subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

in_reply_to: <200302101615.h1AGFheY031953@genovevo.net>; from rednblack@alum.mit.edu on Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 11:15:43AM -0500

body:
I would totally appreciate that.

rednblack at alum.mit.edu wrote:

>
> There might be others here who can do that, but, um, dare I suggest that if
> someone send me IP addresses and times of access, I could probably pretty
> easily chase down who exactly this MIT vandal is (being a stone's throw from
> MIT), which would be much more helpful in figuring out what to do.
>
> Saurabh
>
> ------
>
> In message <005e01c2d100$7f982dc0$24e76f83 at andrew>, "Andrew Smith" said:
> >The MIT vandal might be discouraged from repeating his antics if someone
> >complains to MIT about him. While we don't explicitly know who it was, it
> >seems from what I've read that we know what IP addresses he was using at
> >specific times so if MIT keep track of this then they will know who he is.
> >Pointing out to them that if actions like these are repeated then wikipedia
> >may be forced to block ranges of MITs IP addresses which would adversely
> >affect their students as this is a useful educational resource etc might
> >spur them into action.
> >
> >While I wouldn't like to see anything serious happen to him a warning about
> >his future conduct regarding university network facilities (which
> >universities seem quite keen to give) might encourage him not to repeat his
> >actions.
> >
> >Just an idea..
> >
> >Andrew
> >
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
> >To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> >Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 11:53 AM
> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!
> >
> >
> >> Erik Moeller wrote:
> >> > Any solution that depends on Jimbo being present is IMHO
> >> > flawed. Jimbo is usually logged off on the weekends, for example.
> >>
> >> I agree with this.
> >>
> >> At this point, we're not talking about *policy* per se.  Policy on
> >> simple vandals very much empowered the sysops to ban the MIT vandal,
> >> it's just that a technical limitation made it impossible.  The wiki
> >> model of trust means that sysops can ban simple vandals without even
> >> talking to me about it -- this happens all the time -- but that bans
> >> of people who are not *just* simple vandals requires a discussion
> >> point.
> >>
> >> This is a check on our power (all of us, even me), to prevent the
> >> temptation to ban people for political disagreements.
> >>
> >> > We already have that - IP blocking. We never had a vandal that could
> >> > switch IPs faster than we could block them. What would be nice is
> >> > wildcard support at least for the fourth octet.
> >>
> >> This would have been helpful this weekend.  Obviously, wildcard
> >> blocked ips should be restored to use more rapidly than single ips,
> >> because they are much more likely to negatively impact legitimate
> >> users.
> >>
> >> > We should also have account
> >> > creation per IP throttling.
> >>
> >> That's a good idea, too, but in this *particular* case it would not
> >> have helped.  The MIT vandal was hopping ips fairly quickly.
> >>
> >> But a fourth octet wildcard would generally knock out an entire
> >> computer lab or coffee shop no problem.
> >>
> >> --Jimbo
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> >> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> >http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Current humor (was: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!)

body:
Sheldon, I was electrified by your shocking remark. "Wire you attacking me?" I asked myself. Then, with a jolt, I remembered all the energy our conversation last week generated, and that cleared the circuits in my head. ^_^

Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Sheldon Rampton [mailto:sheldon.rampton at verizon.net]

(4) The ability to push a button that will instantly send one million
megavolts coursing through the body of Ed Poor. (Just joking.)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

in_reply_to: <8f$P1JtSpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 06:36:00PM +0100

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Isn't the Internet wonderful? I'll leave it to Jimbo to write a nice
> warm letter.

A 3rd year graduate student in the M.I.T. math department?

Fortunately, we happen to have a regular contributor and guy I've
known for so many years I can't count who happens to be an M.I.T.
math professor.

So getting to the bottom of this is getting pretty easy.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Front page language

body:
Matt M. wrote:

>How about something like this? If you visit www.ndp.ca (my political party's
>website) you will see that it gives you a choice of language. If you visit
>it subsequently, it remembers your choice and sends you to that language
>automatically. Would this be appropriate?
>
>Matt
>
I still don't like it.  I went to the site and refused the cookies, so
that I was able to prevent that from happening.  If I want to go there
again to the English language version, I can simply put my bookmark
there.  I do not accept all cookies, and as I've said before I object
when electronic systems want to make my decisions for me.

Eclecticology


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Naming convention: popularity vs. correctness

body:
Mav-
> Anglicization is the process by which foreign words are altered and enter
> into
> common usage by English speakers. If you support this form of common usage
> then why do you not support common usage when presented with two words
> which
> are already in English?

If one of these words is an obvious linguistic error, and the other one is
commonly used among academics, it is clear that we should use the latter. I
repeat, it is not POV to highlight the correct term if nobody factually
disagrees that it is correct (besides, arguably, no matter which name we choose, we
always take a POV in the process, it is just whether we go by Google, or by
what is more accepted among scholars).

As the example of [[Pennsylvania German]] shows, people in other articles
prefer linking to the correct term, not the incorrect one. From that
perspective alone using the more correct term is justified. You yourself constantly use
the linkability argument.

> By extending the logic you propose all animals in Wikipedia
> should
> be under their scientific names, [[Mark Twain]] would be under [[Samuel
> Langhorn Clemens]], [[Linda Lovelace]] under [[Linda Boreman]], [[Billy
> the
> Kid]] under [[William Henry Bonney]], [[Eva Peron]] under [[Mar?a Evita
> Durante de Peron]], [[Marilyn Monroe]] under [[Norma Jeane Mortenson]].

Names of people, cities, tribes and so on are decided by popular usage and,
in case of people, by themselves; academic opinion is of less importance
here. There is nothing wrong with pseudonyms, and if people are primarily known
under these pseudonyms, then that is the title we should use. It is also the
more likely one to be linked. Names that are, however, in error (e.g. of
historical persons) should not be used where there is a reasonable scholarly
alternative.

William of Ockham should reside under that title, as he does, which makes
the fact that "Occam's" Razor is misspelled even more egregious.

> Oh
> yeah, it is also misleading to call an orca a killer whale since they are
> not
> whales and the term "sea lion" is also misleading since these animals have
>
> nothing to do with lions.

That depends on which term is used by biologists.

> Academics also disagree -- which ones do we listen to?

If there's substantial disagreement, we can fall back on the common name
rule.

> Many also prefer
> foreign language forms. Should we use those because some academics think
> so?

Most academics prefer anglicized names. However, we should avoid losing
information, so we should call an article about J?rg Haider either "J?rg Haider"
or "Joerg Haider", but not "Jorg Haider".

> Getting rid of the common usage naming convention opens the floodgates to
> these type of arguments.

Not necessarily this type of argument, but yes, it makes our conventions
more complex. As they should be: Finding the right title for an article should
not be as simple as throwing a few keywords at Google. It is a process where
different factors have to be weighed against each other. These factors are:

1) Is the term based on a misconception or outdated convention and therefore
avoided by scholars?
2) Which title will other articles want to use for linking?
3) Which title will people want to search for (which is most popular)?

If there is disagreement on 1) or 2), we ignore them.

> Abandoning common usage would make it more difficult to directly link to
> articles and find them.

No, because we should only abandon it in cases where common usage is
incorrect and we therefore do not want to use the incorrect term for linking either.
We will usually want to link to [[Marilyn Monroe]] using that name, but it
is unprofessional to use an incorrect name in other articles, and therefore
avoided.

> Above all else the name we choose should be the
> one
> that will attract the largest number of eyes and fill the largest number
> of
> edit links -- without having to deal with redirects.

We have to deal with redirects in any case.

> We are not writing an encyclopedia for academics and specialists, we are
> witting an encyclopedia for use by the masses.

That doesn't mean that we have to make the same mistakes as the masses :^)

> Page titles should reflect common usage in order to ensure our content is
> exposed to the largest possible audience.

As I have repeatedly demonstrated, it does not "ensure" that significantly
more than using the correct term.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Naming convention: popularity vs. correctness

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>>I think we need to change our naming convention to use the more
>>
>correct
>
>>article title if everybody who knows the history of the term in
>>
>question
>
>>agrees that it is correct; that is, if everybody who has a coherent
>>
>POV on the matter shares the same opinion. In other words, we should
>use
>
>>academically correct titles, not those which Google prefers.
>>
>
>I agree. Two reasons:
>
>* The text of our articles always aims for correctness as recognized by
>those who know what they're talking about, not for "correctness" as
>recognized by the majority of the people. The same should apply to
>article titles.
>
>* We're here to educate, not to provide people with the warm and fuzzy
>feeling that comes from reading something familiar. For retaining
>memory, there's nothing better than a healthy shock. You follow a link
>to X and end up on page Y, how is that possible? Shock! Confusion!
>Immediately you investigate and the article gives the answer, right
>there in the second paragraph. You're not going to forget that one
>easily.
>
I share those sentiments.  Still, inconvenient as it may be, it does end
up on a case by case basis.

Of the two specific proposals by Erik I happen to agree with one and
disagree with the other.

I agree with Ockham because it is English and he was English.  There are
apparently two such villages in England with no certainty about which of
them produced old Bill.  If we're going to use a Latinized version why
not go all the way and refer to him as [[Gulielmus Occamensis]]?

I disagree about [[Pennsylvania Dutch]].  That term is not just about
language, but about three centuries of cultural life.  That term has
developed a large range of connotations that go well beyond what the
term "Dutch" may mean by itself.  As the popular saying goes: "The whole
is bigger than the sum of its parts."  There is still room for
[[Pennsylvania German]], but it seems to me that this would have a more
restrictive sense that deals with linguistic aspects of German in
Pennsylvania including in areas that are not familiarly considered to be
"Pennsylvania Dutch".

Eclecticology


list: wikitech-l

from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] UTC time

body:
Pedro M.V. wrote:

>I suggest include a UTC clock in the wikipedia.
>
>This is interesting when you see : "Sorry! This feature has been temporarily disabled during peak access hours for performance reasons; come back between 02:00 and 14:00 UTC and try again".
>
>One would add : "Now it?s XX:XX UTC ( i.e. 1994-11-05  13:15:30Z)".  Or a link in UTC to see UTC time ( if the user it?s interested ).
>
>
>
Would be handy on the Preferences page too, since the user has to set
their offset.

>
>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
On Monday 10 February 2003 01:45 am,  Erik Moeller wrote:
> Names of people, cities, tribes and so on are decided by popular usage and,
> in case of people, by themselves; academic opinion is of less importance
> here. There is nothing wrong with pseudonyms, and if people are primarily
> known under these pseudonyms, then that is the title we should use. It is
> also the more likely one to be linked. Names that are, however, in error
> (e.g. of historical persons) should not be used where there is a reasonable
> scholarly alternative.

OK so you don't want to do away with the common usage naming convention you
just want to crack it open a bit in some cases. Well that isn't as horrible
as I thought. But this does make naming a much more complicated and
contentious issue. BTW I am offended by your implication in other messages
that the common naming convention is based /solely/ on Google. It is /not/ at
all -- Google is just a useful tool to quickly get a reasonably objective
measure of at least Internet usage. It is just one component to be considered
(granted often an important one), /not/ the determining factor. It is a bit
of an insult to infer that those of us who follow our current naming
conventions bow down to the Google god (as somebody else put it).

> William of Ockham should reside under that title, as he does, which makes
> the fact that "Occam's" Razor is misspelled even more egregious.

Hm. You had to mention a specific case. Which academics are you going to let
decide this one? Many different disciplines lay some claim to the concept of
Occam's Razor and many of these disciplines use one of two different
spellings. Mathematicians and scientists generally use the Latinized spelling
while most historians use the "Ockham" spelling. Which academics do you think
are correct? Yes, this is a historical term but it is also a term which is
central to scientific thought and even to the scientific method. In my
scientific training I have very rarely come across the "Ockham Razor"
spelling. That is just one example where the word "correct" can't be used for
either spelling -- therefore we should fall back to common usage (which is
more objective in this case).

> No, because we should only abandon it in cases where common usage is
> incorrect and we therefore do not want to use the incorrect term for
> linking either. We will usually want to link to [[Marilyn Monroe]] using
> that name, but it is unprofessional to use an incorrect name in other
> articles, and therefore avoided.

I would therefore propose this addition to the common usage convention:

In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading (For example:
[[Pennsylvania Dutch]] is misleading since it really is a dialect of German),
then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative
([[Pennsylvania German]], for example). Also, some terms are in common usage
but are unreasonably offensive to large groups of people (Eskimo, Black
American and Mormon Church, for example).. In those cases use widely known
alternatives (Inuit, African-American, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day
Saints, for example).

This does not mean that we should avoid using widely-known pseudonyms like
Mark Twain, Marilyn Monroe, Billy the Kid, or widely-known common names of
animals and other things. But it does mean that we need to temper common
usage when the commonly used term is unreasonably misleading or offensive to
one or more groups of people.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS I just did a spell check and "Ockham" came up as a misspelling but "Occam"
did not.

WikiKarma:
Added a bunch of events to [[February 4]]; updated all the year pages and many
of the other articles linked from that page.


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Front page language

body:
How about something like this? If you visit www.ndp.ca (my political party's
website) you will see that it gives you a choice of language. If you visit
it subsequently, it remembers your choice and sends you to that language
automatically. Would this be appropriate?

Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

body:
On Monday 10 February 2003 08:15 am, Andrew Smith wrote:
> The MIT vandal might be discouraged from repeating his antics if someone
> complains to MIT about him. While we don't explicitly know who it was, it
> seems from what I've read that we know what IP addresses he was using at
> specific times so if MIT keep track of this then they will know who he is.
> Pointing out to them that if actions like these are repeated then wikipedia
> may be forced to block ranges of MITs IP addresses which would adversely
> affect their students as this is a useful educational resource etc might
> spur them into action.
>
> While I wouldn't like to see anything serious happen to him a warning about
> his future conduct regarding university network facilities (which
> universities seem quite keen to give) might encourage him not to repeat his
> actions.
>
> Just an idea..
>
> Andrew

Hm. Has anybody on this list written such a letter before? If so, it would be
useful to edit out the specifics in that letter and create a boilerplate
template for Admins to use when contacting the abuse departments of ISPs.

Aside: Just so everybody knows we already have a boilerplate template "request
for permission" that several people have used to ask outside authors to allow
us to use their work under terms of the GFDL.  See
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Boilerplate_request_for_permission

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma:
Added a bunch of events to [[February 5]]; updated all the year pages and many
of the other articles linked from that page.


from_name: rednblack at alum.mit.edu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

body:
There might be others here who can do that, but, um, dare I suggest that if
someone send me IP addresses and times of access, I could probably pretty
easily chase down who exactly this MIT vandal is (being a stone's throw from
MIT), which would be much more helpful in figuring out what to do.

Saurabh

------

In message <005e01c2d100$7f982dc0$24e76f83 at andrew>, "Andrew Smith" said:
>The MIT vandal might be discouraged from repeating his antics if someone
>complains to MIT about him. While we don't explicitly know who it was, it
>seems from what I've read that we know what IP addresses he was using at
>specific times so if MIT keep track of this then they will know who he is.
>Pointing out to them that if actions like these are repeated then wikipedia
>may be forced to block ranges of MITs IP addresses which would adversely
>affect their students as this is a useful educational resource etc might
>spur them into action.
>
>While I wouldn't like to see anything serious happen to him a warning about
>his future conduct regarding university network facilities (which
>universities seem quite keen to give) might encourage him not to repeat his
>actions.
>
>Just an idea..
>
>Andrew
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
>To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 11:53 AM
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!
>
>
>> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> > Any solution that depends on Jimbo being present is IMHO
>> > flawed. Jimbo is usually logged off on the weekends, for example.
>>
>> I agree with this.
>>
>> At this point, we're not talking about *policy* per se.  Policy on
>> simple vandals very much empowered the sysops to ban the MIT vandal,
>> it's just that a technical limitation made it impossible.  The wiki
>> model of trust means that sysops can ban simple vandals without even
>> talking to me about it -- this happens all the time -- but that bans
>> of people who are not *just* simple vandals requires a discussion
>> point.
>>
>> This is a check on our power (all of us, even me), to prevent the
>> temptation to ban people for political disagreements.
>>
>> > We already have that - IP blocking. We never had a vandal that could
>> > switch IPs faster than we could block them. What would be nice is
>> > wildcard support at least for the fourth octet.
>>
>> This would have been helpful this weekend.  Obviously, wildcard
>> blocked ips should be restored to use more rapidly than single ips,
>> because they are much more likely to negatively impact legitimate
>> users.
>>
>> > We should also have account
>> > creation per IP throttling.
>>
>> That's a good idea, too, but in this *particular* case it would not
>> have helped.  The MIT vandal was hopping ips fairly quickly.
>>
>> But a fourth octet wildcard would generally knock out an entire
>> computer lab or coffee shop no problem.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tom Parmenter

in_reply_to:
<20030210061043.GB11884@reactor-core.org> (message from Jonathan
	Walther on Sun, 9 Feb 2003 22:10:43 -0800)

body:
|From: Jonathan Walther <krooger at debian.org>
|Content-Disposition: inline
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 22:10:43 -0800
|
|
|--neYutvxvOLaeuPCA
|Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
|Content-Disposition: inline
|Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
|
|On Sun, Feb 09, 2003 at 10:35:33PM -0500, Tom Parmenter wrote:
|>Of course, that was a contribution to the mailing list, not the
|>Wikipedia, but I did look it up first.  The Oxford English Dictionary
|>and Grimm are a little bit more reliable than Tacitus for the meaning
|>of words, don't you think?  And, of course, Latin picked up words from
|>other languages, such as Celtic.  Tacitus may have been right, but I
|>did not make it up.  Why would I have done that?
|
|Tacitus was "on the ground" so to speak. He referenced his sources, and
|did a lot of legwork.  He is the closest thing to a reliable, first-hand
|witness we have.  I don't care to spend a lot of time debunking modern
|historical revisionists who have political axes to grind.
|
|Jonathan
|
|--=20
|                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.
|
|  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
|  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
|  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998
|
|Phone:   604-435-1205
|Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
|Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
|Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
|
|--neYutvxvOLaeuPCA
|Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
|Content-Disposition: inline
|
|-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
|Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
|
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|p48EzaCWQk3qpA5nRsgTiodxQb8jnCigFJp2mLnBKPS8rLaXXByKErhIqZ1qrnPc
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|=6oVm
|-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
|--neYutvxvOLaeuPCA--
|_______________________________________________
|WikiEN-l mailing list
|WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
|

Well, now we see you as you are, Jonathan,

It's easier, I guess, to go on about Tacitus if you cut out the part
where you insulted me and said I had done no research and the part
where I answered your insult and proved you dead wrong by showing you
my research.  (Unedited exchange below).  Silly me, I thought you'd be
apologizing this morning, not adding more falsehood and insults.

I don't have any axe to grind.  I pointed out that the debate about
the corrrectness of "Pennsylvania German" versus "Pennsylvania Dutch"
was not well framed since both were English words.  That's all.  I
think anyone can look at the contents of this message and take your
measure and mine pretty accurately.

Howlin' Tom Parmenter, that accurate and honest guy who does his
research before he shoots, a/k/a Ortolan88

The entire story, with no cuts:

Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 22:35:33 -0500
From: Tom Parmenter <tompar at world.std.com>
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
CC: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
In-reply-to: <20030210030248.GB10674 at reactor-core.org> (message from Jonathan
	Walther on Sun, 9 Feb 2003 19:02:48 -0800)
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Naming convention: popularity vs. correctness
Reply-to: tompar at world.std.com

|From: Jonathan Walther <krooger at debian.org>
|Content-Disposition: inline
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 19:02:48 -0800
|
|
|--K8nIJk4ghYZn606h
|Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
|Content-Disposition: inline
|Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
|
|On Sun, Feb 09, 2003 at 08:38:54PM -0500, Tom Parmenter wrote:
|>
|>Of course, "German" is no more Deutsch (or Dietsch) than "Dutch" is.
|>"Dutch" is at least cognate with what they call themselves in their
|>own language, whereas "German" is is a Celtic name that has never been
|>used by any of the many Teutonic peoples.
|
|According to Tacitus, 2000 years ago they were calling themselves
|something cognate with "Germanii", which was the Roman word for them.
|How did German suddenly become a "Celtic" word?  What research can you
|show to back up that assertion?  How can I trust other information you
|add to Wikipedia articles if it has a similar amount of research behind
|it?
|
|Jonathan
|
|

Hi there, Jonathon,

Of course, that was a contribution to the mailing list, not the
Wikipedia, but I did look it up first.  The Oxford English Dictionary
and Grimm are a little bit more reliable than Tacitus for the meaning
of words, don't you think?  And, of course, Latin picked up words from
other languages, such as Celtic.  Tacitus may have been right, but I
did not make it up.  Why would I have done that?

So, here you go (from OED):

     German, a.2 and n.2 Also germayne, germaine, germane.
     [ad. L. German-us, used, as adj. and n., as the designation of
     persons belonging to a group of related peoples inhabiting
     central and northern Europe, and speaking the dialects from which
     the "Germanic" or "Teutonic" languages have been developed.  The
     name does not appear to have been applied to these peoples by
     themselves, or to be explicable from Teut. sources. A view widely
     held is that it was the name given by the Gauls to their
     neighbours; the Celtic derivations suggested are from OIr. "gair"
     neighbour (Zeuss) and from Irish "gairm" battle-cry (Wachter,
     Grimm). According to Muellenhoff, "Germani" was originally the
     name of a group of Celtic peoples in north-eastern Gaul, was
     transferred from these to their Teutonic conquerors, and
     afterwards extended to all the Teutonic peoples.]

     <snip bit about pronuciation that wouldn't render in ascii>

     In English use the word does not occur until the 16th c., the
     n. appearing in our quots. earlier than the adj. The older
     designations were Almain and Dutch (Dutchman); the latter,
     however, was wider in meaning.

Note also that "Dutch" for the language and people is older than
"German", harking back to the original discussion.

Hoping this finds you well, I remain,

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

body:
Here you are.

Saurabh

[Note: details of vandal hunt removed from archive by Jimbo Wales,
for reasons of privacy]

In message <13391.1044894288 at www68.gmx.net>, Erik Moeller said:
>>
>> There might be others here who can do that, but, um, dare I suggest that
>> if
>> someone send me IP addresses and times of access, I could probably pretty
>> easily chase down who exactly this MIT vandal is (being a stone's throw
>> from
>> MIT), which would be much more helpful in figuring out what to do.
>
>The following IP addresses were used, the vandal has been active for up to
>four hours until the blocks (times are UTC+1).
>
># 14:24 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.56.0.30 (contribs) (unblock)
>(This is Ivone?)
># 14:33 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.56.0.31 (contribs) (unblock)
>(The MIT vandal)
># 14:40 Feb 8, 2003, Eloquence blocked 18.56.0.32 (contribs) (unblock)
>(preventive blocking)
># 14:41 Feb 8, 2003, Eloquence blocked 18.56.0.33 (contribs) (unblock)
>(preventive blocking)
># 14:41 Feb 8, 2003, Eloquence blocked 18.56.0.34 (contribs) (unblock)
>(preventive blocking)
># 14:51 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.97 (contribs) (unblock)
>(MIT vandal again)
># 14:56 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.108 (contribs) (unblock)
>(MIT vandal)
># 15:02 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.109 (contribs) (unblock)
>(MIT vandal)
># 15:02 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.110 (contribs) (unblock)
>(MIT Vandal)
># 15:02 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.111 (contribs) (unblock)
>(MIT vandal (pre-emptive strike))
>
>--
>+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
>NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: s

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #1016 - 15 msgs

body:
> Steve suggested:
>Perhaps an N by a username on the recent changes page can denote a new
> username: thus helping people figure out anons who log in for a one-shot
>go at things.

>Eric wrote..
>Check the link color. If it's a new user, the user page and/or talk page
>link is likely to be red (non-existent). We should store the user creation
>date in the user table and provide that information on the user page,
>though.

<dreaming>
>It would be very nice to have a manual 'Watch this user' option that would
>work similarly to 'Watch this page'. Then it would be possible to flag
>troublesome users. The user name/IP of a flagged user would show up >bold
on

I understand this is not a new problem. But the power of committee is
something that might be useful here - it can be sorta ballot-automated.. so
X # regular users can deny access (short term) to a vandal, by a common
flag/checkbox system... (Penalties for attempted abuse of course...) might
save sysops some <s>stress</s>, and later they can deal with the permanent
status of that ip, Dynamic ranges? Dont ask me, but perhaps, by somehow
communalising the powers of s.t.blocking, there can be greater protective
powers overall. -Stevertigo

Mav wrote


from_name: Andrew Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

body:
The MIT vandal might be discouraged from repeating his antics if someone
complains to MIT about him. While we don't explicitly know who it was, it
seems from what I've read that we know what IP addresses he was using at
specific times so if MIT keep track of this then they will know who he is.
Pointing out to them that if actions like these are repeated then wikipedia
may be forced to block ranges of MITs IP addresses which would adversely
affect their students as this is a useful educational resource etc might
spur them into action.

While I wouldn't like to see anything serious happen to him a warning about
his future conduct regarding university network facilities (which
universities seem quite keen to give) might encourage him not to repeat his
actions.

Just an idea..

Andrew

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 11:53 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Any solution that depends on Jimbo being present is IMHO
> > flawed. Jimbo is usually logged off on the weekends, for example.
>
> I agree with this.
>
> At this point, we're not talking about *policy* per se.  Policy on
> simple vandals very much empowered the sysops to ban the MIT vandal,
> it's just that a technical limitation made it impossible.  The wiki
> model of trust means that sysops can ban simple vandals without even
> talking to me about it -- this happens all the time -- but that bans
> of people who are not *just* simple vandals requires a discussion
> point.
>
> This is a check on our power (all of us, even me), to prevent the
> temptation to ban people for political disagreements.
>
> > We already have that - IP blocking. We never had a vandal that could
> > switch IPs faster than we could block them. What would be nice is
> > wildcard support at least for the fourth octet.
>
> This would have been helpful this weekend.  Obviously, wildcard
> blocked ips should be restored to use more rapidly than single ips,
> because they are much more likely to negatively impact legitimate
> users.
>
> > We should also have account
> > creation per IP throttling.
>
> That's a good idea, too, but in this *particular* case it would not
> have helped.  The MIT vandal was hopping ips fairly quickly.
>
> But a fourth octet wildcard would generally knock out an entire
> computer lab or coffee shop no problem.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Slow query log

in_reply_to: <02fa01c2d11f$57549eb0$5c5014ac@iangilfillan>; from iang@iol.co.za on Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 06:13:25PM +0200

body:
When does the slow query log place an entry for the slow query?  Based
on what is in the log, I would guess that the log is written to after
the query finishes.  So, if the log has some entries like:

select ....  took 130 seconds
update ....  took 60 seconds
insert ....  took 513 seconds

It would be reasonable to assume that the insert was the statement
that started the problem.  Perhaps it would be usefull to write a
quick script to reorder the slow query log, sorting statements
according to when the startd execution, rather than when they
finished.  It might be easier to make sense of it all that way

Let me know if I am way off base here.

Jason

Ian Gilfillan wrote:

> - it's not the volume of queries, it's often the query that starts the
> backing up. So look at the first query in the log, and the first queries
> after a period of time running OK. Two that I saw this way are:

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] blocking:

body:
> Many of these don't stay red for long since I greet users and create blank
> user pages for them usually within 48 hours of them appearing on Recent
> Changes.

I don't understand why you create blank user pages. This was necessary
previously to get to the talk page and contributions listing, but this is no
longer the case.

If the red is too annoying, maybe we should use a less bright red, or red on
a grey background.

> It would be very nice to have a manual 'Watch this user' option that would
> work similarly to 'Watch this page'. Then it would be possible to flag
> troublesome users.

Even better, build a web of trust. You can add users to your trusted user
list; any user trusted by those users is also somewhat trusted by you, and so
on. You can thus calculate sophisticated trust metrics, which can be used to
quickly propagate information about users. You could set the thresholds for
users that should be highlighted or hidden (perhaps only displayed in a smaller
font, I am not comfortable with completely hiding users).

The tricky part here is mostly the user interface. Getting trust controls
right has been the main challenge of any attempt to build webs of trust. But if
we get it right, it could be a very effective mechanism that would almost
automatically lead to collaborative mentoring efforts, just in order to get
untrusted users trusted and, thus, no longer highlighted.

Such a trust infrastructure can also be built upon for certification and
ratings.

Regards,

Erik

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NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New random page code

body:
I just made one more tweak to the random page selection; I had been
getting duplicates more frequently than I would expect, this should
spread out the results better:

         $sqlget = "SELECT cur_id,cur_title
                 FROM cur USE INDEX (cur_random)
                 WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0
+                AND cur_random>RAND()
                 ORDER BY cur_random
                 LIMIT 1";

Please check it experimentally; currently on test and English.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] IP blocking - possibly a dumb question

body:
> When a user is IP blocked here, does that:
>
> (a) prevent them accessing Wikipedia at all
> (b) or just kick them into a "read only" mode?
>
> If the former, is it technically feasable to do the latter instead? The
> advantage would be that sysops would not need to be in quite so much of
> a hurry to restore blocked IPs.

This should be in an FAQ somewhere ;-). Banned users can still read
articles.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Zoe as sysop

body:
Zoe has promised to be on her best behavior, and there doesn't seem to be a strong chorus of objection, so I don't see why she shouldn't be made a sysop.

If I recall correctly, it's a privilege automatically granted "for the asking" anyway.

Any last minute comments, before I run the "promotion" script for Zoe?

Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Zoe [mailto:zoecomnena at yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 2:33 PM
To: WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] The Lir situation

For some unfathomable reason, people want to allow Lir to come back.  Why, is beyond me.  He has been nothing but disruptive since he first came onto the scene.  See the Talk page on [[Iowa State University]] for Lir's very first comments on Wikipedia, in which he called people who disagreed with him morons and specifically said that a dean at Iowa State was a liar for disputing a quote Lir attributed to him.  It's also worth noting that Lir tried to delete the Talk page, but I've restored it so people can see just what he had to say.

His next forary into collegiality was his attempt to make us believe that Christopher Columbus's sole reason for visiting America was to take slaves.  We also encountered a long edit war in which Lir insisted that the article be at [[Cristobal Colon]] (with accent marks I'm not going to try to reproduce here).  He then went into a crusade to rename all places and people by the names they're known in their native languages, instead of by the names they're known to English speakers, even though this is the English wikipedia.  He has never made any attempts to be polite, cordial or cooperative, but insists that only his way can prevail.

When he was finally banned, he went outside the Wikipedia and tried to make people believe, on his personal blog page and elsewhere, that he was banned for his politics, not for his personality and inability to cooperate with others.  So then he came back as Vera Cruz, and continued his lack of cooperation.  Even 172, someone who has the same sort of personality as Lir/Vera Cruz/Adam/Bridget, found him impossible to work with on the [[New Imperialism]] page, even though at first the two of them were allies against those of us who wanted to keep the page NPOV and useful.

And now he claims he's repentant and won't behave in the same manner.  I find it hard to believe, but for some reason, the rest of you think he's reformed.  I've had a long night thinking about this.  At first, I felt that if you thought it was more important to have Lir here than me, that fine, I'd leave and you could have him, and more power to you.  But I've decided that was childish, and I apologize to everybody for saying that.

However ...

If you let Lir back, I'd like to be a sysop.  I've avoided asking for the authority before, even though some people have encouraged me to do it.  But I know that Lir will be as disruptive as before, and I want to be able to deal with him.  I promise I will be on my best behavior, and will not act abruptly.  If you grant me this authority, then I'll go along with the odd request that Lir be allowed to come back.  But if he continues to disrupt, and people don't step in to get rid of him for good, then I do swear I will leave, and I'm not just blowing smoke this time.

Zoe

  _____

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail  <http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com> Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up  <http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com> now

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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Zoe as sysop

body:
On Mon, 2003-02-10 at 13:28, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Zoe has promised to be on her best behavior, and there doesn't seem to be a strong chorus of objection, so I don't see why she shouldn't be made a sysop.
>
> If I recall correctly, it's a privilege automatically granted "for the asking" anyway.
>
> Any last minute comments, before I run the "promotion" script for Zoe?
>
> Uncle Ed
>
Well, I think she'll make a bad sysop, but we might as well grant it.
Zoe is quick to see offense or personal attack where none is intended.
As Ray said, "We don't all have the thick skin that is needed when
dealing with offensive people. A passion for seeing things put right is
no protection in the heat of battle; it is more often a vulnerability."

Over the long run, I believe, both Zoe and Wikipedia will be better off
if she's not made a sysop.

I've already stated how flawed I consider the current situation, and
what the proper mechanisms are for fixing it, so I won't get into that
here.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maps

body:
Pedro M.V. wrote:

> So, where can one find his/her city coordinates ???. I will try with
> spanish state geographical institute, region and so on and perhaps
> with a GPS user.

1. Look at a good printed map or atlas, visit your library
2. Use a GPS satellite navigator, if you have one
3. Look at a website built by GPS users, e.g. http://geourl.org/
   or http://www.findu.com/ or http://www.geocaching.com/
4. Look for "Waypoint" files
5. Google for the city name together with "latitude", "longitude",
   which gives hits like http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001769.html
6. Look at a map website, e.g. http://www.mapquest.com/ or
   http://www.yahoo.com/
7. Look at a wiki that already uses map coordinates, e.g.
   http://susning.nu/

No matter where you find coordinates, always look to see if they seem
reasonable.  There is a lot of incorrect or inaccurate data out
there...

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


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Choose your language

body:
> This a problem, because, somebody cannot understand
> "choose your language".

I would hope everyone in the world who would use
Wikipedia would be able to read the phrase, "Choose
your language" or at least the word "language".  In
all of my travels, I've only found one person (a young
Japanese person in the USA on a Greyhound bus) who
couldn't understand the word "language".  I'm sure
though that a Japanese person seeing a link with
Japanese characters would click it though...

Generally when I meet someone in a country where I
can't speak the language, I start by saying "English,
Deutsch, Espa~nol?" and then usually the reply is
"English" or "Deutsch" and then we begin a
conversation.  In this same way Wikipedia would start
by presenting the languages in question, like
http://europa.eu.int/, www.esperanto.net or
www.tejo.org.

I have a fair amount of experience with multilingual
webpages, and this is the general practice and
multilingual people really appreciate knowing that a
language is in more than one language instead of
simply being directed to "their version".

> Automatic redirection solves this problem,
> transporting you to your language frontpage.

This doesn't show that a webpage is in multiple
languages and doesn't help the Esperanto speakers in
the Czech Republic nor the English speakers in Sweden.

> Later, in this page you can choose, using the
> language you understand, go to another page of a
> language you speak too, like or understand.

But what if you don't understand the page that your
browser has redirected you to because your browser is
poorly configured or you're using a computer in an
Internet cafe which uses a language you can't
understand?  I still remember the nightmares of trying
to set up an MSN messenger account which I desperately
needed in a Czech republic internet cafe!  ...and try
changing your browser settings when all the browser
help is in Czech!

Chuck

=====
Interesting fact:  Google returns more
results for "Esperanto" than for "Catalan"
----------------------------------------
Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

___________________________________________________
Yahoo! M?viles
Personaliza tu m?vil con tu logo y melod?a favorito
en http://moviles.yahoo.es


subject: HTML templates (was: [Wikipedia-l] Navigation and search tools)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>
>Cologne Blue is still in desperate need of work, but my todo list is
>waaay too long and I haven't got to it yet. Others are welcome to pitch
>in...
>
>
If someone converts the PHP to using HTML templates, I'll do the HTML &
CSS work on Cologne blue & the other skins too :-)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] CologneBlue at test site

body:
I have changed Brion's updates to the CologneBlue skin at
http://test.wikipedia.org yet again. Now the quickbar fits on my 800x600
screen (except for some of "My options", which is OK, as these functions
are not used so often).

I'd like to put this into CVS so it can run at the "real" sites ASAP, so
please have a look.

Magnus


from_name: Jason Williams

body:
On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 09:20:42AM -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Sheldon, I was electrified by your shocking remark. "Wire you attacking me?" I asked myself. Then, with a jolt, I remembered all the energy our conversation last week generated, and that cleared the circuits in my head. ^_^

Ahhhh. It all becomes clear. The word at the beginning of your name
line isn't a surname, it's a description of your humour ;-)

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] CologneBlue at test site

body:
> I have changed Brion's updates to the CologneBlue skin at
> http://test.wikipedia.org yet again. Now the quickbar fits on my 800x600
> screen (except for some of "My options", which is OK, as these functions
> are not used so often).
>
> I'd like to put this into CVS so it can run at the "real" sites ASAP, so
> please have a look.

It still has the same problems as before, esp. the line spacing in Mozilla.
See
http://www.scireview.de/oss/colognia.png
for a commented screenshot.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: Jesse Alter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop

body:
No objections here. I'd just like to caution others against seeing this
as an issue of good versus evil. I don't mean to preemptively accuse
Zoe, as she has, from what I understand, a pretty good track record, but
I wish to see both Lir and Zoe being held to the same standards. Lir
shouldn't get any lenience because he/she (I'm confused) is learning
what constitutes a good contribution, and Zoe should not get any
lenience because she is in a more authoritative. I hope my comments
don't seem presumptuous or accusatory. I'm still quite the
newbie/outsider in Wikipedia terms, I think.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Slow query log

body:
> On dim, 2003-02-09 at 19:23, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > I've managed to catch it in the act; attached are two snapshots of "SHOW
> > PROCESSLIST" taken about 45 seconds apart.  A whooole bunch of threads
> > are stuck on the user_newtalk query in "Statistics" state; after about a
> > minute they fall apart and there are a bunch of cur queries in "Closing
> > tables" and "Opening tables".
>
> The only information I've dragged up so far on the 'statistics' state is
> this thread: http://forums.devshed.com/archive/4/2002/11/4/46232
>
> Apparently it's something to do with joins... or indexes... or finding
> which indexes which are sometimes relevant to joins... Anyway, I'm not
> sure how much benefit an index has on a table with 75 rows and only
> constant SELECTs, 99% of which are checking for values that *don't*
> appear in the table. I've dumped the indexes on user_newtalk for now,
> see what that does...

Personally, I doubt that it is at all related to user_newtalk. If you check
the slow query log, you will notice that we have queries that take up to
>1000 seconds. While such a killer query runs, my guess is that everything else
slows down. Since user_newtalk is queried on every pageview (including recent
changes etc., and for anons and non-anons), it's bound to show up in the slow
query log more often than other queries. Even then, it is predictably the
fastest among the slow queries. Similarly, simple queries like looking up a
user by ID occasionally show up in slow query log, probably again due to general
slowdowns of the server.

Is there a way to specify how long a query can take? Most queries are not
critical, and maybe we should just timeout after 20 seconds and show an error
message (which, technically, should *never* come up, as queries really
shouldn't take that long).

Regards,

Erik

--
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NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: sannse at delphiforums.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Front page language

body:
Matt wrote:

> How about something like this? If you visit www.ndp.ca (my political
party's
> website) you will see that it gives you a choice of language. If you visit
> it subsequently, it remembers your choice and sends you to that language
> automatically. Would this be appropriate?

This would be my choice.  There are very few situations this wouldn't cover,
the only one I can think of is library computers previously used by someone
with a different language to the one you want.  And that would be sorted by
the clear links to other language editions that are already on the main
pages.

sannse


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: SearchDay #461 - Wikipedia - A Collaborative, Multilingual Encyclopedia

body:
I thought you all might be interested in seeing the
head article in the most popular mailing list for
search engine news...

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/03/sd0210-wikipedia.html

Chuck

=====
Interesting fact:  Google returns more
results for "Esperanto" than for "Catalan"
----------------------------------------
Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

___________________________________________________
Yahoo! M?viles
Personaliza tu m?vil con tu logo y melod?a favorito
en http://moviles.yahoo.es


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Web of trust

body:
On Monday 10 February 2003 02:10 pm, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I don't understand why you create blank user pages. This was necessary
> previously to get to the talk page and contributions listing, but this is
> no longer the case.

Hm. Let's see: I check new user's contributions and I sometimes email them.
These features are not available until their user page has been created. This
also makes it possible for other people to use these features as well. BTW
under Phase II edit link user names in Recent Changes allowed you to click on
them and not be confronted with an edit window. This allowed the user and
others to use their user contribes link without the user having an actual
user page.

I really liked your ideas about building "webs of trust" though.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
Added a bunch of events to [[February 5]]; updated all the year pages and many
of the other articles linked from that page.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preview on top etc.

body:
Just a small but useful feature: You can now set an option to show the
preview before the edit box and not after it. Also, I have added a "My
contributions" link to the sidebar, which is a shortcut to your user page->contribution
list. This is live on the English Wikipedia and will go live on others as
soon as Brion updates them to CVS. Translations are needed for "previewontop"
and "mycontris".

I have also changed the English explanation for "highlightbroken" to make it
somewhat more obvious.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

body:
>
> There might be others here who can do that, but, um, dare I suggest that
> if
> someone send me IP addresses and times of access, I could probably pretty
> easily chase down who exactly this MIT vandal is (being a stone's throw
> from
> MIT), which would be much more helpful in figuring out what to do.

The following IP addresses were used, the vandal has been active for up to
four hours until the blocks (times are UTC+1).

# 14:24 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.56.0.30 (contribs) (unblock)
(This is Ivone?)
# 14:33 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.56.0.31 (contribs) (unblock)
(The MIT vandal)
# 14:40 Feb 8, 2003, Eloquence blocked 18.56.0.32 (contribs) (unblock)
(preventive blocking)
# 14:41 Feb 8, 2003, Eloquence blocked 18.56.0.33 (contribs) (unblock)
(preventive blocking)
# 14:41 Feb 8, 2003, Eloquence blocked 18.56.0.34 (contribs) (unblock)
(preventive blocking)
# 14:51 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.97 (contribs) (unblock)
(MIT vandal again)
# 14:56 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.108 (contribs) (unblock)
(MIT vandal)
# 15:02 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.109 (contribs) (unblock)
(MIT vandal)
# 15:02 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.110 (contribs) (unblock)
(MIT Vandal)
# 15:02 Feb 8, 2003, Jimbo Wales blocked 18.21.0.111 (contribs) (unblock)
(MIT vandal (pre-emptive strike))

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from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preview on top etc.

body:
Hi Erik!

> Just a small but useful feature: You can now set an option to show the
> preview before the edit box and not after it.

Could we set this on per default? I've heard people complaining that the
preview function wouldn't work for them. But they just didn't scroll
down.

Kurt


from_name: Ian Gilfillan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Slow query log

body:
Aargh, this is frustrating - I only seem to get 5 minutes to look before I'm
rushing off somewhere else.

I'd tend to agree with Erik that the user_newtalk is a symptom.

I'd just got looking at the log when I'm dragged away, but a few things that
may help...
- it's not the volume of queries, it's often the query that starts the
backing up. So look at the first query in the log, and the first queries
after a period of time running OK. Two that I saw this way are:

SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_text FROM cur,searchindex WHERE
cur_id=si_page AND (MATCH (si_text) AGAINST ('math characters') AND
(cur_is_redirect=0) ) AND (cur_namespace=0) LIMIT 0, 20;

and

SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_text FROM cur,searchindex WHERE
cur_id=si_page AND (MATCH (si_text) AGAINST ('math characters') AND
(cur_is_redirect=0) ) AND (cur_namespace=0) LIMIT 0, 20;

You can also usually spot locking problems by seeing a whole batch of slow
queries that finish around the same time - look for the query causing the
locking problem..

Other things I've spotted, upping the table cache is a good idea - dropping
the index from user_newtalk probably will make little difference if the
table is so small, but shouldn't help (stranger things have happened though)

And now I really have to run!!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 5:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Slow query log

> On dim, 2003-02-09 at 19:23, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > I've managed to catch it in the act; attached are two snapshots of "SHOW
> > PROCESSLIST" taken about 45 seconds apart.  A whooole bunch of threads
> > are stuck on the user_newtalk query in "Statistics" state; after about a
> > minute they fall apart and there are a bunch of cur queries in "Closing
> > tables" and "Opening tables".
>
> The only information I've dragged up so far on the 'statistics' state is
> this thread: http://forums.devshed.com/archive/4/2002/11/4/46232
>
> Apparently it's something to do with joins... or indexes... or finding
> which indexes which are sometimes relevant to joins... Anyway, I'm not
> sure how much benefit an index has on a table with 75 rows and only
> constant SELECTs, 99% of which are checking for values that *don't*
> appear in the table. I've dumped the indexes on user_newtalk for now,
> see what that does...

Personally, I doubt that it is at all related to user_newtalk. If you check
the slow query log, you will notice that we have queries that take up to
>1000 seconds. While such a killer query runs, my guess is that everything
else
slows down. Since user_newtalk is queried on every pageview (including
recent
changes etc., and for anons and non-anons), it's bound to show up in the
slow
query log more often than other queries. Even then, it is predictably the
fastest among the slow queries. Similarly, simple queries like looking up a
user by ID occasionally show up in slow query log, probably again due to
general
slowdowns of the server.

Is there a way to specify how long a query can take? Most queries are not
critical, and maybe we should just timeout after 20 seconds and show an
error
message (which, technically, should *never* come up, as queries really
shouldn't take that long).

Regards,

Erik

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from_name: Zoe

body:
I normally don't reply with "Me too", but I had to say that mav is saying EXACTLY the way I feel.
Zoe
 Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:On Sunday 09 February 2003 02:34 pm, Erik Moeller wrote:
> No, because that name is used neither by scholars nor the public. As I
> wrote, I am not opposed to anglicization, and anglicization is by itself
> not unscientific. (There are reasonable arguments that can be made against
> it in the case of European languages, but I do not subscribe to those
> arguments.) If there exist two different English terms, however, the one
> which is correct should in most cases be used, provided it has already been
> adopted by scholars.

Anglicization is the process by which foreign words are altered and enter into
common usage by English speakers. If you support this form of common usage
then why do you not support common usage when presented with two words which
are already in English?

> I think we need to change our naming convention to use the more correct
> article title if everybody who knows the history of the term in question
> agrees that it is correct; that is, if everybody who has a coherent POV on
> the matter shares the same opinion. In other words, we should use
> academically correct titles, not those which Google prefers.
>
> Examples:
>
> 1) Ockham's Razor should not reside at Occam's Razor (Occam is the
> latinization of the town name Ockham; the town still exists today).
>
> 2) Pennsylvania Dutch should be at Pennsylvania German (it is not Dutch at
> all; the word is merely a corruption of "Deutsch" or "D?tsch").
>.....

Hm. "more correct article title" Correct to whom? OIC to a small group of
people. That is hardly NPOV. Titles are /nominative/ - and that is their only
role. And as such, they should reflect what most people who are at all
familiar with the subject call it (unless the term is unreasonably
ambiguous).

Academics are harmed the least by this since they most definitely already know
what the common name of subjects are that they are experts on. But the
non-academic isn't going to necessarily know what that academics call the
subject. By extending the logic you propose all animals in Wikipedia should
be under their scientific names, [[Mark Twain]] would be under [[Samuel
Langhorn Clemens]], [[Linda Lovelace]] under [[Linda Boreman]], [[Billy the
Kid]] under [[William Henry Bonney]], [[Eva Peron]] under [[Mar?a Evita
Durante de Peron]], [[Marilyn Monroe]] under [[Norma Jeane Mortenson]].

It is also more academically correct to use somebody's real name, right? And
it is even /more/ academically correct to use their entire name, isn't it? Oh
yeah, it is also misleading to call an orca a killer whale since they are not
whales and the term "sea lion" is also misleading since these animals have
nothing to do with lions. Rubbish!

Academics also disagree -- which ones do we listen to? Many also prefer
foreign language forms. Should we use those because some academics think so?
Getting rid of the common usage naming convention opens the floodgates to
these type of arguments. By contrast trying to determine common usage is far
easier in most cases.

Abandoning common usage would make it more difficult to directly link to
articles and find them. Above all else the name we choose should be the one
that will attract the largest number of eyes and fill the largest number of
edit links -- without having to deal with redirects.

We are not writing an encyclopedia for academics and specialists, we are
witting an encyclopedia for use by the masses. As such the subjects they look
for should be at page titles that are recognizable by the largest number of
people (with a reasonable minimum amount of ambiguity). But after a title has
served its /one and only/ purpose (to get a person to the correct article),
/then/ we can explain why academics think why the page title is not correct
and then procede, where appropriate, to use what the academics in that field
think is the best term. So in the [[Linda Lovelace]] article her real last
name 'Boreman' is used, and in the [[Billy the Kid]] article 'Bonney' is used
(although it is not certain whether that is correct though), and in [[Occam's
razor]] we use Ockham's razor.

Page titles should reflect common usage in order to ensure our content is
exposed to the largest possible audience. But once the person has the article
in front of them /then/ we educate them as to why some academics think the
common usage is not correct along with whatever else the article has to say.

So instead of hitting people over the head that are wrong by placing the
article at the academically correct title (giving them a jolt of surprise
when they are redirected from a title they know to a title they don't), we
allow them to land at the page title they know and then gently explain why
academics think the commonly used form is incorrect.

We are also not working with a static set of articles here and each article's
title serves as an example of our naming conventions to newbies. And one
thing I've noticed is that, in general, newbies don't know about or care to
use redirects.

So how about we support the naming convention, that if followed by reading the
naming convention or looking at examples, /naturally/ is the one that a new
contributor is most likely to use when creating a new page? People look for
things by the titles they already know - let's continue to follow this
natural tendency and not work against it, shall we?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma:
[[February 3]] and all year pages linked from there and many of the other
articles.
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body:
You keep saying that it's unprofessional to use the terms you don't like (not those which are incorrect, because that's only your interpretation), but you haven't responded to my pointing out that Britannica, perhaps the most professional of encyclopedias, calls it Pennsylvania Dutch.
Zoe
 Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:Mav-
> Anglicization is the process by which foreign words are altered and enter
> into
> common usage by English speakers. If you support this form of common usage
> then why do you not support common usage when presented with two words
> which
> are already in English?

If one of these words is an obvious linguistic error, and the other one is
commonly used among academics, it is clear that we should use the latter. I
repeat, it is not POV to highlight the correct term if nobody factually
disagrees that it is correct (besides, arguably, no matter which name we choose, we
always take a POV in the process, it is just whether we go by Google, or by
what is more accepted among scholars).

As the example of [[Pennsylvania German]] shows, people in other articles
prefer linking to the correct term, not the incorrect one. From that
perspective alone using the more correct term is justified. You yourself constantly use
the linkability argument.

> By extending the logic you propose all animals in Wikipedia
> should
> be under their scientific names, [[Mark Twain]] would be under [[Samuel
> Langhorn Clemens]], [[Linda Lovelace]] under [[Linda Boreman]], [[Billy
> the
> Kid]] under [[William Henry Bonney]], [[Eva Peron]] under [[Mar?a Evita
> Durante de Peron]], [[Marilyn Monroe]] under [[Norma Jeane Mortenson]].

Names of people, cities, tribes and so on are decided by popular usage and,
in case of people, by themselves; academic opinion is of less importance
here. There is nothing wrong with pseudonyms, and if people are primarily known
under these pseudonyms, then that is the title we should use. It is also the
more likely one to be linked. Names that are, however, in error (e.g. of
historical persons) should not be used where there is a reasonable scholarly
alternative.

William of Ockham should reside under that title, as he does, which makes
the fact that "Occam's" Razor is misspelled even more egregious.

> Oh
> yeah, it is also misleading to call an orca a killer whale since they are
> not
> whales and the term "sea lion" is also misleading since these animals have
>
> nothing to do with lions.

That depends on which term is used by biologists.

> Academics also disagree -- which ones do we listen to?

If there's substantial disagreement, we can fall back on the common name
rule.

> Many also prefer
> foreign language forms. Should we use those because some academics think
> so?

Most academics prefer anglicized names. However, we should avoid losing
information, so we should call an article about J?rg Haider either "J?rg Haider"
or "Joerg Haider", but not "Jorg Haider".

> Getting rid of the common usage naming convention opens the floodgates to
> these type of arguments.

Not necessarily this type of argument, but yes, it makes our conventions
more complex. As they should be: Finding the right title for an article should
not be as simple as throwing a few keywords at Google. It is a process where
different factors have to be weighed against each other. These factors are:

1) Is the term based on a misconception or outdated convention and therefore
avoided by scholars?
2) Which title will other articles want to use for linking?
3) Which title will people want to search for (which is most popular)?

If there is disagreement on 1) or 2), we ignore them.

> Abandoning common usage would make it more difficult to directly link to
> articles and find them.

No, because we should only abandon it in cases where common usage is
incorrect and we therefore do not want to use the incorrect term for linking either.
We will usually want to link to [[Marilyn Monroe]] using that name, but it
is unprofessional to use an incorrect name in other articles, and therefore
avoided.

> Above all else the name we choose should be the
> one
> that will attract the largest number of eyes and fill the largest number
> of
> edit links -- without having to deal with redirects.

We have to deal with redirects in any case.

> We are not writing an encyclopedia for academics and specialists, we are
> witting an encyclopedia for use by the masses.

That doesn't mean that we have to make the same mistakes as the masses :^)

> Page titles should reflect common usage in order to ensure our content is
> exposed to the largest possible audience.

As I have repeatedly demonstrated, it does not "ensure" that significantly
more than using the correct term.

Regards,

Erik

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

body:
(someone) could be him. The MIT vandal started out on [[Woman]] under
the IP 18.21.0.98. The same IP also engaged in a flamewar on [[Kosovo
War]] a few days earlier. Now if we search for "(someone)" in Google,
what do we find? The guy is a a Serbian student; from Belgrade, to be
precise.

Isn't the Internet wonderful? I'll leave it to Jimbo to write a nice warm
letter.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop

body:
As I've said to Jimbo off list, forget it.  If I can't be trusted, if I'm so disliked, don't give me the damn thing.
Zoe
 Jesse Alter <jesse at snacksoft.com> wrote:No objections here. I'd just like to caution others against seeing this
as an issue of good versus evil. I don't mean to preemptively accuse
Zoe, as she has, from what I understand, a pretty good track record, but
I wish to see both Lir and Zoe being held to the same standards. Lir
shouldn't get any lenience because he/she (I'm confused) is learning
what constitutes a good contribution, and Zoe should not get any
lenience because she is in a more authoritative. I hope my comments
don't seem presumptuous or accusatory. I'm still quite the
newbie/outsider in Wikipedia terms, I think.

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from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Preview on top etc.

body:
(dutch, wikipedia NL)

> Translations are needed for
>"previewontop" if = Show preview before edit box and not after it

Toon controlepagina boven bewerkingsveld

>"mycontris".

Mijn bijdragen

+ (Rendering math:)
>Recommended for modern browsers

Aanbevolen voor recente bladerprogramma's


subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandal again

body:
Kosana's and DrFreud's edits come from various addresses in the subnet
18.187.0.*. These appear to be Sun workstations in a computer lab at
MIT.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML templates (was: [Wikipedia-l] Navigation and search tools)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>
>Cologne Blue is still in desperate need of work, but my todo list is
>waaay too long and I haven't got to it yet. Others are welcome to pitch
>in...
>
>
If someone converts the PHP to using HTML templates, I'll do the HTML &
CSS work on Cologne blue & the other skins too :-)

(oops. went to the wrong list first time. sorry)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preview on top etc.

body:
Erik wrote:

>Just a small but useful feature: You can now set an option to show the
>preview before the edit box and not after it.

I like this, much better.

But for those using the old format, the reminder that you are in preview and
haven't saved might need to go back to the bottom of the page (maybe as well
as the top?)   I've often previewed, scrolled to the bottom of the page to
check what I've done, and then forgot what I'm doing.  That little reminder
is very helpful.

Or maybe it's just me with the leaky brain and it doesn't matter :)

sannse


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ips for usernames

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

> I'm not sure what you mean.  What "appropriate actions" do you
> recommend?

I have pretty basic actions in mind: Try identifying him and then take
care about him (talk to him, tell social services about this poor soul,
etc.).  Yes, that's a time consuming job.

> In an emergency situation, like the one we faced on Saturday morning,
> it's unrealistic to hope that we can find and get a sysop on the other
> end to take action.

It might be okay to "ban" someone for a short period of time, but it's
not okay to ban an IP number longer then half a day or so.  If the
attacker is a criminal he probably has mask his identity, etc.  I'm
sure I'm telling you nothing new.

--
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home):              |
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |      ,__o
Free Translation Project:                                |    _-\_<,
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/             |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop

body:
On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 11:56:09PM -0500, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>   Zoe is one of the finest contributors Wikipedia has. The fact that a few
>   people, most of whom have flawed agendas, feel threatened by her being a
>   sysop should raise an alarm about those people opposed to Zoe more than
>   anything else.
>
>   Besides, being a sysop is not some remarkable surge of power. It simply
>   makes it easier to revert vandalism. It is pretty obvious to me that Zoe
>   would not abuse any additional editorial powers she gets.
>
>   I suggest that we ask Zoe to reconsider and become a sysop.

I second that motion and agree with what Danny has said.  Zoe, please accept
the position of sysop, and please take on the role of mentor to Lir.  If he
acts up in the next 3 months, act in as draconian a manner as you feel is
warranted.  We need someone to encourage community standards; I think you
would do that admirably.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

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Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] HTML templates (was: [Wikipedia-l] Navigation and
 search tools)

body:
tarquin wrote:

>
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>>
>> Cologne Blue is still in desperate need of work, but my todo list is
>> waaay too long and I haven't got to it yet. Others are welcome to pitch
>> in...
>>
>>
> If someone converts the PHP to using HTML templates, I'll do the HTML
> & CSS work on Cologne blue & the other skins too :-)

You go to http://test.wikipedia.org

You change the skin to "Omni" in your user prefernces

You wonder why it looks just like CologneBlue...

... until you go to

http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:OmniCologneBlue&action=edit
and find the HTML template there, which you can edit right now!

(Not everything's converted, though - work in progress)

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preview on top etc.

body:
> Erik wrote:

>> Just a small but useful feature: You can now set an option to show the
>> preview before the edit box and not after it.

> I like this, much better.

> But for those using the old format, the reminder that you are in preview and
> haven't saved might need to go back to the bottom of the page (maybe as well
> as the top?)

Sure, I'll try some different formats.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #1017 - 18 msgs

body:
> I still don't like it.  I went to the site and refused the cookies, so
> that I was able to prevent that from happening.  If I want to go there
> again to the English language version, I can simply put my bookmark
> there.  I do not accept all cookies, and as I've said before I object
> when electronic systems want to make my decisions for me.

Fine then, how about having a little dialogue box to ask, "Would you like
your browser to automatically load the English-language version of Wikipedia
in the future?" (traductus traducendis for other languages), instead of
automatically setting the cookie?

M


from_name: Tony Wilson

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Wikipedia scheduled downtime tonight

body:
Brion wrote:

> The downtime window will cover roughly 04:00-08:00 UTC (UK time). For us
> USians, that's 8pm-midnight PST / 11pm-3am EST. Australians & others,
> please check http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone for the appropriate
> offset to your local time.

Just one problem. You forgot that Australians are too stupid to be able
to calculate how many hours away from UTC they are, and which one you
are supposed to add to the other one to get the right one. Or is it
subtract?

Errr .. Guess it will be back up when it's back up. (And I reckon the
next rain might come when my hat gets wet.)

(PS: why is it that I can calculate a standard error on the back of an
envelope; work out an appropriate discount on a $1950 sale in my head
without scratching it; but haven't quite got the hang of telling the
time yet? Is it something to do with big hands and little hands?)


body:
When a user is IP blocked here, does that:

(a) prevent them accessing Wikipedia at all
(b) or just kick them into a "read only" mode?

If the former, is it technically feasable to do the latter instead? The
advantage would be that sysops would not need to be in quite so much of
a hurry to restore blocked IPs.


from_name: Pedro M.V.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maps

body:
Thak you a lot, Lars. I have included your anwser in http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediatlas and in wikipedia.

I have found an interesting link too  :

http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn

Regards.

----- Original Message -----
TSent: Monday, February 10, 2003 2:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Maps

> Pedro M.V. wrote:
>
> > So, where can one find his/her city coordinates ???. I will try with
> > spanish state geographical institute, region and so on and perhaps
> > with a GPS user.
>
> 1. Look at a good printed map or atlas, visit your library
> 2. Use a GPS satellite navigator, if you have one
> 3. Look at a website built by GPS users, e.g. http://geourl.org/
>    or http://www.findu.com/ or http://www.geocaching.com/
> 4. Look for "Waypoint" files
> 5. Google for the city name together with "latitude", "longitude",
>    which gives hits like http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001769.html
> 6. Look at a map website, e.g. http://www.mapquest.com/ or
>    http://www.yahoo.com/
> 7. Look at a wiki that already uses map coordinates, e.g.
>    http://susning.nu/
>
> No matter where you find coordinates, always look to see if they seem
> reasonable.  There is a lot of incorrect or inaccurate data out
> there...
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop

body:
This is silly.

Zoe is one of the finest contributors Wikipedia has. The fact that a few
people, most of whom have flawed agendas, feel threatened by her being a
sysop should raise an alarm about those people opposed to Zoe more than
anything else.

Besides, being a sysop is not some remarkable surge of power. It simply makes
it easier to revert vandalism. It is pretty obvious to me that Zoe would not
abuse any additional editorial powers she gets.

I suggest that we ask Zoe to reconsider and become a sysop.

Danny
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Slow query log

body:
On lun, 2003-02-10 at 23:28, Jan Hidders wrote:
> > SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_text
> > FROM cur,searchindex
> > WHERE cur_id=si_page AND (MATCH (si_text) AGAINST ('math characters') AND
> > (cur_is_redirect=0) ) AND (cur_namespace=0) LIMIT 0, 20;
>
> This query looks extremely suspect to me because it seems to combine the worst
> of two worlds: the locking overhead of InnoDB tables (for table 'cur')  and
> large locking granulatity of MyISAM tables (for table 'searchindex' which
> needs to be updated every time an article is saved) .

Last week I tried removing the join and doing a second query for the
'cur' info using just the results from 'searchindex'; as I recall it
wasn't helping much if at all. A small difference might stand out more
now, though.

>  As I said before, I
> really don't think we should be using InnoDB tables, but perhaps Ian has some
> good arguments why we should.

Best reason I've found is that the table doesn't have to lock the whole
time during backup dumps; the dump gets a consistent read without
blocking inserts and updates.

Of course, this could be got around by having a replicated slave
database and tacking backups from that.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML templates

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> You go to http://test.wikipedia.org
>
> You change the skin to "Omni" in your user prefernces
>
> You wonder why it looks just like CologneBlue...
>
> ... until you go to
>
> http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:OmniCologneBlue&action=edit
>
> and find the HTML template there, which you can edit right now!
>
> (Not everything's converted, though - work in progress)

either that, or it's not quite what I had in mind.
I tried saving the contents of

http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:OmniCologneBlue&action=edit

as an HTML file on my hard drive, but without the CSS and the outer html
tags, it's not much good to someone trying to fine-tune a CSS/HTML
design locally.

>
>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Matt M. wrote:

>>I still don't like it.  I went to the site and refused the cookies, so
>>that I was able to prevent that from happening.  If I want to go there
>>again to the English language version, I can simply put my bookmark
>>there.  I do not accept all cookies, and as I've said before I object
>>when electronic systems want to make my decisions for me.
>>
>
>Fine then, how about having a little dialogue box to ask, "Would you like
>your browser to automatically load the English-language version of Wikipedia
>in the future?" (traductus traducendis for other languages), instead of
>automatically setting the cookie?
>
That would be much better.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikitech-l] Slow query log

body:
On sab, 2003-02-08 at 14:26, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Slow query log from Friday morning to present:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/tools/slowquerylog.gz

Now extends through, well, the present present.

Remaining things that need to be made less ugly slow are: recentchanges,
search, watchlist.

Recentchanges looks okay, except it should benefit from the inverse
timestamp trick (or Mysql4 upgrade); this would allow an index sort.

Search has been discussed elsewhere...

The watchlist:

SELECT DISTINCT
  cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_comment,
  cur_user,cur_user_text,cur_timestamp,cur_minor_edit,cur_is_new
  FROM cur,watchlist
  WHERE wl_user=7457 AND wl_title=cur_title
        AND (cur_namespace=wl_namespace OR cur_namespace=wl_namespace+1)
  ORDER BY inverse_timestamp LIMIT 100;

+-----------+------+----------------------------------------------+-----------+---------+--------------------+------+----------------------------------------------------------+
| table     | type | possible_keys                                | key       | key_len | ref                | rows | Extra                                                    |
+-----------+------+----------------------------------------------+-----------+---------+--------------------+------+----------------------------------------------------------+
| watchlist | ref  | wl_user                                      | wl_user   |       4 | const              | 1730 | where used; Using index; Using temporary; Using filesort |
| cur       | ref  | cur_namespace,cur_title,name_title_timestamp | cur_title |     255 | watchlist.wl_title | 1    | where used                                               |
+-----------+------+----------------------------------------------+-----------+---------+--------------------+------+----------------------------------------------------------+

Explain doesn't give any different results if the namespace+1 is taken
out; so adding near-dupe rows to cover talk pages wouldn't help.

I'm not quite sure how to match up the indexes right. Note that
watchlist has a composite index on wl_user, wl_namespace, and
wl_title... but I don't know if it can match those up if part 1 of the
index is a constant, and parts 2 and 3 match 1 and 2 of the other
table's index.

Some prolific users have three thousand or more titles in their
watchlist; the total number of distinct watched pages on the en.wiki is
30409.

Is there any way we could do this without temporary tables & filesorts &
whatnot?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 11:56:09PM -0500, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>>   Zoe is one of the finest contributors Wikipedia has.
>>   Besides, being a sysop is not some remarkable surge of power. It
>> simply
>>   makes it easier to revert vandalism. It is pretty obvious to me
>> that Zoe
>>   would not abuse any additional editorial powers she gets.
>>
>>   I suggest that we ask Zoe to reconsider and become a sysop.
>
>
> I second that motion and agree with what Danny has said.  Zoe, please
> accept
> the position of sysop, and please take on the role of mentor to Lir.
> If he
> acts up in the next 3 months, act in as draconian a manner as you feel is
> warranted.  We need someone to encourage community standards; I think you
> would do that admirably.

I want it on record that I have no objection to Zoe as a sysop.  I'm
sure that if she ever chose to exceed her authority, there would be
enough others to complain.  Our Mister Ed has experienced that in the
past, and he is still alive and well.

For the mentorship to work both Zoe and Lir would need to agree to that
solution.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop

body:
On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 12:48:56AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>For the mentorship to work both Zoe and Lir would need to agree to that
>solution.

Lir can either accept that solution, or not bother coming around the
Wikipedia.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Eugene Gill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandal again

body:
We just had another hit and run attack on List of people with visual
disabilities and Manuel II of Portugal by User:Kosana.

He put a single dot on his user-page to before commencing the attack to make
it less obvious that he had just created the user. He did this with the user
I reported earlier. Is there a way to check for users with this on their
user page?

Mintguy


subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandal again

body:
It looks like DrFreud who is making controversial changes to the Woman
article and some time ago uploaded an image of a bridge bombed by NATO is
the same person.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eugene Gill" <minty at keergill.screaming.net>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 3:19 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandal again

> We just had another hit and run attack on List of people with visual
> disabilities and Manuel II of Portugal by User:Kosana.
>
> He put a single dot on his user-page to before commencing the attack to
make
> it less obvious that he had just created the user. He did this with the
user
> I reported earlier. Is there a way to check for users with this on their
> user page?
>
> Mintguy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysop status

body:
I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*.

I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of
people who have been around for awhile sysops.  I want to dispel the
aura of "authority" around the position.  It's merely a technical
matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone.

I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted
sysop status is a really special thing.


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop

body:
I hope that Zoe has not withdrawn her request. In my four months here Zoe
has been one of the most impressive people I have come across, and
considering some of the talent and ability working on Wiki, that says
something. I don't imagine her becoming some sort of mini-Hitler. I missed
(had the luck to miss?) the start of the Lir /children of Lir saga, but I
for one would like to see Zoe get the position. Every so often Wiki does
attract vandals, nutters, nutty vandals, not to mention people who were
obviously in the lavatory when God was giving out charm (DW?) so we need
people like Zoe empowered to deal with them; once she does more of a Kofi
Annan than a George Bush I'll be quite happy.

JT

>From: Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop
>Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 18:58:16 -0800 (PST)
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>
>
>As I've said to Jimbo off list, forget it.  If I can't be trusted, if I'm
>so disliked, don't give me the damn thing.
>Zoe
>  Jesse Alter <jesse at snacksoft.com> wrote:No objections here. I'd just like
>to caution others against seeing this
>as an issue of good versus evil. I don't mean to preemptively accuse
>Zoe, as she has, from what I understand, a pretty good track record, but
>I wish to see both Lir and Zoe being held to the same standards. Lir
>shouldn't get any lenience because he/she (I'm confused) is learning
>what constitutes a good contribution, and Zoe should not get any
>lenience because she is in a more authoritative. I hope my comments
>don't seem presumptuous or accusatory. I'm still quite the
>newbie/outsider in Wikipedia terms, I think.
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
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>
>
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> Mentor was just a polite word for what I really meant; something along
> the lines of "Corrections Officer", if you catch my drift. I trust Zoe
> not to go to undue extremes in such a role.

There is no such thing as "Corrections Officer" or "Mentor".  If
people want to mentor others, i.e. be helpful in easing newcomers on
board, then that's fine.  But I'm not about to start handing out
personal fiefdoms.

Everyone please remember that no one here speaks for me, except for
me, and that *especially* Jonathan/Clutch -- who is one step or two
away from being banned himself -- does not set policy.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Zoe becoming a sysop

body:
On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 08:58:30AM -0500, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>If I were Zoe--having reluctantly asked for this, and found that people
>wanted to saddle
>me with the task of mentoring someone I distrusted--I wouldn't want it
>either.
>
>If we agree that Lir should be invited back (I don't, but I'm not the final
>voice here)
>subject to mentorship, the mentor should be a volunteer.

Mentor was just a polite word for what I really meant; something along
the lines of "Corrections Officer", if you catch my drift. I trust Zoe
not to go to undue extremes in such a role.

It is like sending the kid everyone picks on to karate lessons.  Lir was
picking on Zoe; by giving her a measure of power, Lir is in a position
where he has to play nice, or bear the consequences.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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