from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 01:51:48AM +0100, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> Takuya Murata wrote:
> > The problem is set up. Surely the current dependency hell
> > makes hard to host mimi-wikipedia, particularly on windows-
> > based servers.

No, you got it all wrong.
It's not "dependency hell", it's "server-side programming".
We're supposed to use whatever we find convenient on server-side.
That's the paradigm on this side of network connection.

These dependencies aren't really that weird - Apache, PHP and MySQL
are available on all Unices (and Windows), and offered by most web
hosting providers.

If you want math, maybe LaTeX, GhostScript and OCaml are not that popular,
but you'll need first two in any case if you want to render math,
and OCaml files may be compiled to native codes, so you just
have to put binaries on server.

As for windows servers, it doesn't really matter.
They are rather small minority, and have so many problems
that supporting them is not really worth effort.
Just get some Unix.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Takuya Murata

subject: [Wikitech-l] "View user page" edit links on anon talk pages

body:
>Most policy decisions should be made on wikipedia-l.

I see.

> doing it on the wiki itself might not help.

Why is that?


body:
>> Also, I was wondering where such a decision was made.
>
>The new Talk code was requested both on Village Pump and on
the mailing
>list repeatedly. The user page stuff was simply a side
effect of that.

I mean is there someone who made the final decision?
(probably one who has a right to submit a code to CVS) For
example, in Linux after all Linus decided to apply a patch
or not. Of course, he listen to people's opinion but he made
a decision.

>However, if you want to keep up with the latest changes and
possibly have
>some influence, check out the code and start hacking.
>
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_Wikipedia_hac
ker

Yeah, thanks. I don't think I can have influence though.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
On mer, 2003-01-29 at 17:25, Jan Hidders wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 03:55:16PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > On mer, 2003-01-29 at 14:15, Jan Hidders wrote:
> > >
> > > Not necessarily, row level locking causes sometimes a *lot* more overhead
> > > and can block *more* than table level locking. I assume you have read the
> > > manual but for good measure I will quote the relevant part anyway:
> >
> > If you have concrete suggestions on how to reform our code, I'd *love*
> > to hear them. I say this in all seriousness; I freely admit that I'm new
> > at this database stuff, and am unsure of the best course of action.
>
> Ok, sorry for being critical in an unhelpful way. But I would still want to
> know if there was a concrete problem that you wanted to solve with row-level
> locking, or would going back to full MyISAM be an option? My gut feeling is
> that row locking really doesn't help much because our access patterns are a
> lot of small reads (fetching pages), a few big reads (recent changes et
> cetera) and relatively rare small updates that don't mind if they have to
> wait a few seconds.

Well, an update (counter increment) comes with every page view, and we
often have several edits per minute.

> > Our slow locks currently seem to be happening on 'old' and
> > 'searchindex', both MyISAM tables -- so no row-level locks on them.
>
> Hmm, that is very mysterious indeed, and I have to think a little longer
> about why that could be. The only thing I can think of now would be to
> consider using INSERT DELAYED so that the updates don't wait on the SELECTs.

I made the searchindex updates REPLACE DELAYED last night, it may have
helped a bit.

I would try making the olds INSERT DELAYED too, but currently we need to
get the autoincrement index on the new insert in order to reference it
in the recentchanges table. (in Article::updateArticle() )

> > 'old' is usually being queried for the list of previous edits for a
> > given page, or sometimes user contribs; these queries have no joins, and
> > are WHERE'd with = on indexed fields. It appears to be properly indexed,
> > so I'm unsure why it sometimes takes so long.
>
> What does EXPLAIN say? Is it using the indices properly?

They _look_ okay to me.

Let's try the history of [[Talk:Ellipse]]:
mysql> explain SELECT old_id,old_namespace,old_title,old_user,old_comment,old_user_text,old_timestamp,old_minor_edit FROM old WHERE old_namespace=1 AND old_title='Ellipse' ORDER BY old_timestamp DESC;
+-------+------+---------------+-----------+---------+-------+------+----------------------------+
| table | type | possible_keys | key       | key_len | ref   | rows | Extra                      |
+-------+------+---------------+-----------+---------+-------+------+----------------------------+
| old   | ref  | old_title     | old_title |      20 | const |   31 | where used; Using filesort |
+-------+------+---------------+-----------+---------+-------+------+----------------------------+

Sounds good... Village pump bumps the rows up to 600-something, still a tiny fraction of the table.

Search for "English civil war":
mysql> explain SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_text FROM cur,searchindex WHERE cur_id=si_page AND ( (MATCH (si_text) AGAINST ('english')) AND (MATCH (si_text) AGAINST ('civil')) AND (MATCH (si_text) AGAINST ('war')) AND (cur_is_redirect=0) ) AND (cur_namespace=0) LIMIT 0, 20;
+-------------+----------+----------------------+---------+---------+---------------------+------+------------+
| table       | type     | possible_keys        | key     | key_len | ref                 | rows | Extra      |
+-------------+----------+----------------------+---------+---------+---------------------+------+------------+
| searchindex | fulltext | si_page,si_text      | si_text |       0 |                     |    1 | where used |
| cur         | eq_ref   | cur_id,cur_namespace | cur_id  |       4 | searchindex.si_page |    1 | where used |
+-------------+----------+----------------------+---------+---------+---------------------+------+------------+

No diff in the explain results if we reduce to a single search term.
Note that the number of rows listed here is bogus when InnoDB tables are
involved; this may be true of fulltext search as well. (In theory it's
not scanning individual rows, but a big glob 'o' indexy goodness, so I
guess it would be meaningless.)

If we cut out the join to cur:
mysql> explain SELECT si_page FROM searchindex WHERE (MATCH (si_text) AGAINST ('english')) AND (MATCH (si_text) AGAINST ('civil')) AND (MATCH (si_text) AGAINST ('war')) LIMIT 0, 20;
+-------------+----------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+------------+
| table       | type     | possible_keys | key     | key_len | ref  | rows | Extra      |
+-------------+----------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+------------+
| searchindex | fulltext | si_text       | si_text |       0 |      |    1 | where used |
+-------------+----------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+------------+

> > > Especially if you are also going to use transactions that span more than
> > > 1 SQL statement (are you?) things may even get considerably worse.
> >
> > If you mean chunks of statements actually wrapped in BEGIN/COMMIT blocks,
> > then there are only a couple of these at present, both done on page save.
> > The first should be quite lightweight in terms of rows, doing a 1-row
> > update to 'cur', a 1-row insert to 'recentchanges', and two more updates
> > to 'recentchanges' which hit respectively 1 row and as many rows as are
> > present that refer to the particular article.
>
> Yes, ok, that doesn't sound too bad, but I was a little bit affraid that you
> also had included the MyISAM tables in the transactin.

Shouldn't be. However, on page save we do have to wait for the INSERT to
the old table to finish before we move on to the part that is wrapped in
a transaction, since we need the insert id.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search engine

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>* 'Power search' is perhaps a little confusing, and there's currently no
>way to get to it short of doing two searches.
>
>
We could turn the word Find/Search in front of the text box into a link
to a "Power Search" page.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Red Hill Technology

subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive names - a simple suggestion

body:
I think we can *certainly* all agree that:

(a) That some names really are offensive and need to be
changed or deleted.

(b) This shouldn't be allowed to soak up vast amounts of
time and energy which could more usefully go into real
work.

And we can *probably* all agree that:

(c) Most usernames are obviously either benign  or
offensive, only a very small number are difficult to
classify as OK or not-OK.

(d) No realistic written set of rules can ever be detailed
enough to catch all possible offensive names - some types
of people will go to an enormous amount of thought to dream
up something that is technically "legal" and yet still
offensive, and there will be other cases where a written
rule takes out a perfectly innocent username on some
technicality.

(e) Most or all of the cases raised so far have been
straightforward. There really wasn't much room for any
reasonable person to doubt that "cumguzzler" was offensive,
nor "crucified christ".

(Note that I'm making a distinction here between a name
"being offensive" and that same name "causing personal
offence". For example, I felt a little offended by
"cumguzzler" but was not personally offended by "crucified
christ". However, as an ordinary "reasonable man", I can
see that "crucified christ" is obviously going to offend a
lot of people who happen to hold different religious
beliefs to mine. Both names are clearly unacceptable.)

>From these points, we can reason that (i) formal, exact
rules are unworkable, and (ii) that extensive discussion of
each case is an unreasonable waste of our time. Why
*should* we have to spend forever arguing about such
offensive trivia when we have work to do?

It seems to me that we can probably agree that 99% of cases
could be quickly decided by one or two or three reasonable
people. Why not appoint some - let's say three -
representative "reasonable people" from amongst us and
declare those three the "Name Police"? (I don't think it
matters much which three people - 'most any three regular
list members will do.) Then instruct whoever it is that has
the practical power to change a username (i.e., the person
who holds the database keys) that a request from any two of
the "Name Police" to change a username is to be complied
with.

Here is how it would work:

Let's say that the three are (just picking the first three
names to come into my head) Tom, Zoe, and Ed. User XXXX
come along and registers an offensive name. Dan notices it
on "recent changes" and tips Zoe off. She agrees it is
offensive, and passes the message on to the other two (via
talk pages or email - it doesn't matter). Ed is away but
Tom agrees that XXXX has crossed over the line, and with
two requests, the name is changed to something more
acceptible.

Next week, user YYYY comes along. I message Tom, but he
thinks I am over-reacting and the name is OK. So does Zoe.
Result: the name stands.

That should take care of 99^% of the problem.  Once in a
blue moon, an example will crop up which is really
difficult to decide. In this rare instance, anyone is at
liberty to bring the matter up here on the list. XXXX may,
if he wishes, appeal to the list against the change, or I
may bring up YYYY and say "that really *is* offensive, can
we reconsider?" or Ed may post here to say "I am unsure
what to do about user ZZZZ - what do others think?".

Who should the "Name Police" be? I don't think it matters.
99% of the cases are so obvious that just about any three
list members will come up with the same answers anyway.
(And they can still be over-ruled here, if need be.)

How many should there the be? I'm not sure. One would do,
three is probably better, too many more risks turning it
into a circus. If only three, then maybe there should be
one or two "deputies" available to fill in for people who
are away.

How should they be chosen? I don't care. Pick some at
random off the January archive, have Jimbo nominate them,
run an election - it doesn't matter. Turn them over after
some set period of time so that no-one gets  lumbered with
it forever.

PS: All that text for "a simple suggestion?"  - Whooah -
time I learned to write more briefly!

Tony Wilson
(Tannin)


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:26:31AM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> It is worse now than it was during the Slashdotting especially with Konqueror.
> Sometimes all I get for hours are timeouts.
>
> Does this have anything to do with the new table structures Brion
> installed a few days ago? Everything was working fine before then.

Is it correct the we are now using the locking mechanism in MySQL? (I
haven't been following this list for a while.) If so then this is probably
causing all the delays. Was there is specific reason for starting to use
locking?

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikitech-l] C again :-) for worried Wikipedians

body:
>On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 01:51:48AM +0100, Pieter Suurmond
wrote:
>> Takuya Murata wrote:
>> > The problem is set up. Surely the current dependency
hell
>> > makes hard to host mimi-wikipedia, particularly on
windows-
>> > based servers.
>
>No, you got it all wrong.
>It's not "dependency hell", it's "server-side programming".

Oh, how can I say. First, please recognize the context. If
we distribute wikipedia server to hunders of mimi-server, it
is necessary to make easy to set up. But if we don't, the
dependency really doesn't matter the

>We're supposed to use whatever we find convenient on server-
side.
>That's the paradigm on this side of network connection.

Gentelly notice the debate should be based on the reasoning
not simple assumptions.

>These dependencies aren't really that weird - Apache, PHP
and MySQL

I don't think these dependencies are weired neither.

>As for windows servers, it doesn't really matter.
>They are rather small minority, and have so many problems
>that supporting them is not really worth effort.
>Just get some Unix.

Again, if you distribute, the number of windows servers does
matter. But again the context depends.


body:
>It seems it's usually Brion who commits stuff here, but it's
>less formal than with Linux kernel.

So, it is a kind of arbitrary.

>And it's Jimbo who owns servers.

What do you mean? I thought Bomis owns the server. Am I
right?

>Anyway, this was rather uncontroversial change.

I don't remember saying it is controversial. I am sorry for
giving wrong impression. I was just wondering about the
decision process. I don't mean to object to this change at
all. (though I advocate the system should be more democratic)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
> It is worse now than it was during the Slashdotting especially with
> Konqueror. Sometimes all I get for hours are timeouts.

> Does this have anything to do with the new table structures Brion installed
> a few days ago? Everything was working fine before then.

Yes, it's related to the InnoDB updates. Once we get the problems fixed,
it should be a lot faster than before, though. The problems should
absolutely be browser-independent, please try to verify that.

Regards,

Erik


body:
> Why in the world are we now giving anon users the option to create user
> pages? Talk pages are a good idea but please don't display an edit link to
> "View user page" on anon talk pages. We don't want to give them too much
> since that will only result in fewer of them actually signing up for and
> using a user account (which is still something we want to encourage, no?).

That was simply a side effect of the new Talk code. However, I'm not sure
it needs to be changed. Just today I talked to an anonymous user who told
me that he would only login when at home, but who had a fixed IP address.
By using the "View user page" link, he could put a redirect to his normal
user page on it. I think that sidebar link is too obscure to be abused but
can have reasonable uses. At the same time, the more frequently displayed
user link in recent changes still points to the user contributions.

If it's not wanted, I can take it out, though. Any other opinions?

Regards,

Erik


body:
> Also, I was wondering where such a decision was made.

The new Talk code was requested both on Village Pump and on the mailing
list repeatedly. The user page stuff was simply a side effect of that.
However, if you want to keep up with the latest changes and possibly have
some influence, check out the code and start hacking.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_Wikipedia_hacker

Regards,

Erik


body:
>But if you mean "democratic" as in voting, then no, we
don't do that.

I didn't mean that. I don't believe in voting.

Actually I am not so sure about what is more democratic
system. I said the system of wikipedia should be more
democratic because it seems to me that the decision about
the wikipedia system doesn't reflect well the opinion among
the majority of wikipedians, if not totally. First, simply
really few people subscribe this mailing list. Second,
changes are somewhat invisible. Basically there is no
announcement about the changes. For example, new text for
new pages. (Forget the talk pages or Village pump. They
exist for conversation not for announcement)

I don't want to mean people who have access to CVS should
speak more (I am implying Brion). I am saying we should make
the management (including decision-making) more visible and
closer to oridanly wikipedians. Sure, now people dicuss in
Village pump or some send direct message to Brion personally
in his talk page. But it is not the democracy in the essence.

Wikipedia is great because not only it is free, open-content
but also because it is democratic. People made decision in
their own. People go where they want to go without
discussion. The important distinction is wikipedia is the
place where not the rulers listen to people's demands but
all of people rule.

Sorry I am just talking about something abstract. But this
is why I felt the management should be more democratic. And
again I don't know practical way. Developing wikipedia
system in wiki? I don't know.

Sure, it is usuall that the system of the site changes
suddenly. Think of amazon.com or google. They are not
democratic. But we can do better.

Oh, anyway, can we set up the wikipedia for developing? Like
hacker.wikipedia.org

I like to document more information about the wikipedia
software and also it would be nice if there is the place the
developers find the tasks wikipedias want and exchange
brainstorms. (Well, there is sourceforge. But no one is
using it anyway. Most of stuff in sourceforge seems outdated
like bug reports several months ago)

Again, I don't want to blame anyone. I just hope the system
of wikipedia is as good as the articles of wikipedia.

(Sorry pieter. I prefer hacker to developer. hehe)


subject: [Wikitech-l] two small patches to texvc code

body:
On mer, 2003-01-29 at 22:29, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Some minor things got wrong with new version of texvc.
> Here are fixes.

Before I forget it again, do we have a working solution for the
15-byte-hash problem? It's still striking (see [[en:Talk:Ellipse]] for
latest example.)

If nothing else, storing the hash as a hex string instead of binary
ought to do it, but that seems inelegant.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
> Is it correct the we are now using the locking mechanism in MySQL? (I
> haven't been following this list for a while.) If so then this is probably
> causing all the delays. Was there is specific reason for starting to use
> locking?

No. We switched to the InnoDB table type, which uses row-level locking
instead of MyISAM's table locking. So in general, things should get much
faster.

Regards,

Erik


body:
On mer, 2003-01-29 at 22:53, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> As far as I understand it just strips trailing spaces, so we can simply
> append 16-lenght(md5) bytes of " " to whatever database returns.
> Even easier thing would be to unpack (md5 ."                ")
> instead of just md5 (first 16 bytes will be used only).

Great, that seems to fix it so far; the previously broken revisions of
[[Ellipse]] and [[Feigenbaum constant]] seem to load (and reload!) okay.

So, are the rest of the updates sufficiently tested that I should
install it?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: M Carling

subject: [WikiEN-l] DW's new  threat

body:
On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, james duffy wrote:

> After quite a while of personal abuse ('moron', 'retard' etc) DW sent me the
> following message:
>
> Will suggest you stop vandalizing the [[Amedeo Modigliani]] page on which
> you have made no contribution except to vanadalize it. Keep it up and I
> guarantee you that a dozen people will start examining very carefully
> anything your retarded brain might have created as per your list....DW

Threat?  He clearly insulted you.  If there's any threat here, it's that
12 of his friends will very carefully examine the pages you've created as
per your user contribution list.

I think the repeated insults after a number of people, myself included,
with which he had never had any previous interaction gently warned him
justify bannishment.

M Carling


subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

in_reply_to: <8elLZuGCpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:43:00PM +0100

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:43:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Is it correct the we are now using the locking mechanism in MySQL? (I
> > haven't been following this list for a while.) If so then this is probably
> > causing all the delays. Was there is specific reason for starting to use
> > locking?
>
> No. We switched to the InnoDB table type, which uses row-level locking
> instead of MyISAM's table locking. So in general, things should get much
> faster.

Not necessarily, row level locking causes sometimes a *lot* more overhead
and can block *more* than table level locking. I assume you have read the
manual but for good measure I will quote the relevant part anyway:

> Cons:
>
>    * Takes more memory than page level or table locks.
>    * Is slower than page level or table locks when used on a big part of
>      the table, because one has to do many more locks.
>    * Is definitely much worse than other locks if you do often do GROUP BY
>      on a large part of the data or if one has to often scan the whole
>      table.
>    * With higher level locks one can also more easily support locks of
>      different types to tune the application as the lock overhead is less
>      notable as for row level locks.

Especially if you are also going to use transactions that span more than 1
SQL statement (are you?) things may even get considerably worse.

-- Jan Hidders

 .---------------------------------------------------------------------.
 | Post-doctoral researcher               e-mail: jan.hidders at ua.ac.be |
 | Dept. Math. & Computer Science         tel: (+32) 3 820 2427        |
 | University of Antwerp, room J1.06      fax: (+32) 3 820 2421        |
 | (UIA) Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk - Antwerpen   (Belgium)  |
 `---------------------------------------------------------------------'


body:
On mer, 2003-01-29 at 20:09, Takuya Murata wrote:
> Wikipedia is great because not only it is free, open-content
> but also because it is democratic. People made decision in
> their own. People go where they want to go without
> discussion. The important distinction is wikipedia is the
> place where not the rulers listen to people's demands but
> all of people rule.

Democracy is a two-way street, and the way to get involved is, well, to
get involved. ;)  This mailing list is open to subscription and can be
read on the web by anyone.  Our source repository can be examined on the
web or by anonymous CVS access, and anyone showing interest and with a
sourceforge account can be given commit access.

Pick a task, find an itch to scratch, and get working on it. The only
reason I'm here is because I got involved in the Esperanto Wikipedia and
wanted to modify the software to better support my favorite language. If
I do anything else here, it's just to provide the infrastructure for the
supersigno-conversion code. Now, if only I had the time to write some
articles! ;)

> Sorry I am just talking about something abstract. But this
> is why I felt the management should be more democratic. And
> again I don't know practical way. Developing wikipedia
> system in wiki? I don't know.

Oh, it can be done in theory:
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?FileReplacement

I dunno if we want to do that for our source, though...

> Oh, anyway, can we set up the wikipedia for developing? Like
> hacker.wikipedia.org

I'd prefer to work on meta.wikipedia.org. But that's just me.

> I like to document more information about the wikipedia
> software and also it would be nice if there is the place the
> developers find the tasks wikipedias want and exchange
> brainstorms. (Well, there is sourceforge. But no one is
> using it anyway. Most of stuff in sourceforge seems outdated
> like bug reports several months ago)

Those bug reports are still open because they're still not fixed. :)
There are a lot of little parser errors, and little search errors, that
can be best fixed by replacing the horribly fragile subsystems they're
in with clean, testable code.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] mimi-wikipedia

body:
> Speaking of which, why on earth was it decided to start using locking? IMO
> we don't really need it and AFAICT this wreaks havoc on the performance. A
> very bad decision if you ask me.

You misunderstood. We are not locking explicitly. MySQL locks implicitly
in certain situations, though, and with InnoDB we now use row level
locking instead of table locking.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wikipedia Foundation

body:
What is the plan for setting up The Wikipedia
Foundation?  For my volunteer work here at TEJO
(www.tejo.org), I've been researching how foundations
work and perhaps I could be of assistance in setting
one up.  Unfortunately all of my experience is dealing
with European foundations, but I hope to learn about
American ones as well.

I bet within a year of setting it up you'd get some
rich guy (or gal) who'd want to give us a million
dollars or more, which of course would pay the full
time salary for several Wikipedians in several
different language projects.  So, what are we waiting
for?

Chuck

=====
Interesting fact:  Google returns more
results for "Esperanto" than for "Catalan"
----------------------------------------
Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

___________________________________________________
Yahoo! M?viles
Personaliza tu m?vil con tu logo y melod?a favorito
en http://moviles.yahoo.es


subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

in_reply_to: <1043884516.1082.179.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 03:55:16PM -0800

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 03:55:16PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On mer, 2003-01-29 at 14:15, Jan Hidders wrote:
> >
> > Not necessarily, row level locking causes sometimes a *lot* more overhead
> > and can block *more* than table level locking. I assume you have read the
> > manual but for good measure I will quote the relevant part anyway:
>
> If you have concrete suggestions on how to reform our code, I'd *love*
> to hear them. I say this in all seriousness; I freely admit that I'm new
> at this database stuff, and am unsure of the best course of action.

Ok, sorry for being critical in an unhelpful way. But I would still want to
know if there was a concrete problem that you wanted to solve with row-level
locking, or would going back to full MyISAM be an option? My gut feeling is
that row locking really doesn't help much because our access patterns are a
lot of small reads (fetching pages), a few big reads (recent changes et
cetera) and relatively rare small updates that don't mind if they have to
wait a few seconds.

> Our slow locks currently seem to be happening on 'old' and
> 'searchindex', both MyISAM tables -- so no row-level locks on them.

Hmm, that is very mysterious indeed, and I have to think a little longer
about why that could be. The only thing I can think of now would be to
consider using INSERT DELAYED so that the updates don't wait on the SELECTs.

> 'old' is usually being queried for the list of previous edits for a
> given page, or sometimes user contribs; these queries have no joins, and
> are WHERE'd with = on indexed fields. It appears to be properly indexed,
> so I'm unsure why it sometimes takes so long.

What does EXPLAIN say? Is it using the indices properly?

> > Especially if you are also going to use transactions that span more than
> > 1 SQL statement (are you?) things may even get considerably worse.
>
> If you mean chunks of statements actually wrapped in BEGIN/COMMIT blocks,
> then there are only a couple of these at present, both done on page save.
> The first should be quite lightweight in terms of rows, doing a 1-row
> update to 'cur', a 1-row insert to 'recentchanges', and two more updates
> to 'recentchanges' which hit respectively 1 row and as many rows as are
> present that refer to the particular article.

Yes, ok, that doesn't sound too bad, but I was a little bit affraid that you
also had included the MyISAM tables in the transactin.

-- Jan Hidders

 .---------------------------------------------------------------------.
 | Post-doctoral researcher               e-mail: jan.hidders at ua.ac.be |
 | Dept. Math. & Computer Science         tel: (+32) 3 820 2427        |
 | University of Antwerp, room J1.06      fax: (+32) 3 820 2421        |
 | (UIA) Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk - Antwerpen   (Belgium)  |
 `---------------------------------------------------------------------'


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wikipedia Foundation

body:
We're not waiting for anything.  This is in the works now.

Chuck Smith wrote:

> What is the plan for setting up The Wikipedia
> Foundation?  For my volunteer work here at TEJO
> (www.tejo.org), I've been researching how foundations
> work and perhaps I could be of assistance in setting
> one up.  Unfortunately all of my experience is dealing
> with European foundations, but I hope to learn about
> American ones as well.
>
> I bet within a year of setting it up you'd get some
> rich guy (or gal) who'd want to give us a million
> dollars or more, which of course would pay the full
> time salary for several Wikipedians in several
> different language projects.  So, what are we waiting
> for?
>
> Chuck
>
> =====
> Interesting fact:  Google returns more
> results for "Esperanto" than for "Catalan"
> ----------------------------------------
> Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
> Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/
>
> ___________________________________________________
> Yahoo! M?viles
> Personaliza tu m?vil con tu logo y melod?a favorito
> en http://moviles.yahoo.es
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] DW's new  threat

in_reply_to: <BAY1-F106p5LX3s1Vcf000030a8@hotmail.com>; from jtdirl@hotmail.com on Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 03:18:16AM +0000

body:
I told DW, pointblank, not to insult people.  But DW continues to
behave in this way.  So, goodbye DW.  It's time for a ban.

Could some sysop make this happen... AND, I'm sorry to have to ask,
but what's the best procedure for me to do this myself?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> If you have concrete suggestions on how to reform our code, I'd *love*
> to hear them. I say this in all seriousness; I freely admit that I'm new
> at this database stuff, and am unsure of the best course of action.

Yeah, Jan really knows this stuff, too.  So I'd like to second this
motion.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

in_reply_to: <1043894781.1082.814.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 06:46:22PM -0800

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Well, an update (counter increment) comes with every page view, and we
> often have several edits per minute.

What's the wikipedia-purpose of a counter increment on every page
view?  Just to know which pages are popular?  We could get the same
information easily enough from a log analysis program, which I could
offload to a less-busy server.  Or we could just do without the
information easily enough.  It's not really that useful.  Or am I
missing something?

Even if this is thought by Jan and others to be only a small part of
the performance problem, it's probably philosophically good for us to
get in the habit of thinking "unless this feature is free or really
really useful, we should do without it".  That is, we already have a
bad case of feature-itis, and taking a hardline on such things might
be very helpful.

--Jimbo


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] DW's new  threat

body:
After quite a while of personal abuse ('moron', 'retard' etc) DW sent me the
following message:

Will suggest you stop vandalizing the [[Amedeo Modigliani]] page on which
you have made no contribution except to vanadalize it. Keep it up and I
guarantee you that a dozen people will start examining very carefully
anything your retarded brain might have created as per your list....DW

For the record, what I did was revert the page to the style as laid out by
Zoe (she asked me a few days ago to keep an eye on the page 'invert and hurl
abuse around' phases. I duly did that while carefully keeping in the one
textual change he made. However DW does not appreciate anyone else touching
'his' pages. It is one thing to leave insults on people's talk pages (is
there anyone he hasn't done that to by now?), but to threaten to vandalise
the work of someone if they 'vandalise' (ie, touch) anything of his seems
astonishing. Or maybe there is nothing astonishing in anything DW says or
does anymore.

Do we have to put up with nonsense from DW or could someone out there
(preferably someone he hasn't already hurled abuse at, if there is anyone he
hasn't hurled abuse at, that is!) have a quiet word with him. Or maybe feed
him a dozen valium!

JT

_________________________________________________________________
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in_reply_to: <200301292357.EDX51072@vmms8.verisignmail.com>; from takusi@manjiro.net on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 05:58:20PM -0600

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:
> >Most policy decisions should be made on wikipedia-l.
>
> I see.
>
> > doing it on the wiki itself might not help.
>
> Why is that?

Lots of things happen on the wiki that lots of people miss.  There are
a lot of pages flying around everywhere, recentchanges is really
pretty big, and so on.  Here, there are threads and a degree of
linearity to the conversation.


in_reply_to: <200301300004.EDX51581@vmms8.verisignmail.com>; from takusi@manjiro.net on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 06:05:51PM -0600

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:
> I mean is there someone who made the final decision?

In theory that's me, and for anything that really affects real policy
in a real way, it should be discussed before implemented.  On the
other hand, lots of minor changes go in whenever the developers feel
like it.

Erik instituted subpages on talk and user spaces and asked the world
about it at the same time that it was installed.  That wasn't really
best practice.  It turned out o.k., though, because in the ensuing
discussion it turned out that I was pretty much the only person
against it.

Generally, though, major things should be discussed before being
implemented.

What counts as major versus minor?  Well, that's a judgment call
sometimes.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <200301300307.EDX61869@vmms8.verisignmail.com>; from takusi@manjiro.net on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 09:08:12PM -0600

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:
> >And it's Jimbo who owns servers.
>
> What do you mean? I thought Bomis owns the server. Am I
> right?

Bomis owns the server; I own Bomis.  So, that's what he meant.

Very soon now, the server will be owned by the nonprofit foundation.

--Jimbo


body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 06:05:51PM -0600, Takuya Murata wrote:
> I mean is there someone who made the final decision?
> (probably one who has a right to submit a code to CVS) For
> example, in Linux after all Linus decided to apply a patch
> or not. Of course, he listen to people's opinion but he made
> a decision.

It seems it's usually Brion who commits stuff here, but it's
less formal than with Linux kernel. And it's Jimbo who owns servers.

Anyway, this was rather uncontroversial change.


in_reply_to: <200301300408.EDX64484@vmms8.verisignmail.com>; from takusi@manjiro.net on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:09:02PM -0600

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:
> Sorry I am just talking about something abstract. But this
> is why I felt the management should be more democratic. And
> again I don't know practical way. Developing wikipedia
> system in wiki? I don't know.

Your discussion is good.  You have thoughtful criticisms here,
and these are always appreciated.  However, I will say that this
particular discussion should take place on wikipedia-l, not on
wikitech-l.

Never hesitate to talk in the abstract, and big-picture ideas with the
good of wikipedia in mind are the best!

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

in_reply_to: <1043920431.1283.6.camel@chesoo.fokus.gmd.de>; from e.moeller@fokus.gmd.de on Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:53:51AM +0100

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> No way, all Wikipedias run on the same codebase.

And I think this is really important.

>But you can try to convince other people than myself to support your
>syntax. I think it's a bad idea.

The best place to convince other people to support a proposed new
syntax is wikipedia-l, rather than wikitech-l, I'd like to add.
Wikitech-l is for technical issues, but new syntax falls into the
realm of policy issues.

--Jimbo


body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 09:08:12PM -0600, Takuya Murata wrote:
> >And it's Jimbo who owns servers.
>
> What do you mean? I thought Bomis owns the server. Am I
> right?

And Jimbo owns Bomis.

[cut&paste]
> >It seems it's usually Brion who commits stuff here, but it's
> >less formal than with Linux kernel.
>
> So, it is a kind of arbitrary.
>
> >Anyway, this was rather uncontroversial change.
>
> I don't remember saying it is controversial. I am sorry for
> giving wrong impression. I was just wondering about the
> decision process. I don't mean to object to this change at
> all. (though I advocate the system should be more democratic)

Generally if change is not controversial, anyone with CVS access
can apply it, and if you don't have CVS access you can just
send it to such person (usually to Brion). For example most
translations get updated without any discussion.

If change is controversial, there is usually lot of discussion,
and it usually doesn't get applied unless there is consensus that
it should be. There were some exceptions, for example there was no
consensus about banning subpages, but usually we try to make
everyone either agree or at least not strongly oppose change.

But if you mean "democratic" as in voting, then no, we don't do that.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Open-Site.org]

in_reply_to: <3E3918D2.8080701@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 01:21:38PM +0100

body:
Perhaps the most important thing of all would be license
compatibility.  They say that they will have a "free license" -- it it
is GNU FDL, that's great.  If it's something else, well, things can
get very complicated as far as reuse goes.

Magnus Manske wrote:

> Vlad from the Open-site project (open-site.org), another free
> encyclopedia just starting, answered to my "merger" proposal. I forward
> this to the list for discussion.
>

> From: vladd <jocuri at softhome.net>
> Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 14:08:48 +0200
> To: Magnus.Manske at epost.de
> Subject: Open-Site.org
>
> Hello Magnus,
>
> My name is Vlad Dascalu and I'm one of the administrators of the Open-Site
> project. I've read links on Wikipedia about it, such as:
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-Site
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AOpen_Site
> http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-January/thread.html#8549
>
> Those are interesting comments. A "merge" of 2 projects would be relatively
> complicated, but it could prove also very useful for the Internet community.
>
> I don't have a strong opinion about it, one way or another, but I think there
> are some possibilities of integration, if not full, at least partially, that
> they warrent discussion. That's why I insisted to contact you, so you could
> have an email address for future contacts. You can use staff at open-site.org ,
> and that will go directly to all admins of the Open-Site project.
>
> Another integration possibility would be code-only, it would be cool to have
> the same code power both projects. See http://open-site.org/code for more
> details.
>
> Anyway, I hope we find the time to explore those possibilities in the future,
> in order to provide to the Internet community the best opened content
> possible.
>
> Thanks and congratulations for the work you put in Wikipedia,
> Vlad.
>


body:
Some minor things got wrong with new version of texvc.
Here are fixes.

Already installed on test.
-------------- next part --------------
--- mathml.ml.orig	2003-01-30 07:20:05.000000000 +0100
+++ mathml.ml	2003-01-30 07:23:35.000000000 +0100
@@ -9,7 +9,8 @@
   | otr,TEX_LITERAL(MHTMLABLEC(_,_,_,MO,a))::itr -> make_mathml_tree(TREE_MO a::otr,itr)
   | otr,TEX_LITERAL(MHTMLABLEC(_,_,_,MI,a))::itr -> make_mathml_tree(TREE_MI a::otr,itr)
   | otr,TEX_CURLY(crl)::itr -> make_mathml_tree(otr,crl at itr)
-  | otr,_ -> List.rev otr
+  | otr,[] -> List.rev otr
+  | _ -> failwith "failed to render mathml"

 let render_mathml_tree = function
     TREE_MN s -> "<mn>"^s^"</mn>"
-------------- next part --------------
--- texvc_cgi.phtml.orig	2003-01-30 07:12:34.000000000 +0100
+++ texvc_cgi.phtml	2003-01-26 07:09:06.000000000 +0100
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
 	"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>texvc</title></head><body>
 <?
-print "<form method=\"post\" action=\"{$wgServer}{$wgScriptPath}/texvc_cgi.phtml\">"
+print "<form method=\"post\" action=\"{$wgServer}/texvc_cgi.phtml\">"
 ?>
 <textarea name='math' rows='10' cols='80'><?
     global $math;


body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:39:00PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On mer, 2003-01-29 at 22:29, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > Some minor things got wrong with new version of texvc.
> > Here are fixes.
>
> Before I forget it again, do we have a working solution for the
> 15-byte-hash problem? It's still striking (see [[en:Talk:Ellipse]] for
> latest example.)
>
> If nothing else, storing the hash as a hex string instead of binary
> ought to do it, but that seems inelegant.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I didn't code anything about that.

As far as I understand it just strips trailing spaces, so we can simply
append 16-lenght(md5) bytes of " " to whatever database returns.
Even easier thing would be to unpack (md5 ."                ")
instead of just md5 (first 16 bytes will be used only).


body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 11:08:36PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On mer, 2003-01-29 at 22:53, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > As far as I understand it just strips trailing spaces, so we can simply
> > append 16-lenght(md5) bytes of " " to whatever database returns.
> > Even easier thing would be to unpack (md5 ."                ")
> > instead of just md5 (first 16 bytes will be used only).
>
> Great, that seems to fix it so far; the previously broken revisions of
> [[Ellipse]] and [[Feigenbaum constant]] seem to load (and reload!) okay.
>
> So, are the rest of the updates sufficiently tested that I should
> install it?

Yes.


subject: [Wikitech-l] LinkCache Prefill

body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-30 at 05:15, Magnus Manske wrote:
> I am working on the replaceInternalLinks function, trying to improve
> speed. Tracking the "does this article exist" mechanism, I ended up at
> the preFill function in LinkCache.php, which reads all existing links
> for a page in a single query, avoiding zillions of queries later.
>
> Now my question: Is there a reason why it doesn't pre-fill the "bad
> links" array as well? That would save some time on all pages with more
> than one broken link, would it not?

On the English wiki at least (where performance is critical), most links
are live. It's fairly rare to have more than one or two broken links on
a page, so a prefill on those might not save much.

On the other hand it shouldn't be much slower in the common case. If you
want to add it, feel free.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Nice article in The Guardian

body:
Is there a URL for this?

The Cunctator wrote:

> On Thu, 2003-01-30 at 09:05, Gareth Owen wrote:
> > Perusing my paper over lunch, I spotted a nice write up of the project in
> > todays Guardian.
> >
> > Highlights :
> > "perhaps one of the greatest testaments to the generosity on the web"
> > "What makes the Wikipedia so compelling - and this article so hard to finish -
> >  is the way everything is so massively linked. You read one entry, and before
> >  you know it, you're reading up on Anne Boleyn or Italian greyhounds."
> >
> Not bad for the press, even though they got the URL wrong, credited
> Sanger with the creation of Wiktionary, and utterly mangled the
> definition of WikiWiki.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-30 at 03:17, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> What's the wikipedia-purpose of a counter increment on every page
> view?  Just to know which pages are popular?  We could get the same
> information easily enough from a log analysis program, which I could
> offload to a less-busy server.  Or we could just do without the
> information easily enough.  It's not really that useful.  Or am I
> missing something?

I wouldn't miss seeing them go. The counters are fairly arbitrary; they
don't indicate how much time has passed since they began. They include
hits from search engine spiders and the same people passing over the
page multiple times by accident.

The only thing they're used for is the count at the bottom of the page
view, and the Popular Pages list. And they're inaccurate for both.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
wrote:
> You don't trust wikipedians ?
> Perhaps you ran into trouble on english wikipedia
> that we don't know on the
> french one.
> But, just with basic features, it is possible to
> create fully unreadable
> articles ;o)
> I preview the answer but... can't we add features
> for one wikipedia in
> particular (french one for exemple) if all those
> wikipedians agree ?

I don't agree :-)))

__________________________________________________
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body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-30 at 03:23, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Takuya Murata wrote:
> > I mean is there someone who made the final decision?
>
> In theory that's me, and for anything that really affects real policy
> in a real way, it should be discussed before implemented.  On the
> other hand, lots of minor changes go in whenever the developers feel
> like it.

Just like wiki. :)

> Erik instituted subpages on talk and user spaces and asked the world
> about it at the same time that it was installed.  That wasn't really
> best practice.  It turned out o.k., though, because in the ensuing
> discussion it turned out that I was pretty much the only person
> against it.
>
> Generally, though, major things should be discussed before being
> implemented.

Subpage support features for user-space had, in fact, been discussed on
the mailing list before, and was approved by many. (If it hadn't, I
definitely would have taken it out when installing updates.) The key
feature, though, which still hasn't gotten done, is changing the
'contribs' and 'email' links on subpages to point to the user!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
>Very soon now, the server will be owned by the nonprofit
foundation.

Oh, really. Do you have more information regarding this? I'd
love to mention about this in wikipedia article.


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
I didn't solicited a design class ;o)
I will use small bar in the french wikipedia and if you don't want to create
a WikiSyntax for this I will still using HTML, no problem for me.
But I don't understand your argument that give to wikipedian more features
will make wikipedia more confuse and chaotic... (same argument that for
anchors).
You don't trust wikipedians ?
Perhaps you ran into trouble on english wikipedia that we don't know on the
french one.
But, just with basic features, it is possible to create fully unreadable
articles ;o)
I preview the answer but... can't we add features for one wikipedia in
particular (french one for exemple) if all those wikipedians agree ?

Aoineko

> On Mit, 2003-01-29 at 06:28, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> > Bonjour!
> >
> > The bars drown with ---- are good to separate completely different part
of a
> > text, but we may enjoy to use also small bars (for exemple 100 pixel
width)
> > to separate paragraph.
>
> Sorry, but that's a bad idea. One rule of good design is only to use
> design elements - like fonts, italics etc. - when necessary. Adding more
> formatting "fluff" will make some people use it excessively, just like
> the smiley-pictures on messageboards or colors in email clients. This
> will make Wikipedia more confusing and chaotic. It's bad enough with the
> normal <hr>, its use should be limited as much as possible.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> --
> FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
> Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Open-Site.org]

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Vlad from the Open-site project (open-site.org), another free
> encyclopedia just starting, answered to my "merger" proposal. I
> forward this to the list for discussion.
>
>Hello Magnus,
>
>Another integration possibility would be code-only, it would be cool to have
>the same code power both projects. See http://open-site.org/code for more
>details.
>
>Anyway, I hope we find the time to explore those possibilities in the future,
>in order to provide to the Internet community the best opened content
>possible.
>
>Vlad.
>
I don't know that integration would be the way to go, but there is still
plenty of room for co-operation.  Jimbo raised some interesting points
around the copyright issue.  When I looked through Open-site my
impression was that this whole matter has simply no been thought
through.  There is a copyright notice on the bottom of each page.  On
the help page after a routine admonition against using copyright
material there is, "It's of vital importance to keep the open character
of open-site, therefore we can't accept submissions that violate the
copyright laws. We must pay special attention, in order not to stop the
flow of information due to patents that are applied to our information."
 That's all there is, and I find that last sentence to be cryptic.  Does
this suggest that Open-site is proprietary?

They are younger project, and I see nothing in there about how they
would handle such issues as NPOV and vandalism.  These are bound to be
perpetual problems for any open encyclopedia project.

Some of their presentation and material organization is interesting, and
they to have a Rumanian language section which we don't.

Personally, I don't at this time support any kind of merger.  It may in
fact be healthy to have competing projects each attracting its own
particular blend of contributors.  On the other hand the free sharing of
content and code to the benefit of both projects would be a perfectly
healthy activity.

When it comes to copyright, the real problem is not going to be with
people who put copyrighted material into an on-line encyclopedia.
 That's easily removed as soon as it's recognized.  It's going to be
with people who try to claim personal copyrights on openly licensed or
even public domain material.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikitech-l] Old table locking

body:
On Mit, 2003-01-29 at 21:22, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Just a note; of our current slowdowns, many are coming from locks on the
> 'old' table (which is still MyISAM, not the new table type). I'm going to
> try tweaking the sort buffer a bit, as I notice a lot of the stuck threads
> are in "sorting" state.

Can we convert it to InnoDB? I think we don't need to take the site down
for long to do this, we could do it on a separate machine, then copy the
files back and insert all rows which have a newer timestamp (this
requires some downtime, but probably not much). Do we have a machine we
could use for this?

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
On Don, 2003-01-30 at 02:36, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> But I don't understand your argument that give to wikipedian more features
> will make wikipedia more confuse and chaotic... (same argument that for
> anchors).
> You don't trust wikipedians ?

When it comes to design, no. Wiki tends to develop very chaotically
(just look at the many different ways we disambiguate pages), and I
would like to see more standards, and perhaps templates, long before new
formatting tricks.

> But, just with basic features, it is possible to create fully unreadable
> articles ;o)

Indeed. That's why we don't need more.

> I preview the answer but... can't we add features for one wikipedia in
> particular (french one for exemple) if all those wikipedians agree ?

No way, all Wikipedias run on the same codebase. But you can try to
convince other people than myself to support your syntax. I think it's a
bad idea.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] DW banned - was: DW's new  threat

body:
As requested, I have enforced the "ban" on DW's username.

Banning someone by username can be done through the Wikipedia web interface only by a user with "developer" rights -- currently, there are 4 of us:
* Brion Vibber
* Lee Daniel Crocker (LDC)
* Magnus Manske
* Ed Poor

Just execute a "change query" to change the exiled user's "password" field (which is actually encrypted) to something in clear text, e.g., "banned for 2 weeks per so-and-so" -- which effectively prevents the user from logging in.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 6:05 AM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] DW's new threat

I told DW, pointblank, not to insult people.  But DW continues to
behave in this way.  So, goodbye DW.  It's time for a ban.

Could some sysop make this happen... AND, I'm sorry to have to ask,
but what's the best procedure for me to do this myself?

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


from_name: P Philippe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Race

body:
Good evening,

I have a very difficult problem on the french
wikip?dia. I got here maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago. I read
all the information provided, that explain what
wikipedia is, and especally, the fact it is respecting
neutrality, and that everypoint of view should be
there.

I am rather biaised it is true, but I think the other
people are also biaised. I have been very strongly
insulted, many times. It is true that at first my
texts were not very neutral. But I have made efforts
and I am still insulted. What I write is deleted, and
I am call a vandal.

This evening, I wrote several things about racisme and
racialisme, and race.

All my texts were deleted several times. Racialisme
because Aoineko said it do not exist. Race because it
is not true it exist human races. But I know that some
people agree that humans are made of several races.

The definition of race I gave is:

Une race est un terme  d?finissant un groupe humain
qui serait distinct des autres par des
caract?ristiques biologiques particuli?res. On a
baptis? racialisme, la croyance persistante en
l'existence de races.

This text is deleted and Aoineko said it was un "tas
de merde". Just because they say race do not exist, so
this article should not exist

I think it must exist. What do you think ?

Regards

Philippe

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body:
On Don, 2003-01-30 at 05:09, Takuya Murata wrote:

> Actually I am not so sure about what is more democratic
> system. I said the system of wikipedia should be more
> democratic because it seems to me that the decision about
> the wikipedia system doesn't reflect well the opinion among
> the majority of wikipedians,

Actually, the wiki code is developed in a manner very similar to wiki
articles themselves. CVS access is granted fairly liberally, so almost
anyone can modify the software. Like wiki, CVS stores all previous
revisions, so it's always possible to revert if necessary. To avoid
problems, we use a manual mechanism similar to FileCopy, in the form of
Brion occasionally updating the live sever. This part could be more
formalized, and probably should be eventually.

Given this, I'm surprised we don't have more active coders. Right now,
it's mostly Brion, Magnus, Tomasz (TeX) and me. There are really few
valid excuses not to participate, given that PHP is easy to learn and
all the tools you need are free. If you have time to work on Wikipedia
articles, you have time to work on Wikipedia code.

The only real difference is that you need to be a coder to participate.
Since we're dealing with code, I don't think this can be much improved.
Importing the code into wiki doesn't make much sense -- we should use
the right tool for the right job. CVS is tried and tested and works well
in this situation, so do SourceForge's tools.

When there are conflicts about features we try to resolve them either
before or after the feature is introduced, depending on personal
judgment. Knowing that there are *always* people who disagree about
something if you ask if there are people who disagree makes it tempting
to wait until someone complains *after* a feature has been added.
Compare it to asking on a Talk page before making a change, or just
making the change and waiting until someome complains.

But if by "democratic" you mean that the coders need to work on what the
non-coders decide then, sorry, that's not gonna happen. If you want
that, I have a long list of articles that I want to be written ..

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 06:46:22PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On mer, 2003-01-29 at 17:25, Jan Hidders wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 03:55:16PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > > On mer, 2003-01-29 at 14:15, Jan Hidders wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Not necessarily, row level locking causes sometimes a *lot* more overhead
> > > > and can block *more* than table level locking. I assume you have read the
> > > > manual but for good measure I will quote the relevant part anyway:
> > >
> > > If you have concrete suggestions on how to reform our code, I'd *love*
> > > to hear them. I say this in all seriousness; I freely admit that I'm new
> > > at this database stuff, and am unsure of the best course of action.
> >
> > Ok, sorry for being critical in an unhelpful way. But I would still want to
> > know if there was a concrete problem that you wanted to solve with row-level
> > locking, or would going back to full MyISAM be an option? My gut feeling is
> > that row locking really doesn't help much because our access patterns are a
> > lot of small reads (fetching pages), a few big reads (recent changes et
> > cetera) and relatively rare small updates that don't mind if they have to
> > wait a few seconds.
>
> Well, an update (counter increment) comes with every page view, and we
> often have several edits per minute.

True, I had forgotten about those. But these are really tiny updates, and
requesting a row lock is sometimes implemented such that it excludes other lock
requests on the table until the lock is granted or refused. Remember that a
lock request is in some sense also an update operation and one that
necessarily has to use a coarser locking protocol than the one it
implements.

Sorry I can't be of more help now, because I really have to get to my work
now. I'll see if I can find some time this evening. I did look at the result
of EXPLAIN and I agree that they look Ok.

-- Jan Hidders

 .---------------------------------------------------------------------.
 | Post-doctoral researcher               e-mail: jan.hidders at ua.ac.be |
 | Dept. Math. & Computer Science         tel: (+32) 3 820 2427        |
 | University of Antwerp, room J1.06      fax: (+32) 3 820 2421        |
 | (UIA) Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk - Antwerpen   (Belgium)  |
 `---------------------------------------------------------------------'


subject: [Wikitech-l] [hardy@math.mit.edu: edit conflicts]

body:
On Mit, 2003-01-29 at 22:24, Michael Hardy wrote:
> > yes, we need a better way to handle edit conflicts; but in any case,
> > your work should not be destroyed! Unless something went very wrong,
> > you should be given two edit windows, one with the new version saved
> > by someone else and one with your version, and a list of changes.
>
>
>      This has not happened.  I was using a version of Netscape
> that may not be up-to-date; I'm not sure what would happen on
> Mozilla or Internet Explorer.

Please let me know if you can reproduce this problem, and if so, under
which conditions it appears.

> > 2) Show a warning if someone has started to edit the text < x minutes
> > before you have

>      Or maybe a warning if they start to edit _while_ you are
> editing,

We can only show the warning when the edit page is loaded, i.e. to the
person editing after another person has started doing so. We need a time
limit because otherwise people could get the warning indefinitely if
someone opens an edit window and doesn't save.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
On Don, 2003-01-30 at 12:17, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Well, an update (counter increment) comes with every page view, and we
> > often have several edits per minute.
>
> What's the wikipedia-purpose of a counter increment on every page
> view?  Just to know which pages are popular?  We could get the same
> information easily enough from a log analysis program, which I could
> offload to a less-busy server.  Or we could just do without the
> information easily enough.  It's not really that useful.  Or am I
> missing something?
>
> Even if this is thought by Jan and others to be only a small part of
> the performance problem, it's probably philosophically good for us to
> get in the habit of thinking "unless this feature is free or really
> really useful, we should do without it".  That is, we already have a
> bad case of feature-itis, and taking a hardline on such things might
> be very helpful.

Yeah, the counters are wildly inaccurate anyway because they've been
disabled so often. Let's just get rid of them entirely. A most popular
ranking by URL would still be neat though.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On Thu, 2003-01-30 at 09:05, Gareth Owen wrote:
> Perusing my paper over lunch, I spotted a nice write up of the project in
> todays Guardian.
>
> Highlights :
> "perhaps one of the greatest testaments to the generosity on the web"
> "What makes the Wikipedia so compelling - and this article so hard to finish -
>  is the way everything is so massively linked. You read one entry, and before
>  you know it, you're reading up on Anne Boleyn or Italian greyhounds."
>
Not bad for the press, even though they got the URL wrong, credited
Sanger with the creation of Wiktionary, and utterly mangled the
definition of WikiWiki.


body:
>But if you mean "democratic" as in voting, then no,
we
don't do that.

I didn't mean that. I don't believe in voting.
Actually I am not so sure about what is more
democratic
system. I said the system of wikipedia should be more
democratic because it seems to me that the decision
about
the wikipedia system doesn't reflect well the opinion
among
the majority of wikipedians, if not totally. First,
simply
really few people subscribe this mailing list. Second,
changes are somewhat invisible. Basically there is no
announcement about the changes. For example, new text
for
new pages. (Forget the talk pages or Village pump.
They
exist for conversation not for announcement) I don't
want to mean people who have access to CVS should
speak more (I am implying Brion). I am saying we
should make
the management (including decision-making) more
visible and
closer to oridanly wikipedians. Sure, now people
dicuss in
Village pump or some send direct message to Brion
personally
in his talk page. But it is not the democracy in the
essence. Wikipedia is great because not only it is
free, open-content
but also because it is democratic. People made
decision in
their own. People go where they want to go without
discussion. The important distinction is wikipedia is
the
place where not the rulers listen to people's demands
but
all of people rule. Sorry I am just talking about
something abstract. But this
is why I felt the management should be more
democratic. And
again I don't know practical way.

Hello Takuya

What you say makes a lot of sense. I agree the current
system is far from being the perfect one.

Just wanted to add that if people want to get
involved, they may come here if they want. But, if all
the discussions take place on the en.wiki, you just
remove internationals the possibility to say their
word too. We can't follow what is happening on the en.wiki.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] hacker.wikipedia.org

body:
> If you know UseMod and meatball, my proposal is akin
> to the
> relationship among UseMod and meatball.
>
> Yes, there is a meat-wikipedia. But as we know,
> meta-
> wikipedia doesn't work well. There are plenty of
> dead stuff,
> which look weird and make strangers difficult to
> participate. There are even non-English stuff.
> Meta-wiki may
> be good place to put a draft, submit a proposal but
> it is
> not suitable for developers.
>
> What do you think?

I thank you for giving new ideas. I looking forward to
your next mails.
But please avoid sentences such as "There are plenty
of dead stuff, which look weird and make strangers
difficult to participate. There are even non-English
stuff"

It might be considered as offensive by some :-)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

in_reply_to: <1043926654.1283.27.camel@chesoo.fokus.gmd.de>; from e.moeller@fokus.gmd.de on Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 12:37:34PM +0100

body:
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 12:37:34PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> On Don, 2003-01-30 at 12:17, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Brion Vibber wrote:
> > > Well, an update (counter increment) comes with every page view, and we
> > > often have several edits per minute.
> >
> > What's the wikipedia-purpose of a counter increment on every page
> > view?  Just to know which pages are popular?  We could get the same
> > information easily enough from a log analysis program, which I could
> > offload to a less-busy server.  Or we could just do without the
> > information easily enough.  It's not really that useful.  Or am I
> > missing something?
> >
> > Even if this is thought by Jan and others to be only a small part of
> > the performance problem, it's probably philosophically good for us to
> > get in the habit of thinking "unless this feature is free or really
> > really useful, we should do without it".  That is, we already have a
> > bad case of feature-itis, and taking a hardline on such things might
> > be very helpful.
>
> Yeah, the counters are wildly inaccurate anyway because they've been
> disabled so often. Let's just get rid of them entirely. A most popular
> ranking by URL would still be neat though.

I couldn't agree more. Whatever type of locking we are going to use,
restricting ourselves to read-only operations for page views is better for
concurrency and performance.

-- Jan Hidders

 .---------------------------------------------------------------------.
 | Post-doctoral researcher               e-mail: jan.hidders at ua.ac.be |
 | Dept. Math. & Computer Science         tel: (+32) 3 820 2427        |
 | University of Antwerp, room J1.06      fax: (+32) 3 820 2421        |
 | (UIA) Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk - Antwerpen   (Belgium)  |
 `---------------------------------------------------------------------'


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Open-Site.org]

body:
Vlad from the Open-site project (open-site.org), another free
encyclopedia just starting, answered to my "merger" proposal. I forward
this to the list for discussion.

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from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] DW's new  threat

body:
Unfortunately, DW doesn't always log in, and when he doesn't, he uses lots of different IP addresses.
Zoe
 Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:I told DW, pointblank, not to insult people. But DW continues to
behave in this way. So, goodbye DW. It's time for a ban.

Could some sysop make this happen... AND, I'm sorry to have to ask,
but what's the best procedure for me to do this myself?

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

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
Hello

Here's the texte I posted today for racialisme

"Le '''racialisme''' est relatif ? la conviction qu'?
une personne de l'existence de [[race]]s. Le terme est
utilis? dans les sciences humaines et en particulier
par [[Pierre-Andr? Taguieff]].

Le racialisme est le fait de d?signer une personne
comme ?tant d'une race ou d'une autre, plut?t que par
exemple d'une couleur ou d'une autre. Par exemple, un
article reportant un accident dans un journal, et
indiquant qu'un conducteur est blanc est du
racialisme."

------------

Here's the comment I had on the discussion page (of
course, my definition was deleted)

''Rigoles pas des genoux ? part toi personne ne
connais ce mot. Consid?res que par d?faut ce que dit
Aoineko est vrai ton mot c'est pipot i.e. dans aucun
dico ! C'est une encyclop?die pas un d?pliant du FN.
En attendant laisse b?ton. Merde, je suis peut ?tre
que ma?tre es science, mais mes notions scientifiques
sont suffisantes pour savoir que tes th?ories sont
aussi scientifiques que celle sur les aliens. Jul''

Is it a proper way to talk to people ?

---------

There are hits on google about racialisme. Some are
from the french embassy, some on antiracist
associations
people like Taguieff and Poliakov, and Barthes are
talking about this

But french people consider the word don't exist, they
insult me, and delete my article

They replaced my article with

"Terme invent? par des groupes racistes dans le but de
nier le racisme.
Ce mot n'existe officiellement pas."

--------

Do you think that definition is correcte ??? I don't
think so; and I think many people would disagree with
it, not only me.

But, it is the definition that is on Wikip?dia now.

I don't know if people other then french speak french
here. But, if they do, can they give their advice
please ?

I think it is totally untrue that wikipedia is
neutral. It is not. Unless you do something, and tell
them not to delete what I write.
I tried to merge my texte and their texte, but they
deleted mine again.

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from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
Perusing my paper over lunch, I spotted a nice write up of the project in
todays Guardian.

Highlights :
"perhaps one of the greatest testaments to the generosity on the web"
"What makes the Wikipedia so compelling - and this article so hard to finish -
 is the way everything is so massively linked. You read one entry, and before
 you know it, you're reading up on Anne Boleyn or Italian greyhounds."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,884666,00.html
or linked from [[Wikipedia:Press_coverage]] (by Rbrwr)
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The Wikipedia Foundation

body:
> We're not waiting for anything.  This is in the
> works now.

Hmm... am I not on the list where they're discussing
this?  I think this new change of mailing lists has
really left me out of things.  :(

Chuck

=====
Interesting fact:  Google returns more
results for "Esperanto" than for "Catalan"
----------------------------------------
Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

___________________________________________________
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from_name: Takuya Murata

subject: [Wikipedia-l] hacker.wikipedia.org

body:
Hello, everyone

I am not interested in the policy of wikipedia at all. While
it can be better still, I think the current policy (NPOV,
for instance) and the syntax (wiki-markup language) are
adequate and have no intention to discuss them.

My concern is about the administration of wikipedia, or the
server, database stuff and the development of wikipedia. It
seems there is a lot of problems and they are goind to be
even worse.

In theory, yes, CVS of wikipedia code is open for anyone who
is willing to contribute and should be work just like wiki.
Alas! the reality is different, if not totally. As we know,
quite a few of people are actually coding, compared with the
number and diversity of wikipedians. Unlike the article in
wikipedia,

I posted this for responding to the advice by Jimbo.
However, if here is not appreciate place to submit this kind
of mail, please let me know and I will seek another place to
conduct the discussion.

Therefore,

I would like to proposal:

1. Disclose more information

While none of details are hidden, surely strangers have
almost no information to hack. ("How to become a wikipedia
hacker" in meta-wikipedia has a lack of critical information
and is heavliy underused.)

2. Organize the development system

See UseMod. It has a far better developer community then
wikipedia software.

We should stop immediately relying on the individual
efforts. For example, many people simply post a bug to
Brion, knowing he is responsible for the wikipedia software.
Even he encourages people to report a bug to *him*. I don't
blame him as well as others like him but really appreciate
them. But such a case is not ought to be in wikipedia.

3. Make wikipedia software more visible and independent

Maybe we need a nice name for wikipedia software to make it
more recognizable.

-- Therefore, --

the practical solution (I think but should not be limited
to) is probably:

set up hacker.wikipedia.org or sister project dedicated to
development software tools for wikipedia. In additon to the
server software hosting wikipedia, the software programs may
include another useful tools for wikipedians (maybe chat
tools, if someone would like to persuite )

The site can embrace services for the sites hosting
wikipedia software other than wikipedia.org (actually I am
planning to switch the wiki program of my wiki to wikipedia
software).

If you know UseMod and meatball, my proposal is akin to the
relationship among UseMod and meatball.

Yes, there is a meat-wikipedia. But as we know, meta-
wikipedia doesn't work well. There are plenty of dead stuff,
which look weird and make strangers difficult to
participate. There are even non-English stuff. Meta-wiki may
be good place to put a draft, submit a proposal but it is
not suitable for developers.

What do you think?

Best wishes,
Takuya Murata
takusi at manjiro.net


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] LinkCache Prefill

body:
I am working on the replaceInternalLinks function, trying to improve
speed. Tracking the "does this article exist" mechanism, I ended up at
the preFill function in LinkCache.php, which reads all existing links
for a page in a single query, avoiding zillions of queries later.

Now my question: Is there a reason why it doesn't pre-fill the "bad
links" array as well? That would save some time on all pages with more
than one broken link, would it not?

Magnus


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:53:51AM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> On Don, 2003-01-30 at 02:36, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> > I preview the answer but... can't we add features for one wikipedia in
> > particular (french one for exemple) if all those wikipedians agree ?
>
> No way, all Wikipedias run on the same codebase. But you can try to
> convince other people than myself to support your syntax. I think it's a
> bad idea.

We will have to make formatting language-specific in the future anyway,
to get CJK, right-to-left and other non-Latin languages right.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
Excerpt from the french-speaking wikipedia today

===========

Au passage je rappelle que les tribunaux fran?ais ont
condamn?s yahoo pour la mise en vente d'objet nazis.
L'expression de th?ories, racistes, x?nophobes,
antis?mites peuvent faire l'objet de poursuites
p?nales m?me si le serveur est h?berg? aux ?tats Unis.
Pour permettre ? wikipedia d'?tre accessible, je me
permet donc de supprimer tout article qui contredisent
directement le premier et le deuxi?me  article de la
d?claration universelle des droits de l'Homme :

Article 1

Tous les ?tres humains naissent libres et ?gaux en
dignit? et en droits. Ils sont dou?s de raison et de
conscience et doivent agir les uns envers les autres
dans un esprit de fraternit?.

Article 2

1.Chacun peut se pr?valoir de tous les droits et de
toutes les libert?s proclam?s dans la pr?sente
D?claration, sans distinction aucune, notamment de
race, de couleur, de sexe, de langue, de religion,
d'opinion politique ou de toute autre opinion,
d'origine nationale ou sociale, de fortune, de
naissance ou de toute autre situation.

2.De plus, il ne sera fait aucune distinction fond?e
sur le statut politique, juridique ou international du
pays ou du territoire dont une personne est
ressortissante, que ce pays ou territoire soit
ind?pendant, sous tutelle, non autonome ou soumis ?
une limitation quelconque de souverainet?.

dura lex, sed lex

Voil?. Jul

---------------

The google translation (I feel lazy, I will just
correct it quickly :-))

"
By the way, I recall you that the French courts
condemned yahoo for the setting on sale of Nazis
object.  The expression of racists, xenophobes,
anti-semites theories can be the subject of penal
continuations even if the server is hosted in the
United States.  To allow wikipedia to be accessible, I
thus will delete any article which directly
contradicts the first and the second article of the
universal declaration of the humans right:
"

This is a point of view rather widely followed on the
"FRENCH" wikipedia (sorry canadian folks :-) - ey,
this is humour !)

I don't think I need to translate the 1rst 2nd and 3rd
articles of ONU. I am sure you all know them. This is
the french wikipedia charter. Beware !!!

Comments anyone ???

Shall we proceed on this way ?

Or not ?

NB : do you think speciesm would be acceptable by the
ONU point of view ? May I move the article to meta if
not ?

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from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-30 at 15:33, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> Sorry for bothering again but I very much agree with
> the above. Having no solution, it is at least good to
> talk about it (clear and visible management, democracy, etc).

Great!

> Maybe, closing down meta.wikipedia.org is a good idea?

What??! Why??

Are you saying that discussion about the site should be hidden away on a
secret "hackers-only" wiki where people can't find it instead of the
open-to-everyone meta wiki?

Or buried in a thousands-of-edits-per-day encyclopedia where people
can't find it instead of a more leisurely specifically-for-discussion-
about-running-the-site meta wiki? Buried on the English Wikipedia where
people coming from other languages won't have a *clue* how to find
things, and people who don't speak English don't have a chance of having
their voices heard?

I say NO to that. Closing meta would be undemocratic, bigoted, and wrong
in every way.

> Designers, developers, programmers, administrators, etc should be
> on the 'normal' wikipedia, they should _not_ be 'gods'.

Not sure what this means.

> This relates to (inter)language problem: there is no
> central wikipedia (or do you regard the English-speaking
> one, www.wikipedia.org, as the central one?).

meta.wikipedia.org is the central wiki for discussion about the workings
of Wikipedia and plans for changing it. It is officially multilingual,
and open to all (though _so far_ most content is only in English).

> Wikipedia thus already DOES work with distributed
> servers, isn't it? (Spanish wikipedia is on another machine
> than the Dutch, and the English, etc?)

They're all on the same machine, and will be integrated further when the
user accounts and upload sections are rolled into one to avoid the
numerous headaches encountered currently by people working in multiple
languages (separate logins; have to copy images multiple times, have to
put in interlanguage links multiple times, etc).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] hacker.wikipedia.org

body:
>Meta should be about
>
>- meta-project: discussing and formulating project-wide
(i.e. not
>language-specific) policies; organizing events, contests
etc.
>- meta-content: organizing and preparing content, e.g.
templates; language
>files
>- meta-code: coordinating the development process - bugs,
features etc.

If the meta-wikipedia got rid of mess, I don't have any
reason to hesitate to use meta for development of wiki
software.

Takuya Murata


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
Ah, another thing

Curry is asking for the banning.

I put here the last articles posted on the french
wikipedia that are triggering this wish.

On race
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Race&oldid=25534

On racisme anti-blanc
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Racisme_%E0_l%27envers&oldid=25580

On racialisme
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Racialisme&oldid=25542

On racisme et homosexualit?
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Homosexualit%E9_et_religion&oldid=25372

On islam and homosexualit?
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Islam_et_homosexualit%E9&oldid=25414

-----

I say "this is really shocking, isn't it"

My fellow seem to consider these writings are
non-acceptable by french law, thus should not be on
Wikipedia.

Okay, off I am :-)

Anthere

---------
---------

These pages triggered this comment

"

Tu peux appeler mon comportement de "l'intol?rance" et
de la censure, consid?re plut?t que c'est :

l'expression arbitraire de la ligne ?ditoriale d'une
encyclop?die qui se veut universelle,
contrairement aux ?tats-Unis et au Premier amendement
de la Constitution am?ricaine, nous pensons, en
Europe, qu'il est l?gitime de limiter la libert?
d'expression lorsque celle-ci porte atteinte ? la
dignit? de l'homme, aux droits d'autrui, et aux
valeurs qui fondent la d?mocratie,
un moyen de se prot?ger par rapport ? la loi de propos
facilement interpr?table comme d?lictueux.
La discrimination et le racisme sont beaucoup plus que
des d?lits, punis p?nalement, ils sont une atteinte
aux valeurs qui fondent la d?mocratie. Celle-ci
reconna?t l'?gale dignit? de chaque citoyen ?
participer ? la chose publique, ? poursuivre son
bonheur et son ?panouissement.

Le l?gislateur n'a cess? au fil du temps, et
particuli?rement apr?s la seconde guerre mondiale, de
compl?ter le dispositif l?gislatif afin de r?primer
plus efficacement toutes les formes de racisme,
d'antis?mitisme et de x?nophobie. Il a pour cela cr??
un certain nombre d'incriminations d'une part dans le
code p?nal, d'autre part dans la loi du 29 juillet
1881 sur la libert? de la presse et dans la loi
relative ? la communication audiovisuelle.

Il faut le redire, l'Internet n'est pas une zone de
non-droit car le droit positif fran?ais permet de
r?primer la diffusion de tout discours raciste ou
r?visionniste, par quelque moyen que ce soit et quel
qu'en soit le support, pour reprendre les termes m?mes
du code p?nal.

Un d?lit commis dans le cyberespace n'en demeure pas
moins un d?lit.

Pour avoir ?t? commis dans l'espace virtuel, le d?lit
n'en est pas moins r?el. A cet ?gard, la r?volution
num?rique ne cr?e pas de r?volution juridique pour
reprendre le th?me des premi?res rencontres
parlementaires sur l'Internet qui se sont d?roul?es ?
l'Assembl?e nationale le 3 octobre 1999.

sign? Jul

"

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] hacker.wikipedia.org

body:
On 1/30/03 4:02 PM, "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> hacker.wikipedia.org is a bad idea. The solution is not to create *yet
> another Wikipedia* which we have to check, but to clean up meta, which is
> currently used for purposes which are clearly beyond its mission (i.e.
> whenever some unfixable idiosyncratic crap is posted to Wikipedia and the
> person posting it insists on keeping it, the solution is "let's move it to
> meta").
>
Forums would help.


from_name: J.T. Stanton II

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for administrator privileges

body:
  Hello . . .

Writing to request sysop status - my motivation is simple : * -based sex
practice
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Scrotum-based_sex_practice&action=edit>,
Like This, queef, ulm, Tea bag sex position, teabagging, John Cheese,
Erectile Bone, Cabinet of Canada
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Canada> . . .  ad infinitum.
 I've no doubt that this kind of nonsense would eventually get caught
with or without me, but what's the point in waiting for someone else to
come along and clean it up if my fair amount of spare time and
T3-and-friendly-boss-equipped day job give me the ample opprotunity to
help keep the 'pedia tidy ? After all, *someone* has to finish
classifying and deleting all those orphaned talk pages . . .

Anyway . . . take a look at the 'votes for deletion' page, and tell me
everyone's life wouldn't be easier if I could just dump garbage like '
Arise Oh Compatriots Nigerias Call Obey ' myself.  :' )

~ J.T.  ( Tzaquiel )


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for administrator privileges

body:
   Hello . . .

Writing to request sysop status - my motivation is simple : * -based sex
practice,
Like This, queef, ulm, Tea bag sex position, teabagging, John Cheese,
Erectile Bone, Cabinet of Canada  . . .  ad infinitum.
  I've no doubt that this kind of nonsense would eventually get caught
with or without me, but what's the point in waiting for someone else to
come along and clean it up if my fair amount of spare time and
T3-and-friendly-boss-equipped day job give me the ample opprotunity to
help keep the 'pedia tidy ? After all, *someone* has to finish
classifying and deleting all those orphaned talk pages . . .

Anyway . . . take a look at the 'votes for deletion' page, and tell me
everyone's life wouldn't be easier if I could just dump garbage like '
Arise Oh Compatriots Nigerias Call Obey ' myself.  :' )

~ J.T.  ( Tzaquiel )

PS : I might've cross-posted this to the Wikipedia list - if so, all
apologies !


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-30 at 16:11, Anthere wrote:
> Ah, another thing
>
> Curry is asking for the banning.

Of Philippe, no?

> I put here the last articles posted on the french
> wikipedia that are triggering this wish.
[snip]
> I say "this is really shocking, isn't it"
>
> My fellow seem to consider these writings are
> non-acceptable by french law, thus should not be on
> Wikipedia.

Hmm... I can't speak for French law, of course...

> On race
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Race&oldid=25534
>
> On racisme anti-blanc
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Racisme_%E0_l%27envers&oldid=25580
>
> On racialisme
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Racialisme&oldid=25542

These all need *desperately* some contextualisation, as they are about
terms whose usage carries a point of view with them. Naked as they are,
these do strike me as 'the kind of thing a racist would say, then say
"hey! i'm not racist, just _racialist_, and see how innocent it is!"'.

I'd be rather curious to see what kind of law they might break,
though...

The current versions of these articles aren't necessarily the best way
to handle it; I think they would do better to discuss *and debunk*
racist notions as much as possible, putting them in the proper context
so when some kid hears about "racialism" or "reverse racism" and then
looks it up on Wikipedia they'll see a rational, neutral explanation of
what makes some people think and speak that way -- so they'll
_understand_ why to discount those ideas. Pretending the terms don't
exist or saying "oh, that's just what RACISTS think, if you touch them
it might rub off on you! stay away!" strikes me as ineffective, or even
counterproductive ("look, those Wikipedians are so biased they're afraid
to take us on rationally!"). There are lessons to be learned from the
evil that men do.

> On [religion] et homosexualit?
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Homosexualit%E9_et_religion&oldid=25372

It's a fact that some religions (or some religious traditions) consider
homosexuality a sin, and that some people use this as a basis for a
stance against gay rights.

Of course it needs expansion and detail (I would agree the current
revision is better). Compare:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_homosexuality

> On islam and homosexualit?
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Islam_et_homosexualit%E9&oldid=25414

That's a direct translation of the first two paragraphs of the English
article:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_of_homosexuality

Later revisions have I think improved it with mention that there are
somewhat more tolerant traditions in Islam as well.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
--- Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net> wrote:
> Hi Anthere!
>
> > Comments anyone ???
>
> Sorry Anthere, I must admit that I sometimes don't
> understand what
> you're talking about. This is also there case here.
>
> Could you give an example for that kind of article
> you're talking about?
>
>
> Kurt

Sorry Kurt

On race
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Race&oldid=25534

On racisme anti-blanc
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Racisme_%E0_l%27envers&oldid=25580

On racialisme
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Racialisme&oldid=25542

On racisme et homosexualit?
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Homosexualit%E9_et_religion&oldid=25372

On islam and homosexualit?
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Islam_et_homosexualit%E9&oldid=25414

I didnot remember you understood french.

How "wrong" do these articles look like to you ???
Would you support banning the author ?

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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> Just execute a "change query" to change the exiled user's "password" field
> (which is actually encrypted) to something in clear text, e.g., "banned
> for 2 weeks per so-and-so" -- which effectively prevents the user from
> logging in.

Won't the user be able to request a new password?

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


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

> Is there a URL for this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,884666,00.html
or linked from [[Wikipedia:Press_coverage]] (by Rbrwr)

--
Gareth Owen


body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-30 at 21:20, Takuya Murata wrote:
> 2. Quit sourceforge. Objections?

Not until everything in that bug report list is fixed! :)

We can take the CVS backup tarball and move it elsewhere if desired.

> 3. Publishing wiki sourcecode in wiki and make it editable
> just like wikipedia articles.
>
> I don't know if this works but we can try.

Source is fragile enough that I'd be very wary of this. That, and I
really do want a better editor than Mozilla when working with code. ;)

>  Probably the
> first step is publishing "language.php"s and probably sysop
> applies them.

The current format of those files (a bunch of arrays and a class
definition in a PHP source file!) is horrible, arcane, and very very
fragile. (About half the updates I get submitted to me ends up with a
missing comma, an extra quotation mark, whatever, and hence syntax
error. And that includes the ones I make myself!)

What we need is a human-friendly interface for editing the messages,
being able to compare all or selected language versions of each one
side-by-side. The ability to incrementally and safely update 99% of this
stuff without waiting for a developer's intervention will be a big help
for newer language sections being established.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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