subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Per-article blocking

body:
I think this sounds like a wonderful idea. I think a lot of edit wars
and revert wars could be stopped if pages were more quickly protected
and people were actually forced to try and work it out on talk
beforehand.

The negative aspect -- that the page was being prevented from other,
legitimate edits -- is indeed quite negative, but no less so than if
it is in the middle of edit wars, which make preserving newly added
content near impossible.

Is there a page for requesting protection? If there was some easy way
to do it, I'd do it all the time. I'd much rather discuss
disagreements on talk pages than change the articles, but most anons
and POV pushers seem unwilling to do that unless forced.

FF

On 6/22/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> JAY JG wrote:
>
> >> > For how long would these individual article blocks remain?
> >>
> >> Just like current user blocks, the duration can be set by the
> >> blocker/admin. I would assume that a 24 hour block for a 3RR violation
> >> could for just the article in question, not for the entire Wikipedia.
> >
> > I fail to see the advantage then; they would likely just move on to
> > revert-warring on some other article, and then return to the original
> > after 24 hours.
>
> The advantage is that it gives the antisocial more rope to hang
> themselves with, while simultaneously taking a lot of the sting out of
> being blocked, for those who aren't simply on Wikipedia to push an
> agenda. Yes, the battlefields may shift occasionally, but the process of
> building a case for arbitration against serious offenders can move much
> more rapidly. Then you won't have to wait as impatiently to get a
> sanction that lasts longer than 24 hours, in situations where this
> proves necessary.
>
> Back in the day when the three-revert rule was only a guideline, I
> brought an arbitration case against three of the most prolific revert
> warriors of the time. I think the arbitrators found the evidence
> persuasive in part because I could point to a long list of pages that
> had to be protected due to their revert wars. This is straightforward
> and a lot easier to deal with than wading through diffs to figure out
> who said what personal attack to whom. The same principle would apply to
> somebody who gets blocked from 10 different articles on closely related
> topics in short succession. With this kind of track record established,
> I'm confident that arbitration would quickly consider hearing such a case.
>
> --Michael Snow
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] smaller dumps

body:
So for de.wikipedia the article dump is reduced by a factor of 3, while
the complete dump is reduced almost by a factor of 7 (do numbers in [4]
refer to the "cur" table or cur+old?).

VERY good. It's important that this new dump format is clearly documented
for people who write offline readers, or that a reference implementation
exists somewhere. Is

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:El/History_compression/Blob_layout

the current split-revisions format?

Alfio

On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 elwp at gmx.de wrote:

>I've uploaded a new version of dumpBackup.php to
>Bugzilla (#2310 [1]) that understands the following
>options:
>
>--splitrevisions :
>	Split revisions in sections for better
>	compression. (see [2] and [3])
>
>--usebackrefs :
>	Another optimisation that enhances compression.
>	(... and makes the dump slightly more
>	complicated.) Only meaningful with the
>	--splitrevisions option.
>
>--namespaces=n,m,... :
>	Dump only the given namespaces. (Can be used to
>	dump "encyclopedic" and "non-encyclopedic" content
>	separately.)
>
>--day=yyyymmdd :
>	Dump revisions of that day only. (For dayly
>	incremental dumps.) Note that this is pretty
>	useless unless regular dumps of the log table
>	(with page deletions and moves) are made
>	available.
>
>Dumping with --splitrevisions and --usebackrefs compresses
>more than 8 times better than without these options, and it
>is faster. (German Wikipedia; for details see [4]).
>
>In SpecialExport.php I added 4 options ('splitrevisions',
>'usebackrefs', 'limit' and 'newerthan'). The rationale for
>'limit' and 'newerthan' is described in bug #1748 [5]. Maybe
>the corresponding GUI elements can be removed because the
>options are mainly useful for download scripts.
>
>I also tried to write a new XML schema, but I don't think
>it is the best solution. I'd be glad if someone could
>write a better one. (It should specify e.g. that in
>
abc
 abc is a string and in
>
0
 0 is an integer. I
>don't know how to do this.)
>
>[1] http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2310
>[2] http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-June/030001.html
>[3] http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-June/030047.html
>[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:El/dumpBackup.php
>[5] http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1748
>
>--
>Weitersagen: GMX DSL-Flatrates mit Tempo-Garantie!
>Ab 4,99 Euro/Monat: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl
>_______________________________________________
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>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


list: wikien-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Per-article blocking (was: RickK leaving)

body:
On 6/22/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> For how long would these individual article blocks remain?

Just like current user blocks, the duration can be set by the
blocker/admin. I would assume that a 24 hour block for a 3RR violation
could for just the article in question, not for the entire Wikipedia.

-User:Fuzheado


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
JAY JG wrote:
> In my experience, when this kind of person is blocked from editing one
> article (e.g. via page protection), he or she typically moves on to
> start edit warring on a related article.  A good example is one of the
> people currently being proposed for RfAR, who has managed to get perhaps
> 10 articles protected so far, one after another, returning to the
> originals for further revert warring when they are unprotected again.

Well, the feature I have in mind would allow the user to be blocked from
an arbitrary list of articles. In the scenario you refer to, the effect
would be the same for the badly behaving user, they would continue to
move from article to article. The difference is that other editors would
still be able to edit the articles left behind. Since the collateral
damage is lower, action could be taken sooner, and the bad user would
run out of related articles to edit more quickly.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Rebecca

references:
<d9abjf$49d$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<BAY107-F178BE04A16278F9EE9663EB0EB0@phx.gbl>
	<d9ah5r$ejf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Or alternatively, they could just be blocked from Wikipedia. I take it
this would not need to be used in all cases. :)

-- ambi

On 6/22/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> JAY JG wrote:
> > In my experience, when this kind of person is blocked from editing one
> > article (e.g. via page protection), he or she typically moves on to
> > start edit warring on a related article.  A good example is one of the
> > people currently being proposed for RfAR, who has managed to get perhaps
> > 10 articles protected so far, one after another, returning to the
> > originals for further revert warring when they are unprotected again.
>
> Well, the feature I have in mind would allow the user to be blocked from
> an arbitrary list of articles. In the scenario you refer to, the effect
> would be the same for the badly behaving user, they would continue to
> move from article to article. The difference is that other editors would
> still be able to edit the articles left behind. Since the collateral
> damage is lower, action could be taken sooner, and the bad user would
> run out of related articles to edit more quickly.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: you do not have to be positive

body:
Hoi,
Even though there is nothing in what I wrote to Ray privately that I
could not or would not write publicly, I object to his publishing my
mail to him publicly to the list. It is in my mind extremely rude to
publish this. The reason why I mailed him privately is because there is
no point in continuing this conversation on the list. There is nothing
new being said. It is a waste of time for people on this list.

I wrote Ray to make sure that he knows that THIS is the time to
cooperate on the ideas of the UW. When he waits untill the UW has been
programmed, all the decisions will have been made and there will be
technically little left room to change it. That will be the time when we
will start populating UW with data. Ray's insistence to wait untill it
is too late is totally unproductive. His arguments are not constructive
as they do not point to anything that would improve what UW may be/ may
do. This is found in his use of words like "hyperbolic" or "hidden agenda".

When I say that new people will join us in the UW, he sees it as proof
of a hidden agenda. Wake up Ray, on the agenda IS the functionality of
UW. Some people can see what is in front of their eyes. When the GFDL is
a hindrance for adding functionality of our projects, the WMF has a
history of taking that into account. Wikinews is not GFDL because it
prevents WN from having the functionality that it wants. At this time
there are functionalities for the UW where the GFDL is a handicap. This
leaves two options: forgo the funcionality or work on the license. As
the UW does not have any data yet, the time to have finished this
discussion is clear: the start of including data in the UW or the moment
that Ray would start to have his first look.

Ray's understanding of Dutch schools is 100% wrong. Almost all schools
are state funded. For parents it makes almost no difference what school
they send their children to. Schools are obligated to take all children.
There is no room for "intelligent design" in the Dutch secondary
schools; evolution and genetics are part of the Biology curriculum.

To conclude: my apologies to the list. I had hoped to have continued
this conversation off-line. And as to Mark, I have mailed him privately
on more than one occassion. The only excuse I have to post it is that it
gives me the opportunity to explain that this is the time to become
involved in what UW will be. When the UW is life it will be time to get
involved in what UW has become.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Gerard saw fit to send these comments privately.  In the spirit if
> wiki-openness I thought it best to reply publicly.  There is nothing
> in my views about his proposals that cannot be discussed in the open.
>
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> Ray,
>> I would like to know what you hope to achieve with the rubbishing you
>> are doing of the Ultimate Wiktionary.
>
>
> Since when are honest comments "rubbishing"
>
>> It has a huge potential and the only way I can categorise your
>> "contributions" is as a FUD treatment. I would really like you to use
>> arguments. I would really like to know what you hope to achieve this
>> way. The way you make me feel is that I am some shady car dealer that
>> is waiting for this 1000th carsale that will make him his bonus.
>
>
> You said it. :-)   I can't see how my comments could be anything but
> arguments in the sense that you apparently mean.
>
>> Lucky for me I know better. I do appreciate what Erik is doing, we
>> both realise that our reputation will suffer when we do not come up
>> with some goods. I am sure that the initial UW will not have all the
>> trimmings.
>
>
> Nothing to debate there.
>
>> That does not take away from the basic fact that the UW will have a
>> better usability than any of the Wiktionaries ever will. It will,
>> because the functionality is built with synergy and community in the
>> forefront of what it is about and it will because it is meant to host
>> lexicological content.
>
>
> This is pure speculation.  I leave myself open to that possibility,
> but I'll keep on with what I'm doing until there's something to judge.
> Certainly I'm not going to fall in line with your hyperbolic
> confidence about the future of UW without seeing it.  I can easily see
> the value of a project that ties the different Wiktionaries together,
> but I cannot be so credulous as to believe that it will be so great as
> to inspire everyone to abandon what they are doing to work with your
> project.
>
>> The argument about communities of Mark Williamson is silly, the
>> wikimedia community does evolve and, the community that is growing
>> around the Ultimate Wiktionary will be different from any of the
>> Wikimedia communities.
>
>
> Since you have mentioned Mark, it is only fitting that I should
> forward a copy of these comments directly to him.  I have in the past
> objected to some of his points of view, but such comments have always
> been to him rather than around him.  If you think that he is being
> silly tell him about it, not me.
>
>> Many new people will make it their own, people who have no background
>> in Wikipedia, people that do not think a Wiki is the best thing there
>> is.
>
>
> So there's more to your project than the Wiki community!  You have in
> the past made it clear that you would like the GFDL replaced.  If,
> just for example, someone were contemplating a fork compliance with
> that licence could be an embarassment.
>
>> People who are very much aware of what language technology is. People
>> with a solid reputation outside the Wikimedia world.
>
>
> Am I supposed to be impressed by these statements?  Or is there a
> hidden agenda?  A company that funds educational research in the
> Netherlands does so in a completely different environment than in most
> countries given that Holland has by far the greatest proportion of
> privatization of schools in the world.
>
>> I hope that you will become part of the UW crowd. It is as always
>> your choise...
>
>
> Of course it's my choice, and I will certainly be willing to look at
> UW objectively ... when it is released to the public.
>
> Ec
>
>


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Newpages and rc patrollers needed

body:
After a lot of digging (I went through RickK's talk page in the end -
glad it was undeleted!) I've found #en.wikipedia.vandalism, which is
Cool Cat's vandal-detector bot in its own channel on Freenode.

r3m0t's thing is probably Humanbot, which is inactive at the moment (I
only realised after install Greasemonkey and then the script - d'oh!)

HTH

Dan

On 22/06/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > (r3m0t is beta-testing some very nice tools for making RC patrol a lot
> > easier, and Newpages would easily be handled in the same sort of way. If
> > you have Firefox with Greasemonkey, have a word with him on IRC. CoolCat
> > also has some nice tools working with IRC, as does CryptoDerk. Have a
> > look.)
> >
> Mind telling us if and where we can find r3m0t's and Coolcat's tools?
>
> --Mgm
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 6/22/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I fail to see the advantage then; they would likely just move on to
> revert-warring on some other article, and then return to the original after
> 24 hours.

Then perhaps the 9RR (or 3 x 3RR) rule will result in a ban from all editing. :)

A persistent "reverter" on one article will have to wait 24 hours, but
he'll be facing a legion of admins ready to hit the block button
again. It is highly likely the invidivudal will run out of patience
first.

-User:Fuzheado


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] RickK deleted his talk page

body:
If there's more people who deleted talk pages with significant
content, then I think that should be adressed. We should ask the
community at large if they need to be undeleted.

--Mgm

On 6/21/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
> >
> >They did?
>
> Yes.
>
> >I don't think it's right to delete user talk pages when they
> >contain significant amounts of discussion. So those deserve as much
> >attention as Rick's page.
>
> What kind of attention, and from whom?
>
> >I don't think Rick needs to be sanctioned
> >for it, though. But I doubt he'd mind de-sysoping if he's serious
> >about leaving.
>
> I think de-sysopping would be like kicking him when he's down.  Most people
> who leave when upset return anyway.
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 6/22/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> (r3m0t is beta-testing some very nice tools for making RC patrol a lot
> easier, and Newpages would easily be handled in the same sort of way. If
> you have Firefox with Greasemonkey, have a word with him on IRC. CoolCat
> also has some nice tools working with IRC, as does CryptoDerk. Have a
> look.)
>
Mind telling us if and where we can find r3m0t's and Coolcat's tools?

--Mgm


from_name: elwp at gmx.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] smaller dumps

body:
Alfio Puglisi:
> So for de.wikipedia the article dump is reduced by a factor of 3, while
> the complete dump is reduced almost by a factor of 7 (do numbers in [4]
> refer to the "cur" table or cur+old?).

In Mediawiki 1.5 cur and old are combined. The numbers refer to a gzipped
XML dump of the complete page histories. (And the factor is 8.5, not
"almost 7". :-)

> VERY good. It's important that this new dump format is clearly documented
> for people who write offline readers, or that a reference implementation
> exists somewhere. Is
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:El/History_compression/Blob_layout
>
> the current split-revisions format?

No, this page describes an internal format. Revisions can be stored in this
format, but they don't need to be. In SpecialExport I use the
SplitMergeGzipHistoryBlob class only as a temporary container. Users who
intend to use the dumps for their programs don't need to know anything
about this class because the dumps will be in XML format.

That is the same format that SpecialExport produces for single pages. I
only added the elements <sectiongroup> and <section> and changed the meaning
of <text> if it has the attribute type="sectionlist".

<text type="sectionlist">0 3 4</text> means e.g. that the text is composed
of the 1st, 4th and 5th section in the previously defined sectiongroup.

A reference implementation is the perl script [1]. You can try it with the
example that I've now put on [2].

[1] http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/attachment.cgi?id=628&action=view
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:El/XML_format

--
Weitersagen: GMX DSL-Flatrates mit Tempo-Garantie!
Ab 4,99 Euro/Monat: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 4 new Wikipedias have just been created

body:
>Hi all,
>
>I would like to announce that 4 new Wikipedias have just been created
>by Tim Starling (thanks!)
>
>They are:
>http://pam.wikipedia.org/ Kapampangan Wikipedia
>http://ceb.wikipedia.org/ Cebuano Wikipedia
>http://sco.wikipedia.org/ Scots Wikipedia
>http://fiu-vro.wikipedia.org/ V?ro Wikipedia
>
>I also hope that in the near future we may add additional Philippines
>languages to our repertoire (many have millions of speakers, for
>example Illocano, Bicolano, Hilgaynon, Samaran, Pangasinan...)
>
THANK GOD! FINALLY IT PROCEEDED! Man, this is encouraging! I'll drink one on
this happy event tonight!

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Content, reason and the ArbCom

body:
On Wed, 22 Jun 2005, JAY JG wrote:

At the risk of repeating myself, the issue is not about which version is
better, or "POV", or "extremist", but about attempts by editors to enforce
their own views on the matter.  And I don't think this list is the place to
discuss the pro and con arguments regarding use of BCE/CE vs. BC/AD.

Then JAY JG wrote:
>
> Sigh.  Until 40 years ago or so the word "Colored" for "African-American"
> was used near-universally in the United States, and was seen as "neutral" as
> well.  Before that the neutral and near-universally used term was "Negro".
> They're now seen as offensive, though I'm sure some older users of the terms
> see (or saw) their replacements as "nonsense" and a "POV lobby".
> Regardless, I imagine that none of the members of this list would use those
> terms today, and there are many other examples of this kind of thing (e.g.
> "Mohammedan"->"Moslem"->"Muslim").
>
> Language changes, and English probably changes faster than most other
> languages; usages that were once thought neutral are now seen to contain
> inherent bias.  This has happened with other terms in the past, and may be
> happening with BC/AD today.  Now, can we move the debate about BCE/CE vs.
> BC/AD to where it belongs, on some policy page?
>
If you want the conversation taken off-list, then take it off-list yourself.
Don't use it as an attempt to get the final word.

Geoff


body:
>I await the East Frisian, Northern Frisian, etc... Wikipedias
>
>:)
>
>Mark

Oh yes, now that this succeeded I will certainly work harder for those!

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger: altijd en overal beschikbaar http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikitech-l] automatic checking for or flagging of copyright
	violations

body:
--- aerik at thesylvans.com wrote:
> Wouldn't automatically checking edits against google searches add an awful
> big load to the servers?  Not only is it several thousand hits, but then also
> thousands more string comparisons?  Amd then we'd have event handling for any
> suspect edits...

The load could be distributed offline via possible changes to the rc patrol
software already in use. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CryptoDerk/CDVF

That way we could also get around Google's 1000 search per day limit.

-- mav

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


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
This is great news :-)

I wish them all good luck :-)

Ciao, Sabine

Mark Williamson wrote:

>I would like to announce that 4 new Wikipedias have just been created
>by Tim Starling (thanks!)
>
>They are:
>http://pam.wikipedia.org/ Kapampangan Wikipedia
>http://ceb.wikipedia.org/ Cebuano Wikipedia
>http://sco.wikipedia.org/ Scots Wikipedia
>http://fiu-vro.wikipedia.org/ V?ro Wikipedia
>
>I also hope that in the near future we may add additional Philippines
>languages to our repertoire (many have millions of speakers, for
>example Illocano, Bicolano, Hilgaynon, Samaran, Pangasinan...)
>
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


body:
But there seems to be a technical defect on sco:. A few articles were
created, among which some by Mark fyi, but the statistics ignore them... I
was aiming to add the Scottish Wikipedia to the List of Wikipedias but I
can't, for that reason.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Direct antwoord op je vragen: gebruik MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Moldovan Wikipedia Proposal

body:
Hiya.

I have no personal opinion to give as of now regarding the current
conflict (I seem to remember I had to make a couple of comments
regarding this topic several months ago);

However, you raise a side, but important point.

You wrote

 > Danutz, a Romanian user, pointed out that it is unfair
 > that Node is the only user which supports the Moldovan
 > Wikipedia, when he does not even speak
 > Moldovan/Romanian very well (it seems he has some
 > Moldovan roots, though) and has placed himself as
 > sysop undemocratically (without any community
 > consensus - note, though, that at that time the
 > Romanian visitors weren't yet aware of the mo.wiki).
 > They therefore feel that an abuse of power is taking
 > place, especially since Node is saying that the
 > Romanian users shouldn't be able to have a say because
 > they aren't Moldovan (in which case, the Romanian
 > users claim that Node also doesn't have a right
 > because he can "barely" speak Romanian/Moldovan).

Unless I am proven wrong, it is very likely Node asked to be sysop on
this project when there were no editors (to do precisely what he
mentionned, interface, main page protection....).

It is a habit amongst stewards to give sysophood very liberally on small
wikis, as editors who are unique, or only a couple... can't expect to be
elected "democratically". However, there is also a provision saying that
if necessary, someone apppointed sysop before there is a community, has
to be confirmed sysop later if the then build community does wish to
start elections.

I guess we are in this kind of configuration.

I consequently invite you to organise elections for sysophood and mo.
According to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions,
there is no current page for admins. Could you add one and invite
editors to candidate then vote ?

Naturally, from the moment you start these elections, Node will be
considered a temporary sysop and will need to be supported by current
community in order to keep a status which was given to him before there
was one.

I hope he will stay one as I do not think he did anything wrong... but
that way, things will be clearer :-)

What do you think ?

Ant

Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) a ?crit:
> Hi to all,
>
> This is Ronline from the Romanian Wikipedia. We have
> currently (in the past week especially) had quite a
> lot of controversy about the Moldovan Wikipedia at
> http://mo.wikipedia.org.
>
> The reason I'm raising the issue here is to gauge the
> response of the wider community towards my proposal
> and also what's happening over at mo:
>
> Mo.wikipedia.org was founded a while ago, but until
> about  this year, it basically had no content and
> simply contained a redirect link to the Romanian
> Wikipedia, since Moldovan is identical to Romanian,
> renamed for political reasons (I won't go into the
> whole story now, you can see
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language).
>
> Anyway, so a few months ago, a user called Vertaler
> came and added some Cyrillic content to the Moldovan
> Wikipedia. Cyrillic is a script used by a minority of
> Moldovans. Node_ue (Mark Williamson) supported that
> and said that he wishes to convert mo.wikipedia.org
> into a Cyrillic-Moldovan Wikipedia, with all Latin
> content being placed at ro.wikipedia.org in order to
> avoid duplication.
>
> After negotation with Node, I have come forward with a
> proposal that he has agreed with, which seeks to
> establish mo.wikipedia.org as a biscriptal
> Latin/Cyrillic Wikipedia in interface, and a
> biscriptal portal, but with Cyrillic content hosted on
> mo.wikipedia in order to avoid duplication with
> ro.wiki.
>
> The entire proposal is at
> http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere,
> in English and Romanian.
>
> Now, the reason I've come here is because some users
> from the Romanian Wikipedia do not agree with keeping
> a Moldovan Wikipedia for Cyrillic content, because
> they believe that a Moldovan language doesn't exist
> (most linguists agree with this) and that since
> Wikipedia is neutral, it shouldn't have a Wikipedia in
> a language renamed for political reasons like
> Moldovan. Also, since Cyrillic is no longer the
> official script in Moldova (it used to be during
> Communist times), there is no place for it as mo.wiki.
> Other users agree to Cyrillic content, but not under
> the "Moldovan language" name.
>
> The controversy, which can be viewed at
> http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Паӂина
> принчипалэ,
> has been exacerbated by the fact that there has been
> mutual distrust between Node on one hand, and a series
> of Romanian users, on the other. Node has blamed the
> Romanian users for being "nationalist" and "radical"
> and "anti-Moldovan", this being the reason why they
> don't support a Moldovan Wikipedia. The Romanian users
> have labelled Node a "Stalinist" and claim that he is
> not listening to them even though they are in the
> majority.
>
> Danutz, a Romanian user, pointed out that it is unfair
> that Node is the only user which supports the Moldovan
> Wikipedia, when he does not even speak
> Moldovan/Romanian very well (it seems he has some
> Moldovan roots, though) and has placed himself as
> sysop undemocratically (without any community
> consensus - note, though, that at that time the
> Romanian visitors weren't yet aware of the mo.wiki).
> They therefore feel that an abuse of power is taking
> place, especially since Node is saying that the
> Romanian users shouldn't be able to have a say because
> they aren't Moldovan (in which case, the Romanian
> users claim that Node also doesn't have a right
> because he can "barely" speak Romanian/Moldovan).
>
> Now, personally, I have taken a very neutral stance
> and compelled both sides to argue more rationally and
> stop the criticism. I also am entirely committed to
> hearing both sides out and acting in a professional
> manner.
>
> We have made some headway recently, and I have struck
> an agreement with Node over my proposal, which he
> seems to support. Some of the Romanian users, however,
> still do not agree with all parts of the proposal,
> some of them asking for a separate subdomain for a
> Moldovan-Cyrillic wiki. What do people say to that? I
> would personally agree to that, meaning a mo.wiki
> which is simply a portal, and a mo-cyr.wikipedia.org
> which hosts only Cyrillic content.
>
> I have presented my case here in order to gauge public
> response. I have also opened a consultation period
> with the community to allow for any complaints to the
> proposal, at
> http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere.
> I'd just like to hear some opinions of people which
> aren't involved in this case so we can get more
> neutral, unaffiliated viewpoints.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ronline
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Yahoo! Sports
> Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
> http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com>
>
>Most importantly, the whole BCE/CE thing is a POV lobby. It's nonsense
>to suggest that changing a very common phrase in the English language,
>hitherto used near-universally, is "neutral".
>
>Now Wikipedia with NPOV policy certainly has to avoid siding with
>different POVs - but surely to use BCE/CE notation at all is indeed
>siding with a POV. Does every POV have to be accommodated on *some*
>articles in order to have NPOV?
>
>Surely sticking to BC/AD, as has been used for centuries and centuries
>in the English language (almost certainly the vast majority using it
>without religious or political intent), is the most sensible option?
>
>Wikipedia's ridiculous pandering to all the extremist POVs is not a
>good way to ensure NPOV in my opinion, and seriously dints its
>credability.

At the risk of repeating myself, the issue is not about which version is
better, or "POV", or "extremist", but about attempts by editors to enforce
their own views on the matter.  And I don't think this list is the place to
discuss the pro and con arguments regarding use of BCE/CE vs. BC/AD.

Jay.


from_name: iznogood at iznogood-factory.org

subject: [Wikitech-l] orphaned pages

body:
Hello,

I'm a french wikipedia contributor especially to link orphaned pages.

But I have a problem with frequency list of orphaned pages update.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Lonelypages

I wonder if it is possible to make an update on week or 2 weeks bases
even if it is only on french orphaned list page.

That will ease my linkage job.

Thanks.


body:
>From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>
>Zoney wrote:
> > Most importantly, the whole BCE/CE thing is a POV lobby. It's nonsense
> > to suggest that changing a very common phrase in the English language,
> > hitherto used near-universally, is "neutral".
> >
><snip>
>
>I agree with your post entirely.
>
>- --
>Alphax

Sigh.  Until 40 years ago or so the word "Colored" for "African-American"
was used near-universally in the United States, and was seen as "neutral" as
well.  Before that the neutral and near-universally used term was "Negro".
They're now seen as offensive, though I'm sure some older users of the terms
see (or saw) their replacements as "nonsense" and a "POV lobby".
Regardless, I imagine that none of the members of this list would use those
terms today, and there are many other examples of this kind of thing (e.g.
"Mohammedan"->"Moslem"->"Muslim").

Language changes, and English probably changes faster than most other
languages; usages that were once thought neutral are now seen to contain
inherent bias.  This has happened with other terms in the past, and may be
happening with BC/AD today.  Now, can we move the debate about BCE/CE vs.
BC/AD to where it belongs, on some policy page?

Jay.


from_name: Andrew Venier

subject: [WikiEN-l] I will be leaving the project

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 6/21/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The largest reason, I think, why CoolCat's assertion did not help was
>>that this user has been found to have violated copyright before.
>>"Assume good faith until burned", I guess.
>>
>>
>
>I've seen CoolCat repeatedly accused of copyright infringement but the
>ones I've reviewed I've found that those accusations lacked substance.
> He's involved in one of the more contentious edit wars (Kurd issues
>in Turkey) that we have running right now and there are some people
>who will stoop to underhanded techniques to "win".  Apparently,
>alleging copyright infringement is a very effective technique to
>silence your opponents.  And it seems that we're playing right into
>that strategy.
>
>Kelly
>
There's a very simple way to counter such an attack: don't copy and
paste verbatim text from websites or other copyright sources and leave
them unattributed.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RickK deleted his talk page

body:
>>From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
>
>If there's more people who deleted talk pages with significant
>content, then I think that should be adressed. We should ask the
>community at large if they need to be undeleted.

O.K.  You can start with User talk:Xed - 371 deleted edits there.

Would you extend this to User pages with extensive edits?

Jay.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Licenses

body:
On 6/22/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hoi,
> The NTG is a Dutch organisation that maintains a resource that is used
> by most Open/Free software application that are in need of such a
> resource. These applications are under any and all Open / Free licenses.
> The NTG has it nominally under the LGPL but they do not enforce it at
> all. The license is there to ensure that nobody can make it propietary.

Are NTG against commercial re-use?

< an extra objective; to be the lexicological
> resource of choise for Open / Free projects. I am of the opinion that
> this would be an opportunity too good to miss.

You are using "open" and "free" very loosely here.  If we want to be
the resource of choice for all projects of any type whatsoever, we
cannot make the content non-commercial-use-only.  A non-commercial
project cannot accept GFDL content; a GFDL project cannot accept
non-comm content.

SJ


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Licenses


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Licenses


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 6/22/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am sure this is what they are doing, but:
>
> Wouldn't it be easy to detect when article sizes or content fluctuated
> wildly and mark that as worth checking into?

This is quite easy and CDVF already flags "large" edits.  (I catch a
lot of vandalism that way.)

> Wouldn't it also be easy
> to check for new articles created without any Wikilinks?

That's harder because you have to actually fetch the edits to check for that.

Kelly


body:
Mark Williamson a ?crit:
> Hi Anthere,
>
> Unfortunately, there isn't really a mo.wiki "community".
>
> It's more like, a group of two or three core individuals working on
> the project, and another 2 or 3 "mo.wiki hagglers" -- people who keep
> complaining on talkpages that the Wikipedia should be deleted.
>
> Incidentally, the "hagglers" also believe that "there is no such thing
> as a Moldovan language", and until recently they were all editing
> anonymously. None of them has any edits to content pages.
>
> The current problem is, what rights should go to what users? If we let
> the "hagglers" vote, they will possibly nominate one of themselves,
> vote him in, and then sabotage the Wikipedia using  their newfound
> sysop privelages.

Well, I am not sure what "haggler" mean, but I guess this is not a
gentle term :-)

I'd say only those with an account can vote. And a rule such as at least
1 month and a certain number of real articles can make the trick.

However, I must confess, as one external to your conflict, this sounds
like "all those agreeing with me are good editors, all others are hagglers".

> If we let the "core" vote only, then we run the risk of being "undemocratic".
>
> Also, according to Ronline's proposal, I will remain a sysop
> "temporarily" to translate the interface, whether or not I am voted
> in.
>
> Mark

This strikes me as reasonably democratic solution ;-)

Hmmm, a question... does the issue of whether to use Cyrillic as an
influence in any way in the translation of the interface ?

Ant

> On 22/06/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Hiya.
>>
>>I have no personal opinion to give as of now regarding the current
>>conflict (I seem to remember I had to make a couple of comments
>>regarding this topic several months ago);
>>
>>However, you raise a side, but important point.
>>
>>You wrote
>>
>> > Danutz, a Romanian user, pointed out that it is unfair
>> > that Node is the only user which supports the Moldovan
>> > Wikipedia, when he does not even speak
>> > Moldovan/Romanian very well (it seems he has some
>> > Moldovan roots, though) and has placed himself as
>> > sysop undemocratically (without any community
>> > consensus - note, though, that at that time the
>> > Romanian visitors weren't yet aware of the mo.wiki).
>> > They therefore feel that an abuse of power is taking
>> > place, especially since Node is saying that the
>> > Romanian users shouldn't be able to have a say because
>> > they aren't Moldovan (in which case, the Romanian
>> > users claim that Node also doesn't have a right
>> > because he can "barely" speak Romanian/Moldovan).
>>
>>Unless I am proven wrong, it is very likely Node asked to be sysop on
>>this project when there were no editors (to do precisely what he
>>mentionned, interface, main page protection....).
>>
>>It is a habit amongst stewards to give sysophood very liberally on small
>>wikis, as editors who are unique, or only a couple... can't expect to be
>>elected "democratically". However, there is also a provision saying that
>>if necessary, someone apppointed sysop before there is a community, has
>>to be confirmed sysop later if the then build community does wish to
>>start elections.
>>
>>I guess we are in this kind of configuration.
>>
>>I consequently invite you to organise elections for sysophood and mo.
>>According to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions,
>>there is no current page for admins. Could you add one and invite
>>editors to candidate then vote ?
>>
>>Naturally, from the moment you start these elections, Node will be
>>considered a temporary sysop and will need to be supported by current
>>community in order to keep a status which was given to him before there
>>was one.
>>
>>I hope he will stay one as I do not think he did anything wrong... but
>>that way, things will be clearer :-)
>>
>>What do you think ?
>>
>>Ant
>>
>>Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) a ?crit:
>>
>>>Hi to all,
>>>
>>>This is Ronline from the Romanian Wikipedia. We have
>>>currently (in the past week especially) had quite a
>>>lot of controversy about the Moldovan Wikipedia at
>>>http://mo.wikipedia.org.
>>>
>>>The reason I'm raising the issue here is to gauge the
>>>response of the wider community towards my proposal
>>>and also what's happening over at mo:
>>>
>>>Mo.wikipedia.org was founded a while ago, but until
>>>about  this year, it basically had no content and
>>>simply contained a redirect link to the Romanian
>>>Wikipedia, since Moldovan is identical to Romanian,
>>>renamed for political reasons (I won't go into the
>>>whole story now, you can see
>>>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language).
>>>
>>>Anyway, so a few months ago, a user called Vertaler
>>>came and added some Cyrillic content to the Moldovan
>>>Wikipedia. Cyrillic is a script used by a minority of
>>>Moldovans. Node_ue (Mark Williamson) supported that
>>>and said that he wishes to convert mo.wikipedia.org
>>>into a Cyrillic-Moldovan Wikipedia, with all Latin
>>>content being placed at ro.wikipedia.org in order to
>>>avoid duplication.
>>>
>>>After negotation with Node, I have come forward with a
>>>proposal that he has agreed with, which seeks to
>>>establish mo.wikipedia.org as a biscriptal
>>>Latin/Cyrillic Wikipedia in interface, and a
>>>biscriptal portal, but with Cyrillic content hosted on
>>>mo.wikipedia in order to avoid duplication with
>>>ro.wiki.
>>>
>>>The entire proposal is at
>>>http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere,
>>>in English and Romanian.
>>>
>>>Now, the reason I've come here is because some users
>>>from the Romanian Wikipedia do not agree with keeping
>>>a Moldovan Wikipedia for Cyrillic content, because
>>>they believe that a Moldovan language doesn't exist
>>>(most linguists agree with this) and that since
>>>Wikipedia is neutral, it shouldn't have a Wikipedia in
>>>a language renamed for political reasons like
>>>Moldovan. Also, since Cyrillic is no longer the
>>>official script in Moldova (it used to be during
>>>Communist times), there is no place for it as mo.wiki.
>>>Other users agree to Cyrillic content, but not under
>>>the "Moldovan language" name.
>>>
>>>The controversy, which can be viewed at
>>>http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Паӂина
>>>принчипалэ,
>>>has been exacerbated by the fact that there has been
>>>mutual distrust between Node on one hand, and a series
>>>of Romanian users, on the other. Node has blamed the
>>>Romanian users for being "nationalist" and "radical"
>>>and "anti-Moldovan", this being the reason why they
>>>don't support a Moldovan Wikipedia. The Romanian users
>>>have labelled Node a "Stalinist" and claim that he is
>>>not listening to them even though they are in the
>>>majority.
>>>
>>>Danutz, a Romanian user, pointed out that it is unfair
>>>that Node is the only user which supports the Moldovan
>>>Wikipedia, when he does not even speak
>>>Moldovan/Romanian very well (it seems he has some
>>>Moldovan roots, though) and has placed himself as
>>>sysop undemocratically (without any community
>>>consensus - note, though, that at that time the
>>>Romanian visitors weren't yet aware of the mo.wiki).
>>>They therefore feel that an abuse of power is taking
>>>place, especially since Node is saying that the
>>>Romanian users shouldn't be able to have a say because
>>>they aren't Moldovan (in which case, the Romanian
>>>users claim that Node also doesn't have a right
>>>because he can "barely" speak Romanian/Moldovan).
>>>
>>>Now, personally, I have taken a very neutral stance
>>>and compelled both sides to argue more rationally and
>>>stop the criticism. I also am entirely committed to
>>>hearing both sides out and acting in a professional
>>>manner.
>>>
>>>We have made some headway recently, and I have struck
>>>an agreement with Node over my proposal, which he
>>>seems to support. Some of the Romanian users, however,
>>>still do not agree with all parts of the proposal,
>>>some of them asking for a separate subdomain for a
>>>Moldovan-Cyrillic wiki. What do people say to that? I
>>>would personally agree to that, meaning a mo.wiki
>>>which is simply a portal, and a mo-cyr.wikipedia.org
>>>which hosts only Cyrillic content.
>>>
>>>I have presented my case here in order to gauge public
>>>response. I have also opened a consultation period
>>>with the community to allow for any complaints to the
>>>proposal, at
>>>http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere.
>>>I'd just like to hear some opinions of people which
>>>aren't involved in this case so we can get more
>>>neutral, unaffiliated viewpoints.
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>
>>>Ronline
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>____________________________________________________
>>>Yahoo! Sports
>>>Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
>>>http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anon IP blocking without account

body:
Just FYI, this request is in bugzilla as item #550; there is some
discussion of it there:

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Licenses

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>I do ask the board: When the Ultimate Wiktionary is life, do we allow
>>all and any use of our data and do we allow at least other Open or Free
>>organisations to use the content of the UW in their applications without
>>restrictions ?
>>
>>
>
>I am very sorry, but I do not understand the question.  I support that
>people should be able to freely use our data, but as per specific
>questions, I don't quite get what you are asking.
>
>--Jimbo
>
Hoi,
The NTG is a Dutch organisation that maintains a resource that is used
by most Open/Free software application that are in need of such a
resource. These applications are under any and all Open / Free licenses.
The NTG has it nominally under the LGPL but they do not enforce it at
all. The license is there to ensure that nobody can make it propietary.

I do want to cooperate with these people, getting the list into the
Ultimate Wiktionary is relatively easy but it would make more sense if
we could be a resource to hold this type of data for ANY Open / Free
application. It would give us a community that is instantly much bigger.
It would give the UW an extra objective; to be the lexicological
resource of choise for Open / Free projects. I am of the opinion that
this would be an opportunity too good to miss.

When we achieve this for the Dutch language, I am sure we will be able
to achieve this for other languages as well. The question is can we do
this and are we willing to do this from a license point of view and how
do we do this with licenses in mind.

Thanks,
    Gerard


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Licenses


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Is there a given anon IP address be blocked from editing unless it
signs up with an account? I think this would be quite useful in
situations of persistent vandalism from high schools or libraries,
etc.

It would just say something like, "This IP is blocked from editing
anonymously because of past problems with vandalism, but you are free
to start an account and then you can edit all you want" or something
like that. Is this possible?

FF


body:
I suppose what it would be, at a technical level, would be "account
only, not IP" blocking, and you'd block edits from [[User:0.0.0.0]],
etc.

(At least, that's how I -- someone who has no idea how anon account
editing works -- would imagine it to work).

FF

On 6/22/05, David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
> It's something to think about to implement, but its not possible at the
> moment. It would be good for the extreme cases of mass-vandalism (Cambridge
> University has IPs getting blocked/unblocked/warned almost constantly, for
> example).
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fastfission" <fastfission at gmail.com>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 9:01 PM
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Anon IP blocking without account
>
>
> Is there a given anon IP address be blocked from editing unless it
> signs up with an account? I think this would be quite useful in
> situations of persistent vandalism from high schools or libraries,
> etc.
>
> It would just say something like, "This IP is blocked from editing
> anonymously because of past problems with vandalism, but you are free
> to start an account and then you can edit all you want" or something
> like that. Is this possible?
>
> FF
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Directed donations

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>The better solution is simple: total transparency.  It's something
>we've always been pretty good at, and that we are uniquely suited to
>provide.  We should simply guarantee that every penny we spend for
>any reason is listed on reports that we publish to the world
>frequently and archive indefinitely.  Anyone who wants to know how
>his money will be spent can just look to see how our money /has been/
>spent; if he likes that, he can donate.  If he doesn't, he can tell
>us why and suggest how me might improve.  But in either case, he
>has total control, and /informed/ control, and in a way that doesn't
>interfere with our management needs.
>
>
I agree this is something we should have, but I don't think directed
donations are mutually exclusive.  In many cases, people simply like the
option, and will not actually take it---if the organization looks
well-run, such that they trust that it knows how to spend money well,
people will be willing to donate funds for "unrestricted use" or
"general fund" or something of that sort, even if given an option to
donate specifically to something else.  But it may pull in other
donations from people who want to fund specific things.  We already
accept such donations from large institutions in the form of grants for
a specific purpose; why not give individual donors the same option?

(I know I personally would not donate to my alma mater if I could not
earmark the funds for a specific purpose, because I disagree with some
of the things they spend their money on.)

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Directed donations


body:
>From: "Fastfission" <fastfission at gmail.com>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 9:01 PM
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Anon IP blocking without account
>
>
>Is there a given anon IP address be blocked from editing unless it
>signs up with an account? I think this would be quite useful in
>situations of persistent vandalism from high schools or libraries,
>etc.
>
>It would just say something like, "This IP is blocked from editing
>anonymously because of past problems with vandalism, but you are free
>to start an account and then you can edit all you want" or something
>like that. Is this possible?

Would that make it harder to stop sockpuppets?

Jay.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 6/22/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >It would just say something like, "This IP is blocked from editing
> >anonymously because of past problems with vandalism, but you are free
> >to start an account and then you can edit all you want" or something
> >like that. Is this possible?
>
> Would that make it harder to stop sockpuppets?

Only if we replaced the current functionality with this..
Better to make them both available and use the new one only for shared IPs.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Per-article blocking

body:
Fastfission, have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection

Dan

On 22/06/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is there a page for requesting protection? If there was some easy way
> to do it, I'd do it all the time. I'd much rather discuss
> disagreements on talk pages than change the articles, but most anons
> and POV pushers seem unwilling to do that unless forced.
>
> FF
> >


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
JAY JG wrote:

> Sigh.  Until 40 years ago or so the word "Colored" for
> "African-American" was used near-universally in the United States, and
> was seen as "neutral" as well.  Before that the neutral and
> near-universally used term was "Negro".  They're now seen as
> offensive, though I'm sure some older users of the terms see (or saw)
> their replacements as "nonsense" and a "POV lobby".  Regardless, I
> imagine that none of the members of this list would use those terms
> today, and there are many other examples of this kind of thing (e.g.
> "Mohammedan"->"Moslem"->"Muslim").

Despite the current fad for the term "African-American" neither the
United Negro College Fund nor the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People have seen fit to change the names of their
organizations.  I avoid the term "African-American" because a person's
citizenship is not apparent in his racial features, and I certainly
would not want to offend a non-citizen by calling him "American".  To me
there is something offensive about a herd instinct that requires me to
change my terminology to suit the whims and fashions of the day.

> Language changes, and English probably changes faster than most other
> languages; usages that were once thought neutral are now seen to
> contain inherent bias.  This has happened with other terms in the
> past, and may be happening with BC/AD today.

Language change is more complex than that.  We learn our terminology at
different times and different places.  Paramount is its need to continue
as an effective means of communication.  These formerly neutral terms
may still be neutral in another place, or with another segment of the
same society, or in different circumstances.  "Assuming good faith"
includes assuming that the person using a particular term does so
without intent to offend.  Only the context of his words will show the
difference.

Ec


from_name: geni

body:
On 6/22/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am sure this is what they are doing, but:
>
> Wouldn't it be easy to detect when article sizes or content fluctuated
> wildly and mark that as worth checking into? Wouldn't it also be easy
> to check for new articles created without any Wikilinks? That would
> probably flag a good heap of the random vandalism right off the bat
> (dedicated vandals would of course be more subtle, but that's not a
> new thing). A little red flag for profanities would also probably work
> as well. This seems like something which could be easily hardwired
> into MediaWiki -- if condition X, add a list to this edit to
> Special:Checkup or something like that. But I don't know much about
> that, and know the developers are few, so it is just a thought, and
> one they have probably already had.
>
> FF

a lot of vanadlism involves adding or changeing only one word. With
new articles anything small is worth cheack. However since using
firefox you can check a page about once every 5 seconds (you open them
in lagre batches and view the diffs) it is often quicker and simpler
to cheack everything.

--
geni


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: 4 new Wikipedias have just been created

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> For some reason (probably some theory of Jamesday's about great ways to
> optimise selects on single-row tables), the query for the
> {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} tag looks like this:
>
>   $s = $dbr->selectRow( 'site_stats',
>     array( 'ss_total_views', 'ss_total_edits', 'ss_good_articles' ),
>     array( 'ss_row_id' => 1 ), $fname
>
> i.e. using the new primary key in a way that's always meant to match.
> For this latest batch of wikis, I created the site_stats row using:
>
>   INSERT INTO site_stats() VALUES ()
>
> which creates a row with default values in every column. The default for
> ss_row_id is 0. I'll fix this on these wikis shortly, I just thought it
> was a nice example of the problems you can get when you optimise things
> that don't really need optimising.

Well, that table's only ever had one row, but it does *have* a key and
there was some theory about storing multiple rows over time that never
happened. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
It's generally considered bad netiquette to forward private emails to
a mailing list.

-User:Fuzheado


body:
Yea, yea. I'm working on that.

I've got a database running that imports all new changes, and will
allow a client to retrieve changes and see who has checked them.

I'm still diddling with the schema.

On 6/22/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a question for y'all as a newbie to RC patrolling.
>
> So I've got CDVF going, and I've imported the admins. So is it now
> simply a job of sitting here and trying to check diffs as quickly as
> possible?
>
> It strikes me that must waste *a lot* of effort - lots of people must
> check the same edit.
>
>
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
That's exactly right. This wouldn't replace anything as is, it would
just augment. I'm getting real sick of high school IP addresses that
vandalize and then say, "Oh, must have been someone else." Better to
just lock that down at a level where you can leave a message and be
sure it is getting to the right person. But only in situations where
it has been shown to be a recurrent problem, of course.

FF

On 6/22/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >It would just say something like, "This IP is blocked from editing
> > >anonymously because of past problems with vandalism, but you are free
> > >to start an account and then you can edit all you want" or something
> > >like that. Is this possible?
> >
> > Would that make it harder to stop sockpuppets?
>
> Only if we replaced the current functionality with this..
> Better to make them both available and use the new one only for shared IPs.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
>From: Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>
>On Wed, 22 Jun 2005, JAY JG wrote:
>
>At the risk of repeating myself, the issue is not about which version is
>better, or "POV", or "extremist", but about attempts by editors to enforce
>their own views on the matter.  And I don't think this list is the place to
>discuss the pro and con arguments regarding use of BCE/CE vs. BC/AD.
>
>Then JAY JG wrote:
> >
> > Sigh.  Until 40 years ago or so the word "Colored" for
>"African-American"
> > was used near-universally in the United States, and was seen as
>"neutral" as
> > well.  Before that the neutral and near-universally used term was
>"Negro".
> > They're now seen as offensive, though I'm sure some older users of the
>terms
> > see (or saw) their replacements as "nonsense" and a "POV lobby".
> > Regardless, I imagine that none of the members of this list would use
>those
> > terms today, and there are many other examples of this kind of thing
>(e.g.
> > "Mohammedan"->"Moslem"->"Muslim").
> >
> > Language changes, and English probably changes faster than most other
> > languages; usages that were once thought neutral are now seen to contain
> > inherent bias.  This has happened with other terms in the past, and may
>be
> > happening with BC/AD today.  Now, can we move the debate about BCE/CE
>vs.
> > BC/AD to where it belongs, on some policy page?
> >
>If you want the conversation taken off-list, then take it off-list
>yourself.
>Don't use it as an attempt to get the final word.

And furthermore, BC/AD is completely POV. So there. :-P

Jay.


from_name: Wytukaze

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Wiktionary mailing list admin needed

body:
Assuming nobody else volunteers within a suitable timeframe, I would be
willing to take up the reins. Although I am reasonably confident I would be
up to the task, I am sure there are many better candidates out there, so, if
I may, I would like to act as the fall-back if no one wants to do it
instead.

Cheers,
Wytukaze

On 6/21/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A mail was sent to this list from the Wikimania OTRS account (I don't
> know who from). This bounced back to me, since I get notified about
> mails in the Wikimania queue, with the standard "your mail is being
> held until the list moderator can review it for approval", so I went
> to the Wiktionary queue to see whether it was still waiting, only to
> find that there are so many pending mails there that it froze my
> browser.
>
> Fire is the only registered list admin for wiktionary-l, and hasn't
> been active for some time, so we urgently need a new volunteer for
> this role.
>
> Is anyone willing to administer this list? It would basically involve
> deleting lots of spam and letting through the occasional mail from
> someone who was not a subscriber to the list (like the Wikimania one).
> There are more details on this at
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_list_administration>.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>


from_name: Alphax

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Zoney wrote:
> Most importantly, the whole BCE/CE thing is a POV lobby. It's nonsense
> to suggest that changing a very common phrase in the English language,
> hitherto used near-universally, is "neutral".
>
<snip>

I agree with your post entirely.

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Wednesday, June 22, 2005, at 19:42, Jay JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Until 40 years ago or so the word "Colored" for "African-American"
> was used near-universally in the United States, and was seen
> as "neutral" as well.

Actually, using "African-American" instead of "black" is widely ridiculed in
the UK, FWIW. But yes, I agree, language changes - the point is, the use of
CE/BCE notation is a POV term like all the others whose time of being
considered better than any others has not yet come, and may indeed never do
so.

[Snip]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM  (MSN) : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


body:
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Hash: SHA1

Andrew Lih wrote:
> It's generally considered bad netiquette to forward private emails to
> a mailing list.
>
> -User:Fuzheado
>

I've done it in the past when someone replyed to something I said
in-list, but sent it to me instead of the list. I sent the discussion
back to the list, in the interests of openness.

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
>> I await the East Frisian, Northern Frisian, etc... Wikipedias
>>
>> :)
>>
>>
>>
> I am awaiting Surinamese and Papiamentu wikipedias!

OK, so far I noted that there are many small languages that would like
to create encyclopedic content, but that probably lack in something. Did
you ever consider to start a wikicities project without having the
wikipedia interface translated etc. and start editing there - so when it
then comes to the wikipedia contents can easily be transferred and it is
not so difficult to start a wikicities project. This would also show
that people are really interested. I mean if someone wants a wikipedia
in a specific language and does not have the requested number of
contributors etc. he can anyway start a project there. If things are
taken seriously one could then also think about exceptions to the rules etc.

This is just a thing that came to mind right now as instead of hoping
that something happens I prefer just to go there and do it - afterwards
when people see that things work it is normally accepted without problems.

Just my 2 cts. - And I hope I understood wikicitie's policies enough to
say this here (if not, please tell me).

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
>Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>>I await the East Frisian, Northern Frisian, etc... Wikipedias
>>
>>:)
>>
>>
>>
>I am awaiting Surinamese and Papiamentu wikipedias!
>
>Walter/Waerth

Yes, so am I... Btw, did someone try to find any native speakers?

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Angela

body:
On 22/06/05, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:

> OK, so far I noted that there are many small languages that would like
> to create encyclopedic content, but that probably lack in something. Did
> you ever consider to start a wikicities project...

I've just created
http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Wikicity_creation_policy/Encyclopedias
to answer that question.

Basically, the wiki should be trialed at Meta if it is not opposed,
rather than Wikicities. Wikicities could only be used for
encyclopedias in languages that are actually opposed by the Wikimedia
community. However, our WikiLabs (<http://scratchpad.wikicities.com>)
can be used for any (temporary) purpose and this creation policy does
not apply there.

Angela


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Conflict arising - what to do?

body:
For a start, on the talk page you might try to identify who the some
people are and where they say these things. If the sources for both
views can be identified, they can then be attributed. If the real
source is one of the Wikipedia editors that is more troublesome.

Fred

On Jun 22, 2005, at 8:07 PM, Habj wrote:

> Let's say that:
>
> There is an article about a relatively controversial subject that, for
> some reason, has not yet been through any massive edit wars. Maybe the
> subject is fairly new, the word in itself is pretty new so no one has
> actually written much about it- until now.
>
> There are two people editing this article. You get involved a bit, and
> try to create what you feel is a neutral version. This makes one side
> immediatelly assume you belong to the Enemy. This person creates a
> version that says "some people say this, some people say that" but it
> is badly written, the reasoning is strange, it is hard to understand
> what he really means. Both sides are getting loud and argumentative,
> more concerned with being right than with what is logical and not. The
> subject is probably emotional to them. Maybe one side is louder than
> the other; maybe not.
>
> You feel that hey - this isn't going to lead anywhere.
>
> What do you do? Do you just leave the article and let them fight? But
> then, what happens if all the "good forces" just leave whenever
> problem arises? Should you ask someone to try and talk to these
> people? Is there a standard way of handling things like this, or is
> the only thing to do to stay away and wait until things are so bad
> that the article gets locked?
>
> /Habj
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Content, reason and the ArbCom

body:
Zoney wrote:

>Most importantly, the whole BCE/CE thing is a POV lobby. It's nonsense
>to suggest that changing a very common phrase in the English language,
>hitherto used near-universally, is "neutral".
>
>Now Wikipedia with NPOV policy certainly has to avoid siding with
>different POVs - but surely to use BCE/CE notation at all is indeed
>siding with a POV. Does every POV have to be accommodated on *some*
>articles in order to have NPOV?
>
>Surely sticking to BC/AD, as has been used for centuries and centuries
>in the English language (almost certainly the vast majority using it
>without religious or political intent), is the most sensible option?
>
>Wikipedia's ridiculous pandering to all the extremist POVs is not a
>good way to ensure NPOV in my opinion, and seriously dints its
>credability.
>
>I suspect many have no idea how absurd it appears to a non-USian to
>see BCE/CE spreading across Wikipedia
>
Just wanted to note how ironic it is to see an argument against BCE/CE,
based on the universal use of BC/AD, while simultaneously using the term
non-USian in place of the similarly universal term non-American.

--Michael Snow


from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

body:
It's something to think about to implement, but its not possible at the
moment. It would be good for the extreme cases of mass-vandalism (Cambridge
University has IPs getting blocked/unblocked/warned almost constantly, for
example).
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fastfission" <fastfission at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 9:01 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Anon IP blocking without account

Is there a given anon IP address be blocked from editing unless it
signs up with an account? I think this would be quite useful in
situations of persistent vandalism from high schools or libraries,
etc.

It would just say something like, "This IP is blocked from editing
anonymously because of past problems with vandalism, but you are free
to start an account and then you can edit all you want" or something
like that. Is this possible?

FF
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:

>> Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>> I await the East Frisian, Northern Frisian, etc... Wikipedias
>>>
>>> :)
>>
>> I am awaiting Surinamese and Papiamentu wikipedias!
>>
>> Walter/Waerth
>
>
> Yes, so am I... Btw, did someone try to find any native speakers?
>
Hoi,
I try to find people that speak Papiamento or Sranang. One issue with
Papiamento is that there are two official ways of spelling Papiamento.
So I am not sure that we can have only one Papiamento Wikipedia, if we
are going to have one in the first place.

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
>>OK, so far I noted that there are many small languages that would like
>>to create encyclopedic content, but that probably lack in something. Did
>>you ever consider to start a wikicities project...
>>
>>
>
>I've just created
>http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Wikicity_creation_policy/Encyclopedias
>to answer that question.
>
>Basically, the wiki should be trialed at Meta if it is not opposed,
>rather than Wikicities. Wikicities could only be used for
>encyclopedias in languages that are actually opposed by the Wikimedia
>community. However, our WikiLabs (<http://scratchpad.wikicities.com>)
>can be used for any (temporary) purpose and this creation policy does
>not apply there.
>
>
>
Thank you Angela - I'll add this link to my bookmarks - this explains
clearly how things can be done.

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Licenses

body:
Sj wrote:

>On 6/22/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Hoi,
>>The NTG is a Dutch organisation that maintains a resource that is used
>>by most Open/Free software application that are in need of such a
>>resource. These applications are under any and all Open / Free licenses.
>>The NTG has it nominally under the LGPL but they do not enforce it at
>>all. The license is there to ensure that nobody can make it propietary.
>>
>>
>
>Are NTG against commercial re-use?
>
>
There will be two parties involved: OSOSS and NTG, I will know
exactlywhere they stand once I met them. I will have a meeting on the
eight of July.

>< an extra objective; to be the lexicological
>
>
>>resource of choise for Open / Free projects. I am of the opinion that
>>this would be an opportunity too good to miss.
>>
>>
>
>You are using "open" and "free" very loosely here.  If we want to be
>the resource of choice for all projects of any type whatsoever, we
>cannot make the content non-commercial-use-only.  A non-commercial
>project cannot accept GFDL content; a GFDL project cannot accept
>non-comm content.
>
>SJ
>
I use it loosely as both Open and Free software applications make use of
this resource. The NTG is really not interested in licenses, they want
the resource to be used. In a way I sympathise even agree, once
information is truly Free there is no purpose in making a proprietary
resource that does the same. As to what license is best, I have at this
moment no clue. I do know that there may be changes underway with regard
to the GFDL..

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Licenses


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: LISA article and Wiktionary misunderstandings

references:
<BAY22-F32538C5D1600A0597E5C8EB7F70@phx.gbl>	<42B4D46D.6000505@telus.net>
	<42B4E4D8.8050406@yahoo.it>	<742dfd06050620174141d2733c@mail.gmail.com>	<op.sspm93no2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>	<42B7D0DD.9010504@gmail.com>
	<op.ssqhi7jr2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>

body:
Muke Tever wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Muke Tever wrote:
>>
>>> Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>          [Interlingua]: ministro;  [Japanese]: ?? (????,
>>>> daijin);
>>>
>>> Will users of non-Roman scripts be able to see transliterations in
>>> their own scripts, or will they have to be stuck with Roman?
>>
>> When you look at the current practice in the nl:wiktionary, you will
>> find that the different scripts are supported. This will also be the
>> case for Ultimate Wiktionary. More interesting is how a right to left
>> implementation will look like, like Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew ..
>
> No, I know the scripts are supported. I meant, in the translation list,
> if the transliteration such as "daijin" would be transliterated (or
> transliteratable) into the user's script as well.  I know that nl:wikt
> doesn't give a Hebrew transliteration of "??" anywhere, and that
> en:wikt
> has actually been deleting Cyrillic transliterations of Chinese (though
> those were added as entries, not translations).

Whatever my complaints about Gerard's UW, scripts are not one of them.

>>>> == [Dutch] ==
>>>> minister ([n.]) 1. [A person commissioned by the government for
>>>> public service.]
>>>>          "Zware voet jaagt minister Anciaux uit de bocht."
>>>
>>> Hopefully there's space for a translation of this example
>>> in the user's language.
>>
>> There will be room for idiom, this line is problematic in that the
>> meaning of "zware voet" is not clear in its own right without context.
>> So as idiom it is not really great.
>
> I think that's meant to be a sample sentence using the word, not
> necessarily an idiom.  But it should bear a translation into the
> user's language as well.

We haven't really addressed this issue at en:wiktionary.  My first
impression would be that a quotation to illustrate the use of a word in
a foreign language should be in its original, _and_ should be
accompanied by its English translation.

>>> What exactly is the translation table attaching to?  The definition
>>> number? The auto-translating definition? or the individual language's
>>> translation of the definition? If the English definition is improved
>>> by someone, made more specific (and hopefully it would be) nothing
>>> stops a Dutch editor from adding translations (in several languages
>>> even) that relate only to the older definition that was faithfully
>>> done into his language.  Also, the English editor mightn't even think
>>> to check an added translation--does he know that the Dutch editor isn't
>>> translating from the same definition?
>>
>> Meaning exist on a global level. When a meaning is added, it will be
>> universally seen to be there. Meanings are linked to a word.
>> Translations will be linked to meanings.
>
> So the problem of translations given to a language's out-of-date version
> of a meaning will still exist?

"Meaning on a global level" would need to be in some kind of
abstraction.  Without that you would need to give precedence to some
language.

>>>> [1] There is a difficult question, which we are ignoring for now :
>>>> just how precisely do all the translations of "minster (English, n.,
>>>> 2)" have synonymous definitions?  When are two different words ever
>>>> truly synonymous?  But that is a discussion for another month.
>>>
>> Even when words are not "truly" synonymous for some, they may be "truly"
>> synonymous for others. Some words have only a distinct meaning in
>> certain subcultures. This can be adressed by giving a word multiple
>> meanings. The truly synonymous meaning and the slightly differing
>> meaning.
>
> If a word really has different meanings, that's not a problem, and should
> be being done anyway.

How different is different?  "Number" and "numeral" have closely
related, but different meanings that are not recognized by everyone.
The differential will not always be the same in all languages.

> But this doesn't work if the word doesn't actually *have* multiple
> meanings
> to native speakers.  English "you" isn't divided into formal and
> familiar,
> or masculine and feminine, as it is in some languages. I hope this isn't
> what you're talking about.

The 2nd person pronoun is full of problems.  The English singular,
"thou", is rarely used, so using that in translation would sound very
strange to most hearers.  In French politeness and social standing play
a major role in the choice of singular and plural.  Spanish takes
politeness one step further by also using "usted", which takes a third
person verb.  New and old world versions of the language will treat
these issues differently.  You can't possibly sort this out through a
multi-language translating dictionary.

>>> A minister is a special case. Nouns that refer to specific referents
>>> are likely to have synonymous definitions, but they're relatively
>>> rare; most words won't have ready one-word translations so easily. Try:
>>> walk, run, saunter, dash, sashay, hurry, skip, mosey, gallop (varying
>>> degrees of the same kind of action); die, expire, pass away, kick the
>>> bucket, buy the farm (varying degrees of the formality of an
>>> action);...
>>> sludge, slush, slime, mush, slurry... (various specific referents in
>>> the
>>> same close semantic field) -- different languages will handle them all
>>> differently (though possibly the common European languages will share
>>> more gracefully than others).
>>
>> When it comes to explain what words like walk, run, saunter, dash,
>> sashay, hurry, skip, mosey, gallop mean, it helps when you use
>> methodology used in thesauri: some terms are included in others some may
>> be specific to certain animals.
>
> Yes, they all have different meanings.  They have different pragmatics
> too. For example it may be that the usual translation in one language
> actually has a different literal meaning, and that the exact translation
> is a kind of technical term nobody would use, or may not exist at all.
> (A well-documented example is that of color terms.)  But if, as I
> understand from what you say above, translation tables are not being
> shared across words with "synonymous" definitions, then my previous
> comment on this point doesn't apply.

It's the subtleties that make the difference.  Albert Camus' novel
"L'?tranger" is variously tianslated as "The Stranger" or "The
Outsider".  It takes more than crude dictionary knowledge to sort out
the distinction.

Before a UW project or any other kind of multilanguage translating
dictionary can be an effective tool the material belonging to the
separate component languages must first be functional reference tools
for the native speakers of each language.  English already has over
75,000 entries, but it still has a long way to go before it can be that
kind of tool for English speakers.  I can't imagine that the much
smaller wiktionaries for other languages are any closer.

Ec


body:
>Hoi,
>I try to find people that speak Papiamento or Sranang. One issue with
>Papiamento is that there are two official ways of spelling Papiamento. So I
>am not sure that we can have only one Papiamento Wikipedia, if we are going
>to have one in the first place.
>
>Thanks,
>    GerardM

Yes, but the differences are small enough to create both variants within one
Wikipedia. Compare the Breton wikipedia, which seems to march fine at the
moment.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Nieuw: Download nu MSN Messenger 7.0 http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Sean Turvey

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal for new project: Faith Wiki

body:
Please be advised that I have posted a proposal for a new project. The
proposed name is Faith Wiki. The address is
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Faith_Wiki

Sincerely,

Sean A. Turvey U.E.


from_name: gutty prakasam

subject: [Wikitech-l] CLARIFICATION ON SHARATHA THIDIS

body:
DEAR SIR,

THERE IS A CONFUSION ON SHARATHA THIDHI,

LAST YEAR MY FATHER EXPIRED ON 28TH OF JUNE.  THE SAME
YEAR EXTRA MONTH CAME . THIS YEAR WHEN THE CALCULATION
FOR THE 1ST YEAR CERIMONY FALLS ON 15TH TO 18TH OF
JULY I.E. 1ST DAY MASIKAM, 2 DAY VIMOGAM 3 DAY
SHRATHAM AND THE 4 DAY SUBHAM CONDUCTING HOMA.

NOW THERE IS A CONFUSION SITUATION ARISE.  THE DAY
16TH AND 17TH OF JULY IS THE IMPORTANT DAY WHERE THE
SHRATHA THIDHI IS SUNNYA AS PER THE RULE WE CAN'T
CONDUCT CEREMONY'S ON THESE DAYS WHERE THE SHRATHA
THIDHI IS SUNNYA.

IF YOU CAN ABLE TO GET ME THE CLARIFICATION ON THIS.
HOW TO CONDUCT THE CEREMONY.

AS PER HINDU SASTHARA WE CAN'T AVOID ANY CEREMONYS.

HOPE YOU RECEIVE A LINE IN RESPONSE IN THIS REGARD

THANKS  AND REGDS
GUTTY PRAKASAM

KINDLY ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT.

THANKS AND REGDS
GUTTY

PROGRESSIVE CONTAINER TERMINAL
ROOM NO:5, 2ND FLOOR,
NO: 234,THAMBU CHETTY STREET
CHENNAI 600 001
TEL: 25228535, 25214588
FAX: 25232963
EMAIL: pct at touchtelindia.net
            pctchennai at yahoo.com

____________________________________________________
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] we need responsive servers on Tuesday

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:

> Sure. I'm just giving an advise to relax and not to worry.
> Things will go as they have to go :) People look live ok
> only when relaxed :) And we sure, will try not crashing :)

The servers were responsive, I was relaxed, and everything went well. :-)

You're all doing a great job here, thanks!

Kurt


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
Here's a question for y'all as a newbie to RC patrolling.

So I've got CDVF going, and I've imported the admins. So is it now
simply a job of sitting here and trying to check diffs as quickly as
possible?

It strikes me that must waste *a lot* of effort - lots of people must
check the same edit.

Dan


subject: [Wiktionary-l] GEMET and Wikipedia - The Pizza Connection ;o)...

body:
On 9/2/04, ALBatro <a.l.beretta at virgilio.it> wrote:
>
> Stefan Jensen wrote:
>
> >Good morning Sabine and everybody,
> >Great to see more people joining into the communication. I am not a
> frequent user of the Wicki discussion tools which Gerhard proposes to use
> for this but I'll try to move things over to there. (And I see Bernard is
> already using it).
> >
> Dear Stefan,
>
> really nice to "cybermeet" ;o) you and the others in this Wiki/EEA ring...
> The merit or the blame - you'll see later... - is to be put on that
> German Vesuvio ;o) who's definitely SabiNet...
> We recently got in touch in a list of discussion - LANGIT - I quitted
> very fast, for some reasons, after launching a project, RL - RAPTVS
> LINGV?, which she was the only replier to.
>
> As soon as Sabine has got some time to explain to me where and how to
> effectively start to work in/for Wiki world with the support of EEA
> (even if at present I'm already doing/studying really several things,
> and would need paid work, I'll be glad to play actually my part, also
> owing to its being a good reference on the whole and it will let me learn.
>
> My mother tongue is Italian, which I studied also at the university;
> moreover I worked as a professional proofreader and editor for ten years
> and am an author.
>
> As for Chinese at least - I can't assure you nothing - but I'm in high
> touch with some Chinese linguists (two women) who know English and are
> interested in Italian too. They have a sort of translation agency on the
> net and I created and moderate an Itlaian subforum on their Chinese
> website.
>
> Enough & maybe too much?, for the time being...
>
> ALBatro.
>
>
>
> Carme diem,
> ALBatro.
> __________________________________________________________
> Alberto L. Beretta, FIRCA
> (Freelance Italian Relations & Communications Assistant).
> Italian proofreading - editing - composition - voiceovers - translations
> escorting - research - other.
> (www.carmediem.it <http://www.carmediem.it>, under refurbishment until 27
> Aug.) - info at carmediem.it.
> Email a.l.beretta at virgilio.it, fax on request,
> (+39) 02 57501442, home office/study (+39) 338 3524079 (mobile),
> Via Pavese 137, 20089 Rozzano (Milan), Italy (EU).

Oops, sorry about this one, folks. It's well past its sell-by-date (was sent
in September 2004), so we can probably call it irrelevant now.

Wytukaze (your brand-new list admin)


body:
On 6/22/05, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
>
> >Oops, sorry about this one, folks. It's well past its sell-by-date (was sent
> >in September 2004), so we can probably call it irrelevant now.
> >
> >
> lol - it seems as if I missed some mails last year ... I cannot remember
> having Alberto seen posting on the wiktionary list.
>
> Really he would make a great contributor as far as I know him - are you
> still in contact?
>

Unfortunately, this was me clearing out the pending list of emails
from unsubscribed users, which is why we needed an admin in the first
place. So, I'm not in contact, no, I just noticed that this wasn't the
usual mortgage and viagra spam, but forgot to look at the date.

> Hmmm ... maybe it's time to write some e-mails....
>
> Guys, i beg you: please work on some kind of thingie to at least double
> the hours of the day ;-)
>

With enough time and mind-altering drugs, I could make you *think*
there were twice the number of hours in a day, will that work?

> Ciao, Sabine
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
> http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com
>
>

I must be off to clear the pending list out some more, so you may get
a few more of these sorts of emails, but if I'm doing my job properly,
no spam. Hooray!

Wytukaze


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Newpages and rc patrollers needed

body:
On 6/22/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>Here's a question for y'all as a newbie to RC patrolling.
> >>
> >>So I've got CDVF going, and I've imported the admins. So is it now
> >>simply a job of sitting here and trying to check diffs as quickly as
> >>possible?
> >>
> >>It strikes me that must waste *a lot* of effort - lots of people must
> >>check the same edit.
> But that's no better than the old "mark this change as patrolled" system
> - - you are relying on someone else to check the diff! And what if they
> too are a vandal, or don't bother to fix it?? Anyway, with CDVF, admin
> reverts are already detected and removed from the table, and diffs can
> be manually removed from the table (click in the "X" column), so the
> number of diffs that actually need checking is lower than you might think.

Eh, I solve this by marking who patrolled it and the client will have
complete visability into that..

So, you could make items not appear on your list if they've been
patrolled by two people or one person you really trust. Or anything
else you'd like. I can also store flags set by RCers so they can mark
suspicious edits for later evaluation.

Also, this will be totally decoupled from the realtime flow of
edits... so you can work in realtime or you can look at the edits from
last night that no one reviewed yet.

I'm only working on the backend infrastructure (well I'm 80% done now
I think), this will need to be integrated into CDVF before it's
useful. I suspect the interface will take more time than the :30
minutes it took me to write an irc->sql gateway. :)


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Help

body:
We already had this problem once. It could depend on your browser
settings as I have similar problems with another website. The last time
I created the account for the user and he then changed the password
after login - this worked well - we could try it this way.

Could you please try to edit an article and see if you can save it? Not
that your IP is locked due to some vandal that was around (there were
quite many during the last weeks).

Please let me know - you can also contact me by private e-mail
(s.cretella at wordsandmore.it)

Ciao, Sabine

_feeling at tin.it wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I'm not able to create a new account in the Italian page.
>Though I used  the same "user name" into your English page
>and for registering in Wikipedia, then on the Italian page I always
>get an "error". Even if I use different "user name" the site doesn't
>accept it !
>Since I'm an Italian people I only should work on the Italian page,
>so please help me replying to:
>
>_feeling at tin.it
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wiktionary-l mailing list
>Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>
>
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


body:
>Oops, sorry about this one, folks. It's well past its sell-by-date (was sent
>in September 2004), so we can probably call it irrelevant now.
>
>
lol - it seems as if I missed some mails last year ... I cannot remember
having Alberto seen posting on the wiktionary list.

Really he would make a great contributor as far as I know him - are you
still in contact?

Hmmm ... maybe it's time to write some e-mails....

Guys, i beg you: please work on some kind of thingie to at least double
the hours of the day ;-)

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Request for Amis Wiktionary

body:
On 1/5/05, Pochung Chen <pcchen at phys.nthu.edu.tw> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
>   We would like to open a Wiktionary for the Amis language. Amis is an
> Austronesian language used by the Amis -- one of the Austronesian
> people in Taiwan. The Amis account for about one third of Taiwan's
> indigenous population (i.e. 130 thousand), however, many of the younger
> generation do not speak the language and till now there is still no
> exact ststistic report of the number of real speakers.
>
>   There are two prevailing writing systems of this language: the
> Presbyterian Church system and the International Phonetic Symbol
> system, the later is used only within the academic circle. We would
> like to edit a Wiktionary which basically employs the Presbyterian
> Church system but also notes the IPS so that readers can also know the
> exact pronounciations.
>
>   At this moment there are at least three people who are willing to
> commit to this project. They are Nakao Eki, Afah Lisin, and Tai-ni
> Tsou. The former two are native speakers and the later two as
> ethnographers are also familiar with the academic Amis writing system.
> Pektiong Tan (zh-min-nan:pektiong) will help those people to get
> familiar with the wikipedia system.
>
>   We would prefer to set the default interface language to be Mandarin
> with traditional character used in Taiwan (zh-tw) since most of the
> potential user of this wiktionary can read Mandarin with traditional
> character.
>
>   Proposed domain name:
>   http://amis.wiktionary.org/
>
>   Language tag for Amis:
>   ISO 639-2: N.A.
>   ISO 639-3 (Draft): Ami
>   SIL: ALV
>   RFC-3066: i-ami
>
>   Sincerely,
>   Nakao Eki,
>   Afah Lisin,
>   Tai-ni Tsou,
>   Pektiong Tan
>
> Some info about Taiwanese aborigine:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_aborigine
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

Quick note on this:

Even though this is from January, I don't know if the request was
filed anywhere else, and it seems sufficiently interesting to warrant
investigation.

Wytukaze


from_name: Mark Bergsma

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Domas Mituzas wrote:
>
>> Sure. I'm just giving an advise to relax and not to worry. Things will
>> go as they have to go :) People look live ok only when relaxed :) And
>> we sure, will try not crashing :)
>
>
> The servers were responsive, I was relaxed, and everything went well. :-)
>
> You're all doing a great job here, thanks!

Actually, we had severe (network) problems in florida at that time... :)

--
Mark

mark at nedworks.org


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Export Dictionary?

body:
Brian Suda wrote:

>I have been on this list awhile, when i originally joined i was
>interesting in the possibility of exporting the wiktionary data as
>.dict format. Now that the newest version of OSX 10.4 has a built-in
>dictionary that uses the dict:// to look-up words i was interested to
>see if anyone on the technicaly side would like to explore the
>possibility of either exporting the Wiktionary database as .dict
>format, or run a dictionary daemon that would access the wiktionary
>database server and return dict entries. It would be read-only, but it
>would be another interesting way to access the wiktionary besides the
>web interface.
>
>Does anyone on the tech list know if this is even possible? I'm not
>asking you to do it (i can write the export), i was wondering if there
>is some sort of database schema available to extract the data into
>dict format, or are the entries too fragmented to even attempt an
>export?
>
>
>

Brian, there is already something - I have to write a mail to Kasper
about this - only: since it is going to be a longer mail I just waited
for a moment - there are too many things around these days.

I'll see if I can do this later on tonight. Anyway he can convert
wiktionaries into a .dict format as much as I understand.

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Deathphoenix

body:
Alphax wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>
>>Eh, I solve this by marking who patrolled it and the client will have
>>complete visability into that..
>>
>>So, you could make items not appear on your list if they've been
>>patrolled by two people or one person you really trust. Or anything
>>else you'd like. I can also store flags set by RCers so they can mark
>>suspicious edits for later evaluation.
>>
>>Also, this will be totally decoupled from the realtime flow of
>>edits... so you can work in realtime or you can look at the edits from
>>last night that no one reviewed yet.
>>
>>I'm only working on the backend infrastructure (well I'm 80% done now
>>I think), this will need to be integrated into CDVF before it's
>>useful. I suspect the interface will take more time than the :30
>>minutes it took me to write an irc->sql gateway. :)
>>
>>
>>
>
>Awesome :)
>
>
I agree. That's the RC checker from hell.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 4 new Wikipedias have just been created

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>I await the East Frisian, Northern Frisian, etc... Wikipedias
>
>:)
>
>
>
I am awaiting Surinamese and Papiamentu wikipedias!

Walter/Waerth


body:
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:

>> Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>> I await the East Frisian, Northern Frisian, etc... Wikipedias
>>>
>>> :)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I am awaiting Surinamese and Papiamentu wikipedias!
>>
>> Walter/Waerth
>
>
> Yes, so am I... Btw, did someone try to find any native speakers?
>
Yes a businesspartner of my father he is interested
but pointing him the way to meta is difficult. So my vote counts for him!

Walter


from_name: Przykuta

subject: [Foundation-l] wikievolution tree?

body:
What do you thik about - it will be good for wikiresearch? I look
for all wikiprojects and links between this projects to.

google.pl say:

http://www.google.com/search?q=wiki+%22main+page%22+%22welcome+to%
22&hl=pl&lr=&start=750&sa=N&filter=0

Przykuta


subject: [Foundation-l] wikievolution tree?