied-upon source like a peer-reviewed journal,
> but in the *vast* majority of cases, people are who they say they are and
> made their posts.

You can't know this. Most people who post do so anonymously, and even
if you know their real names, what does that tell you? They're not
credible, published sources just because they post to Usenet.
>
Sarah


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikitech-l] RE: Longterm hosting strategy [warning tome]

in_reply_to:
<42695911002105F4@n126.sc0.cp.net> (added
	by	postmaster@bouncemessage.net)

body:
Eden Akhavi wrote:

>If we are talking Europe, I think the key here is to consider where the
>traffic comes from and who has good connectivity to that audience.
>
>
[analysis of network traffic by country snipped]

I'm not sure for our goals it's that big a deal which network we're on,
so long as it's a decent one.  If the bottleneck in Wikipedia's
performance were network latency, we'd be in pretty good shape.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> >We can
> >use Usenet as a source of information about itself, and about its
> >awards. What we can't do is use it as a secondary source of
> >information about someone or something else. Even if it's true that
> >John Smith won the KOM award, we shouldn't include Smith's name,
> >because to do so is to use Usenet as a *source of information
> >regarding a subject other than itself*.
> >
> Whoa, that's getting pretty epistemiologically twisty... "A person
> named 'J-o-h-n S-m-i-t-h' was mentioned as KotM on Usenet, but we
> make no claim as to who that designates in real life".

That's not what I meant. I was using the name John Smith only as an
example. My argument about Edmond is that we shouldn't name him at
all, not that we should give him a pseudonym.
>
> At some point you have to fall back on common sense, or else
> be confined to working on philosophy articles.

Are you saying that people who work on philosophy articles tend to
have no common sense?  LOL! Okay, I may have to concede that one to
you.  ;-p
>
> Another irony is that Usenet was once as revered as a source
> of good information as Google is today - I suspect part of the
> disconnect in the discussion is the difference in perception
> between people for whom it was an important part of their
> lives (in my case, 1982 to 1994 or so), vs those who've
> never known it as anything other than a flame board.
>
That's a good point, though we're discussing it as a source the way it is today.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com stated for the record:

> On 5/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>>Sean Barrett (sean at epoptic.org) [050507 07:27]:
>>
>>
>>>Frankly, an unthinking no-tolerance policy that material in, frex,
>>>sci.space.moderated is somehow untouchable is a stupid policy, and I for
>>>one will be bold and continue to ignore it.
>>
>>Indeed. For example, it is *impossible* to tell the story of
>>[[Scientology]] over the last decade without reference to Usenet. The CoS
>>has made groups.google.com unreliable, but the relevant posts put on the
>>Web are frequently (and properly) used as Wikipedia sources.
>>
>
> David, you're a member of the arbcom, and so the issue of what you
> regard as policy concerning references is important. Please show me
> where our policy states or implies that Usenet might be properly used
> as a Wikipedia source.  Or are you agreeing with Sean that policy
> ought to be ignored?  (I'm not trying to be needlessly confrontational
> here, by the way, or trying to put you on the spot; it's just that the
> issue of citation of credible sources is an important one for me.)
>
> Sarah

Just for the record, where is the policy stating that Usenet /cannot/ be
used?  I'm not being sarcastic; I genuinely don't know.

--
  Sean Barrett     | When you smell an odorless gas,
  sean at epoptic.com | it is probably carbon monoxide.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
> On 5/6/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> > Whoa, that's getting pretty epistemiologically twisty... "A person
> > named 'J-o-h-n S-m-i-t-h' was mentioned as KotM on Usenet, but we
> > make no claim as to who that designates in real life".

As I was overruled about removing the name entirely, I asked for
unprotection and added names of notable people who've won awards from
this group (Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Pierre Salinger, Gary Glitter)
so that Edmond's name stands out less.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Sean Barrett (sean at epoptic.org) [050507 07:27]:
>
> > Frankly, an unthinking no-tolerance policy that material in, frex,
> > sci.space.moderated is somehow untouchable is a stupid policy, and I for
> > one will be bold and continue to ignore it.
>
> Indeed. For example, it is *impossible* to tell the story of
> [[Scientology]] over the last decade without reference to Usenet. The CoS
> has made groups.google.com unreliable, but the relevant posts put on the
> Web are frequently (and properly) used as Wikipedia sources.
>
David, you're a member of the arbcom, and so the issue of what you
regard as policy concerning references is important. Please show me
where our policy states or implies that Usenet might be properly used
as a Wikipedia source.  Or are you agreeing with Sean that policy
ought to be ignored?  (I'm not trying to be needlessly confrontational
here, by the way, or trying to put you on the spot; it's just that the
issue of citation of credible sources is an important one for me.)

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com stated for the record:

> On 5/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>>Just for the record, where is the policy stating that Usenet /cannot/ be
>>used?  I'm not being sarcastic; I genuinely don't know.
>
>
> The relevant policies state that Wikipedia sources must be published
> sources, and that the publishers must be, in some sense, reputable,
> authoritative, and credible. These terms are impossible to define, but
> they boil down to relying on publishing houses that have some form of
> fact-checking procedure, or peer-review if it's an academic subject.
> Sometimes the degree of fact-checking will be minimal, but there
> should be some infrastructure within which information is checked,
> complaints are responded to, and obviously authors are usually not
> anonymous.
>
> None of these things applies to Usenet. It is pretty much the
> definition of a source that should not be used (except in very limited
> circumstances as primary-source material). See [[Wikipedia:No original
> research]] for more details.

So, to summarize, there is no policy stating that Usenet is forbidden as
a source.  Some people (you, for instance) do not consider it to be
reputable source, but nothing forbids some other people (me, for
instance) from disagreeing.  And, most importantly, there is no policy
permitting anti-Usenetters to delete Usenet-based material /just
because/ it originated on Usenet.

Certainly, Usenet contains a mindboggling level of garbage.  It also
contains real facts.  Material from a group like
alt.politics.usa.constitution should be scrutinized much more strictly
than that from a group like sci.space.moderated, but in the end, Usenet
is just as usable as a source as any Web site, popular magazine, or book
from a library.

--
  Sean Barrett     | When you smell an odorless gas,
  sean at epoptic.com | it is probably carbon monoxide.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Faraaz Damji

subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFDL works inside other published works

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

Sorry for digging this back out, but I thought that minor edits can't be
protected by copyright? If so, wouldn't be possible for a lot of the
names to be removed from the list? Also, anonymous users *usually* make
minor edits (doesn't change the content, eg. spelling).  I understand
that those edits wouldn't be marked as such, so someone would have to
manually go through the diffs; however, it could end up reducing (or
even eliminating!) the problem of showing IPs rather than proper names
(the problem is that it doesn't look professional).

- --
Blog: http://frazzydee.ca

Sj wrote:
> Someone in Boston is publishing a book in which he would like to
> include a few entire Wikipedia articles; he wrote me recently to ask
> whether this had been done before, and precisely how he should go
> about including the GFDL where, to clarify which sections of the
> published work it covers, and how he should most perfectly comply with
> the license (should he list main authors himself?  all non-anon
> authors?  should he use pseudonyms or full names of both are
> available? Do IP contributors ever include their real name on their
> user page?  Will it look funny to list pseudonyms as authors in what
> is otherwise a scholarly text?).
>
> If there are precedents, please point me to them.  If anyone can
> advise on this matter, please respond!  Perhaps I should I contact the
> FSF directly, but I thought I'd check with this list first.
>
> --SJ, who is very curious what said book is about
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>On 5/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>>Just for the record, where is the policy stating that Usenet /cannot/ be
>>used?  I'm not being sarcastic; I genuinely don't know.
>>
>
>The relevant policies state that Wikipedia sources must be published
>sources, and that the publishers must be, in some sense, reputable,
>authoritative, and credible. These terms are impossible to define, but
>they boil down to relying on publishing houses that have some form of
>fact-checking procedure, or peer-review if it's an academic subject.
>Sometimes the degree of fact-checking will be minimal, but there
>should be some infrastructure within which information is checked,
>complaints are responded to, and obviously authors are usually not
>anonymous.
>
>None of these things applies to Usenet. It is pretty much the
>definition of a source that should not be used (except in very limited
>circumstances as primary-source material). See [[Wikipedia:No original
>research]] for more details.
>
>
Are you looking at the same page as I am? It notes that for
non-academic subjects, "it is impossible to pin down a clear
definition of 'reputable'", proposes a series of litmus tests to
try, and suggests one's intuition as a fallback. The page also
mentions that a "mix of primary and secondary sources is preferred".

In practice I agree, the main value of old Usenet postings is
as a primary source, for instance, technologies were often
announced and discussed by the principals involved. (Noteworthy
examples include Berners-Lee's announcement of the World Wide
Web itself, and Linus' announcment of Linux on comp.os.minix,
which is linked from our Linux article in fact.)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com stated for the record:

> The anonymous posters on Usenet are not published authors just because
> they post to Usenet. So yes, any editor who wanted to delete material
> sourced to Usenet would be well within their rights - except where
> it's being used as a primary source about itself.

Such deletion would clearly be against policy.  As
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOR#What_counts_as_a_reputable_publication.3F
states, "When dispute arises regarding whether a publication is
reputable, you can attempt to get more editors involved and work toward
a consensus."  Notice that it does not state that a single editor taking
a hardline zero-tolerance stance can delete material simply because that
single editor does not feel that it comes from a reputable source.

--
  Sean Barrett     | No time for goofing off, I
  sean at epoptic.com | got dawdling to do! --Tigger


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Just for the record, where is the policy stating that Usenet /cannot/ be
> used?  I'm not being sarcastic; I genuinely don't know.

The relevant policies state that Wikipedia sources must be published
sources, and that the publishers must be, in some sense, reputable,
authoritative, and credible. These terms are impossible to define, but
they boil down to relying on publishing houses that have some form of
fact-checking procedure, or peer-review if it's an academic subject.
Sometimes the degree of fact-checking will be minimal, but there
should be some infrastructure within which information is checked,
complaints are responded to, and obviously authors are usually not
anonymous.

None of these things applies to Usenet. It is pretty much the
definition of a source that should not be used (except in very limited
circumstances as primary-source material). See [[Wikipedia:No original
research]] for more details.

Sarah


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On Thu, 5 May 2005, Delirium wrote:

> Geoff Burling wrote:
>
> >Usenet is often little more than idle gossip traded by computer users
> >waiting for their programs to compile -- & I challenge anyone to offer a
> >simple rule to determine which posts are unsuitable for citation, & which
> >are. (I suspect that any such argument will simply be a reprise of the
> >recent discussion over which pictures are suitable for children, except
> >that Wikipedia has no way to turn off Usenet citations.)
> >
> >
> That sounds like a notability argument, which is another matter
> entirely.  There are plenty of non-notable things not worth a mention in
> Wikipedia.  However, I'm not sure the alt.usenet.kooks "KOTM award" is
> one of them---I had heard of it before coming to Wikipedia, and it's
> somewhat well-known in the net-culture world.  Not quite the [[IgNobel
> Awards]] --- another set of "anti-awards" --- but not entirely
> unheard-of either.
>
That was not my intent: by saying "idle gossip traded by computer users
waiting for their programs to compile" I was trying to emphasize the fact
many -- if not most -- Usenet users did not take their posting seriously,
thus if a Wikipedian documents an assertion with only a cite from a
Usenet post, it is the same as saying "It must be true; I read it on the
Internet" -- a comment that allows me to elicit peals of laughter from
librarians for some reason.

Because Usenet, Slashdot, blogs & similar fora allow anyone to post
about anything -- they do. Discussion threads can lead all over the place,
& a thoughtful contribution can be followed by an off-topic vulgar insult.
If a Wikipedian cites something that she/he saw on Usenet, how can the
user be sure that the original statement was made by a qualified expert &
not just another opinionated & uninformed loudmouth?

Stan perhaps made my point better later in this thread:

> Another way to think about this is how you would write up policy.
> Would you declare "Usenet is not credible"? Some of the postings
> to it are authentic and authoritative though, so you'd have to
> introduce some way to distinguish.  "No naming of non-notable
> people?" Then you're just in the never-ending argument about
> notability. "Have a sense of decency?" Nice, but too subjective
> for WP editors to use, given how many of them seem to fall
> outside the three-sigma range for human behavior... :-)

The easiest test for reliability of any information posted on Usenet is
to quote it at second hand -- from a book, magazine or website that has
quoted it. In other words, someone else has bet their own reputation on
the specific post as being credible. And in my experience, everything
that is credible on Usenet eventually appears in another place. Which
leads to another test: if a post gets explicit confirmation outside of
Usenet, the post should be cited _if_ it is integral to the article.
An example would be a link to the original Usenet post about the
Pentium bug, which IIRC was first announced on Usenet -- but had been
confirmed by countless other reports.

But if the material only exists in a Usenet post, then the post should
not be cited.

Geoff


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Longterm hosting strategy

body:
Domas has said that in his opinion, we can meet our availability goals
even if we expand the Florida colo, rather than putting servers
elsewhere in the US. If this is indeed the case (and Domas has more
experience than any of us with this sort of thing) then I'd be in favour
of this course of action. It's not clear that we can acheive good
performance without a central database/apache cluster serving the
English Wikipedia.

We can put other wikis in other colos. The small size of the subsidiary
colos will limit their usefulness as a redundant backup if the Florida
colo goes down, but that's OK. We have to consider our goals. I think in
the worst case scenario of an extended failure of the Florida colo, a
reasonable goal is to expect:

* Read-only service after a few hours, using the other colos
* Limited (i.e. slow) read/write service a few hours after that
* Permanent data loss on the order of a few transactions
* Full read/write service after repair or replacement

I don't think it's worth doubling our hardware or accepting a permanent
performance reduction in order to reduce downtime in this unlikely case.
However it is certainly sensible to analyse possible single points of
failure in the main colo, and to take steps to eliminate them.

Currently the main vulnerable points appear to be network and power, and
we've experienced problems with both in the last 6 months. I'm not an
expert on either, but I'm assured securing these services to a
reasonable degree is possible.

Note that eliminating SPOFs is not sufficient to guarantee service. If
we have 5 DB servers running at 95% capacity, we can hardly expect to
lose one of them without performance problems. There are similar
problems in the upstream network -- two weeks ago we temporarily had
extremely high packet loss rates, probably due to a link or router
failure in the backbone network. The solution to this is obvious but
expensive -- buy spares or add capacity.

-- Tim Starling


message_id:
<42695911002105F4@n126.sc0.cp.net> (added by
	postmaster@bouncemessage.net)

from_name: Eden Akhavi

body:
> Belnet/Belgium -- 1 rack of space, unlimited bandwidth, they are ready
> to go Monday, they can do full hands-on, etc., including replacing
> borken hard drives and so on like that.  They are excited to move
> forward quickly.  In this case, we must supply the hardware.  We can
> either buy hardware (with the German money?) or I can ask someone to buy
> it for us (see Big Company X, below).

> Amsterdam - a large NGO wants to do a big press announcement when I'm
> there in Holland at the end of this month.  They are providing a set of
> servers which have already been ordered.  I do not know the exact
> specifications, perhaps someone else can tell me?

If we are talking Europe, I think the key here is to consider where the
traffic comes from and who has good connectivity to that audience.

Belnet is an educational network; so it will be able to provide the best
connectivity to the Belgian educational users (approx 500,000 users); and
connectivity to other networks via BNIX which is generally used by networks
in the Benelux countries. Outside of this it is going to be slower. And I
would expect they would want a cap on their external connectivity - they are
using Cable & Wireless and Cogent amongst others.

The dutch NGO, I cannot comment on but again this seems very Benelux
centric; I think it is important to consider where the primary hotspots of
traffic are:

- UK
- Germany
- Sweden
- Nederlands

If you study each NAP across Europe; you will see that the largest in terms
of traffic is LINX (London). If you then look at the participants on that
NAP you will then see that its not UK centric but a number of US, UK,
German, Dutch and Scandinavian networks are connected there. If you equate
this back in terms of number of users then this one NAP alone gives you many
millions of users; and the majority of tier 1 networks across Europe.

Then looking at the German market; most of the traffic/users are on Deutsche
Telecom's network, they also have multiple interconnects with LINX. The
tier-1 German networks are also well connected internationally.

In Sweden you have a different situation; the majority of traffic (general
not Wikipedia specific) I have measured seems to remain within the region
(SE/NO/DK/FI). This also seems to be how Bredbandsbolaget (main broadband
provider) seems to have dimensioned their network. This could also be down
to language - the Swedish/Norwegian/Danish language is similar enough for
their neighbors content to be of interest to them as well.

Statistics
----------

		Population	Users
Germany	82726188	46312662
UK		59889407	35179141
Italy		58608565	28610000
France	60293927	24848009
Spain		43435136	14590180
Netherlands	16316019	10806328
Poland	38133891	10600000
Sweden	9043990	6656716
Belgium	10443012	5100000
Austria	8163782	4630000
Greece	11212468	3800000
Denmark	5411596	3720000
Portugal	10463170	3600000
Czech 	10230271	3530000
Finland	5246920	3260000
Hungary	10083477	3050000
Ireland	4027303	2060000
Slovakia	5379455	1820000
Latvia	2306489	936000
Slovenia	1956916	800000
Lithuania	3430836	695000
Estonia	1344840	621000
Cyprus	950947	250000
Luxembourg	455581	170000
Malta		384594	120000

In terms of Penetration:

		Population	Users
Sweden	9043990	6656716
Denmark	5411596	3720000
Netherlands	16316019	10806328
Finland	5246920	3260000
UK		59889407	35179141
Austria	8163782	4630000
Germany	82726188	46312662
Ireland	4027303	2060000
Italy		58608565	28610000
Belgium	10443012	5100000
Estonia	1344840	621000
France	60293927	24848009
Slovenia	1956916	800000
Latvia	2306489	936000
Luxembourg	455581	170000
Czech 	10230271	3530000
Portugal	10463170	3600000
Greece	11212468	3800000
Slovakia	5379455	1820000
Spain		43435136	14590180
Malta		384594	120000
Hungary	10083477	3050000
Poland	38133891	10600000
Cyprus	950947	250000
Lithuania	3430836	695000

Assuming that the demand of Wikipedia content is the similar in terms of
percentage of population (its not but I do not have any figures to comment
on that yet), I would strongly consider the following first:

UK: LINX and XchangePoint. This will give access to all the tier 1 networks
in Europe http://green.linx.net/cgi-bin/peering_matrix2.cgi
Sweden: DGIX. This will give access to all the tier 1/2 networks in
Scandinavia. http://www.netnod.se/connected.htm

If anyone has any details traffic analysis for Europe or would like to set
one up, please let me know.

//Eden


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> So, to summarize, there is no policy stating that Usenet is forbidden as
> a source.  Some people (you, for instance) do not consider it to be
> reputable source, but nothing forbids some other people (me, for
> instance) from disagreeing.  And, most importantly, there is no policy
> permitting anti-Usenetters to delete Usenet-based material /just
> because/ it originated on Usenet.
>
Sean, did you read WP:NOR? For example, see this section
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOR#What_counts_as_a_reputable_publication.3F,
though you also need to read the whole thing through. Also read
[[WP:NPOV]].  Both state that sources must be published by
reputable/credible publishers.  I believe [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]]
says the same thing, though it's a while since I've read it. We've
also had this discussion many, many times on this list, and the
consensus seems to be that WP sources must be published and must be
credible.

The anonymous posters on Usenet are not published authors just because
they post to Usenet. So yes, any editor who wanted to delete material
sourced to Usenet would be well within their rights - except where
it's being used as a primary source about itself.

Sarah


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Delirium wrote:
>
>
>>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>My research (conducted in December) showed that half the edits by logged
>>>in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in users.  It would be extremely
>>>interesting to run tests to compare "edit dispersion" for new articles,
>>>old articles, heavily edited articles, highly watched articles, heavily
>>>trafficked articles, etc.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Those sound like plausible numbers, but I think your methodology is
>>somewhat overstating the cohesiveness: The "drive-by editors" who are
>>the least associated with an identifiable Wikipedia community are the
>>users who haven't even bothered to go so far as to create a user
>>account, which you explicitly exclude from your count.
>>
>>
>
>Users who aren't logged in make only around 18% of all edits.  It
>doesn't change the results materially.
>
>
How about when bots are excluded?  Just RamBot is a non-negligible
proportion of the total edits on en:, and obviously what bots do isn't
really a good measure of the social aspects of how humans edit Wikipedia...

-Mark


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>We can put other wikis in other colos. The small size of the subsidiary
>colos will limit their usefulness as a redundant backup if the Florida
>colo goes down, but that's OK. We have to consider our goals. I think in
>the worst case scenario of an extended failure of the Florida colo, a
>reasonable goal is to expect:
>
>* Read-only service after a few hours, using the other colos
>* Limited (i.e. slow) read/write service a few hours after that
>* Permanent data loss on the order of a few transactions
>* Full read/write service after repair or replacement
>
>Currently the main vulnerable points appear to be network and power, and
>we've experienced problems with both in the last 6 months. I'm not an
>expert on either, but I'm assured securing these services to a
>reasonable degree is possible.
>
I would suggest suggest that any new major backup colo in North America
should be in a different power grid area.  This would protect from the
possible consequences of a major blackout such as occurred in 2003.  As
I understand the situation North America has two major power grids, one
in the East and one in the West.  Only Texas and Quebec have independent
grids.

Ec


from_name: W. Guy Finley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/5/05 3:06 PM, "Astrological Consulting" <arcturianone at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Thank you, there are plenty of websites and other forms of abuse against me,
> they can get the information there and decide for themselves.
> It really boils down to the fact that when I started posting in 1996, I didn't
> realize that some of these harassers make a life career out of doing this to
> people. I sent complaints and yanked a few accounts, they have not left me
> alone ever since, it really has little to do with my perspectives.

I love it, it's all a big misunderstanding going back 9 years, really has
nothing to do with his perspectives.  But......

On 5/5/05 3:39 PM, "Astrological Consulting" <arcturianone at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> If it is not removed I will file a lawsuit for damages and MAKE you remove it.

Then we have the true colors which looks awfully similar:

On Fri, 30 Jul 1999, Edmond Wollmann wrote:

 > This is my first request. Remove your defamation or I'll walk down there
 > and yank it off.

(from http://www.smbtech.com/ed/edonsmb.htm)

He hasn't changed from the emails archived all over the place from 9 years
ago, he has the ability to go from zero to apeshit in no time once he
doesn't get his way.

One individual person who makes frequent claims of defamation or whatnot is
definitely not notable or worth consideration of an article.  Someone who's
prolific at it for almost ten years is.

--Guy


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>They are flexible on the amounts -- it is essentially whatever we need
>and can honestly justify.  They are tech savvy and fully agree with my
>view that just throwing random money and servers at us is not the best
>use of our resources -- rather, they prefer that we ask for what we can
>really use in a way that optimizes the use of their money -- best
>strategy for everyone, obviously.
>
>SOOOOOOOOO......
>
>Feedback?
>
>--Jimbo
>
>
>
>
 From the "big picture" viewpoint, this occurs to me:

 From watching the dev wiki and developer log, I can see that a huge
amount of admin effort is devoted to change
management: keeping different installs in sync with one another,
deploying new software, load-balancing, and cutting
over from failed servers to new servers.

As the number of different server farms worldwide gets larger, with
different configurations in different places,
the amount of sysadminning is likely to grow exponentially with the
number of different possible combinations of
software and hardware, rather than linearly with the number of systems
to be administered. Simply scaling up the sysadmin
team to cope will be difficult, so automation is the only way forward in
the medium and long term.

There are a number of tools which can help with this:
* distribution of software using (say) debian packages, so software
dependencies are greatly reduced
* the use of mass-scripting tools for software configuration and rollout
* the use of, or development of, generic tools for detection,
deployment, and load-balancing of resources (and
  shutting them down if they're broken, up to and including STONITH).

Although this sounds very fancy, it need not be. There are already a
number of good free software packages
already available for these jobs:

For example, the Debian packaging tools will do very nicely for the
first case; tools like cfengine are designed to
do the second (there are lots of other alternatives), and Wikipedia is
already using perlbal, which is a simple version of
the sort of software needed to do the third part. (Note that something
like cfengine can be used to do the actual grunt work for the
auto-deployment of resources on nodes, or the shutdown of failed nodes).

Considering this sort of auto-administration now, whilst Wikipedia is
still relatively monolithic, would be a good idea;
the alternative is to be driven to do it at a later date in an unplanned
way.

Regards,

Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Michael P. Hopcroft wrote:

> First of all, the man is an ASTROLOGER. That doesn't bode well for his
> logical capacities in the first place unless he's an outright fraud.
> "Serious discusssion of astrology" is no more possible than serious
> discussion of the belief that every object in the Universe is a
> uniform shade of purple.

That's a shamefully ignorant comment of the kind that can be expected
from those who believe more in scientism than scienc.

Ec


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Sean Barrett (sean at epoptic.org) [050506 11:51]:
> Astrological Consulting stated for the record:

> >Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.
> >(C) 2005 Altair Publications, SAN 299-5603
> >Astrological Consulting http://www.astroconsulting.com/
> >Artworks http://www.e-wollmann.com/
> >http://home.earthlink.net/~arcturianone/

> Googling
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Edmond+Wollmann+kook&btnG=Google+Search
> allows one to wile away as many minutes as one cares to wile.  I had never
> heard of this kook before, but I sure have now.
> http://www.smbtech.com/ed/ is a trove of interesting information.

Indeed. While SlimVirgin's concerns apply in a general sense, specific
cases must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Which includes doing a
bit of research. There's enough out there on Mr Wollmann.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
> On 5/6/05, Josh Gordon <joshua.p.gordon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Mperel made a good point about this elsewhere: "So does this mean you
> would support listing the name of high school girls awarded the name
> "slut" by their male peers under the respective high school articles,
> since it would simply be reporting the verifiable fact that boys at
> high school xyz have called girl abc a "slut"?" --MPerel

Precisely.  The article says AUK called Wollmann a kook because one day in
early 1998 I decided the guy's activities were amusingly self-defeating.
About forty people agreed (they had open voting in those days) and he
joined the likes of Archimedes Plutonium as a Kook of the Month.  He's
been nominated and awarded countless times since.
However I was rather naive in those days.  I believed and still believe
that Wollmann's behavior isn't so much of a problem--he's easily ignored.
However perhaps because of my actions some people seem to have dedicated
large amounts of their lives to denigrating him, and seem to take him
rather more seriously than he really deserves.  I think it would be better
if we didn't feed these people's beliefs that Wollmann is noteworthy and
their long, long jihad is worthy.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Sean Barrett said:
>
> If the administrations of numerous high schools across the country all
> went on record stating that a particular schoolgirl had to be kicked
> out  of all their schools because of her slutty behavior, I would more
> than  "dream of" publishing that information, I'd be getting into
> edit-conflicts trying to be the first to add that information to
> Wikipedia.
>

I think I'd have to protect the page. Wikipedia isn't a place for
recording petty gossip.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: 1.5 upgrade test

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>* The updater ran for a few minutes shy of 10 hours. Most of that time
>>was spent shuffling cur entries into the old table, where they
>>eventually become plain old text entries. The pulling of revision data
>>out of old (by now renamed to text) seemed to take a smaller portion of
>>the time, but I foolishly didn't time the individual steps.
>
> If this proves to be a problem, we could write an external storage class
> for retrieving text from the cur table, similar to the stub objects for
> concatenated gzip compression. That would at least reduce the size of
> the required disk writes. The whole cur row may still need to be loaded
> in order to construct the page table, such is the nature of MySQL. The
> text could be moved to the text table while the wiki is read/write.

I went ahead and tried this last night; it reduced the cur-to-old copy
to about 8 minutes, though the old-to-revision extraction still took
about 5 hours.

This is now checked in, and can be enabled by setting
$wgLegacySchemaConversion = true; before running update.php. There is
not yet a final cur->text migration script but it would be fairly easy
to do.

As for the revision extraction, I suppose it might be acceptable to
extract the current revision data only at first, then fill in the old
revisions during read/write... though that might be confusing and odd,
and page move / deletion / undeletion operations could break things
unless disabled.

There may also be ways to make the copy more efficient; if InnoDB is
trying to bunch up a million rows in one transaction it may be less
efficient than it should be, particularly if the buffers are smallish.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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	<427BBEA2.60309@hackish.org>

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Eden Akhavi wrote:
>
>> If we are talking Europe, I think the key here is to consider where the
>> traffic comes from and who has good connectivity to that audience.
>>
>>
> [analysis of network traffic by country snipped]
>
> I'm not sure for our goals it's that big a deal which network we're
> on, so long as it's a decent one.  If the bottleneck in Wikipedia's
> performance were network latency, we'd be in pretty good shape.
>
> -Mark

You might also want to consider that Wikipedia is, on balance, a large
net source of network traffic, and that peering agreements make most
sense for networks which have balanced traffic in and out (and, for the
same reason, transit gets cheaper for balanced flows, even if you cannot
negotiate settlement-free peering). Thus, network providers with net
inflows may well be able to make substantial cost _savings_ by giving
Wikipedia free bandwidth, power and rackspace.

Wikipedia is rapidly becoming big enough to become a player in the
peering game, or at least should be aware of its advantage to others in
doing so.  I presume this has not escaped the attention of some of our
potential benefactors...

-- Neil


from_name: Robert Jones

subject: [Wikitech-l] URL changes

body:
How do I do that? Is it something within mediawiki or something I have to
change with the server?

> -----Original Message-----
> Robert Jones wrote:
> > I have a problem in that my SERVER_NAME is www.URL but I use the
> > domain name without the www. To host my closed wiki. This
> works fine
> > until I submit an edit and the www. Is added meaning I have
> to log in
> > again.
>
> Override the autodetected $wgServer.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Another irony is that Usenet was once as revered as a source
> of good information as Google is today - I suspect part of the
> disconnect in the discussion is the difference in perception
> between people for whom it was an important part of their
> lives (in my case, 1982 to 1994 or so), vs those who've
> never known it as anything other than a flame board.

There are still useful parts of Usenet, for instance
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/ne.transportation/browse_frm/thread/288c4bbfd0265c9f/c492e9162faefeed
(used as one of several sources for
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasant_Street_Incline ).


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> we're not supposed to use Usenet as a source
> except for material
> about itself.

That is EXACTLY what we're doing.  We are reporting
that THIS PARTICULAR Usenet newsgroup called this guy
"Kook of the Millenium".

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>David, I take your point about him, but I've tried to make it clear
>that I'm not arguing about the individual, but about policy. Our
>secondary sources have to be authoritative, reliable, credible, and in
>some sense reputable. We can use Usenet as a source about itself,
>including as a source about its awards, but we can't use it to name
>individuals, because that's using Usenet as a source for claims about
>that person's notability.
>
I've been reluctant to jump in on this debate, but this position just
seems too peculiar for me to leave it be. We can say that a Usenet group
has voted to give an award to a person, but we can't say who that person
actually is? What would we write instead of the name of the recipient?

> He isn't notable except in Usenet terms.
>
>
So, if there's an article about this newsgroup, he'd be notable in that
article's context?

IMO the newsgroup itself is notable, although I've never visited it
myself I've heard it discussed repeatedly over the years. And if the
newsgroup itself is notable, then I don't see the problem with
describing the major activities that go on there.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> On 5/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > Just for the record, where is the policy stating
> that Usenet /cannot/ be
> > used?  I'm not being sarcastic; I genuinely don't
> know.
>
> The relevant policies state that Wikipedia sources
> must be published
> sources, and that the publishers must be, in some
> sense, reputable,
> authoritative, and credible. These terms are
> impossible to define, but
> they boil down to relying on publishing houses that
> have some form of
> fact-checking procedure, or peer-review if it's an
> academic subject.
> Sometimes the degree of fact-checking will be
> minimal, but there
> should be some infrastructure within which
> information is checked,
> complaints are responded to, and obviously authors
> are usually not
> anonymous.
>
> None of these things applies to Usenet. It is pretty
> much the
> definition of a source that should not be used
> (except in very limited
> circumstances as primary-source material). See
> [[Wikipedia:No original
> research]] for more details.
>
> Sarah

Then all of the information about Sollog has to go,
all of the information about any Usenet celebrity
(Kibo?), all information about any Usenet news group,
unless there is '''''published''''' verification?
Does this mean we can't use links to newspaper
websites?  Those aren't published, after all.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Make Yahoo! your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: URL changes

body:
Robert Jones wrote:
> How do I do that?

You simply edit LocalSettings.php and put something in it like:

	$wgServer = 'www.URL';


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
On Thu, 2005-05-05 at 21:27 -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> While I of course welcome "big picture visionary" statements from people
> who don't know a lot about our actual network and challenges (we can
> learn from that), I'm mostly interested in extremely practical *here and
> now* feedback.  The people who are actually involved in the day to day
> running of the site have a better feel for what makes sense than anyone
> else -- it is their advice which will carry the day.

Sorry, but I have to make a big-picture comment.  The phase 3 software
was a quick hack, and reasonably effective at getting us over the
bandwidth hump until we could afford to throw more hardware at the
problem.  But my impression is that it is still 10-20 times less
efficient than it could be if done right.  Good software takes time to
design and build.  Might it not be wise to consider starting now to
invest in some development work?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected (was: Abuse of your services)

body:
Astrological Consulting wrote:
> You OBVIOUSLY haven't a clue about the law: Defamation= Injuring
> someone's character or reputation by making false and malicious
> statements about him to other people. The law recognizes a difference
> between defamation and mere criticism of an individual. Criticism
> deals only with matters that legitimately invite public attention or
> call for public comment. In contrast, defamation usually involves a
> person's private life and domestic affairs. Calling a woman a
> prostitute or a banker an embezzler, or an astrologer or consultant a
> fraud on a television, radio or usenet public forum are examples of
> defamation. The term defamation includes both libel and slander.
>

So I can't call a woman who has sex for money a "prostitute", a banker
who has stolen from their company an "embezzler", a person (regardless
of occupation) claiming to be something they clearly are not a "fraud",
because that amounts to defamation?

I'll need to add all that to [[free speech]] then.

> Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.

By the way, what does PMAFA stand for?

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax


body:
I see that the overwhelming majority of people here think that splitting
different language wikis away from each other is a good idea?

I guess I can kiss my vision of a unified cross-language watchlist
good-bye then...

Seriously, though: I do not understand how setting up colocations in
other countries is going to accomplish anything that putting the same
hardware into the Florida colo wouldn't already accomplish.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Critics & weak articles

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> David Gerard schrieb:
>
>> I asked Brion to switch this on for test.leuksman.com last night and, er,
>> everything broke :-) So it's off again. But it would be good to have
>> whatever's missing back on so we can beat it around on the test wiki.
>
> Strange... I just set up a brand-new test wiki from CVS HEAD, and
> validation works just fine...

Well, he mentioned somewhere else something about database table
prefixes. Maybe your brand-new test wiki didn't use table prefixes and
therefore didn't run into the problem?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: URL changes

body:
Thanks Biron & Timwi

This:

$wgServer = "http://" . $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"];

Works great.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brion Vibber
> Sent: 06 May 2005 22:36
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: URL changes
>
>
> Timwi wrote:
> > Robert Jones wrote:
> >
> >> How do I do that?
> >
> >
> > You simply edit LocalSettings.php and put something in it like:
> >
> >     $wgServer = 'www.URL';
>
> $wgServer must include the protocol (eg 'http://').
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template asymmetry

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> In practice, I suggest putting the
>
> {{Proposed template}}
>
> tag on top of dubious templates which do not yet have community support.

But you're not following your own doctrine. You didn't put it on top of
[[Template:Proposed template]].


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] Where to find buildtables.sql

body:
On 5/5/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> > OK, one last question.
> >
> > Is there already a 1.4 to 1.5 db migration script?  Otherwise, I may
> > unwittingly become a mediawiki developer.  :)
>
> In updaters.inc, where it's run by the standard updaters
> (config/index.php or update.php).

OK, I see that the updaters.inc is re-runnable, and that it delegates
creation of new db objects to patch files.

It assumes an existing DB with certain schema.  Does it assume 1.4.0
schema?  Also, is there a way I can identify which changes were added
after/prior to 1.4.4 (since that's the live wikipedia version)?

Thanks very much for your previous helpful responses.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] VFD is now a links page

body:
You might've wanted to  discuss this with AllyUnion prior to deciding
on doing it. Nevertheless, it's a good thing. No need to make the long
and hard to load page the default.

--Mgm

On 5/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> [[WP:VFD]] is now a page of links to individual day pages. The reason for
> this is (a) unmanageability and consequent insularity, but more importantly
> (b) this page is a noticeable and undesirable server load ALL BY ITSELF:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-May/029193.html
>
> For those who can't live without the long form week-to-a-view version, it's
> at [[WP:VFDL]]. But at least that's not the default any more.
>
> I await with some trepidation what AllyUnion's VFDbot will do at midnight,
> though, if he hasn't checked his talk page before then ...
>
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion for
> discussion of the hows and whys.
>
> (Longer-term solution: make templates in templates stop working.)
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
>> On 5/6/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>> > Whoa, that's getting pretty epistemiologically twisty... "A person
>> > named 'J-o-h-n S-m-i-t-h' was mentioned as KotM on Usenet, but we
>> > make no claim as to who that designates in real life".
>
> As I was overruled about removing the name entirely, I asked for
> unprotection and added names of notable people who've won awards from
> this group (Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Pierre Salinger, Gary Glitter) so
> that Edmond's name stands out less.

Cool.  Let's just hope they don't join forces and sue our pants off. :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>On 5/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>
>>So, to summarize, there is no policy stating that Usenet is forbidden as
>>a source.  Some people (you, for instance) do not consider it to be
>>reputable source, but nothing forbids some other people (me, for
>>instance) from disagreeing.  And, most importantly, there is no policy
>>permitting anti-Usenetters to delete Usenet-based material /just
>>because/ it originated on Usenet.
>>
>>
>Sean, did you read WP:NOR? For example, see this section
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOR#What_counts_as_a_reputable_publication.3F,
>though you also need to read the whole thing through. Also read
>[[WP:NPOV]].  Both state that sources must be published by
>reputable/credible publishers.  I believe [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]]
>says the same thing, though it's a while since I've read it. We've
>also had this discussion many, many times on this list, and the
>consensus seems to be that WP sources must be published and must be
>credible.
>
This is ever so much policy-geekism.  I certainly don't need to read
interminable pages of rules to tell me how to apply common sense.  Much
of this should never be treated as anything more than guidelines.  It
may be possible to develop applicable techniques to determine whether
something has been published, the determination of credibility (whether
of the work or its publisher) is essentially subjective.  It's
impossible to say that something is credible without expressing a POV.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Michael P. Hopcroft wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Michael P. Hopcroft wrote:
>>
>>> First of all, the man is an ASTROLOGER. That doesn't bode well for
>>> his logical capacities in the first place unless he's an outright
>>> fraud. "Serious discusssion of astrology" is no more possible than
>>> serious discussion of the belief that every object in the Universe
>>> is a uniform shade of purple.
>>
>> That's a shamefully ignorant comment of the kind that can be expected
>> from those who believe more in scientism than science.
>
> I have no idea what 'scientism" is, but I do know that the idea that
> randomly placed thermonuclear reactors dozens, hundreds and thousands
> of light-years away have a direct influence on what happens to human
> beings on Earth is illogical to the point of delusion. Even if they
> were capable of thought, which is insanity in itself, how could they
> possibly care?

According to Oxford scientism is the "excessive belief in the power of
scientific knowledge and techniques."  In many instances it takes on the
characteristics of a religion.

You began by making a wild comment about astrology and astrologers, and
now you want to compound the issue with your creationist premise that
someone has been going around placing thermonuclear reactors just so
that you can set up some kind of straw man argument.

> Some hypotheses are too utterly absurd to be worth exploring. And I'm
> going to drop the subject at this point because we are getting
> woefully off-topic.

Absurdity is a Point of View, but since the only hypothesis that has
been raised is yours about the placement of thermonuclear reactors, I
must agree with you.

Since you were the one that raised the issue of astrology and chose to
say nothing about it, and furthermore want to drop your subject I must
agree with that and accept your apology.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
David Gerard said:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 09:33]:
>
>> The anonymous posters on Usenet are not published authors just because
>> they post to Usenet. So yes, any editor who wanted to delete material
>> sourced to Usenet would be well within their rights - except where
>> it's being used as a primary source about itself.
>
>
> Although in practice, this would be disruption to make a point. Why are
> you hardly being agreed with?

I happen to find slimvirgin's argument impossible to answer.  As a
secondary source, Usenet will never, ever be even remotely citable on the
subject of the world outside Usenet.  I would not regard deletion of
Usenet-sourced material as disruption to make a point.  Where we can trust
what Usenet says, it is because, like Wikipedia, its information about the
universe outside Usenet is independently verifiable.  I would probably
oppose any suggestion that Usenet posts were intrinsically interesting,
and certainly oppose any suggestion that  individual Usenet posts can be
authoritative about anything outside themselves.


from_name: Deathphoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050507 09:54]:
>
>
>
>>David Gerard said:
>>
>>
>>>slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 09:33]:
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>>>The anonymous posters on Usenet are not published authors just because
>>>>they post to Usenet. So yes, any editor who wanted to delete material
>>>>sourced to Usenet would be well within their rights - except where
>>>>it's being used as a primary source about itself.
>>>>
>>>>
>
>
>
>>>Although in practice, this would be disruption to make a point. Why are
>>>you hardly being agreed with?
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>I happen to find slimvirgin's argument impossible to answer.  As a
>>secondary source, Usenet will never, ever be even remotely citable on the
>>subject of the world outside Usenet.  I would not regard deletion of
>>Usenet-sourced material as disruption to make a point.
>>
>>
>
>
>I found it very useful for [[The Eye of Argon]], for instance.
>
>
>
I also found it useful regarding a conversation between Andrew S.
Tanenbaum and some guy named Linus Torvalds. For instance, under
[[flaming]], which would you prefer?

1. For example, the Usenet discussion between Andrew S. Tanenbaum and
Linus Torvalds on microkernel versus monolithic kernel operating system
design has been described as a famous "flame war".

2. For example, the Usenet discussion between a computer science
professor and a software developer on microkernel versus monolithic
kernel operating system design has been described as a famous "flame war".


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Only non-commercial re-use od Wiki content?

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> In my opinion, PD in that case should simply be taken to mean "the
> author grants everyone unlimited rights to do as they please."
>
>Which, by the way, is indeed impossible in the law of certain
>countries. I as a Dutchman for example cannot sign away my right to
>object to the material being published under another name than mine,
>or to mutilation of the work in such a way that it is damaging to my
>honour or good name as the author.
>
This sounds as though you're mixing up copyrights and moral rights.
Copyright is an economic right.  Allowing all others to republish the
work without paying royalties falls within that.  Demanding that you be
shown as the author is a different thing.  Whether a "mutilation"
damages your honour or good name would be an arguable question of fact.
Parodies would not fall into that.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l


body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:

>> That's an awful lot to proclaim without a supporting argument.  I'm
>> interested in details of why you think so.
>
> Well, my PhD is on the emergence of Law and I am using wikimedia and
> wikipedia as demonstrations for my arguments :)
>
> But you're right, I should write something on it !

A simpler response would be to cite the clause in the statute that says
this.  To me a fundamental principal of law is that anything which is
not specifically forbidden is allowed.

Ec


message_id:
<4269532400244DF2@n120.sc0.cp.net> (added by
	postmaster@bouncemessage.net)

body:
> Seriously, though: I do not understand how setting up
> colocations in other countries is going to accomplish
> anything that putting the same hardware into the Florida colo
> wouldn't already accomplish.

Disaster recovery, power failure (UPS/Generator failure), fibre cut, ISP
going bankrupt leading to lock out, international fibre system failure,
faster access for non US customers, etc.

Florida is not an ideal location either from a US network perspective, most
of the European landings are in NY; whereas Asian landings are California.
>From memory I think the Columbus cable system is the only transatlantic
fibre to land in Florida which connects to Tarifa in Southern Spain; and the
Spanish end is not idea for European connectivity.

//Eden


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc problems

body:
On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 02:37:48PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> >Roberto A. Santiago wrote:
> >>am working on a shared server (freebsd and apache).  So this might
> >
> >These are just general debugging suggestions, things you should always
> >check when having problems running external programs from a PHP web app:
> [snip]
>
> And in particular on FreeBSD, check the PATH environment variable *as it
> is present in the web server and passed to the PHP program*. It very
> likely does not contain /usr/local/bin, which is where many programs
> installed via the ports system will be installed.

Indeed the $PATH seems to be the most common problem.

Check http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Problems_with_texvc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 03:00]:

> There's nothing worse than a powerful journalist who uses his or her
> position in the manner described above, and we've all become people
> who have, in many ways, just as much power (but without any of the
> infrastructural restraints journalists have), which means we have to
> exercise self-restraint and be decent. What's wrong with being decent
> all of a sudden?

Please go do your research on Mr Wollmann; enough pointers have certainly
been posted to the list.

- d.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Invalid XML in the codebase

body:
I often come across invalid XML in the codebase, such as unquoted
attributes or unclosed tags, this is a request my fellow developers to
help ensure that our output meets the XHTML spec at all times, one way
to do help ensure this is to add:

$wgMimeType = 'application/xhtml+xml';

To LocalSettings.php, if you're using a Gecko browser for testing this
will activate its strict mode causing it to trow parsing errors if
finds invalid XML.


from_name: Sj

body:
On 5/6/05, Faraaz Damji <frazzydee at spymac.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Sorry for digging this back out, but I thought that minor edits can't be
> protected by copyright? If so, wouldn't be possible for a lot of the
> names to be removed from the list?

Interesting idea.  I suppose so... though many minor edits are made by
users who also make major edits to the same article.  There's
something to be said for preferentially crediting the editors who have
contributed the most to an article.

< Also, anonymous users *usually* make
> minor edits (doesn't change the content, eg. spelling).  I understand
> that those edits wouldn't be marked as such, so someone would have to
> manually go through the diffs; however, it could end up reducing (or
> even eliminating!) the problem of showing IPs rather than proper names
> (the problem is that it doesn't look professional).

There have been so many strong claims made about what anonymous
editors do recently! We should track them, so we can figure out which
ones are accurate at any given moment.   I agree with David Gerard
that just saying "And anonymous editors" would be fine; the question
is, for editors known only by the pseudonym "FunkyMan13," how to
credit them without looking unprofessional.

And a lot of anon edits are not minor.  I just browsed through the
changes made to articles by the last 25 anon contributors (starting at
03:44 UTC), and 40% of them were major (adding a few sentences, a
section, significant references or lists).

Still haven't found out which articles were being used,
  SJ


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: VfD needs to be internally wired

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

: VFD puts great strain on the server as it is, because the server is
: forced to regularly render the whole page, consisting of a few megabytes
: of HTML. If you can break it down into small sections, I think that will
: be a win for performance, even if there is less opportunity for caching.

Tim, this is being bitterly resisted by VFD habitues on VFD talk. Please
stop by and give numbers if needed to convince:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#Can_we_please_stop_listing_THE_ENTIRE_WEEK_in_one_place.3F

Jamesday may also care to weigh in - VFD is composed of metatemplates,
which are a known noxious entity.

Please let them know that insisting their 1.5 megabyte page be the
*default* deletion portal is actually a bad idea.

- d.


from_name: walter compton

subject: [WikiEN-l] the wonder of it all

body: Can you tell me how to find "The Wonder of it All ?


body:
David Gerard (fun at thingy.apana.org.au) [050507 05:04]:

> Tim, this is being bitterly resisted by VFD habitues on VFD talk. Please
> stop by and give numbers if needed to convince:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#Can_we_please_stop_listing_THE_ENTIRE_WEEK_in_one_place.3F
> Jamesday may also care to weigh in - VFD is composed of metatemplates,
> which are a known noxious entity.
> Please let them know that insisting their 1.5 megabyte page be the
> *default* deletion portal is actually a bad idea.

[[:en:User:jguk]] has boldly made a shorter and saner page. The original
longform page is at [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (long form)]] (shortcut
[[WP:VFDL]]) for those who insist they can't live without it. 'Cos you just
know they'd recreate it in their own user space if it was taken away.

Weighing in may still be needed. Also, the change probably breaks
AllyUnion's VFDbot, so we'll see what happens when that swings by at
midnight ...

(Longer-term possible fixes: make templates in templates stop working.)

- d.


from_name: DAVIDARPS at aol.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Sympathy entry: there appears to be an error in the
	example

body:
Below is from the Sympathy entr
The bold statements appear to be reversed.
Thus it is possible to be:
    *   Empathetic but not sympathetic, by internally experiencing their
feeling but not being motivated to alleviating action as a result (eg, a lust
killer who is aroused by his victim's fear, or a con artist who knows how his
"mark" feels but uses it to manipulate not support),
and it is also  possible to be:
    *   Sympathetic but not empathetic by realising (perhaps _cognitively_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognition) )  someone is upset and wanting to
alleviate that, but not experiencing their  sense of upset directly and internally
as an emotional state within themselves  (eg, a person at a help desk who
sees another in distress, does not feel  distress themselves, but tries to find
what is wrong and help them anyway).
[_edit_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sympathy&action=edit&section=1) ]
See also


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 05:25]:

> Right. If he's named as a kook (or anything) somewhere vaguely
> reputable, we can use it. But we can't allow Usenet to determine who
> is or isn't notable.

On that basis, we wouldn't have articles about Usenet at all. We do,
therefore your assertion that Usenet notability is not notability at all
ever is evidently not the case.

(And that's not even pointing out that "notable" is not and has never been
a criterion, and in fact failed to be ratified as policy. Because the
policy is and remains *verifiability*, of which Mr Wollmann has provided
buckets outside Usenet.)

> Also bear in mind that your disreputable ancient Roman figures are
> long dead. Their livelihoods aren't going to be harmed because someone
> calls them smelly.  ;-)

If Mr Wollmann's livelihood is harmed, it's by people looking him up and
seeing the pages documenting his past fraudulent behaviour. That's what
really riles him.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFD is now a links page

body:
[[WP:VFD]] is now a page of links to individual day pages. The reason for
this is (a) unmanageability and consequent insularity, but more importantly
(b) this page is a noticeable and undesirable server load ALL BY ITSELF:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-May/029193.html

For those who can't live without the long form week-to-a-view version, it's
at [[WP:VFDL]]. But at least that's not the default any more.

I await with some trepidation what AllyUnion's VFDbot will do at midnight,
though, if he hasn't checked his talk page before then ...

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion for
discussion of the hows and whys.

(Longer-term solution: make templates in templates stop working.)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] REMOTE_USER instead of REMOTE_ADDR

body:
The list for this sort of discussion is mediawiki-l, which is the list
about the software itself:

    http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

This question (auto-login to someone's NT login) has been asked a bit
recently, and several people have told of their ways to do this; you should
find the list archive of interest.

(cc and reply-to mediawiki-l)

- d.

Chris McIntosh (cmcintosh at gmail.com) [050507 06:03]:

> I am working on an Intranet where we are spinning off many wiki's per
> project. In the forseeable future we might have 5-10 separate
> instances of the Wiki's.
>
> Because of this I would like to make it easy for people to move
> between the Wiki's without having to login each time.
>
> A simple mod I just wrote will grab the REMOTE_USER which is their
> NTACCOUNT on our intranet and use that instead of IP.
>
> I set a flag in LocalSettings to allow me to turn this on|off.
>
> My questions are: is this a good way to do this? Are there better
> ways? Will this break anything?
>
> Thanks,
> Chris McIntosh
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 05:57]:
> On 5/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 05:25]:

> > > Right. If he's named as a kook (or anything) somewhere vaguely
> > > reputable, we can use it. But we can't allow Usenet to determine who
> > > is or isn't notable.

> > On that basis, we wouldn't have articles about Usenet at all. We do,
> > therefore your assertion that Usenet notability is not notability at all
> > ever is evidently not the case.

> I'm struggling to understand why people can't see the difference here
> between using something as a primary and a secondary source. We can
> use Usenet as a source of information about itself, and about its
> awards. What we can't do is use it as a secondary source of
> information about someone or something else. Even if it's true that

Perhaps because you appear to be alternating between the general case and
this specific case and it isn't clear from each message which is the
current context. In the general case, of course Usenet content is to be
salted appropriately; in specific cases, we use editorial judgement. Case
by case.

In this specific case, not including Wollmann's name would be ridiculous.
In addition, if he had not made his name a curse through assiduous effort
on Usenet (spamming, personal attacks, abuse of ISP abuse processes to an
actually remarkable degree) and outside Usenet (fraudulent behaviour, the
attacks and abuse of complaint processes) to such a notable degree that
people needed to document it searchably, there would be no negative
consequences of bringing up his name at all. You do appear to be ignoring
this.

Usenet is not a fixed and relied-upon source like a peer-reviewed journal,
but in the *vast* majority of cases, people are who they say they are and
made their posts. (Modulo anomalies like the [[sporgery]] on
[[alt.religion.scientology]].)

We have lots of sources of dubious reliability on Wikipedia; we sort them
out using (a) editorial judgement and (b) not insulting the intelligence of
the reader and assuming they're too stupid to judge a source.

- d.


body:
Faraaz Damji (frazzydee at spymac.com) [050507 06:29]:

> Sorry for digging this back out, but I thought that minor edits can't be
> protected by copyright? If so, wouldn't be possible for a lot of the
> names to be removed from the list? Also, anonymous users *usually* make
> minor edits (doesn't change the content, eg. spelling).  I understand
> that those edits wouldn't be marked as such, so someone would have to
> manually go through the diffs; however, it could end up reducing (or
> even eliminating!) the problem of showing IPs rather than proper names
> (the problem is that it doesn't look professional).

The problem with anonymous writers is that they are, er, anonymous. Full
author credits in Flyspeck 3 with "and X anonymous contributors" would
surely be sufficient good-faith effort that no *sane* judge would accept a
claim that a given anon wasn't identified.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFD is now a links page

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm (macgyvermagic at gmail.com) [050507 07:23]:

> You might've wanted to  discuss this with AllyUnion prior to deciding
> on doing it. Nevertheless, it's a good thing. No need to make the long
> and hard to load page the default.

I didn't do it :-) I put forward the idea before and it was shouted down;
this time around, the red mist descended over jguk's eyes. I'm just letting
the list know.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Sean Barrett (sean at epoptic.org) [050507 07:27]:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com stated for the record:

> >David, if you're saying Usenet is sometimes an acceptable source, and
> >that we ought to judge its validity on a case-by-case basis (as a
> >secondary source), I'll have to ask you to show me where in any of our
> >policy documents that is stated or implied, because my understanding
> >of all the relevant policies is that they are worded precisely so that
> >these issues are *not* judged by individual editors on a case-by-case
> >basis. Usenet is only allowed as primary-source material in articles
> >about itself, and then only in very limited ways, carefully worded,
> >balanced by other sources.

> Frankly, an unthinking no-tolerance policy that material in, frex,
> sci.space.moderated is somehow untouchable is a stupid policy, and I for
> one will be bold and continue to ignore it.

Indeed. For example, it is *impossible* to tell the story of
[[Scientology]] over the last decade without reference to Usenet. The CoS
has made groups.google.com unreliable, but the relevant posts put on the
Web are frequently (and properly) used as Wikipedia sources.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Stan Shebs (shebs at apple.com) [050507 07:22]:

> It really depends on the era. If you have a John Mashey or Erik Fair
> posting from 1983, it's almost certainly authentic and authoritative
> (the kremvax hoax of 1984 was the first time that most of us were
> even aware that forged postings were possible). Conversely, anybody
> can print a credible-looking book these days, so one's analysis of
> believability has to be based on context and content, not just the
> mechanism of transport.

i.e., editorial judgement and reader judgement.

- d.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm stated for the record:

> Websites of established newspapers may not be published in the
> original sense, but they're still run by the attached news agency and
> therefore trustworthy sources.

/me snorts coffee though his nose.

News agencies are trustworthy sources?  Are you on drugs, or someone's
payroll?

May I suggest you start with [[Journalism scandals]], and let us know
when you've caught up to the present?

--
  Sean Barrett     | We're going to take things away from
  sean at epoptic.com | you on behalf of the common good.
                   | --Hillary Clinton, 28 June 2004,
                   | at a fundraiser for Barbara Boxer


from_name: Stirling Newberry

body:
On May 7, 2005, at 7:43 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
>>
>>>> That's an awful lot to proclaim without a supporting argument.  I'm
>>>> interested in details of why you think so.
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, my PhD is on the emergence of Law and I am using wikimedia and
>>> wikipedia as demonstrations for my arguments :)
>>>
>>> But you're right, I should write something on it !
>>
>>
>> A simpler response would be to cite the clause in the statute that
>> says this.  To me a fundamental principal of law is that anything
>> which is not specifically forbidden is allowed.
>>
>> Ec
>>

It isn't a principle of law, the correct principle is "that which is
not forbidden is allowed". The specifically changes the meaning
entirely.


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Timwi wrote:
>
> I see that the overwhelming majority of people here think that splitting
> different language wikis away from each other is a good idea?
>
> I guess I can kiss my vision of a unified cross-language watchlist
> good-bye then...
>
> Seriously, though: I do not understand how setting up colocations in
> other countries is going to accomplish anything that putting the same
> hardware into the Florida colo wouldn't already accomplish.

It accomplishes the acquisition of hardware that we wouldn't have had
otherwise. The hardware/hosting donations were contingent on their
location.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Roberto A. Santiago

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc problems

body:
Thanks for all the information.  it really served as a nice checklist of
things I had already checked and things I needed to check.  Tomasz, your
suggestion was the critical one and your pointer to the "Problems with
texvc" page made all the difference.  In particular, the section about
including the pathing in the render.ml file and recompiling did the
trick.  I also consulted with several other colleagues on this issue as
well as my hosting company.   The problem I had with texvc seems to
occur regularly in the shared hosting situation.  Indeed, if you go to
google and search for the error string "Failed to parse (PNG conversion
failed; check for correct installation of latex, dvips, gs, and
convert)" you will find many sites suffering from this problem.
Fortunately, not only did I get a great list of things to check (and
explanations of why and how to check them) but also a couple of
alternatives to texvc which I was able to make work.  I want to put my
notes (mostly other people's emails) together in an article and post
it.  I was wondering where might be the best place.   Certainly, it
would be useful in the installation documentations  and as an addition
to the "Problems with texvc" page.  Are there other points where it
would be useful?

Thanks Again

Roberto

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 02:37:48PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Roberto A. Santiago wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>am working on a shared server (freebsd and apache).  So this might
>>>>
>>>>
>>>These are just general debugging suggestions, things you should always
>>>check when having problems running external programs from a PHP web app:
>>>
>>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>And in particular on FreeBSD, check the PATH environment variable *as it
>>is present in the web server and passed to the PHP program*. It very
>>likely does not contain /usr/local/bin, which is where many programs
>>installed via the ports system will be installed.
>>
>>
>
>Indeed the $PATH seems to be the most common problem.
>
>Check http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Problems_with_texvc
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 09:33]:

> The anonymous posters on Usenet are not published authors just because
> they post to Usenet. So yes, any editor who wanted to delete material
> sourced to Usenet would be well within their rights - except where
> it's being used as a primary source about itself.

Although in practice, this would be disruption to make a point. Why are you
hardly being agreed with?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050507 09:54]:

> David Gerard said:
> > slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 09:33]:

> >> The anonymous posters on Usenet are not published authors just because
> >> they post to Usenet. So yes, any editor who wanted to delete material
> >> sourced to Usenet would be well within their rights - except where
> >> it's being used as a primary source about itself.

> > Although in practice, this would be disruption to make a point. Why are
> > you hardly being agreed with?

> I happen to find slimvirgin's argument impossible to answer.  As a
> secondary source, Usenet will never, ever be even remotely citable on the
> subject of the world outside Usenet.  I would not regard deletion of
> Usenet-sourced material as disruption to make a point.

I found it very useful for [[The Eye of Argon]], for instance.

- d.


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On 5/7/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> This sounds as though you're mixing up copyrights and moral rights.
> Copyright is an economic right.  Allowing all others to republish the
> work without paying royalties falls within that.  Demanding that you be
> shown as the author is a different thing.  Whether a "mutilation"
> damages your honour or good name would be an arguable question of fact.
> Parodies would not fall into that.

I don't understand your statement. The question was whether it was
possible to put some of your work in the public domain. Public domain
to me means "Anyone can use it however they like". The law says that
there are certain rights to the work that I cannot sign away. Thus, I
cannot put it in the public domain. I *can* allow others to republish
the work without royalties, but there are certain rights I cannot give
them.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
On 5/6/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> That sounds great, but it raises some issues that are, for the most
> part, specific to Wikipedia and not many other projects/companies/et
> cetera.  At least, it potentially raises such issues, depending on what
> exactly you mean to do with that read-only copy.  Do you mean to have it
> in operation as a way to serve pages concurrently with the primary
> setup, or do you mean it to be sort of a failover backup?  If the
> latter, I'm all for it, if the Powers That Be decide it's in the stars
> for us.  If the former, however, I might bring up those potential issues
> to which I already alluded.

The primary use I was thinking of was as a failover option, even if
all normal servers blow up, go down, etc. But as long as such a system
is set up, however, why shouldn't it be available all the time?  For
instance, if I were to design a game that involved regularly querying
WP content (and needed quick response times for it not to slow down
gameplay)... it would be much easier to do that through a central
static site than by setting up an incrementally-updating local mirror.

No need for us to rely on third parties like factindex to provide fast
static mirrors of Wikipedia content when that is what 90% of our
visitors want to see.  (Or perhaps there is such a need?  Depending on
said potential issues.)

Timwi: having different langs in different data centers wouldn't make
it impossible to have a cross-language watchlist; it would just have
to be done carefully, without too much between-datacenter latency...
--
+sj+