subject: [Wikitech-l] SPOF notes

body:
Another note; we really need to be able to survive a Zwinger downtime
much better than we do currently. Sometimes its an avoidable accident;
but it might be hardware failure... and we'd like to get Zwinger
upgraded some day so we don't have to special-case installations on it
for Red Hat 9. Surviving that upgrade would be nice. ;)

Most of the files the web servers need to run (eg, the PHP scripts
themselves) are stored on each machine's local disk, and we push out
updates. That's good!

Uploaded files are on another server; downtime there too can also be
bad, but at least a zwinger down shouldn't be killing those too.

However we are reading a few bits off of zwinger's NFS (some block lists
etc, some lock files) and sometimes writing (logs). Insofar as those are
currently used they should be either migrated to a more survivable
situation or should be able to fail gracefully. NFS should be set up if
it's not in a way that will fail cleanly after a short timeout.

Some other configuration files, such as php.ini, and various programs
and utilities (one of the perlbals?) are also pulled off of NFS
currently. These need to generally be fixed up so that things can
continue running while home dirs are down; pushing the files out on
update as we do with the PHP scripts is probably in order.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Desysopping inactive admins

body:
On 9/18/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
>
> 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
> 2, If the admin in question requests it.

Short of going to the backup tape/drive/whatever device in use, isn't
image deletion permanent?  If someone hacked an admin account,
couldn't they delete dozens, or even hundreds of images before being
stopped, especially if they used misleading edit summaries?

Unless ALL admin actions are easily revertable, removal of admin
privileges from inactive accounts seems like an extremely obvious
method of damage prevention to me.

If it's too much work, we shouldn't dodge the work, we should appoint
more bureaucrats until we have more than enough to voluntarily cover
all the duties.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New Proposal: WikiMemory (17 reasons)

body:
Poe, Marshall wrote:
> More pitch.  Just tell me if this is horribly annoying (or ignore it)... Best, Marshall.
>
> 17 Reasons Why I Think WikiMemory is a Good Idea
>
> 1. When you die, all your memories vanish.  That's a boatload of lost information.
> 2. It's good to know about the past, and this would help (not us, maybe, but the future).
> 3. People see and do really interesting stuff; I'd like to read about it (and so would a lot of others).
> 4. Some people have seen what I've seen; I'd like to get their POV.
> 5. Some people lie (especially politicians), and this might be a way to stop them, a little.
> 6. People are basically honest; they aren't going to lie, especially when there is no reason to.
> 7. Readers aren't stupid--they'll know to take any memoir about a very controversial issue with a grain of salt.
> 8. If you carefully compare accounts of the same event, you often can determine which one is more accurate.
> 9. If you check the proported facts in an account against some other source, you can often determine if the writer
>  knows what the hell he is talking about.
> 10. And you can always ask someone who was there. Just email them.
> 11. Besides, even if they lie, the way they lie will tell future historians something about them.  That's valuable info.
> 12. Journalists know that they should check their sources (at least the good ones do).
> 13. There is some great undiscovered memoir writer out there, and I'd like to find him or her.
> 14. In a hundred years, historians everywhere will use this site, and praise us (alas, we'll be dead...)
> 15. Nothing like this exists.
> 16. Nothing like this has ever existed.
> 17. For the first time in human history, we could pass our very memories on to future generations.  Wow.
>
> Marshall Poe

Sorry, but as for 15, 16 and 17, there are things like books or personal
journals which do the job. Some personal journals became pretty famous
and well distributed in the past century.

But even without books, there are places where an oral history exist and
is very strong. People, even if they do not read, tell stories to others
over and over in their life, till the stories are well known enough for
younger people to remember them. The younger people then become story
tellers themselves. Some stories have crossed the centuries this way.

But well...

Ant


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] AFD 100 days

body:
Interesting stuff. James Burns has basically made a career out of AfD, so
I'm not surprised to see he is the top contributor in this sample. I think
his contributions and Etacar's and mine are probably distorted somewhat by
selective voting. For instance I won't bother voting at all on most
nominations because they're going to be deleted anyhow and I agree with the
deletion. The few that I do look at and vote delete on are generally cases
where I think it look marginal and I investigate. Probably most of the 500+
keeps I made were related to topics of interest to me. Programming
languages, schools, roads. Stuff that I think should be in the Library of
Babel.

Also I have the worst judgement for nomination of anyone I know. If I
nominate an article for deletion, it will probably end up as a FAC within a
month.


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Desysopping inactive admins

body:
As Phrozaic pointed out, inactive admins are theoretically much less of targets for account hijackers.  Nevertheless, I am in full support of more bureaucrats.

--Ryan

> From: Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Desysopping inactive admins
>
> On 9/18/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> > It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
> >
> > 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
> > 2, If the admin in question requests it.
>
> Short of going to the backup tape/drive/whatever device in use, isn't
> image deletion permanent?  If someone hacked an admin account,
> couldn't they delete dozens, or even hundreds of images before being
> stopped, especially if they used misleading edit summaries?
>
> Unless ALL admin actions are easily revertable, removal of admin
> privileges from inactive accounts seems like an extremely obvious
> method of damage prevention to me.
>
> If it's too much work, we shouldn't dodge the work, we should appoint
> more bureaucrats until we have more than enough to voluntarily cover
> all the duties.
>
> --
> Michael Turley
> User:Unfocused

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] help improper blocking by Lucky 6.9

body:
Thank you for your email.  We got it the first six times.  The message
has already been replied to.  Please stop spamming the list.

Yours,

Sam Korn


from_name: Phroziac

body:
On 9/18/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
> 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
Being inactive makes you less visible. I think one of the active
admins is MUCH more likely to get hacked. If the "hacker" really knows
anything, they would try to hit the SQL servers, and delete a few
databases... Deleting that much data might even crash the machines,
causing a long fsck to be needed..
Or hack the SQL and make it look like all the admins are vandalizing...

> 2, If the admin in question requests it.
We already desysop you on request, as long as you can prove you're who
you claim to be to a steward.

> --Ryan
--Phroziac


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] AFD 100 days

body:
hmm I suspect the low delete rate amoung no regulars may be infulence
by people trying to protect the articles they have created.

--
geni


body:
On 9/18/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally, I don't see any advantages either unless their account was
> hacked into. It only makes returning to admin duties harder.
>
> If I were to go away for a few months because I have other obligations
> in my life, I'd hate to spend extra time trying to find a bureaucrat
> to get me back to admin status.
>
> It only creates extra work.
>
> --Mgm
>

If you have gone away for 6 mounths getting back to being an admin is
going to be very hard anyway. Finding a helpful bureaucrat (trivial
just cheack the log to see who is active) is going to be the least of
your worries.~~~~

--
geni


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] 24.18.59.229 Block

body:
Please don't spam your message to the list. One message is enough to
get attention. Also, I don't know how much time you've given Lucky,
but please don't expect him to respond immediately.

-Mgm

On 9/18/05, Szuy and Joe Scuderi <suzynjoe at comcast.net> wrote:
> Lucky 6.9 sent me a warning and then immediately (in a few minutes) blocked
> 24.18.59.229
> because I created a wiki entry for a victim of 9/11 (passenger Edward Felt
> on Flight 93).  I understand that listing every victim with a page is not
> practical.  Nevertheless the entry was justified because it was short and to
> the point and his family has recent commented on events involving that
> Flight.
>
> Lucky 6.9 sent me a warning and before I could even respond (it was a matter
> of minutes) blocked me.  I had renewed the Edward Felt page once thinking
> that the original posting had not gone through (I did not even realize at
> that point Lucky 6.9 had deleted it).  Otherwise I would have contacted
> Lucky 6.9
> first and explained my position
>
> I believe Lucky 6.9 is abusing his/her administration powers in blocking
> users without good cause.
> I registered and emailed Lucky 6.9 to resolve this but he/she does not
> respond.
> Thank you.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] 24.18.59.229 Block

body:
I've undone the block as it appears the anons creation and Lucky's
warning overlapped.

Anonymous user, please take heed and don't recreate the article.
Wikipedia is not a memorial: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT)

In fact there's a whole Memorial Wiki made for 9/11 victims.
(http://sep11.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Memoriam)

--Mgm

On 9/18/05, Szuy and Joe Scuderi <suzynjoe at comcast.net> wrote:
> Lucky 6.9 sent me a warning and then immediately (in a few minutes) blocked
> 24.18.59.229
> because I created a wiki entry for a victim of 9/11 (passenger Edward Felt
> on Flight 93).  I understand that listing every victim with a page is not
> practical.  Nevertheless the entry was justified because it was short and to
> the point and his family has recent commented on events involving that
> Flight.
>
> Lucky 6.9 sent me a warning and before I could even respond (it was a matter
> of minutes) blocked me.  I had renewed the Edward Felt page once thinking
> that the original posting had not gone through (I did not even realize at
> that point Lucky 6.9 had deleted it).  Otherwise I would have contacted
> Lucky 6.9
> first and explained my position
>
> I believe Lucky 6.9 is abusing his/her administration powers in blocking
> users without good cause.
> I registered and emailed Lucky 6.9 to resolve this but he/she does not
> respond.
> Thank you.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] AFD 100 days

body:
Well, since keepable articles shouldn't end up on AFD to begin with
the number of delete votes don't really surprise me. The amount of
votes the top 5 provide are stunning, though. I really wonder how they
read all those articles they're voting on and still have time to do
other stuff.

--Mgm

On 9/19/05, DF <dragons_flight at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Having tired of listening to arguments about what goes
> on at AFD but having little data, I decided to engage
> in a little experiment to analyze voting patterns at
> AFD.  I wrote a computer script to parse over 100 days
> of AFD logs and compile a variety of statistics by
> looking at the bold faced terms (eg. keep, delete,
> merge, etc).
>
> Obviously this is imperfect since AFD is suppose to be
> about discussion and consensus building (somehow
> despite somehow having 100 noms and 875 votes cast a
> day), but it is good enough to reveal some interesting
> patterns.  For example, I would not have guessed that
> on a forum with 7200 participants over 100 days that
> the top 5 would account for 10% of all votes.  Or that
> for all articles with 2/3 of the votes cast favoring
> deletion, only 6 would also have 10 or more keep
> votes.
>
> However, I am not all that surprised that regulars
> cast delete votes 76% of the time whereas occasional
> participants (the vast majority of all voters) say
> delete only 56% of the time.
>
> The full listing of statistics compiled so far can be
> seen at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AFD_100_days
>
> Things are still somewhat preliminary as I may yet try
> to further improve the parser and the last three days
> of my AFD sample have not entirely closed, but I doubt
> those things with substantially change the patterns.
>
> Anyway, I hope this provides a better grounding for
> some of the endless discussions about what to do with
> AFD (and whether or not it has serious problems).
>
> -Dragons flight
>
> PS. I need to get back to real life now, so if there
> are questions/requests/complaints, it will probably be
> several hours or a day before I get back to respond to them.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Personally, I don't see any advantages either unless their account was
hacked into. It only makes returning to admin duties harder.

If I were to go away for a few months because I have other obligations
in my life, I'd hate to spend extra time trying to find a bureaucrat
to get me back to admin status.

It only creates extra work.

--Mgm

On 9/19/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/19/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> > It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
> >
> > 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
> > 2, If the admin in question requests it.
> >
>
> The only reason I can think of would be that having inactive admins on
> the books might inflate admin numbers, but we already have [[WP:LA]],
> which is split into "active", "semi-active" and "inactive" groups as
> it is.
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: How to be careful

body:
On 9/19/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> D'oh! I mean chgrp! Oh well, no harm done ;)
>
> -- Tim Starlign

Tim, thanks for the email, but this second one is pure comedy.
Notice the typo in your name?  :)


from_name: Austin Hair

subject: [Wikitech-l] SPOF notes

body:
> However we are reading a few bits off of zwinger's NFS (some block lists
> etc, some lock files) and sometimes writing (logs). Insofar as those are
> currently used they should be either migrated to a more survivable
> situation or should be able to fail gracefully. NFS should be set up if
> it's not in a way that will fail cleanly after a short timeout.

Linux mount option "soft" will cause an I/O error to be returned after
a "major timeout," the definition of which varies.  "intr" in
combination with "hard" will allow the program to respond to signals,
which is in most cases preferable to having an uninterruptable process
sitting there until reboot.

If you want anything better than that, use iSCSI.

-- Austin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Violation of Blocking Policy

body:
> > "In the cases where multiple parties violate the
> >> rule, sysops should treat all sides equally."
> > Wow, isn't this a revelation, after all the admin
> > voices here who have denied there is any obligation to
> > equality and said "You are not entitled to anything",
I must have missed this. I did not notice or investigate anyone else
excessively reverting the article. If I did, I would have treated them
equally.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikiquote e-mail

body:
Blocks are different from the type of "ban" Kelly is talking about. I
do not agree with the usage of the terms, but by "ban", she means ban
the user. "Block"s are against an account, IP address, or IP address
range. He has been indefinitely blocked, and the wacky usernames he
registers are being indefinitely blocked. But, a single sysop cannot
boldly ban a user from the project, there must be an arbcom ruling,
decree by jimbo wales, or community consensus to ban a user.

The terms are obnoxiously similar, consider proposing new ones.
Personally I would prefer if we had the distinction, but did not make
it by using a different (but very very similar) term. "I banned him",
or "I banned XXXX account(s)/ip(s)" maybe.

On 9/18/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> And I see that he has been indefinitely blocked from all English-speaking
> projects by Linuxbeak and Anthere. That just about settles it.
>
>  --[[en:User:Bratsche|Ben]].


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia faces key test: corruption in wikipedia

body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
> You didn't check carefully - the edit history shows that the image  was
> last updated in March, when, in fact, the pornographic image has  only
> been in place for a few hours. Or do you think that it would  have been
> left on my user page for months with no one commenting on it?

No, the image description page was last updated in March, the image
itself has been changed three times in the last day. Uploading a new
version of an old image does not cause an entry to be placed in the
history of the image description page. And as Stephen Forrest pointed
out, the upload was performed by an imposter with a homographic name. No
secret sysadmin powers required.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Does your e-mail have a point?

Mark

On 18/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia Anglo-Saxon?! Wikipedia Middle English?!! Wikipedia Scot's
> English?!!!
>  I want Wikipedia English English!!!
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia faces key test: corruption in
	wikipedia

body:
That, plus a general fondness of explaining something with a
conspiracy theory whenever possible.

What if this e-mail wasn't really sent by me?? Gasp! I'll bet it was
faked by the [[tinc|cabal]]  to cast doubt on the existance of the
cabal (which does not exist). Or maybe Brion faked it because he likes
to do things like insert pornographic images into the database under
other people's usernames or spoof e-mails to the MLs in his free time?
Or maybe it was generated by Micro$oft with some sort of subliminal
adbuymicrosoftproductsvertising? ...or perhaps it was written by the
CIA or Mossad or the MI5 in a covert operation to infiltrate
Wikipedia-l?? Oh no! What if they implanted a mind control device in
my brain and they're making me write this e-mail... against my
wishes!!

;p

Mark

On 19/09/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de> wrote:
> What really baffles me here is how relatively petty
> incidents can cause people to write lengthy editorial
> articles, philosophizing about "key shifts in society"
> in general and alleged conspiracies at Wikipedia in
> particular (while the actual explanation is much more
> mundane). The only reason I can think of seems to be
> superabundance of time combined with a total lack of
> more fulfilling occupation in life.
>
> Arbeo
>
>
> --- Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> schrieb:
>
> > On 9/18/05, Stirling Newberry
> > <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
> > > Then that is a huge user interface and security
> > hole - because
> > > someone looking at the history of the image would
> > think that the
> > > original uploader uploaded the image. In an
> > organization that relies
> > > on users being able to track and document problems
> > this is gap in
> > > that ability.
> >
> > Look at the bottom of the image page.  There is your
> > file history.
> >
> > Sam
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] AFD 100 days

body:
> Also I have the worst judgement for nomination of anyone I know. If I
> nominate an article for deletion, it will probably end up as a FAC within a
> month.
And you call yourself an inclusionist?


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Need help compiling Wikipedia accuracy studies

body:
I have a request. My university's education department offers a graduate
course in Technology utilization, and (believe it or not) wikis [in
general] and Wikipedia [in particular] are part of the curriculum. I've
been asked to come in as a guest speaker. The topic will be "Why should
I believe anything on the Web and (especially) on Wikipedia"

So, to this end, I was looking for studies of Wikipedia and/or
comparisons with other mainstream sources. Here's what I have so far.
Any suggestions to add to this list would be most appreciated.

1)
A group of students in the Graduate School of Library and Information
Science at the University of Illinois has published a paper entitled
"Information Quality Discussions in Wikipedia" (PDF format). The focus
of the paper was on assessing the IQ of Wikipedia featured articles ? in
this case, IQ stands for "information quality" ? when compared to other
samples from the project, including featured article removal candidates,
pages marked as NPOV disputes, and a selection of random pages.
According to the paper, the study showed how seriously the Wikipedia
project views issues of article quality. The authors concluded that as a
quality standard, the featured article process "is not ideal, but it
does seem relatively rigorous." They also noted that the process is not
as resource-intensive as other possibilities, such as blind judging. -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-08-01/Featured_content
PDF of research paper can be found at:
http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~stvilia/papers/qualWiki.pdf

2) An article comparing the WP to Brockhaus and Encarta has appeared in
issue 21/04 of C't, a major German computer engineering magazine. It is
titled /Lexika: Wikipedia gegen Brockhaus und Encarta/, starting on p.
132 - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_vs_Brockhaus_and_Encarta
Full survey results can be found at:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-October/035339.html

3) Computer Science professor (and minor geek rockstar) Ed Felton
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Felten) posted in his blog about a
small-scale survey he did of Wikipedia:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=674

-Mark


body:
On 9/19/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/18/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> > It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
> >
> > 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
> > 2, If the admin in question requests it.
>
> Short of going to the backup tape/drive/whatever device in use, isn't
> image deletion permanent?  If someone hacked an admin account,
> couldn't they delete dozens, or even hundreds of images before being
> stopped, especially if they used misleading edit summaries?
>
> Unless ALL admin actions are easily revertable, removal of admin
> privileges from inactive accounts seems like an extremely obvious
> method of damage prevention to me.
>
> If it's too much work, we shouldn't dodge the work, we should appoint
> more bureaucrats until we have more than enough to voluntarily cover
> all the duties.
>
> --
> Michael Turley
> User:Unfocused

Image deletions are permanent.


body:
On 9/19/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> OTOH, Brion told me[0] that making image deletion non-permanent and,
> indeed, as easily revertable as any other delete is trivial[2], it's
> just that the dev.s don't really get requests for it but they get
> requests for a lot of other stuff instead (new features, "help, the
> site's too slow!", etc.). If the community decides that non-permanent
> image deletion was a particularly valuable feature, I'm sure they'd add
> it...[3]
>
> [0] - Though he may well have been drunk at the time.[1]
> [1] - Yes, indeed, Wikimania /was/ fun. ;-)
> [2] - For Wikipedia-sized values of "trivial". :-)
> [3] - Well, OK, they might say that our desire is mis-guided and what we
>       /really/ need is a new thingumydoodle, but...
I wouldn't call myself a developer, but I know my way around php
(though i'm rusty as i have not touched it in a few years, until
recently), and have a tendency of understanding most types of code.
Yes, it would be easy. It would also eat a substantial amount of
server space, and have to be cleared out somewhat often.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
There is no Wikipedia in "Scot's English". There is a Wikipedia in Scots.

Now, please list out for me some of the differences between American
and Commonwealth English which one is likely to see in the average
encyclopaedia article.

How often will encyclopaedia articles talk about nappies/diapers,
dummies/pacifiers, lifts/elevators, prams/strollers, or anything else
where the essential terminology differs?

The reason there's a separate Wikipedia for Scots is because usage of
Scots on the English Wikipedia would never be tolerated. However, both
Commonwealth and American English are tolerated and widely used
throught the English Wikipedia.

I, for one, am an American who prefers Commonwealth English, but
having received my education in American spelling (or as you would
say, "misspelling"), my writing tends to be a jumble of forms rather
than all one way or all the other. I tend to write "encyclopedia",
"traveler", "check", "catalog", but "realise", "internationalisation",
etc. This isn't due to personal preference, but rather habit -- I
would rather read a document in Commonwealth English, and I try to
write in it, but since I don't go over my spelling carefully, I tend
to end up using American spellings most of the time for certain
lexical items (such as "encyclopedia"), but Commonwealth spellings
most of the time for others (such as "rationalisation").

See, now, that the most common differences are mere differences of
spelling. And they aren't particularly frequent. How often does
Wikipedia say "nationalise"/"nationalize", "realise"/"realize"? Things
like "kilometres"/"kilometers" are a bit more frequent.

But still, in the past, there haven't been separate Wikipedias for
such tiny differences. You seem to regard Anglo-Saxon as similar to
English. A sample sentence from the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia, for you to
decipher (with accents and special characters removed):

"Lundene is heafodburg thaes Geanlaehtan Cynerices and Englalandes,
and is thara greatostre worulde burga an. Hit haefth seofon millonan
leoda in Greatrum Lundene (hatte Lundeneras)."

Now is that Balkanisation? "heafodburg"?? Are you kidding me? (in case
you're wondering, it means "capital"). "cynerice"? do you get that? It
means "kingdom".

There isn't an actual Wikipedia for Middle English, only a test
Wikipedia, but it is also a bit hard to understand:

"A dogge is the beste that man hath as a housbeste. Doggen arn 'mannes
best frend' as the saying goth."

"Hallo. It is trewe, as Briane hath seyde, when thaet man sholde
scryven as in this cas in middel englisce, that suiche a nam is brodre
than man wolde thinken, for it refereth to a period of foure hundred
yaren, in which many different scrives manneren. Peradventure 'twere
bettre thaet we formed some sort of concordat on this, but I fere
thaet this coulde forfenden and demarken forcome contributiouns"

Compared to that, American vs Commonwealth differences seem tiny.

Mark

On 19/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Cool, mockery is for trolls.
>  This is not about Balkanisation, it's about separating American-English
> from English.
>  But come to think of it - yes, have one for every variation you like, and
> let natural selection take care of the rest. Just as long as English is
> English, and not American.
>  Have you seen the "Scot's English" one? Do you not call that Balkanisation?
>  If you want to have a legitimate criteria for a language, a different
> orthography has got to be a clear one.
> In English there are two - American and non-American.
> Orthography is the main issue, meaning is another.
>  If you want to go academic - which is surely the best way to back this
> whole argument up, you should scan this (ironically american) leading
> insitute of linguistic research:
>  http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=eng
>  On 19/09/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > (note: I've split this into paragraphs for readability)
> >
> > Jack wrote:
> > > I want American English to have a separate Wikipedia from English
> > > English - this would mean copying
> > >
> > > I typed it in a hurry at the end of my shift with a view to
> > > responding to any response, later.
> > >
> > > I've placed a more detailed post on the helpdesk page. I think,
> > > however, that it's apt that I should go into even more depth here.
> > >
> > > I've asked about English on Wikipedia before and been told that they
> > > think it's acceptable for English articles to be in a mish-mash of
> > > dialects and spellings; but having seen the range of ludicrous
> > > languages available - including variant forms of English: Scots
> > > English and Middle English etc... I've now decided I must make a
> > > request and campaign properly for American English to be given a
> > > seperate Wikipedia language from (English) English.
> > >
> >
> > I must remind viewers who are still with us that Balkanisation Is Evil.
> >
> > > It's simply infuriating and offensive for the misspellings of a
> > > dialect of English to take precedence over the standard language -
> > > I'm sure Spanish, French and Portuguese speakers would feel
> > > similarly; it's cultural imperialism.
> > >
> > > If you have different forms of Chinese Wikipedia (I'm a graduate of
> > > Jap & Chi so I'm aware of xyz); if you have Wikipedias for dialects
> > > and older forms of English; if you Wikipedias for countries and
> > > languages with far smaller populations, economic/political importance
> > > and internet presences; then the English of the British Isles and
> > > Commonwealth - the standard and original form of English - simply
> > > *has* to be the only form of English that can use the term "English"
> > > on Wikipedia.
> > >
> > > Some might say that it is "British English", this term is fallacious
> > > (even if you can find it in a dictionary) no English, British,
> > > British Isles or even Commonwealth native understands or recognises
> > > the term - it is both meaningless and fallacious: there are no
> > > "British English" speakers in the world - there are English
> > > (nationality) English (language) speakers, Welsh English speakers,
> > > Scottish English speakers, Irish English speakers, Cornish English
> > > speakers and so on...
> > >
> > > Whereas the term "American English" is not.
> > >
> > > When I go to Wikipedia English, and type a search for "colour" I
> > > should not expect to be redirected to "color" which is a recent
> > > spelling of a dialect of English that has arisen over the last couple
> > > of centuries perhaps - it is simply *not* *English* it is
> > > *American-English*. I'm more than happy for American-English speakers
> > > to have an American-English wikipedia and have all their weird and
> > > wonderful spellings and vocabulary - and it may well turn out to be
> > > the biggest wiki; but I don't want to select Wikipedia English and
> > > type in "Aubergine" and get "Eggplant"; "Nappy" and get "Diaper"; or
> > > "Tap" and get "Faucet", it's simply unacceptable, and against the
> > > spirit of multilingualism and accuracy that wikipedia is supposed to
> > > strive for. Hence I want to campaign in all seriousness that The
> > > English Wikipedia is duplicated, and one is called American-English,
> > > the other remaining English, and the task of correcting spelling,
> > > vocab and grammar can begin.
> > >
> >
> > I agree completely. Furthurmore, I feel that we shall need an Australian
> > English Wikipedia to handle the many words in Australian English which
> > differ from English English (and possibly Queensland English, New South
> > Wales English, et. al), a South African English Wikipedia to accomodate
> > the heavy use of Afrikaans, a New Zealand English Wikipedia to account
> > for the lack of vowels, a Canadian English Wikipedia to account for the
> > number of French words, a Canadian French Wikipedia to complement it,
> > and a Singlish Wikipedia because it has a funny name.
> >
> > Here's a far better idea: Let's go back to Proto-Indo-European. Imagine
> > the amount of server space we could save!
> >
> > Conversely, imagine a Beowulf cluster of English Wikipedias!
> >
> > > The Campaign for an English Wikipedia is not about Britain (the
> > > fourth largest economy in the world, a population of about 60m, 55%
> > > of whom are online), it's also about a whole host of other countries
> > > and regions (over a billion people) that do not use American-English,
> > > but use English instead as a lingua franca (many with complete
> > > fluency):
> > >
> > <snip overly long list>
> > > The term Commonwealth English is therefore also apt, but
> > American-English
> > > has no right to usurp the title English, from English! Wikipedia should
> > > reflect this.
> > >
> >
> > I find your theories interesting/intriguing and wish to subscribe to
> > your newsletter/journal.
> >
> > --
> > Alphax | /"\
> > Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> > OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards
> > http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
note the quotes.
On 9/18/05, Zephram Stark <zephramstark at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> "'Making up rules' is allowable under [[WP:IAR]]"
>
> For editors who treat each other with respect, the Wikipedia: Ignore All Rules policy is a way of saying, "No rules are necessary for you."  Since every rule of Wikipedia is made to enable and promote mutual respect and consensus, those who seek consensus naturally need no Wikipedia rules.
>
> In no way, can the [[WP:IAR]] be expanded to mean: make up and enforce any rule that you want.  In fact, for an administrator to do so would be in direct contradiction to the promise we essentially make editors in the [[WP:IAR]] that they need only worry about making good, NPOV articles.
>
> Zephram Stark zephramstark at yahoo.com
> 432-224-6991
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! for Good
>  Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 19/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Actually, we don't have a Wikipedia in Klingon.
>
>  that's a surprise

Why?

> > Actually, the policy is (or at least was):
> >
> > * If subject of article is British (or other Commonwealth
> > English)-related, use Commonwealth English.
> > * If subject of article is USian, use US English
> > * If neither applies, majority style (in case both are used) of original
> > author is preferred.
>
>  And what of "Aubergines" and "Eggplants"? "Colour" and "Color"

See the 3rd rule. However the original author of the article writes
it. Colour and color aren't that big of a deal. Any mention of
"eggplant" or "aubergine" can note the other variant in parentheses,
although I have a sneaking suspicioun that in the commounwealthe the
werde "eggplant" will be understode wel enough.

> > I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism, ambiguation
> > > (because of the many differences in American-English and English usage),
> > and
> > > English learners learning to spell incorrectly and talk like Americans -
> > why
> > > is it wrong to resist that?
> > >
> >
> > You are welcome to create your own fork of the site in Commonwealth
> > English, provided you comply with the GFDL.
>
>  Happy to do so, but what I really want is a fork called "American-English".

I hope you realise that a separate American English project wouldn't
instantly lead to the "purification" of the existing Wikipedia.

Let me put it this way:

This issue has been considered very, very, very carefully in the past.
It's always been clear to everyone involved that one Wikipedia rather
than two is the better way, if not the only logical way.

No matter how much you whinge, the chances that there will ever be two
separate English Wikipedias are extremely low, especially given the
current size of the project.

However, you are welcome to start your own encyclopedia in "pure"
English. In fact, you can even use articles from Wikipedia, provided
that you release content under the gfdl.

Mark


from_name: James D. Forrester

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

Phroziac wrote:

> Image deletions are permanent.

OTOH, Brion told me[0] that making image deletion non-permanent and,
indeed, as easily revertable as any other delete is trivial[2], it's
just that the dev.s don't really get requests for it but they get
requests for a lot of other stuff instead (new features, "help, the
site's too slow!", etc.). If the community decides that non-permanent
image deletion was a particularly valuable feature, I'm sure they'd add
it...[3]

[0] - Though he may well have been drunk at the time.[1]
[1] - Yes, indeed, Wikimania /was/ fun. ;-)
[2] - For Wikipedia-sized values of "trivial". :-)
[3] - Well, OK, they might say that our desire is mis-guided and what we
      /really/ need is a new thingumydoodle, but...

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDLjcvkn3kUxZyJx0RAmQUAJ9EAVzfy6QGhXGL5x+cXvnPkZ0I9ACgnAu3
3vfW5AfSvad/3jMXRJkx7b4=
=BALR
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Actually, it really depends on where you learnt it.

In most Pacific nations, they teach Commonwealth English, being close
to New Zealand. In Mexico, however, they teach American English. Most
European nations teach Commonwealth English, while many Asian and
American nations teach American English.

Mark

On 19/09/05, Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Compared to that, American vs Commonwealth differences seem tiny.
>
> A point that has not yet been remarked in this threat is this:
> most people who learn English as a foreign language learn to write the
> traditional, commonwealth spelling. I really like the idea to convert
> the entire en.wikipedia to this spelling, but alas, it's not going to
> happen. I dislike American English, but I will learn to live with it.
> The splitting proposal is indeed exaggerated.
>
> Gerrit.
>
> --
> Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
> | Current temperature   05-09-19 13:39:49   11.9 degrees Celsius ( 53.4F) |
> --
> Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
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POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglicised English British English

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>Well I don't want to live in an Americanised world; I'd rather take arms
>against a sea of illiterate yanks, than suffer the slings and arrows of
>their nauseating makey-uppy drawl. (and yes I do have American friends!)
> I know it's not going to feed the starving children in Africa, but I simply
>can't feckin' stand seeing the word "center" and "color" and hearing people
>raising the intonation at the end of their sentences.
> American-English is like a giant linguistic fingernail down the English
>blackboard.
>
The trend toward American dumbing down and illiteracy has been
significant in the two centuries since the time of Noah Webster.  If
England had done a better job of educating its colonists in the 1770s it
might not have been overcome by this band of ruffians.  Has English
really progressed when it must rely on mixed clich?s of Rome and
Scotland?  I have never heard an American use the term "makey-uppy", and
I am also unfamiliar with its use in Standard English; perhaps it would
be enlightening to know what dialect of England has so enriched the
language with this term.

I am well aware of the difficulties with "center" and "color" in
Wikipedia, but I have failed to notice where a rising intonation has
been so obvious in written speech.  Could you please give us an example
of where this is so apparent?

I appreciate the desire to see the Americans set adrift on their own
"Stone Raft", but failing this we are left with the herculean task of
trying to re-integrate them into the rest of the world as much in
language as n politics.  American Wikipedians have perhaps progressed
more swiftly on this path than their less informed countrymen; they
already accept that there is a world beyond their borders  We have
already coloured their thoughts.  Now is no time for your proposal of
"coitus interruptus".

> On 19/09/05, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
>
>
>>I love these kinds of debates - the ones that can go around in circles
>>until the cows come home. Sure, I get pissed off (AE pissed) at american
>>spellings as much as the next bloke - but it doesn't mean I can't follow
>>what's going on - nor does it mean that it will ever influence my pristine,
>>strawberries and cream, Oxbridge, very best of the Queen's english - with a
>>name like Giuseppe d'Angelo - you wouldn't expect otherwise would you?
>>
One needs to remember that the Queen's English is the language of the
privileged classes in England.  That makes it anything but common.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>The thing aboot (!) Canada is that there's a steady stream of recent (and
>educated) British immigrants as with Australia, maintaining the standards.
>I would not be surprised to find Americanisms more a feature of urban
>working-class Canadians near the US border.
>
Some 80% of the Canadian population lives within 150km of the US
border.  (That's about 90 miles for you Brits and Yanks that don't
understand that.)  British and Australian immigrants have not been
dominant among those who choose to come live in Canada; we see far more
newcomers from India.  I understand that years of British influence have
resulted in a peculiar form of hypercorrect English, but I don't see how
this influx of Raj English will help maintain standards among Disneyfied
Canadians.  I think that a continued practice of smug linguistic aikido
will be more effective  Come to think of it, that strategy may work as
well in cricket as in baseball.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Stephen Forrest wrote:

>On 9/19/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>fact displaying it in a dialect of English - we've got Wikipedia in
>>Scots, Wikipedia in Middle English, but when you click on Wikipedia
>>English, you get spelling errors, sloppy grammar and garbled syntax;
>>in short the American dialect of English, trying to hijack the term
>>English.
>>
>>
>Middle English does have an ISO 639 language code, enm.  But I
>wouldn't even want to think about how a wikipedia would work, given
>the number of variant spellings -- Anglo-Saxon was at least usually
>spelled consistently within a dialect, but the confusion introduced by
>the Norman Conquest left Middle English writers seemingly making up
>spellings as they went along.
>
Yes the influence of French spelling was bound to do that. :-)

Ec


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] AFD 100 days

body:
On 18/09/05, DF <dragons_flight at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Having tired of listening to arguments about what goes
> on at AFD but having little data, I decided to engage
> in a little experiment to analyze voting patterns at
> AFD.  I wrote a computer script to parse over 100 days
> of AFD logs and compile a variety of statistics by
> looking at the bold faced terms (eg. keep, delete,
> merge, etc).

That's a magnificent piece of work, thank you very much!

Any chance the script could analyse the data to see how votes end up
being closed? I.e. the % delete votes articles which actually are
deleted get?

Dan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>On 19/09/05, Mike Kuklinski <admin at kuattech.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 18/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>Americans seem to want to believe that they speak English, and we speak
>British English in England (meaning Britain!). They are wrong. They speak a
>dialect of our language, called American-English, an offshoot from the main
>trunk if you will, which has evolved somewhat independently of English.
> American-English is an out and out dialect of English. How can English
>English be a dialect of English?
>
I presume you are referring to the dialect of the ruling classes.

>(NB, I'm basing my definition on the written word not the regional spoken
>dialects of England).
>
That does narrow your outlook.

> if you want
>
>
>>proper English, look to Shakespearean early Modern English.
>>
>>
>Incorrect, if you want proper English, go to England; that is where the
>English language is spoken by the English people, of England.
>
>
Which part of England?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Stephen Forrest wrote:

>On 9/19/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Americans seem to want to believe that they speak English, and we speak
>>British English in England (meaning Britain!). They are wrong. They speak a
>>dialect of our language, called American-English, an offshoot from the main
>>trunk if you will, which has evolved somewhat independently of English.
>>
>>
>Look, this is getting tiresome.
>
It's only tiresome if you take his proposal seriously.  Lighten up!

Ec


from_name: Mike Kuklinski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 18/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>Wikipedia Anglo-Saxon?! Wikipedia Middle English?!! Wikipedia Scot's
>English?!!!
> I want Wikipedia English English!!!
>
I am going to to reply to the original post, since the follow-ups are
irrelevant.

American-dialect English (also known as American-English) is more
related to English of the 17th-18th century than 'Commonwealth-English'
is. Neither Commonwealth-English nor American-English are
'English-English' or proper English more than the other; if you want
proper English, look to Shakespearean early Modern English.

By the way, I am an American.

--Mike


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:

>Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>
>>Compared to that, American vs Commonwealth differences seem tiny.
>>
>>
>
>A point that has not yet been remarked in this threat is this:
>most people who learn English as a foreign language learn to write the
>traditional, commonwealth spelling.
>
This really depends on who you're talking about, and I'm not sure it is
"most".  Most *Europeans* who learn English as a foreign language learn
the UK spellings; most Asians, in my experience, learn the US spellings.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Commonwealth English", since Canadians
are in the Commonwealth and use a mixture of US and UK spellings
("colourize" is a nice hybrid word).  The term seems to mostly have been
invented at [[en:Commonwealth English]], and is not widely used elsewhere.

-Mark


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> To explain to the people on the Wiktionary mailinglist where this
> comes from, there is a huge debate on the Wikipedia-l mailinglist
> about having a seperate English and American English wikipedia.

I wouldn't characterize it as huge.  One person made the proposal, and
no-one who replied considered it realistic.

> In the plans for Ultimate Wiktionary there are three ways in which
> words can be destinguished as being of a particular orthography. I
> will describe these here and hope to use the energy of this discussion
> for this question that needs a resolution at some stage.
>
>
> Please let me know what you think and particularly why.

It's premature to get into this kind of debate before the software is in
place, but I suspect that the preferred option will vary from one term
to the next.

Ec


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked

body:
On 9/17/05, Brandon Hansen <buhansen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've recently been blocked and I feel it is unjustified and against policy.
>
>
> This is how things went down:
>
>    1. I added content to many WP articles using content from ON articles
>    and subsequently cited the ON articles as references.
>    2. These references were removed but the content left. I protested.
>    3. A discussion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Uriah923/OmniNerd)
>    was held to determine if the reference should be replaced and if content
>    should remain. It was concluded that ON articles are not worthy of being
>    used as references and that the content could remain. I conceded.
>    4. I opened discussions on four Talk pages to determine if some ON
>    articles could be included as external links. No links were placed.
>    5. I was blocked by Taxman, citing linkspam and disruption.
>

There is a reason that all the discussion was collected into one
place, to produce one consensus. After a decision was reached which
you didn't like, you continued to spruik your site on four separate
talk pages, presumably to try to get around this consensus.

Your behaviour falls within the bounds of link spamming, and
disruptive behaviour, and the block appears justified to me (although
I am not an admin).

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 9/19/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
>
> 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
> 2, If the admin in question requests it.
>

The only reason I can think of would be that having inactive admins on
the books might inflate admin numbers, but we already have [[WP:LA]],
which is split into "active", "semi-active" and "inactive" groups as
it is.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Foundation-l] A hearty welcome to Danny!

body:
Great news for the Foundation, and for all Wikipedians. Congrats!

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 9/19/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I am pleased to announce that Danny Wool has accepted my offer of a job
> at the Wikimedia Foundation to be the Executive Assistant for the
> foundation.  This job will primarily entail removing work from me so
> that I can better focus on the parts of my job that I am best at.
>
> Danny has extensive experience in the nonprofit sector and has been our
> (volunteer) grant co-ordinator for some time.  I have worked with Danny
> on many projects and we are an excellent working team with a fine
> personal relationship.
>
> It is envisioned that Danny's staff role as my assistant will be
> temporary as he comes in and sets up professional systems for our work
> and begins to look for a replacement Executive Assistant (sometime
> within a year, depending on the flow of events) so that he can focus
> more and more over time in writing grant proposals.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Assistant has a very very
> cursory look at the position.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD

body:
Hi all,

You may not know that there's currently a proposal being voted on to add
another discretionary criterion to [[WP:CSD]].

See [[Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio
material]].

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 9/19/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:

[snip]
> fact displaying it in a dialect of English - we've got Wikipedia in
> Scots, Wikipedia in Middle English, but when you click on Wikipedia
> English, you get spelling errors, sloppy grammar and garbled syntax;
> in short the American dialect of English, trying to hijack the term
> English.

Just wanted to point out that there is not, as yet, any Middle English
wikipedia.

Middle English does have an ISO 639 language code, enm.  But I
wouldn't even want to think about how a wikipedia would work, given
the number of variant spellings -- Anglo-Saxon was at least usually
spelled consistently within a dialect, but the confusion introduced by
the Norman Conquest left Middle English writers seemingly making up
spellings as they went along.

Steve


body:
On 9/19/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> As Phrozaic pointed out, inactive admins are theoretically much less of targets for account hijackers.  Nevertheless, I am in full support of more bureaucrats.
>
> --Ryan
>

since when could they de-admin people?

--
geni


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Desysopping inactive admins

body:
It was my understanding that they could... or am I wrong?

--Ryan

> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Desysopping inactive admins
>
> On 9/19/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> > As Phrozaic pointed out, inactive admins are theoretically much
> > less of targets for account hijackers.  Nevertheless, I am in
> > full support of more bureaucrats.
> >
> > --Ryan
> >
>
> since when could they de-admin people?
>
>
> --
> geni

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 9/19/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> The thing aboot (!) Canada is that there's a steady stream of recent (and
> educated) British immigrants as with Australia, maintaining the standards.
> I would not be surprised to find Americanisms more a feature of urban
> working-class Canadians near the US border.

Dude, truly you know naught of what you speak.  No matter what level
of British immigration Canada might get, it is more than met by the
_vast tides_ of cross-border influence from the south.

As for this odd theory that American influence is a pernicious disease
seeping northwards through the lower orders: southern Ontario has its
own working-class accent, which is distinct from an upstate New York
accent (as I am reminded every time I flip by the Buffalo news station
on TV).  And "Canadians near the US border"?  The latter part of that
statement is redundant for approximately 85% of us.

As a Canadian I am typically in the position of having to defend my
Briticisms (colour, labour, licence) from clueless Americans.  But I
will equally well defend my Americanisms (curb, tire, jail, program)
from clueless Brits.

>  You might see it as an invention, I see it as a spelling error - as would
> an American no doubt.

Well, there we are: linguistic imperialism from two directions. :)

Steve


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fwd: Wikiquote e-mail

body:
Well... no... not sure.

Some Wikiquote editors are not very happy with this, because Jarlaxle
has made good contributions to Wikiquote and has not apparently behaved
wrongly. So he will probably be unblocked there.
Imho, such behavior should grant banning from all projects. But
Wikiquote community does not want seem to want others to make that
decision for them. A growing issue I guess...

Well, at least, now they know he might be a problem. So will be careful.
Hmmm.

Anthere

Ben E. wrote:

> And I see that he has been indefinitely blocked from all English-speaking
> projects by Linuxbeak and Anthere. That just about settles it.
>
> --[[en:User:Bratsche|Ben]].
>
> On 9/18/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>same.
>>
>>On 9/18/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On 9/18/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>I believe that there now exists a community consensus to ban
>>>>JarlaxleArtemis.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>I certainly have no objection. Suggest you put it to [[WP:ANI]] or
>>
>>[[WP:VP]]
>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [Wikitech-l] Edit conflict

body:
At 21:32 -0700 17/9/05, Brion Vibber wrote:

>
>Bill Clark wrote:
>>Actually, it looks like the timestamps are simply getting all screwed up in
>>Article.php for some reason.
>>
>>What's really weird is that the timestamp seems to be losing exactly one
>>hour between the $this->loadLastEdit() line in getTimestamp() and when it's
>>actually returned. Nothing is happening in the code between those two lines,
>>yet somehow the timestamp changes. This makes no sense whatsoever. Clearly
>>I'm misunderstanding something here.
>
>Is this on every page or some particular page?
>
>When was the page last edited? Was it during a daylight saving time
>transition in your server's timezone?
>
>Some versions of PHP have a bug where timestamps going through
>gmmktime() and gmdate() get converted to/from local time internally,
>which can corrupt them if they occur during a daylight saving time
>transition (hence ambiguous timezone); the result is a time that's one
>hour off, and matching timestamps no longer match.
>
>If you're experiencing this, try adding in your LocalSettings.php:
>
>putenv("TZ=UTC");
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

I also had this problem (a few months back). I had installed on two
servers. The problem appeared on a server with mysql4 and not on the
server with mysql3. But that may irrelevant.

The problem disappeared (with 1.5.x releases as I recall) and I have
hence removed the fix below from LocalSettings.php

# Ugly hack warning! This needs smoothing out.
$wgLocaltimezone = "UTC";
$oldtz = getenv("TZ");
putenv("TZ=$wgLocaltimezone");
$wgLocalTZoffset = date("Z") / 3600;
putenv("TZ=$oldtz");

Not sure who suggested this workaround?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 9/19/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Americans seem to want to believe that they speak English, and we speak
> British English in England (meaning Britain!). They are wrong. They speak a
> dialect of our language, called American-English, an offshoot from the main
> trunk if you will, which has evolved somewhat independently of English.

Look, this is getting tiresome.  The only argument you could provide
on why written British English has greater legitimacy than written
American English is that it happens to be written by people who mostly
still live where the writers of the written language ancestral to both
once lived.

This is a political consideration, not a linguistic one.  Since this
political point is not commonly accepted, it is POV and therefore
unsuitable for Wikipedia.

Steve


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

> Incorrect, if you want proper English, go to England; that is where the
>English language is spoken by the English people, of England.
>
>
Incorrect.  Usage among the educated class of England is no longer
definitional of the English language.

In any case, this debate is unlikely to go anywhere.  Our friend "Jack &
Naree" is obviously a imperialist of the eldest variety, and unlikely to
be convinced that his particular bastardized dialect of
early-21st-century English is anything but the divinely-sanctioned
correct one.

-Mark


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 19/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does your e-mail have a point?

I would guess this is the same person who ranted at the en: Help Desk
yesterday about the issue.

As this rant included (edited highlights) -

"It's bad enough that the British invention of HTML won't let you type
colour correctly in tags, without having the world's largest free
online dictionary purporting to display information in English, but in
fact displaying it in a dialect of English - we've got Wikipedia in
Scots, Wikipedia in Middle English, but when you click on Wikipedia
English, you get spelling errors, sloppy grammar and garbled syntax;
in short the American dialect of English, trying to hijack the term
English. ... I want Wikipedia "English" to be partitioned in to
"English" and "American". We can copy and paste and run spellcheck to
iron out the mangled American illiteracy, no worries. ... It is a
scandal to actively promote the butchering of English..."

- I think we can safely consider this as not providing a great deal of
useful insight into our language policy :-)

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Alphax wrote:

>What about the French Wikipedia? How do they feel?
>
>
>What about the Portuguese Wikipedia? How do they feel?
>
>
If I'm not mistaken, the Quebec dialect of French and the Brazilian
dialect of Portuguese are considered acceptable in the French and
Portuguese Wikipedias, respectively.

-Mark


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 9/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/19/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> > It was my understanding that they could... or am I wrong?
> >
> > --Ryan
>
> Removeing is stewards only. There is a case for more stewards but I
> don't think there will be another election for a while.

Either add more stewards, or move this permission one level down.

Without any REAL knowledge of any other differences between the roles,
I prefer the latter.  However my opinion is, as stated, pretty
uninformed.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Arbeo M

body:
What really baffles me here is how relatively petty
incidents can cause people to write lengthy editorial
articles, philosophizing about "key shifts in society"
in general and alleged conspiracies at Wikipedia in
particular (while the actual explanation is much more
mundane). The only reason I can think of seems to be
superabundance of time combined with a total lack of
more fulfilling occupation in life.

Arbeo

--- Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> schrieb:

> On 9/18/05, Stirling Newberry
> <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
> > Then that is a huge user interface and security
> hole - because
> > someone looking at the history of the image would
> think that the
> > original uploader uploaded the image. In an
> organization that relies
> > on users being able to track and document problems
> this is gap in
> > that ability.
>
> Look at the bottom of the image page.  There is your
> file history.
>
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

___________________________________________________________
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from_name: Jack & Naree

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
I want American English to have a separate Wikipedia from English English -
this would mean copying
 I typed it in a hurry at the end of my shift with a view to responding to
any response, later.
 I've placed a more detailed post on the helpdesk page. I think, however,
that it's apt that I should go into even more depth here.
 I've asked about English on Wikipedia before and been told that they think
it's acceptable for English articles to be in a mish-mash of dialects and
spellings; but having seen the range of ludicrous languages available -
including variant forms of English: Scots English and Middle English etc...
I've now decided I must make a request and campaign properly for American
English to be given a seperate Wikipedia language from (English) English.
 It's simply infuriating and offensive for the misspellings of a dialect of
English to take precedence over the standard language - I'm sure Spanish,
French and Portuguese speakers would feel similarly; it's cultural
imperialism.
 If you have different forms of Chinese Wikipedia (I'm a graduate of Jap &
Chi so I'm aware of xyz); if you have Wikipedias for dialects and older
forms of English; if you Wikipedias for countries and languages with far
smaller populations, economic/political importance and internet presences;
then the English of the British Isles and Commonwealth - the standard and
original form of English - simply *has* to be the only form of English that
can use the term "English" on Wikipedia.
 Some might say that it is "British English", this term is fallacious (even
if you can find it in a dictionary) no English, British, British Isles or
even Commonwealth native understands or recognises the term - it is both
meaningless and fallacious: there are no "British English" speakers in the
world - there are English (nationality) English (language) speakers, Welsh
English speakers, Scottish English speakers, Irish English speakers, Cornish
English speakers and so on...
Whereas the term "American English" is not.
When I go to Wikipedia English, and type a search for "colour" I should not
expect to be redirected to "color" which is a recent spelling of a dialect
of English that has arisen over the last couple of centuries perhaps - it is
simply *not* *English* it is *American-English*. I'm more than happy for
American-English speakers to have an American-English wikipedia and have all
their weird and wonderful spellings and vocabulary - and it may well turn
out to be the biggest wiki; but I don't want to select Wikipedia English and
type in "Aubergine" and get "Eggplant"; "Nappy" and get "Diaper"; or "Tap"
and get "Faucet", it's simply unacceptable, and against the spirit of
multilingualism and accuracy that wikipedia is supposed to strive for.
Hence I want to campaign in all seriousness that The English Wikipedia is
duplicated, and one is called American-English, the other remaining English,
and the task of correcting spelling, vocab and grammar can begin.
 The Campaign for an English Wikipedia is not about Britain (the fourth
largest economy in the world, a population of about 60m, 55% of whom are
online), it's also about a whole host of other countries and regions (over a
billion people) that do not use American-English, but use English instead as
a lingua franca (many with complete fluency):
Ireland
India
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Sri lanka
Nepal
Singapore
Malaysia
Brunei
(Hong Kong)
(Canada)
Australia
New Zealand
Nigeria
Ghana
Sierra Leone
parts of Cameroon
Uganda
Kenya
Tanzania
Sudan
Zambia
Zimbabwe
RSA
Lesotho
Namibia
Botswana
Malawi
various island nations in the Caribbean plus Belize and Guyana, Indian Ocean
and Pacific British dependencies all over the planet.
 The term Commonwealth English is therefore also apt, but American-English
has no right to usurp the title English, from English! Wikipedia should
reflect this.
 Jack
 York
England
The United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Crown Dependencies &
Overseas Territories
 On 19/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Does your e-mail have a point?
>
> Mark
>
> On 18/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia Anglo-Saxon?! Wikipedia Middle English?!! Wikipedia Scot's
> > English?!!!
> > I want Wikipedia English English!!!
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Chris Lüer

subject: [WikiEN-l] On speedying "halfway decent stubs"

body:
At 03:00 PM 9/18/2005, Dan Grey wrote:

>I've read some "featured articles" and wondered how on earth they got
>that status... Probably because our "peer review" rarely really is
>"peer" review, more often
>other-editors-who-don't-know-the-subject-having-a-glance-and-thinking-that-looks-nice
>review.
>
>Not a complaint, just an observation :-)

I have been wondering about pictures in featured articles... there
seems to be a rule that a featured article needs to have lots
of  pictures. The problem is that for many topics there are no
suitable pictures.

An example of what I'm thinking of: [[Attila the Hun]] has a whole
bunch of pictures of Attila -- but all of them are fictional. To the
credit of the article, it is actually mentioned that there are no
real pictures of him. But this is way at the end, and the first
fictional picture is at the very beginning of the article.
Unexperienced readers that don't read all the way to the end might be
misled into accepting these pictures as factual representations.

Shouldn't the same encyclopedic standards we have for text be applied
to images, too?

         Chris
         [[User:Chl]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Yes, it was me, I did rant, I do apologise, but I'm just pissed off with
proper English being treated like this.
You have Wikipedia in Klingon, in tiny tribal languages, and now in Scots
(and I'm Scottish btw) - which is basically as similar to correct English as
American-English is - at least I think most native English-speakers can
probably read it.
 "- I think we can safely consider this as not providing a great deal of
useful insight into our language policy :-)"
 Why not? Ok, I ranted, but this not an illegitimate point, why should we
(and I say that because you have a ".uk" address) be forced to accept
Americanisms?
If you're British, do think we should start changing our spellings to
American ones? Start changing our grammar too?
 someone at Wikipedia ages ago wrote to me that he thought it was fine for
articles in the English section to remain in the dialect relevent to their
subject matter - he basically said, if it's about the UK it can be in
English, but everything else is to be in American-English, but called
English - and he said he was British!
 I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism, ambiguation
(because of the many differences in American-English and English usage), and
English learners learning to spell incorrectly and talk like Americans - why
is it wrong to resist that?
  On 19/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 19/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Does your e-mail have a point?
>
> I would guess this is the same person who ranted at the en: Help Desk
> yesterday about the issue.
>
> As this rant included (edited highlights) -
>
> "It's bad enough that the British invention of HTML won't let you type
> colour correctly in tags, without having the world's largest free
> online dictionary purporting to display information in English, but in
> fact displaying it in a dialect of English - we've got Wikipedia in
> Scots, Wikipedia in Middle English, but when you click on Wikipedia
> English, you get spelling errors, sloppy grammar and garbled syntax;
> in short the American dialect of English, trying to hijack the term
> English. ... I want Wikipedia "English" to be partitioned in to
> "English" and "American". We can copy and paste and run spellcheck to
> iron out the mangled American illiteracy, no worries. ... It is a
> scandal to actively promote the butchering of English..."
>
>
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
> andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 19/09/05, Ole Andersen <palnatoke at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 19/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would guess this is the same person who ranted at the en: Help Desk
> > yesterday about the issue.
> >
> > As this rant included (edited highlights) -
> >
> ...
> > I want Wikipedia "English" to be partitioned in to
> > "English" and "American".
>
> It could be done, of course. We could also have Australian, Indian and
> South African English. If we wanted to do so, that is.

 I don't think there is significant difference - I think it's really a split
between "Commonwealth English" and "American English".
The cultural ties - even down to soap operas on telly mean that Aussies and
Pommes and South Africans have much more affinity and familiarity with each
other, and this also extends to language.
 When it comes to Americans, however, there really is a gulf of
(mis)understanding (and misspelling).
 But I think you miss the point in that - I'm not talking about making a
"British English" wikipedia (In fact I don't believe the ?British English?
article should exist, becuase the term does not make any sense outside
America) - I want the English Wikipedia to be reclaimed by English or
Commonwealth English speakers, and the Americans given their own "/am-en"
American-English wikipedia.

--
> http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
> CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc
> ICQ: 86989486 phone: +45 22 34 72 92
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Cool, mockery is for trolls.
 This is not about Balkanisation, it's about separating American-English
from English.
 But come to think of it - yes, have one for every variation you like, and
let natural selection take care of the rest. Just as long as English is
English, and not American.
 Have you seen the "Scot's English" one? Do you not call that Balkanisation?
 If you want to have a legitimate criteria for a language, a different
orthography has got to be a clear one.
In English there are two - American and non-American.
Orthography is the main issue, meaning is another.
 If you want to go academic - which is surely the best way to back this
whole argument up, you should scan this (ironically american) leading
insitute of linguistic research:
 http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=eng
 On 19/09/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> (note: I've split this into paragraphs for readability)
>
> Jack wrote:
> > I want American English to have a separate Wikipedia from English
> > English - this would mean copying
> >
> > I typed it in a hurry at the end of my shift with a view to
> > responding to any response, later.
> >
> > I've placed a more detailed post on the helpdesk page. I think,
> > however, that it's apt that I should go into even more depth here.
> >
> > I've asked about English on Wikipedia before and been told that they
> > think it's acceptable for English articles to be in a mish-mash of
> > dialects and spellings; but having seen the range of ludicrous
> > languages available - including variant forms of English: Scots
> > English and Middle English etc... I've now decided I must make a
> > request and campaign properly for American English to be given a
> > seperate Wikipedia language from (English) English.
> >
>
> I must remind viewers who are still with us that Balkanisation Is Evil.
>
> > It's simply infuriating and offensive for the misspellings of a
> > dialect of English to take precedence over the standard language -
> > I'm sure Spanish, French and Portuguese speakers would feel
> > similarly; it's cultural imperialism.
> >
> > If you have different forms of Chinese Wikipedia (I'm a graduate of
> > Jap & Chi so I'm aware of xyz); if you have Wikipedias for dialects
> > and older forms of English; if you Wikipedias for countries and
> > languages with far smaller populations, economic/political importance
> > and internet presences; then the English of the British Isles and
> > Commonwealth - the standard and original form of English - simply
> > *has* to be the only form of English that can use the term "English"
> > on Wikipedia.
> >
> > Some might say that it is "British English", this term is fallacious
> > (even if you can find it in a dictionary) no English, British,
> > British Isles or even Commonwealth native understands or recognises
> > the term - it is both meaningless and fallacious: there are no
> > "British English" speakers in the world - there are English
> > (nationality) English (language) speakers, Welsh English speakers,
> > Scottish English speakers, Irish English speakers, Cornish English
> > speakers and so on...
> >
> > Whereas the term "American English" is not.
> >
> > When I go to Wikipedia English, and type a search for "colour" I
> > should not expect to be redirected to "color" which is a recent
> > spelling of a dialect of English that has arisen over the last couple
> > of centuries perhaps - it is simply *not* *English* it is
> > *American-English*. I'm more than happy for American-English speakers
> > to have an American-English wikipedia and have all their weird and
> > wonderful spellings and vocabulary - and it may well turn out to be
> > the biggest wiki; but I don't want to select Wikipedia English and
> > type in "Aubergine" and get "Eggplant"; "Nappy" and get "Diaper"; or
> > "Tap" and get "Faucet", it's simply unacceptable, and against the
> > spirit of multilingualism and accuracy that wikipedia is supposed to
> > strive for. Hence I want to campaign in all seriousness that The
> > English Wikipedia is duplicated, and one is called American-English,
> > the other remaining English, and the task of correcting spelling,
> > vocab and grammar can begin.
> >
>
> I agree completely. Furthurmore, I feel that we shall need an Australian
> English Wikipedia to handle the many words in Australian English which
> differ from English English (and possibly Queensland English, New South
> Wales English, et. al), a South African English Wikipedia to accomodate
> the heavy use of Afrikaans, a New Zealand English Wikipedia to account
> for the lack of vowels, a Canadian English Wikipedia to account for the
> number of French words, a Canadian French Wikipedia to complement it,
> and a Singlish Wikipedia because it has a funny name.
>
> Here's a far better idea: Let's go back to Proto-Indo-European. Imagine
> the amount of server space we could save!
>
> Conversely, imagine a Beowulf cluster of English Wikipedias!
>
> > The Campaign for an English Wikipedia is not about Britain (the
> > fourth largest economy in the world, a population of about 60m, 55%
> > of whom are online), it's also about a whole host of other countries
> > and regions (over a billion people) that do not use American-English,
> > but use English instead as a lingua franca (many with complete
> > fluency):
> >
> <snip overly long list>
> > The term Commonwealth English is therefore also apt, but
> American-English
> > has no right to usurp the title English, from English! Wikipedia should
> > reflect this.
> >
>
> I find your theories interesting/intriguing and wish to subscribe to
> your newsletter/journal.
>
> --
> Alphax | /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
>
> Actually, we don't have a Wikipedia in Klingon.

 that's a surprise

BTW, have you considered contributing to sco.wikipedia?

 no

>
> Really? I thought it was en.wikipedia.org...

 - I think we can safely consider this as not providing a great deal of
useful insight into our language policy :-)

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
 - Show quoted text -
 my turn to do a "..."

>
> Actually, the policy is (or at least was):
>
> * If subject of article is British (or other Commonwealth
> English)-related, use Commonwealth English.
> * If subject of article is USian, use US English
> * If neither applies, majority style (in case both are used) of original
> author is preferred.

 And what of "Aubergines" and "Eggplants"? "Colour" and "Color"

> I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism, ambiguation
> > (because of the many differences in American-English and English usage),
> and
> > English learners learning to spell incorrectly and talk like Americans -
> why
> > is it wrong to resist that?
> >
>
> You are welcome to create your own fork of the site in Commonwealth
> English, provided you comply with the GFDL.

 Happy to do so, but what I really want is a fork called "American-English".

--
> Alphax | /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Ole Andersen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 19/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would guess this is the same person who ranted at the en: Help Desk
> yesterday about the issue.
>
> As this rant included (edited highlights) -
>
...
> I want Wikipedia "English" to be partitioned in to
> "English" and "American".

It could be done, of course. We could also have Australian, Indian and
South African English. If we wanted to do so, that is.

--
http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc
ICQ: 86989486 phone: +45 22 34 72 92


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
> Nick Jenkins wrote:
> >>(Also the SQL dump output needs to actually be tested before we dedicate
> >>a few gigs to it.)
> >
> > I'm happy to be a guinea pig. Just give tell me where to get it from,
> > and I'll leave it importing overnight and report back any
> > errors/problems and whether it worked or not.
>
> I haven't had a chance to upload some test conversions yet but I'd
> appreciate it if you'd give a quick test of the program:
> http://leuksman.com/misc/mwdumper-preview.zip
>
> This .zip contains the compiled converter program in its present state,
> with a bundled executable for Linux/x86 and as CIL assemblies for any
> other OS.
>
> The Linux binary does *not* require a Mono installation; I've tested it
> on Ubuntu Hoary and Fedora Core 1. (It does require glib2, which is
> probably installed by default on any modern Linux.)

// O/S is Debian Woody 3.0r6 GNU/Linux, with a backport of the 2.6.7
kernel, so it's semi-modern (i.e. not truly ancient, but definitely
not cutting edge either - more kind of middle-aged, with a few grey
hairs, and driving a station wagon or mini-van).

// Tried running initially - got error loading libgmodule-2.0.so.0 :
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper# wget
http://leuksman.com/misc/mwdumper-preview.zip
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper# unzip mwdumper-preview.zip
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview# ls
README  cil  doc  linux-i386
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview# cd linux-i386/
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386# ls
mwdumper
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386# ./mwdumper
./mwdumper: error while loading shared libraries: libgmodule-2.0.so.0:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386#
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386#
strace ./mwdumper
execve("./mwdumper", ["./mwdumper"], [/* 18 vars */]) = 0
uname({sys="Linux", node="ludo", ...})  = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x857c000
open("/etc/ld.so.preload", O_RDONLY)    = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)      = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=10970, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 10970, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x40014000
close(3)                                = 0
open("/lib/libpthread.so.0", O_RDONLY)  = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0`C\0\000"...,
1024) = 1024
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=102172, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 81316, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x40017000
mprotect(0x40024000, 28068, PROT_NONE)  = 0
old_mmap(0x40024000, 28672, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE,
MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, 3, 0xd000) = 0x40024000
close(3)                                = 0
open("/lib/libm.so.6", O_RDONLY)        = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\2007\0"...,
1024) = 1024
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=130088, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 132708, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x4002b000
mprotect(0x4004b000, 1636, PROT_NONE)   = 0
old_mmap(0x4004b000, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE,
MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, 3, 0x1f000) = 0x4004b000
close(3)                                = 0
open("/lib/i686/mmx/libgmodule-2.0.so.0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No
such file or directory)
stat64("/lib/i686/mmx", 0xbfffee94)     = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/i686/libgmodule-2.0.so.0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such
file or directory)
stat64("/lib/i686", 0xbfffee94)         = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/mmx/libgmodule-2.0.so.0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such
file or directory)
stat64("/lib/mmx", 0xbfffee94)          = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file
or directory)
stat64("/lib", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
open("/usr/lib/i686/mmx/libgmodule-2.0.so.0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT
(No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/lib/i686/mmx", 0xbfffee94) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/lib/i686/libgmodule-2.0.so.0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No
such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/lib/i686", 0xbfffee94)     = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/lib/mmx/libgmodule-2.0.so.0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No
such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/lib/mmx", 0xbfffee94)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such
file or directory)
stat64("/usr/lib", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=16384, ...}) = 0
writev(2, [{"./mwdumper", 10}, {": ", 2}, {"error while loading shared
libra"..., 36}, {": ", 2}, {"libgmodule-2.0.so.0", 19}, {": ", 2},
{"cannot open shared object file", 30}, {": ", 2}, {"No such file or
directory", 25}, {"\n", 1}], 10./mwdumper: error while loading shared
libraries: libgmodule-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No
such file or directory
) = 129
_exit(127)                              = ?
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386#

// Based on your message about needing glib2, looked for and installed this:
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/cil# apt-get
install libglib2.0-0
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libglib2.0-0
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0  not upgraded.
Need to get 288kB of archives. After unpacking 723kB will be used.
Get:1 http://debian.ihug.com.au woody/main libglib2.0-0 2.0.1-2 [288kB]
Fetched 288kB in 5s (51.0kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package libglib2.0-0.
(Reading database ... 24745 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libglib2.0-0 (from .../libglib2.0-0_2.0.1-2_i386.deb) ...
Setting up libglib2.0-0 (2.0.1-2) ...
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386#

// tried running again:
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386# ./mwdumper
./mwdumper: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: version `GLIBC_2.3' not found
(required by ./mwdumper)
./mwdumper: /lib/libpthread.so.0: version `GLIBC_2.3.2' not found
(required by ./mwdumper)
./mwdumper: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.3.2' not found (required
by ./mwdumper)
./mwdumper: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.3' not found (required by
./mwdumper)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386#
dpkg -S /lib/ld-linux.so.2
libc6: /lib/ld-linux.so.2
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386# dpkg -s libc6
Package: libc6
Status: install ok installed
Priority: required
Section: base
Installed-Size: 12760
Maintainer: Ben Collins <bcollins at debian.org>
Source: glibc
Version: 2.2.5-11.8
Replaces: ldso (<= 1.9.11-9), timezone, timezones, gconv-modules,
libtricks, libc6-bin, netkit-rpc, netbase (<< 4.0)
Provides: glibc-2.2.5-11.8
Suggests: locales, glibc-doc
Conflicts: strace (<< 4.0-0), libnss-db (<< 2.2-3), timezone,
timezones, gconv-modules, libtricks, libc6-doc, libc5 (<< 5.4.33-7),
libpthread0 (<< 0.7-10), libc6-bin, libwcsmbs, apt (<< 0.3.0),
libglib1.2 (<< 1.2.1-2), libc6-i586, libc6-i686, libc6-v9, netkit-rpc
Conffiles:
 /etc/default/devpts fc857c5ac5fb84d80720ed4d1c624f6e
Description: GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone data
 Contains the standard libraries that are used by nearly all programs on
 the system. This package includes shared versions of the standard C library
 and the standard math library, as well as many others.
 Timezone data is also included.

ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386#

// I.e. only have glibc 2.2.5, need >= 2.3.2.   :-(

// Upgrading currently isn't really viable as the machine's reason for
existence is to be a test box configured in the same way as a
production server (i.e. should have the same versions of software),
and currently the production machine works fine, so the current
feeling is "don't fix what ain't broken".

> If you're on
> Linux and the binary does or doesn't work, please let me know. (If it
> fails, please include output of 'ldd mwdumper'.)

ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386# ldd mwdumper
./mwdumper: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: version `GLIBC_2.3' not found
(required by ./mwdumper)
./mwdumper: /lib/libpthread.so.0: version `GLIBC_2.3.2' not found
(required by ./mwdumper)
./mwdumper: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.3.2' not found (required
by ./mwdumper)
./mwdumper: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.3' not found (required by
./mwdumper)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x40017000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x4002b000)
        libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0x4004d000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x40051000)
        libgthread-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgthread-2.0.so.0 (0x40054000)
        libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0x40059000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x400bc000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia/new-dumper/mwdumper-preview/linux-i386#

All the best,
Nick.