from_name: Nathan Wong

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google hit rankings

body:
Why does Wikipedia seem to be so low recently? It seems to be barely
featured for lots of common searches, whereas various snapshots and
Wikipedia mirrors are indexed frequently. For example:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=prime+minister+of+the++united+kingdom&fsrc=1&oi=moresources
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Australia+capital&fsrc=1&oi=moresources
(those are question answers, but thats what many people may look for).

With Wikipedia being such a popular site, I'd have thought that it might
be higher.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Arkady Rose

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google hit rankings

body:
Nathan Wong wrote:
> Why does Wikipedia seem to be so low recently? It seems to be barely
> featured for lots of common searches, whereas various snapshots and
> Wikipedia mirrors are indexed frequently. For example:
> http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=prime+minister+of+the++united+kingdom&fsrc=1&oi=moresources
>
> http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Australia+capital&fsrc=1&oi=moresources
> (those are question answers, but thats what many people may look for).
>
> With Wikipedia being such a popular site, I'd have thought that it might
> be higher.

Quite a few mirrors have Google Ads; Wikipedia doesn't. You might
find your answer there....

-a

--
Imagination is just intelligence having fun.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.11.8 - Release Date: 10/05/2005


list: foundation-l

from_name: Paris Lovett

subject: [Foundation-l] Update on Wikibook: Emergency Medicine

body:
Hi all,

Some news and a quick update on the Emergency Medicine wikibook:

1. Those of you who recommended that we not have special author registration
processes were right. It's hard enough to get contributors at the start
without extra speed bumps!
2. The book is still at an embryonic stage. The structure has been laid out,
but there is only one chapter (by yours truly).
3. On the plus side, I recently emailed a 1200 member listserv for emergency
physicians and got some interested responses, particularly from one
emergency physician who also is a regular wikimedia participant
4. The listserv posting also got me an invite to make a presentation on May
24th 3:00-4:30 at the Annual National Meeting of the Society for Academic
Emergency Medicine. That is pretty exciting.
5. For the presentation, it would be helpful to have some facts that could
demonstrate the unique benefits of the wiki system to those who've had no
contact.
(a) I would appreciate any metrics on the growth of the wikipedia.
(b) And I would appreciate your thoughts on how best to "sell" the concept.
(c) Some at the meeting will be very sceptical of a textbook that does not
verify authors' credentials and does not have a formal peer-review process.
Those are the two big concerns. Remember, in medicine, when people read a
textbook, they may go directly to use the advice in patient care, so the
audience will have safety concerns, whatever disclaimers we place on the
site. Please give thoughts on how best to respond.
6. Finally, I may get a mention in a national EM residents' magazine.
Hopefully all these things will help get past the embryonic stage, to the
fetal stage, and eventually to critical mass!

Paris Lovett.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
David Gerard a ?crit:
> Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050512 15:34]:
>
>
>>Just for the record, Mr Wollmann is still requesting removal of that
>>information. I am not exactly sure what we should answer him now...
>
>
>
> Probably not at all. Read these:
>
>     http://www.smbtech.com/ed/index.html
>     http://www.smbtech.com/ed/whyed.html
>
>
> - d.

I seeeee.

Well, in any cases, we are not calling him a krook, we report someone
else is doing so. There is absolutely no standing for a legal action here.

Besides, while I agree that "yes, who cares...", I consider we should
NOT accept to remove an information, just because the target is unhappy
with it. Even if in this case it would not matter, the principle is bad.

While I would just not answer anything at all, the problem is that he is
calling by phone Terry. And while it is easy not to answer a mail, it is
not so easy not to answer a phone call.

This said... if Alt is calling him a kook, should he proceed requesting
removal of the reference on wikipedia, he might also get a troll label
on his forehead on top.

Ant


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Proposal for deprecation of syntax features for
	1.5

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,
On Thursday 12 May 2005 17:58, Andrew Rodland wrote:
> On 5/12/05, Nicolas Weeger <nicolas.weeger at laposte.net> wrote:
> > > * Current syntax: '''italic''plain => 'italicplain
> > > * Proposed syntax: '''italic''plain => italicplain
> > > * Previous behaviour with new syntax:
> > > <nowiki>'</nowiki>''italic''plain
> >
> > For the record, I shall say that I fully expect riots on w:fr: if
> > this new behaviour becomes mandatory :)
> >
> > Some versions, months ago, did require the <nowiki> tag, and it was
> > really afwul to manage.
> > And we'd also need to *fix* all pages with this syntax, and we can't
> > really fix automatically, need to check on a case-by-case basis.
>
> Not quite true; it could be fixed automatically by having the existing
> parser code apply the rule that it does now, and write a <nowiki>
> around the ' that it interprets literally. It wouldn't be quite
> semantically perfect, but articles would keep their appearances (and
> it could even be applied before/without removing the offending code).
> I agree that <nowiki> is somewhat unwieldy, but it's a solution to the
> problem that already exists (and always has) and doesn't require
> mangling the grammar so that it's imposible to know whether ''' means
> ''' or not.
>
> A slightly more radical approach that just crossed my mind would be to
> add a token reminiscent of TeX's "\/" which would produce no output,
> but break up tokens. For the sake of readability in this email, let's
> imagine it's ";"
>
> * l';''italic''bold => "l'italicbold"
> * l'';'italic''bold => "l'italicbold"

"\" as in

 * l'\''italic''bold
 * l''\'italic''bold

? "\" escaping is used a lot elsewhere and "\" would be the first char
that springs to my mind.

Best wishes,

Tels

>
> gives you full control without the 17 characters of <nowiki></nowiki>.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

- --
 Signed on Thu May 12 20:19:22 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Spammed if you do, spammed if you don't." - Murphy's Law

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBQoOeY3cLPEOTuEwVAQHMEAf+LjH+mywiDF2ov/tUfCjP39cH0PURR1zU
XPk8b2hdAHcYs0RnXMIEbdPXkJHZaYI0X/SakPEdd9KAAXcvrIX0zqV6kQdcURKc
XlY47o8JQt0oPLzgBRb+9Txktwjs1ur9ANqjriqSZFY1SrodiqIPVB4sSuKAxg8T
DxAdPO41/pK7MhzLT5/N4KSDUq/lADS2woZM0lxQShhaM2vagZg855XFdS+4yqu+
gpm8iRMQnoA51xLkUFwXBCwS/KNHVya4rv5nNdR/R9V+XGTY787jfz4GkBGizGIb
3VsJHXjDLyqbrkVL6pG1OlbL4SeUI5EG4Dk2XsB5P01oXUK3wyeMxQ==
=v1r2
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Proposal for deprecation of syntax features
	for	1.5

body:
> "\" as in
>
>  * l'\''italic''bold
>  * l''\'italic''bold
>
> ? "\" escaping is used a lot elsewhere and "\" would be the first char
> that springs to my mind.

That's too tech-savy. The aim of wikisyntax is to be easy to
understand - we can't ask people to put a \ before ' or surround it by
<nowiki></nowiki>.
I don't mind a slightly more complex syntax for tables, templates &
such, "advanced" behaviour. But for your daily usage (and ' is used
often at least in french), something quite simple to use is imo
waaaaaaay better.

> Best wishes,
>
> Tels

Regards
Nicolas Weeger


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Bryan Derksen said:
>
>
>>It seems to me based on what I've seen over the past week or two of
>>this  debate that Wollman is both notable and public.
>>
>>
>
>Well that's a judgement call, and we can respectfully disagree on this.
>
>
Dratted respectfulness. :)

>In rebuttal I recall that Wollmann's Wikipedia entry was listed for
>deletion in January and it was deleted because the consensus at the time
>was that Wollmann was *not* notable. During the discussion those voting
>had access to all public documentation, as this was in links from the
>article at the time and summarised in the article itself (most of which
>was written by me as the original article had been severely POV).
>
>
The current context is just the alt.usenet.kooks article, though. In the
little microcosm that is this newsgroup Wollmann has been voted as the
Kook of the Millennium, which suggests a significant degree of
notoriety. I can envision Wollmann not having enough notability outside
that context to warrant his own separate article but still enough to be
mentioned within the alt.usenet.kooks article, much like how many
fictional character articles have lately been folded into the main
articles on the works of fiction they belong to.


body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Thursday 12 May 2005 20:50, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> > "\" as in
> >
> >  * l'\''italic''bold
> >  * l''\'italic''bold
> >
> > ? "\" escaping is used a lot elsewhere and "\" would be the first
> > char that springs to my mind.
>
> That's too tech-savy. The aim of wikisyntax is to be easy to
> understand - we can't ask people to put a \ before ' or surround it by
> <nowiki></nowiki>.
> I don't mind a slightly more complex syntax for tables, templates &
> such, "advanced" behaviour. But for your daily usage (and ' is used
> often at least in french), something quite simple to use is imo
> waaaaaaay better.

Yes, I agree on the "simple" solution. However, the current situation
isn't "simple" for things like l'''italic'' because it is unclear what
exactly that should mean. Maybe it means

	l'italic

or it means

	l'italic

How is the computer (and the human writing it) to know which is which? You
need at least one more bit information to distinguish between these two
variants.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Thu May 12 21:26:43 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 This email violates U.S. patent #4,197,590:

   for (x = 0; x < widht; x++) {
     for (y = 0; y < height; y++) {
       setPixel (x+xm, y+ym, getPixel(x+xm,y+ym) ^ getCursorPixel(x,y);
     }
   }

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBQoOuqHcLPEOTuEwVAQGlTQf+OuBRC1X8b1kFVVtdCnNe2aFU+/EdsCfh
VfEXdJmcUefVitB2NI+p+3rVaxcP8nLdGWcM5n+NSvFNQVykidB1ifZQqyOda7SE
9pR9EbzuhSV1HRJOOqc6P8pj01bIVtkn9y+aNhIci3sezscPsNYNFh54JX3PFKBo
uP8rkeiGWBOLberV4qaG8WzQf17RpuruabLHI1EAz7z8oh2WUm+74B7kqQhRfK7c
jtpHqCtYHoQ3XuyyvkT5CMMyMAl+6uwYE6B+FxiTz0/61y/DzyQl8tyMgthRH9Kb
sAdc4nhvS448PEwxS3JbWUJ2cuemyYReUo2w7UvJRCmPIV3mIL0U9g==
=8RoC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
>From mailing list messages I read earlier, Wollmann's article already failed
VfD previously (and had serious NPOV issues).
----- Original Message -----
From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2005 9:17 PM
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

Why not write a Wikipedia about Wollman, if he's that fascinating? If it
survives the VFD process, than that might give us an excuse to mention
him via a link from kooks newsgroup. But if it fails a vfd vote, that's
pretty conclusive evidence that he's "non-notable".

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


from_name: Asbestos

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google hit rankings

body:
Maybe Google's annoyed that Yahoo got to host Wikipedia space instead of
them...

Sam
--
Asbestos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos

On 5/12/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
> Nathan Wong wrote:
>
> > Why does Wikipedia seem to be so low recently? It seems to be barely
> > featured for lots of common searches, whereas various snapshots and
> > Wikipedia mirrors are indexed frequently. For example:
> >
> http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=prime+minister+of+the++united+kingdom&fsrc=1&oi=moresources
> >
> >
> http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Australia+capital&fsrc=1&oi=moresources
> > (those are question answers, but thats what many people may look for).
> >
> > With Wikipedia being such a popular site, I'd have thought that it
> > might be higher.
>
> I imagine the Google spider doesn't wait around five minutes
> hoping for the page to come up. Many times it just has to cache
> the empty page from wikipedia.org <http://wikipedia.org>, can't be good
> for our
> page rank vs quick-responding mirrors.
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>I'm not talking about quoting, I'm talking about things like the
>copious images of Disney characters sprinkled throughout the site,
>without even mentioning the anime characters. But I'm not advocating
>paranoia, but I am advocating a less nonchalant attitude about fair
>use. At the moment it is often used as a "get out of copyright free"
>card in ways which I suspect would not be legally defensible [...]
>
Like how exactly? How would a picture of Mickey be used in any
other way than to illustrate an article about animated characters
or Disney?

One of WP's most useful defenses is to become even more popular
and respected. We want to be in a position where all the judges
in the building have to recuse themselves because they and their
clerks consult WP on a daily basis, or have them find lawyers in
contempt for merely suggesting that WP has any evil intentions. :-)

Perhaps more realistically, we want to be so credible and widely
used that merely publishing the C&D letter on the main page will
cause the foolhardy company to get deluged with hate mail and
backpedal within 24 hours, disavowing any knowledge of the law
firm that sent the letter. We've shown we can raise thousands of
dollars within a few days just by asking; that's a reservoir of
good will that can help us deal with a wide variety of threats.

Stan


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] The niceness principle

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

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Wiktionary:
> Noun
> kook
>
> (Slang) an eccentric, strange or crazy person.
>
> I really don't understand how someone could get so worked up about
> such a thing in the first place. I've been named all sorts of things
> by a bunch of vandals, but most people know it's complete and utter
> rubbish.
>
> I'd recommend this person to take it easy and laught at the effort
> these people make to do all this.
>
> --Mgm
>
> On 5/12/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 5/11/05, Stacey Greenstein <stacey.nj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Should we then only write nice things about people/ Should we only include
>>>facts that the subjects' approve? Or should we be impartial and show that
>>>there is reality and negativeity?
>>
>>And when I wrote that I meant the note to Ed to be offline, I meant
>>offlist, sorry. Was trying to do too many things at once there.
>>
>>Stacey, it's not a question of requiring subjects' approval. Sometimes
>>it's important to fight to keep material in Wikpedia, and I've done
>>it, but in this case, the subject is a private person, entirely
>>non-notable, in a story that isn't a matter of public interest; so if
>>it were up to me alone, I'd delete it because it's upsetting him. It's
>>a question of cost-benefit. In this case, there's a cost to him and no
>>benefit to us.
>>
>>Sarah

Wiktionary:
Noun
kook

   1. (Slang) an eccentric, strange or crazy person.

Wiktionary:
Adjective
crazy (crazier, craziest)

   1. insane, demented
   2. out of control
          * When Jim gets on the motorcycle he goes crazy.
   3. overly excited or enthusiastic

Noun
craziness (uncountable)

Synonyms

    * lunatic
    * deranged
    * mad man
    * nut case

I laugh at the effort *he* takes in appealing their labels.

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCg0rd/RxM5Ph0xhMRAuFXAJ9JH3LLHY/7oMEKsApWjB4NKT8SDwCePcXE
NTmNG/AQrqiXZJutSkCr6r4=
=4hoa
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Ray Saintonge said:
>
> If Mr. Wollmann thinks that he has a case let him go ahead with it, and
>  show us that he means more than simply to intimidate.  We can easily
> promise that when we receive the court documents in the case we will
> reconsider our position in the matter.  This may or may not result in a
>  removal of what he finds offensive from the site.  Meanwhile it will
> have been very costly for him to mount his case with no prospects of
> recovering those costs.

Well, Wikipedia probably wouldn't be vulnerable, but where individuals are
involved he could get a default judgement in a plaintiff-friendly UK court
for a no-show defendant in the US, with costs awarded (which is very
common in UK cases), and then use that as leverage in the US.  This
technique has been tried against Usenet posters and worked well.  Since
Wikipedia content is produced by individuals who are often identifiable it
would probably work as well on Wikipedia.
He may have to demonstrate standing to sue in UK courts, but that could be
as simple as selling books through Amazon.co.uk--which Wollmann does, as
it happens.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Poor, Edmund W said:
> Why not write a Wikipedia about Wollman, if he's that fascinating? If
> it survives the VFD process, than that might give us an excuse to
> mention him via a link from kooks newsgroup. But if it fails a vfd
> vote, that's pretty conclusive evidence that he's "non-notable".
>

Been there, done that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Edmond_Wollmann


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050512 15:34]:

> Just for the record, Mr Wollmann is still requesting removal of that
> information. I am not exactly sure what we should answer him now...

Probably not at all. Read these:

    http://www.smbtech.com/ed/index.html
    http://www.smbtech.com/ed/whyed.html

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Proposal for deprecation of syntax features
	for 1.5

body:
> Exactly. Now add to that the complication that ''' supposedly means
> something completely different from _both_ of those when it's not in
> the middle of a word, and that (as with much of the syntax) there has
> never been any well-defined rule governing this behavior, only a
> last-resort hack in PHP code. It's not simple conceptually, and it's
> far from simple for the computer, and it's bad for parsing. I hate to
> be argumentative, but I don't believe that the issue is as simple
> (heh) as you make it out to be, Nicolas.

I don't believe either it's simple, conceptually or computer-ally
(whao, a neologism).

Merely pointing out that:
1) there'd be many broken page if the syntax was changed, and some
huge work to fix everything
2) people (on w:fr:, can't tell other languages) would be simply
really bothered by the change, and would simply revolt to go hang the
people changing everything :)

Nicolas Weeger


subject: [Foundation-l] Calendar

body:
Hiya

Would anyone have the time to update the calendar ?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar

It would be great to help here.

Thanks

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Calendar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Poor, Edmund W a ?crit:
> Why not write a Wikipedia about Wollman, if he's that fascinating? If it
> survives the VFD process, than that might give us an excuse to mention
> him via a link from kooks newsgroup. But if it fails a vfd vote, that's
> pretty conclusive evidence that he's "non-notable".
>
> Ed

Admitedly... I am surprised his article was deleted for him being non
notable... while at the same time he is mentionned in another article
(which seems to imply he is...).

But maybe this is not an argument for notability ?

Ant


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
David Gerard a ?crit:
> Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050513 03:34]:
>
>
>>While I would just not answer anything at all, the problem is that he is
>>calling by phone Terry. And while it is easy not to answer a mail, it is
>>not so easy not to answer a phone call.
>
>
>
> She asks him to hereby stop calling and write a proper legal threat (on
> paper, from proper lawyer, signed for, etc.) if he has one to make. He
> keeps calling, it's harassment.
>
>
> - d.

You have a point...
We might suggest that he (Terry is a man...) record the discussions...

Ant


from_name: Ben

subject: [Wikitech-l] Images download

body:
Hi,

I download successfully mysql database on
http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/

But I can't find the place to download images.
Where can I found it ?

Thanks
Ben


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
geni wrote:

>>Perhaps more realistically, we want to be so credible and widely
>>used that merely publishing the C&D letter on the main page will
>>cause the foolhardy company to get deluged with hate mail and
>>backpedal within 24 hours, disavowing any knowledge of the law
>>firm that sent the letter. We've shown we can raise thousands of
>>dollars within a few days just by asking; that's a reservoir of
>>good will that can help us deal with a wide variety of threats.
>>
>
>
>I would suggest against any form of vigilantism. Apart from anything
>else sooner or latter you run into someone who doesn't care. Then you
>are in real trouble.
>
What do you mean, "vigilantism"? We just don't need to tiptoe around
scared that one mistake by some anon editor will force us to shut
down. We're not some kind of dubious dotcom with a shady biz model,
we're as open and truthful as we know how, we're dedicated to facts
more than agendas, and best of all, we're giving away stuff for free.

That's a very powerful story, and we should be making everybody
aware of it, not chewing our fingernails in fear of corporate
lawyers. Suing WP should come to be regarded as worse than suing nuns.

Stan


from_name: Sam Hocevar

body:
On Wed, May 11, 2005, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> >I'd also like to suggest the removal of the workaround (occupying most
> >of the first half of parser.php doQuotes) dealing with confusion of
> >quotes-as-text and quotes-as-markup within words. In other words, the
> >workaround provides that "l'''italic''plain" renders as
> >"l<i>italic</i>plain".
>
> Fatal error: failed assert( not_much_in_use ); on line 345 :)
> This is widely used (at least) on w:fr: and is *required* - many words
> starting with a vowel will yield a leading "l'", sometimes we want to
> highlight only the word after.

   The proper fix for this situation is to use the real apostrophe
character (U+2019 right single quotation mark, UTF-8 0xE28099) for
apostrophes and continue using ' for wiki markup.

--
Sam.


from_name: David Monniaux

body:
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon wrote

>What *might* help is if we could use the ' HTML entity.  IE
>doesn't support it, but perhaps MediaWiki could translate it after
>it's done with the '' => <i> transformation.
>
Are you suggesting that we explain to francophone users that they have
to type a HTML entity every time they write a contracted definite
article? :-)


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
I'm not talking about quoting, I'm talking about things like the
copious images of Disney characters sprinkled throughout the site,
without even mentioning the anime characters. But I'm not advocating
paranoia, but I am advocating a less nonchalant attitude about fair
use. At the moment it is often used as a "get out of copyright free"
card in ways which I suspect would not be legally defensible, or not
worth the money or time it would take to defend it (considering the
principle at hand would be "does this qualify as X under this law,"
I'm not sure this would really be a first-amendment blockbuster if it
clearly didn't qualify).

FF

On 5/10/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Fastfission (fastfission at gmail.com) [050511 01:25]:
>
> > I don't see any good way around this. It is less a problem of
> > Wikipedia itself (though I'd be very careful of "fair use" because of
> > the way it is structured in US law), as it is with the ability of the
> > big and powerful to wage legal war even on principles they are in the
> > wrong on. It's more of a maddening thought than it is a sobering one.
>
> The mediapathic nature of such a suit.
>
> "They're suing an encyclopedia for quoting them."
> "WTF?!"
>
> "They're suing Wikipedia for quoting them."
> "UNLEASH THE NINJA FIRST-AMENDMENT ATTACK LAWYERS!"
>
> It's the sort of backup one hopes never to have to call upon. But it's
> there and keen to help. Avoid copyright paranoia.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] benchmarking ielo.net

body:
I wanted to know whether we had bottlenecks for the small Paris cluster,
so Mederic and I ran a "siege" experiment (using the fr welcome page: it
is so frequently accessed it's bound to be in RAM) on the Paris squids.

We came from two networks:
- Renater (French academic network)
- ProXad (free.fr, major French ADSL provider; Med has a 16 Mbits/s
connection there)

It all went well; we simply reached about 8.2 megabytes per second
(measured as something like 100 megabits/s), which means we saturated
the fast ethernet link and switch between our machines and the Lost
Oasis router.

-- DM


body:
On Thu, May 12, 2005, Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon wrote:

> >    The proper fix for this situation is to use the real apostrophe
> > character (U+2019 right single quotation mark, UTF-8 0xE28099) for
> > apostrophes and continue using ' for wiki markup.
>
> Unicode RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK is not an apostrophe, any more
> than Unicode SWUNG DASH is a tilde.  U+0027 APOSTROPHE is the proper
> apostrophe character.

   I wonder what version of the Unicode standard you are referring to.
Both the U+0027 and the U+2019 comments mention that (I quote) U+2019 is
the preferred character to use for apostrophe.

> What *might* help is if we could use the ' HTML entity.  IE
> doesn't support it, but perhaps MediaWiki could translate it after
> it's done with the '' => <i> transformation.

   ' is the ASCII apostrophe, not the apostrophe used in latin
languages, which is ’.

Regards,
--
Sam.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> What do you mean, "vigilantism"? We just don't need to tiptoe around
> scared that one mistake by some anon editor will force us to shut
> down. We're not some kind of dubious dotcom with a shady biz model,
> we're as open and truthful as we know how, we're dedicated to facts
> more than agendas, and best of all, we're giving away stuff for free.

All issues of activism aside, something like this might be needed anyway
in order to prevent future editors from re-adding "forbidden" content.
Wikipedia is editable by everyone, so if we need to direct our editors
not to do something that means we have to make those directions known to
everyone.

I don't know if they still do it, but back when Google was first forced
to remove certain sites from the results one gets when searching for
certain terms, they did so by replacing those results with links to the
takedown notice that had forced them to do so. Since the takedown notice
named the "forbidden" URL it just added an extra step to the process of
finding those pages. If Wikipedia winds up having material forced off of
it, rather than trumpeting the fact and raising a ruckus how about just
replacing the pages or images in question with the takedown notice? That
way it's only presented to people who are looking for that specific
information.


from_name: admin Yellowikis

subject: [Wikitech-l] UI Language and logging on

body:
Users have to register and log-in before they are able to change the
UI language.

Is it possible to give users the option of changing the UI language
without the log in?

or will that cause problems with cookies?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Tony Sidaway a ?crit:
> Poor, Edmund W said:
>
>>Why not write a Wikipedia about Wollman, if he's that fascinating? If
>>it survives the VFD process, than that might give us an excuse to
>>mention him via a link from kooks newsgroup. But if it fails a vfd
>>vote, that's pretty conclusive evidence that he's "non-notable".
>>
>
>
> Been there, done that.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Edmond_Wollmann

The page leads nowhere...
so, why was it deleted ?

Ant


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Ray Saintonge said:
>
>
>>If Mr. Wollmann thinks that he has a case let him go ahead with it, and
>> show us that he means more than simply to intimidate.  We can easily
>>promise that when we receive the court documents in the case we will
>>reconsider our position in the matter.  This may or may not result in a
>> removal of what he finds offensive from the site.  Meanwhile it will
>>have been very costly for him to mount his case with no prospects of
>>recovering those costs.
>>
>>
>Well, Wikipedia probably wouldn't be vulnerable, but where individuals are
>involved he could get a default judgement in a plaintiff-friendly UK court
>for a no-show defendant in the US, with costs awarded (which is very
>common in UK cases), and then use that as leverage in the US.  This
>technique has been tried against Usenet posters and worked well.  Since
>Wikipedia content is produced by individuals who are often identifiable it
>would probably work as well on Wikipedia.
>He may have to demonstrate standing to sue in UK courts, but that could be
>as simple as selling books through Amazon.co.uk--which Wollmann does, as
>it happens.
>
I'm not familiar with the Usenet cases, so I can't comment on what they
mean.

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I thought that Wohlmann was a UK
resident.  If so his selling books through Amazon.co.uk should only be a
secondary issue.

Defaulting would not be a preferred option, but that too would depend on
just what he is asking.  Assuming that the defendant is a US person, he
too should be able to receive an award of costs including travel costs.
Perhaps he could be asked to pay conduct money or post a bond for costs
of attending.  It would be refundable to him if he wins the case.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Update on Wikibook: Emergency Medicine

body:
For ideas of presentations, check out
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations

Unless I am wrong no presentation has ever been done on wikibooks...

who is the other participant also knowledgeable in emergency medicine ?

And what is your opinion about wikiversity ?

Anthere

Paris Lovett a ?crit:
> Hi all,
>
> Some news and a quick update on the Emergency Medicine wikibook:
>
> 1. Those of you who recommended that we not have special author registration
> processes were right. It's hard enough to get contributors at the start
> without extra speed bumps!
> 2. The book is still at an embryonic stage. The structure has been laid out,
> but there is only one chapter (by yours truly).
> 3. On the plus side, I recently emailed a 1200 member listserv for emergency
> physicians and got some interested responses, particularly from one
> emergency physician who also is a regular wikimedia participant
> 4. The listserv posting also got me an invite to make a presentation on May
> 24th 3:00-4:30 at the Annual National Meeting of the Society for Academic
> Emergency Medicine. That is pretty exciting.
> 5. For the presentation, it would be helpful to have some facts that could
> demonstrate the unique benefits of the wiki system to those who've had no
> contact.
> (a) I would appreciate any metrics on the growth of the wikipedia.
> (b) And I would appreciate your thoughts on how best to "sell" the concept.
> (c) Some at the meeting will be very sceptical of a textbook that does not
> verify authors' credentials and does not have a formal peer-review process.
> Those are the two big concerns. Remember, in medicine, when people read a
> textbook, they may go directly to use the advice in patient care, so the
> audience will have safety concerns, whatever disclaimers we place on the
> site. Please give thoughts on how best to respond.
> 6. Finally, I may get a mention in a national EM residents' magazine.
> Hopefully all these things will help get past the embryonic stage, to the
> fetal stage, and eventually to critical mass!
>
> Paris Lovett.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050513 03:34]:

> While I would just not answer anything at all, the problem is that he is
> calling by phone Terry. And while it is easy not to answer a mail, it is
> not so easy not to answer a phone call.

She asks him to hereby stop calling and write a proper legal threat (on
paper, from proper lawyer, signed for, etc.) if he has one to make. He
keeps calling, it's harassment.

- d.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
Skyring stated for the record:
> On 5/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Truth is an absolute defense against charges of libel.
>
>
> Maybe it is where you live, but certainly not everywhere. If I was
> mounting a lawsuit, I'd go for the jurisdiction with my best chance of
> success. Wouldn't you?

Two important points: the plaintiff doesn't have infinite resources.
Even if the courts in Kookooland can be relied upon to always find for
the plaintiff and not to care about the truth, the plaintiff has to get
there and get them to accept his case.  And even if he does, I'm an
American citizen.  I don't care what the courts in Kookooland say about me.

--
  Sean Barrett     | That was the stun setting. This is not.
  sean at epoptic.com |


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use on English Wikinews

body:
I would like to re-enable local uploads on the English Wikinews for the
purpose of fair use image uploads only. We have worked in the last few
weeks on a whitelist policy for cases where we believe fair use to be
acceptable:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Fair_use

This includes screenshots, publicity photos explicitly intended for the
media, logos, and images under "semi-free" licenses which we might get
under a fully free license eventually, but where a breaking news
situation requires us to make a temporary compromise.

This is very important for us; we've already had to delete screenshots
that showed a security flaw scooped by Wikinews because they were
non-free and therefore not allowed on the Commons.

For now, there would be two upload links, "Upload media" and "Upload
fair use media", one pointing to the Commons, the other to the local
upload page. In MediaWiki 1.5, we can point "Upload file" to the
Wikimedia Commons, and hide local uploads from the navigation. That way,
we can apply "security by obscurity". Only people who read the fair use
policy will find the local upload link.

I'd like to ask the Board to register any objections within the next
week or so. If there are none, I would also recommend that the other
language editions follow a similar procedure to develop their own local
fair use policies, so we can re-enable local uploads on these editions
one by one.

Erik


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Proposal for deprecation of syntax features for 1.5

in_reply_to:
<1115900443.8681.4.camel@shuttle.piclab.com> (Lee Daniel
	Crocker's message of "Thu, 12 May 2005 05:20:43 -0700")

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> writes:

> On Thu, 2005-05-12 at 09:33 +0200, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>
>> I do not ask for HTML, I vote for XML.  Our all-time-morphing
>> wiki-syntax is not user-friendly.
>
> Yes, The current wiki syntax is dreadful, and getting worse with
> every release.  But using XML doesn't solve the problem, it just
> puts up a big barrier to entry for newcomers.

I think different.  Those who don't know or don't like XML can write

simple paragraphs
 without any markup at all.  After editing some
article the markup is self-explaining:

     <row>
      <entry>...</entry>
     </row>
     <row>
      <entry>...</entry>
     </row>

I never edit table boxes, too complicate, and it isn't worth learning a
wiki-syntax; I cannot imagine something more boring than learning random
markup codes.  But that's just me ;)

> FWIW, in the current thread, I'm all for deprecating unneeded
> syntaxes now, even before we reform the whole package.

If well planned, exchange the syntax could happen at edit/save time -
simply store converted articles in a new table, etc.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


body:
Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> writes:

> ? "\" escaping is used a lot elsewhere and "\" would be the first char
> that springs to my mind.

Only on hacker keyboards (US flavor) the backslash is easy to enter...

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
> Perhaps more realistically, we want to be so credible and widely
> used that merely publishing the C&D letter on the main page will
> cause the foolhardy company to get deluged with hate mail and
> backpedal within 24 hours, disavowing any knowledge of the law
> firm that sent the letter. We've shown we can raise thousands of
> dollars within a few days just by asking; that's a reservoir of
> good will that can help us deal with a wide variety of threats.

I would suggest against any form of vigilantism. Apart from anything
else sooner or latter you run into someone who doesn't care. Then you
are in real trouble.
--
geni


body:
Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> writes:

> And writing XML is much harder
> than writing plain text (which wiki syntax basically is).

<p>
And the same is valid for XML.
</p>

> It certainly has some drawbacks. But throwing it out for XML is a solution
> in search of a problem :)

I think different.  XML is simple, self-explaining.  wiki-syntax is
cryptic and by no mean ''plain text''.  Many a lot ASCII characters are
special, they are overloaded with markup resp. layout side effects.  We
are wasting much time with getting these side effects right.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Poor, Edmund W (Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com) [050513 06:20]:

> Why not write a Wikipedia about Wollman, if he's that fascinating? If it
> survives the VFD process, than that might give us an excuse to mention
> him via a link from kooks newsgroup. But if it fails a vfd vote, that's
> pretty conclusive evidence that he's "non-notable".

You haven't been around VFD much lately, I take it. It's not just an immune
system but an autoimmune disease; people appear to be trying to use it as
Wikipedia's quality control system.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050513 06:47]:
> Poor, Edmund W a ?crit:

> >Why not write a Wikipedia about Wollman, if he's that fascinating? If it
> >survives the VFD process, than that might give us an excuse to mention
> >him via a link from kooks newsgroup. But if it fails a vfd vote, that's
> >pretty conclusive evidence that he's "non-notable".

> Admitedly... I am surprised his article was deleted for him being non
> notable... while at the same time he is mentionned in another article
> (which seems to imply he is...).
> But maybe this is not an argument for notability ?

"Notability" STILL isn't a deletion criterion.

- d.


from_name: Jason Trickey

subject: Scope of phone support, (was [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann))

body:
Make, and enforce policy of not supporting any encyclopedia content over
the phone. Refer him back to this list if need be :)

Reserve phone usage for media and press enquiries and other business needs
only. Content issues should be dealt with in writing.

Cheers,

-j

>David Gerard a ?crit:
>>Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050513 03:34]:
>>
>>>While I would just not answer anything at all, the problem is that he is
>>>calling by phone Terry. And while it is easy not to answer a mail, it is
>>>not so easy not to answer a phone call.
>>
>>She asks him to hereby stop calling and write a proper legal threat (on
>>paper, from proper lawyer, signed for, etc.) if he has one to make. He
>>keeps calling, it's harassment.
>>
>>- d.
>
>You have a point...
>We might suggest that he (Terry is a man...) record the discussions...
>
>Ant
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: MaPhi Werner

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> I don't realy see that as a big problem at all.  If we change the
> syntax, yes, we'll have to lock the databases, making everything
> read-only while an update process goes through all those gigabytes.
> But we really can do that overnight, only inconveniencing users a
> little.

Overnight? There is no "overnight" on a system that's accessed
world-wide, 24x7.

In my opinion, if the wiki syntax is changed dramatically, then the db
table should receive a new column called "syntax version". This would
allow the parser to distinguish between old and new syntax, rendering
both correctly.

MaPhi


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
geni said:
>> Perhaps more realistically, we want to be so credible and widely used
>> that merely publishing the C&D letter on the main page will cause the
>> foolhardy company to get deluged with hate mail and
>> backpedal within 24 hours, disavowing any knowledge of the law
>> firm that sent the letter. We've shown we can raise thousands of
>> dollars within a few days just by asking; that's a reservoir of
>> good will that can help us deal with a wide variety of threats.
>
>
> I would suggest against any form of vigilantism. Apart from anything
> else sooner or latter you run into someone who doesn't care. Then you
> are in real trouble.

Indeed. The first sniff of endorsement of that kind of thuggery and I'll
be gone, for one.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] request for block of website

body:
On http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jeronim#website_to_block
there is a reaction by IzyNews, stating that what they are running is
not a live copy but a cached copy, refreshed every 14 days. Because of
this, Walter has agreed with IzyNews's request to be unblocked.

Andre Engels

On 5/9/05, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> http://encyclopedie.izynews.be/fr/lexw.aspx?doc=Special%3aRecentchanges
>
> http://lexikon.izynews.de/de/dir/default_fr.aspx?u=http%3a%2f%
> 2flexikon.izynews.de%2fde%2flexw.aspx%3fdoc%3dSpezial%253aRecentchanges
>
> http://lexicon.izynews.be/nl/lexw.aspx?doc=Speciaal:Recentchanges
>
> The are running a live copy of Wikipedia at the expence of the Wikimedia
> foundation. Can the be blocked?
>
> Greetings,
> [[w:nl:gebruiker:Walter]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Why not write a Wikipedia about Wollman, if he's
> that fascinating? If it
> survives the VFD process, than that might give us an
> excuse to mention
> him via a link from kooks newsgroup. But if it fails
> a vfd vote, that's
> pretty conclusive evidence that he's "non-notable".
>
> Ed

He's already been deleted following a VfD vote.

RickK

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] benchmarking ielo.net

body:
David Monniaux wrote:

> I wanted to know whether we had bottlenecks for the small Paris
> cluster, so Mederic and I ran a "siege" experiment (using the fr
> welcome page: it is so frequently accessed it's bound to be in RAM) on
> the Paris squids.

 From a Renater site:

Same experience to the Florida squids (at approx 0640Z today May 13).
Transaction rate:             185.63 trans/sec
Throughput:               6134925.79 bytes/sec
+
Transaction rate:             119.09 trans/sec
Throughput:                     3.75 MB/sec

=9.88 megabytes/s (I think we have a 100 mbit Ethernet segment between
us and our main gateway, so I saturated it)

I'll try arranging hammering from multiple sites on Renater.

--DM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> You haven't been around VFD much lately, I take it.
> It's not just an immune
> system but an autoimmune disease; people appear to
> be trying to use it as
> Wikipedia's quality control system.
>
>
> - d.

And this is bad because ...?

RickK

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
--- Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> The attitude of "well I've never heard of him so he
> can't deserve an
> article" is entirely too prevalent and needs to be
> addressed before we turn
> into just a list of people *everybody* knows about
> already.
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]

Straw man.  Not the prevalent idea at VfD at all, but
then, it seems to be common argument of the radical
inclusionist that things like [[List of pizza parlors
in New York City]] is somehow an encylopedia article.
It has nothing to do with "I've never heard of him"
and everything to do with "He doesn't merit an
article."

RickK

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail Mobile
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/learn/mail


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Copyright question for independent wiki

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
message news:428394A0.3080807 at pobox.com...
> Phil Boswell wrote:
> > We've got a wiki for our church running on Mediawiki, so the default
> > site-wide copyright notice is the GFDL.
>
> No GFDL notice is shown unless:
> a) You selected the GFDL explicitly during setup
> b) You're running a pretty old version from before this was generalized
> c) You're running one of the localizations which is badly out of date
> d) You imported pages including localization info from a Wikimedia web
> site that has these notices embedded, in which case it probably does
> apply.
>
> If you're running an old version, upgrade to the current 1.4 release.
>
> If you're running an old localization, go to Special:Allmessages, find
> the offending message, and remove it.

We're running version 1.3.9 which I guess answers your question: I will
contact the guy who owns the hosting machine and ask him to upgrade. I'm
assuming that the upgrade process has pretty much all the bugs knocked out
of it by now?

We've got [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]] which I could fix myself: which new
ones should we be expecting with version 1.4?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Calling a spade a spade

body:
=>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
=>
=>"Notability" STILL isn't a deletion criterion.

> There are a number of policies which make notability a
> deletion criterion, even if they don't use the word
> "notability". It's certainly used as a criterion often
> enough; it may be the single most popular reason given
> for deletion.

> Jay.

LOL! When is a spade not a "spade"?

Answer: When it's an "earth-removal device".

Okay, class, we can put aside the obligatory joke and get to the heart
of the lecture.

I think our policies should be consistent. Otherwise we'll be
duplicating that sorry historical episode in which one person was
acquitted of bribery, while the guy he bribed was convicted for
receiving the very same bribe.

Too complex? Okay, let's try again.

If the person is not notable enough to have his own article, and we VOTE
to delete that article on those grounds, then how can we say that it's
crucial to Wikipedia's editorial independence to mention a "fact" about
him in another article? Especially when it's merely the FACT that
someone has called him a nasty name?

Can I mention in an article that Wikipedian Joey Fastwoney ducked out of
paying his share of the check at the First Boston Meetup? (By the way,
this really did happen, you can ask Danny. I just haven't decided
whether to "out" the poor slob. The conclusion of this debate will
determine whether I do or don't!)

And is it relevant that I don't really like Joey that much, for other
unrelated reasons? That is, must we consider my vengeful motivation, my
desire to embarass him about X because I'm really mad at him for Y?

Anyway, I've just started to dip into the A.U.K. newsgroup, and some of
the things it mentions are even worse than "kook of the millenium". Just
try clicking on this reference, if you dare. It's pretty gross, i.e.,
it's not very pretty.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.usenet.kooks/browse_thread/threa
d/41f8a13468d342a5/fcc6e23e6968dd04?q=wollman+++group:alt.usenet.kooks&r
num=6&hl=en#fcc6e23e6968dd04

I just searched for Wollman on Google groups, and this was one of the
first 10 hits. It makes "the pot calling the kettle black" seem tame
indeed.

Well, obviously there's a lot of anger and hostility and outrage being
expressed here. Should we really write about all the details? How about
summarizing what people on alt.flame say about each other? How is that
encyclopedic?

With all the time that's been wasted discussing this issue, a few of us
could have researched and written a fairly good article about AUK by
now.

For one thing, there's no point in mentioning that a certain person has
been "named kook of the millenium" unless we know WHY they chose to call
him that. And if there's any controversy, we ought to describe the major
sides fairly. (Hey, anyone around here remember NPOV?)

Otherwise, we just spread the anger around. It has even begun to infect
level-headed, even-tempered old Uncle Ed.

*sigh*

Now, let's forget all this nonsense and get back to work.

Ed Poor


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
> And we'd also need to *fix* all pages with this syntax, and we can't really fix automatically, need to check on a case-by-case basis.

Why not? The current parser manages just fine with it, you could write
a bot that changes everything with the same rule.

The proposed change is just that ''' always opens a bold tag and ''
always opens an italic tag, not having to check *the entire wikitext*
for context (as is done currently) would make things a lot easier, not
just for machines but for people to, the only way to tell currently if
''' is really opening a whole lot of bold text or just opening some
italic text is to find the matching '' or ''', that's not intuitive at
all.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
"Anthere" <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote in
message news:4283EC15.50408 at yahoo.com...
> Tony Sidaway a ?crit:
> > Poor, Edmund W said:
> >
> >>Why not write a Wikipedia about Wollman, if he's that fascinating? If
> >>it survives the VFD process, than that might give us an excuse to
> >>mention him via a link from kooks newsgroup. But if it fails a vfd
> >>vote, that's pretty conclusive evidence that he's "non-notable".
> > Been there, done that.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Edmond_Wollmann
> The page leads nowhere...
> so, why was it deleted ?

>From a quick perusal and in very broad terms, because people are confusing
"non-encyclopaedic" with "non-notable".

Unless I'm very much mistaken, the idea of constructing an encyclopaedia is
to gather together crumbs of information that individually are not
particularly helpful to construct a whole which is.

There seems to be a group of people who are intent on pulling out the centre
of the loaf, leaving just the crust which will then implode under its own
weight.

The attitude of "well I've never heard of him so he can't deserve an
article" is entirely too prevalent and needs to be addressed before we turn
into just a list of people *everybody* knows about already.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Patrick Collison

body:
There's a partial overnight. See http://wikimedia.org/stats/live/
org.wikimedia.all.squid.requests-hits-day.png.

If there is a decision to change the syntax in a major way, locking
the database for 12 hours is hardly a huge price to pay. How could
syntax versions work? Can you mix syntax versions in the same
article? If so, does the parser know what regions use what syntax? If
not, can only new articles use the new syntax? I don't think a hack
is the solution to a hack-ish syntax.

Le 13 mai 05 ? 06:38, MaPhi Werner a ?crit :

> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
>> I don't realy see that as a big problem at all.  If we change the
>> syntax, yes, we'll have to lock the databases, making everything
>> read-only while an update process goes through all those gigabytes.
>> But we really can do that overnight, only inconveniencing users a
>> little.
>>
>
> Overnight? There is no "overnight" on a system that's accessed
> world-wide, 24x7.
>
> In my opinion, if the wiki syntax is changed dramatically, then the
> db table should receive a new column called "syntax version". This
> would allow the parser to distinguish between old and new syntax,
> rendering both correctly.
>
>
>
> MaPhi
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Alphax said:
>
>
>>I think there should be a request for undeletion on this.
>>
>>
>
>I could reluctantly see that--if he's the first person to get into this
>kind of situation with Wikipedia, for instance.  However I'm not sure it
>would be very ethical to undelete on those grounds.  It seems too trollish
>to me (though I don't think you are proposing it for trollish reasons).
>
>
A few days back I removed an external link Sj had added to the
alt.usenet.kooks article that led to one of Wollmann's pages with his
photographic art on display. The reason this link was added was to give
Wollmann some context information since he was the only unlinked person
in the list of award winners. This suggests to me that there's some
legitimate interest in having a Wollman article, and I suggested moving
that external link to it should one be created.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Somewhere in there is a private individual, someone like you and me.
>Though he is not particularly likeable he is entitled to his privacy.  He
>is trying in his typically misguided, futile, inept way to ask for
>privacy.
>
>
But if he's a public individual, then he's a public individual whether
he wants to be or not. I'm sure there are plenty of public individuals
out there who'd prefer to be private.

If the Wollmann article gets undeleted, NPOV policy would demand that
the sort of caveats you just listed off about Wollmann's notoriety
should be mentioned in there. If NPOV is done right then all sides of an
argument should theoretically be satisfied with the results.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
Skyring said:
>
> Another factor is the ease of access to the same audience. If a
> newspaper libels you, it is difficult to present counter-claims to
> everyone who read the original libel. But on Usenet, and arguably on
> Wikipedia, you have the same access to the same audience.

This argument hasn't featured as a serious legal argument in any internet
cases that I'm aware of.  The damage is done by the original defamation;
the plaintiff's attempts to control the damage (which are notoriously
counter-productive even where the damaged party is utterly above reproof)
do not make the original damage any less serious.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Ray Saintonge said:
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I thought that Wohlmann was a UK
> resident.

He lives in Southern California.

>
> Defaulting would not be a preferred option, but that too would depend
> on  just what he is asking.  Assuming that the defendant is a US
> person, he  too should be able to receive an award of costs including
> travel costs.   Perhaps he could be asked to pay conduct money or post
> a bond for costs  of attending.  It would be refundable to him if he
> wins the case.
>

I'm not in charge of the British legal system, so I have no authority to
mandate any of the above.


from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Wikitech-l] benchmarking ielo.net

body:
Finally, same experience fetching content from the Florida squids to Paris:

ennael:
Data transferred:          630944944 bytes
Response time:                  1.20 secs
Transaction rate:              82.43 trans/sec
Throughput:               2717481.97 bytes/sec
Concurrency:                   98.66
+
bleuenn:
Data transferred:          641605566 bytes
Response time:                  1.18 secs
Transaction rate:              83.93 trans/sec
Throughput:               2766733.86 bytes/sec
Concurrency:                   98.82
+
chloe:
Data transferred:          625900833 bytes
Response time:                  1.20 secs
Transaction rate:             82.12 trans/sec
Throughput:               2707183.57 bytes/sec
Concurrency:                   98.70

Thus 8.2*10^6 bytes/s.

Since we only forward 10-20% of requests, this means that our inbound
bandwidth from Florida is way more than enough, even when maxing out
outgoing bandwidth.

--DM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Alphax said:
>
> I think there should be a request for undeletion on this.

I could reluctantly see that--if he's the first person to get into this
kind of situation with Wikipedia, for instance.  However I'm not sure it
would be very ethical to undelete on those grounds.  It seems too trollish
to me (though I don't think you are proposing it for trollish reasons).


subject: Florida squids, benchmarks (Re: [Wikitech-l] benchmarking ielo.net)

body:
Forcing www11.wikimedia.org as proxy:
Response time:                  1.09 secs
Transaction rate:              90.37 trans/sec
Throughput:               2986624.10 bytes/sec

Response time:                  1.09 secs
Transaction rate:              91.25 trans/sec
Throughput:               3015748.88 bytes/sec

Response time:                  1.09 secs
Transaction rate:              90.71 trans/sec
Throughput:               2997883.72 bytes/sec

Thus 9 megabytes/s, slightly above the previous result. I ascribe this
to different performances from the front squids in Florida.

-- DM


from_name: Leif Knutsen

subject: [WikiEN-l] When do deletions become vandalism

body:
At what point do deletions of images, paragraphs, etc., cross the border
from edits to becoming either violations of NPOV or even vandalism? I keep
running into one editor who deletes whole sections of information with no
explanation or a simple dismissal, e.g., "untrue assertion," "no evidence
for this," or sometimes appeal to authority. I think there is an honest
disagreement about the subject matter under editing, but simply deleting
inconvenient facts or assertions is imho bad, and possibly unacceptable,
behavior.

Leif (Leifern)


from_name: Stacey Greenstein

body:
Which articles are you referring to?

Stacey
[[User:UtherSRG]]

On 5/13/05, Leif Knutsen <vyerllc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> At what point do deletions of images, paragraphs, etc., cross the border
> from edits to becoming either violations of NPOV or even vandalism? I keep
> running into one editor who deletes whole sections of information with no
> explanation or a simple dismissal, e.g., "untrue assertion," "no evidence
> for this," or sometimes appeal to authority. I think there is an honest
> disagreement about the subject matter under editing, but simply deleting
> inconvenient facts or assertions is imho bad, and possibly unacceptable,
> behavior.
>
> Leif (Leifern)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Images download

body: They aren't offered anymore.


body:
> 3. {{msg:}}
>
> Leftover stuff from the 1.2 days, let's kill it;)

Update: I just took that one out.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Alphax said:
>>
>
> Did you read the pages...

I *contributed* a considerable amount of material to them, although I do
not endorse them.
[...]
>
> It is well known that he has threatened everyone who disagrees with him
> with legal action; it is alleged on the site mentioned above that he
> has caused *hundreds* of people's ISPs to cancel their accounts, based
> solely on the fact that he asked them to.

One of my reasons for utterly repudiating the Wollmann fan club, prior to
their compilation of that site, was their propensity for wild
exaggeration, not to mention their tendency to unconsciously ape Wollmann
himself.
Wollmann claims to have persuaded ISP's to pull many accounts, because it
is his intention to intimidate--he credits me with teaching him how to do
this because I once reported him for spamming and his two accounts of that
time were pulled.
His fan club agrees that he has been successful, partly because it enables
them to explain away the few times they've had their own accounts pulled
for misbehaving, and partly because it serves their interests to make
their own misbehavior look less serious in its consequences than his.
I was for a considerable period of time, and may well still be, one of
Wollmann's prime targets--my ISP told me they had received hundreds of
complaint emails from Wollmann, and he inadvertently sent a number of the
early complaints to me.  ISP's do not pull the accounts of people who
aren't misbehaving.  None of the complaints ever resulted in any official
or unofficial complaint or disciplinary action against me by my ISP.  One
ISP that received telephone complaints from Wollmann made an unprecedented
post on Usenet detailing his bogus complaints.  This is typical of
Wollmann and his detractors. They exaggerate flagrantly.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] grant wiki

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I know it is a minor preoccupation basically, but it is important for us
> to have a private wiki on which we can prepare some paper stuff.
>
> We sometimes do so on the grant wiki, but this one is half broken. For
> 10 edits you make on it, 9 result in a 404. This has been going on for a
> long time now.
>
> I would really really really appreciate if someone could have a look one
> day and fix it. It would really be helpful.

Should be working now, I've fixed the misplaced directory. I wish we'd
heard about the problem sooner!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050513/13512ed0/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Patrick Collison wrote:

> There's a partial overnight. See http://wikimedia.org/stats/live/
> org.wikimedia.all.squid.requests-hits-day.png.
>
> If there is a decision to change the syntax in a major way, locking
> the database for 12 hours is hardly a huge price to pay. How could
> syntax versions work? Can you mix syntax versions in the same
> article? If so, does the parser know what regions use what syntax? If
> not, can only new articles use the new syntax? I don't think a hack
> is the solution to a hack-ish syntax.
>
> Le 13 mai 05 ? 06:38, MaPhi Werner a ?crit :
>
>> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>>
>>> I don't realy see that as a big problem at all.  If we change the
>>> syntax, yes, we'll have to lock the databases, making everything
>>> read-only while an update process goes through all those gigabytes.
>>> But we really can do that overnight, only inconveniencing users a
>>> little.
>>>
>>
>> Overnight? There is no "overnight" on a system that's accessed
>> world-wide, 24x7.
>>
>> In my opinion, if the wiki syntax is changed dramatically, then the
>> db table should receive a new column called "syntax version". This
>> would allow the parser to distinguish between old and new syntax,
>> rendering both correctly.
>>
>>
>>
>> MaPhi
>
Hoi,
You are right that we could do all kinds of everything. However, I have
the distinct impression that some people could lynch you when you
implement what is under discussion. What has been proposed is techno and
English oriented. It would make it next to impossible to edit French for
instance. The Mediawiki is there to ENABLE people to add content. When
schemes like this make this impossible, it is not an acceptable scheme
however good is may seem from a technical point of view.

This is one of those few instances where developpers should not have the
final say about the future of the Mediawiki software.

If you want to enhance the syntax, the first thing that comes to my mind
is working on a syntax that is easy to use in languages like Farsi
because I found it next to impossible to edit Farsi with the Mediawiki
syntax. I would not be suprised if this is one of the major reasons why
projects in other scripts have such a hard time.

Thanks.
    GerardM


subject: [Wikitech-l] Paris servers: underpowered

body:
I've run a number of tests on the Paris servers (following from
complaints from a British ISP complaining of  slower access times from
Paris than from Florida). They show that:
* We have no connectivity/bandwidth problems (we shoot up to 100
megabits/s to major French ISPs, which is the limitation brought by our
Ethernet uplink; not so long ago the same was true of the Florida cluster).
* Under light loads, the machines give pages 3x faster than the Florida
cluster (.24s vs .67s; that's to be expected, there's a 100ms RTT to
Florida that cannot be avoided, for instance)
* The machines are WAY TOO SLOW under heavy load. They are Celeron 600s,
slower than my old laptop!

So essentially, there's no problem with the hosting and networking. It's
just that the machines don't follow the load.

-- DM

Tests under light load:

* PARIS SERVERS / 20 SIMULTANEOUS CLIENTS
$ siege -c 20 http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accueil
** siege 2.62
** Preparing 20 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...
Lifting the server siege...      done.
Transactions:                    638 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                  23.52 secs
Data transferred:              37.13 MB
Response time:                  0.24 secs
Transaction rate:              27.13 trans/sec
Throughput:                     1.58 MB/sec
Concurrency:                    6.50
Successful transactions:         638
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:            3.20
Shortest transaction:           0.07

* FLORIDA SERVERS / 20 SIMULTANEOUS CLIENTS
$ siege -c 20 http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite
** siege 2.62
** Preparing 20 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...
Lifting the server siege...      done.
Transactions:                    918 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                  54.11 secs
Data transferred:              28.94 MB
Response time:                  0.67 secs
Transaction rate:              16.97 trans/sec
Throughput:                     0.53 MB/sec
Concurrency:                   11.29
Successful transactions:         918
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:            3.68
Shortest transaction:           0.57

So it's 3x faster to fetch a page from a not much loaded Paris cluster
than from Florida, which is probably nice for French users.

Tests under higher load:
* PARIS SERVERS [chloe] / 100 SIMULTANEOUS CLIENTS
$ siege -c 100 http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accueil
** siege 2.62
** Preparing 100 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...
Lifting the server siege...      done.
Transactions:                   6163 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                  87.62 secs
Data transferred:             360.31 MB
Response time:                  0.90 secs
Transaction rate:              70.34 trans/sec
Throughput:                     4.11 MB/sec
Concurrency:                   63.09
Successful transactions:        6163
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:            9.80
Shortest transaction:           0.12

Note the sharp increase in response time. CPU is 80-95% on chloe under
such tests.

$ siege -c 200 http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accueil
** siege 2.62
** Preparing 200 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...
Lifting the server siege...      done.
Transactions:                   5257 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                  60.64 secs
Data transferred:             307.35 MB
Response time:                  1.74 secs
Transaction rate:              86.69 trans/sec
Throughput:                     5.07 MB/sec
Concurrency:                  150.46
Successful transactions:        5257
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:           34.87
Shortest transaction:           0.24

* FLORIDA [www11], HIGH LOAD
$ siege -c 200 http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite
** siege 2.62
** Preparing 200 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...
Lifting the server siege...      done.
Transactions:                   7111 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                  47.08 secs
Data transferred:             222.15 MB
Response time:                  0.81 secs
Transaction rate:             151.04 trans/sec
Throughput:                     4.72 MB/sec
Concurrency:                  122.22
Successful transactions:        7111
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:           10.71
Shortest transaction:           0.57

* FLORIDA, EVEN HIGHER LOAD
$ siege -c 500 http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite
** siege 2.62
** Preparing 500 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...
Lifting the server siege...      done.
Transactions:                  12160 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                  45.41 secs
Data transferred:             379.88 MB
Response time:                  1.33 secs
Transaction rate:             267.78 trans/sec
Throughput:                     8.37 MB/sec
Concurrency:                  354.86
Successful transactions:       12160
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:           15.02
Shortest transaction:           0.68

* FLORIDA, EVEN HIGHER LOAD
$ siege -c 600 http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite
** siege 2.62
** Preparing 600 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...
Lifting the server siege...      done.
Transactions:                   9504 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                  38.13 secs
Data transferred:             296.91 MB
Response time:                  1.79 secs
Transaction rate:             249.25 trans/sec
Throughput:                     7.79 MB/sec
Concurrency:                  445.22
Successful transactions:        9504
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:           15.89
Shortest transaction:           0.71


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] a proposal

body:
Say yes!!! Such a skeleton could be of much use to the Wikimedia
Foundation. I say we change our logo to the
possibly-older-than-5000-years-skeleton.

It could also help us improve wikipedia somehow.

Can skeletons edit??

Mark

On 13/05/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Read on OTRS...
>
> De :
> xxx(anonymised) <xxx(anonymised)@yahoo.co.uk>
> ?:board at wikimedia.org
> Sujet:E
>
> Are you interested from a skeleton 5000 years old
> (maybe,not sure,very possible to be older), 5 meters
> high?
>
> Yf "yes" contact me as soon is possible!
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
David Gerard said:
> Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050513 17:26]:
>
>> Indeed. The first sniff of endorsement of that kind of thuggery and
>> I'll be gone, for one.
>
>
> Publishing a takedown notice is vigilantism?
>

No.  But soliciting or endorsing a hate mail campaign is, in my opinion.

This touches on my main beef with the reaction to Wollmann here.

For all his grandiose threats, Wollmann is a puny, harmless self-deluding
individual with no supporters, but a group of dedicated, obsessed enemies
who have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be without scruples or
pity.  I know these people intimately, I watched aghast as they built the
legend, and I did my best to gently tear away the artifice and reconcile
them with their bete noir.  I misjudged badly.
Hatred of Wollmann led to active email mailbombing/spamming campaigns
against him (to his credit one Usenet administrator helped Wollmann to
deal with and stop these--not that he showed any gratitude).  It led to a
campaign of denigration in the San Diego University newsgroups, with the
result that crossposts from astrology groups, or posts discussing any
aspect of the Edmond Wollmann flame war, are now forbidden in those
newsgroups.
Somewhere in there is a private individual, someone like you and me.
Though he is not particularly likeable he is entitled to his privacy.  He
is trying in his typically misguided, futile, inept way to ask for
privacy.


from_name: Andrew Rodland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Parsers

body:
Sure! Let me iron out a few more bugs / known issues, and then I'll do
my best to set it up somewhere. I'd be happy to have someone else
banging on it for me. :)

On 5/13/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Andrew Rodland wrote:
> >
> > Recently I've been working on parsing wikitext for some projects of my
> own, and
> > because I think that a general-purpose parser is just a good thing to
> have. In
> > any case, I've made significant progress on a Perl implementation.
>
> I've taken a look at your code and I'm quite impressed. However, I have
> only seen the code; I would be very delighted if I could see the thing
> in action as well! Can you set up a webserver where I can just
> type/paste some wiki-text into a textarea and have your parser output
> the HTML? Once I can do this, I think I can send you some meaningful
> bugreports. :)
>
> > With regard to
> > http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?ConsumeParseRenderVsMatchTransform my
> code
> > is of the "consume/parse/render" variety.
>
> First time I looked at your code I thought "Not really; it does use
> regular expressions, so it has bits of a "Match/Transform" algorithm
> too", but closer inspection reveals that you are not using regular
> expressions any more than a standard lexer would. Good work!
>
> So, if you can set up a demo, I'd be most grateful :)
> Greetings,
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] a proposal

body:
Why not licence the skeleton itself? I would definitely like to be
able to freely distribute copies.

Mark

On 13/05/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> On Friday, May 13, 2005 9:21 PM, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at ens.fr>
> wrote:
>
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> >
> > > Say yes!!! Such a skeleton could be of much use to the Wikimedia
> > > Foundation. I say we change our logo to the
> > > possibly-older-than-5000-years-skeleton.
> >
> > Just ask them for GFDL+CC-BY-SA hires photographs of the skeleton.
>
> CC-BY, please. -SA is overly restrictive (as bad as the GFDL).
>
> Yours,
> --
> James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
>
> Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
> IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
> a group of dedicated, obsessed enemies
> who have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be without scruples or
> pity.

So do they have any bad qualities?
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RE: Corrected

body:
"Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
wrote in message
news:28944.62.252.0.4.1115987732.squirrel at happy.minority-report.co.uk...
[snip]
> Somewhere in there is a private individual, someone like you and me.
> Though he is not particularly likeable he is entitled to his privacy.  He
> is trying in his typically misguided, futile, inept way to ask for
> privacy.

So why does he insist on appending his full name, address and contact
details to everything he posts?

After so many years, he cannot be unaware of the possible consequences.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Watchlist: Making parts invisible

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> On my Watchlist, I'd like to make some more part invisible using CSS;
> unfortunately, IDs are missing or other attributes are missing, not to
> mention the lack of proper block elements ;-(

SpecialWatchlist.php isn't too bad (just had a look at it); I'm sure you
can make the changes you like yourself. Open a bug at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ and attach your patch there.

> "<body>" has class="ns--1" - is this reserved for Watchlist pages only?

No, all "Special" pages will have this. If you're bold, you can figure
out a way to change this, too; but this is probably a bit less easy
because this isn't in SpecialWatchlist.php.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Special variable

body:
Is there a variable, related to {{PAGENAME}} which can strip off a
parenthesised suffix? I'm after the result of doing the pipe-trick IYSWIM.

For example, for the article at [[en:Buff (color)]], {{PAGENAME}} gives
"Buff (color)". Is there anything which would give simply "Buff"?

The main reason I was thinking of this was for a variation on {{otheruses}}
which could be added to these parenthesised articles automagically.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Images download

body:
You can download the image table and get them one by one as long as you
follow the robots rule for speed.

On 5/13/05, Tomer Chachamu <the.r3m0t at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 13/05/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > They aren't offered anymore.
>
> What happened to the RightToFork?
>
> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?RightToFork
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
"What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence." - Ludwig
Wittgenstein
"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring." - Richard Feynman's last words
--
http://www.br1an.net (website)


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
It's hard to say without knowing more details. Many of us act that way about
material that we honestly feel is worthless. Please give some example of
specific edits and images. That way we will have a better feel for what is
going on.

Provisionally, without looking at what is being deleted, such behavior is
unacceptable.

Fred

> From: Leif Knutsen <vyerllc at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: vyer at earthlink.net, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 10:53:00 -0400
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] When do deletions become vandalism
>
> At what point do deletions of images, paragraphs, etc., cross the border
> from edits to becoming either violations of NPOV or even vandalism? I keep
> running into one editor who deletes whole sections of information with no
> explanation or a simple dismissal, e.g., "untrue assertion," "no evidence
> for this," or sometimes appeal to authority. I think there is an honest
> disagreement about the subject matter under editing, but simply deleting
> inconvenient facts or assertions is imho bad, and possibly unacceptable,
> behavior.
>
> Leif (Leifern)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: my favorite nightmare...

body:
Is this relevant?

http://www.mail-archive.com/otrs%40otrs.org/msg06589.html

Cheers
Andrew

On 5/13/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> OTRS
>
> Right.
>
> When I want to forward or send back a mail on OTRS (infoen queue, since
> Sannse is not there right now, the queue keeps growing...), I get an error
>
> Software error:
>
> Wide character in subroutine entry at
> /opt/otrs/Kernel/cpan-lib/MIME/Decoder/QuotedPrint.pm line 74.
>
> For help, please send mail to the webmaster (noc at wikimedia.org), giving
> this error message and the time and date of the error
>
> ------
>
> So, it is not possible anymore to forward mails.
>
> Idea ?
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
> Anthere
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
On Fri, 2005-05-13 at 07:38 +0200, MaPhi Werner wrote:

> Overnight? There is no "overnight" on a system that's accessed
> world-wide, 24x7.
>
> In my opinion, if the wiki syntax is changed dramatically, then the db
> table should receive a new column called "syntax version". This would
> allow the parser to distinguish between old and new syntax, rendering
> both correctly.

That's another way to do the conversion: leave both parsers in for the
time it takes to do the update.  By "overnight" I mean "10-20 hours, or
however long it takes".  I don't think making the English Wikipedia
read-only for that long is unacceptable at all (and all the others are
small enough that it's not an issue).

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Calendar

body:
"Anthere" <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote in
message news:4283BF0A.8020102 at yahoo.com...
> Hiya
> Would anyone have the time to update the calendar ?
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar
> It would be great to help here.

Is the format set in stone? because it does look rather squidged up...
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Calendar


body:
On 5/13/05, Leif Knutsen <vyerllc at gmail.com> wrote:
> At what point do deletions of images, paragraphs, etc., cross the border
> from edits to becoming either violations of NPOV or even vandalism? I keep
> running into one editor who deletes whole sections of information with no
> explanation or a simple dismissal, e.g., "untrue assertion," "no evidence
> for this," or sometimes appeal to authority. I think there is an honest
> disagreement about the subject matter under editing, but simply deleting
> inconvenient facts or assertions is imho bad, and possibly unacceptable,
> behavior.
>
> Leif (Leifern)

When it fills one of the defintions listed at [[Wikipedia:Vandalism]]

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Parsers

body:
Andrew Rodland wrote:
>
> Recently I've been working on parsing wikitext for some projects of my own, and
> because I think that a general-purpose parser is just a good thing to have. In
> any case, I've made significant progress on a Perl implementation.

I've taken a look at your code and I'm quite impressed. However, I have
only seen the code; I would be very delighted if I could see the thing
in action as well! Can you set up a webserver where I can just
type/paste some wiki-text into a textarea and have your parser output
the HTML? Once I can do this, I think I can send you some meaningful
bugreports. :)

> With regard to
> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?ConsumeParseRenderVsMatchTransform my code
> is of the "consume/parse/render" variety.

First time I looked at your code I thought "Not really; it does use
regular expressions, so it has bits of a "Match/Transform" algorithm
too", but closer inspection reveals that you are not using regular
expressions any more than a standard lexer would. Good work!

So, if you can set up a demo, I'd be most grateful :)
Greetings,
Timwi


body:
Tels wrote:

>>The <pre> element allows styling which pre-pending a ' ' to each line
>>doesn't, which can be useful (and is used in places).
>
> And inside <pre>, the {{template}} syntax doesn't work, while it works in
> ' '. This distinction might be important. (Whether this is a bug or a
> feature, I do not know :)

It's a feature -- <pre>-in-wiki essentially means: <nowiki> + <pre>-in-HTML.


body:
Austin Hair wrote:
>>The
 element is used a lot to enforce linebreaks where you can't do it
>>otherwise (inline as template variables, for instance) on w:en, at the very
>>least. I don't see that it would be particularly easy to avoid using them..
>
> Don't forget forcing a
, commonly needed for
> columns of images and things.

No, you don't want to force that! Otherwise you'll have problems
displaying images alongside a poem... (That's just an example.)


body:
Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
>
>
 is pretty damm usefull when there's more
> than one floated image on a page.

No, not at all. Such br's often break floating images, especially when
there is more than one on a page.

Remember that the *right*-floating images (left-floating on LTR wikis)
have a "clear:right" (resp. clear:left) attribute themselves. This means
that right-floating images will display underneath each other and never
next to each other. Ideally, all right-floating tables should have this
attribute too so they fit in with the vertical alignment of everything.
Unfortunately, too many people use "float:right" (or even worse, the
now-obsolete align='right') without a corresponding "clear:right" -- I
usually have to fix this myself.

If you add a
, you will cause not only other
images, but also text and headings to move below existing right-floating
images. This usually generates a lot of unnecessary vertical space. I
really really hate it when people do that when they should have added
the "clear:right" to a table that was missing it.

Timwi


body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>>I support all three points on your list (why do you want to keep

>>and
?)
>
> First, I didn't say anything about
 and
, and second, we need
> to keep those because there's no equivalent for them in the
> wikisyntax.

Some people believe that there should not be a
 or an equivalent. I
can sort of appreciate this sentiment, because
 is very often used
in completely inappropriate contexts. Many contexts where
 is
currently believed to be useful and legitimate can be replaced with a
new, more appropriate wiki-syntax.


body:
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>1. <p>
>>
>>The only reason one would want to use <p> is to avoid the effect two
>>newlines have of spawning a new paragraph, that is, to be able to
>>write something like:
>
> I've used it in a few cases where a single bullet point needs to have
> multiple paragraphs.  (Yes, this really does happen sometimes.)
> There's no other way to do this in wikicode.

Well, that's not really an argument to keep <p>, but rather an argument
to extend the list syntax so you don't need the <p>.

I've always thought this was a bit of a stupid limitation of the list
syntax. I would extend it to allow blocks:

* First list item
**{ This list item allows several paragraphs.

I think this syntax can be very useful. -- ~~~~
}


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
geni said:
>> a group of dedicated, obsessed enemies
>> who have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be without scruples or
>> pity.
>
> So do they have any bad qualities?

None.  They'd be perfect for arbcom. :)


body:
Andrew Rodland wrote:
>
> I'd also like to suggest the removal of the workaround (occupying most
> of the first half of parser.php doQuotes) dealing with confusion of
> quotes-as-text and quotes-as-markup within words. In other words, the
> workaround provides that "l'''italic''plain" renders as
> "litalicplain".

This is incorrect -- it renders as "l'italicplain", and this is
intended. As has already been mentioned, this is used extremely often on
French wikis.

I was the one that made the modification to this code, and I think it
solves the issue quite nicely.

You said that it was a "user-input error", but you haven't offered a
suggestion what the *correct* input should be in order to yield the
output "l'homme". Before my modification, the only way to do it
was "l'''homme''", which is obviously too cumbersome, too
unreadable, and too unintuitive to new editors.

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
On 5/13/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Andrew Rodland wrote:
> >
> > I had guessed that it might find some use in fr -- It's too bad to
> > hear that it's "widely" used. However, I should note that it's not
> > _required_.
>
> Of *course* it's required. By saying it isn't, you're thinking too
> technically. Humans aren't like that, humans just want to write their
> text and not ugly tags and syntax elements just for a single apostrophe.

I didn't know that it was too technical of me to think that "required"
should mean "required".

> > <nowiki> resolves the ambiguity nicely.
>
> Again -- "nicely" only in the technical sense, but not in the human
> usability sense.
>

It's nice in the human-usability sense that you can say exactly what
you mean, instead of having to guess how it's going to be interpreted
(speaking of which, can you show me any document, preferably in
English, which explains this behavior?). I agree that <nowiki> is
rather unwieldy, but that in itself doesn't make the existing solution
a good one.

> > The workaround, on the other hand, does bad things to the language,
> > and makes the implementation of a more advanced parser exceedingly
> > difficult.
>
> You are making two assumptions here that are both false.
>
> Firstly, you are assuming that the language becomes more ambiguous this
> way. This is false, because by handling this case explicitly, I have
> actually made it *less* ambiguous. Previously, it was only a side-effect
> of the way regular expressions match text that three apostrophes were
> rendered as <i> followed by an apostrophe. Now I have specifically
> written code to define three apostrophes to mean "an apostrophe followed
> by open-italics, unless there is another triple-apostrophe in the line,
> in which case it's open-bold". No ambiguity there.

How does "a side-effect of the way regular expressions match text"
turn the markup for bold into an apostrophe and the markup for italic?

> The second assumption you are making (explicitly, even) is that it is
> more difficult to implement, when in fact you really just mean that you
> found it harder because it is not the way regular expressions normally
> work (and because you find the behaviour confusing because you don't
> normally think of French). I didn't find this particularly difficult to
> do -- neither in the current parser, nor in flexbisonparse.

If you had read my messages, you might have noticed that my reasoning
was based neither on anything to do with regexes at all, nor on
linguistic prejudice, but on a simple consideration. It is impossible,
at the time that the parser sees a ''', to resolve what type of token
it is, without looking ahead to the end of the line (an unbounded and
unknown distance away). _That's_ what I called ambiguity. The
alternative is that '' means '', and ''' means '''. My current feeling
is that the "cleanest" solution to the problem would be to introduce a
separator which produces no output, but breaks up tokens; then you
could write (with ? as sequence operator) ' ? '', '' ? ', ' ? ''', '''
? ', and even '' ? '' all you want, with no ambiguity to the parser
and no considerable hassle to the user. "Otherwise how is the computer
supposed to know what you mean?" is an argument anyone can understand.
The existing code in doQuotes() simply operates by logically
_separating_ the consecutive quotes, so automatic conversion wouldn't
be overly taxing, nor time-critical. I haven't seen flexbisonparse,
but the reason it's "easy" in the current parser is, as I'm sure you
know, that it makes N passes over the entire string, with the benefit
of unlimited lookahead. You're right that it _can_ be done -- I think
I've got it down. But it's still not pretty. And it's still, I think,
a violation of expectations. Nonetheless, I'll shut up about it.

Andrew


body:
Andrew Rodland wrote:
>
> I had guessed that it might find some use in fr -- It's too bad to
> hear that it's "widely" used. However, I should note that it's not
> _required_.

Of *course* it's required. By saying it isn't, you're thinking too
technically. Humans aren't like that, humans just want to write their
text and not ugly tags and syntax elements just for a single apostrophe.

> <nowiki> resolves the ambiguity nicely.

Again -- "nicely" only in the technical sense, but not in the human
usability sense.

> The workaround, on the other hand, does bad things to the language,
> and makes the implementation of a more advanced parser exceedingly
> difficult.

You are making two assumptions here that are both false.

Firstly, you are assuming that the language becomes more ambiguous this
way. This is false, because by handling this case explicitly, I have
actually made it *less* ambiguous. Previously, it was only a side-effect
of the way regular expressions match text that three apostrophes were
rendered as <i> followed by an apostrophe. Now I have specifically
written code to define three apostrophes to mean "an apostrophe followed
by open-italics, unless there is another triple-apostrophe in the line,
in which case it's open-bold". No ambiguity there.

The second assumption you are making (explicitly, even) is that it is
more difficult to implement, when in fact you really just mean that you
found it harder because it is not the way regular expressions normally
work (and because you find the behaviour confusing because you don't
normally think of French). I didn't find this particularly difficult to
do -- neither in the current parser, nor in flexbisonparse.

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
Delirium wrote:
> Andrew Rodland wrote:
>
>> I had guessed that it might find some use in fr -- It's too bad to
>> hear that it's "widely" used. However, I should note that it's not
>> _required_. <nowiki> resolves the ambiguity nicely. The fact that
>> it takes 17 characters is, well, unfortunate, but it's _correct_.
>> The workaround, on the other hand, does bad things to the language,
>> and makes the implementation of a more advanced parser exceedingly
>> difficult.
>
> I'm not sure if it would be a more or less drastic change, but making
>  bold be four tics instead of three would also solve the problem.

That would solve the problem only if we can somehow automatically
convert all existing articles that use triple-apostrophes to mean
"bold". That's not worth it.

My suggestion would instead be to use ""..."" to mean "bold". This would
not interfere with ''...'' at all. We could have both '''...''' and
""..."" for the transition period, and once all use of '''...''' has
been removed (which would be a long long time), the syntax can be
deprecated. This, too, I don't think would be worth it, but on the other
hand, I just ''know'' that someone is going to write a script to do the
conversion automatically.

> Then without lookahead: 2 tics is italics; 3 ticks is an apostrophe
> plus italics; 4 tics is bold; 5 tics is an apostrophe plus bold; 6
> tics is bold and italic; and 7 tics is an apostrophe plus bold and
> italic.

How do you know that 5 tics isn't a single apostrophe wrapped in italics? :)


body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>
> I do not ask for HTML, I vote for XML.

The same reasons against HTML apply to XML.

> Our all-time-morphing wiki-syntax is not user-friendly.

Certainly more than XML.

> The wiki-syntax is short, but not easy.  Sometimes whitespace is
> critical, but you will never know for sure.

Well, I don't know about other people, but I always know for sure, even
before I wrote flexbisonparse.

> It is a very limited presentation or layout language.

It's supposed to be.