from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interview

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Oh, great, how clever of me to post my phone number on the net.

Clever, clever marketer you...

BTW, wuzzup -> wikia?

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
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New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [WikiEN-l] Register, Round Three

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We just need to tell him that if he thinks Wikipedia is crappy now,
> he should
> go to the Internet archive and see how crappy we were three years
> ago, or even
> a year ago.

Mav, let him wallow in his ignorance. His readers will realize he's
full of bitterness once they check out the site and possibly become a
contributor.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Huge misunderstanding which arose from
	miscommunication

body:
--- Mirko Thiessen <wikipedia at mirko-thiessen.de> wrote:
> I realise that there is still a misunderstanding what Wikispecies would
> look like. This is not about having articles which would be too special
> for Wikipedia. This is (at least how I understand it) about having a
> species directory containing raw data.

Sweet! That would be neat (based on your example and link). I still think this
would be better under the Commons umbrella, but oh well.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: zhengzhu

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 22:58:48 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> Since the wrong character and the right character in Traditional are
> the same character in Simplified, it won't have any effect on
> Simplified users who will continue browsing it as it is. However, the
> error *will* show up to Traditional users, who will then correct it.
> This correction will have no effect on the apperance of the text to a
> Simplified user, but it will make it so it uses the correct character
> for a Traditional user.
>
> This eliminates the need for special semantic markup.
>
> --Jin Junshu/Mark
>

As someone pointed out before, the problem is not just on the
character-to-character mapping. Some concepts are expressed entirely
differently, for example, ??(electronic brain) vs. ???(calculator or
computer). A second example will be translations of foreign names, for
example, Croatia is translated in Mainland China as ?????but ??????in
Taiwan. This kind of difference can be arbitrary, and will likely
evolve along time. It is mainly this kind of difference that requires
a special markup.

In fact, I think the character ambiguity is less of an issue, because
most of them (although not all) can be distinguished by looking at the
phrase that a character is in. Including phrases that contains
ambiguous characters in the conversion table should eliminate most of
the character ambiguity.

However I don't have enough data to proof this. I have implemented
this idea on the test site, but since I myself am a Simplified user, I
can't really tell if most of the ambiguity on the character level is
eliminated or not. I urge Traditional Chinese user on this list to
visit the test site, and proof read a few converted articles to see
how well/bad the current implementation works. The test site is at
http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/wiki/

--
---------------------
gmail.com at zhengzhu


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Register, Round Three

body:
FYI, the Register's latest rant against Wikipedia:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15/emergent_people_fail_to_impress/

It's up to you to consider the value of responding to these folks. :)

--
Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Register, Round Three


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: create new function; domain name administrator

body:
Sj <2.718281828 at ...> writes:

> Support.
>
> This is not at all an easy job; work will need to be done to scale the
> paperwork and synchronize regular deadlines.  I am glad that Walter is
> even considering doing this.

I have been owner of several domains. I did not have the impression it is very
complicated or difficult. The most important thing is to not forget witch
registrator you have used, the password of it. And to renew it on time.

The domains wikipedia.ca and wikipedia.us are squatted long after the where
listed on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Domain_names for a long time. This is
because of the absence of a domain name administrator.

I know Branko Collin is now attempting to transfer wikipedia.nl to Wikimedia. I
have also a domain to transfer. And I hope that it is not forgotten to renew
wikipedia.be, a domain I earlier have hand over to Wikimedia.

I am pesimistic about the current way of dealing whit this. There is need of
more internal organisation about who does what and clear contact persons. Most
Wiki's or even the Wikimedia Foundation does not have a clear way of contact
like for example the Dutch and German wiki.

I will be offline for 2 weeks. It is time for my annual internet-
disintoxication.

Greetings,
Walter Vermeir


list: wikimedia-l


list: textbook-l

from_name: Lars Hennings, www.l-hennings.de

body:
Hi, I know a school using an open source textbook - it?s the
"Photoschule Gro?format", a school to teach photograpers asked for that.
And there was a social projekt bringing kids away from the street they
use it too.
best wishes
lars

Sanford Forte schrieb:

>John,
>
>Most of what you see in the link below reflects the current state of Wiki
>(and other) open source textbook development.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_content
>
>It's hard to know exactly how many people are engaged in open source
>textbook development, but it's growing all the time as the open source
>textbook movements gathers steam as a practical way for states to save
>money, while increasing quality of textbooks for universities and K-12.
>
>To the best of my knowledge,  no K-12 public school district that has yet
>adopted a Wiki textbook. This is primarily because the open source K-12
>textbook effort is so new, as well as the fact that purchasing behaviors in
>public school systems are strongly habituated to working with commercial
>publishers. This has begun to change, but slowly.
>
>That said, I'm also interested in hearing from anyone who knows of a public
>school adoption of an open source K-12 textbook
>
>Best,
>Sanford
>www.opensourcetext.org
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Brolap" <brolap at yahoo.com>
>To: <textbook-l at wikimedia.org>
>Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 3:45 PM
>Subject: [Textbook-l] State of the Union on Open Wiki Textbooks?
>
>
>
>
>>I am new to this group, but am super duper interested
>>in supporting the "movement".
>>
>>Would someone be kind enough to give me an update as
>>to the "State of the Union" for Open Wiki Textbooks?
>>
>>I would love to know things like:
>>
>>-- How many people are engaged?
>>-- Is the movement growing, or shrinking?
>>-- Are any Wiki textbooks "completed"?  If so, how
>>many?
>>-- Is there any record of any school or school
>>district anywhere in the U.S. that has agreed to use a
>>Wiki Textbook for official classes?
>>-- Is there another forum or alias or group where the
>>dialog is more active/involved?
>>-- Are there other open textbook initiatives outside
>>of this one that I should be aware of?
>>
>>I can't wait to learn more!
>>
>>John
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________
>>Do you Yahoo!?
>>Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
>>http://vote.yahoo.com
>>_______________________________________________
>>Textbook-l mailing list
>>Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Textbook-l mailing list
>Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>
>
>


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Huge misunderstanding which arose from

body:
While it's nice that Mav is happy about this, I'm still somewhat annoyed.

It's clear that there was no consensus in the broader Wikimedia
community for this. If there was a discussion on meta, I haven't seen
it, so it would only be those people who are subscribed to the list
that would've known about this. It's also apparent that even on the
list, Mav wasn't the only one with objections. But because the three
or four proponents of this shouted him (and others) down more vocally,
it seems the board decides to go off and do their own thing. I don't
make the accusation that it was underhanded, but at the same time, I
hope it won't be something that's repeated.

If there is a non-forking policy, where is it, and why haven't I heard
of it until now? If there is conditions placed on the creation of
Wikispecies, what were they? Disclosure, people, disclosure.

I still believe that Wikispecies should be treated the same as Mark's
attempt to start a Traditional Chinese Wikipedia has been - suspended
until there is community consensus for it to exist.

-- ambi


from_name: Mirko Thiessen

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> One question:
>
> Is the level of detail in this article:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Zion_and_Kolob_canyons_area
>
> appropriate for Wikipedia? Or would it be better to have such an article
> in a
> Wikigeology project? I would certainly hate to see similarly detailed
> [[Biology
> of ...]] articles not be created for species in Wikipedia because the
> same
> content is in Wikispecies. Or worse, for them to exist in both and thus
> half
> the contributor base working on each of them.
>

I realise that there is still a misunderstanding what Wikispecies would
look like. This is not about having articles which would be too special
for Wikipedia. This is (at least how I understand it) about having a
species directory containing raw data. For example, an entry for the
European Grass Snake could be structured this way:

Scientific name: Natrix natrix
Vernacular names: European Grass Snake (en), Ringelnatter (de), Ringslang
(nl), Snog (da)...
Author: (Linnaeus 1758)
Synonymes: Coluber natrix, Natrix vulgaris, Coluber scutatus...
Subspecies: Natrix natrix astreptophora, Natrix natrix cetti, Natrix
natrix corsa...
Containing clades: Colubridae - Serpentes - Squamata
Distribution: Europe, North Africa, West Asia
More info: [[de:Ringelnatter]], [[nl:Ringslang]], [[da:Snog (Natrix
natrix)]]...

That's it. The textual info remains in Wikipedia and is not duplicated.
The aim is having a searchable database of every known species, with data
that is mainly interesting for biologists.

I hope I could solve some misunderstandings. Nobody wants to create
another Wikipedia containing Biology articles. That is at least my
understanding (not knowing if I speak for everyone interested in the
Wikispecies project, of course).

See here (http://www.sp2000.org/AnnualChecklist.html) how a taxonomic
database may look like.

Mirko (Baldhur)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Not every reference work is an encyclopedia.  Other types of reference
>works will likely include, according to the specific needs of their
>users, both more and less information of various kinds.  It's just
>different.
>
>
Are we going to have literally thousands of different project then?  Why
species in particular?  Just off the top of my head I can think of
dozens of other possibilities (such as languages).  And why aren't these
being made as wikibooks?  When previously it came up that some people
wanted general-purpose articles on food, and other people wanted more
specialist articles specifically on how to cook food (i.e. recipes), the
decision was made that recipes should be done at wikibooks.  Why
shouldn't a species reference work be a wikibook?

-Mark


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>I don't think this is an accurate characterization of what happened at
>all.  No one shouted down anyone.  What happened was that there was a
>big discussion that we on the board judged to end in a consensus; we
>attempted to formulate the consensus as a proposal and approve it so
>that we could all move forward together on the next steps.
>
>
My general decision-making objection is that in all cases, it should be:
1) Wikipedian discussion
2) Determination that there is a consensus
3) Statement that there appears to be a consensus, and propose something
based on that
4) Wait for comments on that proposed consensus-based whatever-it-is
5) Implement it

There doesn't appear to have been an interest in 3-4 here: instead it
was straight from "board determines there is a consensus" to "board
implements", which should *never* happen---it should go from "board
determines there is a consensus" to "board *proposes* an action to the
community."

-Mark


from_name: Matthew Larsen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [customer.support@orbimage.com: Illegal Use of SeaWiFS
	/ OrbView-2 imagery]

body:
wanker lawyers. Remove the images and tell them that we will never use
them / give them credit again.

You would think they would have something better to do with their time...

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 19:04:56 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> >We will need to do a search to determine if we have other images from
> >this site as well.  The error was due to the assumption that if it is
> >on the Nasa site, and is a picture from space, it is in the public
> >domain.
> >
> >
> In a brief spot-check of 30 NASA images, no others were from SeaWiFS, so
> if there are any others, they seem to be in a small minority.  It's hard
> to check for them though, as they come from various NASA sites under the
> company's agreement with NASA, and not from a separate SeaWiFS site.
> There is a http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov, but the only references we have
> to that site are external links, not images.  So I'm guessing we're okay.
>
> -Mark
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
Anthere wrote:

> It is possible that we do not have the same definition of macro and
> micro...
>
> For me, micro is "local" issues, not "may be done by the community"
> and macro is "wikimedia wide issues" rather than "may not be done by
> the community".

If that's the board's role, I *strongly* object, and I don't believe
this is how it was proposed.  it is most important that wikimedia-wide
issues be decided by the community, and *only* by the community, with
the board serving only as a neutral arbiter (and vote-counter, if
necessary).  The community ought to decide its own path; that's how
wiki-type stuff works.  The community is not as good at deciding
detailed logistical issues, which I thought is why we had a board.  But
it's perfectly capable of deciding larger vision- and direction-type issues.

> It seems clear to me, that this decision did not please some people;
> and we will consider this fact for the next decisions. I am quite
> surprised that you consider this a total precedent. There are more
> than one decision which was taken by Jimbo in the past, with none of
> you all complaining. You trusted that this was a good decision and
> that there some arguments for taking it. Usually, Jimbo listened to
> the community, till a consensus arise.

Well, Jimbo gets some deference, having spent over $100,000 of his own
money on the project, and generally singlehandedly keeping the project
afloat at various times.  But I think everyone, including Jimbo, agreed
that the benevolent-dictator model was something that he'd like to phase
out in favor of community decision-making at some point, and even
previously he only occasionally made dictatorial-type decisions when it
was absolutely necessary.

> We will try to do better in the future, to listen more and longer. But
> I must warn you of one point. Jimbo, Angela and I are all three
> already streching our time limits. If you all want us to listen
> better, you will have to help us by providing better insight,
> summaries and such... and mostly, do not expect us to start polls or
> votes all the time. Neither of us three are very happy with votes and
> I doubt we'll start organising votes one by one. In short, those who
> want to help us take some final decisions will have to wet their
> shirt, hang around and call people to participate to discussion,
> create summaries, emulate discussions and co.

I don't see why this is the case: the board shouldn't be the
bottleneck.  Decision-making on these sorts of things should be done by
the community, perhaps by a vote if necessary, and then implementation
can be done by one of the developers.  The board should only be there to
make decisions that are not reasonable decisions for the community to make.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Register, Round Three

body:
Agreed, The Register is the equivalent of the UK Sun. Anyway, who
gives a shit what they say lol. The people who use wikipedia are the
people who think its worth it!

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 01:46:40 -0700, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I misread that for a second as "the value of responding to these
> trolls", which sums it all up really.
>
> The Register is a whore; it'll do anything so long as it makes money -
> i.e. gets the site noticed and visited, which gets visitors to read
> the ads and pay the bills.  Their credibility is significantly less
> than Wikipedia's, even by THEIR opinion of Wikipedia.
>
> -Matt (User:Morven)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Import on Wikibooks?

body:
On Sep 16, 2004, at 5:21 AM, Yann Forget wrote:
> When the [[Special:Import]] feature will be able on Wikibooks (fr:)?

When someone has the time and inclination to finish Special:Import.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] 1,000,000 articles

body:
copy-and-pasted from milestones talk on meta

I think we are pretty close to hitting 1,000,000 articles globally,
anyone care to confirm this?? looking at the starts in sept 8th or 9th
we were~18k articles away at a rate of ~3k articles a day which would
roughly mean that by the 15th or 16th we should roughly be there.
anyone care to take a look? today is the 14th BTW

Lightning 16:13, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So do we globally have 1,000,000 articles or what?

Lightning


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Printing problem

body:
shantanu oak wrote:

>Hi,
>Whenever I print a page from my wiki installation, It prints
>"Retrieved from" and "This page was last modified..." How do I disable
>these 2 lines along with the border?
>I will also like to control how does the bold title and sub title will
>be printed. I tried to opne the commonPrint.css file from stylesheets
>directory. But I don't know which line to be edited.
>Shantanu Oak
>shantanuo at yahoo.com
>
Why would you want to remove them?  They document where you received the
material for purposes of copyright licences, etc.  If you download it
again at a later date you will be able to know which version is which.
It's only a mater of two lines at the bottom.

Ec


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: I am really tired of registering an
	account	for	each MetaWiki site I found

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:21:06 -0700 Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
wrote:

>As much as I support the idea of a single log-in it should not imply that a
>person will want the same preferences in all projects.  A default set of
>preferences would be fine in a seldom visited project, but one may want
>special settings in his more frequently visited ones.

As an example, I have an automatic marking of edits as minor on most
Wikipedia languages, but not on the languages I use most. Reason is that on
the first my edits are almost always interwiki-links.

Andre Engels


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Huge misunderstanding which arose from

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
>  There's not much else to disclose other
> >than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.
> >
> >--Jimbo
>
> And ?

There is nothing to disclose, for I wore nothing. ;-)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Stripping HTML comments

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:49:04 -0700 (PDT), Wil Mahan <wmahan_04 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>MediaWiki uses the following line (in Parser.php) to strip comments
>>when outputting HTML:
>
> <snip>
>
> Forgive me if I'm being thick, but why do you need to remove HTML
> comments from an HTML output *anyway*? Is it to allow magic behaviour
> of wikimarkup on either side of the comment, which could otherwise be
> broken by the content of the comment?

Wiki markup inside comments, such as links, should not be converted to
HTML. Links are detected using a regex, and it's difficult to determine
the context of a regex match. For <pre> and <nowiki>, this is handled by
stripping out the non-parsed sections, running the necessary
replacements, then putting the stripped sections back in. We could do
the same thing with comments, but there's not much point in putting them
back in when they don't do anything.

> If so, it looks like we could *really* do with this new parser that's
> been under discussion, because that's a pretty daft thing to have to
> do...

The "parser" may be ugly, but it seems to be optimal for a certain set
of criteria. In particular, it seems to be the fastest pure-PHP method
to convert wikitext to HTML, if little regard is given to future syntax
features or bug avoidance.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000 Fredrik Adev?g <gadrauhts at hotmail.com>
wrote:
>I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
> gothic.
>
>Full name: gothic
>
>Language code: got
>
>Number of speakers: 0
>
>Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
>much more.

I still am very wary about putting Wikipedia in dead languages. Reason is
that in my opinion the first function of Wikipedia is to bring over the
information content in the articles; the language, in my opinion, is just a
means to do this, it should not be a goal in its own. Because, as far as I
can see, nobody would _prefer_ to have Gothic as the language in which s/he
gets this information, I don't think having a Gothic Wikipedia aids in this
goal (and yes, there are languages in which Wikipedia already exists with
which I have the same objections).

My doubts would be much lessened if you could give me evidence that the
language is actually used - in the sense of being written/spoken rather than
just read. I would like to ask this:

Can you specify a body of literature written in Gothic, from recent date
(say, after World War II)?

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The Board -> Mav's disgust

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at ...> writes:
[cut]
> something are properly informed.  At the very least all sysops for all
> projects should be required to join a general mailing list.  (Just which
> list may still be an open question.)
>
> Ec

Very good idea. At least foundation-l (gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation)

The logical lists whould be;
gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation Top
gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc  The general list for the project
gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.XXXXXX The local list

And if more people people know about how the gmane-gateway works so that the do
not need to flood there mailbox whit postings maybe more peole whould follow
the lists.

[[nl:gebruiker:walter]]

Posted whit the web interfase of gmane


body:
--- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have a number of translators in each language who would be happy to
> spend 5 minutes a week translating important notices for their local
> projects.  What we don't have, is a page (one per language) dedicated
> to brief, globally-interesting announcements, where contributors are
> careful to write simply (for translation), and which is translated
> actively.  See [[m:Announcements]] for a somewhat silly example.
> [Goings-on is many things to many people, but it is not this place.]

If we move milestone announcements to a separate Meta page, then [[m:Wikimedia
News]] (or [[m:Goings on]] but I really don't get the difference other than
organization) could be used for this.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
> > Anthere wrote:
> >
> >>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
> >> There's not much else to disclose other
> >>
> >>>than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.
> >>>
> >>>--Jimbo
> >>
> >>And ?
> >
> >
> > There is nothing to disclose, for I wore nothing. ;-)
>
> How are we supposed to think business after such disclosure of
> information ? ;-)

Great - that is the last thing I want to think about in a meeting (who else is
naked besides me?). :)

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [customer.support@orbimage.com: Illegal Use of
	SeaWiFS/ OrbView-2 imagery]

body:
>wanker lawyers. Remove the images and tell them that we will never use
>them / give them credit again.

I don't think this is helpful. They have every right to inform us that
we a violating their copyright.

Theresa


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Charts, spreadsheets, and other plugins

body:
Nick Triantos wrote:

> Fair enough, so as a follow-on question:  Does anyone [else] see it as
> a worthwhile goal to try to stabilize the APIs, so that extensions
> could be created more easily?  The most obvious ones, IMO, are those
> that replace wikitext with some formatted output, such as what the
> <math></nomath> functionality provides.
>
> I see that there's some attempt to provide extension hooks in the
> parser code, do people think that's sufficient?
>
It worked for me including our in-house calender PHP feature on our lab
wiki. But, I couldn't figure out how to register it in
LocalSettings.php; I had to edit index.php :-(

Magnus


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Fwd: Re: using the "random page" feature in
	academic studies]

body:
On Sep 16, 2004, at 12:12 PM, samuel wrote:
> Hm. Seems like the email wasn't attached for some reason. I'll try
> again.

Binary attachments are stripped to reduce forged-header virus spam
problems.

Consider cut and paste of plain text. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Ctrl-C is our friend

body:
On Sep 16, 2004, at 12:16 PM, samuel wrote:
>> I am about conduct a study of the quality of Wikipedia's content. In
>> order to do this, I will need to randomly select articles, and for
>> this, the "random page" feature appears a natural choice.

Depending on what you're trying to measure, simply taking a random
selection of pages and looking at them in isolation may or may not be
useful to you. Wikipedia is a permanent work in progress; its purpose
is to generate content and grow and develop it over time. The actual
distribution of a published or "stable" encyclopedia is a distinct
project from the free-for-all editing on the wiki.

Due to Wikipedia's nature it can be fully expected that many, many
pages at any given time will be found wanting, because they are new or
unpopular subjects and thus insufficiently developed. By the same
token, Wikipedia can be fully expected to cover many topics that more
traditional encyclopedias don't cover at all, or cover in less detail.

If you're interested in comparing the quality of Wikipedia articles
against that of more traditional encyclopedias, consider also doing
random selection of topics covered by those encyclopedias, then seeking
the same particular topics in Wikipedia for comparison. (And
vice-versa!)

>>  However, I cannot find any information on how it works, and it is
>> essential that such information in described in the methodology
>> section of the study. The questions I have regarding the selection
>> are the following:
>> 1) What counts as a page?

Returnable pages are those in article namespace (not talk pages, user
pages, etc) and not marked as redirects.

>> 2) Is the selection done from all pages/articles or a subset of them?

 From all articles that meet the above criteria, with one exception: on
en.wikipedia.org the random selection has been hacked not to return
pages last edited by the accounts Ram-Man or Rambot. This is a crude
(and in my view unfortunate) hack to appease complaints that the random
page function returned articles on cities and towns in the US too
often.

>> 3) Is there any weight attached to outcomes (for example, so that a
>> very popular or frequently edited article would have a higher chance
>> of appearing as a random article)?

No.

You are of course welcome to download the article database from
http://download.wikimedia.org/ and select & sort articles in any
fashion you see fit.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Alan Wessman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page

body:
Here's some relevant code snippets from SpecialRandomPage.php:

$rand = mt_rand() / mt_getrandmax();
$randstr = number_format( $rand, 12, ".", "" );

$sqlget = "SELECT cur_id,cur_title
		FROM $cur $use_index
		WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0 $extra
		AND cur_random>$randstr
		ORDER BY cur_random
		LIMIT 1";

Here's the PHP documentation on mt_rand():

http://us2.php.net/mt_rand

The salient points are:

* A random number is generated using the PHP function mt_rand()
* That number is used to find an article in the default namespace (not
a redirect) with the closest greater cur_random value than the
generated number.
* The cur_random value is generated with mt_rand() and saved with the
article in Article.php.

It appears that if multiple articles should happen to share the same
cur_random number, you could end up with a slight bias, since then the
choice of which article to return is determined by how the database
decides to order the articles, and if this isn't arbitrary then some
articles are less likely to be returned than others.  The degree of
non-randomness that this implies probably depends on the number of
articles and the range of the assignable random numbers.

Hope this helps,
Alan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page

body:
On Sep 16, 2004, at 1:34 PM, samuel wrote:
> 1) How is cur_random set in the first place?

A random number is selected and set at article creation.

> 2) What is the precision of cur_random and randstr? (I don't speak
> PHP, so I can't tell from the code.)

mt_rand_max() is (2^31)-1, so there should be ~2 billion possible
random numbers.

cur_random is of type 'double', which I believe is 64-bit floating
point. I _think_ PHP uses doubles for floating-point numbers
internally, but I'm not sure.

Speaking SQL the numbers are converted to decimal and back, so some
precision may be lost. Queries look something like this:

SELECT cur_id,cur_title   FROM cur USE INDEX (cur_random)   WHERE
cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0    AND cur_random>0.440311077722
ORDER BY cur_random   LIMIT 1

> 3) How many articles are there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page

body:
On Sep 16, 2004, at 1:42 PM, Jens Frank wrote:
> Some pages have a cur_random of 0, and will never be chosen by
> Special:Randompage.

A quick spot-check on enwiki indicates that this is probably due to a
bug in Special:Movepage; all the afflicted pages I checked began as
redirects created by a page move and were subsequently edited into
articles. Most likely they were created without a cur_random assigned.

Should check if this bug is still current, and correct the remaining
affected articles.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Sj

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 15:35:42 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Again, we have grown too big to spend our time to go to each of the 50
> projects in turn to ask people their opinion. This is just impossible.

Actually, it is only thirty times as hard as going to each of two
projects to ask people their opinion... and doesn't require a Board
member's attention.   I don't think it is too much to ask that the 15
largest wiki communities have this kind of direct feedback about major
announcements in their own language.

We have a number of translators in each language who would be happy to
spend 5 minutes a week translating important notices for their local
projects.  What we don't have, is a page (one per language) dedicated
to brief, globally-interesting announcements, where contributors are
careful to write simply (for translation), and which is translated
actively.  See [[m:Announcements]] for a somewhat silly example.
[Goings-on is many things to many people, but it is not this place.]

With such multilingual content, we could also generate an announcements
mailing-list which would exist only to disseminate announcements, without
the responses and emotional exchanges which keep many people from
subscribing to current wikipedia lists.

> Some time ago, I suggested that we have a system to publish an message
> on all wikipedia at the same time, precisely for these types of general
> message; it basically met no answer but one.

And this would be wonderful -- a small button on every logged-in page
which lights up slightly when there is a new global announcement.

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ctrl-C is our friend

body:
On Sep 16, 2004, at 1:59 PM, samuel wrote:
> Interesting. Is Ram-Man and Rambot actual users who submitted such
> changes, or are the accounts created for the specific purpose of
> identifying the articles to be ignored?

Ram-Man is an actual human; he set up a bot to do a mass import of stub
pages on cities and towns generated from data from the 2000 US census,
which created some 30000 pages. After a while he switched the bot to
its own account, Rambot.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rambot

> According to other posters to the list, there are two ways that
> certain articles could have negative weights associated with them, the
> first being those that have cur_random = 0

This only happens in the case of bugs in the software.

>  and the other being those which share cur_random with at least one
> other article.

This should pretty rare and hopefully doesn't happen. :) If it turns
out not to be rare, a 'jitter' could perhaps be added to compensate.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

When the [[Special:Import]] feature will be able on Wikibooks (fr:)?

Thanks,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New projects

body:
I'm not sure the result of all this should be elaborate procedure.  I
do think it is
worth personally contacting serious contributors who strongly oppose a plan,
and letting them know that they have been heard (and how their
opposition has been taken into consideration / affected the proposed
plan), before announcing the plan to the world.

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 07:16:51 -0700 (PDT), Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Procedures (arrrggggg) should be something like
> * propose a project on meta
> * explain the proposal and the benefit of the project on meta
> * list people interested on meta
> * mention it on the goings-on
> * head to the mailing list and talk about it
> * toss well
> * regularly put sumaries on meta
> * let rest for some time
> * toss again
> * regularly put sumaries on meta
> * let rest for some time
> * look for support
> * remind people
<snip>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 10:25:29 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> >
> Are we going to have literally thousands of different project then?  Why
> species in particular?  Just off the top of my head I can think of
> dozens of other possibilities (such as languages).  And why aren't these
> being made as wikibooks?  When previously it came up that some people
> wanted general-purpose articles on food, and other people wanted more
> specialist articles specifically on how to cook food (i.e. recipes), the
> decision was made that recipes should be done at wikibooks.  Why
> shouldn't a species reference work be a wikibook?

Species data (like dictionary data, actually) has a specific form, and
applies to millions of items.   Rather than comparing this to
'languages', I would compare this to 'book data'.  Once again, there
are millions and millions of records with very
clearly-defined fields, which data is the same across all languages.  And once
again, there is room for book-wonks to enhance that data with comments
-- "this book initially was assigned ISBN <foo>, but was later
assigned <foo> when printed in compilation form..."

Finally, there *is* a place for a species reference in wikibooks...
but that would call on raw data from wikispecies and transform it into
a narrative, perhaps an instructional one (note for instance the
dichotomous key started by TUF-KAT at
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Dichotomous_key , which would be enhanced
by links to detailed species information at each leaf of the key).

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ctrl-C is our friend

body:
samuel wrote:
> Yes, I am quite familiar with the nature of Wikipedia and how it works.
> The object of the study is to measure the quality of the current (by
> "current" I mean the Wikipedia that exists at a certain, as of yet
> undetermined, moment in time) online version of Wikipedia, since that is
> what people actually use.

Excellent.  For this, one slight improvement I suggest, rather than
selecting random pages, is to select random pages with a weighting
adjusted for the traffic to those pages.  What we're really interested
in is the quality of the content that people actually use, as opposed
to obscure "dead-end", orphan or near-orphan pages that end users
seldom see.

> This is indeed what will be done. It is for the "vice-versa" part that I
> considered using the "random page" feature to select articles.

It's a good idea -- some form of randomization is a great way to look
at it.  Probably the random pages feature is too crude to really
answer the most interesting questions, though.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Communication catalysts

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:59:32 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We will try to do better in the future, to listen more and longer. But I
> must warn you of one point. Jimbo, Angela and I are all three already
> streching our time limits. If you all want us to listen better, you will
> have to help us by providing better insight, summaries and such... and

One thing which I would very much like to see, is a group trusted to
act as ombudsmen or secretaries, who stay on top of these issues of
communication.  These are not tangential issues which matter only to
those who are complaining right now, they are central to scaling our
community.

Many of the people most likely to be involved with important decisions
have a hundred things to worry about, to draft, and to discuss.  There
should be a single
sink into which they (and community members) can toss updates and
announcements, confident that from there, such tidbits will be
collated and distributed to every appropriate community channel.
 * "I just created page <foo>on meta that everyone should know about,"
 * "I created a meetup list on my user-talk page, and posted to
wikipedia-l about it,"
 * "Jimbo just sent a notice about global problem <fee> to foundation-l,"
 * "The Board just agreed that <fi> and said as much on the AC Talk page,"
 * "There's a big debate about page-capitalization going on at page <fo>"
 * "This group of users says nobody is paying attention to their
troubles with <fum>"

Currently, I feel that one has to read three+ mailing lists, watch new
pages and RC on meta, and keep up with a sizeable watchlist on one's
local wiki, to stay abreast of developments, or even to show up in
time to have a say in certain important discussions.

+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
>> There's not much else to disclose other
>>
>>
>>>than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.
>>>
>>>--Jimbo
>>>
>>>
>>And ?
>>
>>
>
>There is nothing to disclose, for I wore nothing. ;-)
>
>
Don't let the journalists know, or they'll have another reason we're not
as professional as Britannica. =]

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ctrl-C is our friend

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Sep 16, 2004, at 12:16 PM, samuel wrote:
>
>>> I am about conduct a study of the quality of Wikipedia's content. In
>>> order to do this, I will need to randomly select articles, and for
>>> this, the "random page" feature appears a natural choice.
>>
>
> Depending on what you're trying to measure, simply taking a random
> selection of pages and looking at them in isolation may or may not be
> useful to you. Wikipedia is a permanent work in progress; its purpose
> is to generate content and grow and develop it over time. The actual
> distribution of a published or "stable" encyclopedia is a distinct
> project from the free-for-all editing on the wiki.

On a similar note, since Wikipedia is strongly a hypertext work (at
least in its current HTML-based form; a future print version would be
different), random sampling articles from the flat article-space doesn't
measure the same sort of experience that users would see.  It probably
measures something, and possibly something valuable, but it's another
thing to keep in mind: people often arrive at Wikipedia pages through
other Wikipedia pages, in a non-uniformly-random way.

-Mark


from_name: shantanu oak

subject: [Wikitech-l] Printing problem

body:
Hi,
Whenever I print a page from my wiki installation, It prints
"Retrieved from" and "This page was last modified..." How do I disable
these 2 lines along with the border?
I will also like to control how does the bold title and sub title will
be printed. I tried to opne the commonPrint.css file from stylesheets
directory. But I don't know which line to be edited.
Shantanu Oak
shantanuo at yahoo.com


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] 1,000,000 articles

body:
Lightning wrote:

> copy-and-pasted from milestones talk on meta
>
> I think we are pretty close to hitting 1,000,000 articles globally,
> anyone care to confirm this?? looking at the starts in sept 8th or 9th
> we were~18k articles away at a rate of ~3k articles a day which would
> roughly mean that by the 15th or 16th we should roughly be there.
> anyone care to take a look? today is the 14th BTW
>
> Lightning 16:13, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
>
>
> So do we globally have 1,000,000 articles or what?
>
>
>
>
> Lightning

Do these include all projects or, is this only wikipedia ??
Thanks,
  GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising drive meeting, blurbed

body:
Blurb-style, for alerts:
* Fri, Sept 17, 20:00 UTC -- WMF fundraiser discussion on #wikimedia [IRC]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_meeting%2C_September_2004

Announcement-style, for translation:

Wikimedia is having a fundraiser next week, following our press
release. [1], [2]
We are discussing this on the #wikimedia IRC channel on Friday,
September 17, at 20:00 UTC. [3]
Comments, summaries, and chat logs can be found on meta. [4]

[1] "fundraiser" : A public request for donations over a period of time.
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_press_releases/One_million_Wikipedia_articles
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_channels
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_meeting%2C_September_2004

----
Thanks for the announcement, Angela.

+sj+


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interview

body:
On Thu, Sep 16, 2004 at 08:18:25AM -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Oh, great, how clever of me to post my phone number on the net.

After you are allways traveling around Europe as it seems, it
should bother you ;-)

ciao, tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikispecies FAQ

body:
I have attempted to consolidate and expand upon the answers to many of
the concerns raised about Wikispecies on the Wikipedia-l mailing list
over the last few days.

Please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies_FAQ . The page
includes both questions specific to Wikispecies, as well as the wider
issues concerning the decision making processes of the Wikimedia
Board, including the following questions:

1 What is Wikispecies?
2 Is Wikispecies a fork of Wikipedia?
3 Why is Wikispecies not part of Wikipedia?
4 Why is Wikispecies not part of the Wikimedia Commons?
5 What happens if people start writing encyclopedia articles on Wikispecies?
6 What if people want Wikiwar, Wikichemistry etc
7 Was there consensus on starting this project?
8 Was Wikispecies a board decision?
9 Where was this announced?
10 Why was the full log of the meeting not published?
11 What is the next step for Wikispecies?

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikispecies FAQ


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikispecies FAQ


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interview

body:
On 16 Sep 2004, at 17:18, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Oh, great, how clever of me to post my phone number on the net.
>
>

Now wait for the inbound sales calls to start coming...

;-)

But wait!
There's MORE:
I have a GREAT WEBSITE PROMOTION OFFER that can drive THOUSANDS OF
CUSTOMERS to YOUR website. This offer is NOT AVAILABLE IN SHOPS and
only on SALE today, so ACT NOW!!!

LOL! ;D

PS: I always wondered what it must feel like for an actor to play the
Power City shouting sales clerk? A porn flick role can't be much worse.


subject: [Wikitech-l] 1,000,000 articles

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Do these include all projects or, is this only wikipedia ??

Jens Ropers wrote:
> Please forgive the daft question, but do REDIRECTs count as articles?

Redirects are not included in the official article count. There are
more details on what does count at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article . As of 8
September, there were 457000 redirects. The 1 million count only
includes the Wikipedias, not the other projects. Full details on the
stats can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm.

Angela.


subject: [Wikitech-l] 1,000,000 articles

body:
Please forgive the daft question, but do REDIRECTs count as articles?

-- Jens

On 16 Sep 2004, at 17:13, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Lightning wrote:
>
>> copy-and-pasted from milestones talk on meta
>>
>> I think we are pretty close to hitting 1,000,000 articles globally,
>> anyone care to confirm this?? looking at the starts in sept 8th or
>> 9th we were~18k articles away at a rate of ~3k articles a day which
>> would roughly mean that by the 15th or 16th we should roughly be
>> there. anyone care to take a look? today is the 14th BTW
>>
>> Lightning 16:13, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
>>
>>
>> So do we globally have 1,000,000 articles or what?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Lightning


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Register, Round Three

body:
Jim Redmond wrote:

>Ah, but the problem is that, as a grassroots effort, we have no control
>over the impulses of our participants.  Our more... fanatic... devotees
>are likely to respond to this latest slight with mouths a-foaming and
>fingers a-misspelling.
>
Oh well, at least while they're busy flaming The Register they won't be
foaming misspelled POV all over our nice articles.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>If we create a new project, say htt://www.wikispecies.org (to simplify)
>>and that this project is multilingual, then we will also probably have
>>http://en.wikispecies.org
>>http://fr.wikispecies.org
>>http://zh.wikispecies.org
>>etc...
>>
>>
>Huh? Wikispecies is *specifically* supposed to be a language-neutral database.
>Subdomains mean different databases so I'm a bit perplexed. Perhaps you are
>thinking about the language that the interface is in and having the subdomains
>trigger that?
>
Quite so, if Wikispecies (or, for that matter, Wikicommons) generates a
push for different language domains, that would seem to me like a sign
that the project is off track. These projects should be
language-independent resources for the language-specific projects like
Wikipedia.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia (un)dress code

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
>> There's not much else to disclose other
>>
>>
>>>than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.
>>>
>>>--Jimbo
>>>
>>>
>>And ?
>>
>>
>There is nothing to disclose, for I wore nothing. ;-)
>
So regarding the question of disclosure, is it more accurate to call
that nondisclosure or full disclosure?

--Michael Snow


from_name: Daniel Wunsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] Minimalistic Web-API for use by Tools nad Bots

body:
On Thursday 16 September 2004 06:34, Wil Mahan wrote:

> For me, what would be most useful would simply be a way of getting the
> timestamp of the most recent revision. Right now, I can use a simple
> script to get the wiki text with action=raw, but I can't submit
> modifications because I don't have the edittime.

afaik the modification time is in the last-modified header

d


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 10:34:53 +0100, Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> wanker lawyers. Remove the images and tell them that we will never use
> them / give them credit again.
>
> You would think they would have something better to do with their time...

Actually, there message seemed pretty reasonable to me: we are X; we
have found Y on your site; we own the copyright to Y, although you
probably found it through Z, who we gave a licence to; since we
haven't given *you* a licence to use Y, you should remove it from your
site; alternatively, you can obtain a licence for the images - selling
licences to the images being how we pay for their existence in the
first place.

It's a capitalist world: people spend money to do things, and do
things to make money, and they don't like other people using those
things without paying their due value. Live with it.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising drive meeting

body:
To coincide with the international press release being made on Monday,
Wikimedia will be holding a cross-project fundraising drive. The
details of this are not yet decided. If you would like to contribute
to the decision, there will be a meeting on the #wikimedia IRC channel
(see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_channels ).

The meeting will begin at 20:00 (UTC) (see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Timezone_conversion ) on Friday 17
September, 2004.

If you have any points you would like to make before the meeting, or
if you can not come to the meeting, please write them on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_meeting%2C_September_2004 .

The chat will be logged to Meta for those unable to be there.

Angela.


from_name: Andre

body:
I think that if there are people who speak the language, even if in a
merely academic context, a Wikipedia is worthwhile. What about the
Latin Wikipedia?

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:08:02 +0200, Andre Engels <andrewiki at freemail.nl> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000 Fredrik Adev?g <gadrauhts at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> >I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
> > gothic.
> >
> >Full name: gothic
> >
> >Language code: got
> >
> >Number of speakers: 0
> >
> >Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
> >much more.
>
> I still am very wary about putting Wikipedia in dead languages. Reason is
> that in my opinion the first function of Wikipedia is to bring over the
> information content in the articles; the language, in my opinion, is just a
> means to do this, it should not be a goal in its own. Because, as far as I
> can see, nobody would _prefer_ to have Gothic as the language in which s/he
> gets this information, I don't think having a Gothic Wikipedia aids in this
> goal (and yes, there are languages in which Wikipedia already exists with
> which I have the same objections).
>
> My doubts would be much lessened if you could give me evidence that the
> language is actually used - in the sense of being written/spoken rather than
> just read. I would like to ask this:
>
> Can you specify a body of literature written in Gothic, from recent date
> (say, after World War II)?
>
> Andre Engels
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Anthere

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
  There's not much else to disclose other
> than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.
>
> --Jimbo

And ?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Printing problem

body:
On 16 Sep 2004, at 20:31, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> shantanu oak wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> Whenever I print a page from my wiki installation, It prints
>> "Retrieved from" and "This page was last modified..." How do I disable
>> these 2 lines along with the border?
>> I will also like to control how does the bold title and sub title will
>> be printed. I tried to opne the commonPrint.css file from stylesheets
>> directory. But I don't know which line to be edited.
>> Shantanu Oak
>> shantanuo at yahoo.com
>>
> Why would you want to remove them?  They document where you received
> the material for purposes of copyright licences, etc.  If you download
> it again at a later date you will be able to know which version is
> which.  It's only a mater of two lines at the bottom.
>
> Ec

It's ''his own'' MediaWiki installation (not Wikipedia content) -- if I
understand correctly.

So why ask for the reason for his wish for printouts w/o the blurb?
It's perfectly reasonable that he should want and wish to be able to do
this.

-- Jens


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
I know plenty of people *can* speak/write Gothic, I just don't know
that they *do*.

However the movement to bring Gothic back to life as a language with
native speakers, which I mentioned before, will undoubtedly result in
quite a few children who will in the future want to read encyclopedias
in Gothic as their preferred language.

Best, Mark/Jin Junshu

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:08:02 +0200, Andre Engels <andrewiki at freemail.nl> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000 Fredrik Adev?g <gadrauhts at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> >I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
> > gothic.
> >
> >Full name: gothic
> >
> >Language code: got
> >
> >Number of speakers: 0
> >
> >Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
> >much more.
>
> I still am very wary about putting Wikipedia in dead languages. Reason is
> that in my opinion the first function of Wikipedia is to bring over the
> information content in the articles; the language, in my opinion, is just a
> means to do this, it should not be a goal in its own. Because, as far as I
> can see, nobody would _prefer_ to have Gothic as the language in which s/he
> gets this information, I don't think having a Gothic Wikipedia aids in this
> goal (and yes, there are languages in which Wikipedia already exists with
> which I have the same objections).
>
> My doubts would be much lessened if you could give me evidence that the
> language is actually used - in the sense of being written/spoken rather than
> just read. I would like to ask this:
>
> Can you specify a body of literature written in Gothic, from recent date
> (say, after World War II)?
>
> Andre Engels
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia (un)dress code

body:
Uhh... new policy... no naked Jimbo.

Anybody have any objections?

--Node

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 19:22:54 -0700, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> >Anthere wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
> >> There's not much else to disclose other
> >>
> >>
> >>>than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.
> >>>
> >>>--Jimbo
> >>>
> >>>
> >>And ?
> >>
> >>
> >There is nothing to disclose, for I wore nothing. ;-)
> >
> So regarding the question of disclosure, is it more accurate to call
> that nondisclosure or full disclosure?
>
> --Michael Snow
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: samuel

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Fwd: Re: using the "random page" feature in academic
	studies]

body:
Hi!

I just joined the list, so hello everybody. I have some questions about
the "random page" feature; see the email attached below. I'd be very
happy if someone in the know would take the time to answer them.

--Samuel


from_name: Wil Mahan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at ikso.net> wrote:

> Should check if this bug is still current, and correct the remaining
> affected articles.

In case you didn't notice already:

Index: Title.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/Title.php,v
retrieving revision 1.116
diff -u -u -r1.116 Title.php
--- Title.php	14 Sep 2004 05:35:34 -0000	1.116
+++ Title.php	17 Sep 2004 03:57:52 -0000
@@ -1101,6 +1101,8 @@
 		$dbw =& wfGetDB( DB_MASTER );
 		$now = $dbw->timestamp();
 		$won = wfInvertTimestamp( wfTimestamp(TS_MW,$now) );
+		wfSeedRandom();
+		$rand = number_format( mt_rand() / mt_getrandmax(), 12, '.', '' );

 		# Rename cur entry
 		$dbw->updateArray( 'cur',
@@ -1127,6 +1129,7 @@
 			'inverse_timestamp' => $won,
 			'cur_touched' => $now,
 			'cur_is_redirect' => 1,
+			'cur_random' => $rand,
 			'cur_is_new' => 1,
 			'cur_text' => "#REDIRECT [[" . $nt->getPrefixedText() . "]]\n" ), $fname
 		);

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body: Hm. Seems like the email wasn't attached for some reason. I'll try again.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ctrl-C is our friend

body:
Ok, so attachments don't work. Thus, I copy and paste my brief
correspondence with Jimbo. See below.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject:
Re: using the "random page" feature in academic studies
From:
"Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
Date:
Thu, 16 Sep 2004 08:33:40 -0700

To:
samuel <sha at chello.se>

Well, as it turns out, I do have a lack of knowledge, and so I recommend
to you wikitech-l mailing list or #mediawiki irc channel on freenode.net.

I am unsure how the random article function works, it may avoid
certain types of articles for some reason, I don't actually know.

In terms of a study of quality, I do think that "random article" may
be a misleading starting point, but of course this depends on the
interpretation of the results.

Wikipedia is a work in progress, and so what would likely be
interesting would be to have "random articles" but sorted into
categories depending on things like: how many edits, how long the
article has been around, how "stable" it is (i.e. if it got a ton of
edits in the past but has reached an equilibrium now), how long it is,
etc.

Any random article is probably not as good as Britannica, for example.
But "featured articles" are generally much much better.

--Jimbo

samuel wrote:

> Hi!
>
> First off, thank you for bringing one of the best ideas in the history
> of the Internet to fruition. With that out of the way, onwards to the
> actual point of this email: I am about conduct a study of the quality of
> Wikipedia's content. In order to do this, I will need to randomly select
> articles, and for this, the "random page" feature appears a natural
> choice. However, I cannot find any information on how it works, and it
> is essential that such information in described in the methodology
> section of the study. The questions I have regarding the selection are
> the following:
>
> 1) What counts as a page?
> 2) Is the selection done from all pages/articles or a subset of them?
> 3) Is there any weight attached to outcomes (for example, so that a very
> popular or frequently edited article would have a higher chance of
> appearing as a random article)?
>
> If you, for whatever reason, have a better idea than using the "random
> page" feature for a study of this sort, I would be very glad if you
> could let me know. Also, if you are unable to answer this email for lack
> of knowledge (I find this hard to believe, but you never know) or time
> constraints, or whatever, I would greatly appreciate if you could point
> me in the direction of someone who is more likely to be up for the task.
>
> Thank you very much!
>
> Best regards,
> Samuel H?rgestam,
> undergrad in mathematics, computer science and philosophy at Stockholm
> Univerisity, as well as a true Wikipedia lover


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Huge misunderstanding which arose from
	miscommunication

body:
On Thu, Sep 16, 2004 at 09:06:37AM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Mirko Thiessen <wikipedia at mirko-thiessen.de> wrote:
> > I realise that there is still a misunderstanding what Wikispecies would
> > look like. This is not about having articles which would be too special
> > for Wikipedia. This is (at least how I understand it) about having a
> > species directory containing raw data.
>
> Sweet! That would be neat (based on your example and link). I still think this
> would be better under the Commons umbrella, but oh well.

Maybe its format is too restricted and the data is too similar for the
commons. Commons would be simply a storage for linking from, while species
is more like a database to transfer data from. It would mess up Commons
I believe.


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
>> There's not much else to disclose other
>>
>>>than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.
>>>
>>>--Jimbo
>>
>>And ?
>
>
> There is nothing to disclose, for I wore nothing. ;-)

How are we supposed to think business after such disclosure of
information ? ;-)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [customer.support@orbimage.com: Illegal Use of
 SeaWiFS / OrbView-2 imagery]

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
>> We will need to do a search to determine if we have other images from
>> this site as well.  The error was due to the assumption that if it is
>> on the Nasa site, and is a picture from space, it is in the public
>> domain.
>
> In a brief spot-check of 30 NASA images, no others were from SeaWiFS,
> so if there are any others, they seem to be in a small minority.  It's
> hard to check for them though, as they come from various NASA sites
> under the company's agreement with NASA, and not from a separate
> SeaWiFS site.  There is a http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov, but the only
> references we have to that site are external links, not images.  So
> I'm guessing we're okay.

There was actually one more from SeaWiFS, uploaded by the same user, who
was able to provide the source on a third one that seemed questionable.
The copyrighted one that needs to be removed is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Azov_sea_sat.jpg

It didn't occur to me until people started tracking down the Black Sea
image, but I'm guessing this one is also uploaded and used on other
Wikipedias.

--Michael Snow


body:
On 16 Sep 2004, at 20:57, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
>>  There's not much else to disclose other
>>> than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.
>>>
>>> --Jimbo
>>
>> And ?
>
> There is nothing to disclose, for I wore nothing. ;-)

Ah.
I always wondered what the Bomis erotica business was about.

-- Jens


subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page

body:
Thanks!

It seems to me that any way the database chooses to order articles with
the same value for cur_random there will be a bias, regardless if the
order is arbitrary, since the arbitrary order is static. Let's take an
example to see if I understand this correctly. Say that we have two
articles X and Y with cur_random(X) = cur_random(Y). Then regardless if
the database returns X prior to Y or the other way round if there is no
y>randstr (where y is the cur_random of another article) such that y <
cur_random(X) or y < cur_random(Y), either X or Y will never be
returned, whatever the value of randstr.

Thus it seems my question is transformed to:

1) How is cur_random set in the first place?
2) What is the precision of cur_random and randstr? (I don't speak PHP,
so I can't tell from the code.)
3) How many articles are there?

With this information, it should be possible to calculate the risk of
error in the future survey.

--Samuel

Alan Wessman wrote:

>Here's some relevant code snippets from SpecialRandomPage.php:
>
>$rand = mt_rand() / mt_getrandmax();
>$randstr = number_format( $rand, 12, ".", "" );
>
>$sqlget = "SELECT cur_id,cur_title
>		FROM $cur $use_index
>		WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0 $extra
>		AND cur_random>$randstr
>		ORDER BY cur_random
>		LIMIT 1";
>
>Here's the PHP documentation on mt_rand():
>
>http://us2.php.net/mt_rand
>
>The salient points are:
>
>* A random number is generated using the PHP function mt_rand()
>* That number is used to find an article in the default namespace (not
>a redirect) with the closest greater cur_random value than the
>generated number.
>* The cur_random value is generated with mt_rand() and saved with the
>article in Article.php.
>
>
>It appears that if multiple articles should happen to share the same
>cur_random number, you could end up with a slight bias, since then the
>choice of which article to return is determined by how the database
>decides to order the articles, and if this isn't arbitrary then some
>articles are less likely to be returned than others.  The degree of
>non-randomness that this implies probably depends on the number of
>articles and the range of the assignable random numbers.
>
>Hope this helps,
>Alan
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page

body:
On Thu, Sep 16, 2004 at 01:44:45PM -0600, Alan Wessman wrote:
> Here's some relevant code snippets from SpecialRandomPage.php:
>
> * A random number is generated using the PHP function mt_rand()
> * That number is used to find an article in the default namespace (not
> a redirect) with the closest greater cur_random value than the
> generated number.
> * The cur_random value is generated with mt_rand() and saved with the
> article in Article.php.
>

Some pages have a cur_random of 0, and will never be chosen by
Special:Randompage.

Regards,

	JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ctrl-C is our friend

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Sep 16, 2004, at 12:16 PM, samuel wrote:
>
>>> I am about conduct a study of the quality of Wikipedia's content. In
>>> order to do this, I will need to randomly select articles, and for
>>> this, the "random page" feature appears a natural choice.
>>
>
> Depending on what you're trying to measure, simply taking a random
> selection of pages and looking at them in isolation may or may not be
> useful to you. Wikipedia is a permanent work in progress; its purpose
> is to generate content and grow and develop it over time. The actual
> distribution of a published or "stable" encyclopedia is a distinct
> project from the free-for-all editing on the wiki.
>
> Due to Wikipedia's nature it can be fully expected that many, many
> pages at any given time will be found wanting, because they are new or
> unpopular subjects and thus insufficiently developed. By the same
> token, Wikipedia can be fully expected to cover many topics that more
> traditional encyclopedias don't cover at all, or cover in less detail.

Yes, I am quite familiar with the nature of Wikipedia and how it works.
The object of the study is to measure the quality of the current (by
"current" I mean the Wikipedia that exists at a certain, as of yet
undetermined, moment in time) online version of Wikipedia, since that is
what people actually use. There has been a lot of debate as to how
reliable this version of Wikipedia is, and it is that I am interested in
settling.

>
> If you're interested in comparing the quality of Wikipedia articles
> against that of more traditional encyclopedias, consider also doing
> random selection of topics covered by those encyclopedias, then
> seeking the same particular topics in Wikipedia for comparison. (And
> vice-versa!)

This is indeed what will be done. It is for the "vice-versa" part that I
considered using the "random page" feature to select articles.

>
>>>  However, I cannot find any information on how it works, and it is
>>> essential that such information in described in the methodology
>>> section of the study. The questions I have regarding the selection
>>> are the following:
>>> 1) What counts as a page?
>>
>
> Returnable pages are those in article namespace (not talk pages, user
> pages, etc) and not marked as redirects.
>
>>> 2) Is the selection done from all pages/articles or a subset of them?
>>
>
> From all articles that meet the above criteria, with one exception: on
> en.wikipedia.org the random selection has been hacked not to return
> pages last edited by the accounts Ram-Man or Rambot. This is a crude
> (and in my view unfortunate) hack to appease complaints that the
> random page function returned articles on cities and towns in the US
> too often.

Interesting. Is Ram-Man and Rambot actual users who submitted such
changes, or are the accounts created for the specific purpose of
identifying the articles to be ignored?

>
>>> 3) Is there any weight attached to outcomes (for example, so that a
>>> very popular or frequently edited article would have a higher chance
>>> of appearing as a random article)?
>>
>
> No.

According to other posters to the list, there are two ways that certain
articles could have negative weights associated with them, the first
being those that have cur_random = 0 and the other being those which
share cur_random with at least one other article.

>
> You are of course welcome to download the article database from
> http://download.wikimedia.org/ and select & sort articles in any
> fashion you see fit.

That might very well be the best idea, and what I will actually do in
the end. I just thought it convenient to use the "random page" feature
if it indeed worked in the way that the study demands.

>
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Delirium wrote:

> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
>>> There's not much else to disclose other
>>>
>>>
>>>> than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.
>>>>
>>>> --Jimbo
>>>>
>>>
>>> And ?
>>>
>>
>>
>> There is nothing to disclose, for I wore nothing. ;-)
>>
>>
> Don't let the journalists know, or they'll have another reason we're
> not as professional as Britannica. =]
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
Brittain was an empire, now why is it a good thing when you know you do
not wear any clothes ??

GerardM


from_name: kelvSYC

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] The "One Chinese Wikipedia" and the "One Chinese
	Wiktionary"

body:
It seems to be that there is a heated debate on whether to keep zh as
one or split.  Being from Hong Kong, which uses traditional, and having
the large majority of my Chinese education in Simplified (plus the fact
that I now reside in Canada, which does not use Chinese as an official
language), I'd say that I'd prefer a conversion script/program over
keeping things separate, due to the difficulties in even keeping the
information in two different Wikipedias synchronized.

Has anyone dealt with the article titles?  Obviously, if an SC version
redirects to a TC version or vice-versa, given the NPOV policy on
Wikipedia and the political overtones, the article title may be showing
POV (or is it the intention that the conversion script also covers the
article title?).

Having said that, has anyone also discussed this issue with regards
to...

Wiktionary - SC/TC differences are generally that much more of a
problem with a dictionary than an encyclopedia (not to mention if
ci2dian, ci3dian, or zidian is the correct words to use).  For example,
a predominantly SC dictionary has the SC character, followed by the
traditional equivalent in brackets, while a TC dictionary has the SC
character in brackets (whether to bracket a character is another story
- TC dictionaries bracket everything, while SC dictionaries only
bracket if their TC version is not readily apparent).  Would a
conversion script deal with this?  What about codes that are dependant
on how the character is written (such as four-corner or Q-9)?  In those
indices, characters in one type but not another is bracketed if they do
not belong to the inherent type of dictionary.  I doubt that a
conversion script would bother to make the necessary changes to make it
look aesthetically pleasing (not to mention that it would be stupid for
a TC user to be denied access to an SC dictionary).

Articles about Chinese stuff in a non-Chinese Wiki - Do we need this
automatic conversion process in a non-Chinese Wiki?  For example, does
en.wikt need this conversion process for its entries on Chinese
characters, phrases, and sayings?

Regional differences with regards to SC and TC - Consider "luo-bo"
(carrot).  On the mainland, the second character is valid SC and TC.
In Hong Kong, it's valid SC, but not valid TC (as it has another form).
  Other characters may be treated similarly: in one region a character
is both SC and TC, but in another, it could be SC only or TC only.  An
automatic conversion script would, IMO, be really picky about what is
SC and what is TC.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
Actually, if history is any indication, the effort will go nowhere, the
language will stay dead, and a Gothic Wikipedia will be nothing more
than a curiosity. Then again, we have a Klingon one.

-Snowspinner

On Sep 16, 2004, at 10:59 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:

> I know plenty of people *can* speak/write Gothic, I just don't know
> that they *do*.
>
> However the movement to bring Gothic back to life as a language with
> native speakers, which I mentioned before, will undoubtedly result in
> quite a few children who will in the future want to read encyclopedias
> in Gothic as their preferred language.
>
> Best, Mark/Jin Junshu
>
> On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:08:02 +0200, Andre Engels
> <andrewiki at freemail.nl> wrote:
>> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000 Fredrik Adev?g
>> <gadrauhts at hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
>>> gothic.
>>>
>>> Full name: gothic
>>>
>>> Language code: got
>>>
>>> Number of speakers: 0
>>>
>>> Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400,
>>> probably
>>> much more.
>>
>> I still am very wary about putting Wikipedia in dead languages.
>> Reason is
>> that in my opinion the first function of Wikipedia is to bring over
>> the
>> information content in the articles; the language, in my opinion, is
>> just a
>> means to do this, it should not be a goal in its own. Because, as far
>> as I
>> can see, nobody would _prefer_ to have Gothic as the language in
>> which s/he
>> gets this information, I don't think having a Gothic Wikipedia aids
>> in this
>> goal (and yes, there are languages in which Wikipedia already exists
>> with
>> which I have the same objections).
>>
>> My doubts would be much lessened if you could give me evidence that
>> the
>> language is actually used - in the sense of being written/spoken
>> rather than
>> just read. I would like to ask this:
>>
>> Can you specify a body of literature written in Gothic, from recent
>> date
>> (say, after World War II)?
>>
>> Andre Engels
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
I can't say anything about Gothic lit after WW2, except for:
http://www.stormloader.com/carver/gutrazda/bagmebloma.html
http://www.stormloader.com/carver/gutrazda/ringpoem.html

and a few more on http://www.stormloader.com/carver/gutrazda/index.html

I can understand the hesitation with dead languages, especially Gothic, with
such a limited vocabulary as it has, but other languages, such as Latin, Old
Norse, and Old English/Anglo-Saxon should definitely have wikipedias, as
they have quite a large corpus of material written in their languages, have
large vocabularies, and have large numbers of people who learn them, write
in them, and speak them.  Just check out these sites on
Old English:
http://www.buckrogers.demon.co.uk/nasc.htm and
http://home.comcast.net/~modean52 and
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/4506/ and
http://www.kami.demon.co.uk/gesithas/index.html

Old Norse:
http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/ and
http://hem.passagen.se/peter9/gram/index.html and
http://www.snerpa.is/net/isl/isl.htm

I can list at least 20 to 30 more sites between the two languages.  Material
is being written both in Old Norse and Old English nowadays, and there are
mailing lists for both languages, with communities willing to support
wikipedias in both languages.  I myself would contribute to both languages'
wikipedias, and a Gothic one as well, if it were created.  Could the
requestor please list some sites or material he has available to him, as I'm
simply curious about the ability of Gothic to adequately describe modern
concepts and events.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andre Engels
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 6:08 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000 Fredrik Adev?g <gadrauhts at hotmail.com>
wrote:
>I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
> gothic.
>
>Full name: gothic
>
>Language code: got
>
>Number of speakers: 0
>
>Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
>much more.

I still am very wary about putting Wikipedia in dead languages. Reason is
that in my opinion the first function of Wikipedia is to bring over the
information content in the articles; the language, in my opinion, is just a
means to do this, it should not be a goal in its own. Because, as far as I
can see, nobody would _prefer_ to have Gothic as the language in which s/he
gets this information, I don't think having a Gothic Wikipedia aids in this
goal (and yes, there are languages in which Wikipedia already exists with
which I have the same objections).

My doubts would be much lessened if you could give me evidence that the
language is actually used - in the sense of being written/spoken rather than

just read. I would like to ask this:

Can you specify a body of literature written in Gothic, from recent date
(say, after World War II)?

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ctrl-C is our friend

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>samuel wrote:
>
>
>>Yes, I am quite familiar with the nature of Wikipedia and how it works.
>>The object of the study is to measure the quality of the current (by
>>"current" I mean the Wikipedia that exists at a certain, as of yet
>>undetermined, moment in time) online version of Wikipedia, since that is
>>what people actually use.
>>
>>
>
>Excellent.  For this, one slight improvement I suggest, rather than
>selecting random pages, is to select random pages with a weighting
>adjusted for the traffic to those pages.  What we're really interested
>in is the quality of the content that people actually use, as opposed
>to obscure "dead-end", orphan or near-orphan pages that end users
>seldom see.
>
>

I agree. The study will (hopefully -- this project cannot be allowed to
grow arbitrarily large) make quality measures of wikipedia sample pages
collected in several different ways. An example of categories that are
interesting to look at with respect to quality:

1) Completely random pages
2) Most popular pages
3) Least popular pages
4) Most edited pages
5) Least edited pages
6) Most recently edited pages
7) Least recently edited pages

These are not the only possible selections (an omission is obviously
selections from different normal categories of human knowledge --
technology, culture, etc. It would be interesting to see, for example,
if technology articles are less likely to contain factual errors than
articles about art.). However, the first category is important since
there is no obvious analogy to, say, "most recently edited pages" in
other encyclopedias, and some comparision to other encyclopedias is
necessary if the scale at which the Wikipedia quality is judged is to be
truly meaningful. (By the way, if anyone has ideas for methods to select
articles from these other categories as well, by all means, let me know!
Some of them are rather straightforward, such as "most recently edited
pages", but others much less so.)

--Samuel

>
>
>>This is indeed what will be done. It is for the "vice-versa" part that I
>>considered using the "random page" feature to select articles.
>>
>>
>
>It's a good idea -- some form of randomization is a great way to look
>at it.  Probably the random pages feature is too crude to really
>answer the most interesting questions, though.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Aoineko

subject: [Wikitech-l] 1,000,000 articles

body:
> Please forgive the daft question, but do REDIRECTs count as articles?

no


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject:
[WikiEN-l]
	[customer.support-cp5JiV/QSYtWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org: Illegal
	Use of SeaWiFS /OrbView-2 imagery]

body:
In message <20040915220611.GD4965 at wikia.com>, "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales"
<jwales-ADBWotsCEHwAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>Dear Mr. Wales:
>
>It has come to our attention that our SeaWiFS (OrbView-2) imagery is
>being used on your website located at:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Black-sea-nasa.jpg
><http://www.greeklandscapes.com/maps/satellite.html>   and that you
>claim that "This image has been released into the public domain by the
>copy right holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for
>copyright.  This applies worldwide."

Oh dear... we had a copy of that over on cy: as well, until about 10
minutes ago. I suppose this little incident does highlight the need for
some central place where problem images can be brought to the attention
of admins on all language wikis. Goodness knows how we'd necessarily
recognise the images if the names have been localised, though....

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: zhengzhu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Simplified/Traditional Chinese conversion

body:
The initial code for conversion between Simplified and Traditional
Chinese is now in CVS. It uses two conversion tables to perform normal
SC->TC and TC->SC conversion. A new wiki tag was introduced to specify
special conversions without using the conversion tables, for example,
-{zh-cn some_phrase zh-tw some_other_phrase zh-hk
yet_some_other_phrase}-. Using -{some_phrase}- along will displae
some_phrase for all without any conversion. A quick hack also alows
the UI messages to be converted this way, but this is likely to be
replaced in the future by a more general way of switching UIs.

Thanks to Tim and Jens at IRC for help!

--
---------------------
gmail.com at zhengzhu


subject:
[WikiEN-l]
	Re: [customer.support-cp5JiV/QSYtWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org:
	Illegal	Use of SeaWiFS /OrbView-2 imagery]

references:
<20040915220611.GD4965@wikia.com>
	<20040915220611.GD4965-ADBWotsCEHwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
	<U$jYtdD8CkSBFwuM@cartref.demon.co.uk>

body:
In message <U$jYtdD8CkSBFwuM at cartref.demon.co.uk>, Arwel Parry
<arwel-wfA80NnNzEcG2Il/BtU0GPXRex20P6io at public.gmane.org> writes
>In message
><20040915220611.GD4965-ADBWotsCEHwAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>, "Jimmy
>(Jimbo) Wales"
><jwales-ADBWotsCEHwAvxtiuMwx3w-XMD5yJDbdMReXY1tMh2IBg at public.gmane.org>
>writes
>>Dear Mr. Wales:
>>
>>It has come to our attention that our SeaWiFS (OrbView-2) imagery is
>>being used on your website located at:
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Black-sea-nasa.jpg
>><http://www.greeklandscapes.com/maps/satellite.html>   and that you
>>claim that "This image has been released into the public domain by the
>>copy right holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for
>>copyright. This applies worldwide."
>
>Oh dear... we had a copy of that over on cy: as well, until about 10
>minutes ago. I suppose this little incident does highlight the need for
>some central place where problem images can be brought to the attention
>of admins on all language wikis. Goodness knows how we'd necessarily
>recognise the images if the names have been localised, though....

Bad news, folks. I've just done a cursory search of the articles which
are linked from [[en:Black Sea]] and found the same picture is used on
cz:, da:, es:, fi:, ja:, pl:, ro:, ru:, sl:, sv:, and tr: at least.
Someone's going to have fun removing all those...

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] New Fundraising page under development

body:
See: http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising and
http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD

Major new features
*Mostly in wiki text now (use of templates)
*Ability to create new pages at will (notice the translated pages)
*HTML can be used if encapsulated in <html></html> (thanks Brion!)
*Separate pages for one time, monthly, and yearly donations (only USD
implemented so far)

The amounts and tier scheme should not be considered official payment options ;
they are just my working suggestion.

The goal is to have everything ready by the time the fund drive starts on
Monday.

Comments welcome either here or at the Friday IRC meeting.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Projects references

body:
Hi all,

There are yet some information to fill on that page :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_projects

It would be nice if more holes were filled up.

Thanks :-)

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Projects references


from_name: Angela

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re:
	[customer.support-cp5JiV/QSYtWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org:
	Illegal Use of SeaWiFS /OrbView-2 imagery]

references:
<20040915220611.GD4965@wikia.com>
	<20040915220611.GD4965-ADBWotsCEHwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
	<U$jYtdD8CkSBFwuM@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<AOsNRmHDYkSBFwvK@cartref.demon.co.uk>

body:
On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 03:03:47 +0100, Arwel Parry
<arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Bad news, folks. I've just done a cursory search of the articles which
> are linked from [[en:Black Sea]] and found the same picture is used on
> cz:, da:, es:, fi:, ja:, pl:, ro:, ru:, sl:, sv:, and tr: at least.
> Someone's going to have fun removing all those...

On ru, tr and et I have removed the image from the article and told
the most recently active admin about it since they don't seem to have
a VfD.

On ro, sl, sv, ja, es and cs, I've removed the image and listed it on
VfD. Probably wrongly and the wrong VfD, and certainly not in the
right language but...

The image has already been deleted on en, cy and fi.

pl has an image they claim is from NASA, but it is not the same one.
This is also used on da with no source mentioned.

Angela.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [customer.support@orbimage.com: Illegal Use of
	SeaWiFS / OrbView-2 imagery]

body:
On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 22:02:15 -0700, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> There was actually one more from SeaWiFS, uploaded by the same user, who
> was able to provide the source on a third one that seemed questionable.
> The copyrighted one that needs to be removed is:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Azov_sea_sat.jpg

Thanks for pointing this out. I've removed it from es, nl, ru and sl.
It's worth noting that an alternative image is available on the German
Wikipedia at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Asophsches_Meer_bei_Ursuf.jpg
which could be used to replace it.

Angela.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
Michael Snow a ?crit:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> If we create a new project, say htt://www.wikispecies.org (to
>>> simplify) and that this project is multilingual, then we will also
>>> probably have
>>> http://en.wikispecies.org
>>> http://fr.wikispecies.org
>>> http://zh.wikispecies.org
>>> etc...
>>>
>>
>> Huh? Wikispecies is *specifically* supposed to be a language-neutral
>> database.
>> Subdomains mean different databases so I'm a bit perplexed. Perhaps
>> you are
>> thinking about the language that the interface is in and having the
>> subdomains
>> trigger that?
>
> Quite so, if Wikispecies (or, for that matter, Wikicommons) generates a
> push for different language domains, that would seem to me like a sign
> that the project is off track. These projects should be
> language-independent resources for the language-specific projects like
> Wikipedia.
>
> --Michael Snow

Please read the answer I already provide in my last email to this list.

Ant


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

references:
<BAY19-F181jYhAOylhg00001e33@hotmail.com>	<web-102618522@freemail.nl>
	<efa4bf4a0409161723272543d3@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Andre wrote:

>I think that if there are people who speak the language, even if in a
>merely academic context, a Wikipedia is worthwhile. What about the
>Latin Wikipedia?
>
>On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:08:02 +0200, Andre Engels <andrewiki at freemail.nl> wrote:
>
>
>>On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000 Fredrik Adev?g <gadrauhts at hotmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
>>>gothic.
>>>
>>>Full name: gothic
>>>
>>>Language code: got
>>>
>>>Number of speakers: 0
>>>
>>>Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
>>>much more.
>>>
>>>
>>I still am very wary about putting Wikipedia in dead languages. Reason is
>>that in my opinion the first function of Wikipedia is to bring over the
>>information content in the articles; the language, in my opinion, is just a
>>means to do this, it should not be a goal in its own. Because, as far as I
>>can see, nobody would _prefer_ to have Gothic as the language in which s/he
>>gets this information, I don't think having a Gothic Wikipedia aids in this
>>goal (and yes, there are languages in which Wikipedia already exists with
>>which I have the same objections).
>>
>>My doubts would be much lessened if you could give me evidence that the
>>language is actually used - in the sense of being written/spoken rather than
>>just read. I would like to ask this:
>>
>>Can you specify a body of literature written in Gothic, from recent date
>>(say, after World War II)?
>>
>>Andre Engels
>>
>>
Latin is still spoken; it is one of the official languages of the Vatican.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WIKI to .DOC/ .DOC to WIKI

body:
--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:

>
> On 17 Sep 2004, at 16:12, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 10:59:54AM -0300, Felipe Sanches wrote:
> >> I'd like to know if it's possible to have a wiki page converted
> to
> >> MSWord documents or any other file format that would keep the
> style,
> >> font size ,colors , etc... (and vice-versa).
> >
> > With OpenOffice.org you can simply copy'n'paste the wikipedia
> articles
> > into a doc-file. Didn't try such a thing with MSWord, no windows
> here.
> >
> > Much better is PDF, either export via OOo after copy'n'paste or
> > use wiki2pdf at http://wiki.auf-trag.de/
>
> Nah, too complicated.
> Just sit down in front of any friggin Mac OS X browser and select
> File
> - Print - Save as PDF.

I think he meant a two way street, from .wiki to .doc back to .wiki.
I wonder, wondering, if OOo could be used to do that... I wonder... I
see scripts floating in my head... Poof!

Better just to stick with wikimarkup...

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now.
http://messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Register, Round Three

body:
The article said we had no entry on a famous British moral philosopher.
But by the time I did a search, our article was the best article
available on Google. So either they WERE wrong, or they have BECOME
wrong.

All actors and politicians know that "There is no such thing as bad
publicity."

You want to kill something? Ignore it. (What you pay attention to,
grows.)

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Criticism of Prem Rawat

body:
Anybody remember Guru Maharaj Ji?

Well, there's a long running controversy at Wikipedia over how to
characterize him. Apparently, it's the single biggest edit war we've
ever had.

One scholar has spent over 8 months researching the man, and a group of
several dozen ex-followers is reverting like crazy.

I think the way we handle this has important implications for our future
credibility.

Ed Poor
Bureaucrat and NPOV Maven