subject: [Wikitech-l] Static html dump

body:
On Tue, 20 May 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

>
>Welcome!

Thanks!

>Cool! I don't think anyone's really actively working on this at the
>moment, so if you'd like to, that would be great.
>
>A few things to consider:
>
> [...]

Thanks, I'll take a look at the links

>A couple of the big questions that have come up before are:
>
>* filenames -- making sure they can stay within reasonable limits on
>common filesystems, keeping in mind that non-ascii characters and
>case-sensitivity may be handled differently on different OSs, and there
>may be stronger limits on filename lengths.

I'll have to find some minimum common denominator. I have already run into
the upper/lower case problem, that works in URL and on Unix machines, but
not in Windows. I expect the problem of truncated filenames to be similar.

>* search -- an offline search would be very useful for an offline
>reader. JavaScript, Java, local programs are various possibilties.

This would be hard to do without some sort of index file, at least for
article titles. We don't want the search app to scan an entire CD-ROM! :-)
I suspect that fulltext search would be impossible (or deadly slow) from
CD, but quite possible from an "installed" version. Article titles search
may be workable from CD.

>* size! with markup, header and footer text tacked onto every page, a
>static html dump can be very large. The English wiki could at this
>point approach or exceed the size of a CD-ROM without compression. Is
>there a way to get the data compressed and still let it be accessible
>to common web browsers accessing the filesystem directly? Less
>important for a mirror site than a CD, perhaps.

header/footer overhead may be avoided using  frames, but it's a less
portable solution. I will investigate the compression options.

>* interlanguage links - it would be nice to be able to include all
>languages in a single browsable tree, with appropriate cross-links.

I think i'll leave this for a future improvement plan.... :-))

Ciao,
Alfio


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sort order

body:
> (Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>):
> At some point in the near future I'll be adding in a per-language sort
> order adjustment, so that various sorted lists should turn out in more
> or less correct order for a change. :)
>
> I'd appreciate pointers to descriptions of various languages' sorting
> requirements so I can try to get them right.

Collation rules for all languages are defined in the Unicode spec;
I believe MySQL contains many of them, but I'm not sure how to tell
it how to use them.  It's often a lot more complex than doing a few
character substitutions, even for some fairly common languages (for
example, Spanish requires some 2-to-1 subs, German a 1-to-2, and
French uses accents only when necessary).

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Modification in SearchEngine (and other files)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> "Showing below $3 results using the respective limit of $1
> starting with #$2."
>
> Whoa... :)  I'd prefer something simpler:
> "Showing up to $1 results starting with #$2."

If $1 is still the $limit thats simply wrong if, you then get 24 results
(e.g. 4 times title + 20 times full text results).

Well, I know the sentence is not as good as it should be.
>
> Or better yet, just give the actual number of results and let the chunk
> size be shown by the "next X" / "prev X" links.

What do you mean with 'actual number' the '24' or all results? (which
needs a off limit sql-request (bad for performance) - even this would be
nice).

I'm today not at my CVS host, so if you have a better idea fell free.
Next / Prev links still exists, on the search. I'm (and others complain
it) not happy with "Hier sind 20 Ergebnisse, beginnend mit #1." and
seeing 21 (e.g. with "Biographie" as search term). You excuse the
german, but I know you know what I mean.

Smurf
--
Running German Wikipedia at home .. with 90MHz :)
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


from_name: David A. Wheeler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Creating a Plucker version (was: Static html dump)

body:
> Je Mardo 20 Majo 2003 03:53, Alfio Puglisi skribis:
> > I just subscribed (I'm the wikipedia user At18) to ask about the
> > automatic html dump function.  ...
>
> > If anyone is interested, I have a rudimental Perl script that is
> > capable of reading the downloadable SQL dump and output all the
> > articles as separate files in a number of alphabetical directories.
> > It's not very fast, but it works.

That's great!

> > What's missing from the script: wikimarkup -> HTML conversion,

You should be able to call the existing PHP code that generates
HTML to do this.

A tool that generated the entire Wikipedia, in static HTML format,
would make it trivial to generate the "Plucker" format
for Palm PDAs.  Plucker is offline web browser for Palm PDAs;
it's open source software/Free Software (OSS/FS) released under the
GPL.
It can handle HTML, as well as PNG, GIF, JPEG, txt, and a few others;
HTML is usually rendered as you'd expect (hypertext, italics, bold,
font size changes, lists, indenting all work).
It'd be very nice if the Wikipedia were available in Plucker format;
that would mean that an OSS/FS reader could be used to view the text
on a Palm PDA.

Plucker is available at: "http://www.plkr.org".
I have a Palm, and it is the MOST important program I use by far.

One minor problem is that Plucker doesn't have an index
facility. That could be solved by creating HTML pages that link to
sorted articles, e.g., "Master Index" could list "A, B, C...";
clicking on "A" would reach "Index A" which would list "AA, AB, AC...".
Then, modify the static version of the main main page so you
could quickly jump to the master index.

Internally, Plucker will break long pages (>32K) into multiple
pages with front and back link - but that'll be automatic and
won't affect anything.

I don't know of an automatic way to download the Wikipedia
images (which, in my mind, is a serious problem).  Hopefully there
will soon be a way to download the images other than trawling.
However, for a Palm you'd have to drop the images in general anyway,
so for that particular use it wouldn't matter.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Wed, 21 May 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Hmm, wait, is that what you mean? Why would we want that? Those are two
> > entirely separate searches...
>
> But they are handled with the same next/prev schema. Which is confusing the
> users a little bit. It was my intention to fix the text in a way the users
> are less confused.

Well, I'm more confused. :)

Personally, I think it would be easier still if we just had one set of
search results. If we reindexed on title plus content combined, with an
option to search titles only...?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageFr.php

body:
Thank you Brion,
It sound very good !
I like especially the new recent change... pity it don't work on all
browser.
It's java-script ?

I have an error on the mispelling page :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=mispeelings

Here is the fallacious request :
SELECT cur_text FROM cur WHERE
cur_title='Liste_de_fautes_d'orthographe_courantes' AND cur_namespace=4

And here is the line where we decalere mispeeling translation :
"mispeelings"           => "Pages avec fautes d'orthographe",
"mispeelingstext"               => "Les pages suivantes contiennent une
faute d'orthographe courante (la liste de celles-ci est sur $1).
L'orthographe correcte est peut-?tre (ceci).",
"mispeelingspage"       => "Liste de fautes d'orthographe courantes",

Any  idea ?

Aoineko


from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sort order

body:
On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 01:46:48PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Tue, 20 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > Collation rules for all languages are defined in the Unicode spec;
>
> Well, that could be handy. :) I'll see if I can dig them up.
>
> hmm... This looks like a place to start:
> http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr10/
>
>
> > I believe MySQL contains many of them, but I'm not sure how to tell
> > it how to use them.
>
> MySQL's really ugly in this regard. First, no UTF-8 support at all.* The
> collation order modules that it does have (for some 8-bit charsets and
> some multibyte) can only be enabled on a server-wide basis, so we can't
> say "this database sorts as english, this one sorts as german, this one
> sorts as polish" unless we run separate instances of MySQL.
>
> * Allegedly 4.1 has/will have some unicode support. It's not stable
> though.
>
> ** Yes, I know PostgresQL has Unicode support. :)  I don't know if it
> supports per-table or per-column selection of collation order, and there
> would be much other work to get Wikipedia running on it.

Well, PostgreSQL allows you to set the encoding on a per database basis.
So, you can have some databases with UTF-8, some with EUC_JP, etc.  I
don't think you can have some ASCII rows and some unicode rows, although
I could certainly be wrong.  Its collation rules are based on whatever
character set the database is.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageFr.php

body:
> Aha, we're missing a wfStrencode(), so it's croaking on the
> apostrophe... should be fixed now.
>
> (I haven't yet checked the change in to CVS as the sourceforge server
> seems to be offline at the moment.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Ok, cool !
It's not hurried... anyhow the misspeling page don't work well on french
wikipedia ;o)
It don't check accent while it is the more common misspeling  in french
(with double consonant).
Can you add the misspeling function to "class Language" that we can make a
different version for "class LanguageFr" ?
Regards,

Aoineko


subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageFr.php

body:
> Ok, cool !
> It's not hurried... anyhow the misspeling page don't work well on french
> wikipedia ;o)
> It don't check accent while it is the more common misspeling  in french
> (with double consonant).
> Can you add the misspeling function to "class Language" that we can make a
> different version for "class LanguageFr" ?
> Regards,
>
> Aoineko

Sorry I just think there are perhaps a more easy way.
I don't know exactly what this used for :

"linktrail"     => "/^([a-z?????????]+)(.*)\$/sD",

But perhaps we can use a different filter (it is?) for the misspelling page.
For search page -> we want to find page even if we forget an accent
For misspelling page -> we want to find pages where there are accent
misspelling

An other question :
I have the developper statute on CVS. If I finally succeed to connect to CVS
from my office I will be able to make my own update. Who to ask before to do
any update ? This list ? Where can I found the "todo list" ? I'm video-game
programmer so I'm more efficient in hard core coding than in data-base
programming.

Regards,

Aoineko


body:
On Wed, 21 May 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:
> But (never without a but;) I think 2 types of seaches are needed most:
> 1. Search parts of title ( cur_title like "%query%" ), possibly a regex
> (rlike '.*query.*') would be better.

Or boolean fulltext search:
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Fulltext_Search.html

> Add on:
> If we (developer) create a 'search_title' field in the DB, we can do:
>   [cur|old]_search_title = Language_depending_converting_function(cur_title)

See treatment of si_title field in searchindex table.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alex T.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se) said:

> Alex R. wrote:
>
> > As Larousse is a French publisher of French books, how can there be
> > confusion?
>
> Look Alex, (1) I'm not trying to win an *argument*, and (2) I'm not
> having an argument with *you*.  All I said was that I would recommend
> against using names that are trademarks.  You are free to ignore my
> recommendations.  I'm not speaking for Larousse and I'm not a lawyer.
> Actually, your response makes me regret I mentioned this at all.
> This is my last posting on this topic.
>
I am not arguing with anyone. I am just stating my opinion, which is what
I thought this discussion list was for. If it is for something else, would
someone please let me know, as that is not what it is being represented
to be.

I was responding to your opinion, which is that there might be a legal
problem using the word "laroussee" and in fact I was agreeing with you
(even more so than other posts) as the word larousse IS registered with
the USPTO. Technically you are right maybe Wikipedia should worry
about using this name even if it is the name of an encyclopediest or
the name of a Red Head Linux Server or even what I say when I am ordering
an amber beer in Montreal. ''Donnez-moi la rousse, SVP!''

The point is not all use of a trademark is infringement of that mark, I am
not offering Wikipedia my legal opinion (though I do admit to being
a lawyer, I hope that doesn't make anyone nervous) but just stating
what to me seems pretty obvious, it is the French word that Larousse
is trying to protect as a mark for its French encyclopedias, not for all
uses of the word.  Unlike copyright trademarks must be used to be
protected, and while there is an argument that the word larousse is
a registered trademark referring to encyclopedias, it is also true that
they only use it in reference to French encyclopedias, it is maybe like
saying that that word Exxon cannot be used by an insurance company,
well Exxon refers to oil and gas, not to insurance, they are different
things, and I was arguing that there was no underlying confusion between
the use of the name Larousse as a server for an English encyclopedia
web site, not that it wasn't a trademark infringement, only a federal
district judge can make that determination and that determination is
based, in part, about their being confusion between the two uses.
I hope the above  does not upset you, Lars, it was not my intention.
Alex756


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] unlisted administrators

body:
Hum...question...

When did Alvaro become an admin ? And why is he not
listed on the sysop list ?

Anthere (still wishing Anth?re account be deleted and
made non usable by other people since she can't write
her name proper as she did before from time to time)

--- Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, 19 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> > according to [[Special:Statistics]], there are 69
> > administrators. Only 66 are listed. Who are the
> > missing three?
>
> First, the statistics page is broken in this regard.
> It should say 68, not
> 69; it mistakenly counts the old Rambot bot account.
>
> Here's a complete list:
> +--------------------+-----------------+
> | user_name          | user_rights     |
> +--------------------+-----------------+
> | -- April           | sysop           |
> | 172                | sysop           |
> | Alvaro             | sysop           |
> | Ams80              | sysop           |
> | Andre Engels       | sysop           |
> | AstroNomer         | sysop           |
> | AxelBoldt          | sysop           |
> | Brion VIBBER       | sysop,developer |
> | Bryan Derksen      | sysop           |
> | Camembert          | sysop           |
> | Chuck SMITH        | sysop           |
> | Clifford Adams     | sysop           |
> | Cordyph            | sysop           |
> | Cprompt            | sysop           |
> | Danny              | sysop           |
> | Ed Poor            | sysop,developer |
> | Eloquence          | sysop,developer |
> | Enchanter          | sysop           |
> | Fred Bauder        | sysop           |
> | Hephaestos         | sysop           |
> | Infrogmation       | sysop           |
> | J Hofmann Kemp     | sysop           |
> | Jasonr             | sysop           |
> | JeLuF              | sysop           |
> | Jimbo Wales        | sysop,developer |
> | Jimfbleak          | sysop           |
> | JohnOwens          | sysop           |
> | Karen Johnson      | sysop           |
> | Khendon            | sysop           |
> | Kingturtle         | sysop           |
> | LC                 | sysop           |
> | Lee Daniel Crocker | sysop,developer |
> | LittleDan          | sysop           |
> | Magnus Manske      | sysop,developer |
> | Manning Bartlett   | sysop           |
> | Mark Christensen   | sysop           |
> | Maveric149         | sysop           |
> | Minesweeper        | sysop           |
> | Mirwin             | sysop           |
> | Montrealais        | sysop           |
> | MyRedDice          | sysop           |
> | Notheruser         | sysop           |
> | Oliver Pereira     | sysop           |
> | Peter Winnberg     | sysop           |
> | PierreAbbat        | sysop           |
> | Robert Merkel      | sysop           |
> | RoseParks          | sysop           |
> | Sannse             | sysop           |
> | Scipius            | sysop           |
> | Sheldon Rampton    | sysop           |
> | Sjc                | sysop           |
> | Slrubenstein       | sysop           |
> | Someone else       | sysop           |
> | Stephen Gilbert    | sysop           |
> | TUF-KAT            | sysop           |
> | Tannin             | sysop           |
> | Tarquin            | sysop           |
> | Taw                | sysop           |
> | The Anome          | sysop           |
> | The Cunctator      | sysop           |
> | The Epopt          | sysop           |
> | Tim Shell          | sysop           |
> | Tim Starling       | sysop           |
> | Timshell           | sysop           |
> | Toby Bartels       | sysop           |
> | Vicki Rosenzweig   | sysop           |
> | WojPob             | sysop           |
> | Zoe                | sysop           |
> +--------------------+-----------------+
> 68 rows in set (0.15 sec)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sort order

body:
On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 11:29:31AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> At some point in the near future I'll be adding in a per-language sort
> order adjustment, so that various sorted lists should turn out in more
> or less correct order for a change. :)
>
> I'd appreciate pointers to descriptions of various languages' sorting
> requirements so I can try to get them right.
>
> I don't know if we can handle Japanese and Chinese sensibly, but
> alphabetic languages should generally work fairly well by making a
> munged copy of the string such that, eg, if "?" sorts as the same as
> "o" we just change it to "o"; if "?" sorts after "o" (as in Polish
> IIRC), it becomes "o~", which should always sort after any "o" and
> before any "p" in a binary ASCII-order string sort.
>
> Simple replacements should generally work, though we can also do more
> complicated replacements of certain sequences of characters.

1.
In some languages certain letter pairs are treated as single letter,
for example in Czech, "ch" is a letter, so "ca", "cz", "ch", "da"
would be the correct sort order ;)
Polish is 100% sane about that, maybe with exception of having two
diactrics based on z (order: y z z' z.).

2.
Some languages sort first by primary then by secondary characteristics,
so it's *not lexicographical order*
For exampre to sort Japanese kana you have to:
    if (strip_"_ond_o(x) != strip_"_ond_o(y))
	return strip_"_ond_o(x)-strip_"_ond_o(y);
    else
	return x-y;

So order is like: kou gou kouin.
Then, sorting kanji is even worse.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dante Alighieri is a sysop

body:
Dante has applied for sysop status and been seconded with no objections,
so I've made him a sysop. Of course, the Pope might still express
reservations ;-)

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] SpamAssassin

body:
Some of the mailing lists are getting, and their admins regularly
rejecting, a fair amount of spam.

I'm going to see if I can get SpamAssassin set up to cull some of the
more wretchedly obvious stuff out before it gets to mailman.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sort order

body:
Nick Reinking wrote:
>
> Well, PostgreSQL allows you to set the encoding on a per database basis.
> So, you can have some databases with UTF-8, some with EUC_JP, etc.  I
> don't think you can have some ASCII rows and some unicode rows, although
> I could certainly be wrong.  Its collation rules are based on whatever
> character set the database is.
>

Database is correct. See:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/view.php?version=7.3&idoc=0&file=multibyte.html

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Je Mardo 20 Majo 2003 05:42, Thomas Corell skribis:
>
>>Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>>Whoa... :)  I'd prefer something simpler:
>>>"Showing up to $1 results starting with #$2."
>>
>>If $1 is still the $limit thats simply wrong if, you then get 24
>>results (e.g. 4 times title + 20 times full text results).
>
>
> Hmm, wait, is that what you mean? Why would we want that? Those are two
> entirely separate searches...

But they are handled with the same next/prev schema. Which is confusing the
users a little bit. It was my intention to fix the text in a way the users
are less confused.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Wed, 21 May 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:
>

> Well, I'm more confused. :)
>
Sorry, that was not intended.

> Personally, I think it would be easier still if we just had one set of
> search results. If we reindexed on title plus content combined, with an
> option to search titles only...?

Well, combining would be fine, if possible without stressing the machine.

But (never without a but;) I think 2 types of seaches are needed most:
1. Search parts of title ( cur_title like "%query%" ), possibly a regex
(rlike '.*query.*') would be better.

2. Full text search, which is effectiv a word based search. That's good
enough IMHO like it is today.

Add on:
If we (developer) create a 'search_title' field in the DB, we can do:
  [cur|old]_search_title = Language_depending_converting_function(cur_title)

so a search query, '$query' can be done by:
  $query = Language_depending_converting_function($query)
  [cur|old]_search_title rlike '.*$query.*'

we can do it on the fly as well. And we can easily delegate the Language
search (for title) to the Landuage??.php files.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Well, I'm more confused. :)

Ok, take e.g.:

http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=Alan

The user _reads_:

Showing below 20 results starting with #1.
View (previous 20) (next 20) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500).
Article title matches

    1. Alan
    ...
    20. Alan Backer

Article text matches

    1. Alan Smithee (2073 bytes)
    ...
   20. Abe Lincoln in Illinois (726 bytes)

View (previous 20) (next 20) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500).

I (as a user) count 2 times 20 results equals 40..but why there's written:
"Showing below 20 results starting with #1." ?

I (as a user) think: this <ironic>stupid</ironic> programmers can't count,
(and tey have a computer doing this...).

I (as reader of the source code) know that this are two diffrent query's,
but the user don't know that unfortunatly.

I had a long discussion the last two days about SpecialContributions.php,
which do something similar, with more 'hidden' funny results. Because I
know you can read german, take a look:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Smurf/SpecialContributions.php
Especially the example from Olaf1541 is showing the problem very good. The
page is intented to explain the 'funny' restults to users, and is work in
progress ;) Some guys would substitute 'funny' with 'buggy', but I think
about it more in a 'feature' way.

Hope it helps to get you less confused.
--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin nominations

body:
Alex R. wrote:
> LittleDan informed me that he nominated me, I'm not quite sure I
>should accept the nomination (I don't think it has been seconded). I'm
>a bit new here and willing to do my share of housekeeping if that is
>part of what being a good Wikipedian is all about, but if being a
>sysop is a status thing then I'm not really interested.

Part of the reason it's important that people like you become sysops
is to help us keep it from being a status thing.  It's a technical
thing, not a status thing.  Or it's supposed to be.  But as long as we
have a small number of sysops, it's too tempting for "us" to feel that
we have to keep a special watch on "them" in a way that's very
un-wiki.

Being a sysop is only a status thing in the sense that it means that
you're trusted not to post obscene material on the homepage, to use
certain destructive commands only in accordance with long-established
custom, if at all, and that you'll help police against vandals in a
gentle and caring way.

--Jimbo


subject: Lir and his clones  (Was: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sysop nomination: Jtdirl)

in_reply_to: <3EC131AE.80107@tmbg.org>; from cprompt@tmbg.org on Tue, May 13, 2003 at 01:55:58PM -0400

body:
cprompt wrote:
> I've advised Lir in the past to stop making new accounts, apologize and
> ask the list for permission to return, and for guidance when he does
> something that makes people want to block him. He says that he's already
> done that, and he doesn't think that the list would respond well to
> that. So, what do you people think? If Lir came around and said all of
> that, how would you feel?

I'm in a unique position to make unpopular decisions and have them
stick, and I can say that if Lir were to mature and agree to act
co-operatively, I'd buck some serious heat if necessary to give
another chance.  I've done it before and been disappointed, but my
nature is to be very willing to allow people ways to grow, and to
"save face" and become something other than a pariah.

I'm constantly concerned, as is well known, that threats of banning
are tossed around too lightly, and that we should try (to a *point*,
at least) to reform people with love rather than berate them into
submission.  A reformed Lir would be a great propaganda coup for me,
illustrating that positive change is possible and desirable and so on.

However, the constant attacks -- and I consider making new accounts
and editing while banned to be a form of 'fuck you' to my face -- make
it difficult to believe that there's been any change at all.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and controversial material

in_reply_to: <20030513124614.53725.qmail@web41804.mail.yahoo.com>; from littledanehren@yahoo.com on Tue, May 13, 2003 at 05:46:14AM -0700

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I don't think we should have an actual photograph in this case. Just
>think what would be acceptable in schools (actually, a lot of
>wikipedia probably wouldn't be acceptable in schools, like its lack of
>"drugs are evil" stance, but this is much worse). I don't think
>photographs of genitalia belong in an encyclopedia, no matter how
>informative. Drawings would be a much better alternative.

One of the beauties of NPOV is that it works like a fancy martial arts
move to undermine critics.  Anyone who is critical of our lack of
"drugs are evil" stance is not going to be able to say that we are a
pro-drug encyclopedia, because we aren't pro- or anti- anything.

If a fact is value-sensitive, we don't assert it, we report that it is
asserted.  We can quite honestly and accurately report on the
arguments of the drug warriors and their opponents, and we should be
doing it in such a way that neither side will find anything particular
objectionable about our presentation.

It a little harder to wrap one's mind around NPOV for a picture --
after all, isn't a picture objectively 'true' in a sense, so long as
it isn't faked?  But a picture says a thousand words, and those words
can have bias, nuance, suggested other meanings, etc.  100 pictures or
drawings of something controversial will all be different, and some
will be objectionable to some people for various reasons.  The NPOV
choice should make everyone -- or nearly so -- happy.

We have managed to have several articles on obscene words that are
tactful and tasteful and informative and entertaining and NPOV.  We
ought to be able to treat this issue in the same way.

I think that Daniel Ehrenberg is right, that a drawing is likely to be
more educational, more informative, and -- importantly -- to be more
tasteful.

Not everything in the wikipedia needs to be such that mainstream
parents will think it is o.k. for kids to read, although most of it
should be.  Someday there will probably be a kids wikipedia, probably
partly machine-generated and partly human-edited.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] JohnQ / MaryMary - the clitoris guy

in_reply_to: <opro6ma3f1zs1r4a@localhost>; from lists@dramatic.co.nz on Thu, May 15, 2003 at 09:36:29AM +1200

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:
> Ok then, consider a parallel case: For many years, the Encyclopedia
> Brittanica contained quite detailed information on the extraction of
> opitates from poppies (it may still do for all I know, but the only copy I
> have access to is 1970's) - probably enough for someone to be able to
> replicate it. Or perhaps the case of chemical recipies for explosives -
> should Wikipedia, in the interests of being NPOV and encyclopedic, include
> these?

Yes, I think so.  There might be some practical reasons to refrain in
some cases, i.e. if a legal battle which threatened the future of the
project seemed likely, then a tough decision would have to be made as to
the best course of action.  But that's highly unlikely.

> Some information is suppressed for the "public good". In fact the
> scope of information that is suppressed is one of the key determinants of
> whether we regard a particular political environment as being "free" or
> not. -- Richard Grevers

Hopefully, wikipedia works in the service of the free flow of
information as much as we can.

--Jimbo


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sort order

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> At some point in the near future I'll be adding in a per-language sort
> order adjustment, so that various sorted lists should turn out in more
> or less correct order for a change. :)
>
> I'd appreciate pointers to descriptions of various languages' sorting
> requirements so I can try to get them right.

If you set the environment variable LC_COLLATE to sv_SE.ISO8859-1 or
sv_SE.UTF-8, Linux sort(1), strcmp(3), qsort(3) and MySQL will do the
right thing for Swedish.  I think this true for PHP as well.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/


in_reply_to: <8lphtn2CpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Wed, May 14, 2003 at 11:57:00PM +0200

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> The only forms of censorship Wikipedia should abide by are those demanded
> by United States law (or the respective local equivalents for the
> international Wikipedias).

I would amend this only in saying that I think international
wikipedians should of course follow the law in their own country --
I'd hate to think of us taking up a collection for a fund to help a
fellow wikipedian in Iran or North Korea who has been imprisoned for
writing an NPOV article on some topic that is suppressed there.

But there is no need for kr.wikipedia.org (Korean wikipedia) to be
concerned, as an institution, for Korean law.

I suppose there might be a difficult decision to be made at some
point, if -- for example -- France tried to block wikipedia because
they didn't approve of something we've published (as in the case of
Yahoo).  Do we follow French law, so as to at least reach the French
with as much NPOV as we can, or do we refuse, and trust the French
people to find a way around the ban?

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <opro60a3txzs1r4a@localhost>; from lists@dramatic.co.nz on Thu, May 15, 2003 at 02:38:53PM +1200

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:
> I don't - although if their inclusion results in W being banned from
> schools etc then it becomes debatable as to whether inclusion is in
> Wikipedia's best interests.

I think that's right.  And I think LittleDan's concerns are
legitimate, quite apart from any questions of censorship.  The
question is: how do we present information that's potentially "hot" in
a fashion that's NPOV and educational and tasteful, and in the case in
point, would a drawing be better than a photo?

I have certainly in my day seen photos of genetalia that were tasteful
and "medical", as well as photos that were tasteless, as well as
photos that were tasteful and erotic.  As with any form of expression,
there's a thoughtful and responsible way to express what we want to
express, and we should do that.

> Well in the "free" United States since recent regulations, if someone
> posted information that certain agencies decided were an aid to terrorists,
> could not those agencies arrest Jimbo for refusing to disclose information
> on the user who posted it?

Not that it's really relevant right now, but I take the very rare
position among libertarians of finding that the Patriot Act provisions
that you're referring to are not nearly as draconian as most media
outlets and civil libertarins make them out to be.  It's not a good
law, but the changes that it made are much less than most people
realize.

I'll post more about this if people are interested.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary proposal to Princeton WordNet project

in_reply_to: <3EC09E73.2090008@wikipedia.org>; from wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org on Tue, May 13, 2003 at 12:27:47AM -0700

body:
Let me know if there's anything you want me to do.  (I just got back
from vacation.)

Merphant wrote:

> A few of us have drafted a letter to Princeton's cognitive science
> department, asking permission to use data from their WordNet project in
> Wiktionary. We think it's ready to send:
>
> http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary%3APrinceton_wordnet
>
> My question is, who should send it? Jimbo, I guess, but it looks like
> he's on vacation right now. Maybe whoever sends it should just put the
> wikpedia-l address in the From: header, so everyone can read their
> response and/or questions, etc. Comments?
>
> Merphant
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] I have apoligized

in_reply_to: <20030514045244.68326.qmail@web14702.mail.yahoo.com>; from cddvdlenscleaner@yahoo.com on Tue, May 13, 2003 at 09:52:44PM -0700

body:
Adam von [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> I have apoligized, on numerous occasions and via numerous channels
>of communication. I have apoligized both publicly and privately. I
>have apoligized both to the general community and to specific
>individuals.

You have also repeatedly signed up for accounts in violation of the
ban, thus illustrating that the apologies were meaningless, that you
don't respect community norms, and that nothing has changed.

> It would be appropriate, for those who argue that I am a vandal, to
>stop stating that I have refused to abide by wiki guidelines, that I
>have refused to apoligize, or that I have refused to admit that my
>behavior was inappropriate.

But you *have* refused to abide by wiki guidelines.  You have
repeatedly, and against both private and public warnings, persisted in
behavior that I have promised you will keep you banned.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin nominations

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Being a sysop is only a status thing in the sense
> that it means that
> you're trusted not to post obscene material on the
> homepage, to use
> certain destructive commands only in accordance with
> long-established
> custom, if at all, and that you'll help police
> against vandals in a
> gentle and caring way.

All being behaviors that anybody could follow, without
being necessary a sysop. Being gentle, caring, loving
and trusted, is not the prerogative of a sysop.

Anthere (without accent please)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] SpamAssassin

body:
I have a better suggestion -- upgrade to the most recent version of
mailman.

The new version of mailman has an option to automatically discard any
message that's from someone who isn't subscribed to the list.  It
still sends them a message explaining the problem, but the admin
doesn't have to see it.

In my experience on another whole set of lists that I manage, this
works wonderfully.  The amount of spam that admins have to deal with
goes to an absolute zero.

Brion Vibber wrote:

> Some of the mailing lists are getting, and their admins regularly
> rejecting, a fair amount of spam.
>
> I'm going to see if I can get SpamAssassin set up to cull some of the
> more wretchedly obvious stuff out before it gets to mailman.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > The only forms of censorship Wikipedia should
> abide by are those demanded
> > by United States law (or the respective local
> equivalents for the
> > international Wikipedias).
>
> I would amend this only in saying that I think
> international
> wikipedians should of course follow the law in their
> own country --
> I'd hate to think of us taking up a collection for a
> fund to help a
> fellow wikipedian in Iran or North Korea who has
> been imprisoned for
> writing an NPOV article on some topic that is
> suppressed there.
>
> But there is no need for kr.wikipedia.org (Korean
> wikipedia) to be
> concerned, as an institution, for Korean law.
>
> I suppose there might be a difficult decision to be
> made at some
> point, if -- for example -- France tried to block
> wikipedia because
> they didn't approve of something we've published (as
> in the case of
> Yahoo).  Do we follow French law, so as to at least
> reach the French
> with as much NPOV as we can, or do we refuse, and
> trust the French
> people to find a way around the ban?

Imho, better trust us to have imagination and to find
ways to turn around things.
In France, I would say the toughest is not the law,
the toughest are (is ?) the barriers people build
themselves thinking of the law.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[The Economist]]

body:
[Side note: I'm about halfway through my backlog of messages, and I'll
probably just be reading a lot of the discussions from when I'm gone,
because if I responded to everything, I'd just generate a lot of
noise.  I'm dull and predictable, though, so it's almost always
possible to envision what I would have said anyway.  When the killer
robots come to replace us, I'll be one of the first to go.]

I have a message that someone from _The Economist_ magazine is trying
to contact me for a chat about wikipedia.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist

is not bad, but it'd be neat to flesh it out.  It would *not* be neat
to have a flame war about the content.  :-)


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

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

Alex R. wrote:
|
| wasn't Larousse the man the founder of Larousse the company? This is
| the whole point of a trademark, you can't call Spanish sparkling wine
| champagne as champagne is a trademark identified with the production
| of sparking wine in a particular French region.
|
| Alex756

On the other hand, sparkling wine from California ''is'' called
champagne. Trademarks, especially in the international arena, are seldom
absolute.

- --
~ Sean Barrett     | Vortex goggles on? Here we go! --Calvin
~ sean at epoptic.com |
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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Wed, 21 May 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:
>
>>But (never without a but;) I think 2 types of seaches are needed most:
>>1. Search parts of title ( cur_title like "%query%" ), possibly a regex
>>(rlike '.*query.*') would be better.
> Or boolean fulltext search:
> http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Fulltext_Search.html

Ok, after reading it you forget to be confused over "boolean" (I realy
realy expected something different) and Yes, thats what we want :)

>
>
>>Add on:
>>If we (developer) create a 'search_title' field in the DB, we can do:
>>  [cur|old]_search_title = Language_depending_converting_function(cur_title)
> See treatment of si_title field in searchindex table.

Oh, well. I see just another thing noboby telled LanguageDe.php. You will
replace e.g. '?' with 'ae' and so on.

I will never talk about ideas anymore if I'm not realy shure that
LanguageDe.php only works ugly because noboby told it to do it the right
way. I'm sure the one who setted it up missed it to enter a lot of /* FIXME
*/ comments.

*Smurf stands in his corner like a drowned rat*

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] DB error [wikide]

body:
Just another DB-Error:

cur_id	cur_namespace	cur_title	cur_text	cur_is_redirect

5144
0
Tacitus_(Kaiser)
#REDIRECT [[Marcus Claudius Tacitus]]
0

It should be "cur_is_redirect = 1" or did I miss something again?
How to solve this? (other than "update cur set cur_is_redirect=1 where
cur_id = '5144'")

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

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

tarquin wrote:
| Reality check:
| it's a server name.
| NOBODY is going to see it except the devs and the occasional mention of
| "our Larousse server is down" on this mailing list.

Ah, such savoir-plaindre!  Have some champagne de la Californie and join
the bagarre.

[This message is close-smilied for the humor-impared.]

- --
~ Sean Barrett     | Vortex goggles on? Here we go! --Calvin
~ sean at epoptic.com |
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[The Economist]]

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>[Side note: I'm about halfway through my backlog of messages, and I'll
>probably just be reading a lot of the discussions from when I'm gone,
>because if I responded to everything, I'd just generate a lot of
>noise.  I'm dull and predictable, though, so it's almost always
>possible to envision what I would have said anyway.  When the killer
>robots come to replace us, I'll be one of the first to go.]
>
Wading through accumulated messages can easily turn otherwise sane
people into killer robots. :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>>On the other hand, sparkling wine from California ''is'' called
>>champagne. Trademarks, especially in the international arena, are seldom
>>absolute.
>>
>
>It's a bad example anyway, because 'Champagne' is not a trademark. A trademark
>is owned by a single company (although it might allow others to use it).
>"Champagne" is a _product name_ (and the European Union has specified that
>only when it is created in a certain region, the product name may be used).
>
One cannot confuse American champagne with the real stuff.  It's all in
the taste.  Some producers do use the expression that their sparkling
wine is produced in the "m?thede champennoise".

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
tarquin wrote:

> > *much debate*
>
> Reality check:
> it's a server name.
> NOBODY is going to see it except the devs and the occasional mention
> of "our Larousse server is down" on this mailing list.

You took the words right out of my keyboard!
Ec


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
"Oliver Pereira" wrote on  Wednesday, May 21, 2003 5:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

>
> My copy of the "New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Animal Life" is an
> English-language encyclopaedia, although it is based on a French work. I'm
> not making any legal point at all, but I must admit that Wikipedia's use
> of the name did strike me as odd. A bit like Microsoft calling one of its
> servers "macintosh", and then saying, "Yeah, but we named after an
> esteemed computer scientist, not the rival brand of computers..."
>
> Oliver

I think that the analogy with Macintosh may be a bit wrong. If someone
gets linked to Wikipedia by putting the word larousse into a brower,
search engine, etc., in light of  Larousse publishing English encyclopedias
I think that they might have a trademark infringement issue, the word, in
English is considered fanciful.  It is not an actual English word and it
was not MrLarousse or Drlarousse it is the exact infringing word. And
wasn't Larousse the man the founder of Larousse the company? This is
the whole point of a trademark, you can't call Spanish sparkling wine
champagne as champagne is a trademark identified with the production
of sparking wine in a particular French region.

Since it links to an encyclopedia there is not an issue of secondary
meaning.
This is the protection that Larousse was seeking when it applied for
a trademark and got it from the US government.

I am just saying here that one might have a hard time convincing a federal
judge, in light of the use of Larousse as a trademark name and being used
for English encyclopedias that its trademark was not infringed.  Of course
the infringement may be insignificant, but that is not the issue, is it?

Alex756

>
> +-------------------------------------------+
> | Oliver Pereira                            |
> | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
> | University of Southampton                 |
> | omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
> +-------------------------------------------+
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
On Tue, 20 May 2003, Alex T. wrote:

> The point is not all use of a trademark is infringement of that mark, I am
> not offering Wikipedia my legal opinion (though I do admit to being
> a lawyer, I hope that doesn't make anyone nervous) but just stating
> what to me seems pretty obvious, it is the French word that Larousse
> is trying to protect as a mark for its French encyclopedias, not for all
> uses of the word.  Unlike copyright trademarks must be used to be
> protected, and while there is an argument that the word larousse is
> a registered trademark referring to encyclopedias, it is also true that
> they only use it in reference to French encyclopedias

My copy of the "New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Animal Life" is an
English-language encyclopaedia, although it is based on a French work. I'm
not making any legal point at all, but I must admit that Wikipedia's use
of the name did strike me as odd. A bit like Microsoft calling one of its
servers "macintosh", and then saying, "Yeah, but we named after an
esteemed computer scientist, not the rival brand of computers..."

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
--- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Alex R. wrote:
> |
> | wasn't Larousse the man the founder of Larousse
> the company? This is
> | the whole point of a trademark, you can't call
> Spanish sparkling wine
> | champagne as champagne is a trademark identified
> with the production
> | of sparking wine in a particular French region.
> |
> | Alex756
>
> On the other hand, sparkling wine from California
> ''is'' called
> champagne. Trademarks, especially in the
> international arena, are seldom
> absolute.

In any case, that was real nice to give a "french"
name to the server and we appreciated the choice.

This said, trademark or no trademark, the french
Champagne is best.

Initially, the Champagne region was a very poor
region, very very low yields due to soils not really
fit for agriculture. It was refered (or rr ?) to as
"Champagne pouilleuse" ("poux" are lices).

Later, with progress in agricultural techniques, soils
were improved. It is now one of the richest regions in
terms of agriculture. We grow there wine (for
Champagne in particular), potatoes (1000 euros of
margin for an hectare) and beets.

Single women ! marry Champagne farmers. Thanks to
potatoes, beets and all the money from great Champagne
exports, they are *rich* guys.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikitech-l] SpamAssassin

body:
On 5/21/03 9:04 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> I have a better suggestion -- upgrade to the most recent version of
> mailman.
>
bulletin board....


from_name: uwe kils

subject: [WikiEN-l] sysop member request uwe kils

body:
Dear Wikipedians,

I would like to request to become a sysop member of your project
my user name is

kils

and I work on oceanography subjects and like your project a lot

-------------------------

Uwe Kils, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Marine Biology
Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences
Rutgers University
71 Dudley Road
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901-8521
Phone: 732/932-6555 extension 367
Fax: 732/932-6557
Email: kils at imcs.rutgers.edu
http://www.ecoscope.com

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body:
Anthere wrote:

>Imho, better trust us to have imagination and to find
>ways to turn around things.
>In France, I would say the toughest is not the law,
>the toughest are (is ?) the barriers people build
>themselves thinking of the law.
>
This is an insightful comment, but its truth is not limited to France.

There are a lot of people running around trying, in completely good
faith, to impose an interpretation of the law that has more to do with
their view of the law than the law itself.  In other words most of them
have no idea what they are talking about, and no direct connection with
the current issue.  At Wikipedia we probably notice it more in terms of
intellectual property law, but it can also come up in other area such as
libel, obscenity, sedition etc. My general approach to these is (in order):
    1.    Use common sense in what I say or write.
    2.    Investigate what business the complainer has making his complaint
    3.    Use common sense in evaluating the complaint
    4.    Admit when I'm wrong while knowing full well that it is easier
to get forgiveness than to get permission

The difficulty is obtaining permission is not based on an unwillingness
of somebody to give it, but in determining with any certainty just who
has the right to give that permission.

Ec


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[The Economist]]

body:
At 09:24 AM 5/21/2003, you wrote:
>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>[Side note: I'm about halfway through my backlog of messages, and I'll
>>probably just be reading a lot of the discussions from when I'm gone,
>>because if I responded to everything, I'd just generate a lot of
>>noise.  I'm dull and predictable, though, so it's almost always
>>possible to envision what I would have said anyway.  When the killer
>>robots come to replace us, I'll be one of the first to go.]
>Wading through accumulated messages can easily turn otherwise sane people
>into killer robots. :-)
>
>Ec

Killer Robots are a Good Thing[tm].... they remove you horrible
carbon-based lifeforms from existence and stop your continued destruction
of the...

Ummm... I mean, "Go humans, woohoo!"

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Sean Barrett sean at epoptic.com said:
>
> On the other hand, sparkling wine from California ''is'' called
> champagne. Trademarks, especially in the international arena, are seldom
> absolute.

We are not talking about international trademark issues here, Larousse has
registered their mark in the United States (see previous post) and is using
it in the United States for English encyclopedia publications.

Regarding the use of the word champagne in the United States (excuse me
but I am Canadian) that is because the word champagne is not recognized as
being a trademark in the United States, it is considered to have a regular
meaning in the dictionary.

This comparison is thus inappropriate because there is no word "larousse" in
American English dictionaries. Words like macintosh (a type of apple), and
champagne (in the US) are words that have regular meaning and cannot be
trademarked, even IF they can be trademarked for a fanciful use it is
limited
to the product that they are marking until the TM becomes so well known
as to take on a secondary meaning, or it becomes so widespread that it
becomes the same as the product it marks such as in singer,
which was once a word that meant sewing machine (but no more) or
xerox copy, which many people still use when they mean photocopy.
Campagne is a trademark (and even an origin of appellation mark) that is
recognized in many countires. It is one of the reasons that these products
need to be relabeled in these countries as "sparkling wines".

Larousse does not appear to fit into the category of champagne, macintosh,
xerox or
any other exceptions. The only exception would be if it were not used,
or that it was being used in a different class than it was registered.
Wikipedia
is an encyclopedia, it cannot use larousse, a trademark registered in the US
to be used for enclyclopedias in the US. Using it as a mark to allow people
to
recognize Wikipedia under trademark law (with all the previous caveats added
here
by reference) appears to be infringement and may create  confusion between
Wikipedia
and Larousse. Using it as a subdomain name, in my opinion does not protect
it from confusion, it as if Pepsi had a web site called
www.coca-cola.pepsi.com. I
doubt that Coca-Cola would tolerate such an infringement.

I agree with Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se) regarding the fact
pattern as presented -- use of a trademarked encyclopedia name would
likely be considered infringement and I doubt that if the TM owner found
out about it that they would tolerate it. At this point the infringement is
probably de minimus and would only lead to nominal damages ($1), but if it
started popping up in search engines I am sure Wikipedia would hear from
Larousse's US trademark representatives who would be probably more than
happy if Wikipedia agrees to cease and desist using such a mark.

Alex756


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Andre Engels" <engels at uni-koblenz.de wrote:
>
> It's a bad example anyway, because 'Champagne' is not a trademark. A
trademark
> is owned by a single company (although it might allow others to use it).
> "Champagne" is a _product name_ (and the European Union has specified that
> only when it is created in a certain region, the product name may be
used).
>
> Andre Engels

Trademarks do not have to be owned by a business entity, they may be owned
by
trade association, or regional governments and be licensed to be used by
people
who conform with the standards that the body is promulgating including the
place
of origin of the goods (commonly called appellation of origin trademarks)
 Here is the text of sec. 2 of the definition of certification mark, a type
of trademark:

2. In this Act,
"certification mark" ?marque de certification?

"certification mark" means a mark that is used for the purpose of
distinguishing
or so as to distinguish wares or services that are of a defined standard
with
respect to

(a) the character or quality of the wares or services,

(b) the working conditions under which the wares have been produced or the
services performed,

(c) the class of persons by whom the wares have been produced or the
services
performed, or

(d) the area within which the wares have been produced or the services
performed,

from wares or services that are not of that defined standard.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Regarding geographic origin the Canadian act also defines that
term in sec. 2:

"geographical indication" ? indication g?ographique ?
"geographical indication" means, in respect of a wine or spirit, an
indication
that

(a) identifies the wine or spirit as originating in the territory of a WTO
Member, or a region or locality of that territory, where a quality,
reputation
or other characteristic of the wine or spirit is essentially attributable to
its
geographical origin, and

(b) except in the case of an indication identifying a wine or spirit
originating
in Canada, is protected by the laws applicable to that WTO Member;

Alex756


from_name: JFrost8401 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kils for sysop

body:
I'll support the prof for this

jim (jimfbleak)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Village Pump question

body:
Hey guys/gals, check out the last post in Village Pump, someone know
whether such a concept is useful or feasible?

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] dates on fr:

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> what's happened to dates on fr: ?
> They all look like:
>
> 21 mai 2003 ?18:21
>
> On the Mac the "?" is a bullet character.
>
> ---------
>
> Bizzare, les dates sur le fr: depuis quelque temps:
> 21 mai 2003 ?18:21
>
> c'est quoi, ce point d'interrogation?

I see the same ? or square depending on browser

Alvaro sees the same on pc linux

a problem with the translation file probably

some japanese characters ??? :-))

(where is the file ?)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
--- julien tayon <julien at tayon.net> wrote:
> > > On the other hand, sparkling wine from
> California
> > > ''is'' called
> > > champagne. Trademarks, especially in the
> > > international arena, are seldom
> > > absolute.
>
>
> > In any case, that was real nice to give a "french"
> > name to the server and we appreciated the choice.
>
> > This said, trademark or no trademark, the french
> > Champagne is best.
>
> And why not renaming larousse to champagne ? It
> seems there is a
> consensus. It is not in the name that lays the value
>  but in the
> ?bottle?. :)

not only in the bottle
also in the "content" of the bottle

non-tech thought

-----

How was your speech yesterday ?

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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Village Pump question

body:
--- Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com>
wrote:
> Hey guys/gals, check out the last post in Village
> Pump, someone know
> whether such a concept is useful or feasible?
>
> -----
>
> Dante Alighieri
> dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com
>
> "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those
> who maintain their
> neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
>     -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
>
I don't know why we'd want to do that.

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Modifications in CVS

body:
On Wed, 21 May 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:
> Modified Search to display a link to generate a new page if with 'Go' no
> article is found. You have to modify "nogomatch" like demonstrated in
> LanguageDe.php to do so. The "showingresultnum" texts are modified, limit
> is removed now.

Sounds fun, I'll take a look at it after work...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
--- uwe kils <kils at comcast.net> wrote:
> Dear Wikipedians,
>
> I would like to request to become a sysop member of
> your project
> my user name is
>
> kils
>
> and I work on oceanography subjects and like your
> project a lot
>
> -------------------------
>
> Uwe Kils, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Marine
> Biology
> Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences
> Rutgers University
> 71 Dudley Road
> New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901-8521
> Phone: 732/932-6555 extension 367
> Fax: 732/932-6557
> Email: kils at imcs.rutgers.edu
> http://www.ecoscope.com
>
> > begin:vcard
> n: ;Uwe
> fn:Kils
> tel;home:001 609 748 9693
> adr:;;161 South Concord Terrace;Galloway;;;
> version:2.1
> email;internet:kils at comcast.net
> end:vcard
>
>
Please use a shorter signature.
Judging by your userpage, you are a native German
speaker (You spelled some words, like English, as they
are in German).  Are you a sysop on the german wiki
yet?
--LittleDan

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] dates on fr:

body:
On Wed, 21 May 2003, Jens Frank wrote:
> The source looks like this:
>
> 	21 mai 2003 ・13:59
>
> The &-code is refering to a unicode-character for a mid-dot.

Yes, that's how the file Aoineko sent me had it... If a mid-dot is the
right thing to use, · might be better for those who don't have
Japanese fonts installed. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad status

body:
On Wed, 21 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Alvaro-
> > Thanks for your *quick* intervention .
> > You don't know who changed my status on en: ... there is no historic ?
>
> Nope, not as far as I know. Sysop status is assigned via direct queries on
> the database. Somebody probably picked the wrong DB by accident when
> running the query.

It's possible I might have done it by accident, but I don't remember doing
so. Which, I guess, is what "by accident" means. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[The Economist]]

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> I have a message that someone from _The Economist_
> magazine is trying
> to contact me for a chat about wikipedia.
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist
>
> is not bad, but it'd be neat to flesh it out.  It
> would *not* be neat
> to have a flame war about the content.  :-)

I know this probably sounds pathetic when The
Economist is writing about you, but I was planning on
asking to interview you (via IRC) for my school
newspaper. Has anyone ever directly interviewed you
before?
--LittleDan

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body:
> Imho, better trust us to have imagination and to
> find
> ways to turn around things.
> In France, I would say the toughest is not the law,
> the toughest are (is ?) the barriers people build
> themselves thinking of the law.
> Anthere

I think it's is. The verb should agree with the
subject, and the subject is singular.
--LittleDan

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from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad status

body:
I am probably more likely the culprit...  This is just the sort of
mistake I am prone to make.

Jason

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Wed, 21 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Alvaro-
> > > Thanks for your *quick* intervention .
> > > You don't know who changed my status on en: ... there is no historic ?
> >
> > Nope, not as far as I know. Sysop status is assigned via direct queries on
> > the database. Somebody probably picked the wrong DB by accident when
> > running the query.
>
> It's possible I might have done it by accident, but I don't remember doing
> so. Which, I guess, is what "by accident" means. ;)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Richard Grevers wrote:
> > I don't - although if their inclusion results in W
> being banned from
> > schools etc then it becomes debatable as to
> whether inclusion is in
> > Wikipedia's best interests.
>
> I think that's right.  And I think LittleDan's
> concerns are
> legitimate, quite apart from any questions of
> censorship.  The
> question is: how do we present information that's
> potentially "hot" in
> a fashion that's NPOV and educational and tasteful,
> and in the case in
> point, would a drawing be better than a photo?
>
> I have certainly in my day seen photos of genetalia
> that were tasteful
> and "medical", as well as photos that were
> tasteless, as well as
> photos that were tasteful and erotic.  As with any
> form of expression,
> there's a thoughtful and responsible way to express
> what we want to
> express, and we should do that.
>
> > Well in the "free" United States since recent
> regulations, if someone
> > posted information that certain agencies decided
> were an aid to terrorists,
> > could not those agencies arrest Jimbo for refusing
> to disclose information
> > on the user who posted it?
>
> Not that it's really relevant right now, but I take
> the very rare
> position among libertarians of finding that the
> Patriot Act provisions
> that you're referring to are not nearly as draconian
> as most media
> outlets and civil libertarins make them out to be.
> It's not a good
> law, but the changes that it made are much less than
> most people
> realize.
>
> I'll post more about this if people are interested.
>
> --Jimbo

I'm interested

Even before the USAPA (USA Patriot Act), the US
government could still require people to disclose
information to the government if they had significant
proof that it would solve a pending case and a judge
certified this. The USAPA effectly removed this
requisite, instead replacing it with that if the
government suspected someone to be a terrorist (under
the definition someone planning to destroy property),
a judge would be _forced_ to sign that they can
search.  Also, with the USAPA, the government is
automatically authorised to search _all_ of wikipedia
even if the search warrant only authorises one part of
it.
--LittleDan

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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Tarquin wrote:

>Reality check:
>it's a server name.
>NOBODY is going to see it except the devs and the occasional mention of
>"our Larousse server is down" on this mailing list.

This is what it comes down to.
Is the name "larousse" going to promulgated to the outside?
My understanding is no ... people won't even find it in the DNS servers.
A Google search for "larousse Wikipedia" should never find anything
besides our articles on Larousse and the discussions on this maling list.

If that's not the case ... then we may have a problem.
But that's my understanding of the set-up.

-- Toby


body:
In case you didn't know, Daniel Ehrenberg and
LittleDan are the same person.

Some people (not me) think a lack of a "drugs are
evil" stance are just as bad as if you lacked a
"murder is bad" stance (although then those people
turn around and say "war is peace; let's bomb iraq"
and "killing people will help reduce murder rates").

--LittleDan

Jimbo wrote:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I don't think we should have an actual photograph in
this case. Just
>think what would be acceptable in schools (actually,
a lot of
>wikipedia probably wouldn't be acceptable in schools,
like its lack of
>"drugs are evil" stance, but this is much worse). I
don't think
>photographs of genitalia belong in an encyclopedia,
no matter how
>informative. Drawings would be a much better
alternative.

One of the beauties of NPOV is that it works like a
fancy martial arts
move to undermine critics.  Anyone who is critical of
our lack of
"drugs are evil" stance is not going to be able to say
that we are a
pro-drug encyclopedia, because we aren't pro- or anti-
anything.

If a fact is value-sensitive, we don't assert it, we
report that it is
asserted.  We can quite honestly and accurately report
on the
arguments of the drug warriors and their opponents,
and we should be
doing it in such a way that neither side will find
anything particular
objectionable about our presentation.

It a little harder to wrap one's mind around NPOV for
a picture --
after all, isn't a picture objectively 'true' in a
sense, so long as
it isn't faked?  But a picture says a thousand words,
and those words
can have bias, nuance, suggested other meanings, etc.
100 pictures or
drawings of something controversial will all be
different, and some
will be objectionable to some people for various
reasons.  The NPOV
choice should make everyone -- or nearly so -- happy.

We have managed to have several articles on obscene
words that are
tactful and tasteful and informative and entertaining
and NPOV.  We
ought to be able to treat this issue in the same way.

I think that Daniel Ehrenberg is right, that a drawing
is likely to be
more educational, more informative, and -- importantly
-- to be more
tasteful.

Not everything in the wikipedia needs to be such that
mainstream
parents will think it is o.k. for kids to read,
although most of it
should be.  Someday there will probably be a kids
wikipedia, probably
partly machine-generated and partly human-edited.

--Jimbo

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin nominations

body:
Anth?re (but forced to be only Anthere on [[fr:]]) wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>Being a sysop is only a status thing in the sense that it means that
>>you're trusted not to post obscene material on the homepage, to use
>>certain destructive commands only in accordance with long-established
>>custom, if at all, and that you'll help police against vandals in a
>>gentle and caring way.

>All being behaviors that anybody could follow, without
>being necessary a sysop. Being gentle, caring, loving
>and trusted, is not the prerogative of a sysop.

Indeed, all things that anybody could and should do.
But you can't become a sysop unless we *trust* that you will do them.
Thus, becoming a sysop indicates that such trust exists, a status bonus.
Not being a sysop hardly proves that such trust does *not* exist --
but it leaves open that possibility, so not a status bonus.

Still, you are right, we should ignore this status bonus.
Being a sysop is not meant to be a status thing.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[The Economist]]

body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> > I have a message that someone from _The Economist_
> > magazine is trying
> > to contact me for a chat about wikipedia.
> >
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist
> >
> > is not bad, but it'd be neat to flesh it out.  It
> > would *not* be neat
> > to have a flame war about the content.  :-)
>
> I know this probably sounds pathetic when The
> Economist is writing about you, but I was planning
> on
> asking to interview you (via IRC) for my school
> newspaper. Has anyone ever directly interviewed you
> before?
> --LittleDan

Oh yeah, and my city's newspaper also allows send-in
articles. I'd probably put it there instead.

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from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: SpamAssassin

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
news:200305210012.02343.brion at pobox.com:

> Some of the mailing lists are getting, and their admins regularly
> rejecting, a fair amount of spam.
>
> I'm going to see if I can get SpamAssassin set up to cull some of the
> more wretchedly obvious stuff out before it gets to mailman.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I am list admin of Wikitech-l and Intlwiki-l.
Since the removal of the @nupedia.com forwards my lits do not recieve a lot
of spam anymore.

Mostly there are to types of postings;

- a list member who has used a emailadres where he is not subcribed whit.
action: approve posting and inform the user that he used the wrong email
adres and add that emailadres to the list of allowed posters.

- a non-list member who wants to ask something.
action: until now I approve it and send the poster a email to inform them
how to subcribe.

Problem; if the do not subcribe the do not recieve a responds. I think
posters only wants to ask something and not understand the idea of a
mailing list.

Is it better to reject the posting and inform them the have to subcribe?
The can see it like a insult if you reject.

The posting can come from a non-wikipedian who only wants to send a email
to "wikipedia".

So far a know only the german and dutch wikipedia has a emailadres where
visitors can send a question to.

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

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

Richard Grevers wrote:
| My hosts use server names
| which include "Scooby" and "Scrappy" but the only reason I know that is
| through doing contract work for them (you might see it on a tracerout
| result, too). Will Hanna-Barbera file suit? Not likely.

Similarly, the Jet Propulsion Lab's mail servers are named for the
Jetsons -- Elroy delivered all my mail for quite a few years.  Should
JPL, CalTech, or NASA worried?

My servers are named Orwen, Orgoch, and Orddu.  For two Wikicents, who
did I lift the names from?  No fair googling.

- --
~ Sean Barrett     | Vortex goggles on? Here we go! --Calvin
~ sean at epoptic.com |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQE+y/O8v/8xpnvE6M8RAsEUAJ0d1ExedwVHYdSpvKsjie8xebAMUwCbBdkt
XTgcuxZnVz6K0RO8O1IY1kg=
=s/6l
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lir and his clones

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> cprompt wrote:
> > I've advised Lir in the past to stop making new
> accounts, apologize and
> > ask the list for permission to return, and for
> guidance when he does
> > something that makes people want to block him. He
> says that he's already
> > done that, and he doesn't think that the list
> would respond well to
> > that. So, what do you people think? If Lir came
> around and said all of
> > that, how would you feel?
>
> I'm in a unique position to make unpopular decisions
> and have them
> stick, and I can say that if Lir were to mature and
> agree to act
> co-operatively, I'd buck some serious heat if
> necessary to give
> another chance.  I've done it before and been
> disappointed, but my
> nature is to be very willing to allow people ways to
> grow, and to
> "save face" and become something other than a
> pariah.
>
> I'm constantly concerned, as is well known, that
> threats of banning
> are tossed around too lightly, and that we should
> try (to a *point*,
> at least) to reform people with love rather than
> berate them into
> submission.  A reformed Lir would be a great
> propaganda coup for me,
> illustrating that positive change is possible and
> desirable and so on.
>
> However, the constant attacks -- and I consider
> making new accounts
> and editing while banned to be a form of 'fuck you'
> to my face -- make
> it difficult to believe that there's been any change
> at all.
>
> --Jimbo

I used to think that Lir would change. I also used to
believe in Santa Claus (acutally I never did, but you
get my point). Lir will never change.

In all of the other wikis (except for the ones modeled
after us), there is no "supreme-dictator-for-life" (as
you put it, perhaps humorsly, in a previous post).
Most other wikis despise that we have one person
running the whole thing. I don't think we should keep
doing your unpopular decisions just because you own
the servers. When you created Wikipedia, you also gave
up control of it. We are a community, not governed by
one person, but by everyone. On many of the About,
FAQ, and similar pages, you state that Wikipedia is an
anarchy, but that really is not true. As long as you
unilaterally make decisions like this, wikipedia will
never be a true anarchy, always a dictatorship.
--LittleDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lir and his clones

body:
> I used to think that Lir would change. I also used
> to
> believe in Santa Claus (acutally I never did, but
> you
> get my point). Lir will never change.
>
> In all of the other wikis (except for the ones
> modeled
> after us), there is no "supreme-dictator-for-life"
> (as
> you put it, perhaps humorsly, in a previous post).
> Most other wikis despise that we have one person
> running the whole thing. I don't think we should
> keep
> doing your unpopular decisions just because you own
> the servers. When you created Wikipedia, you also
> gave
> up control of it. We are a community, not governed
> by
> one person, but by everyone. On many of the About,
> FAQ, and similar pages, you state that Wikipedia is
> an
> anarchy, but that really is not true. As long as you
> unilaterally make decisions like this, wikipedia
> will
> never be a true anarchy, always a dictatorship.
> --LittleDan

Sorry for my harsh wording

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: SpamAssassin

body:
Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de> wrote in
news:Pine.LNX.4.44.0305211654340.17622-100000 at ponnuki.uni-koblenz.de:

> I think it would be a valid way of acting to just post to the list -
> the archives are publicly available, so someone could in theory send
> their mail, and read the answers that way. I don't know whether anyone
> actually does it, but the possibility exists.
>
> Andre Engels

I think a lot of people do that, read from the archive. But if a poster
does not understand that you have to subcribe to the list to post I do not
think he will find the list archives.

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lir and his clones

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-05-21 at 17:59, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
> > I used to think that Lir would change. I also used
> to
> > believe in Santa Claus (acutally I never did, but
> you
> > get my point). Lir will never change.
> >
> > In all of the other wikis (except for the ones
> modeled
> > after us), there is no "supreme-dictator-for-life"
> (as
> > you put it, perhaps humorsly, in a previous post).
> > Most other wikis despise that we have one person
> > running the whole thing. I don't think we should
> keep
> > doing your unpopular decisions just because you
> own
> > the servers. When you created Wikipedia, you also
> gave
> > up control of it. We are a community, not governed
> by
> > one person, but by everyone. On many of the About,
> > FAQ, and similar pages, you state that Wikipedia
> is an
> > anarchy, but that really is not true. As long as
> you
> > unilaterally make decisions like this, wikipedia
> will
> > never be a true anarchy, always a dictatorship.
> > --LittleDan
>
> That's not true. Lir has changed and will continue
> to do so. Not
> necessarily for the better, but he's a person, not a
> mythological
> creature.
>
> There are plenty of non-anarchistic wikis.
> MeatballWiki is ruled with a
> velvet glove by Sunir Shah. Jimbo has made it plenty
> clear where the
> limits of anarchy lie.
>
> You're off base here.
>
> If you're really concerned, then agitate for
> forking. I wouldn't bother,
> and there are plenty of policies and decisions that
> I disagree with.
>
> Finally, an anarchy is not governed by
> everyone--it's governed by noone.
> You're thinking of a (true) democracy.

I'd never think of forking. It's more trouble than
it's worth. I guess I'll just stick with this. Sorry
for my bouts of pointless rage.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Anthere wrote:

>--- julien tayon <julien at tayon.net> wrote:
>
>>>>On the other hand, sparkling wine from
>>>>
>>California
>>
>>>>''is'' called
>>>>champagne. Trademarks, especially in the
>>>>international arena, are seldom
>>>>absolute.
>>>>
>>>In any case, that was real nice to give a "french"
>>>name to the server and we appreciated the choice.
>>>
>>>This said, trademark or no trademark, the french
>>>Champagne is best.
>>>
>>And why not renaming larousse to champagne ? It
>>seems there is a
>>consensus. It is not in the name that lays the value
>> but in the
>>?bottle?. :)
>>
>
>not only in the bottle
>also in the "content" of the bottle
>
>non-tech thought
>
Hmmm!  Wikipedia, the fine champagne of encyclopedias!

Ec


body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>>Imho, better trust us to have imagination and to
>>find
>>ways to turn around things.
>>In France, I would say the toughest is not the law,
>>the toughest are (is ?) the barriers people build
>>themselves thinking of the law.
>>Anthere
>>
>
>I think it's is. The verb should agree with the
>subject, and the subject is singular.
>--LittleDan
>
"Are" is correct.  The implicit subject is "barriers" -- plural

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lir and his clones

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>I used to think that Lir would change. I also used to
>believe in Santa Claus (acutally I never did, but you
>get my point). Lir will never change.
>
Many kids stop believing in Santa Claus long before they let their
parents know that they've stopped believing.  That's an economic
self-interest decision!

>In all of the other wikis (except for the ones modeled
>after us), there is no "supreme-dictator-for-life" (as
>you put it, perhaps humorsly, in a previous post).
>Most other wikis despise that we have one person
>running the whole thing. I don't think we should keep
>doing your unpopular decisions just because you own
>the servers. When you created Wikipedia, you also gave
>up control of it. We are a community, not governed by
>one person, but by everyone. On many of the About,
>FAQ, and similar pages, you state that Wikipedia is an
>anarchy, but that really is not true. As long as you
>unilaterally make decisions like this, wikipedia will
>never be a true anarchy, always a dictatorship.
>--LittleDan
>
Dumping the dictator is not always the panacea that many expect.  Those
unpopular decisions are often necessary for the well being of the
collective.  An unpopular decision can be much better than no decision
at all.  What killed the Paris Commune of 1871 was too much democracy;
it prevented the communards from mounting an effective defence.  There's
a paradox in the idea that a benevolent dictatorship is what allows an
anarchy to flourish.  An openly democratic system is fertile ground for
cliques, and the tyranny of minorities in decision making positions.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] IRA

body:
I noticed that the entry for IRA is a straight redirect to Irish Republican
Army. Should it be a disambiguation page? IRA is also Individual Retirement
Account. There is no preexisting article on the Individual Retirement
Account as far as I know, and there are MANY links to IRA as the Irish
Republican Army, so.... I don't know. Thoughts?

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: SpamAssassin

body:
On Wed, 21 May 2003, Giskart wrote:

> Mostly there are to types of postings;
>
> - a list member who has used a emailadres where he is not subcribed whit.
> action: approve posting and inform the user that he used the wrong email
> adres and add that emailadres to the list of allowed posters.
>
> - a non-list member who wants to ask something.
> action: until now I approve it and send the poster a email to inform them
> how to subcribe.
>
> Problem; if the do not subcribe the do not recieve a responds. I think
> posters only wants to ask something and not understand the idea of a
> mailing list.
>
> Is it better to reject the posting and inform them the have to subcribe?
> The can see it like a insult if you reject.

I think it would be a valid way of acting to just post to the list - the
archives are publicly available, so someone could in theory send their
mail, and read the answers that way. I don't know whether anyone actually
does it, but the possibility exists.

Andre Engels


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
 > *much debate*

Reality check:
it's a server name.
NOBODY is going to see it except the devs and the occasional mention of
"our Larousse server is down" on this mailing list.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
On Wed, 21 May 2003, Sean Barrett wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Alex R. wrote:
> |
> | wasn't Larousse the man the founder of Larousse the company? This is
> | the whole point of a trademark, you can't call Spanish sparkling wine
> | champagne as champagne is a trademark identified with the production
> | of sparking wine in a particular French region.
> |
> | Alex756
>
> On the other hand, sparkling wine from California ''is'' called
> champagne. Trademarks, especially in the international arena, are seldom
> absolute.

It's a bad example anyway, because 'Champagne' is not a trademark. A trademark
is owned by a single company (although it might allow others to use it).
"Champagne" is a _product name_ (and the European Union has specified that
only when it is created in a certain region, the product name may be used).

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] no article on Three Musketeers?!?!

body:
We have no article on The Three Musketeers. Does this bother anyone else?
I'm not really equipped to write such an article on my own, but I could
always start with the 1911 EB and go from there... anyone happen to be a
Dumas expert?

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] IRA

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> I noticed that the entry for IRA is a straight redirect to Irish
> Republican Army. Should it be a disambiguation page? IRA is also
> Individual Retirement Account. There is no preexisting article on the
> Individual Retirement Account as far as I know, and there are MANY
> links to IRA as the Irish Republican Army, so.... I don't know. Thoughts?

Most TLAs have multiple meanings these days, so disambig pages are in order.
Did you know that GDB is used not only for the GNU debugger, but also by
Guide Dogs for the Blind, Greater Dallas Bicyclists, and a company making
Grateful Dead Beanie Babies? :-)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lir and his clones

body:
On Wed, 2003-05-21 at 17:59, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> I used to think that Lir would change. I also used to
> believe in Santa Claus (acutally I never did, but you
> get my point). Lir will never change.
>
> In all of the other wikis (except for the ones modeled
> after us), there is no "supreme-dictator-for-life" (as
> you put it, perhaps humorsly, in a previous post).
> Most other wikis despise that we have one person
> running the whole thing. I don't think we should keep
> doing your unpopular decisions just because you own
> the servers. When you created Wikipedia, you also gave
> up control of it. We are a community, not governed by
> one person, but by everyone. On many of the About,
> FAQ, and similar pages, you state that Wikipedia is an
> anarchy, but that really is not true. As long as you
> unilaterally make decisions like this, wikipedia will
> never be a true anarchy, always a dictatorship.
> --LittleDan

That's not true. Lir has changed and will continue to do so. Not
necessarily for the better, but he's a person, not a mythological
creature.

There are plenty of non-anarchistic wikis. MeatballWiki is ruled with a
velvet glove by Sunir Shah. Jimbo has made it plenty clear where the
limits of anarchy lie.

You're off base here.

If you're really concerned, then agitate for forking. I wouldn't bother,
and there are plenty of policies and decisions that I disagree with.

Finally, an anarchy is not governed by everyone--it's governed by noone.
You're thinking of a (true) democracy.


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
tarquin wrote:
>  > *much debate*
>
> Reality check:
> it's a server name.
> NOBODY is going to see it except the devs and the occasional mention of
> "our Larousse server is down" on this mailing list.

After this long discussion I know why I call hosts 'mail' or 'www' or
'www1', noboby will complain about copyright, only about the unimaginative
sysop;)

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kils for sysop

body:
> I'll support the prof for this

Any objections?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Zoe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Has there been any resolution on the trademark battle
between Budweiser beer of Czechoslovakia and Budweiser
beer of the United States?

Zoe

--- Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 May 2003, Sean Barrett wrote:
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Alex R. wrote:
> > |
> > | wasn't Larousse the man the founder of Larousse
> the company? This is
> > | the whole point of a trademark, you can't call
> Spanish sparkling wine
> > | champagne as champagne is a trademark identified
> with the production
> > | of sparking wine in a particular French region.
> > |
> > | Alex756
> >
> > On the other hand, sparkling wine from California
> ''is'' called
> > champagne. Trademarks, especially in the
> international arena, are seldom
> > absolute.
>
> It's a bad example anyway, because 'Champagne' is
> not a trademark. A trademark
> is owned by a single company (although it might
> allow others to use it).
> "Champagne" is a _product name_ (and the European
> Union has specified that
> only when it is created in a certain region, the
> product name may be used).
>
> Andre Engels
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wiki Search Function Now Works!

body:
The subject line of my email says it all. Yay!

Who wants to take credit for restoring this valuable feature? I
have WikiLovePoints (or whatever they're called) I'd like to shower
on the person responsible.

It's not like anyone is trying to earn them by contributing to the Latin
Wiki.

Geoff


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] IRA

body:
Yes, it should be a disambiguation page.

Fred

From: Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com>
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 16:52:49 -0700
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] IRA

I noticed that the entry for IRA is a straight redirect to Irish Republican
Army. Should it be a disambiguation page? IRA is also Individual Retirement
Account. There is no preexisting article on the Individual Retirement
Account as far as I know, and there are MANY links to IRA as the Irish
Republican Army, so.... I don't know. Thoughts?

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
  -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] dates on fr:

body:
what's happened to dates on fr: ?
They all look like:

21 mai 2003 ?18:21

On the Mac the "?" is a bullet character.

---------

Bizzare, les dates sur le fr: depuis quelque temps:
21 mai 2003 ?18:21

c'est quoi, ce point d'interrogation?


body:
Don't panic.

Fred

From: Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com>
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 17:42:23 -0700
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] no article on Three Musketeers?!?!

We have no article on The Three Musketeers. Does this bother anyone else?
I'm not really equipped to write such an article on my own, but I could
always start with the 1911 EB and go from there... anyone happen to be a
Dumas expert?

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
  -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Modifications in CVS

body:
Modified Files:
includes/SearchEngine.php
languages/Language.php
languages/LanguageDe.php

Modified Search to display a link to generate a new page if with 'Go' no
article is found. You have to modify "nogomatch" like demonstrated in
LanguageDe.php to do so. The "showingresultnum" texts are modified, limit
is removed now.

Brion, take a look if it's now more as you like it. I still left $3, if
anyone insists on displaying the $limit value ($1). It's all testet, at
home of course, using "Nase" (nose) as query.

If you think it's ok, please install at german wikipedia, in LanguageDe.php
are further changes independent from the SearchEngine.

Thank you in advance.
--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: julien tayon

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
> > On the other hand, sparkling wine from California
> > ''is'' called
> > champagne. Trademarks, especially in the
> > international arena, are seldom
> > absolute.

> In any case, that was real nice to give a "french"
> name to the server and we appreciated the choice.

> This said, trademark or no trademark, the french
> Champagne is best.

And why not renaming larousse to champagne ? It seems there is a
consensus. It is not in the name that lays the value  but in the
?bottle?. :)

--
Julien Tayon
http://www.tayon.net/			       http://libroscope.org/
Si la v?rit? est une femme, essayons de la s?duire avant de la saisir.


from_name: alvaro

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad status

body:
Salut,

There is a probleme. I had get the sysop status on the french wikipedia,
that's ok, it was planned.
By the same time, I had get the same status on the english one, it was
not planned !
Ok, I don't use my superpowers on en: but it seems a little strange too me.

Do someone has a brillant idea ?

Merci d'avance ( thanks in advance ? )

Alvaro


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad status

body:
> Salut,

> There is a probleme. I had get the sysop status on the french wikipedia,
> that's ok, it was planned.
> By the same time, I had get the same status on the english one, it was
> not planned !
> Ok, I don't use my superpowers on en: but it seems a little strange too me.

> Do someone has a brillant idea ?

Well, I don't know who changed your status on en:, but I've reset it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
To Ray Saintonge

> One cannot confuse American champagne with the real stuff.  It's all
> in the taste.  Some producers do use the expression that their
> sparkling wine is produced in the "m?thede champennoise".

"m?thode champennoise". M?thode rather than m?thede. M?thode like
english method, I think. The process of fabrication.

End of the french cultural minute :-)

Alvaro