from_name: Oliver Pereira

body:
On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Tony Wilson wrote:

> Issue No 1: "1 April" or "April 1". WHO CARES? Anyone who
> can't count up on his fingers and decide "1 April" and
> "April 1" both mean April Fools' Day, please email me right
> away.

Okay, I'll e-mail you right away...

A month followed by a number means a month within a year, to me. In an
article about Roman history, an unlinked date of the form "April 1"
could mean April in the year 1 AD, and so could easily be ambiguous. Hope
that helps.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: tarquin

subject:
The Style Oppressors (was: [WikiEN-l] Oh No! Not another date format
 post!)

body:
Tony Wilson wrote:

>But when I'm
>crafting the body of an entry, I should hope I've got
>better things to do with my mind than stuff about trying to
>remember which particular order the Wikipedia Style Guide
>Nazis are insisting on.
>
>
>
I thought the opening paragraphs of the actual manual of Style page made
it clear:

the average contributor is NOT expected to follow the style guidelines,
in the same way that we don't expect perfect spealling.

>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] What W is not

body:
Cunctator has made a number of additions to the "What Wikipedia is not"
policy page

To see the diff:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not&diff=0&oldid=715621

The one I quety is this, under the "not a genealogical or biographical
dictionary" heading:

  A good measure of achievement is whether their lives (or deaths) were
newsworthy, that is, that there exist external sources on the people.

It seems to me that Cunc has added this so he can better justify the
keeping of the Sep11 casualties in Wikipedia.

any thoughts on this?


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] SoftSecurity, Roman style (was: Return of DW?)

body:
--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:

> Me, I want to create something good, not just spend all my time
> painting
> over graffiti.
> If I enjoyed the endless, losing fight against entropy, I'd go
> scrub my
> kitchen floor.

I second that sentiment from Vicky.

I want to create and shape. I'll stand a little bit of housecleaning,
but just a little bit.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Style Oppressors

body:
Tony Wilson wrote:

>Mav said:
>
>
>
>>you should calm down and realize that what is being proposed would be no
>>more mandatory than what we have now. I've already explained this on the talk page.
>>
>>
>
>Put it in the ACTUAL PROPOSAL and I'll start to take it seriously.
>
>
>
It's at the very top of:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AManual_of_Style

I thought it was clear that any MoS page depended from that top-level page.

I quote:

New contributors are reminded that clear, informative and unbiased
writing is always more important than presentation and formatting.
*Writers are NOT expected or required to follow all or any these rules*:
the joy of wiki editing
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy> is that
perfection is not required. Copy-editing wikipedians will be referring
to these pages when weeding
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Weeding_Wild_Wikipedia>, and
pages will be gradually made to conform with this guide.

>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] What W is not

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> A good measure of achievement is whether their lives (or deaths)
> were
> newsworthy, that is, that there exist external sources on the
> people.

Define newsworthy in this day of blogs and instant reporting about
every little thing.

<fictitious>
The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday about a shop owner in los
angeles who finds the restriction on liquor permits restrictive.
</fictitious>

It was in print in a national newspaper. Should it be here? Probably
not.

Likewise is something was not in print in a newspaper and not covered
by CNN, does that by default make it not encyclopedia-ish?

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] What W is not

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> In terms of your fictitious example, it probably wouldn't merit its
> own
> entry, but it would certainly be reasonable for there to be an
> entry
> that discusses Los Angeles liquor permits, referencing that
> article. If
> that shopkeeper was killed by a cartel of teetotalers, for example,
> then
> the shopkeeper might merit his own entry.

I hear you.

I just tried to make the point that newsworthiness was not
necessarily a criteria for inclusiveness into the W.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Style Oppressors

body:
--- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
> ...The wish to micro-regulate small and irrelevant
> details of what other people do (or, in this case, write) is
> entirely
> deserving of the term "Style Nazi" - for surely it is not the term
> which is offensive, it is the behaviour which gives rise to it and
> makes it apt.

The term is offensive.

<mature audience>Just like "FUCK YOU".</mature audience>

Feel offended yet?

You get the point.

<rant>
I grew up in France. We had upward of 5 million casulaties in WWII.
People in my family whom I have had dinner with spent years in labor
camps in Baden Baden, under Nazi rule.
</rant>

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Do we really want to confuse every American  who
 reads the Wikipedia?

body:
On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> The people who use the "2 March 2003" style would say "Second March,
> 2003", not "Two March". It's natural to British speech (or, at least,
> none of my British friends seem to find it artificial when they use it).

"*The* second *of* March 2003", in fact. It being the second day of the
month of March. Logical, see? :)

"March the second" sounds to my ear like a reference to another March,
some time after the first one, much like "Elizabeth the second"...  ;)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lists which are sheer nonsense

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>As far as I have been able to determine, though, "American" is often
>used by Canadian, British, and Australian newspapers to refer solely
>to the United States.

Yes, even people who object to this usage often lapse into it. The
term "American" is less cumbersome than "United States citizen,"
which accounts in part for its popularity. Other terms also exist,
such as "yanks" or "gringos." However, the fact that these usages
exist doesn't mean we should adopt them for Wikipedia. (I don't see
anyone advocating that we call this article a "list of gringos.")

>We should be highly sensitive to word usages that are not universal,
>particularly if there's a double meaning that's offensive to some.

The term "American" has multiple meanings, including the following:

(1) pertaining to the continents of North and South America

(2) pertaining specifically to the United States of America

(3) supportive of the U.S. government, politically conservative,
pro-war (For example, the House Un-American Activities Committee
declared U.S. citizens "un-American" for various alleged political
sins. and more recently you can find examples of newspaper columnists
declaring U.S. peace protesters "anti-American.")

As I stated previously, I don't have any personal objection to usages
(1) or (2), although I do take offense when people insinuate that
peace activists are anti-American. However, I think the term "United
States citizen" should be preferred on Wikipedia because it is more
precise than "American" and also carries less political baggage.

>In making decisions like this, we shouldn't just go on a vague "urban
>legend" that some people might be offended.  Are there authorities
>(style guides, for example) which recommend against the usage?

The fact that some people object to this is not an "urban legend." I
know people personally who object to it. Also, you can do a Google
search and find examples of people expressing their objections. For
example, here's a column from Sonoma Business magazine which
criticizes the usage:

http://www.sonomabusiness.com/archives/2002-04-column-gizzi.html

You can disagree with this guy's reasoning, but it's not an "urban
legend" to say that opinions like this exist.

As for style guides, the style guide for the journal of the American
Anthropological Association says, "#"America or American: For clarity
use the noun United States  and the adjective U.S. unless a wider
region is intended":
http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_guide.pdf

In a similar vein, "Sea Power" magazine offers editorial guidelines
for prospective authors, which state, "American. Use sparingly when
the intent is to describe U.S. citizens, the U.S. military, etc.":
http://www.navyleague.org/sea_power/style_guide.php

In a separate thread, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>What about immigrants who haven't gotten citizenship yet? With any name,
>someone will be offended. Besides, do you think the Canadians are really
>offended by it anyway?

It's not just the Canadians. For example, I've spoken with people
from Latin America who express resentment at the seeming U.S.
monopoly on the term "American" and think it contributes to the U.S.
tendency to treat Latin America as "our back yard" (a phrase that
Ronald Reagan used when justifying U.S. military intervention in
Central America).

Actually, Daniel's comment demonstrates my point about the vagueness
of the phrase "Americans." A "list of Americans" could include
immigrants who don't have U.S. citizenship, whereas a "list of United
States citizens" couldn't. Thus, "list of Americans" is so
conceptually vague that it could conceivably include Mohammed Atta.
He was an "immigrant" who "hadn't gotten citizenship" at the time he
flew an airplane into the World Trade Center.

As for the notion that "list of U.S. citizens" might offend
immigrants, I find this implausible unless we assume that there's
something unique in this regard about the United States. Why should
"list of U.S. citizens" be any more offensive than "list of French
citizens"?
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Do we really want to confuse every American who reads the Wikipedia?

body:
Jimmy Wales said:

> > 2 March 2003 is logical, natural to speech, and (so long as the
> > month name is used) unambiguous.
>
> I asked this question on a talk page, and I'm basically just ignorant
> on this issue: is '2 March 2003' natural to speech?
>
> Americans almost never speak that way.  We would say "March the
> Second, Two Thousand and Three" or "March Second, Two Thousand and
> Three".  We would never say "Two March Two Thousand and Three".
>
> --Jimbo

I'm in England and I would say:  Second of March, Two Thousand and Three.

sannse


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What W is not

body:
On Mon, 2003-03-03 at 14:31, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Cunc wrote:
> >Lies, lies. You said "decision", not "consensus".
> >
> >Two very different things.
>
> Eh? Consensus is used to arrive at decisions. Semantic
> arguments tire me - esp since they tend to change the
> subject of discussions.
>
By that logic, a Dodge Dart is equivalent to New York City, since cars
are used to arrive at destinations.

If you're going to put words in my mouth, I'd appreciate it if you
respect the meaning of those words.

There certainly had been a consensus, a consensus of people who had
little-to-no involvement in developing the entries. The discussion
naturally attracted people who wanted to change the status quo, rather
than those who were happy with it. Shouldn't a proper consensus involve
more than a people who all want to jump on the same bandwagon?

Popularity arguments tire me - esp when they involve groupthink.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What W is not

body:
On Mon, 2003-03-03 at 17:17, Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
> --- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
> > A good measure of achievement is whether their lives (or deaths)
> > were
> > newsworthy, that is, that there exist external sources on the
> > people.
>
> Define newsworthy in this day of blogs and instant reporting about
> every little thing.
>
> <fictitious>
> The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday about a shop owner in los
> angeles who finds the restriction on liquor permits restrictive.
> </fictitious>
>
> It was in print in a national newspaper. Should it be here? Probably
> not.
>
> Likewise is something was not in print in a newspaper and not covered
> by CNN, does that by default make it not encyclopedia-ish?

It should be noted that tarquin above was quoting something I wrote.

In terms of your fictitious example, it probably wouldn't merit its own
entry, but it would certainly be reasonable for there to be an entry
that discusses Los Angeles liquor permits, referencing that article. If
that shopkeeper was killed by a cartel of teetotalers, for example, then
the shopkeeper might merit his own entry.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Pedro M.V.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Selecting maps

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at web.de>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 11:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Maps : Never mind

> > Can you explain it more detailed, please ???.
>
> On the test site, when you click on a map link, you go directly to the map.
>
> One could also be directed to a wikipedia page, giving the choice
> between several online maps for the coordinates you just clicked on.
> Like ISBN page, which gives you the choice between several bookstores to
> look at the ISBN you just clicked on.
>
This is a good idea. We could name it the wikimap service choice page..

This page could include : if you don?t select the service, you are going to be redirected within 20 seconds (i.e.) to the default ( wider ) service map.

> That would not only reduce impact of a map service shutting down, it
> would also give the used the choice between different kinds of maps. Of
> course, you'd have to guess which service actually provides a map fot
> that specific region :-(
>
Go ahead with the project. Regards ;)


from_name: Richard Grevers

body:
On Sun, 2 Mar 2003 19:09:41 -0800 (PST), Zoe
<zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Apparently there is a move under way to change EVERY date in the English
> Wikipedia to "2 March" format from "March 2" format.  How did this slip
> under the radar without a major discussion?  It's a very anti-American
> thing to do.
That's the first time I've been asked to consider Americans to be an
opressed minority :-)
(4% of the world population and they expect everyone else to suffer their
illogical system?)
2 March 2003 is logical, natural to speech, and (so long as the month name
is used) unambiguous.
In your terms, "March 2" is anti British, Anti European, Anti-Australasian,
Anti-African etc. etc.
--
Richard Grevers


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Do we really want to confuse every American who reads the Wikipedia?

body:
On Mon, 03 Mar 2003 00:22:57 -0500, The Cunctator
<cunctator at kband.com> wrote:

> On 3/3/03 12:18 AM, "Richard Grevers"
> <dramatic at xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 2 Mar 2003 19:09:41 -0800 (PST), Zoe
>> <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Apparently there is a move under way to change EVERY date in the
>>> English
>>> Wikipedia to "2 March" format from "March 2" format.  How did this slip
>>> under the radar without a major discussion?  It's a very anti-American
>>> thing to do.
>> That's the first time I've been asked to consider Americans to be an
>> opressed minority :-)
>> (4% of the world population and they expect everyone else to suffer
>> their
>> illogical system?)
>> 2 March 2003 is logical, natural to speech, and (so long as the month
>> name
>> is used) unambiguous.
>> In your terms, "March 2" is anti British, Anti European, Anti-
>> Australasian,
>> Anti-African etc. etc.
>
> This discussion should be held to the proper forum: [[Wikipedia
> talk:Manual
> of Style (dates and numbers)]].
>
Sorry, the threading was broken and I replied to what I thought was a 2-
post thread.

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Zoe

body:
I find (3) highly offensive.  That is NOT a definition of "American" and to claim it is is to create a straw man to shoot down legitimate use of the term, which is to definie people who live in the United States.
Zoe
 Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net> wrote:Jimmy Wales wrote:

>As far as I have been able to determine, though, "American" is often
>used by Canadian, British, and Australian newspapers to refer solely
>to the United States.

Yes, even people who object to this usage often lapse into it. The
term "American" is less cumbersome than "United States citizen,"
which accounts in part for its popularity. Other terms also exist,
such as "yanks" or "gringos." However, the fact that these usages
exist doesn't mean we should adopt them for Wikipedia. (I don't see
anyone advocating that we call this article a "list of gringos.")

>We should be highly sensitive to word usages that are not universal,
>particularly if there's a double meaning that's offensive to some.

The term "American" has multiple meanings, including the following:

(1) pertaining to the continents of North and South America

(2) pertaining specifically to the United States of America

(3) supportive of the U.S. government, politically conservative,
pro-war (For example, the House Un-American Activities Committee
declared U.S. citizens "un-American" for various alleged political
sins. and more recently you can find examples of newspaper columnists
declaring U.S. peace protesters "anti-American.")

As I stated previously, I don't have any personal objection to usages
(1) or (2), although I do take offense when people insinuate that
peace activists are anti-American. However, I think the term "United
States citizen" should be preferred on Wikipedia because it is more
precise than "American" and also carries less political baggage.

>In making decisions like this, we shouldn't just go on a vague "urban
>legend" that some people might be offended. Are there authorities
>(style guides, for example) which recommend against the usage?

The fact that some people object to this is not an "urban legend." I
know people personally who object to it. Also, you can do a Google
search and find examples of people expressing their objections. For
example, here's a column from Sonoma Business magazine which
criticizes the usage:

http://www.sonomabusiness.com/archives/2002-04-column-gizzi.html

You can disagree with this guy's reasoning, but it's not an "urban
legend" to say that opinions like this exist.

As for style guides, the style guide for the journal of the American
Anthropological Association says, "#"America or American: For clarity
use the noun United States and the adjective U.S. unless a wider
region is intended":
http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_guide.pdf

In a similar vein, "Sea Power" magazine offers editorial guidelines
for prospective authors, which state, "American. Use sparingly when
the intent is to describe U.S. citizens, the U.S. military, etc.":
http://www.navyleague.org/sea_power/style_guide.php

In a separate thread, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>What about immigrants who haven't gotten citizenship yet? With any name,
>someone will be offended. Besides, do you think the Canadians are really
>offended by it anyway?

It's not just the Canadians. For example, I've spoken with people
from Latin America who express resentment at the seeming U.S.
monopoly on the term "American" and think it contributes to the U.S.
tendency to treat Latin America as "our back yard" (a phrase that
Ronald Reagan used when justifying U.S. military intervention in
Central America).

Actually, Daniel's comment demonstrates my point about the vagueness
of the phrase "Americans." A "list of Americans" could include
immigrants who don't have U.S. citizenship, whereas a "list of United
States citizens" couldn't. Thus, "list of Americans" is so
conceptually vague that it could conceivably include Mohammed Atta.
He was an "immigrant" who "hadn't gotten citizenship" at the time he
flew an airplane into the World Trade Center.

As for the notion that "list of U.S. citizens" might offend
immigrants, I find this implausible unless we assume that there's
something unique in this regard about the United States. Why should
"list of U.S. citizens" be any more offensive than "list of French
citizens"?
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] American Citizens and Their Dates -- A Love Story Without Nazis

body:
When I discovered the discussion that there was a bot being developed to change all of the dates to one format, that made me sit up and take notice.  That's not "using the date you are most comfortable with", that's imposing an arbitrary rule.
Zoe
 Jesse Alter <jesse at snacksoft.com> wrote:
I thought this was
a closed issue when it came to British and American spellings, and I
thought this would apply as well. Use the date you are most comfortable
with. Others will understand. If they don't understand, they should
learn that the name of the month refers to the month, the big number
refers to the year, and the small number refers to the day.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meta-question: wiki links in list/news posts

body:
I notice that many wikipedians refer to wikipedia pages in these discussion
groups using wiki markup: e.g. [[this_article]]. That's very cute, but
highly impractical in terms of actually linking to the article from a
mail/news client. I usually have to resort to searching, particularly with
meta pages that I'm not familiar with the url syntaxt of. Would it not be
much better to paste the full url from the browser in list messages?

--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: non-breaking space (Re: Re: Please use <!--HTML comments-->
 (Bug))

references:
<20030301000902.29827.81126.Mailman@www.wikipedia.org>
	<200302282338.59096.maveric149@yahoo.com>
	<1046504658.3704.34.camel@frank.vibber.org>
	<shu1enpfck.fsf_-_@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<oprlct1bwpk4g8ki@news.gmane.org> <shfzq6pxwt.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<1046556957.4666.24.camel@frank.vibber.org>

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

> It's a minimal check for an 0xa0 (160) byte in a submitted textarea. A
> quick test on Windows 2000 shows IE 5.5 working fine, but Mozilla 1.3b
> fails: that is, Mozilla is converting the non-breaking space to a
> breaking space before sending it to the server.

Thanks for enlightment, you are most probably right.  Incidentally, I'm
using Mozilla (version 1.0.1, some time soon I'll try a newer
version) and report results.

--
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home):              |
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |      ,__o
Free Translation Project:                                |    _-\_<,
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/             |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Tony Wilson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oh No! Not another date format post!

body:
There are two issues here and a non-issue.

First the non-issue: there is NO ISSUE to do with
AMBIGUITY. No-one is trying to replace April 1 1999 with
1/4/99, 01/04/99, 01/04/1999, 04/01/99, 1999/04/01 or any
other all-numeric format. The spelled-out month in "1
April" OR "April 1" takes care of that. ISO is irrelevant
to the entire discussion.

Issue No 1: "1 April" or "April 1". WHO CARES? Anyone who
can't count up on his fingers and decide "1 April" and
"April 1" both mean April Fools' Day, please email me right
away. I have a bridge that I sure you will be interested
in.

Issue No 2:  The degree to which we should mandate one
style or another. This one is the ONLY important one.
Obviously the date articles should all be named the same
way.

(Whichever way. I don't care, and neither should anyone
else. Utter trivia.)

HOWEVER, mandating that all in-text dates conform to this
style is absurd and restrictive. If a date links to a date
page, sure, write it whichever way the link works. Ouside
of that, we have no business requiring contributors to use
any particular style.

If anyone wants to know which way I myself write a date,
then you will have to find some of the articles I've
contributed to and work it out for yourselves. I honestly
don't know what I usually write, but I do vary it to suit
the particular sentence from time to time. Sometimes one or
another way suits the context, is clearer and conveys the
point better. When writing history, sometimes it is the DAY
that matters most ("... on the *8th* December, the
President made a speech to say that ..."), other times it
is the MONTH that matters ("...it was not until *October* 4
that action was finally taken  to ... "). It all depends.
Mostly, of course, it doesn't matter either way.

By all means have the date articles named whichever way is
most desired. When I want to link to a date, I'll write it
whichever way makes the link turn blue. But when I'm
crafting the body of an entry, I should hope I've got
better things to do with my mind than stuff about trying to
remember which particular order the Wikipedia Style Guide
Nazis are insisting on.

Tony (Tannin)

Tony Wilson
(Tannin)


body:
On Mon, 3 Mar 2003 01:09:56 -0500, Tom Parmenter
<tompar at world.std.com> wrote:

>
> Our story up to now:
>
> Both the University of Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk and White's
> Elements of Style state a preference for the 2 March form, but both
> also accept the March 2 form.  Virtually every date in the Wikipedia
> is expressed in the March 2 form.  (The mail headers for this message
> use the 2 March form.)
No - that is an example of something that is correctly localised to user
preferences.
I see the header written Mon, 3 Mar 2003 01:09:56 -0500

I suggested localisation on the talk page, but it would need some sort of
advanced markup
such as [[date:yyyy-mm-dd]] and we'd probably still argue about the default
presentation for non-logged-in users.

  There's nothing
> confusing about the March 2, 2003 style either.
It's not confusing, it just "feels wrong" to me.
--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Internet archive at the new library of alexandria

body:
On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 05:40:52AM -0700, Fred Bauder wrote:
> Something is wrong at the server; it wan't load for me either in English or
> Arabic. Just wait till they get up again.
>

They said something about a fire at the library of Alexandria in the radio
this morning. I don't remember the details - I've still been half asleep.

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Jesse Alter

body:
I currently live in the United States of America. I hope I will not
offend anyone by abbreviating the country's name as "United States" or
"U.S." I was born in the U.S., and I am a citizen of this country. I
take no offense at being called an American. I take no offense at people
in other countries in North and South America being called Americans,
although I think it lends some ambiguity to the word "American".

When I refer to a date, I say "the third". If I need to specify a month
to be clear, I say "March Third". If I need to specify the year as well,
I say "March Third, Two Thousand Three". When speaking with people in
other countries, I understand "The Third of March, Two Thousand Three"
clearly, without confusion. I also imagine that I would understand "Two
Thousand Three, March Three" or "March Two Thousand Three, Three" if
anyone wanted to refer to the date that way.

I hope for everyone's sake that they can do the same. I thought this was
a closed issue when it came to British and American spellings, and I
thought this would apply as well. Use the date you are most comfortable
with. Others will understand. If they don't understand, they should
learn that the name of the month refers to the month, the big number
refers to the year, and the small number refers to the day.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Beware the Datebot!

body:
Jimbo-
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia_talk%3AManual_of_Style_(dates_and_nu
> mbers)

> This page is a very good example of what's wrong with voting, as
> opposed to a more complex and subtle process of seeking general
> consensus.

It is obvious that there is not going to be consensus for or against using
a particular date style. Maybe there is going to be pseudoconsensus for a
particular compromise solution, but that does not necessarily mean that's
a good one. For example, the solution most likely to be more or less
acceptable to most contributors in terms of date style is "Do what you
want". It is only a relatively small number of contributors who fight for
consistency. But consistency is important for professionality.

But I agree with you that the voting method used here was flawed, as have
been all methods used in the past. We've been over this: If you want to
make a decision, you should

1) Announce the upcoming discussion/vote in a prominent place, depending
on its potential impact.

2) Have a discussion period -- length again depending on the impact of any
decision. (In the case of date styles, the impact is pretty big, as a bot
has to go over thousands of articles.) Try to find consensus if possible.

3) Refactor the discussion, sort out options and advantages/disadvantages
of each one.

4) Depending on the type of decision, choose a voting method (fptp or
approval), e.g. yes/no works better with fptp because it's simpler.

5) Require everyone who votes, by an "unenforcable policy", to read the
arguments for and against each option.

6) Vote. Depending on the decision impact, a certain minimum number of
votes needs to be gathered before a decision is made.

There was no clear discussion/vote separation here, no defined period or
minimum number of votes. The whole thing was not initially announced and
only came to my attention through the mailing list. The voting method used
was a very primitive form of approval voting that allows for all kinds of
clever manipulation.

All this is the result of the fact that we still have no official decision
making process that works. People come up with very basic, simplistic
voting solution because they are at least likely to get us somewhere,
unlike the pseudoconsensus process that almost never works. It is now
generally recognized that you are the benevolent dictator, Jimbo, and that
is the decision making process we use most of the time we actually get
something controversial done.

The examples you like to uphold to refute this are examples where
consensus is blindingly obvious anyway -- nobody but the most annoying
crank would argue that an encyclopedia should not strive to be neutral and
rely on verifiable sources, for example. On Votes for deletion, nobody
would argue that a page containing "jjalosdfjlk? HELLO WORLD" should not
be deleted. But on VfD, pages often linger for months because a single
person has expressed doubts -- sysops then eventually make often arbitrary
decisions. With a real process, we would just try to see where most (in
the case of deleting, 80-90%) people stand, and then make a quick
decision.

When there is real controversy, consensus usually becomes impossible. We
need to either formalize voting, or rely on your great-but-not-infinite
wisdom whenever that happens.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[No Border network]]

body:
See [[No Border network]].  When does an "excerpt" start becoming a copyright violation?

Zoe

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Style Oppressors

body:
Mav said:

> you should calm down and realize that what is being proposed would be no
> more mandatory than what we have now. I've already explained this on the talk page.

Put it in the ACTUAL PROPOSAL and I'll start to take it seriously.

When it's simply the unsupported comment of one contributor in an
obscure talk page (even a particularly prominent and well-respected
one), it means nothing. If that is really the intention of the MoS,
then it must say so unambiguously. My characterisation of the obsessive
urge to micro-manage things which could perfectly well be left alone as
being something "the Style Nazis" would do is an accurate one. If the
cap fits ...


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American  whoreads the Wikipedia?

body:
On Monday 03 March 2003 17:11, Tom Parmenter wrote:
> That's not what my copy of 12th edition the CMOS says. It states (rule
> 8.14),

And what does the TTL say? :)

phma

--
.i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
.ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
.icu'u la ma'atman.


body:
What about a GNU plug-in to convert [[address]]es into html addresses ???.

This would be very cold ;)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 7:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Meta-question: wiki links in list/news posts

> Richard Grevers wrote:
>
> > I notice that many wikipedians refer to wikipedia pages in these
> > discussion groups using wiki markup: e.g. [[this_article]]. That's
> > very cute, but highly impractical in terms of actually linking to the
> > article from a mail/news client. I usually have to resort to
> > searching, particularly with meta pages that I'm not familiar with the
> > url syntaxt of. Would it not be much better to paste the full url from
> > the browser in list messages?
> >
> Not really.  Sometimes using the Wiki markup is simply shorthand for
> saying "The article named "this article'".  It lets us know that
> reference to an article is intended.  Pasting the full URL is a lot of
> work when you are just trying to send off a quick note.  The reader who
> wants to check the article in question (if it is not a purely
> hypothetical one) can still copy and paste to the search box on any
> Wikipedia page, and press "Go".
>
> Eclecticology
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Beware the Datebot!

in_reply_to: <8h87KpLxpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 10:15:00PM +0100

body:
I'm listening, and everyone else should listen, too.

I'm not sure that Erik and I agree on all the details, but he's very
patiently been working on me with some success that we are going to
need a more formalized process in the future.

One area where this really comes up a lot is in non-English wikis,
where my near-infinite-wisdom is rendered powerless by the Kryptonite
of other languages.  :-)

Erik Moeller wrote:

> Jimbo-
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Wikipedia_talk%3AManual_of_Style_(dates_and_nu
> > mbers)
>
> > This page is a very good example of what's wrong with voting, as
> > opposed to a more complex and subtle process of seeking general
> > consensus.
>
> It is obvious that there is not going to be consensus for or against using
> a particular date style. Maybe there is going to be pseudoconsensus for a
> particular compromise solution, but that does not necessarily mean that's
> a good one. For example, the solution most likely to be more or less
> acceptable to most contributors in terms of date style is "Do what you
> want". It is only a relatively small number of contributors who fight for
> consistency. But consistency is important for professionality.
>
> But I agree with you that the voting method used here was flawed, as have
> been all methods used in the past. We've been over this: If you want to
> make a decision, you should
>
> 1) Announce the upcoming discussion/vote in a prominent place, depending
> on its potential impact.
>
> 2) Have a discussion period -- length again depending on the impact of any
> decision. (In the case of date styles, the impact is pretty big, as a bot
> has to go over thousands of articles.) Try to find consensus if possible.
>
> 3) Refactor the discussion, sort out options and advantages/disadvantages
> of each one.
>
> 4) Depending on the type of decision, choose a voting method (fptp or
> approval), e.g. yes/no works better with fptp because it's simpler.
>
> 5) Require everyone who votes, by an "unenforcable policy", to read the
> arguments for and against each option.
>
> 6) Vote. Depending on the decision impact, a certain minimum number of
> votes needs to be gathered before a decision is made.
>
> There was no clear discussion/vote separation here, no defined period or
> minimum number of votes. The whole thing was not initially announced and
> only came to my attention through the mailing list. The voting method used
> was a very primitive form of approval voting that allows for all kinds of
> clever manipulation.
>
> All this is the result of the fact that we still have no official decision
> making process that works. People come up with very basic, simplistic
> voting solution because they are at least likely to get us somewhere,
> unlike the pseudoconsensus process that almost never works. It is now
> generally recognized that you are the benevolent dictator, Jimbo, and that
> is the decision making process we use most of the time we actually get
> something controversial done.
>
> The examples you like to uphold to refute this are examples where
> consensus is blindingly obvious anyway -- nobody but the most annoying
> crank would argue that an encyclopedia should not strive to be neutral and
> rely on verifiable sources, for example. On Votes for deletion, nobody
> would argue that a page containing "jjalosdfjlk? HELLO WORLD" should not
> be deleted. But on VfD, pages often linger for months because a single
> person has expressed doubts -- sysops then eventually make often arbitrary
> decisions. With a real process, we would just try to see where most (in
> the case of deleting, 80-90%) people stand, and then make a quick
> decision.
>
> When there is real controversy, consensus usually becomes impossible. We
> need to either formalize voting, or rely on your great-but-not-infinite
> wisdom whenever that happens.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> As I stated previously, I don't have any personal objection to usages
> (1) or (2), although I do take offense when people insinuate that
> peace activists are anti-American.

The offense you take is on political grounds relating to the "anti-"
part, as opposed to any discomfort with the word "American" there,
right?  I mean, isn't your thinking on this point something like "How
dare they say that protestors are anti-American, after all, the
essence of the American spirit is healthy dissent and free speech."

> However, I think the term "United
> States citizen" should be preferred on Wikipedia because it is more
> precise than "American" and also carries less political baggage.

I'm not opposed to that, really, but I just want to point out that
there *is* a loss of richness due precisely to the loss of what you
call "baggage".

We could "tend to avoid" the term, but there are lots of examples of
sentences that just read poorly, and lose some meaning, without it.

> As for the notion that "list of U.S. citizens" might offend
> immigrants, I find this implausible...

Yes, me too.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] What W is not

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> I just tried to make the point that newsworthiness was not
> necessarily a criteria for inclusiveness into the W.

Not an absolute, no, but it probably is helpful.  In the case of a
thorny problem like the sep11 entries, it's really helpful.  It gives
us an external (i.e. not driven by internal wikipedia politics)
reference point so that we can move forward in an NPOV manner.

Let me explain: "Is this person important enough?"  Gee, that's a very
subjective question, and different people will feel differently.  And,
in this *particular* case, emotions are strong, and who *really* wants
to argue that ANY dead person is "not important enough".

But one thing that we can all agree on is a simple factual question:
was there news coverage about this person?

This kind of "external" informational "hook" can be really helpful in
coming to a reasonable answer.  There could be exceptions, of course.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Style Oppressors

body:
I very rarely disagree with Jimbo, but on this matter my mind is
perfectly clear. The wish to micro-regulate small and irrelevant
details of what other people do (or, in this case, write) is entirely
deserving of the term "Style Nazi" - for surely it is not the term
which is offensive, it is the behaviour which gives rise to it and
makes it apt.

But no-one here would seriously wish to behave like that.

Would they?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

in_reply_to: <000901c2e25a$6abcfe60$0200a8c0@oemcomputer>; from matt_mcl@sympatico.ca on Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 09:29:07AM -0500

body:
Matt M. wrote:
> I have a question about the GNU FDL. What is meant by "the work"? If
> I took a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on
> an existing website, would just that page, my entire website, or
> neither (just the picture) be released under GNU FDL?

I don't know.

This probably applies:
>A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate
>and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or
>distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright
>resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights
>of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit.
>When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not
>apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves
>derivative works of the Document.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Administrative note re: kq

body:
At KQ's request, I have taken away his "sysop rights". I understand, however, that they are his for the asking any time he changes his mind.

Ed Poor
Wikipedia Developer


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
I have a question about the GNU FDL. What is meant by "the work"? If I took
a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on an existing
website, would just that page, my entire website, or neither (just the
picture) be released under GNU FDL?

Matt


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
> "If I took a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on an
> existing website, what would I have to release under the GFDL for that
> inclusion not to violate Wikipedia's license? Would I need to release that
> page, my entire website, or neither (just the picture) under GNU FDL?"

I'll echo the "I don't know"s, and add a complication: pictures and
text are a bit different.  Almost all the text in Wikipedia was made
collaboratively, and is therefore unquestionably FDL.  But many of the
pictures are either public domain or used under "fair use", so using
them in another work would have no affect at all on that work.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
On 3/4/03 9:29 AM, "Matt M." <matt_mcl at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> I have a question about the GNU FDL. What is meant by "the work"? If I took
> a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on an existing
> website, would just that page, my entire website, or neither (just the
> picture) be released under GNU FDL?

Forgive me if I get semantic here--it's necessary when we're discussing the
specificity of law.

Including the picture doesn't release anything under the GFDL. The correct
question is:

"If I took a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on an
existing website, what would I have to release under the GFDL for that
inclusion not to violate Wikipedia's license? Would I need to release that
page, my entire website, or neither (just the picture) under GNU FDL?"

The reality is that my answer to that question is the same as Jimbo's: I
don't know. But I believe releasing just the page would be sufficient.


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] What W is not

body:
> This kind of "external" informational "hook" can be really helpful
> in
> coming to a reasonable answer.  There could be exceptions, of
> course.
>
> --Jimbo

I hear you. I just didn't want some people to latch on to it like gospel-truth.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
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from_name: Sheldon Rampton

body:
I wrote:

>>The term "American" has multiple meanings, including the following:
[SNIP]
>>(3) supportive of the U.S. government, politically conservative,
>>pro-war (For example, the House Un-American Activities Committee
>>declared U.S. citizens "un-American" for various alleged political
>>sins. and more recently you can find examples of newspaper columnists
>>declaring U.S. peace protesters "anti-American.")

Zoe replied:

>I find (3) highly offensive.  That is NOT a definition of "American"
>and to claim it is is to create a straw man to shoot down legitimate
>use of the term, which is to definie people who live in the United
>States.

It doesn't matter how offensive you find this usage, the fact is that
it exists. Here are a few examples that I plucked off the Internet:

>      The communist anti-war leftists are not satisfied with their
>large anti-American rallies, they now intend to try to stop the war
>when it starts.
http://www.chronwatch.com/featured/contentDisplay.asp?aid=1778

>It boggles my mind to see the attention given to anti-war and
>anti-American protesters in the United States.
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Feb/02262003/public_f/32922.asp

>As Vietnam veterans we know all too well the demoralizing effect the
>anti-American anti-war protesters have on our mothers, fathers, sons
>and daughters as they fight to keep America safe and free
http://www.pal-item.com/news/stories/20030228/localnews/1081575.html

>The "Peace" Movement: a Front for the Anti-American Left?
http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6007

>Will handwringing Democrat ex-presidents and the anti-American
>protesters they encourage admit they were wrong when the first
>McDonald's opens up in Saddam Hussein's gulag on the Tigris?
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2003/3/1/114743

I've selected these examples because they each refer specifically to
anti-war *citizens of the United States* (including former U.S.
presidents) as "anti-American." Clearly, the authors of these
passages believe that it is possible to be both a "U.S. citizen" and
still "anti-American."

Like Zoe, I find this usage of "American" offensive. It attempts to
wrap conservative politics and pro-war sentiments in the flag of
patriotism. I hope Zoe will join me in objecting to this usage
wherever it occurs. Nevertheless, we have to take language as we find
it and recognize that words have multiple meanings and connotations
that are created, not by dictionaries or committees, but by their
actual usage in the real world.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


body:
That's nonsense.  "anti-American" does not carry the same use of the word as "American".
Zoe
 Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net> wrote:I wrote:

>>The term "American" has multiple meanings, including the following:
[SNIP]
>>(3) supportive of the U.S. government, politically conservative,
>>pro-war (For example, the House Un-American Activities Committee
>>declared U.S. citizens "un-American" for various alleged political
>>sins. and more recently you can find examples of newspaper columnists
>>declaring U.S. peace protesters "anti-American.")

Zoe replied:

>I find (3) highly offensive. That is NOT a definition of "American"
>and to claim it is is to create a straw man to shoot down legitimate
>use of the term, which is to definie people who live in the United
>States.

It doesn't matter how offensive you find this usage, the fact is that
it exists. Here are a few examples that I plucked off the Internet:

> The communist anti-war leftists are not satisfied with their
>large anti-American rallies, they now intend to try to stop the war
>when it starts.
http://www.chronwatch.com/featured/contentDisplay.asp?aid=1778

>It boggles my mind to see the attention given to anti-war and
>anti-American protesters in the United States.
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Feb/02262003/public_f/32922.asp

>As Vietnam veterans we know all too well the demoralizing effect the
>anti-American anti-war protesters have on our mothers, fathers, sons
>and daughters as they fight to keep America safe and free
http://www.pal-item.com/news/stories/20030228/localnews/1081575.html

>The "Peace" Movement: a Front for the Anti-American Left?
http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6007

>Will handwringing Democrat ex-presidents and the anti-American
>protesters they encourage admit they were wrong when the first
>McDonald's opens up in Saddam Hussein's gulag on the Tigris?
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2003/3/1/114743

I've selected these examples because they each refer specifically to
anti-war *citizens of the United States* (including former U.S.
presidents) as "anti-American." Clearly, the authors of these
passages believe that it is possible to be both a "U.S. citizen" and
still "anti-American."

Like Zoe, I find this usage of "American" offensive. It attempts to
wrap conservative politics and pro-war sentiments in the flag of
patriotism. I hope Zoe will join me in objecting to this usage
wherever it occurs. Nevertheless, we have to take language as we find
it and recognize that words have multiple meanings and connotations
that are created, not by dictionaries or committees, but by their
actual usage in the real world.
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> writes:
>
> > To access a web archive for about the last 8 years try:
> >
> > http://www.bibalex.gov.eg/Start.asp?LangID=1
> >
> > You'll need to search around a bit on the site for the "internet archive"
> > link. You need the url to access the old pages.
>
> Thanks for the pointer.  Is there any other entry point?  This URL just
> appears as a blue screen for me.  And http://www.bibalex.gov.eg/ wants
> add-ons I don't have installed -- this site isn't user friendly at all
> :-(

Another web site that gives access to the same archive is
http://www.archive.org/

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
--- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:

> I'll echo the "I don't know"s, and add a complication: pictures and
> text are a bit different.  Almost all the text in Wikipedia was
> made
> collaboratively, and is therefore unquestionably FDL.  But many of
> the
> pictures are either public domain or used under "fair use", so
> using
> them in another work would have no affect at all on that work.

I'll second the "I don't know" and add that images should be treated
carefully, becaue when someone gets images from someone else, while
that someone else might grant use of the image to W, that same
someone else may not grant the use of the image for any other
derivative work that is not part of W. Thus, the someone else needs
to be asked essentially whether their image is going in the public
domain, or in the FDL, or for W use only.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Test suite initial pass

body:
After looking at tools like Apache's Latka and Canoo webtest,
I concluded that they were a bit to high-level and underpowered
for what I had in mind for the wiki software test suite.  So I
started a basic test suite in Java using the Httpunit classes,
which seem to work quite well and give me all I need.

I checked in a first pass to CVS in the "testsuite" directory--
right now the suite just loads the main page, follows a couple
of links, fetches an edit form, and extracts the source of a
page to a file.  Eventually of course this will be a full suite
that loads up an empty database with web actions, does lots of
modifications, exercises all the functions, and validates all
the output.

Let me now ask for guidance about what the next pressing step
is: I believe we are already in a performance crunch, and we
already have some ideas about how to fix some of those problems,
so I think I should make that the short-term driver for further
development of the suite.  For example, I have the wikipedia
code installed on a machine on my network at home, and I can
use the suite to time it, make a database change or something,
then time that to get us good numbers about what to tweak.

What would be a good mix of functions for timing?  I'm thinking
heavy on regular page loads, heavy on recent changes, lighter
on things like edits.  Any other ideas?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Signed in vandal (with offensive username)

body:
On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Lee Pilich wrote:
> (Sensitive viewers should look away now)
>
> User:Fuck You has just appeared and is making a long series of vandalistic
> edits. I'm having a grand old time reverting them all, but if a developer
> sees this and wants to ban him, then please do.

Done. Account is disabled (for the name), IP is banned (for the
vandalism).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikitech-l] Test suite initial pass

body:
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 17:41, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> What would be a good mix of functions for timing?  I'm thinking
> heavy on regular page loads, heavy on recent changes, lighter
> on things like edits.  Any other ideas?

I suspect you'd also want to have some frequent edits on large
pages--I'm thinking of pages like current events, and talk pages that
get large. Maybe modeled that the edit rate is somewhat proportional to
page size, until the page hits the 32K limit, at which time edit rate
slows down or the page size goes down.

In other words, I'd model the Current Events page and random Talk page
heated discussion.


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] What is 142's "legal" situation?

body:
Is 142 (that is, the person that's been posting from
several 142.177.xxx.xxx addresses lately) banned?
If so, from which wikis?

The ideas that make me ask:
* 142 is suspected (strongly) of being 24.  But 24 was unbanned.
Also, is the evidence of their identity conclusive (say to Jimbo)?
* When Lir was banned from [[en:]], Jimbo explicitly said
that she wasn't banned from [[m:]] (and thus might play chess there).

I'm asking for facts, not for a discussion about 142
(although I'm sure that other people will take the opportunity).
What I very specifically want to know is whether 142 is banned from [[m:]].

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
> (Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com>):
>
> --- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
>
> > I'll echo the "I don't know"s, and add a complication: pictures and
> > text are a bit different.  Almost all the text in Wikipedia was
> > made
> > collaboratively, and is therefore unquestionably FDL.  But many of
> > the
> > pictures are either public domain or used under "fair use", so
> > using
> > them in another work would have no affect at all on that work.
>
> I'll second the "I don't know" and add that images should be treated
> carefully, becaue when someone gets images from someone else, while
> that someone else might grant use of the image to W, that same
> someone else may not grant the use of the image for any other
> derivative work that is not part of W. Thus, the someone else needs
> to be asked essentially whether their image is going in the public
> domain, or in the FDL, or for W use only.

If you find such an image on wikipedia (i.e., one for which permission
was granted only to wikipedia), it should probably be replaced if at
all possible by a more freely usable one, either PD, or FDL licensed
itself, or usable under "fair use".

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fatal error

body:
When I connect to

 http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Most_active_Wikipedians&diff=0&oldid=479388

I get

 Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DifferenceEngine.php on line 377

(The exact line varies.)

OK, I don't really need to see this diff,
but I thought that the developers should at least know
that diffing two 200-line tables apparently crashes.
(Smaller diffs on this page work just fine.)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
> (Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de>):
> On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> > If you find such an image on wikipedia (i.e., one for which permission
> > was granted only to wikipedia), it should probably be replaced if at
> > all possible by a more freely usable one, either PD, or FDL licensed
> > itself, or usable under "fair use".
>
> Could I get some indication on when an image falls uner fair use, and when
> it does not?

It's very likely that just about any use of an image on Wikipedia
would fall under fair use.  The only ones likely to fail that test
are things like drawings made specifically for technical articles
that are under copyright.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikipedia-l] HTML tag

body:
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 20:42, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Internal anchors were a feature I added and then removed by
> the consensus of the community.  If you can come up with a
> /really good/ example of how an internal anchor will make an
> article better in a way that can't be done without it, and
> won't sacrific simplicity of editing, then I'm certainly
> open to putting the feature back.

As I recall, the primary argument against anchors is that they support
and encourage long pages.

Long pages, in turn, are frowned upon because they're difficult to
navigate internally and intimidating to edit. (And of course, very long
pages can run afoul of browser limitations, making it impossible for
some people to edit them.)

The preferred solution is to break up long articles into smaller, more
self-contained blocks.

Anchors, of course, would potentially simplify internal navigation --
for readers only. When it comes time to change a small paragraph in the
middle of a 25kb article through a tiny textarea in a web page, you
gotta do a lot of scrolling. Short pages are much easier to work with,
and as a wiki project that's committed to being read-write, editing ease
is of great importance to us.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> Thus, the someone else needs
> to be asked essentially whether their image is going in the public
> domain, or in the FDL, or for W use only.

Well, if it's purportedly for wikipedia use only, we can't accept it.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> It's very likely that just about any use of an image on Wikipedia
> would fall under fair use.

Fair use *for us*, but not necessarily for people who repurpose our
content.  It's a thorny issue.

I'd prefer it if we had nothing "fair use" in the 'pedia, but that's
not a reasonable position, since even quoting from copyrighted books
in the usual fashion is "fair use".

--Jimbo


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What W is not

body:
On Monday 03 March 2003 10:47 pm, The Cunctator wrote:
> > Eh? Consensus is used to arrive at decisions. Semantic
> > arguments tire me - esp since they tend to change the
> > subject of discussions.
>
> By that logic, a Dodge Dart is equivalent to New York City, since cars
> are used to arrive at destinations.
>
> If you're going to put words in my mouth, I'd appreciate it if you
> respect the meaning of those words.

Sigh - more semantic arguments.

Consensus means an "agreement of the majority in sentiment or belief." It is
also, esp here, a shorthand term used to refer to the process by which that
agreement is reached. So even though I should have said "consensus building
process" that doesn't mean there wasn't an agreement.

> There certainly had been a consensus, a consensus of people who had
> little-to-no involvement in developing the entries. The discussion
> naturally attracted people who wanted to change the status quo, rather
> than those who were happy with it. Shouldn't a proper consensus involve
> more than a people who all want to jump on the same bandwagon?

So by your argument anybody who creates a set of pages that are not
encyclopedia articles that are viewed as being counter to the goals of our
project by a majority of long-time users, can simply not participate in
mailing list and other meta discussion to prevent the moving or deletion of
the pages they created? Come on - they can easily sign-on with a throw-away
email address and participate in our method of governance. Everybody here -
from the rank newbie to the people who have been around since the founding of
the project - can all participate.

Also, the discussion of this issue went on for months and was on a publicly
available and readable mailing list which was and still is easy to find
access to on meta and through the Main Page. There was ample opportunity for
people to express their views. So just because they didn't doesn't mean that
the consensus is invalid. Your above argument actually argues against the
whole system and not just this case.

> Popularity arguments tire me - esp when they involve groupthink.

What tires me is the fact that you have been working against the very people
trying to enact the consensus. Just because you don't agree with (hardly any)
consensus doesn't mean that the other people on this mailing list have such
weak constitutions that they subvert their owns views in favor of a perceived
group decision. In my experience the opposite is usually what happens:
peoples' views are so diverse and so strong that there is often no clear
consensus and we are left with the status quo.

It's fine if you don't want to help move these non-articles but please don't
work against those that are trying to move the content to their new home. If
I were MyRedDice I would find it very discouraging after working several
hours moving these entries that one person unilaterally changed all the moves
to mere copies (saying only "please don't" in the edit summaries). The point
in the first place was to move - not copy the material (granted the pages
should have been cross-wiki redirected instead of redirected to [[September
11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Casualties]] but that is the only thing MyRedDice
did wrong).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 1]]


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
At 02:52 AM 3/5/03 +0100, Andre Engels wrote:
>On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> > If you find such an image on wikipedia (i.e., one for which permission
> > was granted only to wikipedia), it should probably be replaced if at
> > all possible by a more freely usable one, either PD, or FDL licensed
> > itself, or usable under "fair use".
>
>Could I get some indication on when an image falls uner fair use, and when
>it does not?

Indication, yes. A formula, no. Basically, fair use requires (among other
things) that we not use a significant part of the whole work, and that the use
not decrease the commercial/market/financial value of the work.

>Andre Engels
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] HTML tag

body:
> (Pedro M.V. <macv at interlap.com.ar>):
> How can I use these tags in wikipedia :
>
>  Creates a target name inside the document.
>
>  Links to the target in the document.
>
> ( from [[HTML tag]] ).

Internal anchors were a feature I added and then removed by
the consensus of the community.  If you can come up with a
/really good/ example of how an internal anchor will make an
article better in a way that can't be done without it, and
won't sacrific simplicity of editing, then I'm certainly
open to putting the feature back.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 19:36, Christopher Mahan wrote:
> I'll second the "I don't know" and add that images should be treated
> carefully, becaue when someone gets images from someone else, while
> that someone else might grant use of the image to W, that same
> someone else may not grant the use of the image for any other
> derivative work that is not part of W. Thus, the someone else needs
> to be asked essentially whether their image is going in the public
> domain, or in the FDL, or for W use only.
>
There shouldn't be any images on wikipedia that are for Wikipedia use
only. That would be a gross violation of the GFDL.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: What is 142's "legal" situation?

body:
On Tuesday 04 March 2003 09:45 pm, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Is 142 (that is, the person that's been posting from
> several 142.177.xxx.xxx addresses lately) banned?
> If so, from which wikis?
>
> The ideas that make me ask:
> * 142 is suspected (strongly) of being 24.  But 24 was unbanned.
> Also, is the evidence of their identity conclusive (say to Jimbo)?
> * When Lir was banned from [[en:]], Jimbo explicitly said
> that she wasn't banned from [[m:]] (and thus might play chess there).
>
> I'm asking for facts, not for a discussion about 142
> (although I'm sure that other people will take the opportunity).
> What I very specifically want to know is whether 142 is banned from [[m:]].
>
>
> -- Toby

I'm copying my response to the above on [[meta:Talk:Main_Page]]:

:Yes - I was the one who unbanned 24. Ironic huh?  IMO 24 and 142 are one and
the same (at least the majority of 142s - esp the ones that edit meta). The
topics 142 writes on, the use of meta (esp. telling is that 142 links to many
pages that 24 wrote or substantially contriubted to on meta),  and also the
implied threats and severe dislike of Larry, Jimbo and other 'cabal' members
all are very similar to 24. There is also the fact that 142s isp is in the
same part of Canada that 24 is from. But being 24 shouldn't be reason to
extend any ban since 24 was unbanned.  What matters the most is what 142 has
been doing and we do know that one person using one of the 142 IPs made an
implied threat to me (specifically a death threat via a [[en:straw man|straw
man]]). IMO, making such a threat is enough to be banned from the entire
project for a long time (permanently if 142 and 24 are the same person).
IIRC 24's threat on Larry (which was for 'great bodily injury' and not death
IIRC) was on meta but that was enough to also get him banned from en.wiki.
This is perhaps a better question for the mailing list.
--[[User:Maveric149|Maveric149]]

To which 142 responds:

::There are several false claims in the above, but, not my problem to sort
them out.  The response to Maveric149's assertion that he's been personally
threatened is already on his talk page - saying people deserve things isn't
the same as saying you're going to do it to them - we are not all judges or
thugs or paranoids or Americans (same thing).  As to agreeing with 24,
considering the alternatives, what choice is there?  I suppose everyone that
thinks this project needs better [[governance]] is some kind of criminal or
traitor to the regime.  The real answer is to ban Maveric149 and other
abusive sysops on a rotating basis, so they don't get such a sense of their
own invicibility.  Go ahead and ban, loser, it makes up for your lack of
potency in person, I'm sure.

And me again:

:::Ah name calling - it only reflects negatively on you and tends to discredit
your arguments. Your continued insistence on being anonymous (therefore
making it difficult for other contributors to contact you and for our system
of checks and balances to work), throwing insults around, and making implied
threats only tends to discredit you and your ideas. If you were serious about
actually changing Wikipedia for the better you would work with the community
and not against it. You would also be nice and respectful to other users by
not constantly provoking them into flame wars. When you anger somebody it
doesn't really matter how correct your arguments are because the person you
have angered will protest your ideas because you made them.
--[[User:Maveric149|Maveric149]]

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 2]]


from_name: Lee Pilich

body:
(Sensitive viewers should look away now)

User:Fuck You has just appeared and is making a long series of vandalistic
edits. I'm having a grand old time reverting them all, but if a developer
sees this and wants to ban him, then please do.

lp (camembert)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What W is not

body:
On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 00:49, Daniel Mayer wrote:
<snip long argument>
> It's fine if you don't want to help move these non-articles but please don't
> work against those that are trying to move the content to their new home. If
> I were MyRedDice I would find it very discouraging after working several
> hours moving these entries that one person unilaterally changed all the moves
> to mere copies (saying only "please don't" in the edit summaries). The point
> in the first place was to move - not copy the material (granted the pages
> should have been cross-wiki redirected instead of redirected to [[September
> 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Casualties]] but that is the only thing MyRedDice
> did wrong).

Wow, I guess I must be one wacky unilateralist. Thank goodness I'm not
in charge of any foreign policy.

I have to honestly say your theoretical discussion has completely lost
me. Martin (MyRedDice) and I have found plenty of common ground to work
from. He hasn't indicated any discouragement.

I guess it's a good thing you're not Martin.

cheers,
tc


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

> If you find such an image on wikipedia (i.e., one for which permission
> was granted only to wikipedia), it should probably be replaced if at
> all possible by a more freely usable one, either PD, or FDL licensed
> itself, or usable under "fair use".

Could I get some indication on when an image falls uner fair use, and when
it does not?

Andre Engels


from_name: Pedro M.V.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] HTML tag

body:
How can I use these tags in wikipedia :

 Creates a target name inside the document.

 Links to the target in the document.

( from [[HTML tag]] ).

Regards.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] article length and fragment identifiers/pointers (Re: HTML tag)

in_reply_to: <shvfyyz6xg.fsf_-_@tux.gnu.franken.de>; from ke@gnu.franken.de on Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 07:03:23AM +0100

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> What's a very long article?  We should encourage people to go for proper
> editors.  I'll evaluate Emacs solutions the next weeks.  Any advice?

Yes, my advice is: don't do this!  We should _not_ encourage people to
go for proper editors.  We should encourage _ourselves_ to preserve
simplicity.

--Jimbo


body:
I think this discussion is getting pretty far afield, but...

Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> >That's nonsense.  "anti-American" does not carry the same use of the
> >word as "American".
>
> I see. So what you're saying is that the "American" in
> "anti-American" is a different word entirely than the "American" in
> "pro-American" or "American values." Wow. I had no idea! :)

I think Sheldon is right here.  "American dream" is another example of
this use of the word.  When people say "Americans" they aren't usually
speaking dryly of "citizens of the United States" -- there's a
connotation as well, of the things (good or bad) that Americans are
known for.

In some contexts, this is indispensible.

Suppose we're writing an article about war protests.  Suppose we want
to say "Due to X, Y, and Z, some of the protestors were said to be
anti-American, especially in the more conservative press."  This
sentence can't be rewritten as "said to be anti-US" without losing
something.

--Jimbo


body:
As far as I'm concerned, 142.177 is banned everywhere and his edits
are fair game for instant reversion.  The same goes for '24'.  We can
unban specific dynamic ip numbers that belong to this person, from
time to time, in order to spare trouble for other people.  I think
that's the right way to think about '24's old IP being unbanned -- it
was not due to any pardon of '24' himself, at least not by me.

The big problem here is that 142.177.*.* is a pretty big block of ip
numbers.  Under the current software, we don't really have a way to
block wildcards, and even if we did, there are serious issues here of
accidentally excluding potentially legitimate contributors.

I think that we should start brainstorming technical aids to help
with this problem.

--Jimbo


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

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

> As I recall, the primary argument against anchors is that they support
> and encourage long pages.

Very long pages are bad, but pages up to 20 or 30 KB are perfectly okay
and there fragment links (#fragment) are very useful.  Short articles
suffering from the fact that they are often nothing more than a list of
pointers to other articles (internal and external) ;)

Also they are to easy to edit.  Thus poeple always add stupid lists
of terms and names to short articles ;-)

> (And of course, very long pages can run afoul of browser limitations,
> making it impossible for some people to edit them.)

What's a very long article?  We should encourage people to go for proper
editors.  I'll evaluate Emacs solutions the next weeks.  Any advice?

> The preferred solution is to break up long articles into smaller, more
> self-contained blocks.

I simply disagree :)  Short page maybe easy to edit (caveat, see above)
and they are a pain to read.  Esp. when Internet connection isn't that
good.  Even here in Germany at certain times it can happen that I must
more than 30-45 seconds for an article.  Bandwidth here isn't the
problem.

> Anchors, of course, would potentially simplify internal navigation --
> for readers only. When it comes time to change a small paragraph in the
> middle of a 25kb article through a tiny textarea in a web page, you
> gotta do a lot of scrolling. Short pages are much easier to work with,
> and as a wiki project that's committed to being read-write, editing ease
> is of great importance to us.

Yes, but 25kb articles are perfectly okay.  I'd say the barrier should
be something like 30-50kb, depending on pictures includes etc.  One
should judge form case to case.

--
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home):              |
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |      ,__o
Free Translation Project:                                |    _-\_<,
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/             |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysop Request

body:
It would be helpful if I were given sysop status. I need to be able to
access the text of protected pages and need to learn how the sysop system
works. I am working on an implementation of the wikipedia3 software at

http://www.internet-encyclopedia.info

I could also do some work as a sysop on wikipedia itself.

Thank you,

Fred Bauder


body:
Zoe wrote:

>That's nonsense.  "anti-American" does not carry the same use of the
>word as "American".

I see. So what you're saying is that the "American" in
"anti-American" is a different word entirely than the "American" in
"pro-American" or "American values." Wow. I had no idea! :)
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia responsiveness

body:
On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Sascha Noyes wrote:
> I've been having intermittent unresponsiveness from wikipedia over about the
> last week.

In general it's been a little slower because I disabled client-side
caching until problems are resolved. (However I reenabled it yesterday in
response to more slowness.)

> Is anyone experiencing the same at the moment? There have been 5
> edits in the last half-hour, which is obviously way below normal.Maybe
> something special is happening that I don't know of?

I noticed a couple more crawlers slowing the site WAAAAYYYYY down just
now. I've blocked access to user agents "Snoopy" and "grub" for now.

I'm running late for school, so gotta go now...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use question (was: question about fdl)

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> I'd prefer it if we had nothing "fair use" in the 'pedia, but that's
> not a reasonable position, since even quoting from copyrighted books
> in the usual fashion is "fair use".

I'm very concerned about fair use materials as well. Maybe we need to
recognize a spectrum of fair use. Short quotes from copyrighted books
should be safe for just about any use; even the New York Times does
that on a regular basis. Fetching a photo from some website and
claiming fair use because the photo somehow relates to the subject at
hand is dangerously close to copyright infringement though. We can
probably get away with it, since we have an educational goal, no
commercial interests, and are not an attractive target for lawsuits,
but selling (extracts from) Wikipedia in any form is made almost
impossible by these fair use landmines.

I would favor a policy against all fair use photos.

At the very least, every image page needs to state clearly where the
image came from and why it can be used.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] article length and fragment
  identifiers/pointers (Re: HTML tag)

body:
At 07:03 AM 3/5/03 +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
>
> > As I recall, the primary argument against anchors is that they support
> > and encourage long pages.
>
>Very long pages are bad, but pages up to 20 or 30 KB are perfectly okay
>and there fragment links (#fragment) are very useful.  Short articles
>suffering from the fact that they are often nothing more than a list of
>pointers to other articles (internal and external) ;)
>
>Also they are to easy to edit.  Thus poeple always add stupid lists
>of terms and names to short articles ;-)
>
> > (And of course, very long pages can run afoul of browser limitations,
> > making it impossible for some people to edit them.)
>
>What's a very long article?  We should encourage people to go for proper
>editors.  I'll evaluate Emacs solutions the next weeks.  Any advice?

Yes. Don't tell people they can't use Wikipedia with their current software.

Emacs is many things, but simple it's not. The Wiki software is
*deliberately* easy to use.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about fdl

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> There shouldn't be any images on wikipedia that are for Wikipedia
> use
> only. That would be a gross violation of the GFDL.

I agree, and I don't personally upload images to the W (crappy
scanner anyway), but I think it needs to be clear to contributors
that images they make available to the W may be used by others.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia responsiveness

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

Hi

I've been having intermittent unresponsiveness from wikipedia over about the
last week. Is anyone experiencing the same at the moment? There have been 5
edits in the last half-hour, which is obviously way below normal.Maybe
something special is happening that I don't know of?

Sascha Noyes
aka: snoyes
- --
Please encrypt all correspondence.
PGP key available from:
http://individual.utoronto.ca/noyes/snoyes.asc
- --
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iD8DBQE+Zh5ugzJdfX+cTW8RAsBIAJ0cMcUr4G/Ulb1/UooxcKD/3LvAXgCgnVwn
T6uo/pritSotu1d9duifr30=
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from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [WikiEN-l] acronym search tool

body:
Since I objected to the acronym search that popped up Amazon links,
I'm obliged to send this one along.  There are ads on the page, but
they are not linked to the acronyms themselves.

		    http://www.acronymsearch.com/

Companion site to the handy

		   http://www.onlineconversion.com/

for numerical conversions.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] missing search results

body:
On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Andre Engels wrote:
> One of the users of WikipediaNL found that when one searches for the word 'het'
> on WikipediaNL, only hits in the article title are found, none in the article
> text. When doing a similar search on the English version, it behaves normal.
> Apparently common words are being excluded from full-text searches.
>
> My questions:
> * What are the criteria to exclude such words from searches?

* words shorter than two characters (this is configurable, we have it set
   to two; so single-letters will not be searchable)
* words in the stopword list, which is built in to mysql and
   English-specific.
* words present in more than half of the search set

'Het' is likely present in more than half of pages on the nl wiki; the
fulltext search considers such extremely common words to be essentially
useless for narrowing down a search and so ignores them. Meanwhile on the
title index, 'het' is probably much less often present, so there it will
show up.

Unfortunately, our pre-parsing doesn't know which will be caught this way,
so a multi-word search including "het" on the page index will return no
results, because we 'and' each word's result sets together.

> * Is it possible to get for a language a list of such excluded words?

The English stopword list is duplicated so the preparsing can filter them
out: 'FulltextStoplist.php' in the wiki source tree.

I'm not sure if it's possible to extract a list of words-that-will-be-
ignored on a given table from the fulltext index.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia responsiveness

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

On Wednesday 05 March 2003 11:14, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Sascha Noyes wrote:
> > I've been having intermittent unresponsiveness from wikipedia over about
> > the last week.
>
> In general it's been a little slower because I disabled client-side
> caching until problems are resolved. (However I reenabled it yesterday in
> response to more slowness.)
>
> > Is anyone experiencing the same at the moment? There have been 5
> > edits in the last half-hour, which is obviously way below normal.Maybe
> > something special is happening that I don't know of?
>
> I noticed a couple more crawlers slowing the site WAAAAYYYYY down just
> now. I've blocked access to user agents "Snoopy" and "grub" for now.
>
> I'm running late for school, so gotta go now...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

Thanks, everything is back to normal now. Hehe, I'm also running late for
school ...

Cheers,
Sascha Noyes
aka snoyes

- --
Please encrypt all correspondence.
PGP key available from:
http://individual.utoronto.ca/noyes/snoyes.asc
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE+ZiR7gzJdfX+cTW8RAtouAJ9oWYo99gjh5SNvxtecSPrGXmZjswCfaPRA
BBM4ZabxdxuJlp72lR9AxiA=
=NFX9
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>The big problem here is that 142.177.*.* is a pretty big block of ip
>numbers.  Under the current software, we don't really have a way to
>block wildcards, and even if we did, there are serious issues here of
>accidentally excluding potentially legitimate contributors.
>
I believe it was mentioned before that 142.177.*.* is associated with
Sympatico in Canada.  This ISP is related to the company that provides
telephone service in much of Canada.  Thus anybody who chooses to use
the ISP recomended by the telephone company could have this.  That's a
lot of people who may not be the most savvy on the net.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pb with the server ?

body:
On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> > What's happening with the server ?
> > I can't access any page.
> > Is it just over loaded or what ?
>
> Dans ces cas la, Brion a une bonne formule :
> Ouvre ta fenetre et regarde comme la nature est belle ;o)

Hehe, I should follow my own advice more often. I _do_ see some pretty
trees on the way across campus from class to computer lab and back
though. ;)

> Ca doit etre un bakcup ou qq chose dans le genre... un peu de patience.

Just some heavy spidering this morning loading up the server. Should be
lightened up by now, I did some user-agent blocking. Sigh... why can't
spiders be nice and *not* hammer my poor little server several times per
second each? Did their mamas not teach them any manners?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
|From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
|Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 06:38:55 -0800
|
|Karl Eichwalder wrote:
|> What's a very long article?  We should encourage people to go for proper
|> editors.  I'll evaluate Emacs solutions the next weeks.  Any advice?
|
|Yes, my advice is: don't do this!  We should _not_ encourage people to
|go for proper editors.  We should encourage _ourselves_ to preserve
|simplicity.
|
|--Jimbo

Right again, requiring emacs for Wikipedia editing would be a big
mistake.  There are ways Karl might help out with emacs, however.

A lot of the emacs gestures are already in the editor, at least the
easy ones like c-a, c-e, c-k, c-t.  It would be nice if more of them
were there, silently, for those of us whose fingers go that way first
anyway.

And, an emacs minor mode for use on our own editors  would also be
nice.

Tom P.
O88


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Offline reader

body:
I put up a new version of my wikipedia offline reader, again at
    http://test.wikipedia.org/upload/WINOL.zip
(~600KB). You'll also need the en or de SQL file. Click on the help link
in the program for further instructions.

Magnus


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use question

body:
> > I would favor a policy against all fair use photos.
>
> That would seriously undermine the quality of Wikipedia as an
> educational resource...

Yep, we're pretty much stuck with needing "fair use".  But there's
really no need to get paranoid about it.  The description page for
each image should list its source, and as long as we have such
records we're fine.  90% of the other uses to which Wikipedia data
might be put will also qualify for the same fair use provisions,
and I don't think it's worth our effort to worry about the other
10% unless and until /we/ produce one of those products.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A policy for albums

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Thursday 27 February 2003 05:33 pm, Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>
>>....
>>Even if this policy is not implemented, I will point out at this juncture
>>that I am strongly opposed to an import of the FreeDB data, should that
>>ever come up. But to be consistent and to avoid unnecessary work, I think
>>we should apply these rules even to existing, manually added album pages.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Erik
>>
>>
>
>I have no problem with your proposed policy (at least for en.wiki) but
>wouldn't it be a good idea if we somehow collaborated with FreeDB? It would
>be great if at the end of a freedb entry there was a link to a Wikipedia
>article on the album. Just thinking out loud.
>
>-- mav
>
>WikiKarma
>The usual at [[February 21]]
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
>
See Ben Roeder's suggestion, as per my earlier post, that we do just that.

Neil


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>As far as I'm concerned,

Thanks! Now I know.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A policy for albums

body:
To the moderator: please disregard my earlier posting.

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Thursday 27 February 2003 05:33 pm, Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>
>>....
>>Even if this policy is not implemented, I will point out at this juncture
>>that I am strongly opposed to an import of the FreeDB data, should that
>>ever come up. But to be consistent and to avoid unnecessary work, I think
>>we should apply these rules even to existing, manually added album pages.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Erik
>>
>>
>
>I have no problem with your proposed policy (at least for en.wiki) but
>wouldn't it be a good idea if we somehow collaborated with FreeDB? It would
>be great if at the end of a freedb entry there was a link to a Wikipedia
>article on the album. Just thinking out loud.
>
>-- mav
>
>WikiKarma
>The usual at [[February 21]]
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
>
See Ben Roeder's suggestion, as per my earlier post, that we do just that.

Neil


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] HTML tag

body:
Hi,

> On Wednesday, March 05, 2003 2:01 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
> As I recall, the primary argument against anchors is that they support
> and encourage long pages.

I fully disagree this argument !
Long pages is an arranging problem not a feature problem.
If you think a page is too long, then just split it in 2 parts.
I can't understand you private us using a good feature just cause someone
can misuse it.
Any feature can be misused !

> On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 20:42, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Internal anchors were a feature I added and then removed by
> the consensus of the community.  If you can come up with a
> /really good/ example of how an internal anchor will make an
> article better in a way that can't be done without it, and
> won't sacrific simplicity of editing, then I'm certainly
> open to putting the feature back.

Imho, the main way anchor can be useful are :
- Link the summary to the corresponding part of the article. Even if it is
not a "long" article, it can be useful.
- Target a particular paragraph in an other article. Useful for encyclopedia
and especially for talk page.

An other problem is perhaps we all don't have the same idea about what is a
"long" article.

Aoineko (as Guillaume)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] selling Wikipedia and licensing

body:
> (Chuck Smith <msochuck at yahoo.com>):
> > We can
> > probably get away with it, since we have an
> > educational goal, no
> > commercial interests, and are not an attractive
> > target for lawsuits,
> > but selling (extracts from) Wikipedia in any form is
> > made almost
> > impossible by these fair use landmines.
>
> From what I understood.  I could go out tomorrow,
> print Wikipedia as an 20-volume encyclopedia set and
> start selling it tomorrow, without having any legal
> problems.  Am I wrong here?  Perhaps a CD-format would
> be more practical though.  ;-)

You're not wrong; that's probably well within the confines
of both the GFDL and fair use.  However, the FTC might have
something to say about marketing a non-saleable product...

> Also, could someone direct me to a page that
> illustrates why being under the GFDL license is better
> than simply being public domain.  I've pretty much
> ignored all the discussions before about it, but now
> I'm involved in a few projects and we're thinking
> about our license policies, so...

There's really only one reason: more people are willing
to contribute to copylefted projects than to PD projects.
It's purely a human emotional response: some people feel
cheated if their generosity is used in other ways, and so
they are more willing to work for a project that enforces
that. (Though others, like me, would say that it wasn't
really generosity in that case).

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] missing search results

body:
One of the users of WikipediaNL found that when one searches for the word 'het'
on WikipediaNL, only hits in the article title are found, none in the article
text. When doing a similar search on the English version, it behaves normal.
Apparently common words are being excluded from full-text searches.

My questions:
* What are the criteria to exclude such words from searches?
* Is it possible to get for a language a list of such excluded words?

Andre Engels