subject: [WikiEN-l] censorship

body:
--- Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > I hate to say this, but you know what I mean. Stop
> > exploiting loopholes in my wording. I guess
> "censor
> > obscene content" would be more clear.
> > --LittleDan
>
> But Dan, you still don't tell us how to identify
> what
> is obscene.  As Vicki said, it's in the eye of the
> beholder.  Victorians used to cover the legs of
> pianos
> and refer to human extremities as "limbs".
>
> Zoe

OK. I guess I'd define obscene as something that is
blocked on broadcast TV in the United States, but that
is extremely biased, and from what I understand, it is
overly-complicated. Maybe any genitals and female breasts.

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: vandalism

body:
On Sunday 18 May 2003 13:39, koyaanis qatsi wrote:
> Hm, I've misunderstood something then.  How is it The
> Stick et al. can keep logging in under different
> accounts?

"Depending on one's Internet connection the IP address can be the same every
time, a static IP address, or different per session (but the first part being
the same each time): a dynamic IP address."

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

> > Are you just suggesting we make "vandals" think
> > that the wiki is "broken" so they'll go away?
>
> Yes.

Well, I'm sure that the numerous AOL users and others using major ISPs will be
thrilled to see the wiki is "broken" after some idiot wrote "u r al gay" in
one page and got the dynamic IP permanently banned. Then the developers will
get e-mails about "your site is down" and we won't know what the hell they're
talking about, because they can't describe what's happened so we can unblock
the IP.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: vandalism

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Well, I'm sure that the numerous AOL users and
> others using major ISPs will be
> thrilled to see the wiki is "broken" after some
> idiot wrote "u r al gay" in
> one page and got the dynamic IP permanently banned.
> Then the developers will
> get e-mails about "your site is down" and we won't
> know what the hell they're
> talking about, because they can't describe what's
> happened so we can unblock
> the IP.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I've long thought that IP bans should be automatically
reverted after one week because most people have
dynamic IPs.
--LittleDan

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from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: vandalism

body:
Erik:
> That's what I've been trying to tell you:
> WE HAVEN'T BANNED HIS IP ADDRESS. Please
> read my earlier mails again.

thanks for shouting.  it's all perfectly clear now.

kq

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #360 - 17 msgs

body:
Brion:
> Well, I'm sure that the numerous AOL users
> and others using major ISPs will be thrilled
> to see the wiki is "broken" after some idiot
> wrote "u r al gay" in one page and got the
> dynamic IP permanently banned.

Hello?  That's why I asked if it was something we
wanted to consider.  Apparently it's not.  Thanks for
explaining.

kq

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subject: [WikiEN-l] censorship

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> LittleDan-
> > As for the category scheme that Eloquence
> suggested
> > (but I accidentally deleted the email) I think
> that
> > would be a great idea, but it would require too
> much
> > work. I've always wanted a category scheme, even a
> > rough one like in the esperanto wiki, and your
> > suggestion would work out well. I just think that
> if
> > we set our goals too high, we'll never complete
> them
> > (though I suppose Wikipedia is in defiance of
> this).
> > --LittleDan
>
> You think that making Wikipedia censorable for
> "inappropriate" content is
> a worthwhile goal. I don't.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

I seem to be going against almost everyone, so I'll
just concede to the majority. I no longer support the
censorship of Wikipedia.
--LittleDan

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from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] censorship

body:
At 01:20 PM 5/18/03 -0700, LittleDan wrote:

>--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
> > At 09:49 AM 5/18/03 -0700, LittleDan wrote:
> > >I wrote:
> > > > [ ] Censor inapropriate content
> > >
> > >But I meant
> > > > [ ] Censor obscene content
> > >or
> > > > [ ] Censor content that may be considered
> > obscene.
> >
> > "Content that may be considered obscene" is
> > incredibly wide,
> > depending on who is doing the considering: diagnosis
> > and
> > treatment of breast cancer, for example. Two people
> > of the same
> > gender kissing. A woman nursing a baby. The bare
> > human calf
> > used to be considered shocking and provocative.
> > --
> > Vicki Rosenzweig
> > vr at redbird.org
> > http://www.redbird.org
>
>I hate to say this, but you know what I mean.

No, I don't know what you mean. "Obscene" is not
a well-defined category in the first place and, more to
the point, *obscene according to what standards*?
The server is in California, but will users understand the
differences between the standards of that state's law and
of wherever they happen to be?

The breast cancer example is one of the things that is
routinely blocked by censorware designed to "protect"
users from obscene material.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] censorship

body:
At 05:14 PM 5/18/03 -0400, I wrote:

>No, I don't know what you mean. "Obscene" is not
>a well-defined category in the first place and, more to
>the point, *obscene according to what standards*?
>The server is in California, but will users understand the
>differences between the standards of that state's law and
>of wherever they happen to be?
>
>The breast cancer example is one of the things that is
>routinely blocked by censorware designed to "protect"
>users from obscene material.

P.S. Part of why I'm not prepared to accept "you know what I mean"
is that two different users, at different sites, have informed me that my
own Website has been blocked on the grounds that it contains inappropriate
sexual content. It contains no sexual content, appropriate or otherwise.
The URL in question is http://www.redbird.org/yawl.html.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] re: vandalism

body:
I didn't realize what a thoroughly stupid idea the
IP/block login idea was until you mentioned all the
people that would be trying to tell you that the
server is broken.  Sorry about that.

kq

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body:
On Sunday 18 May 2003 16:55, koyaanis qatsi wrote:
> Hello?  That's why I asked if it was something we
> wanted to consider.  Apparently it's not.  Thanks for
> explaining.

Well, I'm glad that's settled. :)

My apologies if I sounded a little rude.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tony Wilson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unilateralism

body:
Mate.

Let's have a fair crack of the coconut here, eh?

As one of the several victims of your unilaterial character assination
attempt earlier this month, I had not intended to raise the matter
again. What's past is past, and usually best left that way. But on
reading your comment that "By the way, it's slightly difficult for me
to work with people when they impugn my actions and intentions"  I just
had to take time out to respond.

I agree with you on this point. I ONE HUNDRED PERCENT agree.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] what the folks at Debian think about the GNU FDL

body:
There's much talk on the debian-legal mailinglist about the GNU FDL.
I've read a few of those mails, and I think some parts might be
important for us, but I'm getting headaches. And I know that when I read
a few more I'll get bellyache. But maybe someone else is interrested
enough in these things:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/

Happy reading!

Kurt


from_name: John R. Owens

subject:
[WikiEN-l] photographs and POV (was: JohnQ / MaryMary - the
 clitoris guy)

body:
On Fri, 16 May 2003, koyaanis qatsi and many others wrote:

> Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 18:42:27 -0700 (PDT)
> From: koyaanis qatsi <obchodnakorze at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] photographs and POV (was: JohnQ / MaryMary - the
>     clitoris guy)
>
> John R. Owens writes:
> > As long as they aren't doctored or staged,
> > photographs are about as NPOV as it gets around
> > here. You _can_ make a POV photograph, but you have
> > to try.
>
> No, no, no!  Not true.

Did anyone bother to notice that I did NOT say that photographs were NPOV,
or very NPOV? :-\

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Marcus, this is the kind of conversation that can only end in a gunshot.
				--Dr. Stephen Franklin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing list archives moved to mail.wikipedia.org

body:
The archive and sign-up pages for the Wikipedia mailing lists are now at
mail.wikipedia.org, so if someday we move the mailing lists to yet another
server we should never have to change the links again. :)

Any old links via www.wikipedia or pliny.wikipedia should forward there
automatically.

[ Aside to Jason: I still turn up links to wikipedia-l message archives on
www.nupedia.com via google searches sometimes, but these give 404 errors. Any
chance we could get /pipermail/(wikipedia|wikitech|intlwiki)-l/(.*) to
redirect to mail.wikipedia.org? "In theory" a 301 response will also tell
search engines to change their listings to the new location if they ever
re-index the page. ]

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Legality of content

body:
I would suggest we leave this talk off until the W
foundation/non-profit is set up, funds are raised, and a property
right attorney paid for to give us legal advice.

I know it seems a silly thing to do, because we are all very
intelligent people.

Nevertheless the law in the US is hard to interpret even by lawyers,
so I would rather send the WFoundation $100 than *wonder* whether I'm
right or wrong on some point or other.

As far as Nicks, use the signature feature in your mail client.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] minimum stub length.

body:
On Sun, 2003-05-18 at 14:43, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I don't like the comma rule, because it can be easily
> (and inadvertantly) worked around. For example, what
> if someone wrote "in Massachusetts, USA." for the
> Boston article. Then the rule and subsequently
> software would consider it a full article.

No arbitrary automatic rule is perfect. If the rule was three periods,
someone could write "in Massachusetts..." etc. They're all dumb rules,
essentially equivalent.


from_name: Giskart

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: forum instead of mail

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
wrote in news:20030518202203.9396.qmail at web41811.mail.yahoo.com:

> What ads?

A normal banner and a browser javascript system popup saying that I am
using a popup killer and that i have to set that popup killer off to close
the messagebox. First time i have see that.

Netscape 7.0

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [WikiEN-l] forum instead of mail

body:
On Sun, May 18, 2003 at 11:23:50AM -0700, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I think that we should use a web-based forum instead
> of email. Forums are much more organised and don't
> clutter your inbox.

If mailing lists clutter your inbox, than use a real mail
program that automaticaly sorts incoming mail to folders.

> They also eliminate problems with
> different email clients (like the whole "wrap your
> text" thing), as well as signing letters.

But are way behind the features a good mail client
provides to you. Scoring, filtering, fast access,
offline readable *and* replyable (good for those
people not having a flat rate), kill lists (some
topics just don't interest me, so they are set
to "read" automaticaly) etc pp.

Not to mention the ads and the two-screens long
legalese I have to sign prior to logging in.

Best regards,

JeLuF


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageFr.php

body:
Je Lundo 19 Majo 2003 18:48, Guillaume Blanchard skribis:
> Here is the new version of the french interface.
..
> Someone can please upload this file on the server ?

Cool, installed.

(By the way, I'm having trouble with my e-mail lately, and I've just
switched e-mail clients, so I may be missing some things that were sent
to me in the last few days.)

Slight tweak: I changed the 'dellogpage' to remove the prefixed space
and replace the inner spaces with underscores. It's the internal form
of the page name, so must be the _exact_ form that will be used in the
database to name the log page.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: rednblack at alum.mit.edu

subject: [Wikitech-l] additional pipe trick suggestion

body:
Hi,

Thought this might be a good pipe trick addition, been pining for it for a
while:

[[Mexic|o]]an => Mexican

Shouldn't really break anything, because no one would use pipe text and
trailing text together anyway, and this saves a lot of retyping (which is
what pipe tricks are all about, after all).

Saurabh

------
"In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the people who get killed."
-- Eduardo Galeano, "Upside Down"


from_name: Graham Burnett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #359 - 16 msgs

body:
> I disagree. The stub-length preference allows each user to define what
they
> consider a "minimum" stub. I, for one, believe that a one-sentence stub is
> better than no information at all.
>

I agree with this- sometime for example Michael or one of his
re-incarnations will post some babble as an 'article'- often it's possible
to salvage this into a one sentence stub which can then prompt somebody who
actually knows a bit about the subject to expand this into a reasonable
article.

Cheers Graham (Quercus robur)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: SpecialContributions.php

body:
Thomas Corell wrote:
>
> I found this in SpecialContributions.php (about line 72):
>
>
> if ( 0 == $nCur && 0 == $nOld && 0 == $rcrows ) {
>   $wgOut->addHTML( "\n<p>" . wfMsg( "nocontribs" ) . "</p>\n" );
>   return;
> }
>
> What I'm missing is the $rcrows variable initialisation. Hopefully php
> init it with 0, but I'm not sure.
>
> Possibly Lee or Brion have an idea :)
>

Looks like a chunk of code has been deleted. There's a comment which says:

	# Sorting slowness on cur and especially old
	# forces us to check RC table first

But the code never touches RC.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageFr.php

body:
Je Mardo 20 Majo 2003 00:02, Guillaume Blanchard skribis:
> Thank you Brion,

De rien. :)

> I like especially the new recent change... pity it don't work on all
> browser.
> It's java-script ?

Yes. (shudder)  :)

> Here is the fallacious request :
> SELECT cur_text FROM cur WHERE
> cur_title='Liste_de_fautes_d'orthographe_courantes' AND
> cur_namespace=4

Aha, we're missing a wfStrencode(), so it's croaking on the
apostrophe... should be fixed now.

(I haven't yet checked the change in to CVS as the sourceforge server
seems to be offline at the moment.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Getting rid of nicknames

body:
> > I propose you change
> > [[Machinchose|Anthere]]
> > to
> > [[Machinchose]] qui me fait chier en faisant
> > semblant d'etre moi

On s'arrete tous niveau cochonneries douteuses, sinon on va
serieusement degeulasser la liste d'email.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] censorship

body:
LittleDan-
> As for the category scheme that Eloquence suggested
> (but I accidentally deleted the email) I think that
> would be a great idea, but it would require too much
> work. I've always wanted a category scheme, even a
> rough one like in the esperanto wiki, and your
> suggestion would work out well. I just think that if
> we set our goals too high, we'll never complete them
> (though I suppose Wikipedia is in defiance of this).
> --LittleDan

You think that making Wikipedia censorable for "inappropriate" content is
a worthwhile goal. I don't.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] forum instead of mail

body:
> I think that we should use a web-based forum instead
> of email. Forums are much more organised and don't
> clutter your inbox. They also eliminate problems with
> different email clients (like the whole "wrap your
> text" thing), as well as signing letters. I set up a
> free (and ad-free) hosted forum at
> wikipedia.proboards19.com to test out swithching to a
> forum, but if it suits you better to download forum
> software for www.wikipedia.org instead, it's probably
> better that way anyway. There could be a link to the
> forum from the main page to increase awareness of it
> (many people don't know of the mailing list, and there
> is no way to link to it.) Some people think this
> mailing list is exclusive and only for sysops and the
> like.

No.
See these two long threads:
http://pliny.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-May/010033.html
http://pliny.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-May/010047.html

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: vandalism

body:
KQ-
>> IP bans affect the IP even if edits coming from
>> that IP are logged in, so they couldn't edit
>> if they were coming from a banned IP. If they
>> come back with a different IP, there's nothing
>> we can do about it anyway with an IP ban.

> Hm, I've misunderstood something then.  How is it The
> Stick et al. can keep logging in under different
> accounts?

That's what I've been trying to tell you: WE HAVEN'T BANNED HIS IP
ADDRESS. Please read my earlier mails again.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: vandalism

body:
Brion wrote:
>My apologies if I sounded a little rude.

It's not a problem.  Most of us have been rude on
occasion, and I'm no exception.  :-/

kq

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: vandalism

body:
I wrote:
>I didn't realize what a thoroughly stupid idea the
>IP/block login idea was until you mentioned all

um, that was meant to be a private message to Brion.

kq

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from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: vandalism

body:
On Sun, 18 May 2003 08:04:56 -0700 (PDT), koyaanis qatsi
<obchodnakorze at yahoo.com> gave utterance to the following:

> Erik writes:
>> I think we're still talking past each other.
>> Banned IP addresses can login, but they
>> cannot edit, even if they're logged in. The
>> IP address of the user in question (Stick)
>> is not banned.
>
> Yes.  We're talking past each other.  What I'm saying
> is that a banned IP that tries to access the "login"
> page, regardless of whether it's logged in already,
> could be served a 404.  This could prevent people like
> Michael or yesterday's vandal from coming back with
> several different usernames.  Again, I'm not sure if
> this is a good or bad idea--there may be other, bad
> results as well.
>
Given that any form POST of a reasonable length can have a GET substituted
for it, it is easy to bookmark an URL which replicates the form submission
and never requires the login page to be served. (I won't post that here but
will explain off list if required).

Actually I've always wondered why non-logged users didn't see a quick login
form on the Wikipedia home page.
--
Richard Grevers
I am a nobody - nobody is perfect - therefore I am perfect.


from_name: tarquin

body:
rednblack at alum.mit.edu wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Thought this might be a good pipe trick addition, been pining for it for a
>while:
>
>[[Mexic|o]]an => Mexican
>
>
>
starting to get complex.
Why not create [[Mexican]] as a redirect page?


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
www directs me to 'larousse.wikipedia.org' -- larousse is a great name,
but for an innocent user it looks confusing.  Why can't we continue to
use 'www' or 'en' as the host name?

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Getting rid of nicknames

body:
--- Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > I propose you change
> > > [[Machinchose|Anthere]]
> > > to
> > > [[Machinchose]] qui me fait chier en faisant
> > > semblant d'etre moi
>
> On s'arrete tous niveau cochonneries douteuses,
> sinon on va
> serieusement degeulasser la liste d'email.

Y a pas de souci. Probl?me r?solu. Maintenant, on
?crit comme ?a

I propose you change [[Machinchose|Anthere]] to
[[Machinchose]] qui me fait <strike>chier</strike> en
faisant semblant d'etre moi

Pour ?a, il suffit d'ajouter tous les mots grossiers
dans la page sp?ciale de recherche d'orthographe, et
de tout barrer en s?rie. Pas mal non ?

:-)

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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Two issues here: what is legal to have on the server and what is legal in the user's nation

body:
Eclecticology wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>But really, I should have changed it to "they".

>Then you would have been grammatically wrong. :-)

I know that Ec is smiling, but if anybody wonders how to pull it off
(perhaps especially people that learned English only in school),
see [[en:Singular they]].

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Getting rid of nicknames

body:
--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Pour ?a, il suffit d'ajouter tous les mots grossiers
> dans la page sp?ciale de recherche d'orthographe, et
> de tout barrer en s?rie. Pas mal non ?
>
> :-)

Je pense detecter une solution humoriste. Ineffective, pour sur...

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Getting rid of nicknames

body:
On Sat, May 17, 2003 at 10:34:17AM -0700, Axel Boldt wrote:

[...]
> New users do
> not know that "LDC" refers to the same person as "Lee Daniel Crocker"
> and cannot be expected to deduce it. After they follow a link to "LDC",
> they may realize it, but why should they have to memorize irrelevant
> facts like that for hundreds of contributors?

Do you memorize the realnames (and consider them relevant)? :)

I memorize 'ldc' easier than 'lee danier crocker' (and much easier not to
misspell! :)). not that it mattered, since it's just a string associated with a
virtual entity. I'll sign '--grin' no matter what my 'registration data' is,
but it would make it naturally impossible to click on me and see my pages.
(I'm far too lazy to sign [[Peter Gervai|grin]] all the time, you know.)

I'm not really sure about the accents problem, I mean, probably I just
missed the document describing the OriginalWikipedia character encoding,
which tells whether it's 8859-1, utf-8 or what. If it's latin1 then nicks
should not contain non-latin1 accents, and problem solved. If it's utf-8...
but don't try to tell me that. :)

Fighting abusive nicknames by making restrictions and rules won't work. If
you disallow nickname "adolf hitler" then the guy going to sign up his
realname as such. Nothing would change except the loss of flexibility. In
the long run it's up to the people's (or the admins/sysops) power to
regulate. IMHO.

> How is signing on a talk page with "Lee Daniel Crocker" any worse than
> signing with "LDC" and why do you call it "overkill"?

People came from different environments. Some prefer nicknames for various
reasons. Some of these reasons do not exist in your world. :-) (Some of
these reasons in fact do not exist in any of the worlds, but anyway...)

grin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Including parametrized snipplets

body:
Jens Frank wrote in part:

>For some articles, we use those nice tables. E.g.
>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Beryllium&action=edit
>It starts like this:

>[[de:Beryllium]][[eo:Berilo]][[nl:beryllium]][[pl:Beryl]][[fr:B?ryllium]]
>

>

>

>
[[Lithium]] - '''Beryllium''' - [[Boron]]
>

>

'''Be'''
[[Magnesium|Mg]]

>
[[image:Be-TableImage.png|Click for description]]

>[[Periodic table/Standard Table|Full table]]

>

>

>Those articles are not easy to edit. They are frightening.

This is just a stopgap, but I'd like to encourage people to write this:

"[[de:Beryllium]][[eo:Berilo]][[nl:beryllium]][[pl:Beryl]][[fr:B?ryllium]]
"
"
"
"

"

"

"
[[Lithium]] - '''Beryllium''' - [[Boron]]
"

"

'''Be'''
[[Magnesium|Mg]]

"
[[image:Be-TableImage.png|Click for description]]

"[[Periodic table/Standard Table|Full table]]

"

"

It at least tells people that there ''is'' text that they can edit easily,
even though it doesn't fix things to make the table itself easily editable.
Hopefully some new editors won't be scared off as quickly in that case.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Getting rid of nicknames

body:
Tarquin wrote in part:

>3. suggest that *anyone* feel free to edit an instance of a  signature
>that obscures the real user name, just by editing the wiki text. (people
>power)

Although I've said that I see no need to support nicknames,
I also see no need to go ahead and remove them since people like them.
This is the correct, truly wiki solution --
we only need to achieve consensus that confusing nicks are not allowed
(as Kibo would say), and people power can go into action fearlessly.
I suspect that this consenus is here.

Anth?re's problem is slightly more complicated,
since she also needs to have [[Utilisateur:Anth?re]] forbidden
once she's created her own account [[Utilisateur:Anthere]].
It should be quite valid for a developer on [[fr:]] to change such a name.

-- Toby


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] minimum stub length.

body:
--- Richard Grevers <lists at dramatic.co.nz> wrote:
> On 18 May 2003 20:36:06 -0400, The Cunctator
> <cunctator at kband.com> gave
> utterance to the following:
>
> > On Sun, 2003-05-18 at 14:43, Daniel Ehrenberg
> wrote:
> >> I don't like the comma rule, because it can be
> easily
> >> (and inadvertantly) worked around. For example,
> what
> >> if someone wrote "in Massachusetts, USA." for the
> >> Boston article. Then the rule and subsequently
> >> software would consider it a full article.
> >
> > No arbitrary automatic rule is perfect. If the
> rule was three periods,
> > someone could write "in Massachusetts..." etc.
> They're all dumb rules,
> > essentially equivalent.
> >
> Not to mention that a three sentence requirement
> only encourages people to
> add unresearched material which may well be wrong in
> order to fulfil the
> requirement.
> Or they may write short sentences. These sentences
> may not read well.
> --
> Richard Grevers
> I am a nobody - nobody is perfect - therefore I am
> perfect.

I guess you're right, but I think the requirement for
counting as an article should be 3 sentences instead
of a comma, because a comma can easily be left out in
a full article or be included (without use of an
elipsis) in a short one.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Mon, 19 May 2003, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Andre Engels wrote:
> > [[domi]], [[domum]], [[domo]], [[domos]], [[domorum]], [[domis]] (and perhaps
> > also [[dome]]). And similar for almost every word. Then a trick like the
> > above would be much welcome, it seems.

A trick we've used occasionally on an experimental basis on the Esperanto
wiki: make a redirect for the stem.

So [[dom]] -> [[domus]], hence links [[dom]]o, [[dom]]um, [[dom]]i,
[[dom]]orum, etc.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
> (Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>):
> > Larousse is just the name of the machine, and shouldn't generally be
> > linked to directly; at some point in the near future it will probably
>
> Larousse is also a trademark for a French commercial encyclopedia,
> http://www.larousse.fr/ and http://www.encyclopedie-larousse.fr/

Utterly irrelevant. Larousse is just the name of a famous historical
encyclopedist. It's a trademark only in its use as a brand name to
sell encyclopedias. Since we aren't using the name as a brand (we're
not using it for any public purpose whatsoever--it's a private
internal machine name), there's no trademark issue.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [WikiEN-l] minimum stub length.

body:
On Mon, 19 May 2003, Andrew Smith wrote:
> You may want to have a look at
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_count_reform which is, I think, the
> most recent major discussion of what constitutes an 'article'. The link on
> that page to Article Count Reform Vote shows the options suggested and voted
> for.

What was decided:
* all articles in talk space containing at least one wiki link shall be
considered "articles" for purposes of the front-page article count.

I haven't had a chance to make the change yet, but I'll probably go ahead
and do it when I figure out why the counter is currently broken. :)

I'm not entirely sure whether the count is what Dan's referring to here
though, as there's also the link color display etc mixed in.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia in the media

body:
See article on wikis and business, at the NY times, where the W is
mentioned as propably the "best known" wiki.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/19/technology/19NECO.html?ex=1368763200&en=b816c8c120986d88&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
rednblack at alum.mit.edu schrieb:
> Thought this might be a good pipe trick addition, been pining for it for a
> while:
>
> [[Mexic|o]]an => Mexican
>
> Shouldn't really break anything, because no one would use pipe text and
> trailing text together anyway,

I've seen this often, at least in the German Wikipedia.

> and this saves a lot of retyping (which is
> what pipe tricks are all about, after all).

But the software should please expand those tricks on save. Not all our
editor are hackers.

Kurt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for deletion

body:
Zoe wrote:

>Oh, and by the way, The Cunctator has unilaterally,
>without discussion, deleted "If the page contains no
>useful content (all gibberish for example) and no
>useful history, this step may be skipped." from the
>[[Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages]]
>page.

It's TC's opinion[*] that his edit summary (which shows up on Recentchanges)
''is'' the (start of) discussion.  If you think that that's not good enough
(and I often think that TC edits policy pages too quickly myself),
then it's good to remember to review all of his edits to policy pages.
Such a habit could never hurt anyway!

[*] Or my understanding of his opinion, at least.  Please correct, Cunc.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia in the media

body:
On Mon, 19 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> And if the broken screenshot at
> http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/05/19/business/19NECO.jpg
> doesn't get us to fix our layout, I don't know what will ..

Netscape 4.x on MacOS 9. Bleccch!! :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Mon, 19 May 2003, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 12:18:21PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > A trick we've used occasionally on an experimental basis on the Esperanto
> > wiki: make a redirect for the stem.
> >
> > So [[dom]] -> [[domus]], hence links [[dom]]o, [[dom]]um, [[dom]]i,
> > [[dom]]orum, etc.
>
> It may do with Esperanto but in most "real" languages there is more than
> one spelling of the stem. Like: kobieta, kobiety, kobiecie (bzzt, different
> stem form).

So, most of them work great with [[kobiet]], and now and again you write
one out explicitly with the irregular stem or make a redirect on
[[kobiecie]] itself.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> The archive and sign-up pages for the Wikipedia mailing lists are now at
> mail.wikipedia.org, so if someday we move the mailing lists to yet another
> server we should never have to change the links again. :)

Great! But http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo doesn't show all
the lists anymore (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/admin does).

Kurt


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se) wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Larousse is just the name of the machine, and shouldn't generally be
> > linked to directly; at some point in the near future it will probably
>
> Larousse is also a trademark for a French commercial encyclopedia,
> http://www.larousse.fr/ and http://www.encyclopedie-larousse.fr/
>
> Are the other servers named Britannica and Brockhaus?  I would advise
> against the use of these names, to avoid legal problems.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/

It is true that it is a US registered trademark see USPTO.gov No. 0836321,
1939180, but at larousse.wikipedia.org
 it is only being used for testing purposes, it probably
does not dilute the french tradmark or otherwise create confusion. Also
many educational web sites use the word larousse, even on wikipedia you
can find reference to Larousse, so if someone finds their way to Wikipedia
via
larousse they will get a page about: [[larousse Gatronomique]].

As Larousse is a French publisher of French books, how can there be
confusion?
It is obviously not well known enough to have acquired a secondary meaning
under
US law, one could argue that their protection only extends to products and
services
where the French language must be a major component, as far as I can tell
they
have not taken any steps to publish dictionaries or encyclopedias in
English.

La rousse is also a french word meaning a color between orange and red.
I thought it was a reference an ironic reference to the  Department of
Homeland Security.
It can also mean a red headed woman, as in ''une belle fille rousse', la
rousse'.

Perhaps to keep Pliny company on those cold nights?
Alex 756


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Sun, 18 May 2003 rednblack at alum.mit.edu wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> Thought this might be a good pipe trick addition, been pining for it for a
> while:
>
> [[Mexic|o]]an => Mexican
>
> Shouldn't really break anything, because no one would use pipe text and
> trailing text together anyway,

I'm not so sure about that. Sure, one would not usually write
"...unless one uses [[foobar|foo]]s.", but if [[foo]] is a disambiguation
page, one might have "...unless one uses [[foo]]s" be corrected to
"...unless one uses [[foobar|foo]]s." for disambiguation.

Andre Engels


from_name: David A. Wheeler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: additional pipe trick suggestion

body:
rednblack at alum.mit.edu said:
> Hi,
>
> Thought this might be a good pipe trick addition, been pining for it
> for a while:
>
> [[Mexic|o]]an => Mexican
>
> Shouldn't really break anything, because no one would use pipe text
> and trailing text together anyway, and this saves a lot of retyping
> (which is what pipe tricks are all about, after all).

It's an interesting idea, but I think this proposed syntax
is _way_ too confusing... it's too clever.  I would expect
[[Mexic|o]]an to be equivalent to [[Mexic|oan]] and I suspect
others would too.


body:
On Mon, 19 May 2003, tarquin wrote:

>
>
> rednblack at alum.mit.edu wrote:
>
> >Hi,
> >
> >Thought this might be a good pipe trick addition, been pining for it for a
> >while:
> >
> >[[Mexic|o]]an => Mexican
> >
> >
> >
> starting to get complex.
> Why not create [[Mexican]] as a redirect page?

That would solve things for en:, but not for some other languages. For example,
in Latin all of the following could be forms to redirect at [[domus]]:

[[domi]], [[domum]], [[domo]], [[domos]], [[domorum]], [[domis]] (and perhaps
also [[dome]]). And similar for almost every word. Then a trick like the
above would be much welcome, it seems.

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] censorship

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>I seem to be going against almost everyone, so I'll
>just concede to the majority. I no longer support the
>censorship of Wikipedia.

Well, you don't have to stop *supporting* it,
you can just stop *agitating* for it (since it's not working).
Maybe sometime in the future, your view will gain ascendancy
(I hope not, but presumably you hope so).

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Getting rid of nicknames

body:
--- Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Pour ?a, il suffit d'ajouter tous les mots
> grossiers
> > dans la page sp?ciale de recherche d'orthographe,
> et
> > de tout barrer en s?rie. Pas mal non ?
> >
> > :-)
>
> Je pense detecter une solution humoriste.
> Ineffective, pour sur...

Perhaps...
One french editor made yesterday a search on "connard"
and strike all instances of the word.

Another option would be to remove any comment
containing swear words and insults, and to move them
under one of these smelly black clouds. What do you
think ?

when my kids swear, I 1)make as if I didnot understand
what they said or 2)send them to their room

when I swear, the kids tell me I am a bad person.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
Tarquin wrote:

>Saurabh wrote:

>>[[Mexic|o]]an => Mexican

>Why not create [[Mexican]] as a redirect page?

That could work in this case, but [[Norwegian]] is a disambiguation page
(to [[Norway]] and [[Norwegian language]]), so you'd need "[[Norw|ay]]egian".

-- Toby


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>Saurabh wrote:

>>[[Mexic|o]]an => Mexican

>I'm not so sure about that. Sure, one would not usually write
>"...unless one uses [[foobar|foo]]s.",

Actually, I write "...unless one uses [[foobar|foo]]s." all the time.
If I'd known that Saurabh was going to suggest this,
then maybe I wouldn't have, but as it is ... '_`.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Support for booksources page added

body:
On Mon, 19 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> In CVS:
>
> Analogous to [[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]], I have added support for
> [[Wikipedia:Book sources]] (which must be named as the localized version
> of the "Book sources" special page title, e.g. "Wikipedia:Buchhandlungen"
> for German). The content of this page, if present, will be used instead of
> the short text in Language.php, and can be openly edited.

Cool! This should solve the debate nicely. Or at least move it into a more
active, productive state. :D

> All instances of the text "WIKI-ISBN" are automatically substituted with
> the ISBN number from the query.

Hmm, would you consider something like {{ISBN}} to match the current
variable replacement syntax?

I've put it up on test.wikipedia.org (slight code style tweaks and
potential apostrophe bug fix in CVS), please play with it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Larousse is just the name of the machine, and shouldn't generally be
> linked to directly; at some point in the near future it will probably

Larousse is also a trademark for a French commercial encyclopedia,
http://www.larousse.fr/ and http://www.encyclopedie-larousse.fr/

Are the other servers named Britannica and Brockhaus?  I would advise
against the use of these names, to avoid legal problems.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> Larousse is just the name of the machine, and shouldn't generally be
> linked to directly; at some point in the near future it will probably
> not serve wiki pages under that name anymore, but just under en. and
> www.

Thanks for the info.  Wondering why my providers DNS server is that
slow this time; but I can wait.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [WikiEN-l] minimum stub length.

body:
On 18 May 2003 20:36:06 -0400, The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> gave
utterance to the following:

> On Sun, 2003-05-18 at 14:43, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>> I don't like the comma rule, because it can be easily
>> (and inadvertantly) worked around. For example, what
>> if someone wrote "in Massachusetts, USA." for the
>> Boston article. Then the rule and subsequently
>> software would consider it a full article.
>
> No arbitrary automatic rule is perfect. If the rule was three periods,
> someone could write "in Massachusetts..." etc. They're all dumb rules,
> essentially equivalent.
>
Not to mention that a three sentence requirement only encourages people to
add unresearched material which may well be wrong in order to fulfil the
requirement.
Or they may write short sentences. These sentences may not read well.
--
Richard Grevers
I am a nobody - nobody is perfect - therefore I am perfect.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] minimum stub length.

body:
On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 15:22, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Mon, 19 May 2003, Andrew Smith wrote:
> > You may want to have a look at
> > http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_count_reform which is, I think, the
> > most recent major discussion of what constitutes an 'article'. The link on
> > that page to Article Count Reform Vote shows the options suggested and voted
> > for.
>
> What was decided:
> * all articles in talk space containing at least one wiki link shall be
> considered "articles" for purposes of the front-page article count.
>
> I haven't had a chance to make the change yet, but I'll probably go ahead
> and do it when I figure out why the counter is currently broken. :)
>
By the way, while that rule makes sense in general for the international
wikis, it's a worse one than the current one for English language, and
will cause yet another unfortunate hiccup in our statistical history. I
hope that even if we change the "official" formulat, we'll continue to
keep track of the comma numbers so as to give a statistically useful
history.


subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc patch

body:
On Tue, 20 May 2003, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Patch allows typesetting $ by either $ or \$.
>
> It shouldn't break anything so it can be installed without any further
> testing. Brion: just check that permisions are the same ;)

Applied, in CVS, and installed.

Added some to try it out in:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money

Looking good!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 16:42, David A. Wheeler wrote:
>
> rednblack at alum.mit.edu said:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thought this might be a good pipe trick addition, been pining for it
> > for a while:
> >
> > [[Mexic|o]]an => Mexican
> >
> > Shouldn't really break anything, because no one would use pipe text
> > and trailing text together anyway, and this saves a lot of retyping
> > (which is what pipe tricks are all about, after all).
>
> It's an interesting idea, but I think this proposed syntax
> is _way_ too confusing... it's too clever.  I would expect
> [[Mexic|o]]an to be equivalent to [[Mexic|oan]] and I suspect
> others would too.
>
Fortunately we have redirects, which have equivalent functionality and
are not confusing.


subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia in the media

body:
--- Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> See article on wikis and business, at the NY times,
> where the W is
> mentioned as propably the "best known" wiki.
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/19/technology/19NECO.html?ex=1368763200&en=b816c8c120986d88&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
>
> =====
> Christopher Mahan
> chris_mahan at yahoo.com
> 818.943.1850 cell
> http://www.christophermahan.com/

The way they present it, it seems like Wikipedia is
the old-fashioned one and these new startups are
what's the future. I hate how someone just wrote a
closed source version of a wiki and now everyone's
buying it, but I guess they do have some good features
geared at buisnesses.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: votes for deletion

body:
That's not what I'm saying at all. We shouldn't copy
public domain sources verbatim, but it's fine to copy
the information. We're not just a dump site for words,
only for ideas and information. In effect, it is the
same as copywrited sources (except that we can copy
the pictures from PD) but I see nothing wrong with
that.

--LittleDan

--- koyaanis qatsi <obchodnakorze at yahoo.com> wrote:
> LittleDan writes:
> < reminds us of #14, not a place to dump public
> domain
> materials >
> >We shouldn't copy content from public domain
> sources,
> >only the information from them.
>
> Are you saying we shouldn't copy in information from
> public domain resources, and if so, why are you
> saying
> that?
>
> Copying in public information has been very useful
> in
> building up the country articles--all of them are
> based on CIA information, with many of them
> supplemented with information from the State
> Department.  There is no harm in that.  Similarly,
> some but not all of the biographical entries come
> from
> public domain resources.
>
> The problem with public domain sources is not that
> they are public domain, but that copyright has far
> extended any sort of reasonable limit and has turned
> into a system for controlling culture in perpetuity.
>
> In less ideological terms, what that means is that
> nearly everything post 1920s is *not* in the public
> domain, so the information you can glean from public
> domain resources typically predates that and so is
> often anachronistic to the point of being useless.
> This was the case with the information on
> [[Algeria]]
> from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, which took me
> several hours to verify, and even then I got no more
> than a few paragraphs from it.  Similarly, this was
> the problem with the various instructions someone
> was
> uploading about e.g. how to swim, as well as the
> recipes from the 1800s and early 1900s, referring to
> ingredients, methods, and measurements that often
> had
> not been in use for decades.  Often the material in
> old biographical entries is laden with various
> cultural assumptions which are incorrect or
> downright
> embarassing.
>
> Anyway, that is the background behind #14.  It's not
> an absolute--or at least it shouldn't be--it's a
> warning: know what you're in for, and be prepared to
> do a lot of work.
>
> kq
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
> http://search.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] unlisted administrators

body:
according to [[Special:Statistics]], there are 69
administrators. Only 66 are listed. Who are the
missing three?
-LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] unlisted administrators

body:
On Mon, 19 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> according to [[Special:Statistics]], there are 69
> administrators. Only 66 are listed. Who are the
> missing three?

First, the statistics page is broken in this regard. It should say 68, not
69; it mistakenly counts the old Rambot bot account.

Here's a complete list:
+--------------------+-----------------+
| user_name          | user_rights     |
+--------------------+-----------------+
| -- April           | sysop           |
| 172                | sysop           |
| Alvaro             | sysop           |
| Ams80              | sysop           |
| Andre Engels       | sysop           |
| AstroNomer         | sysop           |
| AxelBoldt          | sysop           |
| Brion VIBBER       | sysop,developer |
| Bryan Derksen      | sysop           |
| Camembert          | sysop           |
| Chuck SMITH        | sysop           |
| Clifford Adams     | sysop           |
| Cordyph            | sysop           |
| Cprompt            | sysop           |
| Danny              | sysop           |
| Ed Poor            | sysop,developer |
| Eloquence          | sysop,developer |
| Enchanter          | sysop           |
| Fred Bauder        | sysop           |
| Hephaestos         | sysop           |
| Infrogmation       | sysop           |
| J Hofmann Kemp     | sysop           |
| Jasonr             | sysop           |
| JeLuF              | sysop           |
| Jimbo Wales        | sysop,developer |
| Jimfbleak          | sysop           |
| JohnOwens          | sysop           |
| Karen Johnson      | sysop           |
| Khendon            | sysop           |
| Kingturtle         | sysop           |
| LC                 | sysop           |
| Lee Daniel Crocker | sysop,developer |
| LittleDan          | sysop           |
| Magnus Manske      | sysop,developer |
| Manning Bartlett   | sysop           |
| Mark Christensen   | sysop           |
| Maveric149         | sysop           |
| Minesweeper        | sysop           |
| Mirwin             | sysop           |
| Montrealais        | sysop           |
| MyRedDice          | sysop           |
| Notheruser         | sysop           |
| Oliver Pereira     | sysop           |
| Peter Winnberg     | sysop           |
| PierreAbbat        | sysop           |
| Robert Merkel      | sysop           |
| RoseParks          | sysop           |
| Sannse             | sysop           |
| Scipius            | sysop           |
| Sheldon Rampton    | sysop           |
| Sjc                | sysop           |
| Slrubenstein       | sysop           |
| Someone else       | sysop           |
| Stephen Gilbert    | sysop           |
| TUF-KAT            | sysop           |
| Tannin             | sysop           |
| Tarquin            | sysop           |
| Taw                | sysop           |
| The Anome          | sysop           |
| The Cunctator      | sysop           |
| The Epopt          | sysop           |
| Tim Shell          | sysop           |
| Tim Starling       | sysop           |
| Timshell           | sysop           |
| Toby Bartels       | sysop           |
| Vicki Rosenzweig   | sysop           |
| WojPob             | sysop           |
| Zoe                | sysop           |
+--------------------+-----------------+
68 rows in set (0.15 sec)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ancient pages

body:
On Tue, 20 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> A list of all pages, ascending by date. This should give all those who
> crave for more copyediting a new addiction, as old pages are frequently in
> need of work.

Now on test.wikipedia.org.

> It seems reasonably fast, but the "Using filesort" still bugs me. To get
> rid of that, I think we would have to create a combined namespace/redir/
> timestamp index.

Yes, that ought to help...

> Thoughts?

I'm not sure of the real usefulness of this page; it's going to be
dominated for a long time by the work of "conversion script". But it could
be fun at least! :)

Also, I think it's high time we have a common function to handle
validating the $limit and $offset parameters on the various specials.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] ISBN update

body:
On Tue, 20 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I've changed the string for the ISBN replacement page from "WIKI-ISBN" to
> "MAGICNUMBER" to avoid triggering the "ISBN .." parser itself on the page.
> Otherwise you get into trouble when you try something like "ISBN WIKI-
> ISBN".

Eeek! :)

Updated on test.wiki

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> > Why not create [[Mexican]] as a redirect page?
>
> That would solve things for en:, but not for some other languages. For example,
> in Latin all of the following could be forms to redirect at [[domus]]:
>
> [[domi]], [[domum]], [[domo]], [[domos]], [[domorum]], [[domis]] (and perhaps
> also [[dome]]). And similar for almost every word. Then a trick like the
> above would be much welcome, it seems.

Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are about as complicated as Latin in
this respect (Swedish words have 4.5 forms on *average*), while German
is a little lighter (perhaps 3 forms per word), and Finnish is a lot
heavier (I'd guess 10 forms per word on average).

Still, the free spell checker "ispell" is able to "stem" most forms
down to the correct basic word, except for the relatively few
ambiguous cases. The existing ispell dictionaries for various
languages already contain the information necessary for this.

Using stemming (based on ispell) could be useful both as an automatic
URL redirection, and during searches.  Commercial "text retrieval"
databases do this, but I haven't heard of any open websites or web
search engines or free software that use this technology.

For searching, you could either stem each word before you index the
text corpus, or you could "unstem" each search expression, so that a
search for "domus" actually searches for "domus OR domi OR domum OR
domo OR domos OR ...".

The next step would be to "stem" synonyms into "concepts", so that a
search for "car" returns hits on "automobile", as well.  At some point
of generalization, you just get too many hits.  So maybe perfect hits
should be prioritized over stemming hits, which in turn get prio over
synonym hits.  Just like title hits get prio over fulltext hits today.

This is a new direction that I have thought about, but never got
around to implement.  Does anybody have any experience to share?

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


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] How rare is a rare disease?

body:
I added an article on Barth syndrome, which I read about in Reader's Digest,
and which affects about 10 babies per year in the USA. There's also Asperger
syndrome, which affects about 1 in 300. (Why the article calls it a
"disorder" I don't know. I'm an aspie and I don't feel it's a disorder.) Why
is Asperger listed in the list of rare diseases?

phma
--
.i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
.ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
.icu'u la ma'atman.


from_name: Andrew Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] minimum stub length.

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" <littledanehren at yahoo.com>

> I guess you're right, but I think the requirement for
> counting as an article should be 3 sentences instead
> of a comma, because a comma can easily be left out in
> a full article or be included (without use of an
> elipsis) in a short one.
> --LittleDan
>

You may want to have a look at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_count_reform which is, I think, the
most recent major discussion of what constitutes an 'article'. The link on
that page to Article Count Reform Vote shows the options suggested and voted
for.

Andrew (Ams80)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Alex R. wrote:

> As Larousse is a French publisher of French books, how can there be
> confusion?

Look Alex, (1) I'm not trying to win an *argument*, and (2) I'm not
having an argument with *you*.  All I said was that I would recommend
against using names that are trademarks.  You are free to ignore my
recommendations.  I'm not speaking for Larousse and I'm not a lawyer.
Actually, your response makes me regret I mentioned this at all.
This is my last posting on this topic.

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


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Votes for deletion

body:
LittleDan Writes:
> We shouldn't copy public domain sources verbatim,
> but it's fine to copy the information. We're not
> just a dump site for words, only for ideas and
> information.

well, a few points about that.  Originally the idea
was to import the information as a base for an article
that, with any luck, we'd expand.  It's happened in
some cases, not in others.

A few problems with the original idea: 1, it forks the
material; 2, sometimes information goes out of date
and with e.g. the CIA Factbook stuff it would be
easier to let them update it year by year, and have us
just link to it.

A few benefits of the idea: 1, we have no guarantee
that the information will stay wherever it is
originally; 2, at least we'll have *something* on big
topics like e.g. Chile when it's time to have a hard
copy of the 'pedia.  I very much doubt we'd have
anything at all on e.g. [[Bhutan]] by this point if
not for the CIA stuff.

A side point: arguing that we shouldn't have the
information because someone else has it is a
non-starter--if that were our rationale, we wouldn't
have any information that's available *anywhere* else
online.  I'm not saying *you* are arguing that, but
people sometimes do.  Ideally, the wikipedia would
have information on everything under the sun, and be
as complete as possible.

> In effect, it is the same as copywrited sources
> (except that we can copy the pictures from PD)
> but I see nothing wrong with that.

I don't understand what you mean by this.

kq

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: photographs and POV

body:
John Owens writes:
>Did anyone bother to notice that I did NOT say that
>photographs were NPOV, or very NPOV? :-\

Well, I noticed that you said

"So, umm, just what opinions does a photograph have?
As long as they aren't doctored or staged, photographs
are about as NPOV as it gets around here.  You _can_
make a POV photograph, but you have to try.  The
inclusion or not is where the POV usually starts to
creep in. And it seems to be trying to do so now."

It sounds to me--and apparently I've misunderstood
this--as if you are saying that photographs are
inherently NPOV unless they are doctored or staged.
It sounds to me as if you are also saying that it
takes effort to make an undoctored photograph which is
POV.

Failing to disagree with you respectfully the last
time, I will disagree with you respectfully now.  I
would argue that taking a POV photograph is a function
of having a camera.

But perhaps I've misunderstood what you mean, again,
which I seem wont to do.  If so, please explain how.

best,

kq

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
Hello out there in WikiEN-l land... I've been futzing around the W now for
some time and I think it might be time to try my hand at being an
administrator if no one else objects. I can't promise to be half as
prolific or attentive as Mav149, but then, who can. :) So, this is a formal
request for Wikipedia Administrator privileges for my humble self.

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 12:18:21PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Mon, 19 May 2003, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Andre Engels wrote:
> > > [[domi]], [[domum]], [[domo]], [[domos]], [[domorum]], [[domis]] (and perhaps
> > > also [[dome]]). And similar for almost every word. Then a trick like the
> > > above would be much welcome, it seems.
>
> A trick we've used occasionally on an experimental basis on the Esperanto
> wiki: make a redirect for the stem.
>
> So [[dom]] -> [[domus]], hence links [[dom]]o, [[dom]]um, [[dom]]i,
> [[dom]]orum, etc.

It may do with Esperanto but in most "real" languages there is more than
one spelling of the stem. Like: kobieta, kobiety, kobiecie (bzzt, different
stem form).


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia in the media

body:
> See article on wikis and business, at the NY times, where the W is
> mentioned as propably the "best known" wiki.

> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/19/technology/19NECO.html?ex=1368763200&en=b8
> 16c8c120986d88&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

And if the broken screenshot at
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/05/19/business/19NECO.jpg
doesn't get us to fix our layout, I don't know what will ..

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Thomas Corell

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> A trick we've used occasionally on an experimental basis on the Esperanto
> wiki: make a redirect for the stem.
>
> So [[dom]] -> [[domus]], hence links [[dom]]o, [[dom]]um, [[dom]]i,
> [[dom]]orum, etc.

In my opinion [[foo|fooo]] is a nice pipe trick. All the others are to
confusing, and only to have a shortcut for a maxium of 3 keystrokes or some
mouseclicks more not realy necessary.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dante for Admin

body:
Dante Alighieri wtote:
>Hello out there in WikiEN-l land... I've been futzing
>around the W now for some time and I think it might
>be time to try my hand at being an administrator if no
>one else objects. I can't promise to be half as prolific or
>attentive as Mav149, but then, who can. :) So, this is a
>formal request for Wikipedia Administrator privileges for
>my humble self.

I was just about to nominate you, but since you nominated yourself then I
second the nomination.

Dante will make a great Admin.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 12:53:14PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Mon, 19 May 2003, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 12:18:21PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > > A trick we've used occasionally on an experimental basis on the Esperanto
> > > wiki: make a redirect for the stem.
> > >
> > > So [[dom]] -> [[domus]], hence links [[dom]]o, [[dom]]um, [[dom]]i,
> > > [[dom]]orum, etc.
> >
> > It may do with Esperanto but in most "real" languages there is more than
> > one spelling of the stem. Like: kobieta, kobiety, kobiecie (bzzt, different
> > stem form).
>
> So, most of them work great with [[kobiet]], and now and again you write
> one out explicitly with the irregular stem or make a redirect on
> [[kobiecie]] itself.

They are 100% regular, they are just spelled different way.


body:
In CVS:

Analogous to [[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]], I have added support for
[[Wikipedia:Book sources]] (which must be named as the localized version
of the "Book sources" special page title, e.g. "Wikipedia:Buchhandlungen"
for German). The content of this page, if present, will be used instead of
the short text in Language.php, and can be openly edited.

All instances of the text "WIKI-ISBN" are automatically substituted with
the ISBN number from the query.

If "Book sources" is called without an ISBN number, the standard text is
displayed.

Rationale:

We've had discussions on whether it is OK to link to certain book sellers.
I don't want to encourage a renewed flamewar; rather, instead of removing
certain sellers, we can now annotate them with links to their business
practices so that readers can make an informed choice (on the basis of
NPOV, of course).

We can also use this space to explain a little more how ISBNs can be used,
and what other methods there are to locate books. And I'm sure some
readers have catalogs which they would like to add to the list.

Other than this, the functionality of the book sources page has not been
changed, so neat stuff like automated author searches is not yet possible.
But it's a start.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia in the media

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>--- Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>See article on wikis and business, at the NY times,
>>where the W is
>>mentioned as propably the "best known" wiki.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/19/technology/19NECO.html?ex=1368763200&en=b816c8c120986d88&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
>
>
>>=====
>>Christopher Mahan
>>chris_mahan at yahoo.com
>>818.943.1850 cell
>>http://www.christophermahan.com/
>>
>>
>
>The way they present it, it seems like Wikipedia is
>the old-fashioned one and these new startups are
>what's the future. I hate how someone just wrote a
>closed source version of a wiki and now everyone's
>buying it, but I guess they do have some good features
>geared at buisnesses.
>--LittleDan
>
>
I didnt see it that way. It really is all in the marketting. Wikipedia
is a very specific project: we aim to create an open and accurate
encyclopedia. I dont see why businesses would be attracted to Wikipedia
unless we presented it as a business solution. If Wikis for business
catch on, mark my words, there will be an opensource solution. :-)

--cprompt


body:
Brion-
> Hmm, would you consider something like {{ISBN}} to match the current
> variable replacement syntax?

Originally I wanted to use $isbn, but both this and {{ISBN}} have the same
problem; if I use them in a link:

* [http://www.foo.com/bar?{{ISBN}} bookshop]

The link no longer gets rendered on the [[Wikipedia:Book sources]] page
(no proper url regex match). Although it would still work after the
replacement, I considered that too confusing.

> I've put it up on test.wikipedia.org (slight code style tweaks and
> potential apostrophe bug fix in CVS), please play with it.

Doing right now ..

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageDe.php

body:
New Version of LanguageDe.php ion the CVS-Repository.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc patch

body:
Patch allows typesetting $ by either $ or \$.

It shouldn't break anything so it can be installed without any further
testing. Brion: just check that permisions are the same ;)

By request on Wikipedia:TeX_requests.
-------------- next part --------------
--- lexer.mll.orig	2003-05-20 00:29:00.000000000 +0200
+++ lexer.mll	2003-05-20 00:29:26.000000000 +0200
@@ -61,6 +61,7 @@
   | "\\_" 			{ LITERAL (HTMLABLEC(FONT_UFH,"\\_","_")) }
   | "\\#" 			{ LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UFH,"\\#","#")) }
   | "\\%"			{ LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UFH,"\\%","%")) }
+  | "\\$"			{ LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UFH,"\\$","$")) }
   | "&"				{ NEXT_CELL }
   | "\\\\"			{ NEXT_ROW }
   | "\\begin{matrix}"		{ Texutil.tex_use_ams(); BEGIN__MATRIX }
@@ -80,6 +81,7 @@
   | '>'				{ LITERAL (HTMLABLEC(FONT_UFH,">"," > ")) }
   | '<'				{ LITERAL (HTMLABLEC(FONT_UFH,"<"," < ")) }
   | '%'				{ LITERAL (HTMLABLEC(FONT_UFH,"\\%","%")) }
+  | '$'				{ LITERAL (HTMLABLEC(FONT_UFH,"\\$","$")) }
   | '~'				{ LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UF, "~"," ")) }
   | '['				{ DELIMITER (HTMLABLEC(FONT_UFH,"[","[")) }
   | ']'				{ SQ_CLOSE }


from_name: JFrost8401 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dante for sysop

body:
I'll second Dante too

jim (aka jimfbleak)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Ancient pages

body:
In CVS:

A list of all pages, ascending by date. This should give all those who
crave for more copyediting a new addiction, as old pages are frequently in
need of work.

Implementation is a simple query on CUR. I am not sure about the index
use. EXPLAIN tells me the following:

EXPLAIN SELECT cur_title, cur_user, cur_user_text, cur_comment,
cur_timestamp
FROM cur
WHERE cur_namespace = 0 AND cur_is_redirect = 0
ORDER BY cur_timestamp
LIMIT 0 , 50

-->

table:cur
type:ref
possible_keys:cur_namespace,name_title_timestamp
key:name_title_timestamp
rows:14810      (German DB)
Extra:Using where; Using filesort

It seems reasonably fast, but the "Using filesort" still bugs me. To get
rid of that, I think we would have to create a combined namespace/redir/
timestamp index. Thoughts?

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] ISBN update

body:
I've changed the string for the ISBN replacement page from "WIKI-ISBN" to
"MAGICNUMBER" to avoid triggering the "ISBN .." parser itself on the page.
Otherwise you get into trouble when you try something like "ISBN WIKI-
ISBN".

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Experimental gzip compression

body:
Just for kicks, I've added some preliminary, experimental support for
gzip encoding of pages that have been saved in the file cache. If
$wgUseGzip is not enabled in LocalSettings, it shouldn't have any
effect; if it is, it'll make compressed copies of cached files and then
serve them if the client claims to accept gzip.

At present this only affects file-cachable pages: so plain current page
views by not-logged-in users. Compression is only done when generating
the cached file, so it oughtn't to drain CPU resources too much. My
informal testing shows the gzipping takes about 2-3 ms, which is much
shorter than most of the page generation steps. (Though it will eat up
some additional disk space, as both uncompressed and compressed copies
are kept on disk.)

I'd appreciate some testing with various user agents to see if things
are working. If you receive a compressed page, there'll be a comment at
the end of the page like <!-- Cached/compressed [timestamp] -->

A few notes:

This needs zlib support compiled into PHP to work. I've done this on
Larousse.

An on-the-fly compression filter could also be turned on for dynamic
pages and logged-in users, but I haven't done this yet. Compression
support could be a user-selectable option, so those with problem
browsers could turn it off, or those with slow modems could turn it on
where off by default. :)

The purpose of all this is of course to save bandwidth; there are two
ends of this, the server and the client:

Jimbo has pooh-poohed concerns about our bandwidth usage; certainly the
server has a nice fat pipe to the internet and isn't in danger of
choking, and whatever Bomis's overall bandwidth usage, Jimbo hasn't
complained that we're crowding out his legitimate business. :) But
still, we're looking at 5-20 *gigabytes* *per day*. A fair chunk of
that is probably images and archive dumps, but a lot is text.

On the client end: schmucks with dial-up may appreciate a little
compression. :)

I've also fixed what seems to be a conflict between the page cache and
client-side caching.

There are some race conditions remaining as far as making sure that two
loads of the same page don't overwrite each other's work or read
another's page partway through, and adding a gzipped second file
perhaps complicates this a bit... also still some cases where caches
aren't invalidated properly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Static html dump

body:
Je Mardo 20 Majo 2003 03:53, Alfio Puglisi skribis:
> I just subscribed (I'm the wikipedia user At18) to ask about the
> automatic html dump function. I see from the database page that it's
> "in development".

Welcome!

> If anyone is interested, I have a rudimental Perl script that is
> capable of reading the downloadable SQL dump and output all the
> articles as separate files in a number of alphabetical directories.
> It's not very fast, but it works.
>
> What's missing from the script: wikimarkup -> HTML conversion, some
> intelligence to autodetect redirects, dealing with images, and so on.
> I don't know if someone is in charge of this fuction. If so, I can
> post the script. Otherwise, I can further develop it myself, given
> some directions.

Cool! I don't think anyone's really actively working on this at the
moment, so if you'd like to, that would be great.

A few things to consider:

Last year someone started on a static HTML dump system with a hacked-up
version of the wiki code and some post-processing, but never quite
finished it up. I don't think he posted the code, but if you can get
ahold of him he may still have it available:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-November/001292.html

There's also a partial, very experimental offline reader program which
sucks the data out of the dump files. This includes a simplified wiki
parser which, I believe, outputs HTML to use in the wxWindows HTML
viewer widget: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WINOR
This may be useful to you.

The latest revisions of the wikipedia code can cache the HTML output
pages, but it's not clear whether this would be easy to adapt for
purposes of generating static output.

A couple of the big questions that have come up before are:

* filenames -- making sure they can stay within reasonable limits on
common filesystems, keeping in mind that non-ascii characters and
case-sensitivity may be handled differently on different OSs, and there
may be stronger limits on filename lengths.

* search -- an offline search would be very useful for an offline
reader. JavaScript, Java, local programs are various possibilties.

* size! with markup, header and footer text tacked onto every page, a
static html dump can be very large. The English wiki could at this
point approach or exceed the size of a CD-ROM without compression. Is
there a way to get the data compressed and still let it be accessible
to common web browsers accessing the filesystem directly? Less
important for a mirror site than a CD, perhaps.

* interlanguage links - it would be nice to be able to include all
languages in a single browsable tree, with appropriate cross-links.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Modification in SearchEngine (and other files)

body:
Je Lundo 19 Majo 2003 23:24, Thomas Corell skribis:
> Can someone checking if the englisch translation of the
> ''showingresultsnum'' is propper english? I tried, but that means not
> so much ;)

"Showing below $3 results using the respective limit of $1
starting with #$2."

Whoa... :)  I'd prefer something simpler:
"Showing up to $1 results starting with #$2."

Or better yet, just give the actual number of results and let the chunk
size be shown by the "next X" / "prev X" links.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dante for Admin

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dante Alighieri wtote:
> >Hello out there in WikiEN-l land... I've been
> futzing
> >around the W now for some time and I think it might
>
> >be time to try my hand at being an administrator if
> no
> >one else objects. I can't promise to be half as
> prolific or
> >attentive as Mav149, but then, who can. :) So, this
> is a
> >formal request for Wikipedia Administrator
> privileges for
> >my humble self.
>
> I was just about to nominate you, but since you
> nominated yourself then I
> second the nomination.
>
> Dante will make a great Admin.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I third
-LittleDan

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Votes for deletion

body:
--- koyaanis qatsi <obchodnakorze at yahoo.com> wrote:
> LittleDan Writes:
> > We shouldn't copy public domain sources verbatim,
> > but it's fine to copy the information. We're not
> > just a dump site for words, only for ideas and
> > information.
>
> well, a few points about that.  Originally the idea
> was to import the information as a base for an
> article
> that, with any luck, we'd expand.  It's happened in
> some cases, not in others.
>
> A few problems with the original idea: 1, it forks
> the
> material; 2, sometimes information goes out of date
> and with e.g. the CIA Factbook stuff it would be
> easier to let them update it year by year, and have
> us
> just link to it.
>
> A few benefits of the idea: 1, we have no guarantee
> that the information will stay wherever it is
> originally; 2, at least we'll have *something* on
> big
> topics like e.g. Chile when it's time to have a hard
> copy of the 'pedia.  I very much doubt we'd have
> anything at all on e.g. [[Bhutan]] by this point if
> not for the CIA stuff.
>
I guess you're right, but we should paraphrase
whenever possible. With very obscure topics, we
shouldn't jump to copy a PD source. I think a 2
paragraph stub is much better than a 20 paragraph
coppied thing.

What hard copy of the 'pedia? I think I missed that
discussion. In my opinion, an offline wiki database
reader and full search engine (but still only offline)
would be more useful.

> A side point: arguing that we shouldn't have the
> information because someone else has it is a
> non-starter--if that were our rationale, we wouldn't
> have any information that's available *anywhere*
> else
> online.  I'm not saying *you* are arguing that, but
> people sometimes do.  Ideally, the wikipedia would
> have information on everything under the sun, and be
> as complete as possible.

You're right, that's not what I'm saying.
>
> > In effect, it is the same as copywrited sources
> > (except that we can copy the pictures from PD)
> > but I see nothing wrong with that.
>
> I don't understand what you mean by this.
>
> kq

We should have approximately the same policy for
copping directly PD and Copyrighted sources, but now I
guess in some circumstances we need to copy PD sources

--LittleDan

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
Hello,

because of the stupid text the SearchEngine returns (Showing below 20
results starting with #1.) and we all see e.g. 24 results, I added a new
output string in Language.php and LanguageDe.php and modified
SearchEngine.php and GlobalFunktions.php to use this new string and the new
function ShowingResulesNum().

There are other SpecialPages using ShowingResults() which may be changed in
an aproppriate way, if you like the new feature.

Can someone checking if the englisch translation of the
''showingresultsnum'' is propper english? I tried, but that means not so
much ;)

Oh, well, it all in CVS checked in. And it works fine at my Test-Wikipedia
at home, no bugs as far as I see.
--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 05:03:03AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Just for kicks, I've added some preliminary, experimental support for
> gzip encoding of pages that have been saved in the file cache. If
> $wgUseGzip is not enabled in LocalSettings, it shouldn't have any
> effect; if it is, it'll make compressed copies of cached files and then
> serve them if the client claims to accept gzip.
>
> At present this only affects file-cachable pages: so plain current page
> views by not-logged-in users. Compression is only done when generating
> the cached file, so it oughtn't to drain CPU resources too much. My
> informal testing shows the gzipping takes about 2-3 ms, which is much
> shorter than most of the page generation steps. (Though it will eat up
> some additional disk space, as both uncompressed and compressed copies
> are kept on disk.)

One of the nice things about gzip is that decompression is much much
cheaper than compression.  It might almost make sense to just compress
everything and then decompress on the fly if you need it.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] unlisted administrators

body:
User:CatherineMunro is not listed there.  Was she missed?  I'm sure all the
nominating, seconding and accepting were done.

Regards,

sannse

WikiKarma:  [[Grammy Awards of 1961]]

> Here's a complete list:
> +--------------------+-----------------+
> | user_name          | user_rights     |
> +--------------------+-----------------+
> | -- April           | sysop           |
> | 172                | sysop           |
> | Alvaro             | sysop           |
> | Ams80              | sysop           |
> | Andre Engels       | sysop           |
> | AstroNomer         | sysop           |
> | AxelBoldt          | sysop           |
> | Brion VIBBER       | sysop,developer |
> | Bryan Derksen      | sysop           |
> | Camembert          | sysop           |
> | Chuck SMITH        | sysop           |
> | Clifford Adams     | sysop           |
> | Cordyph            | sysop           |
> | Cprompt            | sysop           |
> | Danny              | sysop           |
> | Ed Poor            | sysop,developer |
> | Eloquence          | sysop,developer |
> | Enchanter          | sysop           |
> | Fred Bauder        | sysop           |
> | Hephaestos         | sysop           |
> | Infrogmation       | sysop           |
> | J Hofmann Kemp     | sysop           |
> | Jasonr             | sysop           |
> | JeLuF              | sysop           |
> | Jimbo Wales        | sysop,developer |
> | Jimfbleak          | sysop           |
> | JohnOwens          | sysop           |
> | Karen Johnson      | sysop           |
> | Khendon            | sysop           |
> | Kingturtle         | sysop           |
> | LC                 | sysop           |
> | Lee Daniel Crocker | sysop,developer |
> | LittleDan          | sysop           |
> | Magnus Manske      | sysop,developer |
> | Manning Bartlett   | sysop           |
> | Mark Christensen   | sysop           |
> | Maveric149         | sysop           |
> | Minesweeper        | sysop           |
> | Mirwin             | sysop           |
> | Montrealais        | sysop           |
> | MyRedDice          | sysop           |
> | Notheruser         | sysop           |
> | Oliver Pereira     | sysop           |
> | Peter Winnberg     | sysop           |
> | PierreAbbat        | sysop           |
> | Robert Merkel      | sysop           |
> | RoseParks          | sysop           |
> | Sannse             | sysop           |
> | Scipius            | sysop           |
> | Sheldon Rampton    | sysop           |
> | Sjc                | sysop           |
> | Slrubenstein       | sysop           |
> | Someone else       | sysop           |
> | Stephen Gilbert    | sysop           |
> | TUF-KAT            | sysop           |
> | Tannin             | sysop           |
> | Tarquin            | sysop           |
> | Taw                | sysop           |
> | The Anome          | sysop           |
> | The Cunctator      | sysop           |
> | The Epopt          | sysop           |
> | Tim Shell          | sysop           |
> | Tim Starling       | sysop           |
> | Timshell           | sysop           |
> | Toby Bartels       | sysop           |
> | Vicki Rosenzweig   | sysop           |
> | WojPob             | sysop           |
> | Zoe                | sysop           |
> +--------------------+-----------------+
> 68 rows in set (0.15 sec)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: tarquin

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:

>I added an article on Barth syndrome, which I read about in Reader's Digest,
>and which affects about 10 babies per year in the USA. There's also Asperger
>syndrome, which affects about 1 in 300. (Why the article calls it a
>"disorder" I don't know.
>
It's called "syndrome" in the UK too. Change it :)


body:
Je Mardo 20 Majo 2003 05:42, Thomas Corell skribis:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Whoa... :)  I'd prefer something simpler:
> > "Showing up to $1 results starting with #$2."
>
> If $1 is still the $limit thats simply wrong if, you then get 24
> results (e.g. 4 times title + 20 times full text results).

Hmm, wait, is that what you mean? Why would we want that? Those are two
entirely separate searches...

-- brion vibber (brin @ pobox.com)


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: votes for deletion

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>
>==What Wikipedia is not==
>
>14. Mere collections of public domain or other source
>material; such as entire books, original historical
>documents, letters, laws, proclamations and other
>source material that are only useful when presented
>with their original, un-modified wording.
>
For me, the key phrase is "only useful".  For instance, we've
sucked in quite a bit from the Dictionary of American Naval
Fighting Ships; the content is about as authoritative as one
can get, and is frequently written as well as anything else
in wikipedia, in which case there's not much to improve on
once links are added.  However, there are times when we have
to prune out the anti-communist rah-rah left over from the 50s,
update with ship info postdating a DANFS volume, and in a very
very few cases - fix an actual mistake.  Over time I expect
that the wikipedia ship articles will become better than their
DANFS ancestors.

So use of the PD info gives us a leg up in the goal of producing
a reference superior to all others; by cutting out some typing
and fact-collecting time, we get more cycles to spend on areas
for which the info isn't as well-organized already.

Stan


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
--- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> > (Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>):
> > > Larousse is just the name of the machine, and
> shouldn't generally be
> > > linked to directly; at some point in the near
> future it will probably
> >
> > Larousse is also a trademark for a French
> commercial encyclopedia,
> > http://www.larousse.fr/ and
> http://www.encyclopedie-larousse.fr/
>
> Utterly irrelevant. Larousse is just the name of a
> famous historical
> encyclopedist. It's a trademark only in its use as a
> brand name to
> sell encyclopedias. Since we aren't using the name
> as a brand (we're
> not using it for any public purpose whatsoever--it's
> a private
> internal machine name), there's no trademark issue.

A thought for those of you poor people who don't know
french.
Another spelling for Larousse is "La Rousse", which
could mean "Red Head" talking about a woman.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Je Mardo 20 Majo 2003 10:22, Anthere skribis:
> A thought for those of you poor people who don't know
> french.
> Another spelling for Larousse is "La Rousse", which
> could mean "Red Head" talking about a woman.

No small surprise, she is running on Red Head Linux. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: votes for deletion

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Stan Shebs wrote:
| For instance, we've
| sucked in quite a bit from the Dictionary of American Naval
| Fighting Ships; the content is about as authoritative as one
| can get, and is frequently written as well as anything else
| in wikipedia, in which case there's not much to improve on
| once links are added.  However, there are times when we have
| to prune out the anti-communist rah-rah left over from the 50s,
| update with ship info postdating a DANFS volume, and in a very
| very few cases - fix an actual mistake.  Over time I expect
| that the wikipedia ship articles will become better than their
| DANFS ancestors.
|
| Stan

Those links immediately make our articles better than the DANFS
originals.  You don't have to wonder how [[Abner Read]] served on both
the aircraft carrier ''Enterprise'' and the submarine ''Dolphin'' -- you
can click on the links and realize that he served on the schooner
''Enterprise'' and the brig ''Dolphin''.  A DANFS article may specify
that a ship visited a foreign country and was reviewed by "the king";
once I've imported it, you will not only see the King's name, but you
can also click on it.

On another tentacle, refusing to reuse anything ever written, no matter
how authoritative, is silly.  The public domain is a Good Thing[tm], and
I intend to make full use of it.

- --
~ Sean Barrett     | The pellet with the poison's in the flagon
~ sean at epoptic.com | with the dragon; the vessel with the pestle
~                  | has the brew that is true. --The Court Jester
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from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia in the media

body:
--- cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org> wrote:

> I didnt see it that way. It really is all in the marketting.
> Wikipedia
> is a very specific project: we aim to create an open and accurate
> encyclopedia. I dont see why businesses would be attracted to
> Wikipedia
> unless we presented it as a business solution. If Wikis for
> business
> catch on, mark my words, there will be an opensource solution. :-)

I just metioned it because generally businesses want to see an
existing and working model before deciding to go with new tools. I am
not saying the W code is fit for business use (although it could, by
eliminating anon contribs), but rather that it is some place for
managers and so on to go and get a feel for what a wiki is about and
what the possibilities are.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageFr.php

body:
Hi all,
Here is the new version of the french interface.
We correct some un-translated sentence and I add from the Language.php the
new availables options (like "improved RC", ...).
Someone can please upload this file on the server ?
Regards,

Aoineko
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Sort order

body:
At some point in the near future I'll be adding in a per-language sort
order adjustment, so that various sorted lists should turn out in more
or less correct order for a change. :)

I'd appreciate pointers to descriptions of various languages' sorting
requirements so I can try to get them right.

I don't know if we can handle Japanese and Chinese sensibly, but
alphabetic languages should generally work fairly well by making a
munged copy of the string such that, eg, if "?" sorts as the same as
"o" we just change it to "o"; if "?" sorts after "o" (as in Polish
IIRC), it becomes "o~", which should always sort after any "o" and
before any "p" in a binary ASCII-order string sort.

Simple replacements should generally work, though we can also do more
complicated replacements of certain sequences of characters.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] image markup quick fix

body:
While we're waiting for better image markup that allows us to write
{{floatright}}[[Image:foo]]

here's an idea for quick temporary fix.

How about we add the following to our stylesheet:

div.floatright {
float:right;
margin:5px;
}

This means we can write in articles:

[[Image:Rockwell_font.png]]

instead of what is currently on [[Rockwell (typeface)]]


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Static html dump

body:
Hello,

I just subscribed (I'm the wikipedia user At18) to ask about the automatic
html dump function. I see from the database page that it's "in
development".

If anyone is interested, I have a rudimental Perl script that is capable
of reading the downloadable SQL dump and output all the articles as
separate files in a number of alphabetical directories. It's not very
fast, but it works.

What's missing from the script: wikimarkup -> HTML conversion, some
intelligence to autodetect redirects, dealing with images, and so on. I
don't know if someone is in charge of this fuction. If so, I can post the
script. Otherwise, I can further develop it myself, given some directions.

Alfio


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Wikitech-l] script shows up with IP address

body:
Hi,

I am currently working on a small python library which allows reading and
writing articles. Among the features is an (semi)automatic detection of
copyright
violations.

When an article is written by the script, I remarked that the IP address of
my
machine shows up in the log. I would prefer it if my username shows up,
allowing everyone to contact me easily. Therefore my question: what
parameters do I have to send to /w/wiki.phtml in order to appear with my
username?

Any help with this would be very much appreciated,
thanks in advance,

  Marco

P.S. Not sure this is the right list to ask this: could someone please
obscure the
emails in the list archives?
The problem is that by replying many people cite the full email address
which
shows up in the archive, e.g., see
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-April/009828.html for
an
example. I already have enough spam in my inbox :-(

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
Bitte l?cheln! Fotogalerie online mit GMX ohne eigene Homepage!


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sort order

body:
On Tue, 20 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Collation rules for all languages are defined in the Unicode spec;

Well, that could be handy. :) I'll see if I can dig them up.

hmm... This looks like a place to start:
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr10/

> I believe MySQL contains many of them, but I'm not sure how to tell
> it how to use them.

MySQL's really ugly in this regard. First, no UTF-8 support at all.* The
collation order modules that it does have (for some 8-bit charsets and
some multibyte) can only be enabled on a server-wide basis, so we can't
say "this database sorts as english, this one sorts as german, this one
sorts as polish" unless we run separate instances of MySQL.

* Allegedly 4.1 has/will have some unicode support. It's not stable
though.

** Yes, I know PostgresQL has Unicode support. :)  I don't know if it
supports per-table or per-column selection of collation order, and there
would be much other work to get Wikipedia running on it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sort order

body:
On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 11:29:31AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I don't know if we can handle Japanese and Chinese sensibly, but

FYI, Japanese is complicated to sort.

I believe this is the order:

Kana:
  a      i                               u       e     o
ka/ga  ki/gi (kya/gya kyu/gyu kyo/gyo) ku/gu   ke/ge ko/go
sa/za shi/ji (sha/ja  shu/ju  sho/jo)  su/zu   se/ze so/zo
ta/da chi/X  (cha     chu     cho)     tsu/dzu te/de to/do
 na     ni   (nya nyu nyo)              ne       ne   no
ha/ba/pa hi/bi/pi (hya/bya/pya hyu/byu/pyu hyo/byo/pyo) fu/bu/pu \
          he/be/pe ho/bo/po
ma     mi    (mya myu myo)              mu      me     mo
ya                                      yu             yo
ra     ri (rya ryu ryo)                 ru      re     ro
wa                                                    (wo [particle, tho])
n

As far as Kanji goes, I believe it is sorted (any of these is OK):
* First by a characters primary radical, then by remaining strokes
* First by total strokes, then by primary radical
* Sound

Good luck!  ;)
--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN