from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia Personal Views

body:
I am curious... why would personal views interest a reader ?

And talk pages already exist for this I think...

Ant

Simon Kissane a ?crit:
> Hi all,
>
> I have implemented the following feature in MediaWiki, which maybe
> some might find interesting/useful -- "Personal Views". Basically, any
> article page has a "Personal Views" page attached to it; on subpages
> of the personal views page, User's can record their personal views of
> the topic of the article.
>
> So, for example, User:Foo can record their personal viewpoint on
> Microsoft on the page Personal_Views:Microsoft/Foo, a page which only
> User:Foo can edit. And by going to "Personal_Views:Microsoft", we can
> see everyone's personal views on Microsoft.
>
> Some questions:
> 1. Any comments on how I implemented this? Anything in adding a new
> namespace I forget to do?
> 2. Can I add this to the CVS?
>
> Also, since my changes are relatively small, it might serve as an
> example of how to add a new namespace to WikiMedia. (Maybe I can turn
> it into a tutorial...)
>
> Cheers
> Simon Kissane
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ? config/LocalSettings.php
> ? includes/PersonalViews.php
> Index: index.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/index.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.53
> diff -u -r1.53 index.php
> --- index.php	22 Aug 2004 23:55:35 -0000	1.53
> +++ index.php	28 Aug 2004 14:34:37 -0000
> @@ -104,6 +104,10 @@
>  		require_once( "includes/ImagePage.php" );
>  		$wgArticle = new ImagePage( $wgTitle );
>  		break;
> +        case NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS:
> +                require_once( "includes/PersonalViews.php" );
> +                $wgArticle = new PersonalViews ( $wgTitle );
> +                break;
>  	case NS_CATEGORY:
>  		if ( $wgUseCategoryMagic ) {
>  			require_once( "includes/CategoryPage.php" );
> Index: includes/Article.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/Article.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.209
> diff -u -r1.209 Article.php
> --- includes/Article.php	24 Aug 2004 18:04:37 -0000	1.209
> +++ includes/Article.php	28 Aug 2004 14:34:37 -0000
> @@ -345,7 +345,7 @@
>  		# Pre-fill content with error message so that if something
>  		# fails we'll have something telling us what we intended.
>
> -		$t = $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText();
> +		$t = $this->getTitle();
>  		if ( isset( $oldid ) ) {
>  			$oldid = IntVal( $oldid );
>  			$t .= ',oldid='.$oldid;
> @@ -390,7 +390,7 @@
>  							array( 'cur_id' => $rid ), $fname, $this->getSelectOptions() );
>
>  						if ( $redirRow !== false ) {
> -							$this->mRedirectedFrom = $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText();
> +							$this->mRedirectedFrom = $this->getTitle();
>  							$this->mTitle = $rt;
>  							$s = $redirRow;
>  						}
> @@ -467,7 +467,7 @@
>  							array( 'cur_id' => $rid ), $fname, $this->getSelectOptions() );
>
>  						if ( $redirRow !== false ) {
> -							$this->mRedirectedFrom = $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText();
> +							$this->mRedirectedFrom = $this->getTitle();
>  							$this->mTitle = $rt;
>  							$s = $redirRow;
>  						}
> @@ -662,7 +662,7 @@
>
>  		if ( !is_null( $diff ) ) {
>  			require_once( 'DifferenceEngine.php' );
> -			$wgOut->setPageTitle( $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText() );
> +			$wgOut->setPageTitle( $this->getTitle() );
>  			$de = new DifferenceEngine( intval($oldid), intval($diff), intval($rcid) );
>  			$de->showDiffPage();
>  			wfProfileOut( $fname );
> @@ -747,7 +747,7 @@
>  				$wgOut->addWikiText( $text );
>  			}
>  		}
> -		$wgOut->setPageTitle( $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText() );
> +		$wgOut->setPageTitle( $this->getTitle() );
>  		# If we have been passed an &rcid= parameter, we want to give the user a
>  		# chance to mark this new article as patrolled.
>  		if ( $wgUseRCPatrol && !is_null ( $rcid ) && $rcid != 0 && $wgUser->getID() != 0 &&
> @@ -1088,7 +1088,7 @@
>  		global $wgOut, $wgUseValidation;
>  		if( $wgUseValidation ) {
>  			require_once ( 'SpecialValidate.php' ) ;
> -			$wgOut->setPagetitle( wfMsg( 'validate' ) . ': ' . $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText() );
> +			$wgOut->setPagetitle( wfMsg( 'validate' ) . ': ' . $this->getTitle() );
>  			$wgOut->setRobotpolicy( 'noindex,follow' );
>  			if( $this->mTitle->getNamespace() != 0 ) {
>  				$wgOut->addHTML( wfMsg( 'val_validate_article_namespace_only' ) );
> @@ -1127,7 +1127,7 @@
>  			RecentChange::markPatrolled( $rcid );
>  			$wgOut->setPagetitle( wfMsg( 'markedaspatrolled' ) );
>  			$wgOut->addWikiText( wfMsg( 'markedaspatrolledtext' ) );
> -			$wgOut->returnToMain( true, $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText() );
> +			$wgOut->returnToMain( true, $this->getTitle() );
>  		}
>  		else
>  		{
> @@ -1159,7 +1159,7 @@
>  		$wgOut->setRobotpolicy( 'noindex,follow' );
>
>  		$sk = $wgUser->getSkin() ;
> -		$link = $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText();
> +		$link = $this->getTitle();
>
>  		if($add)
>  			$text = wfMsg( 'addedwatchtext', $link );
> @@ -1170,7 +1170,7 @@
>  		$up = new UserUpdate();
>  		array_push( $wgDeferredUpdateList, $up );
>
> -		$wgOut->returnToMain( true, $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText() );
> +		$wgOut->returnToMain( true, $this->getTitle() );
>  	}
>
>  	function unwatch() {
> @@ -1231,7 +1231,7 @@
>
>  		wfDebug( "Article::confirmProtect\n" );
>
> -		$sub = htmlspecialchars( $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText() );
> +		$sub = htmlspecialchars( $this->getTitle() );
>  		$wgOut->setRobotpolicy( 'noindex,nofollow' );
>
>  		$check = '';
> @@ -1408,7 +1408,7 @@
>
>  		wfDebug( "Article::confirmDelete\n" );
>
> -		$sub = htmlspecialchars( $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText() );
> +		$sub = htmlspecialchars( $this->getTitle() );
>  		$wgOut->setSubtitle( wfMsg( 'deletesub', $sub ) );
>  		$wgOut->setRobotpolicy( 'noindex,nofollow' );
>  		$wgOut->addWikiText( wfMsg( 'confirmdeletetext' ) );
> @@ -1462,7 +1462,7 @@
>  		wfDebug( $fname."\n" );
>
>  		if ( $this->doDeleteArticle( $reason ) ) {
> -			$deleted = $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText();
> +			$deleted = $this->getTitle();
>
>  			$wgOut->setPagetitle( wfMsg( 'actioncomplete' ) );
>  			$wgOut->setRobotpolicy( 'noindex,nofollow' );
> @@ -1641,7 +1641,7 @@
>  		if( $from != $s->cur_user_text ) {
>  			$wgOut->setPageTitle(wfmsg('rollbackfailed'));
>  			$wgOut->addWikiText( wfMsg( 'alreadyrolled',
> -				htmlspecialchars( $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText()),
> +				htmlspecialchars( $this->getTitle()),
>  				htmlspecialchars( $from ),
>  				htmlspecialchars( $s->cur_user_text ) ) );
>  			if($s->cur_comment != '') {
> @@ -2044,6 +2044,18 @@
>  			}
>  		}
>  	}
> +
> +    # Added by SJK 28-Aug-2004 to implement Personal_Views: support
> +    function getTitle() {
> +       if ( NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS == $this->mTitle->getNamespace()
> +            and preg_match('/^([^\/]*)\/([^\/]*)$/',$this->mTitle->getText(),$matches) ) {
> +            return wfMsg( 'personalviews_articleheader', $matches[2], $matches[1] ) ;
> +       }
> +       else if ( NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS == $this->mTitle->getNamespace() ) {
> +            return wfMsg( 'personalviews_header', $this->mTitle->getText() );
> +       }
> +       return $this->mTitle->getPrefixedText();
> +    }
>  }
>
>  ?>
> Index: includes/Defines.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/Defines.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.5
> diff -u -r1.5 Defines.php
> --- includes/Defines.php	25 Aug 2004 02:12:02 -0000	1.5
> +++ includes/Defines.php	28 Aug 2004 14:34:37 -0000
> @@ -28,6 +28,8 @@
>  define('NS_HELP_TALK', 13);
>  define('NS_CATEGORY', 14);
>  define('NS_CATEGORY_TALK', 15);
> +define('NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS', 16);
> +define('NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS_TALK', 17);
>
>  # Fix the code and remove these...
>  define('NS_WP', NS_PROJECT);
> Index: includes/Namespace.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/Namespace.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.20
> diff -u -r1.20 Namespace.php
> --- includes/Namespace.php	22 Aug 2004 17:24:50 -0000	1.20
> +++ includes/Namespace.php	28 Aug 2004 14:34:37 -0000
> @@ -29,7 +29,9 @@
>  	NS_HELP             => 'Help',
>  	NS_HELP_TALK        => 'Help_talk',
>  	NS_CATEGORY	        => 'Category',
> -	NS_CATEGORY_TALK    => 'Category_talk'
> +	NS_CATEGORY_TALK    => 'Category_talk',
> +        NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS   => 'Personal_Views',
> +        NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS_TALK => 'Personal_Views_talk'
>  );
>
>  class Namespace {
> @@ -44,7 +46,7 @@
>
>  	function isMovable( $index )
>  	{
> -		if ( $index < NS_MAIN || $index == NS_IMAGE  || $index == NS_CATEGORY ) {
> +		if ( $index < NS_MAIN || $index == NS_IMAGE  || $index == NS_CATEGORY) {
>  			return false;
>  		}
>  		return true;
> @@ -55,7 +57,7 @@
>  		if ( NS_TALK == $index || NS_USER_TALK == $index || NS_WP_TALK
>  	== $index || NS_IMAGE_TALK == $index || NS_MEDIAWIKI_TALK == $index ||
>  	NS_TEMPLATE_TALK == $index || NS_HELP_TALK == $index ||
> -	NS_CATEGORY_TALK == $index ) {
> +	NS_CATEGORY_TALK == $index || NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS_TALK == $index) {
>  			return true;
>  		}
>  		return false;
> Index: includes/Skin.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/Skin.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.263
> diff -u -r1.263 Skin.php
> --- includes/Skin.php	25 Aug 2004 02:13:32 -0000	1.263
> +++ includes/Skin.php	28 Aug 2004 14:34:38 -0000
> @@ -1706,6 +1706,12 @@
>  		$this->checkTitle($title, $name);
>  		return $title->getLocalURL( $urlaction );
>  	}
> +	/*static*/ function makePersonalViewsUrl ( $name, $urlaction='' ) {
> +		$title = Title::newFromText( $name );
> +		$title = $title->getPersonalViews();
> +		$this->checkTitle($title, $name);
> +		return $title->getLocalURL( $urlaction );
> +	}
>  	/*static*/ function makeArticleUrl ( $name, $urlaction='' ) {
>  		$title = Title::newFromText( $name );
>  		$title= $title->getSubjectPage();
> Index: includes/SkinPHPTal.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/SkinPHPTal.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.99
> diff -u -r1.99 SkinPHPTal.php
> --- includes/SkinPHPTal.php	28 Aug 2004 00:38:59 -0000	1.99
> +++ includes/SkinPHPTal.php	28 Aug 2004 14:34:38 -0000
> @@ -319,7 +319,8 @@
>  			if( $this->iscontent ) {
>
>  				$nskey = $this->getNameSpaceKey();
> -				$is_active = !Namespace::isTalk( $wgTitle->getNamespace()) ;
> +				$is_active = !Namespace::isTalk( $wgTitle->getNamespace())
> +                              && $wgTitle->getNamespace() != NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS;
>  				if ( $action == 'validate' ) $is_active = false ; # Show article tab deselected when validating
>  				$content_actions[$nskey] = array('class' => ($is_active) ? 'selected' : false,
>  				'text' => wfMsg($nskey),
> @@ -344,6 +345,30 @@
>  					);
>  				}
>
> +                /* personal views */
> +                if ($wgTitle->getNamespace() == NS_MAIN) {
> +                    $persviews_class = false;
> +                    $persviewstitle = Title::newFromText( $this->titletxt );
> +	    			$persviewstitle = $persviewstitle->getPersonalViews();
> +	    			$this->checkTitle($persviewstitle, $this->titletxt);
> +					$content_actions['personal_views'] = array(
> +						'class' => $persviews_class,
> +						'text' => wfMsg('personal_views'),
> +						'href' => $this->makePersonalViewsUrl($this->titletxt)
> +					);
> +                }
> +                else if ($wgTitle->getNamespace() == NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS) {
> +                    $persviews_class = 'selected';
> +                    $persviewstitle = Title::newFromText( $this->titletxt );
> +	    			$persviewstitle = $persviewstitle->getPersonalViews();
> +	    			$this->checkTitle($persviewstitle, $this->titletxt);
> +					$content_actions['personal_views'] = array(
> +						'class' => $persviews_class,
> +						'text' => wfMsg('personal_views'),
> +						'href' => $this->makePersonalViewsUrl($this->titletxt)
> +					);
> +                }
> +
>  				if ( $wgTitle->userCanEdit() ) {
>  					$oid = ( $oldid && ! isset( $diff ) ) ? "&oldid={$oldid}" : false;
>  					$istalk = ( Namespace::isTalk( $wgTitle->getNamespace()) );
> Index: includes/Title.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/Title.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.103
> diff -u -r1.103 Title.php
> --- includes/Title.php	23 Aug 2004 00:49:02 -0000	1.103
> +++ includes/Title.php	28 Aug 2004 14:34:38 -0000
> @@ -541,6 +541,12 @@
>  			and !$wgUser->isSysop()
>  			and !preg_match('/^'.preg_quote($wgUser->getName(), '/').'/', $this->mTextform) )
>  		{ return false; }
> +        # Disable editing of "Personal Views" user subpages except by appropriate user
> +        if ( NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS == $this->mNamespace
> +            and preg_match('/^[^\/]*\/(.*)$/',$this->mTextform,$matches )
> +            and !$wgUser->isSysop()
> +            and $matches[1] != $wgUser->getName() )
> +        { return false; }
>  		$ur = $wgUser->getRights();
>  		foreach ( $this->getRestrictions() as $r ) {
>  			if ( '' != $r && ( ! in_array( $r, $ur ) ) ) {
> @@ -650,8 +656,7 @@
>  				'cur_title' => $this->getDBkey()
>  			), 'Title::invalidateCache'
>  		);
> -		return $success;
> -	}
> +		return $success;	}
>
>  	# Prefixes some arbitrary text with the namespace or interwiki prefix of this object
>  	/* private */ function prefix( $name ) {
> @@ -800,9 +805,19 @@
>  	function getTalkPage() {
>  		return Title::makeTitle( Namespace::getTalk( $this->getNamespace() ), $this->getDBkey() );
>  	}
> -
> +
> +    # Get a title object associated with the personal views page of the article
> +    function getPersonalViews() {
> +        return Title::makeTitle ( NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS, $this->getDBkey() );
> +    }
> +
>  	# Get a title object associated with the subject page of this talk page
>  	function getSubjectPage() {
> +        if ( $this->getNamespace() == NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS ) {
> +            $dbkey = $this->getDBkey();
> +            if (preg_match('/^([^\/]+)\/([^\/]+)$/',$dbkey,$matches)) { $dbkey = $matches[1]; }
> +            return Title::makeTitle ( NS_MAIN , $dbkey );
> +        }
>  		return Title::makeTitle( Namespace::getSubject( $this->getNamespace() ), $this->getDBkey() );
>  	}
>
> Index: languages/Language.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/languages/Language.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.323
> diff -u -r1.323 Language.php
> --- languages/Language.php	27 Aug 2004 14:55:41 -0000	1.323
> +++ languages/Language.php	28 Aug 2004 14:34:39 -0000
> @@ -43,7 +43,9 @@
>  	NS_HELP             => 'Help',
>  	NS_HELP_TALK        => 'Help_talk',
>  	NS_CATEGORY         => 'Category',
> -	NS_CATEGORY_TALK    => 'Category_talk'
> +	NS_CATEGORY_TALK    => 'Category_talk',
> +        NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS   => 'Personal_Views',
> +        NS_PERSONAL_VIEWS_TALK => 'Personal_Views_talk'
>  );
>
>  /* private */ $wgDefaultUserOptionsEn = array(
> @@ -292,6 +294,11 @@
>  'category_header' => 'Articles in category "$1"',
>  'subcategories' => 'Subcategories',
>
> +'personalviews_header' => 'Personal views on the topic of "$1"',
> +'personalviews_articleheader' => "$1's personal views on $2",
> +'personalviews_viewyours' => "What you've had to say on this topic.",
> +'personalviews_submityours' => "Submit your view on this topic.",
> +'personalviews_notloggedin' => "If you were logged-in, you could submit your view on this topic.",
>
>  'linktrail'		=> '/^([a-z]+)(.*)$/sD',
>  'mainpage'		=> 'Main Page',
> @@ -360,6 +367,8 @@
>  'articlepage'	=> 'View content page',
>  'subjectpage'	=> 'View subject', # For compatibility
>  'talk' => 'Discussion',
> +'personal_views' => 'Personal Views',
> +'personal_views_article' => 'Article page',
>  'toolbox' => 'Toolbox',
>  'userpage' => 'View user page',
>  'wikipediapage' => 'View project page',
> @@ -1442,6 +1451,8 @@
>  'categoryarticlecount' => "There are $1 articles in this category.",
>  'categoryarticlecount1' => "There is $1 article in this category.",
>  'usenewcategorypage' => "1\n\nSet first character to \"0\" to disable the new category page layout.",
> +'personalviewscount' => "$1 users have submitted personal viewpoints on the topic of this article.",
> +'personalviewscount1' => "$1 user has submitted a personal viewpoint on the topic of this article.",
>
>  # Info page
>  "infosubtitle" => "Information for page",
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedias verity

body:
I have been following the discussion of Wikipedia being reliable as a
source for information.  Here are my suggestions.  I have seen that
there is a Wikia.com, which is meant to be another human edited web
directory such as DMOZ.  Unfortunately DMOZ, while freely
downloadable, has a copyright policy incompatable with Wikipedia.
However, having a human edited web directory has its bonuses, and
incorporating the categorization system of Wikia into Wikipedia can
help to increase our reliability and credibility.

For example, the two could be coded into eachother, in such a manner
that when you create or edit an article, you could enter a template
command that pulled information from the directory database and
displayed the related external web links from that category at the
bottom of the article, in a nicely formatted manner. Perhaps a maximum
of ten websites could show. I imagine an article on The Madness of
King George could contain {{Directory: Movies: Historical Fiction}} at
the bottom of the article.  This has an added bonus of not being an
unnatractive listing of hyperlinks as it would come in a preformatted
flavor preferably created by a designer.

When one creates an article, they would also be asked to scour the web
for reliable (i.e. preferably .gov and .edu sites) and other sources
of information.  What does this do?  This emphasizes our advantage
over the EB, and it also advances Wikia at the same time.

Wikipedia is getting big.  As everyone has said, recent changes is
simply too large and some of the rifraf is getting through.  Perhaps
there could be a form of checkboxes with categorizations of
information (Think: Google Personalized categories), and I can only
monitor the directories of my choice.

This sort of a system would quiet the noisemakers by making the
information in our articles easily verifiable.  All of this stands
apart from the fact, though, that these noisemakers simply do not
understand the concept of "Wiki".

/Alterego


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS access

body:
Simon Kissane wrote:
> I am listed on this page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer as
> having CVS accesss, which I did, but then I lost it (I accidentally
> created two SF.net accounts, so my old one was deleted, which happened
> to be the one my CVS access was under.) Could someone please re-add me
> to the SF.net project and re-enable my CVS?

Knowing your SF.net account name would help. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stamps, wiki and copyright

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>In the discussion Wikispecies, there were a few mentions of the possibility to
>enlarge Wikipedia with coverage on postage stamps.
>
>While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an
>encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope of
>Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.
>
>
Don't tease me! :-) I have a database currently describing 146,336
types to varying degrees of detail, all personally typed in by me
and copyright-clean, made possible by some special C software that
handles defaults and integrity checking. This is about half of all
types in existence. I use it to track my collection, which is an
unknown size above 68,557 types, since many are in the "other half"
not yet entered - WP editing has severely cut into my stamp db
time. :-( The software also lets me do things like download into
a Palm, so it's handy when I'm out shopping.

Certainly I've thought about how to publish this database, and
have steered clear of the various obstacles (no use of existing
catalog numbers for instance) in expectation of being able to make
it available some day. A wiki project could be a great way to
finish filling it out, and I even brought it up a while back as
something that needs a database-editing mode.

There are some technical problems to solve; for instance, I don't
want to upload data about my personal collection, but if people
add to the type data, I want to be able to download it and merge
in - but what if some idiot deleted the record describing one of
my stamps? I've also started separating the English-language bits
from the generic data, in the hope of making it multi-lingual.

I'm of two minds about whether it's "encyclopedia data" - certainly
there are "encyclopedias of postage stamps", with coverage ranging
from one paragraph to multiple pages per stamp. (When you get into
designers, the politics, the varieties, etc, it adds up.) On the
other hand, I've been seeding WP with overview-type philatelic
accounts for various countries, about two dozen articles so far,
plus a pile of illustrations, but they haven't generated much
interest - glaring typos have sat in some of them for months.
So it doesn't feel like there's a groundswell of demand for
something even lengthier and more detailed.

But if people like, I could create a meta page with more info about
my existing data and how it might be usefully wikified, and we can
continue thinking about it there.

Stan


from_name: phil hunt

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: in response to your article "Librarian: Don't use
	Wikipedia as source" in the Post-Standard

body:
On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 16:16:43 +0200, Marco Krohn <marco.krohn at web.de> wrote:
>
>I agree with most of what you wrote, but I think it is a mistake to believe
>that we have any kind of review system which is on par (wrt error
>elimination) with a real peer review. At least my experience is that the
>probability for finding a mistake in Wikipedia is by far higher than for
>Britannica.

Yes, and so is the probability of finding true information. The en
Wikipedia has more text and articles than Britannica, and thus
contains more information. Yes, some of that information in either
is going to be wrong, which is why it's always useful to check on
the web (or in books) for other sources of information.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia RC is broken

body:
On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 16:46:10 +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
>
>Imagine a wiki without a Recent Changes page - the error can stay in it for
>days or even weeks before it gets corrected. Such a wiki wouldn't work well.
>But that's almost the situation in Wikipedia today - because the Recent Changes
>is so huge, very few people will check all articles, and as the topics of articles
>become more specialized, chances that non-trivial error will be spotted in RC
>are getting lower and lower.

That's a legitimate concern. Perhaps we could have per-category
Recent Changes pages.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 07:49:48 -0600 Fred Bauder  wrote:
>
>> If you take a photograph or scan a postage stamp that image is not
>> copyrighted even though the underlying design may be. Sometimes a nice
>> image, for example of a butterfly or bird or even a person can be
>> included
>> in Wikipedia in that way.
>
> Anyone _can_ make and publish it. But that does not mean that it's
> legal. Making a photograph of something and copying that photograph is
> a way of copying, and disallowed just like all other methods of
> copying copyrighted works.

This is somewhat muddled.  Saying that an act infringes copyright would
be more accurate that saying that it is illegal or disallowed.  There
are circumstances, such as fair dealing, where the copying is perfectly
legal.  A copy of a copy can indeed infringe an original copyright
whether or not there is a derivative copyright in the first copy.  Every
current Canadian stamp has a copyright notice on it, but catalog
manufacturers quite readily reproduce them in their books without any
hint of having sought permission from the Post Office.  The Scott
Company, on the other hand, is very protective of its own copyrights.

>> It occurs to me that there is a sort of disconnect here. If you take a
>> photograph of painting in an museum or someone's home that is
>> copyright free
>> but if you scan a reproduction of a painting in a book it is not, yet
>> there
>> is very little difference in what you have done.
>
> Indeed, there's little difference, and your statement is wrong.

This is a variant of the issue about the National Portrait Gallery in
London..  The copyright depends on the underlying work, not the
reproduction.

Ec


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anet Dartmouth, Again

body:
On 28 Aug 2004, at 14:54, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 5
> Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 22:59:00 -0700
> From: Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Anet Dartmouth, Again
>
>> The Phoenicians were aware of the consequences of denuding the cedar
>> forests of Lebanon.
>
> Can't speak to that one, but in any case they were the exception
> not the rule.

We have one example of "the exception". Can you give examples of "the
rule"?

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anent Dartmouth, Again

body:
On 28 Aug 2004, at 14:54, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 10
> Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 08:47:00 -0400
> From: "Anthony DiPierro" <anthonydipierro at hotmail.com>
>
>> However, I do feel that I did not lecture but plead and also feel that
>> I did not engage in hostile behaviour.
>
>> -- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
>
> Considering you called the professor who did nothing wrong stupid and
> arrogant I'd say you were hostile.
>
> Anthony

Are you referring to my response to Geoff Burling? Is he "the
professor"?

If not, please explain.

If yes, then please note that I did NOT call Geoff "stupid and
arrogant" -- and I would be curious to hear where you are taking that
from.
Maybe you are confusing me with Christiaan. I am not Christiaan. I am
Jens. Jens Ropers. Known here as User:Ropers. Also called Ian. Also
known as (the) rop. Aka the fake Irishman. Historically known as
Ropercop. Anyway. Christiaan has his views and I have mine. Christiaan
has his way to respond and I have mine. There may be some common ground
between Christiaan and me, but there also is common ground between
Geoff and me. That said, I believe Christiaan, too, for all the
emotionally charged language he used, DID NOT call Geoff "stupid and
arrogant" EITHER. So again, I really don't know where you are taking
that from.

This was my first response email:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-August/030079.html
(Note that I wrote it as a general email to the list, quoting only
Geoff's comment and not giving his name, to avoid the issue getting
personal.)

Geoff chose to respond to me and Christiaan in one email:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-August/030105.html

Because I'm not Christiaan, I only responded to the sections of Geoff's
email that I felt were directed at me:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-August/030140.html

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] in response to your article "Librarian: Don't use
	Wikipedia as source" in the Post-Standard

body:
On Saturday 28 August 2004 19:26, Christopher Mahan wrote:

> > He also told us which
> > articles he
> > modified and claimed that none of the mistakes was detected by now.
>
> Could it perhaps be that he was trusted to not do that (misplaced
> trust if you ask me).

no, he created a new user account for every new "contribution".

> A real peer review is done by people who are paid.

In science reviewers are often not paid for their work. Which btw in many
cases means that the scientist who wrote the paper is paid by the public and
the two other scientists who are doing the review for free (free for the
journal) are paid by the public too. For the resulting journal, libraries
have to pay huge amounts of (public) money. Which is a great system for the
publishing company. Additionally the publishing companies even claim
copyright for their "work".

> > At least my experience is that the
> > probability for finding a mistake in Wikipedia is by far higher
> > than for Britannica.
>
> And britannica has been around what, 100+ years?

right, this surely makes a difference. But if it is possible to introduce bugs
into Wikipedia that easily then I have little doubt that Wikipedia will
always contain more mistakes per sentence than Britannica etc.

> Marco, tell your friend next time he wants to experiment, to use the
> sandbox.
>
> And if you like Britannica so much, then, it's there for you to use.
> Oh, and I forgot, you have to pay to read Britannica articles. (look
> up Blade Runner, the movie)

???

Neither is this guy my friend, nor did I say that I like Britannica more than
Wikipedia. As you can easily find out I am contributing to the German as well
as to the English Wikipedia.

If Jens challenges the author of the article it is perfect legitim to tell
Jens what happended to "de" in a similar case.

Wikipedians are very enthusiastic about Wikipedia and I still am a big fan of
this project and tell everyone about it (whether s/he wants to hear about it
or not ;-). But in our enthusiasm we should not forget that there are areas,
were Wikipedia can improve. I believe that factual correctness still is such
an area where Wikipedia can and should become better and the example from
"de" makes that even clearer.

It is perfect to counter my arguments, or if you tend to agree to think about
what we can improve. For instance I consider Tomasz response usefull. His
idea can certainly help with dealing with the overwhelming amount on "recent
changes" and therefore could make Wikipedia better.

On the other hand the last part of your comment reads "go away and use
Britannica instead", which I don't find too helpfull.

best regards,
  Marco


from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
How about a line that lists the total accepted user contributions as well,
so new users may see how many acceptable/accepted contributions a user has
made?

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jens Ropers
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004 9:16 PM
To: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org; wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia RC is broken

Proposal:

Let's list the number of total user contributions next to all the user names
in the [[Special:Recentchanges]] list.

Rationale:

This will make it easier to focus on new users who may not yet be familiar
with what's acceptable and what not.

While it is true that there is no straightforward relation between a bigger
number of contributions and contribution quality, it can by and large
however be assumed that if a user regularly submits substandard and/or
mischievous contributions then the community probably knows about that user.

So despite the shortcomings, seeing a user's number of total previous
contributions in the Recent changes list would be a step forward.

see: http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=245

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

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


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia RC is broken

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> I think we just have to divide RC into reasonably-sized parts.

I think "filtering" is a more apropriate word than "division". Perhaps
I only want to see changes in biology categories, perhaps you only
want to see new articles, someone else only wants to see changes made
on Wednesdays, a fourth person only wants to see changes made by a
limited group of people (his traditional enemies).  It should be one
list, but with more ways to personalize the display.

Already, the "user contributions" is indeed one such filter applied to
the list of changes.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia RC is broken


from_name: Roman Maurer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] adding search engines to Wikipedia's Webalizer conf

body:
Hello!

Is it possible to add search engines to Webalizer configuration? I'd
like to add the following line:

  SearchEngine    najdi.si   q=

Slovene Wikipedia gets twice the ammount of traffic from Najdi.si
(http://www.najdi.si/) compared to Google (http://www.google.com/), so
current search statistics may not really be relevant - if would
certainly be good if search strings from Najdi.si would be parsed.

Source: http://wikimedia.org/stats/sl.wikipedia.org/usage_200408.html
--
	Pozdrav,
	  Roman


from_name: Eckhart Wörner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using code from MediaWiki - the GPL

body:
Hello,

well, I don't know where to address this to, so I address it to this
mailing list in the hope that it will not be entirely wrong.

As I'm going to write some converter for wiki markup, I need a way to
interprete quotes ('). As this is something really not trivial, I
thought of copying the function doQuotes from the mediawiki software.

The Problem is the Licence: the function is licenced under the GPL, this
means, that my 'derivative work' has to be licenced under the GPL, too.

Well, I thought of publishing the source code, too, but I'm more a fan
of the Creative Commons licences
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/de/ in this case, to be
precise). But this creates trouble with the GPL, which makes it
impossible to use the CC licence.

Does someone know a solution of this problem?

Regards, Eckhart


from_name: kelvSYC

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A new idea: a Wiki-based TV episode guide

body:
Maybe it's OT for this list (if it is, then I forget which list is
appropriate), but I thought of a new Wiki proposal people might like
and could be implemented if people were up to it:

Seeing that there seems to be articles on individual episodes of
certain TV shows in Wikipedia that some might argue is unencyclopedic
(due to the fact that they contribute little other than an episode
summary), how about a television episode guide based on the Wiki
philosophy (a "Wikivision" perhaps)?

The idea was inspired largely by Wikibooks and their management of
individual "books", followed by individual articles within each "book".
  Likewise, this Wiki-based TV Guide would have major sections for an
individual TV series, and each article would represent one show in one
particular series.  The goal of such a Wiki would be to essentially
provide summaries to as many episodes for as many TV series as
possible, in as many different languages as we can.

A potential obstacle to this idea (not a technical obstacle, but rather
a policy obstacle) would be the regional differences that may exist
within the same show.  For example, edit wars may occur over whether to
use the titles and names that are used for the English or French,
German, Japanese, or other regional version, and whether or not to
include episodes that aired in one region but not another (and if so,
which title is the article with the content and which ones are
redirects to that article).

What do you all think of the idea?


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 09:26:32PM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > I think we just have to divide RC into reasonably-sized parts.
>
> I think "filtering" is a more apropriate word than "division". Perhaps
> I only want to see changes in biology categories, perhaps you only
> want to see new articles, someone else only wants to see changes made
> on Wednesdays, a fourth person only wants to see changes made by a
> limited group of people (his traditional enemies).  It should be one
> list, but with more ways to personalize the display.
>
> Already, the "user contributions" is indeed one such filter applied to
> the list of changes.

I think the filtering would only be a partial solution. The reason RC worked
so well was that every change was reviewed by a few competent people.
If we divide the RC (and provide a special RC for uncategorized articles,
from which they will be moved to specialized RCs), this property will be restored.
With general filtering it seems to me that there are going to be many changes
which won't get into filters of enough competent people. The only idea
I have how to cope with that group of changes is the division, but maybe
there's some other way.


subject: [Wikitech-l] edit page and robots="noindex" meta tag

body:
Can we add a robots="noindex" meta tag to the respective HTML source,
so that that tag will be included with EVERY article's edit page?
To explain:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Robots.txt#Don.27t_index_vs_don.27t_spider

I logged this as bug 242 in MediaZilla.

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject:
[WikiEN-l] in response to your article "Librarian: Don't use
	Wikipedia as source" in the Post-Standard

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

> If you doubt the standards of our editorial review mechanisms, go try
> and introduce some decidedly un-encyclopaedic (unproven, contentious
> and/or unacademic, etc.) information into an article of your choice.
> Then check back and see how long your contribution will remain in the
> article. My confidence is high that -- depending on how much this
> contribution falls short of encyclopedic standards -- you will find
> your contribution challenged on the respective article's discussion
> page (where you will likely be asked to provide references for your
> claims) or outright removed.

I think "go and try" is a dangerous answer to give to our critics. It is
easy to falsify and it starts at the wrong end. Of course I could insert
wrong information, but for what purpose? And what does that prove about
wikipedia in general?

Wikipedia is based on the assumption that there are much more people
adding valid information than people interested in deliberately
inserting wrong information. I don't talk of vandalism, this is rather
frequent but easily spotted, I talk of deliberately adding "hidden"
mistakes. My claim is that there are not enough people who find such
actions satisfying to make wikipedia in general unreliable as a source.

So please don't tell people "go and try" (they will suceed if they are
halfway intelligent) but tell them: "most people just don't do it,
that's why wikipedia works".

greetings,
elian


body:
Hello Brion,

Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Creative Commons licenses aren't really meant for code. Please see the
> FAQ: http://creativecommons.org/faq#faq_entry_3646

Well, I didn't see this before.

In this case, I will use the GPL, of course.

Eckhart


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> I think the filtering would only be a partial solution. The reason RC worked
> so well was that every change was reviewed by a few competent people.
> If we divide the RC (and provide a special RC for uncategorized articles,
> from which they will be moved to specialized RCs), this property will be restored.
> With general filtering it seems to me that there are going to be many changes
> which won't get into filters of enough competent people. The only idea
> I have how to cope with that group of changes is the division, but maybe
> there's some other way.

Yesterday I dreamt of a "review queue". There's a common situation: I
check an edit on RC, okay, it's not vandalism, but it smells somehow
fishy. The problem is, I have no knowledge of the subject (say, it is
biology). Currently the only, very stony solution is to leave someone I
know who knows about biology a message on his talk page to please have a
look at the article. But most people don't do that.

Instead, I could - RC patrol mode switched on in my user pref - select
in the diff view the biology-queue, and the edit would go in the review
queue of the biologists where someone checks the edit and removes it
from the queue (and takes the appropriate measures).

Dunno if that's too complicated, sounds like.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using 404 to redirect /bla to /wiki/bla

body:
?var-
> Works perfectly except for /style and such which it is not supposed to work
> for.

Can you give me an example? If I go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/style/x0
I get a 404 as I should. Same for the other dirs.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Simon Kissane

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Personal Views

body:
Hi all,

I have implemented the following feature in MediaWiki, which maybe
some might find interesting/useful -- "Personal Views". Basically, any
article page has a "Personal Views" page attached to it; on subpages
of the personal views page, User's can record their personal views of
the topic of the article.

So, for example, User:Foo can record their personal viewpoint on
Microsoft on the page Personal_Views:Microsoft/Foo, a page which only
User:Foo can edit. And by going to "Personal_Views:Microsoft", we can
see everyone's personal views on Microsoft.

Some questions:
1. Any comments on how I implemented this? Anything in adding a new
namespace I forget to do?
2. Can I add this to the CVS?

Also, since my changes are relatively small, it might serve as an
example of how to add a new namespace to WikiMedia. (Maybe I can turn
it into a tutorial...)

Cheers
Simon Kissane
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from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: An alternate parser

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>
> Will I be stepping on any toes if I do some work on it?

Any progress so far? :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template/taxobox mess-up!

body:
Hi, people.

Please could you guys stop creating stuff like this?:

{{Taxobox_begin | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog}}<br />{{StatusSecure}}
{{Taxobox_image | image = [[Image:Norwegian Elkhound 600.jpg|249px|]]
| caption = A [[Norwegian Elkhound]], a breed of domestic dog.}}
{{Taxobox_begin_placement | color = pink}}
{{Taxobox_regnum_entry | taxon = [[Animal]]ia}}
	[... etc. ...]
{{Taxobox_end}}

This is not going to work in the long run. This is extremely prone to
error and extremely hard to maintain.

Please do it the correct way; something like

{{Taxobox | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog |
  image = [[...]] | regnum = [[Animal]]ia | ... etc. ... }}

The former (current) mark-up gives me the creeps. It defies all the
principles of modularity and document structure. As such, this kind of
thing makes the introduction of a better/faster parser pretty damn hard.

Thanks,
Timwi


body:
Proposal:

Let's list the number of total user contributions next to all the user
names in the [[Special:Recentchanges]] list.

Rationale:

This will make it easier to focus on new users who may not yet be
familiar with what's acceptable and what not.

While it is true that there is no straightforward relation between a
bigger number of contributions and contribution quality, it can by and
large however be assumed that if a user regularly submits substandard
and/or mischievous contributions then the community probably knows
about that user.

So despite the shortcomings, seeing a user's number of total previous
contributions in the Recent changes list would be a step forward.

see: http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=245

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Harry Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] New standard for citations?

body:
Copied from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Violence_against_Israelis#Lists

(posted here so I don't have to repeat myself five
times) I dispute the factual accuracy of the various
terrorism against Israel in {year} pages because
sources for the reports therein are (apart from the
word of a single Wikipedian) fragmentary or
non-existent. I will happily withdraw the accuracy
disputes when each item on each list is annotated
properly. ?No-One Jones 10:37, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Mirv has added the "factually disputed" tag to this
set of articles without disputing any individual item.
Are we to annotate each item in each article to meet
this criteria?  Are we to apply this level of citation
to a set of articles?  Is this level of citation to
apply to Violence against Israelis alone?

I would like the disputed tags remove till a factually
inaccuracy is found.  At that point I would like the
inaccuracy corrected, so that the tag would not apply.

Lance6Wins

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now.
http://messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
A miswording of mine, what i meant is that it redirects for the things
it's supposed to redirect for and doesn't redirect for the things it's
not supposed to redirect for. i.e. /upload, /style /wiki

On 29 Aug 2004 00:08:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> ?var-
> > Works perfectly except for /style and such which it is not supposed to work
> > for.
>
> Can you give me an example? If I go to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/style/x0
> I get a 404 as I should. Same for the other dirs.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mosque as military target

body:
I am quite sure that I am not the only person who is intensely swamped
by email.  I try to read every single post to this list and several
other wikipedia lists.

Please, as a courtesy to me and others in the same situation (limited
time, and a desire to stay current), let's try to keep all of our
lists focussed specifically on _wikipedia_ issues.

General discussions of world politics are beyond the scope of this
list.

--Jimbo


body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> So please don't tell people "go and try" (they will suceed if they are
> halfway intelligent) but tell them: "most people just don't do it,
> that's why wikipedia works".

I agree very strongly with this.  When I talk to reporters and this
topic comes up, I specifically ask them *not* to do it, because it is
very rude behavior, even as an experiment.

--Jimbo


body:
Anthere wrote:
> I am curious... why would personal views interest a reader ?
>
> And talk pages already exist for this I think...

I agree with Anthere, but of course if some other type of website
found this useful in the software, we could add it and support it in
the software, even if Wikipedia itself would not use it..

There would be a huge social change in our community if "personal
views" were encouraged.

--Jimbo


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template/taxobox mess-up!

references:
<cgrd8l$773$1@sea.gmane.org> <cgsa9p$gq8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cgsb7g$i9m$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
>
>> Timwi wrote:
>>
>>> {{Taxobox | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog |
>>>  image = [[...]] | regnum = [[Animal]]ia | ... etc. ... }}
>>
>>
>> We would if we could. See ToL talk for more.
>
>
> Can I regard this as an official statement that you will not mind
> those multi-template boxes breaking when a new parser is introduced
> that will support the "correct" way? :)
>
> If that is the case, then that will make my job for the new parser way
> easier.

I'm still wondering why this would matter. So what if a group of
templates is being used together? If that's going to be disallowed,
that seems like a major change in the language, not a detail of
parser implementation. Any definition of template that doesn't
work a lot like a C-type preprocessor macro is likely to be
difficult to explain to users.

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 67

body:
Well, Talk pages are supposed to be discussion of the content of the
article, not discussion of the topic per se. Secondly, I supposed I
was interested in the possibilities for enabling MediaWiki to be used
for smaller communities that do more than just create an encyclopedia
(i.e. record information) but actually debate and discuss things. In
that context, seeing a list of people's personal views on a topic
might be interesting. And personal views can always be potentially
combined into an article (assuming that the view is sufficiently
common, or the person expressing the view is sufficiently important)
in that MediaWiki's universe (which might potentially follow a
different topic focus or POV rules from Wikipedia.)

Cheers
Simon

On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 15:19:05 +0000 (UTC),
wikitech-l-request at wikimedia.org <wikitech-l-request at wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> Message: 4
> Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 17:20:11 +0200
> From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia Personal Views
> To: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <4130A2AB.9000403 at yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> I am curious... why would personal views interest a reader ?
>
> And talk pages already exist for this I think...
>
> Ant


subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS access

body:
Hi,

I am listed on this page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer as
having CVS accesss, which I did, but then I lost it (I accidentally
created two SF.net accounts, so my old one was deleted, which happened
to be the one my CVS access was under.) Could someone please re-add me
to the SF.net project and re-enable my CVS?

Thanks
Simon Kissane


body:
Timwi wrote:

> {{Taxobox | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog |
>  image = [[...]] | regnum = [[Animal]]ia | ... etc. ... }}

We would if we could. See ToL talk for more.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Parsers

body:
Hi.

What progress has been made on new parsers for the week that I was gone?
Is Magnus Manske still working on his? What about the BisonGen one
(sorry I forgot whose that was)? Has anyone done any work on mine?

If the answer to all those is 'no', is there still interest in myself
finishing mine?

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> {{Taxobox | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog |
>>  image = [[...]] | regnum = [[Animal]]ia | ... etc. ... }}
>
> We would if we could. See ToL talk for more.

Can I regard this as an official statement that you will not mind those
multi-template boxes breaking when a new parser is introduced that will
support the "correct" way? :)

If that is the case, then that will make my job for the new parser way
easier.

Thanks,
Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template/taxobox mess-up!

body:
Isnt the reason people use it because of (previous) limits in the
template syntax? Like when [[Image:asdf|pipes|in|images]] did not work
properly?

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 02:57:49 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Hi, people.
>
> Please could you guys stop creating stuff like this?:
>
> {{Taxobox_begin | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog}}<br />{{StatusSecure}}
> {{Taxobox_image | image = [[Image:Norwegian Elkhound 600.jpg|249px|]]
> | caption = A [[Norwegian Elkhound]], a breed of domestic dog.}}
> {{Taxobox_begin_placement | color = pink}}
> {{Taxobox_regnum_entry | taxon = [[Animal]]ia}}
>         [... etc. ...]
> {{Taxobox_end}}
>
> This is not going to work in the long run. This is extremely prone to
> error and extremely hard to maintain.
>
> Please do it the correct way; something like
>
> {{Taxobox | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog |
>   image = [[...]] | regnum = [[Animal]]ia | ... etc. ... }}
>
> The former (current) mark-up gives me the creeps. It defies all the
> principles of modularity and document structure. As such, this kind of
> thing makes the introduction of a better/faster parser pretty damn hard.
>
> Thanks,
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Parsers

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>> If the answer to all those is 'no', is there still interest in myself
>> finishing mine?
>
> Definitely! :-)

Heh. Okay. :)


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
If you don't write the converter for its own sake, you might want to
participate in the current efforts to set up a wiki-to-XML parser. You
can then import XML into your application, which will be a lot easier
than any converter.

Magnus

Eckhart W?rner wrote:

> Hello Brion,
>
> Brion Vibber schrieb:
>
>> Creative Commons licenses aren't really meant for code. Please see
>> the FAQ: http://creativecommons.org/faq#faq_entry_3646
>
>
> Well, I didn't see this before.
>
> In this case, I will use the GPL, of course.
>
> Eckhart
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
>
>> Timwi wrote:
>>
>>> {{Taxobox | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog |
>>>  image = [[...]] | regnum = [[Animal]]ia | ... etc. ... }}
>>
>>
>> We would if we could. See ToL talk for more.
>
>
> Can I regard this as an official statement that you will not mind those
> multi-template boxes breaking when a new parser is introduced that will
> support the "correct" way? :)
>
> If that is the case, then that will make my job for the new parser way
> easier.

Firstly, those who have worked on ToL taxoboxes would I am sure fall
deeply in love with anyone who implements optional parameters to
templates, otherwise the method you suggest for taxobox templates is
completely impossible (not all species have images, authors, particular
levels of taxa etc etc) so a single taxobox without optional parameters
does not work (and the number of different taxoboxes required grows
exponentially).

Having said that, if you are planning to break the existing code, which
is a perfectly "correct" use of the existing functionality, I am sure
people will very much do the opposite of love you! :)

Pete


subject: [Wikitech-l] Parsers

body:
Timwi wrote:

> What progress has been made on new parsers for the week that I was
> gone? Is Magnus Manske still working on his? What about the BisonGen
> one (sorry I forgot whose that was)? Has anyone done any work on mine?

Nope, didn't do a thing, no time :-(

> If the answer to all those is 'no', is there still interest in myself
> finishing mine?

Definitely! :-)


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Being productive with interwikis

body:
Hi,

I was wondering if the interwikis could help wikipedians to focus on
missing articles in the editions. Let me explain

If an article has several interwikis, this might be an "indication" that
this lemma is valid. So my idea is to produce lists of articles that
follow this attributes:

* A list of English articles that do have x > {2,3,..} interwikis but
don't have an interwiki to de.
* A list of French articles that do have x > {2,3,..} interwikis but
don't have an interwiki to de.

and so on.

There are (imho) three possible main solutions for coming into that list:

* The article is still missing in de.wikipedia (fix: Write that article)
* The article existis but is not linked (fix: set up that interwiki)
* The article is split up for disambiguation

Is there an efficient way to produce that lists? Are there objections to
that thought? Does anyone think that there are easier ways to achieve
that result of bringing the editions closer to each other?

Mathias


body:
Sounds cool to me.  I don't know how it would work within the Wikipedia, but
I know of at least one person who will rail you for proposing 'forks'
because 'forks' are bad.  But I think it would be a great way to increase
the range of knowledge of the Wikipedia, by having the TV Show guides, then
links to the wikipedia from within that guide to the stars, the show's
encyclopedic entries, directors, producers, guest stars, etc.
	As for regional differences, I'd say to keep it in the original
language's name, but translate it across wikis.  So that Star Trek, an
originally English show, has "Star Trek" as its English title, "Star Trek"
for German, and so on, but with a line saying "Original Title: Star Trek,"
or "Premiere Title: Star Trek" or "Erste Titel: Star Trek."  And as for
portions of the show in regions, simply say in the French, German, Japanese,
or whatever that "This show did not air on Japanese television due to
excessive violence." or something like that, but continue to have the
regional versions.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of kelvSYC
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 12:49 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] A new idea: a Wiki-based TV episode guide

Maybe it's OT for this list (if it is, then I forget which list is
appropriate), but I thought of a new Wiki proposal people might like and
could be implemented if people were up to it:

Seeing that there seems to be articles on individual episodes of certain TV
shows in Wikipedia that some might argue is unencyclopedic (due to the fact
that they contribute little other than an episode summary), how about a
television episode guide based on the Wiki philosophy (a "Wikivision"
perhaps)?

The idea was inspired largely by Wikibooks and their management of
individual "books", followed by individual articles within each "book".
  Likewise, this Wiki-based TV Guide would have major sections for an
individual TV series, and each article would represent one show in one
particular series.  The goal of such a Wiki would be to essentially provide
summaries to as many episodes for as many TV series as possible, in as many
different languages as we can.

A potential obstacle to this idea (not a technical obstacle, but rather a
policy obstacle) would be the regional differences that may exist within the
same show.  For example, edit wars may occur over whether to use the titles
and names that are used for the English or French, German, Japanese, or
other regional version, and whether or not to include episodes that aired in
one region but not another (and if so, which title is the article with the
content and which ones are redirects to that article).

What do you all think of the idea?

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


body:
And the direct link to that talk is?

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 11:20:23 +0100, Pete/Pcb21
<pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
> > {{Taxobox | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog |
> >  image = [[...]] | regnum = [[Animal]]ia | ... etc. ... }}
>
> We would if we could. See ToL talk for more.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
A "score" for an article could be developed from number of edits, number of
users who have edited the article, and number of times a reader has looked
at the page.

Number of times someone has looked at the page tells you the number of times
anyone has had an opporunity to edit, number of edits and number of users
who have edited shows how much the article has been worked over.

Fred

> From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 15:36:13 -0400
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] some thoughts on peer-review and obscure subjects
>
> So, as others have proposed, I do think we eventually need some sort of
> tagging system, so people know whether a particular article is a
> well-worked-over draft, or an initial draft that has undergone little to
> no review.


body:
Hello Magnus,

Magnus Manske schrieb:
> If you don't write the converter for its own sake, you might want to
> participate in the current efforts to set up a wiki-to-XML parser. You
> can then import XML into your application, which will be a lot easier
> than any converter.

Well, I think I'd better present my idea.
My idea was an XUL [1] web application which gets the wiki markup from
the Wikipedia server and does a transformation to XML. It then displays
the XML using XSL.
The idea - i call it WikiFox although it should also run under all other
browsers that use Gecko layout engine [2] -
requires a working wiki-to-XML-converter written in JavaScript.
There are also some other problems I am confronted with at the moment -
see [3].

Eckhart

PS: I just noticed that I have sent this message to Magnus, not to the
list. Why is there suddenly no Reply-To header in Magnus's message?

--
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_layout_engine
[3] http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208


from_name: Charles Podles

subject: [WikiEN-l] New standard for citations?

body:
--- Harry Smith <lance6wins at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Copied from
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Violence_against_Israelis#Lists

Where it should stay, but nevermind; I'll explain here
but request that any further discussion go to the
appropriate talk page.

> (posted here so I don't have to repeat myself five
> times) I dispute the factual accuracy of the various
> terrorism against Israel in {year} pages because
> sources for the reports therein are (apart from the
> word of a single Wikipedian) fragmentary or
> non-existent. I will happily withdraw the accuracy
> disputes when each item on each list is annotated
> properly. ?No-One Jones 10:37, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
>
> Mirv has added the "factually disputed" tag to this
> set of articles without disputing any individual
> item.

Well, here are some examples, which I'll copy to the
talk page:

* August 23: A female motorist was wounded by large
rocks thrown at her vehicle while traveling late at
night. ([[Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
2004]])

Here we have no name for the victim, no location for
the attack, and no word other than that of the author
(whose political views and agenda are well-known to
anyone who watches Wikipedia's articles on the Middle
East) on who was responsible. Without a source we
don't even know that if the item is anything other
than word-of-mouth rumour.

*April 28: An Israeli woman stabbed to death in
Karmiel, Galilee. ([[Terrorism against Israel in
2001]])

This item at least has a location, but the rest of it
suffers from the same vagueness: no name, no way to
confirm that this even happened, and no way to tell if
it even belongs in the list.

> Are we to annotate each item in each article to meet
> this criteria?
>Are we to apply this level of
> citation
> to a set of articles?  Is this level of citation to
> apply to Violence against Israelis alone?

In controversial and politically-charged articles,
citations are of paramount importance but are all too
often omitted. The set of articles in question is just
a particularly egregious example of the problem.

> I would like the disputed tags remove till a
> factually
> inaccuracy is found.  At that point I would like the
> inaccuracy corrected, so that the tag would not
> apply.

And I would like to see the disputed tags stay.
[[Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute]] says the following:

*begin quote*

The accuracy of an article may be a cause for concern
if:

* It contains a lot of unlikely information, without
providing references.
* It contains information which is particularly
difficult to verify.
* In, for example, a long list, some errors have been
found, suggesting that the list as a whole may need
further checking.
* It has been written (or edited) by a user who is
known to write inaccurately on the topic.

*end quote*

Reasons #2 and #4 (and perhaps #1) apply to the lists
in question, which I think is ample reason to keep the
disputes in place.

--Charles Podles ([[en:User:Mirv]])

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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fr.wikipedia 50.000 articles

body:
Hi,

The french wikipedia just made it to 50 000 articles
today.

I must say... I cheated, so as to ensure I would do
the 50 000 article :-)
I prepared a collection of stubs and saved them in a
row at the right moment :-) The trick was to save the
right article for the 50 000...

Cough.

When I first edited the french wikipedia, it was
mostly  a collection of stubs, perhaps 5 serious
articles and 100 stubs. Then months after months,
articles got better, more complete. And while they
grew, more and more contributors started complaining
against stubs, which they judge dishonest toward the
readers and not worth for the project.

In summer 2002 (the wikipedia was still in the first
version of the software then, so there was no notion
of namespaces, and about 700 pages all included), a
new editor joigned, Tim (Athymik). Tim has now left
wikipedia.

Tim often wrote stubs; he wrote many in human biology.
One day, he wrote a stub, which could even be called
substubs, the most famous of which was the article on
the apple.

The '''apple''' is a [[fruit]].

http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085.

This one, and with it, several other articles on
fruits (the pear is a fruit etc...) was really
borderline :-)

After Tim wrote several of those, some people
protested (definitly, me included).

A reference of this discussion is here
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discuter%3APoire (this is
the discussion page of the pear).

The article on the apple is now here :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomme

A year later, ''the apple is a fruit'' had become a
real article. The pirannah affect was born.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3AEffet_piranha

Tim throw a few bits on a page, and the other editors
ate them. I think that "the apple is a fruit" became a
historical reference.

Later, Tim grew tired of Wikipedia, and after he
dropped his sysop status, he left. I regretted him,
because we both played a lot having anonymous funny
exchanges on Wikipedia.

Today, I made as the 50 000 article, la n?fle, the
medlar.

The medlar is a fruit.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=N%C3%A8fle&oldid=784091

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A8fle

The expression "Des n?fles" also means in french
"something of little value"

Just as a stub is in itself of little value.

In doing this, the stub-n?fle, I wished to remind
editors that if a stub has nothing very exciting, it
is a start. Our collective additions give our common
project its value.

I also wished to remind that even if Wikipedia is
quite young, Wikipedia also has an history. And I
wanted to thank all those who brought quite a lot and
who are now gone, such as Athymik and so many others,
who left some memories, who left content and who are
now gone.

Thanks to all of them for what their participation.

I'll see what the n?fle article is in one year from
now. Hopefully in 10 years :-) Hehe.

ant

Les plus anciens se souviendront de cette histoire que
je vais vous relater. Il existait dans les temps
anciens un contributeur nomm? Tim. Tim est parti
depuis de long mois maintenant, mais il fut un
contributeur important ? une ?poque.

Dans ces d?buts, la majeure partie de l'encyclop?die
?tait constitu? de stubs (je pourrais probablement
dire que le projet comptait environ 100 stubs quand je
l'?ditait - anonymement - la premi?re fois. Au cours
des mois, les articles se sont am?lior?s enrichis. Et
de nouveaux contributeurs se sont mis ? ronchonner
contre les stubs, jug?s peu dignes du projet.

Un jour, Tim ?crivit une s?rie de stubs, ? la limite
de l'indignit?. Un de ces stubs fut celui de la
[[pomme]]. Je vous invite ? voir l'article de l'?poque
:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085.
Apr?s que Tim eu ?crit plusieurs articles du m?me
genre, plusieurs personnes protest?rent (dont moi, car
en effet, ce genre de stub ne m'enchante pas). Vous
trouverez une petite r?f?rence ici :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discuter%3APoire (la
poire ayant subi le m?me outrage que la pomme).

L'effet pirannah ?tait n?. Tim jeta en pature quelques
miettes, et les autres ?diteurs firent le reste.
Presque deux ans plus tard, vous pouvez lire ce qu'il
deveint de la [[poire]] (certes moins belle que la
pomme). Voir ainsi [[Wikip?dia:Effet piranha]].

Puis Tim s'est lass?, et, apr?s avoir quitt? son
statut d'admin, il est parti. Je l'ai regrett?, car
j'aimais jouer ? l'?diteur anonyme avec lui (jeu
r?ciproque).

En recr?ant comme 50 000 article la [[n?fle]], j'ai
voulu ? la fois rappeler aux m?moires que, m?me si un
stub n'a rien d'excitant, c'est un point de d?part, et
que nos ajouts collectifs donnent sa valeur ? notre
projet commun. J'ai voulu aussi rappeler que m?me si
jeune, Wikip?dia a d?j? une histoire, et remercier
ceux qui ont d?j? beaucoup apport?s, et sont partis,
comme [[Utilisateur:Athymik]] ou [[Utilisateur:Curry]]
(suspendu en plein vol), ou [[Utilisateur:Tibo]] ou
tellement d'autres, qui sont pass?s, qui ont laiss?
leur trace, et qui sont repartis. Merci ? eux et ?
vous tous :-)

ant

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from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] some thoughts on peer-review and obscure subjects

body:
Marco Krohn wrote:

>On Thursday 26 August 2004 12:16, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
>
>>On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 11:46:32AM +0200, Peter Gervai wrote:
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>>Why, this article is pretty fair. It states only the truth:
>>>* Wikipedia is not reviewed by the academics
>>>* Wikipedia does not guarantee validity or accuracy
>>>
>>>
>>Neither are paper encyclopedias, but somehow he didn't have any problems
>>with them. This article is pure biased bullshit.
>>
>>
>
>I haven't read the article, but AFAIK at least some parts of paper
>encyclopedias are reviewed. At the Brockhaus they claim that every article
>was at least reviewed three times. O.k. I can's validate this information
>neither can I proof that it was always reviewed by academics. Nevertheless
>Brockhaus lists >1000 external authors (many of have a PhD or higher degree)
>which helped with the new edition. The latter is at least some indication
>that their claims are not completely without base.
>
>In contrast to that we can not even say if a part of an article was read more
>than once.
>
>
Although the wikievangelists will disagree with me, I do think this is
somewhat of a problem.  Given a random article from an encyclopedia,
there is a higher probability that there are errors, even major ones, in
a Wikipedia article.  Of course, there are more Wikipedia articles, but
this doesn't help in terms of "chance any given fact I look up is
accurate."  It makes it difficult, without some additional heuristics,
to use Wikipedia articles as anything but a pointer to further reading.

Now there are, of course, additional heuristics.  Articles which have
many contributors, especially many well-respected contributors, have a
much higher chance of being accurate, of having controversial material
labeled as such (with all sides represented), and so on.  Articles
written by only one or two people, on the other hand, can have almost
anything: urban legends someone heard from a friend or off google and
repeated; biased takes on an issue from a particular point of view with
no mention of controversy over those views; and so on.  Those of us who
are active Wikipedians have an easier time telling the two apart than a
random person reading Wikipedia, who is not necessarily going to browse
through the article's history and the contribution histories of the
various contributors to the article.

So, as others have proposed, I do think we eventually need some sort of
tagging system, so people know whether a particular article is a
well-worked-over draft, or an initial draft that has undergone little to
no review.

This is particularly important because one of Wikipedia's strengths is
that we cover a lot of subjects that other encyclopedias do not cover
_at all_.  Unfortunately, it is these obscure subjects where the
probability that there are erroneous or slanted articles is the highest,
because there are not very many Wikipedians knowledgeable enough to
review such articles.  _But_, some of these articles do happen to be of
very high quality, and these ought to somehow be marked.  Otherwise, the
heuristic a lot of people will end up using (based on some discussions
with non-Wikipedians who use it) is "on famous stuff, like [[Israel]] or
[[George Washington]], Wikipedia is pretty good, but on obscure stuff
you can't trust it."  We need to somehow indicate to people which of our
obscure stuff they can put a higher degree of confidence in, since it's
one of our strengths that we do have a lot of accurate, well-researched
obscure stuff.

-Mark


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
--- Anthony DiPierro <anthonydipierro at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Of course, by this rationale, Wikimedia Commons itself is an unnecessary
> fork, since all the images in the Commons could be put into Wikipedia
> itself.

No it is not since the Commons is a common place to host data and files that
are used by more than one wiki. It therefore helps to bind us together, not
divide us.

-- mav

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body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The french wikipedia just made it to 50 000 articles
> today.
> ...

Magnifique!

-- Le mav :)

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body:
--- kelvSYC <kelvsyc at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Seeing that there seems to be articles on individual episodes of
> certain TV shows in Wikipedia that some might argue is unencyclopedic
> (due to the fact that they contribute little other than an episode
> summary), how about a television episode guide based on the Wiki
> philosophy (a "Wikivision" perhaps)?

Just lump small summaries together into larger, list-like articles for the
relevant seasons. This is already done for minor fictional characters. No need
for a separate project.

-- mav

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body:
--- "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:

> An episode guide within that TV Show's wiki article?  Sounds good to me.

Separate articles for each season would be better (with a summary and maybe a
table for the main TV show's article). Organizing layout and such would be done
through WikiProject Television on the various wp language versions.

-- mav

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from_name: Eckhart Wörner

body:
Hello Magnus,

Magnus Manske schrieb:
> Why not help developing (or jsut sit back and wait till it is done;-)

Sitting back and waiting is always the worse decision. :-)

> that XML generator? It will run at the wikipedia site, and one can then
> probably grab "real" XML - not the pseudo-XML one can get now through
> SpecialPages-Export. This could include list of authors etc. Then you
> can do your XUL thing. Also, this will mean that we (wikimedia) gets an
> XML standard, instead of everyone generating their own flavour of wiki XML.

Just saw the Wikipedia DTD, and stopped sitting back. ;-)

Eckhart

--
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_DTD


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia RC is broken

body:
--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > I think we just have to divide RC into reasonably-sized parts.
>
> I think "filtering" is a more apropriate word than "division". Perhaps
> I only want to see changes in biology categories,

This can already be done by using 'Related changes' on a list of
biology-related articles. But creating and maintaining such a list is too
centralized and too hard to maintain for a wiki.

I do see that 'Related changes' somewhat works now for articles listed on
category pages. What is needed, IMO, is for user-selectable levels for that
feature such that all articles with the category Biology, for example, and all
articles that are listed as sub, sub-sub, sub-sub-sub, etc., categories of
Biology could all be displayed in a single RC for Biology-related articles.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
An episode guide within that TV Show's wiki article?  Sounds good to me.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 8:58 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] A new idea: a Wiki-based TV episode guide

--- kelvSYC <kelvsyc at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Seeing that there seems to be articles on individual episodes of
> certain TV shows in Wikipedia that some might argue is unencyclopedic
> (due to the fact that they contribute little other than an episode
> summary), how about a television episode guide based on the Wiki
> philosophy (a "Wikivision" perhaps)?

Just lump small summaries together into larger, list-like articles for the
relevant seasons. This is already done for minor fictional characters. No
need for a separate project.

-- mav

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Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: foundation-l

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Upcoming press release - 1,000,000 articles

body:
I've started a page for a new press release for when we reach one
million Wikipedia articles:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_press_releases/One_million_Wikipedia_articles

I guess this means I'm taking Anthere up on her suggestion that I
coordinate this press release, but obviously I can't do it alone and I
welcome anybody who is interested in helping out. So far I basically
copied the 500,000-article press release and rewrote some of the first
paragraph. Obviously a lot of the content is still outdated information
and will need work.

I agree with Anthere's general comments that we should probably try and
make this press release more concise. Also, hopefully we'll leave a
paragraph or so that each Wikipedia can write itself to include items of
particular local interest.

Since it appears that we'll reach one million articles in mid-September,
I've suggested a timeline for the process. I'm hoping we can get the
press release written by 7 September, then freeze the content and allow
a week for it to be translated into as many languages as possible before
14 September. Then start distributing it on or about 15 September,
depending on what day we actually reach the milestone.

If people could spread the word on the different Wikipedias, I would
really appreciate it. Input from all languages is welcome, and in any
case we'll need a lot of help when it comes time for translations.

--Michael Snow


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anglo-Saxon wikipedia

body:
Based on the past discussion and support for an Anglo-Saxon wikipedia, I've
begun translating the interface (PHP file, I think), and listed it at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Complete_list_of_language_Wikipedias_availabl
e .  I was wondering if there are any others on this list who could help me
get this wiki started, specifically in the coding arena.

Thanks,

James


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer poll results

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Possibly more readable on wiki :-)
> here :
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment_poll/results#Results_for_the_poll
>
> Greetings :-)

<snip>

Thanks for your work on that Anthere.

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.3.2 released

body:
1.3.2 fixes since 1.3.1:
* Fix namespaced page creation links when no go match
* When cookies are disabled, don't show login screen twice
* Install should no longer die when PHP is pre-configured to compress
   output
* Fixed bug that caused long Japanese pages to time out with Tidy active
* When session.handler is set incorrectly, try automatic override
   to 'files'
* Watch/Unwatch links back to the affected page instead of Main Page
* Upload link no longer displayed on Monobook if uploading is disabled
* Special:Allmessages faster, shows correct original text, works in
   safe mode

Anyone still running the 1.3 beta releases is _strongly_ recommended to
upgrade to the current code due to numerous fixed bugs and a security
vulnerability in the betas with some PHP configurations.

Note that while MediaWiki through 1.1 required register_globals to be
on, 1.2 and 1.3 *do not*. If you have register_globals on, you should
turn it off unless you are absolutely sure you require it for some other
package. See http://php.net/register_globals for general information.

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=264310

Download:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.3.2.tar.gz?download

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: How to get a list of authors for each article

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

> Why do you need an extra table?
>
> SELECT DISTINCT old_user_text FROM old
>  WHERE old_namespace=0
>    AND old_title='ArticleYouWantTheAuthorListFor'
>    AND old_user_id != 0;
>
> should do the job. (IP's have old_user_id=0)

Thanks! I missed the old_user_id colum.

I'll write the required function in PHP to get it implemented as a
function in MediaWiki.

Jakob


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stamps, wiki and copyright

body:
Hi,

Le Sunday 29 August 2004 02:58, Stan Shebs a ?crit :
> Yann Forget wrote:
> >
> >While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an
> >encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope
> > of Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.
>
> Don't tease me! :-) I have a database currently describing 146,336
> types to varying degrees of detail, all personally typed in by me
> and copyright-clean, made possible by some special C software that
> handles defaults and integrity checking. This is about half of all
> types in existence. I use it to track my collection, which is an
> unknown size above 68,557 types, since many are in the "other half"
> not yet entered - WP editing has severely cut into my stamp db
> time. :-( The software also lets me do things like download into
> a Palm, so it's handy when I'm out shopping.
>
> Certainly I've thought about how to publish this database, and
> have steered clear of the various obstacles (no use of existing
> catalog numbers for instance) in expectation of being able to make
> it available some day. A wiki project could be a great way to
> finish filling it out, and I even brought it up a while back as
> something that needs a database-editing mode.
>
> There are some technical problems to solve; for instance, I don't
> want to upload data about my personal collection, but if people
> add to the type data, I want to be able to download it and merge
> in - but what if some idiot deleted the record describing one of
> my stamps? I've also started separating the English-language bits
> from the generic data, in the hope of making it multi-lingual.
>
> I'm of two minds about whether it's "encyclopedia data" - certainly
> there are "encyclopedias of postage stamps", with coverage ranging
> from one paragraph to multiple pages per stamp. (When you get into
> designers, the politics, the varieties, etc, it adds up.) On the
> other hand, I've been seeding WP with overview-type philatelic
> accounts for various countries, about two dozen articles so far,
> plus a pile of illustrations, but they haven't generated much
> interest - glaring typos have sat in some of them for months.
> So it doesn't feel like there's a groundswell of demand for
> something even lengthier and more detailed.
>
> But if people like, I could create a meta page with more info about
> my existing data and how it might be usefully wikified, and we can
> continue thinking about it there.

Yes, go for it!
I am very interested to build a free database about stamps.
See http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/stamps-sql/
A simple MySQL database with data about 3000 French stamps.
This project was a failure. Probably Savannah is not adapted for this kind of
project, it's mainly not software, but data.
However I am not sure that Mediawiki is the framework needed for this.

> Stan

Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: phil hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: New standard for citations?

body:
On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 05:48:41 -0700 (PDT), Harry Smith <lance6wins at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Copied from
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Violence_against_Israelis#Lists
>
>(posted here so I don't have to repeat myself five
>times) I dispute the factual accuracy of the various
>terrorism against Israel in {year} pages because
>sources for the reports therein are (apart from the
>word of a single Wikipedian) fragmentary or
>non-existent. I will happily withdraw the accuracy
>disputes when each item on each list is annotated
>properly. ?No-One Jones 10:37, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
>
>Mirv has added the "factually disputed" tag to this
>set of articles without disputing any individual item.
>Are we to annotate each item in each article to meet
>this criteria?

I think it's a good idea to have as much accuracy in Wikipedia, and
backing statementys up with citations will help us be accurate.

> Are we to apply this level of citation
>to a set of articles?  Is this level of citation to
>apply to Violence against Israelis alone?

I think citations are a particularly good idea in those articles
where accuracy or NPOV is disputed.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: in response to your article "Librarian: Don't use
	Wikipedia as source" in the Post-Standard

body:
On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 09:19:22 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>> So please don't tell people "go and try" (they will suceed if they are
>> halfway intelligent) but tell them: "most people just don't do it,
>> that's why wikipedia works".
>
>I agree very strongly with this.  When I talk to reporters and this
>topic comes up, I specifically ask them *not* to do it, because it is
>very rude behavior, even as an experiment.

All this talk of deliberately wrong edits has apparently inspired a
misguided person, one [[User:AlHalawi]], to do it.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
Hi Anthere!

> The french wikipedia just made it to 50 000 articles today.

Great! Congratulations to all the contributors of the French Wikipedia!
The German Wikipedia hat a big media boost at that time, I hope there will
happen something similar in France.

That's a nice story about the stubs. I think it's important for every Wiki to
have some people around from the very beginning of the project, who can tell
what the site looked like one, two or three years ago. Especially on VfD I often
see newbies complaining about stubs, and sometimes also long-time contributors
are frustrated and start complaining that things are getting worse. The truth
is: Things are getting better, from day to day. Sometimes I send people to
archive.org [1], and they can't believe what they see. :-)

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/*/de.wikipedia.com

Kurt

--
  http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile B?cher, Videos und CDs mit anderen!
  http://wikipedia.de    -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklop?die!
  Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de


from_name: John

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and "personal use"?

body:
Back in May 2004 [[User:ChrisDJackson]], who appears to be inactive on
Wikipedia at the moment, uploaded [[Image:Bushlogo.jpg]], but provided
no information about its source or its use status. Assuming it came
from http://www.georgewbush.com/  then it would fall under the sites
copyright terms which are http://www.georgewbush.com/copyright.aspx

"All compilation and content of this site, including its assembly,
design, text, illustrations, photographs, logos, etc. are the
intellectual property of Bush-Cheney '04, Inc., its affiliates or its
content suppliers and constitute copyrighted material, trademarks
and/or trade dress. This site and its contents may be used only for
personal, noncommercial use. All worldwide rights, titles and
interests are reserved."

Now, Wikipedia is certainly noncommercial, but these copyright terms
bring up another larger question, is Wikipedia "personal"?

Should we continue to use this image, or other images protected for
"personal" use? What's the US law in this area, do laws of other
nations also apply because Wikipedia is an internet site?


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parsers

body:
On Sun, 2004-08-29 at 11:27 +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Hi.
>
> What progress has been made on new parsers for the week that I was gone?
> Is Magnus Manske still working on his? What about the BisonGen one
> (sorry I forgot whose that was)?

I've been studying the dom stuff in more detail, mainly Xlink as
transclusion representation. My intention is not to return any xml text
that would need to be parsed again for further processing, so tight
integration with python is necessary. Similar with syntax that needs to
be passed in like allowed html tags and parameters, extension names etc.
Current code is at http://dl.aulinx.de/wikiparser/.

> Has anyone done any work on mine?
>
> If the answer to all those is 'no', is there still interest in myself
> finishing mine?

Sure, i don't work on php integration anyway and don't expect to make
too much progress in the next two weeks as i'm moving/starting new
studies soon. A way to generate a pure php parser from the same grammar
would also be nice to avoid maintaining two completely separate parsers.
Might be possible to add php support to BisonGen, don't know.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template:PD-US

body:
PD-US is for photographs that are definitely public domain under US
copyright law but may not be under others.  Ignoring a few possible
(but unproven) legal wrinkles, everything published pre-1923 is public
domain in the US.  Some of this material may not be public domain
elsewhere, because of differing law (70 years from author death, for
example, would place some pre-1923 works still in copyright
elsewhere).

This also applies to things that are PD in the US because the
requirements of former US copyright law were not met; copyright lapsed
through lack of renewal, or work published without a copyright notice.
 These works may still be copyrighted elsewhere.

PD-USGov is for photos that are PD because they are US Government photos.

-Matt

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 10:13:08 +0200, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> >From Wikipedia:Copyrights:
>
> "Government photographs
>
> Works produced by employees of the United States federal government in
> the scope of their employment are public domain by statute. However,
> note that, despite popular misconception, the US Federal Government
> can own copyrights that are assigned to it by others. As a general
> rule photographs on .mil and .gov sites are public domain. However
> there are some notable exceptions. Check the privacy and security
> notice of the website. It should also be noted that governments
> outside the US often do claim copyright over works produced by their
> employees (for example, Crown Copyright in the United Kingdom). Also,
> most state governments in the United States do not place their work
> into the public domain and do in fact own the copyright to their work.
> Please be careful to check ownership information before copying."
>
> >From Template:PD-US
> "This image is in the public domain in the United States and possibly
> other jurisdictions. See Copyright."
>
> I think it's a bit vague but don't dare "fix" it because i might be
> "un-fixing" something, what it reads like to me is that things marked
> as {{PD-US}} are in the public domain in the United States but might
> not be in the public domain in other countries. Is this the desired
> message or does it mean to say that things marked as {{PD-US}} are
> things put into the public domain by the US Government?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fr.wikipedia 50.000 articles

body:
Anthere wrote:
> [A great story]
> ant

Lovely story - hope it ends up on meta somewhere :).
Congratulations to all at fr.

Pete/Pcb21


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia RC is broken

body:
On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 03:16:20 +0200 Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com>
wrote:

>Proposal:
>
>Let's list the number of total user contributions next to all the user
>names in the [[Special:Recentchanges]] list.

That's certainly a possibility; my proposal would be to get the
RecentChanges ordered by editor rather than by date. Then when checking 1 or
2 edits from a person and seeing they are okay, one can go to the next
person, who might be someone needing a hand for this or that.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: An alternate parser

body:
On Sun, 2004-08-22 at 21:13 +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
> > Timwi wrote:
> >
> >> Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> >>
> >>> This is what i'm writing currently
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> So how many people are currently working on a new parser?  :-)
> >
> >
> > Never heard of redundancy? We'll get at least *one* parser done, even if
> > some of us go bluescreen in the process ;-)
>
> I think I like Magnus' one better. Gabriel's might be alright if it was
> in CVS, but it's not as far as I can see. Will I be stepping on any toes
> if I do some work on it?

No, if there's interest i (or you) can upload it to CVS as well- it's
just not really geared towards working with the current php code (would
only return plain xml which php would need to re-parse). It's also
supporting big parts of the current Moin syntax additional to the
MediaWiki one, and integrating the parser with the Moin framework is
what i'd like to do after getting the dom processing working. Kind of
another wiki supporting the MediaWiki syntax (yes, with some MW features
missing), but smaller code and a cleaner architecture. The planned and
currently-being-worked on Moin framework promises many small components
tied together by events and interfaces which makes it easy to
extend/change things without hacking the main code. Current Moin is also
faster than MediaWiki, mainly due to mod_python's long-running processes
(little Setup.php-like overhead) and an efficient pickle-based caching
system.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer poll results

body:
Ashar Voultoiz a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Possibly more readable on wiki :-)
>> here :
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment_poll/results#Results_for_the_poll
>>
>> Greetings :-)
>
>
> <snip>
>
> Thanks for your work on that Anthere.

Thanks

Let's negociate something in exchange would you ?

Please, do not delete the stubs.

"The prune is a fruit" does not deserve such deed.

Okay ?

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3APages_%C3%A0_supprimer#29_ao.C3.BBt_2004