from_name: Anthere

body:
> And I'd make a distinction (philosophically
> questionable, but we're
> trying to get work done here 'on the ground')
> between complying with
> laws that are _copyright_ restrictions versus
> complying with laws that
> are _censorship_.  In that case, I have to insist
> that we not worry
> too much wether NPOV articles might be illegal in
> some other
> countries.  Individual contributors should do what
> they need to do to
> stay out of jail, of course.
>
> For example, there was a brief controversy about
> whether certain types
> of articles about racism might be illegal in France.
>  I don't really
> care, although I certainly encourage our French
> wikipedians to do what
> they need to do to obey the law in their own
> country.
>
> On the other hand, most of the censorship laws in
> Europe don't really
> impact NPOV articles anyway.  In France, it's
> illegal to insult the
> President.  But insulting people is not NPOV anyway,
> so there's really
> no conflict.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> Article on French censorship:
>
http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,900093,00.html

Dear Jimbo,

If I read you well, you are first saying that making
"illegal" to insult someone is "censorship".

I disagree. I don't call that censorship,but
"civilization". We are perfectly allowed to say
publicly that we agree with our president, or disagree
with him, for such and such reason. So, we are not
censored. However, we can have problems with justice
when we say someone is an asshole. Or a worm. But in
truth, what does exactly mean ? What is more
important, using fact to support our claim that we
disagree, or saying someone is a worm ? Where's the
censorship here ? Btw, this does not apply only to our
president.

You are also saying that "insulting people is not NPOV
anyway"; I don't understand why. If the claim is
substanciated, and attributed; where is the POV that
we need to take of ? Say, if we state that someone
stabbed a politician for being gay, and later explain
to the police he did because because the politician
"est un p?d?". That's an insult, but that's a fair
account of what was said, by who, to who, about who.
How can it be not NPOV ?

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Free photos (was: A Friendly Challenge to Sheldon Rampton)

body:
--- cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org> wrote:

> I have considered making Wikipedia
> a little prettier by finding suitable pictures for some articles.

That is a noble project, and if you stick to public domain or GFDL
pictures, it will be much nobler still. Please familiarize yourself
with the wealth of image resources listed under

   http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources

I think Jimbo's suggestion of a free photo resource site is great. It
could work pretty much like the GIMP photo archive

   http://gimp-savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/

with a wiki-edited set of keywords for each photo, except it should
allow uploading of course, and needs to keep track of the license (or
lack thereof) and origin of each photo. Initially, we could seed the
database with all the photos from the public domain sources. Could be a
bit resource hungry though.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: copyright on photos (was: a friendly challeng)

body:
Richard Grevers

>In general, if you are approaching someone for
> permission to use a photo they own the rights of,
they
> need to understand that once on Wikipedia it is free

> for anyone else to use within the terms of the
license.
> And if you really want a photo of a Koala, I have
one
> I took myself, which I amd happy to release, also
> kangaroos, wombats and a dingo.

This is the way to go, I think.  I've been very
hesitant about the "fair use" photos from the
beginning, and would very much prefer people take
their own or use photos from various sources in the
public domain.  The NOAA and NASA have some striking
photos, but of course those won't cover every
situation.

If I lived in New York, like Mr. Poor, I can assure
you there would be a wide array of photos of various
famous figures in the 'pedia.  *That's* where the
current need is, since AFAIK the various
counterintelligence agencies are the only agencies
making it a point to photograph famous people.  And,
for some reason, they don't usually release their
dossiers to the public.

kq

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


body:
> --- cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org> wrote:
>
> > I have considered making Wikipedia
> > a little prettier by finding suitable pictures for
> some articles.

Hi all,

Talking about free picture...

Would anyone have a picture (free :-)) of Bagdad
surroundings.
Not an oil well, rather desertic landscape, or local
plant or animal ?

Thanks

Anthere

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] re: take you own dang pictures

body:
Brion writes:
>I keep meaning to wander around LA with a camera
> and snap some  pictures. Hopefully I won't get
> picked up on suspicion of planning terrorist
> acts!

You're only a terrorist if you challenge the status
quo or have a beard.

I got stopped once while taking a picture of a plant.
"Hey man, what are you doing?"
"Taking pictures."
"Of what?"
"Of plants."
...
"You might be robbing houses."
"On my bike?"

I haven't uploaded the offending photo yet because I
don't know what it's called.  Attached, for anyone who
cares.  Is there a botanist in the house?

kq

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: pokyplant.jpg
Type: image/pjpeg
Size: 20141 bytes
Desc: pokyplant.jpg
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030321/7f824e10/attachment.bin


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] eo visitor statistics?

body:
I've just been asked for the visitor statistics to the
Esperanto Wikipedia for an article about Esperanto
webpages.  Can someone please pass this information on
to me?  I asked for it several months ago and from
what I remember, no one replied.

Thanks,
Chuck

=====
Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en fran?ais !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Pedro M.V.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Search

body:
Instead of use google, I prefer use http://www.seeatown.com/search/ only selecting use wikipedia. It works better for me than google and I would like include it in my wikipedia preferences ( like search macine).

Regards.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, koyaanis qatsi wrote:
> Brion writes:
> >I keep meaning to wander around LA with a camera
> > and snap some  pictures. Hopefully I won't get
> > picked up on suspicion of planning terrorist
> > acts!
>
> You're only a terrorist if you challenge the status
> quo or have a beard.

Guilty on the second count, and suspicious-looking on the first.  ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Okhrana and Google

body:
On 20 Mar 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

> That wouldn't have gone to an edit page, just to a blank page. The
> problem here is that an actual edit URL got into google at some point
> and is still coming up in results.
>
> Sannse, we *do* exclude edit pages from google's and other bots'
> spiders, doubly:
>
> * robots.txt excludes access to the /w/ subdirectory, and thus all
>   direct script actions (edits, histories, diffs, printable mode,
>   changing options/length on recentchanges, etc), so it shouldn't be
>   touching them at all.
>
> * edit pages and such have meta tags telling robots "noindex,nofollow";
>   ie that if they do end up with that page, they shouldn't index it, and
>   shouldn't follow links from it, but should just toss the page out and
>   go back where it came from.
>
> A few have somehow gotten through. I'm not sure how. They may be old and
> not yet flushed (googlebot is still going over the site and hasn't
> reindexed every page yet). Note that in the google results there's no
> summary extract, no cache, no notice of the size. It's just a raw URL
> sitting there in the results. That's weird and wrong, and to me
> indicates a problem in their index.

This is more than a few - do a search for "site:wikipedia.org action=edit'.
That gives an estimated 148,000 hits; only the first two seem to be NOT
edit pages. It seems to me that google works according to one of the following
two procedures:
* When a URL is forbidden by the robots.txt, they do keep the URL in the
  database, but do not follow it. Thus, the page will be in the database,
  but only with its URL, without any title or content
* When a new URL is found, it is added to the database in the manner described
  above. Only at a later stage it is found to be forbidden by the robots.txt,
  and thrown out again - to then be moved back in when a link to it is found.

Andre Engels


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Stylesheets suggestion.

body:
> (Richard Grevers <dramatic at xtra.co.nz>):
> How does the user preferences table stores the user's preferred stylesheet?
> Is it just an index number, or does it contain the URI for the stylesheet?
> If the latter, may I suggest that we allow users to specify the location of
> a personal style sheet for wikipedia.
> For example, I could then take the Cologne blue stylesheet, change the
> things I don't like about it (such as the article text size) and host it on
> my own webserver*, point to it from my wkipedia preferences, et voila - a
> fully customized view of wikipedia, but I am actually reducing the load on
> the wikipedia.org servers by not getting a stylesheet from them.

Preferences only stores the index number of your skin, which indexes
the standard stylesheet of that skin. If you want to tweak the styles,
you should be able to do that with your browser, telling it to override
whatever the wikipedia stylesheet says.

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


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Steal This Book (was: A Friendly Challenge to Sheldon Rampton)

body:
I wonder if anyone ever was charged with shoplifting
a copy of Abbie Hoffman's weighty tome, "Steal This Book"?

Uncle Ed


from_name: Jason Williams

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Friendly Challenge to Sheldon Rampton

body:
On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 10:55:44PM -0600, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> I'm not an attorney, but U.S. copyright law, as spelled out in 17 USC
> 107 [...]

I think following US copyright law is a mistake - much better to
follow a policy of complying with the law in as many countries
as feasible. (I've no idea if in this case it makes a difference,
I just wanted to raise the point)

It might not be of much importance *now*, because of course the
server is on US soil. However, if we want to put wikipedia on
paper or CD one day, restricting the legal market for it to
America would be bad.

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Stylesheets suggestion.

body:
On Sat, Mar 22, 2003 at 07:46:27AM +1200, Richard Grevers wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Mar 2003 13:12:18 -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker
> <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
>
> >>(Richard Grevers <dramatic at xtra.co.nz>):
> >>How does the user preferences table stores the user's preferred
> >>stylesheet? Is it just an index number, or does it contain the URI for
> >>the stylesheet? If the latter, may I suggest that we allow users to
> >>specify the location of a personal style sheet for wikipedia.
> >>For example, I could then take the Cologne blue stylesheet, change the
> >>things I don't like about it (such as the article text size) and host it
> >>on my own webserver*, point to it from my wkipedia preferences, et voila
> >>- a fully customized view of wikipedia, but I am actually reducing the
> >>load on the wikipedia.org servers by not getting a stylesheet from them.
> >
> >Preferences only stores the index number of your skin, which indexes
> >the standard stylesheet of that skin. If you want to tweak the styles,
> >you should be able to do that with your browser, telling it to override
> >whatever the wikipedia stylesheet says.
> >
> Unfortunately, no browser (not even Opera which would rate as the most
> configurable by far) yet allows you to define a site-specific user
> stylesheet with a bookmark. Does anyone think it would be worth changing
> the table structure to store 80 bytes rather than a couple in order to
> provide this feature?

Yeah man, that is a bummer.  I do know that if you use Windows, you can
use a tool called Proxomitron, which would allow you to do regex
replaces on HTML.  You could certainly change the link in that case.
Might be worth taking a look at in the meantime.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Steal This Book (was: A Friendly Challenge to
	Sheldon Rampton)

body:
On Fri, 2003-03-21 at 13:39, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> I wonder if anyone ever was charged with shoplifting
> a copy of Abbie Hoffman's weighty tome, "Steal This Book"?
>

The title is the reason no publisher would touch it, and bookstores
hated stocking it.

Well, that and the content.


body:
On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 06:40:35AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Jason Williams wrote:
> > I think following US copyright law is a mistake - much better to
> > follow a policy of complying with the law in as many countries
> > as feasible. (I've no idea if in this case it makes a difference,
> > I just wanted to raise the point)
>
> I like this suggestion generally, but I'm not sure what differences
> there might be.  U.S. copyright law is pretty restrictive, so if we
> adhere to U.S. copyright law, we're probably not violating anyone
> else's copyright laws.  Are there counter-examples?

I'm not particularly well-informed on this matter, but I vaguely
suspect exceptions for parody and fair use are the most likely
to be a problem.

> And I'd make a distinction (philosophically questionable, but we're
> trying to get work done here 'on the ground') between complying with
> laws that are _copyright_ restrictions versus complying with laws that
> are _censorship_.

Agreed - this isn't a binary issue by any means. I think we just need
to consider and balance two factors; international compliance, and
how important whatever we want to do is to the task at hand.

It's very important to be factual and neutral, so if that limits
international legality then so be it.

Pictures of koalas or album covers aren't nearly so much of a
"core issue", so if it turns out that they are illegal in places
outside the US they should be dropped.

--

jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


body:
> (Richard Grevers <dramatic at xtra.co.nz>):
> Unfortunately, no browser (not even Opera which would rate as the most
> configurable by far) yet allows you to define a site-specific user
> stylesheet with a bookmark. Does anyone think it would be worth changing
> the table structure to store 80 bytes rather than a couple in order to
> provide this feature?

I'm not opposed to the idea, and it shouldn't be a performance hit.
Put in on feature request list at SourceForge--I actually do plan
to go though that soon.

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


from_name: Takuya Murata

body:
>Unfortunately, no browser (not even Opera which would rate
as the most
>configurable by far) yet allows you to define a site-
specific user
>stylesheet with a bookmark. Does anyone think it would be
worth changing
>the table structure to store 80 bytes rather than a couple
in order to
>provide this feature?

Fortunately, if you use put !important like

   color: #333333 !important;

you can override site specific stylesheets.


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Page caching

body:
"Lee Daniel Crocker" skribis:

> I think I can probably work around header numbering by
> always including them, putting them in a <span> and setting
> the visibility in CSS. That will have the side-effect that
> old non-CSS browsers will always get numbered headings
> whether they want them or not. I can live with that.

What about putting the numbers only by CSS?

One could use counter-increment/counter-reset and
counter(..) to show them.
An example i found here:
http://jendryschik.de/wsdev/einfuehrung/beispiele/counter.html
(Here is the explanation:
 http://jendryschik.de/wsdev/einfuehrung/css/generierter-content.html#zaehler
 (in german).)

Paul


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: A Friendly Challenge to Sheldon Rampton

body:
On Fri, 21 Mar 2003 00:26:33 -0500, cprompt
<cprompt at tmbg.org> wrote:

> >I'm not an attorney, but U.S. copyright law, as spelled out in 17 USC
> 107, says that "fair use of a > copyrighted work...for purposes such as
> criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching..., scholarship, or
> > research, is not an infringement of copyright." It goes on to specify
> the following criteria to be used in
> > judging whether the use made of a work constitutes fair use:
>
> You seem familiar with copyright law. I have considered making Wikipedia
> a little prettier by finding suitable pictures for some articles. If I
> find a photograph of, say, a koala, and I want to add it to [[Koala]], is
> that permissable (if I can attribute the photo)?
>
That is seldom sufficient. All material on Wikipedia ought to comply with
the GNU Free Documentation License. See
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
In general, if you are approaching someone for permission to use a photo
they own the rights of, they need to understand that once on Wikipedia it
is free for anyone else to use within the terms of the license.
And if you really want a photo of a Koala, I have one I took myself, which
I amd happy to release, also kangaroos, wombats and a dingo.

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Slander against scientists

body:
Ec wrote in part:

>Students of alternative
>scientific theories are content to pursue their studies, and have better
>things to do with their time than to go out attacking scientists.

You should hang out on alt.sci.physics.new-theories more often.
(Not that I ever go there anymore, so no promises.)
Still, these aren't the same sort of people as chiropractors,
or even serious astrologers.

>That something cannot be proven does not make it false.

No, but the attitude of the sceptic (which is most opponents of pseudoscience)
is that something should not be *relied*upon* unless it's been verified.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that chiropractic is pseudoscience
but your family doctor's methods have been verified a good deal
(by which I mean that they've survived several attempts at falsification).
Then the sceptic's POV is that your family doctor is worth turning to
but the chiropractor is more likely just a waste of your time --
so if this POV has any credence in society, then it's dishonest
to suggest that the chiropractor is as reliable as the family doctor.
(This is a more subtle position than what I *think* RK is saying,
and I haven't checked whether, say, Fredbauer is violating it or not.)

>In the spirit
>of Kurt G?del there are always things that cannot be proven within a
>finite set of principles.

As a mathematician, I'm contractually obligated
to refute misapplications of G?del's theorems.
Of course, you only said "In the spirit of" ....

>Fermat's Last Theorem could not be proven for
>300 years, did that make it false during all that time?  Were all the
>people who insisted on its truth for three centuries to be called
>pseudoscientists, or even more slanderously, frauds?

No, but anybody that maintained that it was a theorem
would be called, at best, mistaken.  No mathematician
would have *relied*upon* its truth, even one that believed it.
Of course, we're not exactly comparing the same things here,
scientific verification vs mathematical proof.

>A basic concept of
>logic is that the negation of the statement "All A are true" is "Some A
>are false" and NOT "All A are false".  The fallacy of the excluded middle
>ignores that simple principle.

Aside:  Constructivist mathematicians would argue that even
"Some A are false" is too strong.  But that's irrelevant here.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fred Bauder and academic dishonesty

body:
Fred Bauder wrote in part:

>Here, (I think) is the offending reference it is contained within:
>http://www.ncahf.org/pp/chirop.html

[quote snipped]

>Despite the cricical tenor of the aricle it sets forth both that spinal
>manipulation is effective for the treatment of low back pain, but points out
>that to get that treatment the easiest way is to consult a chiropractor.

Yeah, when I read that passage myself a couple days ago,
I thought that the web site wasn't as unqualifiedly critical
as RK's citation seemed to imply.

>I really fail to see what is dishonest in citing this passage as a
>reference.

-- Toby


body:
RK wrote:

>I have been having a problem with user Fred Bauder on the
>Chiropractic medicine article, and it has no reached the
>point of vandalism. He is openly and repeatedly committing
>academic fraud; i.e. bald-faced lying.

Even if he is doing all of the fraud and lying that you claim,
then he is not doing vandalism.  Let's not water down our terms.
Please see [[Wikipedia:Vandalism]] for what that word means here.

(And if he is doing all of the fraud and lying that you claim,
then it really is a problem, even though it's not vandalism.)

-- Toby


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
Recently, US judges have ruled against creaters of satire on many occasions.
  I wouldn't trust it, or fair use for that matter.  We're better off
assuming fair use doesn't apply.

>I'm not particularly well-informed on this matter, but I vaguely
>suspect exceptions for parody and fair use are the most likely
>to be a problem.

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Slander against scientists

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Ec wrote in part:
>
>>Students of alternative
>>scientific theories are content to pursue their studies, and have better
>>things to do with their time than to go out attacking scientists.
>>
>You should hang out on alt.sci.physics.new-theories more often.
>(Not that I ever go there anymore, so no promises.)
>Still, these aren't the same sort of people as chiropractors,
>or even serious astrologers.
>
I had never visited there before.  So I had a quick look at random
articles.  Someone was referring to accelerating assholes.  I
immediately determined that the entire newsgroup was moving beyond my
mental capacity at an exponential rate.

>>That something cannot be proven does not make it false.
>>
>No, but the attitude of the sceptic (which is most opponents of pseudoscience)
>is that something should not be *relied*upon* unless it's been verified.
>Let's assume for the sake of argument that chiropractic is pseudoscience
>but your family doctor's methods have been verified a good deal
>(by which I mean that they've survived several attempts at falsification).
>Then the sceptic's POV is that your family doctor is worth turning to
>but the chiropractor is more likely just a waste of your time --
>so if this POV has any credence in society, then it's dishonest
>to suggest that the chiropractor is as reliable as the family doctor.
>(This is a more subtle position than what I *think* RK is saying,
>and I haven't checked whether, say, Fredbauer is violating it or not.)
>
Subtlety does not appear to play a big role in RK's approach to a
subject.   ;-)  but let's leave RK aside.

The argument that you are making seems probabilistic, and I can go along
with that.  Any two approaches to a problem will have varying
probabilities of success.  In many medical conditions chiropractic and
standard medical techniques will have different  probabilities of
success.  In very many of those conditions chiropractic's will be very
near zero.  But dismissing chiropractors as utter charlatans does not
lead to the conclusion that the standard medical doctor will perfect.
 They too have often been sold a bill of goods by drug company sales
representatives with fat commissions to protect..

>>In the spirit
>>of Kurt G?del there are always things that cannot be proven within a
>>finite set of principles.
>>
>As a mathematician, I'm contractually obligated
>to refute misapplications of G?del's theorems.
>Of course, you only said "In the spirit of" ....
>
It would be a shame if G?del had no practical application!

>>Fermat's Last Theorem could not be proven for
>>300 years, did that make it false during all that time?  Were all the
>>people who insisted on its truth for three centuries to be called
>>pseudoscientists, or even more slanderously, frauds?
>>
>No, but anybody that maintained that it was a theorem
>would be called, at best, mistaken.  No mathematician
>would have *relied*upon* its truth, even one that believed it.
>Of course, we're not exactly comparing the same things here,
>scientific verification vs mathematical proof.
>
You really should try to get people in the other sciences to accept
mathematical standards of proof. :-)

>>A basic concept of
>>logic is that the negation of the statement "All A are true" is "Some A
>>are false" and NOT "All A are false".  The fallacy of the excluded middle
>>ignores that simple principle.
>>
>
>Aside:  Constructivist mathematicians would argue that even
>"Some A are false" is too strong.  But that's irrelevant here.
>
My requests are more modest.  Consistency with basic logic, or
consistent definitions.

Ec.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Free photos (was: A Friendly Challenge to Sheldon Rampton)

body:
On Friday 21 March 2003 10:51 am, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> That is a noble project, and if you stick to public domain or GFDL
> pictures, it will be much nobler still. Please familiarize yourself
> with the wealth of image resources listed under
>
>    http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources
>
> I think Jimbo's suggestion of a free photo resource site is great. It
> could work pretty much like the GIMP photo archive
>
>    http://gimp-savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/
>
> with a wiki-edited set of keywords for each photo, except it should
> allow uploading of course, and needs to keep track of the license (or
> lack thereof) and origin of each photo. Initially, we could seed the
> database with all the photos from the public domain sources. Could be a
> bit resource hungry though.
>
> Axel

Great idea but this is something of Wikipedia-wide importance, no?

Everybody, please remember which mailing list you are writing to and send your
posts accordingly. :-)

Yours in WikiLove, mav

WikiKarma
I'm writing a response that will be posted to wikipedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] User pages

body:
Should user pages should be protected for that username only? It would make
sense, because that's who it's intended for. But maybe not because then
someone could post any libelous or offensive content they wanted.  Maybe
sysops and the user should be able to edit the users page. What do you
think? Would it destroy the Wiki concept or help free speech and protection
of the page? Is it worth changing or thinking about?

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


subject: [Wikitech-l] Client-side caching updates

body:
I think I've found a help for the Internet Explorer reload problem!

I finally dug up a network dump tool and looked at the actual
communication between IE and the server. What I found was that things
went roughly like this:

First request of page: 200 return code, all text, has last-modified date
and cache-control which requires revalidation on every load.

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 05:40:36 GMT
   Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) PHP/4.2.3
   X-Powered-By: PHP/4.2.3
   X-Accelerated-By: PHPA/1.3.3r2
-> Expires: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
-> Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, max-age=0
-> Last-Modified: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 16:34:52 GMT
   Content-language: en
   Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=99
   Connection: Keep-Alive
   Transfer-Encoding: chunked
   Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Second request of page: 304 return code (not modified) -- but!

   HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified
   Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 05:40:53 GMT
   Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) PHP/4.2.3
   X-Powered-By: PHP/4.2.3
   X-Accelerated-By: PHPA/1.3.3r2
-> Expires: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 08:40:53 GMT
-> Cache-Control: public, max-age=10800
-> Last-Modified: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 14:03:33 GMT
   Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=98
   Connection: Keep-Alive
   Content-Type: text/html

Third request of page: didn't even bother to touch the network, because
the 304 return accidentally let apache and/or php fill in generic
settings for the last-modified and cache-control headers which claim it
was modified when the PHP script was last updated and that it doesn't
need to be revalidated for 24 hours!

I've patched OutputPage.php to include the cache-control and
last-modified when sending 304s, and it's now rechecking the page on
subsequent visits. (A 304 returns very quickly, so it's fast even on my
modem.)

This may or may not help with the "reload doesn't actually reload"
problem. Hopefully so. ;)

Next step is to add a last-touched field for pages and users to
invalidate caches when links & preferences change -- see
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_control

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20030321/fa53595b/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
|X-Originating-IP: [24.59.201.39]
|X-Originating-Email: [name12323 at hotmail.com]
|From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" <name12323 at hotmail.com>
|X-OriginalArrivalTime: 22 Mar 2003 01:12:58.0623 (UTC) FILETIME=[2D1418F0:01C2F010]
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 20:12:58 -0500
|
|Recently, US judges have ruled against creaters of satire on many occasions.
|  I wouldn't trust it, or fair use for that matter.  We're better off
|assuming fair use doesn't apply.
|
|>I'm not particularly well-informed on this matter, but I vaguely
|>suspect exceptions for parody and fair use are the most likely
|>to be a problem.
|
|

See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody for court decision protecting
parody.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia.org (that's with an "m" as in multimedia)

body:
On Friday 21 March 2003 10:51 am Axel wrote:
> That is a noble project, and if you stick to public domain or GFDL
> pictures, it will be much nobler still. Please familiarize yourself
> with the wealth of image resources listed under
>
>    http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources
>
> I think Jimbo's suggestion of a free photo resource site is great. It
> could work pretty much like the GIMP photo archive
>
>    http://gimp-savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/
>
> with a wiki-edited set of keywords for each photo, except it should
> allow uploading of course, and needs to keep track of the license (or
> lack thereof) and origin of each photo. Initially, we could seed the
> database with all the photos from the public domain sources. Could be a
> bit resource hungry though.
>
> Axel

This is a most excellent idea. In addition to being a home to the Foundation,
Wikimedia.org could also be the central repository of all types of resource
media files (images, sounds, videos, GIS-based maps, maybe even indexed
read-only source text documents ...) that could be used by all Wikipedia
languages, Wiktionary, "WikiTextbooks", "WikiFiction" and whatever else we
think-up. This project could be covered by the GNU-FDL by default, but IMO
the GNU-FDL is poorly suited for media files...

We can have a more extensive license discussion later but either way I would
support a license (or several licenses) that has/have the same type of
restrictions and protections as the GNU-FDL but is better-suited to media
files. And, like Wikipedia pages the license(s) could be compulsory by
default for all materials created by project contributors and uploaded to the
website.

"Fair use" media would be discouraged and could be allowed only on an interim
basis for things we could potentially produce ourselves (such as an image of
a famous building that still exists or person who is still alive). But some
things we could not obtain a new copyright to (something for which we do not
have a free media file for nor could obtain for practical reasons).

These things would have to be clearly marked as "fair use" so that any
downstream licensee for whom the use would not be fair, could easily exclude
those media files from any Wikipedia-derivative work that might make use of
the media (exact attribution would be absolutely required in order to
discourage the copying of non-free media files and to make it as easy as
possible for downstream licensees to ask the copyright holder for
permission). But the general goal of the project should be to have the
maximum amount of media under a free license.

IMO this proposed project shouldn't necessarily be limited to media files that
are already used by a Wikipedia or Wikiwhatever article. It could be a
project onto itself that Wikipedia articles could use as its media resource
(using the image and media namespaces just as we do now). This could also be
a good place to figure out some better way to more intelligently index and
add metadata to the content in order to facilitate media searches (even human
made lists would work here but we've already tried that with Wikipedia with
limited success).

And of course, if there isn't a Wikipedia/Wiktionary article that makes use of
a media file, then we would have no "fair use" claim to have that file on our
server (even then we might be on shaky ground since many people will find the
image first and not the article that makes use of the image - "fair use"
media may have to be excluded from Google indexing for this reason).

This should encourage a community of media producers to form whose goal would
be to create a "free as in libre" media resource. The only problem I see is
that it would be difficult to check for copyright violations (this may be a
very important point - esp with some newly proposed legislation and the
general insane paranoia in the media industry about file sharing). Come to
think of it, our sever may also be abused by teenage garage rock bands
looking for a distribution medium...

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 17]]

PS if this project really takes off as "Wikimedia.org" then we might have to
think up yet another name for the as-yet-to-be-named Foundation in order to
avoid confusion. Sigh... I thought I had it nailed with Wikimedia. But we
could still simply think of the media file repository as a shared resource
for all Wikimedia projects (such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary...).


subject: [Wikitech-l] Stylesheets suggestion.

body:
How does the user preferences table stores the user's preferred stylesheet?
Is it just an index number, or does it contain the URI for the stylesheet?
If the latter, may I suggest that we allow users to specify the location of
a personal style sheet for wikipedia.
For example, I could then take the Cologne blue stylesheet, change the
things I don't like about it (such as the article text size) and host it on
my own webserver*, point to it from my wkipedia preferences, et voila - a
fully customized view of wikipedia, but I am actually reducing the load on
the wikipedia.org servers by not getting a stylesheet from them.

*actually, I could access it from my PC via file:// protocol, but hosting
it on the web gives me a mobile profile that I can use form any computer.

--
Richard Grevers


subject: [WikiEN-l] User pages

body:
On Fri, 2003-03-21 at 18:35, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Should user pages should be protected for that username only? It would make
> sense, because that's who it's intended for. But maybe not because then
> someone could post any libelous or offensive content they wanted.  Maybe
> sysops and the user should be able to edit the users page. What do you
> think? Would it destroy the Wiki concept or help free speech and protection
> of the page? Is it worth changing or thinking about?

I think this would damage the Wiki ethos. Wiki should have a "small
town" feel: we don't lock our doors, and if someone makes a mess we
pitch in and clean it up. There's not really much of a downside to
having user pages editable -- the rare vandalism still gets cleaned up,
and useful edits can and do occur (fixing formatting errors or broken
links, for example).

Dan, if you haven't already, you might want to take a look around
MeatballWiki, a wiki about online communities. Naturally, there's a lot
of discussion there about what makes wiki so wikilicious! In particular,
see:
  http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
  http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?UnlockedDoors
  http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?BarnRaising

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030322/2f69bc53/attachment.pgp


body:
On Fri, 2003-03-21 at 22:19, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Next step is to add a last-touched field for pages and users to
> invalidate caches when links & preferences change -- see
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_control

Okay, experimental code is in CVS and running on test.wikipedia.org,
please give it a thorough tryout!

Caching is now enabled for all browsers except for Internet Explorer 5.0
and earlier (which apparently have some other dreadful problems, and
I've no means to test them).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Checking in newcodebase/Article.php;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/Article.php,v  <--  Article.php
new revision: 1.142; previous revision: 1.141
done
Checking in newcodebase/DatabaseFunctions.php;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/DatabaseFunctions.php,v  <--  DatabaseFunctions.php
new revision: 1.27; previous revision: 1.26
done
Checking in newcodebase/DefaultSettings.php;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/DefaultSettings.php,v  <--  DefaultSettings.php
new revision: 1.20; previous revision: 1.19
done
Checking in newcodebase/LinksUpdate.php;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/LinksUpdate.php,v  <--  LinksUpdate.php
new revision: 1.11; previous revision: 1.10
done
Checking in newcodebase/OutputPage.php;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/OutputPage.php,v  <--  OutputPage.php
new revision: 1.116; previous revision: 1.115
done
Checking in newcodebase/SpecialMovepage.php;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/SpecialMovepage.php,v  <--  SpecialMovepage.php
new revision: 1.30; previous revision: 1.29
done
Checking in newcodebase/User.php;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/User.php,v  <--  User.php
new revision: 1.41; previous revision: 1.40
done
Checking in newcodebase/maintenance/buildTables.inc;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/maintenance/buildTables.inc,v  <--  buildTables.inc
new revision: 1.23; previous revision: 1.22
done
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/maintenance/patch-cache.sql,v
done
Checking in newcodebase/maintenance/patch-cache.sql;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/maintenance/patch-cache.sql,v  <--  patch-cache.sql
initial revision: 1.1
done
Checking in newcodebase/maintenance/patch-list.txt;
/cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/maintenance/patch-list.txt,v  <--  patch-list.txt
new revision: 1.8; previous revision: 1.7

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20030322/9198275a/attachment.pgp>


body:
On Fri, 21 Mar 2003 13:12:18 -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker
<lee at piclab.com> wrote:

>> (Richard Grevers <dramatic at xtra.co.nz>):
>> How does the user preferences table stores the user's preferred
>> stylesheet? Is it just an index number, or does it contain the URI for
>> the stylesheet? If the latter, may I suggest that we allow users to
>> specify the location of a personal style sheet for wikipedia.
>> For example, I could then take the Cologne blue stylesheet, change the
>> things I don't like about it (such as the article text size) and host it
>> on my own webserver*, point to it from my wkipedia preferences, et voila
>> - a fully customized view of wikipedia, but I am actually reducing the
>> load on the wikipedia.org servers by not getting a stylesheet from them.
>
> Preferences only stores the index number of your skin, which indexes
> the standard stylesheet of that skin. If you want to tweak the styles,
> you should be able to do that with your browser, telling it to override
> whatever the wikipedia stylesheet says.
>
Unfortunately, no browser (not even Opera which would rate as the most
configurable by far) yet allows you to define a site-specific user
stylesheet with a bookmark. Does anyone think it would be worth changing
the table structure to store 80 bytes rather than a couple in order to
provide this feature?

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikimedia.org (that's with an "m" as in multimedia)

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> writes:

> Wikimedia.org could also be the central repository of all types of resource
> media files (images, sounds, videos, GIS-based maps, maybe even indexed
> read-only source text documents ...) that could be used by all Wikipedia
> languages, Wiktionary, "WikiTextbooks", "WikiFiction" and whatever else we
> think-up. This project could be covered by the GNU-FDL by default, but IMO
> the GNU-FDL is poorly suited for media files...

Don't waste ressources.  Better use archiving projects that already
exist:

    http://www.ibiblio.org
    http://www.gutenberg.net

The Wikipedia is for dynamic contents (articles written by us);
documents are better stored on specialized sites.

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


from_name: A thypique

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l --User Name

body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <name12323 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Sounds good, but only a sysop could change that
> status of the page.  Or
> maybe there could be a cookie identifier on each
> person's computer so we
> could track them? The cookie would be blockable.

Hello list,

For Tannnin
I don't like very much the idea of adding another
class level on Wikipedia. I think it is a slow
constitution of a very rigid hierarchy, where more and
more people forget being a sysop imply more duties
than rights. And it would make very obvious that
non-loggued in people are not trusted.

For Daniel
What do you mean by a trackable cookie ? Another
spying intention on people ? Invasion privacy ?
Tracking exactly what ?

Yours

Athypique

> >Maybe it is worth considering having a special
> class of Wikipedia
> >article that is not a completely protected page,
> but can only be edited
> >by logged-in contributors. I'm not sure if this
> would work or not, or
> >if it would be practical to implement. I'm just
> thinking aloud. Any
> >bright ideas out there? Comments?
> >
> >
> >Tony Wilson
> >(Tannin)
> >list at redhill.net.au

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en fran?ais !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re:User name

body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <name12323 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Should user pages should be protected for that
> username only? It would make
> sense, because that's who it's intended for. But
> maybe not because then
> someone could post any libelous or offensive content
> they wanted.  Maybe
> sysops and the user should be able to edit the users
> page. What do you
> think? Would it destroy the Wiki concept or help
> free speech and protection
> of the page? Is it worth changing or thinking about?

Hello list

Maybe the username page could be protected against any
edition done by any other user except the logued in
user. If the logued in user is abusing us in posting
insanity, discussion with him would be enough to drive
him out of the idea. Just like some users were asked
by the community to change their user name because it
did not please the community. The choice of a user
name and of a user page content is free as long as
community is happy with it. Similarly, regular sysop
have no possibility now to change a user name; why
would they have the right to change the content of the
page ? The user name and the user page are his image.

Yours

Athypique

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en fran?ais !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Stylesheets suggestion.

body:
On Fri, 21 Mar 2003 15:41:48 -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker
<lee at piclab.com> wrote:

>> (Richard Grevers <dramatic at xtra.co.nz>):
>> Unfortunately, no browser (not even Opera which would rate as the most
>> configurable by far) yet allows you to define a site-specific user
>> stylesheet with a bookmark. Does anyone think it would be worth changing
>> the table structure to store 80 bytes rather than a couple in order to
>> provide this feature?
>
> I'm not opposed to the idea, and it shouldn't be a performance hit.
> Put in on feature request list at SourceForge--I actually do plan
> to go though that soon.
>
Done

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Real stats! (Re: what's going on with wikipedia ?)

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
news:1047904066.17941.6.camel at frank.vibber.org:
>
> Assuming I haven't screwed it up ;)  it should be rotating the logs
> and updating the stats every night from here out.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

It does not seems to work for nl.wikipedia.org/stats  last update 18th

And for FR and EN the stats for 19th and 20th are lost.

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l --User Name

body:
Track them to see who is doing the bad editing/trolling.  This would be more
useful than tracking IP addresses because it wouldn't chage. We could then
ban the cookie. Would that be too harmful? (IP addresses change every time
for dialup users and sometimes cycle around for broadband users).

>For Daniel
>What do you mean by a trackable cookie ? Another
>spying intention on people ? Invasion privacy ?
>Tracking exactly what ?
>
>Yours
>
>Athypique

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> On Friday 21 March 2003 10:51 am Axel wrote:
>
>>That is a noble project, and if you stick to public domain or GFDL
>>pictures, it will be much nobler still. Please familiarize yourself
>>with the wealth of image resources listed under
>>
>>   http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources
>>
>>I think Jimbo's suggestion of a free photo resource site is great. It
>>could work pretty much like the GIMP photo archive
>>
>>   http://gimp-savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/
>>
>>with a wiki-edited set of keywords for each photo, except it should
>>allow uploading of course, and needs to keep track of the license (or
>>lack thereof) and origin of each photo. Initially, we could seed the
>>database with all the photos from the public domain sources. Could be a
>>bit resource hungry though.
>>
>>Axel
>
>
> This is a most excellent idea. In addition to being a home to the Foundation,
> Wikimedia.org could also be the central repository of all types of resource
> media files (images, sounds, videos, GIS-based maps, maybe even indexed
> read-only source text documents ...) that could be used by all Wikipedia
> languages, Wiktionary, "WikiTextbooks", "WikiFiction" and whatever else we
> think-up. This project could be covered by the GNU-FDL by default, but IMO
> the GNU-FDL is poorly suited for media files...

I think images, sounds and videos will do just fine. :-)

I especially like the words "central repository". As far as I'm
concerned, we'll have a wikipedia-wide user management sooner or later.
I'd imagine a "central" site for managing data that is used by all the
different wikipedias (including wiktionary, meta, and so on). It could be
* The central user management.
* A place to manage language links
* A place to manage the different translations of the user interface
* The central media storage, where we'd store the *images*, with a
description, that can be linked from every wikipedia (which can in turn
have a description in its own language). This would greatly reduce the
need for uploading every image in every language.
* Maybe the seat of the "Wikipedia foundation" as well.

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Search feature

body:
I hate to say this, but the seach engine in Wikipedia is once again slowing
down the server.  i don't think the new server can keep up with the high
demand for seaches. Maybe we should postpone using it until it works
completely. Or maybe we should make some restrictive measure for searching,
like only signed in users can seach. We really need another server.

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail


from_name: Zoe

body:
And in favor of them just as often.  The Matell lawsuit against the band who sang "Barbie Girl" was dismissed.
Zoe
 Daniel Ehrenberg <name12323 at hotmail.com> wrote:Recently, US judges have ruled against creaters of satire on many occasions.
I wouldn't trust it, or fair use for that matter. We're better off
assuming fair use doesn't apply.

>I'm not particularly well-informed on this matter, but I vaguely
>suspect exceptions for parody and fair use are the most likely
>to be a problem.

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030322/3c5ce77a/attachment.htm


body:
"Richard Grevers" skribis:

> [...] Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
>
> > Preferences only stores the index number of your skin, which indexes
> > the standard stylesheet of that skin. If you want to tweak the styles,
> > you should be able to do that with your browser, telling it to override
> > whatever the wikipedia stylesheet says.
>
> Unfortunately, no browser (not even Opera which would rate as the most
> configurable by far) yet allows you to define a site-specific user
> stylesheet with a bookmark. Does anyone think it would be worth changing
> the table structure to store 80 bytes rather than a couple in order to
> provide this feature?

A nice way to allow user defined style sheets per site
is yet possible ...

Bertilo uses it in his site:

http://www.bertilow.com/ttt-signaturo.php

(only in esperanto yet).

What wikipedia have to do:

add id="wikipedia-org" (or something similar)
to the <body>-elements

    <body id="wikipedia-org">
    ...
    </body>

Then the users in their style sheets add someting like

    #wikipedia-org * {
      background-color: #000 !important;
      color: #fff !important;
    }

to get for example white on black only on
wikipedia.

Paul


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia metup

body:
Are there any definitive dates for the wikipedia metup?

_________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] eo stats, dankon!

body:
> http://eo.wikipedia.org/stats/
>
> Unfortunately, I haven't yet put the eo stats into
> the update queue, so
> they only go up to january at the moment. I'll get
> those updated...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Thanks!  Your rock!  This is awesome...

Chuck

=====
Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en fran?ais !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc

body: Wikipedias should upgrade to texvc code that runs on test.wikipedia.org


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and other
 similar entries

body:
On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> Sounds good, but only a sysop could change that status of the page.  Or
> maybe there could be a cookie identifier on each person's computer so we
> could track them? The cookie would be blockable.
>
Using cookies to track users would not be as effective as you appear to
think it is. Altering cookies is a remarkably trivial exercise, only a
little more complicated than changing the wallpaper on your computer screen.
(Then again, I used to do phone support for the Netscape browser, so maybe
it's only trivial to me.)

Perhaps if the relevant token in the cookie were encrypted -- say along
the lines of how the password is encrypted in Linux -- then it would
discourage all but the most determined attempts to masquerade as the
targetted user. But in any case, it would still be trivial for someone
like Lir/Vera/Susan to create a new identity by deleting the token when
Wikipedia started blocking him/her based on the token in the cookie.

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] PHP-mySQL sandbox

body:
I'm trying to learn PHP and mySQL so I can become a developer of Wikipedia.
I'm having trouble configuring them on my computer to test out programs, and
I've already asked around for help. If it's not to much trouble, could
someone make some sort of sandbox for PHP and mySQL? The database would have
to be seperate to prevent hacking to the Wikipedia server.  It could be a
good resource to the net, as it is very inconvienent to set up your computer
as a server. The PHP part wouldn't be that hard, just make it so anyone
could edit the text of some sandbox.php (including the HTML) and have it
update to the server.

-LittleDan

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] leave of absence

body:
I've been contributing to the Wikipedia with great enthusiasm for a
year now, but it is time for a break.  See you later and my best to
everyone.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [WikiEN-l] PHP-mySQL sandbox

body:
>I'm having trouble configuring them on my computer to test out programs,
>and I've already asked around for help.

I've figured it out. You can disregard my last email if you want to, but it
would still be a good idea.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
I'd like to do some tinkering with the Wikipedia skins and maybe come
up with a couple of different layouts, but the HTML seems to be
scattered across several different PHP files. Is there a recommended
easy way to do this (ideally in a WYSIWYG HTML editor like
Dreamweaver)?
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Search feature

body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <name12323 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I hate to say this, but the seach engine in
> Wikipedia is once again slowing
> down the server.  i don't think the new server can
> keep up with the high
> demand for seaches. Maybe we should postpone using
> it until it works
> completely. Or maybe we should make some restrictive
> measure for searching,
> like only signed in users can seach. We really need
> another server.

Using wikipedia with the google search is really
painful. not all articles are found by far
and we are working not only for editors, also for
readers, who will be non loggued in most of the time,
and could have the feeling the encyclopedia is emptier
on some topics that it really is
What about enhanced search feature ? With some of the
articles being classified in groups ? Not all of them,
but for example, authors could be grouped in an author
list, and people could search in the author list
instead than in the whole encyclopedia ?

Exactly how much is the search feature used ? And
what's the proportion between real articles search and
meta search ?

I'll give an example...
on the french wiki, all the redirect articles about
common meta.articles have been deleted, for some said
they didnot belong to the encyclopedia itself.

Fine, but now, if I want to access someone talk page
for example, I do a first search in all articles, then
I get the more precise search box, then I give more
precision saying I want to look in user page, then I
do a second search, and I finally get the result. Same
for any help page.

How bright is that ? Looking in the whole database
first to have then the possibility to give more
precision to my search. That's inefficient. Is there
anything to do there ? At least an access to advanced
search ? Or does that exist and I did not realise ?

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Search feature

body:
Maybe we should recreate the category system like there are in so many other
languages.  Then you can search within a category, which would have less
items then the whole wikipedia? There could be a drop-down box with all of
the main categories next to the search box, and you would have to choose a
category. Or (seperate situation)  you could search the category name. This
would search all of the sub category names too. Would this work?

-LittleDan

>Fine, but now, if I want to access someone talk page
>for example, I do a first search in all articles, then
>I get the more precise search box, then I give more
>precision saying I want to look in user page, then I
>do a second search, and I finally get the result. Same
>for any help page.
>
>How bright is that ? Looking in the whole database
>first to have then the possibility to give more
>precision to my search. That's inefficient. Is there
>anything to do there ? At least an access to advanced
>search ? Or does that exist and I did not realise ?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sysop request: Tim Starling

body:
On Sunday 23 March 2003 04:00 am Tim Starling wrote:
> I'd like to request sysop status. I've been around since last October, and
> I hardly ever get into POV disputes or edit wars of any kind. Being a sysop
> would be nice since I'll finally be able to revert annoying page-creation
> vandalism, and to delete pages to make way for moving.
>
> -- Tim Starling

I thought you already were! Of course you should be an Admin silly. :-)

--mav


subject: [WikiEN-l] Search feature

body:
On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Anthere wrote:
>
> --- Daniel Ehrenberg <name12323 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I hate to say this, but the seach engine in
> > Wikipedia is once again slowing
> > down the server.  i don't think the new server can
> > keep up with the high
> > demand for seaches. Maybe we should postpone using
> > it until it works
> > completely. Or maybe we should make some restrictive
> > measure for searching,
> > like only signed in users can seach. We really need
> > another server.
>
> Using wikipedia with the google search is really
> painful. not all articles are found by far
> and we are working not only for editors, also for
> readers, who will be non loggued in most of the time,
> and could have the feeling the encyclopedia is emptier
> on some topics that it really is
> What about enhanced search feature ? With some of the
> articles being classified in groups ? Not all of them,
> but for example, authors could be grouped in an author
> list, and people could search in the author list
> instead than in the whole encyclopedia ?
>
> Exactly how much is the search feature used ? And
> what's the proportion between real articles search and
> meta search ?
>
One way the search engine could be improved on is if
by default it does a logical "and" search, rather than
the logical "or" search it appears to do now. To provide
an example of what I'm talking about, the other night I needed
to know who wrote the novel "Red Harvest," so I did a
search on Wikipedia using those two words. What the
search engine did was return all of the articles with
the words "red" or "harvest" in either the title or the
body of the article.

After glancing through the first hundred hits, I gave up on
Wikipedia, & used Amazon's search engine. The book was the
first or second on the list.

Although I'm not a database programmer (although I've taken
a couple of classes on Oracle & SQL in the past), I'd guess
that it's not that much of a performance hit to have the
search query first treat the input as an "and" statement,
then if nothing is returned, say in the subject head, then
offer to rerun the query as an "or" statement.

Just my two cents.

Geoff


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
> (Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>):
> I'd like to do some tinkering with the Wikipedia skins and maybe come
> up with a couple of different layouts, but the HTML seems to be
> scattered across several different PHP files. Is there a recommended
> easy way to do this (ideally in a WYSIWYG HTML editor like
> Dreamweaver)?

You can certainly design and lay out Wikipedia pages using any tool
you like, and just point the developers to them when you're done
with a suggestion to implement you design. If it aligns with our
goals (that is, it's conformant HTML, works across browsers and OSs,
is not a performance penalty, etc.), then we're like to do it.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: date on front page

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>Maybe on the front page (or the side bar) we should
>have a link for the date (ie today in history). For example,
>today would be [[23 March]] [[2003]].
>Or it could be a Special page updated automatically
>(Special:History, Special:Today?)

It is already on the Main Page. Click on "Historical anniversaries" in the
Selected Articels box.

>It would look like this:
>
>{23 March text}
>
>----
>
>{2003 text}

Actually this is the syntax:

[[{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}]]

Which for today would give [[March 23]]

This is what the wiki code looks like for the current link:
'''[[{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}|Historical anniversaries]]''':

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Rutherfordium&diff=768918&oldid=768912


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] date on front page

body:
On Sun, 2003-03-23 at 13:22, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Maybe on the front page (or the side bar) we should have a link for the date
> (ie today in history). For example, today would be [[23 March]] [[2003]].

Don't we already?

Aha! It's been deceptively renamed, so the link appears as the text
"Historical anniversaries", which is followed by a list of links to
things that didn't necessarily happen on that day. This isn't very good
design.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030323/e581c8e6/attachment.pgp


subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
> >>(Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>):
> >>I'd like to do some tinkering with the Wikipedia skins and maybe come
> >>up with a couple of different layouts, but the HTML seems to be
> >>scattered across several different PHP files. Is there a recommended
> >>easy way to do this (ideally in a WYSIWYG HTML editor like
> >>Dreamweaver)?

On Sun, 2003-03-23 at 13:46, tarquin wrote:
> It would be nice if designers could simply upload an HTML template & a
> CSS file.

Tarquin, Sheldon: could you create some sample HTML template files & CSS
sheets in the form you'd *like* to be able to work with? Then we can see
about making the code talk to it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20030323/4da03551/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] date on front page

body:
brion vibber wrote:
>Don't we already?
>
>Aha! It's been deceptively renamed, so the link
>appears as the text "Historical anniversaries", which
>is followed by a list of links to things that didn't
>necessarily happen on that day. This isn't very good
>design.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Agreed - that was a hack. I've made some changes to the [[Main Page]] that
make things a bit more clear:

'''[[List of historical anniversaries|Historical anniversaries]]''':
[[{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}]] - [[Event]] - ...

See
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Notice the date link is no longer hidden but is now just the first article in
the Historical anniversaries list. This works for the list since the newest
items for that list are always placed right next to the Historical
anniversaries subhead and it is rare that any historical event gets listed
until /after/ the day on which the event occurred has passed (sorry, but Zoe
and I are always at least a day behind on de-stubifying the day pages).

BTW these events are only listed on the Main Page for an average of 4 days -
sometimes less. In comparison some "Recent deaths" stay listed for nearly a
month and "Current events" usually has a link or two that is two or more
weeks old (not that anything is wrong with that - there is only so much to
report on). Needless to say there is a lot more past history to cover than
current history (thank goodness!).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
I added more events to [[March 22]], checked and fixed all events for
accuracy, updated all the year pages and many of the other articles linked
from that page. I then added a few historical anniversary events to the Main
Page.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysop request: Tim Starling

body:
I'd like to request sysop status. I've been around since last October, and I
hardly ever get into POV disputes or edit wars of any kind. Being a sysop
would be nice since I'll finally be able to revert annoying page-creation
vandalism, and to delete pages to make way for moving.

-- Tim Starling

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_mobile.asp


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Search feature

body:
Maybe the article didn't exist.  Try typing in Red_Harvest after
wikipedia.org/wiki/. That's what I aways do.  The page doesn't exist.  We
need more people to write book articles. I write one after every book I read
for school. If everyone collectively tries to avoid using the search engine,
the server will be much faster.

>One way the search engine could be improved on is if
>by default it does a logical "and" search, rather than
>the logical "or" search it appears to do now. To provide
>an example of what I'm talking about, the other night I needed
>to know who wrote the novel "Red Harvest," so I did a
>search on Wikipedia using those two words. What the
>search engine did was return all of the articles with
>the words "red" or "harvest" in either the title or the
>body of the article.
>
>After glancing through the first hundred hits, I gave up on
>Wikipedia, & used Amazon's search engine. The book was the
>first or second on the list.
>
>Although I'm not a database programmer (although I've taken
>a couple of classes on Oracle & SQL in the past), I'd guess
>that it's not that much of a performance hit to have the
>search query first treat the input as an "and" statement,
>then if nothing is returned, say in the subject head, then
>offer to rerun the query as an "or" statement.
>
>Just my two cents.
>
>Geoff

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail


subject: [WikiEN-l] date on front page

body:
Maybe on the front page (or the side bar) we should have a link for the date
(ie today in history). For example, today would be [[23 March]] [[2003]].
Or it could be a Special page updated automatically (Special:History,
Special:Today?)
It would look like this:

{23 March text}

----

{2003 text}

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] leave of absence

body:
> I've been contributing to the Wikipedia with great enthusiasm for a
> year now, but it is time for a break.  See you later and my best to
> everyone.

Tom,

hope to welcome you back soon. Despite occasional disagreements, I enjoyed
your contributions!

Have fun,

Erik


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>>(Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>):
>>I'd like to do some tinkering with the Wikipedia skins and maybe come
>>up with a couple of different layouts, but the HTML seems to be
>>scattered across several different PHP files. Is there a recommended
>>easy way to do this (ideally in a WYSIWYG HTML editor like
>>Dreamweaver)?
>>
>>
>
>You can certainly design and lay out Wikipedia pages using any tool
>you like, and just point the developers to them when you're done
>with a suggestion to implement you design. If it aligns with our
>goals (that is, it's conformant HTML, works across browsers and OSs,
>is not a performance penalty, etc.), then we're like to do it.
>
>

It would be nice if designers could simply upload an HTML template & a
CSS file.
(or CSS files plural -- I've discovered alternate stylesheets. see
devedge.netscape.com with Mozilla / Opera to see!)

The system that was set up on the test server of having the combined
HTML & CSS in a wiki pages is unfeasible. when designing by hand, one
tends to refresh the browser every minute or so. having to save the wiki
page & wait for a reload would really drag things out; plus combining
CSS & HTML in a single document means I lost 1/2 of the syntax
highlighitng in TextPad :(


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] New naming convention

body:
Mav's informed me that I should write to the list before making a naming
convention "official", so here I am. The convention in question is
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ANaming_conventions_(pieces_of_music)
and concerns how to name articles about pieces of classical music. The
convention as it stands has been forming in my brain for the past few
months, and I'm pretty sure it's the best way to go.

Discussion can be had on the convention talk page - I'd rather we didn't
clog up the list with talk of something so specific.

To be clear: I'm not just making this convention for the sake of it or
because I get a kick out of inventing new rules. I honestly think that it's
a useful convention, because there are literally dozens of feasible titles
one could give an article on, say, the Beethoven violin concerto, and
unless some sort of standard is set we could have links pointing to any
number of different titles (I think [[Violin Concerto (Beethoven)]] is best
in this case, for reasons laid out on the convention talk page).

LP (Camembert)
WikiKarma: [[Concerto for Orchestra (Bart?k)]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wanli

body:
On Mon, 2003-03-24 at 01:59, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Just in case: Brion, how do I block the IP of a logged-in user (never
> did that before)?

If you really need the IP of a logged-in user, you'll need to match up
their last edit (as shown by contribs) with the web server logs. This is
somewhat annoying, and deliberately so; banning people is a serious
step, and isn't supposed to be one-click easy. (For one thing we can't
afford the patent license!)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030324/2fde0620/attachment.pgp


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wanli

body:
A user named "Wanli" has, afer making some contributions that look OK,
started to create dozens of new articles all consisting of the text
"Goolge keywords: Canada America cooperation" (or something like that).
I asked him to stop that and removed these articles. He started
recreating them and told me on my talk page to "stop deleting valuable
encyclopedia content".

I then blocked his user account, but he created a "Wanli2" user and asks
to resurrect the "Wanli" account.

Does anyone know Wanli? Can anyone reason with him/her?
Just in case: Brion, how do I block the IP of a logged-in user (never
did that before)?

Please assist,
Magnus


from_name: Leonard Tulipan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Skins

body:
About Skins and HTML Templates (as that is what you seem to propose)
I had a few of my webpages running using Fast Template
http://www.google.com/search?q=fast+template (a few tutorial +
modifications can be seen on google)
I don't really like it anymore, but it may be worth a look.
The way you handle it is, making an external template file which is
basically html-code with {SPECIAL_TAGS} in curly brackets which you can
replace from your code.
But for REAL php-programmers (and I am not one of them) this might be to
simple/redundant so feel free to ignore this.

Cheers
Leo


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
You're a sysop now, Tim.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wanli

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>On Mon, 2003-03-24 at 01:59, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>>Just in case: Brion, how do I block the IP of a logged-in user (never
>>did that before)?
>>
>>
>
>If you really need the IP of a logged-in user, you'll need to match up
>their last edit (as shown by contribs) with the web server logs. This is
>somewhat annoying, and deliberately so; banning people is a serious
>step, and isn't supposed to be one-click easy. (For one thing we can't
>afford the patent license!)
>
I was just asking because I was afraid of another "Google keywords"
flood, and didn't have the time to revert them. Fortunately, it seems to
have stopped.

Maybe we could afford the patent fee if we redirect our search queries
to Amazon? That would also reduce server load ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Skins

body:
Leonard Tulipan wrote:

>About Skins and HTML Templates (as that is what you seem to propose)
>I had a few of my webpages running using Fast Template
>http://www.google.com/search?q=fast+template (a few tutorial +
>modifications can be seen on google)
>I don't really like it anymore, but it may be worth a look.
>The way you handle it is, making an external template file which is
>basically html-code with {SPECIAL_TAGS} in curly brackets which you can
>replace from your code.
>
I had a very similar thing running on the test site once.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia HTML standards (was Skins)

body:
If you want redesign wikipedia's look or add a skin, here's
what I consider to be the basic requirements. Others may want to
add to or quibble with these, but I consider them important to
the point where I would not be likely to implement anything
that violates them:

- All output, both inside the article text and outside, must
  be fully W3C-compliant HTML 4.0 for now, and XHTML 1.0 at some
  point in the future.

- Markup should be as economical as possible for performance.

Within the article text itself:

- The text of the article must be rendered as actual text with
  appropriate semantic labeling, so that it is readable on all
  browsers, including text-only browsers like Lynx, speech
  browsers for the blind, etc. The HTML code within the article
  should be the same on all skins. No visual markup should be used.

- Style elements should be contained in an externally linked
  stylesheet, using valid CSS (preferably mostly CSS 1, but CSS 2
  where the effect can't be achieved otherwise). Styles should be
  attached to elements within the article based on element classes
  and unique IDs.

- JavaScript should not be used with the article text.

- Article text must not depend on any system-specific features
  like non-standard symbol fonts.

- Article text should be in high-contrast colors that are not so
  overly loud they induce eye strain, and serifed fonts are
  preferred for readability.

Outside the article text (sidebars, etc.) things can be a bit more
relaxed:

- JavaScript can be used for "extra" functionality (like form
  validations) as long as the site is still usable by those that
  don't have JavaScript or have it turned off.

- Site should render reasonably on Netscape 4.X, Gecko-based
  browsers (Mozilla, Netscape 7, Galeon...), KHTML-based browsers
  (Konqueror, Safari...), MS Internet Explorer 4+, and Lynx.
  It's OK if some non-vital features won't render on some
  browsers, especially Netscape 4.X and Lynx, as long as users
  of those browsers can still view and edit articles and otherwise
  interact with the site normally.

- Text in sidebars, forms, etc., should be readable but doesn't
  have to face the same constraints as article text: for example
  louder colors and sans-serif fonts are fine.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia HTML standards (was Skins)

body:
> (Richard Grevers <dramatic at xtra.co.nz>):
> On Mon, 24 Mar 2003 14:31:52 -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker
> <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
>
> >- Article text should be in high-contrast colors that are not so
> >overly loud they induce eye strain, and serifed fonts are
> >preferred for readability.
> >
> <Klaxon sound>
> From my personal experience I strongly disagree with this. I side with the
> various research studies which show that whilst serifed fonts provide
> better readability on paper, sans-serif is more readable on screen.
> In addition, typefances with metrics that depart considerably from the norm
> (such as verdana) are best avoided. (My personal favourite is Trebuchet,
> which I use for nearly everything).
>
> Perhaps the best solution is that font-family preference should be left
> entirely to the user?

The user will always be free to have his browser substitute his own
stylesheets. If a Sans font is clean and readable on screen, that's
good too--that particular point is a suggestion, not a firm requirement.
Trebuchet is nice--do you know if there's any free equivalent?  I tend
to use Lucida fonts myself which are easy to find, but I think Bitstream
recently donated some more modern ones to the public we might want to
look into. I certainly don't want us to standardize on anything that
only looks good on Windows machines.

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


from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 04:10:14PM -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > (Richard Grevers <dramatic at xtra.co.nz>):
> > On Mon, 24 Mar 2003 14:31:52 -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker
> > <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> >
> > >- Article text should be in high-contrast colors that are not so
> > >overly loud they induce eye strain, and serifed fonts are
> > >preferred for readability.
> > >
> > <Klaxon sound>
> > From my personal experience I strongly disagree with this. I side with the
> > various research studies which show that whilst serifed fonts provide
> > better readability on paper, sans-serif is more readable on screen.
> > In addition, typefances with metrics that depart considerably from the norm
> > (such as verdana) are best avoided. (My personal favourite is Trebuchet,
> > which I use for nearly everything).
> >
> > Perhaps the best solution is that font-family preference should be left
> > entirely to the user?
>
> The user will always be free to have his browser substitute his own
> stylesheets. If a Sans font is clean and readable on screen, that's
> good too--that particular point is a suggestion, not a firm requirement.
> Trebuchet is nice--do you know if there's any free equivalent?  I tend
> to use Lucida fonts myself which are easy to find, but I think Bitstream
> recently donated some more modern ones to the public we might want to
> look into. I certainly don't want us to standardize on anything that
> only looks good on Windows machines.

Personally choosing a font, or relying on one, is universally considered
a Bad Idea(tm).  If you want a sans font, fine - specify that you want a
sans font in the stylesheet.  Forcing a particular font is just a bad
idea - usually the UA will know which font is best.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
He takes a consistently "scientific" point of view. I'm not sure anything
needs to be done, but he does have trouble taking other views into account
and accommodating other possibilities.

Fred

> From: "Tony Wilson" <list at redhill.net.au>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 06:11:18 +1100
> To: "WikiEN" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] RK causing huge problems in Chiropractic medicine
>
> I give up.
>
> NOTHING seems to dissuade RK from relentlessly imposing his own
> partisan POV on the "Chiropractic medicine" entry. I haven't seen
> unreasonable and persistent bias on this scale from a regular Wikipedia
> contributor since Clutch was banned.
>
> Something has to be done about it.
>
> Tony Wilson
> (Tannin)
> list at redhill.net.au
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Rachel Corrie]] and [[Images of Rachel Corrie]]

body:
At the risk of being accused of blasphemy, this hagiography of Rachel Corrie has gone on long enough.  Since we've had the discussion of moving the victims of 9/11 to Meta, could we do the same thing with the Rachel Corrie iconography and worship pages?

Zoe

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030324/208a3caa/attachment.htm


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Zoe wrote:

> At the risk of being accused of blasphemy, this hagiography of Rachel
> Corrie has gone on long enough.  Since we've had the discussion of
> moving the victims of 9/11 to Meta, could we do the same thing with
> the Rachel Corrie iconography and worship pages?
>
> Zoe
>
Although I very much support the inclusion of the [[Rachel Corrie]] page
as properly encyclopedic, I see no value in continuing the images page,
which adds nothing to the subject.  The biographical page does include a
few statements (like her love of gardening) that have nothing to do with
her claim to fame, and therefore go beyond encyclopedia material, I
would be content to let those details stay for the next few months.

Eclecticology


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <F87Z4wfyjYiaZwA30Qr00003864@hotmail.com>; from name12323@hotmail.com on Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 08:12:58PM -0500

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Recently, US judges have ruled against creaters of satire on many
> occasions.

Can you cite particular cases?  I don't know of any.

> I wouldn't trust it, or fair use for that matter.  We're
> better off assuming fair use doesn't apply.

In general, I agree, but keep in mind that if we so much as quote a
single line from a copyrighted source, we're doing so via fair use.
If an article about Richard Nixon quotes a single line from his
autobiography, which it easily could, then that's fair use.

I don't think it's practical for an encyclopedia to never quote
copyrighted sources at all.  And so I'd say we should generally try to
avoid fair use, but decide on a case by case basis for each "kind" of
fair use.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <3E80279C.9030206@telus.net>; from saintonge@telus.net on Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 01:55:40AM -0800

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Although I very much support the inclusion of the [[Rachel Corrie]] page
> as properly encyclopedic,

I agree.  This is a valid topic.

> I see no value in continuing the images page, which adds nothing to
> the subject.

I agree with this.  These images are somewhat questionable from a
copyright point of view as well.  We include them as "fair use", which
we prefer to avoid.

>  The biographical page does include a few statements (like her love
> of gardening) that have nothing to do with her claim to fame, and
> therefore go beyond encyclopedia material, I would be content to let
> those details stay for the next few months.

If she said to have had a love of gardening, and this is verifiable
from published sources, then I think there's nothing wrong with having
it.

It is true that gardening is not her claim to fame, but I think that
in the future when people read an article about her, rather than a
more general article about the Palestinian situation in 2003, they
will likely be asking themselves "What kind of person is this?"

No matter what a person's political position is, or view of Rachel
Corrie's actions, there's no question that it is very *interesting* to
say: "What sort of person does such a thing?  What motivated her?  How
is she different from me?  How are we similar?"

Personal details are relevant to a biography of this sort.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] City names argument resurrected

in_reply_to: <F11A85Ur8YMuz3URRvv00011cc7@hotmail.com>; from ts4294967296@hotmail.com on Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 12:18:56AM +1100

body:
I don't have a strong opinion on this, so the only comments I have are
to just list some of the factors that should influence our decision.

1.  Consistency -- consistency might argue for all place names to be
qualified in some fashion.  If some are qualified and some are not, we
are inconsistent.  But consistency is only one factor.

2.  Familiarity -- Every English speaker knows where [[New York]] and
[[Paris]] are, but possibly not [[Tallahassee]] (Florida) or
[[Canberra]] (Australia).  That's probably relevant.

Probably the only town named [[Gnaw Bone]] is in Indiana, but that
uniqueness is probably not an argument against adding some more
information in the title.

> Are there any objections to my setting a new standard for Australian
> city and town names, favouring simple names such as [[Canberra]]?

Probably there's nothing special about Australia here, so if we're
going to set a standard, it might be more general than that, i.e. a
standard for all city names.

We've discussed this in the past, but I don't remember the result.

--Jimbo


from_name: Tony Wilson

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK causing huge problems in Chiropractic medicine

body:
I give up.

NOTHING seems to dissuade RK from relentlessly imposing his own
partisan POV on the "Chiropractic medicine" entry. I haven't seen
unreasonable and persistent bias on this scale from a regular Wikipedia
contributor since Clutch was banned.

Something has to be done about it.

Tony Wilson
(Tannin)
list at redhill.net.au


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

body:
Eclecticology wrote:
> Although I very much support the inclusion of the
> [[Rachel Corrie]] page as properly encyclopedic, I
> see no value in continuing the images page,
> which adds nothing to the subject.  The biographical

> page does include a few statements (like her love of
> gardening) that have nothing to do with her claim to
> fame, and therefore go beyond encyclopedia material,
> I would be content to let those details stay for the
> next few months.

Actually, Stephen King's rock band (with Amy Tan, Dave
Barry, and Anne Rice) has nothing to do with his claim
to fame, but I wouldn't mind reading about it.
Similarly, that Kubrick was a photographer as well as
a director is not so pressing (though one could argue
that photography affected his directing--ok, one
could, and I will).  Less so with King's guitar
playing.  The only reason I haven't put in what Moby
does with his spare time is because I personally
consider it boring, but I wouldn't mind if anyone else
added it. (when he's not waiting tables at his
restaurant or composing music, he's attending
concerts, taking photos, or playing Scrabble with his
friends).

If the claim is unduly praising, or unverifiable, then
that's something else entirely.  But that it's
irrelevant to her fame shouldn't be the deciding
factor (but let me be clear that I think explaining
why a subject is controversial, well-known, or
generally discussed *should* be our goal as writers).

IMO,

kq

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Iraq and chemical weapons

in_reply_to: <E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280F43EF@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 09:31:51AM -0500

body:
Well, I don't think this is all that special.  There's a controversy,
so we don't take a position on it.  We merely report.

The wikipedia can take no position on whether or not Iraq has chemical
weapons, at least not as long as there's any legitimate doubt about
it.  I suppose, if they successfully use chemical weapons in the
current conflict, it will likely no longer be controversial to say
_that they had them_.

We can *never* take a position on whether the campaign is morally
justified, nor on whether it "violates international law".

Each and every element of this is something that, as an NPOV
reference, we can't take a position on.

> ...which may have ramifications about whether Iraq is
> bound to treat POWs according to the Geneva Convention or
> can "legally" torture, execute or rape them.

I'm not aware that any provision of the Geneva Conventions which make
torture, execution or rape of POWs legal, even if the conflict itself
is somehow illegal.  But certainly an NPOV discussion of what,
exactly, constitutes a war crime, is valid.

> The question is, how do we handle this when writing articles about
>the war?

NPOV.  We don't take a position on anything controversial.  We state
what others have said.

For some of these things, our best friend will be time.  There's a lot
going on "in the fog of war" that simply can't be treated very well in
an _encyclopedia_, until the facts are more settled and widely known.

At the same time, people have always enjoyed writing current events
articles, and they are a strength, so I see no reason to avoid them,
so long as we're careful and so long as we understand that the full
story may not come out for many years.

--Jimbo


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] No problem on the chiropractic article

body:
Tannin's claims against me bear no resemblance to reality.
He simply is not correct. In fact, I have worked with
others to make sure that this article is NPOV, and I have
not removed the recent additions and changes.

Believe me, if I was writing this article by myself, it
would look different than it does!

I don't even have a problem with Tannin. My only problem
has been with Fred, because his particular changes were
grossly misleading, which I have explained in the Talk
section of this article. With the help of Steven Carlson
and others, we are making great progress.

RK

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Fellow Australian Tannin (Tony Wilson) and I were confused as to the
> naming of Canberra -- why is it [[Canberra, Australia]] rather than
> just [[Canberra]], since there is only one in the world? It turned out
> that Karen Johnson had moved the article to [[Canberra, Australia]]
> before either of us came here. Tannin, Karen and I discussed the
> matter on Karen's user page. I'm keen to move every non-ambiguous name
> (e.g. Canberra) and every predominantly Australian name (e.g.
> Brisbane) to the simple [[Canberra]] or [[Brisbane]]. Karen said it
> was fine with her, as long as I can "persuade people to agree". So
> here I am.
>
> Are there any objections to my setting a new standard for Australian
> city and town names, favouring simple names such as [[Canberra]]?

I object because it takes these Australian city names as though they
were the only uses of those names.  There was certainly a well-lnown
military aircraft called the Canberra.  Perth is also a significant city
in Scotland.  Sydney, Nova Scotia was at least big enough for an English
travel agent to mistakenly send a young honeymooning couple there a year
or two ago.

Eclecticology


body:
This has been discussed before, at length, and the most
passionate and devoted contributor on the topic has
been maveric. I will go along with any naming convention
he devises (i.e., he has my "proxy vote").

The point of the naming convention has always been to
make the article title:

* unambiguous, and
* as short as possible

These two values compete somewhat, and there are always
thorny special cases. Is [[Paris]] enough to indicate
that big city in France? Does [[New York]] mean New York
State or New York City? -- not to mention (although I
just did; hi, cunctator!) that WITHIN New York City
"New York" generally means Manhattan!

The biggest bone of contention is probably whether to
use commas or parentheses when we need to disambiguate.
Some prefer [[Paris, France]] as familiar to most readers.
Others prefer the convenience of [[Paris (France)]]
because of the "pipe trick".

I have no desire to take a side on this issue, except
(as mentioned above) I will side with whatever Mav wants.

Ed Poor