body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Rotem-
>
>>More things: I would like to remove:
>
>
>>* "Main page", "Recent changes", "Edit this page", "Previous versions"
>>from both the top and bottom (Which also contains "What links here" and
>>"Related changes" to remove) -- Simply redundant and confusing, this is
>>not good website design, I mean, links should be single and clear,
>>otherwise it's confusing and cluttered.
>
>
> Untrue. Redundant links are helpful in navigation because they reduce the
> average mouse path and increase visibility of important elements.
> Inconsistency across wikis in this area is a very bad thing, and I
> strongly discourage you from specifically altering the Hebrew Wiki to that
> effect.
>
> If you wish to change our defaults, then suggest the changes to the
> defaults. But if your arguments are correct, they should be applicable to
> all wikis, so don't try to take a shortcut by sneaking in your favorite
> changes on "your" wiki. It's bad enough that Esperanto uses a different
> skin by default, making it look entirely different from all other wikis.
> And we should have a single international logo for all Wikipedias. This is
> one project, after all.
>
> Making links non-underlined by default is fine with me, there is, however,
> some strong opposition to such a change.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Please, I would not like to argue about something silly as this, my
arguments are nor "correct" nor "incorrect", I was just trying to make
small improvements to the HTML layout to make it more simpler and easier
for users to use. If they won't like it it would have been reverted to
the previous version.

As for trying to "sneak" things in, I thought different language
versions gets autonomy regarding decisions like this. And since I worked
a lot on the language file, I saw that it was pretty easy to change
things on PHP to make the site more easier to use, and that's not a bad
thing.

Making every little decision and improvement on the wiki code a
project-wide issue for 40+ wikis is just beurocratic as hell. I have
many ideas and I know a bit of PHP. If the users (that actually use that
wiki) want a feature, bug fix, or a change on wiki X, why not just let
them have it? what's the big deal? If you use the hebrew wiki and don't
like this and that feature just say it, otherwise, that shouldn't
interest you.

I think that reagardless of geographical, national etc. differences on
wiki users demographies (that I think has nothing to do with anything
here anyway). he.wikipedia.org is a complete, (almost) independent site,
that has its users and readers, they should be the ones who vote for
decisions related to their site, including policy, wiki code, layout,
licensing and logo. Just because the english wiki has 15,000 registered
users, and the hebrew wiki has 30 should not matter because those 30 or
so *are* the ones who work on it and they know what they like or don't
like on their site.

--Rotem


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Rotem Dan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Requests for the Hebrew 'pedia

body:
Lightning wrote:

>>. And since I worked
>>a lot on the language file, I saw that it was pretty easy to change
>>things on PHP to make the site more easier to use, and that's not a bad
>>thing.
>
>
> I hope you didn't put "more easier" in the language file.
>
> Just messing with you, just a joke.
>
> Lightning

My english does get a bit cumbersome from time to time.. ;)

Rotem


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] More license stuff - Edmonton Sun

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> >one of our pages.  See http://cgi.canoe.ca/Columnists/diotte_jul7.html,

> That's a pretty small excerpt, looks like fair use to me.  It's
> not in Wikipedia's interest to get so prickly that reporters and
> writers deliberately avoid quoting it - or worse, that newspapers'
> and publishers' legal departments order their employees to stay
> away from Wikipedia altogether because they're tired of dealing
> with accusations of GFDL violations.

I agree with Stan 100% here.  What we want to watch out for are people
who are not engaging in fair use of our material, particularly those
with spammish sites, or those which appear to be attempting a
proprietary fork, and so on.

For the most part, we can take a relaxed approach to this sort of
thing.  We want people to know about us, we want people to take our
gift to humanity and use it well.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Fast.

body:
Is it true that GNU/Linux is to MS Windows as Wikipedia is to MS
Encarta?  A reporter from Wired Magazine asked me a similar question
the other day, except regarding Britannica.  (Mav was making a more
subtle point here, the reporter was just asking about our competition
with traditional proprietary products.)

My answer was that unlike an operating system, in which there is a
significant learning curve and significant network externalities that
prevent people from switching, there is basically no cost for users of
Britannica to switch to a GNU-free alternative of equal or better
quality.

Here I am a total linux and free software geek, and yet, I have two
computers on my desk -- one is Linux for actually doing work, and one
is Windows because, as a businessman, I'm always getting proposals and
contracts in Microsoft .doc format, and people are always asking me to
put together spreadsheets in Excel format.

None of those kinds of considerations apply to texts.  The field of
competition is much more level for upstarts, because there are very
low costs of switching.

Consider our textbook initiative.  There's a small cost to professors
or teachers to switch from existing proprietary texts to our new texts
(which don't exist yet, of course), but it's pretty darn small.  In my
experience, they already undergo those costs from time to time anyway
as department heads or administrators change to the latest new
textbooks from a competing publisher.

So, unlike the software world where entrenched use is slowing the
adoption of free alternatives, there's really nothing standing in our
way of "World domination. Fast."

--Jimbo


from_name: steve vertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] [OT] Stevertigo's webposts again (Was: Wikipedia more popular than Britannica!)

body:
ure why  is supposed to be more
> legible to me
> than  -- I just copy and paste either
> to my browser.
> ^_^
> -- Toby

Brainfart. Thats what that was.

-nuff said  :} SV~~~

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia more popular than Britannica!

body:
Toby-
> Jimmy Wales wrote:

>> So, this is pretty interesting.  According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia is
>> now more popular than Britannica.

> We should probably keep in mind that Britannica is also available in print.
> In fact, that's the brand's traditional medium.

Encarta has very much harmed Britannica's print sales. Britannica counted
on their brand name and image, but even many of their customers did not
see why they would have to pay thousands of dollars for a paper
encyclopedia when they could get a decent encyclopedia, plus lots of
multimedia stuff, maps etc. for 100 bucks or less, and the whole thing
would fit neatly into their back pocket.

Swiss investor Jacob Safra bought Britannica in 1996 (it's still based in
Chicago), and the sales staff for the paper version was fired shortly
thereafter. Since then the focus has been almost exclusively on the
Internet and CD-ROM version, which was massively reduced in price and is
now dirt cheap. For some time they even had the full text online --
remember, those were the dot com days.

Things are looking pretty grim for Britannica. Their Java-based software
is a piece of crap, and Encarta has much better marketing. They still have
their original content bonus, but even in terms of content they have
massive weaknesses in some areas (for example, compare their article on
circumcision with ours). I think the Britannica brand will live on, but in
terms of competition we should be more worried about Encarta (and vice
versa).

Regards,

Erik


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
One problem is that the best site, AddAll, (where you can compare prices at
all the other major sites) doesn't have a program. I'm not too happy with
the proliferation of booksources anyway, for example, Powells is included.
Nice if you have a few bucks extra for each book, but we don't tell our
users that.

Fred

> From: "limholt at excite.com" <limholt at excite.com>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Wed,  9 Jul 2003 10:36:27 -0400 (EDT)
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links
>
>
> I've got a suggestion to make. Now that Wikimedia is in place and has a bank
> account, I think the issue is ripe for discussion.
>
> The Wikipedia special page 'Booksources' serves as a passthrough link to
> various bookstores. When a book reference in Wikipedia includes an ISBN, any
> reader clicking on that number gets to the Booksources page. A further click
> on "Find this book" links to the external vendor's web site, pasing on the
> ISBN when practical.
>
> Many of book sellers have programs that permit an affiliate or referring site
> the potential to earn revenue. In general, we could sign up then include our
> organization ID in a link along with the ISBN. Amazon dot com is an example of
> this usage. Based on the experience of other sites, there shouldn't be any
> great income expected, but there's not much effort either. The use of this
> option is totally transparent to the reader or user (unless they can interpret
> the data passed in the URI).
>
> I wanted to discuss possibility for two reasons: to see if there are
> objections, and to look at presentation alternatives.
>
> OBJECTION ARGUMENT:
>
> I do not view this as a commercialization of Wikipedia. I have a guest card at
> a local university library. They charge a small annual fee for this service,
> but that doesn't make their library a business. Nor can I see this as any
> danger to non-profit status, unless the revenue would exceed Wiki's expenses,
> which seems incredibly remote. So, why shouldn't we take advantage of this?
>
> PRESENTATION:
>
> We do need to consider how of if we inform the reader of this 'feature'. There
> are three broad choices available:
>
> 1.  Just do it.
> 2.  Implement the idea but inform the user.
> 3.  Don't do it.
>
> My own choice is 2, but I'd actually propose 2(A), along the following lines.
> Explain to the reader (or user or editor) that Wiki may get a commission at no
> added cost to them if they buy the book. Also explain that they if they want
> us to get revenue, they need to buy it in one session, or come back through
> Wikipedia if they decide on a later purchase. We could even offer two options
> for passthrough, one with and one without a refer back to Wikipedia.
>
> Any comments?
>
> Regards, LouI on Wikipedia
>
> _______________________________________________
> Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
> The most personalized portal on the Web!
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] This may be true someday soon: GNU/Linux is to MS Windows as Wikipedia is to MS Encarta.

body:
Golly, this GNU thing is a virus.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer

Well, lets not forget that things free and open are
also in some ways more vulnerable.  Like viruses,
though, the OS world will fight back in flexible ways
-- but ultimately the basis for the technology that
most Open-systems run on is commercial.

This means something interesting -- that OS
anti-Corporatism tends to challenge long-standing
assumptions about how capitalism itself works -- and
if trends continue will call to question the means by
which the tertiary level societies maintain their
status.

To completlely undermine -- one after one, the means
by which major corporate institutions make their money
-- will not go unnoticed, and will have some kind of
repercussive effects -- if not by government
impositions, then via an increase in active traction
-- the issues are a matter of money after all.

WP doesnt technically have a lot of "partnerships" --
like eLibrary or LexisNexis do -- to create a unified
base for parousing "paid content."  So as long as
people get paid to deal in information, then access
will be limited.  WP has always known this, and thus
it could never be the intent of 'free materiale' to
undermine all of the 'paid materiale' outlets.   But
the perception that WP is a threat, like with other
things in the GNU world -- SCO's suit of IBM over AIX,
Microsoft's leaked memos about fighting Linux, etc. --
may take some shape soon. and WP best be prepared to
deal with the manifestations of this perception.

Civil actions against perceived copyright violations
are apparently, as we speak, underway....
--SV

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] possible security issue

body:
 Nevertheless, I have just discovered that
> the computers I
> have been using now long me on automatically.  I do
> not really care
> that someone might end up using my own user name in
> the future, we can
> sort it out then.

>But since I am a sysop I am very
> concerned about the
> potential security breach.  Anyone going to
> Wikipedia from this
> terminal, it seems, will automatically log on as me,
> and have the
> ability to delete pages and ban users.

Change your password - often, if you use public
machines.  Then the most imporant thing is to clean
the cache afterward.  Take an extra minute, shut down
whatever browser used -- usually explorer.. and then
restart it to make sure you cant get back on. This
kind of thing happens with email all the time.. I can
tell how many times Ive emailed people (from their own
accounts) telling them to pull their pants up....:)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
> Many of book sellers have programs that permit an
> affiliate or referring site the potential to earn
> revenue. In general, we could sign up then include
> our organization ID in a link along with the ISBN.
> Amazon dot com is an example of this usage. Based on
> the experience of other sites, there shouldn't be
> any great income expected, but there's not much
> effort either. The use of this option is totally
> transparent to the reader or user (unless they can
> interpret the data passed in the URI).

Its interesting. And certainly meritous of a debate...
a long, heated, debate.  I like the idea, but before a
commercial  or semi-commercial precedent is set, there
ought be some philosophical groundrules set also.

I doubt if this violates the GNU Fdl -- the material
itself is not the currency exchanged. These debates,
as we have many cats to herd... tend to take a
while.... as they often should.

-S*-

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Fast.

body:
Umm... does'nt OpenOffice deal with Excel files?

-S-

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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net>
wrote:

> It doesn't break GFDL, but it creates unhealthy
> pressure
> and Amazon people in particular are clearly
> evildoers,
> so Wikipedia shouldn't have anything to do with
> them.

"Amazon=Evildoers...  We =/= Amazon."

Hmm... BushLOgiC has permeated the Wikipedia eh?

:) -SV

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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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body:
Anthere wrote:
> sigh
>
> yes
>
> But there are some things that should be common, such
> as licensing
> and things that should not be, such as policies
> and things we are supposed to be involved in, such as
> red links
> (now, from what I understood, you are willing to
> remove a lot of things from the pedia. In particular
> for anonymous)
>
> ant
Licensing is actually not an issue here, since if we choose, say, to go
with creative commons license. Then we wouldn't be able to translate
articles from english because of the licensing problem so that's not
really an option.

As for the rest, I want to push the hebrew wikipedia forward strongly
(yes I also want it to look more attractive, shame on me), as it is
growing very fast and we already got premission to mirror a complete
computing jargon dictionary from an israeli site. (about 100 articles)
and numerous requests are pending for other informative sites. We are
also planning to get permissions from educational institutes to publish
already written material suitable for the encyclopedia.

What I asked was either to get developer priviledge (or other developer
would help) to remove a couple of duplicate links that are hard-coded
into the site ("edit this page", "recent changes", duplicate
interlanguage links etc. on top and bottom), make all links
non-underlined by default (horrible!), and have the ability to fix bugs
related to several browsers. And also we are having a contest for a logo
(that may or may not be similiar to the English wikipedia logo) -- to
understand how to replace the default one.

I really think autonomy is needed here in order to get things going. If
you really expect me to wait for Brion Vibber to return from his
time-out (and then nag him) then you are wrong. There is no-one except
him with developer rights on the Hebrew wikipedia. This is beaurocracy
in action, and I don't really like politics.

Rotem
http://he.wikipedia.org


from_name: limholt at excite.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
I've got a suggestion to make. Now that Wikimedia is in place and has a bank account, I think the issue is ripe for discussion.

The Wikipedia special page 'Booksources' serves as a passthrough link to various bookstores. When a book reference in Wikipedia includes an ISBN, any reader clicking on that number gets to the Booksources page. A further click on "Find this book" links to the external vendor's web site, pasing on the ISBN when practical.

Many of book sellers have programs that permit an affiliate or referring site the potential to earn revenue. In general, we could sign up then include our organization ID in a link along with the ISBN. Amazon dot com is an example of this usage. Based on the experience of other sites, there shouldn't be any great income expected, but there's not much effort either. The use of this option is totally transparent to the reader or user (unless they can interpret the data passed in the URI).

I wanted to discuss possibility for two reasons: to see if there are objections, and to look at presentation alternatives.

OBJECTION ARGUMENT:

I do not view this as a commercialization of Wikipedia. I have a guest card at a local university library. They charge a small annual fee for this service, but that doesn't make their library a business. Nor can I see this as any danger to non-profit status, unless the revenue would exceed Wiki's expenses, which seems incredibly remote. So, why shouldn't we take advantage of this?

PRESENTATION:

We do need to consider how of if we inform the reader of this 'feature'. There are three broad choices available:

1.  Just do it.
2.  Implement the idea but inform the user.
3.  Don't do it.

My own choice is 2, but I'd actually propose 2(A), along the following lines.
Explain to the reader (or user or editor) that Wiki may get a commission at no added cost to them if they buy the book. Also explain that they if they want us to get revenue, they need to buy it in one session, or come back through Wikipedia if they decide on a later purchase. We could even offer two options for passthrough, one with and one without a refer back to Wikipedia.

Any comments?

Regards, LouI on Wikipedia

_______________________________________________
Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
The most personalized portal on the Web!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

in_reply_to: <20030709174603.GA1247@tavaiah>; from taw@users.sourceforge.net on Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 07:46:03PM +0200

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> I don't understand you. Supporting evildoers by sending
> clients to them is not a good thing to do.

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0312243359

We already list Amazon and several others, and we've consciously made
the choice not to boycott anyone or have any particular editorial
policy on this.  I think that's the right thing to do, because it's
really outside our mission to make controversial political statements
about booksellers.

We let the end user decide, and wash our hands of the matter.

So this does raise the natural question: if we're sending people to
Amazon anyway, is there any reason we should not accept a commission
for doing it?

If you think they are not evildoers, then there seems to be no
problem.  If you think that they *are* evildoers, then at least this
will help to reduce their profits.

<personal opinion>
My own personal opinion: I'm not happy with some of the things that
Amazon has done, but I'm also a very satisfied customer, and I shop
there regularly.  I think that the charge of 'evildoer' is overblown.

I was just reading this history of Rwanda, with 800,000 dead due to
genocide.  That's evil.  Amazon filing stupid patents, well, it's
stupid and I don't like it, but we do need to keep some perspective.
</personal opinion>

Anyhow, I think it's an open question now that we've got a foundation,
whether we should take advantage of revenue opportunities like this.

See, here's the thing: a nonprofit organization has a moral
obligation, I think, to be a good steward of the funds donated to it.
People aren't donating money to us to engage in a hopeless boycott
against Amazon.

In the past, when I was the only financial patron, our only financial
responsibility was to make me happy.  And I was totally happy.  Still
am.  :-) So, if it was just me paying all the bills, I'd say, sure,
let's skip the Amazon money if it upsets a few people, because I'm all
about harmony, and I'll just buy the new server and pay for all the
bandwidth myself, and not worry much about it.

But if people are going to be signing up to give us $20 or $2, then we
should really think about maximizing our use of those funds *for our
mission*.  That's a responsibility that we have to people who donate
money.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

in_reply_to: <8pWzc80SpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 08:28:00PM +0200

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> It would make us an official Amazon.com business partner, and I'm not sure
> I'm very comfortable with that idea. Also, would it be compatible with
> Wikimedia's non profit status?

Yes, it would be fine.  It wouldn't affect our 501(c)(3) status (which
is different from 'non profit' status, actually), so people could
still take a tax deduction for donating money to us.  However, the
income would be 'unrelated business income', and we'd have to pay
taxes on the income over $1000, to be reported on Form 990-T.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Step one

in_reply_to: <200307091409.AA20316616@jumpingjackweb.com>; from webmaster@jumpingjackweb.com on Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 02:09:43PM -0400

body:
webmaster wrote:
> ...What's being done about this?  What can I do to help?  I know
>there is a website for a company somewhere that will do donation
>transactions for non-profits for free (I'll go look into that now.)
>Anyhow, who is working on this, and what can I do to help move it
>along?

Well, you could forward any information you find on to me, but there's
not a lot we can do.  We're waiting for the IRS to say that we're a
501(c)(3), and they are waiting on me to finish the application.  :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: rubenste at ohio.edu

subject: [Wikipedia-l] possible security issue

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030709/15651a38/attachment.diff


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Problem with installation

body:
Timwi wrote:

>> Timwi, can you please test it for me?
>
>
> I can't; the CVS server has been dysfunctional for me all of today and
> yesterday.

It's been fine and lovely for me... hmmm

> Again, are the Sourceforge people working on this problem at all?

Better to ask them than us, I suspect. :D

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

body:
Timwi wrote:

>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks
>
>
> Hm. This seems to assume we will be continuing to use the Phase-3
> software for quite some time.

It assumes we're using it *right now* and performance sucks *right now*
and we can make improvements *right now* with relatively little effort
(compared to a rewrite) focused on specific parts of the code.

> Is this the case? I thought we were going to re-write everything again
> so we will no longer need to set up independent wikis for the
> different languages. It should really all be one wiki, or at least the
> user should think so.

Someday, perhaps.

But complete rewrites take time, and introduce new and better bugs. ;)
Phase III still has bugs that weren't in and lacks features that were in
phase II, a year after we put it online.

Better to refactor the existing code bit by bit until it looks
completely different, and naturally that way. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] possible security issue

body:
rubenste at ohio.edu wrote:

>I need advice, or concrete help, concerning a technical matter.  I have
>been abroad for the past four days, and have been accessing Wikipedia
>from internet cafes.  When I log on, I of course have avoided checking
>the box that asks if I want the computer to remember by password across
>sessions.  Nevertheless, I have just discovered that the computers I
>have been using now long me on automatically.
>
Are you sure of that? Note that when you log out (or let the session
time out), any pages you've visited while logged in are still in your
browser's cache.

If the page doesn't change by the next time you visit, the cached
version will be displayed, with your name in the corner, but as far as
the wiki is concerned, you're not logged in.

Note also that the wiki _does_ leave a cookie with your username when
you log in, so when you come back it puts the last username you used in
the login form (but not the password). If you're paranoid, clear the
cookies manually when you're finished.

If it *is* automatically logging you in, that could be a problem. More
information would help.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
limholt at excite.com wrote:

>2.  Implement the idea but inform the user.
>
>My own choice is 2, but I'd actually propose 2(A), along the following lines.
>Explain to the reader (or user or editor) that Wiki may get a commission at no added cost to them if they buy the book. Also explain that they if they want us to get revenue, they need to buy it in one session, or come back through Wikipedia if they decide on a later purchase. We could even offer two options for passthrough, one with and one without a refer back to Wikipedia.
>
I would support this: keep options available and don't trick your users.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Source of protected pages (Was: IMPORTANT: language issues)

body:
[This is crossposted from <intlwiki-L> to <wikipedia-L>.
Replies should go to <wikipedia-L>.]

Peter Gervai wrote at last:

>Btw people, how can I get the _source_ of the protected pages? Like copying
>GFDL or Main_Page for later translation, etc.

We can hardly call ourselves "open source" when people can't get at this!
A simple solution requires 2 changes
when a page is protected and a user's no admin:

* Change the current '''Protected page''' non-link to
  a '''View page source''' link to the usual "...&action=edit" URI.
* Rather than redirect this URI to back the page itself,
  let it be the usual big box with the source in it,
  only with nothing below (or above) said box for editing
  (no warnings, no buttons, no permission statements, etc).

There you are -- open source!

-- Toby


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Recieving online donations

body:
David [[User:Nohat]] wrote:
>Once this is set up I imagine we will want a
>"Donate now" or similar link on Wikipedia.
>I would just like to start the discussion by
>registering a vote against having such a
>link (or worse yet, an image) appear on
>every wiki page. Excessive come-ons are
>a total turn-off.

"Donate now" is a command so we wouldn't want to say
that. But a simple, text only, normal link titled say
"Donations" would be perfectly acceptable IMO. It
would link to a Wikimedia.org page dealing with
donations.

Having a simple link makes it easy for people who want
to donate to donate while not unnecessarily cluttering
the interface of everyone else and looking like we are
begging.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] European language wiki's to own server+database.

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>At that time, I'll be submitting to him the
>completed application, by-laws, etc., for him to review and make
>suggestions.
>
What is the link to the by-laws?

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Erik:

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Regards,
>
> Erik

I find your previous message insulting, Erik, I was just asking for a
little bit of trust on my doings or misdoings, but I'm in no position to
prove that my intentions were positive, judge it as you like. I hope
we'll both learn to collaborate better in the future as I (and it seems
that you, too) intend to donate a lot of time and thought for this
project, in its various forms.

Rotem


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Source of protected pages

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>We can hardly call ourselves "open source" when people can't get at this!
>A simple solution requires 2 changes
>when a page is protected and a user's no admin:
>
>* Change the current '''Protected page''' non-link to
>  a '''View page source''' link to the usual "...&action=edit" URI.
>* Rather than redirect this URI to back the page itself,
>  let it be the usual big box with the source in it,
>  only with nothing below (or above) said box for editing
>  (no warnings, no buttons, no permission statements, etc).
>
>There you are -- open source!
>
Anyone want to take care of this? You'll get big fame as the liberator
of the people, and it should be real easy! :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Number separator

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

>Hi all,
>Do you ever discuss about automatic number separator ? (ex: 12512 -> 12,512)
>In french Wikipedia it is a real problem because our separator is the not
>veiwable character : " ".
>
Does the entry Alt+0160 not work as an equivalent to " "?

Ec


body:
Anthere wrote:

> Well, in short, I think some of your comments are
> receivable :-) Perhaps taking one after the other ?

(taking a deep breath)

Yes I guess I have a habit of pouring all the guts at once, thanks for
the friendly attitude, Anthere :-)

*sigh* I have been working too much on the hebrew 'pedia, I really
despise the administrative/public relations/embassy stuff but no other
user on the wiki seem to do that.

I will retire now and resign from my temporary position as an
unsuccesful initiator/administrator/embassador/wannabe-developer and
work solely on creating Mathematical articles (In my quest for creating
the first math encyclopeia in hebrew, that's also free! hurray!).

Rotem


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

references: <3F0BDD1F.8010004@pobox.com> <behnuh$54o$1@main.gmane.org> <3F0C6ECF.7020903@pobox.com> <behtnq$458$1@main.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> But complete rewrites take time, and introduce new and better bugs.
>> ;) Phase III still has bugs that weren't in and lacks features that
>> were in phase II, a year after we put it online.
>> Better to refactor the existing code bit by bit until it looks
>> completely different, and naturally that way. :)
>
>
> This sounds like you're opposed to another rewrite?

WorseIsBetter, my friend. While a rewrite can hypothetically be far
superior to the current code, it would take a while to get there, at the
expense of our present needs.

Switching from phase 2 to phase 3 set back the non-English installations
by months as existing development effort on unicode support and
translations got thrown away and new development effort was spent fixing
new bugs and restoring lost features. I'm not in a hurry to repeat that
experiment; it's not at all clear that the present code is better than
what we'd have if we'd spent the time fixing phase 2.

> I don't think the current Phase 3 software can elegantly/efficiently
> be enhanced to handle several languages within one server/installation.

Then _make_ it elegant. :) Refactor the code so those global variables
aren't so global and language-specific things are kept properly isolated.

Handling multiple languages, unfortunately, just *isn't* elegant. Each
language will have its own rules for sort order, capitalization,
acceptable letters in links, how to munge search indexes to match
properly, etc. Turning the namespace-title doublet into a
language-namespace-title triplet and zealously keeping track of it may
be a useful direction to look at, or it may not.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More license stuff - www.4reference.net

body:
Michael Becker wrote in part:

>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_as_a_source

These can be used by more than the English Wikipedia.
(Accordingly, they should probably be moved to [[meta:]].)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: More license stuff - www.4reference.net


from_name: webmaster

subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Step one

body:
I think right now we need to focus on publicity.  But as pointed out on [[Wikipedia talk:Press release: Wikipedia surpasses Britannica]], we shouldn't do that until the wikipedia foundation is open for donations.  So...
...What's being done about this?  What can I do to help?  I know there is a website for a company somewhere that will do donation transactions for non-profits for free (I'll go look into that now.)  Anyhow, who is working on this, and what can I do to help move it along?

--
Michael Becker
a.k.a. Mbecker
a.k.a. MB

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date:  Wed, 9 Jul 2003 08:21:00 -0700

>Is it true that GNU/Linux is to MS Windows as Wikipedia is to MS
>Encarta?  A reporter from Wired Magazine asked me a similar question
>the other day, except regarding Britannica.  (Mav was making a more
>subtle point here, the reporter was just asking about our competition
>with traditional proprietary products.)
>
>My answer was that unlike an operating system, in which there is a
>significant learning curve and significant network externalities that
>prevent people from switching, there is basically no cost for users of
>Britannica to switch to a GNU-free alternative of equal or better
>quality.
>
>Here I am a total linux and free software geek, and yet, I have two
>computers on my desk -- one is Linux for actually doing work, and one
>is Windows because, as a businessman, I'm always getting proposals and
>contracts in Microsoft .doc format, and people are always asking me to
>put together spreadsheets in Excel format.
>
>None of those kinds of considerations apply to texts.  The field of
>competition is much more level for upstarts, because there are very
>low costs of switching.
>
>Consider our textbook initiative.  There's a small cost to professors
>or teachers to switch from existing proprietary texts to our new texts
>(which don't exist yet, of course), but it's pretty darn small.  In my
>experience, they already undergo those costs from time to time anyway
>as department heads or administrators change to the latest new
>textbooks from a competing publisher.
>
>So, unlike the software world where entrenched use is slowing the
>adoption of free alternatives, there's really nothing standing in our
>way of "World domination. Fast."
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database schema?

body:
Timwi wrote:

>
> Is the database schema for the Phase III software documented anywhere?

docs/schema.doc

Probably outdated, and mostly just reiterates the names of the columns. ;)

See also maintenance/tables.sql and maintenance/indexes.sql

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> I think it is very likely that more people will buy from Amazon if they
> think they will be helping Wikipedia by doing so. And so Amazon will quite
> likely make more profits.

Well, I think all the booksellers offer some kind of commissions
program.  Nearly all do, anyway, I guess we'd have to check each one
of them to be sure about the exact details.

--Jimbo


body:
The Network for Good is "a nonprofit collaboration to help nonprofit organizations increase capacity, reach new audiences, and build Internet strategies."

They have a service setup that allows Nonprofits with a Web site to collect donations by simply linking to their nonprofit's donation page from Network for Good.  See:  http://www.networkforgood.org/npo/fundraising/donations/index.html

Charities receive 100% of the donations.
Nonprofits pay no fees or costs.
Donors receive records of contributions for tax purposes.

If no one has any objections, I will setup an account for us (unless Jimmy will do it, since he is head of the foundation [I think?]).  So Jimmy, just tell me if you want me to take care of this.

--
Michael Becker
a.k.a. Mbecker
a.k.a. MB


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

body:
First of all,  Ich m?chte dem deutschen Kontingent
danken -- f?r das Verwenden von Zeit, englisches zu
erlernen, Nutzen zu allen mit ihren F?higkeiten und
Wissen dadurch gebend.

Back to business...  I think its reasonable that now
be the time to deal with some of the vast and varied
ideas about software changes -- lofty or not -- and to
do so with some reasonable suggestion that not all of
this be upon Brion's shoulders.   Since a journey of a
thousand miles begins with a single step, its not
unreasonable to start formalizing and accepting a
"roadmap" to the future of WP.

Lofty ideas abound, and though anyone can come up with
these, it ought be fair to say that no single
individual should be tasked with the job of keeping up
with an exponentially greater amount of admin tasks -
and the related bright ideas that necessitate them.
These two things -- staffing and development -- in an
*ideal world , should be unrelated.

Meine Entschuldigungen f?r die geschlachtete Google
?bersetzung oben.

Respektvoll,
-S-

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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from_name: David Friedland

body:
Once this is set up I imagine we will want a "Donate now" or similar
link on Wikipedia. I would just like to start the discussion by
registering a vote against having such a link (or worse yet, an image)
appear on every wiki page. Excessive come-ons are a total turn-off.

- David [[User:Nohat]]

webmaster wrote:

>The Network for Good is "a nonprofit collaboration to help nonprofit organizations increase capacity, reach new audiences, and build Internet strategies."
>
>They have a service setup that allows Nonprofits with a Web site to collect donations by simply linking to their nonprofit's donation page from Network for Good.  See:  http://www.networkforgood.org/npo/fundraising/donations/index.html
>
>Charities receive 100% of the donations.
>Nonprofits pay no fees or costs.
>Donors receive records of contributions for tax purposes.
>
>If no one has any objections, I will setup an account for us (unless Jimmy will do it, since he is head of the foundation [I think?]).  So Jimmy, just tell me if you want me to take care of this.
>
>--
>Michael Becker
>a.k.a. Mbecker
>a.k.a. MB
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] bug (or feauture) in "new articles" special page
 in es.wiki

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Then rewrite it to be useful about it, counting the number of edits and
> who made them.

That would be helpful too, but wouldn't a short explanation suffice to
put the "bug" back in - like "This page lists new articles, the authors
or their IP and their last edit comments (which might be by someone
else). This is to help sort out articles which have already been
proofread." (Please rewrite it in better English.)

Kurt


body:
I would like to make a vote for having a link on every page.  We already have links to Bug reports on every page.  A text link need not be intrusive.  There are multiple cases where we could loose out on a donation, by not having a link on every page.  For instance, it is my impression that a large number of our visitors visit via a google search.  So, they will probably not be visiting the main page, or a donation specific page.  So, in this case, we would benifit by having "donate now" link on every page..  It sort of confuses me as to why anyone would object to this?  These are not really come-ons.  We need money for operations costs, we have a non-profit org to recieve donations.  If we don't provide a donations link on at least most pages, then we may loose out on donations from people who just don't know they can donate.  Additionally, I think that any rational person could read a page, describing why we need donations, and not get upset and/or label it as an "Excessive come-on."  I mean, I don't think we are talking about a pop-up ad, are we?  If someone were to purpose a pop-up, or a big flashy ad, or anything besides a simple non-intrusive link, I would probably object too.  However, I think a text link would be perfectly acceptable.

--
Michael Becker
a.k.a. Mbecke
a.k.a. MB

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: David Friedland <david at nohat.net>
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date:  Wed, 09 Jul 2003 14:49:49 -0400

>Once this is set up I imagine we will want a "Donate now" or similar
>link on Wikipedia. I would just like to start the discussion by
>registering a vote against having such a link (or worse yet, an image)
>appear on every wiki page. Excessive come-ons are a total turn-off.
>
>- David [[User:Nohat]]
>
>webmaster wrote:
>
>>The Network for Good is "a nonprofit collaboration to help nonprofit organizations increase capacity, reach new audiences, and build Internet strategies."
>>
>>They have a service setup that allows Nonprofits with a Web site to collect donations by simply linking to their nonprofit's donation page from Network for Good.  See:  http://www.networkforgood.org/npo/fundraising/donations/index.html
>>
>>Charities receive 100% of the donations.
>>Nonprofits pay no fees or costs.
>>Donors receive records of contributions for tax purposes.
>>
>>If no one has any objections, I will setup an account for us (unless Jimmy will do it, since he is head of the foundation [I think?]).  So Jimmy, just tell me if you want me to take care of this.
>>
>>--
>>Michael Becker
>>a.k.a. Mbecker
>>a.k.a. MB
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Request

body:
Could we get the Arabic wiki nav bar to default to the
right side please, Brion?

This might be appropriate for the Hebrew wiki as
well....  though you might ask someone there...

-S-

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Request

body:
steve vertigo wrote:

>Could we get the Arabic wiki nav bar to default to the
>right side please, Brion?
>
Sure... done. Reload pages as necessary.

>This might be appropriate for the Hebrew wiki as
>well....  though you might ask someone there...
>
Will ask.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Request

body:
Danke, Brion.

Quick Progress report...

Im in the process of translating the essential
links...
(got my little book out :) )

Bugs -- the frame size of the edit window gets too
big... on 1256 encoding, it looks like its fine, --
The font sizes tend to be smaller though -- my Unicode
font looks awesome...  though im sad to say they only
show up as unicode in the edit window -- which makes
them pretty useless.

Am i doin something screwy?

-S-

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Arabikipedia

body:
correction -- the utf-8 seems to be only one that
works... I thought the bottom text on the frontpage
was unicode...

-S

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Arabikipedia

body:
steve vertigo wrote:

>correction -- the utf-8 seems to be only one that
>works... I thought the bottom text on the frontpage
>was unicode...
>
Terminology note:

"Unicode" is a _character set_, which maps abstract numerical code
points to characters. Unicode code points (and hence characters) may be
represented in a number of ways.

"UTF-8" is a _character encoding_, which maps Unicode code points to
variable-length sequences of bytes. UTF-8's primary feature is that it
is compatible with ASCII, which has made it popular in Unix and internet
contexts as a more or less backwards-compatible way of storing Unicode text.

"UTF-16" is another character encoding, which maps Unicode code points
to 16-bit integers. (Or, sometimes, to two 16-bit integers.) For
historical reasons and/or stupidity ;) UTF-16 (or its evil elder sister
UCS-2) may get called "Unicode" by some software. If you select
so-called "Unicode" encoding for a page that's encoded in UTF-8, you'll
probably corrupt the display.

There are also many domain-specific ways of encoding Unicode characters;
in HTML and XML (and SGML, if the document character set is defined as
Unicode) you can use sequences such as 〹 (decimal) or ሴ
(hexadecimal). Because these only use ASCII characters to do their dirty
work, they're robust through other character encoding conversions and
can be typed in any text editor (if you know the numbers). However they
are specific to that type of markup language, take up more space than
binary encodings, and don't necessarily survive forms well if let
through unencoded.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Step one

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> webmaster wrote:
> > ...What's being done about this?  What can I do to help?  I know
> >there is a website for a company somewhere that will do donation
> >transactions for non-profits for free (I'll go look into that
> now.)
> >Anyhow, who is working on this, and what can I do to help move it
> >along?
>
> Well, you could forward any information you find on to me, but
> there's
> not a lot we can do.  We're waiting for the IRS to say that we're a
> 501(c)(3), and they are waiting on me to finish the application.
> :-)
>
> --Jimbo

We're also waiting for you to finish the application :-)

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
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body:
I would just put a link to:

The Wikipedia is operated by the Wikipedia Foundation. Find out how
you can help.

--- webmaster <webmaster at jumpingjackweb.com> wrote:
> I would like to make a vote for having a link on every page.  We
> already have links to Bug reports on every page.  A text link need
> not be intrusive.  There are multiple cases where we could loose
> out on a donation, by not having a link on every page.  For
> instance, it is my impression that a large number of our visitors
> visit via a google search.  So, they will probably not be visiting
> the main page, or a donation specific page.  So, in this case, we
> would benifit by having "donate now" link on every page..  It sort
> of confuses me as to why anyone would object to this?  These are
> not really come-ons.  We need money for operations costs, we have a
> non-profit org to recieve donations.  If we don't provide a
> donations link on at least most pages, then we may loose out on
> donations from people who just don't know they can donate.
> Additionally, I think that any rational person could read a page,
> describing why we need donations, and not get upset and/or label it
> as an "Excessiv!
> e come-on."  I mean, I don't think we are talking about a pop-up
> ad, are we?  If someone were to purpose a pop-up, or a big flashy
> ad, or anything besides a simple non-intrusive link, I would
> probably object too.  However, I think a text link would be
> perfectly acceptable.
>
> --
> Michael Becker
> a.k.a. Mbecke
> a.k.a. MB
>
> ---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
> From: David Friedland <david at nohat.net>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date:  Wed, 09 Jul 2003 14:49:49 -0400
>
> >Once this is set up I imagine we will want a "Donate now" or
> similar
> >link on Wikipedia. I would just like to start the discussion by
> >registering a vote against having such a link (or worse yet, an
> image)
> >appear on every wiki page. Excessive come-ons are a total
> turn-off.
> >
> >- David [[User:Nohat]]
> >
> >webmaster wrote:
> >
> >>The Network for Good is "a nonprofit collaboration to help
> nonprofit organizations increase capacity, reach new audiences, and
> build Internet strategies."
> >>
> >>They have a service setup that allows Nonprofits with a Web site
> to collect donations by simply linking to their nonprofit's
> donation page from Network for Good.  See:
> http://www.networkforgood.org/npo/fundraising/donations/index.html
> >>
> >>Charities receive 100% of the donations.
> >>Nonprofits pay no fees or costs.
> >>Donors receive records of contributions for tax purposes.
> >>
> >>If no one has any objections, I will setup an account for us
> (unless Jimmy will do it, since he is head of the foundation [I
> think?]).  So Jimmy, just tell me if you want me to take care of
> this.
> >>
> >>--
> >>Michael Becker
> >>a.k.a. Mbecker
> >>a.k.a. MB
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>WikiEN-l mailing list
> >>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
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from_name: Tim Starling

body:
>   Warning: Empty regular expression in Language.php on line 1424
>
>This line in Language.php is:
>
>   $text = preg_replace( $rxYDM, '[[$1]] [[$4 $3]]', $text);

Ouch, that's not the context I like to see my code quoted in a mailing list.
I think I've fixed it now, it was just an obvious typo. Timwi, can you
please test it for me? Download the latest Language.php (version 1.29 or
later), turn on $wgUseDynamicDates, and see if the error comes back?

-- Tim Starling.

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


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Use of Wikipedia articles at Malaspina.com

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Oliver Pereira wrote:
>
>> Another question, though: Does someone who creates a derived work
>> from one
>> of our articles have to link back to the actual version of the article
>> that they used to create the derived work, or is linking to the current
>> version of the article acceptable?
>
>
> I'm in no way an expert, but looking at the practical implications of
> such a requirement, it would seem that such a requirement would make
> the GFDL useless for most purposes. Hardly any webmaster would archive
> every past version of a page.

Well, the GFDL doesn't actually require that the original work be
provided at all; only that the derived work itself be provided in
"transparent" form.  With normal text this just means that you have to
provide the derived work; with wiki-text, since "transparent" is derived
as the wiki-markup version, someone who makes an HTML/ASCII/whatever
derived work would have to provide the wiki-text, which is sometimes
onerous to make them do.  Thus you can just let them link to wikipedia,
where the text can be found.  I think reading the GFDL it actually is
the exact work you derived from that legally should be provided, but as
all past versions are archived by wikipedia anyway, simply linking to
the wikipedia page should suffice.  If someone wanted to be pedantic
they could link to the specific page in the history instead of the
"current version," but I think that would have adverse consequences
(like people reading out of date articles).  At most I think it might be
reasonable for them to cite the date they took it off wikipedia, and
then someone can search through the page history themselves to find that
version (citing the date you used an online source is a pretty good idea
anyway).

-Mark


from_name: Colin Brace

body:
On 07/08/03  at 07:58 PM, Michael Becker <wikipedia at jumpingjackweb.com>
said:

> I think this warrants a press release!  Could someone that knows at
> least something about them start one at
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_release:_Wikipedia_surpass
> es_Britannica please?

ok, I had a go. The quotes from Jimmy Wales are *proposed*; he should
check them obviously. Also, can someone provide accurate new articles and
edits per day stats? (Mine are rough guesses).

HTH

--
  Colin Brace | cb at lim.nl
  Amsterdam
  http://www.lim.nl


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

in_reply_to: <bei6lu$il0$1@main.gmane.org>; from timwi@gmx.net on Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 12:58:12AM +0200

references: <3F0BDD1F.8010004@pobox.com> <behnuh$54o$1@main.gmane.org> <3F0C6ECF.7020903@pobox.com> <behtnq$458$1@main.gmane.org> <3F0C8876.30505@corell.dyndns.org> <bei6lu$il0$1@main.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:
> * You need an extra login on each of them.
> * You have to change your preferences on all of them individually.
> * You have to follow several watchlists/recent changes lists.

I've traditionally referred to this group of features as "single
sign-on".  I don't think that there's any opposition to these features
at all, and they are much desired.

> This is how I feel it /should/ work. Of course, if any of you can point
> out disadvantages that I'm not seeing (except, of course, for the fact
> that we don't have a software to do this yet), please feel free to reply
> and discuss.

Well, there is one potential complication.  Right now, someone could
be signed up as 'John' on the en.wikipedia.org, and someone else could
be signed up as 'John' on the de.wikipedia.org, and they might not
even know each other or realize that there's a collision.

So when we merge usernames across the wikipedia, we have to deal with
that _somehow_, and doing so in a sensitive way that doesn't annoy too
many people is a good idea.

But, really, I think that the main obstacle here is just code.  It's
an easy thing to want something, it's a harder thing to make it
happen.

And I tend to agree with Brion and others who have come down on the
side of a need for immediate performance gains and bug fixes *for
right now*, as opposed to grand plans for the future.

But, you know, if you're interested in working on a grand plan for the
future, by all means... :-)  I'd be eager to see single sign-on, that's
for sure.

--Jimbo


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 09:53:57AM -0700, steve vertigo wrote:
>
> > Many of book sellers have programs that permit an
> > affiliate or referring site the potential to earn
> > revenue. In general, we could sign up then include
> > our organization ID in a link along with the ISBN.
> > Amazon dot com is an example of this usage. Based on
> > the experience of other sites, there shouldn't be
> > any great income expected, but there's not much
> > effort either. The use of this option is totally
> > transparent to the reader or user (unless they can
> > interpret the data passed in the URI).
>
> Its interesting. And certainly meritous of a debate...
> a long, heated, debate.  I like the idea, but before a
> commercial  or semi-commercial precedent is set, there
> ought be some philosophical groundrules set also.
>
> I doubt if this violates the GNU Fdl -- the material
> itself is not the currency exchanged. These debates,
> as we have many cats to herd... tend to take a
> while.... as they often should.

It doesn't break GFDL, but it creates unhealthy pressure
and Amazon people in particular are clearly evildoers,
so Wikipedia shouldn't have anything to do with them.


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Just now I caught another minute the CVS server was working, so I
> tried, and I received the same error as before (WinCVS 1.3.8.1):
>
> cvs login
> Logging in to
> :pserver:Timwi at cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net:2401/cvsroot/wikipedia

Hrm... that doesn't look right. You should be using external
authentication via ssh, not pserver.

If you were on Unix or using Cygwin's Win32 port of the regular Unix
CVS, I'd tell you to just follow the instructions on SF and pull a fresh
source tree like so:

export CVS_RSH=ssh
cvs -z3 -d:ext:timwi at cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wikipedia co phase3

I don't know how to set up WinCVS for this, as I've never used it. I
think Tarquin has used it....?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Step one

body:
Alex R. wrote:
<a whole bunch of excellent stuff>

Alex, can you contact me with your phone number?

---Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 10:28:34AM -0700, steve vertigo wrote:
>
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net>
> wrote:
>
> > It doesn't break GFDL, but it creates unhealthy
> > pressure
> > and Amazon people in particular are clearly
> > evildoers,
> > so Wikipedia shouldn't have anything to do with
> > them.
>
> "Amazon=Evildoers...  We =/= Amazon."
>
> Hmm... BushLOgiC has permeated the Wikipedia eh?

I don't understand you. Supporting evildoers by sending
clients to them is not a good thing to do.


body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
>I would just put a link to:
>
>The Wikipedia is operated by the
>Wikipedia Foundation. Find out how
>you can help.

Seems a bit wordy ; just a one or two word normal link would do. Also don't
you mean to say Wikimedia Foundation?

--mav


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 10:56:57AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> <personal opinion>
> My own personal opinion: I'm not happy with some of the things that
> Amazon has done, but I'm also a very satisfied customer, and I shop
> there regularly.  I think that the charge of 'evildoer' is overblown.
>
> I was just reading this history of Rwanda, with 800,000 dead due to
> genocide.  That's evil.  Amazon filing stupid patents, well, it's
> stupid and I don't like it, but we do need to keep some perspective.
> </personal opinion>

Because of "stupid patents" milions died of AIDS. Part of money sent
to Amazon goes to bribe politicians to expand patent laws, and in
effect to kill more people.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
Jimmy-
> If you think they are not evildoers, then there seems to be no
> problem.  If you think that they *are* evildoers, then at least this
> will help to reduce their profits.

It would make us an official Amazon.com business partner, and I'm not sure
I'm very comfortable with that idea. Also, would it be compatible with
Wikimedia's non profit status?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Timwi

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Timwi, can you please test it for me?

I can't; the CVS server has been dysfunctional for me all of today and
yesterday.

Again, are the Sourceforge people working on this problem at all?

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> and we can start to look at the boring stuff that needs to get done.
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks

Hm. This seems to assume we will be continuing to use the Phase-3
software for quite some time.

Is this the case? I thought we were going to re-write everything again
so we will no longer need to set up independent wikis for the different
languages. It should really all be one wiki, or at least the user should
think so.

At least I seem to have picked up something like that somewhere. Let me
know if I'm completely off-track. Of course, I'd be very willing to
participate in another complete re-write.

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Step one

body:
A non-profit can accept donations without a 501(c)(3) status,
it only means the donations are not tax exempt for the donor
if the 501(c)(3) status is not given (and maybe the organization
will have to pay taxes if it does not spend the donations on some
valid expense within its purpose). As well any determination letter
is usually valid retroactively from the date the organization came
into existence so if any tax payments are sent to the IRS to make
sure the organization is not penalized the money is refunded when
the exemption is recognized.  See IRS Pub. 557 at page 4, col. 3
(Rev. May, 2003).  This is true if 1023 is filed within a 15 month
period from formation (page 17).

In any case if the organization has a clear exempt purpose and
does not receive more than $5,000 in income per year. See
IRS Pub. 557 at page 18, col. 2.  The word foundation does not
refer to the use of this word in the organization's name,
'foundation' is a term of art used in tax law to distinguish public
charities from organizations that are private foundations that fail
the public charity support test (page 27) or are a 509(a)(1)
organization (page 30) and most likely your organization is
a "publicly supported organization" under that category (page
31-34).

Therefore you "foundation" does not necessarily have
have to apply to the IRS for exempt status if it is not endowed
by an individual but receives wide public support. You can start
receiving donations right away in such a case.

Unless, of course, the reason for starting this not for profit
organization is to obtain an excess benefit.

If you don't believe me (and why should you believe me, I am
only a not-for-profit organization lawyer, why would I know
anything?) you can check this by looking at the IRS publication
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p557.pdf It does not seem
to me to be intelligent to assume that you cannot accept donations
when there are indications you possibly can. (this is not a solicited
legal opinion, if you wish a legal opinion, please contact my office
as I have previously stated I would be willing to do pro bono work
for your folks).
Good luck.
alex756
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Mahan" <chris_mahan at yahoo.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 7:54 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Step one

>
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> > webmaster wrote:
> > > ...What's being done about this?  What can I do to help?  I know
> > >there is a website for a company somewhere that will do donation
> > >transactions for non-profits for free (I'll go look into that
> > now.)
> > >Anyhow, who is working on this, and what can I do to help move it
> > >along?
> >
> > Well, you could forward any information you find on to me, but
> > there's
> > not a lot we can do.  We're waiting for the IRS to say that we're a
> > 501(c)(3), and they are waiting on me to finish the application.
> > :-)
> >
> > --Jimbo
>
>
> We're also waiting for you to finish the application :-)
>
>
> =====
> Christopher Mahan
> chris_mahan at yahoo.com
> 818.943.1850 cell
> http://www.christophermahan.com/
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Thomas Corell

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> Timwi, can you please test it for me?
>
>
> I can't; the CVS server has been dysfunctional for me all of today and
> yesterday.
>
> Again, are the Sourceforge people working on this problem at all?
>

The anonnymous access needs some (10 or 20) try's to work (and don't send
an EOF), but I don't have any problems with the developer server. Updates
works fine and fast.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: possible security issue

body:
rubenste at ohio.edu wrote:

> Is there a way to make sure that the terminals I have used in the last
> four days will not log on automatically to my username?

The only thing you can do now is to change your password.

In future, perhaps you should clear all the cookies after you have used
a public computer. I do that too, even for site where I have no reason
to believe such a security flaw exists.

Timwi


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>>> Timwi, can you please test it for me?
>>
>> I can't; the CVS server has been dysfunctional for me all of today and
>> yesterday.
>
> It's been fine and lovely for me... hmmm

I'm probably doing something wrong :/

>> Again, are the Sourceforge people working on this problem at all?
>
> Better to ask them than us, I suspect. :D

I did; they closed my support request with a short note to a "Known
issues" page where a notice about this has been posted over three months
ago.

Timwi


from_name: Peter Bartlett

body:
> [Donations talk snipped]

Is there a meta page anywhere discussing what any donations would be
spent on? If time is ripe enough to discuss links... its ripe enough to
discuss what the money would be spent on.

There would seem to be some hard choices to make... e.g. it would be
great to make a dent in the current running costs to Jimbo... but it
would great if any money, such as it is, is used to do something that
would not have been possible if it weren't for donations,

Pete


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> We already list Amazon and several others, and we've consciously made
> the choice not to boycott anyone or have any particular editorial policy
> on this.  I think that's the right thing to do, because it's really
> outside our mission to make controversial political statements about
> booksellers.
>
> We let the end user decide, and wash our hands of the matter.
>
> So this does raise the natural question: if we're sending people to
> Amazon anyway, is there any reason we should not accept a commission for
> doing it?

Listing several booksellers and not picking any out for special treatment
is all very neutral. But if we list several booksellers and then add, "By
the way, if you go to *this* one, Wikipedia gets some money," then that is
a clear encouragement to the users (or at least the ones who support us!)
to go to *that* bookseller rather than the others. So it starts to look as
if we are supporting that bookseller. Of course, we could just not mention
the fact that Wikipedia gets money from one of them, but that could be
considered dishonest.

> If you think they are not evildoers, then there seems to be no problem.
> If you think that they *are* evildoers, then at least this will help to
> reduce their profits.

I think it is very likely that more people will buy from Amazon if they
think they will be helping Wikipedia by doing so. And so Amazon will quite
likely make more profits.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> But complete rewrites take time, and introduce new and better bugs. ;)
> Phase III still has bugs that weren't in and lacks features that were in
> phase II, a year after we put it online.
> Better to refactor the existing code bit by bit until it looks
> completely different, and naturally that way. :)

This sounds like you're opposed to another rewrite?

I don't think the current Phase 3 software can elegantly/efficiently be
enhanced to handle several languages within one server/installation.

Timwi


body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>>   Warning: Empty regular expression in Language.php on line 1424
>>
>> This line in Language.php is:
>>
>>   $text = preg_replace( $rxYDM, '[[$1]] [[$4 $3]]', $text);
>
>
> Ouch, that's not the context I like to see my code quoted in a mailing
> list. I think I've fixed it now, it was just an obvious typo. Timwi, can
> you please test it for me? Download the latest Language.php (version
> 1.29 or later), turn on $wgUseDynamicDates, and see if the error comes
> back?

I've managed to update from CVS once, and I'm still getting the same
error. However, I have not ever consciously set (or unset)
$wgUseDynamicDates.

Additionally, I'm receiving the error only the first time (when the page
doesn't yet exist). It will then start to exist and I can edit it
without problems.

I hope that helps in further diagnosis,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database schema?

body:
Is the database schema for the Phase III software documented anywhere?

Thanks,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

body:
Timwi wrote:

> I don't think the current Phase 3 software can elegantly/efficiently be
> enhanced to handle several languages within one server/installation.

I don't think a single server should handle several languages. We see
currently that two servers can't manage...I'm quite happy that wikipedia
can easily distributed on many servers. Even many web-severs supporting
one-language-handling-database server should work.

And at home.. whats the problem of some additional links to the source (or
even a copy) and some redirects in the web-server?

I don't know how come up with the matter, but I think it's very useless.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
> >The Wikipedia is operated by the
> >Wikipedia Foundation. Find out how
> >you can help.
>
> Seems a bit wordy ; just a one or two word normal link would do.
> Also don't
> you mean to say Wikimedia Foundation?

Yes, yea, and a resounding yes!

ahem...

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Fuck article cited in Colorado court document

body:
steve vertigo wrote:

>Someone pointed this out on Talk:Fuck -- From District
>Court, Larimer County, Colorado
>
>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/fword1.html
>
Great!  We're now being quoted as a fucking authority in the courts!

I can't be sure, but I don't think that court documents are
copyrightable in case someone wants to add information from these pleadings.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of Wikipedia articles at Malaspina.com

body:
On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:

> Oliver Pereira wrote:
>
> >This is the message I sent.
>
> [Snipped!]
>
> It's perfectly fine that Oliver sent a letter,
> since he discovered and his letter was just from him.
> We should send one more letter: a form letter
> (or something that looks just as official ^_^)
> that's worked out on [[meta:]] and can be used again.

I've had a reply from Russ McNeil of Malaspina Great Books. I was going to
forward his reply to the list, but then I had the thought that that would
probably be an infringement of *his* copyright, which would be quite
ironic in the circumstances. :)

Basically, he says that he supports the Wikipedia philosophy, and thought
that by acknowledging the source and linking back to the Wikipedia
articles he was dong everything he had to. He said he would check to see
if he needed to do more. (I think this means he didn't trust my statement
that he *did* need to do more!) So I think we should check his site again
later to make sure that he's making the necessary changes.

Another question, though: Does someone who creates a derived work from one
of our articles have to link back to the actual version of the article
that they used to create the derived work, or is linking to the current
version of the article acceptable?

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

references: <3F0BDD1F.8010004@pobox.com> <behnuh$54o$1@main.gmane.org> <3F0C6ECF.7020903@pobox.com> <behtnq$458$1@main.gmane.org> <3F0C8876.30505@corell.dyndns.org>

body:
Thomas Corell wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> I don't think the current Phase 3 software can elegantly/efficiently
>> be enhanced to handle several languages within one server/installation.
>
> I don't think a single server should handle several languages.

I suppose I wasn't being very precise. It doesn't have to be a single
server (which is why I said "installation" also). It should, however, be
one consistent system as a whole, not several independent systems. I'm
talking on a more ideological level ("what it looks like to the user")
rather than the technical implementation of it ("what it looks like to
the system administrator").

Take LiveJournal, for example. (Ignore for the moment that it's the only
website/codebase I know in real detail ;-) ) ... They have several
webservers and a load balancer that distributes incoming requests to
them. They also have several database servers, called "clusters", and
users' journals are randomly distributed over these clusters. Yet
LiveJournal is a single system in the sense that it is possible to add
another user to your own friends list (to name just an example)
seamlessly even when you're on different clusters. There is only one
additional "global" database (the "master") which stores all the global
data (e.g. user preferences), which is tiny in size compared to the
clusters that store users' journal entries and the comments thereto.

What I find disturbing about the current Wikipedia setup doesn't really
have anything to do with running everything off multiple servers. It's
just that the different Wikipedia servers are too separate in the
following sense:
* You need an extra login on each of them.
* You have to change your preferences on all of them individually.
* You have to follow several watchlists/recent changes lists.
* You have to add Inter-Wiki links in *both* directions.
   (Ideally, adding X to Y should add Y automatically not only to X, but
   also to all other wikis that X links to.)

Ideally, Wikipedia should have one "master" database to take care of
passwords, preferences, watchlists, bans, etc. - which would be a
ridiculously small database compared to the language-specific contents,
whether or not it should also contain the entire User: namespace (which
would be an interesting topic for a separate discussion). Then each
language would have an own database; those databases could be put all on
one server first, and later they can be easily spread over several servers.

This is how I feel it /should/ work. Of course, if any of you can point
out disadvantages that I'm not seeing (except, of course, for the fact
that we don't have a software to do this yet), please feel free to reply
and discuss.

> I don't know how come up with the matter, but I think it's very useless.

Despite the fact that I can't make a lot of sense of this sentence, I
have a feeling it contains a trace of unnecessary polemics.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Continuing CVS server problems

body:
I'm getting really fed up with the continuing problems with the CVS
server. I don't see how I can do anything productive like this.

Would it be feasible if we set up a CVS server of our own rather than
using Sourceforge's? Would it produce a lot of traffic if we just used
one of the Wikipedia servers?

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: steve vertigo

subject: [Wikitech-l] Arabikipedia

body:
Well, thanks for clearing *that up. -- %)

-S-

> "Unicode" is a _character set_, which maps abstract
> numerical code
> points to characters. Unicode code points (and hence
> characters) may be
> represented in a number of ways.
>
> "UTF-8" is a _character encoding_, which maps
> Unicode code points to
> variable-length sequences of bytes. UTF-8's primary
> feature is that it
> is compatible with ASCII, which has made it popular
> in Unix and internet
> contexts as a more or less backwards-compatible way
> of storing Unicode text.
>
> "UTF-16" is another character encoding, which maps
> Unicode code points
> to 16-bit integers. (Or, sometimes, to two 16-bit
> integers.) For
> historical reasons and/or stupidity ;) UTF-16 (or
> its evil elder sister
> UCS-2) may get called "Unicode" by some software. If
> you select
> so-called "Unicode" encoding for a page that's
> encoded in UTF-8, you'll
> probably corrupt the display.
>
> There are also many domain-specific ways of encoding
> Unicode characters;
> in HTML and XML (and SGML, if the document character
> set is defined as
> Unicode) you can use sequences such as 〹
> (decimal) or ሴ
> (hexadecimal). Because these only use ASCII
> characters to do their dirty
> work, they're robust through other character
> encoding conversions and
> can be typed in any text editor (if you know the
> numbers). However they
> are specific to that type of markup language, take
> up more space than
> binary encodings, and don't necessarily survive
> forms well if let
> through unencoded.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Step one

body:
> We're also waiting for you to finish the application
> :-)

Gosh people seem ansy these days.  A man can only do
so much by himself...   I propose we take a collection
and send a lawyer or three down to San Diego to stand
over Jimbo's shoulder and "assist" him in filling out
the 10xx))z(3)... whatever...  Im sure that would get
it done quicker.

Sarcastically,
-S-

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body:
> I'm in no way an expert, but looking at the
> practical implications of
> such a requirement, it would seem that such a
> requirement would make the
> GFDL useless for most purposes. Hardly any webmaster
> would archive every
> past version of a page.
>
> Timwi

Civil Law is not meant to be practical. It's meant
merely to be a roadsign that says, "our stuff, our
rules" -- so that later it can look like a breach of
contract, and money can be restituted from the
prostituting party.

Ironically, the notion that "your not supposed to make
$$ off of  X" (as a claim) is kinda antithetical to
the whole notion of lawsuits, which tend to be about
"only Ims supposed to make money off X".  And in the
end, regardless of GNUFDL, a civil win would be
represented (symbolically) in dough.  Otherwise why
would anyone bother forking out for a lair?

-S-

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

body:
> And I tend to agree with Brion and others who have
> come down on the
> side of a need for immediate performance gains and
> bug fixes *for
> right now*, as opposed to grand plans for the
> future.
>
> But, you know, if you're interested in working on a
> grand plan for the
> future, by all means... :-)  I'd be eager to see
> single sign-on, that's
> for sure.
>
> --Jimbo

I foolheartedly agree.

-S-
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:

> Another question, though: Does someone who creates a derived work from one
> of our articles have to link back to the actual version of the article
> that they used to create the derived work, or is linking to the current
> version of the article acceptable?

I'm in no way an expert, but looking at the practical implications of
such a requirement, it would seem that such a requirement would make the
GFDL useless for most purposes. Hardly any webmaster would archive every
past version of a page.

Timwi


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Well, he is not the only one having problems. I was never able to make a
>connection either and finally gave up and used phase 2.
>
Hmm... bad news. :(

I've uploaded a snapshot of phase 3 to the files section, and also put
it on our website:

http://download.wikipedia.org/wikipedia-snapshot-20030710.tar.gz

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Well, he is not the only one having problems. I was never able to make a
connection either and finally gave up and used phase 2.

Fred

> From: Thomas Corell <T.Corell at t-online.de>
> Reply-To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 05:51:47 +0200
> To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Continuing CVS server problems
>
> Timwi wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm getting really fed up with the continuing problems with the CVS
>> server. I don't see how I can do anything productive like this.
>>
>> Would it be feasible if we set up a CVS server of our own rather than
>> using Sourceforge's? Would it produce a lot of traffic if we just used
>> one of the Wikipedia servers?
>
> Sorry, but you seem to be the only one having problems with Sourceforge.
>
> You are useing cvs.sourcforge.net as server (which is the developer
> cvs-server, instead of the public cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net Server)?
>
> Setting up a CVS Server is the cosing activity, not the traffic. And keep
> it secure.
>
> --
> Smurf
>
> smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
> -------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] textbook.wikipedia.org wiki set up

body:
Should now be editable: http://textbook.wikipedia.org/

No special features so far; like meta, it's running in UTF-8 mode. Has
not yet been thoroughly tested, so be warned. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> Which reminds me, did you get CVS working?

Just now I caught another minute the CVS server was working, so I tried,
and I received the same error as before (WinCVS 1.3.8.1):

cvs login
Logging in to
:pserver:Timwi at cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net:2401/cvsroot/wikipedia

*****CVS exited normally with code 0*****

cvs commit -m "apostrophe fix" OutputPage.php (in directory
C:\Wikipedia\phase3\includes\)
cvs [server aborted]: "commit" requires write access to the repository

*****CVS exited normally with code 1*****

Any help would be appreciated :/

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Step one

body:
Alex R. wrote:

>(this is not a solicited
>legal opinion, if you wish a legal opinion, please contact my office
>as I have previously stated I would be willing to do pro bono work
>for your folks).
>Good luck.
>alex756
>
>
Very generous of you! :-)

--

--cprompt


body:
Timwi wrote:

>
> I'm getting really fed up with the continuing problems with the CVS
> server. I don't see how I can do anything productive like this.
>
> Would it be feasible if we set up a CVS server of our own rather than
> using Sourceforge's? Would it produce a lot of traffic if we just used
> one of the Wikipedia servers?

Sorry, but you seem to be the only one having problems with Sourceforge.

You are useing cvs.sourcforge.net as server (which is the developer
cvs-server, instead of the public cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net Server)?

Setting up a CVS Server is the cosing activity, not the traffic. And keep
it secure.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> We already list Amazon and several others,

Unfortunately, that's not the "we" I seem to belong to.

> and we've consciously made the choice not to boycott anyone or have
> any particular editorial policy on this.

There are many, many more bookstores, give them a chance!

> I think that's the right thing to do, because it's really outside our
> mission to make controversial political statements about booksellers.

Refusing to take a posisition is a political statement, too.  The
classical encyclopaedians took a position: they promoted enlightment.
But "we" seem to tell the user, it does not matter where to buy books.

> If you think they are not evildoers, then there seems to be no
> problem.  If you think that they *are* evildoers, then at least this
> will help to reduce their profits.

No, it will not: you just spend some marketing money to increase your
profit.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Just now I caught another minute the CVS server was working, so I tried,
> and I received the same error as before (WinCVS 1.3.8.1):
>
> cvs login
> Logging in to
> :pserver:Timwi at cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net:2401/cvsroot/wikipedia
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Use the right cvs server. See other mail from me.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

references: <3F0BDD1F.8010004@pobox.com> <behnuh$54o$1@main.gmane.org> <3F0C6ECF.7020903@pobox.com> <behtnq$458$1@main.gmane.org> <3F0C8876.30505@corell.dyndns.org> <bei6lu$il0$1@main.gmane.org> <20030709191311.C7763@joey.bomis.com>

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
> I've traditionally referred to this group of features as "single
> sign-on".  I don't think that there's any opposition to these features
> at all, and they are much desired.
>>This is how I feel it /should/ work. Of course, if any of you can point
>>out disadvantages that I'm not seeing (except, of course, for the fact
>>that we don't have a software to do this yet), please feel free to reply
>>and discuss.
> Well, there is one potential complication.  Right now, someone could
> be signed up as 'John' on the en.wikipedia.org, and someone else could
> be signed up as 'John' on the de.wikipedia.org, and they might not
> even know each other or realize that there's a collision.
>
> So when we merge usernames across the wikipedia, we have to deal with
> that _somehow_, and doing so in a sensitive way that doesn't annoy too
> many people is a good idea.

There is the problem that some users want and have different usernames in
different wiki's. The only way to handle this is keeping all those 'lokal'
users and first of all allow additional sigle-signon on the 'Master user
DB' which should handle not only single-sign-on, but even all those lokal
user accounts. I remember to designed some DB-schema to handle this, but I
don't remember if I posted it. If it is from interest, I try to search or
rebuild it, not realy a problem. And should work inside phase 3.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
People who are using the license are establishing custom and practice which
is also relevant. I cannot imagine archiving on my site the past history of
a Wikipedia page, the link back to Wikipedia gives access to that. As to law
being practical, we all try.

Fred Bauder

http://wwww.internet-encyclopedia.org

> From: steve vertigo <utilitymuffinresearch at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 01:54:10 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Use of Wikipedia articles at Malaspina.com
>
>> I'm in no way an expert, but looking at the
>> practical implications of
>> such a requirement, it would seem that such a
>> requirement would make the
>> GFDL useless for most purposes. Hardly any webmaster
>> would archive every
>> past version of a page.
>>
>> Timwi
>
> Civil Law is not meant to be practical. It's meant
> merely to be a roadsign that says, "our stuff, our
> rules" -- so that later it can look like a breach of
> contract, and money can be restituted from the
> prostituting party.
>
> Ironically, the notion that "your not supposed to make
> $$ off of  X" (as a claim) is kinda antithetical to
> the whole notion of lawsuits, which tend to be about
> "only Ims supposed to make money off X".  And in the
> end, regardless of GNUFDL, a civil win would be
> represented (symbolically) in dough.  Otherwise why
> would anyone bother forking out for a lair?
>
> -S-
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


in_reply_to: <shk7arjawu.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>; from ke@gnu.franken.de on Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 05:52:33AM +0200

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> > We already list Amazon and several others,
>
> Unfortunately, that's not the "we" I seem to belong to.

I'm not sure what you mean.  All I was talking about was what's on
pages like this one:

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0312243359

The status quo is that we list 10 different booksellers in English, 2
in Japanese, and 3 libraries.

> > and we've consciously made the choice not to boycott anyone or have
> > any particular editorial policy on this.
>
> There are many, many more bookstores, give them a chance!

Well, sure!  Any bookseller that accepts a search based on ISBN could
easily be added.  Just 'Edit this list of links' on the URL above.

> > I think that's the right thing to do, because it's really outside our
> > mission to make controversial political statements about booksellers.
>
> Refusing to take a posisition is a political statement, too.

I suppose so, in the sense that it is taking the position that
wikipedia ought to be neutral on such matters.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

in_reply_to: <3F0CE667.7090704@corell.dyndns.org>; from T.Corell@t-online.de on Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 06:07:03AM +0200

references: <3F0BDD1F.8010004@pobox.com> <behnuh$54o$1@main.gmane.org> <3F0C6ECF.7020903@pobox.com> <behtnq$458$1@main.gmane.org> <3F0C8876.30505@corell.dyndns.org> <bei6lu$il0$1@main.gmane.org> <20030709191311.C7763@joey.bomis.com> <3F0CE667.7090704@corell.dyndns.org>

body:
Thomas Corell wrote:
> There is the problem that some users want and have different usernames in
> different wiki's. The only way to handle this is keeping all those 'lokal'
> users and first of all allow additional sigle-signon on the 'Master user
> DB' which should handle not only single-sign-on, but even all those lokal
> user accounts.

Hmmm, that's interesting.  Complicated but interesting.

At Yahoo, I notice that I can have multiple 'profiles' for a single
login.  I'm not 100% sure what that means, but I suppose it's similar
to what you are saying?

Under a system like you're proposing, I could create a new 'master'
account, 'Jimbo Wales', and then consolidate all of my 'local'
accounts under it, so for example, 'Jimbo Wales' could "own" 'en:Jimbo
Wales' and 'de:Jimbo Wales' and even 'jp:Yojimbo' (just a joke, I
don't really have such an account as that.

I love the concept, but does it introduce a layer of unfriendly
complexity for the end user?

-----

The way I was thinking of it is that people could have a single signon
across all the wikipedias, and if they want a different id on one,
then they could just create it, and it would work everywhere of
course, but they'd just have two accounts and could use one on 'jp'
and one on 'en' if they wanted.

Your solution is more elegant, in that it does away with the problem
of namespace collisions, I guess.

But it could be very confusing for users in some cases?

--Jimbo


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

body:
Smurf wrote:

>There is the problem that some users want and have different usernames in
>different wiki's.

I wouldn't call that a *problem*.
If we merge usernames across the various wikis,
then these people will have 2 (or more) usernames.
So naturally they'll have to set preferences for each separately
and log on to each separately, and watchlist each separately, etc.
But this is no worse for them than things are now.

To be sure, the following is a reasonable /additional/ feature request,
and there's no reason to avoid it:

>The only way to handle this is keeping all those 'lokal'
>users and first of all allow additional sigle-signon on the 'Master user
>DB' which should handle not only single-sign-on, but even all those lokal
>user accounts. I remember to designed some DB-schema to handle this, but I
>don't remember if I posted it. If it is from interest, I try to search or
>rebuild it, not realy a problem. And should work inside phase 3.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination and the IRS

in_reply_to: <3F0DA432.F03D783A@frognet.net>; from jaknouse@frognet.net on Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 10:36:51AM -0700

body:
Well, this is going to be pretty cut-and-dried, as far as I can tell.
Our mission certainly fits the bill perfectly for the sort of thing
that qualifies.

John Knouse wrote:

> My two cents worth:
>
> In the application for tax-exempt status, it's critical to
> be clear, concise, and understandable, and to clearly
> delineate past, present, and projected future activities,
> cast in the light of public service (particularly
> educational) purposes.  If it's a really clean application,
> determination may be awarded within three months.  If not,
> then it can take a couple of years of the IRS requesting
> additional information.
>
> --
> John Knouse
> jaknouse at frognet.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Development tasks

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote at first:

>Timwi wrote:

>>* You need an extra login on each of them.
>>* You have to change your preferences on all of them individually.
>>* You have to follow several watchlists/recent changes lists.

>I've traditionally referred to this group of features as "single
>sign-on".  I don't think that there's any opposition to these features
>at all, and they are much desired.

You mean that /changing/ this group is "single sign-on", yes?
^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote at first:

>Listing several booksellers and not picking any out for special treatment
>is all very neutral.

I'm not sure why we list individual booksellers in the first place.

Suppose that we followed that plan and added some features for our users.
For example, we could spend some effort ensuring that we found
all of the online booksellers that we could possibly find.
And then we listed the prices that the booksellers charge,
to help our users make wise economic decisions.
Wouldn't that be useful?

But that's exactly what AddALL and PriceSCAN do --
these are the links that we made on the /original/ booksource page.
Why link directly to Barnes & Noble or Amazon
when AddALL and PriceSCAN cover those -- and much more!
Even though we've added even more bookstores since,
we still don't have all of those on AddALL or PriceSCAN --
so we're still favouring certain ones.

Of course, adding the Japanese bookstores and the libraries
is another matter; they're not covered on AddALL or PriceSCAN.

BTW, I'm basing this on the list that appears on [[en:]];
presumably other languages have different lists,
for which this may or may not be applicable.

-- Toby