subject: [Wikitech-l] automated TeX-like dashes

body:
Taw (Tomasz Wegrzanowski) wrote:

>Steven G. Johnson wrote:

>>Just a suggestion, it would be great if it were easier to do proper dash
>>typography. I find TeX's -/--/--- convention for hyphen/en-dash/em-dash
>>to be fairly intuitive.

We could go TeX one better and make "----" the quotation dash (―).
Although there are a couple of technical problems with /that/. ^_^

>>Right now, if you do — in the text, it makes things much less
>>readable and is confusing for newbies.  The need for these glyphs is so
>>common that wiki support seems worthwhile.

>Sure, sure, just research the subject "which browsers is it going to break".

They will appear literally as "–" and "—" on Netscape 4.
The last I heard, lots of our visitors were still using that --
but the last I heard was about a year ago, so it may be false now.

This is one reason that /I/ change "—" to "--" when I see it.
(The other is ease of editing, which Steven's suggestion would fix.)

There is another possible problem:  Since "--" often means an em dash,
and is used thus in many Wikimedia pages now (with "-" for an en dash),
then a switch in the parsing code should require a conversion of old dashes.
Such a conversion will have many exceptions and may be hard to design.
However, another possibility is to forget it and let bad en dashes appear;
it's a small cosmetic error that people will fix in normal proofreading.

-- Toby


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote:

>The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of
>wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]]
>(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that
>page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to
>[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]
>(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks), which I have
>quoted above.

Number 9 on a list of 50 items /is/ obscure.
If this is going to be used as material for a ban,
then I agree that it should be made less obscure!

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism

body:
Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote in part:

>Of course more info is needed! Refining that we could say that they are both
>widely regarded as terrorist in the West and by nearly all national
>governments in the Arab world. That is attributing a POV to its adherents. It
>is also in line with NPOV.

>Taking that out would be expressing the minority POV that they are not
>terrorist.

You've said this a couple times now, but I must disagree strongly.

/Failing/ to state X is *not* equivalent to /denying/ X!!!

So you and Ec may disagree over whether the statement
"Many people consider Osama Bin Laden to be a terrorist.",
in the absence of additional facts, is sufficiently NPOV;
but his position (to remove it in the absence of such facts)
does not advocate the opposite POV.

-- Toby


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
Eloquence (Erik Moeller) wrote in part:

>Tillwe wrote:

>>One of this browsers is Netscape 7.1, and if I understand the discussion
>>at the village pump correclty, Mozilla won't work correctly, too.

>No, you didn't understand it correctly. Please refrain from further
>whining until the feature is actually activated.

This response isn't very useful for those of us
that have only read about this on this mailing list.
Tillwe's fears, if grounded, would make it a bad thing
the moment that the feature is activated at all.
Now, his fears may well be groundless, as you imply,
but the people on the mailing list don't know that.
(The word "whining" is especially unproductive.)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban

body:
Nathan Russell wrote in part:

>I do disagree with RK calling anyone he dislikes a Nazi, but that's a
>separate issue.  If I told (picking random user names here) Angela that
>I thought she was a terrorist because she protected an article on
>someone else's version, would that justify Uncle Ed telling me he was a
>terrorist and was going to kill me?

You're analogy goes too far here -- and that's rather the point.

Would it justify Uncle Ed telling you he was a terrorist, *period*?
No, it wouldn't -- but Sascha was claiming more than that MNH was unjust.
Then, would it be reasonable for us to /conclude/ that Uncle Ed /meant/
(but did *not* literally say!) that he was going to kill you?

IMO, that would not be a reasonable conclusion.

-- Toby


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Characterizations of Behavior

body:
As I have been saying on the discussion about [[List of war heroes]].

RickK

Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Any characterization of behavior is subject to the criticism that it could
>be replaced with a description of the phenomenon. We use these forms as a
>shorthand for such descriptions. "Sneak attack", for example, can serve in
>place of a long description explaining how a plan to declare war at 6 AM and
>attack at 7 failed because of a delay in decoding.
>
>The words "patriotic", "brave", "noble" and "democratic" come to mind in
>this context. These are words which express point of view. They don't need
>to be banned, just used consciously.
>
What's important about your comments is that they show that the same
kind of problem can arise when the word in question has positive overtones.

Ec

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote in part:

>Geoff Burling wrote:

>>I think you are making a logical fallicy here. You assume that because MNH
>>calls himself a Nazi, therefore he wants to kill RK. As I argued, one can
>>describe oneself -- or another person -- a Nazi for many reasons. In my
>>last email, I suggested it was in response to RK's habit of calling anyone
>>he disagrees with "a Nazi";

>Your criticisms of my interpretation of his statement are all valid. However,
>what you have failed to dispel (in my mind), is the possibility that it was
>meant as a threat. Implicit threats function not by being overt threats, but
>rather by having the property that they can be interpreted as a threat. I
>concede that one has to also employ a measure of likelihood. Your suggestion
>that this statement was meant as an attack on RK for calling others Nazis has
>in my mind lowered the possibility that it was meant as a threat. But I am
>still of the opinion that it is a possibility.

Sure, it's a possibility.  But if you want MNH to be banned on this basis
(in part on this basis I mean, since you charge further reasons),
then the burden lies with you to convince /us/ (or Jimbo, or the arbitrator)
that it really was a threat.

I know that if I saw A say to B ?I am a Z.? in the course of a fight,
and B has a habit of calling people Zs, then I would assume
that B had called A a Z earlier in the course of the fight,
and that now A was being sarcastic in a bitter response.
I would /not/ assume that A really intended to claim to be a Z.
Now, this does not excuse A's outburst, but it puts considerable doubt
on any claim that A was /threatening/ B, even though a Z is a threat to B.

I don't know if RK ever called MNH a Nazi before that comment appeared,
but I'd at least have to establish that he hadn't done so
if I wanted to argue that MNH intended to threaten RK.

So I would drop the threat charge for now and stick to this:

>My case is founded first and foremost on his personal attacks.

-- Toby


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Mendelovich Meir

subject: [Wikitech-l] RE: Watch list optimisation

body:
Brion, et al.
  As far as I understand, the watch list query has a date/time range
condition on the revisions table (which is VERY big). Most DB servers don't
use non-clustered indexes for range conditions. There are two ways to solve
this:
1. Change the revision table clustered index to timestamp (and primary key
to timestamp+ID). The ID should be kept only for timestamp collisions.
2. Save for each user in his watch list the cut-off revision ID for each
article.

I think that #1 is the easiest and will give significant improvement.

	Meir :->

-----Original Message-----
From: Brion Vibber [mailto:brion at pobox.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 8:13 PM
To: Mendelovich Meir
Cc: 'Peter Gervai'
Subject: Re: Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 45

On Jan 15, 2004, at 05:20, Mendelovich Meir wrote:
> Brion,
> ?Small question: What is the primary key of the revision histroy
> table? Is it the timestamp? Is it clustered?

The primary key is the revision ID number.

There are also indexes by namespace/title/timestamp and by timestamp
alone.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>This response isn't very useful for those of us
>>that have only read about this on this mailing list.
>>Tillwe's fears, if grounded, would make it a bad thing
>>the moment that the feature is activated at all.
>>Now, his fears may well be groundless, as you imply,
>>but the people on the mailing list don't know that.
>>(The word "whining" is especially unproductive.)

>Tillwe is spreading FUD. I consider FUD unproductive. If he wanted to
>understand the issues, he should have talked to me first.

OK, so he's spreading FUD.  But how could I possibly know that?

Your response didn't do me any good here,
and I doubt that I'm the only person on this mailing list
that hasn't looked at the English village pump recently.

I know that you don't want to repeat your answers to Tillwe's FUD
all over again just because he posted it to another forum.
So here are some replies that you might make instead:

# Since this is planned only for [[en:]], I will respond on <wikiEN-L>.
# Since this is planned only for [[en:]] and that wiki is now responsive,
  please see my earlier replies on [[en:Village pump]].
# This is only a vauge idea now, and I will propose it on <wikitech-L>
  when it becomes serious.  If you want to join the current discussion
  on [[en:Village pump]], then there's plenty of time to wait
  for that wiki to become responsive again.
# This has been discussed already on <wikitech-L> under Subject:XXX.
  The stuff on the English village pump is not the main discussion
  and the points raised there should not be trusted fully.
# This has been discussed already at [[meta:XXX]].
  The stuff on the English village pump is not the main discussion
  and the points raised there should not be trusted fully.
# I have given adequate response already on [[en:Village pump]].
  Since this is an option for all wikis, I'm sorry that the proposal
  was discussed for so long only there, even close to its implementation.
  Since that wiki is unresponsive, I'll hold off on any implementation
  until you all can read my replies there, which I will move when I can
  to a central location at [[meta:XXX]].  Then you will see that it's OK.

Only some of these would be appropriate, depending on the situation;
but all of them, if appropriate, would dispell Tillwe's FUD.

However, if you want to call Tillwe a whiner, then please do it privately.

-- Toby


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism

body:
zero 0000 wrote:

>--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"Many people regard ..." carries a strong POV wallop  It applies the
>>>
>>>
>>>logical fallacy that if a significant majority consider something to
>>>
>>>
>>be
>>
>>
>>>true, then it must in fact be true.
>>>
>>>
>>No it doesn't. If something is true, then it is true. If in fact a
>>great many
>>people say and think a certain way, then the statement needs to be
>>made.
>>
>>
>
>It isn't the truth of it that I am questioning.  I am questioning
>that the "statement needs to be made".  Consider whether you would
>like to see the statement "Some people consider that his teeth
>are crooked" in (say) the article on George Bush even if the
>truth of that statement could be positively established.
>I guess that you would take it out, which (if I'm right) shows
>that the mere truth of a statement is not really your criterion
>for including it.  You must have an additional reason.  Not
>referring specificially to yourself, I suggest that the main
>reason that people include statements like "Some people believe
>that X is a terrorist" is that they WANT to attach that label to
>that person and not because they have a disinterested intention
>to report a fact.  They should instead devote more effort to
>reporting hard data about X ("X has been responsible for many
>attacks on civilians, including ... and ..."), then readers who
>like labels like "terrorism" will have no trouble attaching them.
>I think this shows respect for the intelligence of the reader.
>
>
In this case, I think the statement does need to be made.  OBL is widely
referred to as  "terrorist" or "terrorist mastermind".  If it were
particularly notorious and commonly discussed that GWB had crooked
teeth, or if perhaps he were widely referred to as "the man with the
crooked teeth", we should of course report that fact as well.  But as
far as I know, that's not the case, so we don't.

If a label is very widely attached to something, we ought to report that
the label is very widely attached, and if possible discuss at least
briefly who commonly attaches it.  Otherwise, we're very conspicuously
omitting a well-known and relevant fact.  In the case of OBL, the label
is relevant to a number of worldwide conflicts, and especially relevant
to US politics, both domestic and as regards foreign relations.  In
short, OBL may or may not be a terrorist, but it is a fact that he is
called such by nearly all governments in the world, and by public
opinion in the West, and that fact is one that ought to be reported, as
it is both relevant and has important consequences.

-Mark


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote in part:
>
> >Of course more info is needed! Refining that we could say that they are both
> >widely regarded as terrorist in the West and by nearly all national
> >governments in the Arab world. That is attributing a POV to its adherents. It
> >is also in line with NPOV.
>
> >Taking that out would be expressing the minority POV that they are not
> >terrorist.
>
> You've said this a couple times now, but I must disagree strongly.
>
> /Failing/ to state X is *not* equivalent to /denying/ X!!!
>
> So you and Ec may disagree over whether the statement
> "Many people consider Osama Bin Laden to be a terrorist.",
> in the absence of additional facts, is sufficiently NPOV;
> but his position (to remove it in the absence of such facts)
> does not advocate the opposite POV.

A lie of omission is still a lie. So to take out the word 'terrorist' from [[Osama Bin Laden]] is
dishonest and gives the impression that Wikipedia is saying that, in direct opposition to what
most of the western world thinks, that OBL is not a terrorist. And when I say that something will
not be tolerated, I mean that that behavior will be countered and negated. So in this case the
correct NPOV sentence about what many in the West feel is going to be continuously put back into
that article one way or the other.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Subpages for Wikipedia namespace

body:
Timwi wrote:
>Discussion should really be taking place on Talk pages. This has irked
>me for a long time; the Village Pump should really be on a Talk page, too.

For some page the whole point of the page is discussion. It's /subject/ is
discussion. In those cases having discussion on that page is perfectly fine.
But even so, subpages functionality would really help to move that discussion
off the main Wikipedia pages onto subpages and talk pages. That would greatly
reduce edit conflicts and the huge page sizes of certain pages.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: mediation mailing list

body:
I know one thing.

It is painful to send mails, through wikimail, one after the other.

Without counting those who have no registered email. Must wait minutes
for the talk page to load.

Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> Erik wrote:
>
>>A phpBB board is already set up and can be used as soon as our
>>servers are in better shape.
>
>
> That sounds like a great idea, but we need something now, not in the
> Neverneverland of when the servers are in better shape. ;) The server
> situation has been almost constantly bad since early summer 2003. This in
> spite of near super-human efforts by Brion, Jason and co.
>
> -- mav


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Jan 18, 2004, at 16:05, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>> Discussion should really be taking place on Talk pages. This has irked
>> me for a long time; the Village Pump should really be on a Talk page,
>> too.
>
> For some page the whole point of the page is discussion. It's
> /subject/ is
> discussion. In those cases having discussion on that page is perfectly
> fine.
> But even so, subpages functionality would really help to move that
> discussion
> off the main Wikipedia pages onto subpages and talk pages. That would
> greatly
> reduce edit conflicts and the huge page sizes of certain pages.

Works for me.

We should keep in mind that the most important distinction is between
"aritlces" and everything else. Everything else is meta information:
discussion, commentary, supplementary information of one sort or
another.

Subpages were taken out because in the article space they interfere
with things (mainly by usurping a perfectly good slash, which messes up
some page titles); but they were added back for discussion and user
namespaces because they are useful. Wikipedia: seems fair game. I've
made the change (in CommonSettings.php; if there is consensus to undo
it, take out the line that changes $wgNamespacesWithSubpages[4] = 1;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Fixing "many people regard..."

body:
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
>For example, "some people regard the situation in Iraq as a guerrilla
>war" can be replaced with "Army Gen. John P. Abizaid said that forces
>in Iraq were 'conducting what I would describe as a classical
>guerrilla-type campaign against us.'"

Being so specific doesn't work in a lead paragraph and different high-ranking
people have a multitude of POVs that are very often not representative of the
population in general.

-- mav


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
Anthere wrote:
>What is FUD ?

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/fud.html

--mav


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism

body:
On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >"Many people regard ..." carries a strong POV wallop  It applies the
> >logical fallacy that if a significant majority consider something to be
> >true, then it must in fact be true.
>
> No it doesn't. If something is true, then it is true. If in fact a great many
> people say and think a certain way, then the statement needs to be made.

My thinking about this issue revolves around the utility of this statement.

Saying that 9/11 was considered by many people as a terrorist act is a
useful statement, because it then leads to explaining the various responses:
visible signs of patriotism in the US, a number of public shows of support
for not only the US but for the Fire Department and Police Departments of
New York City, passage of the US PATRIOT act.

Saying that Usama ben Laden is considered by many people as a terrorist
doesn't offer anything more than a possible widespread opinion -- unless it
is linked to the fact that he is currently hiding in Pakistan or Afghanistan
from the US government, who are looking for him for that very reason.
>
> >A statement founded on public
> >opinion should be subject to verification just as much as anything else.
>
> Sorry, but polls do not exist for everything. Some things are just plain
> common sense because they are views so widely held. For example, the
> statement that OBL is a terrorist or that Al-Queda is a terrorist
> organization.
>
> Of course more info is needed! Refining that we could say that they are both
> widely regarded as terrorist in the West and by nearly all national
> governments in the Arab world. That is attributing a POV to its adherents. It
> is also in line with NPOV.
>
Having written more than once words to the efect "it is widely believed that",
my excuse is that I can prove this statement, but in the press to get
_something_ into Wikipedia, I'll use those 5 words, or a variation on them.
However, I also try to qualify those words with something like: "a significant
minority, however thinks Y because" or "an eloquent minority dissents".
There are people who think Usama ben Laden is a freedom fighter, & I think
their reaons are worth noting -- although I may not agree with them.

[snip]
>
> Oh and some things are so widely held that there is no real need to be
> wishy-washy about it. For example that the 9/11 attacks were terrorist acts.
> However, as I stated on that talk page the word 'terrorist' should be taken
> out of that title for other reasons (not common as shorter title and not
> needed for disambiguation).
>
It is nice that on Wikipedia we are allowed to call a spade a spade. However,
some people misunderstand statements like this, & think we are talking about
African Americans, when we are alluding to Tacitus' desire to use lofty
language. That is where we get into nasty conflicts.

Geoff


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
Yann wrote:
>It doesn't work on Konqueror, it seems.

A lot of Java and JavaScript stuff doesn't work on Konqueror. The pull down
links in the enhanced recent changes, for example, don't pull down next to
the article listed in RC. Instead the pull down list jumps to the top of RC.
No biggie - I just don't use the pull down feature.

Erik, just make sure that people with Java-broken browsers don't see the
broken Java bits unless they select that option in their preferences. And the
option in the preferences should have a 'does not work in all browsers'
warning. Otherwise users will think that MediaWiki is broken, not their
browser.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Brion wrote:
>Works for me.

Thank you Brion! :)

-- mav


from_name: Peter Bartlett

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From D.P.B Smith
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fixing "many people regard..."

See also http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words
where it is says that many people regard the phrase "many people regard"
as a legitimate rhetorical device.

Pete


from_name: Nathan Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban

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

Rick wrote:

| He also likes to list EVERY person with whom he has edit
| disagreements on [[Conflicts between users]].
|
| RickK
|
| */Sascha Noyes <sascha at pantropy.net>/* wrote:
|
| Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health
| has repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal
|  attacks on other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user
| on the grounds that he is not abating with said attacks.
|
| I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by
| this user on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox
|
| I have not looked through all of the disputes this user has had
| with others, but in the ones that I have looked at he has made no
| less than 12 personal attacks. Some of them quite vicious ("Hello,
| RK. Have you always suffered from mental illness and perceptual
| problems?"). At another time he has made an implicit threat to RK
| on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi from New York. I am
| proud of my German heritage, how about you?". Anyway, this is all
| documented at the above url. My question: are we only paying lip
| service to the policy of not making personal attacks (and implicit
| threats), or shall this policy be enforced?
|
| As an endnote, it must be stated that MNH has not just personally
| RK, but numerous others as well.
|
| Best, Sascha Noyes

Michael, in particular, seems to make death threats a LOT, and I don't
believe any action outside WP has been taken in regard to this.

Anyone who has spent a half-hour banning Michael clones (which is most
of the active admins) knows that death threats start showing up in
edit summaries within 5 minutes.

Nathan aka pakaran
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban

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

Geoff Burling wrote:
| On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote:
|
|
|>On Saturday 17 January 2004 10:19 pm, Geoff Burling wrote:
|>
|>>On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote:
|>>
|>>>Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has
|>>>repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks
|>>>on other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds
|>>>that he is not abating with said attacks.
|>>>
|>>>I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by this
|>>>user on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox
|>>
| [snip]
|
|>>>(...) At another time he has made
|>>>an implicit threat to RK on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi
|>>>from New York. I am proud of my German heritage, how about you?".
|>>
|>>I'm not clear how identifying one's home location is a threat. And having
|>>read quite a few emails on this mailling list from RK where he accuses
|>>people of being a Nazi for disagreeing with him, I read this as a
sardonic
|>>description.
|>
|>I agree with you that RK has at times behaved extremely badly on
wikipedia,
|>but that is not at issue here. I have stated that I believe that MNH's
|>statement that he is a german Nazi from NY who is extremely proud of his
|>heritage is indeed an implicit threat to RK:
|>
|>RK is a jew who lives in NY. MNH stating that he is a Nazi from NY implies
|>firstly that he is ideologically motivated to kill RK, and secondly
that he
|>lives close to RK.
|
|
| I think you are making a logical fallicy here. You assume that because MNH
| calls himself a Nazi, therefore he wants to kill RK. As I argued, one can
| describe oneself -- or another person -- a Nazi for many reasons. In my
| last email, I suggested it was in response to RK's habit of calling anyone
| he disagrees with "a Nazi"; another possible meaning would be the
"Soup Nazi"
| from the Seinberg sitcom, who is not clearly anti-semitic, merely despotic
| in how he runs his restaurant.

However, when one thinks of historic Nazis, killing Jews IS one of the
first characteristics to come to mind.

I do disagree with RK calling anyone he dislikes a Nazi, but that's a
separate issue.  If I told (picking random user names here) Angela that
I thought she was a terrorist because she protected an article on
someone else's version, would that justify Uncle Ed telling me he was a
terrorist and was going to kill me?

Nathan aka Pak
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:
>Saying that Usama ben Laden is considered by many people as a
>terrorist doesn't offer anything more than a possible widespread
>opinion -- unless it is linked to the fact that he is currently hiding
>in Pakistan or Afghanistan from the US government, who are looking
>for him for that very reason.

A linkage would of course improve such a statement. But if a very large
percentage of the population in the West would define OBL as a terrorist,
then that opinion is very valid and relevant to an article about him. Like I
said before, that widespread opinion about him is one of the major, perhaps
/the/ major, reason why he is famous. That type of info needs to go in the
lead section of an article about him (probably in the lead paragraph).

>Having written more than once words to the efect "it is widely
>believed that", my excuse is that I can prove this statement,
>but in the press to get _something_ into Wikipedia, I'll use those
>5 words, or a variation on them. However, I also try to qualify those
>words with something like: "a significant minority, however thinks Y
>because" or "an eloquent minority dissents". There are people who
>think Usama ben Laden is a freedom fighter, & I think their reaons
>are worth noting -- although I may not agree with them.

Adding qualifiers stating counter opinions is always a good thing. I in fact
did this for the OBL article but my qualifier stating that 'in large parts of
the Islamic world he is viewed as a freedom fighter' was first neutered by
somebody taking out "large" and then the whole qualifier was taken out.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi wikipedia-l,

the server is extremly slow at the moment, so I move this from the
village pump to here. Eloquence wants to implement a default edit mode
using click-buttons for formating. This doesn't work with a number of
browsers. With some, it just doesn't do anything (browser that don't
support JavaScript). With other browsers which support JavaScript but
not the right kind, it does funny things (as inserting the formating
tags not at the cursors place, but at the end of the edited text). One
of this browsers is Netscape 7.1, and if I understand the discussion at
the village pump correclty, Mozilla won't work correctly, too. Still,
Eloquence wants to make this fancy editing mode the default mode --
which would led to an seemingly unusable wikipedia editing for a number
of browsers. I must admit that I don't like the introduction of fancy
editing at all, but if we introduce it, it either should work with *all*
browsers currently used, or it should be off by default.

What do you think?

Best regards,

Till

 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism

body:
Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Maveric149 wrote:

>>>Taking that out would be expressing the minority POV that they are not
>>>terrorist.

>>You've said this a couple times now, but I must disagree strongly.
>>/Failing/ to state X is *not* equivalent to /denying/ X!!!

>A lie of omission is still a lie.

I'm sorry, mav, but you've completely lost me here.

I've heard of deceiving people by leaving things out,
but that's definitely not what happens in an NPOV dispute
when somebody removes a "Many people think ..." statement.
This is deliberately a choice to refuse to state an opinion.
And in this NPOV dispute, the person taking Ec's position
is even open to including a more carefully worded, documented statement.

The only deception would be if we described Osama Bin Laden
in such a way that people might get the impression
that many people /don't/ think that he's a terrorist.
Then by failing to point out that this is wrong, we deceive.
That's definitely not the situation that Ec was talking about.

If instead we take the position, as you seem to advocate,
that failing to mention an important fact about somebody
is a "lie of omission", then NPOV is an unworkable policy.
Disputants with no documentation or evidence on either side
will have nothing to do but revert each other over and over;
it will be impossible to settle on any sort of compromise.
Instead, Wikipedia should take the position that
we include information only when it well established,
and disputants that want to include text must back that up.
Silence from Wikipedia must always indicate ''incompleteness''
(and Wikipedia is always incomplete), never denial.

It's also insufficient to cry "common sense" and say
that everybody ''knows'' that OBL is widely considered a terrorist.
In this case, I don't know it until you add "in the west",
and Ec may not know it in any case.  OK, so we're wrong!
But this is where NPOV comes in and says
"If people don't agree on the claim, then state the reasons instead."
Common knowledge cannot replace NPOV when it's not, in fact, common.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Sascha Noyes wrote:

>>>The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of
>>>wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]]
>>>(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that
>>>page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to
>>>[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]
>>>(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks), which I
>>> have quoted above.

>>Number 9 on a list of 50 items /is/ obscure.
>>If this is going to be used as material for a ban,
>>then I agree that it should be made less obscure!

>That is a matter of contention. How would you make it less obscure? Would you
>have all the policies listed on the "policy page" actually displayed on that
>page? The page would become very large indeed.

It /is/ a matter of contention?  Sorry, I thought that you had said
that you wanted this matter clarified before people were banned for it.
(But I may have confused this with something that somebody else wrote.)

Mav already gave a good suggestion for making it less obscure,
which is to list it on the submission requirements page
that he wants linked to from every edit page.
Then it would clearly be a requirement for any submission,
not merely one of 50 "guidelines to consider".

I trust that you're not arguing that people should be banned
for violating any of the 50 items listed as "guidelines to consider".
This particular rule is special -- more than just for our consideration.
But that is /not/ how it explained now -- it's obscure.

>Your obscurity argument would constitute a somewhat valid criticism had it not
>been the case that MNH was informed by various different wikipedians
>approximately six times that "no personal attacks, period." was an official
>wikipedia policy.

Then say that!  My obscurity argument was a response to what you wrote above.
If you're going to rely on something else, then my response doesn't apply.
But I stand by my response to *what*you*wrote*above* (with ">>>").
That placement /is/ obscure!

-- Toby


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation mailing list

body:
Daniel-
> That sounds like a great idea, but we need something now, not in the
> Neverneverland of when the servers are in better shape. ;)

That shouldn't be so far ahead, since 8 new machines have been ordered. It
doesn't make much sense to come up with an elaborate mailing list setup
and ditch it two weeks later.

FWIW, I've just tried three times to post something to the Village pump
and failed three times. With such response times, mediation is really not
something to worry about.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
Hi Tillwe,

> the server is extremly slow at the moment, so I move this from the
> village pump to here. Eloquence wants to implement a default edit mode
> using click-buttons for formating. This doesn't work with a number of
> browsers. With some, it just doesn't do anything (browser that don't
> support JavaScript).

That's been changed in CVS - JavaScript-disabled browsers will not show
the toolbar.

> With other browsers which support JavaScript but
> not the right kind, it does funny things (as inserting the formating
> tags not at the cursors place, but at the end of the edited text).

That's not "funny", it's intended behavior, as these browsers do not
support JavaScript selection. It's still helpful for learning the tags.

> One of this browsers is Netscape 7.1, and if I understand the discussion
> at the village pump correclty, Mozilla won't work correctly, too.

No, you didn't understand it correctly. Please refrain from further
whining until the feature is actually activated.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Erik,

>> the server is extremly slow at the moment, so I move this from
>> the village pump to here. Eloquence wants to implement a default
>> edit mode using click-buttons for formating. This doesn't work
>> with a number of browsers. With some, it just doesn't do
>> anything (browser that don't support JavaScript).

>That's been changed in CVS - JavaScript-disabled browsers will not
>show the toolbar.

Okay.

>> With other browsers which support JavaScript but
>> not the right kind, it does funny things (as inserting the
>> formating tags not at the cursors place, but at the end of the
>> edited text).

>That's not "funny", it's intended behavior, as these browsers do
>not support JavaScript selection. It's still helpful for learning
>the tags.

Yes. But do you know what actually will happen? You edit a long text
with some of this browsers, click on the tag-icon, nothing happens
(seemingly), you continue editing, and in the end, at the end of the
text some silly tags are inserted ... every newbie with a not fully
functional browser according to the MS specification (sorry for the
polemics here) will do this at least once -- instead of learning the
tags. Why not just disable it on these browsers, too?

>> One of this browsers is Netscape 7.1, and if I understand the
>> discussion at the village pump correclty, Mozilla won't work
>> correctly, too.

>No, you didn't understand it correctly. Please refrain from
>further whining until the feature is actually activated.

I think I did understand it. And I think it's better to talk now about
it (doing it here instead of Village Pump because of server slowness)
instead of being sorry afterwards. After the implementation it will be
whining, yes. But at the moment it's a discussion about a proposed new
feature, which doesn't work correctly on all browsers. And calling a bug
a feature doesn't help.

So, why not find a solution where the fancy editing is by default
enabled on browsers where the code works correctly, only, and disabled
on every other browser?
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Sascha,

>> As long as we can ask that the feature be dis-activated later on
>> if it prevent us from editing...
>>

>It won't prevent anyone from editing. As I understand it, one can
>either use the toolbar or just continue marking the text up "by
>hand" as is currently the practice. I personally prefer marking
>stuff up "by hand". I would request that the there be an on/off
>switch in the user preferences for this toolbar, as for me
>personally it just wastes screen real-estate.

>I do not care much whether the toolbar is on or off by default.

Right. I only care because I think that there will be newbies using it
(with the wrong browsers), wondering that it won't work and actually
adding mark-up to the end of articles. If that "feature" will be
disabled, I'll stop "whining" about it ...
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
Till Westermayer a ?crit:
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
>
> Hi wikipedia-l,
>
> the server is extremly slow at the moment, so I move this from the
> village pump to here. Eloquence wants to implement a default edit mode
> using click-buttons for formating. This doesn't work with a number of
> browsers. With some, it just doesn't do anything (browser that don't
> support JavaScript). With other browsers which support JavaScript but
> not the right kind, it does funny things (as inserting the formating
> tags not at the cursors place, but at the end of the edited text). One
> of this browsers is Netscape 7.1, and if I understand the discussion at
> the village pump correclty, Mozilla won't work correctly, too. Still,
> Eloquence wants to make this fancy editing mode the default mode --
> which would led to an seemingly unusable wikipedia editing for a number
> of browsers. I must admit that I don't like the introduction of fancy
> editing at all, but if we introduce it, it either should work with *all*
> browsers currently used, or it should be off by default.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Till

What do I think ?

I concluded from numerous browser experiments to work *with* Wikipedia,
that the only browser I could use, that supported utf8, was Netscape7.

If Netscape7 may not be used any more on Wikipedia, I will revert to
Opera 5.
Those supporting this proposition will clean up after each of my edits :-)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
Till-
> Yes. But do you know what actually will happen? You edit a long text
> with some of this browsers, click on the tag-icon, nothing happens
> (seemingly), you continue editing, and in the end, at the end of the
> text some silly tags are inserted ...

1) They're not silly.
2) This only affects about 5% of users.
3) It only affects large pages and only happens when the cursor isn't
within visible range of the end.
4) You make a prediction that users will not notice what has happened.
This prediction can only be properly tested through actual use.

It's trivial to disable the toolbar in non-Moz/IE. The code for doing that
is already there. I just don't intend to do it unless it's absolutely
necessary.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:

> No, you didn't understand it correctly. Please refrain from further
> whining until the feature is actually activated.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

As long as we can ask that the feature be dis-activated later on if it
prevent us from editing...


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Anthere,

>Karl Eichwalder a ?crit:
>> erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
>>
>>
>>>It's trivial to disable the toolbar in non-Moz/IE.
>>
>>
>> Please, don't add this feature at all.  There is already much
>> too much markup applied.  The "easier" it will become to add
>> markup the worse; it is a tedious job to remove superfluous
>> markup all over the articles.

>I will be real glad to read about that new feature of the english
>wikipedia, on the pump, as soon as wikipedia is working again.
>I do not remember it was explained or described on the fr pump,
>and I must admit, I have no idea what you are all talking about.
>It is disturbing :-)

meanwhile, you can have a look at

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

 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
Karl-
> Please, don't add this feature at all.  There is already much too much
> markup applied.  The "easier" it will become to add markup the worse; it
> is a tedious job to remove superfluous markup all over the articles.

Typing '' isn't exactly hard either. I have deliberately omitted buttons
for fancy markup such as fonts and colors.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

in_reply_to:
<915usv8hpVB@erik_moeller> (Erik Moeller's message of "18 Jan
	2004 20:53:00 +0100")

body:
erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:

> It's trivial to disable the toolbar in non-Moz/IE.

Please, don't add this feature at all.  There is already much too much
markup applied.  The "easier" it will become to add markup the worse; it
is a tedious job to remove superfluous markup all over the articles.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban

body:
On Sunday 18 January 2004 05:40 pm, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Sascha Noyes wrote:
> >The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of
> >wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]]
> >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that
> >page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to
> >[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]
> >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks), which I
> > have quoted above.
>
> Number 9 on a list of 50 items /is/ obscure.
> If this is going to be used as material for a ban,
> then I agree that it should be made less obscure!

That is a matter of contention. How would you make it less obscure? Would you
have all the policies listed on the "policy page" actually displayed on that
page? The page would become very large indeed.

Your obscurity argument would constitute a somewhat valid criticism had it not
been the case that MNH was informed by various different wikipedians
approximately six times that "no personal attacks, period." was an official
wikipedia policy.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
Karl Eichwalder a ?crit:
> erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
>
>
>>It's trivial to disable the toolbar in non-Moz/IE.
>
>
> Please, don't add this feature at all.  There is already much too much
> markup applied.  The "easier" it will become to add markup the worse; it
> is a tedious job to remove superfluous markup all over the articles.

I will be real glad to read about that new feature of the english
wikipedia, on the pump, as soon as wikipedia is working again.
I do not remember it was explained or described on the fr pump, and I
must admit, I have no idea what you are all talking about.
It is disturbing :-)


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Erik Moeller wrote:

>Hi Tillwe,
>> One of this browsers is Netscape 7.1, and if I understand the discussion
>> at the village pump correclty, Mozilla won't work correctly, too.
>
>No, you didn't understand it correctly. Please refrain from further
>whining until the feature is actually activated.

Reading the village pump, I understood the same thing. Saying "stop
whining" is not nice.

I would vote for this feature to be implemented, but disabled by default,
at least until such issues are resolved.

Ciao,
Alfio


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

in_reply_to:
<915utqgSpVB@erik_moeller> (Erik Moeller's message of "18 Jan
	2004 21:33:00 +0100")

body:
erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:

> Typing '' isn't exactly hard either.

On a German keyboard it is and you can confuse it with the accents
easily ??...  But that's not the point.  If the users will see the
buttons they will (mis)use them, because it's so nice to click on
something.

But since the server isn't available it does not matter ;)

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edit modus bug (probably mozilla's but just in case)

body:
Pedro-
> Not a complain, just a bug notification.

This is a bug in Mozilla. It appears in all such toolbars I've seen (in
fact ours at least gets the cursor position right). I have reported it and
all we can do is wait for the Mozilla development team to fix it. IMHO it
is not so severe to justify disabling the toolbar, as 1) it happens only
in Moz, 2) you are still in the right position after you move the cursor.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Pedro Fortuny

body:
Just FWIW. I am using Mozilla 1.5 (let us call it a bug and I fancy it
is Mozilla's but just in case it is not):

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

when I am writing near the end of the textbox, if I press any button
the markup appears BUT the text scrolls back to the top (although the
cursor remains at its place. So I read the top again (although if I go on
writing, then the text area scrolls down again to show the cursor). Yes,
it is funny...

Not a complain, just a bug notification.

I like it more or less, but I find it cumbersone having to move back,
deleting, etc...

BTW: I like the flower at the test page :)

Pedro.

--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain -->        www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny at sdf-eu.org                         Tfn. Nr. 34  983  298277


subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
>I've heard of deceiving people by leaving things out,
>but that's definitely not what happens in an NPOV dispute
>when somebody removes a "Many people think ..." statement.
>This is deliberately a choice to refuse to state an opinion.
>And in this NPOV dispute, the person taking Ec's position
>is even open to including a more carefully worded, documented statement.

And there is nothing wrong with making the statement better, It makes for a
better article.

>It's also insufficient to cry "common sense" and say
>that everybody ''knows'' that OBL is widely considered a
>terrorist.

Why? Some things just go without saying because they are so pervasive. That is
common sense. Taking out attributed references to OBL being a terrorist and
then having to prove that he is (or is widely regarded as so) in order to
have those references put back it, would be like having to defend statements
in our article on the Apollo moon landings that indicate that they actually
happened.

When things go against common sense like that the burden of proof should be on
the opposing party. And don't give my any of the relativistic crap stating
that there is no such thing as common sense - I don't buy it in this case. We
needn't entertain the the ravings of every kook by having to defend very
obvious things.

>In this case, I don't know it until you add "in the
>west", and Ec may not know it in any case.  OK, so we're
>wrong! But this is where NPOV comes in and says
>"If people don't agree on the claim, then state the
>reasons instead." Common knowledge cannot replace
>NPOV when it's not, in fact, common.

That's all nice and academic, but has little to do over the fact the OBL is
widely considered to be a terrorist in West. We could even add *especially*
in the United States too. Sorry, but polls don't exist for everything - why
would somebody think to have a poll on such an obvious thing? But his article
last time I saw it stated that he was the head of Al-Queda, which is widely
regarded as terrorist organization in the West. That is OK (but not ideal)
with me.

The same question applied to other people, such as Arafat, would be much less
clear cut.  Arafat at one time was considered to be a terrorist, but I've
seen far fewer remarks to that effect since he changed hats from head of the
PLA to the PLO. So we could not state "in the West Arafat is widely
considered a terrorist", because that would not be true (unless you parse
"widely" liberally).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote:
>My apologies for not reading [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]] carefully.

This is exactly why policies and rules to consider /should not/ be on the same
page. I'll go ahead and split this up next weekend if there are no
complaints.

>I missed the part under the heading stating: "In addition to the generally
>accepted policies listed above, the following guidelines have been suggested
>by various participants:" under which the "no personal attacks is placed. I
>propose moving it up to the section of generally accepted policies. How does
>a policy become generally accepted?

"No personal attacks" /is/ a policy because it is already stated at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiquette which is a clear policy
linked from the policy page from the policy section. All the No personal
attacks page is, is a longer discussion of that particular part of the
policy.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia merchandise at CafePress

body:
Erik has updated all Wikipedia merchandise at CafePress and added US$5 to the
price of everything so that this can now generate money for the foundation.

But before I place a link to http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia on our
fundraising page, I think it would be a good idea for some members of this
list to purchase an item or two and report back on the quality of the service
and item(s). It would also be interesting to hear from people who have bought
things from CafePress before and learn about their experiences.

If we determine that CafePress makes quality products and gives good service,
then I'll go ahead and link http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia on our
fundraising page.

Knowing about other places that perform the same service as CafePress but who
do so at lower prices and/or accept payments in other currencies, would also
be nice. Of course we will have to be reasonably sure of their quality as
well.

NOTE: According to Jimbo, we plan to eventually set-up a secure server to
handle direct donations (this would be in addition to PayPal and probably one
other service). If and when that is set-up we would be able to order bulk
shipments from a variety of vendors and handle orders on our own. But that
would require a staff to fill orders and storage area (two things the
foundation does not have). Those two things might negate the cost savings of
doing this on our own. So for now at least, we will probably have to depend
on services like CafePress and deal with fairly expensive base prices.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] please test the Squid setup

body:
The Squid integration is pretty complete- now it's time to do some
testing!

Please visit
http://wiki.aulinx.de/ or
http://wiki.aulinx.de/aulinx_testwiki:Sandbox and try it.

Please add any bugs you find in the Sandbox bug section.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
Toby-
> This response isn't very useful for those of us
> that have only read about this on this mailing list.
> Tillwe's fears, if grounded, would make it a bad thing
> the moment that the feature is activated at all.
> Now, his fears may well be groundless, as you imply,
> but the people on the mailing list don't know that.
> (The word "whining" is especially unproductive.)

Tillwe is spreading FUD. I consider FUD unproductive. If he wanted to
understand the issues, he should have talked to me first.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban

body:
On Sunday 18 January 2004 09:44 pm, Toby Bartels wrote:
> It /is/ a matter of contention?  Sorry, I thought that you had said
> that you wanted this matter clarified before people were banned for it.
> (But I may have confused this with something that somebody else wrote.)

My apologies for not reading [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]] carefully.
I missed the part under the heading stating: "In addition to the generally
accepted policies listed above, the following guidelines have been suggested
by various participants:" under which the "no personal attacks is placed. I
propose moving it up to the section of generally accepted policies. How does
a policy become generally accepted?

Because the policy of not making personal attacks is listed as a "suggested
policy" on [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]], I have edited
[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] to reflect that fact. The matter that I had
said I wanted clarified is the exact procedure for getting someone to act
according to the guidelines. Now that you have made me (all of us?) aware of
the fact that it is not actually a generally accepted policy, that will also
have to be resolved.

> Mav already gave a good suggestion for making it less obscure,
> which is to list it on the submission requirements page
> that he wants linked to from every edit page.
> Then it would clearly be a requirement for any submission,
> not merely one of 50 "guidelines to consider".

I agree that this is the correct way to bring the policies to the attention of
wikipedians.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Mediawiki namespace collisions?

body:
Rob Hooft wrote:
> On the nl: wikipedia we are discussing the introduction of some custom
> {{msg:xxx}} templates. During that discussion it occured to me that this
> may be another namespace with two goals: internal messages for the
> mediawiki software, plus templates for in the wikitext. If we make a new
> message MediaWiki:weg on nl:, or MediaWiki:abc, who tells me that this
> will not conflict with a future built-in message? Do we need two
> separate namespaces for these features?

It's a good point. If a new internal message is created with the same
name as an existing custom one, the custom message will replace the
internal message when the new feature executes. It may be a good idea to
write a script to search existing implementations for name availability,
so that developers can check for conflicts before they choose their
message names.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
Toby-
> Your response didn't do me any good here,

It might discourage future whining. That's good enough for me.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

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

Hi,

Le Sunday 18 January 2004 21:28, Till Westermayer a ?crit :
> meanwhile, you can have a look at
>
> http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=edit

It doesn't work on Konqueror, it seems.
Yann

- --
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFACw8bm4KYjQo0y9oRAmwTAKCl7rswQh9BVwVhngNMvbZuvHFsLQCfbn0/
tk7SoB6zGLZr3cfIxdG9LXo=
=neaI
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
Yann Forget a ?crit:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi,
>
> Le Sunday 18 January 2004 21:28, Till Westermayer a ?crit :
>
>>meanwhile, you can have a look at
>>
>>http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=edit
>
>
> It doesn't work on Konqueror, it seems.
> Yann

I can't check it on Netscape since I can't access wikipedia :-(


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Toby-
>
>>This response isn't very useful for those of us
>>that have only read about this on this mailing list.
>>Tillwe's fears, if grounded, would make it a bad thing
>>the moment that the feature is activated at all.
>>Now, his fears may well be groundless, as you imply,
>>but the people on the mailing list don't know that.
>>(The word "whining" is especially unproductive.)
>
>
> Tillwe is spreading FUD. I consider FUD unproductive. If he wanted to
> understand the issues, he should have talked to me first.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

What is FUD ?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
>May be, but should talk to the users first before enabling new
>features in the software.

Do you talk to users of the articles you edit before you edit them. I don't.
If anything I put a note on the talk page if I think that my edits may be
controversial. But most of the time I just edit.

If the developers had to talk with us each time they implement a new feature,
then MediaWiki development would grind to almost nothing. I haven't seen any
evidence that Erik acted wrongly (he announced the new feature and asked
people to test it on the test wiki before it went live - wow, what a crime!).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: zero 0000

subject: [WikiEN-l] terrorism

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> On the other hand the fact that a great many people regard
> OBL to be a terrorist is one of the big reasons why he is
> famous.

No, most of his fame is due to his organizing a couple of
planes to fly into the WTC.  Some is due to his other attacks.
Some is due to the manhunt and invasion of Afganistan that
followed Sep 11.  Lots is due to the media focus on him.

However, that isn't what I wanted to reply for.  My mail on
this subject was not in relation to OBL or Sep 11 specifically.
I wanted to address the issue in general and of course most
cases are much less clearcut than OBL.  Nor would I want to
prevent reporting on public opinion about something PROVIDED
that public opinion has some actual significance to the case
and PROVIDED the report is made in a way that doesn't look
like the disguised opinion of the writer.

In the case of OBL, in addition to being a terrorist he is a
sort of celebrity.  This aspect of him is interesting, and
there's no reason to avoid reporting on it. A well-researched
section on OBL's public image in various parts of the world
would be an excellent addition to his page, and reporting there
that OBL's image in the USA is "arch-terrorist" would be fine.

However, OBL is unusual in this respect.  In most cases where
I see things like "Many people regard ..." in Wikipedia there
is far less excuse and I stand by my judgment that it is often
(if not usually) just the POV of whoever wrote it.

Zero.

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
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from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [Wikitech-l] automated TeX-like dashes

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

> We could go TeX one better and make "----" the quotation dash
(―).
> Although there are a couple of technical problems with /that/. ^_^

Is '----' only converted into a horizontal rule when on a line by
itself?  If so, it's less of a problem.

> They will appear literally as "–" and "—" on Netscape 4.
> The last I heard, lots of our visitors were still using that --
> but the last I heard was about a year ago, so it may be false now.
>
> This is one reason that /I/ change "—" to "--" when I see it.
> (The other is ease of editing, which Steven's suggestion would fix.)

Adding support for this in the parser would, for one thing, allow a
choice of how the different dashes were rendered.  It could be a
preferences flag, or possibly even converted differently for NS 4 users.
It would certainly mean that, when older browsers have died out, we can
phase in better support for dashes.

> There is another possible problem:  Since "--" often means an em dash,
> and is used thus in many Wikimedia pages now (with "-" for an en
dash),
> then a switch in the parsing code should require a conversion of old
> dashes. Such a conversion will have many exceptions and may be hard to

> design. However, another possibility is to forget it and let bad en
dashes
> appear; it's a small cosmetic error that people will fix in normal
> proofreading.

I'd say let bad dashes appear and be corrected.  It would probably just
inspire some industrious user to write a 'dashbot' assistant to
semi-automatedly fix them, anyhow.

-Matt (User:Morven on WP)


subject:
[Wikitech-l] automated TeX-like dashes (-- for –
	and --- for — )?

body:
Nikola Smokenski writes>

> I just want to say that in C and some other programming languages'
sources,
> -- must remain -- and must not be converted to en-dash. But perhaps
this
> could be solved with <nowiki></nowiki> tags.

I'd go with the solved via nowiki tags.  One should not rely on
programming language source passing through the parser unscathed in any
event.

-Matt (User:Morven on WP)


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Friday 16 January 2004 23:13, Steven G. Johnson wrote:
> Just a suggestion, it would be great if it were easier to do proper dash
> typography. I find TeX's -/--/--- convention for hyphen/en-dash/em-dash
> to be fairly intuitive.

This was mentioned on the Village pump, I just want to say that in C and some
other programming languages' sources, -- must remain -- and must not be
converted to en-dash. But perhaps this could be solved with <nowiki></nowiki>
tags.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server update

body:
The new server (Altus 1000E) that I'm loaning to Wikipedia (I had
ordered this a few weeks ago for Bomis) did not arrive on Friday, but
is scheduled to arrive today.  Also, extra RAM for it is scheduled to
arrive today.

Depending on those two things happening correctly, of course, Jason
will be installing both machines (geoffrin plus new) for Wikipedia to
use later this afternoon.

Geoffrin, last I spoke to Jason, Saturday, is still not 100% healthy.
It will run without errors with 3 gig of RAM, but not with 4 gig of
RAM.  Jason has tried a number of different things, but what we're
most likely to do at some point is simply send it back to Penguin and
insist that they fix it or replace it or refund our money.

However, the warranty is for 3 years, so there's no particular hurry
on that front.  What we might do in the meantime is populate it with 3
gig of RAM and install it for use.  So this would give Wikipedia 2
dual opteron machines in working order, to see us through until the
new cluster arrives here and is installed.  (Scheduled ship date is
late January, and presumably it'll take a week or so to get it
installed and working.  We'd rather take *longer* to do that, so that
we can make sure it's right before switching, but of course if
Wikipedia is still limping at that time, we'll just do it.)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Server update


from_name: Jay Bowks

body:
Hi Daniel,
Erik did a nice job of merchandizing and putting the logo
on the items for sale. I'd suggest that the logo be as big
as possible, none of this little logo on the upper right
corner of the shirt, it looks out of center and too small
to read when you walk up to someone.

I've had excellent results with CafePress with the
Academia pro Interlingua and Volapuk Press stores.
The quality depends a lot on the graphics you send
them. If you send jpeg files with bleeding throughout
you'll get it and magnified when it's imprinted. But a
good quality PNG with sharp contrast will stand out
well and print beautifully, has been my experience.

One more thing the "tile" with the page-being-edited
graphic is a neat idea. I'd like a mousepad with the
same graphic. !!!

Overall Kudos! Nice store!
w/ regards,
Jay B.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 1:59 AM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia merchandise at CafePress

> Erik has updated all Wikipedia merchandise at CafePress and added US$5 to
the
> price of everything so that this can now generate money for the
foundation.
>
> But before I place a link to http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia on our
> fundraising page, I think it would be a good idea for some members of this
> list to purchase an item or two and report back on the quality of the
service
> and item(s). It would also be interesting to hear from people who have
bought
> things from CafePress before and learn about their experiences.


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc.

body:
Nat,

> I do disagree with RK calling anyone he dislikes a Nazi,
> but that's a separate issue.

I have tried to stay silent for a week, but the threats and
personal attacks just keep on coming.

Do you really believe this craziness about me? I did no
such thing. I have made many hundreds of edits on over a
hundreds of different Wikipedia articles. Just like
everyone else here, I often have had disagreements with
other people. So what? We don't go around attacking each
other as Nazis. That is simply a fabrication.

Your problem is that you are taking a specific set of
related incidents that happened here, and then incorrectly
assume that I write the same thing about every person I
disagree with. That's absolutely false, as well as
insulting.

Do you have any idea of what the specific issue actually
was? An anonymous Wiki-En contributor wrote a detailed
analysis proving that Stevertigo was posting anti-Semitic
material, and posting Holocaust denial. Every one of these
edits was made in accord with either Nazi or Christian
Identity ideology. Stevertigo was then supported by Martin
Harper ("MyRedDice") who supported and encouraged all of
these Jew-baiting edits. A number of other anonymous people
dropped by to help Martin and Stevertigo as well. Many of
the edit lines had Jew-baiting comments. (Which,
fortunately, a few fellow Wikipedians recognized and
commented on. I was not alone by a long shot in this phase
of the process.)

Did you actually read this analysis?

However, when this issue was brought to the attention of
the Wiki-En list, I was slandered, called a liar, and worst
of all, many Wiki-En supporters wrote in support of
Stevertigo and Martin Harper. Incredibly, no one was
publicly willing to speak out against anti-Semitic
propaganda and Holocaust denial. (A few people wrote me in
private to support me, but they stated that they were
afraid to post publicly here. I can now see why; they were
right all along about this place.)

Look, when people write in support of Nazi propaganda (and
there is no debate about the edits in question), then in
those select cases we are forced to admit that they are, by
definition, anti-Semitic. The same would be true of people
who wrote in support of racist anti-black propaganda.

The Wiki-En list is currently ruled by an elite clique of
political left-wingers who won't allow any un-PC writings
about Arabs, gays, blacks, Asians, women or socialists. Yet
this same clique is so anti-Zionist that they will support
outright anti-Semitism and Christian identity or Nazi
propaganda, just as a way to make the "enemy" look bad.

In recent weeks BL and Mr-Natural-Health have been trying
to scare my off of Wikipedia by implying that they might
be, or actually are, Nazis. This isn't a joke. This is
violent hatespeech.

No one on Wikipedia would allow a group of contributors to
drive away a black person by others posing as members of
the Ku Klux Klan. Such a person would be banned
immediately.  Yet the only case when such hateful and
violent actions are allowed here are when people say they
are Nazis, and when they are targeting Jews.

When Wiki-En members are supportive of such actions, that
(by definition) is anti-Semitism. If this doesn't bother
someone, then this tells us how they really feel about
Jews: That Jews are only allowed to contribute here if they
follow a pro-Arab left-wing line. Otherwise, let the
self-proclaimed Nazis drive them off.

On the other hand, if you do not support such harassment,
then you are morally obligated to speak out, and to ask for
these people to be banned. We should not allow sucvh
violent hatespeech to drive people away. Editing
encyclopedia articles should depend on facts, sources and
historical considerations alone.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
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body:
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
> Jay-
> Thanks for the kind words.

Well earned, nice job of merchandizing!

> Some people might prefer something more subtle.

The crispness of the logo won't
suffer if your PNG file is large
enough. Also if you want a
golf type shirt logo, it would
be miniscule, anything in between
looks a bit off, but that's only my
opinion. If you're going for promotion
and propaganda, let the logo be
obvious.

> As far as I understand I can only create one product per type in the basic
> shop. We already have a logo mousepad which I think looks fairly nice. Of
> course if Wikimedia covers the costs I'm all for upgrading the shop, but I
> think we should test it with some orders first.

Yes, I agree; the current mousepad
looks very nice too. One idea is that
you can change the image on the item
monthly, this gives folks a reason
to visit the site again and again to
see what's new. You can have
featured graphics, contest graphics,
special event graphics, etc.

After the site gets going you'll
notice it will pay for itself, specially
if you're only charging $5 on top
of the item cost. You may even
want to hold monthly sales on
certain items and have only a
$1 or $2 profit instead, this will
encourage the sale of that item
and also give folks a reason to
visit again and see what's on sale.

You can also buy in bulk for
events. The minimum quantity
is 15 items to get the reduced
price. This may be a good
way of promoting Wikipedia
at functions etc.

Keep up the good work ;-)
and
Stay Wiki!

w/ regards,
Jay B.


from_name: Timothy R. Matas

subject: [WikiEN-l] Volunteering my assistance

body:
Good morning!
 I am a degreed journalist with three decades of experience. I have minors
in math, poly sci, English and general science. In addition I have an
extensive back ground in the Christian religion, have taking technical
courses, courses in fire fighting and police science and for eight years
took classes (without credit) in agriculture and land/water management.
 I can read well out loud but have trouble absorbing, however; anything I
have ever been told that I felt was significant, I can recall -- that
includes numbers, laws, reasons etc.
 I was rendered disabled by a medical doctor and now have extra time on my
hands. I love to write, am working on a book, become inspired to write a
poem every year or so and would like to be a regular contributor to your
fine project.
 I am a genealogist and have side of my family traced back to 1726.
 My aim is the truth and perfection so I welcome those who would edit my
work for that improves me. It is my belief that one should be either
learning or teaching most of one's life in order to make it worthwhile.
 Could I be of help in your operation?
Sincerely,

Tim R. Matas
104 S. Buckeye
Abilene, an. 67410
785-263-0415
Evenings are the best time to call
church at classicnet.net


from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
> Tillwe is spreading FUD. I consider FUD unproductive. If he wanted to
> understand the issues, he should have talked to me first.

May be, but should talk to the users first before enabling new features in the
software.

Uli


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: pictures at an exhibition

body:
--- Dreger <dreger at onlinehome.de> wrote:
> From: "Dreger" <dreger at onlinehome.de>
> To: <wikien-l-owner at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: pictures at an exhibition
> Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 17:50:42 +0100
>
> Dear Wikipedia team,
> I would like to know, if the pictures from "pictures
> at an exhibition" are actually exhibited somewhere
> and if there is possability to view them.
>
> Thank you for answering my question, E.Dreger.
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jay Bowks wrote:

>Erik did a nice job of merchandizing and putting the logo
>on the items for sale. I'd suggest that the logo be as big
>as possible, none of this little logo on the upper right
>corner of the shirt, it looks out of center and too small
>to read when you walk up to someone.
>
Better still to have both options available.  Some people like a more
discrete logo on a shirt.

Ec.


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>As far as I understand I can only create one product per type in the basic
>shop. We already have a logo mousepad which I think looks fairly nice. Of
>course if Wikimedia covers the costs I'm all for upgrading the shop, but I
>think we should test it with some orders first.
>
That's sensible..  We want this undertaking to make money.  As long as
reasonable expenses can come from the proceeds that should work.  A
significant up-front outlay of money on this woould not be wise.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus

body:
On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Erik Moeller wrote:

>Tillwe is spreading FUD. I consider FUD unproductive. If he wanted to
>understand the issues, he should have talked to me first.

???? He said that, according to the village pump, the edit toolbar has
problems with Mozilla. Ok, so it's actually Mozilla that has problems
with the toolbar. How is this "whining" or "spreading FUD"?

Alfio


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Pedro-
>
>
>>Not a complain, just a bug notification.
>>
>>
>
>This is a bug in Mozilla. It appears in all such toolbars I've seen (in
>fact ours at least gets the cursor position right). I have reported it and
>all we can do is wait for the Mozilla development team to fix it. IMHO it
>is not so severe to justify disabling the toolbar, as 1) it happens only
>in Moz, 2) you are still in the right position after you move the cursor.
>
>
I *really* like new toys to play with, but I have two questions:
* In which browsers does it actually work the way it is supposed to?
* Why can't this be an off-by-default user option?

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reducing redirects (was: Sep 11)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Gotta check your redirects.
>
>After you move an article, please click on the "What Links Here" link.
>Identify any double-redirects, and reduce them to singles.
>
>
Once we have a decent DB server again, we can re-enable the maintenance
page functions and fix them by the dozen :-)
I expect that there have been many double redirects piling up.

Magnus


subject: Announcement Policies (was Re: [Wikipedia-l] New edit modus)

body:
>(he announced the new feature and asked
>people to test it on the test wiki before it went live - wow, what a crime!).

For me, he didn't announce it. The first notice I got from that new feature
was from the posting here on the list. Then I was looking through the
wikitech list, and found Eriks announcement there. But: That's the technical
list, I don't read it normally. However, since we're talking about editing
here, I'm interested in that information.

That brings me to this posting: Obviously, I don't notice if something of
importance is going on. But that's not my fault, I just can't collect the
information because it's to scattered among various lists, mediawiki pages,
meta pages, IRC chats and so on. And I don't have time to read all of them.

So I'd like to suggest a general announcement policy:

Everything that is of some importance to the Wikipedia community - like new
software features, changes in the hardware status, disabling of features and
so on, scheduled server downtimes - should be announced on THIS list (since
the official announcement list is not used any more). Always. Please. I - and
probably also most others - cannot be everywhere, but still like to know
what's going on. In each announcement, a hint should be given where the
respective discussion takes place, so that this discussion doesn't increase
the traffic here.

Uli


body:
Robert wrote:

>Nat,
>
>>I do disagree with RK calling anyone he dislikes a Nazi,
>>but that's a separate issue.
>>
>I have tried to stay silent for a week, but the threats and
>personal attacks just keep on coming.
>
Personal attacks are not acceptable behaviour, and should be condemned
in their own right.  On the other hand extrapolating those attacks on
one individual into evidence of generalized anti-semitism is not a
logical consequence. To the extent that apparently anti-semitic comments
are made, I would suggest that they do not really reflect that attitude.
 Some people simply use them because they know that one particular
individual will have excessive reactions.  This sort of thing happens
all the time on playgrounds.  Although neither practice is socially
acceptable, a distinction still needs to be made between generalized
jew-baiting and baiting one specific Jew.

>However, when this issue was brought to the attention of
>the Wiki-En list, I was slandered, called a liar, and worst
>of all, many Wiki-En supporters wrote in support of
>Stevertigo and Martin Harper. Incredibly, no one was
>publicly willing to speak out against anti-Semitic
>propaganda and Holocaust denial.
>
Some of us might think that jumping into these topics would be feeding
trolls.  Directly confronting Holocaust denial gives it a credibility
that it could never achieve by itself.

>Look, when people write in support of Nazi propaganda (and
>there is no debate about the edits in question), then in
>those select cases we are forced to admit that they are, by
>definition, anti-Semitic.
>
This is a non-sequitur.  Nazi propaganda dealt with many more issues
than just anti-semitic ones.  As with any political party, a general
support of that party does not imply supporting every policy on that
party's platform.  With a limited number of parties one is often
confronted at an election with trying to choose the least evil.

>The Wiki-En list is currently ruled by an elite clique of
>political left-wingers who won't allow any un-PC writings
>about Arabs, gays, blacks, Asians, women or socialists. Yet
>this same clique is so anti-Zionist that they will support
>outright anti-Semitism and Christian identity or Nazi
>propaganda, just as a way to make the "enemy" look bad.
>
That is outright nonsense.  In U.S. politics I've seen Jews, to their
credit, more often associated with the Democratic Party and left-wing
causes.  The real hardcore fundamentalist anti-semites have a greater
affinity with the other side of the spectrum.  And please don't confuse
anti-Zionism with anti-semitism.

>When Wiki-En members are supportive of such actions, that
>(by definition) is anti-Semitism.
>
No, it is anti-RK-ism.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
You exaggerate Robert, Partly as PC, as you put it, is so long as
interpreted sensibly, is simply courtesy and avoidance of prejudicial
conclusionary statements unsupported by evidence. Partly when you
characterize them as an "elite clique of political left-wingers". These are
real people, usually with an academic background (graduates of the Gulag
would not fit in) but to say they "rule" Wikipedia is simply false. They are
simply people who lack practical experience. But Wikipedia to a great extent
by its nature reflects academic knowledge.

Could you please (I know well how difficult this would be) give at least one
instance (please give the Wikipedia URL's of the statement and its removal
or modidication) of an un-PC writing which was not allowed by them in each
of the fields:

Arabs

Gays

Blacks

Asians

Women

Socialists

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 07:54:43 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc.
>
> The Wiki-En list is currently ruled by an elite clique of
> political left-wingers who won't allow any un-PC writings
> about Arabs, gays, blacks, Asians, women or socialists. Yet
> this same clique is so anti-Zionist that they will support
> outright anti-Semitism and Christian identity or Nazi
> propaganda, just as a way to make the "enemy" look bad.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sociology course work

body:
Goto http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en (Google advanced search)
and in the top box, "with all of the words", type in "educational
achievement". In the second box, "with the exact phrase" type in "cultural
deprivation". You'll get 884 hits many of which appear useful. Reversing
what you put in the boxes might get you a few more.

Fred

From: "Sam Kayaca" <kayaga at ntlworld.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 17:06:34 -0000
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sociology course work

Hi
I am finding it hard to my course work
My course work title is TO INVESTIGATE THE POSSIBLE IMPACT OF CULTURAL
DEPRIVATION ON EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT I don't know what to put in my aim.
Can you please help me
Asingura

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

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dumps overdue

body:
On Jan 19, 2004, at 03:48, Erik Zachte wrote:

> The dumps are 10 days old now.

A backup has been running for the last couple days.

Hopefully it'll finish tonight.

>  Is the current configuration able to recover from a harddisk crash
> (raid)?

It's on the hella slow single IDE drive. One hard crash and
everything's gone.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Volunteering my assistance

body:
Timothy R. Matas wrote:

>Good morning!
> I am a degreed journalist with three decades of experience. I have minors
>in math, poly sci, English and general science. In addition I have an
>extensive back ground in the Christian religion, have taking technical
>courses, courses in fire fighting and police science and for eight years
>took classes (without credit) in agriculture and land/water management.
> I can read well out loud but have trouble absorbing, however; anything I
>have ever been told that I felt was significant, I can recall -- that
>includes numbers, laws, reasons etc.
> I was rendered disabled by a medical doctor and now have extra time on my
>hands. I love to write, am working on a book, become inspired to write a
>poem every year or so and would like to be a regular contributor to your
>fine project.
> I am a genealogist and have side of my family traced back to 1726.
> My aim is the truth and perfection so I welcome those who would edit my
>work for that improves me. It is my belief that one should be either
>learning or teaching most of one's life in order to make it worthwhile.
> Could I be of help in your operation?
>
Welcome.  The three decades of journalistic experience should give you
the thick skin needed for copng with hostile edits.  You probably know
the hot-button items that are best avoided.  Genealogy tends to be a
discouraged pursuit, since it tends to produce lists of people that are
of interest only to limited audiences. but general contributions about
how it's done are worthwhile.  There is much in what you say that can
produce valuable articles, so as a final piece of advice I would say,
"Just pitch in, and do it."

Eclecticology


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] why does the page goes up each time you click on
	something ?

body:
> From: Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 19:33:51 +0100
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New edit modus
>
>
>
> Till Westermayer a ?crit:
>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
>>
>> Hi Anthere,
>
>>
>> http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=edit
>
> found the *?^?&@?& thing...
> that seems to work
> though why does the page goes up each time you click on something ?

This happens in Netscape, but not in Internet Explorer (at least the
Macintosh versions)

Fred

> what would be nice would be that you could select a textblabla, and then
> click on the tool, and it would automatically transform the bit in the
> appropriate way.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] allpages for wikipedia namespace

body:
On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 04:47:12AM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pages_in_the_Wikipedia_namespace

Well, maybe my mistake, I thought I haven't posted that on the ENGLISH
wikipedia list.

I do not see any Hungarian one there. And is it fresh?

(Last sentences are jokes: the page was empty indeed.)

So, no, thanks, I need our allpages, not yours. No offense: I'm sure yours
at least as juicy and delicious as ours, but, erm, still...


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Magnus-
> * In which browsers does it actually work the way it is supposed to?

In all of them -- it provides the maximum functionality each browser
supports.

> * Why can't this be an off-by-default user option?

Because the whole point of the feature is to make it easier for newbies to
learn the wiki syntax.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] trouble with gzip2 downloads

body:
On Jan 19, 2004, at 12:00, Frederic Malo wrote:
> does anyone know how I can download the english old table ?

Please wait until the current backup is done (should be within a day),
I'll make a split version available.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Jay-

Thanks for the kind words.

> I'd suggest that the logo be as big
> as possible, none of this little logo on the upper right
> corner of the shirt,

Do others agree? Some people might prefer something more subtle.

> One more thing the "tile" with the page-being-edited
> graphic is a neat idea. I'd like a mousepad with the
> same graphic. !!!

As far as I understand I can only create one product per type in the basic
shop. We already have a logo mousepad which I think looks fairly nice. Of
course if Wikimedia covers the costs I'm all for upgrading the shop, but I
think we should test it with some orders first.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] German WP broken

body:
On Jan 19, 2004, at 12:11, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> I cannot see the "F?rth" article I just checked in for reading;
> clicking
> on the edit button I can access the version I just comitted.

I can see it, looks fine.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dumps overdue

body:
The dumps are 10 days old now. Is the current configuration able to
recover from a harddisk crash (raid)?

Erik Zachte
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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
> And
> please don't confuse
> anti-Zionism with anti-semitism.
>
> Ec

Although you're right that anti-Zionism and
anti-Semitism are different, you're not likely to get
very far just saying it considering the recent New
Yorker cover article  saying the opposite.

Even if someone in Wikipedia is anti-semetic, unless
he or she is making threats, I don't see why any of it
is Wikipedia's buisness.

LDan

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from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Database dumps overdue

body:
On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 12:48:20 +0100, Erik Zachte wrote:

> The dumps are 10 days old now. Is the current configuration able to
> recover from a harddisk crash (raid)?

Afaik Ursula, the current DB server has a single ATA drive, no RAID. And
that seems to be constantly swapping because of missing ram- let's hope it
holds up long enough...
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server update

body:
http://www.fedex.com/cgi-bin/tracking?tracknumbers=051041110012839&action=track&language=english&cntry_code=us

The new server is "On FedEx vehicle for delivery".  We are not sure
when it will actually arrive.  Depending on the timing, Jason will
drive down to San Diego with it later today (unlikely) or tomorrow
morning bright and early (more likely).

He's also taking Geoffrin which is running without errors with only 3
gig of RAM.  that's not acceptable in the long run, but will get us by
for a month or so, and we'll return the machine to Penguin at that
time, if necessary, before shipping it to the new colo.

--Jimbo


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

(...)
> If we determine that CafePress makes quality products and gives good
> service,  then I'll go ahead and link http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia
> on our  fundraising page.
>
> Knowing about other places that perform the same service as CafePress
> but who  do so at lower prices and/or accept payments in other
> currencies, would also  be nice. Of course we will have to be reasonably
> sure of their quality as  well.
(...)
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

For the future promoting events taking place in France this year (already
3 events planned in 2004), it would be nice to have a Wikipedia tee-shirt
in French ("L'encyclop?die libre"). How much would be the cost for say 300
pieces? And transportation cost?

Yann

--
http://non-violence.org Site coop?ratif sur la non-violence
http://forget-me.net Alternatives et non-violence
http://fr.wikipedia.org Encyclop?die libre
http://forget-me.net/pro/ Formations et services Linux


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server update - good news!

body:
Jason has the new server in possession and has graciously agreed to go
tonight to install it (I'm loaning this one to Wikipedia) and also
Geoffrin (which seems to be fine with 3 gig of RAM instead of 4).

This means that we should be considerably more functional tomorrow.

--Jimbo


body:
On Jan 19, 2004, at 14:08, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Jason has the new server in possession and has graciously agreed to go
> tonight to install it (I'm loaning this one to Wikipedia) and also
> Geoffrin (which seems to be fine with 3 gig of RAM instead of 4).
>
> This means that we should be considerably more functional tomorrow.

Awesome!

As a reminder, folks; once the faster machine(s) have been tested to
our satisfaction, we'll have to shut the databases down completely for
the transfer. I don't know how long the downtime will be, but it will
likely be a few hours; hopefully this will be in the middle of the
night for most contributors in Europe and America (sorry, Asia!)

Read-only cached pages will be available during downtime, but editing
won't be possible.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Volunteering my assistance

body:
On Mon, 2004-01-19 at 10:28, Timothy R. Matas wrote:

>  Could I be of help in your operation?

No need to ask, but thanks for introducing yourself!

Everyone is allowed to edit any Wikipedia article, even without an
account. If you decide to establish an account (rather than edit
anonymously), feel free to mention your account name on the list, so we
know who you are. A common idea here is that no article is ever
"finished", so you can begin editing wherever you like. If you're
looking to begin a new article, try checking out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles

once the site is usable again.

Looking forward to seeing your contributions.

--cprompt


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Any idea on when Wikipedia will be useable again?

body:
I can get to the front page, and I can click on links, but I can't search, I can't bring up my contributions page or Recent Changes, and when I change something and save it, my browser dies, but the save seems to take.

RickK

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from_name: Delirium

body:
Rick wrote:

> I can get to the front page, and I can click on links, but I can't
> search, I can't bring up my contributions page or Recent Changes, and
> when I change something and save it, my browser dies, but the save
> seems to take.

If you've been reading Jimbo's mailing list posts, you'd know the answer. =]

Probably tomorrow sometime, from what I understand, since some equipment
is being installed tonight.

-Mark