from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Scott Stevenson wrote:

>Greetings fellow Wikipedians,
>
>Has anyone else noticed the lack of clarity on the [[Wikipedia:Neutral point
>of view]] relative to images?
>I realize it may seem like common sense but certain editors don't seem to
>understand the NPOV equally applies to images.
>Due to this fact I've begun work on an addition to NPOV policy and I was
>wondering what others thought of it.
>
>Please have a look here:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netscott/NPOV_image_policy
>
>
There is no dispute about the fact that NPOV also applies to images;
it's more a question of how it applies.  Unless you can edit an image,
the image speaks for itself; if it is a photograph of people carrying a
placard then the placard says what it says.  That much of it is neutral
because we would not be acting neutrally if we chose to doctor the
photograph, whether we agree with its contents or not.  We can, however,
exercise NPOV in our choice of photographs, or in the way that we
describe them.

It is unfortunate that this issue should come up in the charged
atmosphere of anti-semitism/zionism where so many people want to draw
contrary conclusions from the picture or to impute motives that may not
have been consistent with the view of the placard holders.  Scott's
fictional duckgull example serves only to muddle the issue, and adds
nothing to clarity.

The problem with great principles is that they defy elaboration and
clarification.  In the case of NPOV such elaboration and clarification
is paradoxical.because it can induce a lack of neutrality to the whole
notion.

Currently, the "Policy in a nutshell" says, "All Wikipedia articles must
be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly and
without bias. This also includes maps, reader-facing templates,
categories, and portals."  The first sentence is fine.  The second
presents an inclusion list.  It would be possible to add "images" to
that list, but next week, or next month, or next year someone will have
a good reason to add something else to the list.  Why not just change
that second sentence to, "This applies to all aspects of an article."
would people find some part of the word "all" that they don't understand?

Ec


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Draft on voting eligibility clarification (Re:
 Open	question from an Election Official: on voters' elibiglity)

body:
Aphaia wrote:

>Thanks to all those who contributed their ideas. After considering the
>opinions posted on meta, I propose the below as our policies for voter
>eligibility in the coming Election:
>
>   1. Users indefinitely banned or blocked from any Wikimedia project
>may not vote in the Wikimedia Foundation Board elections. This means
>they may not vote using the blocked account or from any other account
>they may hold on a Wikimedia project.
>   2. Users temporarily banned or blocked from any Wikimedia project
>may not vote from the blocked or banned account for the duration it is
>blocked. However, they may vote from any other project on which they
>are eligible to vote, or they may vote after being unblocked if the
>election is still open.
>   3. Election officials may strike votes from users who do not meet
>the eligibility criteria described above. Officials may find
>disqualified voters by searching manually, by technical filtering (to
>be provided by developer(s) if possible), or by third-party reports.
>   4. Any Wikimedia user is invited to report questionable votes to
>the Election Officials. To ensure the authenticity of the reports, we
>highly recommend that bureaucrats or admins of a local wiki make the
>reports, and we appreciate the assistance of local wiki admins in
>checking such questionable votes. Admins of local wikis are welcome to
>report on projects other than the ones on which they are
>administrators; however, local admins are expected to be the most
>reliable source of such information.
>
>Your comments and feedback to the dedicated page on meta will be appreciated.
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Elections_for_the_Board_of_Trustees_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%2C_2006/En#feedback
>
>The final version will be posted on meta and foundation-l before the
>Election starts.
>
>Cheers,
>
>
This is reasonable.

J


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 02:13:08PM +0200, Ligulem wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Are HFCS's bad? They also reduce the chances of edit conflict don't they?
>
> (I assume HFCS = "high frequency consecutive saves"). Some people don't
> like them (they inflate edit count, use resources). Thus I try to reduce
> them myself. But I'm prone to HFCS myself (not on templates!).

I concur with Steve; my mental model for Save Early and Often is the
shorter the window you use, the less likely you are to have to clean up
an edit conflict.

> > The thing I don't get in this mockup is, why would you have multiple
> > drafts for one article?
>
> Why limit to only one? I can imagine having several backups, going to
> older variants if I see I'm on a wrong track.
>
> An undo function comes to mind. Revert before published.
>
> That might lead to private revision trees per user and page, forked at
> some time in the past. Duh.

Indeed; this could well be overimplemented, if one wasn't careful.

I too tend to think, Rob, that one draft per user/page is a limit...
and even that might have ... notable effects on the DBMS.  Separate
table, at the least, I would assume...

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
Garion96 wrote:

>I think, but I might be wrong, that something coming from the foundation
>would lead to better results.
>
Please define the demarcation between what should be foundation policy,
and what policy should be in the hands of any given project.  Except for
absolutely essential policies, most of it should be in the hands of the
projects, and one needs to accept that any two projects can have
different policies, including ones relating to fair use.

>To quote from anthony's mail. "Wikimedia is "powerful enough now that we can
>insist on [free images], and get it, from just about any celebrity".  Joe
>Schmoe Wikipedian is not, and if a dozen people contact someone claiming to
>be acting on behalf of the foundation, even that power is quickly going to
>dissipate."
>
The fact is that when you are determining whether an image is free there
is a huge grey area.  The grey area includes a lot of images that would
be free if people ever bothered to put in a little effort to make them free.

>I just now and then get discouraged when I see the fair use images mess on
>en.wikipedia. I do like it that we can use fair use though but it seem to
>be used too easily. If some good responses come from this, it would diminish
>a bit the excessive fair use there.
>
So what's wrong with having fair use images, as long as they really are
fair use images.  Excessiveness has nothing to do with it; establishing
quotas for the number of fair use images would open up the question of
whose fair use to use.  It's good that you accept some fair use images
but what makes the use excessive?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


list: wikien-l

from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> The more recent change, preventing anon users (I assume) from creating
> pages or making edits until they're approved by someone else, is
> something the author asserts the German Wikipedia are experimenting
> with.  However, given that it's been discussed repeatedly here, it's not
> unreasonable to assume, as the author does, that if the German trial
> goes well, we might adopt it, too.

If it's an experiment, I'd like to see what the analysis of the results
show before implementing it here.

> [0] If I get it wrong this time, it's the BBC's fault.
>
> [1] Much as I like the lower workload this has caused, it might be nice
>      to new page creation back on and see what happens.  We can even call
>      it an "experiment", if only to see how Bryan Derkson reacts ...

You probably can guess. :)

Seriously, though, I'm still looking for a response on my request for
details when you said "analysis has been done, results will be
published" regarding the initial disabling of anon page creation. Who
did the analysis? Or did you answer in a different thread that I haven't
been reading? I know I'm being a hardass about this, but so far this has
been the only lead I'm aware of indicating that any such analysis might
actually be taking place.

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language proposal: Wikipedia...

body:
Hoi,
Currently we have our "own" wikipedias and we consider them NPOV. That is,
we consider them NPOV within the framework of that Wikipedia. When you
consider them in the light of the "other" wikipedia, there are many ways in
which a bias can be proven.. if only by omission by relevant content.

At this moment, countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea are seen as
enemies, when you consider how little content there is on these countries
combined with the relevant information that COULD/SHOULD be told, it is
partisan by ommision.

Consequently, I do not think having articles in multiple scripts is much of
a problem.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 8/27/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 27/08/06, Frederick FN Noronha <fredericknoronha at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We have two options -- a common Konkani Wikipedia, or separate ones
> > (set up according to interest shown and activity levels initiated). FN
>
> If you have a common one, with up to five different articles on the
> same topic, doesn't that seem like it could be or could lead to
> content forking? ( [[Wikipedia:Content forking]] ) Or instead of
> having one POV dispute, having five... it seems very tricky.
>
> I don't think starting five (or even two) simultaneously would be a
> good idea either. Maybe you should just start one, get the community
> going for that one, and when there is enough demand for another one,
> start that one then.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Andreas Vilén

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Wikitech-l] WikiCharts

body:
Don't know which irc channel you're active on but can we please have this
for svwiki too?

/Andreas

On 8/26/06, Leon Weber <leon.weber at leonweber.de> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett schrieb:
> > http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/wikicharts/?wiki=enwikiversity
> >
> > Awesome. Can we have this on en Wikipedia?
> >
> Okay, done. http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/wikicharts/?wiki=enwiki
> > Steve
> >
> > On 8/26/06, Leon Weber <leon.weber at leonweber.de> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >> I've finished WikiCharts now. A short description can be found here:
> >>
> >> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCharts
> >>
> >> As described there: If you'd like to have WikiCharts for your wiki,
> just
> >> contact me in the IRC (my nick is LeonWP).
> >>
> >> -- Leon
> >>
> --Leon
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Julien Lemoine

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories problem

body:
Hello,

I read the thread "how bad is a category with ....", and I was wondering
how categories were filled. If I understand well, categories were filled
by editors of the article. This assume that these editors know the whole
set of categories and that these categories will not change with time ?
I was wondering if there is projects to help *detect* categories and
then to help editors by *suggesting* categories ?

I am thinking about two different technologies to help dealing with
these two problems :
1) Text clustering to help finding categories but probably not using
classical approaches where words space is used to describe a document
(applying a part of speech tagging
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part-of-speech_tagging>, stemming
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stemmer>, ...). I am thinking about
clustering links graph (seems similar to the clique problem
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clique_problem> but with different
constraints), i.e. each document will not be described by his words (or
lemmas, LSA vector...) but by his links to other articles using an
algorithm that do not needs the number of cluster before processing but
needs a distance or a similarity threshold. With this kind of
processing, you will have a set of clusters that are linked together,
but a cluster will probably not be a complete graph (this is the
difference with the clique problem). Once you have the clusters, you
need to try labeling them with a category :
 - give to the user the role of identifying the category name
 - use the words space to find the better words that describe this set
of articles
 - ...
Then you can run this algorithm on a category to try to split it in sub
categories.

2) Machine learning or links graph exploration to suggest categories
during edition of an article.
This first idea is to try to learn existing categories with a machine
learning algorithm (using words space) to guess categories of a new
article (but this algorithm will have to deal with the new categories
and the fact that the number of document not having a category is grater
than number of document having a category).
The second idea is really more simple and easier to implement : When you
edit an article, you can suggest categories of linked articles (can be
replaced by an other graph-exploration algorithm).

Is there some functions like these in Wikimedia ? and to you think that
this kind of algorithms could help ?
Finally, do you know people working on this functionalities (maybe
people working on semantic web ?)

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [16226]
	branches/REL1_7/phase3/includes/SkinTemplate.php

body:
On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 04:40:51PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> On 27/08/06, rotem at svn.leuksman.com <rotem at svn.leuksman.com> wrote:
> > Revision: 16226
> > Author:   rotem
> > Date:     2006-08-27 08:37:33 -0700 (Sun, 27 Aug 2006)
> >
> > Log Message:
> > -----------
> > Backport: View the formatted namespace name (without _) in custom namespaces, when no message is specified.
>
> Please remember that, in general, you shouldn't be backporting things
> into the release branch. There's a reason we keep it stable.

And that reason is: (ta-da) that a version number is a *contract*
between developers, users, and most especially technical support
people.  If you can't trust a version number to mean that the code is
what you think it is, then give up.  (Certainly on trying to provide
support...)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Stephen Streater

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 27 Aug 2006, at 13:29, Kelly Martin wrote:

> On 8/27/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>> This article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5286458.stm)
>> got my
>> concern. Editorial control on the Wikipedia? What exactly have I
>> missed?
>
> You basically missed the fact that Bill Thompson is fond of talking
> out of his ass.
>
> Mark's description of what German is going to be testing is not
> accurate.  Anonymous users will still be permitted to make all the
> edits they want.  The system that German is going to be testing will
> simply limit the impact that anonymous EDITORS have on anonymous
> READERS by changing which version of an article is displayed by
> default.

So what exactly is being proposed?


from_name: Aphaia

subject:
[Foundation-l] Open question from an Election Official: on
	voters' elibiglity

references:
<35be2a710608250421v5834bb22l6bd47f88861fb3e6@mail.gmail.com>
	<44EFC2B8.2010507@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<35be2a710608252112i374a8d9bg66d100469fd6ae7e@mail.gmail.com>
	<44EFCF08.9060206@wolfmountaingroup.com> <44EFEC2F.20906@telus.net>
	<44F003D8.9050302@wolfmountaingroup.com> <ecp0s9$dej$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e2a50e360608262013q7bf12ab9k423f99584cf68cc8@mail.gmail.com>
	<44F11947.9000106@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<44F11B1F.8090406@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Sorry, a bit off-topic but I found some worthy-mentioned things on this page.
http://chr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jeffrey_V._Merkey

To developers:
There was something wrong around August 1, when we tried to update the
sitenotice. We thought it changed globally, but apparently, not. Geni
suggested already there were other projects lacking the sitenotice.

We are going to have a global voting. I really wish every eligible
voter join the voting. All your effort to enforce our globality and to
improve our communication method will be very appreciated.

To Chrwiki:User:Jeffrey V. Merkey
I am not sure if you are reading my mail, but assuredly you are not
eligible for vote as far as you vote from this account. Further
information on vote eligibility is found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election

On 8/27/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
> >Austin Hair wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>On 8/26/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>As one of the list moderators, my finger is one inch away from the
> >>>moderator button for you. The comment above is not really acceptable.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>For those who've asked in the past weeks, this is another of the very
> >>few codified reasons for moderation on this list: "incivility."  I
> >>absolutely concur.
> >>
> >>Austin
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>foundation-l mailing list
> >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >Well, I won't be incivil here again. And I apologize for any outbursts.
> >I am after all, only human,
> >as we all are.
> >
> >Jeff
> >_______________________________________________
> >foundation-l mailing list
> >foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
> And I am not going to try to vote in the election or raise any more
> stink about it. I have too much other important work to
> do for our Wikipedia projects for language preservation for me to become
> embroiled in debates and fights which
> are not focused on achieving this goal. I have several languages to
> save, and this task has nothing to do with elections,
> Wikimedia administration, or any other internal issues. I also have
> significant resources and technical skills and I am
> not dependent in any way on the Foundation or Wikia for hosting or
> support (in fact its the other way around). I do have
> a need for collaboration on language projects and content and licensing
> and IP issues. My apologies to all involved for
> loosing sight of this important task.
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 8/27/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Anonymous readers of an article will be displayed the most recent
> revision of that article which has been marked by a trusted user as
> being free of vandalism.
[snip]

Of course, 'Trusted user' is a complicated issue in and of itself.

I can't stress enough that only Dewiki is currently discussing this,
not Enwiki... Their experiences will be more valuable to us than
*months* of speculation on the list, so until we have the data the
speculation is likely pointless.

Once Dewiki has used this long enough to learn some things we should
begin discussing it for enwiki.  It is possible, and likely, that the
details of any future implementation on enwiki will be different from
dewiki based on their experiences and our differing community
dynamics.

There will be an opportunity for all of us to provide input before any
such changes on enwiki.

So please lets not begin a huge argument about something thats not yet
well enough defined to argue about... I don't want to see us get burnt
out on the subject before we have enough data to make *good*
decisions.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On 8/27/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> Rob Church wrote:
> > http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/0/09/Drafts_%28mockup%29.png
>
> Very interesting. Fear for loosing edits is one of the driving forces
> for high frequency consecutive saves.

Are HFCS's bad? They also reduce the chances of edit conflict don't they?

The thing I don't get in this mockup is, why would you have multiple
drafts for one article? Also, are you planning on storing the version
number that the original draft was created from, to let MediaWiki's
normal edit conflict/resolution processes work their magic?

I like the idea of having one draft that I can come back to in the
next half an hour or so. I'm not sure I understand the benefit of
having multpile drafts that hang around for months at a time?

Steve


from_name: Carlos

subject: [Wikitech-l] References - ugh

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

> I know I've done this once before, but this one's worse:
>
> The name Pluto was first suggested by [[Venetia Burney|Venetia Phair
> (n?e Burney)]], at the time an eleven-year-old girl from [[Oxford,
> England|Oxford]], [[England]].<ref>{{cite web
[...]
> announcement made by Slipher on [[1930-05-01]].
>
> ---
> Can you believe that in that chunk of text, there are actually three
> separate pieces of text, with two references between them? It's
> totally unmanageable - attempting to actually edit the text that's
> buried in there as a cohesive whole is next to impossible. Solutions
> desperately wanted.

It would be nice if the extension allowed for references to be declared
after the paragraph that uses them. In the edit window every paragraph
would have their own "footnotes" with the full reference information,
while in the paragraph only <ref name="xzxz"/> would be used. (In the
rendered article, all references would go together, as they do now.)
This way, the text would flow uninterrupted, and the reference
information would keep its proximity with it (except in very long
paragraphs...).

Greetings.
--


subject: [Wikitech-l] References - ugh

body:
On 8/27/06, Carlos <angus at quovadis.com.ar> wrote:
> It would be nice if the extension allowed for references to be declared
> after the paragraph that uses them. In the edit window every paragraph
> would have their own "footnotes" with the full reference information,
> while in the paragraph only <ref name="xzxz"/> would be used. (In the
> rendered article, all references would go together, as they do now.)
> This way, the text would flow uninterrupted, and the reference
> information would keep its proximity with it (except in very long
> paragraphs...).

Yeah, I think we've discussed putting them at the end of the article,
but probably the best is just allowing them to be defined *anywhere* -
before, at, or after the time the link to the reference (the [1])
actually appears.

Steve


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Are HFCS's bad? They also reduce the chances of edit conflict don't they?

(I assume HFCS = "high frequency consecutive saves"). Some people don't
like them (they inflate edit count, use resources). Thus I try to reduce
them myself. But I'm prone to HFCS myself (not on templates!).

> The thing I don't get in this mockup is, why would you have multiple
> drafts for one article?

Why limit to only one? I can imagine having several backups, going to
older variants if I see I'm on a wrong track.

An undo function comes to mind. Revert before published.

That might lead to private revision trees per user and page, forked at
some time in the past. Duh.

Just some ugly brainstorming ;-) ...


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] WikiCharts

body:
On 8/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> It'd be better to have specific data for that. Just because page X is
> more popular than Y doesn't mean that people were more likely looking
> for X than Y when they typed in Z.

True -- if anyone wants to write something to gather more specific
data.  (You'd have to track people across their session: what they
typed, then what they clicked after that, and whether it corresponded
to a disambiguation page.)


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [[New anti-Semitism]] and violations of NPOV re: top
 image

body:
G'day Sarah,

> The thing that always strikes me now when I read the Encyclopaedia
> Britannica is how POV it is, and I often wonder why we're aiming to be
> as good as them, when in fact (at our best) we can be so much better.

At our best, we *can* be much better than Britannica.  This is for a
variety of reasons, but I don't think NPOV really is one.  NPOV is Good,
yes, but it doesn't make us Better.  Maybe this is because my POV is
closer to Britannica's than yours is, and I'm thus biased.

There's nothing wrong, in my view, with being POV but objective (thanks
to Fastfission for pointing out the distinction).  The best POV for any
encyclopaedia, including Wikipedia, to adopt is Mark Gallagher's Point
of View.  This is quite obvious to me; any encyclopaedia which explains
itself clearly, objectively, and undeniably biased towards Mark
Gallagher's viewpoint will be much, *much* better than one that aims
towards some impractical ideal of NPOV.  As long as the POV is
*consistent* and *known to the reader* ...

The problem --- the only big problem --- with MGPOV is that some smart
young lady will undoubtedly point out, "Well, what's wrong with Sarah's
Point of View?  Why shouldn't Wikipedia be written from *that* instead?"
  And while it's quite obvious that SVPOV is inferior in every way to
MGPOV, I don't really have a good explanation as to *why* at this stage.
  Then we get a certain historian saying that, since he's more of an
expert than Canberran university students in certain matters, history
articles should be written according to FFPOV.  Then some smartarse will
pipe up with, "Who founded this project anyway?" and we'll have fights
over whether to go with JWPOV or LSPOV.

NPOV is a compromise.  It says that even though that pinko Aussie
bastard Mark doesn't get to POV-push, neither does that awful
crypto-fascist[0] Sarah.  NPOV is a good idea for a project like
Wikipedia, for the comfort of readers and especially writers who don't
share Mark Gallagher's Point of View, but that doesn't necessarily mean
a project which adopts NPOV is "better" than a project which doesn't, in
much the same way as a policy of Not Being Lame About English Variants
works well for Wikipedia but is not necessarily better than a policy of
Use International English And Be Damned To What The Americans Want.

[0] I don't actually know what the phrase "crypto-fascist" means, but
     it's part of the standard Pinko Aussie lexicon, so I use it anyway.

--
Mark Gallagher
"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it."
(Raymond Chandler, /The Big Sleep/)


from_name: Frederick "FN" Noronha

body:
That doesn't seem possible at this point of time. Each script tends to
have some small but significant dialectal variations. So, simply using
some form of mechanical transalation/transiteration might render the
output quite unreadable.

It would be preferable to have human-created pages.

Even if done in different scripts, I don't think this would cause any
problems as such. Teams would work at differing paces, as per their
own abilities and convenience. And work by one team might spur on
others to catch up too.

The issue we're shifting to is a much wider question, which has been
causing worry for those keen about the Konkani language. As far as
Wikipedia goes, what do you see as the suitable solution?

We have two options -- a common Konkani Wikipedia, or separate ones
(set up according to interest shown and activity levels initiated). FN

PS: Have just been working on a portal for Goa at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Goa  You can see some Konkani
descriptions (in English there). Since I'm not a techie, have been
struggling a bit to control the templates and code!

On 27/08/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> >a script-neutral Wikipedia, or multi Wikipedias to deal
> > with the diverse scripts of Konkani (even if with differening levels
> > of activity).
>
> Is there any way to make an automatic coverter among the 5 scripts? It would
> save you a lot of trouble.
>
> B?rto
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org  9822122436 +91-832-240-9490
http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com fredericknoronha at gmail.com


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wiki entropy

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 25 Aug 2006 at 10:48:54 -0700 (PDT), stevertigo wrote:
>
>> Slogan: "Wikipedia: Leave your baggage at home
>>                     (or else be prepared to deal with it)"
>
> Are carry-ons allowed?
>

Only if they're in clear plastic bag. Dell laptops are still not allowed.

>> wasted energy. If Jimbo doesnt step up, Im going to have to appoint an
>> editorial board. You should be on it of course, SlimV.
>
> Are you leaving out apostrophes, or is software somewhere along the
> line stripping them out (perhaps because you're using nonstandard
> characters instead of standard ASCII)?
>

Ameri-centric fascist! I use UTF-8! Fear my unicode characters!
?????????????????? !!!!!!!!!!e^i.pi!

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Jack

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: NYTimes.com: African Languages Grow as a
	Wikipedia Presence

body:
> > what the Newyork Times has to say about content in African
> > language
> > Wikipedias. Enjoy :)
> > -- GerardM

Link for those who don't want to jump thru NYT's registration hoops:
<http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/BIZ04/608270326/1013>.

"Swahili [...] is the first African-language Wikipedia to have reached
the 1,000-article mark" is from
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-31/News_and_notes#Milestones>,
see the correction at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-07/News_and_notes#Correction>.
--
Jeandr?


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On 27/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> The thing I don't get in this mockup is, why would you have multiple
> drafts for one article? Also, are you planning on storing the version
> number that the original draft was created from, to let MediaWiki's
> normal edit conflict/resolution processes work their magic?

Yes and no. Bear in mind I've given away nothing about how I'm
thinking of implementing this, remember? I haven't worked out all the
details myself, yet.

> I like the idea of having one draft that I can come back to in the
> next half an hour or so. I'm not sure I understand the benefit of
> having multpile drafts that hang around for months at a time?

Then you clearly didn't read the information properly, did you?
Because had you done so, you'd have found that I state drafts are
cleaned up after a specific time period.

Rob Church


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: NYTimes.com: African Languages Grow as a
	Wikipedia Pr...

body:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I
think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for
languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely
 "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers,  and
just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
million speakers and only 6 articles)?

So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace  the term "African
languages" with "languages in developing regions."  Speakers of Pashto, Tajik,
and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong  Wikipedia just as much as the
speakers of Swahili.

Danny


from_name: James Hare

body:
Yes... we need to help out these Wikipedias. I suggested on the Wikipedia
mailing list one time something that would allow people who don't use the
Internet to mail in articles for Wikipedia. The proposal generally specified
for improvements of the English Wikipedia, but I think we should focus more
on having "wiki ambassadors" in these regions to help collect articles and
upload them to their respective Wikipedia.

On 8/27/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I
> think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist
> for
> languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as
> uniquely
> "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
> make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
> articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million
> speakers,  and
> just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
> million speakers and only 6 articles)?
>
> So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace  the term
> "African
> languages" with "languages in developing regions."  Speakers of Pashto,
> Tajik,
> and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong  Wikipedia just as much as
> the
> speakers of Swahili.
>
> Danny
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject:
[Foundation-l] Draft on voting eligibility clarification (Re: Open
	question from an Election Official: on voters' elibiglity)

body:
Thanks to all those who contributed their ideas. After considering the
opinions posted on meta, I propose the below as our policies for voter
eligibility in the coming Election:

   1. Users indefinitely banned or blocked from any Wikimedia project
may not vote in the Wikimedia Foundation Board elections. This means
they may not vote using the blocked account or from any other account
they may hold on a Wikimedia project.
   2. Users temporarily banned or blocked from any Wikimedia project
may not vote from the blocked or banned account for the duration it is
blocked. However, they may vote from any other project on which they
are eligible to vote, or they may vote after being unblocked if the
election is still open.
   3. Election officials may strike votes from users who do not meet
the eligibility criteria described above. Officials may find
disqualified voters by searching manually, by technical filtering (to
be provided by developer(s) if possible), or by third-party reports.
   4. Any Wikimedia user is invited to report questionable votes to
the Election Officials. To ensure the authenticity of the reports, we
highly recommend that bureaucrats or admins of a local wiki make the
reports, and we appreciate the assistance of local wiki admins in
checking such questionable votes. Admins of local wikis are welcome to
report on projects other than the ones on which they are
administrators; however, local admins are expected to be the most
reliable source of such information.

Your comments and feedback to the dedicated page on meta will be appreciated.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Elections_for_the_Board_of_Trustees_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%2C_2006/En#feedback

The final version will be posted on meta and foundation-l before the
Election starts.

Cheers,
--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


body:
Yes, that sounds realistic.

Since we face no immediate problems with issues like fonts and
keyboards in the Roman script (and I also know people who could
volunteer), could Wikipedia start a Konkani-Roman wikipedia?

Its name could be titled according to what's seen suitable by the
Wikipedia naming convention. But let's do this early please, and
strike while the iron is hot. I'm just back from New Delhi, where I
heard Jimmy Wales talk on his plans for Wikipedia in India. If we get
the right persons on board, we can scale up Konkani-Roman and also use
it to encourage other Konkani scripts to get start their ventures.

Thanks! FN

On 27/08/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/08/06, Frederick FN Noronha <fredericknoronha at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We have two options -- a common Konkani Wikipedia, or separate ones
> > (set up according to interest shown and activity levels initiated). FN
>
> If you have a common one, with up to five different articles on the
> same topic, doesn't that seem like it could be or could lead to
> content forking? ( [[Wikipedia:Content forking]] ) Or instead of
> having one POV dispute, having five... it seems very tricky.
>
> I don't think starting five (or even two) simultaneously would be a
> good idea either. Maybe you should just start one, get the community
> going for that one, and when there is enough demand for another one,
> start that one then.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org  9822122436 +91-832-240-9490
http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com fredericknoronha at gmail.com


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] References - ugh

body:
On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 12:03:15PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I know I've done this once before, but this one's worse:
> > Can you believe that in that chunk of text, there are actually three
> > separate pieces of text, with two references between them? It's
> > totally unmanageable - attempting to actually edit the text that's
> > buried in there as a cohesive whole is next to impossible. Solutions
> > desperately wanted.
>
> Yeah, that's bad. The detailed part of the references really should be
> under a 'Works cited' subsection of the ==References== section while
> something like this <ref>bbc.co.uk "The Girl that named Pluto"</ref>
> should be inline. The whole point of wiki syntax is to make it
> possible to easily read and edit source text (unlike HTML). But having
> complete reference info directly inline defeats that.

Yes; that's the argument we were having last week.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 10:07:20PM +0200, Ligulem wrote:
> Rob Church wrote:
> > Christ, in future, remind me not to post tentative previews of
> > possible things to come. It's not worth the bloody hassle of having
> > fifty thousand trivial little questions.
>
> Assume good faith. I've learned that from you ;-)
>
> Don't be so sensitive.

I hate to agree with him Rob, but relax.  This is the price of
open-source *design*; people will kibitz.  Don't take it so seriously.

If you haven't made those decisions, then clearly no one's taking issue
with yours... :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On 27/08/06, rotem at svn.leuksman.com <rotem at svn.leuksman.com> wrote:
> Revision: 16226
> Author:   rotem
> Date:     2006-08-27 08:37:33 -0700 (Sun, 27 Aug 2006)
>
> Log Message:
> -----------
> Backport: View the formatted namespace name (without _) in custom namespaces, when no message is specified.

Please remember that, in general, you shouldn't be backporting things
into the release branch. There's a reason we keep it stable.

Cheers,

Rob Church


from_name: niht-hræfn

subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS for wikien

body:
On Aug 27, 2006, at 16:37, David Gerard wrote:

> On 27/08/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 8/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 8/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>> I don't really know what that format would be. A forum? A wiki-
>>>> style
>>>> page (which there are plenty of on wikipedia)? A newsgroup
>>>> (which is
>
>>> Wikis are crap for having actual conversations.
>
>> I'd say that that depends on the conversation. If there is a long,
>> drawn-out discussion with many parties, than yeah, it's crap. However
>> for purposes of having a talk-page (atleast a talk-page about a
>> relatively non-controversial topic), it's awesome. Comments like
>> "Statement X sounds wierd to me, can somebody source it?" or
>> something
>> similar (which is what is contained in the vast majority of wikipedia
>> talk-pages), comments which draws only a few replies works very well
>> on wikis. Honestly, I can't think of a better format for them.
>
>
> There's a Forum extension for Mediawiki which does pretty well on
> Uncyclopedia. Check http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/DUMP .
>
>
> - d.

The problem is that DPLforum is extremely expensive for the server.
I've found there is no way in hell to convince the devs to implement
it on en.wp. We can always keep trying though!

--Keitei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keitei


from_name: Dan Li

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On 8/27/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 04:03:29AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> > Allow me, ladies, gentlemen and those in between, to shove a
> > screenshot under your noses.
> >
> > http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/0/09/Drafts_%28mockup%29.png
>
> I'm getting a 404 for that URL, but I would like to check it out; Has the image maybe been
> moved somewhere else?

Still works for me.
Regards,
  - Dan Li


subject: [WikiEN-l] on new article creation

body:
On 8/27/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Seriously, though, I'm still looking for a response on my request for
> details when you said "analysis has been done, results will be
> published" regarding the initial disabling of anon page creation. Who
> did the analysis? Or did you answer in a different thread that I haven't
> been reading? I know I'm being a hardass about this, but so far this has
> been the only lead I'm aware of indicating that any such analysis might
> actually be taking place.

I'd lost that thread, which is why I hadn't replied.

It's not really my place to talk about papers being written by others,
which is why I hadn't answered in more detail.

You're not being a hardass... I'm just not the right person to ask,
the only research I've done is informal subjective measurements (which
I posted about months ago), I've also posted the link to the new
articles over time which was a part of that informal research.

[[NBER]] presented at Wikimania about their statistical research into
Wikipedia editing, and I have worked with them some to help with
collecting data for their work. One of the researchers working on the
subject is currently off the net, but I'll ping the other person (Eric
Garrison) and find out what the status of his research is...

I found it amusing that everyone in the thread has assumed that I'm
arguing against turning back on anon page creation, because that is
certantly not my position.  I've only argued that we shouldn't act
without evidence when evidence is so easy to obtain.

If you don't believe me that people are working on this, feel free to
do your own research it's not like you need anyone's permission. If
you need help getting data in a convenient form and can clearly
articulate what data you need, please contact me... I'll be glad to
help.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] #time

body:
I have written a new parser function for time and date formatting, called
#time. It is an interface to Language::sprintfDate, a function which I wrote
a few weeks ago to support internationalisation. Documentation is at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions#.23time

It allows things like {{#time:F|+2 hours}} to get the month name in CEST.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] #time

body:
On 8/27/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please also add support for the Summer time change, as i didn't find on the
> doc :P

What sort of support do you want?


from_name: Scott Stevenson

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:NPOV and images (possible policy update)

body:
Greetings fellow Wikipedians,

Has anyone else noticed the lack of clarity on the [[Wikipedia:Neutral point
of view]] relative to images?
I realize it may seem like common sense but certain editors don't seem to
understand the NPOV equally applies to images.
Due to this fact I've begun work on an addition to NPOV policy and I was
wondering what others thought of it.

Please have a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netscott/NPOV_image_policy

Thanks.

-Scott


subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On 8/27/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 04:03:29AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> > > > Allow me, ladies, gentlemen and those in between, to shove a
> > > > screenshot under your noses.
> > > >
> > > > http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/0/09/Drafts_%28mockup%29.png
> > >
> > > I'm getting a 404 for that URL, but I would like to check it out; Has the image maybe been
> > > moved somewhere else?
> >
> > Still works for me.
> > Regards,
> >   - Dan Li
>
> Yep, I can see it too now, but that's because it was deleted and then restored: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Log/delete
>
> All the best,
> Nick.

Yeah, sorry about that. Your email and Rob's email took about 3
minutes to get to me ;)

Regards,
  - Dan Li


subject: [Wikitech-l] #time

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/27/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>> I have written a new parser function for time and date formatting, called
>> #time. It is an interface to Language::sprintfDate, a function which I wrote
>> a few weeks ago to support internationalisation. Documentation is at:
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions#.23time
>>
>> It allows things like {{#time:F|+2 hours}} to get the month name in CEST.
>
> Excellent!  This will make a ton of ridiculously complicated templates
> obsolete.  Could you add the rest of the letter codes?  I'm sure
> people would find U useful if they needed to do date arithmetic, for
> instance.  It shouldn't reduce performance, since the case statements
> would be at the end and therefore just ignored unless they match,
> right?

I assume (and hope) PHP case statements are implemented with a hashtable,
otherwise they would be very inefficient. I have no problem with adding more
format characters in principle, it's just a matter of development time.

This time formatter would probably be one of the slowest parts of the parser
per-character, which is why I used memoization and a 1000-byte limit on
actual (post-memoize) processing per page, since the initial commit.
Hopefully the limit won't affect any legitimate users.

-- Tim Starling


body:
This sensible proposal to update WP:NPOV is in response to Fastfission's
excellent comments (I recommend reading them in their entirety):

>As just one clarification... when I suggest we need to spell out our
>neutrality explicitly, I don't mean it to sound like I am assuming a
>dumb audience. That's not true at all. But if the "neutrality" comes
>from someone having to have a meta-view of the image -- "Oh, what an
>interesting image. When I look at it, I see it as anti-Semitism, but
>others would say it is only anti-Zionism. How clever." -- I don't
>think that's neutral. For one thing, the ambiguity of the image -- the
>entire claim for it being a good illustration up there -- is exactly
>one of the reasons that such ambiguity needs to be outlined explicitly
>(if we know someone is likely to interpret only one POV in the image,
>we need to point out that we don't mean for there to be only one POV
>in the image).
>
>A less-charged analogy would be using the picture of the famous
>Duck-Rabbit illusion
>(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Duck-Rabbit_illusion.jpg) to
>illustrate the article on "Rabbit", with a caption saying, "A famous
>picture of a rabbit." Now, one could argue that the point of using the
>image would be to show the reader that a picture of rabbit could also
>look like a duck, but by not spelling that out explicitly, and using
>it at the top of an article called "Rabbit," I think we are easily
>sending the message that the illustration is of a Rabbit. Whether or
>not we are worried about prejudicing the reader -- who cares, in this
>case -- the real problem is that it looks like Wikipedia is taking a
>stance on the issue. Now, if we changed to caption to, "In the famous
>duck-rabbit illustration, one can see a duck or a rabbit," then it is
>made perfectly clear. It isn't dumbing it down at all, it is just
>making explicit the point of putting the image in the article, and
>making it clear that Wikipedia itself is not taking a position on the
>issue. It is also a better caption, if that is what the image is meant
>to represent. "A picture of a rabbit," is actually NOT descriptive of
>the image, if it is being used to illustrate conceptual ambiguity.
>
>If it isn't obvious to numerous editors that something is neutral --
>and I think it is clear from the dispute that it is not obvious in the
>case of the new anti-Semitism image -- then it is probably safe to
>assume that it is NOT neutral. In this case I think a slight tweaking
>of the caption would fix it perfectly and bring it into line with our
>stated goal of neutrality, without stepping on anyone's toes.
>
>FF

-Scott


subject: [Wikitech-l] flexbisonparse

body:
On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 11:14:51PM +0100, Buttay cyril wrote:
> I'm currently working on a (python) wiki to pdf converter, based on
> wiki2pdf, which is no longer actively maintained.

My hobby horse is "Get The Glue Right", which leans me to ask:

would it not be {easier,more useful} to direct effort towards
wikitext2docbook?  Doesn't docbook already know how to get to PDF?

/derail

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories problem

body:
On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 12:00:26AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/27/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Add to it category redirections. If you tried to save with a category which
> > is a redirect, you shouldn't be able to, or automagically change to the
> > redirected one though it may be confusing seeing the wiki don't obeying you
> > ;-)
>
> I think the behaviour where the saved text is not what you actually
> typed ought to be kept to a minimum. At current I know of that
> happening in two instances: ~~~~ (and variants) and [[Foo (blah)|]],
> which is replaced by [[Foo (blah)|Foo]]. It's kind of surprising to
> the user...

I concur, but both examples are miswarts: on inspection, it's pretty
clear why those choices were made...

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Stephen Streater

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 27 Aug 2006, at 18:15, Kelly Martin wrote:

> On 8/27/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>>
>> So what exactly is being proposed?
>
> Anonymous readers of an article will be displayed the most recent
> revision of that article which has been marked by a trusted user as
> being free of vandalism.  There may be more recent revisions, but
> those will not be displayed by default; readers will have to
> specifically request to see them.  A consequence of this is that edits
> made by anonymous readers will not be immediately displayed as the
> "primary" revision of an article.  This is being misrepresented by
> some as imposing an approval requirement on such edits before they
> become visible, but that's not what it is; such edits are immediately
> visible as they are now, just not as the primary version which is
> displayed by default to anonymous readers.
>
> I, personally, see this as a great benefit to the vast bulk of our
> customers: the chances that Joe Q. Public will go to an article he
> found by a Google search and be confronted by unexpected penis go WAY
> down with this approach.

I'd also be happy with this.

New users will have a slightly sanitised version while registered
users (who are more experienced) will be happy to revert any vandalism.


body:
On 27 Aug 2006, at 18:23, Cheney Shill wrote:

> Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Has anyone else noticed the lack of clarity on the
>> [[Wikipedia:Neutral point
>> of view]] relative to images?
>> I realize it may seem like common sense but certain editors don't
>> seem to
>> understand the NPOV equally applies to images.
>> Due to this fact I've begun work on an addition to NPOV policy and
>> I was
>> wondering what others thought of it.
>
>> Please have a look here:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netscott/NPOV_image_policy
>
> A separate policy page is probably not needed.  It would make an
> excellent addition as an example page.  NPOV already is supposed to
> apply to all content, that seems fairly obvious in the nutshell
> portion, though it may be helpful to add "images" to the "includes"
> list.  The only other place "images" are explicitly mentioned is in
> the Undue Weight section.  Mentioning it in a more visible space
> seems like minimal instruction creep and, I agree, apparently is
> needed.  Removing the examples from the nutshell portion and
> replacing them with "ALL content" would fix that, unless NPOV is
> supposed to be applied selectively to content.
>
> I had thought that "All Wikipedia articles" covered all content,
> but apparently "written" is taken in the most restrictive lawyer-
> loop-hole sense.

I agree the main NPOV article is the best place to start (though I
couldn't resist the temptation to fix a couple of things anyway).
Otherwise we'll need separate sections for NPOV in animations,
diagrams, photographs, videos, B/W film, ...


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] on new article creation

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> It's not really my place to talk about papers being written by others,
> which is why I hadn't answered in more detail.

I just wanted to know who was doing it so that I could follow up on it
and simply confirm that the work was being done. Thanks for giving a
name, if you're pinging him yourself already I'll wait a little before
pestering him with questions myself.

> If you don't believe me that people are working on this, feel free to
> do your own research it's not like you need anyone's permission. If
> you need help getting data in a convenient form and can clearly
> articulate what data you need, please contact me... I'll be glad to
> help.

I don't have the tools or skillset to be doing this sort of research
myself, or frankly the time or interest - I'm here on Wikipedia as an
editor, all I want to do is edit. I am, however, concerned about the
process behind these sorts of changes. I want to be sure that Wikipedia
is being run in an open, inclusive manner since that's one of the major
reasons I like this place and continue to stick around.

I try to assume good faith, but the long lack of information about this
started to make me strongly suspicious that no experiment was intended,
Jimbo wasn't interested in the actual impact on editing and just wanted
to make an appearance of "doing something" so press releases could be
issued to counter the bad PR of the Siegenthaler matter. While
countering bad PR is certainly a good and worthy goal, I would rather
not have random tempests-in-teapots spawn restrictions on Wikipedia
editing with no plan or options for ever repealing them if they turn out
to be counterproductive.

Simply having the means to verify that this "experiment" _is_ in fact an
experiment, and not just something that had been called an experiment to
brush off any complaints that may have been raised over its
implementation, goes a long way toward easing my concerns.

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as CFO

body:
In July 2004 I was appointed to the official position of Chief Financial Officer of the Wikimedia
Foundation. The expectation, backed up by repeated calls from myself, was that I would be replaced
by a relevantly trained paid professional when the needs of the foundation became greater than
what I, as a part time volunteer, could provide.

During my tenure, I have helped with bookkeeping, budgeting, financial reporting, and with
fundraising. I am most proud of my work coordinating several fundraisers that together brought in
nearly a million dollars for the foundation. I am least proud of the last nine months, a time when
the board repeatedly failed to meet to discuss proposed budgets I submitted to them or to give me
direction on what we could or could not publish to the community in regards to spending.

Last week, the board informed me that a selection process has been initiated to hire a paid
professional to help run the foundation's finances from the Wikimedia office in Saint Petersburg,
Florida, USA. At the same time, the board informed me that they approved the membership of a
fundraising committee. I will be serving on that committee.

I therefore resign as Chief Financial Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation but will continue to
help where needed during the transition process.

It truly amazes me how long we, as an organization that runs one of the top sites on the Internet,
can go on volunteer time alone. So it is both a sad and happy day for me as I prepare to hand the
baton to a paid professional.

Yours in the wikiway,

Daniel Mayer,
Wikipedian

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as CFO


subject: [Wikitech-l] flexbisonparse

body:
On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 12:01:00AM +0100, Buttay cyril wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 11:14:51PM +0100, Buttay cyril wrote:
> >
> >> I'm currently working on a (python) wiki to pdf converter, based on
> >> wiki2pdf, which is no longer actively maintained.
> >>
> >
> > My hobby horse is "Get The Glue Right", which leans me to ask:
> >
> > would it not be {easier,more useful} to direct effort towards
> > wikitext2docbook?  Doesn't docbook already know how to get to PDF?
>
> Well, I picked one of the existing project (wiki2pdf) for the following
> reasons:
> 1- it uses python, which is one of the only languages I am nearly
> comfortable with (I'm not a programmer)
> 2- the objective for me is to create a wikibook-to-Latex converter. I
> plan to keep this piece of code client-side, because I know that even a
> really good parser will need some tweaking of the LaTeX source to
> produce a good pdf on something as long as a wikibook. Among the
> features of the program is the automatic download of images and wiki
> pages, something I can easily do with python

Indeed, and I vote for client side, as well.

> 3- the list of alternative parsers (
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers ) does not mention
> wikitext2docbook, and says that flexbisonparse is "Intended as an
> eventual replacement to the parsing code inside MediaWiki itself", which
> is rather promising!

I don't know that that is what Magnus is calling it, but that's what it
does.  I forget what language he's doing it in.  Check the list
archives; he's mentioned it here in the last couple of months (and may
well chime in here).

> In an other hand, the tests I made with docbook were not very good from
> a typographic point of view (I think the docbook to pdf conversion uses
> LaTeX, but the stylesheets are oriented towards automation rather than
> quality). I will have a look at wikitext2docbook, though.

Worth a couple minutes, at least, I would think.  My perception of it
is that if someone's going to put work into fixing the typography, the
more people who can benefit from that, the better.  Hence, I kibitz.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Sarah

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 37, Issue 134

body:
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 12:15:24 -0500
From: "Kelly Martin"
I, personally, see this as a great benefit to the vast bulk of our
customers: the chances that Joe Q. Public will go to an article he
found by a Google search and be confronted by unexpected penis go WAY
down with this approach.
Yes, but it would require a brain cell to know about and check the primary version, something many Internet users simply don't have...

I think we would end with situations where an article was marked by a trusted editor and then someone would forget to do so: this would lead to a sitiation where the average user could be looking at seriously out-date information, which is never good.

Dev920

---------------------------------
 Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 27/08/06, Frederick FN Noronha <fredericknoronha at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have two options -- a common Konkani Wikipedia, or separate ones
> (set up according to interest shown and activity levels initiated). FN

If you have a common one, with up to five different articles on the
same topic, doesn't that seem like it could be or could lead to
content forking? ( [[Wikipedia:Content forking]] ) Or instead of
having one POV dispute, having five... it seems very tricky.

I don't think starting five (or even two) simultaneously would be a
good idea either. Maybe you should just start one, get the community
going for that one, and when there is enough demand for another one,
start that one then.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
On 8/27/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Since you really want this to happen here is my
> suggestion.  Draft a letter that you think appealing.
> Put together a spreadsheet of with all the address and
> appropriate personalizations for the mailing wizard
> substitution thing.  Submit this together with your
> proposal to both the communications committee and the
> special project committees.  Maybe one of them will be
> able to approve your letter and send it out all
> official-like.  I don't really know if they would but
> that has a better chance than anything else I can
> think of.

Thanks for your reply. I only want this to happen of course if there is a
chance for success. :)
I like Anthony's suggestion of putting up a page on meta for this. Since
english is not my native language it's probably better if someone else
writes it. If writing is the best way anyway. Perhaps that press
release/personal appeal Anthony mentioned where individual editors who
request images can link to would be much better.

Your original post seemed to be trying
> to find the best way to obtain these photos in a short
> time.  I don't think going through the Foundation will
> lead to good results here, and it definately will not
> be quick.

I think, but I might be wrong, that something coming from the foundation
would lead to better results.

To quote from anthony's mail. "Wikimedia is "powerful enough now that we can
insist on [free images], and get it, from just about any celebrity".  Joe
Schmoe Wikipedian is not, and if a dozen people contact someone claiming to
be acting on behalf of the foundation, even that power is quickly going to
dissipate."

Whether it will be quick, I do not think or expect that to be the case.

I just now and then get discouraged when I see the fair use images mess on
en.wikipedia. I do like it that we can use fair use though but it seem to
be used too easily. If some good responses come from this, it would diminish
a bit the excessive fair use there.

Garion96


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: NYTimes.com: African Languages Grow as a
 Wikipedia Presence

body:
Hoi,
The article has also been picked up by the International Herald Tribune
and /.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/27/business/wiki.php
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/27/1757237

It does prove that there is interest for Africa in combination with
Wikipedia..
Thanks,
    GerardM

Jack wrote:
>>> what the Newyork Times has to say about content in African
>>> language
>>> Wikipedias. Enjoy :)
>>> -- GerardM
>>>
>
> Link for those who don't want to jump thru NYT's registration hoops:
> <http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/BIZ04/608270326/1013>.
>
> "Swahili [...] is the first African-language Wikipedia to have reached
> the 1,000-article mark" is from
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-31/News_and_notes#Milestones>,
> see the correction at
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-07/News_and_notes#Correction>.
>


body:
In a message dated 8/27/2006 6:17:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
gerard.meijssen at gmail.com writes:

It is  imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not
that  simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African
settings.

Actually, the article cited doesnt mention WiktionaryZ, which was the bulk
of your email. I am talking in principle, when we refer to projects that need a
 nudge, let's not just focus on African languages because it happens to be in
 vogue. There are plenty of other important languages out there that also
need a  gentle push so that they can reach their full potential.

Danny


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 8/27/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/08/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > http://news.com.com/Can+German+engineering+fix+Wikipedia/2100-1038_3-6108495.html
> > A related source.... not the BBC.
> > "We want to let anybody edit," Wales said, "but we don't want to show
> > vandalized versions."
>
>
> Yeah. When did Jimbo first ask for this, early 2005? People pretty
> much concurred it was a fantastic idea (logged-in editors get the live
> version, anon readers get the last-non-vandal-edit version), but it
> was considered technically rather painful indeed in the then-current
> structure of Mediawiki.
>
> If it looks workable now, that's fantastic, and should help make it a
> better no. 17 website in the world *and* a good perpetual working
> draft.
>
>
> - d.

As I recall, we were happy when the proposed mechanism had a
ten-minute or so time out mechanism, so it didn't turn into a ''de
facto'' anon-edits-must-be-approved rather than an anti-vandalism
mechanism, and to assure the anon that yes, the edit would show up
soon. The de system seems to differ from the one we discussed.

~maru


subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On 27/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sure I did, it says quite clearly: "...removed on a regular basis as
> they become too old." Could you be more specific? Is "too old" a
> question of days, weeks, months, or years?

I've already bloody stated I haven't finished working out the sodding
implementation details and don't plan to do anything for a long time,
so no, I couldn't be more bloody specific.

"Too old" is what I consider to be a good idea at the time if and when
I actually do this, after discussion with users and with Brion.

Christ, in future, remind me not to post tentative previews of
possible things to come. It's not worth the bloody hassle of having
fifty thousand trivial little questions.

Rob Church


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: NYTimes.com: African Languages Grow as a
 Wikipedia Pr...

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>
>>In a message dated 8/27/2006 6:17:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>>gerard.meijssen at gmail.com writes:
>>
>>It is  imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not
>>that  simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African
>>settings.
>>
>>Actually, the article cited doesnt mention WiktionaryZ, which was the bulk
>>of your email. I am talking in principle, when we refer to projects that need a
>> nudge, let's not just focus on African languages because it happens to be in
>> vogue. There are plenty of other important languages out there that also
>>need a  gentle push so that they can reach their full potential.
>>
>>
>Unfortunately the people who are likely to know these languages are
>unlikely to want to contribute to Wikipedia, because they'd probably see
>it as a waste of time/doomed to fail/whatever. Still, I can ask people...
>
It would be wrong to impute motives to any of the speakers whose
language is not represented by a strong Wikipedia community.

In many respects I agree with both Danny and Gerard on this.
"Developing regions" may have been an unfortunate choice of words, but
the differences that they have expressed seem like the sort of thing
that can easily be resolved through dialogue.  We should indeed be
encouraging development in all languages, and development goes well
beyond word lists and languages.  Having complete dictionary listings
for Tocharian or Beothuk is not going to bring those languages back to
life.  Extensive dictionary listings for all the aboriginal languages of
Australia will do very little to bring those people onto the internet
and contributing to Wikipedia in their own languages.

Many of these languages were pre-literate until waves of Christian
missionaries went in and translated the Bible for them.  Talk about
paternalistic!  That was not limited to Africa; it also prevailed over
the first nations languages of the Americas.  When the US government
moved the four tribes from Florida to Oklahoma we all know it was for
their own good. ;-)   What's more, it is not unusual for natives of a
minority language group to see that learning the dominant colonial
language puts one on the path to success, thereby deprecating their
native language.  The white man cannot force native speakers to embrace
and take pride in their own language; that must come from the native
speakers themselves.  Some of this is already beginning with North
American native languages.

Africa has another difficulty: rudimentary infrastructure.  A North
American first nations person can easily go to town and buy a computer
and subscribe to an internet service.  Even if he can't afford the
hardware, there are other ways of accessing the net.  For some Africans
this can be a tremendous hurdle.  Developed nations may be able to help
the African at the level of infrastructure, but he still must overcome
the socio-cultural hurdles himself.before he can become an effective
contributor to Wikipedia.

Asian dynamics are somewhat different.  Many languages of Asia were not
pre-literate at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  Some countries
like North Korea and Myanmar have strong xenophobic trends that keep
people away from the internet, but for most it may just be a matter of
time before strong communities develop.  For India there may be internal
and regional politics at work, and there are times when I believe that
Indian politics defy description.  In a way I would not be very
surprised if the request for a Konkani Wikipedia received more interest
than Assamese despite the much larger population base for Assamese.

Ec


body:
On 27/08/06, Frederick FN Noronha <fredericknoronha at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since we face no immediate problems with issues like fonts and
> keyboards in the Roman script (and I also know people who could
> volunteer), could Wikipedia start a Konkani-Roman wikipedia?

Please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:How_to_start_a_new_Wikipedia .

Some tips:
* gather a group of potential editors and list their names somewhere
* start making would-be articles on the incubator wiki (
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page )
* the real key to getting a new language project opened, regardless of
merit or support, is apparently to harass the dev's as insistently and
consistently as possible, until they get so sick of hearing about it
they just open it to shut you up. Or so I understand. :) Try the
official channels first and if after a month or so there's no movement
from the troops, try this.

Oh and good luck. Let the wikis grow! I hope it is successful.

cheers
Brianna


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
Hey Joe,

> This article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5286458.stm) got my
> concern. Editorial control on the Wikipedia? What exactly have I missed?

The article discusses two changes, one in past and one in present tense.
  The old change, mentioned as a reaction to the Siegenthaler[0] bizzo,
was "recent changes make it harder for ordinary users to create and
update pages on the site."  This obviously refers to banning new-page
creation from anons[1] and semi-protection[2].

The more recent change, preventing anon users (I assume) from creating
pages or making edits until they're approved by someone else, is
something the author asserts the German Wikipedia are experimenting
with.  However, given that it's been discussed repeatedly here, it's not
unreasonable to assume, as the author does, that if the German trial
goes well, we might adopt it, too.

[0] If I get it wrong this time, it's the BBC's fault.

[1] Much as I like the lower workload this has caused, it might be nice
     to new page creation back on and see what happens.  We can even call
     it an "experiment", if only to see how Bryan Derkson reacts ...

[2] Indeed, he mentions semi-protection explicitly later on.

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


from_name: Carl Peterson

body:
On 8/27/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:

> On 27 Aug 2006, at 18:23, Cheney Shill wrote:
> > I had thought that "All Wikipedia articles" covered all content,
> > but apparently "written" is taken in the most restrictive lawyer-
> > loop-hole sense.
>
> I agree the main NPOV article is the best place to start (though I
> couldn't resist the temptation to fix a couple of things anyway).
> Otherwise we'll need separate sections for NPOV in animations,
> diagrams, photographs, videos, B/W film, ...
>

Perhaps the nutshell needs to be:

All Wikipedia articles must be written from a *neutral point of view*,
representing views fairly and without bias. This also includes all media and
their captions, reader-facing templates, categories, and portals.

This generalizes it from maps or maps and images to all forms of media, in
addition to the captions used for those media.

-Carl


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 27/08/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netscott/NPOV_image_policy

You know, this is a beginner's move in WikiNomic. What you should be
aiming at to win conclusively is influencing the process of
constitutional change. It's much more rewarding and more likely to
grant you an IAR card.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as CFO

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>In July 2004 I was appointed to the official position of Chief Financial Officer of the Wikimedia
>Foundation. The expectation, backed up by repeated calls from myself, was that I would be replaced
>by a relevantly trained paid professional when the needs of the foundation became greater than
>what I, as a part time volunteer, could provide.
>
>During my tenure, I have helped with bookkeeping, budgeting, financial reporting, and with
>fundraising. I am most proud of my work coordinating several fundraisers that together brought in
>nearly a million dollars for the foundation. I am least proud of the last nine months, a time when
>the board repeatedly failed to meet to discuss proposed budgets I submitted to them or to give me
>direction on what we could or could not publish to the community in regards to spending.
>
>I therefore resign as Chief Financial Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation but will continue to
>help where needed during the transition process.
>
>It truly amazes me how long we, as an organization that runs one of the top sites on the Internet,
>can go on volunteer time alone. So it is both a sad and happy day for me as I prepare to hand the
>baton to a paid professional.
>
You have nothing to be ashamed of.  Based on our earliest exchanges on
these matters before you were appointed CFO I know that you have come a
long way in managing what has been an increasingly more difficult and
thankless task.  Those of us who have been here a little longer also
know that you have been selfless in ensuring that domain names would be
protected whenever there was even a hint that it might be useful to our
communities.

Congratulations for your fantastic effort.

Ray


subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as CFO


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
It's not the script that has dialectal variations, it would be the
language it's transcribing.

FWIW, all Indic abugidas have neat 1-to-1 correspondences, with a few
exceptions, and some letters missing (for example Oriya has both WA
and VA, all others do not differentiate and use a single character for
both), so it should be quite simple to convert between Konknni in
Kannada script, Konknni in Devanagri script, and Konknni in Malayalam
script.

Roman and Nastalegh would pose additional issues though.

Mark

On 27/08/06, Frederick FN Noronha <fredericknoronha at gmail.com> wrote:
> That doesn't seem possible at this point of time. Each script tends to
> have some small but significant dialectal variations. So, simply using
> some form of mechanical transalation/transiteration might render the
> output quite unreadable.
>
> It would be preferable to have human-created pages.
>
> Even if done in different scripts, I don't think this would cause any
> problems as such. Teams would work at differing paces, as per their
> own abilities and convenience. And work by one team might spur on
> others to catch up too.
>
> The issue we're shifting to is a much wider question, which has been
> causing worry for those keen about the Konkani language. As far as
> Wikipedia goes, what do you see as the suitable solution?
>
> We have two options -- a common Konkani Wikipedia, or separate ones
> (set up according to interest shown and activity levels initiated). FN
>
> PS: Have just been working on a portal for Goa at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Goa  You can see some Konkani
> descriptions (in English there). Since I'm not a techie, have been
> struggling a bit to control the templates and code!
>
> On 27/08/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > >a script-neutral Wikipedia, or multi Wikipedias to deal
> > > with the diverse scripts of Konkani (even if with differening levels
> > > of activity).
> >
> > Is there any way to make an automatic coverter among the 5 scripts? It would
> > save you a lot of trouble.
> >
> > B?rto
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org  9822122436 +91-832-240-9490
> http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com fredericknoronha at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS for wikien

body:
On 27/08/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > I don't really know what that format would be. A forum? A wiki-style
> > > page (which there are plenty of on wikipedia)? A newsgroup (which is

> > Wikis are crap for having actual conversations.

> I'd say that that depends on the conversation. If there is a long,
> drawn-out discussion with many parties, than yeah, it's crap. However
> for purposes of having a talk-page (atleast a talk-page about a
> relatively non-controversial topic), it's awesome. Comments like
> "Statement X sounds wierd to me, can somebody source it?" or something
> similar (which is what is contained in the vast majority of wikipedia
> talk-pages), comments which draws only a few replies works very well
> on wikis. Honestly, I can't think of a better format for them.

There's a Forum extension for Mediawiki which does pretty well on
Uncyclopedia. Check http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/DUMP .

- d.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On 8/27/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The thing I don't get in this mockup is, why would you have multiple
> > drafts for one article? Also, are you planning on storing the version
> > number that the original draft was created from, to let MediaWiki's
> > normal edit conflict/resolution processes work their magic?
>
> Yes and no. Bear in mind I've given away nothing about how I'm
> thinking of implementing this, remember? I haven't worked out all the
> details myself, yet.

Ok, well for me that question falls into user experience, rather than
implementation, but as you like.

>
> > I like the idea of having one draft that I can come back to in the
> > next half an hour or so. I'm not sure I understand the benefit of
> > having multpile drafts that hang around for months at a time?
>
> Then you clearly didn't read the information properly, did you?
> Because had you done so, you'd have found that I state drafts are
> cleaned up after a specific time period.

Sure I did, it says quite clearly: "...removed on a regular basis as
they become too old." Could you be more specific? Is "too old" a
question of days, weeks, months, or years?

Steve


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> Christ, in future, remind me not to post tentative previews of
> possible things to come. It's not worth the bloody hassle of having
> fifty thousand trivial little questions.

Assume good faith. I've learned that from you ;-)

Don't be so sensitive.


from_name: Eric Astor

subject: [Wikitech-l] flexbisonparse

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 12:01:00AM +0100, Buttay cyril wrote:
> > 3- the list of alternative parsers (
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers ) does
> not mention
> > wikitext2docbook, and says that flexbisonparse is "Intended as an
> > eventual replacement to the parsing code inside MediaWiki itself",
> > which is rather promising!
>
> I don't know that that is what Magnus is calling it, but
> that's what it does.  I forget what language he's doing it
> in.  Check the list archives; he's mentioned it here in the
> last couple of months (and may well chime in here).

As someone who's been playing with alternative parsers (though not Magnus),
I'm pretty sure the flexbisonparse project is currently dead. Magnus moved
to his wiki2xml project (also available in the MediaWiki repository), which
is actually coded in PHP. As far as I know, though, it's the single most
feature-complete alternative parser we have. Not claiming it's perfect, but
it's good... I haven't worked with flexbisonparse, though, so maybe it's
better than I know.

I've actually been working on a Python-based wikitext parser, using some
techniques that should make the system a bit faster and cleaner... With a
lot of luck, I should start making progress on that again in the next month
or so.

For anyone who cares, I'll probably be trying to implement a PEG-based
parser using mxTextTools, since I think that should be able to parse all of
MediaWiki's wikitext, and should be about twice as fast as the current
Parser.php (which is about as fast as wiki2xml)... Or I might just end up
using ANTLR, if I can bully my current semi-grammar into working in that
framework... If anyone knows of a decent PEG parser with a Python API (a
packrat parser might be ideal), that'd be great too. *shrugs*

- Eric Astor

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
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from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
At 13:45 -0400 27/8/06, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>On 8/27/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>[snip]
>>  Anonymous readers of an article will be displayed the most recent
>>  revision of that article which has been marked by a trusted user as
>  > being free of vandalism.
>[snip]
>
>Of course, 'Trusted user' is a complicated issue in and of itself.
>

Web of trust is the basis of PGP, surely?

http://www.rubin.ch/pgp/weboftrust.en.html

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/F.AbdulRahman/docs/pgptrust.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust

Good enough then?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS for wikien

body:
On 8/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't really know what that format would be. A forum? A wiki-style
> page (which there are plenty of on wikipedia)? A newsgroup (which is

Wikis are crap for having actual conversations.

Steve


body:
On 8/27/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> <snip>
> > Is there any way you can be convinced to stop using this list for
> > making false and pejorative statements about other editors?
> >
>
> 1800-LISTMOD?

Don't make me attempt to understand anything of the bizarre last 100
messages or so. You're all crazy.

Steve


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS for wikien

body:
On 8/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't really know what that format would be. A forum? A wiki-style
> > page (which there are plenty of on wikipedia)? A newsgroup (which is
>
> Wikis are crap for having actual conversations.
>
> Steve

I'd say that that depends on the conversation. If there is a long,
drawn-out discussion with many parties, than yeah, it's crap. However
for purposes of having a talk-page (atleast a talk-page about a
relatively non-controversial topic), it's awesome. Comments like
"Statement X sounds wierd to me, can somebody source it?" or something
similar (which is what is contained in the vast majority of wikipedia
talk-pages), comments which draws only a few replies works very well
on wikis. Honestly, I can't think of a better format for them.


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> It looks good. You won't get any arguments against auto-saving of drafts
> from me (it's on my list of "software features that I would like to see
> become standard").

Me, too.  I can't help but think, though, that the right place to
standardize it is in ~5 browsers, not on N million web servers.
(Which is not to discourage Rob from implementing this nifty feature.
It's just that in an ideal world he wouldn't have to.)


from_name: No Spam

subject: [Foundation-l] proposed new project - wikistandards

body:
>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> I would suggest that you look around the Meta Wiki
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/) and revise and augument the existing
> proposals that are already there, as I mentioned earlier.
>
> This effort is clearly in need of a "reboot" or some restarting of the
> effort, as earlier efforts have clearly stalled out.  \
<snipped>
>
> Hopefully, with a little bit of effort, you can help add some leadership
> here that is needed.
>

Robert,
I will begin perusing meta wiki as you suggested.
It is instructive that you, and others, recollect the previous intentions.
This aids in validating the need, and perhaps as you suggested, only lacking
in effort. I am eager to get started and see this thing through.
I have a much to learn about wiki however. So, if you and others will
continue your coaching/guidance, I'll carry the football.

Al Cacace


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Want to collaborate on writing a feature?

body:
>> Dunno about everyone else, but my usual editing sequence goes
>> something like this:
>>
>> 1. Make a change
>> 2. Type an edit summary and set the watch/minor checkboxes
>> 3. Preview
>> 4. Save or go back to 1.
>
> Yes, so does everyone's, that's because we don't have an interactive
> message
> box to type into. Behaviour will change according to features.
>
> Let me also say this: if your typical editing behaviour is to open the
> edit
> box, change some little thing, and save it immediately, then you're one of
> the culprits of the edit conflict problem. You're the kind of user that
> the
> "please don't edit this" message is aimed at. Some users want to spend
> longer editing and reviewing a change, and they shouldn't be penalised for
> their extra dedication to correctness.

I'd like the edit conflict to 'rise' on step 3 (preview), sometimes it's not
worth even finishing the edit, as someone else has done. What is frustating
is writing a some paragraphs (with their previews) only to find an edit
conflict with 3 people that ended quite ago.
It doesn't need to be anything complex. A line near "This is a preview"
saying "This page has been edited" would be enough. It could be expanded to
say it was [[User:Foo]], a diff... But the base is being informed that
someone already changed it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS for wikien

body:
On 8/27/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd say that that depends on the conversation. If there is a long,
> drawn-out discussion with many parties, than yeah, it's crap. However
> for purposes of having a talk-page (atleast a talk-page about a
> relatively non-controversial topic), it's awesome. Comments like
> "Statement X sounds wierd to me, can somebody source it?" or something
> similar (which is what is contained in the vast majority of wikipedia
> talk-pages), comments which draws only a few replies works very well
> on wikis. Honestly, I can't think of a better format for them.

I wouldn't call that a conversation. Requests like that also work well
in wiki as they're fairly timeless: I've seen sequences where A posts
a question, is replied to with another question by B 6 months later,
and C answers another 6 months later again.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
At 12:15 -0500 27/8/06, Kelly Martin wrote:
>On 8/27/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>>
>>  So what exactly is being proposed?
>
>Anonymous readers of an article will be displayed the most recent
>revision of that article which has been marked by a trusted user as
>being free of vandalism.  There may be more recent revisions, but
>those will not be displayed by default; readers will have to
>specifically request to see them.  A consequence of this is that edits
>made by anonymous readers will not be immediately displayed as the
>"primary" revision of an article.  This is being misrepresented by
>some as imposing an approval requirement on such edits before they
>become visible, but that's not what it is; such edits are immediately
>visible as they are now, just not as the primary version which is
>displayed by default to anonymous readers.
>
>I, personally, see this as a great benefit to the vast bulk of our
>customers: the chances that Joe Q. Public will go to an article he
>found by a Google search and be confronted by unexpected penis go WAY
>down with this approach.
>
>Kelly

http://news.com.com/Can+German+engineering+fix+Wikipedia/2100-1038_3-6108495.html

A related source.... not the BBC.

"We want to let anybody edit," Wales said, "but we don't want to show
vandalized versions."

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Joe Anderson wrote:
>> This article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5286458.stm) got my
>> concern. Editorial control on the Wikipedia? What exactly have I missed?
>
> The journalist is typical of bad journalists.  Running with only the
> slimmest of understanding, he pukes out his biases about how the world
> works with little concern for underlying facts.
>
> Fortunately for us all, there are also good journalists.
>
> --Jimbo

   I quit reading Bill Thompson's articles on the BBC a year or two ago
when he suggested that IRC and all Internet chat should (by law) have to
be authenticated with verified identities for everyone.

SKL


subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 27/08/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:

> http://news.com.com/Can+German+engineering+fix+Wikipedia/2100-1038_3-6108495.html
> A related source.... not the BBC.
> "We want to let anybody edit," Wales said, "but we don't want to show
> vandalized versions."

Yeah. When did Jimbo first ask for this, early 2005? People pretty
much concurred it was a fantastic idea (logged-in editors get the live
version, anon readers get the last-non-vandal-edit version), but it
was considered technically rather painful indeed in the then-current
structure of Mediawiki.

If it looks workable now, that's fantastic, and should help make it a
better no. 17 website in the world *and* a good perpetual working
draft.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
"Rob Church" wrote:
> Christ, in future, remind me not to post tentative previews of
> possible things to come. It's not worth the bloody hassle of having
> fifty thousand trivial little questions.

Better having them with a preview than having them saying "I don't like
multiple drafts" after several weeks of working to implement them
effectively. :-)