body:
On 10/23/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Robin Shannon wrote:
> > > Mav, for those of us not involved with finance, what are the costs
> > > assosicated with our growth? Is the only expense that is growing
> > > hardware/hosting etc, or are there other rising costs?
> >
> > I'll let mav answer this in detail, but suffice to say, the primary
> > growing cost is hardware/hosting, but some administrative costs are
> > growing as well, although at a slower pace.
>
> Robin, see for yourself: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Budget/2005
>
> Increases in hardware/hosting costs drive overall increases in budgeted
> costs.
> Overhead costs have been pretty much increased as a percentage on top of
> that
> by approximately 20-30%.

You know, those figures would make a lot more sense if they were done on an
accrual basis rather than a cash basis. As is the figures completely ignore
the fact that the expected life of the servers is more than a single
quarter. Yes, the cash basis figures are needed to know how much money is
required in fundraising, but they don't give a good picture of the actual
costs involved in running the foundation.

PS -
>
> Note that the large degree of uncertainty in my hardware cost projection
> is due
> to the fact that I need to update my model with new data (the last real
> traffic
> data I put into it is a year old; the same time WikiStats stopped
> reporting
> page views; yet the model has been pretty good at predicting what we
> needed to
> spend for 2005 so far).

The other big problem with my model is that is only tracks spending vs page
> views from wikipedia.org <http://wikipedia.org>. In the past the amount of
> traffic from the other
> Wikimedia domains was so small that it could safefly be ignored. This is
> no
> longer the case for wikimedia.org <http://wikimedia.org> thanks to Commons
> and will soon not be the
> case for wiktionary.org <http://wiktionary.org> and wikinews.org<http://wikinews.org>
> :

If you're using those cash-basis figures that's another problem with the
model as well :).

Anthony


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject:
Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re: [Foundation-l] Re:
	Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)


list: wikien-l

from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] AfD should be Arguments for Deletion

body:
I support the idea of forcing people to actually argue their view, but
I see a lot of problems with the current idea.
1) The decision of the closing admin is always going to be questioned.
2) Having only arguments doesn't show how many people actually endorse
these views.
3) Debates on schools and roads will probably have an equal amount of
delete and keep arguments of which the validness is impossible to
establish as both "sides" think the other side is wrong and end up in
endless counter aguments.

And if we were to force actual arguments we should also find a way to
make people actually read an article and vote based on its merit and
not a view on the general category of articles.

--Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rambot city articles vs. other topics

body:
Not only are garage bands hard (often impossible) to verify, it's also
the intent by which a lot of them are added. The creators are often
band members seeking attention which they do not yet have.

We could harbor a  tiny fraction of garage bands in the world, but
that would set a horrible precedent attracting the ones we don't have
as well.

At the end of the day, there's other venues for such bands to turn to.

--Mgm


body:
Keith Old wrote:

>You could possibly have concurring opinions at the bottom of each argument
>similar to Supreme Court decisions.
>
>
..or our own RfC process, for that matter.

grm_wnr


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Privacy Protection for Users

body:
> IP addresses are not personal data, they identify a machine and in most
> cases identify a machine leased to that address on a temporary basis.  I
> would posit that IP addresses are in fact extremely less private than a
> phone number is.  I can get someone's phone number and use any number of
> means to use that to get someone's name and address.  I cannot use an IP
> address to do the same thing UNLESS the entity that is leasing that
> information provides it.
>
> This is specifically addressed in the point, on its face it plainly says
> "data relating to subscribers".  Clearly this point is intended for ISP's
> regarding their conduct in protecting a subscriber's right to privacy.  You
> can't jump from a right to privacy a user has with an ISP and then apply
> that to each and every entity that person contacts.
>
> For instance, if some person decides to access my website and he posts
> something I don't like I can't go to his ISP and demand his information.
> However, if the same person sends an email to Jacque Chirac about how he is
> going to bomb the Eiffel Tower you can guarantee his ISP would be handing
> over his information as that clearly falls outside of "legitimate
> interests".
>
> However, the mere fact that I know that a certain IP posted something I
> didn't like on my website doesn't breech his privacy.  I can then, in turn,
> determine I wish to ban his address from my website because I don't like
> him, I own the site and that is my right.  He chose to visit my website and
> thus make some information available to me in doing so.
>
> If you were right, what's next in the EU, you can't take down the license
> number of someone who ran you off the road because that's invading his
> privacy?

You forget one point : this is about personal data processing... one
number is not a database, but if you begin taking down all the licenses
of all the people who ran you off the road, then you will need to
declare your database to the EU relevant institutions. Actually, my own
website is declared to the french cnil, as well as most blogs or forums
are.

I won't argue if IP collections should or should not be personal data.
The point is that these directive consider that data needed to establish
connections and to transmit information contain information on the
private life of natural persons and that they are covered by the
Directives. As of the text of 2002/58/CE, even cookies are considered to
be personal data !

Then, some page on wikipedia should comply with this.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: admin Yellowikis

subject: [Wikitech-l] User Rollback

body:
Is there a quick way to undo or rollback all edits made by one user -
or do I need to undo each page one by one?

Paul
--
Yellowikis is to Yellow Pages, as Wikipedia is to The Encyclopedia Britannica


from_name: Mihai Floran

subject: [Foundation-l] Do you speak Vlax Romany?

body:
In the context of the request for a new language Wikipedia in Vlax Romany. This questionaire is meant to help the community to see how many Vlax Romany speakers already use Wikipedia. Please translate this in your language. We should have at least translated in languages of countries in which exist Vlax Romany speakers.

Can you read, write or speak Vlax Romany?
Add yourself at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vlax_Romany_Survey


from_name: Jtkiefer

subject: [Foundation-l] Recent 1-Click Answers deal

body:
To the board,

I just wanted to let you know how stunnded and disappointed I was to
hear that the board with very little input made this deal to advertise
on wikipedia. I feel that this is a sellout and a betrayal of the trust
that us the users place in the board and I urge you all to terminate
this deal as soon as possible.  I understand that it would be nice to
have an extra income source for misc.projects however that too is
unecessary since there is most likely a better way.  I'd also like to
point out that the community has expressed overall disapproval for the
idea and is as well disappointed in the board for this at Wikipedia
TAlk:Tools/1-Click_Answers
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tools/1-Click_Answers#I.27m_sorry.2C_but_I_don.27t_see_the_point>.
I urge you all to reconsider this before you alienate and isolate many
of the good editors and contributors that Wikipedia has.

Respectfully,

-Jacob T. Kiefer -  User:Jtkiefer
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jtkiefer>

ps - I have subscribed to this list so that this mail will get through
but will be unsubscribing immediately after so I will not get any
replies sent only to the list.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam Attack

body:
I seem to have some sort of spam attack that is adding the following
tag to multiple pages.

Anyone know what it might do?

Paul
--
Yellowikis is to Yellow Pages, as Wikipedia is to The Encyclopedia Britannica


subject: [WikiEN-l] Recent 1-Click Answers Deal

body:
crossposted to Foundation-L list

To the board,

I just wanted to let you know how stunned and disappointed I was to hear
that the board with very little input made this deal to advertise on
wikipedia. I feel that this is a sellout and a betrayal of the trust
that us the users place in the board and I urge you all to terminate
this deal as soon as possible.  I understand that it would be nice to
have an extra income source for misc.projects however that too is
unecessary since there is most likely a better way.  I'd also like to
point out that the community has expressed overall disapproval for the
idea and is as well disappointed in the board for this at Wikipedia
TAlk:Tools/1-Click_Answers
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tools/1-Click_Answers#I.27m_sorry.2C_but_I_don.27t_see_the_point>.
I urge you all to reconsider this before you alienate and isolate many
of the good editors and contributors that Wikipedia has.

Respectfully,

User:Jtkiefer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jtkiefer>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikigrammar

> The wordbook that the previous commenter is proposing already exists: Wiktionary. Each Wiktionary edition contains entries for words in many different ?languages, and each of those pages contain translations into many different languages. For example, the English Wiktionary has an entry on the German word Abnahme, which is translated to abatement, whose entry lists translations in Finnish, French, German, and other languages. The entry on abatement also links to the abatement entry at the Italian Wiktionary, which translates the word as "ribasso."
>  ? Minh Nguy?n (talk, blog) 03:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

The connexion from one language to another in words is not the idea of this project. The primary idea is to create a multilingual and multigramatical gramatic workbook. The dictionary part is normal to be liked out to Wiktionary.

Wiktionary also contains a begining of learning languages. This can be moved to Wikigrammar but is not the primary functionality again. We don't have - as far as I know - a collection of grammars, not even the English one in one place, structurated by chapters (like in school) which can help us. I will (I don't know when I have time) try to start an example of what I mean by creating the structure of one language's grammar.

Mike


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar

body:
Another thing... why not at Wikibooks someone asked.
It's simple... this cannot be like a book in which in one page is presented all to the reader. Every thing must have it's own page (adjective, noun, etc.) which can treate in good manner that problem. How about a 5000 characters long page about Masculine gender. This can be useful!

Mike


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar

body:
>> It's simple... this cannot be like a book in which
>in
>> one page is presented all to the reader. Every thing
>
>> must have it's own page (adjective, noun, etc.)
>which
>> can treate in good manner that problem. How about a
>> 5000 characters long page about Masculine gender.
>This
>> can be useful!
>
>It definetly cannot be like a book. It must have
>enough space. This is a complex idea of project which
>can take a lot of time. We must have persons which
>know what are they writing about, else can be created
>confusion.This is like in any other Wikimedia project. If we stop persons to contribute we cannot call this Wikimedia project and open source and all the other things.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar


from_name: Han Dao

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reputation_management

body:
I agree it look like orginal research although quite interesting.

On 10/23/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/24/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management#Wikipedia
> >
> > We need a better way.
> >
> > Jack (Sam Spade)
>
>
> How the hell did that get past [[WP:NOR]]?
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] The listing of redirects on [[WP:SFD]]

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

SPUI wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Bike-stub has now been protected
> blank because I was recreating it as a redirect to {{cycling-stub}}. I
> ask again - what the fuck is wrong with people?

I know, let's remove redirects and free links from Wikipedia and go back
to 1000 permutations of CamelCase!

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policy on breaches of bans

body:
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Hash: SHA256

Fred Bauder wrote:
> When thinking about this idea, don't assume what form it would take.
> Bottom line, if it takes a few days to gain enough power to do  serious
> vandalism, engaging in serious vandalism would not be fun,  but a stone
> drag since all the rigamarole (which for a first time  user could
> possibly take the form of learning about the wiki) will  have to be gone
> through again. Faster then the first time, but still  time consuming.
>

Aha, a mentoring approach! The wiki purists will have your head! :)

Actually, this isn't a bad idea. We just need to enable per-namespace
blocking. All users start out blocked from everything but Talk:, User:,
User_talk:, and Wikipedia:. IPs would be permanantly restricted to
(main):, Talk:, and User_talk:. It would also make enforcing arbcom
rulings like "this user is banned from editing in the Wikipedia
namespace for six months" trivial to enforce and impossible to break.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
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OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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body:
On 10/23/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > You know, those figures would make a lot more sense if they were done on
> an
> > accrual basis rather than a cash basis. As is the figures completely
> ignore
> > the fact that the expected life of the servers is more than a single
> > quarter.
>
> The figures I gave assume that all the hardware we have already bought is
> still
> in operation (which surprisingly is more or less the case).

What I'm saying is that the hardware you buy today is both a current expense
and an investment in the future. The budget figures make it look like it's
solely a current expense.

> If you're using those cash-basis figures that's another problem with the
> > model as well :).
>
> Yet the model has closely predicted increased costs for the last year
> (yeah, to
> an extent this is self-fulfilling, but only so much so)...
>
> -- mav

The exponential growth has probably to a large extent made the previously
bought hardware negligible, though this will become less and less so as time
goes on (even if growth doesn't slow). Along the same lines as the costs
being largely self-fulfilling (whatever is allocated in the budget, that's
what's going to be spent), I've personally noticed a fairly steadily
increasing reliability in the system in the past 9 months or so. I believe
it was less than a year ago that Wikipedia wasn't even able to enable search
the vast majority of the time. The site is still fairly flaky, but a lot
less than it was a year ago.

Anyway, I haven't looked that closely at your model and maybe you've figured
out a way to capture this in some other way, or maybe it's just a
coincidence that it's worked so far. How many quarters have you actually
made predictions using this model (actual predictions, not backing into
historical data after the fact)?

If you'd prefer I take this conversation off-list I can do that. I'm not
trying to criticise, just make some helpful suggestions; preparing financial
statements on a GAAP basis is a large part of what I currently do for a
living, after all. The [[Wikimedia Budget]] page mentioned that "The
Wikimedia budget has to follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
(GAAP) for Not-for-Profit Organizations", and GAAP requires statements be
made on an accrual basis. Even if you're going to ignore this and use a cash
basis, you should at least use a modified cash basis which factors in things
like depreciation.

Anthony


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject:
[Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New
	Partnership

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> It strikes me as absolutely impossible for *anyone* to exert influence
> over our content.  Our very development model ensurees that.

Could you clarify this point please?

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Link formatting suggestion

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Timwi wrote:
> Ilya N. wrote:
>
>> Afaik you can only do it when you've hovered on the link [...]
>
>
> I wouldn't have made the claim if I didn't have enough competency in CSS
> to know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, I tested it before posting
> (albeit only in Firefox).
>
> Is anyone going to reply to the ACTUAL SUGGESTION?
>

Yes. The actual suggestion was:

Timwi wrote:
>
>> Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight
>> wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
>
>
> Well this gave me an idea.
>
> As far as I understand CSS, it would be possible to make links entirely
> invisible (i.e. indistinguishable from normal text) unless the mouse
> cursor is somewhere within the article content box.
>
> In other words: Imagine the article is just text, no links. As you
> finish reading the section you were looking for, you want to know if
> there is any further information, so you move your mouse into the text
> and all links go blue and underlined.
>

Ok, I just tested this:

#bodyContent * a
{
    text-decoration: none;
    color: #000000;
}

#bodyContent:hover * a
{
    text-decoration: underline;
    color: #002BB8;
}

External links still show up a different colour with the arrow next to
them. It's a quick and dirty hack, but it does the job.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] The issue of existance of the Moldovan language
	Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>The general Romanian dislike for anything perceived as Russian,
>including the Cyrillic alphabet, can also be seen on Wikipedia: even
>in their logo, they replaced the Cyrillic letter on the globe with a
>Romanian-Latin alphabet letter, something which no other Wikipedia has
>done. When they first did this, the font was really messed up for the
>text, so I just uploaded a new Romanian logo with the Cyrillic letter.
>That caused a lot of upset, though, and it ended up at the old logo.
>Now, imagine the upset if the entire WP had a button on-site to
>convert it into Cyrillic.
>
That seems particularly bizarre and directly contrary to the spirit of
both Wikipedia as a project in general and the design of the logo in
particular.  I mean, despite often rocky Chinese-Japanese cultural
relations, the Chinese Wikipedia hasn't removed the Katakana character
visible in the logo or anything, and it would be pretty strange and
provocative if they did.

-Mark


from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Upload URL/filesystem restructuring

body:
On 10/23/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> LiveJournal did the same originally with their user picture URLs. I
> realise they ran into the concern that it would allow people to
> enumerate all user pictures, giving an easy way to write a good-faith
> script that would kill the servers. As a counter-measure, they added the
> numerical ID of the user the image belongs to to the URL as well. Since
> that never changes either, you still have the nice 'permanent URLs' effect.

We also hardcoded the image-serving httpd to immediately respond with
a 301 if the request had an If-modified-since header, which made a
huge difference in traffic.  (But LJ has a lot more "reload" traffic
than WP does, I'd expect.)

One advantage of using a hash (instead of a timestamp or an
autoincrement secondary key) as a guid is that multiple uploads of the
same image can be stored as one instance.  I guess it depends on
whether duplicates are a concern; for example, how often is the one
goatse image uploaded?


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: The issue of existance of the Moldovan language
	Wikipedia

body:
Hi,

I think Node is making a few misleading points here,
most of all to do with this logo changing on the
Romanian Wikipedia.

I have been at the Romanian Wikipedia since 2003, and
I can say that there have been no conflicts so far
with other Wikipedias (except this Moldovan one,
perhaps) and that this logo-changing was not inspired
by a dislike for Russians. It was rather changed by a
desire to have a Romanian character on the logo of a
Romanian-language encyclopedia. There was never any
discussion of "we will particularly replace this
symbol just because it's Cyrllic". I don't think it's
right that Node use this to his advantage just because
of what is in reality a coincidence.

As to automatic conversion, as Node said - it would
cause a great deal of controversy, both in Romania and
Moldova. In Moldova, it is seen as a symbol of Russian
repression - perhaps Node doesn't see it as much
because he hasn't lived through those times (neither
have I - I'm not Moldovan), but a lot of Moldovans
have said that so far. The controversy becomes
increasingly significant when we're talking about a
script that is no longer official (except for in the
breakaway Transnistria, which is a dictatorship that
still follows the Soviet ideals) and is in decline (in
the sense that - all young Moldovans learn Latin
only).

Overall, though, I'm not against the Wikipedia. It is
officially biscriptal at the moment, in terms of
interface, even though Latin content can't go there -
instead, it is placed on the Romanian Wikipedia.

But it would be good to hear what international users
think of this Wikipedia. Would it be correct to delete
it? Or perhaps move the Cyrillic version to a more
specific subdomain, rather than letting the mo:
subdomain host only Cyrillic content?

Thanks,

Ronline

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>One possibility is to embed the timestamp into the URL. So the goatse
>>version might be:
>>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2005/10/23/074223/Puppy.jpg
>>
>>and the reverted image would get a different URL, a few minutes later:
>>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2005/10/23/074506/Puppy.jpg
>
>
> Alternative but very similar idea would be to embed the revision
> number in the URL, instead of the upload timestamp:
>
> Example original:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/P/1/Puppy.jpg
>
> Example revised:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/P/2/Puppy.jpg

We had a lively discussion on in #wikimedia-tech on this subject; as
well as the revision ID numbers another possibility discussed was using
a content hash.

A content hash has the additional advantage that duplicate file versions
only need to be stored once; for instance currently when reverting a
file it makes a new copy of the file on the filesystem, which wastes
space. (However you then need to be careful about deleting.)

So you might have something like:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/584/590/5845907fdfc6eb1125129c4ce0da0704c496a7e4.jpg

Obviously a disadvantage is that the filenames are ugly. One might tack
a 'pretty' but ignored filename on the end, using rewrites or whatever
tool to drop it on the backend:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/584/590/5845907fdfc6eb1125129c4ce0da0704c496a7e4/Puppy.jpg

This does though complicate the server configuration; I think a goal
should be making it very easy to set up a file mirror that we can
actually send requests to. Arbitrary filename additions may also have
security implications for broken browsers like Internet Explorer which
like to interpet filetype information out of the "extension" on the URL.

> Lastly, it's easy for a human with the URL to see what revisions come
> before/after by incrementing/decrementing the digit in the URL,
> whereas the date and time of the upload of a previous revision cannot
> be predicted just from the image name.

That might be kind of neat, but requires maintaining a consistent
revision sequence _within_ each image. If using revision numbers, it's
easier to work with the global row id numbers as the database can
guarantee their uniqueness.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> One possibility is to embed the timestamp into the URL. So the goatse
> version might be:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2005/10/23/074223/Puppy.jpg
>
> and the reverted image would get a different URL, a few minutes later:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2005/10/23/074506/Puppy.jpg

That sounds very sensible. It wouldn't slow down page rendering at all.
We'd better implement that redirecting special page sooner rather than
later, because you know the bot writers will never ask for it. They'll
just code up ugly hacks like parsing the image description page. We'll
find out 6 months later when we change the skin and break all the bots.

Since you're redesigning, would now be a good time to implement an
archive for deleted images?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Timwi,

> I wouldn't have made the claim if I didn't have enough competency in CSS
> to know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, I tested it before posting
> (albeit only in Firefox).

Aw, good on yer.

I've just tested it myself, even going so far as to use "body a { etc.
}", works beaut, if'n that's what you really want.  Top job.

> Is anyone going to reply to the ACTUAL SUGGESTION?

Righto.  It's crap, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.  It's
unintuitive, it breaks in some browsers (IE will "hide" the link but
won't show it again), it's unnecessary, it adds an extra step for users
who're just browsing through article links, and it makes Jakob Nielsen
cry, tho' that last one isn't necessarily cause for objection.

Nonetheless, I commend your initiative.

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
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from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam Attack

body:
On 10/23/05, admin Yellowikis <yellowikis at gmail.com> wrote:
> I seem to have some sort of spam attack that is adding the following
> tag to multiple pages.
>
> Anyone know what it might do?
>
>

This is the wrong mailing list. Please see mediawiki-l, where the
issue has already been reported. The spam started with <div
id="wikitikitavi...", but now is using other ID names, mostly starting
with <div id="wiki...".

<http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-October/007400.html>

Using $wgSpamRegex to block <div id="wiki might help. I've not tried
it myself yet.

Angela.


body:
On 10/23/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm really quite confused.
>
> Angela said we don't need this money to pay for servers, yet Mav is
> apparently saying this.
>
> Which is correct?

Mav and I agree that we need money to run the servers. I'm just
claiming we don't need *this money* to run the servers. There are many
funding strategies open to us to meet the basic needs of the site, and
many others to meet additional needs. I'd rather any money from
something we do not want to become overly reliant on be used for those
additional needs, and something more stable be used for our basic
needs. This way, no one can claim we are dependant on answers.com.

Angela.


from_name: Ilya Haykinson

body:
On 10/23/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Dori wrote:
> >>Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for
> >>us.  It's for them.  It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives
> >>of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's
> >>empowered with the knowledge to do so.
> >
> > Let me be just as blunt, I think that's a fairy tale and unlikely to
> > happen.
>
> Ok, but that's what I've devoted my life to doing. :-)
>

Jimbo et al,

If one looks at the growth of Wikipedia, it'll become very obvious
that information and knowledge is very important to people: they flock
to us because we give them structured knowledge.

I think that it is critical to give access to this knowledge to
everyone in the world -- to eliminate at least _that_ roadblock
between poverty/dependence and success/independence.

I would strongly urge the foundation to take even further, stronger
steps to make this possible. If we're really passing up $1 million in
revenues every month, perhaps we should let some of that in -- let us
try to use some of the wealth of our readers in the industrialized
world to help us with our goal of delivering knowledge to the
developing world.

I can live with a few Google ads; but I'd hate myself for having an
anti-advertising stance delay our ability to deliver this encyclopedia
to those who might need it. Perhaps with a feature to let anonymous
users see ads but to hide them from registered users we can strike a
compromise?

All that said, I would suggest that "partner" vs. "advertiser" are
fuzzy legal terms; when it comes to promotion of a product they seem
to be interchangable. We can argue about semantics all week long, but
the real argument seems to be "does Wikimedia really need money?" and
I believe that Jimbo's pretty much given us the final answer here.

-ilya haykinson


body:
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Hash: SHA256

Timwi wrote:
>
> VfD was renamed to AfD because it was supposed to be less about voting.
>
> Yet people still vote.
>
> People should instead bring forward arguments; some pro-keep and some
> pro-delete. Someone who has several arguments for or against a
> particular article, should mention them all. Someone who just agrees
> with an already-posted argument should not post because they wouldn't be
> adding anything.
>

# Endorse this proposal and wonder where it is on Wikipedia.  ~~~~

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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from_name: Daniel Wunsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam Attack

body:
On Monday 24 October 2005 00:34, Mark Williamson wrote:
> WikiTikiTavi attacks occured on many Wikipedias, as a matter of fact.

it occured on a lot of wikis not using mediawiki,
too. seems to work cross-wikiengine.

daniel


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Dori wrote:
> Could they sue the foundation if they deem the placement not to be
> "charter" enough? If not them, how about a company purchasing them?

No, they could not.

>>Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for
>>us.  It's for them.  It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives
>>of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's
>>empowered with the knowledge to do so.
>
> Let me be just as blunt, I think that's a fairy tale and unlikely to
> happen.

Ok, but that's what I've devoted my life to doing. :-)

>>>On the other hand, there is no reason
>>>why we couldn't start on Wikipedia 1.0, and I've yet to see that get
>>>off the ground.
>>
>>Indeed... if we had the resources to do it, we could do it.  But we
>>don't, so it keeps getting pushed to the back burner.
>
> I'd much rather see the resources dedicated here, which will actually
> make it more useful for people everywhere.

Well, that's a very interesting point, and I don't necessarily disagree
with you.  But the point is, resources are needed desperately in order
to achieve our goals.

--Jimbo


body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> It strikes me as absolutely impossible for *anyone* to exert influence
>> over our content.  Our very development model ensurees that.
>
> Could you clarify this point please?

I'm not sure how to clarify it but I'll try.  :-)

We use wiki software for the editing of the site.  This means that
anyone can change any article at any time.  There are some rare
exceptions, of course, for example the main page of the site, and at
various times, articles which are protected for the purpose of dealing
with vandalism.

Because anyone can edit any article at any time, there is an in-built
mechanism for dealing with inappropriate influence over articles.  Of
course, for a limited period of time, an organized group or a really
persistent editor can push an article to a position of bias for a time,
but we have constantly developing processes (3RR, Arbcom, NPOV rules,
etc.) to deal with that.

--Jimbo


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Well, the relationship between Russia and Romania is much worse.

Russians don't really have problems with Romanians...

Russophobia in Romania is largely relating to Moldova, which many (but
not all) Romanians perceive as "stolen" from them by Russia.

In reality, for most of its recent history, the current Republic of
Moldova was independent, an Ottoman vassal state, or part of Greater
Russia. Despite cultural ties to Romania, it was only united with
Romania for 22 years.

In the Romanian nationalist view, Bessarabia (current Republic of
Moldova) was gradually "invaded" by Slavs while it was part of the
Ottoman SoI -- not a real invasion, but more of an infiltration by
gradual migration of Slavic traders. After that, Bessarabia was
independent for 2 years. Then, the parliament (not the people) voted
to unite with Romania by majority (there was a little bit of
opposition). Ethnic minorities such as the Gagauz and Roma were not
well-represented in this parliament, and it's quite possible that if
they were properly represented, the outcome may've been different.
After 22 years, the Russian empire "stole"/"invaded" Bessarabia. Years
and years later, Romania "liberated" it, but soon after it was
reclaimed by the Soviet Union.

Now, while many Moldovans are proud of a separate identity from
Romanians and consider themselves Moldovans, and the chances of a
unification are very slim, especially given the huge size of ethnic
minorities who oppose such a move (the Gagauz, the Ukrainians, and the
Russians), many Romanians still consider that the Moldovans are their
brothers, and that they continue to be oppressed by Russians. Well,
the ruling government in Moldova is communist, but they are
(supposedly) democratically elected, and opposition parties are legal
and exist.

In fact, if anybody's being oppressed, it's the Slavic minority whose
languages, Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian, and Belarusan mainly, have 0
status in Moldova, even though they are spoken by a huge portion of
the population. Many Romanians say "Oh well they're all just russofile
soviet communist immigrants". This isn't true -- although many are
immigrants, the majority are the children and grandchildren of
immigrants, and consider themselves Moldovan. In addition, a
significant portion of the Slavs already lived there before the Soviet
era.

>From the point of view of most Moldovans, Moldova has been screwed by
both of her neighbours, the former Soviet bloc, and Romania. Russia
isn't a direct neighbour, being separated by Ukraine.

They feel that Russia tries to keep them too close, and that they try
to manipulate them, and many feel especially abused by the Kremlin
over the Transdniester issue. They also feel that Romania gives too
much pressure in other ways, namely the unionist sympathies of many
Romanians, and the distorted national consciousness that is shown by
many Romanians and in most of the Romanian government. Romania also
tries to butt into Moldovan internal affairs sometimes.

Many Moldovans favor closer ties with the European Union, and I think
many would be happier if Moldova were an island or if it were located
between France and Germany than in its current position between two
pushy neighbours.

For these historical reasons, Romania is filled with a deep collective
natural hatred for Russia and all things perceived to be Russian.

Mark

On 23/10/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >The general Romanian dislike for anything perceived as Russian,
> >including the Cyrillic alphabet, can also be seen on Wikipedia: even
> >in their logo, they replaced the Cyrillic letter on the globe with a
> >Romanian-Latin alphabet letter, something which no other Wikipedia has
> >done. When they first did this, the font was really messed up for the
> >text, so I just uploaded a new Romanian logo with the Cyrillic letter.
> >That caused a lot of upset, though, and it ended up at the old logo.
> >Now, imagine the upset if the entire WP had a button on-site to
> >convert it into Cyrillic.
> >
> That seems particularly bizarre and directly contrary to the spirit of
> both Wikipedia as a project in general and the design of the logo in
> particular.  I mean, despite often rocky Chinese-Japanese cultural
> relations, the Chinese Wikipedia hasn't removed the Katakana character
> visible in the logo or anything, and it would be pretty strange and
> provocative if they did.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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body:
Alphax wrote:
> Lisa Thurston wrote:
>
>>>On the topic of Skyring...
>>>
>>>I think I've had my IP address blocked too many times because it is
>>>dynamically allocated to me by Agile and someone using that IP before me has
>>>vandalised WP. It used to be frustrating to always have to email the admin
>>>to get unblocked. Now I worked out a new method though. I simply reset the
>>>internet connection and the IP gets changed quickly, so I'm sure it's no
>>>difficulty for Skyring to do the same.
>>>
>>>I remember once asking Internode (Agile) if they'd do anything about someone
>>>using a specific IP to misbehave on Wikipedia. They said not without a
>>>request (or subpoena) from local police! If Wikipedia wants to rule with an
>>>iron fist then it would have to make agreements with local authorities. But
>>>I don't think this would really be a good thing for Wikipedia in the end.
>>>I'm certain their are other approaches to managing bad faith edits.
>>>
>
>
> As we found out, it seems that half of Internode ends up going through
> the same proxy. Unfortunately, this applies to their home, business, and
> corporate (eg. State Library, TAFE) users as well...

The Internode proxies 203.26.206.129 and 203.26.206.130 have been on our
trusted XFF list for a few weeks, although they have a nasty habit of
randomly giving 10/8 addresses, so you might still see some edits coming
from them occasionally. It's the same setup as for NTL, so read this
post if you want more explanation:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-September/031369.html

(btw Lisa, how did your interview with ABC Radio Central go?)

-- Tim Starling


body:
> I have been at the Romanian Wikipedia since 2003, and
> I can say that there have been no conflicts so far
> with other Wikipedias (except this Moldovan one,
> perhaps) and that this logo-changing was not inspired
> by a dislike for Russians. It was rather changed by a
> desire to have a Romanian character on the logo of a
> Romanian-language encyclopedia. There was never any
> discussion of "we will particularly replace this
> symbol just because it's Cyrllic". I don't think it's
> right that Node use this to his advantage just because
> of what is in reality a coincidence.

It's a big coincidence. If it wasn't a collective decision, who's to
say it wasn't a decision of the person who made the modification to
the image?

> As to automatic conversion, as Node said - it would
> cause a great deal of controversy, both in Romania and
> Moldova. In Moldova, it is seen as a symbol of Russian
> repression - perhaps Node doesn't see it as much
> because he hasn't lived through those times (neither
> have I - I'm not Moldovan), but a lot of Moldovans
> have said that so far. The controversy becomes

Again, somebody's painting it as if all Moldovans hate this WP. Two
Moldovans-in-Moldova so far have supported it, and no
Moldovans-in-Moldova have opposed, though three
Moldovans-outside-of-Moldova have.

> increasingly significant when we're talking about a
> script that is no longer official (except for in the
> breakaway Transnistria, which is a dictatorship that
> still follows the Soviet ideals) and is in decline (in
> the sense that - all young Moldovans learn Latin
> only).

Although I agree that Transnistria is basically a dictatorship, I'd
like to note that it paints itself as a democracy. However, it has
been reported that one candidate received 103% of the vote in one
district. :p

All young Moldovans, at least in Chisinau, will still quickly learn
Russian because it's the language of the streets. Most signs in
Chisinau are bilingual. Any literature from the Soviet period is in
Cyrillic. Any of Russian or Ukrainian parentage will most likely learn
it from family. Most educated young Moldovans will know Cyrillic, even
though it's not taught in public schools.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Created bug, pih, vec, lmo and udm wiki

body:
Can somebody set the default font on the Udmurt WP to Tahoma?

Mark

On 24/10/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> bug, pih, vec, lmo and udm wiki, the five approved wikipedias that had
> an ISO code at  meta:Approved requests for new languages have been
> created, I didn't create the other ones because we don't have any
> standard way to determine a code to be used by  these projects and I
> didn't want to make something up.
>
> * http://bug.wikipedia.org
> * http://pih.wikipedia.org
> * http://vec.wikipedia.org
> * http://lmo.wikipedia.org
> * http://udm.wikipedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: Ant: Re: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
Arbeo, this is about templates on userpages, not articles.

Mark

On 24/10/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de> wrote:
>
> --- Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> schrieb:
>
>
>
> >
> > So, less of 250 people say that their language is
> > Zlatiborian language
> > and this speech is the basis of the Serbian
> > Iyekavian standard.
> >
> > While I don't have anything against anyone who says
> > that "(s)he is
> > speaking Glapolgaptoringian language" even if it is
> > literal English, I
> > think that:
> >
> > 1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. If
> > Glapolgaptoringian is the same as
> > English and 100 humans call it Glapolgaptoringian,
> > then it may be
> > noted in the article about English that some people
> > call it in such
> > way. Idiosyncretic naming should stay inside of user
> > space (yes, I
> > agree to move it into Aleksandra's user space but
> > not redirect, and I
> > would say it on the TfD page). Otherwise it makes
> > mass.
> >
> > 2. Wikipedia is not the place for ethnical/national
> > constitution. In
> > the case of Zlatiborian, English Wikipedia is used
> > for that case
> > ("Zlatiborian exists, you can see the article about
> > Zlatiborian on
> > Wikipedia!") I would support Zlatiborians if they
> > are asking for
> > schools in Zlatiborian etc., even I think it is
> > silly. But, I
> > _didn't_heard_ about them and their needs yet!
> >
> > So, if it is OK to say in Wikipedia article "10
> > people call Serbian
> > language Zlatiborian" or "Mark Williamson calls
> > English language
> > Glapolgaptoringian", it is OK to keep the language
> > tag.
>
> Of course, everybody should have the right to call
> their language whatever they want. However, an
> encyclopedia (even a 'free' one!) nevertheless has to
> focus on scientific facts rather than on (possibly
> radical) personal opions. From the very small language
> sample given at RfWinL one can easily tell that
> "Zlatiborian" is at the most a dialect of the whole
> sr/hr/bs/sh or whatever-you-wanna-call-it language.
>
> A useful question we could ask ourselves here could
> be: "Would any well-renowned printed encyclopedia
> feature an article on 'Zlatiborian'?"
>
> Arbeo
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
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subject: Ant: Re: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
I don't think it matters -- even if there is no template, people can
make it look like a language template anyhow.

So if they can make something that looks like a rabbit and acts like a
rabbit, why not just give them a rabbit?

Mark

On 24/10/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> Templates should tell us something, not to confuse people about the facts.
>
> I have the idea about that. May we write in info-boxes: "This user
> speaks <whatever language name> which is mutually understandeble with
> <lang1>, <lang2>, <lang3>..."
>
> In general, I don't care about user language boxes when we are talking
> about Shtokavian standards/potential standards because I know the
> whole story... But, what about some "exotic" languages where we can be
> very confused with language naming? Without clear classification, we
> would get a lot of idiosyncretic "languages" and user language boxes
> whould be useless.
>
> What others think about the idea?
>
> On 10/24/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Arbeo, this is about templates on userpages, not articles.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 24/10/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de> wrote:
> > >
> > > --- Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> schrieb:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > So, less of 250 people say that their language is
> > > > Zlatiborian language
> > > > and this speech is the basis of the Serbian
> > > > Iyekavian standard.
> > > >
> > > > While I don't have anything against anyone who says
> > > > that "(s)he is
> > > > speaking Glapolgaptoringian language" even if it is
> > > > literal English, I
> > > > think that:
> > > >
> > > > 1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. If
> > > > Glapolgaptoringian is the same as
> > > > English and 100 humans call it Glapolgaptoringian,
> > > > then it may be
> > > > noted in the article about English that some people
> > > > call it in such
> > > > way. Idiosyncretic naming should stay inside of user
> > > > space (yes, I
> > > > agree to move it into Aleksandra's user space but
> > > > not redirect, and I
> > > > would say it on the TfD page). Otherwise it makes
> > > > mass.
> > > >
> > > > 2. Wikipedia is not the place for ethnical/national
> > > > constitution. In
> > > > the case of Zlatiborian, English Wikipedia is used
> > > > for that case
> > > > ("Zlatiborian exists, you can see the article about
> > > > Zlatiborian on
> > > > Wikipedia!") I would support Zlatiborians if they
> > > > are asking for
> > > > schools in Zlatiborian etc., even I think it is
> > > > silly. But, I
> > > > _didn't_heard_ about them and their needs yet!
> > > >
> > > > So, if it is OK to say in Wikipedia article "10
> > > > people call Serbian
> > > > language Zlatiborian" or "Mark Williamson calls
> > > > English language
> > > > Glapolgaptoringian", it is OK to keep the language
> > > > tag.
> > >
> > > Of course, everybody should have the right to call
> > > their language whatever they want. However, an
> > > encyclopedia (even a 'free' one!) nevertheless has to
> > > focus on scientific facts rather than on (possibly
> > > radical) personal opions. From the very small language
> > > sample given at RfWinL one can easily tell that
> > > "Zlatiborian" is at the most a dialect of the whole
> > > sr/hr/bs/sh or whatever-you-wanna-call-it language.
> > >
> > > A useful question we could ask ourselves here could
> > > be: "Would any well-renowned printed encyclopedia
> > > feature an article on 'Zlatiborian'?"
> > >
> > > Arbeo
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ___________________________________________________________
> > > Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail.
> > Si ud. querr?a que le enviara una invitaci?n para juntar gmail, favor
> > de env?eme un mensaje.
> > Si vous voudriez que je vous envoie une invitation ? joindre gmail,
> > envoyez-moi s.v.p un message.
> > Se vce. gostaria que eu lhe enviasse um convite para juntar gmail,
> > favor de envie-me uma mensagem.
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reputation_management

body:
On 10/24/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management#Wikipedia
>
> We need a better way.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)

How the hell did that get past [[WP:NOR]]?

--
geni


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Importing XML database dumps - what actually
	works?

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
>>29,000 pages (113.361/sec), 29,000 revs (113.361/sec)
>>ERROR 1062 at line 459: Duplicate entry '0-1_E0_m?' for key 1

Looking in the database now, I see three pages with similar titles in
that range:

id    ns  title
35982 0   1_E0_m
36017 0   1_E0_m?
36019 0   1_E0_m?

None of them should conflict, being quite distinct, which makes me
suspect garbled input or output, or a garbled index configuration on MySQL.

I'm downloading the dump to test with locally now; could you provide
some details of:
* MySQL version and configuration (charset, etc)
* system locale settings
* anything else interesting

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Reputation_management

body:
On 10/24/05, Han Dao <wikipediankiba at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree it look like orginal research although quite interesting.

Well it's now ex original reseach (ok not quite true because at
present it is only commented out).

--
geni


from_name: Keith Old

body:
Anthony,

I'd at least look seriously at doing so as she has some claims to
notability. She apparently is working on her second album and has sung live
with a notable artist namely Neil Finn of Crowded House and Split Enz fame.
The New York Times article refers to this

In my view, she would be a borderline casein AfD. I would also argue that
she is not a typical case of a garage band that appears on AfD who have not
typically recorded an album or have much verifiable information.

I also note that no-one has yet written an article about her to my
knowledge. There is certainly no article currently on Wikipedia.

Regards

Keith

On 10/24/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 10/23/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I refer to ASCAP's guidelines which state " ASCAP members are
> individuals
> > who make their living writing music. As a society of composers,
> > songwriters,
> > lyricists and music publishers, we know very well that there are many
> > steps
> > between creation and compensation; months, if not years, can pass
> between
> > the creation of a song, its recording, its release, its performance, and
> > the
> > day when the revenues due to the writer actually arrive. A music creator
> > is
> > like a small business, and ASCAP exists to ensure that music creators
> are
> > paid promptly when their works are performed publicly."
> >
> > By the time that a songwriter earns revenue, the song has to be
> recorded,
> > released, sold to the public and played on radio and television. By that
> > stage, the performers would meet WP:music in any event.
>
>
> Really? I guess I misread the page. Let's take [[Tina Vero]], for instance
> (
> http://www.tinavero.com/).
>
> 1) Has had a Top 100 hit on any national music chart, in a large or
> medium-sized country
>
> No.
>
> 2) Has gone on an international concert tour, or a national concert tour
> in
> a large or medium-sized country*<
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MUSIC#Note>
>
> No.
>
> 3) Has released two or more albums on a major label or one of the more
> important indie labels (i.e. an independent label with a history of more
> than a few years and a roster of performers, many of which are notable)
>
> No. She's released one album on an independent label (Handmade Muse) she
> created herself.
>
> 4) Has been prominently featured in any major music media.
>
> No. Minor features in minor music media maybe, some articles in local
> college newspapers and the like, an article in the New York Times which
> wasn't really about her music, but no prominent features in any major
> music
> media.
>
> 5) Contains at least one member who was once a part of or later joined a
> band that is otherwise extremely notable
>
> None of the musicians who have worked with her would pass wp:music.
>
> 6) Has become the most prominent representative of a notable style or the
> local scene of a city
>
> No.
>
> 7) Has won a major music award, such as a Grammy, Juno or Mercury Music
> Award
>
> Nope.
>
> But has she received play on local radio stations? Yes. Is she in ASCAP?
> Yes. Has she released an album? Yes. Can a verifiable article be written
> about her? Yes.
>
> I would accept ASCAP listing in voting on AfD articles about a performer.
> > That performer is very likely to have achieved notability by that stage
> in
> > any event but thanks for bringing the resource to my attention.
>
>
> Now you say very likely to have achieved notability. Which one is it? Does
> [[Tina Vero]] pass wp:music or not? Would you vote to keep or delete an
> article on her? Do I need to come up with more examples? She just happened
> to be the first one I checked, I'm sure I could find many more. The next
> one
> I checked was [[Andy & Denise]] (http://www.andyanddenise.com/). In ASCAP.
> Would they pass wp:music? I checked [[CC Railroad]] (
> http://www.ccrailroad.com/), and they're not in ASCAP as far as I can
> tell,
> but they are in artistdirect. Would you consider them verifiable or not?
>
> In any case, there's a huge gap between verifiability and [[WP:MUSIC]].
> That's the gap I'm talking about, so your strawmen about unverifiable
> artists is irrelevant.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reputation_management

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management#Wikipedia

We need a better way.

Jack (Sam Spade)


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Nick Jenkins wrote:
>>> 29,000 pages (113.361/sec), 29,000 revs (113.361/sec)
>>> ERROR 1062 at line 459: Duplicate entry '0-1_E0_m?' for key 1
>
>
> Looking in the database now, I see three pages with similar titles in
> that range:
>
> id    ns  title
> 35982 0   1_E0_m
> 36017 0   1_E0_m?
> 36019 0   1_E0_m?
>
> None of them should conflict, being quite distinct, which makes me
> suspect garbled input or output, or a garbled index configuration on MySQL.

I can confirm that I can import the first 50k pages or so of this dump
without the reported problem ocurring. I'll run the rest when it's done
downloading.

* Ubuntu Linux (Breezy Badger, x86)
* en_US.UTF-8 locale
* MySQL 4.0.24
* table definitions from MediaWiki 1.4.11
* mwdumper current CVS (shouldn't be any different in this regard from
the last uploaded snapshot)
* Sun J2SE 1.5.0_05-b05

On some quick testing it looks like there are some encoding problems if
UTF-8 isn't the locale charset; I'll try and get those worked out.

In the meantime, try setting LANG=en_US.UTF-8 and rerunning it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On some quick testing it looks like there are some encoding problems if
> UTF-8 isn't the locale charset; I'll try and get those worked out.
>
> In the meantime, try setting LANG=en_US.UTF-8 and rerunning it.

Fixed version of mwdumper available:
http://download.wikimedia.org/tools/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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references:
<djg8kr$2se$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<71cd4dd90510231014x7cdace4cp42aa19940ef5add5@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0510231129x257307c0wefa5b68d2f3265a9@mail.gmail.com>

body:
You could possibly have concurring opinions at the bottom of each argument
similar to Supreme Court decisions.

Keith

User:Capitalistroadster

On 10/24/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I support the idea of forcing people to actually argue their view, but
> I see a lot of problems with the current idea.
> 1) The decision of the closing admin is always going to be questioned.
> 2) Having only arguments doesn't show how many people actually endorse
> these views.
> 3) Debates on schools and roads will probably have an equal amount of
> delete and keep arguments of which the validness is impossible to
> establish as both "sides" think the other side is wrong and end up in
> endless counter aguments.
>
> And if we were to force actual arguments we should also find a way to
> make people actually read an article and vote based on its merit and
> not a view on the general category of articles.
>
> --Mgm
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> What I'm saying is that the hardware you buy today is both a current expense
> and an investment in the future. The budget figures make it look like it's
> solely a current expense.

Hardware looses value so fast that it isn?t really an investment in the
strictest sense of the word. But yeah, it?s a depreciating asset and is tracked
as such in our accounting software.

> Anyway, I haven't looked that closely at your model and maybe you've figured
> out a way to capture this in some other way, or maybe it's just a
> coincidence that it's worked so far. How many quarters have you actually
> made predictions using this model (actual predictions, not backing into
> historical data after the fact)?

Every quarter since northern winter/Q4 of 2004. All the model really does is
figure out how much it cost per page view up to October 2004, chart our
projected exponential traffic growth curve and slowly inflate the amount of
performance we can expect per dollar value of hardware bought in the future
(Moore?s Law adjustments). It is a crude tool, but has worked pretty well so
far as a planning device.

> If you'd prefer I take this conversation off-list I can do that.

Doing this on meta is going to have a much better chance of having lasting
value. The WM budget talk page is probably the best place to continue all this.

> I'm not
> trying to criticise, just make some helpful suggestions; preparing financial
> statements on a GAAP basis is a large part of what I currently do for a
> living, after all.

Again - the books are kept offline (and I don?t consider your questions to be
criticism :). Getting as much information from the books in a
publicly-accessible form is a major item on my ToDo list.

> The [[Wikimedia Budget]] page mentioned that "The
> Wikimedia budget has to follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
> (GAAP) for Not-for-Profit Organizations", and GAAP requires statements be
> made on an accrual basis.

Yep - I wrote that. :)

> Even if you're going to ignore this and use a cash
> basis, you should at least use a modified cash basis which factors in things
> like depreciation.

Our books are already on an accrual basis and our accountant figures out
depreciation and all the foreign exchange gains and losses (thank god ? doing
that work is not fun). It is just that what has been reported thus far has been
minimal and simplified. This will change as we work out our information flow
and process issues.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: Ant: Re: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
People can still add the category [[Category:User zb]] to their page.

Mark

On 24/10/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> On 10/24/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't think it matters -- even if there is no template, people can
> > make it look like a language template anyhow.
> >
> > So if they can make something that looks like a rabbit and acts like a
> > rabbit, why not just give them a rabbit?
>
> Because of categorization.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
I'm not 100% sure about that.

For a separate Wikipedia in Strine/Straiyan/..., it would need to be
developed more as a literary language and/or made an official language
of even a single municipality, or for more people to use it.

By this, I mean in the strictly written sense.

Some might say this is comparable to Cantonese, however I disagree, as
YYBHW is used much more often than written Strine.

Mark

On 24/10/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
> >On 10/21/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> What I support is not a "hoax", but rather the right to determine
> >> one's own sociolinguistic and sociocultural identity.
>
> >Mark, at least two linguists (User:Angr is another) said twice that
> >story about Zlatiborian is a hoax.
>
>
> I want a Wikipoidia in broad 'Straiyan, mate. Yew gonna tell me broad
> 'Straiyan's a hoax, mate? Strewth!
>
>
> - d.
>
> References:
> 1. http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Australian-English_Dictionary
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Created bug, pih, vec, lmo and udm wiki

body:
Hi,

Yes - I've been looking forward most to the Samogitian
one, since I'm interested in the language and culture
of the Baltic states and Samogitian is an important
part of that heritage. Isn't the standard form just to
use the ISO code for the language family and then the
SIL code? For the Aromanian Wikipedia we used that, in
the form: roa-rup, where "roa" = ISO Romance languages
other and "rup" - SIL code for Aromanian. The same was
done for Voro - fiu-vro. But I think Samogitian
doesn't have a SIL code either...

On another note, a big congratulations to the four
Wikipedias set up. A special one for Venetian and
Lombard - it's great to have Wikipedias in as many
Romance languages as possible, especially the
less-well-known ones. I'd really like to contribute to
these two, since the language is similar to Romanian.

Ronline

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


body:
Hi,

Re: the Russian logo character change:

As far as I remember (and this was a long way back so
I'm not sure), it *was* a collective decision, but one
that was passed very quickly and wasn't at all
politically-motivated. It occured along with the
changeover to MonoBook, at a time when the Romanian
Wikipedia was growing very fast, and I don't think
anyone thought twice about "doing it to make a
statement against Russia".

"Again, somebody's painting it as if all Moldovans
hate this WP."

No, not at all. What Oleg and I are saying (I think
that's what Oleg is saying) is that the Cyrillic
script in Moldova is seen as a relic of the Communist
past. That doesn't mean people don't support.
Personally, I disliked the Soviet Union a lot for what
it did to Eastern Europe, and think writing
Romanian/Moldovan in Cyrillic is nonsense, but I
supported the Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia, if only
because I felt there were people (including you) who
were genuinely committed to it and wanted to support
it. Just like I supported the Voro Wikipedia, I
supported this one (well, Voro is a Wikipedia I really
like).

Anyway - so that final point is whether the Wikipedia
should:

*stay as it is
*move to a subdomain
*be deleted outright

Please, what does everyone think? We need more input!

By the way - did you know about our Vlax Romany
Wikipedia proposal at Meta:Requests for new languages?
We've got two native speakers - one still being
confirmed - who are willing to help. Hopefully we can
have a Vlax Romany Wikipedia by the end of the year.

Ronline

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


body:
Hi Ronline, re: Vlax Romany,

Yes, I am aware, and I am interested in it to the degree that I am in
all requests.

However, as it is not the variety most common in Moldova, it doesn't
have that added level of interest.

Mark

On 24/10/05, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Re: the Russian logo character change:
>
> As far as I remember (and this was a long way back so
> I'm not sure), it *was* a collective decision, but one
> that was passed very quickly and wasn't at all
> politically-motivated. It occured along with the
> changeover to MonoBook, at a time when the Romanian
> Wikipedia was growing very fast, and I don't think
> anyone thought twice about "doing it to make a
> statement against Russia".
>
> "Again, somebody's painting it as if all Moldovans
> hate this WP."
>
> No, not at all. What Oleg and I are saying (I think
> that's what Oleg is saying) is that the Cyrillic
> script in Moldova is seen as a relic of the Communist
> past. That doesn't mean people don't support.
> Personally, I disliked the Soviet Union a lot for what
> it did to Eastern Europe, and think writing
> Romanian/Moldovan in Cyrillic is nonsense, but I
> supported the Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia, if only
> because I felt there were people (including you) who
> were genuinely committed to it and wanted to support
> it. Just like I supported the Voro Wikipedia, I
> supported this one (well, Voro is a Wikipedia I really
> like).
>
> Anyway - so that final point is whether the Wikipedia
> should:
>
> *stay as it is
> *move to a subdomain
> *be deleted outright
>
> Please, what does everyone think? We need more input!
>
> By the way - did you know about our Vlax Romany
> Wikipedia proposal at Meta:Requests for new languages?
> We've got two native speakers - one still being
> confirmed - who are willing to help. Hopefully we can
> have a Vlax Romany Wikipedia by the end of the year.
>
> Ronline
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
> http://farechase.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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body:
Is that Udovi?? or Udovi???? (it may not display correctly, try using
Code2000 font)

Mark

On 24/10/05, Zordsdavini iz Litvy <zordsdavini at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi :)
>
> About "But I think Samogitian
> doesn't have a SIL code either.." The code is only in our mind :(
> we say ?M or SMG.
>
> respectfully
> Arns Udovi??
>
>
>
> 2005/10/24, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at yahoo.com>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Yes - I've been looking forward most to the Samogitian
> > one, since I'm interested in the language and culture
> > of the Baltic states and Samogitian is an important
> > part of that heritage. Isn't the standard form just to
> > use the ISO code for the language family and then the
> > SIL code? For the Aromanian Wikipedia we used that, in
> > the form: roa-rup, where "roa" = ISO Romance languages
> > other and "rup" - SIL code for Aromanian. The same was
> > done for Voro - fiu-vro. But I think Samogitian
> > doesn't have a SIL code either...
> >
> > On another note, a big congratulations to the four
> > Wikipedias set up. A special one for Venetian and
> > Lombard - it's great to have Wikipedias in as many
> > Romance languages as possible, especially the
> > less-well-known ones. I'd really like to contribute to
> > these two, since the language is similar to Romanian.
> >
> > Ronline
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
> > http://farechase.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Ok^ ek^ besla ikv Olmok Vzauep^evk
> :)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: I can't believe!

body:
> >Some might say this is comparable to Cantonese, however I disagree, as
> >YYBHW is used much more often than written Strine.
>
>
> Someone who would say that would be smoking crack big time.

So are all of the "oppose" voters, and in fact most
non-Mandarin-speaking Chinese, and most people who speak no variety of
Chinese but think they know something about it, smoking crack big
time?

I guess that makes sense -- after all, Cantonese religion forbids
crack, and those few Cantonese speakers who expressed opposition have
obviously gone astray.

Mark


subject: Ant: Re: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
Uhh... is there such a category? And if there were, would it matter if
that were a part of it? And why couldn't they classify it if it were
userified?

Mark

On 24/10/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> But, they can't classify category "User zb" in some super-category of
> South Slavic speaking people.
>
> On 10/24/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > People can still add the category [[Category:User zb]] to their page.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 24/10/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> > > On 10/24/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > I don't think it matters -- even if there is no template, people can
> > > > make it look like a language template anyhow.
> > > >
> > > > So if they can make something that looks like a rabbit and acts like a
> > > > rabbit, why not just give them a rabbit?
> > >
> > > Because of categorization.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail.
> > Si ud. quiere que le env?e una invitaci?n para juntar gmail, env?eme un mensaje.
> > Si vous voulez que je vous envoie une invitation ? joindre gmail,
> > envoyez-moi s.v.p un message.
> > Se vce. gostaria que lhe envie um convite para juntar gmail, favor de
> > envie-me uma mensagem.
> > Se vuleti chi vi manu 'n invitu a uniri gmail, mandatimi n messaggiu.
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>

--
If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail.
Si ud. quiere que le env?e una invitaci?n para juntar gmail, env?eme un mensaje.
Si vous voulez que je vous envoie une invitation ? joindre gmail,
envoyez-moi s.v.p un message.
Se vce. gostaria que lhe envie um convite para juntar gmail, favor de
envie-me uma mensagem.
Se vuleti chi vi manu 'n invitu a uniri gmail, mandatimi n messaggiu.


body:
> Hi,
>
> Re: the Russian logo character change:
>
> As far as I remember (and this was a long way back so
> I'm not sure), it *was* a collective decision, but one
> that was passed very quickly and wasn't at all
> politically-motivated. It occured along with the
> changeover to MonoBook, at a time when the Romanian
> Wikipedia was growing very fast, and I don't think
> anyone thought twice about "doing it to make a
> statement against Russia".

I was referring specifically to the decision of _which_ character to
replace with which other character. Was that a collective decision? I
doubt it, and if it was, there is no way to know for sure the
motivations of individual voters.

Mark


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Our exponentially increasing costs

body:
On 24/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> As someone else said, surely the features aren't helping. But with good
> design, you can have features and efficiency. I'll admit that there has been
> some progress in this regard in the past year, but there are still some
> major design flaws in the mediawiki software and the overall architecture of
> the system which are causing the hardware costs to be much more than they
> should be. This might have been reasonable in the past when the cost of
> hardware was low, but those days are over.

I'd love to hear from the devs about this , but my impression is that
the system is very highly optimised. If you think you can do better,
write the code!

> At least there's a CTO now,
> though his user page curiously says he's "On WikiBreak".

He's on a break from contributing to Wikipedia - I can assure you,
Brion is very busy writing and managing Mediawiki code!

> And considering
> that I don't recall there ever being a period where Wikimedia advertised
> that it was hiring this position I have my doubts that they can be so sure
> he's the most qualified person for the position.

Well, he wrote a lot of the software himself, so it's a fair bet he
knows it best :-).

Dan


subject:
Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re: [Foundation-l] Re:
	Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)

body:
I'll just say that the one worry with any form of partnerships,
sponsorships etc I have is that they could lead to people thinking
"well, I don't need to donate any more because they've got all this
stuff coming in". I swear I remember people who knew about the Yahoo
servers not donating for just that during the last find drive.

The big Yahoo and Kennisnet hardware donations were obviously more
than worth it, as they serve a large and increasing proportion of our
traffic. But if we start getting lots of other, smaller, income
streams, it could threaten our big one (donations in fund drives).
Maybe Google's arm should be twisted to actually come up with
something solid after their announcement earlier this year (which
undoubtedly did their PR the world of good - some people still think
they actually donated something!) - I'm sure they could spare a few
dozen servers somewhere...

I'm not saying I know what I'd do if I were Jimmy or a board member,
just pointing out potential risks :-).

Dan


body:
Let me put it this way: 90% of people will view these link placements
(one to the tools page in the sidebar, then one to the 1-Click stuff
on that page) as advertising. Slippery slopes, "you said we'd never
run ads" (even if that's not actually what Jimbo said), "I'm not going
to donate any more, you obviously have other revenue streams now"
etc...

For an undetermined amount of money (but I bet it's not going to be much).

It's not a risk worth taking, imho. Explore other sources of income,
of course, but this one seems lame.

Dan


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
bug, pih, vec, lmo and udm wiki, the five approved wikipedias that had
an ISO code at  meta:Approved requests for new languages have been
created, I didn't create the other ones because we don't have any
standard way to determine a code to be used by  these projects and I
didn't want to make something up.

* http://bug.wikipedia.org
* http://pih.wikipedia.org
* http://vec.wikipedia.org
* http://lmo.wikipedia.org
* http://udm.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Created bug, pih, vec, lmo and udm wiki


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unnecessary nudity on [[Hogtie bondage]]

body:
I wish to raise an issue on this list about offensive images on an
article about sexual bondage, [[Hogtie bondage]], to be specific. I
don't feel I can justify spending any more time debating this sort of
thing on the article discussion page (I want to do more productive
things on Wikipedia, like write about cryptography), so I thought I
would flag it here in this forum, and trust the outcome to normal
Wikipedia processes (even if it's not the outcome I would like). I do
think it needs wider attention, as editors who have such a page on
their watchlists are likely to be of a certain opinion. Forgive me,
though, if I start a discussion that might prove controversial and
then quietly sneak off. I'm not a troll, honest!

First, I'd like to state that, in general, I support Wikipedia being
explicit in its illustration where necessary. I have never had a
problem with potentially-offensive photos on pages like [[penis]],
[[clitoris]] and the like. If I cared enough (or if I had kids) I
could filter Wikipedia myself on the client side without too much
hassle.

However, to balance that, I think that content which is likely to be
offensive, such as nudity, should be used only when there is a
compelling case that the offensiveness is unavoidable if the article
is to be illustrated properly. I would oppose photographs of nude
people kissing in [[kiss]], or two nude people hugging in [[physical
intimacy]], because I believe these concepts can be quite adequately
illustrated without nudity. I don't suppose this is a particulary
controversial line to take.

Recently, a proprietor of a bondage pornography site uploaded a number
of his images to Wikipedia depicting a woman in various positions of
sexual bondage, and added them as illustration to several pages,
including (what has now been split off to become) [[Hogtie
bondage]]. Two of these photographs used on [[Hogtie bondage]] feature
a nude woman. However, I don't believe that nudity is necessary to
illustrate this topic -- a hogtie is a way of tying someone up, and
the subject can be nude or clothed. Therefore, I would argue that the
nude images should not be used within this article.

Others disagree (see [[Talk:Hogtie bondage]] and [[Talk:Hogtie]]), and
there has been a few reverts over this question (far more than a
member of the Harmonious Editing Club would like to own up to --
another reason why I'll probably drop my involvement). I'd like to see
what others think.

In general, I think we should be very careful when dealing with
erotica within Wikipedia. The original purpose of such images is not
illustration, so we need to be sure that they do indeed make for good
illustration when used as such. In the hogtie case, the owner of the
adult website likely had the partial motive of promoting his website
(a link was included in the image description pages). And many people
readily enjoy seeing titillating images in web pages, regardless of
their illustrative value. So I think it's worth making sure there is a
robust case for their use, given the potential for offense, because we
decrease the value of Wikipedia if we are offensive without good
editorial reasons.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] JBOD vs. RAID0

body:
I see that the wm servers use RAID 0 quite a bit, and wondered why not JBOD?

Does RAID 0 perform better, or was there some other reason?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks#RAID_0


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I think you know the answer to that. What you are questioning is
everyone's backbone. I have been in a lot of groups who didn't have
much, but I don't see the signs here.

Fred

On Oct 24, 2005, at 8:30 AM, Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> So what happens in this hypothetical scenario where we accept a
> significant contribution from a corporation, and 6 months into the
> partnership they turn around and say "we don't like that bit on the
> article which criticises us, remove it or we pull the funding"?


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 10/24/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > What I'm saying is that the hardware you buy today is both a current
> expense
> > and an investment in the future. The budget figures make it look like
> it's
> > solely a current expense.
>
> Hardware looses value so fast that it isn't really an investment in the
> strictest sense of the word. But yeah, it's a depreciating asset and is
> tracked
> as such in our accounting software.

It certainly doesn't lose its value in a single quarter! Probably at least 3
years, though 5 is more standard. 5 years turns a $2 million/quarter expense
into $100,000!

> I'm not
> > trying to criticise, just make some helpful suggestions; preparing
> financial
> > statements on a GAAP basis is a large part of what I currently do for a
> > living, after all.
>
> Again - the books are kept offline (and I don't consider your questions to
> be
> criticism :). Getting as much information from the books in a
> publicly-accessible form is a major item on my ToDo list.
>
> > The [[Wikimedia Budget]] page mentioned that "The
> > Wikimedia budget has to follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
> > (GAAP) for Not-for-Profit Organizations", and GAAP requires statements
> be
> > made on an accrual basis.
>
> Yep - I wrote that. :)
>
> > Even if you're going to ignore this and use a cash
> > basis, you should at least use a modified cash basis which factors in
> things
> > like depreciation.
>
> Our books are already on an accrual basis and our accountant figures out
> depreciation and all the foreign exchange gains and losses (thank god ?
> doing
> that work is not fun). It is just that what has been reported thus far has
> been
> minimal and simplified. This will change as we work out our information
> flow
> and process issues.
>
> -- mav

Heh, OK. Was the information which is online taken from the books, or was it
made independently? My guess would be the latter.

Anthony


body:
> >>Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for
> >>us. It's for them. It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives
> >>of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's
> >>empowered with the knowledge to do so.
> >
> > Let me be just as blunt, I think that's a fairy tale and unlikely to
> > happen.
>
> Ok, but that's what I've devoted my life to doing. :-)

Wow, talk about blunt... Anyway, I agree with Jimbo on this one. Yes,
leadership is a huge part of the problem in Africa, but education and
information is the solution to that problem. I'm reminded of the book 1984
here. Repressive governments rely on the the information gap between the
government and the masses. As the education of the masses increases, the
ability of the government to repress decreases.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] AfD should be Arguments for Deletion

body:
In that case, I will oppose it strongly.
 I am not opposed to the removal of things that are clearly of little note
but any process should be open and accountable.
 One man's cruft is often another man's interest and should not be removed
without due process.
 Regards
  *Keith*

 On 10/24/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Brian Haws wrote:
>
> >Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>Just kidding, I never get involved with AFD at the moment as a >>kind
> of
> >>>silent protest at the silly way it functions. I do think the idea, or
> >>some
> >>>variant of it is great, and will go a long way to fixing this. However,
> >>I think the "Uncontested deletions"
> >>>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_reform/Proposals/Uncontested_deletions
> >>>is good too, some hybrid of the two ideas may be a really good
> >>solution.
> >>>
> >>>
> >I think the uncontested deletions proposal has a lot of potential as a
> stand alone way to funnel off easy and obvious deletion canidates from AFD.
> I'd like to hear more opinions about it on it's talk page..
> >
> >
> It will clearly be more efficient. AFD fails because it broadcasts the
> fact that an article is proposed for deletion. By confining the
> deletion discussion to the page itself (and its talk page, of course) it
> will limit interference by inclusionists who do not recognize the value
> of removing cruft from Wikipedia.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia

body:
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,16541,1599325,00.html

Sarah


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocking whole large ISPs (was The whole point of
	wikipedia)

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
>On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Incerdenterly do you remeber Mr treason? We had to block everyone who
>> edited from AOL.

>This seems a little unlikely.

AOL is currently 22% of the US market (the "one-third" I was told [by
them ... ahem] a year ago seems to match their noted decline, since
they're not doing nearly as well selling broadband in the US as they
are in the UK), so that would be a *lot* of people to block in a go.

But, if it was that or switch the wiki to read-only, AOL would be
blocked. Same for any other large ISP. With a note from the devs to
the Foundation and a very very nice message to the abuse department of
the ISP in question asking for their help.

That AOL essentially operates an internal anonymising proxy network
only makes them a harder case to make blocks specific for. At least
with most ISPs you can narrow it down to a city's proxy if they aren't
showing you users' real IPs. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dealing_with_AOL_vandals

- d.


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> One possibility is to embed the timestamp into the URL. So the goatse
> version might be:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2005/10/23/074223/Puppy.jpg
>
> and the reverted image would get a different URL, a few minutes later:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2005/10/23/074506/Puppy.jpg

Alternative but very similar idea would be to embed the revision
number in the URL, instead of the upload timestamp:

Example original:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/P/1/Puppy.jpg

Example revised:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/P/2/Puppy.jpg

Then internally there needs to be some translation/lookup table from
image name --> current revision number, as opposed to a lookup table
for image name --> upload date. (Integers are smaller than dates, so
small memory saving perhaps).

Possibility of a very very very small bandwidth saving from slightly
shorter URLs.

Maybe also it helps if two people upload Puppy.jpg at the exact same
second (not sure what happens in a date timestamp system that's only
accurate to the second when this happens, but in a revision number
system one is always going to first, even by a few microseconds).

Lastly, it's easy for a human with the URL to see what revisions come
before/after by incrementing/decrementing the digit in the URL,
whereas the date and time of the upload of a previous revision cannot
be predicted just from the image name.

All other benefits as per timestamp system, I think.

All the best,
Nick.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Removing range blocks (was The whole point of wikipedia)

body:
geni wrote:
>On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Then many people would decide that I was a rogue admin.

>Doubtful. No one concluded that when I've pulled blocks in the past.

Indeed - collateral damage is a good reason to pull a wide block, for
example; or a range block being messed up by someone who miscalculated
the bit after the slash.

If removing such a block, it'd generally be a good idea to put a note
on WP:ANI saying what you did and why, in case e.g. someone else knows
the "collateral damage" reporter to in fact be the person the block
was meant to stop. As long as you let people know what you're doing,
it's quite reversible and OK.

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] The twitch-game joy of vandal-fighting (was The whole
	point of wikipedia)

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
>On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:

>> The other problem that vandalism causes is that it wastes so much time of
>> editors who would otherwise being making articles better rather than
>> stopping them being destroyed.

>Is that really true, though?  How many editors do we have doing RC
>patrol?  I'm on #wikipedia-en-vandalism right now and there are about
>a dozen voiced users (ie regulars) on channel.  Most of them are
>idling.

Indeed. I discovered #wikipedia-en-vandalism just the last few days
and it's bloody hypnotic! Watching stuff come up and shooting it is
like playing a fast-twitch video game. Except it's real life. (Ender's
'Pedia?) I'm now planning not to look at it too closely so I can get
on with other things ...

(I was in bed sick with the laptop for a few days, so coherent thought
to a tightly-written encyclopedic standard was not going to happen;
but twitch games are *fun* and require very little higher thought. And
it beats playing cardgames.mozev.org.)

Vandal fighting is not only useful and important work, it's *fun* as
well as productive.

(May I add that I try to make a point of article editing as well as
the community yak-shaving [*]. I started one on the weekend and
extended another with two key references.)

- d.

[*] a geek term meaning "doing something in order to do something in
order to do something in order to do something." May be ultimately
productive or may be a sophisticated form of procrastination. Possibly
the greatest feat of yak-shaving in geek history is Don Knuth taking
several years off "The Art Of Computer Programming" to invent TeX. His
book needed better typesetting, you see, so he wrote a typesetting
system ...