subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Challenge to Sheldon Rampton re: global warming

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Take a look at it yourself. Here's the verbatim passage from Ed's
> article on "Sun Myung Moon/tax case":
>
> >The government offered to drop all the charges if Rev. Moon would
> >give up his green card (permanent resident visa) and agree never to
> >visit the US again. Rev. Moon preferred to go to trial, professing
> >his belief in the fairness of American justice but saying that he
> >would not have been prosecuted if "his skin had been white or his
> >religion Episcopalian."
> >
> >Reference, please, for the government's offer and the quote (Sorry,
> >I could not find documentation; it's a story circulated among us UC
> >members -- Ed Poor .)
>
> It's clear from this that Ed could *not* find any documentation to
> support the assertions he made in the first paragraph. And since when
> is it proper form for Wikipedians to insert themselves directly into
> articles with first-person, signed asides? I thought that sort of
> thing belonged on the Talk page.

It does, generally.  In the very old days, this is how the tradition
of talk pages got started, i.e. to move 'meta-commentary' from the
article pages, so that the articles themselves always read like
encyclopedia articles.

> I'm not going to make these edits, because I'm not interested in
> working on articles about Rev. Moon or the Unification Church. The
> point I'm making is simply that I find it hypocritical for Ed to
> accuse *me* of dishonesty and bias over an article on global warming
> that I had barely touched, when Ed himself has made no effort to
> apply NPOV in his articles about his own church.

Well, like I say, I think Ed will make things right with you.  You're
both good, you're both kind, and whatever disagreements you may have
about politics or Moon or whatever, I think we all can agree that NPOV
is the way to go, and that saying things that are hurtful to others is
not beneficial to our project.

> >There are at least two views of how wikipedia articles should be
> >written -- the competitive view and the co-operative view.  Ed
> >is merely (and correctly, I think) advocating for the co-operative
> >view.
>
> Actions speak louder than words. How is it "co-operative" for Ed to
> look for pretexts with which to publicly impugn my character?

Well, if that's what happened, then it isn't co-operative.  But, Ed's
been around here for awhile, and I've seen him in action.  Like I say,
he'll make things right with you.

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kudos

in_reply_to: <oprj0953sfk4g8ki@news.gmane.org>; from dramatic@xtra.co.nz on Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 08:38:17AM +1300

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:
> Can I just take a minute to congratulate Wikipedians on the articles on the
> Columbia accident ( http://www.wikipedia.org/
> wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster ). The coverage is better than
> anything I found on other internet media or print media, and dispels many
> of the "jump to conclusions" storylines.
> Wikijournalism beats standard journalism :-)

It's funny, but everytime I talk to journalists, I assure them
(because I usually get a hostile-seeming question about it) that the
open content wiki model is good for an encyclopedia, but can't replace
journalistic writing of news stories.

But sometimes I wonder.  I, too, turned first to wikipedia (and added
a photo of one astronaut as 'payment' for the information got) for
solid, clear, unbiased, thorough background information... updated in
near-realtime, too.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] New quest account: User:MyPasswordIsYELLOW

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> You are now being quoted Jimbo:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MyPasswordIsYELLOW
>
> Can we stop this before it gets out of hand?

It strikes me that the very idea here is silly.  Anyone can login
and change the password *from* yellow to something else.  If any of
these accounts does anything bad, that account can be banned for it.

I just don't see what the author of these is thinking.

I have no problem with deleting these as fast as they show up.
We can treat it like any other vandalism.

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] redirect when Wikipedia is down

body:
On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 11:40:22AM +0000, Giskart wrote:
> Now when Wikipedia goes down all visitors of Wikipedia
> get a error.
>
> Wikipedians, the come back when the system is back up
> but new visitors mayby not.And it gives a bad impression.
>
> I would be very nice that when wikipedia.org goes down
> all traffic goes to a page that says that Wikipedia is
> down and will be back up as soon as possibel.

Even better would be to redirect to read only mirror,
updated nightly.


from_name: Philipp W.

subject: [Wikitech-l] Feature Suggestion

body:
Hello all,

I'm quiet new to Wikipedia... so let me say hello to everyone.
Dou did a great work!

I'd like to suggest a nice feature: Why not let users create a kind of
Template page with links like
[[law]]
[[businesslaw]]
....

every time a user access this page, wiki shows the content of
[[law]] and [[businesslaw]].... This would enable students to create
a easy printable page with all info nessesary to learn for a certain
subject...

warm regards, Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user report

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Please unblock these users. Blocking them just encourages the behavior.

How does it encourage the behavior?

> If I'm not mistaken, you have not been granted authority to block those
> usernames.

Implicitly, whoever created these accounts granted *anyone* authority
to block them by changing the passwords.  It's just a goofy idea,
that's all.

I'm not even understanding what the point of it is supposed to be.
Anonymity?  That's easily available already -- just create a new user,
it takes 5 seconds.

--Jimbo


from_name: Pedro M.V.

subject: [Wikitech-l] Temporally save page

body:
This is very interesting when there is a wikipedia server manteinance operation and the user cannot save it.

Regards.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Apology to Sheldon Rampton

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E0070469@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 05:15:22PM -0500

body:
Wow, now my whole day will be filled with WikiLove.  :-)

The week started off badly, with lots of fighting, but we've turned
the corner.  :-)

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Sheldon,
>
> I'm sorry I needled you and I insulted you, and I don't think that you're dishonest in any way. Nor do I think you have any opposition to our "neutral point of view policy" (NPOV). On the contrary, I applaud the respect you have shown for the arguments of people whose viewpoints differ from your own.
>
> Moreover, I appreciate the good-natured way you responded by placing on my user page a mirror image of the gratuitous comments I had placed on yours. With that and the help of a few friends, I quickly realized my mistake.
>
> I really am sorry, and I look forward to working together with you in a cooperative spirit.
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bug reports auto-notification

in_reply_to: <1044433881.1053.3193.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 12:31:21AM -0800

body:
I would like this, yes.  I never visit the bugtracker thing, but I'd
like to stay informed.

Brion Vibber wrote:

> Question: would anyone else like to receive automatic e-mail
> notification of bug reports and feature requests filed at the tracker on
> our SourceForge project?
>
> If so, I can set up an alias address which will reflect to interested
> parties and tell SF to send notices there instead of to me directly.
>
> (Yes, people *do* file bug reports at the tracker.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Good idea !!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tomasz Wegrzanowski" <taw at users.sourceforge.net>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 3:27 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] redirect when Wikipedia is down

> On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 11:40:22AM +0000, Giskart wrote:
> > Now when Wikipedia goes down all visitors of Wikipedia
> > get a error.
> >
> > Wikipedians, the come back when the system is back up
> > but new visitors mayby not.And it gives a bad impression.
> >
> > I would be very nice that when wikipedia.org goes down
> > all traffic goes to a page that says that Wikipedia is
> > down and will be back up as soon as possibel.
>
> Even better would be to redirect to read only mirror,
> updated nightly.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

in_reply_to: <200302041937.OAA19913@TheWorld.com>; from tompar@world.std.com on Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 02:37:31PM -0500

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:
> |I'm listening.  This sounds like a valid objection to this particular
> |technical detail.
>
> Should a system, flawed, dubious, that gives a fighting chance of
> tracking down a book be replaced by no system at all?

No, I don't think so.  A flawed, dubious system that sort of works is
preferable in this case to nothing at all.

> If there is a better method, Library of Congress or whatever in the
> future, then a 'bot can comb through the Wikipedia and replace all
> those ISBNs with better references.  Why send a 'bot out now to remove
> ISBNs when there is no replacement?  (Is there?)

We certainly shouldn't just remove them, they are informative, albeit
imperfectly so.

I'm merely endorsing a search for better alternatives.

--Jimbo


body:
>Hmm, one could put a short TTL on the DNS entry, and swap it to point to
>another machine in case of problems.
>
>However that could be problematic in terms of hugely increasing traffic
>for the DNS server.

I tried this several times... i don't think it is a good idea.
Isn't it possible to do a normal port-forwarding while doing some
work on the server?

Phil


from_name: Cunciforme

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user report

body:
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 08:48:34 +0000
> From: Jason Williams <jason at jasonandali.org.uk>
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user report
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
> On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 03:35:42PM -0500, The
> Cunctator wrote:
> > > > > In addition to blocking Isis at your and her
> mutual request, I also blocked 5 "MyPasswordIs"
> usernames. See below.
> > > > >
> > > > Please unblock these users. Blocking them just
> encourages the behavior.
> > >
> > > And cleaning up vandalism encourages vandals?
> > >
> > First: what's the connection between the above
> thread and your question?
>
> Quite simple; blocking users that subvert the system
> is equivalent to
> cleaning up after vandalism.

Depends on which side you are

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Apology to Sheldon Rampton

body:
Ed,

Thank you. That was very gracious. Jimbo and others have told me that
you're a good guy, and I believe them. As far as I'm concerned, this
little spat is settled.

You wrote:

>I look forward to working together with you in a cooperative spirit.

Ditto from my end.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Axel Boldt wrote:

> [[ref:article|title:...|author:...]]  could automatically link to
> searches on http://citeseer.nj.nec.com and http://arxiv.org until
> there's something better.

You might want to keep an eye on ParaCite, an article-locating service
which searches lots of different resources, including the two you mention.
It's still in the experimental stages at the moment, but it seems that it
could become very useful.

http://paracite.eprints.org/

Oliver

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


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Maintain language links, alpha version

body:
On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, Magnus Manske wrote:

> On the test wiki, I have created a special page to maintain
> interlanguage links. These are stored in a new database (wiki-intl).
> Please have a look at
>     http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special%3AIntl
> and try the examples.
>
> This is an early attempt at best. What will follow (if all of you
> approve the basic concept :-) is a link from each article to the "add"
> and "zoom" pages (see link above). For example, clicking on "Link
> another language" (or something) will bring up the "add a link" page,
> with source title and language filled in.
>
> Then, there should be an option to automagically generate missing
> language backlinks (probably on the "zoom" page).
>
>
> I called the page "international issues" because I hope that it will
> later hold the interface translation strings, as well as the user database.

Clicking on the links gives the following:

  While trying to retrieve the URL: http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?

  The following error was encountered:

      * Zero Sized Reply

Andre Engels


from_name: Jason Williams

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user report

body:
On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 03:35:42PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> > > > In addition to blocking Isis at your and her mutual request, I also blocked 5 "MyPasswordIs" usernames. See below.
> > > >
> > > Please unblock these users. Blocking them just encourages the behavior.
> >
> > And cleaning up vandalism encourages vandals?
> >
> First: what's the connection between the above thread and your question?

Quite simple; blocking users that subvert the system is equivalent to
cleaning up after vandalism.

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


body:
On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Andre Engels wrote:

> On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> > On the test wiki, I have created a special page to maintain
> > interlanguage links. These are stored in a new database (wiki-intl).
> > Please have a look at
> >     http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special%3AIntl
> > and try the examples.
> >
> > This is an early attempt at best. What will follow (if all of you
> > approve the basic concept :-) is a link from each article to the "add"
> > and "zoom" pages (see link above). For example, clicking on "Link
> > another language" (or something) will bring up the "add a link" page,
> > with source title and language filled in.
> >
> > Then, there should be an option to automagically generate missing
> > language backlinks (probably on the "zoom" page).
> >
> >
> > I called the page "international issues" because I hope that it will
> > later hold the interface translation strings, as well as the user database.
>
> Clicking on the links gives the following:
>
>   While trying to retrieve the URL: http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?
>
>   The following error was encountered:
>
>       * Zero Sized Reply

Ah! I found what's going on. The link does not work for anonymous users, but
it does for logged-in users.

Looks good, but there are some changes I would like to be made:

* Do something about the error above - preferably make it work for
  anonymous users; if that can't be done, remove the link.
* Allow more than one link to be added to a single page
* Show interlanguage links to existing and non-existing pages differently
  from those to existing pages
  (might be problematic because it needs information from several databases;
   perhaps it's better to check this once a day or so, accepting that it will
   sometimes be wrong)
* After a link has been added, don't go to the International issues main
  menu, but to the 'edit interlanguage links' page of the original page.
* Add a backlink to the page itself from its 'edit links' page.

Thank you for your work on this!

Andre Engels


from_name: Jason Richey

body:
This seems like the kind of thing that should be sent to wikitech-l
automatically.  Am I wrong in thinking this?

Jason

Brion Vibber wrote:

> Question: would anyone else like to receive automatic e-mail
> notification of bug reports and feature requests filed at the tracker on
> our SourceForge project?
>
> If so, I can set up an alias address which will reflect to interested
> parties and tell SF to send notices there instead of to me directly.
>
> (Yes, people *do* file bug reports at the tracker.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
> [[ref:book|title:Godel, Escher, Bach|author:Hofstadter]] is turned into
> a properly formatted link to a special page which allows to search
> library catalogs and (used) bookstores for a book with that title and
> with that author. A couple more fields could probably be defined, such
> as publisher, year, ISBN :-) etc., but they would be less useful for
> searching.
>
> [[ref:article|title:...|author:...]]  could automatically link to
> searches on http://citeseer.nj.nec.com and http://arxiv.org until
> there's something better.

Unfortunately, with the current parser we would have to write references in
one line, which would be hard to read. But that should be fixable. I think we
need another character than the pipe as field separator though. Perhaps
simply a line-end:

[[
ref:article
title:Ants and their habitats
author:Freiherr Josef v. Hungewurz
year: 1943
]]

Perhaps we als need:

[[
ref:http://www.wikipedia.org
title:Official Wikipedia website
browser:any
]]

I would want to be able to refer to a source using a unique ID, like in
BiBTeX, perhaps generated from last name + year + disambiguation identifier if
necessary. Here we could use the link syntax: [[#Meyer1987a,23-66]];
automatically turned into a footnote to the appropriate source (preferably using the
same counter as our [http://...] link counter).

Note I'm only referring to a single article here. It might also be cool to
build an encyclopedia-wide bibliography, but that would require a far more
complex system.

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!


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

in_reply_to: <1044415041.1046.13.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 07:17:21PM -0800

body:
On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 07:17:21PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On mar, 2003-02-04 at 14:10, Jan Hidders wrote:
> > 2. The ISBN numbers would not link to a single book store but to a special
> >    page that contains a list of links that each look the ISBN number up with
> >    another on-line book store that provides such a service.
>
> That's exactly what we do right now.

Ah, *blush*, then only my suggestion for an-article-for-every-book remains.
Would that make you happier, Axel?

-- Jan Hidders


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [brion@pobox.com: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Problem with
 "User Contributions"]

body:
On 5 Feb 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

> However a very active user who becomes inactive, and falls out of
> recentchanges, would still be slow to query. Jan and Lars have suggested
> using compound indexes which include the timestamp fields _and_ the user
> fields so it can both select and sort using the index, and that sounds
> reasonable in a sick sort of database-logic way. :)

Might it be possible to store all changes _already sorted_ by date? Then one
could just show the first 50 (or last 50 depending on sort order) hits
without the need of any further selection or sorting.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: redirect when Wikipedia is down

in_reply_to: <2687.62.46.118.186.1044442285.squirrel@mail.diewebdesigner.at>; from philipp@diewebdesigner.com on Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 11:51:25AM +0100

body:
Ah, in this situation, I agree that such a thing would be easy to do.
Our most recent outage (night before last) was due to server problems
that we don't comprehend at the moment.  Since this thread began the
next morning, I assumed that that was the type of outage we were
attempting to deal with.

For outages like these, it only takes a few moments to fix, assuming
someone calls me and asks me to (760-486-9194).  Other than that, I
don't think there is an easily workable solution.

Jason

Philipp W. wrote:

> Jason Richey wrote:
> > We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> > responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> > connected upstream.
> >
>
> I thought that the server is down for maintenance because someone is
> installing new software?
> So portforwarding would be possible....
>
> Phil
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


in_reply_to: <b1qo7q$4d6$1@main.gmane.org>; from Burak.Emir@epfl.ch on Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 11:17:28AM +0100

body:
I'm getting the feeling that I misunderstood what everyone meant when
this thread started.  I thought we were talking about times when we
have lost all contact with the server, but it seems that most everyone
is talking about when the server is not responding due to some sort of
maintenance (do we even do that?).

All I ever meant to say is that if we can't control the server at all
(that is, we can't login, and it doesn't serve any webpages), it is
unlikely that we will be able to perform any sort of redirect without
bringing in some new equipment to preempt the connection.  Also, in
this type of situation, it only takes me a moment to restart the
server once I am made aware of the situation, so it would be easier
and faster if somebody called me and told me instead of trying to
redirect all traffic from the server...

Jason

buraq wrote:

> Jason Richey wrote:
> > We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> > responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> > connected upstream.
> >
>
> It does not have to be that complicated. In principle, and if we assume
> that client browsers support the META redirect tag (after, say 120
> seconds), than a wikipedia mirror could welcome everybody who thirsts
> for knowledge, no ?
>
> cheers,
> buraq
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Account abuse -- innocent, or...?

body:
People have many motivations for concealing their identities. Here's one from a comic strip.

http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/luann/archive/images/luann20012193630205.gif

Ed Poor


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>On mer, 2003-02-05 at 00:25, Andre Engels wrote:
>
>
>>Ah! I found what's going on. The link does not work for anonymous users, but
>>it does for logged-in users.
>>
>>Looks good, but there are some changes I would like to be made:
>>
>>* Do something about the error above - preferably make it work for
>>  anonymous users; if that can't be done, remove the link.
>>
>>
>
>Agreed! It's a little confusing, in that it doesn't come up. :)
>
I'm working on it. Weird thing.

>>* Allow more than one link to be added to a single page
>>
>>
>
>Yes; often (but not always) the link chain is fairly straightforward,
>and a new article on 'Kofi Annan' in language X can be safely linked to
>all other languages' 'Kofi Annan' equivalent. The 'Missing links'
>function does this, but it's an extra step.
>
I hot-fixed this by reloading the "add" page for that article after
addition, similar to the user preferences page. I also added a link to
the "interlinked articles" page and to the "source" page, if one was
given. Will this do?
Another gimmick could be "Add this article under the same title to ALL
languages", for the "Kofi Annan" article, but that would, of course, add
lots of non-existing links.

>>* Show interlanguage links to existing and non-existing pages differently
>>  from those to existing pages
>>  (might be problematic because it needs information from several databases;
>>   perhaps it's better to check this once a day or so, accepting that it will
>>   sometimes be wrong)
>>
>>
>
>Shouldn't be too hard to add an 'exists' field to the ilinks table...?
>
Yes, but that means to hack the "page delete" function as well...
I might just do that!

>>* After a link has been added, don't go to the International issues main
>>  menu, but to the 'edit interlanguage links' page of the original page.
>>
Added a link, see above.

>>* Add a backlink to the page itself from its 'edit links' page.
>>
There is a backlink ("involved..."), but it links to the en: site, which
redirects to "www.", which is due to the test site.

>>Thank you for your work on this!
>>
>>
>
>Yes, go Magnus!!
>
Still waiting for those groupies ;-)

>Also, there are some weirdnesses with charsets. For sanity's sake, I
>recommend that *all* data in the ilinks table be UTF-8. On the wikis
>that remain in Latin-1 (hisss!), care should be taken to convert
>appropriately.
>
As I haven't touched the UTF-8/latin-1 functions at all, I'd appreciate
any help I can get there...

Also, we'll need a conversion function to read the existing language
links from the article texts, add them to the database, and remove them
from the text. Alternatively, we could leave them in the text and just
ignore them (as I do now on test), but that might get confusing...

Finally, someone should look into the table that holds the language
links. The fields should probably all be indices, I guess.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] New ilinks system

body:
Hi,

I really do like the new interlanguage links interface, and hope we can
put it in use ASAP. Some comments:

1) Can you check the code into CVS under a separate tag?

2) The interface is well done. It's a neat idea to have a separate edit
screen for this purpose, since editing interlanguage links and editing
text are reasonably separate. However, we probably want the
ilinks+add/edit links to show up on the edit screen as well.

3) We need to log interlanguage link edits. We can't use RC because of
the different logs involved. So we need an ilinks log similar to RC, and
an individual ilinks history as well as a recent_ilinks type page (which
could be integrated into RC). We need to do this to prevent unnoticed
link vandalism. Being able to roll back changes would be a plus. If we
implement that, we can open ilinks to anons, otherwise I suggest we do
not.

4) I'll probably do some layout edits on the interface. We do need the
ability to add several ilinks at once. I don't know if the nice language
dropdown really gains us speed as it's just too damn full. How about:

Source:      [en:Main Page            ]

Destination(s), one per line:
[de:Hauptseite                        ]
[                                     ]
[                                     ]
[                                     ]
[                                     ]

[Do it]

We already have the two language codes and everyone working on one of
those wikis knows them. (Add a link to the list just in case.) Without
the square brackets, there is fairly little typing involved.

5) Once I have the code, I'll probably add "Select all / Select none"
JavaScript buttons to the checkbox lists.

Regards,

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fixing redirects+disambiguation at the same time

body:
The #REDIRECT syntax is our ugliest, because it stands out and is
confusingly rendered as

1. foo

because # is also our numbering syntax.

The disambiguation pages are badly in need of standardization, as they
all look different. If we ever want to change the disambig text, we need
to do it manually on hundreds of pages.

We can solve both problems with an only slightly improved #REDIRECT
syntax:

Tatra

#REDIRECT [[Tatra mountains]]: a mountain range, part of the Carpathian
Mountains, between Poland and Slovakia.
#REDIRECT [[Tatra (car)]]: car brand from the Czech Republic
--
becomes

Tatra

'''Tatra''' can be used to refer to:

1. [[Tatra mountains]]: a mountain range, part of the ..
2. [[Tatra (car)|Tatra]]: car brand from the Czech Republic

This is a disambiguation page; that is, one that just points to other
pages that might otherwise have the same name. If you followed a link
here, you might want to go back and fix that link to point to the
appropriate specific page.

----

(Note the rightmost parentheses should be auto-removed for aesthetic
reasons.)

As you can see, now our #REDIRECT syntax actually makes sense. If
there's just one #REDIRECT, we just put the user on the respective page.
If there are several, we give him a choice.

I suggest a slightly different syntax to provide a redirect reason:

#REDIRECT [[Tatra mountains]] // namco

Becomes

Redirected to Tatra mountains. Reason: [[Wikipedia:Naming
conventions|naming convention]]

As I suggested earlier, these reasons could be loaded from an array in
the Language.* file, so that we avoid having to standardize these texts
manually.

Thoughts?

Regards,

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


from_name: mindfuq at comcast.net

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Should I post the Drug Testing FAQ?

body:
I just discovered wikipedia the other day and I'm just thrilled that
this thing exists.  I authored the drug testing faq, and it's probably
about 5 years old now because I don't have time to maintain this
monster of a document.  I've been planning to write software that does
almost exactly what Wikipedia does so that others could maintain it.
Now I don't have to!

To get to my question, would it be appropriate for me to post the drug
testing faq?  I have the feeling that too much controversy might not
be appreciated here, but then the faq is pretty objective and factual.
It discusses methods that work and don't work for beating the test,
and it covers details on how tests are administered.

There may be some points where my anti-drug testing bias comes out,
but I'm thinking I could comb through the text and edit that out
before posting it.  I pretty much isolated my opinions in the 'Ethics'
section of the faq.

I know I read somewhere that dramatic changes to wikipedia are
discouraged, so I only plan to post small pieces at a time as I edit
them.

Also, I just caught the end of a discussion on vikipedia (whatever
that is) and other languages.  Some people have already translated the
drug testing faq into other languages.  I could track those down and
post them as well, but I can't read them, so any edits that I make on
the english version will be disjoint from the other languages.

Is wikipedia the right place for me to post the faq, or is there
another *pedia that would be better suited?

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030205/7caea59f/attachment.pgp


from_name: buraq

body:
 >>I tried this several times... i don't think it is a good idea.
 >>Isn't it possible to do a normal port-forwarding while doing some
 >>work on the server?
 >>

Jason Richey wrote:
> We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> connected upstream.
>

It does not have to be that complicated. In principle, and if we assume
that client browsers support the META redirect tag (after, say 120
seconds), than a wikipedia mirror could welcome everybody who thirsts
for knowledge, no ?

cheers,
buraq


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] email prefs

body:
On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, tarquin wrote:

> On the fr: or en:, I type my email into the preferences box, press the
> "save" button, and the page reloads with the text "Your preferences have
> been saved." on top
>
> but the email field is now blank.
>
> is this behaviour or bug, and if the former, could there be a note about
> it -- at the moment, one gets the impression that the entered data has
> been lost in the ether.

Question: are you using Mozilla or Netscape 6 or kin, and told the browser
to save your login & password for logging in to wikipedia?

I think this triggers a bug whereby it mistakenly believes that the
preferences form is the same as the login form, and fills in the same
value you used for the e-mail address -- probably blank.

In any case, for me the problem goes away if I clear the saved forms and
don't let it save my login.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
> This seems like the kind of thing that should be sent to wikitech-l
> automatically.  Am I wrong in thinking this?

It would be both bug reports and all changes to bug reports. (added
comments, change of priority level, etc). If people want those forwarded
to this list, it can be done. If people would prefer a separate list, that
can be done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Summarize subsequent edits by one user?

body:
On Wednesday 05 February 2003 05:34 am, wikitech-l-request at wikipedia.org
wrote:
> We could save a lot of space by summarizing directly subsequent edits
> made by one user into a single edit. User foo edits article bar 10
> times, and for each edit, the previous one is deleted. This would also
> reduce clutter in RC. Just check if OLD contains a top revision by the
> same user and delete it before inserting the new row (preferably as one
> transaction).
>
> To avoid involuntary overwriting of one's own words, we could do this
> only if the previous edit had no edit comment, and occurred less than 10
> minutes ago.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Although I love the idea I do fear that information may be lost. For example I
will often completely rewrite an article on a temp page, check it, then paste
that text into the main article stating that the article had been completely
rewritten. Then when I reread it a second time I often find an embarrassing
typo within 5 minutes. I then edit the article and say in the edit summary
"typo". It would be very bad if "typo" showed-up as the only comment on the
combined edit.

IMO it would also be good to set the combine edit timeout at an hour or maybe
even all subsequent edits made in the same UTC day (my personal favorite). So
how about this:

Combine all the comments in the order in which they were made and separate
them with a semicolon. For example:

(cur) (last) . . M 21:07 Jun 17, 2002 . . Maveric149 (typo)
(cur) (last) . . 20:46 Jun 17, 2002 . . Maveric149 (opps - forgot some stuff)
(cur) (last) . . 20:28 Jun 17, 2002 . . Maveric149 (new format ready for
general wikipedia consumption -- enjoy)

would become:

(cur) (last) . .  20:28  - 21:07 Jun 17, 2002  . . Maveric149  (new format
ready for general wikipedia consumption -- enjoy ; opps - forgot some stuff ;
M typo)

Notice the range of times given. Combining comments would also mean that we
should allow more text in the combined edit summary than we would allow in a
single edit summary since the combined edit comment will often be larger than
a regular edit comment.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Diff selection via radiobuttons

body:
On Wednesday 05 February 2003 05:34 am, wikitech-l-request at wikipedia.org
wrote:
> Are there any objections to changing the history view to work as it does
> on MeatBall? Example:
>
> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?action=history&id=CarnetWiki
>
> (Only the revision selection via radiobuttons, not the change display,
> our DiffEngine is far superior to UseMod's.)
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

I was going to suggest this a while ago but forgot. Please do make the
changes!

--mav


subject: [Wikitech-l] New ilinks system

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>1) Can you check the code into CVS under a separate tag?
>
You mean the whole source (SpecialIntl.php, Skin.php, Output.php, as all
these had to be edited) in a different directory?

>2) The interface is well done. It's a neat idea to have a separate edit
>screen for this purpose, since editing interlanguage links and editing
>text are reasonably separate. However, we probably want the
>ilinks+add/edit links to show up on the edit screen as well.
>
Can do.

>3) We need to log interlanguage link edits. We can't use RC because of
>the different logs involved. So we need an ilinks log similar to RC, and
>an individual ilinks history as well as a recent_ilinks type page (which
>could be integrated into RC). We need to do this to prevent unnoticed
>link vandalism. Being able to roll back changes would be a plus. If we
>implement that, we can open ilinks to anons, otherwise I suggest we do
>not.
>
Yes, I thought of that too. We just needed to be able to make changes to
record first :-)
Another thought of mine was to disallow anons the editing of ilinks (not
because it is currently broken for anons anyway!), because deleting or
adding crap might be too tempting.

>4) I'll probably do some layout edits on the interface. We do need the
>ability to add several ilinks at once. I don't know if the nice language
>dropdown really gains us speed as it's just too damn full.
>
That's because there are a zillion languages in that list we don't have
a wikipedia for (yet!). This could be reduced to actually existing
'pedias. I can add several lines for that. Language code could also be
set automagically if there's a language code in front of the title (like
"de:Zeug"); otherwise, the dropdown selection is used.

>5) Once I have the code, I'll probably add "Select all / Select none"
>JavaScript buttons to the checkbox lists.
>
You're welcome :-)

Magnus


from_name: Mark Christensen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Summarize subsequent edits by one user?

body:
> True, and as I said, we can check if the user has entered an
> edit comment (good indication for a major change) and if he
> has, the subsequent edit does not replace the previous one.

But what if he didn't?  What if he made a major change, posted it, and
then went back to proofread, and was depending on your feature to allow
him to just add comment at the end of the process?


from_name: Philipp W.

subject: [Wikitech-l] [brion@pobox.com: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Problem with 'User Contributions']

body:
> I'm not sure that'd be reliable. Rows that are chronologically earlier
> may be added to the database later -- undeletes, recombining histories
> of broken articles, the great UseMod-Era History Restoration a few
> months back. So the auto-increment per-row ID number isn't a reliable
> indicator of chrono order. (Check some page histories on the English
> wiki that date from 2001 for an example, the current hackish code does
> just this and pays for it by sometimes being incorrect.)
>
> Timestamp can't be the primary key alone, as we only have 1-second
> resolution. Duplicate timestamps can, at least theoretically, happen.
>
> If an index that both selects and sorts on all the criterea we need is
> possible, that should do us well enough.

-Why do you use varchar(14) for timestamps?
The Mysql-Date functions are so powerfull and very fast!

-Did you ever thought about using hints in
your sql-commands to hely mysql using the right Index?

Phil


body:
>>I tried this several times... i don't think it is a good idea.
 >>Isn't it possible to do a normal port-forwarding while doing some
 >>work on the server?
 >>

Jason Richey wrote:
> We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> connected upstream.
>

I thought that the server is down for maintenance because someone is
installing new software?
So portforwarding would be possible....

Phil


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Eric Demolli wrote:
> I think it's just a way to be anonymous. Maybe to avoid to be sued in
> Delaware.

I understand the desire, but this is not a good means to achieve it.

First, you can already make up a user name that doesn't reveal
anything about you.

Second, using one of these accounts still does nothing to mask your
i.p. number from the server, which is what you really need for strong
anonymity.

So, you know, this just doesn't help, is the main thing.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo

body:
On Wednesday 05 February 2003 04:00 am, brion wrote:
> On lun, 2003-02-03 at 11:47, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Here's my WikiKarma: I spent the whole damn day trying to put out
> > WikiFires and spread WikiLove, and managed to make virtually no
> > headway with any of it.
> >=20
> > I'm *this damn close* to going on a banning spree.  But, I'll
> > relax first.
> There, there. We've all been having a tough WikiWeek (and it's only
> Tuesday!) We'll pull through though...
>
> Jimbo, I'd just like to thank you for continuing to support and host
> this project, despite the enormous amount of crap you have to put up
> with.

Mega dittos, err... yeah, me likes Jimbo too. :-)

No seriously. Without Jimbo's foresight, crazy ideas and unusual selflessness
this project would not exist at all. IMO the Internet without Wikipedia is
either a very boring and static place to do research or it is a cacophony of
yelling, flames and other buzz (sic there is no real focus to any of it). But
Wikipedia, I think combines a worthwhile goal to create a research resource
with just enough of the buzz aspect of the Internet to allow us to
collaborate to further our goal.

Yes, sometimes the buzz does get a little loud, but the goal is still being
worked on. Jimbo is also in the unenviable position of mostly seeing the bad
elements of Wikipedia. However I am either editing Wikipedia or at least
monitoring Recent Changes for 12 hours a day now and what I see is greater
than 99% valid edits that improve articles (3+ edits a minute now just in
en.wik!).

IMO vandalism and dross as a percentage of edits has in fact gone down, way
down, since I joined over a year ago (at least in en.wiki). This is the
opposite of what I expected. But with so many edits every day even a very low
level of vandalism, dross and unfriendlyness tends to be a lot in an absolute
sense. And these problems are distilled from all the good things that happen
in Wikipedia and brought to the mailing list.

Our once little town is now a bustling city that never sleeps complete with
thriving and distinct "ethnic quarters". Before, a volunteer fire department
and a combined town Mayor/Sheriff was perfectly fine to run the town. IMO now
what we need is a "city council" headed by a mayor who appoints a "Sheriff"
(who in turn appoints "deputies").

But to form such a structure IMO we need to become a non-profit first (thus
"council members"/"Sheriffs" and "deputies" would have legal roles and would
be that much more accountable for their actions - or inactions).

Thank you Jimbo for making Wikipedia possible. :-) Please understand that we
are just going through some major growing pains right now.

Wikipedia: Order from Chaos.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma:
I added a lot of events to [[February 1]] and updated all the year pages  and
many of the other articles linked from there.


body:
* elian <elian at gmx.li> [2003-02-05 11:43]:
> mindfuq at comcast.net writes:
>
> > Is wikipedia the right place for me to post the faq, or is there
> > another *pedia that would be better suited?
>
> Could you post an URL where this FAQ can be found?

http://www.csun.edu/~hbcsc096/dt


subject: [Wikitech-l] New ilinks system

body:
On Mit, 2003-02-05 at 11:38, Magnus Manske wrote:
> You mean the whole source (SpecialIntl.php, Skin.php, Output.php, as all
> these had to be edited) in a different directory?

No, a different tag, like Brion did with InnoDB. Just do

>cvs tag -b ilinks

and you'll create a new branch "ilinks" in the repository, based on your
current working copy.

Then you need to switch your working copy to that branch:

>cvs update -r ilinks

When we have finished implementing this, we'll switch back to HEAD and
do

>cvs update -j ilinks
>cvs commit

to merge in the updates. See

	http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs_5.html

for details. Please be sure to check in the database patches to create
the table(s).

> Another thought of mine was to disallow anons the editing of ilinks
> (not because it is currently broken for anons anyway!), because
> deleting or adding crap might be too tempting.

While that already will reduce crap, there are also malicious users who
are harder to get rid of. I do believe we need the log before we launch
this, because otherwise we can't really track if someone vandalizes all
the ilinks on some obscure video game pages.

Doing this properly might take some effort, but a date+user column in
the ilinks table would already help to create a basic log .

> That's because there are a zillion languages in that list we don't have
> a wikipedia for (yet!). This could be reduced to actually existing
> 'pedias. I can add several lines for that.

I don't think we should more or less arbitrarily remove Wikipedias. As I
know from my own wiki, a single dedicated user can quickly boost the
article count. I prefer my suggestion, because it does not favor any
language, and makes adding lots of links very fast. We can also make the
syntax a little nicer, like

[en:Kofi Annan]

[de
[fr
[nl
[zh:mkly at v#?ip"$ <-- these aren't actual Chinese characters, I know ;)

So when no :foo is specified, the name from the field above is used.

Regards,

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


body:
Eric Demolli wrote:
> Well the solution is obvious : refuse any user name that contain the
> substring "password".
> Is there any John Password here ?

It seems like an even better solution is to just stop it cold so that
it will just go away.  If someone wants to explain just what
technological point of it is, then we can see if it's worth trying to
accomodate it in some more sensible way.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E0A5D29A@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 04:06:59PM -0500

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Well, SOMEONE is signing talk messages as [[user:Vera Cruz]] -- I
>just haven't bothered tracking it down, because the whole thing seems
>so petty. Why doesn't s/he just e-mail Jimbo and make their peace?

Lir and I are in constant (almost daily at times) email communication.

I am encouraging Lir to contact those who oppose reinstatement and
make amends individually.  And, of course, to stop antagonizing people
by attempting to subvert the process.  I have also threatened to get
legal about it if he doesn't stop editing while banned.

--Jimbo


from_name: James Z

body:
www.jzcool.net
---
my site - www.jzcool.net

_____________________________________________________________
Get 25MB, POP3, Spam Filtering with LYCOS MAIL PLUS for $19.95/year.
http://login.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus&ref=lmtplus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Is Giskart right? www.wikipedia.org

body:
wiki pedista wrote:
>  Who has the final word in the "political" decision
>  (as opposed to technical)? Jimbo?

That's right.

>  I remember him
>  telling that he agreed to the change. Did he change
>  his mind?

No, I agree that it is possible that we could improve the
international flavor of the homepage of www.

However, I *do* think it is a pretty minor issue, because RIGHT THERE
AT THE TOP of www are the links to other languages.  I have not seen
any concrete proposals that are actually much improvement to that.

It seems very unlikely that anyone could visit our homepage and not
know that we are international.  We can make the homepage useless for
everyone, and language neutral, by removing the rest of the links on
the homepage, and forcing all that stuff to appear only on
en.wikipedia.org.  But why?

I fail to see why anyone should be offended by our current treatment.

But, if there is an improvement to be made, I'm all for it.

--Jimbo


from_name: wiki pedista

body:
 Giskart wrote:

 ''It seems clear to my that the English Wikipedia is
 not willing to give up
 his prominend location at www.wikipedia.org.''

 Is that true? I read declarations in the past that
 said otherwise, but actions seems to indicate that
 he is right. There has been discussion here and on
 meta, but the results are always in the future.

 Questions:

 Is there any technical reason that www.wikipedia.org
 can
 not have one content, while
 www.wikipedia.org/wiki/something and
 www.wikipedia.org/wiki/something point to
 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/something?

 Who has the final word in the "political" decision
 (as opposed to technical)? Jimbo? I remember him
 telling that he agreed to the change. Did he change
 his mind?

 I'm sorry to insist in what may appear to be a petty
 issue, but I do not think it is.

 --AstroNomer

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] New contri code breaks rollback

body:
The new contri code does not pass $topmark to ucListEdit. Because of
that we lose the [rollback] feature on recent edits (it should still
work for older ones). The way I would fix it is with an additional
title+ns query on RC for each contri, but a smarter SQL query might also
be possible.

Regards,

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Clutch, Zoe, who else wants to ban?

in_reply_to: <20030205014907.49138.qmail@web40710.mail.yahoo.com>; from lapollutionestsimauvaise@yahoo.com on Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 05:49:07PM -0800

body:
Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> Is there anybody who supports the ban against me besides Clutch and
>Zoe? Im sure Isis does, but I guess she was banned for some reason??

Isis was not banned. She asked that her pages be deleted.


body:
We could save a lot of space by summarizing directly subsequent edits
made by one user into a single edit. User foo edits article bar 10
times, and for each edit, the previous one is deleted. This would also
reduce clutter in RC. Just check if OLD contains a top revision by the
same user and delete it before inserting the new row (preferably as one
transaction).

To avoid involuntary overwriting of one's own words, we could do this
only if the previous edit had no edit comment, and occurred less than 10
minutes ago.

Thoughts?

Regards,

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


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ambassades et petit rapporteur

body:
By the way...

French people agreed that the next french ambassador
be *Youssefsan*, who many of you already know to be a
well-balanced wikip?dien.

I am very happy to announce we were able to make that
decision with NO dissenting voices, and NO vote (well,
except Aoineko who can't help it anyway :-)).

I'll support Youssefsan in the role of "le petit
rapporteur" (in which I can be confortably biased)

So... update your embassies !

Anth?re

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Pedro M.V.

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiktionary

body:
I suggest an "empty redirection".

When you look for a word in the dictionary,the wiktionary ( I  suggest change the name to wikionary,  more easy for all languages )  (i.e. domobot ) and appears the message No matches ( No article title matches  and No article text matches), the wiktionary redirects automatically to the wikipedia article (i.e. www.wikipedia.org/wiki/domobot ).

This is the "empty redirection".

In any case, the "see more in wikipedia" redirection can be add to, although the wikionary word it?s not empty ( to get more information from the encyclopedia about the word searched and found in the dictionary ).

This is, strong and embedded interwiki links.

Regards.


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 11:09 AM 2/5/03 +0000, mindfuq wrote:
>I just discovered wikipedia the other day and I'm just thrilled that
>this thing exists.  I authored the drug testing faq, and it's probably
>about 5 years old now because I don't have time to maintain this
>monster of a document.  I've been planning to write software that does
>almost exactly what Wikipedia does so that others could maintain it.
>Now I don't have to!
>
>To get to my question, would it be appropriate for me to post the drug
>testing faq?  I have the feeling that too much controversy might not
>be appreciated here, but then the faq is pretty objective and factual.
>It discusses methods that work and don't work for beating the test,
>and it covers details on how tests are administered.

Are you willing to release the material under the GFDL (a free software
license for documentation)? And are you prepared to have it edited and
changed by everyone and her brother-in-law?

If so, it seems like a reasonable addition, possibly linked to existing
material on drug testing or recreational drugs.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] From wikionary to wikipedia

body:
Try "[[en:dombots]]".

Pedro M.V. wrote:

>How can I link from wikionary to wikipedia ??? ( without external links [http://..] )
>
>I suggest [[wikipedia:]]
>
>I.e. [[wikipedia:domobots]] to linkt to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domobots
>
>
>Regards.
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


body:
Tried my "advanced Recend Changes"?

Erik Moeller wrote:

>We could save a lot of space by summarizing directly subsequent edits
>made by one user into a single edit. User foo edits article bar 10
>times, and for each edit, the previous one is deleted. This would also
>reduce clutter in RC. Just check if OLD contains a top revision by the
>same user and delete it before inserting the new row (preferably as one
>transaction).
>
>To avoid involuntary overwriting of one's own words, we could do this
>only if the previous edit had no edit comment, and occurred less than 10
>minutes ago.
>
>Thoughts?
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] New pref: preview on top

body:
Subject speaks for itself. In CVS; also, spiffed up the "Highlight
broken links" user preference text and reformatted preview header
slightly.
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] email prefs

body:
On the fr: or en:, I type my email into the preferences box, press the
"save" button, and the page reloads with the text "Your preferences have
been saved." on top

but the email field is now blank.

is this behaviour or bug, and if the former, could there be a note about
it -- at the moment, one gets the impression that the entered data has
been lost in the ether.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On Mit, 2003-02-05 at 13:40, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Tried my "advanced Recend Changes"?

I use and enjoy it. But this is a different matter. Even with RC+ you
have benefits from summarizing edits in the actual table, since you do
not have to unfold edits made by a single user to see the edit text.
Then there's the history and contributions functions, which are all
cluttered by a large number of subsequent edits, and of course the OLD
table grows hideously large.

Regards,

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


body:
How can I link from wikionary to wikipedia ??? ( without external links [http://..] )

I suggest [[wikipedia:]]

I.e. [[wikipedia:domobots]] to linkt to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domobots

Regards.


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 01:31:47PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> We could save a lot of space by summarizing directly subsequent edits
> made by one user into a single edit. User foo edits article bar 10
> times, and for each edit, the previous one is deleted. This would also
> reduce clutter in RC. Just check if OLD contains a top revision by the
> same user and delete it before inserting the new row (preferably as one
> transaction).
>
> To avoid involuntary overwriting of one's own words, we could do this
> only if the previous edit had no edit comment, and occurred less than 10
> minutes ago.
>
> Thoughts?

This isn't any good.
If one breaks something by accident, it should be possible to restore it.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimaps

body:
See the proposal on http://meta.wikipedia.org (somewhere...)

Pedro M.V. wrote:

>Maps are very important for encyclopedia.
>
>I suggest create www.wikimaps.com .
>
>So one can use it with GPS too ( and with radio traffic recieve connect to a CD-ROM with wikimaps inside ).
>
>Very usefull for everybody.
>
>One can begin with the maps of the continents.
>
>Regards.
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Link Changes

body:
The new language links at the test site now have a kind of hackish
Recent Changes.

I'll try to incorporate all the changes into CVS.

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Is Giskart right? www.wikipedia.org

in_reply_to: <b1s1u1$6oh$1@main.gmane.org>; from giskart@wikipedia.be on Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 10:06:57PM +0000

body:
I wrote:

>>I fail to see why anyone should be offended by our current
>>treatment.

Giskart wrote:
> Case closed. The english Wikipedia can have www.wikipedia.org

No, not case closed.  Case opened.  Please see what Erik wrote,
I agree with it entirely.

> Best thing al wikipedia's can do is get your one local country
> domain and use it for promotion.of your wikipedia in that country.

I very much discourage this practice unless done under the auspices
of the Wikipedia Foundation.  It amounts to nothing more than a
power play and I don't think it's in the spirit of international
co-operation.

--Jimbo


from_name: s

subject: [Wikipedia-l] General

body:
1. "Legal issues"...perhaps taking edit wars too far?
2. Might there be a way to eventually implement some kind of mapping interface? I mean, a way to tag, within pages, a relative heirarchy and relationship between them. Sorta like "what links here" only done like a site map. Nothing big. :)
3. Bridget - simmer down. I happen to agree with you. But a lot of it is attitude. The overbearing, do nothing, go by the book usually wins out over the attitude of jumping right on it, and fighting it out. A lot depends on how clearly you can think through the real issue, underneath, which is often very general, and usually a question of style. Yes, people are arrogant, insulting, and hypocritical. "Columbus being a slave trader" is an topical example of how people have a hard time reconciling their engrained and iconoclastic views of things with the dirty details - throw morality in there, and anyone who remains too attached to that idol, will skew even moral issues till their completely backwards. see; moral relativism. But in any event, it would be hypocritical to kill even the hypocrites, and time may permit them change. Think before speak, and obey the Murphy's Law that deals with arguing with fools, or the like...
-Ztevertigo

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030205/9fd93a46/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikitech-l] "send this to a friend"

body:
Just a quick word -- any news on the idea to put a  "send this article
to a friend" link on every page?


body:
On Mit, 2003-02-05 at 13:57, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> This isn't any good.
> If one breaks something by accident, it should be possible to restore it.

What kind of mistake? Consider these cases:

1) User edits text, does something wrong. Saves text. Notices mistake.
Edits text again, fixes mistake.
2) User makes major edits to text. Saves text. Notices minor mistake,
edits text again, accidentally deletes two paragraphs and saves.
Previous text is *not* overwritten because it has an edit comment.
3) Other user notices major error/vandalism by user. Reverts to previous
edit by other user.

Where are the problems?

Regards,

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


from_name: Tucci

subject: [WikiEN-l] calling all programmers

body:
Anybody who would be willing to write a real simple
bot, please see [[Wikiproject: Albums]] near the
bottom.  Allmusic.com recently added all Billboard
chart releases for their artists, and I think it would
be useful to have this info available at Wikipedia.
According to nknight (who used the word "parse" and is
therefore an expert on programming by my standards),
it should be easy to take the info there and format
it.  Since billboard only does the US and Canada, if
anybody out there knows where something similar can be
found for the UK, Australia, Djibouti, etc, please
provide a link at [[Wikiproject: Albums]].

Thanks, Tokerboy

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimaps

body:
Maps are very important for encyclopedia.

I suggest create www.wikimaps.com .

So one can use it with GPS too ( and with radio traffic recieve connect to a CD-ROM with wikimaps inside ).

Very usefull for everybody.

One can begin with the maps of the continents.

Regards.


body:
And to the main wikipedia page ???

Thanks in advance

(you can read [[en:wikimaps]] about free maps.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at epost.de>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] From wikionary to wikipedia

> Try "[[en:dombots]]".
>
> Pedro M.V. wrote:
>
> >How can I link from wikionary to wikipedia ??? ( without external links [http://..] )
> >
> >I suggest [[wikipedia:]]
> >
> >I.e. [[wikipedia:domobots]] to linkt to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domobots
> >
> >
> >Regards.
> >_______________________________________________
> >Wikitech-l mailing list
> >Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> >http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Diff selection via radiobuttons

body:
Are there any objections to changing the history view to work as it does
on MeatBall? Example:

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?action=history&id=CarnetWiki

(Only the revision selection via radiobuttons, not the change display,
our DiffEngine is far superior to UseMod's.)

Regards,

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


from_name: Tei

subject: [Wikitech-l] the word "hacking".

body:
At 18:46 02/02/03 +0100, you wrote:
>I apologize when I insulted people here.
>Nevertheless, I would prefer a more neutral,
>term. The word 'hacker' might scare people
>and it doesn't sound very 'inviting' to me.
>
>    Specification and clear documentation is
>    much more important than implementation!
>

Users where not coders. Users where nothing to do with code.
Users where something to do with features.

A feature without clean documenteion = feature unimplemention.

But this stament:
 "Specification and clear documentation is
    much more important than implementation!", Is extreme. Or wrong. Anyway
IMHO.

Note:

thanks to all people that design and help wikipedia!!

>I personally hate maintaining software, keep adding
>features forever, updating, debugging, etc.
>I love 'design'.
>
>Well, sorry for bothering you all. Thanks for
>correcting me and giving me stuff to read about
>'hacking', Erik.
>
>Don't know in which way I can contribute to
>Wikipedia-software-development for I almost don't
>know anything about databases and database-locking
>(which seems to give rise to performance-problems).
>
>Sorry for crying out nonsense here; thank you for always
>responding; but most of all thanks for making Wikipedia
>at all possible, in that regard you're really doing a
>great job!
>
>Pieter Suurmond
>
>
>Erik Moeller wrote:
>>
>> > They should be given a proper place (don't remove!).
>> > They should however be separated from 'development'.
>>
>> > Software-development and maintainance is a very
>> > serious business, please don't call it 'hacking'
>> > any longer because Wikipedia is reaching adulthood. :-)
>> > (Grown-up software-developers don't call themselves
>> >  'hackers': It's all about thinking and mathematics!)
>>
>> Insulting nonsense. There are plenty of "grown-up" software developers who
>> call themselves hackers. Ask the people at
>>
>>         http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
>>
>> or the folks working on the Linux kernel:
>>
>>         http://www.kernelhacking.org/
>>
>> for example. I wouldn't say that these people are not capable of thinking
>> or do not understand mathematics.
>>
>> Wikipedia is an open source project, and in the open source community, the
>> term "hacker" has a much different tradition from other development
>> groups. It is a perfectly appropriate term for the development process,
>> unless you see open source itself as "unprofessional" and "not for grown-
>> ups" (in which case you should don your asbestos suit..)
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Erik
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
>> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
What about WikIS-BN (Wiki?S-BookNumber).

This is, a permanent ISBN number with reference to ISBN for particular editions.

Regards.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 1:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

> Tom Parmenter wrote:
> > |I'm listening.  This sounds like a valid objection to this particular
> > |technical detail.
> >
> > Should a system, flawed, dubious, that gives a fighting chance of
> > tracking down a book be replaced by no system at all?
>
> No, I don't think so.  A flawed, dubious system that sort of works is
> preferable in this case to nothing at all.
>
> > If there is a better method, Library of Congress or whatever in the
> > future, then a 'bot can comb through the Wikipedia and replace all
> > those ISBNs with better references.  Why send a 'bot out now to remove
> > ISBNs when there is no replacement?  (Is there?)
>
> We certainly shouldn't just remove them, they are informative, albeit
> imperfectly so.
>
> I'm merely endorsing a search for better alternatives.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
And what about temporal moving to a rent server for some ours ( short-time rent room).

Made the changes, the wikipedia could return to the original server.

This is interesting to see with http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/interwiki servers interconnected.

Regards.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Philipp W." <philipp at diewebdesigner.com>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: redirect when Wikipedia is down

> >>I tried this several times... i don't think it is a good idea.
>  >>Isn't it possible to do a normal port-forwarding while doing some
>  >>work on the server?
>  >>
>
> Jason Richey wrote:
> > We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> > responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> > connected upstream.
> >
>
> I thought that the server is down for maintenance because someone is
> installing new software?
> So portforwarding would be possible....
>
> Phil
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiktionary

body:
Pedro M.V. wrote:

>I suggest an "empty redirection".
>
>When you look for a word in the dictionary,the wiktionary ( I  suggest change the name to wikionary,  more easy for all languages )  (i.e. domobot ) and appears the message No matches ( No article title matches  and No article text matches), the wiktionary redirects automatically to the wikipedia article (i.e. www.wikipedia.org/wiki/domobot ).
>
>This is the "empty redirection".
>
>In any case, the "see more in wikipedia" redirection can be add to, although the wikionary word it?s not empty ( to get more information from the encyclopedia about the word searched and found in the dictionary ).
>
>This is, strong and embedded interwiki links.
>
I suspect that "wikionary" would be more of a problem for people than
"wiktionary" if their language is one that has a "t" in dictionary.
 Nevertheless, I can see the problem for a Spanish speaking person who
uses a "diccionario".  The Spanish language version will not need to
have exactly the same name as the English Wiktionary.  There is already
prcedent for this in Wkikpedia.

The links to Wikipedia for more information are surely a good idea if
Wikipedia already has an article, but empty redirection would create an
entirely different set of new problems.  Using your example of "domobot"
it would make access to Wiktionary's "domobot" more difficult for the
person who wants to write a dictionary entry for ways.  There are ways
around it, but I wouldn't expect a newcomer to know that.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipedia domains

body:
At 06:59 PM 2/5/03 +0000, Giskart wrote:
>Also when Wikipedia is down you can point your domain to a temporary page
>to explain your visitors there a technical problems and so save some new
>visitors. (I do that now whit wikipedia.be) In general, you have more
>options, freedom, securtity.
>
>Using a local country domain is the smart thing to do. And if there are
>several languages in youre country you can help other wikipedias.
>Like;
>
>www.wikipedia.us ->  english,  Espa?ol and the chinees Wikipedia

Why only those three? The New York subway system currently has
eight languages on the automatic farecard machines; ten or twenty times
that many are spoken in the city, more elsewhere in the country.

www.wikipedia.us could reasonably include Greek, French, Japanese,
Italian, Yiddish, Lakota, Russian, and almost any other language,
including probably all of those that have Wikipedias. (There is at least
one dialect spoken here that can probably be omitted: the form of
German called "Pennsylvania Dutch", because it's used only by a
community that avoids the Internet, and many other aspects of modern
technological culture.)

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


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: (unknown)

body:
nobody at nowhere.invalid (Unknown) wrote in
news:26582.5949878947$1044397192 at news.gmane.org:

> I know a lot of people who thought the Esperanto
> Wikipedia was the only language that existed in the
> project and I'd imagine that we're not alone in this.
> I started promoting www.vikipedio.org because people
> got confused when we promoted eo.wikipedia.org.
>
> I also know a lot of people who don't speak English
> who simply click off a page if they see that it's not
> in a language they understand, thus they'd never get
> past the English front page of Wikipedia.  Also, a
> dropdown box like we use at www.tejo.org might work as
> well, instead of the portal as planned, but I think
> the multilingual portal at www.wikipedia.org is
> necessary.
>
> Also, what's wrong if people have linked to
> www.wikipedia.org from their webpages.  It will still
> go to Wikipedia, they don't need to change their
> links!  The Wikipedia is a multilingual project, not
> just an English project.  Plus, this is one of the
> reasons why the Spanish project won't merge back with
> us.
>
> I'm crossposting this on Intlwiki-L and Wikipedia-L so
> all can participate.  I recommend that we continue
> this discussion on Wikipedia-L.

It seems clear to my that the English Wikipedia is not willing to give up
his prominend location at www.wikipedia.org.

The first time I requested to move the Engelish Wikipedia was in october or
december 2001. And again whit the change form .com to .org and later also.

The best thing every Wikipedia can do is to obtain the national wikipedia-
domain and use that for promotion.

There are already the domains;
www.wikipedia.nl -> the dutch and frysian wikipedia
www.wikipedia.be -> the dutch, french and german wikipedia
www.wikipedia.de -> the german wikipedia
www.wikipedia.pl -> the polisch wikipedia
www.vikipedio.org -> the esperanto wikipedia
Others ?

The folowing domains are still free and should be registerd by there
Wikipedia's.
www.wikipedia.dk
www.wikipedia.no
www.wikipedia.fr -> the french and catalan wikipedia
and Spain,Portugal, ....

And also, keep the controll over the domain local, at least until there is
a non-proffit organisation.

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


subject: [Wikitech-l] "send this to a friend"

body:
On Mit, 2003-02-05 at 15:12, tarquin wrote:
> Just a quick word -- any news on the idea to put a  "send this article
> to a friend" link on every page?

lynx -dump -nolist
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=President_of_the_United_States_of_America\&printable=yes | mail -s 'President of the United States' e.moeller at fokus.gmd.de

OK, we might want to create a button for that ;-). Preferably that one
would offer both plaintext and HTML, and perhaps a comment field for the
sender.

Regards,

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


body:
On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 02:14:02PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Where are the problems?

First, user edits a page.
Then, the same user edits it again, but due to mouse slippery,
browser sending problems or something like that, broken version of
article is submitted.

Such things happen sometimes.


body:
On Mit, 2003-02-05 at 15:52, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 02:14:02PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Where are the problems?
>
> First, user edits a page.
> Then, the same user edits it again, but due to mouse slippery,
> browser sending problems or something like that, broken version of
> article is submitted.
>
> Such things happen sometimes.

True, and as I said, we can check if the user has entered an edit
comment (good indication for a major change) and if he has, the
subsequent edit does not replace the previous one.
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Eric Demolli

body:
I think it's just a way to be anonymous. Maybe to avoid to be sued in
Delaware.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] New quest account: User:MyPasswordIsYELLOW

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > You are now being quoted Jimbo:
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MyPasswordIsYELLOW
> >
> > Can we stop this before it gets out of hand?
>
> It strikes me that the very idea here is silly.  Anyone can login
> and change the password *from* yellow to something else.  If any of
> these accounts does anything bad, that account can be banned for it.
>
> I just don't see what the author of these is thinking.
>
> I have no problem with deleting these as fast as they show up.
> We can treat it like any other vandalism.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] New quest account: User:MyPasswordIsYELLOW

body:
Actually, I suspect it's Vera Cruz, based on content of contributions to talk pages by MyPassword...

Well, SOMEONE is signing talk messages as [[user:Vera Cruz]] -- I just haven't bothered tracking it down, because the whole thing seems so petty. Why doesn't s/he just e-mail Jimbo and make their peace?

Apologizing is that hard: just say you're sorry and promise to be good!

Uncle Ed


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
With regard to this book I would suggest the 20th anniversary edition:

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
                     by Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
                     ISBN: 0465026567
                     Publisher: Basic Books
                     Publish Date: 01/01/1999
                     Binding: Paperback , 832 pages , 20 edition

or the hardcover:

                    TITLE: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
                    by Douglas R., Hofstadter
                    ISBN: 0465026850
                    Publisher: Basic Books
                    Publish Date: March, 1979
                    Binding: Hardcover

There are two other paperback editions, one published in 1989 and one in
1979: (I think one of the dates from AddAll below is wrong, these older
paperbacks are the cheapest.)

TITLE: Godel, Escher, Bach
                    by Douglas R. Hofstadter
                    ISBN: 0394745027
                    Publisher: Vintage Books
                    Publish Date: May, 1989
                    Binding: Paperback

TITLE: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
                    by Hofstadter, Douglas R.
                    ISBN: 0394756827
                    Publisher: Vintage Books
                    Publish Date: May, 1989
                    Binding: Paperback

It takes a relatively skilled person to find all the ISBNs, and a bit of
time. Probably a good stab at it is enough for wikipedia. It is really up to
the book buyer to check out the various editions and compare prices and
consider condition. The 20th aniversary edition may have additional material
in it.

Fred Bauder

> From: Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 20:47:49 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links
>
> Godel, Escher,
> Bach


from_name: rednblack at alum.mit.edu

body:
This is pretty much impossible to do. There's no filter that's anywhere
near as sophisticated as the human brain. You won't be able to catch all
the possible variations of "password" someone can come up with, or the
probably several billion ways of identifying a password string in a username to
another human being. If you want to do it, the best way is to catch them
by hand. Or just let them slide - I think their impact will be minimal.

Saurabh

------
"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women... It is about a
 socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave
 their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism,
 and become Lesbians." - Pat Robertson

In message <20030205123414.H22575 at joey.bomis.com>, Jimmy Wales said:
>Eric Demolli wrote:
>> Well the solution is obvious : refuse any user name that contain the
>> substring "password".
>> Is there any John Password here ?
>
>It seems like an even better solution is to just stop it cold so that
>it will just go away.  If someone wants to explain just what
>technological point of it is, then we can see if it's worth trying to
>accomodate it in some more sensible way.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] not (yet) down, but very slow

body:
Wikipedia NL is very, very slow. And a lot of "faild to conect"

Today we have again some nice publicty in a ezine. New visitors who come to
Wikipedia and can not recieve it do not come back.

Is it not possibel to move some of the .org wikipedias to the server that
now host the .com wikipedias, if that makes the wikipedias faster...

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: Jonathan Walther

body:
On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 05:49:07PM -0800, Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
>   Is there anybody who supports the ban against me besides Clutch and Zoe?
>   Im sure Isis does, but I guess she was banned for some reason?? To be
>   honest I don't think Clutch's opinion matters, he seems to support a ban
>   against me because he thought my user page was too cluttered and I
>   misspelled too many words or something. As for Zoe...I don't know what
>   problem she has against me and she won't talk about it, is there anybody
>   else? Maybe Larry Sanger or mav or Brion Vibber? I don't really know,
>   being banned was good for me since I taught myself c++ but, uh, I sorta
>   need to get back to working on the articles.

That's a rather unfriendly slur, considering I was about to speak on
your behalf.  You seemed to make considerable improvement since your
previous time on the Wikipedia.  But you are still giving vent to
frustration by insulting people like myself and Zoe.  Working together
in cooperation means respecting each others feelings.  Although you made
an impressive start a few days ago, you seem to be backsliding.

That said, if Jimmy or a quorum of sysops votes to allow Lir back, I have
no objections.  But I believe every sysop should have the power to
immediately ban him again during a three month long probationary period,
based on anti-social behavior like ignoring and not acknowledging peoples
helpful suggestions vis a vis social skills, and the norms of good taste
in editing Wiki articles.  Laconic acknowledgements like "Why?" or
"I disagree." in response to others suggestions are examples of
anti-social behavior.

When someone tries to engage you, it is the respectful thing to do to
show willing to put an equal amount of time and attention into the
interaction.  Without respect, we cannot have cooperation.  Without
cooperation there is no Wikipedia.  Or else there is no Lir.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030205/3d0f01f4/attachment.pgp


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Yugolsavia is now Serbia and Montenegro

body:
Yugoslavia officially has changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro.  Should we move all of the Yugoslavia articles accordingly?

Zoe

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030205/f62966be/attachment.htm


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] [brion@pobox.com: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Problem with"User Contributions"]

body:
Wikipedia re-create the recent change table at each querry of the recent
change page ???
If it is right, why not use a static table with the maximum length (500
articles) updated only when articles are modify or when maintenance occur.
Then display recent-change will just be to display this cached table.
Am I wrong ???

Aoineko


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia domains

body:
Dear Wikipedians!

> The folowing domains are still free and should be registerd by there
> Wikipedia's.
> www.wikipedia.dk
> www.wikipedia.no
> www.wikipedia.fr -> the french and catalan wikipedia
> and Spain,Portugal, ....

I know I've already said this a few times: don't wait with the
registration! It's really annoying to fight with a domain grabber about
it.

> And also, keep the controll over the domain local, at least until
there is
> a non-proffit organisation.

Uuups, did I trust Jimbo too early? ;-)

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Editing in the Diff screen

body:
I sent this yesterday, but it doesn't appear to have made it to the list.

We seem to have lost the capability to Edit in the Diff page.  You have to click Cancel and then edit.

Zoe

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030205/375bc4b8/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The word's getting out

body:
The following appeared on www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/
<http://www.keepAhead.com/r.ihtml?447955_2727_3485092_http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/_END_>

> WIKIPEDIA ENCYCLOPEDIA
>
> www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature
> <http://www.keepAhead.com/r.ihtml?447955_2727_3485092_http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature_END_>
>
>
> Wikipedia is an international, open content, collaboratively developed
> encyclopedia. The project started in January 2001 and currently covers
> a vast spectrum of subjects and has over 100,000 articles in English
> as well as about 37,000 articles in other languages. The Literature
> Encyclopedia includes sections on Genres, Literary Techniques,
> Literary Figures, Literary Themes and literature by country or language.
>
This site is aimed at the education community and is based in Britain.
 It's interesting that they focus on the [[Literature]] article.

Eclecticology


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo

body:
I just want to echo everything Mav said.

Thanks, Jimbo
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030205/072121d4/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipedia domains

body:
"Kurt Jansson" <jansson=hi6Y0CQ0nG0 at public.gmane.org> wrote in
news:001401c2cd38$4d0c2760$43a1e6d9 at maximilian:

>> And also, keep the controll over the domain local, at least until
> there is
>> a non-proffit organisation.
>
> Uuups, did I trust Jimbo too early? ;-)

It not a matter of not trusting Jimbo.
I am a pessimist  (and proud of it).

Now Wikipedia stands or falls whit the support and funding of Jimbo.
When (if) the support of Jimbo fals away, for whatever reason, the
wikipedia.org can get lost.

If a member of a Wikipedia is the owner of the local domain you have more
security that if things go very wrong you can save your wikipedia community
by sending the traffic of your own domain to a new website and attempt to
setup a new Wikipedia.

Also when Wikipedia is down you can point your domain to a temporary page
to explain your visitors there a technical problems and so save some new
visitors. (I do that now whit wikipedia.be) In general, you have more
options, freedom, securtity.

Using a local country domain is the smart thing to do. And if there are
several languages in youre country you can help other wikipedias.
Like;

www.wikipedia.us ->  english,  Espa?ol and the chinees Wikipedia

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: elian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Should I post the Drug Testing FAQ?

body:
mindfuq at comcast.net writes:

> Is wikipedia the right place for me to post the faq, or is there
> another *pedia that would be better suited?

Could you post an URL where this FAQ can be found?

However, if it contains useful information, presented in a neutral way,
and is of encyclopedical value, I see no reason against posting it.

greetings,
elian
--
Either you're with us, or you're with the enemy; either you're with those
who love freedom, or you're with those who hate innocent life. Our
coalition is strong, and we're keeping it strong. And we're on the hunt;
we're chasing them down one by one. --George W. Bush


subject: [WikiEN-l] Will we have peace on wikipedia ?

body:
172 wrote :

I've been busy lately, so my contributions lately have been slowed. I foward
to a new blitz shortly.

Thinking to recent events and to English and French memory. Blitz is not the
best word he/she could choose.


body:
Of course its not very efficient, everything is in in the logs, but this and
add some incertitude.
See how these accounts have disappearared today.

Well the sollutiond is obvious : refuse any user name that contain the
substring "password".
Is there any John Password here ?

--Eric

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 8:58 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] New quest account: User:MyPasswordIsYELLOW

> Eric Demolli wrote:
> > I think it's just a way to be anonymous. Maybe to avoid to be sued in
> > Delaware.
>
> I understand the desire, but this is not a good means to achieve it.
>
> First, you can already make up a user name that doesn't reveal
> anything about you.
>
> Second, using one of these accounts still does nothing to mask your
> i.p. number from the server, which is what you really need for strong
> anonymity.
>
> So, you know, this just doesn't help, is the main thing.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] User banned, why?

body:
Yeah, lir is a wonderful person.  Just see [[http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Christopher_Columbus/Archived_talk]] for how wonderful he is.
Zoe
 Jesse Alter <jra3 at njit.edu> wrote:Hey, I'm new to the list, and I hope to keep up a bit. The main reason I
subscribed was to talk about User:VeraCruz/Lir. I've been speaking to
them on and off of Wikipedia, and they seem like a nice person. We've
been speaking about various topics, and when advising me about
Wikipedia, he's taught me a lot about empiricism and NPOV. I've read
some articles he has contributed a lot to...

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kuwait
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis_auxiliary_cruiser
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mayhew_Wainwright_IV

...and I've been fairly impressed. I asked him if he could help me with
a stub article I started, about Moulay Ismail, the Bloodthirsty. I had
been unable to find much information on him, but over an IM conversation...

Him: are u talking about the prince of saudi arabia?
Him: or the sultan?
Me: This is a 17th century dude.
Him: associated with Louis XIV ?
Him: asked to marry the Princess of Conti?
Him: did he have 800 children/
Him: he ordered that the heads of 10,000 slain enemies adorn the walls
of the two great imperial capitals, Fes and Marrakech.
Him: heh us hould include this conversation where i find info for u as
an example of how useful i am
Him: Moulay Ismail enlisted over 25,000 Christian prisoners and 30,000
common criminals to build his pretentious city, and brought over 16,000
slaves from sub-Saharan Africa to serve in his military machine. By the
time of his death in 1727, the Black Guard, as it was known, had grown
tenfold and was one of the largest death guards in Morocco's history.
Me: 800 children..
Me: Yeah.
Me: Geez man.
Him: His grandson, Mohammed III, moved the capital back to Marrakech
Him: most of Ismail's great monuments are still standing
Him: Most of the fanciest tile work and wealth were stripped from Meknes
and used to build up other imperial cities

and he also gave me a LOT of helpful links. *groan* I need to synthesize
all of that information later...

I understand there were disagreements with other users. This is of
course bound to happen, and Wikipedia boasts its ability to resolve
those sorts of conflicts through its Talk page. This user is obviously
someone who has the potential to be a great contributor to Wikipedia. I
see no reason for him to be banned.

Thanks,

cprompt

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030205/25618681/attachment.htm


body:
wiki pedista <wikipedista=/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote in
news:20030205212327.65031.qmail at web41403.mail.yahoo.com:

[cut]
>  I'm sorry to insist in what may appear to be a petty
>  issue, but I do not think it is.
>
>  --AstroNomer

Jimmy Wales <jwales=KK9S75Hv+MAAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote in
news:20030205132112.P22575 at joey.bomis.com:

[cut]
> I fail to see why anyone should be offended by our current treatment.

Case closed. The english Wikipedia can have www.wikipedia.org

Best thing al wikipedia's can do is get your one local country domain and
use it for promotion.of your wikipedia in that country.

And if there are several languages in that country, share it. (like
www.wikipedia.nl) For a overview of all Wikipedias you can send traffic to
http://portal.wikipedia.be

It is even better for recognition to use the domain of the local country
instead of the exotic .org (exotic for must users).

Must users get confused when a url does not start whit www and not ends
whit (countrys ccTLD) or .com

And some webdirectorys do not accept a url if it is not from that country.

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo

body:
On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 15:21, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Our once little town is now a bustling city that never sleeps complete with
> thriving and distinct "ethnic quarters". Before, a volunteer fire department
> and a combined town Mayor/Sheriff was perfectly fine to run the town. IMO now
> what we need is a "city council" headed by a mayor who appoints a "Sheriff"
> (who in turn appoints "deputies").

What a fabulous vision. Anyone else see Copland?


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> But, if there is an improvement to be made, I'm all for it.

Well, the idea is to offer actual new features for the multilingual
portal: multi language search, multi language RC, language file editing
interface, what have you. This is, IIRC, currently the plan for "phase IV"
of the software.

My main problem is that people are very impatient. Magnus is just
rewriting the interlanguage links code, which is very, very important to
maintain the coherence of the different language pedias, *much* more
important than the portal. Others are working on optimization so we can
actually scale to accomodate more users. And so forth.

Having phase III working properly is a requirement for starting work on
phase IV, for which we have to reorganize our database once more. We won't
put some crappy link page up just to make people happy -- as you said, if
all we do is *remove* content it's hardly worth it.  I'm happy if we have
phase III working nicely by mid-year. After that we can concentrate on
phase IV.

So, can we stop bringing this subject up again until June or July, please?
Thanks.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jesse Alter

subject: [WikiEN-l] User banned, why?

body:
Hey, I'm new to the list, and I hope to keep up a bit. The main reason I
subscribed was to talk about User:VeraCruz/Lir. I've been speaking to
them on and off of Wikipedia, and they seem like a nice person. We've
been speaking about various topics, and when advising me about
Wikipedia, he's taught me a lot about empiricism and NPOV. I've read
some articles he has contributed a lot to...

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kuwait
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis_auxiliary_cruiser
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mayhew_Wainwright_IV

...and I've been fairly impressed. I asked him if he could help me with
a stub article I started, about Moulay Ismail, the Bloodthirsty. I had
been unable to find much information on him, but over an IM conversation...

Him: are u talking about the prince of saudi arabia?
Him: or the sultan?
Me: This is a 17th century dude.
Him: associated with Louis XIV ?
Him: asked to marry the Princess of Conti?
Him: did he have 800 children/
Him: he ordered that the heads of 10,000 slain enemies adorn the walls
of the two great imperial capitals, Fes and Marrakech.
Him: heh us hould include this conversation where i find info for u as
an example of how useful i am
Him: Moulay Ismail enlisted over 25,000 Christian prisoners and 30,000
common criminals to build his pretentious city, and brought over 16,000
slaves from sub-Saharan Africa to serve in his military machine. By the
time of his death in 1727, the Black Guard, as it was known, had grown
tenfold and was one of the largest death guards in Morocco's history.
Me: 800 children..
Me: Yeah.
Me: Geez man.
Him: His grandson, Mohammed III, moved the capital back to Marrakech
Him: most of Ismail's great monuments are still standing
Him: Most of the fanciest tile work and wealth were stripped from Meknes
and used to build up other imperial cities

and he also gave me a LOT of helpful links. *groan* I need to synthesize
all of that information later...

I understand there were disagreements with other users. This is of
course bound to happen, and Wikipedia boasts its ability to resolve
those sorts of conflicts through its Talk page. This user is obviously
someone who has the potential to be a great contributor to Wikipedia. I
see no reason for him to be banned.

Thanks,

cprompt