from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
On 29 Nov 2004, at 23:10, Robin Shannon wrote:

>> Moreover,   Wikipedia.org, a
>> product of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. promotes disinformation,
>> pornography and disgraceful displays of pornographic images under
>> cover from arcane "company policies". Perhaps the long experience of
>> its founder, Mr Jimbo Wales, a former CEO of Bomis and a leader of
>> pornographic industry, explains such disgraceful, offensive company
>> policies.
>
> pardon? wikiporn? I must be working in the wrong parts of the 'pedia.
> Or maybe its all so strange and kinky that i dont realise its a giant
> database of porn that im editing. Poor me, under the illusion that it
> was an encyclopedia.
>
> paz y amor,
> [[User:The bellman]]
> rjs

The Bellman --

Dangerously, dangerously, there's actually a ''residual'' level of
half-truth in what he's writing there -- it's not actually true, but
it's not entirely made up either: there are some facts which, if
sufficiently stretched and distorted, can be presented by people as
disgruntled as irismeister in the above way. Don't get me wrong: I
don't agree with irismeister's words. I do however think we should be
aware of the full facts, because ignorance of them would make us MORE
vulnerable:

* It is true that our relatively liberal standards concerning reporting
on controversial sex-related issues could be regarded as "promoting
pornography" by some people.
: For example:
** The [[Gag (BSDM)]] article, complete with pictures as of this
writing, was recently listed on "Do you know..." and as such was
recently featured on the title page:
:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gag_%28BDSM%29
:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Recent_additions
** The [[List of sex positions]] could also be seen as "pornographic"
by sufficiently stuffy folks.
:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sex_positions (NB: Love the
in-jokes on the initial big versions of the pictures. Eg. Harry
Potter... or Asimov... WHAAHAHAHA! :D )
: The definition of "porn" is rather muddied -- eye of the (perving)
beholder, I dare say. If you're getting excited "like that" over it,
then it's probably porn to you. Problem is, as fetishists will tell
you, all kinds of everyday objects may be porn to some people. Not that
I think we should censor ourselves one bit because of such things.

* It is also true that [[Bomis]], which among other things "sells
erotic images over the Internet", hosted/supported (and still hosts and
supports?) Wikipedia, and that Jimbo "is the majority owner of Bomis"
(quoted from [[en:Bomis]]). I've never actually bothered finding out
the full story, so I can't tell you lots here. If more clarification is
desired, Jimbo himself may be the man to ask. (Yea, I ''could''
probably take out a Bomis subscription and check if ''I'' regard Bomis'
content as "porn", but, ohm, err... whatever.)

I wouldn't see the merit in replying to irismeister, but again, it's
probably better to be aware, in case such allegations were to hit us
from other parties -- which they probably will, sooner or later.
In the meantime, maybe I, too, will get back to actual
encyclopedia-writing...   ;-)

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


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikitech-l] Generate table of contents

body:
On 30 Nov 2004, at 15:52, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

> On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:02:22 +0100, peter <peter at wa.se> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Is there any way to generate a table of contents to disaplay on the
>> main
>> page och any special page.
>>
>> I am using MediaWiki for documentation and dictionary on our intranet
>> and a good overview of all the topics would be great.
>>
>> Any work done on this kind of feature?
>
> Put __TOC__ in the article text where you want it och observe the
> effect;)

Or are you (Peter) possibly looking for [[Special:Allpages]]?
If you need a fancier directory of all your content, you'd probably
have to start with Special:Allpages and build a categories tree from
there.

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: John Collison

subject: [WikiEN-l] Survey of why wikipedians edit

body:
Thanks v. much for doing the survey, it's helping the project a lot.
Some interesting patterns coming out in the results... such as the
average number of hours spent by wikipedians on wikipedia per week 17!

Incidentally, would you like to remain anonymous in any quoting of
replies to questions?

Cheers,
John


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Opinion of the many?

body:
R E Broadley (20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk) [041130 17:41]:

> Why am I quoting this? What the professional iridologist an expert in
> their field? I don't know this either, but if he was, I would suggest
> his opinion should probably outweigh that of the majority of non-experts
> in this field. The question remains: was the debate between experts and
> experts, or experts and non-experts?

Irismeister was in fact banned for repeated bad behaviour and personal
attacks. The idea being that there are in fact enough knowledgeable people
who don't behave badly that there's absolutely no reason to put up with the
ones who do. Knowledge is not an excuse for behaving obnoxiously. (It can
be remarkably difficult getting this across to some.)

- d.


from_name: David Wendt

subject: [Wikitech-l] odd 10.000 char-size - problem

body:
Heli Retzek wrote:

>dear friends, I encountered a funny problem.
>
>Wehn one of my wikimedia-pages becomes bigger than 10.000 chars, then it is
>not saved, the entire Text is lost and another edit-try delivers just empty
>page.
>
>when I try to restore a previous version and that exceeds 10.000 chars, it
>happens again.
>
>
>What did I do
>
>1. I changed my Website-Provider
>
>2. I updatefrom Wikimedia 1.37 to 1.38
>
>
>
>So, I installed on my new Provider the 1,38 Version of Wikimedia, then
>exported all files from my old providers DB and entered the SQL-Export in
>the DB of my new Provider
>
>Some pages from my old provider exceeded already 10.000 chars, when I then
>edited them in the 1,38 Wikimedia on my new host I coult retrieve the page,
>could edit it, but when I saved it, I got a empty page.
>
>
>Anyone has encountered that problem, some PHP-Install Problem, some
>Wikimedia-Install Problem??? I didnt find anything in google about that.
>
>
>tx for help
>
>HeliR
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
Hrm.. do you get an SQL error?


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] taking forever for MediaZilla registration e-mail to
	appear

body:
On Nov 30, 2004, at 5:41 PM, David Wendt wrote:
> Forget that, all my e-mails are appearing in my server. I guess it was
> me.

The e-mail server occasionally gets backed up; if nobody notices it can
take a few hours to get it unclogged and send the mails out again. (I
just unclogged it about a half hour ago.) We're trying to figure this
one out; maybe an upgrade to postfix is required...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041130/1b88d9f9/attachment.pgp>


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] CheeseDreams/Cultural and Historical Background of Jesus

body:
As some of you know there is an endless debate on this article's talk
page.  Sometimes, there is actually constructive discussion.  I am in a
conflict with CheeseDreams that is under mediation.  But I turn to all of
you for hopefully immediate aid on another issue.

As the talk page gets too long, CheeseDreams summarizes the
discussion.  She claims to do this to save space as "some editors are
verbose."  There are two problems with this.  First, it is CheeseDreams who
does the summarizing, so in effect she has taken it upon herself to
represent all parties in any dispute.  Second, the summaries themselves
take up a huge amount of space.  John Kenney has already questioned this
practice (which I don't think is common).  I just archived a huge amount of
material and asked CheeseDreams to stop summarizing.  But she is currently
summarizing.  She is summarizing the last two days worth of
discussion.  This is ridiculous -- we should archive old material, but keep
new material -- material that is still under discussion --
available.  CheeseDreams'  method of summarizing doesn't really save a lot
of space, but it does rewrite in CheeseDreams' words what other people are
saying.

I know CheeseDreams is not intending to vandalize the page, and I can't
call this vandalism.  But it is wrong, horribly wrong.

I am not calling for her to be banned or blocked.  I am a party to a
dispute under mediation and can't do anything.  But I ask someone to do
something about this obsessive "summarizing."  Please.  Someone.  Help.

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


body:
I've a question, I registered an account on MediaZilla, and for some
reason the e-mail that has my password is... not appearing. Anywhere. I
keep checking my POP server (yes I did put in the right address), but
Thunderbird says there's nothing on the server. So, did the server
forget about my registration or does it just take a long time?


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Opinion of the many?

body:
R E Broadley wrote:
> What is it Socrates said? "The opinion of the many is not important. It
> is the opinion of the experts in their field which is important." -
> Obviously he originally said this in Greek, but I did get a native Greek
> speaker to translate the original sentence for me. It flows better in
> Greek though.
>
> Why am I quoting this? What the professional iridologist an expert in
> their field? I don't know this either, but if he was, I would suggest
> his opinion should probably outweigh that of the majority of non-experts
> in this field. The question remains: was the debate between experts and
> experts, or experts and non-experts?
>

Hey nice flame-bait, I like. Three bites in as many minutes. Keep up the
good work Rebroad.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: R E Broadley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

references:
<BDD06A71.94C8%fredbaud@ctelco.net>	<41AB7D99.90900@stardate.freeserve.co.uk>
	<41AC36F9.20905@telus.net>

body:
Ray

Thanks for your reply. I've recently heard that one of the things that
Wikipedia is not is that it is not a place for "original research". I
accepted this once I heard it, but your last sentence now has me
wondering if the opinion on this is split.

Can we add content that is unproven by the wider scientific community
with a boilerplate, or is it barred altogether?

Cheers,
Ed

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> If we accept only the opinion of experts we end up putting ourselves
> into an elitist box, and that strikes me as very un-wiki.  Ultimately,
> the facts should speak for themselves without regard to who is
> expressing them.
>
> Proponents of mainstream "science" ofte go to great effort to
> discredit ideas which appear contrary to their own, and in doing so
> can manage to make themselves look even more foolish than the people
> whom they are confronting..  It is not necessary to pepper an article
> through with  "they believe . . " or "the discredited idea that . .
> .", etc.  The first burden of proof in a scientific concept rests with
> the proponents.  If they fail to carry that burden then there is
> nothing there for the opponents to disprove.  For many of these
> articles a simple piece of boilerplate, perhaps as the second
> paragraph, should be enough to satisfy NPOV.  It could read, "The
> subject of this article is considered unproven by the wider scientific
> community.  Users relying on the information in this article do so at
> their own risk."
>
> Keeping things simple can save a lot of flames.
> Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderators? (was Re: Opinion of the many?)

body:
Tim,

Might you please extend me the courtesy of letting me know what I have
done to warrant your proposal? I have read the Internet trolls article,
and I can see no match between the individuals being described and
myself. All of my posts have been in good faith, and none of them with
the intention to bait. I am assuming your email was also in good faith.

Regards,
Edmund Broadley

Tim Starling wrote:

> Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>
>> Can someone please ban the trolls? Please? I've got better things to
>> do with my time than read R.E. Broadley's attempts to needle RickK or
>> the rantings of some "iridologist" with a personality problem.
>
>
> Seconded, I said after his first post that I'd be happy having him off
> the list. This is meant to be a moderated list, are any of the
> moderators paying attention? I'd rather a moderator deal with this,
> but if they're not around, I'll do it.
>
> -- Tim Starling


body:
David Wendt wrote:

> I've a question, I registered an account on MediaZilla, and for some
> reason the e-mail that has my password is... not appearing. Anywhere.
> I keep checking my POP server (yes I did put in the right address),
> but Thunderbird says there's nothing on the server. So, did the server
> forget about my registration or does it just take a long time?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
Forget that, all my e-mails are appearing in my server. I guess it was me.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics

body:
Erik,

Answering your always bright and structured point of view, I'd like to point
out that up to now I had the idea that even if you believed in straight and
long copyright terms and in the positive aspects of patents you were
nevertheless welcome to contribute to the free Wikipedia and to the other
projects. For instance, *I* think I could have a different point of view
regarding copyright and patents. I don't think, still an example, that great
photographers are *wrong* when they want to protect their works as long as
possible.

The more the wikimedia communauty is getting specific about its political
goals, the narrower this coummunauty is.  This is the great power of NPOV,
everybody can feel at home. I do think you can be a good man and yet
disagree with every items of your "issues which concern us". I like
wikimedia not questionning my opinion and not telling things on my behalf
that I would disagree with. And by the way, would I, and some others, ever
contribute to any wikimedia projects if wikimedia was tagged, even slightly,
as a political organization, a linux-free-content-environnemental-no
patent-no copyright bunch of lobbyists ? I don't think so. Like many people,
I'm very comfy with not getting into politics at all, I love being a lazy
and even a sheepish dude as to plenty of political issues. That's my right
:)

So I can add that I'd rather political activism be out of the wikimedia
goals. Not to mention that this kind of activism isn't like a brand new
idea, plenty of respectable organizations are dealing with that kind of
issues, and it seems very simple to join them in case a political nerve is
itching you. An "open" project should remain in my opinion a free
agglomerate of point of views ; when you're starting to pick up one point of
view, you're closed to the others and ignore their good sides.

Now, answering Anthere and just to be exactly fair, political lobbying, in
the sense Erik thought about it, would not be in itself a problem with the
French tax law about deductibility. For instance, becoming a member of
Amnesty International still makes you in France eligible to tax
deductibility up to 60 % of your membership fees (max 20 % of your taxable
income).

villy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 2:16 AM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics

| Hello everyone,
|
| I would like to open up the issue of the WMF getting involved in political
| matters, such as copyrights and patents. This has so far been mostly
| theoretical, but the rapid growth of our organization allows us to
| contemplate it, and maybe get our feet wet in a few example cases. I'm
| looking a couple of years into the future here, in part so we can come up
| with a good strategy, but also to open up minds and demolish taboos.
|
| There are two primary risks I see with any political activity of the WMF:
|
| 1) The Board may be too small to make representative decisions on its own,
| so we need a validation process to figure out which issues we can and
| which ones we cannot become involved in.
|
| 2) Advocacy is, by definition, never NPOV, so it cannot happen within the
| context of our content-based projects. A certain extent of alienation is
| inevitable with any position the WMF takes, political or not, but it is of
| key importance that this does not affect the perception or the reality of
| our projects.
|
| There is one risk which I am sure people will bring up, which is that "We
| don't have the resources to do this! We should stick to what we can do!"
| Without wanting to sound too dismissive, that objection is raised to
| virtually every new activity we define. It is valid in the sense that we
| shouldn't start anything which we cannot properly finish. But as new
| projects and new activities attract people from within the community, they
| also attract newcomers, who can cross over into other projects.
|
| In cases where there are strong and experienced groups working on an
| issue, such as software patents, it will often be unwise to start a new
| one, though we may often be able to assist in many ways.
|
| I consider wise political decision-making of key importance for the future
| survival and prosperity of our organization and our projects. We are
| creating a gigantic, global community here, which will increasingly not
| just be Wikipedia, but "the Wikimedia community". This group identity,
| which we will build and strengthen in the coming years, is of immense
| political value, for activism, for its technological superiority to most
| traditional organizations, and for issue-centric fundraising.
|
| We have a great chance to make a world-wide difference, and to change
| society for the better by engaging in smart advocacy and lobbyism. We need
| to proceed carefully, of course, and we can use a few agreeable test cases
| to do that.
|
| == What we can do ==
|
| As I said, any political advocacy has to happen outside the context of our
| individual wiki projects, whose neutrality is inviolable. But there are
| other options:
| - press releases by the Wikimedia Foundation
| - the Wikimedia newsletter
| - the Foundation website
| - a to-be-created email list (wikiaction?)
| - websites which we create for specific campaigns
| - endorsement of a petition or initiative
| - real political lobbyism, AKA "employing professionals to engage in goal-
| oriented discourse with democratically elected representatives"
| - legal action, defense funds
|
| == Issues which concern us ==
|
| The WMF should stay out of general political issues, I think - we should
| seek out those which have a demonstrable impact on our work, and which are
| agreeable to the largest number of people. Here are a few examples:
|
| * Software patents. Various open source leaders have just endorsed the
| www.nosoftwarepatents.com initiative, and I can easily see the WMF being
| one of the supporting organizations. Why does the issue matter so much?
| Because a project like MediaWiki, the software which we use, can be made
| effectively illegal through them. We don't necessarily need to oppose
| patentability of software per se, but we should seek an exemption for open
| source software at the very least. This is one matter where we should
| clearly work with the groups that are there, rather than creating a new
| one.
|
| * Copyright terms. Pretty much everyone who's not a corporation or works
| for one agrees that our current copyright terms are ridiculous. Hence, it
| would be relatively easy to build an effective movement to reduce them.
| Most works are protected for 70 years after the death of the author, which
| means that if I died tomorrow, anything which I have created which is not
| explicitly licensed will only be available for use by Wikimedia projects
| by 2074. Worse, these terms get extended on a regular basis, because
| there's not yet a strong lobby against them.
|
| The potential benefits of even a short reduction in terms for Wikimedia
| are enormous. Thousands of works - encyclopedias, photos, non-fiction
| books, and so forth - would suddenly become available to us. A significant
| reduction, say to a fixed 15 years term, could lead to an unprecedented
| cultural renaissance as millions of works become available for free
| sharing by all of humanity. This is absolutely in line with our mission.
|
| I would estimate the overall cost of an effective global campaign to be
| about $50,000 at least. What we could do fairly soon is endorse existing
| initiatives and groups who are working on this, but unlike for the
| software patent issue, I don't see any single one out there which is doing
| this effectively.
|
| * Copyrights on government-produced materials. As most of you will be
| aware, content created by employees of the federal government of the
| United States in their official capacity is automatically put in the
| public domain. Few other governments have similar rules - and those which
| do tend to use "non-commercial only" licenses.
|
| Changing these rules should not be too hard, as there are clear advantages
| for any government which does this. For instance, right now, many of our
| Wikipedia background articles on the political situation in certain
| countries come directly from the US State Department. This is not good in
| terms of NPOV, and other countries have a strategic interest to have their
| positions represented in works like Wikipedia - which can then try to
| build a neutral picture from a large assortment of public domain sources.
|
| Another example: voanews.com is a US government news site, and thus public
| domain. Wikinews could use its articles, essentially publishing US
| government propaganda (if it is accepted by the community as reasonably
| neutral). If Wikinews becomes important, other countries will have an
| interest in counterbalancing this influence.
|
| Let me make this crystal clear: It's the current situation - just a
| handful of countries putting their materials into the PD - which leads to
| POV. The more countries put there materials in the public domain or under
| a truly free license, the more neutral material we can create on that
| basis.
|
| * Specific copyright issues. One example would be the copyrightability of
| reproductions of images which are in the public domain. So far, courts
| have ruled in our favor on this issue, but many corporations are
| interested in changing this. That would allow corporations, in an unholy
| alliance with museums, to effectively put public domain works into a
| proprietary state: Photos have to be licensed, and museums don't allow you
| to take your own unless you comply with some kind of agreement. Some
| museums already try to do that, though they all know that they're
| currently on shaky legal ground.
|
| Another example is art which is permanently exposed to the public. One
| example would be the wrapping of the Reichstag building in Berlin by the
| Bulgarian artist Christo. A German high court has ruled that, because this
| art installation was temporary, the artist would hold commercial rights on
| photographs of the wrapped Reichstag! Such precedents are very dangerous
| to us, and we should fight them on every level.
|
| * Censorship. This is of course a very broad issue, but it clearly
| concerns us quite directly. It is also, interestingly enough, an issue
| where we can open up new sources of funding. For example, the United
| States government has funded organizations which fight against censorship
| under totalitarian regimes which it opposes. We should be very careful
| with using the "C-word", and try to be cooperative if at all possible. But
| NPOV is not negotiable, and if a wiki project cannot operate as a neutral
| one, then we should work to change the laws to make that possible.
|
| * The Digital Divide. There are quite a few things we can do which
| directly relate to our wiki projects in order to bridge the Digital
| Divide. One idea I like is refurbishing used PCs with Linux and putting a
| Wikimedia Content Reader application on them. We could try to create a
| decentralized, voluntary distribution network for such refurbished
| machines. We can also run fundraising campaigns specifically to distribute
| print editions, or to buy and distribute specialized small, cheap devices
| which are likely to become mainstream in the near future. For developing
| countries, solar or curb power would be good.
|
| == How to proceed ==
|
| With all this future talk, is there anything we can do right now? I
| believe so. There are existing initiatives working on the issues I just
| mentioned, and on others which concern them. We should catalog them, and
| can support them prominently on the Foundation Website, and we can endorse
| their petitions, campaigns and open letters.
|
| I think there needs to be a process for political activity of any kind
| which is similar to the procedure for creating new projects:
| proposal => discussion => poll / consensus => board approval => action
|
| The Board could handle issues which require quick actions: laws which are
| about to be passed, initiatives by other groups, lawsuits, and so forth.
| In such cases, there could be a post-approval process to validate the
| Board's actions, but they should generally only be taken if there's
| precedent.
|
| Within the next 6 months or so, I would like to start one such initiative
| on the software patent issue, i.e. take an official Foundation position on
| the matter and support the organizations, especially in Europe, working on
| it. We can move forward here one issue at a time, without overstretching
| our energy and resources.
|
| Regards,
|
| Erik
| _______________________________________________
| foundation-l mailing list
| foundation-l at wikimedia.org
| http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
|


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Opinion of the many?

body:
Sheldon Rampton (sheldon at prwatch.org) [041130 21:15]:

> Can someone please ban the trolls? Please? I've got better things to
> do with my time than read R.E. Broadley's attempts to needle RickK or
> the rantings of some "iridologist" with a personality problem.

My apoologies; I forwarded the Irismeister message as a legal threat (even
one of the crackpotted variety at first glance).

- d.


from_name: peter

subject: [Wikitech-l] Generate table of contents

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:
> On 30 Nov 2004, at 15:52, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:02:22 +0100, peter <peter at wa.se> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Is there any way to generate a table of contents to disaplay on the main
>>> page och any special page.
>>>
>>> I am using MediaWiki for documentation and dictionary on our intranet
>>> and a good overview of all the topics would be great.
>>>
>>> Any work done on this kind of feature?
>>
>>
>> Put __TOC__ in the article text where you want it och observe the
>> effect;)
>
>
> Or are you (Peter) possibly looking for [[Special:Allpages]]?
> If you need a fancier directory of all your content, you'd probably have
> to start with Special:Allpages and build a categories tree from there.
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com

Yes! That's it. I would have hope for something fancier though but this
is ok. Maybe I can use that and modify it to something that is more
useful and goodlooking.

I can admit I am quite new to MediaWiki so I'm sorry for all the stupid
questions.
      /peter


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: MultiHosting from single source

body:
On Nov 30, 2004, at 10:50 PM, Jonah Bossewitch wrote:
>> There's no need to change index.php, this is what LocalSettings.php is
>> for. (Nor do we need more than one of it, as site-specific setup logic
>> happens under it and its includes.)
>
> Maybe I am confused, but as I understood it, the wikipedia site itself
> is running with an alternative configuration, described here:
>
> http://wp.wikidev.net/Wiki_farm
>
> and using this additional configuration
> http://wikimedia.org/conf/

Yes, that's a description of how we use MediaWiki with a single copy of
the source to run several hundred wikis with varying configurations.

> and presumably, a modified index.php

Nope.

>  or LocalSettings that initializes and
> uses the SiteConfiguration object.

Yes! That's the purpose of LocalSettings.php; to load all
customizations.

>  The 1.3.8 download does not do
> ordinarily use of the SiteConfiguration object.

The common case is a single installation on a hosted account where
there is limited control and fancy stuff won't work. Thus, the default
installation is the simple, reliable in-place system.

For those of us doing big multi-wiki installations, we can relatively
easily move the files, set up a global include_path, and whip up a
multi-configuration LocalSettings.php file to suit our needs. The
SiteConfiguration object is a multi-configuration helper that Tim came
up with to make this easier, but it's just one way to do it.

> As a very typical use case, imagine trying to power two (or more)
> mediawiki instances on the same server that are branded completely
> differently. One way to model this is for each of them to have their
> own skin, which can be worked on separately and independently by
> webdesign specialists.  Creating a custom phptal skin requires
> extending the SkinPHPTal class.

You would probably do this with separate subclassed skins for each
"brand", rather than hacking the base class.

You wouldn't need even this if customizing the style sheets and
messages is sufficient; this can be done purely from within the wiki
interface (MediaWiki:Monobook.css, MediaWiki:MySkin.css, etc), or you
can hack up a separate stylesheets directory and use the appropriate
one for each wiki without changing any of the base source.

>   If you are managing custom code for two different installations,
> they really should be in their own versioned repositories, not
> intermingled.

If you have set yourself the requirement of having separate
version-controlled sets of source, then by definition you're going to
have some difficulty running them both from a common set of source. I
don't think this should be necessary, however.

> Beyond that, you may want to extend different mediawiki instances
> (special pages, extensions, etc) differently for each project (not in
> a server-wide way).  So some special pages may exist on wiki A, but
> not on wiki B, but you would still like for wiki A and B to be running
> off the same set of source.

Extensions are to be loaded from LocalSettings.php, so you can load
them conditionally.

>> I guess it just seems a bit weird to have people tell us why they
>> can't use our software to run multiple sites off one set of source
>> when running multiple sites off one set of source is exactly what we
>> do day after day.
>
> Is this really such a weird requirement?

It's not weird at all; it's exactly what we do with it after all.
What's weird is when we get told that we can't possibly be doing what
we're doing because it's impossible.

>   I am fairly sure there is no easy
> way to manage the collaborative development of multiple custom wikis
> without giving each of them their own "private" space.  The challenge
> is doing so w/out having to replicate the core code for each instance.

I'm not sure what that means, so I can't really comment on it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041130/9e68a28a/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

references:
<BDD06A71.94C8%fredbaud@ctelco.net>	<41AB7D99.90900@stardate.freeserve.co.uk>
	<41AC36F9.20905@telus.net>	<41ACD84F.6020806@stardate.freeserve.co.uk>
	<5309126704113022021a7ca215@mail.gmail.com>

body:
And where do you get the idea that I was talking about "original research"?
Ec

Rebecca wrote:

>Original research is banned.
>Ec may disagree with that policy, and he's welcome to propose a change
>to that, but that's how the policy stands at present
>
>-- ambi
>
>
>On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:30:07 +0000, R E Broadley
><20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>Ray
>>
>>Thanks for your reply. I've recently heard that one of the things that
>>Wikipedia is not is that it is not a place for "original research". I
>>accepted this once I heard it, but your last sentence now has me
>>wondering if the opinion on this is split.
>>
>>Can we add content that is unproven by the wider scientific community
>>with a boilerplate, or is it barred altogether?
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Ed
>>
>>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>>If we accept only the opinion of experts we end up putting ourselves
>>>into an elitist box, and that strikes me as very un-wiki.  Ultimately,
>>>the facts should speak for themselves without regard to who is
>>>expressing them.
>>>
>>>Proponents of mainstream "science" ofte go to great effort to
>>>discredit ideas which appear contrary to their own, and in doing so
>>>can manage to make themselves look even more foolish than the people
>>>whom they are confronting..  It is not necessary to pepper an article
>>>through with  "they believe . . " or "the discredited idea that . .
>>>.", etc.  The first burden of proof in a scientific concept rests with
>>>the proponents.  If they fail to carry that burden then there is
>>>nothing there for the opponents to disprove.  For many of these
>>>articles a simple piece of boilerplate, perhaps as the second
>>>paragraph, should be enough to satisfy NPOV.  It could read, "The
>>>subject of this article is considered unproven by the wider scientific
>>>community.  Users relying on the information in this article do so at
>>>their own risk."
>>>
>>>Keeping things simple can save a lot of flames.
>>>Ec
>>>
>>>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] MediaWiki inspires a rave review

body:
Wikimedia's new biggest fan is named Sean Michael Kerner, and he
published about it in yesterday's NewsForge:

http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/04/11/22/1750202.shtml?tid=137

Kerner is dutifully critical, calling the documentation "somwhat
'dispersed'," noting that tweaking skins "involves a bit of effort,"
and wishing for an interface for automatic backups of the database,
and for "more granular control of users and permissions in one master
dashboard".  But he ends with embarrassingly high praise:

"Downloading, installing, and running MediaWiki for my own purposes
has only enhanced my admiration for both the wiki and the WikiMedia
Foundation. It's not only easy to use, it's also easy to install and
deploy. In the true spirit of the open source community MediaWiki is a
shining example of what open content collaboration is all about."

Oh, and he actually suggested contributing to the documentation
effort.  I reckon he read [[m:Things we wish people would write about
us]] before sitting down at his keyboard.

--
+sj+


body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Can someone please ban the trolls? Please? I've got better things to do
> with my time than read R.E. Broadley's attempts to needle RickK or the
> rantings of some "iridologist" with a personality problem.

Seconded, I said after his first post that I'd be happy having him off
the list. This is meant to be a moderated list, are any of the
moderators paying attention? I'd rather a moderator deal with this, but
if they're not around, I'll do it.

-- Tim Starling


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Alexa: Reference sites: Maps > Wikipedia > Friend
	Finders

body:
Classmate finders, that is.

Wikipedia is lately among the 5 most visited reference sites,
according to our favorite spotty public eyeball yardstick, and somehow
takes up two spots in the top ten. At least now we're linked from the
main Reference page.

http://www.alexa.com/browse/categories?catid=10

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikitech-l] REL1_4 branched

body:
I've created a REL1_4 branch in CVS. To update your existing HEAD
working directory:

   cvs up -dP -r REL1_4

To pull a fresh copy (as a developer):

   cvs -d:ext:username at cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wikipedia \
     co -r REL1_4 phase3

(If you're using Sourceforge's anonymous CVS server it may take a few
hours before the update goes through there.)

The release branch frees up CVS for more experimental code, while
REL1_4 should now concentrate on getting what's already in there stable
and working. We'll tag and release a few beta versions over the next
couple of weeks, with a 1.4.0 final release when the main things are
ironed out.

If we make additional 'big' changes before release, they should be done
in HEAD first. Bug fixes should naturally go both in REL1_4 *and* the
head branch.

As far as future scheduling:  I would very much like us to start
getting releases out on a faster schedule, each with tighter changes
more concentrated on particular areas than the swamps we've done in the
past. Aiming for 1.5 in February would be nice (~2 months from 1.4).
We'll do some planning on future directions at the 21C3 conference in
Berlin in late December.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041201/36df24aa/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Database abstraction layer

body:
On Wed, 2004-01-12 at 13:24 +1100, Tim Starling wrote:

> > I guess I'm mainly worried that this huge change was made without
> > considering other options.
>
> What huge change?

Replacing all the SQL strings in the code with function calls into a
much-expanded database object.

> As far as I'm concerned, DB abstraction is a courtesy to low-traffic
> non-Wikimedia users.

I'm not speaking as a non-Wikimedia user; I'm speaking as a member of
the MediaWiki development team we're both on.

I'm just trying to get across the point that even the World's Greatest
Programmer can benefit from soliciting the ideas of others in a forum
such as wikitech-l. It only takes a few minutes, helps the developer
focus their own thoughts, and could avoid a lot of work for the entire
development team writing, testing and debugging functionality readily
available in an Open Source library. We all benefit from a better
product that comes from sharing our ideas.

And if you fix your ideas in writing, you don't get dumb questions
later. Or, y'know, fewer dumb questions.

Anyways: sorry if I touched a nerve. If it helps, I think this is a real
nice piece of code, and it really cleans up the rest of the codebase.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041201/48302b1b/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Jonah Bossewitch

body:
> There's no need to change index.php, this is what LocalSettings.php is
> for. (Nor do we need more than one of it, as site-specific setup logic
> happens under it and its includes.)

Maybe I am confused, but as I understood it, the wikipedia site itself is
running with an alternative configuration, described here:

http://wp.wikidev.net/Wiki_farm

and using this additional configuration
http://wikimedia.org/conf/

and presumably, a modified index.php or LocalSettings that initializes and
uses the SiteConfiguration object.  The 1.3.8 download does not do
ordinarily use of the SiteConfiguration object.

But, I think I didn't do a good job of explaining the difference between
running multiple sites all with the same policy versus running multiple
sites with different policies.

As a very typical use case, imagine trying to power two (or more) mediawiki
instances on the same server that are branded completely differently. One
way to model this is for each of them to have their own skin, which can be
worked on separately and independently by webdesign specialists.  Creating a
custom phptal skin requires extending the SkinPHPTal class.  If you are
managing custom code for two different installations, they really should be
in their own versioned repositories, not intermingled.

What's the alternative?  Hacking the Skin.php or SkinPHPTal.php directly in
the single, server-wide, software_home?

Beyond that, you may want to extend different mediawiki instances  (special
pages, extensions, etc) differently for each project (not in a server-wide
way).  So some special pages may exist on wiki A, but not on wiki B, but you
would still like for wiki A and B to be running off the same set of source.

To top it off, once you begin this kind of development, its really nice to
be able to test it, stage it, and deploy it in separate environments.

This is the reasoning that led me to set up a separate, minimal footprint
and include path on a per-instance basis, ''not'' a per-server basis.

Do other developers building wikis using the mediawiki software typically
version their entire wiki codebase themselves?  How do they easily manage
and track the patches that they apply to the mediawiki, if they don't
cleanly separate out their changes?

Perhaps one of the reasons that the wikipedia team doesn't encounter this
difficulty in practice, is because whenever the wikipedia needs a new
feature it ends up in the core, and furthermore, it is usually applicable to
all the sites that the wikipedia powers.

> I guess it just seems a bit weird to have people tell us why they can't
> use our software to run multiple sites off one set of source when
> running multiple sites off one set of source is exactly what we do day
> after day.

Is this really such a weird requirement?  I am fairly sure there is no easy
way to manage the collaborative development of multiple custom wikis without
giving each of them their own "private" space.  The challenge is doing so
w/out having to replicate the core code for each instance.

Thanks for responding.  Please let me know if you think I am being thick.

Best Regards,
Jonah


body:
On Wed, 2004-01-12 at 17:56 +1100, Tim Starling wrote:

> If you want to be in on these decisions you should hang around on
> #mediawiki more.

My point isn't that I want to be in on the decisions. My point is that I
want us as a development group to make better decisions, and I want us
as a group to communicate those decisions well to present and future
members of this development team. I know from experience that if we do
this, we will make better software, and our job will be easier, to boot.

>  Discussing things by email is tedious and slow.

Discussing things on IRC is ephemeral and the discussions are hard to
point to later.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041201/1360112e/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Whether you intend to or not, your posts stir up a lot of senseless trouble.
It's hard to explain simply, but mainly it comes down to you not knowing or
misunderstanding the basic policies of Wikipedia and results in discussions
which start at square one over and over.

Fred

> From: R E Broadley <20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:34:58 +0000
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Moderators? (was Re: Opinion of the many?)
>
> Tim,
>
> Might you please extend me the courtesy of letting me know what I have
> done to warrant your proposal? I have read the Internet trolls article,
> and I can see no match between the individuals being described and
> myself. All of my posts have been in good faith, and none of them with
> the intention to bait. I am assuming your email was also in good faith.
>
> Regards,
> Edmund Broadley
>
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>>
>>> Can someone please ban the trolls? Please? I've got better things to
>>> do with my time than read R.E. Broadley's attempts to needle RickK or
>>> the rantings of some "iridologist" with a personality problem.
>>
>>
>> Seconded, I said after his first post that I'd be happy having him off
>> the list. This is meant to be a moderated list, are any of the
>> moderators paying attention? I'd rather a moderator deal with this,
>> but if they're not around, I'll do it.
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Georgian wiktionary

body:
Hoi,
The ka:wiktionary (Georgian) has been changed to allow for undercase
article names.
Thanks,
    Gerard


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikitech-l] Account lockout

body:
My account has a guessable password and some idiot has used my account for
some low-grade idiocy (blocked JoeM and put some dumb text on the "Xero"
page, both reverted quickly) and changed the password. I didn't set the
email to the account. Could someone change the password/lock the account and
set the email to "cunctator at kband.com" so I can reset the password?

Thx.


subject: [Wikitech-l] REL1_4 branched

body:
On Wed, 2004-01-12 at 01:08 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> If we make additional 'big' changes before release, they should be done
> in HEAD first. Bug fixes should naturally go both in REL1_4 *and* the
> head branch.

Doesn't that make merging between branches hard for you?

In any event: I have about half-a-dozen more hook events to add to the
codebase -- mostly stuff about viewing articles, or in the skin. I'm
going to add them to the REL1_4 branch, since I figure a half-built
Hooks feature is not good for anyone.

I'm also going to add a compatibility hook for $wgCallbackFilter at the
end of Setup.php, after all the extensions are run.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041201/b7462808/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Problem in the Yiddish Wikipedia

body:
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:51:32 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm beginning to wonder if you hold a grudge against me personally,
> given the things you have said in private and public correspondence.

Well, I definitely react "Not again!" each time your name comes up.

Andre Engels


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

references:
<BDD06A71.94C8%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<41AB7D99.90900@stardate.freeserve.co.uk> <41AC36F9.20905@telus.net>
	<41ACD84F.6020806@stardate.freeserve.co.uk>

body:
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:30:07 +0000, R E Broadley
<20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Can we add content that is unproven by the wider scientific community
> with a boilerplate, or is it barred altogether?

'Unproven by the wider scientific community' is not the same thing.
Crackpot theories can, and should, be documented on Wikipedia - as
long as you're reporting in a NPOV way about someone ELSE's crackpot
theory that's documented -- they've written a book, a paper, a
website, whatever.  And as long as they have an audience bigger than
just themselves, anyway.

Wikipedia is not the place to post your OWN crackpot theories, odd
philosophy, or whatever.

Basically, an encyclopedia is supposed to be a secondary source.

-Matt


body:
As an aside, I have looked at the other wikimedia websites. Here are
the position of the various wikimedia sites on the _weekly average_
reach position. Weekly average reach per million and 3-months position
given between brackets.

177 wikipedia (4000, 280)
10.519 wikimedia (120, 15.000) (*)
20.835 wiktionary (44, 33.000)
28.709 wikibooks (39, 39.500)
46.666 wikiquote (24, 51.000)

(*): this includes meta, wikiCommons and upload.wikimedia.org, which
contains uploads to all wikis.

Some other URLs that have something to do with wikipedia:
5.805 bomis.com (195, 5.700)
28.630 blogdex.net (50, 31.000) (**)
242.259 mediawiki.org (5.5, 730.000) (***)
----- wikispecies.org (0, 5.000.000) (****)

(**): includes ca.wikipedia.org and wikipedia.com
(***): redirects to sourceforge.net
(****): redirects to wikipedia.org

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 00:41:00 -0500, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Classmate finders, that is.
>
> Wikipedia is lately among the 5 most visited reference sites,
> according to our favorite spotty public eyeball yardstick, and somehow
> takes up two spots in the top ten. At least now we're linked from the
> main Reference page.
>
> http://www.alexa.com/browse/categories?catid=10
>
> --
> +sj+
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] In Chile,
	instant Web feedback creates the next day's paper

body:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1201/p01s04-woam.htm

SANTIAGO, CHILE - It was 102 years old, boring, unpopular, and
basically, as economist Marta Lagos puts it, "a middle-of-the-road piece
of nothing."

Now, it's a phenomenon. Las Ultimas Noticias (LUN) - The Latest News -
is Chile's most widely read newspaper today, setting tongues wagging,
talk-show hosts chatting, celebrities and politicians denying, serious
folks wailing, and advertisers calling.

No, it's not a tabloid, insist the employees at the slightly shabby
downtown newsroom. Rather, they say, it's a revolution in journalism, a
reader-driven product that reflects the changing values and interests of
a postdictatorship public that grew up on a diet of establishment news
and now wants more. Or, as some say - because of the often low-brow
content - less.

This revolution has occurred, says the paper's publisher Augustine
Edwards, thanks to his decision to listen to "the people." Three years
ago, under Mr. Edwards's guidance, LUN installed a system whereby all
clicks onto its website (www.lun.com) were recorded for all in the
newsroom to see. Those clicks - and the changing tastes and desires they
represent - drive the entire print content of LUN. If a certain story
gets a lot of clicks, for example, that is a signal to Edwards and his
team that the story should be followed up, and similar ones should be
sought for the next day. If a story gets only a few clicks, it is
killed. The system offers a direct barometer of public opinion, much
like the TV rating system - but unique to print media.


body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> I guess I'm mainly worried that this huge change was made without
> considering other options. There wasn't any discussion on this list that
> I can find, and the change isn't documented on meta, AFAICT. Publishing
> design decisions can be a good way to avoid second-guessing by people
> like me after the code is written.

What huge change? Like Brion said, DatabaseFunctions.php has existed
since the dawn of time. I switched it to OOP to support multiple
connections, I probably announced that in a post about slave servers and
load balancing. Then Domas implemented PostgreSQL support as a subclass.
Domas' work doesn't preclude the use of a DB abstraction layer, in fact
his work in identifying the use of MySQL-specific features would be
invaluable should we attempt such a thing.

As far as I'm concerned, DB abstraction is a courtesy to low-traffic
non-Wikimedia users. The queries we use, and the schema, should be
optimised for MySQL. My focus has been on emulation of MySQL features,
not replacement by standard SQL in the bulk of the codebase. INSERT
IGNORE is the best example of this.

-- Tim Starling


list: textbook-l

from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] re: questions

body:
John,

I think that the slowdown has a couple of reasons: the
newness has worn off so the initial burst is over and the
true longterm growth has not started yet. Also, I was
making a lot of contributions but am not currently due to
limited access to the Internet living in the Third World at
the moment. And, the more complicated nature of textbooks
requires a higher level of commitment than the regular
Wikipedia, where any person can work on any module without
concern for any other. Here, there is a higher level of
organization to make a book.

What will help: time will only help us, as even small
contributions snowball over time into something impressive.
Organized or institutional backing, like the grant the
WikiMedia Foundation recently recieved from the Beck
Foundation (do I remember that right?) to develop some
booklets for kids, or better than money, the dedication of
a group of educators working together with the tools
available on the site. That?s where I think that you folks
in Utah can help, showing that things can be done even if
it is with one book. Things get very exciting very quickly
when people start to work collaboratively on wikis over the
web, especially when you know what kind of a difference the
work will make.

As for the delay in getting the emails sent out, I think it
was an oversight by our very overworked volunteer Brion,
who seems to have the responsability of watching spam along
with so many other things.

Please let me know if there is anything else that you think
I can do for you at any time.

Karl

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Afrikaans at Wikisource - vandalism?

body:
The following has appeared in the Afrikaans section of the Wikisource
main page, but we have had nothing else in Afrikaans.

> Dit is ook 'n demonstrasie van gemeenskapsekuriteit. (As jy "stront"
> aanvang, gaan iemand dit uitvee en regmaak. Probeer eerder iets sinvol
> skryf.)

Can anyone tell me whether this is something that belongs there.
Afrikaans, as the first language alphabetically, seems especially prone
to silliness.

Looks as though I'll need to keep this permanently protected.

Ec


from_name: David Wendt

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Nov 30, 2004, at 5:41 PM, David Wendt wrote:
>
>> Forget that, all my e-mails are appearing in my server. I guess it
>> was me.
>
>
> The e-mail server occasionally gets backed up; if nobody notices it
> can take a few hours to get it unclogged and send the mails out again.
> (I just unclogged it about a half hour ago.) We're trying to figure
> this one out; maybe an upgrade to postfix is required...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
Aah. Thanks for helping me.

Maby you should set a cron job that cycles some mail thru the server
just to check for clogging.


from_name: Mamma Mia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
I would like to introduce a new language on Wikipedia. The language is called chiTumbuka. It is a language widely spoken in the northern and north-central regions of Malawi, eastern parts of Zambia and to a lesser extent, southern parts of Tanzania, Africa. It is estimated that chiTumbuka is spoken by between 4 and 5 million people and 'understood' by a further million or so.
The main reason I want to start a section for this language is to encourage young people to speak it and at the same time enable our parents, some of whom have limited knowledge of English, have access to information via, among other media, the internet.

With the (coming?) introduction of Wikinews, it is my hope that I will have time to translate some of the news into this language. When I was young, there used to be English-Tumbuka dictionaries but I haven't seen a single one for over a decade. I want to preserve my language and hope to introduce an English-Tumbuka e-dictionary along the way. This might also help tourists from Anglophone countries like the US, the UK, Canada, Australia know a few phrases of the language before visiting the aforementioned countries in which the language is spoken.

Any suggestions as to how I can go about setting this language up will be highly appreciated. To avoid clogging other members' inboxes, please contact me privately on dinnette at softhome.net with whatever suggestions/assistance you may have. Thanks for you time.

Kind regards

Dinnette


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
Original research is banned.
Ec may disagree with that policy, and he's welcome to propose a change
to that, but that's how the policy stands at present

-- ambi

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:30:07 +0000, R E Broadley
<20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Ray
>
> Thanks for your reply. I've recently heard that one of the things that
> Wikipedia is not is that it is not a place for "original research". I
> accepted this once I heard it, but your last sentence now has me
> wondering if the opinion on this is split.
>
> Can we add content that is unproven by the wider scientific community
> with a boilerplate, or is it barred altogether?
>
> Cheers,
> Ed
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > If we accept only the opinion of experts we end up putting ourselves
> > into an elitist box, and that strikes me as very un-wiki.  Ultimately,
> > the facts should speak for themselves without regard to who is
> > expressing them.
> >
> > Proponents of mainstream "science" ofte go to great effort to
> > discredit ideas which appear contrary to their own, and in doing so
> > can manage to make themselves look even more foolish than the people
> > whom they are confronting..  It is not necessary to pepper an article
> > through with  "they believe . . " or "the discredited idea that . .
> > .", etc.  The first burden of proof in a scientific concept rests with
> > the proponents.  If they fail to carry that burden then there is
> > nothing there for the opponents to disprove.  For many of these
> > articles a simple piece of boilerplate, perhaps as the second
> > paragraph, should be enough to satisfy NPOV.  It could read, "The
> > subject of this article is considered unproven by the wider scientific
> > community.  Users relying on the information in this article do so at
> > their own risk."
> >
> > Keeping things simple can save a lot of flames.
> > Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-01-12 at 13:24 +1100, Tim Starling wrote:
>
>
>>>I guess I'm mainly worried that this huge change was made without
>>>considering other options.
>>
>>What huge change?
>
>
> Replacing all the SQL strings in the code with function calls into a
> much-expanded database object.

I discussed it on IRC, with Brion and anyone else who was around.
Replacing SQL strings with function calls was done for these reasons:

* Safer quoting, avoidance of SQL injection attacks
* Easier table prefix support
* Simpler interface with PHP data structures, like wfGetSQL() before it
* DB abstraction, specifically:
** Filtering or emulation of unsupported options to queries such as DELAYED
** Emulation of MySQL-specific queries such as REPLACE
** Table name quoting

If you want to be in on these decisions you should hang around on
#mediawiki more. Discussing things by email is tedious and slow.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Generate table of contents

body:
On 30 Nov 2004, at 23:23, peter wrote:

> I can admit I am quite new to MediaWiki so I'm sorry for all the
> stupid questions.

Not at all. You're VERY welcome -- and besides, you provided me with
the rare opportunity to help someone on this list: Most of the time I'm
rather more likely to be asking questions here rather than answering
them. ;-)
So thank you :)

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


from_name: Delirium

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The following has appeared in the Afrikaans section of the Wikisource
> main page, but we have had nothing else in Afrikaans.
>
>> Dit is ook 'n demonstrasie van gemeenskapsekuriteit. (As jy "stront"
>> aanvang, gaan iemand dit uitvee en regmaak. Probeer eerder iets
>> sinvol skryf.)
>
>
> Can anyone tell me whether this is something that belongs there.
> Afrikaans, as the first language alphabetically, seems especially
> prone to silliness.

Some procrastination-inspired use of Afrikaans and Dutch dictionaries,
as well as some googling since they seem woefully incomplete, led to the
following rough translation:

"This is a demonstration of computer security hacking. (As you start
"shit", someone will delete and repair this.  Tried earlier to write
something sinful.)"

Probably not entirely correct as a translation, but I suspect this isn't
a legitimate contribution. =]

-Mark


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dealing with corporate propagandists

body:
As someone with both [[Linux]] and [[Mozilla Firefox]] on my watchlist
(I wrote a good chunk of the latter article), I find it amusing how
Linux gets vandalised more often than Firefox. By the way, I'm a bit
curious about where the bias is in Firefox since I wrote close to half
the article, but I can see what you're getting at. Already a week or two
after my rewrite POV is beginning to creep into the article (again).

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

David Gerard wrote:

>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [041201 12:31]:
>
>
>>David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>>In the case that brought this up - [[Mozilla Firefox]] - the current
>>>version is a hideous piece of open-source hagiography that needs a severe
>>>NPOV of this sort.
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>:-)
>>Good catch.  As for me, I *love* Firefox, and I bet most of us do: so
>>this is where bias is likely to occur... areas where we are all in
>>such agreement anyway.
>>
>>
>
>
>And in open source, it seems incredibly hard to get NPOV across to
>advocates. Or, worse, anti-advocates. You think the Israel/Palestine
>mission posters are bad ...
>
>
>- d.
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Dealing with corporate propagandists

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>In the case that brought this up - [[Mozilla Firefox]] - the current
>>version is a hideous piece of open-source hagiography that needs a severe
>>NPOV of this sort.
>
>
> :-)
>
> Good catch.  As for me, I *love* Firefox, and I bet most of us do: so
> this is where bias is likely to occur... areas where we are all in
> such agreement anyway.
>
> --Jimbo

You undersell just how seriously NPOV is taken by many editors.
[[Talk:Internet Explorer]] shows many editors bending other backwards to
shut out the slashdot hordes and treat the browser to a fair
encyclopedia article.

Pcb21


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Problem in the Yiddish Wikipedia

body:
Right, if I wrote an article on en: that said "a popular singer", it
would be expanded? Am I supposed to believe that? If I made articles
like that on en.wikipedia, I'd probably be asked to stop, and perhaps
even banned.

An article containing two words is by no measure a stub, unless it is
a language where those two words translate into an English sentence.

I would hardly call my actions "spamming this list with defensive
flames". I believe I have the right to defend myself against
accusations, so even if they are "defensive flames" I believe I am
entitled to that. I have sent perhaps 10 "defensive flames" as you
call them over the course of 3 days. That may be a little bit much,
but given what is going on, I think it should be expected from
anybody.

In addition, the only other minority language Wikipedia I've been
accused of causing problems at is ks.wikipedia. Toki Pona is not a
minority language in the usual meaning of the word.

If you check my edits on all minority language Wikipedias, I guarantee
you there is nothing against policy. I also guarantee you that any
edits made before this moment by "node_ue" on any Wikipedia are mine.
In fact, the majority of these edits are reversions of vandalism,
notes on talkpages, uploads of logos, or other minor helpful edits.
Danny cannot reasonably claim to speak for the userbase of the Yddish
Wikipedia, given that the one user other than him and I has worked out
all outstanding issues on the Yiddish Wikipedia.

As noted before, if I continued to revert the pages to my
speedy-template versions, that could be considered on all accounts
"bad", however when I realised such edits - of which I made 4, I
repeat 4, that's f o u r four - were upsetting Danny, I didn't make
any more. In fact, I didn't make any more before he got upset, either,
even though I had plenty of time. Danny is the only one whining about
this.

Four. That's one, two, three four pages, totaling 19 words. If you
subtract "a", "is", and "of" (in Yiddish of course), that is 19 words.

To deal with these pages separately, that would be 5 words on two
pages (America and Britney Spears), 3 subtracting "a"s.

The other two pages total 14 words, 6 subtracting "a", "is", and "of".
These two pages said exclusively "_____ is a brother of ___" and
linked to one another.

It's not as if I went on some massive spree of replacing pages with
{{delete}} notices, as a matter of fact yi.wikipedia doesn't yet even
have enough pages for a "spree".

Nor did I ignore people when they confronted me. In fact, Jamesday
confronted me and we came to an understanding that not only had I
already stopped, I wasn't planning on doing it anymore. Danny didn't
even bother to confront me.

And all of this hubbub took place nearly 24 hours after these edits,
about 7 hours after they were reverted.

Claims against me are getting to such a level where they are so
rediculous I would laugh if they were made against somebody else. 4
pages which would have been speedied on en.wikipedia or any other
Wikipedia, not engaging in a revert war, and all the action taking
place well after the actual "problem"? That's crazy.

Mark

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 22:58:17 +1000, Craig Franklin <craig at halo-17.net> wrote:
> Scr?obh Mark Williamson:
>
> >If the Britney Spears article said "?'???T???~? ?T?? ???????T?????? ?T?-
> ????
> >[[?????????????.?o?????? ?-?T?'?????T?Y|?????????????.?o??????
> ?-?T?'????]]" ("Britney Spears is a
> >[[popular singer]]") with an actual article of at least stub quality
> >at the "Popular Singer" page, it could reasonably be considered a
> >substub, but even if there was no article at "Popular Singer" I
> >probably wouldn'tve touched it, had it been an actual sentence.
>
> It's funny Mark, I don't seem to remember you being elevated to such a
> position where you could make authoritative judgements on what is a stub, a
> substub, or whatever.  Whatever would have been the problem with just
> expanding the sub-sub-stub or whatever you believed it was to a good
> article?  You know, like we do on other, non-minority Wikipedias.  Yet
> again, both in your original infraction and your spamming of this list with
> hostile defensive flames, you've totally overstepped the bounds of what is
> commonly held to be acceptable behaviour here.
>
> On another note, when the first post to this list informing of a problem on
> a minority-language Wikipedia came up, was I the only one who thought
> "Mark!", before I even opened it to have a read?
>
> Regards,
> - Craig Franklin
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Perhaps you could bring the issue up with Afrikaans-speaking
Wikipedians? af.wikipedia has thousands of pages, and plenty of users
who might be willing to contribute the nessecary text for Wikisource.

Mark

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 15:01:35 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The following has appeared in the Afrikaans section of the Wikisource
> main page, but we have had nothing else in Afrikaans.
>
> > Dit is ook 'n demonstrasie van gemeenskapsekuriteit. (As jy "stront"
> > aanvang, gaan iemand dit uitvee en regmaak. Probeer eerder iets sinvol
> > skryf.)
>
> Can anyone tell me whether this is something that belongs there.
> Afrikaans, as the first language alphabetically, seems especially prone
> to silliness.
>
> Looks as though I'll need to keep this permanently protected.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Alexa: Reference sites: Maps > Wikipedia > Friend
	Finders

body:
Sj wrote:

>Wikipedia is lately among the 5 most visited reference sites,
>according to our favorite spotty public eyeball yardstick, and somehow
>takes up two spots in the top ten. At least now we're linked from the
>main Reference page.
>
>
We were listed on it before too, just before the last press release, but
for some reason disappeared from the list for a while. It looks like
there's somewhat of a disconnect between Alexa's automatically generated
information and the stuff that requires more human input.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
As i understand it, the"no origanal research" means tha you cant just
post some idea you have into wikipedia, however if a wikipedian was to
post some idea to a website or in a journal or whatever and then some
other wikimedian (it is important that it is not the same wikimedian
as the one who did the research because that would be self promotion)
includes that POV in an article (so long as it is appropriate, labled
as just one POV of many, and has where appropriate warnings that the
content may be suspect quality) then it is fine.

If you think about it, everything in every scientific journal is
origanal research. It is fine for wikimedia to quote these, but not
for wikimedia to be thier origanal publisher.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]
rjs

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:30:07 +0000, R E Broadley
<20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Ray
>
> Thanks for your reply. I've recently heard that one of the things that
> Wikipedia is not is that it is not a place for "original research". I
> accepted this once I heard it, but your last sentence now has me
> wondering if the opinion on this is split.
>
> Can we add content that is unproven by the wider scientific community
> with a boilerplate, or is it barred altogether?
>
> Cheers,
> Ed
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > If we accept only the opinion of experts we end up putting ourselves
> > into an elitist box, and that strikes me as very un-wiki.  Ultimately,
> > the facts should speak for themselves without regard to who is
> > expressing them.
> >
> > Proponents of mainstream "science" ofte go to great effort to
> > discredit ideas which appear contrary to their own, and in doing so
> > can manage to make themselves look even more foolish than the people
> > whom they are confronting..  It is not necessary to pepper an article
> > through with  "they believe . . " or "the discredited idea that . .
> > .", etc.  The first burden of proof in a scientific concept rests with
> > the proponents.  If they fail to carry that burden then there is
> > nothing there for the opponents to disprove.  For many of these
> > articles a simple piece of boilerplate, perhaps as the second
> > paragraph, should be enough to satisfy NPOV.  It could read, "The
> > subject of this article is considered unproven by the wider scientific
> > community.  Users relying on the information in this article do so at
> > their own risk."
> >
> > Keeping things simple can save a lot of flames.
> > Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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

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


from_name: Craig Franklin

body:
Scr?obh Mark Williamson:

>If the Britney Spears article said "?'???T???~? ?T?? ???????T?????? ?T?-
????
>[[?????????????.?o?????? ?-?T?'?????T?Y|?????????????.?o??????
?-?T?'????]]" ("Britney Spears is a
>[[popular singer]]") with an actual article of at least stub quality
>at the "Popular Singer" page, it could reasonably be considered a
>substub, but even if there was no article at "Popular Singer" I
>probably wouldn'tve touched it, had it been an actual sentence.

It's funny Mark, I don't seem to remember you being elevated to such a
position where you could make authoritative judgements on what is a stub, a
substub, or whatever.  Whatever would have been the problem with just
expanding the sub-sub-stub or whatever you believed it was to a good
article?  You know, like we do on other, non-minority Wikipedias.  Yet
again, both in your original infraction and your spamming of this list with
hostile defensive flames, you've totally overstepped the bounds of what is
commonly held to be acceptable behaviour here.

On another note, when the first post to this list informing of a problem on
a minority-language Wikipedia came up, was I the only one who thought
"Mark!", before I even opened it to have a read?

Regards,
- Craig Franklin


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [041201 12:31]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > In the case that brought this up - [[Mozilla Firefox]] - the current
> > version is a hideous piece of open-source hagiography that needs a severe
> > NPOV of this sort.

> :-)
> Good catch.  As for me, I *love* Firefox, and I bet most of us do: so
> this is where bias is likely to occur... areas where we are all in
> such agreement anyway.

And in open source, it seems incredibly hard to get NPOV across to
advocates. Or, worse, anti-advocates. You think the Israel/Palestine
mission posters are bad ...

- d.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Textbook-l] re: questions

body:
On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 13:59:15 -0800 (PST), Karl Wick <karlwick at yahoo.com> wrote:

> What will help: time will only help us, as even small
> contributions snowball over time into something impressive.
> Organized or institutional backing, like the grant the
> WikiMedia Foundation recently recieved from the Beck
> Foundation (do I remember that right?) to develop some
> booklets for kids...

You did remember right. The Beck Foundation will be giving us $10000
once our 501(c)3 status comes through. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior for more details and
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior for the three children's books
in progress.

Angela.


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

body:
Sj wrote:
> Classmate finders, that is.
>
> Wikipedia is lately among the 5 most visited reference sites,
> according to our favorite spotty public eyeball yardstick, and somehow
> takes up two spots in the top ten. At least now we're linked from the
> main Reference page.
>
> http://www.alexa.com/browse/categories?catid=10

Great !

One day dictionary.com will be replaced by wiktionary.org.

And once we have enough wiki addict using GPS devices around the world,
we will drop mapquest and maps.yahoo.com with wikimaps.org ! :o)

cheers,

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


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:13:14 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Some procrastination-inspired use of Afrikaans and Dutch dictionaries,
> as well as some googling since they seem woefully incomplete, led to the
> following rough translation:
>
> "This is a demonstration of computer security hacking. (As you start
> "shit", someone will delete and repair this.  Tried earlier to write
> something sinful.)"
>
> Probably not entirely correct as a translation, but I suspect this isn't
> a legitimate contribution. =]

Having Dutch as my first language, I came up with a better translation:

A better translation:

"This is a demonstration of community security as well. (if you start
"shit", someone will wipe this and correct. Try to write something
useful first.)"

Which sounds more like a _reaction to_ vandalism by a bona fide user
than actual vandalism.

Andre Engels


from_name: Wouter Vanden hove

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:

>>> Dit is ook 'n demonstrasie van gemeenskapsekuriteit. (As jy "stront"
>>> aanvang, gaan iemand dit uitvee en regmaak. Probeer eerder iets
>>> sinvol skryf.)

> rough translation:
> "This is a demonstration of computer security hacking. (As you start
> "shit", someone will delete and repair this.  Tried earlier to write
> something sinful.)"

"gemeenskap" = "community"
"sinvol" = "zinvol" in dutch = "meaningful"

My translation would be
"This is also a demonstration of community-security (If you start to
write shit, someone will delete it and correct it). Rather try to write
something meaningful."

Wouter Vanden Hove


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Thanks to everybody that replied.

There is no point for me to take it further, since it's now clear that I
just need to delete the comments.

Ec

Mark Williamson wrote:

>Perhaps you could bring the issue up with Afrikaans-speaking
>Wikipedians? af.wikipedia has thousands of pages, and plenty of users
>who might be willing to contribute the nessecary text for Wikisource.
>
>Mark
>
>On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 15:01:35 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>The following has appeared in the Afrikaans section of the Wikisource
>>main page, but we have had nothing else in Afrikaans.
>>
>>
>>
>>>Dit is ook 'n demonstrasie van gemeenskapsekuriteit. (As jy "stront"
>>>aanvang, gaan iemand dit uitvee en regmaak. Probeer eerder iets sinvol
>>>skryf.)
>>>
>>>
>>Can anyone tell me whether this is something that belongs there.
>>Afrikaans, as the first language alphabetically, seems especially prone
>>to silliness.
>>
>>Looks as though I'll need to keep this permanently protected.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
I would like to introduce a new language on Wikipedia. The language is called chiTumbuka. It is a language widely spoken in the northern and north-central regions of Malawi, eastern parts of Zambia and to a lesser extent, southern parts of Tanzania, Africa. It is estimated that chiTumbuka is spoken by between 4 and 5 million people and 'understood' by a further million or so.
The main reason I want to start a section for this language is to encourage young people to speak it and at the same time enable our parents, some of whom have limited knowledge of English, have access to information via, among other media, the internet.

With the (coming?) introduction of Wikinews, it is my hope that I will have time to translate some of the news into this language. When I was young, there used to be English-Tumbuka dictionaries but I haven't seen a single one for over a decade. I want to preserve my language and hope to introduce an English-Tumbuka e-dictionary along the way. This might also help tourists from Anglophone countries like the US, the UK, Canada, Australia know a few phrases of the language before visiting the aforementioned countries in which the language is spoken.

Any suggestions as to how I can go about setting this language up will be highly appreciated. To avoid clogging other members' inboxes, please contact me privately on dinnette at softhome.net with whatever suggestions/assistance you may have. Thanks for you time.

Kind regards

Dinnette


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New language introduction

body:
On the net, I found "Tumbuka is a Bantu language spoken in Zambia, Malawi & Tanzania.  There are a total of nearly 700,000 speakers in Malawi, where it is spoken primarily in the northern part of the country.  Within Zambia, about 450,000 speakers are located mostly on the eastern side of the country.  The balance of the nearly 2,000,000 total speakers are in Tanzania. "

Gerard is absolutely correct.
We do not *only* work to be *yet* another resource for those who already have actually too much access to information. We also work to become a resource for those who do not have much information.

Adding new languages is certainly a strain on developers. It certainly will be that this project will grow slowly (it would be wiser perhaps to work mostly on wiktionary rather than wikipedia to start with), but I do not think we should on purpose limit the existence of small projects on the motive there will be few editors to work on.

I think increasing the gap between those with information and those without is not in the spirit of what we are trying to do.

He, read this : http://www.timescommunity.com/site/tab1.cfm?newsid=13329958&BRD=2553&PAG=461&dept_id=506042&rfi=6

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Meet the all-new My Yahoo! ? Try it today!


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Account lockout

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> My account has a guessable password and some idiot has used my account for
> some low-grade idiocy (blocked JoeM and put some dumb text on the "Xero"
> page, both reverted quickly) and changed the password. I didn't set the
> email to the account. Could someone change the password/lock the account and
> set the email to "cunctator at kband.com" so I can reset the password?

This is done.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How to destroy the good morning I had...

body:
Justin . wrote:

>On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 01:53:33 +1100, Tim Starling
><t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
>>Mathias Schindler wrote:
>>
>>>http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/02/41ae87066c10f
>>>
>>>"I never fully understood the sheer awfulness of the human condition
>>>until last Tuesday. In the course of a debate about mammalian
>>>intelligence, my friend Harlan and I discovered an online encyclopedia
>>>called Wikipedia.org, a depressingly successful effort to harness the
>>>elusive Power of Loser."
>>>
>>That's brilliant, it's a little insight into the mind of a vandal. He's
>>  calling us all losers for trying to construct something of value. He
>>attacks the site just out of revulsion for the effort we put in. I guess
>>if we want to be more than "barely-sapient", we should discard our
>>geekish ways and go play football.
>>
>>-- Tim Starling
>>
>
>Don't fret it much.  I don't think there's ever been a student
>newspaper that wasn't filled with whining students.
>
Yup, "college junior" pretty much sums it up. He's actually better
than average, almost knows how to use four-syllable words (five
syllables are for seniors).

:-)

I actually think "geekiness" is good for reputation - people
using WP as reference want to know that there are armies of moles
triplechecking every claim, not that a skateboarder occasionally
passes by to reboot the server.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

references:
<BDD06A71.94C8%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<41AB7D99.90900@stardate.freeserve.co.uk> <41AC36F9.20905@telus.net>
	<41ACD84F.6020806@stardate.freeserve.co.uk>
	<42f90dc0041201112815628e3f@mail.gmail.com>

body:
exactly was i was trying to say, but put more elegently.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]
rjs

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 11:28:23 -0800, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:30:07 +0000, R E Broadley
> <20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> > Can we add content that is unproven by the wider scientific community
> > with a boilerplate, or is it barred altogether?
>
> 'Unproven by the wider scientific community' is not the same thing.
> Crackpot theories can, and should, be documented on Wikipedia - as
> long as you're reporting in a NPOV way about someone ELSE's crackpot
> theory that's documented -- they've written a book, a paper, a
> website, whatever.  And as long as they have an audience bigger than
> just themselves, anyway.
>
> Wikipedia is not the place to post your OWN crackpot theories, odd
> philosophy, or whatever.
>
> Basically, an encyclopedia is supposed to be a secondary source.
>
> -Matt
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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

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


from_name: Justin .

body:
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 01:53:33 +1100, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Mathias Schindler wrote:
> > http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/02/41ae87066c10f
> >
> > "I never fully understood the sheer awfulness of the human condition
> > until last Tuesday. In the course of a debate about mammalian
> > intelligence, my friend Harlan and I discovered an online encyclopedia
> > called Wikipedia.org, a depressingly successful effort to harness the
> > elusive Power of Loser."
>
> That's brilliant, it's a little insight into the mind of a vandal. He's
>   calling us all losers for trying to construct something of value. He
> attacks the site just out of revulsion for the effort we put in. I guess
> if we want to be more than "barely-sapient", we should discard our
> geekish ways and go play football.
>
> -- Tim Starling

Don't fret it much.  I don't think there's ever been a student
newspaper that wasn't filled with whining students.

-Justin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
Estimates I find on the net speak of 2 million speakers rather than 4
or 5 million. Still, that number is of course more than enough to say
that a Wikipedia would be a good idea. I do see a problem with the low
internet access in the region; I fear you might remain the only
contributor for quite some time. Still, my opinion here is positive.

The ISO 639 code for Tumbuka is 'tum', so the location would be
tum.wikipedia.org.

Andre Engels

On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 08:09:23 +0200, Mamma Mia <dinnette at softhome.net> wrote:
> I would like to introduce a new language on Wikipedia. The language is called chiTumbuka. It is a language widely spoken in the northern and north-central regions of Malawi, eastern parts of Zambia and to a lesser extent, southern parts of Tanzania, Africa. It is estimated that chiTumbuka is spoken by between 4 and 5 million people and 'understood' by a further million or so.
> The main reason I want to start a section for this language is to encourage young people to speak it and at the same time enable our parents, some of whom have limited knowledge of English, have access to information via, among other media, the internet.
>
> With the (coming?) introduction of Wikinews, it is my hope that I will have time to translate some of the news into this language. When I was young, there used to be English-Tumbuka dictionaries but I haven't seen a single one for over a decade. I want to preserve my language and hope to introduce an English-Tumbuka e-dictionary along the way. This might also help tourists from Anglophone countries like the US, the UK, Canada, Australia know a few phrases of the language before visiting the aforementioned countries in which the language is spoken.
>
> Any suggestions as to how I can go about setting this language up will be highly appreciated. To avoid clogging other members' inboxes, please contact me privately on dinnette at softhome.net with whatever suggestions/assistance you may have. Thanks for you time.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Dinnette
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Houchin, Cecil

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] FW: [Ticket#: 105515] Wikipedia - Concept and Mind
	Maps

body:
Dear Wikipedia Support Team,

Have you ever thought of adding software that would allow the development of
concept and mind maps within Wikipedia?  I believe that concept and mind
mapping are concise and efficient ways to display information and their
associations. I think it would add tremendous value to your site.

A web site with examples of concept and mind maps can be found at:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html

The following websites may also help if your interested:
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/scholonto/summary.html
http://users.edte.utwente.nl/lanzing/cm_home.htm
http://www.macrovu.com/VLBkExmplPgsMenu.html
http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/2001/01/c/index.htm

Thank you for Wikipedia,
Cecil Houchin

-----Original Message-----
From: Wikipedia information team [mailto:info-en at wikimedia.org]
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 4:11 PM
To: Houchin, Cecil
Subject: [Ticket#: 105515] Wikipedia - Concept and Mind Maps

Dear Cecil Houchin,

Thank you for your mail.

> Have you ever thought of adding software that would allow the
> development of concept and mind maps within Wikipedia?  I believe that
> information mapping tools would add tremendous value to your site.

As you may know, Wikimedia projects are written and maintained solely by
volunteers - both on the technical side and the actual content.  Your
suggestion sounds like something our technical volunteers would be
interested in hearing more about.  You might be interested in introducing
your ideas on one of our mailing lists.

Our general information page on the mailing lists is at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_list

In particular the technical mailing list may be of use:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

The general Wikipedia list is also very active:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Thanks for your kind words about Wikipedia,

Regards,

Lisa Cushway
Wikimedia support team

--
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The following has appeared in the Afrikaans section of the Wikisource
> main page, but we have had nothing else in Afrikaans.
>
>> Dit is ook 'n demonstrasie van gemeenskapsekuriteit. (As jy "stront"
>> aanvang, gaan iemand dit uitvee en regmaak. Probeer eerder iets
>> sinvol skryf.)
>
>
> Can anyone tell me whether this is something that belongs there.
> Afrikaans, as the first language alphabetically, seems especially
> prone to silliness.
>
> Looks as though I'll need to keep this permanently protected.
>
> Ec
>
Dutch is similar to Afrikaans: it says This is also a demonstration of
community security (if you add "shit", someone will remove it and
correct it. Try to write something meaningfull"

I do not know the rest of the context but this what it means.
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
Mamma Mia wrote:

>I would like to introduce a new language on Wikipedia. The language is called chiTumbuka. It is a language widely spoken in the northern and north-central regions of Malawi, eastern parts of Zambia and to a lesser extent, southern parts of Tanzania, Africa. It is estimated that chiTumbuka is spoken by between 4 and 5 million people and 'understood' by a further million or so.
>The main reason I want to start a section for this language is to encourage young people to speak it and at the same time enable our parents, some of whom have limited knowledge of English, have access to information via, among other media, the internet.
>
>With the (coming?) introduction of Wikinews, it is my hope that I will have time to translate some of the news into this language. When I was young, there used to be English-Tumbuka dictionaries but I haven't seen a single one for over a decade. I want to preserve my language and hope to introduce an English-Tumbuka e-dictionary along the way. This might also help tourists from Anglophone countries like the US, the UK, Canada, Australia know a few phrases of the language before visiting the aforementioned countries in which the language is spoken.
>
>Any suggestions as to how I can go about setting this language up will be highly appreciated. To avoid clogging other members' inboxes, please contact me privately on dinnette at softhome.net with whatever suggestions/assistance you may have. Thanks for you time.
>
>Kind regards
>
>Dinnette
>_______________________________________________
>
>
Hoi Dinette,
I am from the nl:wiktionary, together with several other wiktionaries we
are cooperating and hope to achieve one big wiktionary which will host
content from any language. One of the drawbacks is the
underrepresentation of African languages. It is not that we do not want
them, it is that we do not know the language and have not found words in
translations. One guy on the nl:wiktionary would be pleased to know the
word "water" in Tumbuka, he has a project to find this word in ALL
languages.

If you look at the word Tumbuka on en:wikipedia, it is another example
of the underrepresentation of African content.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbuka really can use some updating. The
Italian wiktionary has a nice project for Christmas, they want to have
"Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!" in as many languages as possible
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21.

Anyway, if you have a list of Tumbuka words with a translation to
English or another language we would love to include it in the wiktionaries.

Thanks,
    GerardM (Meijssen)


body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> Yup, "college junior" pretty much sums it up. He's actually better
>> than average, almost knows how to use four-syllable words (five
>> syllables are for seniors).
>
> He knows how to use a thesaurus, we have to give him credit for that. A
> dictionary is probably a bit much for him though. From WordNet:
>
>   sapient
>        adj : acutely insightful and wise; "much too perspicacious to be
>              taken in by such a spurious argument"; "observant and
>              thoughtful, he was given to asking sagacious
>              questions"; "a source of valuable insights and sapient
>              advice to educators" [syn: perspicacious, sagacious]
>
> So "barely-sapient" doesn't quite make sense, it's more like "barely
> clever" than "barely sentient", which is probably what he meant.

Hmmm!  Sounds like a large segment of the population has been
disqualified from membership in Homo sapiens. :-)

Ec


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Removing CVS keywords ($Id:$ and friends) from source
	files

body:
I asked brion on #mediawiki if he ever had problems merging between
branches due to the CVS keywords we have embedded in the source code.
Keywords in source make merging between branches kinda hard; you get a
lot of spurious conflicts, and it's consequently harder to find and
resolve the real ones. See this URL for details:

    https://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs-1.11.18/cvs_5.html#SEC64

Brion said that, yes, he did have problems with them, and said to remove
CVS keywords when I saw them. I then did a global search-and-replace
across the codebase, removing all the CVS keywords I could find (almost
all were $Id:$; I found one or two $Revision:$ ones).

I realize that having CVS keywords in source files can be convenient; I
don't think that convenience outweighs the burden put on release
managers when merging across branches. Life's hard enough for our
release managers, and if a release manager misses a real conflict
because a merge caused 65 false ones, we've got a quality problem.

I've added notes to this effect in the coding standards in
docs/design.doc; I'll try to find a place on meta.w.o to add it, too. I
should have posted to the list about it earlier; sorry I didn't.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou                  .O.
http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/       ..O
evan at bad.dynu.ca                OOO
--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041202/63cc34fe/attachment.pgp>


body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Mathias Schindler wrote:
>
>> http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/02/41ae87066c10f
>>
>> "I never fully understood the sheer awfulness of the human condition
>> until last Tuesday. In the course of a debate about mammalian
>> intelligence, my friend Harlan and I discovered an online
>> encyclopedia called Wikipedia.org, a depressingly successful effort
>> to harness the elusive Power of Loser."
>
> That's brilliant, it's a little insight into the mind of a vandal.
> He's  calling us all losers for trying to construct something of
> value. He attacks the site just out of revulsion for the effort we put
> in. I guess if we want to be more than "barely-sapient", we should
> discard our geekish ways and go play football.

The expression "depressingly successful" suggests a tinge of jealousy.

Later in the article he states: "The only drawback is that the content
is just a tad skewed toward entries about hentai, Magic cards and KFC."
Many a chicken found out only too late about the intentions of their
friend Harlan from KFC.

Maybe he should learn Australian rules football, or at least rugby
rather than that tame American excuse for football.

Ec