body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Wednesday 16 October 2002 08:56 pm Stephen wrote:
>
>
>>Indeed. Cunc has convinced me that a portal page is a
>>bad idea. I think we should be working toward a
>>unified project composed of different languages,
>>rather than remaining the English Wikipedia, the
>>German Wikipedia, the Spanish Wikipedia, etc.
>>
>>Stephen G.
>>
>>
>
>Ah, I see; One unified project with the most visible and widely known url
>going only to one language and one language alone.
>
>Perhaps the choice of words "portal page" was a very poor one on my part. Here
>is what I meant by it:
>
>A user types in www.wikipedia.org. They are greeted with a welcome page in
>English that has a very brief intro to the whole project and the non-profit.
>It mentions the total number of articles in all languages and also mentions
>the total number of language that have articles (we might want to set a small
>threshhold for inclusion in this count). Above this is a string or hyperlinks
>in a row. Each one is the word "welcome" in several different languages. A
>non-English speaker could click on his or her language's welcome page and be
>greeted the the text I described above translated into their language (this
>might also change the language.php file for that user's browser session to
>display that language's localized interface). Each welcome page would also
>have below this;
>
>
I disagree strongly, but only about this detail: the "front page" of any
website should lead directly to content: that is to say, an encyclopedia
page. There should be an as-short-as-possible welcome banner at the top,
perhaps with a pull-down menu of languages, that will change the
language of the "front page", banner and all, to be any of the desired
languages.
There should also be a link to a "portal page", as described in Mav's
proposal, easily visible in the banner.

Then the front page for that given language leads directly into the
content of the particular language wikipedia.

The language of the banner, and hence the rest of the page should be:

* the language specified in the URL, whether in the format
en.wikipedia.org or www.wikipedia.org/en
* the language in the user's login cookie, if set
* the language specified by the user's browser preferences
* default to English if www.wikipedia.org/com is used, and the language
cannot be detected in any other way, on the basis that English is the
lingua franca of the net

The layout could be something like:

*
---------
<box>
[[Welcome]]
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Welcome%2C_newcomers> to
[[Wikipedia <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia>*]], a
collaborative project to produce a complete [[encyclopedia]]
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia> in [[every language]]
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:International_Wikipedia>. This
is the {{$$Language$$}} wikipedia: select your language  to go to the
Wikipedia in your language.

Language: {{pull down menu}}
</box>

 Anyone, including /you/, can edit any article right now, without even
having to log in. You can copyedit, expand an article, write a little or
write a lot. See the Wikipedia FAQ
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ> for more background
information about the project, and the help page
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help> for information on how to
use and contribute to Wikipedia.

{{Main page content from the main page of the localised version}}
---------

We could also be cute, and
* if we can detect, for example, a user with Greek browser settings
viewing the en.wikipedia.org page, add an extra bit of text to the UI
saying in Greek "[[Welcome]]! [[Wikipedia]] is also available in the
[[Greek language]]" with the links being to the appropriate pages in the
Greek Wikipedia.
* We could even add the portal prompt in random languages even when we
can't guess the language, so an Urdu user browsing the English wiki with
an English browser from the US will -- sooner or later -- see their
language prompt.

So, think of this as a "portal header" for the front page, and a "portal
prompt" added to all content.

We could also use the language guessed from the user's IP address, based
on analysis of other users' logins and the fact that the public Internet
does not in general route anything smaller than a /19  (a block of 8192
addresses). Of course, this is a poor way of doing things, given that
language != ISP != nation != nationality, but it's better than a totally
random guess: perhaps in this case we should use the guessed language
for the "portal prompt" half the time, and a random one the rest.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Call for a vote

body:
[Note:  Stephen's post wasn't sent to <intlwiki-l>.]

Stephen Gilbert wrote:

>Cunc has convinced me that a portal page is a
>bad idea. I think we should be working toward a
>unified project composed of different languages,
>rather than remaining the English Wikipedia, the
>German Wikipedia, the Spanish Wikipedia, etc.

I can't imagine how people use the need for a unified project
as an argument in favour of keeping www.wikipedia.org English.
That's not unified -- that's English!

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: French

body:
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote in part:

>It's very interestingly to see how different cultures treat
>their languages. The French issued a law some 10 years ago
>that English words were forbidden and had to be translated.

And in the US at least, the idea that this is a matter for the *law*
just seems patently ludicrous.

>I applauded that change. It would make it easier for
>children and the lower classes to spell. But our minister
>of education and his colleague in Belgium decided otherwise.

Perhaps they didn't share your prejudice that the lower classes
are composed of stupid people.  IME, members of the lower classes
are capable of learning how to spell in school.

>The English-speaking countries never change their official
>spelling. That also has it's charmes, because you can still
>(almost) read Shakespeare as if it were in a modern language.

That's because the English speaking countries have no *official* spelling.
There is no Ministry of Orthography in their governments,
and thus no government ability to mandate spelling reform.
When language changes, it does so because of popular consensus,
often with the pressure of various dictionary publishers
(such as Noah Webster, responsible for most of the variation
between US English spelling and the spelling of the rest of the world).
That said, spelling *does* change with time,
which is why modern editions of Shakespeare modernise the spelling.
He did not spell things the same as today, nor even self consistently.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maybe "portal page" was a poor choice of words

body:
Neil Harris wrote in part:

>The "front page" of any
>website should lead directly to content: that is to say, an encyclopedia
>page.

Ah, but *which* encyclopaedia page?
I suggest [[en:Separation axiom]], my personal best work so far.

The point of my sarcasm is that the front page should not be an article;
it should be a welcome page.  And a multilingual one.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] OT spelling nonsense

body:
>Canadian or even more generally English usage on capitalization is often
>a matter of individual choice, and I can remember when, at least for
>adjectives, a distinction like the one Anth?re makes was taught in
>schools.  But the situation is so muddled that writing guides simply ask
>writers to be consistent within their own works..  Translating
>"Fran?ais" as "french man" is acceptable, but I would prefer "French
>man" with a capital letter.

I have never before seen "french" regarded as correct
when it actually refers to France as in "french man"
(as opposed to in "french fry" or "french kiss").
IME, this could only be "French man" (or "Frenchman").

>Sexism doesn't enter into this at all.  "Frenchman" in one word that
>does have associated difficulties, but attitudes are by no means
>unanimous on this.  The movement for non-sexist language does see it as
>sexist, but others of us would see the "a French person" as bringing
>unnecessary awkwardness to the language.  Those afflicted with political
>correctness often draw the false conclusion that those who do not follow
>their solutions for non-sexist must be speaking in a sexist way.  I
>certainly do not consider the word "frenchman" to be sexist.

While I agree with most of this paragraph as far as it goes,
I don't see how you can conclude the first sentence from the rest of it.
Clearly sexism *does* enter into the issue; the question is whether
possibly unfounded worries about it outweigh other relevant matters.

But if you just mean <Sexism does not enter into my decision
to use the word "Frenchman" to refer to a generic French person.>,
then that's fine, I take your word for it.
But sexism (to be precise, opposition to it) enters into *my* decision
to use the phrase "French person" in preference.
Heck, I even say "French person" when I know the person to be male,
unless I wish to point out the person's maleness,
which IMO is usually irrelevant to anything that I want to talk about.

>The "-man" suffix used in conjunction with a nationality is often seen
>as somehow a racial slur.  In Canada their has been a movement in the
>Chinese ethnic community to rename all geographical places with
>"Chinaman" in their names.

"Chinaman" *has* been used as a racial slur, at least here in California,
although I don't know how it managed to evolve into one.
But I don't recally ever seeing any *other* "-man" term used as a racial slur.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] mailing lists

body:
Anthere wrote in small part:

>Option3: the main list becomes the main list (metalist), and a new en.list is
>created for english issues

IMO, Anthere is absolutely right,
and the above quoted portion is the absolutely rightest bit.

-- Toby


body:
[Note:  Tarquin's post wasn't on <intlwiki-l>.]

Tarquin wrote:

>It has already been stated, and wisely so IMO, that grabbing language
>information from a browser's settings might not be a good idea.

It's been pointed out that it's very annoying
that Google makes a half hearted attempt to do this
that isn't correct and can't be overridden by the user.
But what's the argument against our doing so properly,
by looking at what the browser itself says is the preferred language?

-- Toby


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: French

body:
> British spelling and American spelling differ to a
> degree, but there's
> nothing other than convention stopping Americans
> from spelling words
> in the British way.

uh, are they some australians around ?

> To Americans, the French way is a mystery.

The reverse is just as true. This is just perfect, for
it would not be fun otherwise.
As long as one recognise differences exist... and have
to be someow taken into account within the
encyclopedia frameset... ;-)

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
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from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:

> But what's the argument against our doing so properly,
> by looking at what the browser itself says is the preferred language?

I think this is the correct approach. The browser's language preference
decides which Wikipedia's main page they get. If there is no Wikipedia
in that language, or if they don't specify a preference, they get
English.

This should only apply to the main page at www.wikipedia.org of course;
en.wikipedia.org is always going to be English as is
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_axiom.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug fix

body:
I have a lot of experience with "interim bug fixes" -- because finding and fixing bugs is how I earn my living. That said, here is my proposal:

For now, ban the use of the AMPERSAND_CHARACTER in article titles. (I think this is what Jimbo just did -- or is also proposing :-)

* If someone wants to write about the big old phone company, the article will have to be called "ATT" or "American Telephone and Telegraph"
* The first (bold) mention of the company in the text of the article can still be '''AT&T''', because that doesn't hurt anything.

Eventually, one of us bright fellows (or gals) might figure out a way to parse the AMPERSAND_CHARACTER in a URL, but until then the above is a usable workaround.

Ed Poor
Opinions expressed on this list are *mine* -- not my employer's.


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] linguistic issues

body:
|From: "Nick Tarasen" <nwt at uchicago.edu>
|
|in something that perhaps proves anthere's point.
|
|there's no stated preference for American or British spelling in wikipedia
|English, as far as I can tell, and I've been looking.
|
|Is this true?  I don't mean to start a debate that's been done.  just looking
|for an answer.
|
|The UN, or at least the WHO, uses a sort of hybrid.  Just looking for
|comments.  what about it in names?  (for example, UN programmes are, well,
|programmes).
|
|in any case, thanks for creating wikipedia.  it's a great project,
|and one
|I'm enjoying participating in.  the bickering on this listhost is a testament
|to the commitments you all make to it.
|
|.nick tarasen (user:nwt)
|

Actually, there is a stated *non-preference* in the [[Wikipedia:Manual
of Style]]:

Spelling Style

For the English Wikipedia, either American or English spelling is
acceptable.

It is in no way a requirement, but it probably reads better to use
American spellings in articles on American subjects and English
spelling in articles on English subjects.  A reference to "the
American ''labour'' movement" (with a U) or to "''Anglicization''"
(with a Z) may be jarring.  It also may be jarring to find both forms
in a single article.  If the spelling appears in an article name, you
should make a redirect page to accommodate "the other language", as
with [[Aeroplane]] and [[Airplane]].


subject: [Wikipedia-l] linguistic issues

body:
Whenever I write a new article, I always use American English spelling.

When I spell-check an article, and British English spellings like "labour" and "programme" come up, I tell the spell-checker to calm down and accept these.

When I edit an article manually, I switch to British English spelling when I notice that the current paragraph is using British English spelling.

My motto is "blend in".

Ed Poor


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug fix

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> There are at least two possible permanent solutions...
>
> 1.  Fix it so the rewrite works 100% correctly.  Since '&' is a legal
> character in a url, but not in a query string, the _idea_ here is not a
> bad one.  Plus, it's nicer in a way for end users.

I sent such a fix to wikitech-l yesterday, but since I believe LDC's the
one who orignally set up Apache & co on the server I left it to him to
recompile it with the same set of options plus the fix. If he doesn't do
it soon, I may go ahead anyway.

> 2.  Ban '&' from article titles to simplify our lives.  While it is true
> that '&' is _legal_ in a url, there's no reason we have to use it, other
> than usability for articles like 'AT&T'.

That's cutting off your nose to spite your face.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] linguistic issues

body:
"Nick Tarasen" <nwt at uchicago.edu> writes:

> there's no stated preference for American or British spelling in wikipedia
> English, as far as I can tell, and I've been looking.

That is correct.

--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


from_name: Khendon

subject: [Wikipedia-l] linguistic issues

body:
On Thu, Oct 17, 2002 at 06:07:39AM -0500, Nick Tarasen wrote:
> there?s no stated preference for American or British spelling in wikipedia
> English, as far as I can tell, and I?ve been looking.
I don't remember where it says, but iirc the policy is "Either is fine;
try to stick to one or the other within an article; try to use the
most appropriate dialect - eg, in a page about the UK use British,
in a page about the US use American"

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug fix

body:
> I sent such a fix to wikitech-l yesterday, but since I believe
> LDC's the one who orignally set up Apache & co on the server I
> left it to him to recompile it with the same set of options plus
> the fix. If he doesn't do it soon, I may go ahead anyway.

Ah, I understand now; in fact, I just sent you mail asking
if that was in fact your intention (i.e., to recompile Apache
with your patch).  I'll do that on my server so we can test
it a bit.

>> 2.  Ban '&' from article titles to simplify our lives.  While it
>> is true that '&' is _legal_ in a url, there's no reason we have
>> to use it, other than usability for articles like 'AT&T'.

> That's cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I agree; "&" is far too useful to give up.  I wanted it enough
that I thought the original code's double-encoding scheme was
worth the hassle.  If Brion's latest fix can let us have our cake
and eat it too, so much the better.


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug is back again

body:
I just thought that I'd point out that the random page bug is back
again. I though I would wait until someone else reported it this time,
but they haven't, so I'll report it again.

PLEASE could the URL rewriting feature be backed out. The URL rewriting
bug is a much more severe bug than the '&' issue that the URL rewriting
hack fixes -- the whole Wikipedia is currently unusable for readers, as
well as most writers.

If a web spider such as Googlebot comes by when this bug is in effect,
the whole index for Wikipedia on that search engine will be corrupted
for as long as the search engine uses that set of indices: usually about
a month.

This also gives another reason why different international Wikis should
have the possibility of different front-end hosts: resiliency against
software upgrade bugs through diversity. (Databases can still be shared
over the network, something that will surely be the next step in scaling).

Regards,

Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: French

body:
On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 10:33:12PM +0100, tarquin wrote:
> They exist in English: Fowler. (qv in wikipedia). That will tell you,
> for example, that it's the 1980s not the 1980's.

As, of course, would any sane and literate person ;-)

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Intlwiki-l] [Wikitech-l] Unpredictable search results

body:
youandme at poczta.fm wrote:
...
> It would be nice for Polish users to have it fixed before
> upgrade to Phase III. Other non-latin1 users would be
> perhaps happier too :-)

Yes, that's the main reason the Polish wiki isn't upgraded yet, and the
secondary reason the Esperanto wiki isn't upgraded yet (we also need a
charset conversion, since Esperanto keyboard support is not as widely
available as one might hope).

I seem to remember I had this sort-of working on an experimental version
of the phase II software, I just haven't had a chance to fix it up
again. I'll bang on it some more...

-- brion vibebr (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: tarquin

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:

>What I would like to see is this. All articles in all
>languages are in one database. When someone comes to
>www.wikipedia.org, the server gets the prefered
>language setting from the visitor's browser,
>

It has already been stated, and wisely so IMO, that grabbing language
information from a browser's settings might not be a good idea.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Call for a vote (was: Moving the wikis)

body:
Lightning wrote:
>>It was suggested in the first place because many people (including
>>Cunctator) are begging for the abilities to:
>>
>>* Have a single username and login for the encyclopedia in all languages
>>and meta
>>
>>* View things like Recentchanges for the encyclopedia in multiple
>>languages and/or meta combined.
>>
>>These demand a single server.
>
> umm.. not really.. you can make domain wide cookies that work accross
> subdomains

Cookie, schmookie. I'm talking about the backend; if a login is to work
painlessly across all languages, you have to create the account in the
database(s) for all languages, keep the password consistent, etc. So
either these other servers are dependent on a central user account /
recentchanges server, or they are on the same server and use a common
database in the first place.

If the supposed benefit of having separate hostnames is that you can use
separate servers, but we're doing things that mean the separate servers
are dependant on a central server to function, the benefit seems rather
weak indeed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I'm not even in favor of "redirecting" versus just "aliasing", just
> because it makes the browser do an extra step for no particular
> reason.  I'm not adamant about this point, though.  I would just say
> that it's best not to redirect.

I made redirects rather than aliases when going across hostnames to keep
the login cookies working. Remember the old furor over "I'm not logged
in when I go to http://www.wikipedia.com/ but I am when I look at other
pages"? It's much like that: it harms the user experience to have their
login cookie for www.wikipedia.org not work at wikipedia.com or for
nl.wikipedia.org not work at nl.wikipedia.com.

Extra bonus point: you see the preferred URL form in your browser's URL
bar after loading it up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] How many wikipedians and users are actually multi-lingual?

body:
By which I mean fluent enough in more than one or two languages to
contribute to the relevant wikipedia and to need to see what's going on
in more than one wikipedia at a time?

It seems like a great suggestion to be able to access a global 'recent
changes' listing etc, but really, how much use is it to the average
user? Somebody who is monolingual, or poorly bilingual is just going to
be overwhelmed by surplus information and put off the whole project idea
if it seems like you HAVE to be a polyglot to get any sense out of it.
If you speak Japanese and Malay it's not going to be a lot of use to you
to see a listing full of French and English edits, or vice versa.

You'd be better off for the portal page to have access to each language
seperately than to try to jumble them together. Select your language
from a dropdown menu and off you go. Want recent changes in Swahili?
Choose Swahili from the language box and you'll see it. Want to check up
on the Japanese next? Switch over... etc.

I support a global login. I don't see why you should have to have
seperate logins set up for the meta and the standard english pedia AND
any other language that you may be fluent enough to be interested in. If
you want the wikipedias to be one project and not 500 then one login
ought to work for the whole kit and caboodle.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

To err is human... to really foul things up add kitten and stir.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Name clashes and 9/11

body:
On Thu, 2002-10-17 at 13:58, Gareth Owen wrote:
> At the moment http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_expedition links
> to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray .  The Murray who has an article
> was a Cantor-Siegel employee killed in the World Trade Centre, and there is a
> tribute from his family on that page.
>
> I'm extremely loathe to disturb it, but the Murray who collated the Challenger
> data will, at some point deserve an article to.  Was it decided that there is
> a repository for the 9/11 tributes, which would be a fitting resting place for
> the present John Murray article?

The current best solution is the one that I've been working on. The John
Murray 9-11 victim is now at [[John Joseph Murray]], with the tribute in
the Talk for that page.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug fix

body:
> I sent such a fix to wikitech-l yesterday...

I applied your patch and recompiled and installed Apache
on my server.  I changed my httpd.conf to add this:

 RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=$1 [NE]
 RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=${ampescape:$1}
[L]
 RewriteRule ^/wikitest/wiki.phtml(.*) /wikitest/wiki.phtml$1
 RewriteRule ^/wiki$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml
 RewriteRule ^/wiki.phtml/(.*)$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml/$1 [NE]
 RewriteRule ^/wiki.phtml$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml

Using http://www.piclab.com/wiki works, so I know that rewriting
is turned on.  I updated the code from CVS.  But I don't know
whether or not it is doing what you expect.  Can you please test
it?  If you've long since forgotten your login to my server,
let me know).


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug fix

body:
> Take out the above line; that overrides the one below which
> does the magic. And I think you first have to define the map;
> this should do:
>   RewriteMap ampescape int:ampescape

That seems to have done the trick.  I would still appreciate
it if you'd do some testing before I do this to the live server.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug fix

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> broken links to things like /wiki/AT&T, rather than have the whole

Right now, http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T leads to "AT"
but http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%2526T leads to "AT&T".
This is weird.  It seems to be decoded twice (%25 is "%").

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


body:
--- elian <elian at gmx.li> wrote:
> Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > > But what's the argument against our doing so properly,
> > > by looking at what the browser itself says is the preferred
> > > language?

> > I think this is the correct approach. The browser's language
> > preference decides which Wikipedia's main page they get. If
> > there is no Wikipedia in that language, or if they don't
> > specify a preference, they get English.
>
> So we continue our current procedure to hide the other language
> wikipedias from the user.

This is not our current procedure since the Wikipedia main pages all
prominently mention the other languages.

> And if my Spanish friends use my computer for surfing, they
> get German, too, even if they speak no German at all.

If they prefer Spanish they need to have the browser settings changed.
Wikipedia will be their least problem.

> Sorry, I can't see any additional value from such a front page.

I'm not proposing any front page. Just a mechanism that gives you the
main page that you are most likely interested in with one click less
than you need now.

Axel

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug fix

body:
You Wrote:
>> > Take out the above line; that overrides the one below which
>> > does the magic. And I think you first have to define the map;
>> > this should do:
>> >   RewriteMap ampescape int:ampescape
>>
>> That seems to have done the trick.  I would still appreciate
>> it if you'd do some testing before I do this to the live server.
>
>
>hey guys... the URL's with & in them are broken again...
>just go here:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_Tunes_%26_Merrie_Melodies_filmography
>or here:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_Tunes_&_Merrie_Melodies_filmography
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

They're not broken again, they're /still/ broken, and will be
until I install Brion's fix that we're talking about.  I've
just been testing it on my server first.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: French

body:
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:

>It's very interestingly to see how different cultures treat
>their languages. The French issued a law some 10 years ago
>that English words were forbidden and had to be translated.
>
Even with such a law France is more tolerant of anglicisms than Qu?bec.
 This is to Qu?bec's credit.

>My mother (of age 73) doesn't understand commercials anymore
>and therefore doesn't watch them anymore. It's not only a
>matter of language buit also of culture. Most commercials
>try to appeal to young people that know a lot about the
>present (last decades) culture.
>
The people who write commercials aren't concerned about 73 year old
women in any country.  Many of them have experienced hard times and that
has taught them to control their own spending.

Young people often have more money than brains, and advertisers want to
make sure things stay that way.

Ec.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Name clashes and 9/11

body:
At the moment http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_expedition links
to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray .  The Murray who has an article
was a Cantor-Siegel employee killed in the World Trade Centre, and there is a
tribute from his family on that page.

I'm extremely loathe to disturb it, but the Murray who collated the Challenger
data will, at some point deserve an article to.  Was it decided that there is
a repository for the 9/11 tributes, which would be a fitting resting place for
the present John Murray article?
--
Gareth Owen


from_name: Ryan Tuccinardi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Delurking

body:
This is Tokerboy officially delurking.

I tried and failed four times to post this to the
Village Pump.  Since the other night, when the random
page bug was widespread enough that the Main Page was
updated to reflect a way around it, Wikipedia hasn't
been keeping my Login across sessions.  Also, starting
just tonight, it freezes up my computer (IMac OS 9.2.2
running IE 5.1 for Mac) whenever I press "stop" while
it is trying to do something; the reason I am doing so
is because it is taking an inordinate length of time
to save, though it hasn't actually said it failed.  I
let it try for ten minutes last time, and the progress
bar didn't even begin, and my cursor didn't change to
a spinning wheel (which means it's doing something on
a Mac).  Am I the only one?

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug fix

body:
> > Take out the above line; that overrides the one below which
> > does the magic. And I think you first have to define the map;
> > this should do:
> >   RewriteMap ampescape int:ampescape
>
> That seems to have done the trick.  I would still appreciate
> it if you'd do some testing before I do this to the live server.

hey guys... the URL's with & in them are broken again...
just go here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_Tunes_%26_Merrie_Melodies_filmography
or here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_Tunes_&_Merrie_Melodies_filmography


from_name: youandme at poczta.fm

subject: [Wikitech-l] Unpredictable search results

body:
Hi list!

This message popped up as a result of investigation
why the new suite for Polish Wikipedia has so unpredictable
search results when words with non latin1 chars are searched.
But this is valid for Meta as well - which is UTF-8
as well (right?). Japanese, Korean, etc Wikipedias
are endagered as well, but havent' tested that.

I focused on three letter words, what is theoretically legal.

Three letter words (3LW) with one Polish language
specific letter (PLSL) can be searched,
although many silly matches are found.

3LW with two PLSL search fails with the prompt
"Badly formed search query"

3LW with three PLSL - the same as with one PLSL (strange!).

Exactly the same happens when I put Chinese ideograms
instead of PLSL.

It seems that word lengths aren't recognized correctly
("Badly formed..." message is shown when I enter 1-letter word!)
and/or words containing PLSL (or ideograms) are split somehow
in a strange way.
Based on search results my impression is:
non-latin1 letters are treated sometimes as separators
and sometimes as wildcards.

I guess that other bugs in searching non-latin1 words
can be reduced to this.

It would be nice for Polish users to have it fixed before
upgrade to Phase III. Other non-latin1 users would be
perhaps happier too :-)

User:Youandme

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Najlepsi nie maja watpliwosci... >>> http://link.interia.pl/f1667


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
> Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>
> >What I would like to see is this. All articles in
> all
> >languages are in one database. When someone comes
> to
> >www.wikipedia.org, the server gets the prefered
> >language setting from the visitor's browser,
> >
>
> It has already been stated, and wisely so IMO, that
> grabbing language
> information from a browser's settings might not be a
> good idea.

Sorry, I missed the reasoning. Point me to a link?

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


body:
> Cookie, schmookie. I'm talking about the backend; if a login is to work
> painlessly across all languages, you have to create the account in the
> database(s) for all languages, keep the password consistent, etc. So
> either these other servers are dependent on a central user account /
> recentchanges server, or they are on the same server and use a common
> database in the first place.
>
> If the supposed benefit of having separate hostnames is that you can use
> separate servers, but we're doing things that mean the separate servers
> are dependant on a central server to function, the benefit seems rather
> weak indeed.

ahhh. yes, i get you know. I was thinking more about the universal login
that universal recent changes... an idea which I find odd. i mean, if all
the wiki's start getting big, you'd have to keep that page at 250 items and
reload every couple of seconds to see the recent changes, its hard enough
keeping up with them now.. and its only in english. Dont you guys think this
is more an admin/editor function than it is something usefull to people
coming to read something rather than write it?

Oh and i was kind of assuming when you meant separate servers that you
meant, a server per language for spitting pages (if it ever gets that big)
and maybe a couple of slave db servers for reads and a master db server for
changes.. using mySQL replication. maybe i got a bit ahead of myself.. so
dont mind me

Lightning


body:
--- elian <elian at gmx.li> wrote:
> Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > > But what's the argument against our doing so
> properly,
> > > by looking at what the browser itself says is
> the preferred language?
> >
> > I think this is the correct approach. The
> browser's language preference
> > decides which Wikipedia's main page they get. If
> there is no Wikipedia
> > in that language, or if they don't specify a
> preference, they get
> > English.
>
> So we continue our current procedure to hide the
> other language wikipedias
> from the user. It doesn't mind that I speak five
> languages, I have to be
> happy with the German wikipedia because it's point
> one in my browser
> settings. And if my Spanish friends use my computer
> for surfing, they get
> German, too, even if they speak no German at all.
> And the Japanese student
> at the German university library computer gets
> German, too, even if he
> would be a lot more interested in the japanese
> wikipedia.
>
> Sorry, I can't see any additional value from such a
> front page.
>
> greetings,
> elian

I'm thinking that you would get the German front page,
but a row of links at the top would give you the
option of visiting the other language options.

It would be similiar to what we have now, except you
would get the front page in your prefered language
rather than English.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: elian

body:
Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> writes:

> > But what's the argument against our doing so properly,
> > by looking at what the browser itself says is the preferred language?
>
> I think this is the correct approach. The browser's language preference
> decides which Wikipedia's main page they get. If there is no Wikipedia
> in that language, or if they don't specify a preference, they get
> English.

So we continue our current procedure to hide the other language wikipedias
from the user. It doesn't mind that I speak five languages, I have to be
happy with the German wikipedia because it's point one in my browser
settings. And if my Spanish friends use my computer for surfing, they get
German, too, even if they speak no German at all. And the Japanese student
at the German university library computer gets German, too, even if he
would be a lot more interested in the japanese wikipedia.

Sorry, I can't see any additional value from such a front page.

greetings,
elian
--
interpunktion und orthographie sind stellenweise frei erfunden.
eine uebereinstimmung mit geltenden regelungen waere rein zufaellig.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] mailing lists

body:
Hi list!

To avoid confusion in cross-posting, forgetting about that,
splitted discussions among 3 different mailing lists, breading
new lists (see Anthere's lengthy post beneath),
I've got a proposition:

Let's make _only one_ mailing list called
of course wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org

Every message to be sent would be tagged by supplying
the header [Wikitech-l] and/or [Intlwiki-l] or other
in the first line of the post or in the subject field.
Daemon at the mailing list server would decide
(is it possible?) to who sent the fresh post it has just
received. It would be based on information which every
subscriber would enter during subscription process,
like marking check-boxes
"Please deliver me technical issues",
that is current [Wikitech-l]
"Please inform me about international issues",
that is [Intlwiki-l]
"Please inform me about xx language Wikipedia issues",
that is eg. [xxwiki-l]

You might ask, what to do with those who forget to enter
desired [...] tags (especially unexperienced users will do
this permanently).
One could be asked during subscription process
on what Wikipedia he/she spends the most of his/her time.
Then the daemon would sent his/her untagged message
like it was sent with respective tag
(as it would be the most probable target).

What to do when you forget to put one more extra [] tag?
Sent a blank message with only one line:
repost-last [tag1] [tag2] etc. Daemon would send to the respective
remaining subscribers - that way only once to every address!
 (developers, does it sound too stupid?)

The remaining question is: how can I be informed about important
issues when I'm not subscribed to receive them?
(Sounds like more general question of communication issues, eh?)
Maybe through subscribing to messages containing selected
words or regexs + tagging messages with those keywords
like [Spanish], [Main_Page], [unification] etc. Don't know.
But definitely the proposed solution would be a step
to make the process of communication less upsetting
for multi-subscribers and towards unification of Wikipedias.

BTW, please, cross-post it to the Wikipedia-l ;-)
I conscioussly decided to receive less messages
than others do.

User:Youandme

On 17 Oct 2002 at 3:41, Anthere wrote:
>
> Hi everybody,
> I dunno about you all, but I am getting overly confused between all the different points discussed
> at the same time, url adresses, contents of a page we have not agreed to exist, common
> recentchanges, common servers or not, auto-redirection or not, cookies or not, common meta ...
> It's nice that so many ideas are proposed, but it's really getting confusing. Maybe even more to
> non-english speaking, and certainly for those not following all lists thoroughly.
> Another thing adding to the confusion is that *mailing list(s) matter*. I think that could be a point
> to start with, and one on which we could maybe easily agree on, which would be nice for a
> change.
> I already stated a couple of time, there was a problem with the definition of the mainlist and the
> interlist.
> 1)The main list is both used for internal english matters AND integrated wikipedia matters
> 2 The inter list was initially set up to take care of matters dealing with creating and organising
> inter wiki
> A side effect of 1) is that some en.wiki editors tend to generalize typical english matters to the
> rest of the wikipedias.
> A side effect of 1) is that all inter that want to be involved in the decision process have to register
> the main list. Thus making the inter list useless.
> A side effect of 2) is that new inter comers tend to believe they can post messages to the inter
> list, and trust the information there is complete. Both points being clearly untrue (especially since
> we sometimes forget to double post, on one, or on the other list)
> Other side effects are multiple cross posting between the two lists, implying
> - additional posting time (specially when we forget the cc)
> - additional reading time to check the message is the same
> - additional time for deletion
> - cluttering of the mail box
> - incomplete information for those who are not registered at *both* lists
> My belief is that we need to set up that issue.
> Ideally, I think there should be:
> 1) A "main" list, dealing with integrated issues (I don't know the best word to say that, I don't want
> to mean integration, I want to say issues important to the enlarged community)
> 2) Plenty of language-specific lists, among which the english list, to deal with naming
> conventions and majuscule/minuscule typo conventions. Lists only to be set up if there is a need
> and a demand of course.
> In concrete terms, for example
> Option1: either a new list (a "metalist") is created, and the mainlist deals with english matters
> (the inconvenience of that option will be that most people would continue nevertheless to post
> everything at the main list)
> Option2: the interlist really becomes the integrated list and the mainlist stays only for en.issues
> (that option could maybe be accompanied by an automatic registering process for english not yet
> on the interlist; but again, I fear lazyness will prevent this process, and posting will stay on the
> main list anyway; also, this might become a diplomatic issue to some)
> Option3: the main list becomes the main list (metalist), and a new en.list is created for english
> issues (is that possible that all users of the main list are automatically registered to that en.list,
> and an automatic message send for easy unsuscribing for those not interested to stay on it? it
> would make the switching process less labourious...)
> The 3rd process could be nearly transparent for english users, as most of the time, people reply
> to messages, so it won't change habits much. They will be registered to two lists, but ain't that
> the case of many already ?
> This option would help avoiding cross posting and information loss. It would save time. It would
> avoid mailbox cluttering. It will also make clearer that setting up an integrated encyclopedia is a
> one of the goals; not helping side projects to develop.
>
> A conceptual point is also bothering me, but I admit I have no idea to prevent that right now.
> That is the word "international" to be opposed to the english-speaking_main_wikipedia.
> It is just the same than the words "importation" and "exportation"; just depends on your own
> position.
> International has a smell of countries. While english versus non-english just have a smell of
> language. I like that option better.
> Just my thoughts. Sorry if it was too long and laborious task to read. But I think it important that
> somehow, one day, this mailing list issues are dealt with.
> Anthere

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nie tylko dla bogaczy... pogoda! >>> http://link.interia.pl/f166e


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random page bug fix

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>I sent such a fix to wikitech-l yesterday...
>
> I applied your patch and recompiled and installed Apache
> on my server.

Great, thanks! I have enough trouble with Apache and PHP; I'm sure I'd
break it trying to add in the PHP cache too.

 >  I changed my httpd.conf to add this:
>
>  RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=$1 [NE]

Take out the above line; that overrides the one below which does the
magic. And I think you first have to define the map; this should do:

   RewriteMap ampescape int:ampescape

>  RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=${ampescape:$1} [L]
>  RewriteRule ^/wikitest/wiki.phtml(.*) /wikitest/wiki.phtml$1
>  RewriteRule ^/wiki$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml
>  RewriteRule ^/wiki.phtml/(.*)$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml/$1 [NE]
>  RewriteRule ^/wiki.phtml$ /wikitest/wiki.phtml
>
> Using http://www.piclab.com/wiki works, so I know that rewriting
> is turned on.  I updated the code from CVS.  But I don't know
> whether or not it is doing what you expect.  Can you please test
> it?

If it's working, you should end up at [[AT&T]] for the following URLs:
   http://www.piclab.com/wiki/AT&T
   http://www.piclab.com/wiki/AT%26T
   http://www.piclab.com/wiki/AT%2526T
   http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=AT%26T
   http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=AT%2526T

and at [[AT]] for this one:
   http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=AT&T

If it's not working, these will give you [[AT]] instead of [[AT&T]]:
   http://www.piclab.com/wiki/AT&T
   http://www.piclab.com/wiki/AT%26T

That seems to be the case presently.

>  If you've long since forgotten your login to my server,
> let me know).

I have a user login for the wiki, but I indeed seem to have forgotten
the login for the server.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Sven Burkhart

body:
From: "elian" <elian at gmx.li>
>
> So we continue our current procedure to hide the other language wikipedias
> from the user. It doesn't mind that I speak five languages, I have to be
> happy with the German wikipedia because it's point one in my browser
> settings. And if my Spanish friends use my computer for surfing, they get
> German, too, even if they speak no German at all. And the Japanese student
> at the German university library computer gets German, too, even if he
> would be a lot more interested in the japanese wikipedia.

This front page could simply redirect to the preferred language. Of course,
you can still pick a certain language by entering through es.wikipeda.org or
jp.wikipedia.org which would be not any different from the current
situation. In addition, you could follow the interlink from the homepage to
the language you want. These interlinks as well as the links on the page
"Wikipedia in other languages" will also enable google&co to find all
other pedias, no matter through which language they come in.

> Sorry, I can't see any additional value from such a front page.

The advantage would be an URL easy to remember for everyone since it starts
with the common "www" instead of a the rather unusual language code. It
could also help to overcome the concerns of non-English wikipedians that the
English pedia is treated different.

Sven (Ben-Zin)


from_name: Steve Callaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Delurking

body:
Ryan,

No. You are not alone. I have had very similar symptoms myself and I am
using IE6 on a vanilla PC, without the "freezing".

kind rgds

Steve Callaway

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan Tuccinardi" <tucci528 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 3:27 AM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Delurking

> This is Tokerboy officially delurking.
>
> I tried and failed four times to post this to the
> Village Pump.  Since the other night, when the random
> page bug was widespread enough that the Main Page was
> updated to reflect a way around it, Wikipedia hasn't
> been keeping my Login across sessions.  Also, starting
> just tonight, it freezes up my computer (IMac OS 9.2.2
> running IE 5.1 for Mac) whenever I press "stop" while
> it is trying to do something; the reason I am doing so
> is because it is taking an inordinate length of time
> to save, though it hasn't actually said it failed.  I
> let it try for ten minutes last time, and the progress
> bar didn't even begin, and my cursor didn't change to
> a spinning wheel (which means it's doing something on
> a Mac).  Am I the only one?
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
> http://faith.yahoo.com
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #764 - 16 msgs

body:
You Wrote:
>Would anyone care to express any opinions as to what 209.105.200.69, aka DW, is doing with [[Politics of Canada]]?
>
>Matt (Montrealais)
>Montreal, Quebec

It has the trappings of NPOV, attributing everything, but favors independence for Quebec and looks very POV, e.g. non-encyclopedic, in its emphasis on Quebec's efforts towards independence and its virtual neglect of the other point of view.

I for one am suspicious about DW's changes, though I don't know enough about the situation to challenge them intelligently.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] DW and Canada (Quebec separatism)

body:
Sounds good. Now let's take it to the Talk page.
That's what it's there for. ;-)

Stephen G.

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Perhaps the solution is simply to write an article
> on Quebec Separatism or The Separatism Issue in
> Quebec.
>
> Such an article could then could have headings on
> Supporters of Separatism and Opponents of
> Separatism. It would be just as balanced as the
> George Bush article.
>
> Ed Poor
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


body:
Matt M. wrote:

>Would anyone care to express any opinions as to what 209.105.200.69, aka DW, is doing with [[Politics of Canada]]?
>
Groan!  Him again!? He does have the habit of turning disagreements into
personal attacks and irrelevant name calling, but I guess I can go there
and join the battle.
Ec


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] WinCVS

body:
Here is a message for developers:

I asked to get access to the sourceforge Wikipedia project.
I seem to be added to developers list, but I still unable to "submit" files.
I'm running under WindowsXP (I don't have choice) and I'm using WinCVS.
I followed step by step the tutorial "how connect to CVS base with WinCVS":
- Install softwares (PuTTY & WinCVS)
- Create and submit SSH key
- Configure WinCVS
I can connect and checkout the hole project, but when I modify a file
(LanguageJa.php) and try to submit it, I get this error message : "cvs
[server aborted]: "commit" requires write access to the repository".
What wrong ?
Have I right to sbumit files ?
Please help...

Guillaume (Aoineko)


from_name: Matt M.

body:
Would anyone care to express any opinions as to what 209.105.200.69, aka DW, is doing with [[Politics of Canada]]?

Matt (Montrealais)
Montreal, Quebec


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Perhaps the solution is simply to write an article on Quebec Separatism or The Separatism Issue in Quebec.

Such an article could then could have headings on Supporters of Separatism and Opponents of Separatism. It would be just as balanced as the George Bush article.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
I found and corrected 19 separate instances of "seperate" in the Wikipedia today.

All of these are currently in Wikipedia articles. I could use a little help.

headquaters - 6
offical - 5
decendents - 4
thrid - 3
assasination - 2
possibilty - 2
pursuade - 2
seperating - 2
soliders - 2
assitant - 1
beacuse - 1
constuction - 1
disolved - 1
embarassing - 1
grafitti - 1
increadible - 1
relized - 1
seperated - 1

Ed Poor
(If you peel an orange incorrectly, that is a mispeeling.)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Yes, FvdP suggested that in Wikipedia talk:Spellchecking project

> spelling errors detection should be done automatically if possible.
> That is, a list of common misspellings should be periodically
> searched for in the articles, by an automatic "daemon",
> and the results be published for humans to correct
> (I'm wary of automatic correction).

-----Original Message-----
From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at epost.de]

How aboutYet Another Special Page (maybe part of the Maintenance Page)?
It could scan through wikipedia searching for common typos defined in a
special "article" (wikipedia:typos?).

Magnus


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New toy

body:
I added a "broken redirect" finder to the Maintenance Page.

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I found and corrected 19 separate instances of "seperate" in the Wikipedia today.
>
>All of these are currently in Wikipedia articles. I could use a little help.
>
>
How aboutYet Another Special Page (maybe part of the Maintenance Page)?
It could scan through wikipedia searching for common typos defined in a
special "article" (wikipedia:typos?).

Magnus


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikitech-l] WinCVS

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
 > I asked to get access to the sourceforge Wikipedia project.
 > I seem to be added to developers list, but I still unable to "submit"
files.
 > I'm running under WindowsXP (I don't have choice) and I'm using WinCVS.
 > I followed step by step the tutorial "how connect to CVS base with
WinCVS":
 > - Install softwares (PuTTY & WinCVS)
 > - Create and submit SSH key
 > - Configure WinCVS
 > I can connect and checkout the hole project, but when I modify a file
 > (LanguageJa.php) and try to submit it, I get this error message : "cvs
 > [server aborted]: "commit" requires write access to the repository".
 > What wrong ?
 > Have I right to sbumit files ?
 > Please help...

Hm, you're listed in the project members list so I think you should be
okay. (Side note: a Mike Dill is listed as project manager. Who is he?)

If you checked the files out anonymously, you may have to check
everything out again with your username in a new working directory.

I'm afraid I can't give any WinCVS-specific advice; on my Windows 2000
box, I use Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) to give myself a comfy
Unix-like environment, and use the command-line CVS client that you can
install with that.

(Hopefully this message will make it; I'm having terrible SMTP problems
today.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Derek Ross

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 7:00 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

> I found and corrected 19 separate instances of "seperate" in the Wikipedia
today.
>
> All of these are currently in Wikipedia articles. I could use a little
help.
>
> headquaters - 6
> offical - 5
> decendents - 4
> thrid - 3
> assasination - 2
> possibilty - 2
> pursuade - 2
> seperating - 2
> soliders - 2
> assitant - 1
> beacuse - 1
> constuction - 1
> disolved - 1
> embarassing - 1
> grafitti - 1
> increadible - 1
> relized - 1
> seperated - 1
>

Welcome to the Wikipedia Gardening club, Ed.  We may not be as sexy as the
Militia but there's always plenty weeding to keep us busy!

I must admit that I haven't checked out "separate" for a while but there are
always plenty of similar "weeds" to find.  "suprising" and "comittee" to
name but two.  I like Magnus's idea for Yet Another Special Page working off
Wikipedia:Typos though.  Automated finding isn't the complete answer but it
would be a very useful tool.

Cheers

Derek


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
I shamefully admit to mistyping "seperate" on occasions. Funny thing is
I spell it correctly in longhand. Unfortunately I have very lazy fingers
which find hitting "e" twice easier. :(

could we add "it's" to the 3-letter words we can search for?
That's a *very* common error.

Derek Ross wrote:

>Welcome to the Wikipedia Gardening club, Ed.  We may not be as sexy as the
>Militia but there's always plenty weeding to keep us busy!
>
>I must admit that I haven't checked out "separate" for a while but there are
>always plenty of similar "weeds" to find.  "suprising" and "comittee" to
>name but two.  I like Magnus's idea for Yet Another Special Page working off
>Wikipedia:Typos though.  Automated finding isn't the complete answer but it
>would be a very useful tool.
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Brion

I'll add this to the Useful Database queries stuff I'm building on
MetaWikipedia, ta.

Steve Callaway

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion VIBBER" <brion at pobox.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2002 2:33 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

> tarquin wrote:
>
> > could we add "it's" to the 3-letter words we can search for?
> > That's a *very* common error.
>
> There are 1,178 pages in article space containing the word "it's". If
> you _really_ want to wade through them looking for the erroneous ones,
> go to the SQL query page and run:
>
>    SELECT cur_title from cur where cur_namespace=0 and
>    cur_text regexp "[[:<:]]it's[[:>:]]" order by cur_title
>
> (Which reminds me -- I thought we'd lowered the 3-byte search limit to 2?)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Even worse are references -- and even links! -- to decades in the first
century (e.g., "the 70's") when what is meant is a decade in the 20th
century (e.g., "the 1970s").

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Bryan Derksen
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2002 09:48
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

At 02:00 PM 18/10/02 -0400, you wrote:
>I found and corrected 19 separate instances of "seperate" in the
Wikipedia
>today.
>
>All of these are currently in Wikipedia articles. I could use a little
help.

Add to the list of misspellings all the innumerable 1990's, 1980's,
1970's,
etc. I zap them when I see them, but there are so many...

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
At 02:00 PM 18/10/02 -0400, you wrote:
>I found and corrected 19 separate instances of "seperate" in the Wikipedia
>today.
>
>All of these are currently in Wikipedia articles. I could use a little help.

Add to the list of misspellings all the innumerable 1990's, 1980's, 1970's,
etc. I zap them when I see them, but there are so many...


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] How would you deal with this problem?

body:
What is your feeling about the following sort of problem?  This sort
problem is what drove Julie Kemp away, not to mention a number of other
very valuable participants.

As a philosopher, I've studied metaphysics and topics in metaphysics in a
number of graduate courses and I continue to maintain an interest in the
topic of existence ("Is existence a property?") and metaphysics generally.
By no means am I an *expert* on the topic of reality, but I guess I'm the
closest thing we current have to one.

Last June or July I noticed that our [[Reality]] page was a complete joke.
At the time I felt I didn't have the time or patience to try to correct
it.  Unfortunately, the people working on the page kept at it for the next
few months and now, if anything, it has gotten worse: philosophically
illiterate, poorly written, completely biased, and fundamentally confused
about what an article about "reality" should be about.

So on the talk page I took some time out and went through the article,
line by line, and explained what was wrong with it.  When finished, I had
convinced myself that virtually no part of it was salvageable, so I wrote
about five paragraphs of a new article, and just completely deleted the
old one.

This upset Fred Bauder, who it seems was responsible for most of the old
article.  Without going into details (see the Talk: page if you want),
Fred maintained that the original article was superior to the new one.
After an exchange, I decided to give up; I wrote, "I'm not going to try to
improve this article any more. Go ahead and revert it to the old crappy
version. I'm not going to work on this article as long as you're working
on it."

So Fred did revert it, making my article into a subheading of his article,
called "A Philosophical Discussion" (as if I had been talking about a
different topic from the one he was addressing).  To his credit he
actually edited his old article and removed a few of the problems with it
that I had pointed out, but it still remains pretty much a confused piece
of garbage, in my opinion.

Then I realized that I had been driven away from working on something I
actually cared about and knew something about--just as Julie had been.  So
I decided to resist the desire to give up; I reverted my own article and
put Fred's below it.

I am extremely dissatisfied with this situation, however.  As in the case
with the [[racism]] article, there is now more than one article on the
page.  Having multiple articles is just a way to avoid controversy among
editors; it doesn't serve readers very well, for one thing.  I'm mighty
tempted to delete Fred's version again, but I honestly don't really know
what to do at this point.  (Thus, I'm writing to you folks.)

There's a general issue that this situation illustrates.  This isn't the
first time the issue has come up, obviously.  The issue is: when we've got
someone who is clearly more of an expert on a topic locking horns with a
stubborn dilettante who fails to see how little he or she actually knows,
what do we do?  Nothing?

Let me tell you, I can *really* understand why Michael Tinkler and Julie
Kemp left.  It's the same reason that a lot of other able minds never join
in the first place.

Is there *anything* we can do, consistent with our policies of openness,
to make the project more attractive to the best-qualified people, in the
face of the above problem?

--Larry


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Lightning wrote:

>>>hey.. how about we create a db script that fixes this stuff? i can do it
>>>if
>>>you guys approve it and i'll send it to whoever has permission to do this
>>>
>>>seriously, just a big select statement that selects any article that
>>>contains ie "mispeeling" and automatically replaces the correct
>>>spelling...
>>>
>>This is fine until some of the 'mispeelings' are intended....
>>
>
>I figure if we mess up 20 articles, but fix 250, its worth it... or not?
>
>If people like the idea i'll program it, and even tie it into the diff
>thing, so it logs the edit onto the article history...
>
Please no!  Having 20 of 250 articles murdered by friendly fire is not
acceptable.  Simply showing 250 recent changes is no help in finding the
friendly corpses.  Your cure is worse than the disease.
Eclecticology


body:
Larry wrote:
<snip>
>Is there *anything* we can do, consistent with our policies of openness,
>to make the project more attractive to the best-qualified people, in the
>face of the above problem?

Well for one thing, in policy of openness (to experts and dilletantes alike), we might avoid stating whether other edits are "crappy," though they may well be.  :-)

Aside from that, I don't have any exceptionally good ideas.  We're all occasionally vexed when someone who knows less than they think they do starts editing an article clumsily.  Typically people recognize when they're out of their field.  When they don't, I suppose a gentle reminder that there are experts on certain topics would be in order, as well as preferred approaches to topics.  e.g. I would be very surprised to arrive at an article on [[capitalism]] and see that it's been written from an anarchist point of view--though I may agree with much of what the anarchists say.

I for one, reading the [[reality]] article, recognize that I'm out of my field.  It's not user friendly, especially to non-philosophers (even patient ones).  Currently it needs to be explained more thoroughly--yes, even to the point of defining "real" and "tautology", and explaining the context in which "domain" is being used.

Fred Bauder's part, which you've so conveniently labeled, has the same problems: not defining "sui generis", as well as leaving the definitions unintegrated.  Having said that, I think Fred's part is clearly less informed, as well as approaching from a technojunkie's point of view.

Both parts assume we know more than we do.  If I didn't know what reality was before reading the article, I wouldn't know what it was after reading it.

Have you tried talking to Fred about it, without mentioning whether you think his edits are crappy?  Perhaps he senses a certain antagonism and/or condescension.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
You Wrote:
>I //really// don't like this idea at all. It is far too generic and there
>are often good reasons why a word may be mispelt, particularly if we are
>quoting from old texts etc. Dangerous in the extreme and a lazy solution to
>something which should be fixed on a case by case basis.

Maybe we could get those robots from Westworld to correct the typos.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
You Wrote:
>koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>
>>Maybe we could get those robots from Westworld to correct the typos.
>>
>>
>They just entered the arena: Try
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=mispeelings
>
>Magnus

I'm grateful it does require a human to say 'yes' or 'no' to the changes.  :-)

I'm wary of automation.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Magnus wrote:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=mispeelings

The text on that page should be adjusted.  e.g. if Elton John has a song with 'alright' in the title; it's his work and he can spell it like that if he wants to; we have no cause to change it.

Also, not all of the misspellings are misspellings: Tao Teh Ching is an alternative spelling, not an incorrect one.

It's a cool feature though.  I just corrected several pages.

kq


body:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2002 koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:

> Larry wrote:
> <snip>
> >Is there *anything* we can do, consistent with our policies of openness,
> >to make the project more attractive to the best-qualified people, in the
> >face of the above problem?
>
> Well for one thing, in policy of openness (to experts and dilletantes
> alike), we might avoid stating whether other edits are "crappy,"
> though they may well be.  :-)
...
[snip some good suggestions]
...
> Have you tried talking to Fred about it, without mentioning whether
> you think his edits are crappy?  Perhaps he senses a certain
> antagonism and/or condescension.

Point very well taken, KQ.  I know that your approach almost always works
wonders.  Diplomacy is usually a good thing, and I see that I haven't been
at all diplomatic in this case.

--Larry


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Lightning wrote:

>>>just a big select statement that selects any article that
>>>contains ie "mispeeling" and automatically replaces the correct spelling...

>>This is fine until some of the 'mispeelings' are intended....

>I figure if we mess up 20 articles, but fix 250, its worth it... or not?

Not.
An accidental mispeeling, while annoying, is usually harmless.
A deliberate mispeeling, OTOH, is usually important.
Better a hundred typos go free than one contentful item be wrongfully changed.

-- Toby


body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>What is your feeling about the following sort of problem?  This sort
>problem is what drove Julie Kemp away, not to mention a number of other
>very valuable participants.

...

>Is there *anything* we can do, consistent with our policies of openness,
>to make the project more attractive to the best-qualified people, in the
>face of the above problem?

Get Ed Poor to mediate ^_^.

-- Toby


body:
>> Larry wrote:
>Point very well taken, KQ.  I know that your approach almost always works
>wonders.  Diplomacy is usually a good thing, and I see that I haven't been
>at all diplomatic in this case.

We've all had our lapses.  I've especially had a few I'm not proud of.  Things aren't how they were even a year and a half ago--there were only about 20 of us around as late as March 2001; we knew each other; it was obvious we all were trying to help; it was easier to reach decisions.  IIRC, and maybe I don't, people were more generous.

With so many people around now, it's not hard to imagine wikipedia fracturing off into subgroups who favor certain topics--just because it's easier to deal with things.  You can see some of this around certain wikiprojects.  There are enough changes each day now that it's neither practical nor especially desirable to follow each change.

I think diplomacy is going to become increasingly important as we go on--we've developed from a one-horse town to a small city, and eventually we'll be a metropolis.

Best,

kq


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
hey.. how about we create a db script that fixes this stuff? i can do it if
you guys approve it and i'll send it to whoever has permission to do this

seriously, just a big select statement that selects any article that
contains ie "mispeeling" and automatically replaces the correct spelling...
it's really not hard at all, at all.... same thing for uhm double redirects
and other common ailments that take so much of our time, but can be so
easily fixed.

Lightning


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
> > hey.. how about we create a db script that fixes this stuff? i can do it
> > if
> > you guys approve it and i'll send it to whoever has permission to do
this
> > seriously, just a big select statement that selects any article that
> > contains ie "mispeeling" and automatically replaces the correct
> > spelling...
> > it's really not hard at all, at all.... same thing for uhm double
> > redirects
> > and other common ailments that take so much of our time, but can be so
> > easily fixed.

> This is fine until some of the 'mispeelings' are intended....

I figure if we mess up 20 articles, but fix 250, its worth it... or not?

If people like the idea i'll program it, and even tie it into the diff
thing, so it logs the edit onto the article history...


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
> >Maybe we could get those robots from Westworld to correct the typos.
> >
> >
> They just entered the arena: Try
>
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=
mispeelings
>

can you please also have the correct suggested spelling in that page.. i'm
sure well meaning people trying to correct mistakes may just change one
mistake for another...

Lightning


subject: [Wikipedia-l] url's with apersands

body:
whats the status on the fix? it still dont work....

try:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_Tunes_%26_Merrie_Melodies_filmography


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
tarquin wrote:

> could we add "it's" to the 3-letter words we can search for?
> That's a *very* common error.

There are 1,178 pages in article space containing the word "it's". If
you _really_ want to wade through them looking for the erroneous ones,
go to the SQL query page and run:

   SELECT cur_title from cur where cur_namespace=0 and
   cur_text regexp "[[:<:]]it's[[:>:]]" order by cur_title

(Which reminds me -- I thought we'd lowered the 3-byte search limit to 2?)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
This is fine until some of the 'mispeelings' are intended....

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lightning" <lightning at chaos-productions.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2002 7:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

> hey.. how about we create a db script that fixes this stuff? i can do it
if
> you guys approve it and i'll send it to whoever has permission to do this
>
> seriously, just a big select statement that selects any article that
> contains ie "mispeeling" and automatically replaces the correct
spelling...
> it's really not hard at all, at all.... same thing for uhm double
redirects
> and other common ailments that take so much of our time, but can be so
> easily fixed.
>
> Lightning
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Zoe Comnena

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir and Christopher Columbus

body:
User Lir insists on claiming that Christopher Columbus was a slave trader prior to his 1492 voyage.  He refuses to substantiate his claim, and continually reverts the page when his claim is removed.  Can someone deal with him?

Zoe

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
I //really// don't like this idea at all. It is far too generic and there
are often good reasons why a word may be mispelt, particularly if we are
quoting from old texts etc. Dangerous in the extreme and a lazy solution to
something which should be fixed on a case by case basis.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lightning" <lightning at chaos-productions.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2002 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

> > > hey.. how about we create a db script that fixes this stuff? i can do
it
> > > if
> > > you guys approve it and i'll send it to whoever has permission to do
> this
> > > seriously, just a big select statement that selects any article that
> > > contains ie "mispeeling" and automatically replaces the correct
> > > spelling...
> > > it's really not hard at all, at all.... same thing for uhm double
> > > redirects
> > > and other common ailments that take so much of our time, but can be so
> > > easily fixed.
>
>
> > This is fine until some of the 'mispeelings' are intended....
>
> I figure if we mess up 20 articles, but fix 250, its worth it... or not?
>
> If people like the idea i'll program it, and even tie it into the diff
> thing, so it logs the edit onto the article history...
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Lightning wrote:

>If people like the idea i'll program it, and even tie it into the diff
>thing, so it logs the edit onto the article history...
>
>
I'm at the moment patching together a subfunction for the Maintenance
Page; let's see how that works out ;-)

Magnus


body:
Does anyone have a strong objection to banning Lir for an hour or so, to
let him cool off?

>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com]  On Behalf Of Zoe Comnena
> Sent:	Saturday, October 19, 2002 19:44
> To:	wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
> Subject:	[Wikipedia-l] Lir and Christopher Columbus
>
> User Lir insists on claiming that Christopher Columbus was a slave
trader prior to his 1492 voyage.  He refuses to substantiate his claim,
and continually reverts the page when his claim is removed.  Can someone
deal with him?
>
> Zoe


body:
>User Lir insists on claiming that Christopher Columbus was a slave trader prior to his 1492 voyage.  He refuses to substantiate his claim, and continually reverts the page when his claim is removed.  Can someone deal with him?
>
>Zoe

s/he may settle down eventually; I had much the same attitude when I started & wanted to write everything I 'knew' to be true about cannabis, completely without citations or opposing points of view.  :-/

kq


body:
(Sorry for the top edit -- Yahoo makes you do it.)

Yeah, but you should see how he reacted when people changed his NPOV comments on Iowa State University.  The guy's a psycho.  -- Zoe
 koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:>User Lir insists on claiming that Christopher Columbus was a slave trader prior to his 1492 voyage. He refuses to substantiate his claim, and continually reverts the page when his claim is removed. Can someone deal with him?
>
>Zoe

s/he may settle down eventually; I had much the same attitude when I started & wanted to write everything I 'knew' to be true about cannabis, completely without citations or opposing points of view. :-/

kq

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
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from_name: Zoe

body:
I sure don't.  :-)  Zoe
 Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:Does anyone have a strong objection to banning Lir for an hour or so, to
let him cool off?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com] On Behalf Of Zoe Comnena
> Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2002 19:44
> To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir and Christopher Columbus
>
> User Lir insists on claiming that Christopher Columbus was a slave
trader prior to his 1492 voyage. He refuses to substantiate his claim,
and continually reverts the page when his claim is removed. Can someone
deal with him?
>
> Zoe

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Steve Callaway wrote:

>I //really// don't like this idea at all. It is far too generic and there
>are often good reasons why a word may be mispelt, particularly if we are
>quoting from old texts etc. Dangerous in the extreme and a lazy solution to
>something which should be fixed on a case by case basis.
>
That's why I won't implement an auto-correct feature (and because I'm
too lazy;)

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:

>Maybe we could get those robots from Westworld to correct the typos.
>
>
They just entered the arena: Try

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=mispeelings

Magnus


from_name: Ryan Tuccinardi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] on banning Lir

body:
Either Lir et al has agreed to my compromise, everyone
involved has gone to bed or someone already banned
her.  The edit war seems to have calmed down so a ban
no longer appears to be necessary.

Tokerboy

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
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from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
The mispeelings page has a bug. "leran" is on the list, presumably for
"learn", but the only page listed there is a list of French communes
including L?ran. The accent should not be ignored.

phma


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
--- Larry Sanger <lsanger at nupedia.com> wrote:

<snip to the end...>

> Is there *anything* we can do, consistent with our
> policies of openness,
> to make the project more attractive to the
> best-qualified people, in the
> face of the above problem?
>
> --Larry

I agree with KQ's suggestion. I think it's a matter of
trying to work together. As an expert, your natural
inclination is to replace an article that you don't
think very much of with your own writing. Fred's
natural reaction to this is to feel dismissed. The
problem escalates from there.

This isn't the same situation as, say, "working" on an
article with Helga Jonat. Fred (Hi Fred! Are you tuned
in to this thread?) is a good contributor to the
project, and isn't out to push a specific agenda all
through Wikipedia. On the other side of the coin,
you're obviously not intending to dismiss Fred as
unimportant, nor are you trying to insult his
intelligence.

Remember that you both have the same goal: to produce
a good article on "reality". It seems that there's a
clash of approaches here. "Reality" is an enormous
topic, and a truly good article is not going to take
shape in only a few weeks.

We're starting to see the growth of Wikipedia
straining the sense of community. Take a look at the
Wiki Life Cycle
(http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiLifeCycle).
It's a remarkably accurate guide to the rise and fall
of wiki communities. We are entering stage 17:
"Decline Of Civility -- there are more strangers than
friends, and assum[ing] good faith fails as reputation
is fleeting." As more and more Wikipedians contribute,
we have to be careful; it's getting easier to get into
heated arguments, and these fights will de-stabilize a
project that bases itself on openness.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
tarquin wrote:

> If we change all "it's" to either "its" or the more formal "it is",
> then that list will gradually diminish.

All!!!???  Some how changing the song title to "It is a Long Way to
Tipperary" doesn't seem right to me :-(

Eclecticology

>


body:
I would like to weigh in here to say that I'm just slightly disturbed that
we are getting into the habit of publicly proposing, on this list, to use
the banning power to settle acrimonious edit wars.  I've noticed this in
the case of Lir and of DW.  When Jimbo and I were the only ones who had
the authority to ban people, we never used it for this purpose, or at
least, I can't remember a single case.  This is the first time I recall
anyone proposing to ban someone for *one hour* so that the person could
"cool off."  This is the first I've heard of "cooling people off" as a
reason to *ban* them for any length of time.

If I could see immediately that Lir were simply a *vandal*, I could
understand.  But I do not see that Lir is simply a vandal, whatever
his/her merits.

Like everybody, I totally understand :-) the frustration involved in
working with people I regard as unreasonable, difficult, and even
trollish.  But banning them isn't the way that, up until just the last
month or two, we have dealt with them.

Let me be clear here (it's so easy to be misunderstood): on the one hand,
I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with outright banning an IP
number (if it's stable) or perhaps, temporarily, a block of IP numbers, if
it's perfectly clear that the person being banned is just a vandal.  On
the other hand, I do not think we should ban people who appear to be
making a good faith effort to contribute, unless we have gone through a
long public process and ensured that the bar is set very high.

In particular, we do not ban people for merely failing to follow the
"rules," even rules like [[netiquette]].  At least part of the point of
making the first rule "ignore all rules," I thought, is the notion that we
all understand that we aren't going to *enforce* these rules except in the
most egregious cases, which Lir and DW aren't, as far as I can tell.  For
non-vandals, the bar has to be set really, really high, I think.

--Larry


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>This isn't the same situation as, say, "working" on an
>article with Helga Jonat. Fred (Hi Fred! Are you tuned
>in to this thread?) is a good contributor to the
>project, and isn't out to push a specific agenda all
>through Wikipedia. On the other side of the coin,
>you're obviously not intending to dismiss Fred as
>unimportant, nor are you trying to insult his
>intelligence.

I agree with this.  :-)

>We're starting to see the growth of Wikipedia
>straining the sense of community. Take a look at the
>Wiki Life Cycle
>(http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiLifeCycle).
>It's a remarkably accurate guide to the rise and fall
>of wiki communities. We are entering stage 17:
>"Decline Of Civility -- there are more strangers than
>friends, and assum[ing] good faith fails as reputation
>is fleeting." As more and more Wikipedians contribute,
>we have to be careful; it's getting easier to get into
>heated arguments, and these fights will de-stabilize a
>project that bases itself on openness.

Thanks for the link.  I knew I couldn't have been the first person to think about the growth of online communities.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> tarquin wrote:
>
>> Could this page give the *correct spelling too, in each header?
>> eg.
>>      anual (correct: annual)
>
> "* anual (annual)" will search for "anual", but display "anual (annual)".

If the error in "anual" were that an extra letter had been put in rather
than a letter omitted, psychological texts could end up talking about
people with annual retentive personalities.

Ec


body:
On Sun, 20 Oct 2002, Stephen Gilbert wrote:

> --- Larry Sanger <lsanger at nupedia.com> wrote:
>
> <snip to the end...>
>
> > Is there *anything* we can do, consistent with our
> > policies of openness,
> > to make the project more attractive to the
> > best-qualified people, in the
> > face of the above problem?
> >
> > --Larry
>
> I agree with KQ's suggestion. I think it's a matter of
> trying to work together. As an expert, your natural
> inclination is to replace an article that you don't
> think very much of with your own writing. Fred's
> natural reaction to this is to feel dismissed. The
> problem escalates from there.

Here's the problem, though.  Again, I think KQ has the right approach, but
it doesn't solve every problem along these lines.  With all due respect,
in my opinion, Fred really doesn't know what he's talking about on this
topic, and it requires a great deal of patience to go through an article
from someone who does not understand the subject (but thinks he does).

Reasonable people do not react in the way that Fred has reacted, I think.
Suppose I were to have written an article on something I know a little
about, but which I am very far from being an expert--digital cameras, say.
Then someone who were more of an expert were to came along and said,
"Look, this article is totally garbage.  You didn't get half of the stuff
right," and then replaced it with something that was better-informed, I'd
like to think that I would totally understand.  Moreover, if the person
took the time to go through, line by line, what was wrong with my article,
I would probably be abjectly apologetic.

> This isn't the same situation as, say, "working" on an
> article with Helga Jonat. Fred (Hi Fred! Are you tuned
> in to this thread?) is a good contributor to the
> project, and isn't out to push a specific agenda all
> through Wikipedia.

I'm not talking about the whole project.  In this article, he certainly
has been trying to push a specific agenda, though it's possible he doesn't
quite realize that.

> On the other side of the coin,
> you're obviously not intending to dismiss Fred as
> unimportant, nor are you trying to insult his
> intelligence.

Well, that certainly wasn't my point!

> Remember that you both have the same goal: to produce
> a good article on "reality". It seems that there's a
> clash of approaches here. "Reality" is an enormous
> topic, and a truly good article is not going to take
> shape in only a few weeks.

I appreciate the attention you're giving this, Stephen, but this doesn't
help.  The problem decidedly *isn't* that we haven't spent enough time on
it (the original, awful article was up there for many months).

Wikipedia should not *have to be* about *everyone* who wants to
collaborate on an article gets an equal seat at the table on every
article, with all of their views expressed.  Sometimes, people can be
wrong; and they don't know that they're wrong, because they just don't
know enough about the topic.  That's my point.

> We're starting to see the growth of Wikipedia
> straining the sense of community. Take a look at the
> Wiki Life Cycle
> (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiLifeCycle).
> It's a remarkably accurate guide to the rise and fall
> of wiki communities. We are entering stage 17:
> "Decline Of Civility -- there are more strangers than
> friends, and assum[ing] good faith fails as reputation
> is fleeting." As more and more Wikipedians contribute,
> we have to be careful; it's getting easier to get into
> heated arguments, and these fights will de-stabilize a
> project that bases itself on openness.

Again, while I agree that it's important to be civil and I agree with the
above sentiments, but I am skeptical that it's a new or growing problem.
I mean, we've *always* had trouble of this sort.  You'd think I'd know how
to deal with it by now...

Larry


body:
Larry, weigh in directly against me; I'm the first who wondered aloud
whether a one-hour ban might help.  I will only point out that it is the
first time I have ever proposed a ban, and I don't think a single
occurance should be called a "habit."

Did you follow the battle with Lir through all the various talk pages?
On the VANDALISM IN PROGRESS page, Lir accused Zoe of "defacing the
Columbus page, probably due to some form of inherent racism against
Africans and Amerindians."  Lir has no comprehension of NPOV, utterly
refuses to compromise, rejects even proposals that I consider absurdly
accomodating, and insists on entirely unsubstantiated historical
revisionism.

--
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.com

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Larry Sanger
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2002 08:05
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Lir and Christopher Columbus

I would like to weigh in here to say that I'm just slightly disturbed
that
we are getting into the habit of publicly proposing, on this list, to
use
the banning power to settle acrimonious edit wars.  I've noticed this in
the case of Lir and of DW.  When Jimbo and I were the only ones who had
the authority to ban people, we never used it for this purpose, or at
least, I can't remember a single case.  This is the first time I recall
anyone proposing to ban someone for *one hour* so that the person could
"cool off."  This is the first I've heard of "cooling people off" as a
reason to *ban* them for any length of time.

If I could see immediately that Lir were simply a *vandal*, I could
understand.  But I do not see that Lir is simply a vandal, whatever
his/her merits.

Like everybody, I totally understand :-) the frustration involved in
working with people I regard as unreasonable, difficult, and even
trollish.  But banning them isn't the way that, up until just the last
month or two, we have dealt with them.

Let me be clear here (it's so easy to be misunderstood): on the one
hand,
I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with outright banning an IP
number (if it's stable) or perhaps, temporarily, a block of IP numbers,
if
it's perfectly clear that the person being banned is just a vandal.  On
the other hand, I do not think we should ban people who appear to be
making a good faith effort to contribute, unless we have gone through a
long public process and ensured that the bar is set very high.

In particular, we do not ban people for merely failing to follow the
"rules," even rules like [[netiquette]].  At least part of the point of
making the first rule "ignore all rules," I thought, is the notion that
we
all understand that we aren't going to *enforce* these rules except in
the
most egregious cases, which Lir and DW aren't, as far as I can tell.
For
non-vandals, the bar has to be set really, really high, I think.

--Larry

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
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body:
On Sun, 20 Oct 2002, Sean Barrett wrote:

> Larry, weigh in directly against me; I'm the first who wondered aloud
> whether a one-hour ban might help.  I will only point out that it is the
> first time I have ever proposed a ban, and I don't think a single
> occurance should be called a "habit."

Sorry, I didn't mean to say that one-hour bans were a habit; but proposing
to ban people over content disputes has become a regular habit, it seems
to me.

> Did you follow the battle with Lir through all the various talk pages?
> On the VANDALISM IN PROGRESS page, Lir accused Zoe of "defacing the
> Columbus page, probably due to some form of inherent racism against
> Africans and Amerindians."  Lir has no comprehension of NPOV, utterly
> refuses to compromise, rejects even proposals that I consider absurdly
> accomodating, and insists on entirely unsubstantiated historical
> revisionism.

I'd agree that's all pretty bad, and Lir is certainly an abrasive
character who doesn't understand what's generally accepted to be Wikipedia
policy.  I just looked at the talk page and histories of two of the
mentioned pages, and didn't find anything so completely outrageous as to
require an outright ban.

For all I know, you're absolutely in the right.  I just want to try to
slow us down, that's all.

Larry


body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>Suppose I were to have written an article on something I know a little
>about, but which I am very far from being an expert--digital cameras, say.
>Then someone who were more of an expert were to came along and said,
>"Look, this article is totally garbage.  You didn't get half of the stuff
>right," and then replaced it with something that was better-informed, I'd
>like to think that I would totally understand.  Moreover, if the person
>took the time to go through, line by line, what was wrong with my article,
>I would probably be abjectly apologetic.
>
This is an interesting example.  In the main it expresses a logical
approach to a situation, but it gets off the track in two respects.  The
phrase "totally garbage" is unnecesary to the expert's critical comments
even if he finds little of value in your contributions; there are many
people whose sensitivities are such that they would see none of the
posting after that phrase.  The second problem would lie in your feeling
that you need to be "abjectly apologetic".  When you wrote about digital
cameras in the first place, you, in good faith, produced the best
article that you could under the circumstances; there's no cause for
apology in that.

Eclecticology