subject: [Wikitech-l] Anti troll mechanism

body:
On Sat, 26 Jul 2003, Hunter Peress wrote:

> Crap, crap, http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_logo_contest was just vandalised.
>
> If it is ok with some people, I think I should code a feature so that non-registered users are not
> allowed to delete anymore than 50 characters in a row. (as you just have found out, i hacked
> around with difflib.php in order to get some ideas for the difflib.py that i worked on, so i could
> do this quickly).
>
> I believe 50 characters might even be too much.

Aahhhhh.... The worst proposal I have heared of changing the Wikicode. Some very
good contributors are non-registered users. Some others are registered, but have
browsers that tend to log them out regularly. It's happened to me that I found myself
logged out without realizing it, but I can just login again. However, if it happens
every session, I can very well imagine that one does not take the difficulty.

It will indeed stop people from removing large chunks of text at random, but it will
not stop them from writing "this sucks" or "and he was a gay pervert" into articles,
which are much more common and less likely to be caught.

> I think the same should go for adding?

Fair enough. You set the record, you break it. So now if I am an anonymous user and
I happen to know something about (fill in a subject), I am not allowed to write it,
because what I write might also have been a few lines of nonsense or some obscenities?
Not to mention what it does for interlanguage links...

> HOWEVER, seeing this warning might incurr more aggressive behaviour on the whole.
>
>
> What do you think?

I think that the ratio of stopped trolls to stopped decent users is too low to even
_consider_ this as an option.

Andre Engels


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: morphophonics for wikipedia

body:
Stevertigo wrote in part:

>But the whole notion of using English specific formats
>is useless-- once again the sea we tend to swim in is
>an English-centered one.

OTC, it's /exactly/ what's useful for English words.

As I said when I first brought up morphophones,
a morphophonic transcription should only be used for English words,
which appear (or may appear) in all dialects, with different phonemes.
Foreign proper names should still be rendered phonemically,
according to the way that the relevant foreigners speak.

-- Toby


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: b schewek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #1249 - 14 msgs

body:
>
> > 3. The synthesis of the first two concerns: what happens when
> > there are errors in the stable version? Mistakes can be corrected in
> > the current version, but only sysops will be able to change which
> > version is listed on the locked Brilliant Prose page.
>
> Sifter would have the exact same problem. IMHO the best solution is to
> give sysops some leeway to change the pointer to a new revision in case of
> obvious corrections (linkfixes, spelling, uncontroversial factual changes
> as per talk etc.), and to otherwise require a re-listing on the candidates
> page.
>

What about a 'web-of-trust', whereby /all/ registered users can 'approve' or 'reject' a version of an article, and every registered user can select any number of 'trusted registered users', and thereby articles appear 'approved', 'rejected' or 'undetermined', according to the settings of 'trusted users'.

Then it is up to every individual to select the 'sifting agency', so to speak.

Schewek

--
______________________________________________
http://www.linuxmail.org/
Now with e-mail forwarding for only US$5.95/yr

Powered by Outblaze


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Search function

body:
John Robinson wrote:

>I thought it ought to be mentioned that the lack of search capability
>is not just annoying to editors, it reading of the encyclopedia for
>study virtually impossible, expecially for someone new to the site.

>Would it be possible to put the Google search box in as had been done
>in the past?  I realize that's lame in comparison but it's better than
>nothing.

Yes, please!

It's no good as a long term solution, but it's something.
And it does work, kind of.

-- Toby


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search function


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Anti troll mechanism and non registered users

body:
On Sat, 26 Jul 2003, Hunter Peress wrote:

> If you agree with me that trolling is an issue and that my solution is effective (or some derivate
> of it yet to be chiseled out), then it will be FACT that non-registered users will put more hit on
> the server, thus its logical to put them at a lower priority (something that ALSO will be an
> anti-troll mechanism).

1. I agree that trolling is an issue, it is however a very minor one compared
   to many others.
2. I do not agree that your solution is effective. Or rather, that its effectiveness
   is anywhere near to large enough to compare to its damage.
3. The amount of extra hit on the server is negligible. I'm starting to believe that
   you have something against anonymous users.

> ALSO, i believe that one 50 character add/delete (as discussed in previous message) should result
> in automatic write-blocking until they make the effort to write an email (or use some web
> interface) explaining their actions.

You've reached the point. This is where your proposals go from 'bad' to 'ridiculous'.
So now I should write an email each time I forget to login to the (fill in some
language I do not normally edit in) wikipedia when adding one too many interwiki
links at the same time? They are already not going well. This way, they will likely
go to a complete halt.

> There are NO anonymity/privacy issues from making someone register.

Maybe not. But there are other issues. Such as some people simply not wanting to,
getting logged out all the time or not wanting to accept cookies. To name just a
few.

Andre Engels


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TOC error

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_of_the_SARS_outbreak
>
> TOC looks like that:
> 1 November 2002
> 2 February 2003
> Now it looks like day dates  [...]
 >
> So maybe to have TOC without numbers (unless numbered headers
> are chosen in prefs) is the right solution.

No, the right solution is not to make the numbers part of the links
(i.e. to place them outside the <a> tag), or even better yet, use <ol>.
I think I've said that before...

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Table of contents example

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> sgilbert-
>
>>Erik asked for specific examples which need a "disable table of
>>contents" tag.
>
> Actually I saw a lot of pages that needed it once the feature went live.
> Particularly timelines. __NOTOC__ works fine, though. More problematic is
> the fact that section editing gets confused by headings within <nowiki>
> tags. I'll try to sort that one out.

While you're at it, can you also remove the double-[edit] links at the
beginning of articles that start with a heading?

Thanks,
Timwi


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> sgilbert-
>>
>>> Erik asked for specific examples which need a "disable table of
>>> contents" tag.
>>
>> Actually I saw a lot of pages that needed it once the feature went
>> live.  Particularly timelines. __NOTOC__ works fine, though. More
>> problematic is  the fact that section editing gets confused by
>> headings within <nowiki>  tags. I'll try to sort that one out.
>
> While you're at it, can you also remove the double-[edit] links at the
> beginning of articles that start with a heading?

Oh, and another thing. I would be eternally grateful if you'd also
remove the trailing whitespace from headings:

1  Technical Discussion

                                                        ^
                                                     this one

I don't know about other browsers, but Mozilla actually renders this
space and thus makes the link underline go further out to the right than
it should.

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TOC error

body:
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 12:44:07AM +0200, Timwi wrote:
> No, the right solution is not to make the numbers part of the links
> (i.e. to place them outside the <a> tag), or even better yet, use <ol>.
> I think I've said that before...

Fine enough.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] About copyright violations

body:
on 7/29/03 8:32 PM, David Grant at david.grant at telus.net wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> I would like the template for every article to be altered, to include
> something similar to the following: "This is licensed under GFDL...if
> you with to copy this article, go ahead...but you are required to
> provide a link to the GFDL... and you are required to link back to the
> original article..."  That is essence of what needs to be added to the
> template for every Wikipedia article.  This is in order to stop the
> ripping of Wikipedia articles without full copyright/license compliance.

This is what I-E does and it offers the added advantage that it is then very
convenient for an editor on I-E to go back to the Wikipedia article, copy it
then put in on I-E then using history of the article see in detail all the
various changes which have occured during the Wikipedia edits since the
original copy was made. Then you can do a revert, keep the new copy, or do
whatever editing of one or the other version as may be required to make the
best article possible. This technique can also be used to advantage by the
proposed Sifter site for easy evaluation of whether the continued evolution
of the article on Wikipedia can be shifted over to it.

Fred Bauder

http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Right Click Editing

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>A mere MoS policy, that may apply only to [[en:]] anyway,
>>shouldn't be enforced by the software in the default option.

>Right click editing is not and has never been the default option. Michael
>changed it and then whined about it.

My mistake!  I inferred otherwise from Michael's post.
It's all fine then.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Right Click Editing


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] overdoing it with the [edit] tags

body:
steve-
> Take a look at my box and see what you think.

> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevertigo/Sand_box

This highlights a bug in the parser. They should really not be visible on
that page at all.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Right Click Editing

body:
Michael-
> I would just like to say, that I really hate the right-click editing.
> Mostly because I can no longer right click on headings that are also
> links to open them in a new page.  Could we make this a feature you can
> turn off in the user preferences?

First, it has long been our MoS policy that links in headings should be
avoided.

Second, even if there are any, with a decent browser you can open them by
middle- or ctrl+-left-clicking. Mozilla additionally supports type-ahead
find and lets you navigate the links with [Tab]s.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Right Click Editing


body:
Timwi-
> While you're at it, can you also remove the double-[edit] links at the
> beginning of articles that start with a heading?

No. This exists to let you edit the space above the heading, where there
may be interlanguage links etc.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] another real TOC error?

body:
Hunter-
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm

> 1 Formalized algorithms
> 2 Implementing algorithms
> 1 Example
> 2 History
> 3 Classes of algorithms
> 4 See also
> 5 References

Not an error, just headings used in the wrong order. Don't do that.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Installation Annoyances

body:
Evan-
> Anyways, I've got all that stuff working, and I'd like to know if I
> can submit a patch that divides the installed files into Web stuff,
> PHP libraries, and config files?

Just make sure the software finds all the files. If you do that, we could
change the existing wiki installations, which are currently independent
copies of the codebase, to one common codebase with different config
files.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Right Click Editing

body:
Toby-
> A mere MoS policy, that may apply only to [[en:]] anyway,
> shouldn't be enforced by the software in the default option.

Right click editing is not and has never been the default option. Michael
changed it and then whined about it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Right Click Editing


body:
steve-
> Take a look at my box and see what you think.

> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevertigo/Sand_box

Correction - it's not a bug. You are using <h1> where it shouldn't be
used. Don't do that.

Regards,

Erik


list: textbook-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Toby wrote:
>Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
>>Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer
>>could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used
>>in a free and open copyleft spirit.
>
>This sounds like a very interesting idea!

Yes - for /anonymous contributions/ it does sound interesting. Logged-in users
should retain copyright. Otherwise way too much power and control is being
entrusted to the Foundation.

But making it easy for logged-in users to assign copyright if they want too
should be fine.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Right Click Editing

body:
Michael Becker wrote:
>I would just like to say, that I really hate the
>right-click editing. Mostly because I can no
>longer right click on headings that are also
>links to open them in a new page.  Could we
>make this a feature you can turn off in the
>user preferences?

There should /never/ be links in headings. Please remove them and add links
where appropriate in the text. Otherwise do as the country articles do; under
the heading ==History== write ''Main article: [[History of Foo]]''

--mav


from_name: David Grant

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: About copyright violations

body:
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: About copyright violations

body:
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from_name: Delirium

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Here's what you were trying to write:
>     everything else is s?m'p?l ?n?f' for us to use.
>     Geoffrey Thomas / j?f'r? t?'m?s / JEF-ree TAH-muhs
>
> A Unicode-capable mail/news client should be able to display this
> correctly.
>
> However, I'm not a great fan of this system either. It is not
> significantly easier to generate than IPA, and it is certainly less
> universal (I, for once, have never come across it; maybe it's
> Americentric).

I thought it was fairly universal myself -- it's in every major
dictionary I've used, including some of the results at
www.dictionary.com.  It's not particularly easy to generate, but it
seems much easier to *read*.

-Mark


from_name: Pedro M.V.

subject: [Wikitech-l] Redirection

body:
I suggest include automatic redirection when happens a probable error in the article address.

In example, if I write www.wikipedia.org/diesel really I wanted to write www.wikipedia.org/wiki/diesel . The server could redirect to the correct wiki address.

Regards.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Number separator

body:
One could use a tag to indicate : don?t use the separator (i.e. in spanish wikipedia the year 2000 it?s 2000 not 2.000); for example <nsep> ( no separator)</nsep>. Excepting  because of this little problem, it?s a good idea.

Regards.
----
Biofuels for your petroleum-car
http://www.journeytoforever.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/biodiesel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Guillaume Blanchard" <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 8:57 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Number separator

> Hi all,
> Do you ever discuss about automatic number separator ? (ex: 12512 -> 12,512)
> In french Wikipedia it is a real problem because our separator is the not
> veiwable character : " ".
> So if we want Wikipedia show "12 512" we need to write "12 512".
> This make editable version of article sometine very difficulte to read.
> I would like an *option* to cut all number framed by space (or other word
> separators) and length more than 4.
> Exemple :
>
> 100 -> 100
> 1000 -> 1000
> 9999 -> 9999
> 10000 -> 10 000 (separator!)
> R10000 -> R10000
> 123456789 -> 123 456 789 (separator!)
>
> Any hope to see this feature implemented ?
>
> Aoineko
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search function

body:
I agree to the proposal. So, include this goglee search option again, please.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>; <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 8:35 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search function

> John Robinson wrote:
>
> >I thought it ought to be mentioned that the lack of search capability
> >is not just annoying to editors, it reading of the encyclopedia for
> >study virtually impossible, expecially for someone new to the site.
>
> >Would it be possible to put the Google search box in as had been done
> >in the past?  I realize that's lame in comparison but it's better than
> >nothing.
>
> Yes, please!
>
> It's no good as a long term solution, but it's something.
> And it does work, kind of.
>
>
> -- Toby
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Jason Williams

body:
On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 06:58:03PM -0700, Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
> Even better is the limited letters-only system used in textbooks that aren't
> dictionaries: complex words are repeated in identical-sounding imitations
> (I-mi-TAY-shuns). If this latter system is formalized (FAR-muh-liyzd) it
> may be simpler than SAMPA for those who don't have the time to learn it.

That doesn't seem to bear any relation to the way I pronounce
formalised, and for what it's worth I "vote" that only names should
have any kind of pronunciation information; leave that to dictionaries,
which can concentrate on particular dialect(s).


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: DB errors for everyone

body:
On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 11:12, webmaster wrote:
> I keep getting this DB error over the past 30 min or so:
> Could not connect to DB on 130.94.122.197
> Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'
>
> If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache, please notify the Wikipedia developers.

Sorry, I've been busy all day.  I just did the flush and it seems OK.


body:
Geoffrey Thomas wrote:

> I've seen IPA/SAMPA used in Wikipedia articles and didn't like it. The
> former uses too many non-ASCII characters to make it easy enough to use

Currently, that's true, but technology is evolving ... ;-)

> and the latter uses weird ASCII signs that make the word
> [unreadable] and l33t-like for those who don't know the system.

I agree to that. ASCII is not suitable for phonetic representation.

> The system used in practically every school dictionary I've seen  [...]
> everything else is sĭm'pəl ēnəf' for us to use.
> (If those words came out garbled, either your mail client or mine doesn't
> support Unicode. That was 73 12D 6D 27 70 259 6C 20 113 6E 259 66 27 hex.)

You've sent HTML entities in a plain-text mail. ;-) No compliant
mail/news client should interpret them.

Here's what you were trying to write:
	everything else is s?m'p?l ?n?f' for us to use.
	Geoffrey Thomas / j?f'r? t?'m?s / JEF-ree TAH-muhs

A Unicode-capable mail/news client should be able to display this correctly.

However, I'm not a great fan of this system either. It is not
significantly easier to generate than IPA, and it is certainly less
universal (I, for once, have never come across it; maybe it's Americentric).

> (I-mi-TAY-shuns). If this latter system is formalized (FAR-muh-liyzd) it
> may be simpler than SAMPA for those who don't have the time to learn it.

I always thought this system looked really un-pro-FESH-un-al.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Right Click Editing

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:30:22 -0400, Michael Becker
> <wikipedia at jumpingjackweb.com> gave
> utterance to the following:
>
>> I would just like to say, that I really hate the right-click editing.
>> Mostly because I can no longer right click on headings that are also
>> links to open them in a new page.  Could we make this a feature you can
>> turn off in the user preferences?
>
> Now that you've posted that on three separate lists, could you please
> explain what right-click editing is?

It means calling up the "Edit" window by using the right button of your
mouse (which is to the right of the left (or possibly middle) button of
your mouse). If you are left-handed and have set your mouse to swap the
buttons, the left button would be the right one, and the right button
the wrong one.

Seriously, though, you can turn this on in the Preferences ("Enable
section editing by right clicking on section titles (JavaScript)").

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: steve vertigo

body:
Erik said: Correction - it's not a bug. You are using
<h1> where it shouldn't be  used. Don't do that.

So - the <BIG> tag wont trigger the header -- OK that
seems to work fine, then. Danke mucho.

What about the notion of a _NOSECEDIT__ tag?
And what about a text margin on the right side so text
doesnt merge with the [EDIT] tag?  A bit more margin
there regardless of tags might be easier on the eye.

'Gards
-S-

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] MYSQL needs flushing!

body:
Could not connect to DB on 130.94.122.197

*Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection
errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'*

If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache,
please notify the Wikipedia developers <mailto:wikidown at bomis.com>.


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] public domain works with marginal notes

body:
The [[staff lounge]] had some talk about loading public
domain books on the site with space to make annotations to
them. While I thought little about it now I realized that
we could put up the works of William Shakespeare and allow
people to add comments and explanations on the margin. That
would be so cool !! There is no site out there that I know
of that does this. Little by little we could amass a huge
volume of knowlege on these works in one place that is
currently only available dispersed throughout various
printed texts as well as the minds of teachers and
professors at large. Shakespeare seems like the place to
start, along with maybe a public domain translation of the
Bible, or parts of both of those works.

-- Karl

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Error message with bouncing e-mail address

body:
Maybe the smoking gun /kuro5hin article may brought
too many surfers to the beach? -- Are overall page
requests spiking or not?   Im getting the message --
but also intermittent access as well.

-S-

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Jason Richey

in_reply_to: <bg9a87$m60$1@main.gmane.org>; from timwi@gmx.net on Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 10:35:40PM +0200

body:
I can't say that I know why it bounced last month, but the address
should be working correctly...

I'm CC'ing this message there as well, just to test.

Jason

Timwi wrote:

>
> I'm sure you're all aware that Wikipedia is currently down and output
> this error message, but I would like to point out that the e-mail
> address linked to is "wikidown at bomis.com". Now, I haven't tried this
> e-mail address just now, but I did last month, and it bounced back then,
> and I asked for this error message to be changed to contain a valid
> e-mail address, but it's the same one, so I guess I have reason to
> believe it is still bouncing.
>
> Can someone change this e-mail address to one that works? Or is there a
> particular reason it needs to be one that bounces (give the user the
> impression we're listening, but don't receive heaps of complaints during
> each and every outage? ;-) )?
>
> Greetings,
> Timwi
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Pliny feeling the big hurt again...

body:
Nick-
> Pliny seems to be the cause of the current slowness, seems we're running
> low on memory again, although I can't say for sure why this is the
> case... (heavy swapping, low CPU util...)

What I notice is that whenever the Wikipedia is slow, I see several
threads like this in the PROCESSLIST:

SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_text FROM cur,searchindex WHERE
cur_id=si_page AND ( (MATCH (si_title) AGAINST ('tautology')) ) AND
cur_namespace IN (0) LIMIT 0, 20

usually with running times of several hundred seconds. This is the title
search. The main title search is still disabled, but the Go button still
runs one. There are no similar threads for the non-English wiki, which
suggests (to me, at least) that something is seriously wrong with one of
the concerned tables after the crash. Either that, or we're running into
big scaling problems of the above query. I've already done a REPAIR TABLE
SEARCHINDEX to no avail.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: webmaster

subject: [Wikitech-l] DB errors for everyone

body:
I keep getting this DB error over the past 30 min or so:
Could not connect to DB on 130.94.122.197
Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'

If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache, please notify the Wikipedia developers.


from_name: Volker Paul

subject: [Textbook-l] PDF etc. formats

body:
Why not use a format like Docbook
and _generate_ other formats from it?
AFAIK, from Docbook you can generate PS, PDF,
RTF, HTML.
Docbook is used widely for technical documentations,
so why not use it for textbooks as well?

Volker


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Right Click Editing

body:
On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:30:22 -0400, Michael Becker
<wikipedia at jumpingjackweb.com> gave utterance to the following:

> I would just like to say, that I really hate the right-click editing.
> Mostly because I can no longer right click on headings that are also
> links to open them in a new page.  Could we make this a feature you can
> turn off in the user preferences?

Now that you've posted that on three separate lists, could you please
explain what right-click editing is?
--
Richard Grevers
Atheism is a non-prophet organization


from_name: sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca

body:
David Grant wrote:

<snip>
> This is in order to stop the ripping of
> Wikipedia articles without full copyright/license compliance.

I'm not against having more detailed license instructions with our
articles, but as Jimbo has said, we might want to play it cool with
license enforcement. The reason we chose the GFDL was so that
people would use our articles and let others use what they make
with them. As long as it seems that people are following the spirit
of the license (saying it's GFDL and from Wikipedia), we probably
don't want to generate ill-will by accusing them of doing something
wrong.

Frankly, the GFDL is a bit of a monsterous beast, and we're not in
compliance either. Some examples, most of which have been
discussed earlier:

There is no way for a non-sysop to retrieve the source text, i.e. the
wiki-markup, of protected pages. This arguably violates the
requirement to make a "transparent version" available... although
not necessarily, as the article is still available in HTML.

We've incorporated material from the Free Online Dictionary of
Computing without providing a list of authors (this can't be solved
by our linkbacks, as FOLDOC doesn't provide a list either), nor a
history of changes from the original (if we simply import the entire
FOLDOC entry, and we had no article there in the first place, our
article history works fine. However, if we don't import the entire
article, or we merge it with material we already have, our history
doesn't cover all the changes to the original FOLDOC article).

In order to apply the license, we are supposed to have this notice
somewhere:

Copyright (c)  YEAR  YOUR NAME.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover
Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license is included
in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

Problems: Whose name can we put there ("Wikipedians",
perhaps)? Do we put it on the main page only (thus treating
Wikipedia as a single document) or on each article page (thus
treating each article as a separate document)?

... and so on. In short, the GFDL was designed for book-like
software documentation written by individuals, not wikis with
collaborative (and even anonymous) authorship. So, if people are
using our material without mentioning Wikipedia and/or the GFDL,
send a letter. Otherwise, let's cut them some slack.

Stephen Gilbert

-------
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
--- phma at webjockey.net wrote:
> Please use plain text when sending email. HTML is
> not secure when sending
> email because it can contain malicious programs; so
> I view my mail only
> in plain text. Please see http://www.houghi.org for
> how to set this in
> your mail program.
>
> phma

I don't see what's wrong with HTML. If we really can't
use HTML, possibly we could use the HTML text for a
unicode symbol (like è (in case that came out
wrong, &egrave;)).
LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Number separator

body:
Hi all,
Do you ever discuss about automatic number separator ? (ex: 12512 -> 12,512)
In french Wikipedia it is a real problem because our separator is the not
veiwable character : " ".
So if we want Wikipedia show "12 512" we need to write "12 512".
This make editable version of article sometine very difficulte to read.
I would like an *option* to cut all number framed by space (or other word
separators) and length more than 4.
Exemple :

100 -> 100
1000 -> 1000
9999 -> 9999
10000 -> 10 000 (separator!)
R10000 -> R10000
123456789 -> 123 456 789 (separator!)

Any hope to see this feature implemented ?

Aoineko


from_name: phma at webjockey.net

body:
Please use plain text when sending email. HTML is not secure when sending
email because it can contain malicious programs; so I view my mail only
in plain text. Please see http://www.houghi.org for how to set this in
your mail program.

phma


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Karl wrote:
>...I realized that we could put up the works of
> William Shakespeare and allow people to add
>comments and explanations on the margin. That
>would be so cool !! There is no site out there
>that I know of that does this. Little by little
>we could amass a huge volume of knowledge on these
>works in one place that is currently only available
>dispersed throughout various printed texts as well
>as the minds of teachers and professors at large.
>Shakespeare seems like the place to start, along
>with maybe a public domain translation of the
>Bible, or parts of both of those works.

Exactly. Our focus should be on creating book-based
resources for the student; think of all the books a
student is  required to have for any given class
(other than encyclopedias or dictionaries). Those are
the books we should focus on creating (textbooks and
other related works of nonfiction) or annotating (out
of copyright versions of many books that are studied
in the classroom). We could also summarize books in
booklet form (akin to CliffsNotes) for at least books
that are still under copyright and maybe for the
public domain ones as well.

--mav

=====

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> What's wrong with HTML is
>
> * It can contain viruses, tracking software, and other malware (as
> explained in the message you're replying to)
> * It enforces the appearance of a message on the reader, whether
> she likes it or not (sometimes things like black on dark blue)
> * It takes up a lot more space, which is a problem for people on
> dialup lines or with space-limited mailboxes.

I don't see how an HTML message could possibly contain a virus, unless
you have a horribly broken mailreader.  It's simply markup, like SGML or
TeX or whatever (or at least, the mail reader should treat it as simply
markup, certainly not as executable code).  Tracking software I'll agree
is an issue, but I don't expect anyone on this list to be including
image bugs in their emails.

Appearance too should be taken care of by the mailreader -- if you want
black on white background, your mailreader should have an option to
ignore HTML colors or something of that sort.

The last point I'll concede, though "a lot" isn't always necessarily
accurate, especially for relatively simple messages without absurd
amounts of formatting.

-Mark


body:
--- Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> wrote:
> The last point I'll concede, though "a lot" isn't
> always necessarily
> accurate, especially for relatively simple messages
> without absurd
> amounts of formatting.
>
> -Mark

Yeah, I guess you have a good point with that last
one. I won't use HTML (even though I haven't been) in
my letters. But I think unicode-encoded letters are
just as bad. It's the same basic thing with some
mailreaders can't read them properly. Webmail can't
read unicode, and some people have HTML turned off or
are unable to use HTML in their mail client. So
neither should be used. I still think that it would
make sense to use HTML-esque unicode marks, such as
€. I think most of us can read those in our
heads.
-LittleDan

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
--- Jason Williams <jason at jasonandali.org.uk> wrote:
> That doesn't seem to bear any relation to the way I
> pronounce
> formalised, and for what it's worth I "vote" that
> only names should
> have any kind of pronunciation information; leave
> that to dictionaries,
> which can concentrate on particular dialect(s).

Well, wiktionary at least should use a phonetic system
for all words.
LittleDan

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:

>An HTML message can contain a JavaScript program, or an iframe with an
>executable in it. Klez spreads by sending HTML messages with executables in
>iframes, though Klez is filtered out before it reaches my inbox.
>
>
Well, any mail client that allows that is clearly broken.  Correct
JavaScript implementations should not be a security risk, but it's
probably best not to have JavaScript enabled in your mailreader anyway.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Bug reports"->"Contact us"

body:
Erik wrote:
>[idea to replace the defunct "bug reports" to "contact us"]
>If there are no objections, I will proceed as described abo

Great idea - please make it so.

-- mav


body:
Timwi wrote:
>I'm sure you're all aware that Wikipedia is currently down..

I have been able to browse de, es, fr and others all day. I know this because
the /English/ version of Wikipedia is down and I checked the others to see if
they were having problems too.

The English Wikipedia may be the largest but it isn't the only version of
Wikipedia.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Number separator

body:
It's why I suggest this only fot number more than 4 characters length ;o)
I suppose <nowiki></nowiki> may solve (rare) case you don't want automatic
separator.

Aoineko

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pedro M.V." <macv at interlap.com.ar>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 6:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Number separator

> One could use a tag to indicate : don?t use the separator (i.e. in spanish
wikipedia the year 2000 it?s 2000 not 2.000); for example <nsep> ( no
separator)</nsep>. Excepting  because of this little problem, it?s a good
idea.
>
> Regards.
> ----
> Biofuels for your petroleum-car
> http://www.journeytoforever.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/biodiesel
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Guillaume Blanchard" <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
> To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 8:57 AM
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Number separator
>
>
> > Hi all,
> > Do you ever discuss about automatic number separator ? (ex: 12512 ->
12,512)
> > In french Wikipedia it is a real problem because our separator is the
not
> > veiwable character : " ".
> > So if we want Wikipedia show "12 512" we need to write "12 512".
> > This make editable version of article sometine very difficulte to read.
> > I would like an *option* to cut all number framed by space (or other
word
> > separators) and length more than 4.
> > Exemple :
> >
> > 100 -> 100
> > 1000 -> 1000
> > 9999 -> 9999
> > 10000 -> 10 000 (separator!)
> > R10000 -> R10000
> > 123456789 -> 123 456 789 (separator!)
> >
> > Any hope to see this feature implemented ?
> >
> > Aoineko
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Timwi wroteth: I always thought this system looked
really un-pro-FESH-un-al.

ROFL. This *should be the absolute last word on the
"American system" for pronunciation, but Delirium
said:

"I thought it was fairly universal myself -- it's in
every major  dictionary I've used, including some of
the results at  www.dictionary.com. "

Well- the point was that this way of doing it was
"Americentrist" -- which Mark, you actually *validated
somewhat - nothing personal. Its easy to forget the
international, ie non-English thing if your not used
to thinking this way.

My final thoughts on the subject before actually doing
something about it:
1. SAMPA, though based on IPA was designed for machine
readability -- not for human readability.
2. The notion of a human-usable phonetic schema rests
on the fact that most of the world - whether its
Latin, pinyin, romaji, cyrillic, and just plain
non-Anglo English -- the Roman alphabet is ubiquitous
and differs rather little in terms of the way its
used.
3. Jimmy's point is on the right track. -- a schema
for  using Sampa-like input, which is then simply
changed to more readable characters -- these would
probably be have to be as ubiquitous as possible as
well -- as long as they borrow from the better ideas
out there, and could still have a 1:1 conversion to
sampa (eugh!)

-S-

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body:
PS -- its important to note that Sampa was originally
designed with only Germanic /Latin languages in mind
to begin with: "Danish, Dutch, English, French,
German, and Italian (by 1989); later to Norwegian and
Swedish (by 1992); and subsequently to Greek,
Portuguese, and Spanish (1993)."

Plus it just tries to doo too damn much.

-S-

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 03:22 PM 7/30/03 -0700, Daniel wrote:

>--- phma at webjockey.net wrote:
> > Please use plain text when sending email. HTML is
> > not secure when sending
> > email because it can contain malicious programs; so
> > I view my mail only
> > in plain text. Please see http://www.houghi.org for
> > how to set this in
> > your mail program.
> >
> > phma
>
>I don't see what's wrong with HTML.

What's wrong with HTML is

* It can contain viruses, tracking software, and other malware (as
explained in the message you're replying to)
* It enforces the appearance of a message on the reader, whether
she likes it or not (sometimes things like black on dark blue)
* It takes up a lot more space, which is a problem for people on
dialup lines or with space-limited mailboxes.

>If we really can't
>use HTML, possibly we could use the HTML text for a
>unicode symbol (like è (in case that came out
>wrong, &egrave;)).

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


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV

body:
Lightning wrote:
> Very true. I've been looking at the code, trying to find the db calls
> where I could optimize something. and trying to find bottle necks, but
> its pretty hard. The current code is *really* confusing. variables are

Isn't code always confusing?  :-)  However, if you are looking *for*
bottle necks, it means you are looking *at* the bottle.  Try looking
at the fluid instead.  Nobody really cares about the bottle anyway.

>  Another fun think would be to log every query made to the test server
> for say.. 500 page views or so along with a microtimestamp from the
> begining to the end of the file. We could then properly analyze that
> file and try to find the bottle necks and problematic query's. That

You're on the right track here.  However, the first thing we do when
we try to analyze that log file is to filter out all entries that have
a short roundtrip or response time, since they are not a problem.  So
it is rather unnecessary to log anything that has a short roundtrip.
We only need to log the slow responses.

  start = time();
  ... /* do all the calls */
  elapsed = time() - start;
  if (elapsed > OUR_THRESHOLD)
    Log("whooaaa, doing all the calls was very slow!!!");

Let's set the logging threshold so that only, say, 1% of all calls get
logged.  The overhead for looking at the system clock at the beginning
and end of every call is neglectible.  The overhead of writing a line
to the log for 1% of all calls is also neglectible.  There is no
reason not to use this sort of logging in the live system.

If "start" is a global variable, you can write a subroutine to make
the whole program more readable:

  void TimeLog(string text) {
    time_t elapsed = time() - start;
    if (elapsed > OUR_THRESHOLD)
      Log(text + " took " + elapsed + " seconds");
  }

Then the progam will look something like this:

  start = time();
  if (this_call == "GET") {
    ... /* do the get */
    TimeLog("get");
  }
  else if (this_call == "SAVE") {
    ... /* do the save */
    TimeLog("save");
  }
  else if (this_call == "STATISTICS") {
    ... /* do the statistics */
    TimeLog("statistics");
  }

The overhead for calling this subroutine for every transaction is
also neglectible.  It is a matter of microseconds at most, and any
"performance problem" is a matter of several milliseconds.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Wednesday 30 July 2003 20:06, Delirium wrote:
> I don't see how an HTML message could possibly contain a virus, unless
> you have a horribly broken mailreader.  It's simply markup, like SGML or
> TeX or whatever (or at least, the mail reader should treat it as simply
> markup, certainly not as executable code).  Tracking software I'll agree
> is an issue, but I don't expect anyone on this list to be including
> image bugs in their emails.

An HTML message can contain a JavaScript program, or an iframe with an
executable in it. Klez spreads by sending HTML messages with executables in
iframes, though Klez is filtered out before it reaches my inbox.

phma


subject: [Textbook-l] Licenses

body:
I just realized something I should have a long time ago; Our use of the GNU
FDL is completely copyleft. Read below;

:Permission is granted to copy, distribute
:and/or modify this document under the
:terms of the GNU Free Documentation
:License, Version 1.2 or any later version
:published by the Free Software Foundation;
:with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover
:Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.

Note especially "with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no
Back-Cover Texts." Hence, we only give permission to use our text if the 3rd
part does /not/ add Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts, or Back-Cover
Texts.

Therefore, for example, Britannica could never legally incorporate Wikipedia's
content and add a Britannica-ad in an Invariant Section linked from every
article. That way, every improvement they make to the Wikipedia content can
be backported into Wikipedia. The cycle of positive-feedback continues.

This makes me feel much better about our use of the GNU FDL.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Michael Becker

body:
Could we get back on subject or change the title of this thread?
David Grant brings up a valid issue, and it should be discussed.

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Richard Grevers
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 9.02
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: About copyright violations

On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 17:06:28 -0700, Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
gave
utterance to the following:

> Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>
>> What's wrong with HTML is
>>
>> * It can contain viruses, tracking software, and other malware (as
>> explained in the message you're replying to)
>> * It enforces the appearance of a message on the reader, whether she
>> likes it or not (sometimes things like black on dark blue)
>> * It takes up a lot more space, which is a problem for people on
>> dialup lines or with space-limited mailboxes.
>
> I don't see how an HTML message could possibly contain a virus, unless
> you have a horribly broken mailreader.
80% of PC users have a horribly broken mailreader - it comes with their
OS.

I can recall an instance of a Chinese fireworks website where there were

two thumbnail images on a page of about 20 where clicking the thumbnail
served not a jpg image but a vbs scripted virus or bomb. While IE
blindly
trusts the extension rather than checking the MIME type as per the
standard, both Opera and Mozilla simply reported that they could not
open
the resource. Fortunately the computer I was using when I tried it in IE

was not my work one, because the C: drive had to be wiped and the OS
reinstalled from scratch. And the nasty got straight past an up-to-date
AV
program.
If such an image was called from an email, you could be toast if using
client which uses IE as its HTML renderer, without a single click. The
vulnerability has probably been patched by now (but who knows, there are

still unpatched vulnerabilities published 18 months ago) and how many
people have their OS fully patched.
As a result, I do not have vbs or activeX installed on my computers any
more.
--
Richard Grevers
Atheism is a non-prophet organization

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Israeli-Palestinian neutrality

body:
Eclictology wrote:

>Taking this one step further -- Neutral writing is often viewed by
>partisans as seriously biased in favour of the opponents.

That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle ground is a big mistake.
On articles such as these, it may be that we can /never/
simply state anything as fact, if even basic facts are disputed.
If everything in an article says ?X said Y about Z.?,
then (assuming that it's undisputed that X did say that)
partisans are unlikely to view the article as truly biased.
(They may view it as unacceptable wishy-washy, but that's different.)
OTOH, if /we/ say something about Z, then add ?But X said Y instead.?,
then this can easily be viewed as biased against X.

-- Toby


body:
David Grant wrote:

[something in HTML]

Other people have complained when Stevertigo sends HTML
with black text on a dark background (or some such thing).
I've often found these complaints a bit pointless,
since it's the reader's own decision to view the HTML;
every one of Steve's posts has also appeared in plain text.
As such, I've only ever viewed the text version, which is fine.

David's post above, however, appeared only in HTML.
I can't read it unless I copy the file to another program,
or else view the HTML source and read that by hand.

I will now look at the source, and if it's easy to convert to text,
then I'll post the text version and (if applicable) reply to it.
But if it has a bunch of HTML markup all over the place,
then I may well just ignore it.

-- Toby


from_name: David Grant

body:
[This is David Grant's recent HTML post, redone in plain text.
 -- Toby Bartels]

Toby Bartels wrote:

>David Grant wrote in part:

>>I would like the template for every article to be altered, to include
>>something similar to the following: "This is licensed under GFDL...if
>>you with to copy this article, go ahead...but you are required to
>>provide a link to the GFDL... and you are required to link back to the
>>original article..."  That is essence of what needs to be added to the
>>template for every Wikipedia article.  This is in order to stop the
>>ripping of Wikipedia articles without full copyright/license compliance.

>But they are /not/ required to link back to Wikipedia!
>They're required to list up to 5 authors,
>and linking back to Wikipedia is the easiest way to do that.

Yes, this is the tricky thing though.? However, my opinion is that this
needs to be explicit on every Wikipedia article so that all people who
"rip" an article, have a "fighting chance" of seeing it at the
bottom/top of the page.? It should perhaps say, "You are required to
provide a link back to the original wikipedia article, or a link to up
to 5 authors."? The part where it says authors, can be a link to the
Page history.? But you are

>To avoid making people stop believing us, we must separate:
>* You /must/ release your version under the GFDL; and
>* We /advise/ you to link back to the original Wikipedia article.

Shouldn't we say "MUST" link back OR "MUST" give names of 5 authors?? I
don't think using "advise" is a smart thing to do...

>More comments on the meta page (possibly, if I get to it),
>about ideal wording and the like.  I do agree with you in general.

Thanks for your comments.

>
>-- Toby
>


from_name: Timwi

body:
> Could not connect to DB on 130.94.122.197
>
> Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'
>
> If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache, please notify the Wikipedia developers.

I'm sure you're all aware that Wikipedia is currently down and output
this error message, but I would like to point out that the e-mail
address linked to is "wikidown at bomis.com". Now, I haven't tried this
e-mail address just now, but I did last month, and it bounced back then,
and I asked for this error message to be changed to contain a valid
e-mail address, but it's the same one, so I guess I have reason to
believe it is still bouncing.

Can someone change this e-mail address to one that works? Or is there a
particular reason it needs to be one that bounces (give the user the
impression we're listening, but don't receive heaps of complaints during
each and every outage? ;-) )?

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
David Grant wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>But they are /not/ required to link back to Wikipedia!
>>They're required to list up to 5 authors,
>>and linking back to Wikipedia is the easiest way to do that.

>Yes, this is the tricky thing though.  However, my opinion is that this
>needs to be explicit on every Wikipedia article so that all people who
>"rip" an article, have a "fighting chance" of seeing it at the
>bottom/top of the page.

Yes, we must have /something/ better.
I'm just criticising the factual accuracy or your /specific/ suggestion.

>>To avoid making people stop believing us, we must separate:
>>* You /must/ release your version under the GFDL; and
>>* We /advise/ you to link back to the original Wikipedia article.

>Shouldn't we say "MUST" link back OR "MUST" give names of 5 authors?  I
>don't think using "advise" is a smart thing to do...

OTOH, that's more complicated -- and we really do want them to link back.
We can always say that they should look at the GFDL for the precise rules.

We basically agree, I just wanted to correct the factual misapprehension,
so that the error isn't spread amongst the other readers.
I'll take the rest of my comments to the English meta talk page
[[En:Wikipedia talk:Sites that use Wikipedia for content]],
where people can discuss the best wording for such a statement.

-- Toby


from_name: Delirium

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle ground is a big mistake.
>On articles such as these, it may be that we can /never/
>simply state anything as fact, if even basic facts are disputed.
>If everything in an article says ?X said Y about Z.?,
>then (assuming that it's undisputed that X did say that)
>partisans are unlikely to view the article as truly biased.
>(They may view it as unacceptable wishy-washy, but that's different.)
>OTOH, if /we/ say something about Z, then add ?But X said Y instead.?,
>then this can easily be viewed as biased against X.
>
>
In doing this though, we really can't afford to be wishy-washy on
absolutely *everything* if we hope to still be useful at all as an
encyclopedia.  For example, we shouldn't have to preface every physics
article with "is claimed by many/most physicists" to appease the fringe
people, or to preface the Holocaust discussions with "is claimed by
those who think the Holocaust happened" to appease the Holocaust
deniers, and so on.

-Mark


from_name: Jimmy O'Regan

body:
steve vertigo wrote:

>While Tarquin's comment was a bit cheeky (what use
>would he have had *then for it) -- and Dan's comment
>earlier about professors knowing better than the rest
>of us, so why bother (well?) -- represent the pinnacle
>of interest in the subject...  Still -- wikipedia
>might have an interest in attempting to
>unify/formalize something on this. Maybe its time that
>
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetic_schema
>
>But the whole notion of using English specific formats
>is useless-- once again the see we tend to swim in is
>an English-centered one.
>
>And Ill take a look at any PHP or Perl pinyin
>converters so that stuff like "pin:/wo3 bao4 you3/
>SARS" gets turned in into properly accented vowels,
>etc.
>
>
How about something similar to the ISBN links that generates SABLE/MS
SAPI markup/whatever the heck Apple use &c?


from_name: Tomos at Wikipedia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] a loophole of GFDL & modification of a document

body:
Among some Japanese wikipedians, there are some concerns about legality of
certain editing practices -
translating article, cut-and-pasting from one page to another (such as
archiving village pump talk, spining out a section of a long article to
create a new article), merging two articles into one, etc.

Your opinions, pointers to relevant discussions (past or ongoing), or a
pointer to a more appropriate place to ask this kind of help would be
greatly appreciated.

(By the way, Village Pump is called Bistro or Cafe in some other wikipedias
that I could read - for those who are not familiar with English wikipedia.)

These editing constitutes "modification" of a document according to GDFL,
and it has to fulfill certain requirements such as including the history
section of the original document into the new one (4-I).

To practice this literally would be to copy and paste the list of usernames&
IPs and time stamps of the whole Village Pump into a new page, perhaps after
the body text. That's somewhat inconvenient and impractical. Translating a
page from one language to another, in part or in whole, would require the
same.

(Well, of course, you may say worrying about this kind of potential
copyright violation is rather impractical)

But it seems that the text of GFDL allows us a work around. As long as we
copy in verbatim, we do not have to include the history section, it seems.
Not even link back to the original, if the copy is "transparent." So, if one
copies a whole text in verbatim from village pump to some other page,
without history section, that would be okay. Then, after copying in
verbatim, one can edit that copy, and save. That would not violate GFDL,
either.

In translating article, one can copy an original text in verbatim to another
wikipedia, and save first. Then edit the copy, translating or making other
changes. That would be GFDL compliant.

Also, as I understand, this is the way projects like Internet-Encyclopedia
is working.

In non-wikipedia case, one can first reproduce 101 transparent, verbatim
copies of a manual for a free-software. Those copies do not have the history
section, but that's okay. And then, one can take one of those history-less
copies, make modification, and release under GFDL. That would be okay as
well.

I think the purpose of 4-I is to ensure the attribution and traceability of
the older versions of the document. But it seems there is a work around for
those who wants to reduce those info. (I cannot come up with a vivid
illustration of this, but I hope I am making sense.)

regards,

Tomos

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
I intend to change the text "Bug reports" to "Contact us", and to describe
several ways to contact Wikipedia on the respective page:

1) Jimbo Wales / Bombis for press requests
2) IRC and instant messaging for direct chat
3) Village pump for general questions
4) Reference desk for subject-related questions
5) Mailing lists for longer discussions
6) SourceForge tracker for bug reports / feature requests
...

I would suggest that the translation for other Wikipedias than the English
one be changed accordingly.

Reasons:
- Several times people (mostly those who wanted to write a quick article
about the pedia) have said that they saw no easy way to contact Wikipedia.
This is frustrating and can contribute to negative or no reporting about
us.
- We need a single, prominent page that highlights all these options
because some of them (e.g. Village pump) are easily missed.
- "Bug reports" is currently given undue prominence. It can be well
integrated into such a page.

If there are no objections, I will proceed as described above.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] sysops' sql queries

body:
What about temporarily disabling sysops' SQL queries
till we set some hard time limits on them ?


from_name: Angela Abcd

subject: [Wikitech-l] sysops' sql queries

body:
This has already been done. They were disabled two days ago. Or yesterday, depending on your time zone. See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Announcements.

Angela.

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Plus - For a better Internet experience
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from_name: Azure Montaig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Azuresong@charter.net

body:
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from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Lightning wrote:
>
>
>>Very true. I've been looking at the code, trying to find the db calls
>>where I could optimize something. and trying to find bottle necks, but
>>its pretty hard. The current code is *really* confusing. variables are
>>
>>
>
>Isn't code always confusing?  :-)  However, if you are looking *for*
>bottle necks, it means you are looking *at* the bottle.  Try looking
>at the fluid instead.  Nobody really cares about the bottle anyway.
>
>
>
>> Another fun think would be to log every query made to the test server
>>for say.. 500 page views or so along with a microtimestamp from the
>>begining to the end of the file. We could then properly analyze that
>>file and try to find the bottle necks and problematic query's. That
>>
>>
>
>You're on the right track here.  However, the first thing we do when
>we try to analyze that log file is to filter out all entries that have
>a short roundtrip or response time, since they are not a problem.  So
>it is rather unnecessary to log anything that has a short roundtrip.
>We only need to log the slow responses.
>
>  start = time();
>  ... /* do all the calls */
>  elapsed = time() - start;
>  if (elapsed > OUR_THRESHOLD)
>    Log("whooaaa, doing all the calls was very slow!!!");
>
>Let's set the logging threshold so that only, say, 1% of all calls get
>logged.  The overhead for looking at the system clock at the beginning
>and end of every call is neglectible.  The overhead of writing a line
>to the log for 1% of all calls is also neglectible.  There is no
>reason not to use this sort of logging in the live system.
>
>If "start" is a global variable, you can write a subroutine to make
>the whole program more readable:
>
>  void TimeLog(string text) {
>    time_t elapsed = time() - start;
>    if (elapsed > OUR_THRESHOLD)
>      Log(text + " took " + elapsed + " seconds");
>  }
>
>Then the progam will look something like this:
>
>  start = time();
>  if (this_call == "GET") {
>    ... /* do the get */
>    TimeLog("get");
>  }
>  else if (this_call == "SAVE") {
>    ... /* do the save */
>    TimeLog("save");
>  }
>  else if (this_call == "STATISTICS") {
>    ... /* do the statistics */
>    TimeLog("statistics");
>  }
>
>The overhead for calling this subroutine for every transaction is
>also neglectible.  It is a matter of microseconds at most, and any
>"performance problem" is a matter of several milliseconds.
>
>
>
>
I agree with what you say. I just think that we should log the actual
query's made, in case of slow files to see which query's need optimizing.

oh and in any case i think we'd be using microtime() not time()

one more thing, I know you said code is *allways* confusing, but i am
quite fluid in php and c to a certain extent, and i can understand the
code.. its just that i find the design of it horrible. I would never
dream of using a global variable myself if i didnt have to... i just
think that the overall design is sub-optimal. I see why people want to
re-write it. its just obfuscated and i think the architecture of it
could use quite some improvement, however i wouldnt know where to start
since changing one thing would break so much, but i think the code
should be clarified if we really expect to attract outside developers,
the current code is just to hard to understand for people to casually
look it over.

Lightning


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked

body:
I cannot get on to wiki. On the rare times I could today (less than 20% of
all attempts), I could not get into many pages. On those rare occasions when
I did actually get into something, I could not move between article and talk
page. If I actually could get onto a talk page I rarely could save anything
and my watchlist cannot be got to.

Instead I'd constantly get the damned message -

Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection errors.
Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'

If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache,
please notify the Wikipedia developers.

I reloaded and cleared the browser cache to no effect. And the 'please
notify the Wikipedia developers' message would draw a blank, going nowhere.
What is going on?

JT

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] could not connect to DB

body:
I think it would be cool if I wrote a program to monitor wikipedia
hourly or so from my home computer.  When the program gets the 'could
not connect to wikipedia' command, it sends a single line ssh command
to the server which will kick it in the pants.

What would that single line be?

Email me offlist, I guess, if there's a db password in the
command.

--Jimbo


from_name: K Forstner

body:
Exactly. No one seems to notice or mind, at least when looking at the
e-mails. I did clear my browser cache, I did turn off my computer and,
eventually, I did "notify the developers". What are "many connection
errors"??

KF

----- Original Message -----
From: "james duffy" <jtdirl at hotmail.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 5:16 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked

>
> I cannot get on to wiki. On the rare times I could today (less than 20% of
> all attempts), I could not get into many pages. On those rare occasions
when
> I did actually get into something, I could not move between article and
talk
> page. If I actually could get onto a talk page I rarely could save
anything
> and my watchlist cannot be got to.
>
> Instead I'd constantly get the damned message -
>
> Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection
errors.
> Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'
>
> If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache,
> please notify the Wikipedia developers.
>
> I reloaded and cleared the browser cache to no effect. And the 'please
> notify the Wikipedia developers' message would draw a blank, going
nowhere.
> What is going on?
>
> JT
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


in_reply_to: <8qu5yrPhpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 12:57:00AM +0200

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> 1) Jimbo Wales / Bombis for press requests

Well, Bomis is now official "just my day job" with respect to
Wikipedia, and need not be mentioned anywhere.

--Jimbo


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Azuresong@charter.net

body:
Speaking of messages sent in weird, proprietary, unreadable formats,
what in the name of Babbage was this?

   From: "Azure Montaig" <Azuresong at charter.net>
   X-Priority: 3
   X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
   X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165
   Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
   Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
   Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 02:57:20 -0500

   This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

   ------=_NextPart_000_00F1_01C3570F.75C449B0
   Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
	   boundary="----=_NextPart_001_00F2_01C3570F.75C449B0"

   ------=_NextPart_001_00F2_01C3570F.75C449B0
   Content-Type: text/plain;
	   charset="Windows-1252"
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

   ------=_NextPart_001_00F2_01C3570F.75C449B0
   Content-Type: text/html;
	   charset="Windows-1252"
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

   <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">

   <META http-equiv=3DContent-Type content=3D"text/html; =
   charset=3Dwindows-1252">
   <META content=3D"MSHTML 6.00.2800.1170" name=3DGENERATOR>

   ------=_NextPart_001_00F2_01C3570F.75C449B0--

   ------=_NextPart_000_00F1_01C3570F.75C449B0
   Content-Type: text/x-vcard;
	   name="Azure Montaig.vcf"
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
   Content-Disposition: attachment;
	   filename="Azure Montaig.vcf"

   BEGIN:VCARD
   VERSION:2.1
   N:Montaig;Azure
   FN:Azure Montaig
   EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:azuremontaig at yahoo.com
   REV:20030731T075720Z
   END:VCARD

   ------=_NextPart_000_00F1_01C3570F.75C449B0--

   _______________________________________________
   WikiEN-l mailing list
   WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Yes - for /anonymous contributions/ it does sound
> interesting. Logged-in users should retain copyright. Otherwise way
> too much power and control is being entrusted to the Foundation.

Maybe!  But there are advantages for all of us to contribute our
copyrights to the foundation.  It's too late now, of course, but all
of our licensing/relicensing questions would be a lot easier to deal
with if the foundation owned all the copyrights.

The FSF requires an assignment of copyrights to them for any official
FSF projects.  This policy would not work for us -- it's too late, and
would interfere with the wiki model.  But if people voluntarily do it,
I think it's a good idea.

--Jimbo


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] .vcf

body:
(Sean Barrett asked what a .vcf file is.)

http://filext.com/detaillist.php?extdetail=VCF

My bet is on the first table.

kq

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Tobin Richard

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds?

body:
Hello,

Has anyone thought of setting up a RSS feed for Wikipedia? I know that
there was one back in the early days but there doesn't seem to be one
now... (and from memory the old one wasn't an official feed).

How much work would be involved in setting up a feed with some daily
selected articles and a random topic?

Tobin Richard.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Redirection

body:
The only problem with this idea is that we pretty much commit to
supporting those URLs in the longrun if we do that.

Pedro M.V. wrote:

> I suggest include automatic redirection when happens a probable error in the article address.
>
> In example, if I write www.wikipedia.org/diesel really I wanted to write www.wikipedia.org/wiki/diesel . The server could redirect to the correct wiki address.
>
> Regards.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Number separator

body:
No comments ???

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guillaume Blanchard" <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 6:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Number separator

> It's why I suggest this only for number more than 4 characters length ;o)
> I suppose <nowiki></nowiki> may solve (rare) case you don't want automatic
> separator.
>
> Aoineko
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Pedro M.V." <macv at interlap.com.ar>
> To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 6:05 PM
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Number separator
>
>
> > One could use a tag to indicate : don?t use the separator (i.e. in
spanish
> wikipedia the year 2000 it?s 2000 not 2.000); for example <nsep> ( no
> separator)</nsep>. Excepting  because of this little problem, it?s a good
> idea.
> >
> > Regards.
> > ----
> > Biofuels for your petroleum-car
> > http://www.journeytoforever.org
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/biodiesel
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Guillaume Blanchard" <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
> > To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 8:57 AM
> > Subject: [Wikitech-l] Number separator
> >
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > > Do you ever discuss about automatic number separator ? (ex: 12512 ->
> 12,512)
> > > In french Wikipedia it is a real problem because our separator is the
> not
> > > veiwable character : " ".
> > > So if we want Wikipedia show "12 512" we need to write "12 512".
> > > This make editable version of article sometine very difficulte to
read.
> > > I would like an *option* to cut all number framed by space (or other
> word
> > > separators) and length more than 4.
> > > Exemple :
> > >
> > > 100 -> 100
> > > 1000 -> 1000
> > > 9999 -> 9999
> > > 10000 -> 10 000 (separator!)
> > > R10000 -> R10000
> > > 123456789 -> 123 456 789 (separator!)
> > >
> > > Any hope to see this feature implemented ?
> > >
> > > Aoineko
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


in_reply_to: <8qq5qplCpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 02:08:00PM +0200

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> usually with running times of several hundred seconds. This is the title
> search. The main title search is still disabled, but the Go button still
> runs one.

Why should the Go button do that?  It seems to me that all the Go
button needs to do is change spaces to underlines and redirect.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Anti troll mechanism

in_reply_to: <8qe4iz8CpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Sun, Jul 27, 2003 at 12:42:00PM +0200

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> If you want to reduce vandalism, don't make
> it harder to cause -- make it easier to fix. That's the wiki way.

Beautifully put.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>Maybe!  But there are advantages for all of us
>to contribute our copyrights to the foundation.

Can we make copyright assignment compulsory for anonymous contributions to
Wikibooks then? This is something I have often seen other Wikis do (Anon
contribs are a special case because it is much more difficult to track them
down in order to ask them about copyright changes). Maybe this in combination
with requiring valid email to activate user accounts will make the copyright
situation more bearable for Wikibooks.

Both of these ideas might also be a good for Wikipedia too (for new accounts
and edits made by Anons after a certain date) - but I would like to see if it
works on Wikibooks first.

That way we at least have some way to contact users in case of a copyright
change (simply knowing a previous email address - even if no longer valid -
should help a great deal in tracking someone down in order to ask them about
relicensing).

Aside: A prominent link to a privacy policy should be incorporated into the
Special:userlogin page in order to assuage people's fears over giving out
their email address - but that is needed anyway.

>It's too late now, of course, but all of our licensing
>/relicensing questions would be a lot easier to deal
>with if the foundation owned all the copyrights.

<beating a dead horse>
Again, I would be very wary of that; there is would be no guarantee against
the Foundation selling its soul (copyrights) to the Devil (*cough* Bill and
Malinda Gates Foundation *cough*) for a large grant (by-laws and Foundation
constitutions can change). By making it fairly difficult, but not impossible,
to change copyright, we add another layer of protection and filter against
such a thing happening. Power to the people.
</beating a dead horse>

>The FSF requires an assignment of copyrights
>to them for any official FSF projects.  This policy
>would not work for us -- it's too late, and would
>interfere with the wiki model.  But if people voluntarily
>do it, I think it's a good idea.

We should make it easy for logged-in users to assign copyright if they so
choose - it is their text and their right (a push button interface to flag
user accounts, and thus user edits, would be nice). But paranoid people like
me will leave copyright assignment clauses in our Wills (or if we are rich,
then clear instructions to our estates on how those copyrights can be used).

But I plan on being very contactable until then, so if a relicensing of my
work needs to occur, then just ask.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Jimbo wrote:
>Erik Moeller wrote:
>> 1) Jimbo Wales / Bombis for press requests
>
>Well, Bomis is now official "just my day job" with
>respect to Wikipedia, and need not be mentioned
>anywhere.

But Bomis still owns and hosts the servers - that is an important thing to
note, at least in passing.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dump

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
>The last database dump was made 18 days ago.
>Brion does this normally once a week and he is on
>another assignement till tomorrow.
>
>Does this mean that Wikipeia loses 18 days of edits
>if a diskcrash occurs, or are there other backups as
>well?

I sure hope not... But it does look that way (I have those cur dumps on my
hard disk just in case now).

>If SQl dumps are all we have, would it not be better to
>schedule an automatic dump each night?
>Or does this bring Wikipedia to a halt for a prolonged time?

Brion may have since devised a better way to do this, but I remember him
having to put each wiki in read only mode for at least several minutes each
to do the weekly backups (the larger the wiki the longer it took).

I'm sure this could be done automatically if you could trust a script to have
the type of access controls needed to make a wiki read only.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Frecklefoot

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Oxford CfP

body:
> In short, the Oxford
> University Press wants ideas for how to use their
> dictionaries and stuff.  I guess "put it online for
> free" would be too radical, but who knows...

It's not that radical of an idea.  Merriam-Webster (http://www.m-w.com) has been available online for years! :-)


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dump

body:
The last database dump was made 18 days ago. Brion does this normally
once a week and he is on another assignement till tomorrow.

Does this mean that Wikipeia loses 18 days of edits if a diskcrash
occurs, or are there other backups as well? If SQl dumps are all we
have, would it not be better to schedule an automatic dump each night?
Or does this bring Wikipedia to a halt for a prolonged time?

Erik Zachte


from_name: Timwi

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
> Yeah, I guess you have a good point with that last
> one. I won't use HTML (even though I haven't been) in
> my letters. But I think unicode-encoded letters are
> just as bad.

Unicode has nothing to do with HTML. This posting is in UTF-8 (Unicode
Transfer Format), but it does not contain any HTML.

?  <--  This is a c with an acute accent. If you can't see it, well,
         doesn't matter much, because if I hadn't put it there, you
         wouldn't be able to see it either.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] HTML mail

body:
I would like to suggest that we simply keep HTML mail turned *OFF* and
not make a big fuss or flamewar about it. Both sides of the discussion
have good points, so let's just go for backwards-compatibility so
everybody can participate without problems, complaints, or annoyances.

Thank you,
Timwi


from_name: Richard Grevers

body:
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 17:06:28 -0700, Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> gave
utterance to the following:

> Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>
>> What's wrong with HTML is
>>
>> * It can contain viruses, tracking software, and other malware (as
>> explained in the message you're replying to)
>> * It enforces the appearance of a message on the reader, whether
>> she likes it or not (sometimes things like black on dark blue)
>> * It takes up a lot more space, which is a problem for people on
>> dialup lines or with space-limited mailboxes.
>
> I don't see how an HTML message could possibly contain a virus, unless
> you have a horribly broken mailreader.
80% of PC users have a horribly broken mailreader - it comes with their OS.

I can recall an instance of a Chinese fireworks website where there were
two thumbnail images on a page of about 20 where clicking the thumbnail
served not a jpg image but a vbs scripted virus or bomb. While IE blindly
trusts the extension rather than checking the MIME type as per the
standard, both Opera and Mozilla simply reported that they could not open
the resource. Fortunately the computer I was using when I tried it in IE
was not my work one, because the C: drive had to be wiped and the OS
reinstalled from scratch. And the nasty got straight past an up-to-date AV
program.
If such an image was called from an email, you could be toast if using
client which uses IE as its HTML renderer, without a single click. The
vulnerability has probably been patched by now (but who knows, there are
still unpatched vulnerabilities published 18 months ago) and how many
people have their OS fully patched.
As a result, I do not have vbs or activeX installed on my computers any
more.
--
Richard Grevers
Atheism is a non-prophet organization


subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Tomasz wrote:
>It's legally impossible. Copyright assignment
>requires a real legal contract, and you can't
>make those with anonymous people, no way.

Have you taken any law classes? IANAL, but I have. Most contracts are informal
but still binding - like when Jimbo assigned his own Wikipedia copyrights to
the Foundation.

And also by using your logic we could not let Anons contribute at all since,
under your reasoning, we could not bind them to the terms of our license.

Having an easy to find copyright policy and a one line sentence in the edit
window "By clicking save you indicate that you agree to the copyright terms
of this website" is more than enough.

Oh and newspapers, magazines and the equivalent online counterparts very
routinely state that all letters to the editor or posts made to them by the
public are their property.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Number separator

body:
> Hi all,
> Do you ever discuss about automatic number separator ? (ex: 12512 ->
12,512)
> In french Wikipedia it is a real problem because our separator is the not
> veiwable character : " ".
> So if we want Wikipedia show "12 512" we need to write "12 512".
> This make editable version of article sometine very difficulte to read.
> I would like an *option* to cut all number framed by space (or other word
> separators) and length more than 4.
> Exemple :
>
> 100 -> 100
> 1000 -> 1000
> 9999 -> 9999
> 10000 -> 10 000 (separator!)
> R10000 -> R10000
> 123456789 -> 123 456 789 (separator!)
>
> Any hope to see this feature implemented ?
>
> Aoineko


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Oxford CfP

body:
I found the following announcement on another list (Corpora-List), and
just don't know what to do with it.  It's not directly related to
Wikipedia, but on a similar topic.  Any ideas?  In short, the Oxford
University Press wants ideas for how to use their dictionaries and
stuff.  I guess "put it online for free" would be too radical, but who
knows...

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 15:39:59 +0100
From: "LAWSON, Ann" <ann.lawson at oup.com>
To: "'CORPORA at UIB.NO'" <CORPORA at UIB.NO>
Subject: [Corpora-List] Oxford CfP - Reminder

Call for Proposals for Free Access to Resources
Proposals are due by 31 July 2003.
We look forward to receiving your proposals.
Please see www.oup.co.uk/digital_reference for more details. Sample material
is available for pre-proposal testing. A short application form must be
submitted, along with a description of the proposed research project. The
results of the review process will be made available during October 2003.
Oxford University Press (Trade and Reference Department) is pleased to
announce a call for research proposals which make use of OUP's extensive
range of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, thesauruses, subject
reference material and related resources - at no cost to you. Proposals are
welcomed from individuals and research teams in the academic community, and
will be judged by our panel according to research excellence and innovative
use and development of resources.
We have recently undertaken a lot of work on our newly published Oxford
Dictionary of English data set, with over 170,000 entries covering all
varieties of English worldwide. The ODE data set constitutes a fully
integrated range of formal data types suitable for language engineering and
NLP applications. Please ask for more details.

If you'd like to make commercial use of data or have any other questions,
please get in touch with digitalreference.uk at oup.com

Dr Ann Lawson
Business Development Manager, Digital Reference
Academic Division, Oxford University Press
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 353255    Fax: +44 (0) 1865 353658
Mob: +44 (0) 7979 953 100 Web: www.oup.co.uk/digital_reference
Passionate about language? www.askoxford.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Again

body:
KF wrote:
> Whenever I try to access Wikipedia, this is what
> I get. No one has reacted to the same message
> which I posted for the first time 24 hours ago,
> which I find rather strange. A number of minor
> disputes still seem to be going on, and people
> do react to them. But how do you work if you
> can't read, let alone edit Wikipedia articles?
> Or is it just me who can't get in?

I'm having the same problem, periodically, but I
didn't respond earlier because there's nothing I can
do about it.  I understand your frustration, but I
think that most of the developers aren't around right
now, and do all they can when they are.  Within a few
years we'll probably need as many machines as slashdot
has--which will cost quite a lot--but until then, all
we can do is wait for the code to be optimized, which
takes time.  Until then, given that everyone is a
volunteer--including the coders--I'd recommend
patience.  :-)

kq

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


in_reply_to: <8qu6GDhSpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 11:34:00PM +0200

body:
Oh, duh, I didn't realize all of that.

Where's the 'search' button?  Gone?

What if I want to search for articles containing 'Thomas Jefferson', but
more than just the [[Thomas Jefferson]] article?

Maybe I just overlooked that the main search has been removed for
performance reasons right now?

Erik Moeller wrote:

> Jimmy-
> > Erik Moeller wrote:
> >> usually with running times of several hundred seconds. This is the title
> >> search. The main title search is still disabled, but the Go button still
> >> runs one.
>
> > Why should the Go button do that?  It seems to me that all the Go
> > button needs to do is change spaces to underlines and redirect.
>
> The Go button is much smarter, and should be much smarter, than that.
> See
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Go_button
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] mysql flush

body: I just did a flush, and things seem happier again.


subject: [Wikitech-l] What should I do?

body:
What should I do to resovle the flush-hosts problem?  If it's hardware
we need, then it's hardware we shall have.  Is the problem solvable by
ram?  By CPU?

I'm ready to throw some money at this thing again.  Suggestions would
be much appreciated.

Of course, it'd also be groovy if everyone who is working on a Phase
IV idea might be willing to stop porting, or to port with a STRONG eye
towards helping with the performance problem.  Clever tweaks to the
site to avoid DB queries would probably be *most* helpful, but which
queries to avoid?

--Jimbo


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Call for Participation Wizards of OS 3]

body:
Hallo,

Ein Konferenzvortrag ist zwar etwas mehr Arbeit als ein
Wikipedia-Artikel und kann auch nur in begrenztem Rahmen
gemeinschaftlich erstellt werden, aber die Wizards of OS
sollte man schon ausn?tzen. Ich bin leider am September
f?r ein habes Jahr im Ausland, aber vielleicht hat der
eine oder andere Zeit und Lust?

Angeblich ist Jimbo Wales da, aber ich finde, man sollte
auch etwas "von unten" aus der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia
bringen.

http://wiki.wizards-of-os.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Wikipedia_And_Friends

Gru?
   Jakob

P.S: ist gmane gerade unten?

-------- Urspr?ngliche Nachricht --------
Betreff:     Call for Participation Wizards of OS 3
Datum:     Thu, 31 Jul 2003 15:44:43 +0200
Von:     Volker Grassmuck <vgrass at rz.hu-berlin.de>
R?ckantwort:     vgrass at rz.hu-berlin.de
Firma:     mikro & HU
An:     Wizards at arcor-online.net, of at arcor-online.net,
OS at arcor-online.net, speakers at arcor-online.net

Dear wos participant,

we are happy to announce that the Wizards of OS 3 will take place in
late April 2004 in Berlin. The landscape of open collaboration and of
the digital commons is quite different now than it was in 1999 and 2001.
It's no less exciting. As contributor to a previous wos event, we would
like to invite you to participate in shaping the next one. We would like
to re-start the dialog with the following questions:

- What do you see as crucial issues in free software and free content
that the wos3 should address? What other issues should be included?
- Are there any speakers you think we should invite?
- Would you yourself like to contribute something again?
- What other formats aside from the classic "3-4 presentations + panel
discussion in a 2-hour slot" do you know from experience and can recommend?

Some ideas for the wos3 have, of course, come up already. You can view
them at our wiki workspace: http://wiki.wizards-of-os.org/
Instead of replying by mail you're very welcome to input your ideas
there directly.
The discussions about the wos3 have started on the mailinglist
wos at mikrolisten.de. If you're not currently subscribed you can do so at:
http://post.openoffice.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wos

The wos website is currently undergoing a complete re-design. If you
gave a talk at wos2, you might want to take a look at:
http://www.mikro.org/Events/OS/wos2/docu-e.html
and see whether your transcript is online already. The others will
follow soon. I will send a separate mail inviting you to edit it if you
like, before the relaunch of the site.
And a final point, since organizing conferences alas isn't like free
beer: If you can point us to any source of funding for the wos, that
would be very much appreciated.
best regards
Volker Grassmuck


from_name: Oualmakran Youssef

subject: [Wikitech-l] ES wiki and EL

body:
Hello,

Lately, I am spending a lot of time on es:.
Sometimes, I spend some hours a week importing articles
(I would use that time better, if I have not do that).

The main problems about mass-importing are:

*A lot of void template
(example: http://enciclopedia.us.es/wiki.phtml?title=Atolinga+%28Zacatecas%29)
*There are still many ''junk'' articles on  EL
("hello", obsecenities, questions)
*Some different naming conventions
(EL do not make a lot of new subpages, but old ones remain)

Still, I am for a mass-importing tool (ie. a bot)

*A lot of good articles (it takes a lot of time to import them by hand)
*It could attract more user: more articles and higher position in Google

There is informal collaboration between the two projects, some
user spend time on both servers. I hope, that EL users will not get
ungry if I use a bot (I cannot predict their reaction)

There are no talks of rejoining since many months (at least six month,
I am afraid there will be no new talks before another six months).

My conclusion: I will be pleased that someone make a bot. I would
like to import say 50-100 articles a day (depending on my free time and
the availibility of other wikipedians from es)

Thanks in advance if some one could make a bot.

Regards,
Youssef


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Three easy requests for someone with root access

body:
A few requests for people in high places to consider.

Item 1

User:Amillar (216.99.203.72) is blocked from firewallinit. He has said
sorry. Can he please be unblocked? Further details at

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3AAmillar

Item 2

The two recent server crashes were excessively prolonged due to the lack
of available users with the appropriate access. Can Erik Moller please
be given root access? Can I please have a non-root account on pliny? (I
already have one on larousse)

Item 3

:Could not connect to DB on 130.94.122.197
:Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection
:errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'

Can max_connect_errors please be increased to, say, a billion? It is
currently set to 10. This has happened at least twice. There's probably
an underlying hardware problem, but this workaround would greatly reduce
downtime, while we're hunting down the root cause.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowsk wrote:
>Contract of transfer of material copyrights
>requires written form to be valid.

The server is in the US. Thus only US law (for all activity within the US) and
International law (for all activity between the server and those contributing
outside of US jurisdiction) applies.

-- mav


from_name: a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk

subject: [Wikitech-l] Images security flaw...

body:
Hi,

There seems to be a security flaw in the image deletion. It seems
anyone can delete old versions.

So a practical attack becomes possible: just upload a new (junk)
version of an image, and delete the old one.

This is made worse since even sysops can't undo image deletion.

Perhaps deletion of old image versions should be restricted to
sysops?

--
Allan Crossman
a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk
http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk


from_name: Rob Brewer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Azuresong@charter.net

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>Speaking of messages sent in weird, proprietary, unreadable formats,
>what in the name of Babbage was this?
>
>
>
A [[vCard]].

Rob
wikikarma: [[vCard]].


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 11:02:31AM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Can we make copyright assignment compulsory for anonymous contributions to
> Wikibooks then?

It's legally impossible. Copyright assignment requires a real legal
contract, and you can't make those with anonymous people, no way.


subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowsk wrote:
>If it's copyrighted by anyone living in Europe, European laws apply.

All that matters to Wikimedia is what is legal to have on the server in the
US. When you edit on a US-based server then the laws of the US dictate what
is legal to have on that server. That doesn't mean you are immune to the laws
of your own country, but as soon as you post something to the Wikimedia
server then US law takes over.

However, it does look like written consent is required in the US to transfer
ownership (an exclusive right) but it is not required to transfer other
rights (so-called "non-exclusive rights"). This does seem to go counter to
common contract law that which is rather permissive with informal agreements
(but any good lawyer will still tell you to get things in writing)... Oh
well.

But, the question is this; is one of those non-exclusive rights the right to
re-license the work to third parties (such as giving Wikimedia the right to
relicense the Anon's work under another copyleft license)? I couldn't find an
answer to that.

We really need a lawyer's opinion here.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Jimmy-
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> usually with running times of several hundred seconds. This is the title
>> search. The main title search is still disabled, but the Go button still
>> runs one.

> Why should the Go button do that?  It seems to me that all the Go
> button needs to do is change spaces to underlines and redirect.

The Go button is much smarter, and should be much smarter, than that.
See
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Go_button

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Thomas Luft

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Fwd: [Wikide-l] Botrechte]

body:
Hi there,

there is another bot running on the German Wikipedia and the user wanted
to set the bot bit in the user database so that the changes made by the
bot won't appear in the Special:Recentchanges.

Could some one of the developers set the necessary bit?
Attached you find the original message from Nils who created the ApeBot
in German where he is asking to do the changes.
Regards

Thomas

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Wikide-l] Botrechte
Date: 	Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:13:15 +0200
From: 	Nils Kehrein <usenet2003 at affenkrieger.de>
Reply-To: 	wikide-l at wikipedia.org
To: 	wikide-l at wikipedia.org

Hi,

kann jemand meinem kleinen Bot (neuer Username daf?r "ApeBot") die
entsprechenden Rechte geben, dass die ?nderungen nicht mehr in
[[Spezial:Recentchanges]] auftauchen? Hat sich n?mlich schon wer
beschwert :-|

Gru?,
Nils.

_______________________________________________
Wikide-l mailing list
Wikide-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikide-l


from_name: Heinz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Administrator Coma l�scht Abstimmungsergebnisse

body:
Habe gerade einen interessanten Beitrag in der Wikipedia gelesen:
Administrator Coma l?scht Abstimmungsergebnisse.Was wird dies f?r
Konsequenzen haben?