from_name: Gurch

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Oversight-l] Also, once you begin the process,
 You will not make payments on your Account s06x15 c8w

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 08, 2007 at 10:06:44PM +0000, David Gerard wrote:
>> Oh, bother. That's two bits of spam today on oversight-l. I expect
>> we're on the lists now.
>>
>> Devs - what's the spam filter like on the mailing list box?
>>
>>
> At the moment none at all. Most of our lists are for subscribers only.
>
> Regards,
>
> 	jens

Oversight-l is an exception - evidently an address harvester has come
across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_oversight

-Gurch


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] New bot up for RFA

body:
On Mon, 8 Jan 2007 17:16:20 -0500, "James Hare"
<messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

>I'm sure if you asked the guy he'll give you the code, but keeping the code
>concealed may be a good thing because it'll stave off the bot being
>compromised for some time.

Yup.  You really think that Wiki folks would keep it quiet if there
wasn't a plausible reason?  Come on!

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Help!

body:
> From: "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2007 13:35:42 +1030
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Help!
>
> Marc Riddell wrote:
>>
>>> From: Simetrical <Simetrical+wikienl at gmail.com>
>>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>>> Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 13:16:29 -0500
>>> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Help!
>>>
>>> This should now be fixed.  Please confirm.
>>
>> Yes!! It is working fine now. Thank you very much for your patience and your
>> tolerance. I do realize, now, how outdated the version of Internet Explorer
>> I'm using is. I can also see where it could prove to be a real pain in the
>> ass for developers like yourself who are trying to constantly upgrade the
>> system. I'm really sorry about that. I'm planning to do something about it
>> soon.
>>
>
> For future reference, the correct list for these sort of problems is
> wikitech-l (http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l).
>
Thank you for this. I believe I will sign on. I have a great deal to learn
about what goes on in the background of Wikipedia; too often it's drowned
out by all the noise generated in the foreground.

Thanks,

Marc
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Oversight-l] Also, once you begin the process,
	You will not make payments on your Account s06x15 c8w

body:
On 08/01/07, Jens Frank <jf at mormo.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 08, 2007 at 10:06:44PM +0000, David Gerard wrote:

> > Oh, bother. That's two bits of spam today on oversight-l. I expect
> > we're on the lists now.
> > Devs - what's the spam filter like on the mailing list box?

> At the moment none at all. Most of our lists are for subscribers only.

O rly? I recall the old box had various spamfiltering set up on it.
SpamAssassin with a pretty high threshold set.

(I was about to suggest greylisting, but that's probably a really bad
idea for oversight-l ...)

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dump status

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

Alai Wiki wrote:
> The database dump process seems to have been "stalled" at es: since
> Christmas Day, two weeks ago.  (As a result, there's been no dump of
> de: or en: for over a month, as a number of people have observed at
> the meta: page on the data dumps.)  Does this just need to be manually
> restarted, or are things more profoundly on hold or otherwise
> troubled?

We're in progress of moving the dump system to new servers. The initial
test run is extra slow because it's a full rebuild (without using the
old XML files for backing, to make sure we have clean copies of all
revisions).

If you want to take a peek, here it is:
http://storage2.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFozjfwRnhpk1wk44RAlezAKDKe5eavA5BWH/ESqlNPL9fun2s0QCfQpX/
MO+kNgtGV1lH8BAkIyaagH0=
=KkEv
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Logo

body:
Hoi,
Another thing that was really special was that people were told that
during the vote people were told that the logo would be implemented
willy nilly. This was a real turn off for me as in someone else will do
this. Nobody has, apparently nobody cares. It was also my impression was
that it was not something that was popular among the Wiktionary communities.

I do not think the best logo won so I have yet another reason why I do
not bother about the implementation of this logo.

Thanks,
    GerardM

elisabeth anderl schreef:
> Matthieu Barba a ?crit :
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I already wrote something on the English Beer Parlour, but this list is probably more appropriate.
>>
>> A new logo of the project Wiktionary has been voted at the end of October. But the old logo has not been replaced in any project I have visited (All the 1000+).
>>
>> Why isn't it implemented now? Maybe because the logo is still incomplete, some issues are still discussed: which letter should be written? W (from Wiktionary) or A (from the alphabet)? Problems with the Japanese letters, etc.
>>
>> By the pace is is going, there will never be a final version.
>>
>> So, what do we do?
>>
>> We could speed things up by forcing the remaining issues to be discussed (in the English Beer Parlour for example).
>> We could also "forget" about this logo and just keep the old one. Of course it has been voted, but it looks like nobody cares now. And some people complained about the vote procedure itself.
>>
>> I would have supported this logo even though I dislike it (for many reasons), but the way things went and are going now, I would not anymore. Do we still need this logo? It doesn't add anything compared to the old one (maybe more solid, but that's all).
>>
>> If I could, I would just ignore the vote and either keep the current one, or begin another procedure but this time with a proper preparation (there has been too much problems), with more time to propose versions, etc.
>> For example, if I organize a vote on fr: (the project where I work the most) with the question: "Do you want to change the logo with the new one or keep the current one?" I think there would be more votes for keeping the old. In the end, it is still the Wiktionary communities who decide, isn't it?
>>
>> Here is a link to the new logo page on meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo
>>
>>  I would like to know your opinion about that ^^
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Darkdadaah, fr.wikt
>>
>>
> Hello, yes, imho it is not implemented because it is incomplete.
> Furthermore I got the impression, that the logo vote was iniciated by
> non wiktionary contributors and that there were much voters from
> outside, so that now since the voting is over they are gone and no one
> from wiktionary is actually interested or has got the time completing
> this logo.
> It is funny that all Wiktionarians I have spoken with do not like this
> new logo, maybe that is also a reason why there is no progress.
> Best regards
> Elisabeth Anderl (aka spacebirdy)
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Print stylesheet: Fixed font size hinders scaling

body:
Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> Bernd vdB wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Matthew Flaschen wrote:
>>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>>> Could you please describe how one "scales prior to printing"?
>> ..
>>> It took me a while to figure that one out too.  I think he means users
>>> might scale the text in Firefox, then print, ...
>> Hmm, I have here Firefox 2.0.0.1 running, I go to
>>   File-Print_Preview
>> and on top in the middle there is a "Scale" element that can be changed from
>> 100% to, say 70%.
>> Try it with google, or 99% of this worlds famous websites, and - wow, it
>> scales down.
>> Try it with wikipedia and it doesn't.
>>
>> Ok?
>
> My mistake.  You might want to lose the attitude, and just be more
> clear.  Not everyone has Firefox, and Kubuntu's Firefox 2.0.0.1 doesn't
> even have that feature.
>
> Matthew Flaschen

It might be under Page Setup, rather than Print Preview.

-Gurch


from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] Remote Sidebar links at MW.org

body:
I don't know if this affects other wikis, but currently all the remote (full
URL) links in the sidebar at mediawiki.org are broken.

For example, the bug tracker link currently points to
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_tracker-url, instead of
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ (as specified at [[Mediawiki:Bug
tracker-url]]).

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Bernd vdB

body:
Hello,

Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Could you please describe how one "scales prior to printing"?
..
> It took me a while to figure that one out too.  I think he means users
> might scale the text in Firefox, then print, ...

Hmm, I have here Firefox 2.0.0.1 running, I go to
  File-Print_Preview
and on top in the middle there is a "Scale" element that can be changed from
100% to, say 70%.
Try it with google, or 99% of this worlds famous websites, and - wow, it
scales down.
Try it with wikipedia and it doesn't.

Ok?

// Bernd


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Mon, Jan 08, 2007 at 10:06:44PM +0000, David Gerard wrote:
> Oh, bother. That's two bits of spam today on oversight-l. I expect
> we're on the lists now.
>
> Devs - what's the spam filter like on the mailing list box?
>
>
At the moment none at all. Most of our lists are for subscribers only.

Regards,

	jens


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Help!

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=purge

Does that work?

On 08/01/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > From: "NSLE (Wikipedia)" <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> > Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 20:12:46 +0800
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Help!
> >
> > [[Special:Userlogin]] is the link to log-in. Try clearing your browser
> > cache/purging the page.
>
> I'm afraid this couldn't have happened to a worse person when it comes to
> computer understanding. I am completely dependent on my technical support
> guy and he is away at a conference right now. So your instructions will
> need
> to be simpler. I really am sorry about this, and I appreciate any help you
> can give me. This is a first with WP for me. What does clear my browser
> cache/purging the page mean?
>
> Thank you!
>
> Marc
> >
> > On 08/01/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> I don't know where else to turn for input on this. I closed out of
> >> Wikipedia
> >> last evening - everything was fine. This morning, I tried to access it
> and
> >> the entire page is a mess. The WP Globe and contents selections are
> >> superimposed over the page, and I don't have access to the log-in or
> other
> >> such buttons. I tried to access WP via a Google search, and got the
> same
> >> thing.
> >>
> >> Is anyone else experiencing this? How can I fix it?
> >>
> >> Help!
> >>
> >> Marc Riddell
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Steve

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third
	World

body:
Good. Thank you.

I'm outlining it for brevity:

1) Bookmark and check [[Category:Candidates for speedy deletion]] regularly.
Make it part of that hour or so per day when you're aimlessly clicking
around the internet.

2) Even though you shouldn't have to, source to the point of compensation.

3) Call for back-up. Deletionists routinely summon their cheerleaders when
things aren't going their way. Do the same.

4) Structural change -- fuggetaboutit.

-S

I am curious. About how many articles per day/week do you salvage from
speedy del, David?

On 1/8/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, there is a very definite tendency for deletion of anything about
> a non UK/US person or institution, or an academic, or a classical
> musician, or someone or something not recent enough to have material
> on Google. The reason given is always "notability not asserted" and
> people are actually marking for deletion anything which does not
> literally countain the word "notability" in the first paragraph. This
> is worst in speedy, because there are only a few hours at most to
> review tthe listed items, and there's an ongoing discussion on the
> talk page of WP:CSD.
>
> Ways to deal with it are well known, but I'm outlining it for clarity.
> More people must to make the very considerable effort of reviewing at
> least some of the deletions.  For speedys, they're at
> [[Category:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion]]. Twice a day is not too
> often.  Then there's  [[Category:Proposed deletion]] every few days is
> enough, and similarly at AfD. You'll see me there-- I'm DGG.
>
> AfD is the easy part, because if an article gets to AfD, there are
> enough people watching to speak up, and enough time to improve the
> article.
>
> I'm not hopeful on structural change, because no structural change can
> stand up to people wantonly ignoring the meaning of the rules.  But WP
> is after all a cooperatively edited project, and individual people
> joining in can make a difference.  To return to the original posting,
> if a number of other people familiar with Indian material support
> worthy articles, it will work.
>
> For individual articles, the way to do it is to put in a clearly
> sufficient number of citations. from printed works. (accompanied by
> English translations if necessary). I've found that specific citations
> from peer-reviewed journals do help, if they are at all pertinent. So
> do Ph.d. theses and even Masters theses.
>
> The other specific tactic some like-minded people are using is to
> write the article on their user page, and invite comment individually
> from people likely to be active in AfD.
> Format does matter.
>
> -- David Goodman
>
>
>
>
>
> On 1/8/07, Steve <subsume at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My are these slopes slippery this time of year. And me without my sled.
> >
> > -S
> >
> > On 1/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > That's a big hypothetical - if he had been born there, how much and
> what
> > > would he have written? Having somehting un-notable may not be a grave
> > > error,
> > > but having thousands of un-notable things clogs Wikipedia, makes
> > > fact-checking harder and opens the doors wide to usage of Wikipedia
> for
> > > advertisement.
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Virgil Ierubino

subject: [Foundation-l] Why is MediaWiki so low-tech?

body:
Brion vibber wrote:
> Individual paragraphs, table cells, etc would be an even nicer
> fine-grained level to do inline editing on, but this requires having a
> reliable way to associate parts of rendered output with the parts of
> source code which created them.

I'm aware of these difficulties. There are a number of ways I can see this
being tackled. Firstly, only pure wikitext can be edited inline. That is, if
you try to edit some text which is the result of 2 #switch's inside 6 nested
templates being transcluded through 2 articles, then there's just no option
to edit inline. Either that, or attempting to edit that part inline sends
you to an appropriate edit page - either for the article, the template, the
nested template, etc - more difficult.

But focussing on the easy stuff: inline editing on a page with nothing but
nice, pure, transclusion-less wikitext, I don't see this as being so hard.
Obviously the renderer renders the code for inline editing into the output,
so there wouldn't be a correspondence issue.

For instance: for every paragraph, or the contents of every table cell, the
renderer can output some funky code that allows inline editing on that part.
This funky code is ultimately a function with inputs for two numbers that
define a range of characters in the wikitext that will be replaced by the
result of the inline editing. The renderer obviously renders these numbers
into the output as constants when it parses the wikitext.


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Why is MediaWiki so low-tech?

body:
Brion vibber wrote:
> Individual paragraphs, table cells, etc would be an even nicer
> fine-grained level to do inline editing on, but this requires having a
> reliable way to associate parts of rendered output with the parts of
> source code which created them.

I'm aware of these difficulties. There are a number of ways I can see this
being tackled. Firstly, only pure wikitext can be edited inline. That is, if
you try to edit some text which is the result of 2 #switch's inside 6 nested
templates being transcluded through 2 articles, then there's just no option
to edit inline. Either that, or attempting to edit that part inline sends
you to an appropriate edit page - either for the article, the template, the
nested template, etc - more difficult.

But focussing on the easy stuff: inline editing on a page with nothing but
nice, pure, transclusion-less wikitext, I don't see this as being so hard.
Obviously the renderer renders the code for inline editing into the output,
so there wouldn't be a correspondence issue.

For instance: for every paragraph, or the contents of every table cell, the
renderer can output some funky code that allows inline editing on that part.
This funky code is ultimately a function with inputs for two numbers that
define a range of characters in the wikitext that will be replaced by the
result of the inline editing. The renderer obviously renders these numbers
into the output as constants when it parses the wikitext.
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why is MediaWiki so low-tech?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Help!

body:
And for userlogin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin should
work.

On 08/01/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=purge
>
> Does that work?
>
> On 08/01/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > From: "NSLE (Wikipedia)" <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com>
> > > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org >
> > > Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 20:12:46 +0800
> > > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> > > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Help!
> > >
> > > [[Special:Userlogin]] is the link to log-in. Try clearing your browser
> > > cache/purging the page.
> >
> > I'm afraid this couldn't have happened to a worse person when it comes
> > to
> > computer understanding. I am completely dependent on my technical
> > support
> > guy and he is away at a conference right now. So your instructions will
> > need
> > to be simpler. I really am sorry about this, and I appreciate any help
> > you
> > can give me. This is a first with WP for me. What does clear my browser
> > cache/purging the page mean?
> >
> > Thank you!
> >
> > Marc
> > >
> > > On 08/01/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> I don't know where else to turn for input on this. I closed out of
> > >> Wikipedia
> > >> last evening - everything was fine. This morning, I tried to access
> > it and
> > >> the entire page is a mess. The WP Globe and contents selections are
> > >> superimposed over the page, and I don't have access to the log-in or
> > other
> > >> such buttons. I tried to access WP via a Google search, and got the
> > same
> > >> thing.
> > >>
> > >> Is anyone else experiencing this? How can I fix it?
> > >>
> > >> Help!
> > >>
> > >> Marc Riddell
> > >>
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> > >> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > >> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >>
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>


from_name: Yedidia Klein

subject: [Wikitech-l] https auth on wiki logon

body:
hello,

for security reason I want my wiki users to logon via https connection
while all the wiki is accessible via regular http connection.

so I added this code to LocalSettings.php:

$ServerName=$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
if ((substr($_GET['title'],-10,10) == ":Userlogin") && ($_SERVER['HTTPS'] != "on"))
        header("Location: https://$ServerName".$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
else if ((substr($_GET['title'],-10,10) != ":Userlogin") && ($_SERVER['HTTPS'] == "on"))
        header("Location: http://$ServerName".$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);

(also at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Configuration_tips_and_tricks#HTTPS_on_Login_only)

now I've two problems,

first: Firefox tells me that the page is partially encypted - and I
can't find which object isn't encrypted (see wiki.jct.ac.il login page)

second: the "remember me" check box do not work. (maybe it cause of LDAP
auth ??)

any help will be appreciated.

--Yedidia


from_name: Hans Musil (hansm)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding hooks

body:
How is your policy about adding hooks to MediaWiki. I had some suggestions.

Hans


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] New bot up for RFA

body:
I still don't see the need to release the code myself, but this response
makes sense.
I'll agree to disagree and let the operator make the decision.

Mgm

On 1/8/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 08/01/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 1/8/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > There's
> > > no complex checks involved a vandal can game if they know the details,
> > > simply generating a list of all transclusions from a single page and
> > > then setting protection for each. Unless the bot does something I'm
> > > not understanding, releasing the code gives no loss of security and
> > > allows the community to feel a lot more comfortable permitting it.
> >
> > That's why I don't understand some people are uncomfortable with it.
> > It does something simple and it's not dangerous what exactly do they
> feel is
> > so scary that the code needs to be released?
>
> Because we don't *know* that. We know the programmer intends it to do
> something simple and routine. We don't know if he has a secret plan
> (he doesn't, I am sure, but someone who doesn't know of him might not
> accept this), or if he's made some silly mistake whereby it'll
> actually miss every transcluded template containing a "7", or if it'll
> stop checking at the sixth level of transclusion because he thinks
> there won't be any more, or whatever.
>
> It's not a matter of trust; it's a matter of confidence. Because a bot
> doesn't have that simple and obvious "common sense oversight" option,
> we want to know *exactly* what it will do, not what the designer
> intends it to do. And the only way to do that is to see what the code
> is.
>
> Fundamentally, I cannot see any reason not to release it. We're not
> talking a vandalhunter here; there are no complex algorithms that can
> be gamed, no part of this bot that will work better if its targets
> don't know how it works, no plausible scenario where secrecy will
> prove advantageous to it. It has a clearly defined, explicitly
> defined, method; releasing the code to show that method shouldn't, to
> my understanding, be a problem to its operation. So why not? It'll
> make people feel better about it, reduce fear and uncertainty, and let
> us all get on with creative work - which is what we're here for.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
> andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sage Ross

subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
In the past there was some effort put into grant writing, but I'm not
sure if any grant applications ever got submitted.  In any case, it's
been quite a while since anything was done on Meta about grants:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants

There is a new NEH grant that looks like something appropriate for
Wikimedia (or at least for English Wikipedia, through Wikimedia):
http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
In the past there was some effort put into grant writing, but I'm not
sure if any grant applications ever got submitted.  In any case, it's
been quite a while since anything was done on Meta about grants:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants

There is a new NEH grant that looks like something appropriate for
Wikimedia (or at least for English Wikipedia, through Wikimedia):
http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html

>From the program description, they want:
"...proposals for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using
the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American
public, humanities scholarship, and the nation's cultural
institutions. These grants will support collaborations among
libraries, museums, archives, universities, and other cultural
organizations that may serve as models for the field. We encourage
projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret
humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new
uses and audiences for existing digital resources."

It almost looks like it was written with Wikipedia in mind.  The grant
range is $50,000 to $350,000 over two years; not enormous, but it
seems worth the time of some Wikimedian grant writers.

With some creativity, there are probably some other NEH and possibly
NSF grants that Wikimedia might have a shot at as well.

-User:Ragesoss


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> I did find a "scale" option in 'File'/'Page Setup', which seems to work
> just fine.
>
> 50% and 200% produce very small and very large text output respectively
> when print-previewing
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Branch%2C_Pennsylvania
>
> - -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
I can only confirm the bug reporter's experience (using Firefox 2.0.0.1
on Ubuntu Edgy). But it's probably a Firefox bug, since it works on Mac.

Filip


subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding hooks

body:
Well, I have written a small extension that provides a simple API to store custom data in the ParserOutput object and in the QuickTemplate object. In order to make use of it, I would like to have a hook in SkinTemplate.php right before the QuickTemplate is executed. Therefore, I had to patch SkinTemplate.php for getting the hook. See http://wikivoyage.org/tech/CustomData-Extension for detailed explanation.

Hans


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-09

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19023).
Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  12 previously failing test(s) now PASSING! :)
      * Basic section headings
      * Section headings with TOC
      * Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond
      * Resolving duplicate section names
      * Template with sections, __NOTOC__
      * __NOEDITSECTION__ keyword
      * Link inside a section heading
      * Fuzz testing: Parser14
      * Fuzz testing: Parser14-table
      * Inclusion of !userCanEdit() content
      * Out-of-order TOC heading levels
      * -{}- tags within headlines (within html for parserConvert())
   2 new PASSING test(s) :)
      * Transclusion of MediaWiki message with underscore
      * Transclusion of MediaWiki message with space
Passed 484 of 503 tests (96.22%)... FAILED!


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki as a Wikimedia project

body:
Hoi,
The notion that the MediaWiki software is almost entirely developed for
one organisation is seriously wrong. OmegaWiki, formerly WiktionaryZ has
realised a lot of functionality already and this is just one other
project. There are many more projects that have developed on MediaWiki
and much of this development, like OmegaWiki, is as Free as the WMF
developed functionality is.

As to distributed MediaWiki, as you may remember the Vrije Universiteit
of Amsterdam (Andrew Tannenbaum's department) is actively working on a
distributed Mediawiki and is particularly interested in the distributed
network functionality that is required. This includes things like making
sure the content is near to where it is requested.

The WMF could provide a meeting place for organisations that use
MediaWiki stimulate cooperation. The WMF can provide a developer that
has as his task to mentor new developers,  particularly students from
Universities that  want to be technically involved in MediaWiki
projects. My expectation is that it will be possible to do some 50
projects in a half year (only the MW support .. not supporting the
content part of the project) this is likely to lead to a retention of
developers of in between five to ten percent and will as a consequence
be a good investment. The organisations that develop MediaWiki may also
need support to build extensions so that their code can be part of the
main MediaWiki code. This can be a paid for service. When it is not the
WMF who does this, another organisation may be willing to provide this
service ...

I am sure there are more things that can be done when MediaWiki has its
organisational part developed it may even generate money for the Foundation.

Thanks,
     GerardM

David Gerard schreef:
> On 08/01/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
>> Nobody can deny the close relationship between Wikimedia and MediaWiki.
>> Some might worry about Wikimedia taking control of MediaWiki,
>>
>
>
> Well, that's pretty much the de facto condition - it's software
> written and actively developed almost entirely for one organisation,
> that just happens to be open source and useful to lots of other
> people.
>
> OTOH, it's only good sense that getting outside users involved in
> development will make for a better and more robust application.
> Actively recruiting outside developers doing interesting stuff will
> mean the weird and wonderful ideas can go in as extensions rather than
> being separate forks.
>
> (Remember the chitchat about "distributed MediaWiki"? Seen
> http://www.wikileaks.org/ ? I've already written a note to one of the
> devs strongly suggesting they participate in the mainstream of
> MediaWiki development.)
>
> [Mind you, I was sure this would be the case with Slash, which is of
> industrial robustness ... but an exercise in pain to sysadmin. I want
> to hurt it. Real bad. In the face.]
>
> So the question becomes: What would or could Wikimedia being the
> official (not just de facto) organisational umbrella do to or for
> MediaWiki? Assuming things aren't actually broken right now, which it
> appears from this thread is the case.
>
> + Legal backup in case of attacks from the querulous? Lots of
> prominent free software has a legal backup these days. Though most of
> the legal concern for Wikimedia is our content.
> - Too many eggs in one basket
> + Express task of recruiting outside devs
> - ... who then have to be herded by current devs
>
> Please add more.
>
>
>
>> which is
>> amusing considering the amount of influence MediaWiki developers have over
>> Wikimedia affairs. They have as much to fear from us as we do from them ;)
>>
>
>
> The cure for en:wp admin politics is to point out the devs have all
> the REAL power ;-D
>
>
> - d.
>


body:
Hello Brion,

you wrote:
...
> I can find no such option in Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Mac OS X. What operating
> system are you running?

Windows XP, sorry for being a bit autistic - I have no other OS with a gui
running here and assumed Firefox would have the same features on every platform.
But, am I completely wrong to assume that the majority of wikipedia users has
got Windows running (which doesn't mean that there would be no good reasons to
go elsewhere)?

> Sounds like a bug in Firefox; a printing scaling feature ought to work
> regardless of which method was used to set font sizes ..

No, really, Firefix works just as designed and as specified.
A fixed font size is _meant_ to render fixed, and:
"Use of percentage values, or values in 'em's, leads to more robust and
cascadable style sheets."
( http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#font-size-props )

And, have a look at:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?41
.. and you fill not one font-size in 'pt', only percent, ems or 'small' etc.

// Bernd


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Print stylesheet: Fixed font size hinders scaling
 - II

body:
Correction: "find" not "fill":

And, have a look at:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?41
.. and you _find_ not one font-size in 'pt', only percent, ems or 'small' etc.

// Bernd


subject:
[Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.6.9, 1.7.2, 1.8.3,
	1.9.0rc2 released (security)

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

An XSS injection vulnerability was located in the AJAX support module,
affecting MediaWiki 1.6.x and up when the optional setting $wgUseAjax
is enabled.

There is no danger in the default configuration, with $wgUseAjax off.

If you are using an extension based on the optional Ajax module,
either disable it or upgrade to a version containing the fix:

* 1.9: fixed in 1.9.0rc2
* 1.8: fixed in 1.8.3
* 1.7: fixed in 1.7.2
* 1.6: fixed in 1.6.9

Full release notes:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_9_0RC2/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_8_3/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_7_2/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_6_9/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES

Download:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=34373

MD5 checksums:
747d79037d3b90494d7e8b956a6bb9a0  mediawiki-1.9.0rc2.tar.gz
9ef825abfcf0888b22571bbb097480f0  mediawiki-1.8.3.tar.gz
ef33231cb1689dc813f4b08e955f4b18  mediawiki-1.7.2.tar.gz
1ce42061b5f7ea6e4101826b969d2ee4  mediawiki-1.6.9.tar.gz

SHA-1 checksums:
1451e8a8a10f41e517c12ede266dd1a5a743d8fe mediawiki-1.9.0rc2.tar.gz
fa4daa4376b80f61be5925e6172daa76938d9bad mediawiki-1.8.3.tar.gz
f63468ce745bbda6d42f66fc64c713b4fd000ef2 mediawiki-1.7.2.tar.gz
a00bcc6b306a92234da0c2cd3d564869a15045a0 mediawiki-1.6.9.tar.gz

Before asking for help, try the FAQ:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
(Please subscribe to receive announcements of security updates.)
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFo1FGwRnhpk1wk44RAhkpAKCpAoOvgk+5C3Kb0l/3prvhOVd9bQCeL/AK
WAUsj8tCaZfJ+X6f20piUoc=
=s1qL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Robert Brockway

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third
 World

body:
On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:

> While working on articles about Singaporean movies, I've encountered a
> similar problem: difficulty finding references due to systemic bias.
>
> Some seem to have the impression that Singaporean = non-notable. I've
> seen articles on many Singaporean topics, which no Singaporean would
> contest the notability of, get nominated for deletion, under the claim
> of non-notability.
>
> That Wikipedia suffers from systemic bias is not surprising.

I'm afraid I've seen this also.  Non-US articles appear much more likely
to come up for AfD.

But it's not just geographic.  The Maui Cluster Scheduler actually came up
for deletion with a result of "no concensus".  This is a piece of software
that is an integral component of high performance clusters the world over.
One voter apparently wanted it deleted because it was not useful for his
home PC.  At the very best this is parochial.

I'm glad this topic has come up for discussion.  IMHO the entire deletion
process (including speedy deletion) needs to come up for review.  It's too
easy for articles to come up for AfD.

It was interesting to sit in a Greater Toronto Area Linux User Group
meeting recently and hear people list many (IMHO) reasonable articles that
had been deleted.  This was a spontaneous discussion.  I bet if so many
people in Toronto are concerned about the deletion process that we aren't
alone.

Rob

--
Robert Brockway B.Sc.        Phone:          +1-905-821-2327
Senior Technical Consultant  Urgent Support: +1-416-669-3073
OpenTrend Solutions Ltd      Email:          support at opentrend.net
                              Web:            www.opentrend.net


references:
<enujds$loq$1@sea.gmane.org> <45A2DE50.7070006@pobox.com>
	<45A2E0E2.9040400@pobox.com>

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
message news:45A2E0E2.9040400 at pobox.com...
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Mark Clements wrote:
> >> I don't know if this affects other wikis, but currently all the remote
(full
> >> URL) links in the sidebar at mediawiki.org are broken.
> >
> >> For example, the bug tracker link currently points to
> >> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_tracker-url, instead of
> >> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ (as specified at [[Mediawiki:Bug
> >> tracker-url]]).
> >
> > Seems to be a regression in the message cache system where spaces are
> > involved; I'm working on it.
>
> Ok, fixed in r18988 and r18989.
>

Very quick - thank you!

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


body:
"Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com> wrote in
message news:20070109005640.GH15818 at cgi.jachomes.com...
> On Mon, Jan 08, 2007 at 03:49:39PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Just because I ask you questions about a bug I can't reproduce on my
> > system without more information from you doesn't mean I'm out to get
you.
>
> Quote.  Of.  The.  Year.
>

...and it's only January :)

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Matthew Flaschen

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Bug 8473] Special:Allpages should be openable to
 search engines

body:
Dan Jacobson wrote:
> Simetrical says
> S> Why?  noindex,follow for Allpages strikes me as sensible, even if not as useful
> S> as a site map.
>
> It's a deal. However,
> $ GET http://taizhongbus.jidanni.org/index.php?title=%E7%89%B9%E6%AE%8A:Allpages|grep robot
> <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
> as of 1.8.2.

The inherent problem with Special pages is that they're dynamically
generated.  Thus, the crawler can needlessly crawl (and index)
approximately the same content repeatedly.  For example, it could index
both
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Allpages&from=The_Lost_45s
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Allpages&from=The%20Lost%20Battalion
, even though they're essentially identical.  Really, we don't want
these types of pages to appear in the search engine at all.  If we want
to implement Sitemap, we should do it right.

Matthew Flaschen

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 252 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20070109/b7b76458/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 1/8/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Frederick Noronha wrote:
>
> > Maybe we should use some discernment, instead of the mechanical rule
> > of 'number of links' on Google or where-ever.
>
> The question if a topic is notable enough to deserve an entry, can
> only be answered with "yes" or "no", and this is pretty much
> "mechanical", so you cannot really escape the mechanics.

I think the idea that one could come up with a formula, a machine into
which one could put an subject and turn the handle and get a 'yes' or
'no' answer, to rule on inclusion in Wikipedia is fundamentally
wrong-headed.  It reflects a certain 'computer-science' way of
thinking that I feel is flawed - as someone said, expecting to be able
to fix social problems in software is a loser's game.

To some, I feel, such a definitive process would be desirable since
they think it would solve the rancor over inclusion - even if it made
some less-than-perfect decisions, they like the speed and finality and
definitiveness of such.  I think it would only increase the rancor.
There is disagreement about inclusion not because we've not yet
perfected the formula, but because there is deep-seated division on
what we're trying to do and what should be included.  Furthermore,
inclusion doesn't seem suited to binary logic - it's a problem in
which the answers do include definitive 'yes' and 'no' regions but a
substantial fuzzy zone of 'maybe'.

Answering that 'maybe' is the hard part.  Myself, I feel that the
deciding factor, once verifiability is out of the way (and answered
positively) is simply whether anyone is interested/able to make a
worthwhile article out of it.  In practice, well-written, substantial
articles rarely get deleted no matter what the subject.

-Matt


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dump status

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

Alai Wiki wrote:
> Ah, thanks -- that's good to know.  I notice the sql dumps on that
> page (page.sql.gz, etc) are empty: are these being skipped for the
> above testing purposes, then?  (I may of course be biased, as it's
> those I'm waiting for.)

No, just broken. ;)

I'll try and poke it up later this week, in between other things
(*cough* SUL *cough*)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFo2PvwRnhpk1wk44RAr3tAKCeLMF1l01mPOQ5gFs0C343Z4p0WwCgyyu2
xk9jb+OFcwmOVSTmBKoejYI=
=GsE1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Discovered a remote loader

body:
zetawoof wrote:
> http://www.medbib.com/ appears to be doing some remote loading.
> (Checked by pointing it at a page of mine that I'd just created for
> the purpose.)

They're filed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Mno#Medbib.com_-_.22the_modern_encyclopedia.22
.  It would be great if the devs could block this and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Abc#Cooldictionary.com
 (request already sent to this list).  Also, if there's another place to
report this, let us know.

Thanks,

Matthew Flaschen

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 252 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20070109/ee28430d/attachment.pgp>


body:
Gurch wrote:
>
> It might be under Page Setup, rather than Print Preview.
>
> -Gurch

Yes, that was it.  I see the issue.  It's a serious problem, because
that means it scales images but not text.

Matthew Flaschen

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 252 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20070109/029a2eb4/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [Wikitech-l] https auth on wiki logon

body:
Yedidia Klein wrote:
>
> first: Firefox tells me that the page is partially encypted - and I
> can't find which object isn't encrypted (see wiki.jct.ac.il login page)

You should be able to determine that with "View page info"; look under
the "Media", "Scripts" and "Style sheets" tabs.  As far as I can tell,
_all_ the images, scripts and style sheets on that page are being sent
unencrypted.

--
Ilmari Karonen


list: textbook-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibook User Arbitration

body:
Andrew Whitworth wrote:

>What I don't like, (and what Johnny has been pointing out), is that Johnny
>himself served as a moderator in this situation (between Darklama and
>Panic). Panic asked Johnny (and myself) to come in and moderate the
>discussion. Johnny's decision was that Panic was in the wrong, and his
>continued bad behavior warranted a block.
>
>What this arbitration hearing is doing, is essentially punishing (or
>threatening to punish) Johnny for acting as a volunteer moderator for Panic
>in the first place. Panic didn't like the outcome, but that's tough beans:
>He asked for a moderator because he wanted to maintain unilateral control
>over his book, but what he got was a punishment instead. We're creating a
>precedent where moderation and arbitration can be appealed ad infinitum
>until everybody gives up or storms off. Somewhere we need to say "A decision
>has already been made on this issue, and we need to stand by our decisions".
>Don't think for an instant that if you agree with Johnny and have panic
>blocked, that  he won't appeal higher up the chain (WMF intervention?) to
>have you de-admined as well. Maybe he won't succeed, but tell me having your
>adminship on the line over this won't upset you pretty badly as well?
>
>--Andrew Whitworth
>
>
The problem as I see it is that Johnny became a party to the fight, even
if that was not his intention.  And he engaged directly with Panic to
argue on fine points.

I will conceed that Darklama seems to have taken the brunt of most of
the attention by Panic, and that Johnny was trying to step in and help
resolve the issue.  It was a valiant effort, but it also blew up and
went out of control as well.  The main thing I wanted to do here is to
avoid the same sort of mistakes that Johnny made, particularly as I
don't think doing a user block is necessarily the best course of action
when dealing with an edit war, except perhaps to cool things down a bit
and make people pause to think for a moment.  A content freeze would
have been almost as effective to do the same thing, and there are other
options available that may not have been nearly as controvercial.

As far as appealing up the food chain, so to say, that has always been
an option.  And Jimbo has indeed come into Wikibooks on a number of
occasions and tried to establish policy based on promptings from some
users trying to resolve one sort of fight or another.  The problem with
appealing to Jimbo or the WMF, is that once the decision is made it is
absolutely final.  Besides, they don't have the time to have to review
every little petty user edit war that blows up with Wikimedia projects,
which is why it is important to have some trusted users to be able to
sit in between the foundation and users in this situation.

My long experience in dealing with stewards is that they don't want to
get involved with these sort of disputes either.  It isn't so much that
they can't do this, but it is more an apathy regarding projects they are
not generally involved with on a more regular basis.  Both that and for
a steward to get into the dirty details of a project they aren't
familiar with is likely to get them into a mess that just causes more
problems where they are likely to be drawn into the fight.

As far as appealing this "ad infinitum", that would imply that after I'm
done that he could appeal to another Wikibooks admin.  Because of the
way that I've structured this, I highly doubt that any other Wikibooks
admin is going to touch this issue at all, so Panic has no other
realistic avenues of appeal left in that regard.  At best all he can do
after this is to appeal to the stewards (appeal 1) and then directly to
the WMF (appeal 2).  That doesn't sound like an infinite number of
appeals to me.  Besides, with the way that all of this is structured, it
will be easy for a steward to review this matter quite quickly and be
able to see if the actions taken were justified.  And he can't keep
appealing from one steward to another, as they will be pretty much
unified once a decision has been made here as well.

I will note, however, that because this is available for appeal, it
keeps any power that either I or any administrator acting in the future
with a similar situation in check.  Administrators simply will never
have absolute power.  I also think it is very important to remember that
admins are not infallible, and that mistakes can and do happen.  You
should feel as comfortable questioning the actions of an administrator
as you do questioning an edit.

BTW, no, I don't think that my being involved here is going to have my
adminship challenged if I recommend that Panic's account be reblocked,
or set up some other sort of set of "probationary" conditions for him.
 I'm not directly challenging the content itself, and I'm trying very
hard to stay out of this fight.  I don't want to be a party in it.

If I have a concern, it is that the rest of the admins might think I'm
supporting Panic and get into a wheel war fight with me instead, with me
being deadmined and my account being blocked.  As far as maintaining my
adminship on Wikibooks, I really could care less.  My purpose in being
as a human has no relationship to my status on Wikimedia projects, and I
don't want to game the process.  I have a desire to genuinely help out,
fight vandalism, and assist to help grow Wikibooks by using some of the
tools available to administrators, that is all.

What I do love is the ideas behind Wikibooks, providing free as in
freedom books (aka GFDL and FOSS philosophies), and I have very much
enjoyed being able to participate in the development of much of that
content.  If all I am able to do is simply write in those books as an
anonymous user, then I'll be fine with that as well.  Oh, I might be
grumpy about having to go to that extreme situation, but it wouldn't be
the end of the world for me.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Antwort: Re: Print stylesheet: Fixed font size
 hinders scaling

body:
christoph.huesler at css.ch wrote:

> Yes, but it's not a MW problem, it's a firefox bug.

One could say it's a compatibility bug.

Matthew Flaschen

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 252 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20070109/0d2adef6/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Bug 8472] Recentchanges vs. Special:Import

body:
b> Nothing to diff against in a log entry of that nature.

Well from users' perspective, on Recentchanges it is harder to see
diffs from files Imported. At least for zh-tw.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Bug 8473] Special:Allpages should be openable to
	search engines

body:
Simetrical says
S> Why?  noindex,follow for Allpages strikes me as sensible, even if not as useful
S> as a site map.

It's a deal. However,
$ GET http://taizhongbus.jidanni.org/index.php?title=%E7%89%B9%E6%AE%8A:Allpages|grep robot
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
as of 1.8.2.


from_name: David Ashby

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wiki violation that did NOT happen, man!

body:
On 1/8/07, RCTLocoWikiSpam <rctlocomotionwikipeida at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> As they didn't request any unblocking, I get a message that sayd "This user
> is no longer a member of Wikipedia." They said it's against Wikipedia policy
> to remove any semi-protected tags while still protected in this park as the
> Wikipedia police still have not got back to me about my so call wiki
> violation in the park.

Didn't we already have this thread?  Moderators, consider blocking.

-david


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Conflict of Interest Drinks are good for you

body:
Report Warns Of Biases in Drink Studies
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/08/AR2007010801276.html
"The team found that studies funded by industry were four
to eight times more likely to show bias in favor of
sponsors' products than studies that did not receive
industry funding."

Not really surprising and, given that IP blocks can be
circumvented, the more interesting part involves how the
study was performed and how it can be applied to reliable
sources.

They excluded studies, extracted from the "National Library
of Medicine's Medline database", that didn't cite funding
sources.

In short, eliminate not only citations and the content
based on it that are funded by industry, but those that
don't provide funding citations.  Nothing truly new when
compared to WP:NPOV and WP:V, but maybe another way of
looking at and evaluating citations that has not been
explicitly stated.

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (now a Wikia supported site)

--spam may follow--

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


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
This is true. However, is there a workable solution to that?

I remember when people didn't worry too much about references on
Wikipedia. Sure, you were supposed to have them, but as long as you
had a nice article, nobody cared.

Well, what if I know the truth, but it is not written anywhere? What
if I interview 100 people to make sure they agree, and they do? What
if it is common knowledge in my village, which nobody will challenge?

The answer: it will be labeled "unverifiable" or "non-notable" and deleted.

Wikipedia's current message to the world: If it's never been written
about, or been mentioned in a sound recording or a film, it's not
important.

Well:

1) Not all cultures have writing.
2) Among those cultures which DO have writing, they each place
different importance values on it. In my daily life, I am using it
constantly. My desk is littered with books with their titles written
on them, products with their labels. If I go driving, some of the
signs will have writing on them, there are billboards, signs for
businesses, all of them using writing. But in some cultures, writing
may not be used so extensively. Maybe it is usually just used for
poetry, or just for writing letters to people who are far away. The
concept of mass communication is foreign to most cultures still, and
if you don't need mass communication, writing is hardly necessary,
except to write a letter to someone who is not present.
3) Among the population of the Earth, a very, very large portion live
in societies that are not highly literate or which don't place a high
importance on writing. Most societies don't record every aspect of
life the way we do. Yes, there are newspapers in India (although to
the best of my knowledge there are no newspapers in Igbo or Aymara or
Afar), there are books in Nepal, but if you look it up, the sheer
volume of materials published in the First World per-capita far, far,
far, far exceeds that of anywhere else.

Here, if someone sees an insect doing something strange, they write a
paper or a book about it, and if they don't, somebody else will! But
in most countries, this is not the case. Books cost money to make.
People in developing countries often don't have this money. There are
no or (comparatively) few publishers there, and those that do exist
cannot afford to put out the sheer volume of books put out by
publishers here because the demand tends to be much lower (especially
for non-fiction books). They do not have Amazon.com or massive
real-life bookstores, so "specialty" books would not sell because they
would have no way to reach their intended audience!

And they say, that the internet will change all this. Well, in these
societies, although internet access is on the rise, it is still very,
very, low. Even if you do have internet access, it takes a somewhat
higher degree of computer literacy to be able to _publish_ on the
internet. What? You want to put your knowledge on Wikipedia? Go ahead!

...

Sorry, your knowledge is not referenced. It has been deleted. You know
nothing that is worth anything.

We are telling the developing world that they do not matter and that
they are stupid.

Mark

On 09/01/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> Requiring verifiability creates systemic bias. To be more accurate, it
> enforces the systemic bias of existing references.
>
> On 1/9/07, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/9/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > >
> > > Andre Engels wrote:
> > > > I guess I should not go into the examples, but in this case my opinion
> > > is
> > > > that 50,000 would be too high a limit,  I myself would be thinking of
> > > 2,000
> > > > or 5,000.
> > >
> > > Absolutely.  Perhaps for the U.S. and parts of Germany we are
> > > approaching full coverage of all places with 5,000 people.  But
> > > for India I doubt if we have covered all cities with 50,000.
> > > Nothing stops the limit from being set at 500 too.  But a lower
> > > limit could be questioned a lot more easily than a higher one.
> > > Then again, some places with 50,000 people are less notable than
> > > some very small places.  But if you can point to the fact that a
> > > place has 50,000 inhabitants (or was the birth places for a
> > > president), then it is a lot easier to defend its notability.
> > >
> >
> > On one side we have western places. For instance, Wikipedia has an article
> > about my town, political division and local member of parliament. My town
> > and surrounding ones (all of which have wiki articles) have a population of
> > 1,500 or so. Rambot has written articles about towns 1/10th of the size of
> > mine.
> >
> > However, whilst lists of Australian, German or US (and more) topics are
> > mostly blue links, there are lists populated almost entirely by red links,
> > such as [[List of Sudanese singers]]. Unfortunately, very few or no reliable
> > sources will probably be found to warrant articles about these singers (at
> > least not on the internet), and the only way to get coverage of a large
> > portion of them would be through original research (which we can't do
> > obviously), or to find print sources. So does anyone on this mailing list
> > happen to have access to archives for a Sudanese newspaper? It would be nice
> > if we could get more things like [[WP:AWNB]] for smaller countries, so we
> > can find people more local* who may very well be able to walk to a library
> > to find sources and add articles. That could work wonders for coverage :-)
> >
> > *And I may be a bit too ambitious in assuming we have editors from just
> > about every country
> >
> > Michael Billington
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Written with passion,
> J.L.W.S. The Special One
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Alai Wiki

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dump status

body:
The database dump process seems to have been "stalled" at es: since
Christmas Day, two weeks ago.  (As a result, there's been no dump of
de: or en: for over a month, as a number of people have observed at
the meta: page on the data dumps.)  Does this just need to be manually
restarted, or are things more profoundly on hold or otherwise
troubled?

Cheers,
Alai.


body:
Yes. If you interview Jack Neo, you should keep a copy of it somewhere
online or on your personal computer. You may reference it from the
article, but it is of the utmost importance that you can produce a
copy of the interview if anyone wants it.

Mark

On 09/01/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> A very interesting and comprehensive post.
>
> You forgot to mention about the language barrier.
>
> I agree that verifiability is important, but making it compulsory
> introduces problems such as systemic bias.
>
> Where should we raise this issue for further discussion?
>
> I've been working on an article on a Singaporean movie - I Not Stupid.
> It's close to GA status, but there is very little referenced
> information on the production of the film. My friend suggested I
> interview Jack Neo - my idol, who wrote the movie. Since his child
> studies in my school, getting an interview is not out of the question.
> The problem is: how do I publish it?
>
> On 1/9/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is true. However, is there a workable solution to that?
> >
> > I remember when people didn't worry too much about references on
> > Wikipedia. Sure, you were supposed to have them, but as long as you
> > had a nice article, nobody cared.
> >
> > Well, what if I know the truth, but it is not written anywhere? What
> > if I interview 100 people to make sure they agree, and they do? What
> > if it is common knowledge in my village, which nobody will challenge?
> >
> > The answer: it will be labeled "unverifiable" or "non-notable" and deleted.
> >
> > Wikipedia's current message to the world: If it's never been written
> > about, or been mentioned in a sound recording or a film, it's not
> > important.
> >
> > Well:
> >
> > 1) Not all cultures have writing.
> > 2) Among those cultures which DO have writing, they each place
> > different importance values on it. In my daily life, I am using it
> > constantly. My desk is littered with books with their titles written
> > on them, products with their labels. If I go driving, some of the
> > signs will have writing on them, there are billboards, signs for
> > businesses, all of them using writing. But in some cultures, writing
> > may not be used so extensively. Maybe it is usually just used for
> > poetry, or just for writing letters to people who are far away. The
> > concept of mass communication is foreign to most cultures still, and
> > if you don't need mass communication, writing is hardly necessary,
> > except to write a letter to someone who is not present.
> > 3) Among the population of the Earth, a very, very large portion live
> > in societies that are not highly literate or which don't place a high
> > importance on writing. Most societies don't record every aspect of
> > life the way we do. Yes, there are newspapers in India (although to
> > the best of my knowledge there are no newspapers in Igbo or Aymara or
> > Afar), there are books in Nepal, but if you look it up, the sheer
> > volume of materials published in the First World per-capita far, far,
> > far, far exceeds that of anywhere else.
> >
> > Here, if someone sees an insect doing something strange, they write a
> > paper or a book about it, and if they don't, somebody else will! But
> > in most countries, this is not the case. Books cost money to make.
> > People in developing countries often don't have this money. There are
> > no or (comparatively) few publishers there, and those that do exist
> > cannot afford to put out the sheer volume of books put out by
> > publishers here because the demand tends to be much lower (especially
> > for non-fiction books). They do not have Amazon.com or massive
> > real-life bookstores, so "specialty" books would not sell because they
> > would have no way to reach their intended audience!
> >
> > And they say, that the internet will change all this. Well, in these
> > societies, although internet access is on the rise, it is still very,
> > very, low. Even if you do have internet access, it takes a somewhat
> > higher degree of computer literacy to be able to _publish_ on the
> > internet. What? You want to put your knowledge on Wikipedia? Go ahead!
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Sorry, your knowledge is not referenced. It has been deleted. You know
> > nothing that is worth anything.
> >
> > We are telling the developing world that they do not matter and that
> > they are stupid.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 09/01/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Requiring verifiability creates systemic bias. To be more accurate, it
> > > enforces the systemic bias of existing references.
> > >
> > > On 1/9/07, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 1/9/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Andre Engels wrote:
> > > > > > I guess I should not go into the examples, but in this case my opinion
> > > > > is
> > > > > > that 50,000 would be too high a limit,  I myself would be thinking of
> > > > > 2,000
> > > > > > or 5,000.
> > > > >
> > > > > Absolutely.  Perhaps for the U.S. and parts of Germany we are
> > > > > approaching full coverage of all places with 5,000 people.  But
> > > > > for India I doubt if we have covered all cities with 50,000.
> > > > > Nothing stops the limit from being set at 500 too.  But a lower
> > > > > limit could be questioned a lot more easily than a higher one.
> > > > > Then again, some places with 50,000 people are less notable than
> > > > > some very small places.  But if you can point to the fact that a
> > > > > place has 50,000 inhabitants (or was the birth places for a
> > > > > president), then it is a lot easier to defend its notability.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > On one side we have western places. For instance, Wikipedia has an article
> > > > about my town, political division and local member of parliament. My town
> > > > and surrounding ones (all of which have wiki articles) have a population of
> > > > 1,500 or so. Rambot has written articles about towns 1/10th of the size of
> > > > mine.
> > > >
> > > > However, whilst lists of Australian, German or US (and more) topics are
> > > > mostly blue links, there are lists populated almost entirely by red links,
> > > > such as [[List of Sudanese singers]]. Unfortunately, very few or no reliable
> > > > sources will probably be found to warrant articles about these singers (at
> > > > least not on the internet), and the only way to get coverage of a large
> > > > portion of them would be through original research (which we can't do
> > > > obviously), or to find print sources. So does anyone on this mailing list
> > > > happen to have access to archives for a Sudanese newspaper? It would be nice
> > > > if we could get more things like [[WP:AWNB]] for smaller countries, so we
> > > > can find people more local* who may very well be able to walk to a library
> > > > to find sources and add articles. That could work wonders for coverage :-)
> > > >
> > > > *And I may be a bit too ambitious in assuming we have editors from just
> > > > about every country
> > > >
> > > > Michael Billington
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Written with passion,
> > > J.L.W.S. The Special One
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Written with passion,
> J.L.W.S. The Special One
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Oversight-l] Also, once you begin the process,
	You will not make payments on your Account s06x15 c8w

body:
On 09/01/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > At the moment none at all. Most of our lists are for subscribers only.

> > O rly? I recall the old box had various spamfiltering set up on it.
> > SpamAssassin with a pretty high threshold set.
> > (I was about to suggest greylisting, but that's probably a really bad
> > idea for oversight-l ...)

> It would certainly make the moderators' job much easier if there was
> less spam coming in. We probably miss quite a few good messages in the
> quagmire of spam, and end up discarding the lot.

Yeah. One for the devs' *copious* free time ;-)

The new server sends daily nags about the mod queues, which is actually helpful.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Help!

body:
On 09/01/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> > For future reference, the correct list for these sort of problems is
> > wikitech-l (http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l).

> Thank you for this. I believe I will sign on. I have a great deal to learn
> about what goes on in the background of Wikipedia; too often it's drowned
> out by all the noise generated in the foreground.

It's unabashedly technical (as per the name - it's the Wikimedia
Technical list, after all), so you may discover it's just as noisy
there too ;-)

- d.


from_name: David Monniaux

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] formalism (was: Re: Entries for deletion.... issues
 from the Third	World)

body:
>>For individual articles, the way to do it is to put in a clearly
>>sufficient number of citations. from printed works. (accompanied by
>>English translations if necessary). I've found that specific citations
>>from peer-reviewed journals do help, if they are at all pertinent. So
>>do Ph.d. theses and even Masters theses.
>>
This is the current vogue on Wikipedia: everything should have a
gazillion inline citations, and conversely, anything that does not have
a gazillion inline citations is bad. This is how very good articles that
used to have FA status or ability one or two years ago are now
considered "horrible" according to the current fashion.

Now, what this vogue leads to:
* We have very good articles (in terms of content and accuracy) on which
nobody who knows the topic objects anything is wrong, but which are
considered bad because not every statement that any person who have
heard about the issue would agree with has a source.

* We have horrific articles, but in which everything is "sourced".
Anything goes: trivia, mention of the subject appearing in a Seinfeld
episode, quotations from newspapers on fields they are incompetent about
(such as science), etc.

Formally speaking, they sound nice, and they please the crowd who thinks
that what's important in life is sticking to formal rules and earn good
marks for it. However, those articles really are a shame.

In addition, this kind of "sourcing" has a strong bias towards Internet
sources (Internet-accessible newspapers, sites, etc.), which, on the
other hand, tend to be very inadequate on many topics. I remember
recently reading an evaluation of an article on fr: (I think, 'Women in
Iran') by a known specialist. What she said:
* A lot of relevant literature on the issue is ignored.
* On the other hand, Internet sources, often not much good, are
overrepresented.
* There are numerous errors.
But this article nearly made it to "featured" status, because, formally
speaking, it had everything! Many citations, photos etc.

To me, the rules that we create, as all rule systems, have this perverse
effect that people work more to fulfill the rules ("we should have a
photo" even on abstract topics, "we should have a gazillion citations"
even if they are low quality) than to fulfill the goal (having good
articles that people knowing the subject would agree reflect the various
notable points of view in an unbiased way).

-- DM


from_name: James Hare

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third
	World

body:
Aye, but verifiability also allows for third-party peer review.

On 1/9/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Requiring verifiability creates systemic bias. To be more accurate, it
> enforces the systemic bias of existing references.
>
> On 1/9/07, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/9/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > >
> > > Andre Engels wrote:
> > > > I guess I should not go into the examples, but in this case my
> opinion
> > > is
> > > > that 50,000 would be too high a limit,  I myself would be thinking
> of
> > > 2,000
> > > > or 5,000.
> > >
> > > Absolutely.  Perhaps for the U.S. and parts of Germany we are
> > > approaching full coverage of all places with 5,000 people.  But
> > > for India I doubt if we have covered all cities with 50,000.
> > > Nothing stops the limit from being set at 500 too.  But a lower
> > > limit could be questioned a lot more easily than a higher one.
> > > Then again, some places with 50,000 people are less notable than
> > > some very small places.  But if you can point to the fact that a
> > > place has 50,000 inhabitants (or was the birth places for a
> > > president), then it is a lot easier to defend its notability.
> > >
> >
> > On one side we have western places. For instance, Wikipedia has an
> article
> > about my town, political division and local member of parliament. My
> town
> > and surrounding ones (all of which have wiki articles) have a population
> of
> > 1,500 or so. Rambot has written articles about towns 1/10th of the size
> of
> > mine.
> >
> > However, whilst lists of Australian, German or US (and more) topics are
> > mostly blue links, there are lists populated almost entirely by red
> links,
> > such as [[List of Sudanese singers]]. Unfortunately, very few or no
> reliable
> > sources will probably be found to warrant articles about these singers
> (at
> > least not on the internet), and the only way to get coverage of a large
> > portion of them would be through original research (which we can't do
> > obviously), or to find print sources. So does anyone on this mailing
> list
> > happen to have access to archives for a Sudanese newspaper? It would be
> nice
> > if we could get more things like [[WP:AWNB]] for smaller countries, so
> we
> > can find people more local* who may very well be able to walk to a
> library
> > to find sources and add articles. That could work wonders for coverage
> :-)
> >
> > *And I may be a bit too ambitious in assuming we have editors from just
> > about every country
> >
> > Michael Billington
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Written with passion,
> J.L.W.S. The Special One
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On 08/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> The notion that the MediaWiki software is almost entirely developed for
> one organisation is seriously wrong. OmegaWiki, formerly WiktionaryZ has
> realised a lot of functionality already and this is just one other
> project. There are many more projects that have developed on MediaWiki
> and much of this development, like OmegaWiki, is as Free as the WMF
> developed functionality is.

I stand corrected :-) Is as much of this as possible in the main line
of development, or regularly merged?

> As to distributed MediaWiki, as you may remember the Vrije Universiteit
> of Amsterdam (Andrew Tannenbaum's department) is actively working on a
> distributed Mediawiki and is particularly interested in the distributed
> network functionality that is required. This includes things like making
> sure the content is near to where it is requested.

Excellent!

> The WMF could provide a meeting place for organisations that use
> MediaWiki stimulate cooperation. The WMF can provide a developer that
> has as his task to mentor new developers,  particularly students from
> Universities that  want to be technically involved in MediaWiki
> projects.

That's the sort of thing I mentioned. Trouble being that would take an
experienced MW coder who wants to do that and can do that as well as
code.

> My expectation is that it will be possible to do some 50
> projects in a half year (only the MW support .. not supporting the
> content part of the project) this is likely to lead to a retention of
> developers of in between five to ten percent and will as a consequence
> be a good investment.

Yep.

>The organisations that develop MediaWiki may also
> need support to build extensions so that their code can be part of the
> main MediaWiki code. This can be a paid for service. When it is not the
> WMF who does this, another organisation may be willing to provide this
> service ...
> I am sure there are more things that can be done when MediaWiki has its
> organisational part developed it may even generate money for the Foundation.

I wonder if there's any money in MediaWiki programming consultancy as yet.

- d.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Frederick Noronha wrote:

> Maybe we should use some discernment, instead of the mechanical rule
> of 'number of links' on Google or where-ever.

The question if a topic is notable enough to deserve an entry, can
only be answered with "yes" or "no", and this is pretty much
"mechanical", so you cannot really escape the mechanics.

However, the number of Google hits is not the only mechanical
input. There are many categories of topics where you can derive a
good "mechanical reason" to write an article.  For cities, you can
claim that each city with more than, say, 50,000 inhabitants
deserves an article.  The first step would then be to create a
list of the largest/biggest/heaviest objects of the category.

As for cities in India, there are 35 listed that have more than
one million inhabitants on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_plus_cities_in_India
but there are only some 400 cities listed on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_India

I don't know if any population limit was set for that list, but I
think you could easily expand that list to 2000 cities or so, and
start to write articles for each one of them.  Then for each city,
you could list the two or three most famous people that come from
that city, and write articles about them.  And so on.  All along
that chain you would then have a number that proves why this topic
is notable, so you won't have to rely on the Google hit count.
With time, your articles will define the Google hit count.

This kind of reasoning is not limited to the English Wikipedia or
the cities of India, but can be used in the Ukrainian Wikipedia
for Hungarian composers with more than 3 symphonies or whatever.
I don't know if 50,000 inhabitants or 3 symphonies are good limits
for notability, but if you can make such a claim and back it up,
then people should be less likely to attack you.  At least they
will understand that you are not totally clueless or naked.

There are two Swedish proverbs.  One says "you shouldn't judge
people by the clothes they wear" (man ska inte d?ma hunden efter
h?ren).  The other one says "you will get judged by the clothes
you wear" (som man ?r kl?dd s? blir man h?dd).  Go figure.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: christoph.huesler at css.ch

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Antwort: Re: Print stylesheet: Fixed font size hinders
	scaling

body:
Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> Yes, that was it.  I see the issue.  It's a serious problem, because
> that means it scales images but not text.
>
> Matthew Flaschen

Yes, but it's not a MW problem, it's a firefox bug.


from_name: Nina Stratton

subject:
[WikiEN-l] A quiet,
	peaceful email list for experienced en contributors?

body:
Lack of transparency = bad idea. It's much better to improve this mailing
list. Consider it a bit of group therapy. If you want a quiet mailing list,
consider quietly emailing folks directly, like I do. It's gone quite well!
~~~~

On 1/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 09/01/07, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > No, but some of the moderators might be willing to go BOFH on the
> > idjits. Quoth the mailing list info page:
> > "Users are generally expected to follow good practice similar to
> > Wikiquette: assume good faith and be polite and constructive. Users who
> > are extremely disruptive or uncivil may be moderated or banned from the
> > mailing list by the administrators."
> > Unfortunately, this is almost impossible to implement. Any and all
> > complaints to wikien-l-owner at lists dot wikimedia dot org, please.
>
>
> /me hands the baseball bat of loving kindness to Alphax and stands well
> back
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising and site notice

body:
On 1/9/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthony schreef:
> > Ant didn't say anything about the issues which were delayed being
> > *necessary*.  Framing it that way seems unfair.
> >
> Hoi,
> Anthere is quiet explicit: "Limited means we'll go delaying certain
> issues". It means that things that are deemed to be necessary by the
> board will be postponed.

Well, I don't see where you're getting the fact that those "things"
were "deemed to be necessary by the board".

> In my opinion it is unfair that you do not
> accept that the lack of funding inhibits what the Wikimedia Foundation
> is able to do.

I do accept that.  Well, probably.  It's always possible that the lack
of funding will instead cause the Wikimedia Foundation to spend its
money more intelligently.  For instance, instead of continuing to
acquire brand new $3000 servers they might instead choose to rent less
expensive ones.  That wouldn't inhibit anything.  But that's more of
wishful thinking than a real prediction.

> It is quite obvious that lack of funding is holding us back.

"Lack of funding" (failure to reach an arbitrary goal) is certainly
going to hold some people back from whatever it is they would have
otherwise done with the money.  That's quite obvious.  What effect
it's going to have on the foundation is much less clear.  In fact, it
doesn't seem to have been decided just yet.

Anthony


from_name: PeruvianLlama

body:
RCTLocoWikiSpam wrote:
> As they didn't request any unblocking, I get a message that sayd "This user
> is no longer a member of Wikipedia." They said it's against Wikipedia policy
> to remove any semi-protected tags while still protected in this park as the
> Wikipedia police still have not got back to me about my so call wiki
> violation in the park.
>

Is it a coincidence that this user has "WikiSpam" in their name, and
that their messages to the list have all thus far been unintelligible?

 - PeruvianLlama


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Antwort: Re: Print stylesheet: Fixed font size
	hinders scaling

body:
On 09/01/07, christoph.huesler at css.ch <christoph.huesler at css.ch> wrote:
> Matthew Flaschen wrote:

> > Yes, that was it.  I see the issue.  It's a serious problem, because
> > that means it scales images but not text.

> Yes, but it's not a MW problem, it's a firefox bug.

I understand the Mozilla print system presently has no maintainer at
all and large signs saying "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate."

- d.


body:
On 09/01/07, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, but some of the moderators might be willing to go BOFH on the
> idjits. Quoth the mailing list info page:
> "Users are generally expected to follow good practice similar to
> Wikiquette: assume good faith and be polite and constructive. Users who
> are extremely disruptive or uncivil may be moderated or banned from the
> mailing list by the administrators."
> Unfortunately, this is almost impossible to implement. Any and all
> complaints to wikien-l-owner at lists dot wikimedia dot org, please.

/me hands the baseball bat of loving kindness to Alphax and stands well back

- d.


from_name: Steve

body:
As I see it, an "original research" / "nonverifiable" witchhunt started last
year. I think there is far too much "Wikipedia Caselaw" justifying removal
of content for mere suspicion.

I'm glad as well, and surprised this topic picked up so much steam!  I hope
the result is a few practical, actionable process changes to afd/speedy.

One thing I caught a lot of flak for was deleting votes that contained
absolutely no logic or even comment. My reasoning for this was based on
WP:LAW that explained the voting process isn't about a headcount, but about
reaching consensus. What consensus was such a voter attempting to reach?
(except, of course, technical consensus via majority rule).

-S

On 1/9/07, Robert Brockway <rbrockway at opentrend.net> wrote:
>
> I'm glad this topic has come up for discussion.  IMHO the entire deletion
> process (including speedy deletion) needs to come up for review.  It's too
> easy for articles to come up for AfD.
>
> It was interesting to sit in a Greater Toronto Area Linux User Group
> meeting recently and hear people list many (IMHO) reasonable articles that
> had been deleted.  This was a spontaneous discussion.  I bet if so many
> people in Toronto are concerned about the deletion process that we aren't
> alone.
>
> Rob
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dump status

body:
Brion Vibber:
> We're in progress of moving the dump system to new servers. The initial
> test run is extra slow because it's a full rebuild (without using the
> old XML files for backing, to make sure we have clean copies of all
> revisions).

Ah, thanks -- that's good to know.  I notice the sql dumps on that
page (page.sql.gz, etc) are empty: are these being skipped for the
above testing purposes, then?  (I may of course be biased, as it's
those I'm waiting for.)

Cheers,
Alai.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why is MediaWiki so low-tech?

body:
On 1/9/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Virgil Ierubino wrote:
> > But focussing on the easy stuff: inline editing on a page with nothing but
> > nice, pure, transclusion-less wikitext, I don't see this as being so hard.
>
> Well, I look forward to your patch then... ;)

Being the guy who wrote the original parser mess, and since then tried
to recreate it using various approaches and programming languages, I
have the following suggestion to make:

RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!

ahem.

Magnus


from_name: gwern branwen

body:
On 1/9/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> A very interesting and comprehensive post.
>
> You forgot to mention about the language barrier.
>
> I agree that verifiability is important, but making it compulsory
> introduces problems such as systemic bias.
>
> Where should we raise this issue for further discussion?
>
> I've been working on an article on a Singaporean movie - I Not Stupid.
> It's close to GA status, but there is very little referenced
> information on the production of the film. My friend suggested I
> interview Jack Neo - my idol, who wrote the movie. Since his child
> studies in my school, getting an interview is not out of the question.
> The problem is: how do I publish it?

That's an easy one: anywhere that will have it. I personally use
[[TOTSE]] for such material. You may then ask how it's verifiable:
well, your text file on TOTSE would include your name or at least your
Wikipedia identity, and we trust you to be who you say you are bar
oddities, so... I would suggest the Internet Archive or Project
Gutenberg if the two of you were willing to go public domain, but the
point is that finding text file hosts online is really not that
difficult (how difficult is it to set up a blog, for example?).

And you can always keep a backup in your userspace - if userspace
cannot be used for backing up primary materials used in articles and
to which you hold the copyright, then IMO we've gone way too far in
restricting its usage.

And there's always Wikisource, but I guess you would have to ask
someone else to upload it. I think they bar original works created by
contributors, but I'm not sure.

--Gwern


body:
On 1/9/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthony schreef:
> > On 1/9/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Anthony schreef:
> >>
> >>> Ant didn't say anything about the issues which were delayed being
> >>> *necessary*.  Framing it that way seems unfair.
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Hoi,
> >> Anthere is quiet explicit: "Limited means we'll go delaying certain
> >> issues". It means that things that are deemed to be necessary by the
> >> board will be postponed.
> >>
> >
> > Well, I don't see where you're getting the fact that those "things"
> > were "deemed to be necessary by the board".
> >
> Hoi,
> I am sorry that this is not obvious to you. The Wikimedia Foundation has
> a budget. This budget includes what is deemed to be necessary. The WMF
> does not borrow money, so when there is not enough money for what the
> WMF plans to do, it cuts back to the bare essentials. It is quite
> elementary ...

According to this budget, how many months can Wikimedia operate for $900,000?

What I see online is a wish list, not a budget.

> >
> >> In my opinion it is unfair that you do not
> >> accept that the lack of funding inhibits what the Wikimedia Foundation
> >> is able to do.
> >>
> >
> > I do accept that.  Well, probably.  It's always possible that the lack
> > of funding will instead cause the Wikimedia Foundation to spend its
> > money more intelligently.  For instance, instead of continuing to
> > acquire brand new $3000 servers they might instead choose to rent less
> > expensive ones.  That wouldn't inhibit anything.  But that's more of
> > wishful thinking than a real prediction.
> >
> Hoi,
>
> This is pure wishful thinking. What is intelligent in buying less
> expensive servers when our own developers recommend specific hardware.
> Do you really think that the specifications are in a way that cheaper
> alternatives do the same quality job? Mind you, our servers are pushed
> hard.

Forget about changing the server at all.  Looking at dell.com, a
36-month lease on a $3000 server is around $99/month.  I'm sure a
better deal could be negotiated with a different company and for a
larger quantity.  The last time I suggested leasing I was told that
leasing was for companies that didn't have enough money, and the WMF
had plenty of money.  Well, that argument just went out the window
now, didn't it?

> >> It is quite obvious that lack of funding is holding us back.
> >>
> >
> > "Lack of funding" (failure to reach an arbitrary goal) is certainly
> > going to hold some people back from whatever it is they would have
> > otherwise done with the money.  That's quite obvious.  What effect
> > it's going to have on the foundation is much less clear.  In fact, it
> > doesn't seem to have been decided just yet.
> >
> > Anthony
> I think you badly underestimate the efforts that have gone into creating
> a budget when you call them "arbitrary goals". You assume that there is
> no planning, that no time was spend on what is needed for the Foundation
> and why.

Feel free to try to show otherwise.  What I've seen is a wish list,
not a bottom up analysis of the actual costs.

> Your observation that the effect on the Foundation of
> continually being underfunded is unclear is correct, that is something
> that only the future will learn, but how do we compare? You do not have
> to be Einstein to understand that things that are beneficial will not
> happen. I am also surprised that you think it will hold some "people"
> back. It holds US back; we are the Foundation, they are our efforts, it
> is our projects that will be held back.

I was stripped of my membership in the Foundation a month or so ago.
It's not US.  It's them (the board).

> When you mean that some people
> far away will be held back, then sure.. I do not want to argue what I
> think of that.
>
> The problem is that the underfunding of the foundation is consistently
> belittled.

As of the last audited financial report, the foundation was quite
overfunded, not underfunded.  If it is now underfunded, that is a new
thing.

> This is made worse because no credible alternatives are
> provided that will help us raise funds in the future, a future that will
> only require more money.
>
Feel free to change that by providing a credible alternative.

Of course, I think leasing servers is an alternative to buying them.
And I think that's perfectly credible.

Anthony


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2007/1/9, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>:
>
> Frederick Noronha wrote:
>
> > Maybe we should use some discernment, instead of the mechanical rule
> > of 'number of links' on Google or where-ever.
>
> The question if a topic is notable enough to deserve an entry, can
> only be answered with "yes" or "no", and this is pretty much
> "mechanical", so you cannot really escape the mechanics.

Do I understand correctly that you are saying that yes/no questions can only
be answered mechanically? I strongly disagree. Of course you can escape the
mechanics, doing it mechanically might make things somewhat easier, but
surely Wikipedia editors are able to judge non-quantified arguments on their
merits.

This kind of reasoning is not limited to the English Wikipedia or
> the cities of India, but can be used in the Ukrainian Wikipedia
> for Hungarian composers with more than 3 symphonies or whatever.
> I don't know if 50,000 inhabitants or 3 symphonies are good limits
> for notability, but if you can make such a claim and back it up,
> then people should be less likely to attack you.  At least they
> will understand that you are not totally clueless or naked.

I guess I should not go into the examples, but in this case my opinion is
that 50,000 would be too high a limit,  I myself would be thinking of 2,000
or 5,000. 3 symphonies sounds like a bad limit because notability of a
classical composer in my opinion should not be judged by their output, but
by the question how often and by whom their work is played.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Alai

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dump status

body:
Me:
> > Ah, thanks -- that's good to know.  I notice the sql dumps on that
> > page (page.sql.gz, etc) are empty: are these being skipped for the
> > above testing purposes, then?  (I may of course be biased, as it's
> > those I'm waiting for.)

Brion Vibber:
> No, just broken. ;)
>
> I'll try and poke it up later this week, in between other things

That would also explain it. :)  Thanks, that would be much appreciated.

> (*cough* SUL *cough*)

Good luck finding the login-code-equivalent of Benylin for that!

Cheers,
Alai.