from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Note: Obscene language on Tsunami Article]

body:
Warning: this e-mail is [probably unnecessary] rather long; sorry, I
seem to be in "verbose" mode. :-/

On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 12:55:00 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> But I do not really see how what I propose in against wiki principles
> while to my opinion, the time delay is and will be confusing. Or that
> means I really do not understand Jimbo's proposal. In any cases, I do
> not like it :-(

Well, I'm not 100% sure that everybody's sure what proposals they're
talking about, but *my* understanding is:

Jimbo proposed a software feature that allowed a page to remain
editable by any user, but with ["untrusted"?] edits not visible [to
certain people, e.g. "anons"] until they have remained unchallenged
for a certain time, *or* explicitly approved by a "trusted" user
[where "trusted" may be a user level somewhere between logged in and
sysop, possibly available to anyone with "enough" experience]. This
could replace, in certain circumstances, the current practice of
protecting the page from *any* editting, and therefore *increase* the
"wikiness" of the wiki.

The most confusing element of this proposal is that people may come to
the site, try to correct an error, and find it has already been
corrected by someone else, but is stuck in the time delay [the
software can display a message explaining that this is an exceptional
measure, but that's still confusing]. But depending on the exact
details - how long before automatic publication, how many users able
to manually "approve" a new version - this may be a very unlikely
occurence. Note that this is only intended for the specific case of
articles that are, for instance, in the news, and likely to receive a
lot of attention; by their very nature, these articles are likely to
be on plenty of watchlists etc, so people will be likely to "approve"
good changes well before the time limit. And if they don't, the edit
will go through anyway, and the "live" and "current" versions will
match.

[To develop from Jimbo's description a bit, I think users could
perhaps be presented with an edit box straight away, but with a big
note about the article being in "deferred mode" (or whatever). If (and
only if) the "current" version is not the same as the "live" version,
the note could be followed by a diff between the two, with an
additional note/reminder to check that the change hadn't already been
made.]

Anthere, OTOH, proposed that in similar situations, pages could be
protected, but editable via templates, as a deliberate confusion
tactic. In my personal opinion, this would be far *more* confusing
than a [well designed] "deferred edit" feature in the software. I
would also note that it has been used for some time on the Front page
of the en: WP, with only limited success - it confuses a lot of people
who want to make genuine changes, and yet the front page still
receives vandalism [albeit a no doubt reduced amount]. There has been
much discussion of whether the templates themselves should now be
protected, but it looks like this has been avoided for the time being.

Basically, I think some intermediate state (or even more than one!) is
needed between "editable" and "protected", and however tricksy we are,
this can only really be achieved by a carefully designed software
feature. "Deffered edits" are actually *less* restrictive than the
other alternative that might be worth considering - that of protecting
pages *but allowing more than just admins to edit them* (i.e.
edittable by "trusted users", however we want to define that).

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
I took the current www.wikipedia.org page and added an auto-selection
based on the browser language settings. This example recognizes all the
languages with 10.000+ articles:

http://www.tommasoconforti.com/portal2.php

Try to set your browser to Russian or Esperanto and see what happens :-)
If the language preference is not recognized, no selection appear.

It's basically the same page at www.wikipedia.org, with a few lines of php
inserted. I copied over wikimedia's stylesheets and images since hitting
wikipedia servers was too slow. Japanese and Chinese characters might be
incorrect since I don't have them installed and I have no idea of what I
put on the page :-))

Source on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Portal_code

Alfio


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Proposal to show pdf icon for external and media:
	links to PDF files (having fileexternsion .pdf)

body:
Thomas Gries wrote:

> I propose to show in general a small ***pdf icon*** for such links
> pointing to a PDF file. This would be similar to small icon
> external.png, which is already shown after every _external_ link. It
> could be handled in monobook.css.
>
> Tom

The current "external.png" implementation is horribly broken in
languages that are right to left like Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic. So let's
create a "pdf icon" only when the implementation of the external.png is
fixed. Let's not add more garbage in a manner that we know is broken.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Note: Obscene language on Tsunami Article]

body:
On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 22:15:55 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know if I much like the idea of a "fine-grained" system of user levels.
>
> It sounds like the beginning of a caste system. Sysops, bureaucrats,
> and normal users is one thing and creates fairly little tention, but
> what will we do? Have [[Requests for Level 3]] and all the other
> levels? When does it become too much of a headache for everybody?

While I see your point, the new user rights system, as I understand
it, is not about creating "level 3 users" etc, but about being able to
grant people some rights without granting them everything. Currently,
we can't let somebody protect pages without also being able to delete
them; or allow only some users to view deleted pages without being
able to undelete them.

In practice, sysops will probably remain who can do basically
everything, but if we want to grant extra rights here or take them
away there, it should be possible. Or if the community decides that
certain features are "too powerful for every sysop", or "safe enough
for more people", it will only take a tweak in the user rights
management. I imagine we will either end up with specific pages like
"Requests for protection"; or, a "Requests for admin attention"-type
page will be followed by users not all of whom will be able to fulfil
all the requests - that doesn't matter, the request can stay there
until someone comes along who can do it.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject:
[Wikitech-l] RE: Re: French squids- now starting to get the
	first real traffic

body:
On Sat, 2005-01-08 at 00:37 +0100, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> In my experience, usleep() cannot be shorter than a single time slice
> fromt the Linux scheduler, which for 2.6 kernels should be 1 millisecond.
>
> So that code is waiting up to 200 milliseconds, with negligible CPU
> overhead, unless of course PHP does things differently. But to sleep less
> than a timeslice you need to busy sleep, so the CPU would be taxed at
> 100% in that case.

Alfio,

thanks for clearing that up. I set up the squids Friday evening, purges
have been enabled to all three french machines since then without making
a difference. Right now the first real traffic is starting to hit them,
with dns managed by Mark using GeoDNS (sends fr.wikipedia.org visitors
to the french squids if they have a french ip).

Stats:
http://bleuenn.wikimedia.org:8080/ganglia/?c=Paris%
20cluster&m=&r=hour&s=descending&hc=4

--
Gabriel Wicke
MediaWiki hosting, support and development
http://wikidev.net wicke at wikidev.net
Tel(SIP) +49 (0)1801-7775555258, Mob +49 (0)177 2065127
Eckernf?rder Str.58, 24116 Kiel


body:
On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 20:26 +0100, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> The current "external.png" implementation is horribly broken in
> languages that are right to left like Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic. So let's
> create a "pdf icon" only when the implementation of the external.png is
> fixed. Let's not add more garbage in a manner that we know is broken.

The implementation is simply following the CSS standards, but browsers
unfortunately tend to be more broken in RTL languages. The solution
usually is to hide the style from known-as-broken browsers while
allowing more standard-conform ones to render the extra hint. This is
called forward compatibility.
--
Gabriel Wicke
MediaWiki hosting, support and development
http://wikidev.net wicke at wikidev.net
Tel(SIP) +49 (0)1801-7775555258, Mob +49 (0)177 2065127
Eckernf?rder Str.58, 24116 Kiel


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipadia

body:
Mark Williamson stated for the record:

> I think the creativity of the domain squatter at work there should be
> applauded. It also exemplifies the wonderful freedom of the internet
> and how it applies to EVERYBODY. I think we should let it be rather
> than harassing somebody trying to make a living by screwing others.
>
> Mark

To ensure the security of our trolls as well as our serious
correspondents, please observe the following safety precautions:

Trolls are wild. Please stay on the visitor paths, observe posted signs
and do not reach into or climb on exhibits.

Please do not throw things at the trolls.

Please do not feed the trolls.

Making loud noises may startle the trolls.

Thank you for your cooperation.


from_name: John Collison

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipadia

body:
> Ashar Voultoiz (hashar at altern.org) [050110 03:54]:
>> Anthere wrote:
>
>>> Reported by Arnaudus on fr : http://www (dot) wikipadia (dot) org/
>
>> And ? Just looks like a domain squatting, owner expecting users to
>> make
>> typos when accessing wikipedia.
>> What do you want us to do with it ? :o)

And although it is only one letter different, it is an a rather than e,
and those letters are not beside each other on a QWERTY layout.
Normally, they aren't even typed with the same finger so I think we're
safe: not too many people will make that mistake.

John
[[User:Ludraman]]


body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

>On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 20:26 +0100, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>
>>The current "external.png" implementation is horribly broken in
>>languages that are right to left like Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic. So let's
>>create a "pdf icon" only when the implementation of the external.png is
>>fixed. Let's not add more garbage in a manner that we know is broken.
>>
>>
>
>The implementation is simply following the CSS standards, but browsers
>unfortunately tend to be more broken in RTL languages. The solution
>usually is to hide the style from known-as-broken browsers while
>allowing more standard-conform ones to render the extra hint. This is
>called forward compatibility.
>
>
I use Firefox 1.0, that one is broken ?? IE is broken and does not show
it in the first place. So for whom have we coded this ?? Or is it OK to
show it in the left to right languages because we then do not see the
problem ?? So, by all means hide it for Firefox, it really makes Farsi
unreadable as the first characters are overlapped by this "must have"
thingie.

GerardM


list: wikien-l

from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Registered users stats

body:
 --- shantanu oak <shantanu.oak at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I am studying the wikipedia phenomenon in detail.
> I need some more information about wikipedia growth.
>
> Number of registered users at the end of every year:
> At the end of 2001 :
> At the end of 2002 :
> At the end of 2003 :
> At the end of 2004 : 165,000
> I got the last (approx) figure from the page...
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
>
> Please let me know the statistics for the other 3
> years.
>
> Thanks,
> Shantanu Oak

You can find a complete table at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm

and a breakdown of stats by language and various other
criteria at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm

There's also a good overview on Meta at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Statistics

Cheers
Cormac

___________________________________________________________
ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Kate Turner

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: RE: Re: French squids- now starting to get the
	first real traffic

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 21:27 +0100, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>> Great. What's the plan for those squids? Will they only be used for
>> fr.wikipedia or also for de, it, pl and other european languages?
>
> They are getting de as well currently, Kate and Mark are testing it.
> #mediawiki is the place to follow the progress as it happens ;-)

    The French squids are currently serving fr.wikt, fr.wp and de.wp for
French and German IPs.  upload.wm and commons.wm DNS has been changed but
due to a longer TTL (1 day) not much load from there is hitting them yet.

    CPU load at the moment is around 80-90%, so it seems unlikely we'll be
able to put en: there while maintaining a reasonable response time, but it
may be feasible to move some of the other European languages.  Current
network usage is about 600Kbytes/sec, so that seems not to be an issue,
however a configuration issue with Ganglia makes accurate monitoring a
little harder.

    The DNS is currently hosted offsite by blitzed.org, but will move to our
servers once we have it set up and working.  Due to being down 1 squid in
Florida I was rather quicker to move some traffic ASAP without having to
set things up here.

Kate.

(Update: We're about to move nl over, and redirect traffic from .be and .ch
to the French servers.)


list: foundation-l

from_name: Manuel Bejarano Madrid

subject: [Foundation-l] (sin asunto)

body:
confirmacion recibida

_________________________________________________________________
Charla con tus amigos en l?nea mediante MSN Messenger:
http://messenger.latam.msn.com/


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] (sin asunto)


body:
On Sun, 9 Jan 2005, Gabriel Wicke wrote:

>thanks for clearing that up. I set up the squids Friday evening, purges
>have been enabled to all three french machines since then without making
>a difference. Right now the first real traffic is starting to hit them,
>with dns managed by Mark using GeoDNS (sends fr.wikipedia.org visitors
>to the french squids if they have a french ip).
>
>Stats:
>http://bleuenn.wikimedia.org:8080/ganglia/?c=Paris%
>20cluster&m=&r=hour&s=descending&hc=4

Great. What's the plan for those squids? Will they only be used for
fr.wikipedia or also for de, it, pl and other european languages?

Alfio


from_name: Robert Brookes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Possible 3RR breaches by sock puppets

body:
Greetings all,

I would appreciate some assistence in this matter.

While I appreciate that the use of sock puppets is no more than frowned upon at Wikipedia the using of sock puppets to breach the 3RR is certainly not allowed.

Therefore it is requested that someone inform me how to establish how to do it myself (or if it is restricted) then to establish whether the following users are one and the same or just a clever tag-team arrangement.

Michael Glass
Robert Blair
207.69.137.205
207.69.138.202
207.69.137.136
207.69.137.206
4.231.23.133

Much obliged
Robert

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.


body:
On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 21:27 +0100, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> Great. What's the plan for those squids? Will they only be used for
> fr.wikipedia or also for de, it, pl and other european languages?

They are getting de as well currently, Kate and Mark are testing it.
#mediawiki is the place to follow the progress as it happens ;-)
--
Gabriel Wicke
MediaWiki hosting, support and development
http://wikidev.net wicke at wikidev.net
Tel(SIP) +49 (0)1801-7775555258, Mob +49 (0)177 2065127
Eckernf?rder Str.58, 24116 Kiel


subject:
[Wikitech-l] RE: Re: French squids- now starting to get the	first
	real traffic

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:

>On Sun, 9 Jan 2005, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
>
>
>
>>thanks for clearing that up. I set up the squids Friday evening, purges
>>have been enabled to all three french machines since then without making
>>a difference. Right now the first real traffic is starting to hit them,
>>with dns managed by Mark using GeoDNS (sends fr.wikipedia.org visitors
>>to the french squids if they have a french ip).
>>
>>Stats:
>>http://bleuenn.wikimedia.org:8080/ganglia/?c=Paris%
>>20cluster&m=&r=hour&s=descending&hc=4
>>
>>
>
>Great. What's the plan for those squids? Will they only be used for
>fr.wikipedia or also for de, it, pl and other european languages?
>
>Alfio
>
I have been told that Africa with the exception of South Africa is
better served from France then from the USA. As the African projects are
small, it would be cool to serve them from France.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] nagios monitoring alpha

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

Hello,

I set up the nagios monitoring tool on larousse (thanks to brion and
innocence for the help).

The setup is somehow described on http://wp.wikidev.net/Nagios .

Interface access (need account):
  http://noc.wikimedia.org/nagios/

To gain access you need to have root access, then read:
  /h/w/doc/nagios-password

Also to complete a bit the installation I would need:

_ sudo configured to allow users in group wikidev (or nagios) to run as
root the commands:
  /etc/init.d/nrpe (start|stop|restart|status)

_ I can not find the gd library development files on larousse, would
also need: png-devel and jpeg-devel libraries.

cheers,

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
"This signature is a virus. Copy me in yours to spread it."
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFB4aJvpmyHQ2O4INERAoqxAKCpKcV+lKWgVJu9hbEKohb/MFuyzwCfTlys
2DRCZaeplmqEtHKjl4zy8aE=
=Fppf
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A portal page for www.wikipedia.org

body:
Many thanks for your responses Anthere.

That even french journalists quote www.wikipedia.org was surprising to
me (I know journalists are dumb... but wow!) However if they do that
then it is something we need to work with. If this is the case, then I
can see practical advantages of a multi-lingual portal. Before I could
only seen the symbolism of "Wikipedia is international" my having a
multi-lingual and I am not a big fan of symbolism without practical
advantages.

Thus if, as you agree is a good idea, we can get a good-looking page,
then doubters like me can be won over.

P.s. re the poll, I do realise this has a decent amount of support and a
new poll isn't necessary to my mind, my point was supposed to be about
something slightly different, but am not quite sure what :)


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
On 9 Jan 2005, at 20:40, David Gerard wrote:

> (Of course, there's a good reason not to do *too* much special with
> the top
> several languages: at some point other languages are going to make that
> list, and if we ever want to prune it back they'll resent being dropped
> from that status.)

My thinking is that ''instead'' of sticking with the exact numbers
50?000?+
10?000?50?000
1000?10?000 and
100?1000
as selection criteria and promoting the various language Wikipedias
higher as they meet higher thresholds,
again, ''INSTEAD'' of doing that, we should keep roughly four groups
and just ''adjust the thresholds''.

So if in the future we were to have, say, 12 Wikipedias over 50 000 and
30 Wikipedias over 10 000, we should NOT have 12 and 35 items
(respectively) in the top two groups, but we should adjust the
thresholds -- of the top 12, maybe only 6 might be over 500 000 and of
the 35 maybe only 15 might be over 50 000. So we simply make change the
4 group's thresholds to, for example:
500?000?+
50?000?500?000
10 000?50?000 and
100?10 000

This would rightly give emphasis to our "most wanted" Wikipedias and
avoids cluttering the screen too much.

This concept only would need to be changed if, say, our 30 biggest
Wikipedias were to turn out becoming very similarly sized.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipadia

body:
On 9 Jan 2005, at 21:53, John Collison wrote:

>
>> Ashar Voultoiz (hashar at altern.org) [050110 03:54]:
>>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>>> Reported by Arnaudus on fr : http://www (dot) wikipadia (dot) org/
>>
>>> And ? Just looks like a domain squatting, owner expecting users to
>>> make
>>> typos when accessing wikipedia.
>>> What do you want us to do with it ? :o)
>
> And although it is only one letter different, it is an a rather than
> e, and those letters are not beside each other on a QWERTY layout.
> Normally, they aren't even typed with the same finger so I think we're
> safe: not too many people will make that mistake.
>
> John
> [[User:Ludraman]]

Yea. I think it's much more important that we get the two remaining
generic wikipAedia domains under our control (wikipaedia.org and
wikipaedia.com). Because unlike with wikipadia.org, people are actually
likely to make the "mistake" of typing "wikipaedia". I did a lot of
research on wikipaedia.org and wikipaedia.com many months ago and
someone from VereinDE-l wanted to look into this (it's much better if
the German association takes care of this because the
registrant/cybersquatter is German) but after I sent some reminder the
issue just seems to have died, with nobody being particularly
interested...

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: www portal: "The Free Encyclopedia" in Japanese?

body:
In message <20050109155648.GI21075 at thingy.apana.org.au>, David Gerard
<fun-e016Bj8cE8tLBo1qDEOMRrpzq4S04n8Q at public.gmane.org> writes
>Anthere (anthere9-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org) [050109 18:05]:
>> Mark Williamson a ?crit:
>
>> >One prediction I have is that somebody will suggest adding flags to
>> >make it easier to choose languages. This is a BAD idea because there
>> >are speakers of French in Japan, speakers of Thai in Malta, speakers
>> >of Catalan in Greece, etc; also some languages are indigenous to more
>> >than one country, or they don't have a corresponding flag (for
>> >diaspora languages such as Yiddish and Ladino), or it's not
>> >recognizable to most speakers of the language.
>
>> Not a prediction. It was already done. And reverted.
>> Opinions ?
>
>
>I dislike the flag idea, because it's supposed to be languages, not
>countries. (Bosian, Croation and Srpski having separate wikis
>notwithstanding.)
>
>Furthermore, you just *know* some idiot will change the UK flag to a US
>flag. Then another will revert it. Then someone will put both on. Then
>someone else will object to a language having *two* flags. Then soeone else
>will use that horrible split US/UK flag I've seen on some multilingual
>portals. Then someone will protect the page. I suspect flags will provide
>too much material for idiocy.

Well, we /could/ use the English flag (Cross of St George)..... the only
problem would then be that most English-speakers wouldn't recognise it!

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: www.wikipedia.org no longer redirects to the en
	main page

body:
On 9 Jan 2005, at 22:39, csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:

> The problem is that the main page is exceedingly dull and off-putting
> to new users.

This was already fixed in the past:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&oldid=88465

> .org is a US domain, a country that speaks primarily English. Those
> who visit it are reasonably expected to speak English.

I'm very tempted to respond with a long-winded political rant, but I
think one word sums it up: Sheesh.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject:
[WikiEN-l] www.wikipedia.org no longer redirects to the en main
	page

body:
about bloody time too. Congrats to tim. [[Be bold]] my preeties, be bold

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 01:42:31 -0500, Mark Pellegrini
<mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
> I'd like to start out by noting that www.wikipedia.org no longer redirects
> to the english
> wikipedia's main page. Instead, it's been turned into a replica of the
> language template.
> Deeper links ( www.wikipedia.org/wiki/name_of_article ) still work, but the
> main page
> does not.

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Happy

body:
Hoi,
I am happy to inform you that the nl:wiktionary knows 250 languages and
that we have 1000 Dutch ponunciations in Commons. The bot that adds
interwikilinks to the nl:wiktionary runs now for the second day. I am
also running it for the it:wiktionary and the fr:wiktionary. It is great
when you can link to other wiktionaries and compare the content. Without
cooperation it is a lot more hard work and not as rewarding.

Thanks,
    Gerard


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposal to show pdf icon

body:
Dear Gerard,

your wrote

>The current "external.png" implementation is horribly broken in
>languages that are right to left like Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic. So let's
>create a "pdf icon" only when the implementation of the external.png is
>fixed. Let's not add more garbage in a manner that we know is broken.

however, it doesn't matter, where that icon actually is (left or right
-- this can be programmable, dependent on the direction of writing).

My point is, do we want this or not ?

Tom


from_name: NSK

body:
On Sunday 09 January 2005 23:39, csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:
> .org is a US domain, a country that speaks primarily English. Those who
> visit it are reasonably expected to speak English.

No, .org and .com and .net have nothing to do with US. They are stateless
domains intended for international use. The proper US domain is .us

--
NSK
The Wikinerds Community Federation of Science Wikis
Owner of the Wikinerds Portal http://portal.wikinerds.org
Owner of the NerdyPC IT Wiki http://www.nerdypc.org


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Are legal threats blockable offenses?

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> NSK wrote:
>
>> On Saturday 08 January 2005 10:35, Jeff Cook wrote:
>>
>>
>>> to give notice before he goes ahead with litigation. It's beneficial. I
>>> don't really think threats of legal action are a big deal.
>>
>> Banning someone who made a legal threat may encourage him/her to
>> actually sue.
>>
> There's a need to distinguish between legal "threats" and a statement of
> intention to uphold one's legal rights.

More than that, one needs to distinguish between a "threat" and a
request to remove material that violates some applicable law or
intellectual property right. I don't think anyone is really suggesting
we ban someone that simply requests we remove copyrighted material we
have no right to use, or clearly defamatory content that has no evidence
to back it up.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposal to show pdf icon

body:
On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 23:44 +0100, Thomas Gries wrote:
> My point is, do we want this or not ?

You could do a sample implementation and a nice icon, maybe something
like this:
html[dir="ltr"] #bodyContent a[href $=".pdf"] {
    background: url("your_pdf_icon.gif") center right no-repeat;
    padding-right: 16px;
}
--
Gabriel Wicke
MediaWiki hosting, support and development
http://wikidev.net wicke at wikidev.net
Tel(SIP) +49 (0)1801-7775555258, Mob +49 (0)177 2065127
Eckernf?rder Str.58, 24116 Kiel


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Besides, I'm sure there's some people who speak Fraoesee, a language
that doesn't really exist probably but if it does might be related to
Faroese. But yes, Danish is co-official there, so that doesn't really
work.

Mark

On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 19:53:28 -0500, Olve Utne <utne at nvg.org> wrote:
> Hello Mark W.,
>
> At 23:46 09/01/2005 +0000, you wrote:
> >Name me a monolingual country, and I will show you a flying pig.
>
> OK: The Faeroe Islands. :-D      Now, amidst those flying pigs fluttering
> around, I will certainly have to admit that the Faeroese situation is
> highly unusual in that respect.... :]   But coming to think about it --
> there are of course plenty of Danish- and English-speakers there too; along
> with Norwegian- and Tagalog-speakers etc.
>
> (Message fading out to sound of pigs dropping to the ground...)
>
> -Olve
>
> ___________________
>
> Olve Utne
> http://utne.nvg.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: com

body:
I said a country, not a principality.

Mark

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 04:13:33 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On Monday 10 January 2005 01:45, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Name me a monolingual country, and I will show you a flying pig.
>
> Sealand
>
> --
> NSK
> The Wikinerds Community Federation of Science Wikis
> Owner of the Wikinerds Portal http://portal.wikinerds.org
> Owner of the NerdyPC IT Wiki http://www.nerdypc.org
>


body:
This is bad for usability for blind people, and some languages use
multiple scripts or the same scripts as other languages.

Mark

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 04:33:26 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On Monday 10 January 2005 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > The Canadian part of North America would likely prefer the British flag
>
> Whatever you do, at least don't use a US flag to represent English. I never
> visit such sites.
>
> Why not use icons of alphabetical or written elements to represent languages?
>
> --
> NSK
> Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Flags

body:
While most definitely speakers of Sicilian will identify with the
Sicilian flag, not all people who identify with the Sicilian flag will
speak Sicilian - undoubtedly there are proud Sicilians who speak only
Italian, or who speak some other language.

This being the one-way thing that it is (ie, that all speakers of the
language can identify wit the flag but not nessecarily vice versa), of
course it is OK to have a Sicilian flag on your own Wikipedia, in fact
I support it because it adds color to the mainpage and evokes feelings
in people that might make them more likely to continue into the site.

However, I'm not so sure it would be a good idea to have it on an
international portal to represent the Sicilian language. If flags MUST
be used, then without a question that is the flag that should be used
to represent the Sicilian language, but otherwise I think flags should
be absent altogether.

Mark

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 03:56:45 +0100 (CET), Giuseppe DAngelo
<pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
> I accept that for all of the major languages, there is rarely (probably never) a single flag capable of representing that language, completely and without complications.  That alone is probably as good an argument as any for not allowing flags.  On the other hand, when we start looking at minority languages, these can often be associated with the whole of a region within a country, which may happen to have a flag, or coat of arms, or whatever, that represents that region.  So you can end up with a very close alignment (although rarely perfect) between regional symbol and regional language.  I think that is the case with Sicily and her language and regional flag.
>
> The next argument might be:  but isn't that a political statement? (showing the regional flag).  To which I would respond, there are many who would view simply having a wikipedia in a regional language as making a political statement!  In the case of the Sicilian wikipedia, neither is a political statement, both have a cultural intention (although that too may be considered as being political by some).   If flags were banned outright, I would simply put up the Sicilian Triskelion, a symbol as old as her language itself, i.e. over 2,500 years.  Why?  For the reason already given that it looks drab otherwise - I'm trying to entice people into registering and becoming active contributors. I know the main languages have fancy main pages with bells and whistles, but that isn't realistic for the minority languages.  Beyond banning the flag, what next?  the coat-of-arms?  a picture of an influential literary figure?  etc.  The Manx would be able to do the same, and I say good on 'em
>  !
> The flag is not necessarily something I feel overly strong about, but I would want some sort of symbol, picture, or whatever, on our front page - something that can become immiediately identifiable with scn:wiki, that tells you straight away where your are, that might encourage you to linger, maybe even get you thinking about the first language you spoke as a child, before it was drummed out of you through various means, or the language you heard your grandparents speak when you were little, etc.  Isn't that part of  what we are on about?
> Salutamu
> pippu d'angelo, canberra
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Nuovo Yahoo! Messenger E' molto pi? divertente: Audibles, Avatar, Webcam, Giochi, Rubrica? Scaricalo ora!
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On Sunday 09 January 2005 23:39, csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:
> .org is a US domain, a country that speaks primarily English. Those who
> visit it are reasonably expected to speak English.

I should add that English is not the official language of USA. It just happens
that most people in USA speak English.

--
NSK
The Wikinerds Community Federation of Science Wikis
Owner of the Wikinerds Portal http://portal.wikinerds.org
Owner of the NerdyPC IT Wiki http://www.nerdypc.org


body:
On Monday 10 January 2005 00:41, Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> me (I know journalists are dumb... but wow!) However if they do that

Many times they are not dumb, but:
1. They have too little time to write what they are writing
2. They may have no interest in the topic they are writing about
3. They may do it only because someone pays them to do that

So they pay little attention to what they do, resulting in mistakes.

--
NSK
The Wikinerds Community Federation of Science Wikis
Owner of the Wikinerds Portal http://portal.wikinerds.org
Owner of the NerdyPC IT Wiki http://www.nerdypc.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipadia

body:
That was funny, yes, but I don't think it's very constructive.

I was very serious when I made that post, and I still am. That person
is earning their living by screwing over innocent folks, just as you
and all non-unemployed people earn a living doing whatever it is you
do for a living.

Domain squatting doesn't take a genius, but to come up with the idea
you'd certainly have to not be an idiot.

Every domain the squatter squats is most likely a work of creativity,
an idea that suddenly popped into their head rather than a list sent
to them in the newspaper.

Mark

On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 20:47:02 -0800, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson stated for the record:
>
> > I think the creativity of the domain squatter at work there should be
> > applauded. It also exemplifies the wonderful freedom of the internet
> > and how it applies to EVERYBODY. I think we should let it be rather
> > than harassing somebody trying to make a living by screwing others.
> >
> > Mark
>
>
> To ensure the security of our trolls as well as our serious
> correspondents, please observe the following safety precautions:
>
> Trolls are wild. Please stay on the visitor paths, observe posted signs
> and do not reach into or climb on exhibits.
>
> Please do not throw things at the trolls.
>
> Please do not feed the trolls.
>
> Making loud noises may startle the trolls.
>
> Thank you for your cooperation.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Arne Klempert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipadia

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:
> Yea. I think it's much more important that we get the two remaining
> generic wikipAedia domains under our control (wikipaedia.org and
> wikipaedia.com). Because unlike with wikipadia.org, people are
actually
> likely to make the "mistake" of typing "wikipaedia". I did a lot of
> research on wikipaedia.org and wikipaedia.com many months ago and
> someone from VereinDE-l wanted to look into this (it's much better if
> the German association takes care of this because the
> registrant/cybersquatter is German) but after I sent some reminder the
> issue just seems to have died, with nobody being particularly
> interested...

You talked to me. It's still on my to-do list. Sorry for the delay but
in the meantime I decided to wait until "Wikipedia" is registered as a
trademark in the EU (according to Jimbo the paperwork for this is done).
I know that a registered trademark is not necessary, but from my
experience it would help us a lot in getting the problem solved without
long discussions.

-Arne
[[de:Benutzer:Akl]]


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: A portal page for www.wikipedia.org (was Re:
	Why www.wikipedia.org => en.wikipedia.org ?)

body:
Sure, but that's only a couple of months. What percentage of links to
www.wikipedia.org do you think were made during that period?

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 15:37:45 -0800, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Jan 9, 2005, at 8:26 AM, Walter Vermeir wrote:
> > The English Wikipedia have used the domain www.wikipedia.com but never
> > www.wikipedia.org.
>
> www.wikipedia.com was moved to www.wikipedia.org in August 2002:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-August/021615.html
>
> www.wikipedia.org was moved to en.wikipedia.org in October 2002:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/023565.html
>
> We then spent two years on and off bickering about portal designs.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Read the Signpost

body:
In light of the size of Wikipedia, it's increasingly difficult for
people to keep track of significant happenings in the community. I've
made a new effort to collect this information by actually writing about
it. In other words, I've started a newspaper.

It's called The Wikipedia Signpost, and I'm planning to publish it on a
weekly basis. Read it at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost

Many of you probably try to keep track of some of these things, so some
of it will be familiar. Still, I would guess that everybody could find
some stuff in there that they don't know. And there was even more that I
just didn't have time to write up.

People who might want to be reporters are welcome - please contact me if
you're interested. This is needed because we've long passed the point
where anyone can be everywhere at once.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Philippe Elie

subject: [Wikitech-l] French squids

body:
Since nobody seems to have time to look in ennael can I get root in
Paris colo ?

-- Philippe Elie


from_name: Médéric

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: French squids

body:
Philippe Elie wrote:

>
> Since nobody seems to have time to look in ennael can I get root in
> Paris colo ?
>
> -- Philippe Elie

It's ok for me.

M?d?ric


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New community newspaper on en:

body:
(With my apologies for cross-posting to different mailing lists. I wrote
a separate message to wikien-l, so some of you will have already read
about this, but I thought it would be good to mention this to some of
the non-English Wikipedians who don't subscribe there.)

As the English Wikipedia has gotten so big that even the most active and
experienced users can't really follow all of the major events there,
I've started a newspaper to try and collect that information for people.
You can find it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost

Obviously, anyone is welcome to read it, but it's intended to be mostly
for and about the English Wikipedia. Collectively (and in some cases,
individually), all the other languages could undoubtedly have a similar
newspaper, but I don't speak all those languages, and I'm only one
person. Anyway, I think this is the sort of thing that we develop
according to need, so whenever any individual project thinks it needs
this, feel free to use and adapt this idea.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Yet another portal page

body:
Alfio Puglisi schreef:
> I took the current www.wikipedia.org page and added an auto-selection
> based on the browser language settings. This example recognizes all the
> languages with 10.000+ articles:
>
> http://www.tommasoconforti.com/portal2.php

I like this. Auto redirect; NO. But this type of use of the browser
languages settings is good.

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


from_name: Travis Hite

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Re: Are legal threats blockable offenses?

body:
Someone on this list said that legal threats are just another type of, or
another name for, or a euphemism for, personal attacks.

You are incorrect. There is a humongous difference, even though it's easy
to draw a parallel.

The difference between personal attacks and legal threats is the difference
between "I hate you because you're an evil idiot who eats babies" and "I am
going to break your leg and stab you in the arm tomorrow behind the
supermarket."

I do not believe there should be any tolerance whatsoever for legal
threats. Personal attacks and other mere arguments may be offencive, but
that's all just a part of the debate of Wikipedia, even if it's a rough
part of debate and one to avoid.

Legal threats are an entirely different thing. If the policy does not
provide for it now, any user making a serious legal threat should be
blocked on the spot, I believe. Forever.
--

DOMINGO GALD?S


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipadia

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

>Really we should just stick to wikipedia.org period. Buying more domains
>will just get registrars richer.
>
>
Of course.  The possible confusing domains are endless: wikypedia,
wigipedia, wikibedia, etc., etc.
Ec


from_name: Ronald Chmara

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Flags

body:
On Jan 10, 2005, at 12:41 AM, Mark Williamson wrote:
> However, I'm not so sure it would be a good idea to have it on an
> international portal to represent the Sicilian language. If flags MUST
> be used, then without a question that is the flag that should be used
> to represent the Sicilian language, but otherwise I think flags should
> be absent altogether.

In regards to flags, might I suggest, in the spirit of "A Modest
Proposal":
For each language spoken,  rather than use one flag for "color", might
I suggest that each language have representational flags representing
all countries where 1% or more of the resident population speaks that
language. Thus, for the english language, we would have a mere 38 flags
or so, making sure we had quite a colorful and attractive layout. Same
with French, Spanish, and possibly a few other languages. At the top
and bottom of each page, rather than having something dull and legible
like text, we could have hundreds of bright and colorful flags,
representing all of the recognized and provisional nationalities, so
one may switch to flags, rather than languages!

Of course, in order to provide the needed detail on flags, we might
need to limit flag sizes to a minimum of 128 pixels in order to not
insult a given nation. Sure, for 6-10,000 flags
(nations/state-province-region/locale), this may require several
screens of flags before one can read articles text, but nationalism and
regionalism is a good thing! In order to access a given language, we
could break it up into multiple screens, so one could simply click on a
nationality flag, and then a subset flag representing a state or
region, and if needed, a locality flag, and thus be presented with a
small array of word flags to represent the some 6,000+ languages spoken
in the world today. Thus, by using a complex series of flags to
determine language, we can avoid the utter simplification of using
actual languages to select languages, and provoke needed nationalism,
patriotic sentiment, and jingoism around the world!

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_speakers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries

-Bop


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050109 18:05]:
> Mark Williamson a ?crit:

> >One prediction I have is that somebody will suggest adding flags to
> >make it easier to choose languages. This is a BAD idea because there
> >are speakers of French in Japan, speakers of Thai in Malta, speakers
> >of Catalan in Greece, etc; also some languages are indigenous to more
> >than one country, or they don't have a corresponding flag (for
> >diaspora languages such as Yiddish and Ladino), or it's not
> >recognizable to most speakers of the language.

> Not a prediction. It was already done. And reverted.
> Opinions ?

I dislike the flag idea, because it's supposed to be languages, not
countries. (Bosian, Croation and Srpski having separate wikis
notwithstanding.)

Furthermore, you just *know* some idiot will change the UK flag to a US
flag. Then another will revert it. Then someone will put both on. Then
someone else will object to a language having *two* flags. Then soeone else
will use that horrible split US/UK flag I've seen on some multilingual
portals. Then someone will protect the page. I suspect flags will provide
too much material for idiocy.

- d.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: A portal page for www.wikipedia.org (was Re: Why
 www.wikipedia.org => en.wikipedia.org ?)

body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> I do not think there were be links broken now.
>
>
> It is very strange that no-one seems to have picked up on this.
> There are clearly many many more links to http://www.wikipedia.org
> (expecting to link to an English language encyclopedia) than ever
> before. The decision has been taken to break these links.
>
> Whether the cost of breaking those links is worth the gain of getting a
> international portal is debatable.
>
> More interesting to me is how this episode shows how what really matters
> is in getting something changed is what a tiny number of people think,
> not what the unwashed masses (who a: can't programme a computer and b:
> aren't on the board) think.

The links aren't broken, we've just changed the page. A link is broken
when you get a 404, not when you get content which was intended to be
served for that address. The fact that there used to be something
different there is irrelevant, we don't "break links" every time we
update a page on the wiki.

That's just rhetoric of course, the real issue is that we're not serving
the content people expect to see. It is indeed debatable whether that is
a good idea, but it's been debated extensively over the last two years
and I think there's a been a pretty strong consensus for quite some
time. Are you saying the "unwashed masses" have not contributed to this
discussion? There was nothing stopping them from doing so. Of course the
change itself must be performed by someone with shell access, but I was
just following community opinion.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: com

body:
Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050109 16:01]:

> What's the very good reason? That it's been like that forever? That's
> not a reason.

The bit where he suggested someone write one if they want to fix it is
probably a reason ;-)

(I'm surprised there isn't a [[en:Scots language]] wikipedia yet. I'll see
if I can interest Juthware from scotstext.org ...)

- d.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: A portal page for www.wikipedia.org (was Re:
	Whywww.wikipedia.org => en.wikipedia.org ?)

body:
Jens Ropers (ropers at ropersonline.com) [050109 15:28]:

> So what do people think? Is it just me to find the version with flags (
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&oldid=88465 should give you a vague
> idea) more appealing?

I must admit, despite my strong reservations about flags, that layout
really is *tremendously* more visually appealing. Very good!

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews

body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050109 18:20]:

> I may have missed something entirely...
> Onymous just mentionned on #wikimedia that wikinews was now in public
> domain.
> Is that so ?
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

I believe the idea is that while it's being trialled, public domain is the
least restrictive possible open content license [*], so it can be made more
restrictive later if needed - but it would be difficult retrospectively
making it *less* restrictive.

- d.

[*] insofar as PD can be called a 'license', etc., etc.


subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews


from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Flags

body:
I accept that for all of the major languages, there is rarely (probably never) a single flag capable of representing that language, completely and without complications.  That alone is probably as good an argument as any for not allowing flags.  On the other hand, when we start looking at minority languages, these can often be associated with the whole of a region within a country, which may happen to have a flag, or coat of arms, or whatever, that represents that region.  So you can end up with a very close alignment (although rarely perfect) between regional symbol and regional language.  I think that is the case with Sicily and her language and regional flag.

The next argument might be:  but isn't that a political statement? (showing the regional flag).  To which I would respond, there are many who would view simply having a wikipedia in a regional language as making a political statement!  In the case of the Sicilian wikipedia, neither is a political statement, both have a cultural intention (although that too may be considered as being political by some).   If flags were banned outright, I would simply put up the Sicilian Triskelion, a symbol as old as her language itself, i.e. over 2,500 years.  Why?  For the reason already given that it looks drab otherwise - I'm trying to entice people into registering and becoming active contributors. I know the main languages have fancy main pages with bells and whistles, but that isn't realistic for the minority languages.  Beyond banning the flag, what next?  the coat-of-arms?  a picture of an influential literary figure?  etc.  The Manx would be able to do the same, and I say good on 'em!
The flag is not necessarily something I feel overly strong about, but I would want some sort of symbol, picture, or whatever, on our front page - something that can become immiediately identifiable with scn:wiki, that tells you straight away where your are, that might encourage you to linger, maybe even get you thinking about the first language you spoke as a child, before it was drummed out of you through various means, or the language you heard your grandparents speak when you were little, etc.  Isn't that part of  what we are on about?
Salutamu
pippu d'angelo, canberra

---------------------------------
Nuovo Yahoo! Messenger E' molto pi? divertente: Audibles, Avatar, Webcam, Giochi, Rubrica
 Scaricalo ora!


subject: [Wikitech-l] French squids

body:
Why sometimes I feel wikitech is about French seafood?

--
NSK
The Wikinerds Community Federation of Science Wikis
Owner of the Wikinerds Portal http://portal.wikinerds.org
Owner of the NerdyPC IT Wiki http://www.nerdypc.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: com

body:
On Monday 10 January 2005 01:45, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Name me a monolingual country, and I will show you a flying pig.

Sealand

--
NSK
The Wikinerds Community Federation of Science Wikis
Owner of the Wikinerds Portal http://portal.wikinerds.org
Owner of the NerdyPC IT Wiki http://www.nerdypc.org


body:
On Monday 10 January 2005 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> The Canadian part of North America would likely prefer the British flag

Whatever you do, at least don't use a US flag to represent English. I never
visit such sites.

Why not use icons of alphabetical or written elements to represent languages?

--
NSK
Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipadia

body:
Ashar Voultoiz (hashar at altern.org) [050110 03:54]:
> Anthere wrote:

> > Reported by Arnaudus on fr : http://www (dot) wikipadia (dot) org/

> And ? Just looks like a domain squatting, owner expecting users to make
> typos when accessing wikipedia.
> What do you want us to do with it ? :o)

It's fairly obvious trademark abuse (though not registered yet, is it?),
and the Foundation should at least complain on this ground. Dispute
resolution costs US$2000 per domain, so avoiding that would be good ...

- d.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] donate to Wikimedia Deutschland

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

>The normal way of paying something in europa is whit a bank transfer. The cost
>of a banktransfer inside the euro-zone is mostly zero or very very small.
>
>
This varies by country; the normal way of paying for things in *some*
countries in Europe, like Germany, is with a bank transfer.  In others,
like Greece and France, credit cards are much more common.

>The fundraising pages in the languages that are members of the euro-zone should
>make this the first option of payment.
>
>
Languages aren't members of the euro-zone though; countries are.  Is
"French" a member of the euro-zone (France) or not (Canada)?  Etc.
Obviously it makes no sense for a French-speaking Canadian to donate via
a German bank account, since that would involve international
bank-transfer fees.

-Mark


body:
Elisabeth Bauer (elian at djini.de) [050110 05:57]:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:

> >But that begs the question about what the German association *does* with
> >the
> >money donated to it. IIRC about 4000 Euro was donated directly to that

> We are finding out how to best transfer the donations (i.e. buying
> servers directly or sending the money to the foundation) without getting
> in trouble with german association law. Henriette, our treasurer, was
> busy with organizing the 21C3 lately, so I hope there is some progress
> soon. The decision to buy servers has been taken already, the open
> question is now how to do this.

Kate Turner just announced on irc that the French proxy servers are now
live for fr.wikipedia.org and fr.wiktionary.org in .fr, with plans to have
them serving all of Wikimedia for the whole EU if everything works OK.

If all does go well, local proxy servers will be a marvellous thing for
local associations to spend money on, and will form an excellent reason for
local associations to form ;-)

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
Alfio Puglisi (puglisi at arcetri.astro.it) [050110 06:25]:

> I took the current www.wikipedia.org page and added an auto-selection
> based on the browser language settings. This example recognizes all the
> languages with 10.000+ articles:
> http://www.tommasoconforti.com/portal2.php
> Source on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Portal_code

Nice one!

A wikipedia.ch style search box for the 50,000+ languages would be nice,
and would invite people to do something. (wikipedia.ch has a search box
followed by four 'Search' buttons in different languages to search that
Wikipedia.) Although I believe search is still switched off ... perhaps a
'Go' button in the 50k+ languages? Is that possible with PHP just in that
page?

(Of course, there's a good reason not to do *too* much special with the top
several languages: at some point other languages are going to make that
list, and if we ever want to prune it back they'll resent being dropped
from that status.)

- d.


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Bibliography

references:
<200501062354.AAA23339@germaine.webtechnologies.lu>
	<shhdlsh22l.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de> <41E03792.8040605@telus.net>
	<shbrbzw07r.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<FD7EBF48-6220-11D9-A2D7-0003931DCE20@ropersonline.com>
	<41E1CF72.90509@telus.net>

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> writes:

> I think there would be even more than that to merging the two cultures.
> They take the idea of the plain vanilla text to an extreme to the point
> where their English site does not allow for accented characters,
> italics, etc.

Up to some degree this was right in the past.  Things have changed,
there is a European dependence devoted to prepare books with "foreign"
characters:

    http://dp.rastko.net/

Books with illustration are also possible, as an example search for
"Wilhelm Busch" at http://www.gutenberg.org .

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


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Read the Signpost

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> In light of the size of Wikipedia, it's increasingly difficult for
> people to keep track of significant happenings in the community.
> I've
> made a new effort to collect this information by actually writing
> about
> it. In other words, I've started a newspaper.

Thank you.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: www.wikipedia.org no longer redirects to the en main
	page

body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
> John Lee wrote:
>
>> These changes were made after some discussion on Wikipedia-l, but
>> that's still not the same as talking to those who will be affected.
>
>
> I must confess I'm confused as to who will be affected.
>
> Anyone going to www.wikipedia.org will be able to click one link to get
> to the English version (or any other version).
>
> Anyone going to www.wikipedia.org/wiki/anything will be redirected to
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/anything, as has been occurring for
> I-don't-know-how-long.
>
> What's the problem, exactly?

The problem is that the main page is exceedingly dull and off-putting to
new users. It's also not clear what we are all about, and gives to good
example of the hard work we have put into Wikipedia.

.org is a US domain, a country that speaks primarily English. Those who
visit it are reasonably expected to speak English.

TBSDY


body:
BJ?rn Lindqvist wrote:
> What if someone who is the copyright holder of an image that is used
> in Wikipedia under the Fair Use clausul threatens to sue Wikipedia? Do
> you think that should be illegal? Personal threat how?
>

Isn't there a copyright agent they can file with? Why would they just
straight into legal action?

TBSDY


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipadia

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

Jens Ropers wrote:
<snip>
> Yea. I think it's much more important that we get the two remaining
> generic wikipAedia domains under our control (wikipaedia.org and
> wikipaedia.com). Because unlike with wikipadia.org, people are
> actually likely to make the "mistake" of typing "wikipaedia". I did a
> lot of research on wikipaedia.org and wikipaedia.com many months ago
> and someone from VereinDE-l wanted to look into this (it's much
> better if the German association takes care of this because the
> registrant/cybersquatter is German) but after I sent some reminder
> the issue just seems to have died, with nobody being particularly
> interested...
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com

Hello,

Really we should just stick to wikipedia.org period. Buying more domains
will just get registrars richer.

It's just like slashdot, you have to remember it finishes with .org not
.net :o)

cheers,

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
"This signature is a virus. Copy me in yours to spread it."
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=QQAx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] pywikipediabot

body:
Ian Monroe wrote:

>Is there a way to run the script to have it work until it reaches x
>number of words? I just want to test it outa as a still unofficial
>bot. I had it running for a bit, I thought it made changes (so I
>killed the script) though it hadn't actually. So I guess my other
>question is when and how do you know its made a change to Wiktionary?
>
>
I have run it over the Italian and French wiktionary and it is still
running over the Dutch wiktionary (currently doing ragazza),  it does do
changes. It can run for all words and it can work for a particular word.
There is no feature that will stop it after X words (as far as I know)
or you press the Cntrl Break key. As to it being an "unofficial" bot,
there is no such thing. People are given the right to run a bot and
after that it is up to them what they do, because they do not need to
ask permission after a change in the code. So I have run it and
RobotGMwikt is an official bot now on nl: fr: and it:

As to the English wiktionary, I promissed that I would inform when I had
a new functionality in a bot. And give a week before I run it when I run
it. This is exceptional, nobody else does this. As to testing, the
pywikipedia bot is a sourceforge project and, it is used for several
purposes for more than a year. It is a well designed piece of software
that for instance only changes once a minute in order not to burden the
servers too much. The current functionality was first tested by the
developper and, it has run for more than two days and I am quite happy
with the results.

Thanks,
    GerardM

>Ian
>On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 23:36:44 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
><gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hoi,
>>Andre Engels wrote some further extensions to the pywikipedia bot. It
>>allows you to update the interlanguage links. The way it works is by
>>distinguishing between the wiktionaries that DO capitalise and the ones
>>that do not. When a word exists that is capitalised, it will look for
>>capitalised words only and look for a match. When a wiktionary only has
>>capitalised words, it will not look for the uncapitalised words in that
>>wiktionary.
>>
>>When you use the software, the file user-config.py contains three lines
>>that contain in my case:
>>    mylang = "nl"
>>    family = "wiktionary"
>>    username = "RobotGMwikt"
>>
>>The software is used from a prompt: in windows "cmd"
>>You login using the login.py program; it tells you the user it will be
>>using and you will have to provide a password.
>>
>>Then you run the program by typing interwiki.py -wiktionary -start:!
>>This will do try to find all links in all wiktionaries (bigger than 100
>>words) from the first onwards. When it finds words with an exact match
>>it will create an interwiki link. It will only update one article a
>>minute in order not to be too big a burden on the database.
>>
>>I am running it for the nl:wiktionary as I write this. It has updated 59
>>articles so far and the last one is Arnavutluk a Turkish word. It should
>>run (as a bot) every now and then on all wiktionaries. To make clear
>>that a word that is written inexactly the same way in other wiktionaries.
>>
>>If you want the software, it can be found on Sourceforge
>>http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/ or you can ask me to
>>send you the ZIP file Andre send me.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>    GerardM
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wiktionary-l mailing list
>>Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>


from_name: Sj

body:
Believable physical threats are just as odious, and should be
discouraged as strongly, but they almost never come up on the wiki.

~sj~

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 01:30:11 -0500, Travis Hite <hite at digworld.com> wrote:
> Someone on this list said that legal threats are just another type of, or
> another name for, or a euphemism for, personal attacks.
>
> You are incorrect. There is a humongous difference, even though it's easy
> to draw a parallel.
>
> The difference between personal attacks and legal threats is the difference
> between "I hate you because you're an evil idiot who eats babies" and "I am
> going to break your leg and stab you in the arm tomorrow behind the
> supermarket."
>
> I do not believe there should be any tolerance whatsoever for legal
> threats. Personal attacks and other mere arguments may be offencive, but
> that's all just a part of the debate of Wikipedia, even if it's a rough
> part of debate and one to avoid.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Proposal to show pdf icon

body:
Thomas Gries wrote:

> Dear Gerard,
>
> your wrote
>
>> The current "external.png" implementation is horribly broken in
>> languages that are right to left like Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic. So let's
>> create a "pdf icon" only when the implementation of the external.png
>> is fixed. Let's not add more garbage in a manner that we know is broken.
>
>
> however, it doesn't matter, where that icon actually is (left or right
> -- this can be programmable, dependent on the direction of writing).
>
> My point is, do we want this or not ?
>
> Tom

My point is that I do not want something that is broken. Forward
portability is nonsense when it breaks things. So Firefox and Mozilla
NEED to be on the list of browsers that should not show it. The code
should automagically decide on being right OR left depending on the
language. As to do we want it. I do not want it as long as there is no
audience for it. (No IE no Firefox/Mozilla for whom are you doing this ??)

PS there is a Firefox bug report about this one.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Flags

body:
John Lee wrote:

> How odd - I just had a similar idea. I don't think mine goes as far as
> Ronald's though; mine is just purely for aesthetic purposes. I would
> suggest that in place of flags on Jens' layout, we have mosaics of
> flags - miniature flags all combined together to form one giant flag.
> So the "flag" for France, for example, might include the Canadian (or
> Quebecian, or whatever they're called, flag) as well as the French.
> There are two criteria for inclusion of a flag in the mosaic that I
> can think of; either the language must be an official language of the
> country, or it must be spoken by more than x percent of people in the
> country.

I think you're underestimating just how many countries there are for
many languages.  To take your example of French, it wouldn't only be
France and Canada: According to [[en:French language#Geographic
distribution]], French is the official language of 24 countries (France,
D.R. Congo, Canada, Madagascar, Cote d'Ivore, Cameroon, Burkina Faso,
Mali, Senegal, Belgium, Rwanda, Haita, Switzerland, Burundi, Togo,
Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Comoros,
Djibouti, Luxembourg, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mauritius, Vanuatu, and
the Seychelles), and a major language in another 3 of them (Algeria,
Tunisia, and Morocco).  That's quite a mosaic of flags!

There'd also be political implications for some languages.  What flags
would we use for Kurdish, for example?

I do agree that the portal is a bit drab as it is...

-Mark


from_name: Alexandre Passos

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: com

body:
 > On Monday 10 January 2005 01:45, Mark Williamson wrote:
 > > Name me a monolingual country, and I will show you a flying pig.

Brazil - every brazilian resident speaks portuguese. There are no
communities (with internet access at least) that have any other
language as a main language.
Now show me the pig... ;-)

--
 - Alexandre


from_name: J Crews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Could somebody please help remove this block?

body:
Hi folks,

I'm fairly new at this and would appreciate your help.

The following block is several days overdue for removal:

02:32, 6 Jan 2005, Hyacinth blocked 155.84.57.253 (expires 02:32, 7 Jan
2005) (contribs) (vandalism to [[List of sexual slurs]]
([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?

The person that placed the block will not respond to my polite enquiries.  I
don't even know what I allegedly did wrong to deserve the charge of
"vandalism".   It appears that Hyacinth has a running feud with several
other contributors, and he/she? may have confused me for one of them.

Sincere Thanks, your fellow contributor "Can'tStandYa"  aka   155.84.57.253


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

body:
On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 09:47 +0100, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> My point is that I do not want something that is broken. Forward
> portability is nonsense when it breaks things. So Firefox and Mozilla
> NEED to be on the list of browsers that should not show it. The code
> should automagically decide on being right OR left depending on the
> language.

The snippet i posted only applies for LTR languages (the html[dir="ltr"]
selector does this), hence avoiding any problems with RTL browser bugs.

>  As to do we want it. I do not want it as long as there is no
> audience for it. (No IE no Firefox/Mozilla for whom are you doing this ??)

Support in LTR languages is quite good- Opera, Safari,
Gecko(Mozilla/Firefox) all support this. Of course IE doesn't know CSS2
and CSS3 selectors.
--
Gabriel Wicke
MediaWiki hosting, support and development
http://wikidev.net wicke at wikidev.net
Tel(SIP) +49 (0)1801-7775555258, Mob +49 (0)177 2065127
Eckernf?rder Str.58, 24116 Kiel


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On Sun, 9 Jan 2005, Mark Williamson wrote:

>As noted before, it will minimize the other options. If Dutch is
>featured prominently because it is set as the auto-accept language,
>somebody is less likely to notice that W. Frisian, Limburgish,
>Afrikaans, etc. are also available.

Did you look at the page? The selected page is shown as big as the 5 major
languages, while the other languages are smaller. If that's not
acceptable, then also the current www.wikipedia.org portal is not.

Alfio


from_name: Tels

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

Moin,

On Monday 10 January 2005 09:47, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Thomas Gries wrote:
> > Dear Gerard,
> >
> > your wrote
> >
> >> The current "external.png" implementation is horribly broken in
> >> languages that are right to left like Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic. So
> >> let's create a "pdf icon" only when the implementation of the
> >> external.png is fixed. Let's not add more garbage in a manner that
> >> we know is broken.
> >
> > however, it doesn't matter, where that icon actually is (left or
> > right -- this can be programmable, dependent on the direction of
> > writing).
> >
> > My point is, do we want this or not ?
> >
> > Tom
>
> My point is that I do not want something that is broken. Forward
> portability is nonsense when it breaks things. So Firefox and Mozilla
> NEED to be on the list of browsers that should not show it.

As a left-to-right firefox user, I like the little external icon (and
a .pdf one would be nice, although I don't think I have seen a PDF link
yet), thankyouverymuch.

If you can fix the icons for right-to-left or other borken browsers, fine.
This is, however, independend on whether PDF should have an icon or not.

Maybe the broken-browser-dont-show-icons code needs to be adjusted, or a
user setting ("Disable link icons") needs to be added.

Best wishes,

Tels

> The code
> should automagically decide on being right OR left depending on the
> language. As to do we want it. I do not want it as long as there is no
> audience for it. (No IE no Firefox/Mozilla for whom are you doing this
> ??)
>
> PS there is a Firefox bug report about this one.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

- --
 Signed on Mon Jan 10 10:53:56 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Schau, schau, Schoschonen."

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from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipadia

body:
On Jan 9, 2005, at 11:47 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>
> To ensure the security of our trolls as well as our serious
> correspondents, please observe the following safety precautions:
>
> Trolls are wild. Please stay on the visitor paths, observe posted
> signs and do not reach into or climb on exhibits.
>
> Please do not throw things at the trolls.
>
> Please do not feed the trolls.
>
> Making loud noises may startle the trolls.
>
> Thank you for your cooperation.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>

I was just about tempted last night to create a template Template:Troll

"Warning! This page has become infested by a family of
[[Troll(wikipedia) | Trolls]]. Readers are warned that certain
crank/fanatic/extremists/down right apeshit looney POVs are over
represented on this page, and using it as a reference for a term paper
will get you put on academic probation. Editors are warned that the
trolls are organized, armed, and extremely hostile."

More seriously, wiki is going to have to think about how to deal with
organized groups of trolls trying to steal a page for their propaganda
purposes. This is different than individual trolls. Current mechanisms
allow organized trolls to circumvent just about every protection, since
at any given time they will be the consensus on the page.

This is important because there are large well funded groups out there
that are already targeting wikipedia (whose existence and use has not
gone unnoticed in political circles). And when they arrive, it will be
a shock wave.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
Note that, as several people have pointed out but seems to have been
lost in the noise: this only affects the main page.

Accesses to www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo are redirected to
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo so that existing article links still work.
(I just tested this: it does work).

I believe that this is something long past due. While the English
wikipedia is still the largest, a number of other languages have
reached the point where they are substantial, useable encyclopedias.
It is only right that the project's main page be an index of the
available Wikipedias.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Read the Signpost

body:
Congratulations, I'm much impressed.

Wikipedia has now grown big enough that it needs its own newspaper to
keep track of it.

-Matt (User:Morven)


body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

>On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 09:47 +0100, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>My point is that I do not want something that is broken. Forward
>>portability is nonsense when it breaks things. So Firefox and Mozilla
>>NEED to be on the list of browsers that should not show it. The code
>>should automagically decide on being right OR left depending on the
>>language.
>>
>>
>
>The snippet i posted only applies for LTR languages (the html[dir="ltr"]
>selector does this), hence avoiding any problems with RTL browser bugs.
>
>
>
>> As to do we want it. I do not want it as long as there is no
>>audience for it. (No IE no Firefox/Mozilla for whom are you doing this ??)
>>
>>
>
>Support in LTR languages is quite good- Opera, Safari,
>Gecko(Mozilla/Firefox) all support this. Of course IE doesn't know CSS2
>and CSS3 selectors.
>
>
If it is as simple as that why not fix the "external" thingie in this
manner, I do not care for it in the first place; using it in relation to
soundfiles that reside in Commons is horrible and wrong. But if it
"must" be, fix it so that the right to left languages do not suffer from
this ugly bug and have a   html[dir="rtl" in there as well. When it is
such a good thing to have do not discriminate against languages that you
do not use.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: com

body:
This is sorely wrong.

Among others, what about the huge Japanese community in Brazil?

Mark

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 10:03:13 -0300, Alexandre Passos
<alexandre.tp at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > On Monday 10 January 2005 01:45, Mark Williamson wrote:
>  > > Name me a monolingual country, and I will show you a flying pig.
>
> Brazil - every brazilian resident speaks portuguese. There are no
> communities (with internet access at least) that have any other
> language as a main language.
> Now show me the pig... ;-)
>
> --
>  - Alexandre
>


body:
Of course the same problem exists for flags. I am merely saying that
this won't work, not that flags will.

Mark

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:44:59 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On Monday 10 January 2005 09:36, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > This is bad for usability for blind people, and some languages use
>
> same for flags
>
> > multiple scripts or the same scripts as other languages.
>
> similar problem exists for flags
>
> --
> NSK
> Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
Again, any browser-setting based redirect or even not a redirect but a
simple "your language: xxx" notice suffers from problems I have
already enumerated.

Mark

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 17:03:53 +0100 (MET), Alfio Puglisi
<puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>
> Please now have a look at
>
> http://www.tommasoconforti.com/portal3.php
>
> (note the "3"). Only works with English, German, French and Italian
> browser settings, to save on typing. Any errors are Google translation fault:-))
>
> This version translates all the top banner and adds "Go" box with text in
> your language, and a drop-down selection of the available languages, with
> yours selected first. Try changing your browser from en: to fr: or it:.
>
> If you change the language preference and reload, your browser might
> retain the drop-down box selection (Firefox does), so you won't see the
> new one automatically selected. In that case, try clearing your cache
> (Firefox has a special cache for form data that needs to be cleared).
>
> Strings are hard-coded inside the script. Moving them to an
> external configuration file is not a problem.
>
> Alfio
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Arwel Parry (arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk) [050110 09:58]:

> Well, we /could/ use the English flag (Cross of St George)..... the only
> problem would then be that most English-speakers wouldn't recognise it!

I live in East London. Boy do the locals know that flag. Of course, you did
say "speakers" rather than "grunters" ...

("In order to assist other motorists in identifying potentially dangerous
drivers, it is now compulsory for anyone with a lower than average driving
ability to display a warning flag (comprising of a red cross on a white
background) attached to top of at least one door of their vehicle. For
exceptionally low ability, additional flags are required.")

- d.


from_name: Stan Wiechers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Webservices

body:
Hi,

I have a quick question: What is the best way to integrate wikipedia
into other applications without using the html interface? I would like
to integrate the search functionality and the content docs into my app.
Is there an xml interface to the wikipedia? I would like to bypass
screen scraping. Ideal would be a REST style interface.

The application is a public project where I try to connect webservices
in a random way:
	http://konnexion.sourceforge.net/

I would love to integrate wikipedia.

Thanks for any feedback,
Stan Wiechers


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Flags

body:
And with the Chinese flag, you mean Mandarin, Cantonese, or
Shanghainese? (not the Taiwan one mind you)

And with the Indian Flag, you mean English?

I mean, the list goes on...

--- "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:

> I'm aware of the issues regarding the flags, but if you put up a
> British
> flag, or the flag of France, or the flag of Germany, I'm going to
> understand
> you mean English, French, and German.  It's already done on many
> other
> websites to choose languages.  Why not just use the "country of
> origin" to
> determine the flag?  That'll solve the problem of all the French,
> Spanish,
> and English speaking countries.
>
> Just a thought.
>
> James
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ronald
> Chmara
> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 10:45 AM
> To: Mark Williamson; wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Flags
>
>
> On Jan 10, 2005, at 12:41 AM, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > However, I'm not so sure it would be a good idea to have it on an
> > international portal to represent the Sicilian language. If flags
> MUST
> > be used, then without a question that is the flag that should be
> used
> > to represent the Sicilian language, but otherwise I think flags
> should
> > be absent altogether.
>
> In regards to flags, might I suggest, in the spirit of "A Modest
> Proposal":
> For each language spoken,  rather than use one flag for "color",
> might
> I suggest that each language have representational flags
> representing
> all countries where 1% or more of the resident population speaks
> that
> language. Thus, for the english language, we would have a mere 38
> flags
> or so, making sure we had quite a colorful and attractive layout.
> Same
> with French, Spanish, and possibly a few other languages. At the
> top
> and bottom of each page, rather than having something dull and
> legible
> like text, we could have hundreds of bright and colorful flags,
> representing all of the recognized and provisional nationalities,
> so
> one may switch to flags, rather than languages!
>
> Of course, in order to provide the needed detail on flags, we might
>
> need to limit flag sizes to a minimum of 128 pixels in order to not
>
> insult a given nation. Sure, for 6-10,000 flags
> (nations/state-province-region/locale), this may require several
> screens of flags before one can read articles text, but nationalism
> and
> regionalism is a good thing! In order to access a given language,
> we
> could break it up into multiple screens, so one could simply click
> on a
> nationality flag, and then a subset flag representing a state or
> region, and if needed, a locality flag, and thus be presented with
> a
> small array of word flags to represent the some 6,000+ languages
> spoken
> in the world today. Thus, by using a complex series of flags to
> determine language, we can avoid the utter simplification of using
> actual languages to select languages, and provoke needed
> nationalism,
> patriotic sentiment, and jingoism around the world!
>
> See:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_speakers
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries
>
> -Bop
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

=====
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818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Have a look at Alfios proposal first: it doesn't redirect via
autoselection, but has a line saying: "Wikipedia in your language:
<language>" on top of the actual portal. It's a pretty solution for the
highlighting problem.

Till

>We have already discussed why outright auto-selection is a BAD
>idea. It's horrible for usability. I used to have my auto-accept
>language set as Japanese, but my preferred language is English. I
>would not appreciate being sent to ja.wikipedia.

>Mark

>On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 20:25:13 +0100 (MET), Alfio Puglisi
><puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>>
>> I took the current www.wikipedia.org page and added an
>> auto-selection based on the browser language settings. This
>> example recognizes all the languages with 10.000+ articles:
>>
>> http://www.tommasoconforti.com/portal2.php
>>
>> Try to set your browser to Russian or Esperanto and see what
>> happens :-) If the language preference is not recognized, no
>> selection appear.
>>
>> It's basically the same page at www.wikipedia.org, with a few
>> lines of php inserted. I copied over wikimedia's stylesheets and
>> images since hitting wikipedia servers was too slow. Japanese
>> and Chinese characters might be incorrect since I don't have
>> them installed and I have no idea of what I put on the page :-))
>>
>> Source on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Portal_code
>>
>> Alfio
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Hirschstra?e 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A model of decision making using wikipedia


subject: [WikiEN-l] Portals, flags, chaos

body:
A global portal is a fine idea; has been for many moons.  But why in
the world did this change happen with such little notice?

I've been largely offline for the past week, and didn't see the
initial conversation;  afaict the idea of a portal seems to have gone
from suggestion on wikipedia-l to reality in the span of a day,
without notice on the en wikipedia.

It was not at all urgent, and the sudden change breaks the usability
of existing links and shortcuts [though I'd heard a portal was being
set up, this is how I found out just now that the portal is still
English-centric, hard to navigate, and slow to load].

I wish everyone had waited to implement this until the portal were
more usable and better announced, and redirection policy better
discussed.  But perhaps noone else noticed...

+sj+

(For instance, I think anyone coming form a US or UK IP with
browser-lang set to English should still get redirected to the en:
main page, perhaps with a visible line atop the current page-layout
with links to the portal and a language dropdown... this will help a
vast # of visitors who hit [www.]wikipedia.org)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Portals, flags, chaos


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 12:41:38 -0500, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been largely offline for the past week, and didn't see the
> initial conversation;  afaict the idea of a portal seems to have gone
> from suggestion on wikipedia-l to reality in the span of a day,
> without notice on the en wikipedia.

I singled out the en: wikipedia because anyone using URL shortcuts, or
posting links to "wikipedia.org" and expecting them to get to the en:
main page, would have -- until last week -- intended to direct readers
to en.

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Minimalist Portal request

body:
Just the languages, please.
Less text, more interface.

The more text you try to include, the longer it will take visitors to
find a page that really introduces them to WP; and the longer it will
take to add new languages; and the harder it will be to generalize to
other Wikimedia projects.

http://www.europarl.eu.int/  is a fine start.   Add another two-column
list in smaller font for the next 70 languages, and perhaps a big >>
arrow at the bottom leading to a full list of all langs or a dropdown
menu for the smallest 100 langs.

--
+sj+


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [WikiEN-l] Portals, flags, chaos

body:
Sj wrote:
> A global portal is a fine idea; has been for many moons.  But why in
> the world did this change happen with such little notice?

This has been a subject of discussion for years. Decisions were made
repeatedly and publicly that it should be done.

> I've been largely offline for the past week, and didn't see the
> initial conversation;  afaict the idea of a portal seems to have gone
> from suggestion on wikipedia-l to reality in the span of a day,
> without notice on the en wikipedia.

Everyone should have been considering themselves on notice for years
now. I wasn't even aware www.wikipedia.org WASN'T previously directing
to a portal until people started complaining about this, that's how long
it's been since I've gone to www.wikipedia.org. I thought this had
already been taken care of ages ago.

> It was not at all urgent, and the sudden change breaks the usability
> of existing links and shortcuts [though I'd heard a portal was being

It breaks no links or shortcuts that don't go explicitly to
"http://www.wikipedia.org/". Anything UNDER www.wikipedia.org has been
redirected to en.wikipedia.org for a long time now, and still is. And
anyone that has bookmarked anything in that time has it bookmarked under
en.wikipedia.org, because the redirection is explicit and the address
the browser is using actually changes.

> set up, this is how I found out just now that the portal is still
> English-centric, hard to navigate, and slow to load].

I don't see any particularly avoidable english-centrism (we can't
duplicate everything in every language, and English is essentially the
lingua franca of academics and even the internet; much as I hate the
language, it's presently the logical choice for certain things), nor do
I see anything hard to navigate. If there's a problem, you can edit the
portal yourself on meta:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_portal

Knock yourself out.

As for "slow to load", that's a problem all Wikimedia sites are
currently experiencing, and has nothing at all to do with the portal.

> I wish everyone had waited to implement this until the portal were
> more usable and better announced, and redirection policy better
> discussed.  But perhaps noone else noticed...

Redirection policy was decided 2+ years ago and has already been
implemented for a significant portion of that time. You never noticed
that www.wikipedia.org/wiki/<anything> would redirect you to
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<anything> ?

> +sj+
>
> (For instance, I think anyone coming form a US or UK IP with
> browser-lang set to English should still get redirected to the en:
> main page, perhaps with a visible line atop the current page-layout
> with links to the portal and a language dropdown... this will help a
> vast # of visitors who hit [www.]wikipedia.org)

Such detection is incredibly unreliable to the point that I've taken
explicit steps in the past to assist automatic language detection
mechanisms (widespread, pseudo-standard ones, mind you, not strange
home-grown solutions) detect me as needing an English page and still
wound up with pages in German or Russian or some other random language
that I most assuredly do not speak despite the presence of an English
version that the mechanism SHOULD have directed me to.


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Slowness of Wikipedia

body:
Wikipedia has become so slow as to be almost unusable at times for me
in the last 10 days, both for reading and editing. Pages are taking
minutes to load. There are problems saving edits - even when they
appear to be saved, when I check they're not there (even though my
name is in the edit history); and sometimes when they appear not to
have been saved, when I check, they ARE there. As of the last hour or
so, it won't save edits at all. We must be losing a lot of readers,
and will start to lose editors. I know from my own experience of doing
online research, that if a website takes even a few seconds longer to
load than I expect it to, I move on, and when I see that website
again, I don't even try it. So losing readers even once can mean
losing them forever.

There's a page for discussion of this here
http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_Status, but
it seems to be largely editors reporting their problems. Could one of
the people who's working on the problem post an explanatory note on
that page, or on the main page? There are a couple of notes from Tim
from a few days ago, but they don't seem to explain why there has been
such a significant change in the last 10 days (If it is explained, my
apologies for not having understood it).

Some people have said the slowness is caused by an increase in
requests-per-second, but I wonder whether that's an effect of the
problem, rather than a cause, because of editors having to make
multiple requests for pages before they appear.

It seems to me that there's been a change in kind, not degree, in the
last 10 days. Any information from those who may know what has caused
this would be much appreciated.

Slim


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
In the long run, philosophically, I think you're right.  In the short
run, we should focus on usability and minimizing seek time -- an area
where the site is already weak.

If we're going to force people through a portal, it should be clear
how to use it and should load instantly, not in 15 seconds.

+sj+

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 19:14:46 +0100, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski
<fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> S> I singled out the en: wikipedia because anyone using URL shortcuts, or
> S> posting links to "wikipedia.org" and expecting them to get to the en:
> S> main page, would have -- until last week -- intended to direct readers
> S> to en.
>
> And that's why I think they should *not* be redirected automatically.
> This portal makes people more aware of the existance of other language
> Wikipedias.
>
> --
> Ausir
> Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
> http://pl.wikipedia.org
>
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


from_name: Ilya Haykinson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia portal: options

body:
There seem to be a great number of alternate proposals about what to
do with www.wikipedia.org.

1. redirect based on user's language setting
2. show a list of languages by itself
3. show a list, show little flags of countries whenever possible
4. show a list, with header of "Wikipedia in your language: <langname>"
5. show a list, highlighting based on user's language setting.

I strongly urge that the last option be implemented. A simple list of
languages, with ones that match the user's browser language setting
highlighted in bold wherever they are in the list. It is
straight-foward to implement, least contentuous, and prominently shows
the wide variety of Wikipedia languages available.

-ilya haykinson
 en:User:IlyaHaykinson


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
--- Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
>
> But why would a French-speaker want to read the Japanese Wikipedia
> either?

Maybe, maybe not. It's for them to decide.
>
> www.wikipedia.org ends up as not particularly useful to anyone, and
> hard
> to make non-ugly. Thus not much of a benefit, and we have to weigh
> against the "broken" links to www.wikipedia.org that have built up
> over
> the years.

How about a beautiful png world map with language zones rather than
countries. Then, drill down to regions, then drill-down to areas. I
bet it could be made really cool.

Otherwise, I say just a list of languages, in their language, with,
AT THE TOP, the browser's default language.

Also, a "Keep this selection as a cookie on my computer"  checkbox.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Flags

body:
On Jan 10, 2005, at 3:16 PM, Christopher Mahan wrote:

> And with the Chinese flag, you mean Mandarin, Cantonese, or
> Shanghainese? (not the Taiwan one mind you)
>
> And with the Indian Flag, you mean English?
>
> I mean, the list goes on...
>

I am going to voice my support for the minimalist approach of giving
the user a big obvious link to the wikipedia of their browser setting,
and then a list of other languages, each language written in its own
script. It is less pretty than the flags, but it follows the most
important rule of interface design: the easiest choice should be the
highest probability choice. In this case that is a link to the
browser's default language being front and center with text something
like "Continue on to the Wikipedia in [Blank]".