body:
CRAZY TALK.

Seriously, NPOV doesn't mean not linking to opinionated sources if they're
part of the story. Luna is right.

On 12/4/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If the blog is worth mentioning, it seems worth linking to. Wouldn't make
> too much sense to mention a blog post without linking to it *somewhere*,
> eh?
>
> But as to whether it's worth a mention at all, I have no idea.
>
> Just my two cents.
> -Luna
>
> On 12/4/06, Ryan Wetherell <renardius at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I agree that the link should be in [[Anne Milton]], but with some kind
> > of warning of content.  We already do this in a lot of articles,
> > including, say, scientific theories, where we have supportive and
> > opposing external links.  Now I know that theories and people are
> > different things, but I don't see the problem of excluding a notable
> > outside link, even if it is critical.
> >
> > --Ryan
> >
> > On 12/4/06, David Boothroyd <david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > > I should like to clarify the issue in this dispute. The question is
> > > not whether the blog is a 'source'; it is clearly not a source for
> > > anything other than what is said on the blog. The issue is whether or
> > > not to mention it in the article; the subsidiary issue is, should that
> > > question be answered in the affirmative, it should be linked to.
> > >
> > > My position is that the answer to both questions is Yes. The following
> > > reasons justify mentioning the blog:
> > >
> > > 1) The blog has been mentioned twice in the (UK) national press. The
> > > first was in Damian Whitworth, "A strange case of espionage and
> warfare
> > > inside the commuter belt", The Times, April 18, 2005, p. 28. The
> second
> > > was Rod Liddle, "Battle of the Guildford gals", The Sunday Times, May
> 1,
> > > 2005, p. 15. I have undertaken an extensive search and have yet to
> find
> > > any other site set up to target an individual candidate being
> mentioned
> > > in the press. This is therefore a unique situation.
> > >
> > > 2) The blog has also been mentioned by Sandra Howard (wife of the
> > > then Leader of the Opposition) in her election campaign blog.
> > >
> >
> http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=sandra.howard.page&obj_id=122745
> > >
> > > 3) The fact that Anne Milton is quoted by Sandra Howard asserting that
> > > Tim Ireland was "stalking" her through the weblog is particularly
> > > significant. It is a notably extreme accusation.
> > >
> > > 4) It appears to be the only case where a blog about an MP has
> > > continued to be updated. There have been others, but they have all
> gone
> > > under. This one hasn't.
> > >
> > > 5) The author of the blog, Tim Ireland, is notable enough to have an
> > > article about him. His notability is for his work on political blogs.
> > >
> > > 6) I do not propose to mention this in the article, but in my
> submission
> > > the edit wars engaged in by supporters of Anne Milton (including by IP
> > > addresses traced to the Parliamentary estate) who attempt to remove
> all
> > > mention of it from the article, denote that it is considered notable
> by
> > > them. See the article history.
> > >
> > > I do not see how WP:BLP is engaged merely by mentioning that a
> critical
> > > blog exists. It is potentially engaged by reporting Anne Milton's
> > > reaction, but that has an unimpeachable source in The Times piece.
> > >
> > > Now Guy imputes to me motives other than improving the encyclopaedia
> > > to explain why I think it should be mentioned. This is really neither
> > > here nor there to the merits of the case but I would invite anyone
> > > wishing to examine the issue to look at my contributions on Talk:Anne
> > > Milton starting in June.
> > >
> > > Should the first question be decided in the affirmative, that the
> > > blog is notable enough to be mentioned, then should it be linked? I
> > > submit the answer is clearly "Yes". Once the article mentions the
> blog,
> > > inquiring readers may wish to look at it for themselves. It simply
> > > makes no sense to say that the blog is notable but yet not linkable.
> > > Even the Wikipedia article on Goatse.cx links to a mirror to it.
> > > I would make a proviso that the link to the blog should make clear
> > > that the site is not in any sense neutral. It might also be
> > > reasonable, though I don't think warranted, to have the site
> > > address in text rather than as a hyperlink.
> > >
> > > Perhaps I should say that as I understand Guy's position, he considers
> > > that a link to the blog is acceptable from [[Tim Ireland]] but not
> > > from [[Anne Milton]]. I cannot understand the internal logic of such a
> > > position.
> > > --
> > > David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
> > > david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
> > > dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Attack blogs in WP:LIVING articles

body:
On 12/4/06, David Boothroyd <david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> >  > 3) The fact that Anne Milton is quoted by Sandra Howard asserting
> that
> >  > Tim Ireland was "stalking" her through the weblog is particularly
> >  > significant. It is a notably extreme accusation.
> >
> >Well, the jury will have to describe whether objecting to such
> >harassment makes Anne Milton more notable than otherwise. Or whether
> >she is reacting as a normal person might well do.
>
> That does beg the question of whether the existence of the blog or its
> contents amounts to "harassment", or whether such harassment would be
> over and above the level of scrutiny and fair comment anyone might
> expect when standing for public office. I haven't made my mind up on
> that.

And we should let people make up their own minds by letting them see the new
stories and the blog posts.


subject: [WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

body:
On 12/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/3/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > Evidently someone has decided that fair use doesn't apply to
> > images of living people, that any image of a person (legitimately
> > fair use or not) can be speedily deleted, on the grounds that a
> > free image could be found or created.
> >
>
> There are exceptions but that is broadly speaking a correct
> interpritation of our fair use policy.

You mean Wikimedia's? Is that based on advice of counsel?


list: foundation-l

from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiyouth

body:
Please note that Wikiyouth is not a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. If
you told anyone otherwise, you will have to correct yourself.

On 12/4/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In the spirit of announcing a mailing list for women, I would like to
> announce a wiki and message board for the youth (20 and under) of wiki
> communities. Below is our announcement letter / about page, since I feel it
> bests describe the mission and I'll be darned if I make a redundant message.
>
>
> Are you an advocate of youth rights on the Internet?
>
> Have you ever used or edited a wiki, such as the world-famous Wikipedia?
>
> Then we want you to join the Wiki Youth Movement.
>
> http://www.wikiyouth.org/
>
> Wikis like Wikipedia allow young people everywhere to share knowledge,
> ideas and experiences. But wherever young people use the Internet, they are
> faced with reactionary and condescending views. Fearful adults try to
> regulate the content they can see and the communities they can contribute
> to. The Wiki Youth Association seeks to give young readers, users and
> editors a voice.
>
> Beyond demanding equal treatment as wiki contributors, our goal is to
> build a shared understanding of wiki ethics. Vandalism and immature behavior
> are condemned on most wikis, and sensible learning approaches for new wiki
> users are encouraged. We want to have fun, but not at the expense of others.
> We want to help you to understand the maze of wiki-rules, so that you too
> can have fun.
>
> We would also like to give intelligent young people a shared social space
> where they can talk about their experiences in not only wiki communities,
> but also their daily lives. eventually, we hope that we can develop the WYA
> into a true social movement which organizes events and campaigns. But our
> initial goals are modest: we only want to become the single largest
> world-wide community of young wiki users.
>
> The WYA is not a formal organization. There is no membership other than
> registration for our wiki and forums.
>
> Join today!
>


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiyouth


body:
On 12/4/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 18:41:11 -0500, "The Cunctator"
> <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >And we should let people make up their own minds by letting them see the
> new
> >stories and the blog posts
>
> You really think attack blogs should be linked to articles on living
> individuals on the grounds that readers can make up their own minds?
> Wow.

Is that "Wow" facetious? I hope so.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] SOS -- Save Our Sources

body:
> Well, no. This thread is about disappearing sources, no? Having verbatim what is being referred to could help:
>
> (a) in replacing a source by a close equivalent;
> (b) in localising exactly what point is being made, so that further sources can be added;
> (c) in not needing to go to a library that was available;
> (d) for the billions who don't have a handy academic library, not leaving them out in the cold with a mere reference.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here - if you're suggesting
the quote could replace the source for verification purposes, that's
just asking for people to post fake quotes - that's not what you're
saying, is it? A well written article should make it perfectly clear
what point is sourced from what citation without having to read the
source. Also, all the relevant information from the source should be
included in the article - that's the point of a source. So the quote
would be redundant.

> Wikipedia's readers are not only academics, and we do not aim at academics. We aim at a treatment superior to almost all journalism, but we do not assume the reader has the academic resources available.

> Because our articles are not academic papers.

True, but I still think the conventions are just as appropriate on
Wikipedia as they are in academia.


from_name: David Mestel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Introducing a new mailing list

body:
I can see that this new list will be separate, but will it be equal?

David

On 04/12/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/4/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > > I'd like to invite all my friends in Wikimedia to both decline
> > > membership in clubs build around overt gender discrimination
> > > and to reject their biases by refusing to give voice to their
> > > members in our overall community.
> >
> > Wow.  You're either with us or against us.  Shun the unbelievers.
> > Way to be inclusive there, Greg.
>
> I reserve the right to shun anyone who would unite under a banner of
> bigotry and I hope you will take some time to consider it and do the
> same.
>
> I didn't make my decision on short notice, so I don't expect you to either.
>
> It is, in my view, no different to create a woman-only list to discuss
> solutions to gender biases within our projects than it would be to
> create a men-only list to discuss solutions to irrationality within
> our projects. In both cases a prejudiced determination is made about a
> persons ability to productively discuss a subject based on an
> unreasonable application of gender stereotypes.
>
> Unlike affirmative action which can at least be argued to be a
> mechanism to reduce bigotry by encouraging collaboration, I see no
> fair justification for this act of segregation.
>
> If the opportunity had existed, I would have implored the board to
> refuse to allow the foundation's resources to be used for this sexist
> mailing list but I was not given such an opportunity.  I do, however,
> still have the ability to call on the rest of our community to reject
> it as thoroughly as possible.
>
> The examples of overt sexism that I've seen posed by people have been
> examples of mostly-outsider k00ks like Mr. AM. But here today we see
> what appears to be an offical, if only tacit, endorsement of sexism
> against men. The great irony is that now that we have within our
> community a concrete, intentional, and overt act of sexism to discuss
> ... our only list for discussing sexism is closed to the victims.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
David


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Unlike affirmative action which can at least be argued to be a
> mechanism to reduce bigotry by encouraging collaboration, I see no
> fair justification for this act of segregation.
>
> If the opportunity had existed, I would have implored the board to
> refuse to allow the foundation's resources to be used for this sexist
> mailing list but I was not given such an opportunity.  I do, however,
> still have the ability to call on the rest of our community to reject
> it as thoroughly as possible.

I'm not overjoyed by the "females-only" thing either, so how about we call on
the WikiChix to open up their fora to both genders? I feel it's a little
premature to start lobbying for them to be hurled from the Foundation's
hosting. Wikipedia stands to benefit from initiatives that make it more
female-friendly.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Phrase, fable, popular culture

body:
On 04/12/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Oldak Quill" wrote
>
> > WikiFable sounds a little narrow in scope. I'm not sure what approach
> > a larger project would take: creative writing in general?
>
> Traditional dictionaries 'of phrase and fable' contain, as well as mythology,
> proverbs, folkways, odd expressions. Random page opening: a page with
> 'enfant terrible', 'England's Darling' (turns out to be Hereward the Wake),
> 'Queen's English', 'Englishman's home is his castle', inter alia. (And 'inter
> alia' is between 'IQ' and 'intercalary'.) The cover alludes to 'myth, folklore,
> legend and literature'.
>
> I'm not suggesting anything quite so diffuse, but there is this genre of
> dictionary, and we already have the wiki dictionary, and quotation dictionary, in place.

One of the things I have had on my userpage for a couple of years is
my theory that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, after being crossbred
with Usenet and Brewer's...

(For those looking blank in the back, [[Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase
and Fable]] is the marvellous and incomparable Victorian grandfather
of all such works - indeed, these days, most of them are an updated
version of one of the out-of-copyright editions. Broadly speaking, it
was a handbook of "things you might find allusions to in your reading"
- so historical and mythical events and places, odd turns of phrase,
nicknames, obscure dictionary definitions... It is a joy and a
treasure to own, and one of the most enduring literary creations of
its time. Buy one today - Wordsworth do a cheap paperback reprint for
about three quid.)

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper --ouptut=mysql eats utf-8(?)

body:
Hello,

When trying to use mwdumper to import
enwiki-20061001-pages-articles.xml.bz2, I find that using the
--output=mysql:... --format=sql:1.5 causes some piece to eat UTF-8.  I
can verify this in the database: the text table will have data like
is:Stj?rnleysisstefna where the middle mojibake character is a single
byte.

If I use mwdumper with --output=stdout, I can verify the resulting SQL
has good UTF-8 in it.  If I run a command like
  mwdumper --output=stdout --format=sql:1.5 ... | mysql -uwiki -pwiki wikidb
things come out ok: the Greek in [[Anarchism]] (which is a useful test
article because it occurs early in the dump) displays fine.

Some other info that may be useful:
- I have $wgDBmysql5 = false; in my LocalSettings.php.
- My locale doesn't seem to affect it, but it's all en_US.UTF-8 in
case that matters.
- java version "1.5.0_07" / Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard
Edition (build 1.5.0_07-b03)
- Command line I'm trying is:
java -server -classpath /usr/share/java/mysql-3.1.11.jar:mwdumper/bin
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper
"--output=mysql://localhost/wikidb?user=wiki&password=wiki"
--format=sql:1.5 enwiki-20061001-pages-articles.xml.bz2

That mysql jarfile comes from libmysql-java on Ubuntu dapper, version
3.1.11-1, but I find the same behavior with
mysql-connector-java-5.0.4.

I could file this as a bug, but I wanted to first verify I wasn't
doing anything wrong.


list: commons-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] New tool - User dupes

body:
On 12/4/06, Alexandre NOUVEL <alexandre.nouvel at alnoprods.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> ---Selon Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com>:
> > Well, cross-checking one million commons images against a few hundred
> > thousand on one of the larger wikipedias might kill the toolserver
> > quite efficiently ;-)
>
> Well, I agree that image processing is a very CPU-consuming task, and
> cross-checking adds to the difficulty.
>
> However, I think that it may be possible to build a kind of hash
> signature for each file and sort them to find duplicates. The process
> itself of hashing would require some time but may be splitted amongst
> some servers. The resulting hash lists may then be sorted, so that
> matching signatures would lead to further checking of their initial
> images.

There was a discussion somewhere (maybe on this list? I don't
remember) to store MD5-hashes of image data in the table with the
other image information (size etc.). Nothing came of it, I'm afraid.
Too bad.

> One drawback for this solution is to maintain a huge index of all the
> signatures (each one associated with the image name and the originating
> wiki).

With images being replaced, deleted, undeleted, etc. the only
practical place is indeed the image table on the respective wiki. An
outside solution (i.e. toolserver) is out of the question IMHO.

> Or perhaps I'm just writing bullshit :)

Nope :-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper doesn't seem to import all pages(?)

body:
When I run mwdumper with enwiki-20061001-pages-articles.xml.bz2 and
pipe it to mysql (see my other mail), it eventually prints out
something like
  3,583,699 pages (490.212/sec), 3,583,699 revs (490.212/sec)
and exits.

However, on the database afterwards a query like SELECT COUNT(*) FROM
page gives me a result count somewhere around 2.5 million (I don't
have the exact number in my notes, sorry).  And this discrepancy is
further confirmed by many missing articles: lots of red links from
existing articles where I can confirm that the article doesn't exist
in the database but does exist in the dump.

Is mwdumper known to have problems in this area?  How might I track this down?


from_name: David Boothroyd

body:
I should like to clarify the issue in this dispute. The question is
not whether the blog is a 'source'; it is clearly not a source for
anything other than what is said on the blog. The issue is whether or
not to mention it in the article; the subsidiary issue is, should that
question be answered in the affirmative, it should be linked to.

My position is that the answer to both questions is Yes. The following
reasons justify mentioning the blog:

1) The blog has been mentioned twice in the (UK) national press. The
first was in Damian Whitworth, "A strange case of espionage and warfare
inside the commuter belt", The Times, April 18, 2005, p. 28. The second
was Rod Liddle, "Battle of the Guildford gals", The Sunday Times, May 1,
2005, p. 15. I have undertaken an extensive search and have yet to find
any other site set up to target an individual candidate being mentioned
in the press. This is therefore a unique situation.

2) The blog has also been mentioned by Sandra Howard (wife of the
then Leader of the Opposition) in her election campaign blog.
http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=sandra.howard.page&obj_id=122745

3) The fact that Anne Milton is quoted by Sandra Howard asserting that
Tim Ireland was "stalking" her through the weblog is particularly
significant. It is a notably extreme accusation.

4) It appears to be the only case where a blog about an MP has
continued to be updated. There have been others, but they have all gone
under. This one hasn't.

5) The author of the blog, Tim Ireland, is notable enough to have an
article about him. His notability is for his work on political blogs.

6) I do not propose to mention this in the article, but in my submission
the edit wars engaged in by supporters of Anne Milton (including by IP
addresses traced to the Parliamentary estate) who attempt to remove all
mention of it from the article, denote that it is considered notable by
them. See the article history.

I do not see how WP:BLP is engaged merely by mentioning that a critical
blog exists. It is potentially engaged by reporting Anne Milton's
reaction, but that has an unimpeachable source in The Times piece.

Now Guy imputes to me motives other than improving the encyclopaedia
to explain why I think it should be mentioned. This is really neither
here nor there to the merits of the case but I would invite anyone
wishing to examine the issue to look at my contributions on Talk:Anne
Milton starting in June.

Should the first question be decided in the affirmative, that the
blog is notable enough to be mentioned, then should it be linked? I
submit the answer is clearly "Yes". Once the article mentions the blog,
inquiring readers may wish to look at it for themselves. It simply
makes no sense to say that the blog is notable but yet not linkable.
Even the Wikipedia article on Goatse.cx links to a mirror to it.
I would make a proviso that the link to the blog should make clear
that the site is not in any sense neutral. It might also be
reasonable, though I don't think warranted, to have the site
address in text rather than as a hyperlink.

Perhaps I should say that as I understand Guy's position, he considers
that a link to the blog is acceptable from [[Tim Ireland]] but not
from [[Anne Milton]]. I cannot understand the internal logic of such a
position.
--
David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)


from_name: Corum O' Fallamhain

subject: [Foundation-l] Introducing a new mailing list

body:
Seperate but equal doesn't wash any more, get with the new millennium. If
people have things to say, they can say them here. And I can't for the life
of me imagine how anyone who feels "intimidated" on a Wikimedia mailing list
survives day-to-day life of interaction with real live human beings. Some
people are too sensitive, methinks.

Corum

On 04/12/06, Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The fact that there is a slight male bias on the projects is caused by
> the fact that there are simply more male contributers. I think however
> that the problem will not be solved by introducing a new list that is
> more womenfriendly. If there are problems, segregration will only
> enlarge the effect. If there are any problems that people feel
> discriminated on a list, the solution is to remove the discrimination,
> not the discriminated persons! If women are equal to men, which I
> think they are, they should go into discussion rather then flee it. If
> men are equal to women, which I think most of us are, then we should
> accept that discussion, and make the projects a nice place for
> everybody.
>
> Bryan
>
> On 12/4/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Angela a ?crit :
> > > Following recent discussions on wikien-l where a number of women said
> > > they were not comfortable contributing to the discussion, a new
> > > mailing list has been created for female wiki editors to discuss
> > > issues of gender bias in wikis and ways to encourage more female
> > > editors, and just as a place that females can feel more comfortable
> > > posting to.
> > >
> > > It's called WikiChix - named after LinuxChix, the women-oriented
> > > community for Linux users. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxChix
> > >
> > > If you are female and interested in wikis, I would like to encourage
> > > to join the mailing list at
> > > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikichix-l
> > >
> > > There's also a wiki at http://wikichix.org/ - let me know your
> > > username if you'd like an account there. Some of the pages are openly
> > > editable, so even if you're not female, you are welcome to post your
> > > comments at http://wikichix.org/wiki/Comments
> > >
> > > The FAQs for the related communities at
> > > http://wikichix.org/wiki/WikiChix#Related_communities answer a lot of
> > > questions about why this was created, so please read those for more
> > > information until we have our own FAQ.
> >
> > They are always been a gender bias in Wikipedia, first by the simple
> > fact that there are much less women editors than men. This is
> > particularly obvious on the French Wikipedia from the start, so it is
> > not specific to one language. I think the numbers of women editors has
> > increased lately, but women are still far from being about the same
> > number as men.
> >
> > Until recently, I thought that the problem would solve itself over time,
> > when Wikipedia becoming more mainstream. I read the thread on wikien-l
> > and I think that the problem is more serious than I thought. The first
> > problem is when people (men only ?) do not see that the problem exists.
> > It remembers me of the tale of the fish and water. When asked its
> > opinion about water, the fish said: "Please show me some water. I don't
> > see any water."
> >
> > It is sad that women feel the need for a separate list, but denying them
> > this tool will not help solve the problem. So I hope that the list will
> > serve its purpose and helps women feel more confident on Wikimedia
> projects.
> >
> > > Angela
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Yann
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Jim Schuler

body:
On 12/4/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/4/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > The Cunctator wrote:
> > > This should not be one the Wikmedia servers. Just start a googlegroup.
> > >
> > >
> > Why not?
>
>
>
> Because:
> * The list is restricted based on the discriminatory preference of gender
> * A goal of the list is to provide an outside forum for advocating change
> in
> Wikimedia/Wikipedia
> * Having Wikimedia resources be used to support the list implies
> endorsement
> of its standards and goals
> * Having Wikimedia resources be used to support the list means that
> Wikimedia can apply pressure on/control over the users of the list
>
> Or, in more classical Cunctator language, it's a bad idea. So do it on
> your
> own dime.

"do it on your own dime"? A bit dismissive.  In any case, was the original
point missed here?  Remember the comments about separate but equal?


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

body:
The fact that there is a slight male bias on the projects is caused by
the fact that there are simply more male contributers. I think however
that the problem will not be solved by introducing a new list that is
more womenfriendly. If there are problems, segregration will only
enlarge the effect. If there are any problems that people feel
discriminated on a list, the solution is to remove the discrimination,
not the discriminated persons! If women are equal to men, which I
think they are, they should go into discussion rather then flee it. If
men are equal to women, which I think most of us are, then we should
accept that discussion, and make the projects a nice place for
everybody.

Bryan

On 12/4/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Angela a ?crit :
> > Following recent discussions on wikien-l where a number of women said
> > they were not comfortable contributing to the discussion, a new
> > mailing list has been created for female wiki editors to discuss
> > issues of gender bias in wikis and ways to encourage more female
> > editors, and just as a place that females can feel more comfortable
> > posting to.
> >
> > It's called WikiChix - named after LinuxChix, the women-oriented
> > community for Linux users. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxChix
> >
> > If you are female and interested in wikis, I would like to encourage
> > to join the mailing list at
> > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikichix-l
> >
> > There's also a wiki at http://wikichix.org/ - let me know your
> > username if you'd like an account there. Some of the pages are openly
> > editable, so even if you're not female, you are welcome to post your
> > comments at http://wikichix.org/wiki/Comments
> >
> > The FAQs for the related communities at
> > http://wikichix.org/wiki/WikiChix#Related_communities answer a lot of
> > questions about why this was created, so please read those for more
> > information until we have our own FAQ.
>
> They are always been a gender bias in Wikipedia, first by the simple
> fact that there are much less women editors than men. This is
> particularly obvious on the French Wikipedia from the start, so it is
> not specific to one language. I think the numbers of women editors has
> increased lately, but women are still far from being about the same
> number as men.
>
> Until recently, I thought that the problem would solve itself over time,
> when Wikipedia becoming more mainstream. I read the thread on wikien-l
> and I think that the problem is more serious than I thought. The first
> problem is when people (men only ?) do not see that the problem exists.
> It remembers me of the tale of the fish and water. When asked its
> opinion about water, the fish said: "Please show me some water. I don't
> see any water."
>
> It is sad that women feel the need for a separate list, but denying them
> this tool will not help solve the problem. So I hope that the list will
> serve its purpose and helps women feel more confident on Wikimedia projects.
>
> > Angela
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 12/4/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm not overjoyed by the "females-only" thing either, so how about we call on
> the WikiChix to open up their fora to both genders? I feel it's a little
> premature to start lobbying for them to be hurled from the Foundation's
> hosting. Wikipedia stands to benefit from initiatives that make it more
> female-friendly.

I agree that segregation is problematic, first and foremost because it
reminds me of many patriarchal religious groups, which have their own
women's groups that meet separately from the males, but who (unlike
the males) have no authority whatsoever. Declaration of gender
identity, active participation in all processes, and demands for
immediate action against obviously sexist or otherwise rude behavior,
seem preferable to me.  From this view, I've always preferred open
forms of association such as
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_WikiWomen>.

That being said, I don't think it's for us males to demand that the
womenfolk open up their new clubhouse to us. If it is the right thing
to do, I do believe that initiative can and will come from the group
itself.

I wonder if allowing anonymous posts to the list (through trusted
individuals acting as gateways) might be a good way to encourage
people who feel intimidated for whichever reason, to participate.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hello,

Angela a ?crit :
> Following recent discussions on wikien-l where a number of women said
> they were not comfortable contributing to the discussion, a new
> mailing list has been created for female wiki editors to discuss
> issues of gender bias in wikis and ways to encourage more female
> editors, and just as a place that females can feel more comfortable
> posting to.
>
> It's called WikiChix - named after LinuxChix, the women-oriented
> community for Linux users. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxChix
>
> If you are female and interested in wikis, I would like to encourage
> to join the mailing list at
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikichix-l
>
> There's also a wiki at http://wikichix.org/ - let me know your
> username if you'd like an account there. Some of the pages are openly
> editable, so even if you're not female, you are welcome to post your
> comments at http://wikichix.org/wiki/Comments
>
> The FAQs for the related communities at
> http://wikichix.org/wiki/WikiChix#Related_communities answer a lot of
> questions about why this was created, so please read those for more
> information until we have our own FAQ.

They are always been a gender bias in Wikipedia, first by the simple
fact that there are much less women editors than men. This is
particularly obvious on the French Wikipedia from the start, so it is
not specific to one language. I think the numbers of women editors has
increased lately, but women are still far from being about the same
number as men.

Until recently, I thought that the problem would solve itself over time,
when Wikipedia becoming more mainstream. I read the thread on wikien-l
and I think that the problem is more serious than I thought. The first
problem is when people (men only ?) do not see that the problem exists.
It remembers me of the tale of the fish and water. When asked its
opinion about water, the fish said: "Please show me some water. I don't
see any water."

It is sad that women feel the need for a separate list, but denying them
this tool will not help solve the problem. So I hope that the list will
serve its purpose and helps women feel more confident on Wikimedia projects.

> Angela

Regards,

Yann


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Categories vs lists vs navboxes (was Re: Deletions,
	lists, etc?)

body:
Not to mention that categories require articles to exist.
You can combine a bunch of stubs into a list.

>From what I've seen the idea has become less common, but a few months ago
there were plenty of people saying lists were obsolete to categories. As
long as we all understand they are complementary, I'm happy.

Mgm


from_name: Samuel Klein

body:
On Tue, 5 Dec 2006, Corum O' Fallamhain wrote:

> Since women have the ability to contribute here the same as men, I really
> don't see why this is needed. Surely the scepticism being shown to this idea
> from many men is proof positive of the fact that no-one is being opressed.
> How ironic to have women in this day and age proposing their own seperate
> mailing list from men, since so many feminists fought so hard for gender
> equality. This looks to me like a step backward.

Surely.  I congratulate you on your rapier wit, but I fear that most list
readers will take your words at face value.

One of my most intrinsically NPOV friends, who had a hard time grasping
racial and cultural differentiation as a child, despite being a minority
in the US, spent some time at a meditation retreat here that excluded
whites.  She commented that it was a wonderful event, with an instantly
noticable level of comfort; which had nothing to do with skin color per
se and everything to do with shared experience; presumably the same
effect could be had in any country by excluding the dominant tribe.

SJ,
still rereading Lars's lovely post.

> On 05/12/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>>
>> Ilario Valdelli wrote:
>>
>>> I don't understand the problem...
>>
>> This is a large part of the problem, isn't it?  To take just one
>> example, white Americans feel equal and democratic, and pride
>> themselves of this, but black Americans still feel oppressed.
>> Very few whites understand the problem in full but even fewer
>> blacks understand how little the white understand.  How many white
>> men know what it is like to grow up where none of the presidents
>> in the history book has your skin color?  How many black know what
>> it is like, never to have asked that question?  It is so easy to
>> shun the difference and so hopeless to try to make a change.
>> Women, of course, are not a "minority" in real numbers, but often
>> in perceived power.
>>
>> All of us wikipedians are also a minority of this kind, underdogs
>> under the vast dominance of traditional printed, commercial
>> encyclopedias.  Perhaps Britannica, Larousse and Brockhaus feel
>> that it was sad and unnecessary to take the disruptive step of
>> setting up Wikipedia, instead of building on their existing base.
>> They were willing to listen to the young generation, weren't they?
>> Their experience in quality control and profitmaking should have
>> been useful, so why on earth didn't the wikipedians apply for jobs
>> there instead of being unpaid for reverting edit wars?  From their
>> perspective, our obsession must be plain incomprehensible.  And
>> yet there is nothing wrong with us, only with their perspective.
>>
>> Self-identified subgroups will find ways to communicate, whether
>> it is women, skin colour, or operating system preference, and this
>> is nothing we should try to stop.  Now the women have formed their
>> own subgroup within the Wikimedia Foundation.  Hey, that means we
>> have women here!  Compared to Linux kernel hackers, that's great
>> progress.  And unlike the United States, the Wikimedia Foundation
>> does have a female president.  How long will we have to wait
>> before the black people form a subgroup?  Did they have a meetup
>> at Wikimania?  (I guess not.  I heard it was an almost exclusively
>> white event.)  And will we one day see a special interest group
>> for black female Linux kernel hackers?
>>
>> Funny, perspective is what Wikipedia is all about, the NPOV.  We
>> pride ourselves of being able to see beyond our own perspective.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>> Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Europe down

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

Brion Vibber wrote:
> There appear to be some major problems upstream from our European
> proxies in Amsterdam; about 15 minutes downtime there so far. Mark's
> switching DNS for Europe to the Florida servers in case the problem
> continues.
>
> Note that our Bugzilla installation is also hosted on the European
> servers, so it'll remain offline as well until Amsterdam's back up.

Looks like things are back online; servers seem to have survived, so
it's just the network that was out.

Haven't fiddled with DNS yet.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Evan Martin wrote:
> When trying to use mwdumper to import
> enwiki-20061001-pages-articles.xml.bz2, I find that using the
> --output=mysql:... --format=sql:1.5 causes some piece to eat UTF-8.  I
> can verify this in the database: the text table will have data like
> is:Stj?rnleysisstefna where the middle mojibake character is a single
> byte.
[snip]
> Some other info that may be useful:
> - I have $wgDBmysql5 = false; in my LocalSettings.php.

Assuming you're using MySQL 4.1 higher, this is your problem.

When you let Java speak directly to MySQL, it's going to try to speak
"real" UTF-8.

However MediaWiki, when $wgDBmysql5 is off, is charset-agnostic to MySQL
and just grabs and sends UTF-8 strings without caring what MySQL thinks
they are. That may, or may not, be the same as what MySQL thinks is
UTF-8 internally.

To tell MediaWiki to declare its connection communication as UTF-8, set
$wgDBmysql5 to true. (Make sure the tables actually are defined as UTF-8
if you do this, for instance by using the mysql5/tables.sql schema.)

Unfortunately MySQL 4.1/5.0/5.1 doesn't support UTF-8 fully, so you may
end up with some corrupted pages and who knows what other problems if
you use the native UTF-8 schema. For instance you may get a number of
invalid page titles, which could result in unique key conflicts.

Thanks, MySQL!

For this reason I recommend sticking with MySQL 4.0 if you want to work
with Wikimedia data...

> If I use mwdumper with --output=stdout, I can verify the resulting SQL
> has good UTF-8 in it.  If I run a command like
>   mwdumper --output=stdout --format=sql:1.5 ... | mysql -uwiki -pwiki
wikidb
> things come out ok: the Greek in [[Anarchism]] (which is a useful test
> article because it occurs early in the dump) displays fine.

You could also continue doing this, which should probably behave in the
same default way as MediaWiki with $wgDBmysql5 set to off.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: niht-hræfn

body:
On Dec 4, 2006, at 18:38, The Cunctator wrote:

> On 12/4/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
>>
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>> This should not be one the Wikmedia servers. Just start a
>>> googlegroup.
>>>
>> Why not?
>
> Because:
> * The list is restricted based on the discriminatory preference of
> gender
> * A goal of the list is to provide an outside forum for advocating
> change in
> Wikimedia/Wikipedia
> * Having Wikimedia resources be used to support the list implies
> endorsement
> of its standards and goals
> * Having Wikimedia resources be used to support the list means that
> Wikimedia can apply pressure on/control over the users of the list
>
> Or, in more classical Cunctator language, it's a bad idea. So do it
> on your
> own dime.

My impression has been that the list was to provide a "safe space"
for women to discuss Wikipedia or some such. Many women apparently
feel safer in an all women environment. Additionally, the study Tim
linked earlier in the thread ( http://flosspols.org/deliverables/
FLOSSPOLS-D16-Gender_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.pdf ) found that
"Furthermore many of our female participants reported the helpfulness
of an an all-girl environment during their first phase of getting
into computing and programming (e.g. schools, workshops, mailing
lists). Whereas we do acknowledge that this might not be necessary
for all potential female F/LOSS contributors it is important to
understand that this is very effective for some." Of course wiki and
programming are not one and the same, but some women find the
environment helpful, and I'd think that making women feel welcome to
edit and discuss Wikipedia would be a noble enough goal for us.

That being said, I don't personally think an all women environment is
crucial or even necessarily desirable, but it's not a ludicrous idea
that we should kick out of Wikimedia.

--Keitei


body:
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Evan Martin wrote:
> When I run mwdumper with enwiki-20061001-pages-articles.xml.bz2 and
> pipe it to mysql (see my other mail), it eventually prints out
> something like
>   3,583,699 pages (490.212/sec), 3,583,699 revs (490.212/sec)
> and exits.
>
> However, on the database afterwards a query like SELECT COUNT(*) FROM
> page gives me a result count somewhere around 2.5 million (I don't
> have the exact number in my notes, sorry).

This means MySQL encountered an error and stopped executing further
statements from input.

Be sure to watch the output of MySQL for errors, not just the output of
mwdumper... you may find it easier if you send the SQL output to an
intermediate file first, or else redirect each program's error output to
separate files (which you can tail in separate terminals and/or look at
later).

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 12/4/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Rob Church wrote:
> > On 04/12/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> >> Yes, Ivan; that's why Jeff suggested provisioning more powerful
> >> platforms.  :-)  That he mentioned throughput is really a red-herring
> >> here...
> >
> > Let's filch a couple supercomputers.
> >
>
> Who needs supercomputers when you can use distributed computing?
> Wikipedia at Home anyone?

<brief response>
"No"
</brief response>

<computer architect hat>
The problem with distributed computing for general computational problems
requiring interactive updates between computational nodes is that the amount
of traffic between nodes increases both with the amount of updates and with
the number of nodes.

The various @home type projects, and batch job type grid computing, are
efficient network-wise; there is little to no network interaction other than
submission and results.  Where data has to flow laterally, as in a database
system, the scaling increases as described above, rapidly bringing the
distributed application to its knees.  This is a known problem in the design
of MPI type supercomputer clusters.  As the required interconnect
communications bandwidth increases, the optimial solution moves from highly
distributed, towards larger nodes in a higher speed network, towards a few
nodes in a very very high speed network, and finally towards a single large
SMP computer.  If you are pushing the interconnect very hard, you're having
to pay for extremely high performance interconnects, and ultimately there's
no reason not to just buy large SMP systems with single system image and
more compact footprints.  The highest speed system to system interconnects
cost as much as the SMP system components do.

One current commercial example of this particular problem is the throttled
Oracle RAC problem, where you spread a big database out over a large pile of
Linux nodes, but the database update rates overwhelm the private network
interconnect for the shared cache updates.  There are plenty of HPC computer
horror stories of equivalent problems out there in the field for other
workloads.

There is no single right answer; even the large labs who have large
quantities of professional computer architects and code wranglers working on
optimized highly multi-processor projects don't agree on how to do most
work, which is why there are still a bunch of competing
supercomputer/supercluster vendors out there, in many cases individual
centers or labs buying from multiple vendors as they have different types of
work in progress.

For Wikipedia's database problems, I would have to have about 10x more info
than I currently do to make particularly useful actual advice or suggestion,
but I can guarantee you that WikiDB at home would be a disaster of heroic
porportions 8-)
</computer architect hat>

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 12/4/06, Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > Yes, Ivan; that's why Jeff suggested provisioning more powerful
> > platforms.
>
> Wikipedia has so far followed the approach of scaling out instead of up,
> and that with commodity hardware. If you believe this approach is
> mistaken, you'll need to explain what you know about scaling server
> farms that Google doesn't.

You do realize that Google has spent the better part of a half billion
dollars on engineering a completely ground-up distributed system software
architecture, working with a problem that (unusually among largescale
enterprise data management) can theoretically be efficiently partitioned?

The reason not everyone is using Google-like IT architectures is
A) That they can't afford to develop it, and
B) That in most cases, that architecture would be worse than what they have
now, given that most IT problems don't partition so well...

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
On 12/4/06, Corum O' Fallamhain <corumsmail at gmail.com> wrote:
Some
> people are too sensitive, methinks.
>
> Corum

That was also my first thought. I think however locking the sensitive
away in a seperate list is not the solution. The solution is probably
that some people should treat others with more respect, and that and
that those others should not take everything personally. Really,
building a wiki working with respect to each other, as with most
things in life, but if you take everything serious and personally, you
will probably die a hearth disease before your 65.

Bryan


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] tiff files?

body:
On 12/4/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:

> Sorry for the confusion.  Allow me to clarify this.
>
>[...]
>
> In the resulting image, now 200 kbytes, every 150 pixels
> correspond to one inch of the printed page, from which it was
> originally scanned.  Thus, I'm using the shorthand terminology
> that this is now a 150 dpi image.  Since most computer screens
> have a resolution in the rage 100-120 dpi, this means the image is
> displayed a little "larger than life".

Ah ok, now I understand what you are trying to do.

TIFF G4 seems actually the best format for these kind of images,
regardless of the dpi setting. PNG can store 1 bit images, but even at
the maximum compression level (9) the full 3616x5550 image is about
380 kbytes instead of 200.

Ciao,
Alfio


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 12/4/06, niht-hr?fn <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> understand that this is very effective for some." Of course wiki and
> programming are not one and the same, but some women find the
> environment helpful, and I'd think that making women feel welcome to
> edit and discuss Wikipedia would be a noble enough goal for us.
>
> That being said, I don't personally think an all women environment is
> crucial or even necessarily desirable, but it's not a ludicrous idea
> that we should kick out of Wikimedia.

"During their first phase", it further emphasise the limited duration
of such things with language like "short term interventions".

The list that was created, however, wasn't a mechanism for
introduction but a forum for the discussion of an important issue most
likely to interest vested contributors.

It is also the case that the recommendations in the paper are made in
a vacuum. Not only did they not substantially verify their suggestions
through experimentation, to the extent that they had evidence it
appears they did not consider the results outside of improving the
involvement of women. So, for example, if following their suggestions
would increase the involvement of women but otherwise harm the
productivity of the community it's not clear whether they would have
noticed or noted that impact.

On the subject of new member introduction we can probably do much
better than what is suggested by the paper: We could perform
one-on-one introductions and tutorials for new users. It would be
logical and not-at-all unreasonably prejudicial to try to pair new
users up with people who have similar interests, backgrounds, and
working styles. I expect that this would frequently result in women
introducing women to the community.  Furthermore, this an activity
which could be taken up by anyone on this list without prior approval
or even discussion ([[Special:Log/newusers]])).

Our welcome process used to be a lot more helpful, today I see many
junior users pumping their edit count with scads of impersonal robotic
welcomes... sometimes they even welcome people whos only edits have
been blatant unreverted vandalism. I think this is unfortunate and it
certainly doesn't help us increase the number of quality women in our
ranks (or quality men for that matter). ... but any of us can step up
to solve this, so perhaps it's just not so fun to discuss on the
lists.


from_name: phoebe ayers

body:
On 12/4/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

<snip>

> That being said, I don't think it's for us males to demand that the
> womenfolk open up their new clubhouse to us. If it is the right thing
> to do, I do believe that initiative can and will come from the group
> itself.

Yes, thank you. To expand on what I said earlier: my personal view is that
it'd be best to open the list to both genders; that view may not be shared
amongst all women in the community. I respect that there may well be women
who will not want to participate in the list/group if there is open
membership, and I think most people who are seriously interested in the
issue don't want to have to discuss it in a hostile environment, such has
been shown in some of the comments here. Because of this, it's appropriate
to first have a series of considered discussions about the place of the list
and who it is for amongst the initial (invited, female) membership; those
discussions haven't happened yet. People of both genders are (I presume)
welcome to continue discussing the issue on existing mailing lists.

Honestly, I think I am being discriminated against in this community because
my patience for endless bickering is thin.
 -- phoebe


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid material

body:
> On 12/1/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > The verifiability policy has never been a hardline policy, but a
> > guideline and something to aim towards.  When it was first adopted,
> > nobody thought it meant that we should summarily delete the 80%+ of the
> > encyclopedia that at the time was unsourced.  Instead what it meant was
> > that we should begin going through and adding sources to it.

What if a person picks a random article from the 80% of the encyclopedia
that isn't sourced and says "I'm going to delete this unless someone else
sources it"?


from_name: Angela

body:
On 12/4/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's a shame. We could use a bit of female input in a predominantly male
> wiki.

Having a separate list is not preventing women having input into
Wikipedia. It's about getting input from those who otherwise wouldn't
participate.

> Get over the uncomfortable feeling and speak your mind. I want to hear those
> female thoughts on the mailing list.

It's this sort of "get over it" attitude that dissuades people from
wanting to join this discussion. The sexism, discrimination, and bias
present in the Wikipedia community isn't something to "get over".

Angela


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 04/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Haven't seen this one before - doesn't have any link to fundraising or
> anything either.

You've really never seen that one before?

It's the class of error message MediaWiki throws up when something
happens that it can't wrap up in a nice, beautified error. :)

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 04/12/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Yes, Ivan; that's why Jeff suggested provisioning more powerful
> platforms.  :-)  That he mentioned throughput is really a red-herring
> here...

Let's filch a couple supercomputers.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 04/12/06, Bence Damokos <bdamokos at gmail.com> wrote:
> Having a
> link to fundraising in this error message wouldn't be such a bad idea...

It wouldn't necessarily come up in circumstances where more cash would
be helpful....to be honest, users shouldn't see it as often as the
other error messages, which come from the Squids, etc.

Rob Church


from_name: Anthere

body:
Sometimes, mailing lists get very boring. Always the same issues discussed.

I appreciate the new topic :-)

FrenchChick


subject: [Wikitech-l] tiff files?

body:
On 12/4/06, Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In the resulting image, now 200 kbytes, every 150 pixels
> > correspond to one inch of the printed page, from which it was
> > originally scanned.  Thus, I'm using the shorthand terminology
> > that this is now a 150 dpi image.  Since most computer screens
> > have a resolution in the rage 100-120 dpi, this means the image is
> > displayed a little "larger than life".
>
> Ah ok, now I understand what you are trying to do.
>
> TIFF G4 seems actually the best format for these kind of images,
> regardless of the dpi setting. PNG can store 1 bit images, but even at
> the maximum compression level (9) the full 3616x5550 image is about
> 380 kbytes instead of 200.

No. Dejavu is, by a mile.

[gmaxwell at floodlamp ~]$ cjb2 -losslevel 100 nfad-0670.tif nfad-0670.djvu
[gmaxwell at floodlamp ~]$ ls -l nfad-0670.*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gmaxwell gmaxwell  72075 Dec  4 21:55 nfad-0670.djvu
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gmaxwell gmaxwell 200865 Dec  4 08:01 nfad-0670.tif
[gmaxwell at floodlamp ~]$ cjb2 -lossless nfad-0670.tif nfad-0670.djvu
[gmaxwell at floodlamp ~]$ ls -l nfad-0670.*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gmaxwell gmaxwell 128772 Dec  4 21:56 nfad-0670.djvu
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gmaxwell gmaxwell 200865 Dec  4 08:01 nfad-0670.tif
[gmaxwell at floodlamp ~]$ cjb2 -losslevel 200 nfad-0670.tif nfad-0670.djvu
[gmaxwell at floodlamp ~]$ ls -l nfad-0670.*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gmaxwell gmaxwell  35209 Dec  4 21:56 nfad-0670.djvu
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gmaxwell gmaxwell 200865 Dec  4 08:01 nfad-0670.tif

Even at losslevel 200 zoomed way in, I'd be hard pressed to tell the
original from the djvu. Djvu lossy works by reusing whole
characters... so it should not adversely impact OCR, although it does
not work so well on noisy documents.  Even in lossless mode djvu is
half the size of the tiff.

The free software djvu viewer is very good, easily better than most of
the PS and Tiff viewers I've used.

Djvu can also produce mixed pages of images and text using the optimal
compression method for each type. You can't do that with TIFF in G4
mode.  Djvu's lossy compression of photographic material is vastly
superior to jpeg (more quality per bit in terms of PSNR, and less
objectionable artifacts at low quality levels). Djvu files can also be
loaded incrementally.. loading more data as you zoom in. Great for
high resolution images like satellite photography or other ridiculous
resolution photographs.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 04/12/06, Gatto Nero <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/12/4, Angela <beesley at gmail.com>:
> > Following recent discussions on wikien-l where a number of women said
> > they were not comfortable contributing to the discussion, a new
> > mailing list has been created for female wiki editors to discuss
> > issues of gender bias in wikis...
>
> Oh. My. God.
> Which will be the next one?
> WikiNigger? WikiFaggot? (These names are a provocation)
> Are we sure that we need a ML of this kind?

Good grief. Is it the end of the world if women have an ADDITIONAL
list to share their views on? I don't see anyone advocating that women
STOP contributing to the existing lists or channels in favour of a
women-only one instead.

The thread which kick-started the creation of this list is at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2006-November/056725.html
 .

regards
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 12/4/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> For my own curiosity, what does "can't" mean in this context - is it a
> "can't spare the resources to do so", or "doesn't have enough
> information", or "happens at too low a level"?

Doesn't have enough information to render the site layout because it
can't access the database, so it has to just print out text without
any interface widgets.  Substantial parts of the interface are stored
in the database, like the sidebar and so forth, and rendering the
interface without them would be a) weird and b) too much work for an
error message, which people don't expect to be pretty anyway.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] SOS -- Save Our Sources

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 12/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Honest and thorough fact checkers are not about to cut corners by
>>avoiding a trip to the library if they feel it is important enough.  I
>>have frequently had suspicions about citations.  Nothing stops us from
>>asking another Wikipedian to check it out when we don't have access to
>>convenient material.  For some going to a well-stocked library may be a
>>100 mile drive.  Clicking on a link is obviously convenient, but it
>>could also promote tunnel vision and diminish the possibility of editors
>>looking for alternative sources that may view the issue differently.
>>
>>
>So overall do you think that, copyright issues aside, the idea of
>making snippets of source material available for verification is a bad
>thing, or just not a very good thing?
>
There is an essential contradiction here.  I have no complaint about
adding quotes or snippets, but that is not verification.  The source
gives us a context which is more than a mere snippet.  We should want
verification to be more than a rote exercise.

If we only use snippets you're probably right in saying that the
copyright problem will go away.

Ec


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> We're talking about publicity shots aren't we? As in, photos that are
> provided to the media so they can write puff pieces about
> them...presumably the publicist owns the copyright, and presumably it
> is legal for the media to use them this way. So presumably also legal
> for Wikipedia to use them as the lead image for relevant articles. But
> possibly not legal for downstream Wikipedia content reusers...
>
Publicity shots usually come with some kind of limited permission to use
in news articles or whatever; not necessarily to use on a t-shirt - or
on the front cover of a biography in wikibooks.

I think a worse problem is mislabeling - every magazine and news agency
photographer takes all kinds of publicity-shot-like photos of the person
they're featuring that month, and those guys would not be pleased at WP
usage. Worse, the photographer is almost never credited, so the
visibility of WP usage doesn't even help their careers.

Stan


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] SOS -- Save Our Sources

body:
 "Thomas Dalton" wrote

> I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here - if you're suggesting
> the quote could replace the source for verification purposes, that's
> just asking for people to post fake quotes - that's not what you're
> saying, is it?

Not at all. How do you get that? I'm not saying don't cite the source, I'm saying quote from the source as well. The two sentences out of the webpage you actually rely on, for example

>A well written article should make it perfectly clear
> what point is sourced from what citation without having to read the
> source. Also, all the relevant information from the source should be
> included in the article - that's the point of a source. So the quote
> would be redundant.

It's not always just about 'information'.

> > Wikipedia's readers are not only academics, and we do not aim at academics. We aim at a treatment superior to almost all journalism, but we do not assume the reader has the academic resources available.
>
> > Because our articles are not academic papers.
>
> True, but I still think the conventions are just as appropriate on
> Wikipedia as they are in academia.

They are not. Because academics write for fellow academics, and we do not. Said that already, I believe ...

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:

>On 5 Dec 2006, at 01:18, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>
>Thats no different from saying if we dont have an article on Mr John
>C Popular Esquire why dont we just copy the one from the Encyclopaedia
>Brittanica until we get around to writing one. Yes it makes us look better
>but it doesnt belong to us. This copyright theft is "justified" as "fair use"
>because we allegedly dont steal too much from one place at a time, eg we
>only have pictures of all the Pokemon charcaters, so each one is fair
>use.
>
If something is truly fair use it is not copyright theft, and should not
be characterized as such.

Ec


body:
On 12/4/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> This is a positive initiative. I have only one issue with it, which is
> that the mailing list is on Wikimedia's servers, while the wiki is
> not.

I have no objection to the wiki moving to Wikimedia's servers if
Wikimedia want it, though the idea is to expand the concept to cover
wikis in general, not only Wikimedia ones, so I don't know how well
that would fit into Wikimedia's scope. I originally intended to put
the mailing list on the same server as the wiki but the company I'm
hosting it with has objections to mailman. I didn't want to put it on
Wikia and have people thinking the project was just a way of
advertising Wikia,  freelists.org discourages private or unarchived
lists, and, surprisingly, there don't seem to be any other free hosts
of mailman mailing lists. Since Anthere approved the list being hosted
by Wikimedia, I thought that would be the best place for it for now.

> Users might also be confused when they subscribe
> to a Wikimedia mailing list but their Wikimedia username doesn't work
> on the wiki (I'm speaking about the hypothetical post-single login
> world ;-).

Even if Wikimedia hosts it, they will also be confused when their
mailing list password doesn't let them into the wiki (a very common
problem at Wikia).

Angela.


body:
David Boothroyd wrote

<snip>

> The question is
> not whether the blog is a 'source'; it is clearly not a source for
> anything other than what is said on the blog. The issue is whether or
> not to mention it in the article; the subsidiary issue is, should that
> question be answered in the affirmative, it should be linked to.

>From WP:BLP:

[...] insist on reliable third-party published sources and a clear demonstration of relevance to the person's notability.

NB that it is the _person's notability_ in question. It is not just a matter of whether the blog has some notability, for close watchers of UK politics. It is a question of whether an MP, attacked by a blog, is in some way characterised for notability by such an attack. You are saying 'the only': i.e. the only pair of blog and MP in such a relationship.

> 3) The fact that Anne Milton is quoted by Sandra Howard asserting that
> Tim Ireland was "stalking" her through the weblog is particularly
> significant. It is a notably extreme accusation.

Well, the jury will have to describe whether objecting to such harassment makes Anne Milton more notable than otherwise. Or whether she is reacting as a normal person might well do. Of course being a normal person among Westminster politicians could be notability in itself?

I think the case for saying the blog must be mentioned in the Anne Milton article is weakish.

Charles

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body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
> --- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 12/4/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
>>wrote:
>>[snip]
>>
>>>Honestly the
>>>way a woman can contribute in places like this by
>>>overlooking all the subtle sexism.  By ignoring it
>>
>>and
>>
>>>pretending it is not about her.
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>If, at some point in the future, we were all able to
>>sit by and fail
>>to notice a sexist comment flow by our screens
>>because it is so
>>foreign to us that it lacks all meaning.. then I
>>think this would be a
>>grand day indeed because it would signify the true
>>death to sexism.
>>
>>Bigotry doesn't die when we simply avoid using bad
>>words or statements
>>because we know they are unacceptable, it dies when
>>those bad words
>>fail to make the slightest sense to us.
>>
>
>
> I don't think this is about what anyone would
> recognize as bigotry.  It is about the fact the women
> are not finding a way to participate here in
> significant numbers.  Does that fact that there is not
> overt bigotry involved make this an acceptable
> situation?
>
>
>>[snip]
>>
>>>If anyone who attended the Board Q & A at
>>
>>Wikimania and can still think it is not a serious
>>
>>>problem after witnessing the entire room laugh at
>>
>>dismissive comment which nearly brought > me to my
>>feet in outrage
>>[snip]
>>
>>It has been some months, and in that time I have
>>forgotten many
>>important things. So please do not consider my lack
>>of memory of this
>>comment as evidence of my opinion on the importance
>>of the comment.  I
>>simply do not remember what you are talking about,
>>could you please
>>refresh my memory and aid all who were not there?
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>>From the transcript although listening for it on the
> audio recording would be more useful.
>
> <anthere> may I ask a question to the room?
> usually I travle, and b/c they support it.. I have 3
> kids and have to take care of them, so it's not
> considerd to be an expense
> I just want to point out tha tI exaclty nyubmered the
> cost for me to come here and have my child taken care
> offor 3 days
> I think it's the sam efor you : $285 for the 3 days,
> my ost of my particpiation
> tis is the sam e each time I travle. this isn't
> conisdered a cost; that's all.
> <alih> actually if you look on the blog, danny was
> taking care of your baby, so the wmf is paying fo
> ryour baby sitting
> <laughter>
>
>
>
> BirgitteSB

I have learned my lesson.
 From the day I heard the famous french troll Papotages was *nice* to me
only because I had ovaries (3 years ago)
 From the day I heard Angela was on the board because she had big boobs
(2 years ago)
 From the day I was told Angela and I were on the board again because
Jimbo loved women and we were just part of his harem (1 year ago)
 From the day I read on /. I was childish mentionning my child care
concerns at Wikimania (was it a month ago ?)
Oh, and, how much chance do I have to be invited to a conference in
Saudia Arabia ?

This is just hearing about life. Real life is just the same.
Women are the most likely to understand these concerns. I guess few men
are told they got a position because of their cute buttocks, rather than
for their abilities :-) Life is punctuated by dozen of experiences of
this type, and this is for the luckiest of us. These comments are no big
deal, and most will just put them aside. Just dismiss them. But the
comments are made nonetheless.
The good news is that many men do not do that. Do not think that. Do not
even joke about that. The bad news is that some women are worse than men
on such matters.

Nothing is black and white. I have been told, by men and by women, to
not talk about such matters.

So, I do not talk about them anymore. I shall be genderless :-)

ant

PS: ... except in bylaws


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
rfrangi at libero.it wrote:

>[snip]
>
>
>> From the day I heard Angela was on the board because she had big boobs
>>
>>
>[snip]
>
>Huh!?! Really? Where does she hide 'em?
>
>But seriously,
>
You think trying to make a joke excuses comments like that? I hope that
Angela has developed a thick skin (in the figurative sense, not the
literal physical one) from her experiences, but she shouldn't have to be
subjected to this. It's exactly these sorts of comments, yes these sorts
of "jokes", that create what is known as a hostile work environment and
can lead to sexual harassment lawsuits.

I've expressed concern before about the gender disparities in our
community, and wondered about their causes. I had hoped that since
gender is not always apparent online, the problem was largely
inadvertent and that much of it could be addressed in a positive fashion
by simply continuing to encourage women to participate. But between the
things Anthere relates and this kind of response to them, I am appalled.

--Michael Snow


from_name: theProject

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi userboxes

body:
On 11/30/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I indef blocked and deleted the page.  Why are we even talking about
> this?
>
> Because Wikipedia doesn't generally ban users based on political
> affiliation? Banning someone for being a Nazi when it isn't illegal
> and they aren't causing any disruption is discrimination, pure and
> simple.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Couldn't we just ban the user for trolling and defer debate until such time
as there is an actual good-faith Nazi userbox? The chances of this happening
are (at present) fairly low and it'd be prudent not to debate for debate's
sake... :-)

--
theProject


from_name: Bence Damokos

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
> Haven't seen this one before - doesn't have any link to fundraising or
> anything either.

Having a
link to fundraising in this error message wouldn't be such a bad idea...

Bence Damokos

On 12/4/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 04/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Haven't seen this one before - doesn't have any link to fundraising or
> > anything either.
>
> You've really never seen that one before?
>
> It's the class of error message MediaWiki throws up when something
> happens that it can't wrap up in a nice, beautified error. :)
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] tiff files?

body:
On 12/4/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> No. Dejavu is, by a mile.
[snip]
> Even at losslevel 200 zoomed way in, I'd be hard pressed to tell the
> original from the djvu.
[snip]

Pardon my overactive send button.. I guess I should be fair and give examples:

http://72.165.205.81/djvuex.gif

And while the properly compressed png (http://72.165.205.81/p3.png)
weighs in at 70% more (335KiB) than the TIFF, the TIFF is 470% larger
than the lossy djvu you might use if you really cared about size.

Or in, perhaps more useful terms: Assuming this page is typical, with
a 28.8K modem PNG is 34 pages *per hour*, TIFF is 51 pages per hour,
lossless djvu 92 pages per hour, and high lossy djvu is 360 pages per
hour. So a typical reader on dialup could outread the transmission of
both PNG and TIFF, a fast reader (383 WPM) would just keep up with
lossless djvu, and a freak like Kat Walsh might would need the super
lossy in order to not sit waiting. :)   At DSL/Cable or T1 speeds even
the fastest human reader couldn't read as fast as PNGs would transfer.


from_name: Ivan Krstić

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> Yes, Ivan; that's why Jeff suggested provisioning more powerful
> platforms.

Wikipedia has so far followed the approach of scaling out instead of up,
and that with commodity hardware. If you believe this approach is
mistaken, you'll need to explain what you know about scaling server
farms that Google doesn't.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: David Boothroyd

body:
Charles R. Matthews writes:
>David Boothroyd wrote:
>  > The question is
>  > not whether the blog is a 'source'; it is clearly not a source for
>  > anything other than what is said on the blog. The issue is whether or
>  > not to mention it in the article; the subsidiary issue is, should that
>  > question be answered in the affirmative, it should be linked to.
>
>  >From WP:BLP:
>
>[...] insist on reliable third-party published
>sources and a clear demonstration of relevance
>to the person's notability.
>
>NB that it is the _person's notability_ in question. It is not just a
>matter of whether the blog has some notability, for close watchers of
>UK politics. It is a question of whether an MP, attacked by a blog, is
>in some way characterised for notability by such an attack. You are
>saying 'the only': i.e. the only pair of blog and MP in such a relationship.

I think you have slightly misread the policy. The point being made there
is that, in the case of negative material which does engage WP:BLP,
the negative material must have a relevance to the reason why the
person is considered notable. Therefore, if there was a blog set up to
attack Anne Milton for her treatment of her neighbours, that would fall
foul of that requirement because she is not notable by virtue of living
next to someone. However, in this case we have a blog which attacks her
for her political position: that passes the requirement because she is
notable for holding a political position.

This of course assumes that the mere existence of the blog does engage
WP:BLP. I do not see how this is the case. It is not even potentially
defamatory of person X to say that person Y does not like them.

>  > 3) The fact that Anne Milton is quoted by Sandra Howard asserting that
>  > Tim Ireland was "stalking" her through the weblog is particularly
>  > significant. It is a notably extreme accusation.
>
>Well, the jury will have to describe whether objecting to such
>harassment makes Anne Milton more notable than otherwise. Or whether
>she is reacting as a normal person might well do.

That does beg the question of whether the existence of the blog or its
contents amounts to "harassment", or whether such harassment would be
over and above the level of scrutiny and fair comment anyone might
expect when standing for public office. I haven't made my mind up on
that.

>Of course being a normal person among Westminster politicians could
>be notability in itself?

Touch?.
--
David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Evan Martin wrote:
>
>
>>When I run mwdumper with enwiki-20061001-pages-articles.xml.bz2 and
>>pipe it to mysql (see my other mail), it eventually prints out
>>something like
>>  3,583,699 pages (490.212/sec), 3,583,699 revs (490.212/sec)
>>and exits.
>>
>>However, on the database afterwards a query like SELECT COUNT(*) FROM
>>page gives me a result count somewhere around 2.5 million (I don't
>>have the exact number in my notes, sorry).
>>
>>
>
>This means MySQL encountered an error and stopped executing further
>statements from input.
>
>Be sure to watch the output of MySQL for errors, not just the output of
>mwdumper... you may find it easier if you send the SQL output to an
>intermediate file first, or else redirect each program's error output to
>separate files (which you can tail in separate terminals and/or look at
>later).
>
>- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
>Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
>iD8DBQFFdP/awRnhpk1wk44RAhf1AKDe7vwpTyh2c4XpELGeaS3whBh/zwCfbqdS
>Shosm2/hXgo32BfQkKT6zhQ=
>=N4Di
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
Brion,

When I use mwdumper, it says its dumping to the db, but none of the
articles show up in the new dump or the database (but the innodb gets
bigger). importDump works, but is slow as hell.

Jeff


from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

subject: [Commons-l] Blind move

body:
I see, that someone (user:LeonardoG) is making great job moving images
from pt.wiki to Commons...

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=LeonardoG

Yeah  ... great, but:

* He doesn't categorise it
* He doesn't put them into galleries
* He doesn't change stupid filenames to normal (eg. DSC_XXXXXX.JPG)
* He moves copyvios from pt.wiki (I've found book cover, DVD screen,
CD Audio with cover, Hagrid's figurine, image of character from
SouthPark ...)

So it's not great at all...

So my question is:

what to do with such users ?

AJF/WarX


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Commons-l] Blind move

body:
I think threatening to delete all uploads is not a good option. I
don't think you are actually  even allowed to delete _all_ of
somebody's contributions based on the fact that the majority of them
is a copyvio. I think talking is the best option. If he doesnt react
or continues, a short ban might be on the right place in my opinion,
so that we have the time to clean up the mess.

Bryan

On 12/4/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see, that someone (user:LeonardoG) is making great job moving images
> from pt.wiki to Commons...
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=LeonardoG
>
>
> Yeah  ... great, but:
>
> * He doesn't categorise it
> * He doesn't put them into galleries
> * He doesn't change stupid filenames to normal (eg. DSC_XXXXXX.JPG)
> * He moves copyvios from pt.wiki (I've found book cover, DVD screen,
> CD Audio with cover, Hagrid's figurine, image of character from
> SouthPark ...)
>
> So it's not great at all...
>
> So my question is:
>
> what to do with such users ?
>
> AJF/WarX
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 19:38:27 +0000, David Boothroyd
<david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>I should like to clarify the issue in this dispute. The question is
>not whether the blog is a 'source'; it is clearly not a source for
>anything other than what is said on the blog. The issue is whether or
>not to mention it in the article

Er, no.  The issue is whether to *link* it in the article.  That is
rather different.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 18:41:11 -0500, "The Cunctator"
<cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

>And we should let people make up their own minds by letting them see the new
>stories and the blog posts

You really think attack blogs should be linked to articles on living
individuals on the grounds that readers can make up their own minds?
Wow.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: mingwangx

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin, 24 November, 2006

body:
*Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin*

24 November, 2006
  *Call for Help*

   - school promotion tour and volunteer recruitment

   - translation

   - someone who is conversant with PayPal, PHP, and API

  Summary:

   - Wikimania Team has already open an account for this activity, and
   start to accept donations.
   - The first Wikimania 2007 volunteer training
course<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_training/20061209>will
be held on December 9th with the Taiwan Wikimedian Winter Meetup.
   Please go to the Winter Meetup
Page<http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:%E8%81%9A%E4%BC%9A/2006%E8%87%BA%E7%81%A3%E5%86%AC%E8%81%9A%E5%A0%B1%E5%91%8A>on
Chinese Wikipedia to sign up.
   - The Blog Sticker
Page<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blog_Sticker/zh-hant>on
Wikimania
   2007 Official Website <http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/> is
   established.

Account to Accept Donation

Wikimania Team has already open an account for this activity, and start to
accept donations. The information of the account:

   - Account: ????????????
   - Bank: ????????
   - Bank Code: 004
   - Account number: 064001049454

 Volunteer Training Course

The first Wikimania 2007 volunteer training course
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_training/20061209> will
be held on December 9th with the Taiwan Wikimedian Winter Meetup. Please go
to the Winter Meetup
Page<http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:%E8%81%9A%E4%BC%9A/2006%E8%87%BA%E7%81%A3%E5%86%AC%E8%81%9A%E5%A0%B1%E5%91%8A>on
Chinese Wikipedia to sign up. Here is more information:

   - Date: December 9th, 2006 (Saturday)
   - Time: 10:00 - 12:00 (there will be Taiwan Wikimedian Winter Meetup
   in the afternoon).
   - Place: Youth Hub, 2nd floor?2F., No. 31, Sec. 1, Zhongxiao E. Rd.,
   Taipei City?
   - Audience:
      - Anyone who wants to volunteer for Wikimania.
      - Anyone who is simply interested in Wikipedia and other
      Wikimedia projects.

 Blog Sticker

The Blog Sticker
Page<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blog_Sticker/zh-hant>on
Wikimania
2007 Official Website <http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/> is established.
The themes of blog sticker are:

   - Wikimania 2007 Taipei, volunteer recruiting, volunteer training
   courses, call for participation, Babel stickers, activities and other.
   Please visit The Blog Sticker
Page<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blog_Sticker/zh-hant>for
more details.

 Distribution of this Bulletin and feedback

Everyone is welcome to reproduce and distribute this bulletin to their
websites, mailing lists, BBS, blogs, and so on, but please kindly include the
Bulletin's original location
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Team_Bulletin/20061204> on the
official Wikimania 2007 website in your distribution.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them at...

   - http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Team_Bulletin/20061204
   - Wikimania-l mailing
list<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l>

 *Sponsorship<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sponsorship&action=edit>
*    Patron? Chunghwa Telecom <http://www.cht.com.tw/>
<http://www.cht.com.tw/>  Benefactor? dotAsia <http://www.dotasia.org/>
<http://www.dotasia.org/>  Friends?
  Supporter? Cottingham & Company  Contributor?


subject:
[Commons-l] New JS hack - search by namespace options on blank
	searches

body:
Hello,

A while ago I realised that that Special:Search behaved differently in
different circumstances. It only shows the "search by namespace" radio
boxes on searches with search terms - not on plain old Special:Search,
or on blank searches. (I am pretty sure the blank search is still the
most common query, so this is not as stupid as it might sound.) I just
wrote this up as bugzilla:8149.

Anyway, a very nice chap, AmiDaniel, overheard my complaining on IRC
and wrote up a Javscript hack that adds the search buttons for blank
searches:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Blanksearchextra.js

(see talk page for installation instructions)

It would be good to get a variety of browsers and OSs to try it out
and report any problems they encounter. (see talk page) I would like
to install it site-wide until the bug is fixed (which is more a matter
of someone getting around to it rather than something difficult, I
imagine, but IANAD).

regards,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


body:
On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 18:50:21 -0500, "The Cunctator"
<cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

>> You really think attack blogs should be linked to articles on living
>> individuals on the grounds that readers can make up their own minds?
>> Wow.

>Is that "Wow" facetious? I hope so.

Not especially, no.  If one is George W. Bush, and an attack blog is
in the top 50 sites on Alexa, I'd expect it to be linked, but this is
a trivial story from the election, almost entirely unrelated to the
MP's performance of her duties and of strictly limited significance in
her life as a whole.  Constituent opposes candidate?  Interesting
during the election, maybe interesting as a sidenote.  Constituent
opposes candidate, read all the garbage here?  Not really the kind of
thing we should aspire to have in biographies, surely?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
Guy Chapman writes:
>On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 19:38:27 +0000, David Boothroyd
><david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>  >I should like to clarify the issue in this dispute. The question is
>  >not whether the blog is a 'source'; it is clearly not a source for
>  >anything other than what is said on the blog. The issue is whether or
>  >not to mention it in the article
>
>Er, no.  The issue is whether to *link* it in the article.  That is
>rather different.

No, not just that. I understand your position to be that the blog is
worthy of mention in the text but not worthy of a link. However, there
are other actors in this drama, who are the people who wish to have
all mention removed. They are the people I was reverting when you
blocked me for 3RR.

PS: If you look back to my edit to [[Anne Milton]] on 5 October, and
compare it with how the article stood immediately before Twobells'
contribution, where does that leave your still unproven theory that
the reason I want the blog mentioned is that I have a political
animus against Anne Milton? The relevant diff is
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anne_Milton&diff=79621472&oldid=79056731
--
David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-12-05

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Passed 451 of 471 tests (95.75%)... FAILED!


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On Mon, Dec 04, 2006 at 11:21:00PM -0500, Ivan Krsti?? wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > Yes, Ivan; that's why Jeff suggested provisioning more powerful
> > platforms.
>
> Wikipedia has so far followed the approach of scaling out instead of up,
> and that with commodity hardware. If you believe this approach is
> mistaken, you'll need to explain what you know about scaling server
> farms that Google doesn't.

My point was merely that he suggested more powerful hardware, and
received as a reply, "no, the problem is that we need more powerful
hardware".  Essentially.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	(I've been informed that the 'divorce' quote makes me look
	misogynistic, even though Jennifer Crusie is (pretty obviously)
	a female romance novelist.  So I've removed it. :-)


from_name: Corum O' Fallamhain

body:
Since women have the ability to contribute here the same as men, I really
don't see why this is needed. Surely the scepticism being shown to this idea
from many men is proof positive of the fact that no-one is being opressed.
How ironic to have women in this day and age proposing their own seperate
mailing list from men, since so many feminists fought so hard for gender
equality. This looks to me like a step backward.

On 05/12/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
> Ilario Valdelli wrote:
>
> > I don't understand the problem...
>
> This is a large part of the problem, isn't it?  To take just one
> example, white Americans feel equal and democratic, and pride
> themselves of this, but black Americans still feel oppressed.
> Very few whites understand the problem in full but even fewer
> blacks understand how little the white understand.  How many white
> men know what it is like to grow up where none of the presidents
> in the history book has your skin color?  How many black know what
> it is like, never to have asked that question?  It is so easy to
> shun the difference and so hopeless to try to make a change.
> Women, of course, are not a "minority" in real numbers, but often
> in perceived power.
>
> All of us wikipedians are also a minority of this kind, underdogs
> under the vast dominance of traditional printed, commercial
> encyclopedias.  Perhaps Britannica, Larousse and Brockhaus feel
> that it was sad and unnecessary to take the disruptive step of
> setting up Wikipedia, instead of building on their existing base.
> They were willing to listen to the young generation, weren't they?
> Their experience in quality control and profitmaking should have
> been useful, so why on earth didn't the wikipedians apply for jobs
> there instead of being unpaid for reverting edit wars?  From their
> perspective, our obsession must be plain incomprehensible.  And
> yet there is nothing wrong with us, only with their perspective.
>
> Self-identified subgroups will find ways to communicate, whether
> it is women, skin colour, or operating system preference, and this
> is nothing we should try to stop.  Now the women have formed their
> own subgroup within the Wikimedia Foundation.  Hey, that means we
> have women here!  Compared to Linux kernel hackers, that's great
> progress.  And unlike the United States, the Wikimedia Foundation
> does have a female president.  How long will we have to wait
> before the black people form a subgroup?  Did they have a meetup
> at Wikimania?  (I guess not.  I heard it was an almost exclusively
> white event.)  And will we one day see a special interest group
> for black female Linux kernel hackers?
>
> Funny, perspective is what Wikipedia is all about, the NPOV.  We
> pride ourselves of being able to see beyond our own perspective.
>
>
> --
> Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
> Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Single user login status

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

Did another pass-0 migration over the data on the new migration schema.
Briefly enabled the login UI on test.wikipedia.org, but it turns out
I've got an incompatibility with the configuration caching on the live
site which breaks the merging UI badly . Will fix this up in the morning.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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