subject:
[Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the
	Wikipedia family

body:
On Fri, 2002-10-11 at 11:00, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Gareth Owen wrote:
> > koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com writes:
> >
> > > Aside from that, how would the move to en. be an inconvenience aside from
> > > having to log in?
> >
> > Link rot
>
> Can you expand on this?
>
> I don't think anyone is proposing that www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson would
> ever not work as it does now.  It would be a pure alias for en.wikipedia.com.

My understanding is that people are proposing that the www urls be made
into redirects, not pure aliases, or even links to various language
entries, or a redirect to the to-be-created portal page, or to the
to-be-created foundation, at some point. That would be consistent with
the theory that the only fair thing to do is to have total
language-equivalence in urls.

People have floated having www be reserved for a) a portal and b) the
administration/organization. That would seem to preclude pure aliases
for entries.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Question re: talk page notifier

body:
>My question is, is there a good reason that the database-creation
>scripts are defining the default as 1, or should it just be set to 0?

I don't recall having any specific reason for it.  It's just
a simple flag exactly as you describe.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and
	the	 Wikipedia family

body:
On Fri, 2002-10-11 at 10:53, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:

> Aside from that, how would the move to en. be an inconvenience aside
> from having to log in?  And if having to log in is such an
> inconvenience, why do I have to log in every month anyway?  Given
> that we do have to log in every month or so, are you perhaps
> splitting hairs in calling the proposed move an inconvenience?

Just for example, that one inconvenience is a major thing. I'd say it
should be removed 1) ASAP and 2) before we consider doing more
url-redirecting.

What removal means is consolidating the userspaces so that cookies can
point to .wikipedia.org instead of xxx.wikipedia.org.

Doing so has many, many benefits for the long-term health and viability
of the project.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving the English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org

body:
> I agree with this, but what do you think of having all the
> articles at _both_ en.wikipedia.org and www.wikipedia.org,
> with us subtly promoting the latter by hardlinks?

Well, Mav does make some good points, and while I'm generally
not fond of symbolic gestures for their own sake, I don't
particularly oppose them if they're harmless.  Having "www."
be a direct DNS alias for "en." would not impose the costs of
an intro page, and would minimize link rot.  The only downside
then would be the same kinds of glitches we had when we moved
to ".org", with people losing logins because of cookies and
bookmarks and such.  I think that's tolerable.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Search - Strange Results

in_reply_to:
<20021010214505.CZMU23792.mtiwmhc13.worldnet.att.net@mtiwebc21>
 from "rose.parks@att.net" at "Oct 10, 2002 09:45:04 pm"

body:
> Hi  Members,
>
>      I went to try the new search on Wikipedia. I entered "JavaScript" as the
> search argument and got back two entries:
>
> 1. JavaScript (47 bytes)
> 2. Javascript (47 bytes)
>
> followed by a number of citations from articles.
>
> The actual title of the article is "JavaScript."
> The two articles are one and the same. I realize that the difference is in the
> capitalization.
>
> Is this the result we want? Two entries of the same article?
>
> Further, if you look at the entries, they are clearly not 47 bytes, but much
> longer - what happened?

The article is not at 'JavaScript', but at 'ECMAScript programming language'.
Both articles redirect there, which is the reason for the '47 bytes': The
47 bytes is the length of '#REDIRECT [[ECMAScript programming language]]'.

As to whether we want it - if you do not want it, please specify what you do
want, and how it could be implemented. My own opinion is that it is a light
nuisance at worst, not something to worry about.

Andre Engels


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> We don't want people working in other languages to feel that English has
> unfairly co-opted the privileged 'www' namespace.

It has the most contributors (by far), the most readers (by far),
is the most linked too (by far) and has the most articles (by far).

If en.wikipedia.com co-opting the 'www' namespace is "unfair",
its a definition of "unfair" with which I'm not familiar.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the Wikipedia family

body:
Paul Ebermann wrote;
>My understanding is:
>
>(1) http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
>should be the same page as
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson.

www.wikipedia.com/wiki/ and www.wikipedia.org/wiki/
will point to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/. So yes.

>...

>(2)
>We should not use
>    http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
>for anything else in the future.

I agree - it should only be used to redirect people to
en.wiki in order to preserve current links from
outside Wikipedia.

>(3)
>The portal page should be at
>    http://www.wikipedia.org/,

I also agree here.

>anything that is about the foundation
>could for example be in
>    http://www.wikipedia.org/foundation/*,

Why not simply www.wikipedia.org/ ? The word
"foundation" is still in English which isn't necessary
and might seem odd as the URL for the French
translation of the by-laws.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


from_name: Khendon

body:
On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 04:29:50AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> > I really hate saying this, but, um, I'm with Cunc here.
> > I also think it's a really bad idea to have www.wikipedia.org
> > be anything but the most direct route to the front page of
> > the English Wikipedia. Like it or not, that's where the
> > action is.  As long as the front page continues to have links
> > to the foreign wikis, I see no need to waste the time of 90%
> > of our users with a pointless "intro" page.
>
> I agree with this, but what do you think of having all the articles at
> _both_ en.wikipedia.org and www.wikipedia.org, with us subtly promoting
> the latter by hardlinks?

I've not been following this discussion very closely, but why can't
all www. links redirect to a xx. link based on cookie/browser
settings?

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


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject:
[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org
 and the  Wikipedia family

body:
Paul Ebermann wrote:
> "Jimmy Wales" skribis:
>>It seems very prominent to me already.  It seems sensible to me that
>>those links should be translated to Espanol, Deutsche, etc.  (But not
>>by me, since I don't even know what "French" is in French.  Francais?)
>
> This type of translation is already implemented
> in the german, nederlands, ... wikipedias.
>
> I recently asked myself why not also in the
> english, danish, ... wikipedias.

I've got a partial list, I'm changing them over as I get around to them.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC

body:
Thesmelialichu at aol.com wrote:
> <Is the IRC channel underused because nobody wants to use it, or
> because nobody bothers because it's underused?>
>
> That's a good question. I am a newcomer to the project, and looked in their
> hoping to find some help, but only found one person in there, which I felt
> was a bit intimidating (it's easier to direct a question to anyone that wants
> to answer, than to one person I find). Maybe I'll try to spend some more time
> there. Maybe I just looked in at a bad time?

There's an IRC channel? Huh.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] http://wikipedia.org/ bug report

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> http://wikipedia.org/ currently gives a directory listing for the home
> directory.
>
> This is probably not what is desired.

Hmm, that's not supposed to happen.

Fixed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: tarquin

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the
 Wikipedia family

body:
Gareth & cunc. I thought we had agreed on some basics:

* that the Spanish Fork is a bad thing
* that we'd like them to come back
* that the other non-English wikipedias often feel ignored & sidelined.

Your last post seems to backtrack on the above.

Yes, compared to including them in software & policy debate, changing
the URLs is a minor point. If we did *only* that, it would indeed be a sop.

Gareth Owen wrote:

>tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:
>
>
>
>>But this is a significant move.
>>Like mav said, it's *symbolic*. it's not the solution, but it's part of it.
>>It shows that the other languages are siblings -- younger siblings, yes
>>
>>
>
>I disagree.
>Its only symbolic, and thats why its its neither significant, nor part of any
>real solution.
>
>It's an inconvenience to the vast majority of the users, and the only gain is
>that it is a meaningless sop to people who (IMHO) don't have a legitimate
>grievance in the first place.
>
>


subject:
[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs
	www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
On Fri, 2002-10-11 at 12:25, Anthere wrote:
>
> > 1)There's a need for a portal page stating the existence of all the wikis,
> > a few infos about each, and a direct link to each. This page should be
> > at wikipedia.org.
>
> Unfortunately, the portal page is just about the most bankrupt concept
> possible in terms of usability, and online, usability is just about all
> you've got. The harm of adding one more click to users, both new and
> old, is measurable and huge.
>
> One more click *only once* does not look like *huge* to me. Only once.
> And one more login *only once* even less.

If you take a look at  http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special%3APopularpages

you see the problem of the extra click. The front page has more than 20
times as many view as the next most popular pages. Clickthroughs
generally follow [[Zipf's law]] (it's even used as an example!).

> >www.wikipedia.org already has all the portalness it needs in its two
> >paragraphs of intro. The article count should probably count all the
> >languages, but that's about it.
>
>
> Maybe there is a confusion here. Right now, the www.wikipedia.org is the english wikipedia.
>  Right now, on the actual www.wikipedia.org, there is *little way* a user not fluent in english, will have the idea to scroll and look everywhere, down to the bottom of the page, inside a crowded list of international links, to find the link to a latin wikipedia.
> Right now, the www.wikipedia.org introduction text is entirely in english.

Yes. The other language links need to be in their own languages, not in
the English versions of the languages. Jimmy: the translations are on
the bottom of the home page.

I've added the rest of the languages up top.

>
> >Right now the different language versions of WP are separate wikis; that
> >should not be the permanent case. And that is what should be focused on
> >here.
>
>
> I would personnaly highly prefer interlinguage links are improved, before any portal page.

I agree.


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I agree with this, but what do you think of having all the articles at
> _both_ en.wikipedia.org and www.wikipedia.org, with us subtly promoting
> the latter by hardlinks?

FWIW, here's the status quo. The English wiki is at:
   www.wikipedia.org

The following use 301 'temporarily moved' redirects to point to the
above, and are suitable for linking. Since you end up at the above
address, it is shown in the browser's URL bar and cookies stay at that
address:
   wikipedia.com
   wikipedia.org
   www.wikipedia.com
   en.wikipedia.org

The following should be in the above group but aren't yet because we
forgot it existed:
   en.wikipedia.com

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fun with URL encoding

body:
"Brion VIBBER" skribis:

> Paul Ebermann wrote:
> > "Brion VIBBER" skribis:
> >>Note that _theoretically_ a legal UTF-8 sequence could also be legal ISO
> >>8859-1.
> >
> > [eo] Cxu vere?
[...]
>
> Jes ja, sed ne cxiuj UTF-8-kodoj trovigxas en la gamo rezervita; [...]

Mi komprenis ke vi diris "Cxiu legala UTF-8-sekvenco estas
legala ISO-8859-1". Nun mi komprenas ke vi diris
"Ekzistas UTF-8-sekvencoj kiuj estas legala ISO-8859-1".
Pardonu la konfuzo.

> > [en] Really?
[...]
>
> Sure, but not all UTF-8 codes will find themselves in the reserved
> range; [...]

I understood that you said "Each legal UTF-8-sequence is
legal ISO-8859-1", now I understand that you said "there
are legal UTF-8-sequences which are legal ISO-8859-1".
Sorry for the confusion.

Pauxlo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the	 Wikipedia family

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com writes:

> Aside from that, how would the move to en. be an inconvenience aside from
> having to log in?

Link rot

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


body:
On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 08:15:21AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> > Oh.  Heh.  Well, I think that's what I just proposed.  Are you
> >suggesting that links would still carry through to the en. site, but
> >that www. would be reserved for the portal or official business too?
> >That's an interesting idea.
>
> I propose that all the old links work just the same as they do now.  But whenever
> we are internally constructing a link, we construct it to point to the newly
> preferred en.wikipedia.org.

What was wrong with my proposal to have the links divert to the language
specified by cookie and/or browser setting? That still seems the best
approach to me, although it might be a little more work...

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


body:
Khendon <jason at jasonandali.org.uk> writes:

> What was wrong with my proposal to have the links divert to the language
> specified by cookie and/or browser setting? That still seems the best
> approach to me, although it might be a little more work...

That sounds like an excellent idea.
--
Gareth Owen


body:
mattheww+wikipedia at chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 02:12:43PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>>FWIW, here's the status quo. The English wiki is at:
>>   www.wikipedia.org
>>
>>The following use 301 'temporarily moved' redirects to point to the
>>above [...]
>
> 301 is 'permanently moved'. They're using 302 'found'.

Oops, that's what I meant to say. The de, da/dk, nl, ja, ko, and meta
wikis are set up with permanent 301s to their present homes, with en/www
as temporary 302s (as only the (blank)/en/www is presently in dispute,
and I don't want web indexers dropping their links permanently until
it's resolved).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cart before the horse (was: www.wiki vs. en.wik)

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> We need to take a fresh look at why our brothers created their
> fork(s). Obviously, it seemed good to them. I'd like to know why it did so.

Can someone summarise to me why a fork is a bad idea?

I like the idea of autonomy.

I liked it when the East Timorese forked from the Indonesians.
I voted for the limited fork of the Welsh assembly from the UK.

Self determination is a good thing.

If Spanish wikipedians feel happier with self determination, should we not
just say "Cool.  Good luck & don't forget to wave your Free flag high"?
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


body:
You're Welsh?

Then let me rephrase what the move to the en. domain means:

it means downgrading Westminster so it is on an equal footing with the
Welsh assembly -- and both equal within the priniciples of the EU.
:-)

Gareth Owen wrote:

>I voted for the limited fork of the Welsh assembly from the UK.
>
>Self determination is a good thing.
>
>If Spanish wikipedians feel happier with self determination, should we not
>just say "Cool.  Good luck & don't forget to wave your Free flag high"?
>
>


references:
<E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E00706D1@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>
	<r5izntlrn14.fsf@gill.maths.keele.ac.uk>
	<3DA6F8EB.5070902@planetunreal.com>

body:
tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:

> You're Welsh?
>
> Then let me rephrase what the move to the en. domain means: it means
> downgrading Westminster so it is on an equal footing with the Welsh assembly
> -- and both equal within the priniciples of the EU.  :-)

I'm not in favour of Welsh independence either.
--
Gareth Owen


body:
"Khendon" skribis:

> What was wrong with my proposal to have the links divert to the language
> specified by cookie and/or browser setting? That still seems the best
> approach to me, although it might be a little more work...

(1) If I expect an english page about "Grilling"
(http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grilling), should I
get an german article about "Grillen" (that is not
linked from or to the English one, by the way) or
the non-existing Esperanto article about "rostado"?

(My language preferences are now eo, de, en, fr.)

I think, the existing links should stay directing to
the same pages.

Maybe we can set up a clever auto-language-selection
at www., but that should not have to use the namespace
/wiki/, should it?

just my opinion,
Paul


subject: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:

> But, from a conceptual point of view, that is certainly not a portal. That's
> an *english* main page, with links to other languages.  Sorry, but I like
> words to be used in their context.

What the hell *is* a portal (besides a internet buzzword from about 1997)
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


body:
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> writes:

> When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the different
> languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for en.wikipedia.com...

I think you mean GB / US / AUS / NZ / CAN ... well, you get the picture.
Either the Flag of St. George (yuck), or nothing, I'd say.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and theWikipedia family

body:
"The Cunctator" skribis:

> On Fri, 2002-10-11 at 11:00, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Gareth Owen wrote:
> > > koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com writes:
> > >
> > > > Aside from that, how would the move to en. be an inconvenience aside from
> > > > having to log in?
> > >
> > > Link rot
> >
> > Can you expand on this?
> >
> > I don't think anyone is proposing that www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson would
> > ever not work as it does now.  It would be a pure alias for en.wikipedia.com.
>
> My understanding is that people are proposing that the www urls be made
> into redirects, not pure aliases, or even links to various language
> entries, or a redirect to the to-be-created portal page, or to the
> to-be-created foundation, at some point.

My understanding is:

(1) http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
should be the same page as
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson.

Maybe it could be a 301 redirect (from www to en)
- where is the problem?

(2)
We should not use
    http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
for anything else in the future.

(3)
The portal page should be at
    http://www.wikipedia.org/,
anything that is about the foundation
could for example be in
    http://www.wikipedia.org/foundation/*,
everything about _all_ wikipedias (special
functions, etc.) maybe could be in
    http://www.wikipedia.org/all/*,
etc.

There is so much namespace free ...

Paul


body:
> Anthere wrote:
> > Right now, on the actual www.wikipedia.org,
> > there is *little way* a user not fluent in english, will have the
> > idea to scroll and look everywhere, down to the bottom of the page,
> > inside a crowded list of international links, to find the link to a
> > latin wikipedia.
>
> ?  Look again.  When I get to http://www.wikipedia.org/ and I'm logged out,
> I see, very large and near the top: Danish, German, Esperanto, Spanish, French,
> Dutch, Polish, and Portuguese.
>
> It seems very prominent to me already.  It seems sensible to me that
> those links should be translated to Espanol, Deutsche, etc.  (But not
> by me, since I don't even know what "French" is in French.  Francais?)

Check the German and Dutch Wikipedias; they already use the 'native' name
for other languages.

Andre Engels


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Moving the English Wikipedia to
  en.wikipedia.org

body:
At 04:16 AM 10/11/02 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> > I am sure Polish Wikipedians would regard it as a big disincentive
> > to be reduced to mere translators of English (other languages?)
> > articles. I think we have created a relatively small but precious
> > Wikipedia with some remarkably good articles.
>
>I think Cunc will gladly take back the word "translation".  I think he was
>just speaking loosely there.
>
>The way I see it is that the Wikipedia is one project with many
>languages.  The individual language wikipedias are not separate
>projects, but part of the large family.  But neither are they merely
>_translations_.
>
>We are united by the fundamental goals: NPOV, openness, encyclopedic
>writing.
>
>I am opposed to the idea, for example, that an article in Spanish about
>the Spanish-American war should be in any way fundamentally different
>from an article in English about the same war.  There's no need for
>them to be translations of each other, of course.  But they should
>contain the same information, and both should be free of bias.

An interesting example. I would expect an article in Spanish to have
more to say about the effects on Cuba and Puerto Rico, and maybe
less on Hearst; an article in Tagalog would probably spend more space
on the results for the Philippines. Yes, in theory space is infinite. In
practice, we cut articles up when they get too long, so there are choices
to make on what is in the article and what's moved to an external link.

>Multilingual people can read both and notice discrepancies and bring
>the articles into line with each other.

More to the point, given finite human energy and the severe flaws in current
machine translation techniques, I don't expect anyone to translate all the
stubs on US counties into Polish any time soon.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
"Jimmy Wales" skribis:

> Anthere wrote:
> > Right now, on the actual www.wikipedia.org,
> > there is *little way* a user not fluent in english, will have the
> > idea to scroll and look everywhere, down to the bottom of the page,
> > inside a crowded list of international links, to find the link to a
> > latin wikipedia.
>
> ?  Look again.  When I get to http://www.wikipedia.org/ and I'm logged out,
> I see, very large and near the top: Danish, German, Esperanto, Spanish, French,
> Dutch, Polish, and Portuguese.

But not Latin, which Anthere requested.

> It seems very prominent to me already.  It seems sensible to me that
> those links should be translated to Espanol, Deutsche, etc.  (But not
> by me, since I don't even know what "French" is in French.  Francais?)

This type of translation is already implemented
in the german, nederlands, ... wikipedias.

I recently asked myself why not also in the
english, danish, ... wikipedias.

Simply have a look.

Paul


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
http://wikipedia.org/ currently gives a directory listing for the home
directory.

This is probably not what is desired.

http://www.wikipedia.org/ still works OK.

Neil


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
en.wikipedia.com...

Anthere wrote:

>>?  Look again.  When I get to
>>http://www.wikipedia.org/ and I'm logged out,
>>I see, very large and near the top: Danish, German,
>>Esperanto, Spanish, French,
>>Dutch, Polish, and Portuguese.
>>
>>It seems very prominent to me already.  It seems
>>sensible to me that
>>those links should be translated to Espanol,
>>Deutsche, etc.  (But not
>>by me, since I don't even know what "French" is in
>>French.  Francais?)
>>
>>But they seem plenty prominent enough.
>>
>>
>
>Right. That suits me enough personnaly, so I won't
>proceed any further. But, from a conceptual point of
>view, that is certainly not a portal. That's an
>*english* main page, with links to other languages.
>Sorry, but I like words to be used in their context.
>
>fran?ais
>
>It would require the c c?dille (?) to be coded
>properly in any langage though
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
>http://faith.yahoo.com
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


subject:
[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs	www.wikipedia.org
 and the  Wikipedia family

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On Fri, 2002-10-11 at 12:25, Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>One more click *only once* does not look like *huge* to me. Only once.
>>And one more login *only once* even less.
>>
>>
>
>If you take a look at  http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special%3APopularpages
>
>you see the problem of the extra click. The front page has more than 20
>times as many view as the next most popular pages. Clickthroughs
>generally follow [[Zipf's law]] (it's even used as an example!).
>
>
Maybe that could be compensated by placing a big (=central, visible)
search function on top of the"www" main page, with a dropdown box for
the different languages, with the browser-preferred language
pre-selected. I guess that's what the random bypasser (the one-click
guy;) wants from an encyclopedia: search for some topic. People who are
interested in the project itself won't mind an additional click, IMHO.

Magnus


body:
"Magnus Manske" skribis:

> When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
> different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
> en.wikipedia.com...

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/flags.html

Paul


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] policy suggestion: don't create pages for
	everything

body:
On Fri, 2002-10-11 at 20:30, tarquin wrote:
> I was looking on
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3APolicies_and_guidelines for
> something along the lines of "don't create a new page for EVERY tiny
> little thing".
>
> couldn't find it.
>
> so here's a suggestion in the shape of a story
>
> I recently found the following mini-web of pages:
> * roadrunner -- a list of the different meanings, including the cartoon
> character
> * Acme -- a multi-stub: several meanings, 2 paragraphs or so for each,
> including a section on the Acme in the cartoons
> * Wile E Coyote -- the cartoon character
>
> Being bold, I turned took all the stuff on the cartoons and made "Road
> Runner cartoon".
> It's a non-stub made out of stubs. It's not bad as an article, and has
> potential to grow.
> Then someone came along and made "Wile E Coyote" and "Acme" back into
> links.
>
> There's a similar situation over at Winnie-the-pooh -- a dozen stubs for
> each of the characters, saying, basically: "X is a character in
> Winnie-the-pooh". This information would be of greater use to the reader
> on a a single "Winnie-the-pooh" page, say with a header == characters ==.
>
> I'm not sure this can be cleanly stated as some sort of policy without
> resorting to fluffy cartoon animals. It's a little fuzzy just when to
> apply this sort of merging and when not to.
> With the RR articles, there was so much overlap between them.

Atomization is generally a good idea. Overlap isn't. That's the lesson I
would teach young grasshopper.


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Interlanguage link stubs (was Re: Moving the
 EnglishWikipedia to en.wikipedia.org)

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> Brion VIBBER wrote:
>
> > This could perhaps be related to the proposed stub link indication -- see
> > http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-September/005510.html
>
> It is not proposed anymore, I just installed it. Check your user
> preferences. Personally, I set it to 500. Happy stub-hunting!

And how does it work and what does it do exactly? I'm not sure what to
set it to because I'm not at all sure what it actually does...

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

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

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


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "We started in January 2001..."

body:
Hello all,

"We started in January 2001 and are already working on 52607 articles (in
the English version)..."

Is there an easy way to change this sentence on the opening (main)
page of www.wikipedia.org to reflect (even estimated) the total
number of pages created by all Wikipedias ?

This will be a small step towards making Wikipedia one unified project.

Regards,
Kpjas.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wierd bug!

body:
On Friday 11 October 2002 09:27 pm, wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com wrote:
> When I clicked on a brown link to take me to a stub entry, it seems to
> take me to a random page instead. And then when I click on my 'back'
> button to try to get back to where I came from, it takes me to ANOTHER
> random page!
>
> Has anyone else noticed this?????
>
> Actually, it suddenly seems to be happening with ALL links! Is somebody
> playing with the program right now? This is too wierd!

Yep - the Wiki has gone off the deep end. I don't think it is the random page
gone wild since the url is correct but the page displayed is completely
wrong.

Oh well, I need to catch-up on my Star Trek watching anyway. ;-)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


in_reply_to: <3DA74CDB.8010808@pobox.com>; from brion@pobox.com on Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 02:12:43PM -0800

body:
On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 02:12:43PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> FWIW, here's the status quo. The English wiki is at:
>    www.wikipedia.org
>
> The following use 301 'temporarily moved' redirects to point to the
> above [...]

301 is 'permanently moved'. They're using 302 'found'.

-M-


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wierd bug!

body:
Yep.

Some observations on the off chance that this will help:

Almost all of the links on the website don't go where they're supposed to
go, but instead result in a random page.  Links that *do* work include:

[[Edit this page]] (supposing you actually do want to edit a page you
randomly hit!)
[[Watch this page]] and [[Stop watching]]
[[Move page]]
[[History]] (of a page)
[[What links here]]
[[Watch links]]
[[Printable version]]

Another weird thing is that you can hit at least certain links several
times (if they appear on several successive pages) and eventually the
correct link *will* come up.  For instance, I can hit [[Larry Sanger]]
(which appears in the upper right hand of my screen) and after two hits
usually my user page does come up.  Similarly with the [[Recent changes]]
link.

Also, a lot of the "random" links come up over and over, I noticed.

Would be very interesting to learn what the bug was!

--Larry


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wierd bug!

body:
At 02:20 PM 12/10/02 +1000, Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
>When I clicked on a brown link to take me to a stub entry, it seems to
>take me to a random page instead. And then when I click on my 'back'
>button to try to get back to where I came from, it takes me to ANOTHER
>random page!
>
>Has anyone else noticed this?????

I'm getting it too, and so is Maveric (saw him comment on it when I
randomly happened to come by the real Recent Changes page. :)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: "We started in January 2001..."

body:
On Friday 11 October 2002 09:27 pm, Kpjas wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> "We started in January 2001 and are already working on 52607 articles (in
> the English version)..."
>
> Is there an easy way to change this sentence on the opening (main)
> page of www.wikipedia.org to reflect (even estimated) the total
> number of pages created by all Wikipedias ?

I'm sure this is possible but I'm also pretty sure the code for it hasn't been
written yet. This is a great idea BTW.

> This will be a small step towards making Wikipedia one unified project.
>
> Regards,
> Kpjas.

We are already working on a portal page for the whole project at Metapedia.
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
If approved, this page will be hosted at www.wikipedia.org and the English
Wikipedia will be at en.wikipedia.org.

This is a lot better than trying to make the English Wikipedia Main Page also
be the Portal Page for the whole project. Under a couple of plans, the
welcome message on the portal page will also be translated into many
different languages in the same way as the Main Page for Metapedia is now
translated. This also requires a different character set than the one used by
the English Wikipedia - thus the English Wikipedia and the portal page needs
to be separate (at least I think this is the case - developers, would it be
possible to have a different character set for just one page in a wiki?).

{{NUMBEROFARTICLESALLLANGUAGES}},  {{NUMBEROFLANGUAGES}} and
{{NUMBEROFARTICLES-XX}} (where XX is a language code) would be very useful
things to have on a portal page for the whole project.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: M. Wojtowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wierd bug!

body:
Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at ualberta.ca> scribed:

> At 02:20 PM 12/10/02 +1000, Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
>> When I clicked on a brown link to take me to a stub entry, it seems
>> to take me to a random page instead. And then when I click on my
>> 'back' button to try to get back to where I came from, it takes me
>> to ANOTHER random page!
>>
>> Has anyone else noticed this?????
>
> I'm getting it too, and so is Maveric (saw him comment on it when I
> randomly happened to come by the real Recent Changes page. :)

Same here (on the English Wikipedia).

I just checked the Esperanto Wikipedia and it didn't seem to have the
problem.

--
Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] policy suggestion: don't create pages for everything

body:
I was looking on
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3APolicies_and_guidelines for
something along the lines of "don't create a new page for EVERY tiny
little thing".

couldn't find it.

so here's a suggestion in the shape of a story

I recently found the following mini-web of pages:
* roadrunner -- a list of the different meanings, including the cartoon
character
* Acme -- a multi-stub: several meanings, 2 paragraphs or so for each,
including a section on the Acme in the cartoons
* Wile E Coyote -- the cartoon character

Being bold, I turned took all the stuff on the cartoons and made "Road
Runner cartoon".
It's a non-stub made out of stubs. It's not bad as an article, and has
potential to grow.
Then someone came along and made "Wile E Coyote" and "Acme" back into
links.

There's a similar situation over at Winnie-the-pooh -- a dozen stubs for
each of the characters, saying, basically: "X is a character in
Winnie-the-pooh". This information would be of greater use to the reader
on a a single "Winnie-the-pooh" page, say with a header == characters ==.

I'm not sure this can be cleanly stated as some sort of policy without
resorting to fluffy cartoon animals. It's a little fuzzy just when to
apply this sort of merging and when not to.
With the RR articles, there was so much overlap between them.

plus I worry that the list of guidelines is too long already.

erm. there's probably a point to be distilled out of the above ;)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Advertisment

body:
Humhum,

For those of you who can't technically help to solve
the en.bug, and are wikialcoolics, sisters wikipedias
are working very well, and would be delighted to
receive your visit during that interlude.

:-)

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


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Links to IRC

body:
Is linking to IRC standardized? And should we allow it? For example to
irc://irc.openprojects.net/%23wikipedia ?

Or does it only work with Mozilla?

Kurt


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia FIXED

body:
All I did just now was restart apache, and all seems well now.

That was the strangest thing I've ever seen.


from_name: Thesmelialichu at aol.com

body:
I see what you mean, I see no reason however for you to put a short line or
two description of each winnie the pooh character on the main winnie the pooh
page, and then leave a link to a page on each of them so someone can cover
them in more detail.

Alex Bradbury


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Thesmelialichu at aol.com wrote:

>I see what you mean, I see no reason however for you to put a short line or
>two description of each winnie the pooh character on the main winnie the pooh
>page, and then leave a link to a page on each of them so someone can cover
>them in more detail.
>
I very much believe that Winnie the Pooh could be treated in a single
page.  Someone who wants to learn more about Winnie should have all the
basic information available on that page without having to click on
links to stubs.  Of the different character pages the one for
Christopher Robin is the only one to exceed 500 bytes in length.  The
main Winnie the Pooh page at 2470 bytes is still fairly modest in
length.  They should be recombined.

Although my numbers are fairly arbitrary, I would still favour as
general rules of thumb:
    1. Avoid creating dependent stub articles with fewer than 500 bytes.
    2. When considering whether to sub-divide an article
        a) Don't bother if it has fewer than 10,000 bytes,
        b) For articles between 10,000 and 20,000 bytes sub-divide if
there are reasonable place to sub-divide,
        c) Actively look for reasonable ways to sub-divide if the
article is more than 20,000 bytes long.

If the Winnie article were to exceed 10,000 bytes, a reasonable
sub-division might then involve splitting off [[Characters in Winnie the
Pooh]] as a block instead of separate articles for each.

Eclecticology


from_name: Khendon

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC

body:
On Sat, Oct 12, 2002 at 09:56:00AM +1000, Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
> Khendon wrote:
> >
> > Is the IRC channel underused because nobody wants to use it, or
> > because nobody bothers because it's underused?
>
> umm... WHAT irc channel?

Hah :-) [[Wikipedia:IRC channel]] . Maybe over the next week, anybody
who thinks a well-used IRC channel would be useful/nice should hang
around in the channel whenever they can, and see if some momentum
can be built up.

Incidentally, has anybody else been getting random pages when requesting
Special:Watchlist? Today I got [[Image:Elephant-thumbnail.jpg]]...

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC

body:
Khendon wrote:
>
> Is the IRC channel underused because nobody wants to use it, or
> because nobody bothers because it's underused?

umm... WHAT irc channel?

(I think that's your answer...)

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

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

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re We started in January 2001...

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On 10/12/02 1:37 AM, "Daniel Mayer"
> <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > We are already working on a portal page for the
> whole project at Metapedia.
> >
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
> > If approved, this page will be hosted at
> www.wikipedia.org and the English
> > Wikipedia will be at en.wikipedia.org.
>
> This is exactly the incredibly bad idea I'm worried
> about. I can't really
> think of anything more ill-conceived.
Ok. So now we are on similar grounds. But what about
voicing why you think this ill-conceived ?
While I said yesterday why I thought it was not
necessary a bad idea from a technical point of view, I
had the following thoughts
The www.wikipedia.org is a very important address.
Must be used accordingly. What is important in
wikipedia (for users) is first of all *content*. Hence
it is maybe not best that this address is used for the
foundation, which should come far after contents.
The actual page as proposed is not containing any
content, just info about the concept of Wikipedia
(very important I agree nevertheless) and redirection
to other places.
What makes Wikipedia different from other
encyclopedias ?
*reactivity*. Because we do not rely on paper (bought
once in a lifetime) or peer review (hence delays in
publications), the power of wikipedia is that we can
come up with an actual subject very quickly.
So why wouldnot this "portal" page be, in particular,
a place where actualities are on the front ?
People would maybe put www.wikipedia.org as a place
(link) where to drop by very frequently to keep
updated with info probably less biaised than their
newspaper, and with much more background ! The news
wouldnot be as quickly there as in www.lemonde.fr but
within a couple of days is much much better than much
encyclos can do.
Then, why would not these links toward actual subjects
or background subject of actual issues, be in several
languages when available
Something like
Current events
* Israeli-Palestinian conflict (English) -- "title in
spanish" (spanish)
* John Walker Lindh (english) -- "title in japanese"
(japanese)
* Claus von Amsberg (English) -- Claus von Amsberg
(n?erlandais)
* Bertrand Delano? (fran?ais) -- Bertrand Delanoe
(English)
* Nobel Prize (English) -- Prix Nobels (fran?ais)
* Eldred v. Ashcroft (English)
* Jimmy Carter (English)
my excuses, I don't necessarily the translations for
each langages.
The idea is just to
* provide content
* put current events coverage or background in the
front, something other encyc can't offer
* made obvious several langages are available
* put each of these langages at the same level
* generate a little bit more of competition and
collaboration between each langage if they want to
have at least one page in their langage here
(just thinking here, I wrote these articles on Maurice
Papon and Bertrand Delano? in english but didnot
really bothered to translate them in french :-)))
We could have something a bit equivalent with a couple
of brillant prose articles in each langage, these
changing from time to time...
just random thoughts
Anthere

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


subject:
[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs
 www.wikipedia.organd the  Wikipedia family

body:
Probably the simplest thing is to add one little sentence to the
beginning of the description - The wikipedia project encompasses many
languages and countries. This is the ENGLISH LANGUAGE version. For other
languages see: (and then a dropdown box with all the languages listed,
so that people can choose which one they want and get automatically
transferred to their chosen version.)

I know that the languages are already listed at the top and bottom of
the page, but maybe this would make it more obvious that you had a free
choice?

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

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

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


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: "We started in January 2001..."

body:
On 10/12/02 1:37 AM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> We are already working on a portal page for the whole project at Metapedia.
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
> If approved, this page will be hosted at www.wikipedia.org and the English
> Wikipedia will be at en.wikipedia.org.

This is exactly the incredibly bad idea I'm worried about. I can't really
think of anything more ill-conceived.


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wierd bug!

body:
On Sat, Oct 12, 2002 at 02:20:07PM +1000, Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
> When I clicked on a brown link to take me to a stub entry, it seems to
> take me to a random page instead. And then when I click on my 'back'
> button to try to get back to where I came from, it takes me to ANOTHER
> random page!
>
> Has anyone else noticed this?????
>
> Actually, it suddenly seems to be happening with ALL links! Is somebody
> playing with the program right now? This is too wierd!
>

Apparently only links of the form

	http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges

are affected,

	http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges

still seems to work. Is the Apache rewrite engine messed up?

Regards,

JeLuF


body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On 10/12/02 1:28 PM, "Anthere" <anthere5 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> <snip>\>
> > The www.wikipedia.org is a very important address.
> > Must be used accordingly. What is important in
> > wikipedia (for users) is first of all *content*.
> Hence
> > it is maybe not best that this address is used for
> the
> > foundation, which should come far after contents.
> >
> > The actual page as proposed is not containing any
> > content, just info about the concept of Wikipedia
> > (very important I agree nevertheless) and
> redirection
> > to other places.
>
> Exactly. This is the basic problem with the "portal"
> concept.
>
> <snip interesting discussion>
> >
> > The idea is just to
> > * provide content
> > * put current events coverage or background in the
> > front, something other encyc can't offer
> > * made obvious several langages are available
> > * put each of these langages at the same level
> > * generate a little bit more of competition and
> > collaboration between each langage if they want to
> > have at least one page in their langage here
> >
> > (just thinking here, I wrote these articles on
> Maurice
> > Papon and Bertrand Delano? in english but didnot
> > really bothered to translate them in french :-)))
>
> That is the problem with putting languages on the
> same level. (All the other
> ideas above are just right.) Having multiple
> versions of the same
> information, whether in different languages or in
> multiple entries in one
> language, is detrimental to the progress of the
> project. At the same time,
> only being in one language is detrimental to the
> project.

This implies better definition of the word "version"
maybe. In french, version means basically translation.
We recently changed our welcome text to indicate the
french wikipedia was the equivalent of the
en.wikipedia (instead of it being the version of the
en.wiki)

Though npov states that goal, I believe the majority
of the articles will never be the same. We ain't
machines, and nobody will take care to review over and
over articles in each langage to check they are the
same. This would be 1)no fun 2)limiting creativity.
Picking info is one thing, translating it is another.

After the article on Papon was reedited by several
people, I copied it on the french wiki, and mostly let
other french translate it. I tell you, within 2 weeks,
the en. and the fr. article may look similar but *are
not* the same. Some interested might check our
http://fr.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Jacques-Yves_Cousteau,
much more npov than the en. one.

> multiple entries in one
> language, is detrimental to the progress of the
> project.

And I don't think it being detrimental to the project.
In the long term, I believe each langage could get
maybe more specific about some subjects. Just as some
fields are more covered in one langage than another
for the sake of human knowledge communication. Music
by Germans, Romance by Italians, whatever. Say, it is
possible that en.wiki has a small article about "Le
Festival de Cannes" and we have a very comprehensive
one. Does that make sense for english to have a very
comprehensive one ? Does that not make sense then to
have a long "current event" on www.wikipedia.org in
french and a short in english ?

> An example of how to attempt to compromise between
> those issues for the www
> home page, for example, would be to keep the current
> event links in English
> but:
> 1) at the top of the page list all the languages in
> their native tongue (I
> had added the more complete list, but Mav reverted
> it since some of them
> were rarely used)

Are you proposing just the same page than the current
one here, with just all languages instead of a small
dozen ?
Where is the compromise ?
I see very little difference with the current
situation.
If what worries you is the mis-representation we would
have over the english representation with what I
propose, I need to reassure you. We have very little
"current news" right now, and I don't expect we will
have much more until we are bigger. So it is very
likely we would only have a couple of links on the
page. That should do for a representation proportional
to our size I guess...

> 2) add a section for highlighting entries in other
> languages

Can you explain that more ? Where is the section ? How
to access it ? How do you plan to take into account
further development of say...the german wiki is her
links are relegated somewhere and not very visible ?

> (Note that 2) would be greatly helped if we figure
> out ways to integrate
> Recent Changes.)

I totally agree

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] www.wikipedia.org

body:
I think I forgot to put this prop on the main list

Aren't we procrastinating here ? Shouldnot we change
the mailing lists to have one for en. matters and one
for "meta".matters ???

--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On 10/12/02 1:37 AM, "Daniel Mayer"
> <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > We are already working on a portal page for the
> whole project at Metapedia.
> >
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
> > If approved, this page will be hosted at
> www.wikipedia.org and the English
> > Wikipedia will be at en.wikipedia.org.
>
> This is exactly the incredibly bad idea I'm worried
> about. I can't really
> think of anything more ill-conceived.
Ok. So now we are on similar grounds. But what about
voicing why you think this ill-conceived ?
While I said yesterday why I thought it was not
necessary a bad idea from a technical point of view, I
had the following thoughts
The www.wikipedia.org is a very important address.
Must be used accordingly. What is important in
wikipedia (for users) is first of all *content*. Hence
it is maybe not best that this address is used for the
foundation, which should come far after contents.
The actual page as proposed is not containing any
content, just info about the concept of Wikipedia
(very important I agree nevertheless) and redirection
to other places.
What makes Wikipedia different from other
encyclopedias ?
*reactivity*. Because we do not rely on paper (bought
once in a lifetime) or peer review (hence delays in
publications), the power of wikipedia is that we can
come up with an actual subject very quickly.
So why wouldnot this "portal" page be, in particular,
a place where actualities are on the front ?
People would maybe put www.wikipedia.org as a place
(link) where to drop by very frequently to keep
updated with info probably less biaised than their
newspaper, and with much more background ! The news
wouldnot be as quickly there as in www.lemonde.fr but
within a couple of days is much much better than much
encyclos can do.
Then, why would not these links toward actual subjects
or background subject of actual issues, be in several
languages when available
Something like
Current events
* Israeli-Palestinian conflict (English) -- "title in
spanish" (spanish)
* John Walker Lindh (english) -- "title in japanese"
(japanese)
* Claus von Amsberg (English) -- Claus von Amsberg
(n?erlandais)
* Bertrand Delano? (fran?ais) -- Bertrand Delanoe
(English)
* Nobel Prize (English) -- Prix Nobels (fran?ais)
* Eldred v. Ashcroft (English)
* Jimmy Carter (English)
my excuses, I don't necessarily the translations for
each langages.
The idea is just to
* provide content
* put current events coverage or background in the
front, something other encyc can't offer
* made obvious several langages are available
* put each of these langages at the same level
* generate a little bit more of competition and
collaboration between each langage if they want to
have at least one page in their langage here
(just thinking here, I wrote these articles on Maurice
Papon and Bertrand Delano? in english but didnot
really bothered to translate them in french :-)))
We could have something a bit equivalent with a couple
of brillant prose articles in each langage, these
changing from time to time...
just random thoughts
Anthere
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Little flags

body:
On Saturday 12 October 2002 12:33 pm,  Khendon wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 07:28:14PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> > When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
> > different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
> > en.wikipedia.com...
>
> And Australian. And, uh, all the other countries that speak english.

Yes this would be neat but may get out-of-hand for languages like Spanish in
which there are dozens of countries who use Spanish as their main language.

These flags would have to be tiny and might need to be combined in one image
file per language for the upcoming portal page in order to limit the number
of elements that browsers have to download. I'm not sure if the benefit is
worth the cost but it should be at least tried.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia FIXED

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> All I did just now was restart apache, and all seems well now.
>
> That was the strangest thing I've ever seen.

If I had to take a guess, the URL-filter I set up to fix the [[Looney
Tunes & Merry Melodies filmography]] problem got out of sync somehow and
was returning the filtered version of the previous URL that got
requested. I'll see if I can set this up in a less fragile way...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Search results, markup and readability

body:
Lightning wrote:
> another option i ould like would be this:
>
> Miami (1897 bytes)
>  City in the United States. For other uses see Miami.
> ---also available in Esperanto, Spanish ......

I like this one. Also showing the first li'l bit of a page even if it
doesn't contain the search word would be nice. Redirects should also be
labeled as such.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: moving the English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org

body:
On Saturday 12 October 2002 12:33 pm, elian wrote:
> Just one more argument for the multilingual portal: for the German
> wikipedia we thought of making posters (for promoting wikipedia a little
> bit in universities). That means we have to put an URL on the poster
> people are able to remember well. The normal non-expert internet user is
> accustomed to URLs beginning with www (in fact most people simply don't
> know that this is not a necessary part of an internet address) So he will
> not remember de.wikipedia.org or is likely to get it wrong. On the other
> hand, www signifies to everybody: "hey, this is an internet address", so
> we don't even have to add a "http://"
>
> greetings,
> elian

Thanks for mentioning this point - it is a very important one. The PR power of
www.wikipedia.org should be shared by all language projects. It would be
unfair for the English Wikipedia to monopolize the direct benefits from this
PR tool.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS to The Cunctator; When I say "language projects" what I mean is
"subprojects of the larger Wikipedia Project that are based in different
languages".


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wierd bug!

body:
When I clicked on a brown link to take me to a stub entry, it seems to
take me to a random page instead. And then when I click on my 'back'
button to try to get back to where I came from, it takes me to ANOTHER
random page!

Has anyone else noticed this?????

Actually, it suddenly seems to be happening with ALL links! Is somebody
playing with the program right now? This is too wierd!

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

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

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ideas for the portal page (was Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: "We started in January 2001..." )

body:
On Saturday 12 October 2002 12:33 pm, Anthere wrote:
> The www.wikipedia.org is a very important address.
> Must be used accordingly.

I agree - the PR value of that address should be shared.

>What is important in
> wikipedia (for users) is first of all *content*. Hence
> it is maybe not best that this address is used for the
> foundation, which should come far after contents.

I don't think any suggestions thus far would have www.wikipedia.org /only/ be
about the Foundation. The portal page should also be a portal to the
Foundation. Besides I don't see much difference between the Wikipedia Project
and the Wikipedia Foundation; one is the body, the other is the head. They
are therefore part of a whole.

> The actual page as proposed is not containing any
> content, just info about the concept of Wikipedia
> (very important I agree nevertheless) and redirection
> to other places.

This is true.

> What makes Wikipedia different from other
> encyclopedias ?
> *reactivity*. Because we do not rely on paper (bought
> once in a lifetime) or peer review (hence delays in
> publications), the power of wikipedia is that we can
> come up with an actual subject very quickly.

Again, very true.

> So why wouldnot this "portal" page be, in particular,
> a place where actualities are on the front ?
>
> People would maybe put www.wikipedia.org as a place
> (link) where to drop by very frequently to keep
> updated with info probably less biaised than their
> newspaper, and with much more background ! The news
> wouldnot be as quickly there as in www.lemonde.fr but
> within a couple of days is much much better than much
> encyclos can do.

But Wikipedia is not CNN and each Main Page of most of the active language
projects already have "current events" listed.

> Then, why would not these links toward actual subjects
> or background subject of actual issues, be in several
> languages when available
>
> Something like
>
> Current events
> * Israeli-Palestinian conflict (English) -- "title in
> spanish" (spanish)
> * John Walker Lindh (english) -- "title in japanese"
> (japanese)
> * Claus von Amsberg (English) -- Claus von Amsberg
> (n?erlandais)
> * Bertrand Delano? (fran?ais) -- Bertrand Delanoe
> (English)
> * Nobel Prize (English) -- Prix Nobels (fran?ais)
> * Eldred v. Ashcroft (English)
> * Jimmy Carter (English)
>
> my excuses, I don't necessarily the translations for
> each langages.

This seems like duplication of part of each language's Main Page and therefore
would be difficult to maintain if done manually. There will also be
translations of the project overview on the portal page in several different
languages, no? The current events section of each would have to be updated.

> The idea is just to
> * provide content
> * put current events coverage or background in the
> front, something other encyc can't offer
> * made obvious several langages are available
> * put each of these langages at the same level
> * generate a little bit more of competition and
> collaboration between each langage if they want to
> have at least one page in their langage here
>......

Don't get me wrong I like the basic concept but I'm just not sure it would be
practical. Maybe some php magic can be done that automatically takes the
current events section of each Main Page of each language project and then
displays the results in a box on each language version of the portal pages...

That way a person at a glance will be able to see the current events listing
for the whole project. That would be most cool.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
Lightning wrote:
> another option i ould like would be this:
>
> Miami (1897 bytes)
> City in the United States. For other uses see Miami.
> ---also available in Esperanto, Spanish ......

I think this option would be best.

kq


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the Wikipedia family

body:
I haven't voiced an opinion on this yet;
however, I do feel strongly about it.
Now, I disagree with mav often enough that I don't want to appoint him
my diplomatic ambassador in perpetuity for all matters,
but I do want to say that I agree entirely with what he wrote.

(I quote the post that I'm referring to in its entirety below,
lest you confuse it with some other post that maybe I disagree with.
But you can stop reading once you recognise it ^_^.)

-- Toby

Maveric149 wrote:
>I would just like to point out that part of the
>frustration that the current non-English Wikipedians
>seem to feel is that there appears to be a hierarchy
>where the English Wikipedia is considered to be far
>more important than the non-English Wikipedias in
>some. This is also one of the reasons why we had a
>Spanish fork to begin with. Part of the reason why we
>were getting good vibes from them on reunification is
>due to our then tentative plans to move the English
>Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org. So without this small
>concession by us, I don't think there is a good chance
>for them rejoining our project. The English Wikipedia
>won't be harmed by being placed at en.wikipedia.org --
>this is the only fair and neutral thing to do. If the
>English Wikipedia continues to push its weight around
>over these types of issues then there will be other
>forks. How is that for Balkanizaiton?

>As I stated before, the URL thing is symbolic and each
>Wikipedia encyclopedia in my view should be treated as
>siblings. Granted the English Wikipedia is the oldest
>and largest but it shouldn't be vaulted as /The Main/
>Wikipedia with the other languages relegated to second
>class status in The Main Wikipedia's shadow. The Main
>Wikipedia is the /whole/ project which includes all
>languages not just one, no? I furthermore don't see a
>move as Balkanization when we will soon all be on the
>same software, all use the same Metapedia and all have
>interlanguage links going back and forth from all the
>different languages. I now will often take info from
>articles in other languages to update their English
>counterparts and I also see the reverse being done by
>non-English Wikipedias. www.wikipedia.org should be
>home for the Foundation and a portal to each of the
>different language sub-projects as I stated in my
>previous post. The English Wikipedia would be just one
>click away from the portal and so would all the other
>wikipedias. This is only fair.

>--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wierd bug!

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
> At 02:20 PM 12/10/02 +1000, Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
> >When I clicked on a brown link to take me to a stub entry, it seems to
> >take me to a random page instead. And then when I click on my 'back'
> >button to try to get back to where I came from, it takes me to ANOTHER
> >random page!
> >
> >Has anyone else noticed this?????
>
> I'm getting it too, and so is Maveric (saw him comment on it when I
> randomly happened to come by the real Recent Changes page. :)

Whatever the cause, I've given up for the day... I tried to get to my
preferences page to switch off the stubbing in case that was the cause,
but I can't get there! Virtually all links seem to have been
'randomised' and there isn't really anything else to do. I hope that
somebody can figure out what's gone wrong and correct it ASAP!

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

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

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving the English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org

body:
Anthere wrote in part:

>ah, you ring a bell here. I several times felt the
>consuming desire just to create an empty page (or an
>*horrible* stub) in english, just to link a french
>page that existed.

>Sorry for those who don't like stubs, but *this* issue
>is just a call for stubs. Or, we need to find another
>way to indicate links from a empty link.

I've thought about this as well, and this has bothered me,
since I'm supposed to be one of the people opposed to horrible stubs.

But I think that there is a way to avoid horrible stubs here.
It doesn't avoid stubs completely -- but I'm not against non-horrible stubs.

My idea is that you should translate the first paragraph of the article.
It's quite unreasonable that you should translate the whole thing,
but translating the first paragraph will provide a good stub.
Then the language link will show people the fuller article.

My phrase "the first paragraph" has to be interpreted appropriately.
Some articles' first literal paragraphs are too long, some perhaps too short.
There may even be badly written articles whose first paragraph
doesn't properly introduce the subject, and the second would be better.
But generally speaking, the first few sentences should be sufficient,
without being a great burden on the putative translator.

And you don't have to translate it *well*;
use bad grammar and spelling, it'll get fixed.

Your proposal (snipped) is not a bad idea either,
but it will take some programming work to happen.
Translating the first paragraph can be done now.

-- Toby


from_name: Lightning

body:
When i search for Miami this is my top result:

Miami (1897 bytes)
1: [[eo:Miami]]
3: ...ty in the [[United States]]. For other uses see [[Miami
(disambigation)]].''</font>

this is horrible, its a usabilty blotch. i't's just, very unproductive and
non friendly andj ust ugly really

I suggest we do this, stript the markup so we get :

Miami (1897 bytes)
 City in the United States. For other uses see Miami.

where "Untied States" is a hyperlink to United States, and Miami to the
dismbiguation page.. Much more readble, much more space efficient....
Baiscally what I am suggestion is to either parse markup (except for obvious
thinks like lists and == which would make it unreadable) or strip it out.
because the search results are not very readable

another option i ould like would be this:

Miami (1897 bytes)
 City in the United States. For other uses see Miami.
---also available in Esperanto, Spanish ......

as a result

Suggestions, comments? reasons this isn't so? or anything built upon these
ideas?


body:
[Note: The post that I'm replying to didn't get sent to <intlwiki-l>.
       Or perhaps it was sent separately; I'm not sure.]

The Cunctator wrote in last part:

>By definition doing "what is fair and equal" for groups with unequal
>representation is being politically correct.

O, is *that* what it means?  I've always wondered.

>The Wikipedia entry [[political correctness]] is pretty good.

Well, if you think so, then perhaps you should read it.
Because it (at least on [[en:]]) doesn't say what you just said.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the	 Wikipedia family

body:
[Note:  The post that I'm replying to didn't get sent to <intlwiki-l>.
        Or perhaps it was sent separately; I'm not sure.]

The Cunctator wrote:

>Koyaanis Qatsi wrote:

>>Aside from that, how would the move to en. be an inconvenience aside
>>from having to log in?  And if having to log in is such an
>>inconvenience, why do I have to log in every month anyway?  Given
>>that we do have to log in every month or so, are you perhaps
>>splitting hairs in calling the proposed move an inconvenience?

>Just for example, that one inconvenience is a major thing. I'd say it
>should be removed 1) ASAP and 2) before we consider doing more
>url-redirecting.

Erm, you two have to log in every month or so?  I don't.

And we should move the cookie to simply <wikipedia.org>.
Is there any reason why this wouldn't work?
(Other than forcing everybody on every wiki to login one last time.)

>What removal means is consolidating the userspaces so that cookies can
>point to .wikipedia.org instead of xxx.wikipedia.org.

Now *that*'s not a bad idea at all!
Does anybody know (is there an easy way to check),
are there any overlaps between usernames on different language wikis?
(Not counting the same person appearing on different wikis, of course.)

>Doing so has many, many benefits for the long-term health and viability
>of the project.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
[Note:  The post that I'm replying to didn't appear on <intl-wiki>.
        Or perhaps it appeared separately; I'm not sure.]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Anthere wrote:

>>Right now, on the actual www.wikipedia.org,
>>there is *little way* a user not fluent in english, will have the
>>idea to scroll and look everywhere, down to the bottom of the page,
>>inside a crowded list of international links, to find the link to a
>>latin wikipedia.

>?  Look again.  When I get to http://www.wikipedia.org/ and I'm logged out,
>I see, very large and near the top: Danish, German, Esperanto, Spanish, French,
>Dutch, Polish, and Portuguese.

But not Latin, Frisian, ....

>It seems very prominent to me already.  It seems sensible to me that
>those links should be translated to Espanol, Deutsche, etc.  (But not
>by me, since I don't even know what "French" is in French.  Francais?)

"Espa?ol", "Deutsch", "Fran?ais".

>But they seem plenty prominent enough.

They don't seem at all prominent to me.
They're in with a bunch of header material that my eye naturally ignores;
I'm drawn to the beginning of paragraphed text further down.

-- Toby


body:
[Note:  The post that I'm replying to didn't appear on <intlwiki-l>.
        Or maybe it was posted separately; I'm not sure.]

Magnus Manske wrote:

>When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
>different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
>en.wikipedia.com...

I say that we should use the English flag,
since the English language is named after England.
I'm American, never been to England, but this doesn't bother me.

And note that the English flag is *not* the Union Jack.
It's *half* of that, the flag of Saint George.

Will this sort of thing work for every language
that doesn't (like Esperanto) have its own flag?

-- Toby


body:
Maveric149 wrote in last part:

>Paul Ebermann wrote;

>>anything that is about the foundation
>>could for example be in
>>    http://www.wikipedia.org/foundation/*,

>Why not simply www.wikipedia.org/ ? The word
>"foundation" is still in English which isn't necessary
>and might seem odd as the URL for the French
>translation of the by-laws.

Could this cause problems if a currently existing [[en:]] page
has the same name as a proposed foundation text page?
No big deal; conflicts are unlikely and can in any case be avoided by
changing the foundation text page to something different but just as good.

That said, I have a sneaking suspicion that mav intends that
the foundation text pages have URLs such as:
<http://www.wikipedia.org/membership> for English text,
<http://www.wikipedia.org/adh%E9sion> for French text,
<http://www.wikipedia.org/Mitgliedschaft> for German text, etc.

If so, let me mention again that some words (especially big ones)
sometimes appear the same way in different languages.
This is the same thing that I like to point out
whenever mav suggests using <http://www.xxx.org/>
as the homepage for the language whose translation of "Wikipedia" is "xxx".

Thus, we'll really want to say either something like
<http://www.wikipedia.org/en/membership> for English text,
<http://www.wikipedia.org/fr/adh%E9sion> for French text,
<http://www.wikipedia.org/de/Mitgliedschaft> for German text, etc;
or <http://www.wikipedia.org/membership.en> for English text,
<http://www.wikipedia.org/adh%E9sion.fr> for French text,
<http://www.wikipedia.org/Mitgliedschaft.de> for German text, etc.

-- Toby


body:
Alex Bradbury wrote:

>I see what you mean, I see no reason however for you to put a short line or
>two description of each winnie the pooh character on the main winnie the pooh
>page, and then leave a link to a page on each of them so someone can cover
>them in more detail.

This is a good idea, although I would, in general,
also l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] We started in January 2001...

body:
[Note:  The post that I'm replying to didn't appear on <intlwiki-l>.
        Or perhaps it appeared separately; I'm not sure.]

Anthere wrote in part:

>So why wouldnot this "portal" page be, in particular,
>a place where actualities are on the front ?

"actualities" = "current events"?

>Something like
>Current events
>* Israeli-Palestinian conflict (English) -- "title in
>spanish" (spanish)
>* John Walker Lindh (english) -- "title in japanese"
>(japanese)
>* Claus von Amsberg (English) -- Claus von Amsberg
>(n?erlandais)
>* Bertrand Delano? (fran?ais) -- Bertrand Delanoe
>(English)
>* Nobel Prize (English) -- Prix Nobels (fran?ais)
>* Eldred v. Ashcroft (English)
>* Jimmy Carter (English)

I haven't thought this all the way through,
but right now this seems like a pretty neat idea!

-- Toby


subject: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 07:28:14PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
> different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
> en.wikipedia.com...

And Australian. And, uh, all the other countries that speak english.

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


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
>Can I suggest what many other sites have done?
>ok i thought so

>A map of the world, click on a certain region, it takes you to whatever
>language is spoken there...

What language do I get if I click on Canada?

What language do I get if I click on mainland China?  (You of course
know that there is no such language as "Chinese.")

Where do I click if I want Esperanto or Latin?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: DW

body:
On Saturday 12 October 2002 04:00 pm, wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com wrote:
> As some of you may have seen from the Recent Changes page, I've been
> involved in an edit war with user DW (also appearing as various IPs
> starting with 209) over [[List of famous Canadians]]. DW, who did most
> of the initial work on the page wants to keep off Canadians that in his
> eyes are not famous. Most of the other editors (among others Camembert,
> GWO, and later I) argued that famous is a very subjective adjective, and
> that there is no reason not to add anybody that also has an article on
> Wikipedia (just having a bunch of empty links is less useful, except
> maybe for some very famous persons that lack such an entry).
>
> DW then started to vow he would keep reverting any changes regarding a
> Canadian music group (Be Good Tanyas). This evolved into name calling
> (especially directed at me), eventually in calling me fascist, etc. etc
> (see the talk page and edit history for some samples). I'm getting tired
> of dealing with DW, but I don't want to resort to banning or blocking of
> the page - not only would that make me a "fascist" (well, at least in
> DW's eyes), but he has made really valuable contributions in the past,
> and I don't want to scare away good editors.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jeronimo

Others have complained about DW/209 before and his abusive language and
complete failure to offer supporing evidence for his accusations is not
acceptable IMO. He has already been told about our etiquette policy so I say
if he doesn't stop then there should be a temporary block after a warning. I
have seen no evidence to support the accusations that Jeronimo is "racist",
"fascist", a "moron" or even "anti-American". Also refering to Jeronimo or as
"hesheit" or the "fake Jeronimo" is over the top. We needn't encourage this
type of abuse by allowing it to continue indefinitely (the occassion outburst
is fine but DW/209 is showing a pattern of behavior).

BTW, this is the same DW who spewed similar abuse at JHK and demanded that she
present her credentials. It is my understanding that this was one of the
reasons why she left.
See;
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:J_Hofmann_Kemp&oldid=200626
Look for "Credentials" and also "Call to the Militia"

I removed the credentials by JHK's request.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
All right, now that you have expressed your contempt for my questions,
called me and pain in the ass, and questioned my intelligence ... are
you going to answer the questions?

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Lightning
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2002 18:04
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs
www.wikipedia.org and the Wikipedia family

> What language do I get if I click on Canada?
>
> What language do I get if I click on mainland China?  (You of course
> know that there is no such language as "Chinese.")
>
> Where do I click if I want Esperanto or Latin?

Well we can assume people have a certain level of intelligence I
imagine.
And can look  at the bottom in the text links if they dont see their
language,  besides if the map is done right the whole map + text links
should be able to be seen without scrolling to most everyone. (aim for
640x480). Oh and if you putt your mouse over the map most browsers
display
whatever is on the alt tag, or a tooltip thing, you can have that say
the
name of the language in its own laguage how bout that.... sounds
reasonable.. anyone that argues with that is just being a pain  in the
ass
in my opinion. there's no reason to be so picky and people really dont
take
such offense to that.. I mean if you really want to stretch it, maybe
Quebec
point to french...

seriously people... this whole political correctness stuff is getting to
a
ridiculous level... people have a certain ammount of intelligence and
understanding... you cant please everyone

Lightning

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
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body:
--- Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > But, from a conceptual point of view, that is
> certainly not a portal. That's
> > an *english* main page, with links to other
> languages.  Sorry, but I like
> > words to be used in their context.
>
> What the hell *is* a portal (besides a internet
> buzzword from about 1997)

Is this type of question designed to make me sound as
if I had absolutely no idea what I am talking about,
or not worth listening because not using the best
word, or designed to slow down any thinking process by
drawing out a *detail*, or what ??

If such is your concern, explain *yourself* what *you*
think is a portal, or better, explain what should be
www.wikipedia.org page to your opinion.

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and
  the  Wikipedia family

body:
At 03:11 PM 10/12/02 -0700, Toby wrote:
>[Note:  The post that I'm replying to didn't appear on <intlwiki-l>.
>         Or maybe it was posted separately; I'm not sure.]
>
>Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> >When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
> >different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
> >en.wikipedia.com...
>
>I say that we should use the English flag,
>since the English language is named after England.
>I'm American, never been to England, but this doesn't bother me.
>
>And note that the English flag is *not* the Union Jack.
>It's *half* of that, the flag of Saint George.

The problem is that most people won't recognize the English flag, which
is rarely used outside of an international sports context, so it doesn't
serve the purpose of "click here for the English version". I'm not British
either (though I have been to England (and to Wales and Scotland)), but
I'm used to clicking on the UK flag to get English Web pages, not the
English flag.

Of course, by sheer numbers it would properly be the flag of India, which
I suspect would confuse most non-Indians.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
Anthere Wrote:
>--- Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>> > But, from a conceptual point of view, that is
>> certainly not a portal. That's
>> > an *english* main page, with links to other
>> languages.  Sorry, but I like
>> > words to be used in their context.
>>
>> What the hell *is* a portal (besides a internet
>> buzzword from about 1997)
>
>Is this type of question designed to make me sound as
>if I had absolutely no idea what I am talking about,
>or not worth listening because not using the best
>word, or designed to slow down any thinking process by
>drawing out a *detail*, or what ??
>
>If such is your concern, explain *yourself* what *you*
>think is a portal, or better, explain what should be
>www.wikipedia.org page to your opinion.

Anthere, I took the question to be sincere, though not especially diplomatic.  :-)  I also don't know what a portal is--I *think* I do, but I'm usually only partly right when I *think* I know something, and so I'm usually mostly wrong.

Yahoo is a portal, right?  ...  Or no?

kq


body:
> Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > But, from a conceptual point of view, that is certainly not a portal.
That's
> > an *english* main page, with links to other languages.  Sorry, but I
like
> > words to be used in their context.
>
> What the hell *is* a portal (besides a internet buzzword from about 1997)

Can I suggest what many other sites have done?
ok i thought so

A map of the world, click on a certain region, it takes you to whatever
language is spoken there...

and below the map, text links to each language
like this:

-------------------------
|
|         MAP
|
-------------------------
[Espanol|English|Deutch|Francais.........]

_NO TEXT_ Except for the language Links.. this takes you to an introduction
page in your language and yadda yadda yadda or wherever you want it to take
you

Lightning
any one have any objections


body:
> What language do I get if I click on Canada?
>
> What language do I get if I click on mainland China?  (You of course
> know that there is no such language as "Chinese.")
>
> Where do I click if I want Esperanto or Latin?

Well we can assume people have a certain level of intelligence I imagine.
And can look  at the bottom in the text links if they dont see their
language,  besides if the map is done right the whole map + text links
should be able to be seen without scrolling to most everyone. (aim for
640x480). Oh and if you putt your mouse over the map most browsers display
whatever is on the alt tag, or a tooltip thing, you can have that say the
name of the language in its own laguage how bout that.... sounds
reasonable.. anyone that argues with that is just being a pain  in the ass
in my opinion. there's no reason to be so picky and people really dont take
such offense to that.. I mean if you really want to stretch it, maybe Quebec
point to french...

seriously people... this whole political correctness stuff is getting to a
ridiculous level... people have a certain ammount of intelligence and
understanding... you cant please everyone

Lightning


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] DW

body:
I'm getting tired
> of dealing with DW, but I don't want to resort to banning or blocking of
> the page - not only would that make me a "fascist" (well, at least in
> DW's eyes), but he has made really valuable contributions in the past,
> and I don't want to scare away good editors.

I know what you're talking about - see the debacle in [[Talk:Quebec]]. IMHO, the person has no concept of NPOV and is very staunchly convinced of his own righteousness and omniscience. He is continually making snotty comments about virtually anything and seems obsessed with my sexual orientation and that of others. I'm just a little bit tired of him but unfortunately I'm not sure what to do about it. (Mercifully, he seems to have lost interest in [[Quebec]].)

Best,
Matt M. (Montrealais)
Montreal, Quebec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia FIXED

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> All I did just now was restart apache, and all seems well now.

Yay! Well cone... that was sure one heck of a  wierd bug...

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

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

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


body:
> > When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
> > different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
> > en.wikipedia.com...
>
> And Australian. And, uh, all the other countries that speak english.

I don't like flags, and I guess many others also don't like them. If we
really need some kind picture to represent a language, then please let's
coose an image of a famous person who used this language to produce
something important/famous/extraordinary/... (and who could represent
our NPOV somehow).

I don't know if we really need images, but if so than please not flags.

Kurt


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

subject: [Wikipedia-l] DW

body:
As some of you may have seen from the Recent Changes page, I've been
involved in an edit war with user DW (also appearing as various IPs
starting with 209) over [[List of famous Canadians]]. DW, who did most
of the initial work on the page wants to keep off Canadians that in his
eyes are not famous. Most of the other editors (among others Camembert,
GWO, and later I) argued that famous is a very subjective adjective, and
that there is no reason not to add anybody that also has an article on
Wikipedia (just having a bunch of empty links is less useful, except
maybe for some very famous persons that lack such an entry).

DW then started to vow he would keep reverting any changes regarding a
Canadian music group (Be Good Tanyas). This evolved into name calling
(especially directed at me), eventually in calling me fascist, etc. etc
(see the talk page and edit history for some samples). I'm getting tired
of dealing with DW, but I don't want to resort to banning or blocking of
the page - not only would that make me a "fascist" (well, at least in
DW's eyes), but he has made really valuable contributions in the past,
and I don't want to scare away good editors.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Jeronimo


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Intlwiki-l][Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the Wikipedia family

body:
"Toby Bartels" skribis:

> Maveric149 wrote in last part:
>
> >Paul Ebermann wrote;
>
> >>anything that is about the foundation
> >>could for example be in
> >>    http://www.wikipedia.org/foundation/*,
>
> >Why not simply www.wikipedia.org/ ? The word
> >"foundation" is still in English which isn't necessary
> >and might seem odd as the URL for the French
> >translation of the by-laws.
>
> Could this cause problems if a currently existing [[en:]] page
> has the same name as a proposed foundation text page?
> No big deal; conflicts are unlikely and can in any case be avoided by
> changing the foundation text page to something different but just as good.

This is no problem since the en-pages all use /wiki/
(or /wiki.cgi?...) and we should not use
    www.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
for anything else, IMHO).

Paul


body:
"Toby Bartels" skribis:

> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> >When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
> >different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
> >en.wikipedia.com...
>
> I say that we should use the English flag,
> since the English language is named after England.
> I'm American, never been to England, but this doesn't bother me.
>
> And note that the English flag is *not* the Union Jack.
> It's *half* of that, the flag of Saint George.

http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/gb-eng.html

[en]
(a) How many of the people interested in the english
 pages knows that this is the flag of England?

(b) Who will associate this flag with the english
language?

I think, this is even more discriminating than
only using the flag of the United Kingdom.

> Will this sort of thing work for every language
> that doesn't (like Esperanto) have its own flag?

I think at all that country-flags for representing
languages is a bad idea - even if the language is
named after a country.

Here again the arguments:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/flags.html

Paul


from_name: Derek Ross

subject: [Wikipedia-l] DW

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeroen Heijmans" <j.heijmans at stud.tue.nl>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2002 10:46 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] DW

> As some of you may have seen from the Recent Changes page, I've been
> involved in an edit war with user DW (also appearing as various IPs
> starting with 209) over [[List of famous Canadians]]. DW, who did most
> of the initial work on the page wants to keep off Canadians that in his
> eyes are not famous. Most of the other editors (among others Camembert,
> GWO, and later I) argued that famous is a very subjective adjective, and
> that there is no reason not to add anybody that also has an article on
> Wikipedia (just having a bunch of empty links is less useful, except
> maybe for some very famous persons that lack such an entry).
>
> DW then started to vow he would keep reverting any changes regarding a
> Canadian music group (Be Good Tanyas). This evolved into name calling
> (especially directed at me), eventually in calling me fascist, etc. etc
> (see the talk page and edit history for some samples). I'm getting tired
> of dealing with DW, but I don't want to resort to banning or blocking of
> the page - not only would that make me a "fascist" (well, at least in
> DW's eyes), but he has made really valuable contributions in the past,
> and I don't want to scare away good editors.
>
> Any suggestions?
>

How about this.

Create a page called List of notable Canadians
Copy the contents of List of famous Canadians to it
Find all links to List of famous Canadians
Change them to point to List of notable Canadians

Then let DW do what he likes with the list of famous Canadians.  It sounds
like he's got a bad case of "ownership" for that particular page title.  If
he's abusive and starts making ad hominen attacks, you should either point
out that they are simple insults in an NPOV fashion or ignore him completely
as if he were a troll.

Cheers

Derek


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Anthere Wrote:
> >--- Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk>
> wrote:
> >> Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:
> >>
> >> > But, from a conceptual point of view, that is
> >> certainly not a portal. That's
> >> > an *english* main page, with links to other
> >> languages.  Sorry, but I like
> >> > words to be used in their context.
> >>
> >> What the hell *is* a portal (besides a internet
> >> buzzword from about 1997)
> >
> >Is this type of question designed to make me sound
> as
> >if I had absolutely no idea what I am talking
> about,
> >or not worth listening because not using the best
> >word, or designed to slow down any thinking process
> by
> >drawing out a *detail*, or what ??
> >
> >If such is your concern, explain *yourself* what
> *you*
> >think is a portal, or better, explain what should
> be
> >www.wikipedia.org page to your opinion.
>
> Anthere, I took the question to be sincere, though
> not especially diplomatic.  :-)  I also don't know
> what a portal is--I *think* I do, but I'm usually
> only partly right when I *think* I know something,
> and so I'm usually mostly wrong.
>
> Yahoo is a portal, right?  ...  Or no?
>
> kq

Okay. Most of the time a portal is defined as a site
which is a convergence of various entities. A Web site
being useful like starting point, a door open to a
world of information.

Now, the goal of a portal is not only to lead people
to other places (by links leading to other sites), but
also to keep them a little bit (by providing little
services, such as emails accounts, news, weather...).
Meanwhile, people look at your ads and you make money
(along other ways).

Yahoo is not only a portal, but as far as I know, it
is considered the first portal ever. I remember going
on it while it was not called Yahoo yet (I don't
remember the name it had then, but it was another
name).

But Yahoo is a very horizontal portal, not
representative of what wikipedia could be of course.
It is certainly following this open directory
definition. It is providing lots of info on very
various subjects.

Other types of portals follow a different design,
there are vertical, meaning they offer info on very
precise subjects. Some are shared by only a limited
number of people sharing the same interest, and offer
them internal ressources (such commercial info,
customer info, specialized info they can pick up).
They can also be meeting points where there is mixing
of data between several parties. In the farming world,
where farmers are physically very isolated from the
other parties (cooperatives, counsellors, seed firms,
heavy equipement...), these types of portals,
platfarms for data management, are getting rather
numerous.

Here's a totally bare portal I often go to
http://www.agriculture.com/worldwide/index.html
- Just provides a dozen of digested hit news from
Reuters.
- links to the different partners sites (all ag sites
from all over the world)
- and somewhere hidden behind, some more stuff to try
to keep people up a little bit longuer

The type of page proposed on
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
does follow exactly the definition of a portal ahma
* quick information (characteristics of the project,
number of "partners", when each started, maybe the
number of articles we are currently having in the
base...)
* links to all the "partners"
* some information behind (foundation, list of
participants, mailing list)

See? it is just a portal!
Just a gateway to the real stuff, on the
xx.wikipedia.org

I don't say it is necessary wrong. I use portals quite
a lot myself, but I use them 'cause it makes sense to
go each time to the portal, because I use *several* of
the links available on the portal.

In Wikipedia case, most people will only go to one of
the links most of time. So a portal is not very
interesting maybe? Except if on the second connexion,
the user is directly brought to the right
xx.wikipedia.org. Otherwise, it is a lack of time.

But if on the second connexion the user is brought to
the xx.wikipedia.org, he will rarely go to the
www.wikipedia.org and maybe is it loosing something.
No ?

Besides, you will notice I used the word "partners". A
portal tends to atomize things rather than to
interlink  them.

Does what I say make more sense now ? Do you think I
am wrong in my feeling or not ?

__________________________________________________
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