from_name: John Lee

body:
Karl A. Krueger wrote:

>On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 07:24:35PM +0800, John Lee wrote:
>
>
>>What's your problem with letting others disable the viewing of certain
>>images for themselves?
>>
>>
>
>I fully support end-users using whatever systems are at their disposal
>to avoid seeing images that they do not want to see.  Those systems are
>chiefly at the client end, and include goofy censorware programs as well
>as working facilities such as turning images off in the browser before
>you open up an article whose title suggests that it might traumatize
>your poor innocent eyebulbs.
>
>
>
The problem is these are all far too fuzzy, either catching too few
unwanted images or too many wanted ones. Most of them don't provide easy
access to the images should it be decided they are desirable, either.
For example, even if some censorware did figure out all images on
[[autofellatio]] should be blocked and didn't do the same for a random
bunch of unrelated Wikipedia articles, it's hard to disable it for
images the reader wants to view (i.e. they may not mind an illustration,
but a photograph would be undesirable).

The problem is you are still viewing this as an attempt to bowdlerise
Wikipedia so it's suitable for consumption by right-wing wackos or the
underaged. It will never be. This is an attempt to give readers fine
control over what they are viewing, prevent unnecessary distraction
(images like the one originally on autofellatio distract too much from
the article for people not used to nudity, even if they aren't offended
by it) and at the same time (this is a side benefit: something nice to
have, but not the main pillar of the argument) taking a little bit of
sting out of accusations that Wikipedia is offensive.

>
>
>
>>Let's try summaring your stance:
>>
>>
>
>The core of my position is really simple:  There isn't really a problem.
>
>The status quo regarding images is actually working extremely well.
>Gratuitous (uninformative) images do get removed or replaced, especially
>those gratuitous images that also offend some people.
>
>
The problem is, these cases are beginning to take up a great deal of
editors' time, as Raul654 pointed out in his quote from my earlier
email. We should be building an encyclopedia, not squabbling over these
details. Putting the decision in readers' hands means the issue is out
of our hands. Sure, if we go on with the status quo, these crappy images
will disappear. They just disappear after reams of discussion, maybe a
few blocks, and God knows what else.

>At the same time, censorious editors are not allowed to vandalize
>Wikipedia by deleting or concealing informative images just because they
>are offended by caterpillars or clitorises.
>
>
Good.

>This is all as it should be.  As the community gains more experience and
>precedent cases, and more understanding of what to watch for in order to
>detect vandalism (of either kind) it will become easier rather than
>harder.
>
>
Somehow I doubt that. Rarely things get solved without something
official. Michael and Wik have caused a lot of problems, and nothing was
solved until Jimbo or the arbcom stepped in. We got trapped in this
autofellatio quagmire as well even though we already knew from the
clitoris dispute that this would occur.

>
>
>
>>>Because that is what your (and others') "filtering" proposals are.  They
>>>are not really about making Wikipedia "safe" or "inoffensive", since
>>>those goals have been demonstrated to be impossible.  (As long as
>>>Wikipedia is an editable wiki, there is no way to provide assurances
>>>that it is inoffensive.  As long as it is NPOV, there is no way to
>>>decide _whose_ offense shall be considered significant.  And those who
>>>really militate against "indecency" and the like, in law and public
>>>policy, are offended by text just as much as by images.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>So because it's impossible, we should never try to strive for it?
>>
>>
>
>It's possible to do a remarkable amount of harm while pursuing
>unreachable goals.
>
True.

>  I don't think you actually understood what I wrote,
>though, so I'll try to spell it out a little more clearly:
>
>1. As long as Wikipedia is a wiki, bozos and jerks can put "offensive"
>   content into it.  Vandalism may not last long, but it does not have
>   to.  Therefore, we can _never_ provide a guarantee that any given
>   article will not have goatse on it.  And thus, Wikipedia will _never_
>   be suitable for classrooms where such a guarantee is required.
>
>
Absolutely.

>2. As long as Wikipedia has an NPOV policy, there is no way to decide
>   whose view of what is "offensive" shall be used for labeling.  Some
>   people are offended by sex, some by violence, some by caterpillars,
>   and some get seizures from viewing [[moire]] images.
>
>   Therefore, any labeling of selected categories as "potentially
>   offensive" is an NPOV violation and unacceptable on that regard.
>
>
I refer you to the argument regarding disambiguation pages that has
already been discussed by others on this list. Roughly, it goes like
this: [[NSA]] leads to the National Security Association and not the
National Stuttering Association or any other particular article or even
the disambiguation page (although that would be the most NPOV) for the
sake of readers' convenience. It's not POV and actually inconveniencing
for those of us looking for other articles (imagine , but it's accepted
because the cost to benefit ratio is not that severe.

Here's an example of how not automatically using disambiguation pages
where there's more than one related article (this example's just
theoretical; to the best of my knowledge it has never occured) is POV:
Let's say the article [[Greenwar]] is about this organisation opposed to
Greenpeace's environmentalism (assume Greenwar is as well-known and
prevalent as Greenpeace). However, we also maintain an article about an
organisation of the same name that is pro-environmentalism (they just
favour violent methods of protest). Now, what do we do? People looking
for the article about the pro-environmentalism organisation will be
pissed off. Replacing [[Greenwar]] with a disambiguation page is the
most neutral solution, but it's simply unfair since most people will be
looking for the anti-environmentalism organisation.

>3. Your and others' proposals for image censorship have been defended in
>   part on the grounds that people will dislike or distrust Wikipedia
>   because it contains images that offend them.  However, this is as
>   true of text as it is of images.
>
>   Some people, for instance, consider the sentence "Dave (age ten) and
>   Joe (age twelve) had sex" to be child pornography, just as some
>   people believe that a drawing can be child pornography.  I believe
>   that sentence might even be illegal to publish in some jurisdictions.
>
>
That's just a side benefit (IMO) as I already pointed out. However, I
have also pointed out before that photographs have more psychological
impact than illustrations, which have more psychological impact than
text (just try asking a psychologist). Therefore, a good deal of people
offended (or at least annoyed) by the photo formerly at [[autofellatio]]
probably wouldn't feel the same way about text.

We should never try to please extreme right- nor left-wingers, because
such a thing is simply impossible. But for those leaning to the centre
(I generally have my centre-right father in mind), it's not the text so
much as the photographs that disturb them.

>
>   Therefore, the need for any system for image censorship implies the
>   need for a system for text censorship.  I personally suspect that
>   text censorship would drive off a lot of editors and would harm
>   Wikipedia greatly.
>
>
Obviously. Taking things to an extreme is a very, very bad thing (even
with NPOV, which is why for very prevalent things, we do not have a
disambiguation article but the article of the thing most people will
want to view). I have never argued for catering to the whim of
extremists. That's stupid. There is no reason why we shouldn't filter
certain images, though.

>>Wikipedia can never be guaranteed to be safe for viewing, but we can
>>_try_ to stem it. The proposal will not even affect users who explicitly
>>declare they refuse filtering, so what's the fuss?
>>
>>
>
>Censorship by default is still censorship, and still is an imposition of
>someone's POV as to what is "offensive" or not.  If you block clitorises
>by default and don't block caterpillars, then you're offending against
>those who find caterpillars more objectionable than clitorises.
>
>
Refer to the argument regarding disambiguation. It's the cost to benefit
ratio we're talking about here: You're extremely far more likely to find
someone damn pissed to be looking at a photograph of a clitoris than to
find someone damn pissed to be looking at a photograph of a caterpillar.
Of course, the latter's opinion has to be respected, which is why we
have an NPOV policy (we don't ever present as fact an opinion almost
everyone has). But in minor cases like this...

Besides, it's not really an imposition of someone's POV as to what is
offensive. It's an editorial decision about what images would be
potentially offensive or greatly distractive to a substantial amount of
people. Just like the decision to disambiguate or to house a certain
article at a certain title is an editorial decision about what content a
substantial portion of people would be looking for.

>
>Here's how to make an image-filtering system that is NPOV by design:
>
>1. All images are treated equally by default -- either displayed, or not
>   displayed.  Thus, the system does not incorporate any POV biases such
>   as the idea that nudity is "offensive" and caterpillars are not.
>
>
I do not entertain the idea of such extremist pandering to NPOV. By
virtue of that logic, we might as well host a disambiguation page at
[[Chicago]] even though almost everyone will be looking for [[Chicaago,
Illinois]].

>2. IF the system blocks all images by default:  Both anonymous and
>   logged-in users are able to display all images.  The system does not
>   violate WikiNature by incorporating a bias against anonymous users.
>
>
If we are to not discriminate against anons (although we already do so
in extremely minor things like date formatting, colour scheme, etc.),
that can be done with a cookie, although people who disable cookies
would be disenfranchised. (It's still just a tradeoff almost exactly
like the traditional disambiguation page tradeoff).

>
>3. The system does not include any hard-coded categories reflecting the
>   POV of its creators.  It uses the flexible Wikipedia category system.
>   Editors who contribute images are encouraged to categorize them
>   topically.  "Uncategorized images" becomes a virtual category, which
>   can also be selected.
>
>
Er...I thought we *were* going to use the Wikipedia category system.

>4. Existing NPOV policy is applied in full force to categories.  This
>   means that it is a violation of Wikipedia policy to create categories
>   such as "images appropriate for children" or "images of sexual
>   perversions".  Editors who do so persistently are treated the same as
>   any other systematic POV-pushers.
>
>
Agreed.

>Although such a system would not be an NPOV violation, it would still be
>(A) prone to abuse, and (B) prone to cause NPOV conflicts among editors.
>
>
Of course it would be prone to cause conflicts, because it flies in the
face of common sense (the first requirement, I mean). The trouble is as
Wikipedia grows, we seem to have a penchant for relying on legalistic
issues. Instead of having a general policy of "reverting except for
vandalism is bad" we need to have the 3RR which is easily gamed. Instead
of having a policy on personal attacks, we have to go through the whole
merry-go-round of RFC, RFM and RFAr.

>Moreover, it is not necessary, as Wikipedia's present editing regime
>works great for dealing with the images which are most commonly cited as
>problematic, that is, the _uninformative_ "offensive" ones.
>
>
Problems like these are going to crop up more often over the years, and
I am pessimistic that more than a very few editors will learn the
lessons of this debate. When the community is divided like hell on this
(in other words, you would need hell to freeze over before obtaining
anything even resembling consensus), we need something to defuse the
situation.

What works today probably won't work tomorrow. The question we must
always ask regarding policy should be "Is it scalable?" Wikipedia is a
hundred times smaller than MSN today. It won't be that way in a few
years if we keep growing at this pace. Everything in place will need to
be able to cope with problems a hundred times larger than they are now,
and a hundred times more problems than they deal with now.

Of course, if a scalable policy is detrimental to things in the
short-term, it can be delayed. We should never be afraid of questioning
the status quo, though, and right now, a good number of people don't
think the status quo will work for us when everything is a hundred times
bigger than it is now.

>Thus, it is _possible_ to have an NPOV-safe image-filtering system.  But
>it would be a constant struggle to *keep* it NPOV-safe.
>
Of course it would be when such a system would make not using a
disambiguation page on [[Chicago]] taboo.

>Moreover, such
>a system is not what censorship advocates seem to want, and in any event
>it would not improve Wikipedia.
>
Of course, because it flies in the face of common sense. Extremist
solutions always do that (it's the reason why pure capitalism/communism
and pure totalitarianism/anarchy will never ever work).

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Downloading many articles

body:
Stephen Forrest said:
> When
> downloading articles for editing, one would surely want the wiki
> plaintext, no?  How does one get at that automatically, short of using
> a bot?

There is a tool in Special to do this.  It should work on any Wikipedia,
not just en.
Type the following command into the search box on Wikipedia:

Special:export

Follow the straightforward instructions.  Basically you type names of
articles, one per line, into the textbox, and set the checkbox
appropriately according to whether you want only the latest version or the
whole history (all versions).  Then when you click on "Submit Query" you
will get a xml document containing what you asked for.  Your browser may
require you to "view page source" in order to get at the full XML source.
For instance here is what the start and end of my query for the current
version of "falling" and "hat" looked like.  As you can see it contains
the raw wikitext.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<mediawiki version="0.1" xml:lang="en">
  <page>
    <title>Falling</title>
    <revision>
      <timestamp>2005-02-12T23:16:39Z</timestamp>
      <contributor><username>Rich Farmbrough</username></contributor>
      <text>''For other meanings of ''fall'', see [[fall (disambiguation)]]''
----
The word '''falling''' describes movement due to [[gravity]].  By analogy,
it has other uses not directly related to gravity.
==[[sense|Sensation]]==

A [[sense|sensation]] of '''falling''' occurs when the [[Labyrinth (inner
ear)|labyrinth]] or ''vestibular apparatus'', a system of fluid-filled
passages in the [[ear|inner ear]], detects motion. The same system also
detects rotary motion.  A similar sensation of falling can be induced when
the eyes detect rapid apparent motion with respect to the environment.
This system enables us to keep our balance by signalling when a physical
correction is necessary.
[...]

[[Category:Hats]]

[[de:Hut (Kopfbedeckung)]]
[[nl:Hoed]]</text>
    </revision>
  </page>
</mediawiki>


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Downloading many articles

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 14:18:19 -0500, Stephen Forrest
<stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> But wouldn't a solution like this (which is incidentally IE-specific)
> only provide the articles in rendered (i.e. HTML) format?  When
> downloading articles for editing, one would surely want the wiki
> plaintext, no?  How does one get at that automatically, short of using
> a bot?

Look at Special:Export, and the Eclipse editor.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Downloading many articles

body:
Sorry if you see this twice.  I got a bounce.

Stephen Forrest said:
> When
> downloading articles for editing, one would surely want the wiki
> plaintext, no?  How does one get at that automatically, short of using
> a bot?

There is a tool in Special to do this.  It should work on any Wikipedia,
not just en.
Type the following command into the search box on Wikipedia:

Special:export

Follow the straightforward instructions.  Basically you type names of
articles, one per line, into the textbox, and set the checkbox
appropriately according to whether you want only the latest version or the
whole history (all versions).  Then when you click on "Submit Query" you
will get a xml document containing what you asked for.  Your browser may
require you to "view page source" in order to get at the full XML source.
For instance here is what the start and end of my query for the current
version of "falling" and "hat" looked like.  As you can see it contains
the raw wikitext.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<mediawiki version="0.1" xml:lang="en">
  <page>
    <title>Falling</title>
    <revision>
      <timestamp>2005-02-12T23:16:39Z</timestamp>
      <contributor><username>Rich Farmbrough</username></contributor>
      <text>''For other meanings of ''fall'', see [[fall (disambiguation)]]''
----
The word '''falling''' describes movement due to [[gravity]].  By analogy,
it has other uses not directly related to gravity.
==[[sense|Sensation]]==

A [[sense|sensation]] of '''falling''' occurs when the [[Labyrinth (inner
ear)|labyrinth]] or ''vestibular apparatus'', a system of fluid-filled
passages in the [[ear|inner ear]], detects motion. The same system also
detects rotary motion.  A similar sensation of falling can be induced when
the eyes detect rapid apparent motion with respect to the environment.
This system enables us to keep our balance by signalling when a physical
correction is necessary.
[...]

[[Category:Hats]]

[[de:Hut (Kopfbedeckung)]]
[[nl:Hoed]]</text>
    </revision>
  </page>
</mediawiki>


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and category-based image filtering

body:
Ah yes, but now you are making a claim that it is better to be
offensive to some than silly to others. Which is worth interrogating a
bit further. ;-)

I think in this discussion we've got to acknowledge that visual
imagery has the ability to quickly shock and surprise someone a lot
more than textual imagery does, first off. A picture of the Goatse man
will cause more disturbance than the most lurid Times New Roman (in
part because you can always stop reading in mid-sentence, though you
cannot stop viewing mid-image, multi-page images not considered).

If we all agree on that, then it would stand to reason that our
choices with a potentially offensive image?one in which there is a
considerable number of people who find it extremely visually
offensive?then our options seem to be between potentially issuing a
large and unpleasant shock to certain people (let us call them
"prudes") and evoking nothing in particular among the people who are
not shocked (let us call them "callous"), or between linking it and
issuing thoughts that we are silly and perhaps ridiculous among the
"callous" and evoking gratification in the "prudes."

In a cost-benefit sense, it would seem that linking would be the most
prudent thing to do?the "costs" are low (making some people think we
are silly), the "benefits" are modest (having some people thankful
they don't have to view what they don't want to without any real
hassle). Putting it inline would seem to have high "costs" (deeply
offending some people) and non-existent benefits (the people who are
not offended by it are not going to be thankful that we have displayed
it, since that is the default position).

It seems clear to me, though I welcome questioning of my definitions
and assumptions.

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 00:19:28 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Fastfission said:
> > Of course, the advantage to a Wiki is that we can change our content to
> > match the mores of the times, unlike a print object. If this was 1972
> > we could link to the image, and then in 1990 we could inline it. No
> > content lost. Nobody too confused.
>
> I take your point, but I think a lot of people might have found it a bit
> odd.  We Brits had been used to seeing Vitruvian Man in the opening
> credits of a weekly current affairs program for half a decade by then, so
> linking the Pioneer plaque would probably have seemed a rather silly thing
> to do.  I think many Americans might have thought the same, too.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:

>On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:32:59 +0200, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:
>
>
>>If we plug away at the en: wikipedia, adding African-related articles,
>>maybe a couple of years down the line we will be able to automatically
>>translate to Xhosa. I think that is a /much/ better use of everyone's
>>time than writing a Xhosa wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>I think not. As your KDE example showed, translation is far more
>complicated than simple dictionary lookups. Xhosa is only spoken by
>7.9m speakers (mainly in South Africa) and with so few speakers (and
>so little commercial possibility for making a translator) I would
>imagine that Xhosa may never be able to be translated.
>
>Actually, I just read that it is similar to Zulu, which probably adds
>some more "speakers". Still, I think development of a machine
>translation program is unlikely.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_translation
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language
>
>
I fully agree with the fact that translation is far more compilcated
than many think - babelfish does not at all do the trick ;-)

Never ever a machine will be able to translate correctly - not now, not
tomorrow, not in 100 years - it's a dream many have - sorry, I must
destroy it. A spoken and "living" language changes style and partly even
writing and grammar at least every 20 years. It's an evolutionary
process and a machine translator will only be as good as the human who
fed it. It can give raw translations, but they will never be perfect.
Often the same sentence used in another context needs a different
translation as it has a different meaning. So whatever anyone thinks or
belives: you will always need human beings to transmit a concept from
one language to the other.

My 2 cts.

Sabine
(professional translator - and not even a bit worrying about computers
taking over high qualified work :-) go ahead programming machine
translation software - thank you! - you help me to show that humans are
the better translators and are woth every cent a customer pays :-)


from_name: El C

subject:
[WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for everyoneto
	edit Wiki

body:
Indeed, it does reveal (seemingly) a certain propagandist thrust
(ostensibly, waged in the name of combatting "propaganda"). More
importantly, it does this by completely ignoring the notion of and the
distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic human worth in a very
crude, reductionistic way.

As I said, the chances for meaningful dialogue between a POV Warrior
who wishes some collaborators to -inherently- cease to exist, with
absolutely no chance of redemption or conversion (no, suicide does not
count), is very different from that waged by the extrinsic ones (by
whichever standards we wish to define them in accordance with); i.e.
in the ability of seeing the other editor as human, in the levels of
discord we can safely predict for these exchanges amongst editors.

It is not a particularly in-depth philosophical or
social-psychological point, and therefore, this is the reason why I go
on to interpert abovementioned 'thrust' as an attempt to conceal and
obfuscate -- (seemingly) in order to promote certain political biases
it (or rather, the proponent of that position him/her-self) favours.

Persuasion does not seem very likely here, though, so perhaps I am
wasting my words. At the event, I said my piece on that front, now
also here in the mailing list, and I can only hope that it resonates
through and beyond the (percieved) immediate interests of this or that
ideology.

>Language such as "a sustained assault" is out of place.

>Zoney


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward Peschko

subject: [Wikitech-l] running wiki on command line

body:
hey all,

a couple of questions - what are the prerequisites for running
'index.php' at the command line, eg:

	php index.php

doesn't seem to do anything.

Ultimately, I'd like to be able to run index.php sans browser and be
able to debug based on the output that comes to standard out...

Ed

(ps -

is there a good class pretty printer for php? I noticed that - unlike
perl - var_export, print_r, etc, don't seem to handle classes very well.
I'd like to be able to say:

	var_export($class_reference);

and have php print out all the associated class variables and
object variables.
)


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Day 4 Fund Drive Report (updated)

body:
Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050223 17:00]:

> The problem is, "most of the world" - especially the most of the world
> without computers - doesn't speak English.

I suggest starting with what we have and going on from there would be a
good start.

> My point is, I would be heartbroken if English copies of Wikipedia
> print editions are handed out in schools on Hopi, or the school in
> Havasupai, or schools in the Tohono O'odham Nation or the Navajo
> Nation or the Gaeltachta.

Perhaps you can bring those wikipedias up to print quality as well.

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Conflict resolution on meta Wikimedia

body:
I think that Gerard's paragraph that he added and you keep removing is
highlighting the negative side of you idea. Why isn't he allowed to put
that there?

Walter van Kalken


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Igor Konforti

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Will wikipedia.org in Hebrew,
	Arabic etc be registered?

body:
Opera also support IDN. Anyway if something is interested in Unicode
DNS he can buy it. 10$ at godaddy but i don't think it's necessary

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:21:11 -0500, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> > "Wikipedia" in Hebrew: xn--7dbcbqab9ewa.org
> > "Wikipedia" in Arabic: (I'm guessing) is xn--mgbbv2fyambbb.org (I took
> > this from the Main Page in Arabic; it's the text in quotes)
> >
> > Are there plans to register these domains? What about Japanese, etc, etc?
> >
> > Is Punycode even commonly used in the countries of those languages? I
> > know that in Israel it is common to see latinised domains
> > (http://www.shesh.co.il http://www.walla.co.il http://www.nana.co.il
> > etc) instead of domains in Unicode.
> >
> > Internet Explorer does not appear to support Punycode.
>
> It doesn't.  Unfortunately, punycode (for IDN support) presents a huge
> security vulnerability for browsers at this time, so even on non-IE
> browsers a lot of people are turning off IDN support.  The problem is
> that punycode allows easy spoofing of many domain names by using
> character homographs in the URL.  I, for instance, have IDN support
> turned off in Firefox.
>
> --
> Chad
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't push POV into the Wikipedia software and policies

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:10:24 -0500, Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 08:17:56PM +0800, John Lee wrote:

> In contrast, any kind of censorship / filtering regime necessarily
> contains within it the assumption that some material is _lesser_ than
> others, by dint of offending the protected group ... and moreover, that
> some people's offense is unimportant, while other people's offense is
> important.  It is not presented as a guess, but as a moral injunction
> ("this material IS offensive, it MUST BE turned off by default") which
> it is not within Wikipedia's purview to make.

No we are making the judgement that wikipedia can more effectivel
atchive it's goal with certian material presented in certian ways.
Further more since since what is offensive is largly decided at the
level of socierties it is an ethical descision rather than moral

> I don't think we actually have sufficient evidence on that.  Again,
> consider _Ulysses_, a work of text (no images) that was once banned in
> the U.S. for obscenity.

This appears to be the sliperly slope logica fallacy.

> That position generalizes very poorly to other classes of articles,
> though.  (And generalizability is a must for rules.)  The fact that
> people get "damn pissed" about something is no reason not to keep it in
> an encyclopedia.  There are an awful lot of _historical facts_ it's
> worth being damn pissed about.

More slipery slope logical fallacy (and stawman).

> Sure, and I'll just go make an "editorial decision" that homeopathy is
> bunkum, and put that all over the article [[Homeopathy]].  When someone
> accuses me of an NPOV violation, I'll just tell them it was nothing of
> the sort, it was an "editorial decision".  :)

Have you read the homeopathy article? because for the most part it
pretty much does say that.

> Or, in another sense, there's nothing wrong with being extreme about
> NPOV.  It's what we do here.  Wikipedia _is_, in this sense, an
> extremist project; that's why there are so people from Britannica,
> mainstream media, and other "normal" "middle-of-the-road" publications
> who can't figure us out, and assume that we're doomed to failure.

i can't recall anything in wikipolicy saying that we must be an
extreamist policy. In fact this extract from what wikipedia is not:

Wikipedia is not an experiment in anarchy

Wikipedia is free and open, but restricts both freedom and openness
where they interfere with the purpose of creating an encyclopedia.
Accordingly, Wikipedia is not a forum for unregulated free speech. The
fact that Wikipedia is an open, self-governing project does not mean
that any part of its purpose is to explore the viability of
anarchistic communities. Our purpose is to build an encyclopedia, not
to test the limits of anarchism. If you want to do so, you can use the
Wikipedia fork Anarchopedia (http://www.anarchopedia.org/).

Rather destroys your position.

> Sounds to me like your proposal would be more of this, rather than less.
>
> It would end up with nasty, unresolvable arguments over what should go
> in the "off by default" categories, because of what those categories
> would really mean:
>
> If the category "Nudity" is off by default, then the meaning of that
> category would really be not just "these images contain nudity" but
> rather "these images contain nudity AND Wikipedia believes nudity is
> offensive".

No we belive that switching it off would help our goals

> And that is a judgment that Wikipedia still has no business making; and
> it is a judgment that would cause endless dispute.  Just as Wikipedia
> does not have an opinion on the issue of whether homeopathy is bunkum,
> Wikipedia does not have an opinion on whether nudity is offensive.

No we are making a judgement about what helps us towards our goals.

> I don't see how you get the idea that your proposal is defusing, rather
> than escalating.  Defusing means that people quit fighting and go find
> something else to do ... not that you give them a whole brand new arena
> to fight in, and make the issues over which they're fighting all the
> more important.

Most cases are pretty clear cut and those which aren't will got lost
in the normal background noise of edit wars.

geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [1.0] Server logs from poorer Africa?

body:
On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:David_Gerard/1.0 , en:User:Payo1
raises this interesting question:

    Would it be possible to find some schools in developing countries that
    do have internet access and track what articles their students access
    for a couple of months? We might even be able to identify gaps in
    content by looking at their failed searches.--Payo1 10:21, 23 Feb 2005
    (UTC)

This is regarding selection of articles needed for a paper Wikipedia.

Is such a query feasible or framable? This might be of use!

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] [1.0] Server logs from poorer Africa?


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Edward Peschko wrote:
> a couple of questions - what are the prerequisites for running
> 'index.php' at the command line, eg:
>
> 	php index.php
>
> doesn't seem to do anything.
>
> Ultimately, I'd like to be able to run index.php sans browser and be
> able to debug based on the output that comes to standard out...

MediaWiki's index.php is the web entry point and is not designed to be
run from the command line. You'll see no output because it's trying to
use an HTTP header to redirect you to the main page; the header is not
output by PHP's command-line mode.

If you want to run the web output from a command line, you should use a
PHP CGI executable and set up the CGI environment variables.

There are numerous command-line entry points in the maintenance
subdirectory, mostly special-purpose. eval.php provides a somewhat
primitive interactive PHP interpreter within the active MediaWiki code
environment. (You really, really want PHP compiled with readline support
or this will be painful. :)

> is there a good class pretty printer for php? I noticed that - unlike
> perl - var_export, print_r, etc, don't seem to handle classes very well.
> I'd like to be able to say:
>
> 	var_export($class_reference);
>
> and have php print out all the associated class variables and
> object variables.

So far as I know, PHP doesn't have metaclasses or class variables.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Well I kinda understand his reaction. Have you ever lived in a country
were they block 30.000 websites and growing? Where the government is
actually implying a policy of what its inhabitants are "allowed" to see?
Why should we make it any easier for these kind of governments?

Walter van Kalken


body:
geni said:

> No we are making the judgement that wikipedia can more effectivel
> atchive it's goal with certian material presented in certian ways.

What was that goal, again? Ah yes, producing an encyclopedia on the web.
Leave the presentation where it belongs, in the hands of the user.  We
generally can be trusted to know what we want and where.


body:
> You didn't respond to any of my points. And the point you make above
> is yet another straw man. If governments want to block or filter
> Wikipedia there's nothing stopping them from doing that right now.
> What this proposal does is provide users with a choice about which
> images they are presented with when surfing Wikimedia projects.

And what if their providers/governments make the choice for them, Thers
is no choice for them left. Also who decides on what is inappropriate? I
much better like another solution. Put the shocking pictures on a
subpage to the article instead of electronically tagging them.

There is nothing stopping anybody from blocking or filtering wikipedia
right now no ..... I do not see one reason why we should give them the
tools to give them an excuse to do so and make it easier for them. Now
they might not filter becuase it is to much of a pain for them. But when
we will tag the things for them we only make it easier for them to think
hey yes we could do that! I see no reason to help them or give them that
idea.

Walter van Kalken


body:
Fastfission said:
> Of course, the advantage to a Wiki is that we can change our content to
> match the mores of the times, unlike a print object. If this was 1972
> we could link to the image, and then in 1990 we could inline it. No
> content lost. Nobody too confused.

I take your point, but I think a lot of people might have found it a bit
odd.  We Brits had been used to seeing Vitruvian Man in the opening
credits of a weekly current affairs program for half a decade by then, so
linking the Pioneer plaque would probably have seemed a rather silly thing
to do.  I think many Americans might have thought the same, too.


body:
> What was that goal, again? Ah yes, producing an encyclopedia on the web.
> Leave the presentation where it belongs, in the hands of the user.  We
> generally can be trusted to know what we want and where.

Nope that wasn't the goal but it's close enough. While the user may
have a very good idea about what they want and where it is up to us to
provide it (the fun bit comes in when we start providing different IPs
with different stardard setting but I suspect that would be a notiable
drain on server capacity).

--
geni


body:
geni said:
>While the user may
> have a very good idea about what they want and where it is up to us to
> provide it

No.  Let's provide the what; it's up to the user to decide where.  These
choices people have been discussing for server-side implementation
properly belong to presentation.  Should we be pre-empting the user's
choice on this?


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for
	everyoneto edit Wiki

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:51:50 -0500, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:
> When one editor sees another not as human but as sub-human,
> intrinsically and irreversibly, such a dialogue, though it might find
> formal expression, is a caricature by any stretch.

El C has eloquently summed up why we ought not to allow neo-Nazis to
use Wikipedia's NPOV policy to force us to offer them a platform. A
friend of mine is the headmaster of a school in an area of London with
a large number of black and Asian students. Some students invited the
British National Party, a white supremacist/separatist party, to speak
to their debating society. The headmaster - a tolerant man who has
defended openness and free speech all his life - stepped in and banned
the speaker, the only time he has interfered in the debating society's
choice of guest. When accused of censorship, he replied that the BNP
wished that most of his students were not there, and perhaps even
wished they had not been born or that they would die; and that
therefore no meaningful dialogue or free exchange of ideas was
possible because, as El C said, one side regarded the other as less
than human.


body:
> No.  Let's provide the what; it's up to the user to decide where.

And they can download the wiki and put anything they like where they
like. The standard setting should be those that satisfy the greatest
number of people not those the fufill an free speach agenda that is
aginst wikipedia policy anyway.

>  These choices people have been discussing for server-side implementation
> properly belong to presentation.  Should we be pre-empting the user's
> choice on this?

so we should not pre-empt the users choice by throwing the images at
them with no warning?
--
geni


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Mark Williamson wrote:

> Most of the misleading official status goes to English, French, and
> Portuguese.

> Russian also has some measure of this but it's at least
> spoken by a minority in all the independent nations where it's
> official.

ditto.

wikipedia is in the information business.

Cheers,          Andy!


from_name: Zoney

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:08:32 -0700, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Certain religions and ideologies systematically devalue most of humanity.
> Wikipedia policies are a sustained assault against that frame of mind.
>
> Fred
>

Wikipedia policies are an attempt to facilitate the development of a
free encyclopaedia for all. No more, no less. Not that I support
religions or ideologies which deny humanity's true worth, but it's
important to point out we aren't on a mission to re-educate (or even
educate) people - just to simply develop an encyclopaedia that is free
to all.

Language such as "a sustained assault" is out of place.

Zoney

--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


subject:
[WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no 'right' for
	everyoneto edit Wiki

body:
Tony, I agree that it's a misreading of NPOV, but it's a misreading
that's common to many editors, who believe that NPOV means all
minority groups have a right to air their views.

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 08:42:13 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
> I don't believe anybody has been arguing that we should.  Indeed the
> contention that NPOV implies giving any advocacy group a platform seems to
> this editor like a misreading of NPOV.

> > On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:51:50 -0500, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > El C has eloquently summed up why we ought not to allow neo-Nazis to
> > use Wikipedia's NPOV policy to force us to offer them a platform.


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] pre-announce: e-mail notification ENotif for Mediawiki
	1.3.11 ...

body:
... is almost ready but needs some further checks.
expected release date: 25./26.02.2005
Tom
http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454


from_name: George Stepanek

subject: [Wikitech-l] Paying wikimedia sysops (not developers)

body:
Given the recent recovery of the database, and the work to fix the performance
problems experienced earlier this year, it may be time to think again about the
issue of rewarding WikiMedia developers for their oustanding efforts on our
behalf. Their achievements are considerable. I don't believe that anyone has
ever before run such a popular website on so small a budget. They have been able
to scale a rough-and-ready technology to accommodate phenomenal growth.

I have read the ongoing discussions about the subject. The idea of bounties for
specific projects has been mooted, but has not taken off. Part of the problem is
that there appears to be considerable confusion as to what it is the developers
actually do. Their most critical work is not actually development at all; it is
keeping the system running smoothly.

Software development is quite a creative and rewarding activity. The MediaWiki
codebase is reasonably well documented, and it is actually quite accessible. It
would not be hard to find new people to fix bugs and develop new features. But
given the maturity of the software, there is not much that really needs to be
improved.

System operations, on the other hand, is an exhausting, frustrating and largely
thankless activity. It relies on a few key individuals who have deep familiarity
and expertise with the current setup. When things go wrong, the pressure on
these people becomes enormous.

I propose paying a bonus to those developers who make substantial contributions
towards the running the of system. Someone who works 40 or more hours over the
course of a week would receive $400 (US) for their efforts. Someone who works at
least 20 hours would receive $200.

Is this a fair recompense? No. It is way below market rate. But it might help
out a student who would otherwise have to wait tables to make ends meet. And it
would be a nice "thank you" to anyone else: it could pay for a mini-break, or a
night on the town.

What do you think?

George Stepanek


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> A filter applied by default filters by a point of view, however
> non-violating the pieces going into that filter might be.

No one, NO ONE, has said any sort of filtering must take place by default.

I'm getting absolutely sick of this. People are making blanket FALSE
statements about the entire concept of letting users choose, instead of
LOOKING at the proposals and clearly identifying what bothers them and
bringing up alternatives. If everyone would stop being a hardass about
it and come to the table to compromise, this entire topic could have
been done with a week ago!


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Christiaan,
> It is one thing to split articles into two, it is another to castrate
> the talk pages and move all things that are not to your liking
> elsewhere. Your right to ask for a method to have mechanisms into the
> mediawiki software is equal to my right to have an angst of this first
> step of introducing censorship into our projects.

THERE. IS. NO. CENSORSHIP.

> *Your proposal will make it mandatory to allow for tags/categorisations
> so that censorship will work.

Our proposal will make it POSSIBLE for categories to be used by
END-USERS to CHOOSE what they wish to see.

> *Your original article title was End-user content suppression and
> decided that this was not "good" renamed it to image suppression

Because the focus was and has always been on images. Whether like
measures need to be taken for text is a different discussion.

> *There has already been one anonymous coward asking for using your
> censoring mechanism for content.

What?

> *You have repeatedly removed all things you thing are detrimental to
> your proposal from the article and its talk page

The article was intended for a discussion of the technical side of it.
Policy can be dealt with elsewhere.

> *Basically you ask for censorship and find people who oppose it.

You really need to read the wikien-l archives. Christiaan was one of the
most vocal opponents of linking images instead of inlining them.

> As to your question, withdraw your proposal or allow for criticism.

Constructive criticism is always welcome. Blanket false statements are not.


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Capitals or no, it appears at the very least this is a mechanism to enable
> and encourage it. I doubt you would claim there is no wish from anyone to
> censor Wikipedia per se, or to do something that could reasonably be tagged
> censorship.

No one has yet explained how the proposed mechanism could be used for
censorship. All we have is Gerard on some sort of holy crusade shouting
"censorship!".


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>> Christiaan,
>>> It is one thing to split articles into two, it is another to castrate
>>> the talk pages and move all things that are not to your liking
>>> elsewhere. Your right to ask for a method to have mechanisms into the
>>> mediawiki software is equal to my right to have an angst of this
>>> first step of introducing censorship into our projects.
>>
>>
>>
>> THERE. IS. NO. CENSORSHIP.
>>
> No need to shout and yes we disagree on that one. The way you lot have
> been trampling on my views on this has the hallmarks of censorship. Yes,
> in my opinion this proposal is about censorship.
>
>>> *Your proposal will make it mandatory to allow for
>>> tags/categorisations so that censorship will work.
>>
>>
>>
>> Our proposal will make it POSSIBLE for categories to be used by
>> END-USERS to CHOOSE what they wish to see.
>
>
> We disagree on this one. For it is not only end users that will choose.
> Read your own proposal point 4.

I don't even know what that's doing there or who added it. I'm removing
it now. This proposal has never had anything to do with proxies or IP
ranges. Even if that was part of the goal, it would be a technical
nightmare and would not get the parties implementing such filters
anything close to what they want.

>>> *Your original article title was End-user content suppression and
>>> decided that this was not "good" renamed it to image suppression
>>
>>
>>
>> Because the focus was and has always been on images. Whether like
>> measures need to be taken for text is a different discussion.
>
>
> Technically it is not different so why should it be a different
> discussion ?

It is different both philisophically and technically. The code used to
defer images will not be usable for entire articles.

>>> *There has already been one anonymous coward asking for using your
>>> censoring mechanism for content.
>>
>>
>>
>> What?
>
>
> Right, it is a straw mans argument that one thing leads to the next.

You're still not making sense.

> Read the history if you can still find what was said. It is there.

You brought it up, you point me to it.

<snip strange rantings about meta>

>> Constructive criticism is always welcome. Blanket false statements are
>> not.
>>
> Your idea of what is true and false is coloured by where you stand,
> where you are from. Your truth is just that. Making me out for a liar
> and being not constructive is well, not friendly to say the least.

I don't feel very friendly toward someone that can't articulate
themselves but insists they're right.


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Have tags, can select and filter. Censorship abc

So you oppose libraries creating separate sections of separate
categories of books and letting users browse the sections they want to
and not browse the sections they don't?


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
>>No one, NO ONE, has said any sort of filtering must take place by
>>default.
>
>
> All these arguments about appeasing those who will attack us for not
> filtering, are meaningless if a non-logged-in user approaching the site
> for the first time will see the images that it is proposed should be
> filtered on the grounds that most people may be upset to see them.  So
> what's the point of filtering if we only do it for people who are
> motivated enough to either create a user and log in, or fill in a form
> saying what kinds of image they want to have filtered?

If you'd read the pages on meta that Christaain has pointed to
repeatedly, you'd see there are already proposals to use a cookie-based
system and present anonymous users with a disclaimer page permitting to
make exactly that choice.


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Nicholas Knight (nknight at runawaynet.com) [050225 00:00]:
>>No one, NO ONE, has said any sort of filtering must take place by default.
>
> This is not the case - John Lee has, for example, at length. It appears you
> are not keeping track of what people are actually advocating.

Please note my words carefully. Specifically, note that the word
"should" is not the same as the word "must".


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] Zend Optimiser

body:
Wikipedia/WikiCommons/Wikibooks are all dangerously slow. I recently installed
the Zend Optimiser 2.5.7 on my site www.wikinerds.org . Zend Optimiser speeds
up php by 40%. I think you should install it too if you haven't done so
already.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Are you assuming bad faith on Gerard's part?

I've been assuming bad faith on Gerard's part for days. I've seen no
evidence of good faith, and plenty of bad.


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
This is a good example of our dilemma. Slimvirgin's friends says, "the BNP
wished that most of his students were not there, and perhaps even
wished they had not been born or that they would die" For Wikipedia purposes
this information if true would be quite valuable. In our article on the BNP
it says "The BNP denies [claims of racism] and states that many questionable
characters have been expelled from the party; it publicly condemns both
violence and racism." But those in the know are aware that they are lying
and, in power, can be expected to revert to type.

Likewise, should the Maoist rebels in Nepal come to power, those in the know
expect a bloodbath, although many of us would be happy to be proved wrong
and see a genuine people's democracy emerge. Certainly we can put no such
information in the article without a big fuss.

So it turns out that important information, indeed vital information
regarding life and death issues, is verboten, should it offend.

This reminds me of the article I once wrote, [[US invasion of Iraq]]. It
certainly created a big fuss at the time, being written 9 months before the
invasion. The fact is, it is possible to know and there is no prescience or
magic to it. Information of such a nature is derived from long standing past
behavior that has been repeated over and over and over.

But to go back to the issue. In most political cases a neo-nazi or a Maoist
or Marxist-Leninist will come on with a strong POV which they will express,
both by adding material from their peculiar intellectual mileau and stongly
opposing addition or retention of information from mainstream sources,
especially information from those familiar with the workings of their
particular faction. This was seen in the Herschelkrustovsky case with
extreme opposition to the editing of Chip Berlet (Cberlet), who is
thoroughly familiar with the twists and turns of Lyndon LaRouche.

It comes down in terms of Wikipedia policy to [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is
not]] and the particular offense: Wikipedia is not a platform for advocacy
or propaganda.

To repeat, as suitably modified: Certain religions and ideologies
systematically devalue most of humanity. Wikipedia policies are a sustained
defense against that frame of mind.

Fred

> From: <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: slimvirgin at gmail.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 00:57:33 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for
> everyoneto edit Wiki
>
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:51:50 -0500, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:
>> When one editor sees another not as human but as sub-human,
>> intrinsically and irreversibly, such a dialogue, though it might find
>> formal expression, is a caricature by any stretch.
>
> El C has eloquently summed up why we ought not to allow neo-Nazis to
> use Wikipedia's NPOV policy to force us to offer them a platform. A
> friend of mine is the headmaster of a school in an area of London with
> a large number of black and Asian students. Some students invited the
> British National Party, a white supremacist/separatist party, to speak
> to their debating society. The headmaster - a tolerant man who has
> defended openness and free speech all his life - stepped in and banned
> the speaker, the only time he has interfered in the debating society's
> choice of guest. When accused of censorship, he replied that the BNP
> wished that most of his students were not there, and perhaps even
> wished they had not been born or that they would die; and that
> therefore no meaningful dialogue or free exchange of ideas was
> possible because, as El C said, one side regarded the other as less
> than human.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
This is true, O'Reilly can do just as good a job on Wikipedia as he did on
Ward Churchill. He's not going to discuss our article on Canada, or Abraham
Lincoln, he's going to go straight for the jugular, our carefully considered
articles on "sex moves" and autofellatio.

Fred

> From: Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 13:41:02 +0000
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Don't push POV into the Wikipedia software and
> policies
>
> I could almost guarantee that were someone to submit a particular list
> of Wikipedia articles/images for review by popular media outlets, they
> could destroy Wikipedia's reputation for ever. Afterward mostly only
> that section of the public that doesn't have concerns about such
> content would use Wikipedia.


body:
It is not safe to ignore anyone's opinion, but to bring you up to speed,
check out [[The O'Reilly Factor]].

Fred

> From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 14:03:35 -0000 (GMT)
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Don't push POV into the Wikipedia software and
> policies
>
> Fred Bauder said:
>> This is true, O'Reilly can do just as good a job on Wikipedia as he did
>> on Ward Churchill. He's not going to discuss our article on Canada, or
>> Abraham Lincoln, he's going to go straight for the jugular, our
>> carefully considered articles on "sex moves" and autofellatio.
>
> Why should I care about this person's opinion?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary DNS

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

>In the interest of harm reduction for the future, I would like to
>recommend the excellent services of the folks at easydns.com,
>
And we still have 3 machines in Paris that can run DNS once somebody set
them up (the bomb).


body:
Because you are intelligent, knowledgable and understand how public
relations works and have the best interests of Wikipedia at heart? And have
common sense?

Fred

> From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 14:35:22 -0000 (GMT)
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Don't push POV into the Wikipedia software and
> policies
>
> Fred Bauder said:
>> It is not safe to ignore anyone's opinion, but to bring you up to
>> speed, check out [[The O'Reilly Factor]].
>
> I know of this guy.  Fox News are the idiots who threatened to sue Fox
> Broadcast Network because a Fox show, the Simpsons, mimicked their
> braindead scrolling news ticker.  Bill O'Reilly is the chap whose lawsuit
> against Al Franken was thrown out of court, and only succeeded in boosting
> sales of Franken's book.
> Why should I care what these buffoons think?
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
Delirium (delirium at hackish.org) [050224 04:58]:

> It may still be possible to do human translation though.  As hard as
> translation is, I think translating 1000 articles from [x] to Xhosa may
> be easier, in terms of time and especially required research resources,
> than writing 1000 new articles in Xhosa.  Since all the articles in all
> the languages are GFDL, this is a good way to bootstrap new Wikipedias
> if there's an interested translator.  This has been going on on el:
> (Greek) for example.

I understand this is one of the reasons for simple: to exist.

> Even the larger Wikipedias could benefit from some of this.  I've
> translated several German Wikipedia articles to English, despite my
> terrible knowledge of German, simply because they had a lot more
> information on certain subjects (e.g. [[Gregor Gysi]]).

I've actually done this with Babelfish more than once ;-)

- d.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
geni said:
> The standard setting should be those that satisfy the greatest
> number of people

What standard setting?

> not those the fufill an free speach agenda that is
> aginst wikipedia policy anyway.

What "free speech agenda"?  I thought we were discussing whether to give
control of presentation to the user or to someone else.


body:
Fastfission said:
> Ah yes, but now you are making a claim that it is better to be
> offensive to some than silly to others. Which is worth interrogating a
> bit further. ;-)

In this particular case I don't think it's wrong to risk offending people.
 Someone who complains about the Pioneer plaque on grounds of offense
taken at the nudity, well it's a bit extreme.  Even if there are fifty
million of them, we shouldn't cave in to such excessive prudery.
In my opinion, people wwho are easily shocked by visual images of nudity
or sex should not use their web browsers on the default setting.  We would
be doing them a big favor if we advised them to consult their browser
documentation, because if they took that advice they would never be unduly
shocked by pictorial web content again.  For those who favor cost-benefit
analysis (I don't, I'm just a pragmatist who has arrived at the conclusion
that server-based presentation management is broken) this seems like the
optimal path.


body:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:51:50 -0500, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:

> El C has eloquently summed up why we ought not to allow neo-Nazis to
> use Wikipedia's NPOV policy to force us to offer them a platform.

I don't believe anybody has been arguing that we should.  Indeed the
contention that NPOV implies giving any advocacy group a platform seems to
this editor like a misreading of NPOV.


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Zend Optimiser

body:
Well, here again NSK wrote:
> Wikipedia/WikiCommons/Wikibooks are all dangerously slow. I recently installed
> the Zend Optimiser 2.5.7 on my site www.wikinerds.org . Zend Optimiser speeds
> up php by 40%. I think you should install it too if you haven't done so already.

Have you tried Turck? It's on all pages you may find about MediaWiki performance tuning.
http://turck-mmcache.sourceforge.net/. And yes, wikimedia sites sure run bytecode cache.
You may try other caching facilities (memcached, squid, ...) as well, then you could tell
that wikineds.org is running xxx% faster ;-)

Domas


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Fred Bauder said:
>
>>This is true, O'Reilly can do just as good a job on Wikipedia as he did
>>on Ward Churchill. He's not going to discuss our article on Canada, or
>>Abraham Lincoln, he's going to go straight for the jugular, our
>>carefully considered articles on "sex moves" and autofellatio.
>>
>
>Why should I care about this person's opinion?
>
>
O'Reilly is an important part of the crowd that got 59 million to
vote for the robber barons against their own best interests, and
there are lots of ways that a sustained campaign by Fox could make
trouble for WP, far beyond anything Stormfront could mount.

Even though we ourselves might not want a bowdlerized WP,
it would be extraordinarily convenient to have some kind
of subset quasi-mirror that advertised themselves as
"child-safe". We already have a hundred lamers trying to
make an advertising buck off WP content, just need one of
them to think of selling a filtered version into schools.

It would also emphasize WP's role as developer of new content,
attracting people who prefer to be at the edge. Sort of like
the difference between getting Linux from source repositories,
vs a packaged and tested distro.

Stan


list: textbook-l

from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] GMail invites

body:
If anyone is as desperate as I was to get a GMail email
account, let me know, and the first fifteen or so I'll send
you an invite so you can get started.

Have a great day!
Karl

(I sent this same email from my new address, but forgot the
filter probably won't let it go thru, sorry if you get it
twice ...)

=====
Email me at my new address, karlwick at gmail.com

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


from_name: Kesava Mallela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Some problems with Wikipedia's iD

body:
I thought this would be a good forum to bring up some interaction
design  problems with Wikipedia.

These are some of the problems I found as an active contributor who
also happens to be an interaction designer.

1.      Wikipedia shows only the last edit of an article in the watch list.
This leaves the writer no clue of the edits that took place from
his/her base lined version. (Base lined version will generally be the
user's last edit on the article.). Some kind of visualization
technique on all the edits only can give the writer a sense of the
course taken by the article.

2.      Too many entries in watch list make it very difficult to clear them
on a day. Some kind of prioritization needs to be done...like ignoring
the minor edits...or flagging
a.      the articles which are more prone to vandalism or
b.      an article where some real interesting edits are happening or
c.      articles on which some of your trusted buddies are working on...

3.      When you work on more than a few articles, it is very natural that
you might find a same set of people working on those or similar
articles. Wikipedia could encourage collaboration by allowing me to
watch any articles edited by my buddies. (Of course, only if my buddy
agrees to it, which I would think he would, for it is a chance for
both of us to write a quality article.)

4.      When you start with an article, it is very probable that you would
be interested in editing related articles. e.g.: If you start with
Satyajit Ray, you might be interested in editing/reviewing the
articles for Bengali cinema, or Mrinal Sen or Italian Neo-realist
Cinema or the Apu Trilogy. One simple heuristic that could help meet
the similar goals would be to allow the user to watch all the articles
that link to a particular article or watch all the articles that have
been manually grouped as categories. The feature "Related Changes"
tries to do something similar, but lists the changes to the articles
listed only on your watch list.

I believe that encouraging people to collaborate better and giving
users better idea of how articles are changing over time would help
Wikipedia improve the quality of articles tremendously. Guess what?
Interaction Design can bring a real difference again.

--
Kesava Mallela
"The real topic in astronomy is cosmos. Not Telescopes."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:kaysov


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Political correctness vs NPOV

body:
Arno M wrote:

>Just out of curiosity - does Political correctness apply as NPOV or as
>an ideology as described below?
>
>
Political correctness is independent of the ideology it supports.  It
can attach to any ideology.  It will generally involve supporting the
"right" views as they prevail in the society out of fear of being seen
as different.  Sometimes the penalty for not being politically correct
may be social ostracism; in other circumstances, such as in Nazi
Germany, the penalties could be far more severe.  In the United States
supporting the troops in Iraq is a matter of political correctness.

Thus I would see political correctness as neither NPOV nor an ideology.
At the same time practitioners of political correctness have a personal
need to believe that their actions express a NPOV, something which they
can easily confirm in the positive feedback loop of their own community.
Overcoming political correctness requires both insight and courage.

Ec


from_name: Rafael Pinilla

subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary DNS

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

David Monniaux a ?crit :
| uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
|
|> In the interest of harm reduction for the future, I would like to
|> recommend the excellent services of the folks at easydns.com,
|>
| And we still have 3 machines in Paris that can run DNS once somebody set
| them up (the bomb).

I do have an humble personal server in Marseille, France, with 2Mbits
bandwidth, running bind9. I can set it up to become backup DNS in hours.

Rafael Pinilla

- --
~ .O. | Courriel envoy? depuis un syst?me Linux 64 bits
~ ..0 | Dr Rafael Pinilla       Linux addict since 1992
~ 000 | mail://rafa at pinilla point org
~ ______________________________________________________
~ http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip?dia:Projet_M?decine
~ http://www.pinilla.org                place to know
~ http://www.newsmedicales.net          more to come
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCHbDhHZR7lwdtMpsRAi66AJ9ZvFbvyfqsrgdenF9rzonZXr0ZWQCeJV8L
yUIc2uwDllq2PRDWURlsoZ8=
=mpIV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] More frequent dumps possible for contingency?

body:
I'm sure this is not an original thought and probably has been discussed
again recently on IRC.
I'm curious to the outcome though:

Would it be possible to make dumps every one or two days, so that we are
less dependant on good fortune next time?

Erik Zachte


body:
That effectively converts the term into an ambiguous one.  We may easily
agree that the three issues that you list have more positive than
negative connotations, but the person who believes that trees cause
pollution will see the political correctness of the environmentalist as
a negative.  This does not bode well for any menaingful use of the term.
Ec

Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> Political correctness may often be used as a pejorative term but it
> actually has positive connotations as well as the negative that Ray
> has pointed out. Political correctness has been used for all sorts of
> issues, e.g. civil rights movement, womens rights, and the environment
> to name a few. In this sense it is not always something to be
> "overcome" but encouraged in some instances.
>
> Christiaan
>
> On 24 Feb 2005, at 6:19 pm, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Arno M wrote:
>>
>>> Just out of curiosity - does Political correctness apply as NPOV or
>>> as an ideology as described below?
>>
>> Political correctness is independent of the ideology it supports.  It
>> can attach to any ideology.  It will generally involve supporting the
>> "right" views as they prevail in the society out of fear of being
>> seen as different.  Sometimes the penalty for not being politically
>> correct may be social ostracism; in other circumstances, such as in
>> Nazi Germany, the penalties could be far more severe.  In the United
>> States supporting the troops in Iraq is a matter of political
>> correctness.
>>
>> Thus I would see political correctness as neither NPOV nor an
>> ideology.  At the same time practitioners of political correctness
>> have a personal need to believe that their actions express a NPOV,
>> something which they can easily confirm in the positive feedback loop
>> of their own community. Overcoming political correctness requires
>> both insight and courage.
>


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Working toward a consensus on image suppression

body:
This discussion is highly likely to go around in circles forever in a
day, and I'd like to think that we could work toward something
approaching a consensus on this issue but I doubt very much that's
going to happen on a mailing list. There is too much room for
repetition on a mailing list. Why not use a better resource to conduct
such debate, a wiki?

There is now a page on meta dedicated to outlining the desirability of
end-user image suppression:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Desirability_of_end-
user_image_suppression

To help work toward some kind of consensus the issues surrounding this
topic are split into four main areas:

1. the implications of implemention
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/End-user_image_suppression
2. the identification of categories that would be included as part of
implementation
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Potentially_offensive_images
3. the useful categorising of images
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Descriptive_image_tagging
4. and discussion about whether it's all desirable
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Desirability_of_end-
user_image_suppression

Feel free to join in the progressive wiki-way instead of the circular
mailing-list-way. :)

Christiaan


body:
Angela wrote:

>On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 16:20:01 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
>
>
>>I've said already that I think this is something only the Board can
>>decide.  Either we stay the way we are--and no amount of filtering and
>>whatnot will disguise the fact that the operation of our existing content
>>policy fails to censor content in a manner which would make the whole of
>>Wikipedia acceptable to the general public--or the Board imposes content
>>restrictions.
>>
>>
>I disagree. The Board should not control the content. Unless the
>content is actually illegal, then it is up to the community to decide
>whether it is included or not, and up to the community whether we
>accept whatever filtering methods the developers might create.
>
>
Absolutely.  A co-operative community needs to make its own decision,
and accept responsibility for those decisions.  It is an abuse of
democracy when citizens expect God to come down from his heaven to
absolve them of responsibility.

Ec


from_name: David Gerard

body:
geni (geniice at gmail.com) [050224 12:06]:

> > No.  Let's provide the what; it's up to the user to decide where.

> And they can download the wiki and put anything they like where they
> like. The standard setting should be those that satisfy the greatest
> number of people not those the fufill an free speach agenda that is
> aginst wikipedia policy anyway.

"NPOV" is explicitly not about "satisfy the greatest number". You appear to
be invoking the name of "NPOV" without actual reference to it.

- d.


from_name: Arno M

body:
Just out of curiosity - does Political correctness apply as NPOV or as
an ideology as described below?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" foreveryoneto edit Wiki
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:08:32 -0700

>
> Certain religions and ideologies systematically devalue most of humanity.
> Wikipedia policies are a sustained assault against that frame of mind.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com>
> > Reply-To: El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> > <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:51:50 -0500
> > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for everyoneto
> > edit Wiki
> >
> > When one editor sees another not as human but as sub-human,
> > intrinsically and irreversibly, such a dialogue, though it might find
> > formal expression, is a caricature by any stretch.
> >
> >> The hardest thing with Wikipedia is to realize that two editors with
> >> diametrically opposite views both still are humans, and still can be
> >> reasonable people. Denying that your opponent is also human is a grave
> >> error and leads to lots of bad things happening in the world.
> >
> >> For an example of a well-behaved, NPOV-writing nazi (albeit a convert)
> >> see Spandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

--
_______________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


subject: [Foundation-l] fr.wikinews logo

body:
Unless my Internet cache is totally wrong, the fr.wikinews logo is now the "official" wikinews one, without the beta. But considering how many edits there are on this language, i'd pretty much favor the big red "BETA" warning it used to have....

Nicolas Ryo

Acc?dez au courrier ?lectronique de La Poste : www.laposte.net ;
3615 LAPOSTENET (0,34?/mn) ; t?l : 08 92 68 13 50 (0,34?/mn)


subject: [Foundation-l] fr.wikinews logo


body:
I've come back for more advice. Although the outlining of and
discussion about the desirability of [[End-user image suppression]] has
been moved to [[Desirability of End-user image suppression]], and this
is made clear in the opening paragraph of [[End-user image
suppression]], User:GerardM is still insisting on posting desirability
discussion to [[End-user image suppression]]. What to do?

Christiaan


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] fr.wikinews logo

body:
nicolas.weeger wrote:

>Unless my Internet cache is totally wrong, the fr.wikinews logo is now the "official" wikinews one, without the beta. But considering how many edits there are on this language, i'd pretty much favor the big red "BETA" warning it used to have....
>
>Nicolas Ryo
>
Nicolas,
That is a route you do not want to go. The fr:wikinews is controversial,
there has been a lot of agro about it being started in the first place.
The Wikinews project as a whole is not beta anymore so consequently the
French wikinews is not BETA either.

Your point is that the news coverage is not great. This is true for
other Wikinews projects as well. The nl:wikinews is not lively
either.The last article written there was by me because I wanted some
more action.. :( (This was on the 19th after 14 days of no new news)

What you are really after is something different: "what is the minimum
level of activity to have the continued existence of a wikinews." No
news in 14 days might qualify. Then again, how do you treat the request
for a restart ? Again five known editors promissing to give it a go ??
It is a Pandora's box, but please let hope leave her box.. :)

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] fr.wikinews logo


from_name: Edward Peschko

body:
On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 11:22:59PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Edward Peschko wrote:
> >a couple of questions - what are the prerequisites for running
> >'index.php' at the command line, eg:
> >
> >	php index.php
> >
> >doesn't seem to do anything.
> >
> >Ultimately, I'd like to be able to run index.php sans browser and be
> >able to debug based on the output that comes to standard out...
>
> MediaWiki's index.php is the web entry point and is not designed to be
> run from the command line. You'll see no output because it's trying to
> use an HTTP header to redirect you to the main page; the header is not
> output by PHP's command-line mode.
>
> If you want to run the web output from a command line, you should use a
> PHP CGI executable and set up the CGI environment variables.

so I get these environmental variables from what - the $_ENV and
$_SERVER globals? Php seems to have sliced the environmental variables
into these two associative arrays.. What if I need the variables
in $_COOKIE and $_GET and $_POST?

> There are numerous command-line entry points in the maintenance
> subdirectory, mostly special-purpose. eval.php provides a somewhat
> primitive interactive PHP interpreter within the active MediaWiki code
> environment. (You really, really want PHP compiled with readline support
> or this will be painful. :)

I'll give it a whirl, but I'm skeptical. I just tried it, got a '>'
as a prompt, hit one question mark (to get help) and it seemed to spawn
an infinite loop of '>' prompts.

> >and have php print out all the associated class variables and
> >object variables.
>
> So far as I know, PHP doesn't have metaclasses or class variables.

well, I mis-spoke. I wanted to print out an object, and it so happens
that the object I chose (WebRequest) doesn't seem to have any object
variables *or* class variables.

Ed

(
    ps -

    ok, preemptive apology for the following rant, but this is
    seriously screwed up:

    "As of PHP 4.3.0, the name, location and existence of the CLI/CGI
     binaries will differ depending on how PHP is installed on your
     system. By default when executing make, both the CGI and CLI ere
     built and placed as sapi/cgi/php and sapi/cli/php, and NOTE THAT
     BOTH ARE NAMED PHP."

    It goes on to say that based on what compile options you use, ONE OR
    THE OTHER php is installed as php, and the other is ignored.
    I have a php CLI version, but I guess the wiki I installed works
    because I've got a:

        LoadModule php5_module libexec/libphp5.so

    statement inside of my httpd.conf, but this is just too whacked out.
    They've bifurcated the php code base whether or not your in a command
    line world or a CGI world??

    Just curious, but why was php chosen in the first place? The more
    I look, the more php seems to be tied together with little
    bits of string and glue.. why not python or mod_perl, or ruby?
    Or, even c/C++, or *shudder* java?
)


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs:
>
>> I've come back for more advice. Although the outlining of and
>> discussion about the desirability of [[End-user image suppression]]
>> has been moved to [[Desirability of End-user image suppression]], and
>> this is made clear in the opening paragraph of [[End-user image
>> suppression]], User:GerardM is still insisting on posting
>> desirability discussion to [[End-user image suppression]]. What to
>> do?
>
> The desirability discussion presumably needs greater notice in the
> technical discussion.

You're not seriously suggesting that Gerard did not know about it are
you?

Christiaan


body:
John Lee said:
> There is no difference between the disambiguation of pages and this
> beyond their intention.

If I type in "head" my query is ambiguous.  Did I mean "head (anatomy)" or
"head (botany)"?  Or perhaps I was referring to "Head (movie)".  Or maybe
"head (hydraulics)"?  As it happens the overwhelming majority of
references to head are anatomical so "head" is a redirect to the most
likely meaning, which contains a link to "head (disambiguation)" for those
people who weren't looking for something other than that.
If I type in "George Bush", again my query is ambiguous.  At this time in
history there isn't really a front runner; the current President of the
USA and his father are both fairly likely to be the target of the query.
The greater number of contemporary references to the son is offset by the
fact that many readers would have typed "George W. Bush" if they meant the
son.  So here we get equal disambiguation between four different people
who are known as George Bush.
I have to say that it's pretty hard to see what this simple navigational
aid, presented in response to an ambiguous query, has to do with filtering
of image content within an article.  The system simply does not know which
content is being requested, so it responds in a manner that tries to
inform and enable the query to be refined.
> Filtering images
> does not compromise NPOV because readers will still have the choice in
> their hands.

Possibly.  I think the jury is still out on this.  Even if we filter out
*all* images, it still seems to me that we're pandering to a strain of
opinion that, on non-encyclopedic grounds, holds some images unsuitable
for Wikipedia.  There seems to be a contradiction here.>
> If it's going to be as untasteful as the autofellatio image, that would
>  seem a reasonable objection to me. Especially considering it's hard to
>  find pornographic material online without getting a package of spyware
>  to come with it.

Is your claim about spyware true?  I have no reason to believe it to be
so.  Assuming it is, however, what implication does it have, in your
opinion, for the display of images, which contain no spyware?
> There are an awful lot of _historical facts_ it's
>>worth being damn pissed about.
>>
>>
> The difference is that publishing them won't give people ground to
> attack you.

Wikipedia will be attacked anyway if it keeps and displays this material.
Better to get rid of it than keep it but treat it as something to be
ashamed of.
> at
> least public opinion  will be sufficiently divided.

Is that what it's about?  If so, ditch the porn.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request,
	and Chinese Wikipedia again

body:
Kaixo Pablo,

I personally have tried to set up mediawiki software for this but have
run into problems in all cases.

It is however definitely a good idea.

Mark

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 14:54:18 +0100, Pablo Saratxaga
<pablo at mandrakesoft.com> wrote:
> Kaixo!
>
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 06:24:44PM -0800, Felix Wan wrote:
>
> > Mark, once again I appreciate your support.  I don't think we will get
> > the blessing of the community to start a Cantonese Wikipedia soon, but
> > it does not mean that it cannot be done later.
>
> My advice will be that you (or someone else interested in a Cantonese
> wikipedia) just get the mediawiki software and install it on a server
> somewhere to try out, so it can be seen if the project is viable or not;
> if it is, then moving it to wikipedia servers would be no problem, if it
> is not, at least we will know.
>
> That is how Min-nan and Walloon wikipedias started; for the Walloon one,
> I wasn't myself sure it would work or not, that was actually the reason
> why I tried it on my own machine first; and I had almost given up after
> 2-3 months, when someone else appeared and revived it.
> When there were some 1.000 articles moving it to wikipedia was no
> problem (even in the extreme case were the database couldn't be
> imported, copying the articles by hand wouldn't be an impossible task
> either).
> Yes, the Walloon wikipedia is still small, and will continue to be
> small, as the total population of speakers is small (about 600.000)
> and there is absolutely no official support for the language nor
> any presence on mass media; however, with some 1.000 articles a year it
> is a valuable source of information, particularly about Walloon and
> Wallonia related topics (articles about language grammar, personalities,
> villages, rivers, existing and past litterature, etc), and the number of
> users is still growing, slowly, but growing, which means there is
> interest in it.
>
> What I mean is, for a first try, when only limited traffic will happen,
> even hosting it on a private adsl connection is enough, a small computer
> with a standard GNU/Linux distribution is able to run the software;
> so while there is need of somme consensus and approval to be hosted
> by the wikimedia foundation and use its infrastructure; anybody
> can start its own wikipedia-like server at home.
> And then, depending on the results, an official merging with wikipedia
> could be asked.
>
>
> --
> Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
> Pablo Saratxaga
>
> http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/          PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
> [you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
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body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

> Before even thinking about technical implication lets first debate if
> we want it or not.

Part of the problem of this debate is that there has never been a
tangible scheme to discuss, only a idea. It is your opinion that it is
ridiculous to outline a scheme before deciding on it. Equally I could
argue that it is ridiculous to decide on a system that has not been
outlined.

If you don't like what is being done then I suggest you nominate the
page for deletion.

> As I understand it the developers have been asked already to program
> this?

Not that I know of. I have asked developers to post their opinions on
how easy or difficult it would be to code however.

Christiaan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> I would call Sabine's comment realistic rather than pedantic. I
>> realize that technophiles dream of these artificial solutions, but
>> the best they can realistically hope for is competent interpretation
>> of technical material.  When it comes to metaphor technophiles are
>> playing in the right field of dreams. (I wonder how a machine would
>> translate that into the language of people who know nothing about
>> baseball.)
>
> Off-list since this is getting off-topic, but I was implying that my
> comment was pedantic---I agree with Sabine as a practical matter, but
> she was arguing that in principle it is *impossible* for machine
> translation to meet the quality of human translation, which I think is
> incorrect.  It is, however, correct that it will not do so in the near
> future.

I don't know about it being off-topic.  It does have a bearing on how we
approach Africa.  If machine translation were effective it would make
the task of going into Africa a lot easier.   I simply do not share your
unbounded optimism about the future of technology. Of course, in the
nightmare scenario there will always be the HAL who will need to be
reminded that he should stick to "A Bicycle Build for Two."

> The essential observation is that humans are, according to one line of
> thinking, themselves nothing more than biological machines.
> Therefore, by definition, anything a human can do is something a
> machine can do, because we already have an example of a machine that
> can do it.  All that's left is the engineering problem of how to build
> such a machine ourselves.  It could either be a workalike (e.g. wait
> for neuroscientists to document the exact functioning of the brain,
> and simulate that in a computer), or else it could be something
> radically different that still does things we'd consider as  requiring
> intelligence.

The premise that humans are biological machines does not have unanimous
support.  What you say may very well follow logically from that premise,
but others will see it as a kind of GIGO argument

> The "proof" for this as in principle possible is by contradiction: If
> we assume it's impossible, that means that humans must be something
> other than a glob of matter that obeys the laws of physics.  Thus,
> there must be something magical about humans.  That's an assumption
> many people aren't willing to make, which means that they must then
> therefore accept that humans are in essence machines, albeit
> fantastically complex ones.

The glob of matter as matter may very well obey the laws of physics, but
which physics?  Does that necessarily exclude obeying additional laws?
The leap to magic, like the leap to faith, involves jumping to
conclusions.  I'm just as unwilling as you to make that leap, but that
still does not lead me to the conclusion that you derive.  Rather it
leads me to a lot of unanswered questions.  What, for example, is the
role of intuition?  I'm not prepared either to accept my own speculative
theories as an answer, or to confuse that speculation with objective
truth.  That would be engaging in pseudoscience.  I am, however,
prepared to live with the uncertainty that some questions may not be
answerable.  I think that a proof by contradiction can only work if ALL
the contradictory possibilities are known and have been explored.

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 6 Fund Drive Report

body:
On Day 6 (Wednesday 23 February eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not
available in UTC) we made $5,197.09 (USD equivalent) through a combination of
PayPal (completed payments only) and mail donations (no updates available for
other sources at this time).

This is a decrease of 22.48% from Day 5 and represents 11.16% of total funds
collected so far ($46,474.53 ; only counting full days) and 6.93% of our goal
($75,000). At the end of Day 6 we had reached 62.07% of our goal.

We were continuing to have server issues on Day 6. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/February_2005_server_crash for details (if you
can access that page)

Day  6			Day 5 comparison
Breakdown:
PayPal		USD equiv	USD equiv	%change
AUD	  60.71	    $47.99	   $33.37	 43.79%
CAD 	 173.29	   $140.42	  $232.80	-39.68%
EUR 	1143.72	 $1,495.07      $2,553.09	-41.44%
GBP 	 447.17	   $848.64	  $595.47	 42.52%
JPY	19582	   $185.62	  $130.73	 41.98%
USD	2404.35	 $2,404.35	$3,158.91	-23.89%
PayPal total:	 $5,122.09	$6,704.38	-23.60%

MoneyBookers	no data	         no data	-na-
Mail/Post	   $75.00	 no data        100.00%

	TOTAL	$5,197.09	$6,704.38	-22.48%

Grand totals so far (only counting complete days)

PayPal		  USD equiv	%GrandTotal
AUD	1257.71	     $994.22	  2.14%
CAD 	2145.86	   $1,738.79	  3.74%
EUR 	12487.24  $16,323.32	 35.07%
GBP 	2398.41	   $4,551.70	 9.78%
JPY	123678	   $1,172.34	 2.52%
USD	21267.46  $21,267.46	45.69%
PayPal total:	  $46,047.84

Moneybookers:	    $426.69	 0.92%
Mail/Post	     $75.00	 0.16%

GRAND TOTAL	 $46,549.53	100.00%

% toward goal 		62.07%

For the most recent grand total and other details visit
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1

Some selected comments from Day 6:
See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_6

"power to the pedia!" by Anonymous

"Super Site!" by Urs Schwerzmann

"A most delightful time waster!" by Shreesh Taskar

"Que viva la educacion gratuita" by Dennis Salcedo

"My first stop when I want to get started on a new topic." by Joel Gilmore

"I use wiki's nearly every day, thank you for your service hopefully my small
contribution will increase when i get out of college! :)" by Anonymous

"Symbolic gesture of appreciation. Wikipedia is important." by Thomas Herzog

"Thanks for all the hard work everyone has put into this project." by Steven
Schulz

"After learning so much from your site, I owe you at least this. (Woooo!
Cheaper than college!)" by Anonymous

"What a great idea. Probably the most useful site on the Internet for a poor
college student like me." by David Klorig

"For the fundraiser; Get better response times, please!" by David Barbour

Some of my favorites:

"Wisdom of the Crowds rules the Long Tail" by Anonymous

"Once in a lifetime someone comes up with a great idea that improves the
democracy of ideas (PI)" by Anonymous

"A better world is possible -- and this is an example of that better world" by
grupoHuracan Corporation

"If you believe, like me, that this sort of thing is the future, then you are
obligated to contribute. I am happy to do so." by Anonymous

"wikipedia has saved my ass more times than id like to admit" by Louise Noble

"Where would the world be without Wikimedia?" by Emily Baker

"The Bear wishes you well" by Anonymous

"thanks for wikipedia. the revolution will be wikified." by Jeremy Friedman

"Bravo" by Anonymous

Oh, and:

"Can I make it to mav's favorites? ;-)" by Anonymous (well, almost :)

Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO

__________________________________
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Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
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subject: [Foundation-l] Day 6 Fund Drive Report


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 6 Fund Drive Report


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> I doubt you would claim there is no wish from anyone to censor
> Wikipedia per se, or to do something that could reasonably be tagged
> censorship.

Except that self-censorship (i.e. suppression of images) already takes
place on Wikipedia due to some people taking offence at being presented
with certain images of the clitoris, torture and autofellatio.

Christiaan


body:
You didn't answer my question. You're not seriously suggesting that
Gerard did not know about it are you?

The rest of your email didn't make sense to me. How does one purge
debate while at the same announcing where it is in the opening
paragraph?

Purge, in case you were unaware, means to remove. The only thing that
has happened, on the advice of, Rowan Collins, is that it has been
_moved_ so as discussion about technical implications is not drowned by
Gerard's shrill.

Christiaan

David Gerard wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs:
>> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>> The desirability discussion presumably needs greater notice in the
>>> technical discussion.
>
>> You're not seriously suggesting that Gerard did not know about it are
>> you?
>
> As I explained in the bit you snipped, dividing the technical
> discussion of
> how to implement a feature from the desirability of that feature in the
> first place may be seen as artificial and disingenuous. And it
> certainly
> appears that this is being seen that way.
>
> Further (to say again the thing you snipped), continuing to discuss the
> implementation of a feature while purging note of the fact that its
> esirability is *strongly* contentious closely resembles an attempt to
> make
> it a fait accompli.
>
> Also, you should note that - although I am certainly not saying this is
> your intention at all - trying to shift *all* criticism off to a
> separate
> page is a favourite tactic of POV warriors on en: and in other places.
> As
> such, your actions may be seen as highly reminiscent of that.
>
> I suggest you not try so hard to purge this technical page of all
> mention
> of the highly contentious social debate it's concerned with
> implementing
> one side of. i.e. "It hurts when I do this!" "Don't do that, then."
>
>
> - d.


body:
Nicholas Knight said:
>
> No one, NO ONE, has said any sort of filtering must take place by
> default.

All these arguments about appeasing those who will attack us for not
filtering, are meaningless if a non-logged-in user approaching the site
for the first time will see the images that it is proposed should be
filtered on the grounds that most people may be upset to see them.  So
what's the point of filtering if we only do it for people who are
motivated enough to either create a user and log in, or fill in a form
saying what kinds of image they want to have filtered?


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs:
>> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>> I doubt you would claim there is no wish from anyone to censor
>>> Wikipedia per se, or to do something that could reasonably be tagged
>>> censorship.
>
>> Except that self-censorship (i.e. suppression of images) already
>> takes place on Wikipedia due to some people taking offence at being
>> presented with certain images of the clitoris, torture and
>> autofellatio.
>
> This appears to be saying just what I said, but is phrased as a
> disagreement. Please clarify.

Editors censor, as in self-censor, already on Wikipedia.

Christiaan


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>> How does one purge debate while at the same announcing where it is in
>> the opening paragraph?
>
> Evidently he feels it is profoundly lacking in prominence.

You didn't answer my question.

>> Purge, in case you were unaware, means to remove. The only thing that
>> has happened, on the advice of, Rowan Collins, is that it has been
>> _moved_ so as discussion about technical implications is not drowned
>> by Gerard's shrill.
>
> Are you assuming bad faith on Gerard's part?

You used the word purge. Please explain what has been purged. I would
hate to think any of this discussion has been removed from Wikimedia.

Christiaan


body:
Nicholas Knight said:
>
>  there are already proposals to use a cookie-based
>  system and present anonymous users with a disclaimer page permitting
> to  make exactly that choice.

Then there *is* a proposal to filter by default.