from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Who is welcome?

body:
Welcome, Jim!

--- Jim McKeeth <jim at mckeeth.org> wrote:
> I agree with Jason but I would add it depends on the
> scope of the
> article.  For example in an article about the
> Holocaust you would not get
> into the details of the denial, but you might
> mention that some deny it and
> then link to articles about those groups.  This
> would hold true for any
> false (or generally accepted false) belief or
> statement believed or made by
> a group.

Exactly. It is a fact that there are Holocaust
deniers. We should not exclude this information from
the encyclopedia; on the contrary, by including it
along with the overwhelming weight of history, we do a
service to our readers by allowing them to see the
nonsense for what it really is.

Your idea about briefly mentioning it and then linking
to the [[Holocaust denial]] article is exactly what we
should be doing.

> But I think the reverse should be held true for
> religion.  I have seen a
> number of articles in regards to religion and other
> "unpopular" topics that
> have the opposition within the article.  I believe
> that the article should
> solely talk about the subject and only mention the
> opposition (counter
> arguement) and then link to an article that focuses
> on it.

Yes. For example, when talking about Christianity,
there's no need to go into great deal about the
historical Jesus. Instead, mention and link to an
article that deals with the question.

<snipped another good example about Pascal>

> That is just my $0.02 worth.  BTW, I am new here, my
> name is Jim and I look
> forward to eventually making meaningful
> contributions to WikiPedia as time
> permits while retaining my day job and my family.
> ;-)

I have a job, a wife and a young child, and I;ve
managed to hold things together. Good luck. :)

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
http://news.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: Using pseudonyms, was: [Wikipedia-l] Helga banned

body:
--- Jim McKeeth <jim at mckeeth.org> wrote:
> I have only been here a short time, but most of your
> posts seem more aimed
> at making waves then building an encyclopedia.  But
> that is just my opinion.

The technical term is "trolling". ;-)

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
http://news.yahoo.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Conversion script

body:
Just a sidenote on the conversion of the German wikipedia: The [[/Talk]]
links, or rather, [[/Diskussion]], were *not* removed from the article
bodys. We're doing that manually, slowly, but it might be good to check
this before another language is converted.

Magnus


from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikitech-l] A projection

body:
Hi Neil and Ray,

At 2002-09-11 15:55 +0100, Neil Harris wrote:
>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>The underlying premise is that growth is exponential.  People more commonly encounter this with compound interest calculations.  Thus $1,000 invested at 12% for one year will give $1,120 at the end of the year.  If it is compounded semi-annually it will give 1.06 * 1.06 * 1000 or $1,123.60 at the end of the year.  If it is compounded monthly it will give (1.01)^12 * 1000 =  $1,126.83 at the end of the year. The calculationsa that I made are similar, although I have not taken into account any limitations that may exist upon Wikipedia's growth.
>>
>>The annual growth rate based on 0.632% per day would be (1.00632)^365
>>- 1 = 896.861%
>>Based on 0.410% per day it would be 345.239%
>>These figures do seem quite high, but for a reality check Wikipedia's size on September 9 of this year was 42,021 and on September 9, 2001 it was 11,208.   42021/11208 is 3.44920, i.e. growth of 274.920%.  but this does include some periods when the growth was considerable lower than it has been in the last 30 days.

I know what exponential behaviour is, I was just hoping you'd
give the figures in a clearer way instead of as a formula.
It's usual to give the growth per year as a percentage and/or
to give the amount of time in which the amount doubles.

>The graph half way down at [[Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia]]  illustrates this rather nicely.

>It looks exponential to me, with a kink for the Great Slowdown of the Phase II software.  Recent growth is about 217 articles/day for a size of about 42000 articles, and that's about 0.5% / day.

Looks very linear to me.

And I think anyway, that the process will be more linear than exponential.

There are several aspects:
- When the number of people contributing stays fixed and
  they write a fixed number of articles per time unit
  the growth will be linear.
- People may get bored or frustrated however and produce
  less articles. They may also lack the knowledge to write
  about other than their favorite subjects. Even if they
  would write about non-favorite subjects it would go
  slower because they would have to do more research.
- People will also spend time on improving articles
  instead of writing new ones and this get worse the
  more articles there are.
- However, new people will join the club and therefore
  super linear behaviour could occur, but I think that the
  new people will at most counteract the amount that the
  other start writing less articles.
- Even when people don't have to write articles themselves
  but can copy and edit them, the sources that they can
  easily copy them from may dry out over time.
- And a major argument against super linear behaviour of
  the growth is, that the bigger the data base becomes,
  the more complicated and time consuming the
  interrelations will get. Which with a fixed staff would
  let the growth tend to logarithmic behaviour.

Given all these factors and the current graph, I think that
the growth is more likely to be linear (and we should be
happy enough with that).

Greetings,
Jaap


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Another source of information

body:
I am pleased to introduce another source of information.  I don't think
that simply dumping Mr. Phillips' work into the Wikipedia is a
particularly good idea -- he isn't writing encyclopedia articles.
However, we have his permission to incorporate his work freely.

Is there a place, perhaps in Meta, that we can preserve this note?

--~~~
 the Epopt

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Phillips [mailto:mike at cronab.demon.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 15:32
To: Sean Barrett
Subject: Re: "Ships of the Old Navy" and the Wikipedia

Dear Sean,

I must apologise for the delay in answering, I have been away.

I am quite happy for you to use the Ships of the Old Navy pages on
Wikipedia and as an advocate of the free distribution of information I
approve of the GNU Open Licence.

One thing I must stress is that this is an ongoing project. I am
constantly updating entries and I am working, when I get the time,  on
extending  the starting date back from the 1780s  to eventually 1703 ,
the accession of Queen Anne. I also have a CD-ROM version which includes
maps and other additional material.

May I also draw your attention to my Primer on Sailing Warships starting
on
http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/gen1.htm
This contains three pages of facts, figures and definitions.

Regards

Mike Phillips

In message <000201c2506a$9177d3e0$6701a8c0 at ORGOCH>, Sean Barrett
<sean at epoptic.org> writes
>Dear Mr Phillips:
>
>I am one of the administrators of the Wikipedia
>(http://www.wikipedia.org), a collaborative project to produce a
>complete encyclopedia from scratch, which began in January 2001 and is
>growing rapidly.  One of my personal interests is naval history.  While
>researching articles, I discovered your "SHIPS OF THE OLD NAVY" Web
>pages (http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/INTRO.HTM) and was very impressed.
>
>Your work would be of great benefit to the Wikipedia project, and I
>would like to include it.  Wikipedia requires all contributions be made
>under the GNU Free Documentation License, which is a license for open
>content designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU
>project.  Would you be so kind as to review the GFDL at
>http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html and determine if it meets your
>approval?  If it does, I would be pleased to include your research in
>the Wikipedia.  Or, of course, you could incorporate it yourself!
>
>I admire your work, and look forward to corresponding with you.
>
>Yours Truly,
>Sean Barrett
>sean at epoptic.com
>

--
Michael and Jane Phillips        mike at cronab.demon.co.uk
Cronabar, North Pill,            http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/marit/htm
Saltash, Cornwall PL12 6LJ
England.


from_name: Jim McKeeth

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Who is welcome?

body:
At 06:15 PM 09/12/2002 -0700, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>I have a job, a wife and a young child, and I;ve
>managed to hold things together. Good luck. :)

You'll have to let me in on your secret.  I have two small children and one
on the way.  I think if I can come up with a way to use my laptop while
driving my commute I will gain some valuable ground!


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] A projection

body:
On Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 08:35:22PM +0200, Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
> Given all these factors and the current graph, I think that
> the growth is more likely to be linear (and we should be
> happy enough with that).

I don't know about English Wikipedia, but all others certainly grow at
exponential rate. If it isn't the case with English Wikipedia, then
maybe the software is the bottleneck and too much time is spent on
maintaince task.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] User watch

body:
At 2002-09-10 21:28 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>>It's my oppinion that any matters of importance like
>>those of politics, science, economics, philosophy
>>should not be dicussed with women.
>>
>>One should never engage in serious discussions
>>with women anyway. They are not genetically
>>equiped for it.
>
>If I said anything equivalent about men, you and lots of other people would be,
>justifiably, up in arms.

Not if what you were saying was correct.
I could compose quite a big list with 'bad'
habits of men.

Okay, the first sentence is a bit overdone. There
are women who do quite well in politics. ;-)

The sentence that one shouldn't start serious
discussions with women is from my own experience.
Woman tend to take arguments personally, will
think that you're a 'bad person' when you're not
thinking what the rest of the community thinks
etc.

As regards the genetics. Men were selected
for being good co-operators during the hunt.
They would discuss hunting tactics around the
fire but the next day they would have to hunt
again together and be able to trust each other
even if they disagreed the last evening. Men
were selected not to have a problem with that.
For them discussions are a game, which they
like, but don't take overly serious. We like
the men best that are the toughest in the
discussion, becasuse they come up with the
best arguments. In ancient days that could
mean the difference between having food or
not and therefore between survival and not.

Women used to tend to the children and gather
roots and fruit etc. It was not necessary to
cooperate with other women and it would even
be bad for her family to share the findings
or knowledge about where to find things.

When one of the men would kill a large beast
however, he would need the help of the others
to transport it back to the base and it would
be foolish not to share it, because it would
spoil very soon or be eaten by bugs in the
African climate and usually the hunting process
was a combined effort anyway.

Another matter is the woman's IQ. Prof. Dr.
H. J. Eysenck has interesting theories about
this. He poses that men have a bigger diversity
in all kinds of properties, due to the fact
that they are missing one 'leg' in their
Y-chromosoom. This means that for a lot
of properties their fenotype is based on
only one gene and that can be a recessive
gene. (A woman would need two of those genes
to have the same fenotype.) The major example
is colorblindness: This affliction is much
more common under men than under women.
Probably a factor of four. Eysenck argues
that since the IQ is very complex some
of it's genes will probably also reside on
the Y-chromosome and therefore IQ will
also vary more widely in men. Even assuming
that men and women have the same average IQ
(which is not unlikely) it would account for
the fact that there is a lack of intelligent
women. It's about 1 in 30. On the other hand
it also explains why there is also an excess
of dumb men on the other end of the scale.
He noticed for example that in the lower
social classes the woman is usually smarter
and handles practical things like filling
in tax forms.

>If this is really your attitude, you are not mature enough to be working on this, or
>any, project with adults of any sex. If it isn't, I want an apology for the insult. No,
>it isn't funny. And saying you were only joking will not convince anyone of anything
>except that you don't have the guts to admit you said something stupid.

QED

>Vicki Rosenzweig

By the way, when you're jewish as your name suggests,
you can add about 15 points to your average IQ. Perhaps
that explains why you're one of the few women here?

If anybody is interested in these matters, I suggest
reading books like:
- Eysenck, H.J.
- Intelligence: The battle for the mind.
- 1981
On the development of mankind:
- Desmond Morris
- The naked ape
- 1967
In Dutch:
- Marcel Roele
- De Mietjesmaatschappij
- (this is a book with a lot more about modern 'politically
  correct' fallacies, including an article about average
  IQ's that really differ from race to race)
- 2000

Ah, and before I forget: I may try to avoid discussions
with women, but I talk with them and emancipation comes
up from time to time and there is also a downside to the
current tendency to assume that women should have careers
too. Some women don't want a career but just want to
have children and take care of them, but in our current
folly that women are the same as men we are doing that
kind of women injustice by giving them a guild complex,
about not working. And we are maybe depriving the
children of a happy childhood with their mommy.

And to avoid that some of you, especially you Americans
(and French), may think I'm not that bad after all:
I think that all drugs should be legalized.

Greetings,
Jaap


subject: [Wikipedia-l] little earthquakes page - song extract?!

body:
At 2002-09-10 19:15 -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>> USA law is the same as European/international law since about
>> 1990 when the USA adopted the Berne convention rules.
>> http://www.chipdir.nl/about/ under 'Legal stuff'
>
>That's not quite true; we signed the Berne Convention in 1989,
>but since then many countries have made further changes in IP
>law (such as the WIPO treaty) which the US does not participate
>in.  Also, "fair use" law is is a US statute applying only in
>the US.

I also thought that until recently but I think that article
15a of our copyright law of 1912 can be regarded as a fair-use
clause. It says that it's allowed to quote from a work in
an announcement, revue, polemic or work of science under
certain conditions, among which is that no more of the
original is quoted than is necessary.

But you're right in the sense that the Dutch equivalent
of the word 'fair-use' isn't used. Is it used in USA law?

Greetings,
Jaap


body:
Hi 'title of a movie',

At 2002-09-10 19:19 -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>You Wrote:
>>At 2002-09-10 18:09 -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>>>Jaap wrote:
>>>Yes, it would be possible.  It, however, will not be practiced, at least by the person you are directing this part of your message to.  I have very particular reasons to mind my privacy, none of which I'll discuss, thank you, because I won't be convinced otherwise.
>>
>>This sentence doesn't contain a valid argument.
>
>It does.  You don't agree with it.
>
>>>I certainly don't expect anyone who's done their homework to believe that koyaanis qatsi is my real name,
>>
>>That's not the issue.
>
>You're right.  The issue is this: 1) you want me to use my real name, or a less obvious pseudonym.  2) I don't care.
>
>kq

I think that if Wikipedia is to grow into a serious
movement, nay institute even, it's essential that
people adhere more to netiquette.

I don't care which babysteps are made by whomever
but that things are improved in general. That's
why I'd like to point out some issues that can
be improved. If you have considered my arguments
and decide that you still have a legitimate
reason to use a pseudonym, so be it. You will
not be taken as seriously at face value, so
you'll have to try harder to be respected, but
if you choose that road, you have my blessing.

Jaap


subject: [Wikipedia-l] User watch

body:
At 2002-09-10 18:48 -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
>>It's my oppinion that any matters of importance like
>>those of politics, science, economics, philosophy
>>should not be dicussed with women.
>>One should never engage in serious discussions
>>with women anyway. They are not genetically
>>equiped for it.
>
>Is this what passes for humor in the Netherlands or are you just an asshole? I can never tell.

I'm 43 now and together with a lot of brain cells
I lost my sense of humor.

It's said. :-(

Greetings,
Jaap


subject: [Wikipedia-l] User watch

body:
At 2002-09-10 21:20 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
>
>>No it doesn't: Jimmy and Bomis may host it, but they don't
>>own it. Or they should have made it more clearly when I
>>joined it. I am the author of a site about chips and it's
>>hosted by about 30 mirror sites. They own not one iota
>>of the contents of what they mirror. My 'original site'
>>is hosted on the server of a Dutch internet provider and
>>it doesn't own any of the copyrights of my site.
>>
>>If Jimmy thinks he has certain rights I'd really like
>>to hear about that.
>Owning the site and owning the contents are two different things.  If he really got pissed off he could always pull the server's power cord out of the wall, and nobody could legally force him to put it back in.  If it comes to that, and nobody has kept the data independently backed up at a physically separate site, then that's the end of it.
>
>Jimmy's royal prerogatives are not about dictatorship or being a control freak, they're about finance.  Until a critical mass of Wikipedians have shown the capacity to deal with the project's fiscal administration, it's simply a reality whether we like it or not.  Such a state of affairs obviously includes possible dangers to the project, but so do other financing models .

Of course I appriciate what Jimmy is doing, because I think
that Wikipedia is at least an interesting project. I'm
sure that Jimmy has been tested more severally than through
what I did. And when not: What doesn't kill you makes you
stronger.

However I think that financing a site which works on
the principle of GPL shouldn't give the owner of the
hardware special privileges, like being a benign
dictator as regards to banning people.

Anyone noticed the strange dualisme between me defending
Helga's case and in the mean time insulting 2.5 billion
women which Vicki in turn sees as a personal insult?

>Julie is a Wikipediholic, and we would love the opportunity to drink with her without Genral Booth's Dutch minions banging bass drums in out ears.

And I like women that hang-out-with the boys (and I mean
this in a positive sense) very much. Julie seems to be
the Queen of Wikipedia. And you probably know that our
country is run by a real queen that 95% of us admire.

>>But well, uhm, we guys, we like fighting, testing each other out,
>>we will have to go hunt the next day to get the meat
>>and we need to be able to rely on each other 100%.
>>You women only have to dig up roots etc.
>I thought that Holland was such a flat country that people didn't live in caves anymore.

Well, we managed to build a metro in Rotterdam under the
clay and sand...

;-)

Greetings,
Jaap


body:
At 2002-09-11 07:47 +0200, Giskart wrote:
>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>>Unless I am mistaken, the Dutch Wikipedia is hosted in the United States along with the other Wikipedias. Therefore US law is the only one that counts. But you can make any policies you wish for your own 'pedia so long as it doesn't break US law (which I do believe is a lot more permissive in this case).
>Yes, now the Dutch Wikipedia is hosted in the United States. But it does not seems to my good policy to include illigal content . I I hope the Wikipedias can stay  together and hosted by Bomis but you can never be sure. If we must look for i new host (in Europ) there must not even a hint  of copyright violation.  It is better to save than sorry like the say......     -- giskart

I don't think we should be so chicken. I don't know much
about the Belgian situation, but here in the Netherlands
I might not object to betting a couple of $10000 on a
law suit.

I'm in contact with circles who are fighting like minded
battles. When my friends don't win (and I try to help them
win), we could always hire the lawyer from the other side. ;-)

Anyway, don't worry your pretty little head too much
about legal matters...

Greetings,
Jaap


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pseudonyms, etc.

body:
At 2002-09-11 10:35 -0700, Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:
>Seeing as how I'm a woman (or am I?  I could have been lying, I suppose), you all may want to discount this entirely, but here goes --
>
>Jaap (who may have taken on the name because he wants to be like a certain ex-Man Utd. Central defender) --
>
>Here's a funny thing.  You seem to want people to use their own names on the site, and resent KQ's using a pseudonym, while I, who have never used a pseudonym here and even, when asked, provided my credentials, have been: 1) accused of perhaps not being who I say I am and perhaps even of falsely stating my credentials, and; 2) told that, if I am upset that my name is connected with articles I don't find reflect my professional standards, I should perhaps use a pseudonym.
>
>It's a funny ol'world, ain't it?
>
>As for the rest, I'm not that interested in defending myself against silly statements.  Make all you want: it only helps to add to the compendium of knowledge that helps us all consider our sources more wisely.
>
>Jules (a nickname reflecting my true given name of Julie)

Hi Julie,

It's very clear that you're a woman. Men would feel very uncomfortable
displaying so much insecurity. As regards what happened on Wikipedia:
You can't blame me for that, because I didn't do it. You could try to
blame men in general and I'm giggling in advance. (I don't mind
showing male weakness...) Anyway, if I were a tyrant running Wikipedia
and you would have asked me to intervene in your problem I would
probably have solved the question without anyone being able to
complain afterwards...

But luckily Wikipedia is not run by a tyrant...

Greetings,
Jaap


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 11:48 PM 9/12/02 +0200, someone who has yet to contribute to Wikipedia
wrote:
>At 2002-09-12 17:24 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> >At 10:02 PM 9/12/02 +0200, someone calling himself Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
> >>Hi 'title of a movie',
> >>
> >>At 2002-09-10 19:19 -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> >>>You Wrote:
> >>>>At 2002-09-10 18:09 -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> >>>>>Jaap wrote:
> >>>>>Yes, it would be possible.  It, however, will not be practiced, at
> least by the person you are directing this part of your message to.  I
> have very particular reasons to mind my privacy, none of which I'll
> discuss, thank you, because I won't be convinced otherwise.
> >>>>
> >>>>This sentence doesn't contain a valid argument.
> >>>
> >>>It does.  You don't agree with it.
> >>>
> >>>>>I certainly don't expect anyone who's done their homework to believe
> that koyaanis qatsi is my real name,
> >>>>
> >>>>That's not the issue.
> >>>
> >>>You're right.  The issue is this: 1) you want me to use my real name,
> or a less obvious pseudonym.  2) I don't care.
> >>>
> >>>kq
> >>
> >>I think that if Wikipedia is to grow into a serious
> >>movement, nay institute even, it's essential that
> >>people adhere more to netiquette.
> >
> >Netiquette doesn't demand real names, in part because it's very hard to tell
> >which names are real. At one point over on Usenet, someone angrily demanded
> >that another poster use his "real name". The person of whom the demand was
> >made was, in fact, using his full legal name. Conversely, I have no way of
> >knowing, online, whether you're really named Jaap van Ganswijk.
>
>Would you really like to know?

Since it appears that either you are using a handle for the Wikipedia--in
which case
you have no credibility in this discussion--or have never bothered to sign
in, I don't think
it matters. I have an encyclopedia to write and edit.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Adam Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] User watch

body:
On Thu, 2002-09-12 at 20:53, Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
> At 2002-09-10 21:28 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> >>It's my oppinion that any matters of importance like
> >>those of politics, science, economics, philosophy
> >>should not be dicussed with women.
> >>
> >>One should never engage in serious discussions
> >>with women anyway. They are not genetically
> >>equiped for it.
> >
> >If I said anything equivalent about men, you and lots of other people would be,
> >justifiably, up in arms.
>
> Not if what you were saying was correct.
> I could compose quite a big list with 'bad'
> habits of men.

The only thing i'd say in response to this amazing heap of garbage is
that it's clear Jaap has never been involved in any form of hunting, or
any form of child-rearing...
--
adamw


body:
On Thu, 2002-09-12 at 21:02, Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:

> I think that if Wikipedia is to grow into a serious
> movement, nay institute even, it's essential that
> people adhere more to netiquette.

Huh? I've been using the internet for nearly 10 years now and i've never
seen *ANY* interpretation of 'netiquette' which obliged people to post
under their real-life identity. Where do you dig such an idea up from?
--
adamw


body:
At 2002-09-12 17:24 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>At 10:02 PM 9/12/02 +0200, someone calling himself Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
>>Hi 'title of a movie',
>>
>>At 2002-09-10 19:19 -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>>>You Wrote:
>>>>At 2002-09-10 18:09 -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>>>>>Jaap wrote:
>>>>>Yes, it would be possible.  It, however, will not be practiced, at least by the person you are directing this part of your message to.  I have very particular reasons to mind my privacy, none of which I'll discuss, thank you, because I won't be convinced otherwise.
>>>>
>>>>This sentence doesn't contain a valid argument.
>>>
>>>It does.  You don't agree with it.
>>>
>>>>>I certainly don't expect anyone who's done their homework to believe that koyaanis qatsi is my real name,
>>>>
>>>>That's not the issue.
>>>
>>>You're right.  The issue is this: 1) you want me to use my real name, or a less obvious pseudonym.  2) I don't care.
>>>
>>>kq
>>
>>I think that if Wikipedia is to grow into a serious
>>movement, nay institute even, it's essential that
>>people adhere more to netiquette.
>
>Netiquette doesn't demand real names, in part because it's very hard to tell
>which names are real. At one point over on Usenet, someone angrily demanded
>that another poster use his "real name". The person of whom the demand was
>made was, in fact, using his full legal name. Conversely, I have no way of
>knowing, online, whether you're really named Jaap van Ganswijk.

Would you really like to know?

I have been checked out by several secrets services, so
i'm quite sure i know what I am.

Have you been checked out by as much secret services?

Greetz,
Jaap


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] statistical abstract on line (in PDF, alas)


from_name: Jason Khendon Williams

body:
On Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 10:02:46PM +0200, Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
> I think that if Wikipedia is to grow into a serious
> movement, nay institute even, it's essential that
> people adhere more to netiquette.

Can somebody explain *exactly* what the problem with pseudonyms is? I
use a pseudonym on wikipedia, but my full name is available on my
User: page. It's just a convenient identifier, rather than an
attempt to obscure my identity. If anything, I'm *more* identifiable
by "Khendon" than I am by "Jason Williams", since it's far easier
to find out about by me using the former name than the latter.

So... is the objection one of transparent identity, or of aesthetics,
or some other issue?
--
Jason "Khendon" Williams
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


body:
--- Jason Khendon Williams <jason at jasonandali.org.uk>
wrote:
> Can somebody explain *exactly* what the problem with
> pseudonyms is?

There is absolutely no problem with using pseudonyms
on Wikipedia. Many good contributors choose to use
them for a number of reasons, and you should feel free
to do so as well.

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
http://news.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Using pseudonyms

body:
Karen,

Your Google search comment got me thinking so I did a search for me.

My handle "Cybermancer" returns 314, most all of which are not me (I see 2
out of the first 50)

My name "Jim McKeeth" returns 67, and all of them are me.  There used to be
more, but I had some technical difficulties and lost my personal page.

Looking at this list of hits is interesting.  It is amazing to see which
pages get indexed by the search engines and which do not.

I guess it pays to have a less common last name.  Interestingly I created
that handle over 12 years ago and thought it would be unique.  Guess I was
wrong.

-Jim

At 10:22 PM 09/13/2002 +1000, Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
>Don't worry about it Jason... there IS no issue! I agree with you too -
>if you do a google search for 'Karen Johnson' you'll come up with a
>million hits, almost none of which are actually ME. A search for Kajikit
>however, will give you a lot more info than my full name. In fact,
>you'll find out a heck of a lot more about me than I realised!


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tucci528

body:
tarquin wrote:

> could someone with more tact and diplomacy than me point out nicely to
> user Tucci528 that in many of his recent articles he has spelt
> "received" as "recieved"?
> I hesitated to do this myself yesterday when I corrected some of them
> -- if I mention it to him he'll probably think I'm biting his head off.
> It looks like he may become a regular, I don't want to scare him away!
> (I hope he's not on the list yet!)
> thanks
>
> tarquin

The name "Tucci" sounds Italian to me, so English may not be his first
language.  If it bothers you that much it's perfectly OK to tell him
politely.  I would normally just make that correction and go on with life.

BTW By using the search function I found three articles with "recieve"
in them, just in case you were looking for something to do.


subject: [Wikitech-l] User option for full width edit box

body:
I added that to the CVS, as well as a few fixes for Cologne Blue. It is
already online and working in the German wikipedia. Just letting you know.

Magnus


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tucci528

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> could someone with more tact and diplomacy than me
> point out nicely to
> user Tucci528 that in many of his recent articles he
> has spelt
> "received" as "recieved"?
> I hesitated to do this myself yesterday when I
> corrected some of them --
> if I mention it to him he'll probably think I'm
> biting his head off.
> It looks like he may become a regular, I don't want
> to scare him away!
> (I hope he's not on the list yet!)
> thanks
>
> tarquin

:-)))
Please Tarquin, when I spell refered instead of
referred and developped instead of developed, please
tell me or add it in the comment box. I will never
myself eat your head off.

Amicalement,

Anth?re

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
http://news.yahoo.com


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tucci528

body:
>> could someone with more tact and diplomacy than me point
>> out nicely to user Tucci528 that in many of his recent
>> articles he has spelt "received" as "recieved"?

Probably the best way to do that is to just make the
change, and make sure you put "recieved -> received" in
the summary comment so that it will show up on the
recent changes list.  They catch on pretty quickly.


subject: [Wikitech-l] One silly question

body: How to import UseMod database to newcodebase software ?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The 100,000 articles goal

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>Currently, the introductory sentences on the main page read
>
> Welcome to Wikipedia, a collaborative project to produce a complete
> encyclopedia from scratch. We started in January 2001 and already
> have 43165 articles. We want to make over 100,000 complete articles,
> so let's get to work!
>
>I find the 100,000 article sentence out of place:
>
>* The goal is to create a complete, high-quality and free
>  encyclopedia. Nobody knows whether that requires 80,000 or 800,000
>  articles. Nor should anybody care.
>
>* The "100,000 article goal" fosters an unhealthy obsession with
>  statistics, and I'm afraid it can lead people to create stubs, just
>  to help bring the project "closer to this goal", which is of course
>  not its goal at all.
>
>I vote for simply removing this "100,000 article" sentence.
>

I can see your point, but I don't see it as much of a concern.  Building
bulk is fine as a short term goal.  If the projections that I made a few
days ago are at all meaningful we should reach that 100,000 early in
2003.  Let's leave it in until we reach that goal then not replace it
with any new numerical goal at that time.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Common typos (was: Tucci528)

body:
tarquin wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>
>> BTW By using the search function I found three articles with
>> "recieve" in them, just in case you were looking for something to do.
>>
> I've been pondering.
> There are some typos and common spelling mistakes which are
> no-brainers to catch and fix, but require a lot of grunt work.
> Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system which does a
> search for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve", and corrects
> all the pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid loading the
> server?

Would we use an American or British spell-checker?


body:
> I've been pondering.
> There are some typos and common spelling mistakes which are
> no-brainers to catch and fix, but require a lot of grunt work.
> Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system which does
> a search for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve", and
> corrects all the pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid
> loading the server?  Obviously, this will deal with only a
> fraction of the overall typo checking, since many things depend
> on context (eg "its" / "it's").
> Would this be best implemented as a system tool, or as a seperate
> script (like the Eason's Bible Dictionary import)?
> -- tarquin

I think it should be a general policy that we should not allow
any automatic process to alter content.  The value of Wikipedia
is that real human beings with understanding and judgment have
edited the pages.

What if there were a page about common English mispellings
that had "recieve" there intentionally?  Or perhaps it could
be someone's name, or a foreign word used in context.  I
remember having a Vietnames co-worker named "Teh" who was
constantly running into the problem of spell checkers changing
his name to "The".


body:
> I see the problem, but imagine this like a search and
> replace function in a texteditor: I usually don't hit "replace
> all", but look at every particular instance and decide, if it
> should be replaced.

There's a reason that feature is often jokingly referred to
as "search and destroy".  If someone wants to create a script
to find all instances of a certain thing, and make it easier
for him to change it, as long as there's a human being to
look at the text and approve each change individually, I
would have less objection to that, but that's still a bit too
much automation for my tastes; it's likely that the human will
become quick-on-the-button to approve the changes if 99% of
them are OK--but that's exactly the case where he should be
most vigilant.

Don't misunderstand--I have nothing against automated processes
that /add/ new pages, or processes that that change programmatic
features (like updating the wiki syntax or moving titles), but
the actual /content/, the /meaningful/ human-entered text that
constitutes an article, should only be changed by another human.


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tucci528

body:
could someone with more tact and diplomacy than me point out nicely to
user Tucci528 that in many of his recent articles he has spelt
"received" as "recieved"?
I hesitated to do this myself yesterday when I corrected some of them --
if I mention it to him he'll probably think I'm biting his head off.
It looks like he may become a regular, I don't want to scare him away!
(I hope he's not on the list yet!)
thanks

tarquin


body:
I would rather that we didn't implement such a
feature. It seems like a good idea on the surface, but
my experiences with "auto-correct" functions in word
processors have been less than helpful.

Stephen Gilbert

--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> I've been pondering.
> There are some typos and common spelling mistakes
> which are no-brainers
> to catch and fix, but require a lot of grunt work.
> Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system
> which does a search
> for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve",
> and corrects all the
> pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid
> loading the server?
> Obviously, this will deal with only a fraction of
> the overall typo
> checking, since many things depend on context (eg
> "its" / "it's").
>
> Would this be best implemented as a system tool, or
> as a seperate script
> (like the Eason's Bible Dictionary import)?
>
> -- tarquin
>
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
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from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The 100,000 articles goal

body:
Axel wrote:
>I vote for simply removing this "100,000 article" sentence.

I vote for removal also.

kq


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Friday 13 September 2002 19:45, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
li'o
> What if there were a page about common English mispellings
> that had "recieve" there intentionally?  Or perhaps it could
> be someone's name, or a foreign word used in context.  I
> remember having a Vietnames co-worker named "Teh" who was
> constantly running into the problem of spell checkers changing
> his name to "The".

Well, I don't know anyone whose real name is "The", but we both know someone
whose real name is "And". Do any of you know anyone else whose name is a
cmavo in English or some other widely spoken language?

phma


from_name: wojtek pobratyn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tucci528

body:
At 20:40 13.09.2002, tarquin argued thusly:

>It looks like he may become a regular, I don't want to scare him away!

I hope he will become a regular - the sheer amount of knowledge
he has on different characters of [[Greek mythology]] amazes me.
His/her user page seems empty though, are there any replies
on the user talk page?

regards,
[[WojPob]]


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Computer orphans

body:
Sometime today we somehow got an extra 150 orphan articles,
mainly on computer related topics. Has an index page of computer
related terms been deleted ?

Imran


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

body:
Jason Khendon Williams wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 10:02:46PM +0200, Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
> > I think that if Wikipedia is to grow into a serious
> > movement, nay institute even, it's essential that
> > people adhere more to netiquette.
>
> Can somebody explain *exactly* what the problem with pseudonyms is? I
> use a pseudonym on wikipedia, but my full name is available on my
> User: page. It's just a convenient identifier, rather than an
> attempt to obscure my identity. If anything, I'm *more* identifiable
> by "Khendon" than I am by "Jason Williams", since it's far easier
> to find out about by me using the former name than the latter.
>
> So... is the objection one of transparent identity, or of aesthetics,
> or some other issue?

Don't worry about it Jason... there IS no issue! I agree with you too -
if you do a google search for 'Karen Johnson' you'll come up with a
million hits, almost none of which are actually ME. A search for Kajikit
however, will give you a lot more info than my full name. In fact,
you'll find out a heck of a lot more about me than I realised!

I just did a search for Kajikit and at the top of the list is my website
Kajikit's Corner, followed by my Yahoo profile, a couple of
bulletinboards I'm registered on, my writing in other people's websites
and a bunch of my usenet posts! I didn't know that so many people had
websites that tracked newsgroups... you can find out everything except
my mother's maiden name with these hits, so I hope nobody decides to use
it against me! Searching for Karen Johnson, on the other hand, brings up
a good million hits but the only ones that are me are #11, #50, #52 and
#89. The other million are just there to confuse the issue :)

I choose to use my full name on the wikipedia because I feel it is a
project that I am proud of, and I WANT to be associated with it in
public. In general internet use, the use of a full name is extremely
unusual, so I use my normal web ID, which is the one in my sig. They're
both me...

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature
that will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Computer orphans

body:
> Sometime today we somehow got an extra 150 orphan articles,
> mainly on computer related topics. Has an index page of computer
> related terms been deleted ?

It's not a deletion, but a removal of links from the list of articles on
FOLDOC, the subpages of Free_On-line_Dictionary_of_Computing/Status

Andre Engels


from_name: Tesla Coil

body:
On 13 Sep 2002, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> There are some typos and common spelling mistakes which are
>> no-brainers to catch and fix, but require a lot of grunt work.
>> Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system which does a
>> search for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve", and corrects
>> all the pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid loading the
>> server?
>
> Would we use an American or British spell-checker?

[[List of battles 1401-1800]] before British spell-checker:

"1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord?  Apr. 19
 Patriots lose 8 and with guerrilla action kill British"

[[List of battles 1401-1800]] after British spell-checker:

"1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord?  Apr. 19
 Rebels lose 8 and with guerrilla action kill British"  ;)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The 100,000 articles goal and minimum article size

body:
On Friday 13 September 2002 07:59 pm, Axel wrote:
> Currently, the introductory sentences on the main page read
>
> ?Welcome to Wikipedia, a collaborative project to produce a complete
> ?encyclopedia from scratch. We started in January 2001 and already
> ?have 43165 articles. We want to make over 100,000 complete articles,
> ?so let's get to work!
>
> I find the 100,000 article sentence out of place:
>
> * The goal is to create a complete, high-quality and free
> ? encyclopedia. Nobody knows whether that requires 80,000 or 800,000
> ? articles. Nor should anybody care.

Yup. Each time I create a new article of any decent size there are anywhere
from several to a dozen empty links. Therefore all I see for Wikipedia is
geometric increases in total article count that will never stop at any point
(in the same way as solving a question of science leads to several new
questions).

Somebody has already stated that there are 30 to 40 thousand human genes and
that each of them deserves it's own article. I agree. I would also add that
each of the millions of described and cataloged species on Earth also deserve
their own articles. Same for every city, major highway and important geologic
feature. Not to mention the many hundreds of thousands of national rulers,
kingdoms, generals, notable people, major works of art/science/industry ect.
that have ever existed.

I forsee Wikipedia becoming an encyclopedia of encyclopedias.

> * The "100,000 article goal" fosters an unhealthy obsession with
> ? statistics, and I'm afraid it can lead people to create stubs, just
> ? to help bring the project "closer to this goal", which is of course
> ? not its goal at all.

In order to squash this tendency all we need is a much more conservative
definition of just what constitutes an article (and some vigilance to make
sure people are not inserting crap into pages just to meet this definition).
The current definition is far too liberal is this regard -- all you need is
one blasted comma and the page, no matter how short and useless, is counted
as an article.

I vote that in addition to the already established criteria on what
constitutes an article for automatic detection we add at least this
additional criteria; no page less than x  bytes is counted as being an
article. That way stubs won't screw up our stats.

I have suggested that this number can be as low as 500 bytes, others have
suggested the minimum size should be set at 1000 bytes. I now think that the
figure should be somewhere in between. But we need to establish this and
announce it /before/ we hit 50,000 "articles" under our current definition.
Lord knows we will probably be Slashdotted again after reaching our "50%"
point.

Be prepared to see a dramatic reduction in the total article count though. If
we go with the 500 byte cutoff it could be reset to 32,000 articles. If we go
nuts and set the cutoff at 1000 bytes the total count would drop to 22,000
(if I'm reading Wikipedia:Statistics right).

Example of an article of 500 bytes;
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amora

Example of an article of 776 bytes;
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/KWord

Example of an article of 1000 bytes;
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct

Previous talk on this issue is at;
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Statistics

> I vote for simply removing this "100,000 article" sentence.
>
> Axel

I vote for this too -- it is a rather arbitrary number and if anything should
be just a milestone (so that we can say we have more articles than
Britannica). However, that figure will have little meaning if;
"In [[Greek mythology]], '''Cedalion''' was [[Hephaestus]]' servant." is
considered to be an article just because there is a comma. At best, that is a
sad stub definition.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jim McKeeth

body:
I don't know what kind of limits there are for scripting on WikiPedia, but
what have done it other places is have approval on each item (like the
Search Replace analogy).

Have a search result that lists hits on a certain miss spelling (ie
"recieve") and displays the word in bold with surrounding context.  Then
have a check-box next to each "hit".  A user (either and Admin or trusted
editor) could then look at it and if it looks like it needs to be changed
then they check the box, if not then they don't check it.

When the finish the page they submit the form and it only makes the changes
they specifically approved.  This would be as effective (in reducing "auto
pilot" errors) as just doing a search on the word and manually replacing
it.  In fact it might be better because much of the repetitive tasks are
removed so the editor is less likely to just go auto pilot and change
everything.

Don't know how practical this is with WikiPedia's software, but that is my
suggestion.

At 05:45 PM 09/13/2002 -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>Don't misunderstand--I have nothing against automated processes
>that /add/ new pages, or processes that that change programmatic
>features (like updating the wiki syntax or moving titles), but
>the actual /content/, the /meaningful/ human-entered text that
>constitutes an article, should only be changed by another human.


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>
> BTW By using the search function I found three articles with "recieve"
> in them, just in case you were looking for something to do.
>
I've been pondering.
There are some typos and common spelling mistakes which are no-brainers
to catch and fix, but require a lot of grunt work.
Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system which does a search
for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve", and corrects all the
pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid loading the server?
Obviously, this will deal with only a fraction of the overall typo
checking, since many things depend on context (eg "its" / "it's").

Would this be best implemented as a system tool, or as a seperate script
(like the Eason's Bible Dictionary import)?

-- tarquin


body:
At 04:27 PM 09/13/2002 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>Would we use an American or British spell-checker?

We create our own spell checker, but then we make the corrections
manual.  This is similar to Google's spell checking feature.  We first
parse out all the words in every article and make a table with each unique
word and the number of occurrences.  This is typically a step in most
indexed search engines, but MySQL is really fast without this.

It would be a safe a assumption that words that are used the most
frequently are probably spelled correctly.  True, "recieve" may be a very
common miss spelling, but there are probably a lot more occurrences of
"receive".  So the flip side of this is that words that are used rarely are
probably spelled wrong.  Now we don't want to go off blindly replacing
these words (mostly because we would know what with) but they are good
words to look for for replacing.

So if we could have an automated script that took these "l;east frequently
occurring words" and listed them for a human they could say "Ah, recieve
should be receive, this is a miss-spelling."  Then they enter in the
correct spelling and we use the same method mentioned in my previous e-mail
to approve each individual change.

I have found that by automating the mundane repetitive portions of tasks
like this that humans are much more accurate.  If you have to go through 10
of the same motions for every 1 that requires thought then you are more
likely to not put any thought into that 1.  But if it is only a 2:1 or even
better 1:1 ratio then you will put much more thought into it.

Again I don't know if this is even remotely possible with the WikiPedia
software.  I'd hate to do this off-line since it would be too easy to get
out of sync.  Maybe an alternative interface for these kinds of edits.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: The 100,000 articles goal and minimum
  article size

body:
At 11:23 PM 09/13/2002 -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>Somebody has already stated that there are 30 to 40 thousand human genes and
>that each of them deserves it's own article. I agree. I would also add that
>each of the millions of described and cataloged species on Earth also deserve
>their own articles. Same for every city, major highway and important geologic
>feature. Not to mention the many hundreds of thousands of national rulers,
>kingdoms, generals, notable people, major works of art/science/industry ect.
>that have ever existed.
>
>I forsee Wikipedia becoming an encyclopedia of encyclopedias.

I agree with Mav on this point.  When you add a city you then add local
"color".  Nampa, Idaho is not the most exciting place in the world, but we
definitely have a number of interesting landmarks and bits of history.  If
you add these to as articles linked off of Nampa (and every other city) and
with the ones Mav mentioned, we will never run out of articles.  And I
belive these all would be valuable articles.  Not everyone gets the
opportunity to visit or live in Nampa, but with the aid of these articles
they can learn a lot about it (and not just touristy hype).

> > * The "100,000 article goal" fosters an unhealthy obsession with
> >   statistics, and I'm afraid it can lead people to create stubs, just
> >   to help bring the project "closer to this goal", which is of course
> >   not its goal at all.

It is always a good idea to have goals and milestones.  Maybe change the
sentence to say "our next milestone is to have (Britannica + 1)
articles.  This will give us more articles then Britannica."

>I vote that in addition to the already established criteria on what
>constitutes an article for automatic detection we add at least this
>additional criteria; no page less than x  bytes is counted as being an
>article. That way stubs won't screw up our stats.

Then we come up with a "quality gauge".  It is based on the number of
articles over a certain length compared to the number of articles less then
that length (however the stubbiness measurement is decided).  Then we add a
sentence after the milestone sentence to say "Our goal is to keep a quality
level of 90%, which represents our completed article to stub ratio."  Then
we show what this stat is currently.  We make this "quality gauge" our goal
and work towards keeping that as high as possible.  We can plot this over
time on the same chart we plot the number of articles.  Keep this stat as
our focus.

There is probably a better way of phrasing or calculating all of this.  Any
other suggestions?

-Jim McKeeth


from_name: elian

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com writes:

> > Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system which does
> > a search for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve", and
> > corrects all the pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid
> > loading the server?  Obviously, this will deal with only a
> > fraction of the overall typo checking, since many things depend
> > on context (eg "its" / "it's").
...

> I think it should be a general policy that we should not allow
> any automatic process to alter content.  The value of Wikipedia
> is that real human beings with understanding and judgment have
> edited the pages.

ACK.

> What if there were a page about common English mispellings
> that had "recieve" there intentionally?  Or perhaps it could
> be someone's name, or a foreign word used in context.  I
> remember having a Vietnames co-worker named "Teh" who was
> constantly running into the problem of spell checkers changing
> his name to "The".

I see the problem, but imagine this like a search and
replace function in a texteditor: I usually don't hit "replace all", but
look at every particular instance and decide, if it should be replaced.

And something like this, if used in a responsible way (maybe only by
admins) would be a very valuable tool for the wikipedia.

So imagine a list of search results, all showing a few lines a content
around to decide if it's a mispelling (and a link to the article if this
is not enough information for you), and a checkbox beside each result to
include it in the replace or not. All still depends on human judgement,
but facilitates the editing a lot.

greetings, sorry for the bad english
elian
--
========= Open Content statt Copyright ==========
http://de.wikipedia.org - Die freie Enzyklopaedie


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The 100,000 articles goal

body:
Currently, the introductory sentences on the main page read

 Welcome to Wikipedia, a collaborative project to produce a complete
 encyclopedia from scratch. We started in January 2001 and already
 have 43165 articles. We want to make over 100,000 complete articles,
 so let's get to work!

I find the 100,000 article sentence out of place:

* The goal is to create a complete, high-quality and free
  encyclopedia. Nobody knows whether that requires 80,000 or 800,000
  articles. Nor should anybody care.

* The "100,000 article goal" fosters an unhealthy obsession with
  statistics, and I'm afraid it can lead people to create stubs, just
  to help bring the project "closer to this goal", which is of course
  not its goal at all.

I vote for simply removing this "100,000 article" sentence.

Axel


from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pseudonyms, etc.

body:
At 2002-09-12 15:51 -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
>> But luckily Wikipedia is not run by a tyrant...
>
>Oh, but the temptation...

I was just (indirectly) testing your emotional
limits. Men do that, as I explained elsewhere.

Don't worry about it. If we should ever meet
'in the flesh' we'll be best friends and drink
beer together.

Greetings,
Jaap


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Silliness, and a "feature idea"

body:
At 01:54 PM 9/14/02 +0100, you wrote:
>
>Anyway, to make this a more worthwhile email - wouldn't it be nice if there
>was an option whereby you could have pages you edit automatically put into
>your watch list?
>
>--
>Khendon  (Jason Williams)

Once you've written on a few controversial articles like [[Scotland]] or
[[History of England]] or, God help us, [[Law]] your watchlist will be a
full plate without adding in hundreds of routine pages.

Fred


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 12:50 AM 9/14/02 -0600, Jim McKeeth wrote:
>At 11:23 PM 09/13/2002 -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>Somebody has already stated that there are 30 to 40 thousand human genes and
>>that each of them deserves it's own article. I agree. I would also add that
>>each of the millions of described and cataloged species on Earth also deserve
>>their own articles. Same for every city, major highway and important geologic
>>feature. Not to mention the many hundreds of thousands of national rulers,
>>kingdoms, generals, notable people, major works of art/science/industry ect.
>>that have ever existed.
>>
>>I forsee Wikipedia becoming an encyclopedia of encyclopedias.
>
>I agree with Mav on this point.  When you add a city you then add local
>"color".  Nampa, Idaho is not the most exciting place in the world, but we
>definitely have a number of interesting landmarks and bits of history.  If
>you add these to as articles linked off of Nampa (and every other city)
>and with the ones Mav mentioned, we will never run out of articles.  And I
>belive these all would be valuable articles.  Not everyone gets the
>opportunity to visit or live in Nampa, but with the aid of these articles
>they can learn a lot about it (and not just touristy hype).

At some point it makes sense to include them in the main article: we don't
need a separate article
to mention that, say, New York's City Hall has a nice facade and boring
back because the builders
thought nobody would ever live north of it.

Similarly, Nampa's landmarks and history probably should be in the article
about Nampa unless
they're of great interest and should be written about at length. A statue
of a president doesn't need
its own article, for example, though it might include links to the sculptor
and the president.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pseudonyms, etc.

body:
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:

>At 2002-09-12 15:51 -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
>>
>>
>>>But luckily Wikipedia is not run by a tyrant...
>>>
>>>
>>Oh, but the temptation...
>>
>>
>
>I was just (indirectly) testing your emotional
>limits. Men do that, as I explained elsewhere.
>
>
>
I don't think you know very much about women.
(but then again, neither did TS Eliot)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Common typos

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

>>Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system which does
>>a search for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve", and
>>corrects all the pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid
>>loading the server?
>>
>I think it should be a general policy that we should not allow
>any automatic process to alter content.  The value of Wikipedia
>is that real human beings with understanding and judgment have
>edited the pages.
>
>What if there were a page about common English mispellings
>that had "recieve" there intentionally?  Or perhaps it could
>be someone's name, or a foreign word used in context.  I
>remember having a Vietnames co-worker named "Teh" who was
>constantly running into the problem of spell checkers changing
>his name to "The".
>
>
>
I see your point.
I was thinking of something that only tackles one particular
mis-spelling at a time, and not a full spell-checker for that reason;
but I see that even a batch replace of all "recieve" could break things
like:
'a common misspelling of "receive" is "recieve"'
'Recieve is a city in Brazil" (a feasible typo for Recife)
and so on.

Something that gives a list of, say 10 occurences, with context, and
asks for check-box confirmation of each one might be okay -- but I think
it should search for only one particular mis-spelt word.
Overall, the task of checking spelling and grammar has to be a human one.


from_name: Adam Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: The 100,000 articles goal and minimum article
	size

body:
On Sat, 2002-09-14 at 07:50, Jim McKeeth wrote:

> It is always a good idea to have goals and milestones.  Maybe change the
> sentence to say "our next milestone is to have (Britannica + 1)
> articles.  This will give us more articles then Britannica."

> There is probably a better way of phrasing or calculating all of this.  Any
> other suggestions?

Well, we could have it read "Our next milestone is to have (Britannica *
10) articles. This will give us more content than Britannica."

*grins, ducks and runs for the hills*
--
adamw


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The 100,000 articles goal and minimum  article size

body:
Jim McKeeth wrote:

> When you add a city you then add local "color".  Nampa, Idaho is not
> the most exciting place in the world, but we definitely have a number
> of interesting landmarks and bits of history.  If you add these to as
> articles linked off of Nampa (and every other city) and with the ones
> Mav mentioned, we will never run out of articles.   Not everyone gets
> the opportunity to visit or live in Nampa, but with the aid of these
> articles they can learn a lot about it (and not just touristy hype).

If I'm driving along I-84 the used book store in Nampa has become a
"must stop" for me.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Common typos (was: Tucci528)

body:
On Saturday 14 September 2002 05:58 am,  Jim McKeeth wrote:
> When the finish the page they submit the form and it only makes the changes
> they specifically approved. ?This would be as effective (in reducing "auto
> pilot" errors) as just doing a search on the word and manually replacing
> it. ?In fact it might be better because much of the repetitive tasks are
> removed so the editor is less likely to just go auto pilot and change
> everything.
>
> Don't know how practical this is with WikiPedia's software, but that is my
> suggestion.

How about something similar to http://ee.www.ee/filosoft/html_speller_en/ ?

There you either enter in the raw text or URL of where the text is that you
want to check and then another page opens with possible misspells crossed out
with asterisks next to them. You click on the asterisk and a HTML popup box
displays some possible correct spellings.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
At 03:23 PM 9/14/02 +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
> > It would be a safe a assumption that words that are used the most
> > frequently are probably spelled correctly.  True, "recieve" may be a very
> > common miss spelling, but there are probably a lot more occurrences of
> > "receive".  So the flip side of this is that words that are used rarely
> are
> > probably spelled wrong.  Now we don't want to go off blindly replacing
> > these words (mostly because we would know what with) but they are good
> > words to look for for replacing.
>
>I don't think this would work - I think there will be thousands, if not tens
>of thousands of words that are used exactly once. The great majority of these
>will not be mis-spellings, but (parts of) proper names and geographical
>names that happen to occur exactly once, words from other languages and
>reasonable neologisms.
>
>As a test, here is the result from 20 pages got with 'Random page', looking
>at the count of those words I think might be unique:
>
>Aratrum
>  aujtovguon - Greek word used for lack of English equivalent
>  phktovn - idem
>  Mounce - name, although not proper or geographical

Thanks for the pointer; I've tidied the page some (the transcriptions are
just plain
weird here).

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
On Saturday 14 September 2002 10:22 am, you wrote:
> How about something similar to http://ee.www.ee/filosoft/html_speller_en/ ?
>
> There you either enter in the raw text or URL of where the text is that you
> want to check and then another page opens with possible misspells crossed
> out with asterisks next to them. You click on the asterisk and a HTML popup
> box displays some possible correct spellings.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I meant to add that such a feature could be part of the preview function.


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The 100,000 articles goal

body:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2002 09:25:20 Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Axel Boldt wrote:
>
>> Currently, the introductory sentences on the main page read
>>
>> Welcome to Wikipedia, a collaborative project to produce a complete
>> encyclopedia from scratch. We started in January 2001 and already
>> have 43165 articles. We want to make over 100,000 complete articles,
>> so let's get to work!
>>
>> I find the 100,000 article sentence out of place:
>>
>> * The goal is to create a complete, high-quality and free
>>  encyclopedia. Nobody knows whether that requires 80,000 or 800,000
>>  articles. Nor should anybody care.
>>
>> * The "100,000 article goal" fosters an unhealthy obsession with
>>  statistics, and I'm afraid it can lead people to create stubs, just
>>  to help bring the project "closer to this goal", which is of course
>>  not its goal at all.
>>
>> I vote for simply removing this "100,000 article" sentence.
>>
>
> I can see your point, but I don't see it as much of a concern.  Building
> bulk is fine as a short term goal.  If the projections that I made a few
> days ago are at all meaningful we should reach that 100,000 early in
> 2003.  Let's leave it in until we reach that goal then not replace it
> with any new numerical goal at that time.

The 100,000 article goal (or perhaps marker) will be an interesting point,
because that point will provide an excellent place to look around and
see how the 'Pedia is progressing.

Not that I'm harbouring any delusions that it'll be "complete" that that
stage, but it will a) be cause for a celebration, and might b) give some
indication of the asymptotic size of the project.

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net

Node FLY on Melbourne Wireless : http://www.wireless.org.au
------------------------------------------------------------


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>>It would be a safe a assumption that words that are used the most
>>frequently are probably spelled correctly.  True, "recieve" may be a very
>>common miss spelling, but there are probably a lot more occurrences of
>>"receive".  So the flip side of this is that words that are used rarely are
>>probably spelled wrong.  Now we don't want to go off blindly replacing
>>these words (mostly because we would know what with) but they are good
>>words to look for for replacing.
>>
>I don't think this would work - I think there will be thousands, if not tens
>of thousands of words that are used exactly once. The great majority of these
>will not be mis-spellings, but (parts of) proper names and geographical
>names that happen to occur exactly once, words from other languages and
>reasonable neologisms.
>
I agree with Andre.  I suspect that the distribution of mis-spellings
and typos would be Zipfian, as would the finding and corrections for
such words.  "Antibacterial" occurs 4 times in Wikipedia.  No amount of
direct searching would have found "actibacterial"

One feature that would help for finding some common errors would be a
search feature that allows optional searching for parts of words.  Thus
far we have spoken of "recieve" and "recieved", but being able to search
the part word "reciev" would also catch "recieves", "reciever",
"recievers", "recieving" and maybe other less common words with this root.

>Alexandre Fleming
> actibacterial - actual typo (*)
>
Perhaps the article should be redirected to "Alexander Fleming" ;-) .

>Apu Nahasapeempatilon
> octuplet - logical neologism or normal word
> punchcard - might actually be considered a misspelling (*)
>
Octuplet is a perfectly normal word.
"Punchcard" is an acceptable (and IMHO preferable) variant of "punch
card".  It appears that way in the Oxford Dictionary.  If I were to use
the term in an article and someone else "corrected" it to two words, I
would change it right back.
Who will ever have the enthusiasm to check the spelling of Apu's surname?

Eclecticology


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>At 01:54 PM 9/14/02 +0100, you wrote:
>
>>Anyway, to make this a more worthwhile email - wouldn't it be nice if there
>>was an option whereby you could have pages you edit automatically put into
>>your watch list?
>>--
>>Khendon  (Jason Williams)
>>
>
>Once you've written on a few controversial articles like [[Scotland]] or
>[[History of England]] or, God help us, [[Law]] your watchlist will be a
>full plate without adding in hundreds of routine pages.
>
Exactly the problem.  I've made many minor uncontroversial spelling
corrections to articles, and there's no way that I would want to watch
all those.

Ec


body:
Welcome to the list Hynek.

Hynek Hanke wrote:

>I think it could also correct all the mistakes
>at majority of the pages very quickly since
>with _every_ edit, the person who is editing
>is noticed about these possible problems.
>...  The editor can use his
>own judgement to decide to fix it or not.
>For me, that seems better than some one-time massive
>corrections. Use ispell/aspell or something.
>
In Czech this would not be a problem, because that language is official
in only one country.  This makes it much easier to establish an academy
to set standards for the language.

English is spoken in many countries, but most notably in the United
Kingdom and the United States.  Over time these two have developed
different standards for language use, including spelling.  Wikipedia has
had to develop guidelines so that these two cultures can live side by
side in articles.  The proposal to have this spell check every time an
article is edited could easily lead to a whole new round of edit wars.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Minimum  and maximum article size

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> At some point it makes sense to include them in the main article: we
> don't need a separate article
> to mention that, say, New York's City Hall has a nice facade and
> boring back because the builders
> thought nobody would ever live north of it.
>
> Similarly, Nampa's landmarks and history probably should be in the
> article about Nampa unless
> they're of great interest and should be written about at length. A
> statue of a president doesn't need
> its own article, for example, though it might include links to the
> sculptor and the president.

For me this also opens up a question about optimum article size.  There
is a large body of opinion in Wikipedia that frowns upon stubs, but we
also have a growing collection of very long articles that could probably
stand to be split up into articles of a more reasonable size.

As things stand [[Atlas Shrugged]], [[Worms computer games]], and
[[RFC]] all link to a long list of pages that could easily be consolidated.

In the city examples above New York City's article is likely to grow
much faster than Nampa's, but a collection of guidelines illustrating
when and how to subdivide would be interesting.

Eclecticology


body:
At 09:30 AM 09/14/2002 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>If I'm driving along I-84 the used book store in Nampa has become a "must
>stop" for me.

It is amazing how many good stores there are in downtown Nampa, including a
number of good used book stores.

-Jim


from_name: Khendon

body:
On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 11:12:03PM -0500, Tesla Coil wrote:
> [[List of battles 1401-1800]] before British spell-checker:
>
> "1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord?  Apr. 19
>  Patriots lose 8 and with guerrilla action kill British"
>
> [[List of battles 1401-1800]] after British spell-checker:
>
> "1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord?  Apr. 19
>  Rebels lose 8 and with guerrilla action kill British"  ;)
ITYMM "Rebel terrorists lose 8..." ;-)

Anyway, to make this a more worthwhile email - wouldn't it be nice if there
was an option whereby you could have pages you edit automatically put into
your watch list?

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


body:
elian wrote:

> I see the problem, but imagine this like a search and
> replace function in a texteditor: I usually don't hit "replace all", but
> look at every particular instance and decide, if it should be replaced.
>
> And something like this, if used in a responsible way (maybe only by
> admins) would be a very valuable tool for the wikipedia.
>
> So imagine a list of search results, all showing a few lines a content
> around to decide if it's a mispelling (and a link to the article if this
> is not enough information for you), and a checkbox beside each result to
> include it in the replace or not. All still depends on human judgement,
> but facilitates the editing a lot.

You mean a spellchecker :)

One solution is to take an article that you think has a LOT of typoes in
it and run it through the built-in spellchecker in Word or another word
processer. But then you still have to edit the page...

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature
that will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> For me this also opens up a question about
optimum
> article size.  There
> is a large body of opinion in Wikipedia that
frowns
> upon stubs,

I don't think however that a stub is defined by size.
If we are talking about some obscure town in Iowa say,
giving the location, population, when it was founded
and by whom, and any prominent people who grew up
there would be a nice round 4 sentence article. I
wouldn't call it a stub at all.
Many encyclopedias have entries like that.

For me personally, a stub is an article that only
gives information that any half-educated person
already knows or that can be gotten from the first
Google hit on the topic. Such an article is completely
useless.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
http://news.yahoo.com


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikitech-l] OFFTOPIC : question about a firewall

body:
Sorry about this but I need a little help to defeat a fairly draconian packet
filter on our network ... and you're all so smart ...

Anyway, I'm on machine A, and all attempted connections between the outside
world and A get dropped.  I can ssh/rsh/telnet/anything to Unix machine B, and
run any program I like on it (though not as root), and packets from machineB
can get to the outside world.  So I want to route my packets via machineB

Is there a routing rule / IPFW rule / user mode program that I can use to
selectively reroute my packets so I'd write:

[gowen at machineA]$ reroute machineB:7272 netscape http://www.wikipedia.org

and all the network requests would be transparently proxied port 7272 on
machineB (where I was running a program that then sent the packets out into
the ether).  To be honest, I don't know enough about networking to know if
this is even possible.

I'm root on machineA, but not machineB.

And no, the firewall isn't there to stop me doing this ... its a "temporary"
stopgap since some of our machines got used in a DDoS attack.  Unfortunately,
"temporary" has a tendency to mean "policy will probably be repealed before
heat death of universe".
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


body:
> It would be a safe a assumption that words that are used the most
> frequently are probably spelled correctly.  True, "recieve" may be a very
> common miss spelling, but there are probably a lot more occurrences of
> "receive".  So the flip side of this is that words that are used rarely are
> probably spelled wrong.  Now we don't want to go off blindly replacing
> these words (mostly because we would know what with) but they are good
> words to look for for replacing.

I don't think this would work - I think there will be thousands, if not tens
of thousands of words that are used exactly once. The great majority of these
will not be mis-spellings, but (parts of) proper names and geographical
names that happen to occur exactly once, words from other languages and
reasonable neologisms.

As a test, here is the result from 20 pages got with 'Random page', looking
at the count of those words I think might be unique:

Aratrum
 aujtovguon - Greek word used for lack of English equivalent
 phktovn - idem
 Mounce - name, although not proper or geographical
Subtractive synthesis
 synthisizers - indeed a misspelling (*)
 highpass - jargon word
Shocking Blue
 no unique words
Conjugate base
 no unique words
Cenozoic
 Caenozoic - given as an alternative spelling of the subject
Aldo Moro
 Moro's - genitive form of a proper name (**)
Freedom of speech
 no unique words
Film genres
 no unique words
Alexandre Fleming
 actibacterial - actual typo (*)
Hydrogen cyanide
 no unique words
ISDN
 no unique words
20-GATE
 no unique words
Unspun
 unspun - name of a group (**)
 unspinning - logical neologism (**)
Apu Nahasapeempatilon
 octuplet - logical neologism or normal word
 punchcard - might actually be considered a misspelling (*)
Lua programming language
 no unique words
Eros
 no unique words
Scud
 Makeyev - name of an institute
 UDMH - jargon term (abbreviation)
 RFNA - jargon term (abbrevation)
Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
 Herczag - proper name
 Siliphant - proper name
 Hauben - proper name
 Peploe - proper name
 Zaillian - proper name
 Gaghan - proper name
Elie Ducommun
 no unique words
Masamune Shirow
 Deunan - proper name (fictional character)

(*): As I happened upon this misspelling, I corrected it, so you'll have to go
to the previous version of the page to see it.
(**): Occurs several times, but just on one page.

Total: 16 proper singles, 3 misspellings, 3 cases (the ones with **) not counted.

On the other hand, I came across the following mis-spellings which DID occur
more than once (also corrected):
missles (5 times)

> I have found that by automating the mundane repetitive portions of tasks
> like this that humans are much more accurate.  If you have to go through 10
> of the same motions for every 1 that requires thought then you are more
> likely to not put any thought into that 1.  But if it is only a 2:1 or even
> better 1:1 ratio then you will put much more thought into it.

If my attempt above is any guideline, the actual ratio will be more like
1:5 or 1:6.

Andre Engels


body:
At 06:57 PM 9/14/02 +0200, Hynek Hanke wrote:
>On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 04:45:48PM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> > > There are some typos and common spelling mistakes which are
> > > no-brainers to catch and fix, but require a lot of grunt work.
> > > Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system which does
> > > a search for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve", and
> > > corrects all the pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid
> > > loading the server?
>
>Why doesn't someone just add a function, that before
>submitting every article/change, it runs a spell checker, writes
>all the ``mistakes'' and possible ``corrections'' along with
>an editable field of the article bellow. This way the editor
>can see his/her mistakes and correct them very easily.

Because some of us find these things very irritating, and rarely
run them on software that comes with them. Conversely, those
who want such a function can copy the text into a word
processor that has it, run the spell-check, and make the changes
they want. We don't need to burden our programming team, or
our software.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
>Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>
>> At some point it makes sense to include them in the main article: we
>> don't need a separate article
>> to mention that, say, New York's City Hall has a nice facade and
>> boring back because the builders
>> thought nobody would ever live north of it.
>>
>> Similarly, Nampa's landmarks and history probably should be in the
>> article about Nampa unless
>> they're of great interest and should be written about at length. A
>> statue of a president doesn't need
>> its own article, for example, though it might include links to the
>> sculptor and the president.
>
>For me this also opens up a question about optimum article size.  There
>is a large body of opinion in Wikipedia that frowns upon stubs, but we
>also have a growing collection of very long articles that could probably
>stand to be split up into articles of a more reasonable size.
>
>As things stand [[Atlas Shrugged]], [[Worms computer games]], and
>[[RFC]] all link to a long list of pages that could easily be consolidated.
>
>In the city examples above New York City's article is likely to grow
>much faster than Nampa's, but a collection of guidelines illustrating
>when and how to subdivide would be interesting.
>
>Eclecticology

Amen, Some of the pages I can't even load on my older computers. The catch
is that cutting the size of an article in half is not only boring but
promises a big fight besides; cause at least one person and probably
several feel quite passionately about the subject. Subdivision and
consolidation are two ways of accommodating all the information, but in
some cases a book has been written about a subject that a few paragraphs
would have adequately covered. Or as in the case of Tucson, Arizona, one
line.

Fred

Fred


from_name: Hynek Hanke

in_reply_to: <200209132345.g8DNjms20731@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 04:45:48PM -0700

body:
On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 04:45:48PM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> > There are some typos and common spelling mistakes which are
> > no-brainers to catch and fix, but require a lot of grunt work.
> > Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system which does
> > a search for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve", and
> > corrects all the pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid
> > loading the server?

Why doesn't someone just add a function, that before
submitting every article/change, it runs a spell checker, writes
all the ``mistakes'' and possible ``corrections'' along with
an editable field of the article bellow. This way the editor
can see his/her mistakes and correct them very easily.

Note that I don't propose anything like:
,,You have written 'recieve', would you like to
change it [Y/N]'', but rather a _list_ off
all the mistakes displayed at once. Thus
you don't _have_to_ make some extra effort,
it just helps you to realize that this
and that word may be bogus.

Something like:

	recieve => receive, ...
	interestig => interesting, ...
	etc.

	<field for editing article>

	[preview] [submit]

I think it could also correct all the mistakes
at majority of the pages very quickly since
with _every_ edit, the person who is editing
is noticed about these possible problems.
(But I'm sure it wouldn't work if you only
add a button ``spell-checking'', you have to
display it _every_ time!) The editor can use his
own judgement to decide to fix it or not. The server
load is not so heavy, because there are not so much
submits and these are distributed through all the day.
For me, that seems better than some one-time massive
corrections. Use ispell/aspell or something.

Btw., thanx you all for Wikipedia!
Hynek


from_name: tarquin

body:
That already happens: see the "this user's contributions" link,

Fred Bauder wrote:

>At 01:54 PM 9/14/02 +0100, you wrote:
>
>
>>Anyway, to make this a more worthwhile email - wouldn't it be nice if there
>>was an option whereby you could have pages you edit automatically put into
>>your watch list?
>>
>>--
>>Khendon  (Jason Williams)
>>
>>
>
>Once you've written on a few controversial articles like [[Scotland]] or
>[[History of England]] or, God help us, [[Law]] your watchlist will be a
>full plate without adding in hundreds of routine pages.
>
>Fred
>
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


body:
Ward's Wiki has a spell-checker on article save: try editing his sandbox:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiSandbox

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Saturday 14 September 2002 10:22 am, you wrote:
>
>
>>How about something similar to http://ee.www.ee/filosoft/html_speller_en/ ?
>>
>>There you either enter in the raw text or URL of where the text is that you
>>want to check and then another page opens with possible misspells crossed
>>out with asterisks next to them. You click on the asterisk and a HTML popup
>>box displays some possible correct spellings.
>>
>>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>>
>>
>
>I meant to add that such a feature could be part of the preview function.
>
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Tim Marklew

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "tap on the shoulder" to newbs

body:
Tarquin wrote:
>I've been noticing a number of IP users making mistakes on their early
>edits, such as plural names.
...
>Would it be helpful if we could give new IPs a "tap" if we spot a>
> >mistake?
>By that, I mean a *friendly*, *welcoming* message that would appear at the
>top of their next edit box. Hopefully, that may reduce the >numberof things
>we have to clean up.
>Something like this:

>Hello, IP {IP NUMBER} Thank you for your recent contribution to the
>Wikipedia.

>Another user has noticed your edit, on the {ARTICLE} article, and >wishes
>to alert you to the following point:
>{INSERT MESSAGE}

>You can respond on the {TALK PAGE} for that article.
>You might also want to read up on {naming conventions, etc}
>We hope you will {REGISTER} a user name and join the other active
>wikipedians.

In general, I don't think things like a misnamed page, or spelling error,
should warrant even trying to communicate with the user.  Just fix it - they
will usually get the message quickly.  Bear in mind:

* We do not want to make new users feel like they should have to digest a
big set of rules before they can contribute.  That would conflict with our
general openness to contributions.

* The misnamed page may not be 'their' mistake at all - they may have
clicked on an existing link to a badly named page and started typing.  They
might get justifiably confused and annoyed if you then criticise them for
misnaming the page, however polite you are.

The idea for a means to communicate with non logged in users might come in
handy for someone who is causing real problems, for example uploading
material we think is copyrighted.  Remember though that IP addresses do not
uniquely identify users.  I have seen a number of edits made by someone else
using the same IP as me (through a dial-up ISP), and computers are often
shared at schools etc.

Allowing people to make edits without logging in is on balance a good thing
- low barriers to participation are one of the things that makes Wikipedia a
success.  We have to accept that this openness comes with problems, one of
which is that it is never going to be easy to communicate with users that
aren't logged in.

Tim (Enchanter)

_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com


body:
I've been noticing a number of IP users making mistakes on their early
edits, such as plural names.
Not all of them are RecentChangesJunkies like us, and some may not even
be familiar with RC, so they may not notice notes we leave them in the
RC log.

I gather that when we ban a user, they get a message when they try to
next edit, explaining why.
However, in many cases, users are not causing malicious damage, they are
just making minor blunders, which old hands have to clean up after them.

Would it be helpful if we could give new IPs a "tap" if we spot a mistake?
By that, I mean a *friendly*, *welcoming* message that would appear at
the top of their next edit box. Hopefully, that may reduce the numberof
things we have to clean up.
Something like this:

Hello, IP {IP NUMBER} Thank you for your recent contribution to the
Wikipedia.

Another user has noticed your edit, on the {ARTICLE} article, and wishes
to alert you to the following point:
{INSERT MESSAGE}

You can respond on the {TALK PAGE} for that article.
You might also want to read up on {naming conventions, etc}
We hope you will {REGISTER} a user name and join the other active
wikipedians.


body:
On Sat, Sep 14, 2002 at 03:32:06PM -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> >Why doesn't someone just add a function, that before
> >submitting every article/change, it runs a spell checker, writes
> >all the ``mistakes'' and possible ``corrections'' along with
> >an editable field of the article bellow. This way the editor
> >can see his/her mistakes and correct them very easily.
>
> Because some of us find these things very irritating, and rarely
> run them on software that comes with them. Conversely, those
> who want such a function can copy the text into a word
> processor that has it, run the spell-check, and make the changes
> they want. We don't need to burden our programming team, or
> our software.

But you can't deny that the problem is there. I think most
people wouldn't cut&past it into their spellchecker
but they would correct it if they saw their mistakes
directly on the screen.

Hynek


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
At 07:24 AM 14/09/02 -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
>At 01:54 PM 9/14/02 +0100, you wrote:
> >
> >Anyway, to make this a more worthwhile email - wouldn't it be nice if there
> >was an option whereby you could have pages you edit automatically put into
> >your watch list?
> >
> >--
> >Khendon  (Jason Williams)
>
>Once you've written on a few controversial articles like [[Scotland]] or
>[[History of England]] or, God help us, [[Law]] your watchlist will be a
>full plate without adding in hundreds of routine pages.

Two fixes come to mind: making the autowatching trigger for major edits
only, and giving the  autowatch a time duration. For example, I would love
a feature that would automatically add pages I've made major edits to to my
watchlist for 7 days (or 30 or whatever), after which they drop off the
list (unless I've made a new major mod myself). That way, I'd be able to
see what sort of responses and modifications are made immediately after
I've made a major contribution to an article, but it's not there forever.

Of course, manually-added page watches would have an indefinite duration,
as currently happens.


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> Or as in the case of Tucson, Arizona, one
>line.
>
I don't know, the Beatles gave it a mention in a song. ;-)

>
>


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
--- Hynek Hanke <hanke at volny.cz> wrote:
> Why doesn't someone just add a function, that before
> submitting every article/change, it runs a spell
> checker, writes
> all the ``mistakes'' and possible ``corrections''
> along with
> an editable field of the article bellow. This way
> the editor
> can see his/her mistakes and correct them very
> easily.

The original WikiWikiWeb has a similiar spell check
function.

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
http://news.yahoo.com


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] user interface design

body:
You Wrote:
>Hello,
>
>When I did a lot of image uploads recently (the country flags of the
>english wikipedia for the german pages) I came across a very annoying
>thing:
>Step 1: choose "Upload file" from the special menu
>Step 2: Upload of the file
>and then I get a page, announcing that the file was succesfully uploaded -
>but that's not where I wanted to go, I want to upload the next image!
>
>These announce pages are in my opinion completely useless (an error
>message, if it was not okay would be sufficient). It's always one or more
>mouse clicks to much. Same for the "You succesfully logged in" or "The
>page was added to your watchlist".
>
>In my opinion an immediate redirect to the page where I came from (maybe
>with a line "successfully logged in" on top of the page, if this is
>technically possible) would make more sense.
...
>It's a principle of user interface design: a programm
>which confirms every action of the user ("You have done this") and then
>demands a click on the OK-button, before one can go back to work, is
>not well designed.
>
>greetings,
>elian

Yes, but I think in this case, you should probably be redirected to the image description page instead:  I think the idea is to go to that page and announce where you got the picture from so that we know we have the right to use it.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] order of lists of works & prizes

body:
tarquin wrote:

> Of the 5 nobel prize pages, 3 start from the present day, 2 go forward
> from 1901.
>
> I found a page on filmographies etc which suggest that lists start
> from the most recent item:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia_talk:Filmographies_and_Discographies
>
>
> A comment on the talk page Wikipedia talk:Filmographies and
> Discographies raises the fact that this order may have been influenced
> by the IMDB's filmographies.
>
> IMO lists of prize awards or works are in a sense timelines, and as
> such should go forwards.
> what are your opinions?

I agree with you on this.  I shared the work to put all the academy
award pages in normal time line order, and I am sometimes tempted to fix
the Nobel Prize pages in the same way.

The article which you cite suggests that copyright may be an issue.
 Original ways of arranging material can be copyright, but there is
nothing original about a basic chronological or alphabetical sequence
going either forwards or backwards.  That issue's a red herring.

One other advantage of a forward chronological list is that it makes
some annotations about the award much easier.  Using [[Academy Awards]]
as an example, it is much easier to insert something like "This year the
name of this award changed to ..." in a forward context than by trying
to go up on the down escalator.

Eclecticology


body:
Of the 5 nobel prize pages, 3 start from the present day, 2 go forward
from 1901.

I found a page on filmographies etc which suggest that lists start from
the most recent item:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia_talk:Filmographies_and_Discographies

A comment on the talk page Wikipedia talk:Filmographies and
Discographies raises the fact that this order may have been influenced
by the IMDB's filmographies.

IMO lists of prize awards or works are in a sense timelines, and as such
should go forwards.
what are your opinions?


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] user interface design

body:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2002 koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Elian wrote:
> >In my opinion an immediate redirect to the page where I came from (maybe
> >with a line "successfully logged in" on top of the page, if this is
> >technically possible) would make more sense.
>
> Yes, but I think in this case, you should probably be redirected to the image description page instead:  I think the idea is to go to that page and announce where you got the picture from so that we know we have the right to use it.

Having recently uploaded 58 maps in a row for the counties of California,
I have to agree with Elian. The process is very non-streamlined as it is;
remember also that the image description page starts as whatever you put
in the description field when you upload -- so that's an opportunity to
start with the basics.

In phase II, the "upload succeeded" message came up, and the working
upload form came up right below it on the same page. (So did a list of
every file that was uploaded, which became a bit of a problem after a
while!) Having message & form (but not list) would, I think, be the
best behavior.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)