from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
I think that the most important thing is the license information. Even
if there is no source info displayed on the local Wikis, we MUST
display the license info.

Mark

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:00:53 +0900, Guillaume Blanchard
<gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> > --- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
> >
> >> Unify licence template ({{GFDL}}, {{CC-BY-SA}}, etc.) on all Wikipedia
> >> may help a lot.
> >> When we use an image from Commons on local Wikipedia, the software may
> >> include the Commons' description page next to local description (both on
> >> the same page). So, even if people don't enter local information (say
> >> translation), we may be able to see the original information.
> >> For example :
> >
> >
> > Transcluding the raw wikitext from Commons and running it through the
> > local
> > wiki's parsar should do that automatically so long as templates with the
> > correct names exist on each wiki (which you already mentioned).
> >
> > For this to work though, these templates will all have to be able to
> > take an
> > {{{Author}}} variable - otherwise the author's name may get lost in a
> > jumble of
> > words from a different language in that part of the transcluded text.
> >
> > This would automatically translate the most important part of any such
> > message
> > (the license) and give prominent placement to the author's name. Any other
> > parts of the transcluded text (such as a caption) would need to be
> > translated
> > by somebody from the local wiki and placed below the original
> > transcluded text
> > box on the local wiki's image description page.
> >
> > -- mav
>
> We can wrote all information into templates like this:
>
> {{image_description|Picture of the Yokohama harbour}}
> {{image_author|G. Blanchard}}
> {{image_source|From my homepage http://foo.oeg}} or some pre-made
> template like {{image_source|{{Personal_work}}}}
> {{image_licence|{{GFDL}}}}
>
> Like this, if we parse the Commons' message on local project we can
> translate automatically main part the messages (except non-standard
> messages like 'description'). Editable part of the local page may be use
> for 'real' translation.
> I think automatically half-translated description available on local
> project is many time better than fully non translated description on
> Commons (especially for licence information).
>
> Aoineko
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Lee Campion

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Sorry - we have a problem" update

body:
Update: nearly managed to do all five edits in 1 hour 45 minutes.

>I can't tell you how frustrating it is getting this message every
submission
>for the past half an hour (or more):
>
>   "Sorry- we have a problem...
>   The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request."
>
>Particularly annoying when it's in the middle of a series of linked edits.
>Gah.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.7.0 - Release Date: 17/01/2005


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google preventing comment spam

body:
On Jan 18, 2005, at 7:58 PM, shi zhao wrote:
> see
> http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html
>
> Are we can join in the exterior links (rel="nofollow") , preventing
> wikispam?

I'm inclined to agree. It looks legit from a markup perspective (ie it
shouldn't cause HTML validators to bitch at us; rel _is_ a defined
attribute for <a>, and the set of values is open-ended.)

Of course it won't prevent wikispam, but with luck it will discourage
it by reducing its value.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: foundation-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal - Wikibuilder

body:
I would like to see the process for creating new factual/specialist
Wikimedia projects include a stage at whic hthe new project is a
Wikibook, which serves as a demonstration of what project content will
include (and a rough topic mesh for the project), proof of interest in
the project, and a source of inspiration to new project contributors.

After this initial overview book could come full-fledged project development.

+sj+

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:43:41 +0000, Christiaan Briggs
<christiaan at last-straw.net> wrote:
> Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
>
> > Can't it be a part of Wikibooks?
>
> It could, but then so could all the Wikimedia projects. I'm not sure it
> would suit Wikibooks. I see this as a "commons" project covering the
> design and construction of the built environment *in its entirety* in
> all languages. Plus the prominence of being a separate Wikimedia
> project will help in attracting builders and designers. It may even
> need special code introduced into MediaWiki to deal with
> presenting/previewing up-and-coming 2D and 3D file formats, etc.
>
> Christiaan_______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Josh Gerdes

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: images on commons and gfdl

body:
I agree that it is very important to show the license information.
However, one must keep in mind that nearly all licenses (besides public
domain) require crediting the source/author.

Josh Gerdes
(en:User:JoshG)

Mark Williamson wrote:
> I think that the most important thing is the license information. Even
> if there is no source info displayed on the local Wikis, we MUST
> display the license info.
>
> Mark
>
> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:00:53 +0900, Guillaume Blanchard
> <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>
>>>--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Unify licence template ({{GFDL}}, {{CC-BY-SA}}, etc.) on all Wikipedia
>>>>may help a lot.
>>>>When we use an image from Commons on local Wikipedia, the software may
>>>>include the Commons' description page next to local description (both on
>>>>the same page). So, even if people don't enter local information (say
>>>>translation), we may be able to see the original information.
>>>>For example :
>>>
>>>
>>>Transcluding the raw wikitext from Commons and running it through the
>>>local
>>>wiki's parsar should do that automatically so long as templates with the
>>>correct names exist on each wiki (which you already mentioned).
>>>
>>>For this to work though, these templates will all have to be able to
>>>take an
>>>{{{Author}}} variable - otherwise the author's name may get lost in a
>>>jumble of
>>>words from a different language in that part of the transcluded text.
>>>
>>>This would automatically translate the most important part of any such
>>>message
>>>(the license) and give prominent placement to the author's name. Any other
>>>parts of the transcluded text (such as a caption) would need to be
>>>translated
>>>by somebody from the local wiki and placed below the original
>>>transcluded text
>>>box on the local wiki's image description page.
>>>
>>>-- mav
>>
>>We can wrote all information into templates like this:
>>
>>{{image_description|Picture of the Yokohama harbour}}
>>{{image_author|G. Blanchard}}
>>{{image_source|From my homepage http://foo.oeg}} or some pre-made
>>template like {{image_source|{{Personal_work}}}}
>>{{image_licence|{{GFDL}}}}
>>
>>Like this, if we parse the Commons' message on local project we can
>>translate automatically main part the messages (except non-standard
>>messages like 'description'). Editable part of the local page may be use
>>for 'real' translation.
>>I think automatically half-translated description available on local
>>project is many time better than fully non translated description on
>>Commons (especially for licence information).
>>
>>Aoineko
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>


from_name: Cool Hand Luke

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blindly following the 3+ revert rule

body:
> Nice theory. But in practice this is simply false. Most of
> our articles have very few people who actively edit on them
> or who are even qualified to even edit them. Sure, hundreds
> of people do edits on [[God]] or [[Prophet]]. But how many
> people can recognize vandalism or abuse on [[Process
> philosophy]], [[Conservative responsa]] or esoteric math
> and physics articles?
>
> In practice very often we cannot easilly get someone else
> to help us revert or edit, at least not for a few days.
> I've asked for help on articles, only to have other editors
> say "I don't know enough about the topic; I can't do
> anything."  JayJG points out this same issue.
>
> Again, I am not saying that we should throw away the 3+
> revert rule, or any other rule.  But we DO NOT blindly
> enforce Wikipedia rules with 'bots.  Sysops are supposedly
> human beings with some amount of common sense.  Let's see
> some evidence of this.  If I want to be part of 'bot
> community, I'll play Doom 3 in single-player mode.
>
> Robert (RK)

Yes, some topics are very difficult for the average user to get
involved with, but this doesn't speak toward abandoning strict
adherence to 3RR policy. If users specifically solicited for
out-editing a troll don't know enough about a subject to take sides,
why should we expect random administrators to?

If a user makes edits that can be justified clearly enough to avoid
the wrath of the 3RR in spite of exceeding the limit, it should be
easier still to get just one other party to revert so that they don't
break the rule. Perhaps these requests (and subsequent 3RR violations)
could go on the administrator's board.

User:Cool Hand Luke


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] kates tools?

body:
Hi,

"Kate's tools" are currently not available - I am searching for some
information about it because I want to cite it in my Wikipedia research
paper. Most important: Who is kate (full name)? Here is the paragraph I
want to write:

---------

You can easily create user profiles out of the list of all user
contributions but de-personalisation is absolutely necessary because of
privacy. Kate .... wrote a tool where every Wikipedia user can watch his
profile graphically and make it available if he wants[1].

[1] See http://wikimedia.org/~kate/ for a link to "count number of edits
from a user". The application is currently not online because of server
problems.

------------

You can also correct my bad English!

I am also interested in "Six degrees of Wikipedia". If you could take a
random sample of well...around 1.000 article pairs and send me a
histogram of distances - that would be *really* great!

Thanks a lot,
Jakob


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Google preventing comment spam

body:
On Jan 19, 2005, at 1:55 AM, Tony wrote:
> I can't see the point. Look at the losses and gains:
>
> Gain: prevents a *tiny* amount of spamming (tiny, because the average
> lifespan of linkspam on the 'pedia is maybe 2 minutes - our editors
> watch this stuff like hawks.

Automated spam attacks will continue to hit us along with everybody
else whether _any particular_ target cleans up attacks immediately or
not; as a target we have two ways to protect ourselves:
* Try to shield ourselves against particular attacks (blacklists etc)
* Act to discourage spamming in general

The projected gain is from making blogspam/wikispam/guestspam more
expensive in general (needing to do much more damage to gain the same
effect). Will it work? I have no idea.

> Loss:
>
> (1) extra complication to the code. (Small and slim is *always* best.)

Here's the code:
		global $wgNoFollowLinks;
		if( $wgNoFollowLinks ) {
			$style .= ' rel="nofollow"';
		}

I've already added it; if for some reason we change our minds we can
turn it off at any time.

> (2) even more crud to mess up the HTML output. If we keep on adding
> "features" in this manner, a page of MediaWiki output HTML is going to
> be harder to read and consume more bandwidth than a page produced by
> Frontpage.

The rel attribute is standard, validating HTML4 & XHTML1. It's not very
big, and it will only appear on external links which are relatively
rare compared to the primary mass of code. Compared to the ugly  mess it's downright elegant. ;)

(1.5 has experimental code to remove the urlexpansion s in favor
of cleaner CSS, with a lightweight JavaScript fallback for Internet
Explorer.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Continued concern with performance

body:
Rich Holton wrote:
> My greatest concern is that there are continuing performance issues
> with little apparent progress over an extended period. Without
> hesitation I presume that we have good people volunteering their time
> and working hard to resolve these issues.

I think you're overlooking our staggering growth rate, though.  There
has been enormous progress on a great many fronts, but we continue to
grow grow grow at an astonishing rate.

It isn't as if we have steady traffic and the devs are working this
hard and achieving nothing.  It's that we have remarkable progress on
all fronts and enough growth to make it not seem very impressive if
you don't recognize what's going on.

> Sometimes it is necessary for an organization to consider the
> possibility that internal resources are not sufficient to address an
> immediate need. Wikipedia has come a long way relying almost entirely
> on volunteer workers. I do not believe this can continue indefinitely.

I would tend to agree with you on this, but we should not expect paid
work to be a cure-all.  In some well-defined areas, yes.  But in
general, it is not so clear.

--Jimbo


from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: kates tools?

body:
Jakob Voss wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:
> Hi,
>
> "Kate's tools" are currently not available - I am searching for some
> information about it because I want to cite it in my Wikipedia research
> paper. Most important: Who is kate (full name)?

I'd rather not be mentioned by name, if that's possible.

> Here is the paragraph I want to write:
> ---------

> You can easily create user profiles out of the list of all user
> contributions but de-personalisation is absolutely necessary because of
> privacy. Kate .... wrote a tool where every Wikipedia user can watch his
> profile graphically and make it available if he wants[1].

> [1] See http://wikimedia.org/~kate/ for a link to "count number of edits
> from a user". The application is currently not online because of server
> problems.

An older version of this tool is available at
<http://zwinger.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits.cgi>. This doesn't
include the edit history graphs, which won't be returning in the forseeable
future.

> ------------

> You can also correct my bad English!

> I am also interested in "Six degrees of Wikipedia". If you could take a
> random sample of well...around 1.000 article pairs and send me a
> histogram of distances - that would be *really* great!

The source for the links daemon can be found at
<http://wikimedia.org/~kate/linksd>.  Feeding 1000 articles to it from the
database should be quite easy.

> Thanks a lot,
> Jakob

Kate.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly followed

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> Maybe it would be a good idea to form a team of "no original research"
> checkers who have the right to violate 3RR, and on whom any editor
> could call for help in the case of a revert war triggered by an editor
> adding unreferenced claims.

This strikes me as unnecessary.  At any given time of the day or night
there are more than 130 people in #wikipedia.  Just go there and ask
around for help, it's easy to find people to help.

--Jimbo


body:
On Jan 19, 2005, at 2:25 AM, NSK wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 January 2005 12:11, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> I've already added it; if for some reason we change our minds we can
>> turn it off at any time.
>
> Could you please turn it off in the non-Wikipedia MediaWiki
> distribution?

Having it on by default is a significant factor to its having the
desired effect (wide distribution of potential spam targets which will
produce no gain for the spammer if attacked).

You may of course turn it off on your own wikis (as you may configure
or recode them in any way). Unless we decide not to support the
campaign, the option will ship on by default.

>> The rel attribute is standard, validating HTML4 & XHTML1.
>
> That's true. However the values of the rel element are open to
> extensions, so
> maybe someone else already uses "nofollow" for another reason.

If they have, there's little _we_ can do about it, as we are not a
search engine. Talk to the fine folks at Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

> Note that as long search engines don't support this extension, it just
> uses
> extra bandwidth for no reason.

Google started the thing, and MSN and Yahoo's search teams have
announced they will support it. Whether the other players will hop on
the bandwagon remains to be seen (the campaign is young).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Robert Jones

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parsing script

body:
Is there a simple parsing script that could take the content from between
the data in the <text> block and convert all the links to HTML output,
adding links to the wikipedia site and externally linking the images where
necessary?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/Wikipedia:Today%27s_featured_art
icle/January_19%2C_2005

Is this the best way to include wikipedia content on a site?

Many thanks.


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject:
Original Research versus Point of View,
	was Re: [WikiEN-l] The3RR policy sho

body:
Bjorn, that you don't see the POV in [[Lyndon LaRouche]] demonstrates
what others were arguing on this list earlier, which is that editors
often need to have a degree of expertise to spot POV additions and
omissions. (The stuff left out of this article is the worst of it.)
When you're faced with determined POV pushers, but the POV requires
knowledge to spot, it can be hard to find other editors who will help,
because they look at the article and think it's okay. If the POV were
obvious, it would be less of a problem because readers would spot it
too. It's the less obvious kind that does the harm, because readers
will believe it. The Star Wars section I was referring to in [[Lyndon
LaRouche]] is below. It is cited, and so it's not Wikipedia that's
saying this, it's the quoted source. In that way, it meets
[[Wikipedia:Cite sources]]. That doesn't change the fact that it's a
load of baloney, and we shouldn't be quoting people who talk nonsense.

Slim

"According to a speech made by LaRouche science advisor Paul Gallagher
[http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3110sdi_timeline.html],
LaRouche and his representatives met with Reagan administration Energy
Secretary [[Donald Hodel]], Interior Secretary [[James Watt]], Science
Adviser Dr. [[George Keyworth]], and State Department official
[[Richard Morris]] in early [[1981]]. Gallagher also claims that later
that year Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche met with [[CIA]] Deputy
Director [[Bobby Ray Inman]], and cites the following remarks, made in
early [[1993]] at the National Press Club by former head of German
Military Intelligence, Gen. Paul-Albert Scherer:

"In the Spring of 1982 here in the Soviet Embassy there were very
important secret talks that were held ... The question was: Did the
United States and the Soviet Union wish jointly to develop an
anti-ballistic missile defense that would have made nuclear war
impossible? Then, in August, you had this very sharp Soviet rejection
of the entire idea.... I have discussed this thoroughly with the
developer, the originator of this idea, who is the
scientific-technological strategic expert, Lyndon LaRouche. The
[Soviet] rejection came in August, and at that point the American
President Reagan decided to push this entire thing out into the public
eye, so he made his speech of March 1983." (Press Conference at the
National Press Club, Washington, DC., May 6, 1992; video of Scherer's
remarks was broadcast on the "LaRouche Connection" cable TV program
throughout the U.S.)
[http://www.larouchepub.com/tv/tlc_programs_1991-1995.html]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:04:25 +0100, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know, the Lyndon LaRouche article
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche) reads:
>
> "He [LaRouche] claims to have pioneered such ideas as the
> International Development Bank, the Strategic Defense Initiative or
> 'Star Wars,' and the so-called Eurasian Land-Bridge."
>
> I don't see what the problem with that line is, it seems to be factual
> in that LaRouche has claimed to have invented SDI. You have to find a
> better example, because I have read the LaRouche article and I
> couldn't find any obvious NPOV faults.


body:
Bjorn, here are another two pages as examples: [[Schiller Institute}
and [[LaRouche Youth Movement]], both part of the LaRouche movement.
The first is regarded by researchers who know it as a dangerous,
far-right organization, with ties to far-right movements in Germany
where the Schiller Institute is based. Its founder, LaRouche's wife,
has made explicit Holocaust denial statements. But there is nothing
about this in the article.

After a protracted edit war, I was allowed to say that its "critics"
regard it as a cult, and insert a paragraph on [[Jeremiah Duggan]], a
young man who died after attending one of their "cadre schools." The
institute has nothing to do with Friedrich Schiller, the founder is
not the world's leading expert on Schiller, as the article says (or
any kind of expert). They are a dodgy political organization, not a
musical one, yet look how much play the music gets.

The [[LaRouche Youth Movement]], started after LaRouche got out of
jail, now has young members all over the world thanks to the Internet.
It is unquestionably a cult, with members encouraged to live
collectively, spend all their time raising money for the movement, and
receiving almost none of it for their upkeep. Ex-members have given
interviews about how they were forced to undergo "ego-stripping" as
part of their indoctrination. Again, there is nothing about this in
the article. I was only allowed my one paragraph about the death of
Jeremiah Duggan.

Finally, look at [[Template:LaRouche Talk]]. These are the Talk
archives the LaRouche editors have caused in just a few months, as
various editors try to get something close to the truth into these
articles, but instead get worn down by the endless talk, the calls for
mediation, the calls for arbitration, and the insults. So they give
up, as I am about to do.

Slim


body:
Jimbo, it really isn't easy, for the reason I've explained to Bjorn in
my last two e-mails. Often, editors feel they don't know enough about
a subject to intervene, or they simply don't want to because they have
their own watchlist to look out for. Or maybe a citation has been
offered, but it's a terrible one, yet other editors don't see that
because they don't know the area.

That's why I thought it would be a good idea to form a team of people
who are experienced in telling the difference between a decent
reference and a lousy one; and who have a thorough understanding of
Wikipedia's cite sources, no original research, and NPOV
policies/guidelines.

Slim

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 02:22:30 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> > Maybe it would be a good idea to form a team of "no original research"
> > checkers who have the right to violate 3RR, and on whom any editor
> > could call for help in the case of a revert war triggered by an editor
> > adding unreferenced claims.
>
> This strikes me as unnecessary.  At any given time of the day or night
> there are more than 130 people in #wikipedia.  Just go there and ask
> around for help, it's easy to find people to help.
>
> --Jimbo
>


from_name: shi zhao

body:
see http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

Are we can join in the exterior links (rel="nofollow") , preventing wikispam?

[[zh:user:shizhao]]


from_name: David Gerard

body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050119 03:52]:

> "Reliable references", there's the rub.  How do we establish that?  Just
> today I've encountered someone who considered a blog to be a "reliable
> reference".  A couple of days ago it was a "Israelis are Nazis" website.
> Last week it was a Holocaust Denial website.  And of course, these people
> consider any counter websites you bring to be "unreliable", "POV",
> "propaganda", etc.  What do you do then?

The problems you're raising are problem people, hence not rapidly
susceptible to any sort of technical (e.g. revert like crazy) or policy
solution. The problem is how to cure POV-pushing.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] "See also" section heading

body:
Zoney (zoney.ie at gmail.com) [050119 04:01]:
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:57:01 -0000, Charles Matthews
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Zoney wrote

> > > I hereby propose that instead of using the heading "See also" at the
> > > end of articles, we use the title "Related articles".

> > As far as I'm concerned, these mean different things.  'See also' can
> > include non-related articles with names that are closely related, for
> > example  [[Gilbert O'Sullivan]] in an article on [[Gilbert and Sullivan]].
> > I think 'See also' is fine; I'm sure most people just treat it as advisory.

> Ah, but you see, that's exactly the kind of thing that would be nice
> to stop (in my opinion). If for example, [[Gilbert O'Sullivan]] is
> likely to be confused with [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] (and I'm not
> certain about that, but yes, there are other plausible examples), it
> should surely be treated as disambiguation, not lumped in with a list
> of *related* articles. "See also" is too much of a "catch all" title.

In practice, "See also" is universally treated as meaning "Related articles
(that don't have a link in the text)" rather than "disambiguation".
Furthermore, the few existing examples of "Related articles" are being
replaced with the conventional "See also". I think a move back is unlikely
to gain traction.

- d.


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
--- slslimvirginmgmailom wrote:

> JiJimboit really isn't easy, for the reason I've explained to Bjorn
> in
> my last two e-mails. Often, editors feel they don't know enough about
> a subject to intervene, or they simply don't want to because they
> have
> their own wawatchlisto look out for. Or maybe a citation has been
> offered, but it's a terrible one, yet other editors don't see that
> because they don't know the area.
>

What makes a reference a terrible one? Is the source biased by funding
or other interests? Then that is a fact that should be included in an
article on the source, at least.

Not that you're suggesting this, but obviously a source should not be
considered "terrible" simply because you don't agree with it.

I do not see it as WiWikipedia'sole to judge "truth", but rather to
describe "facts". I have only a vague concept of LaLaRouchend his
ideas, and from what I know he sounds like a crackpot. But WiWikipedias
not the place to analyze his ideas and attempt to stomp out his
movement. Our job is to document him and his ideas, and to document
significant reactions to him and his ideas. We leave it up to other
groups, and up to individuals, to discern the truth. For me, that is a
core element of NPNPOV

-Rich HoHolton(en.WiWikipediaser:

__________________________________________________
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body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050119 05:57]:

> To join and be part of a community, you have to abide by its norms.  Those
> who fail to do so generally face exclusion from the community of one form
> or another.  And I find Wikipedia extremely reluctant to use the tools it
> has to enfore communal norms, to its detriment.  Some of the detriment is
> seen in the highly variable quality of the content.  Other is seen in the
> many good editors willing to abide by those norms, but not put up with
> those who do not, and who end up leaving.

Probably the problem in the specific case is that people holding a
particular POV come to Wikipedia, see something that reads to them like
unspeakable bias and go "fuck it" and dive in head first. Look at Alberuni,
who went wild with sockpuppets and personal abuse, but still doesn't think
that constituted doing *anything wrong at all* and that he was kicked off
Wikipedia because of a Jewish conspiracy. He's an extreme case, but still.

For this particular conflict, it would help if someone could be found who
knows and even holds the Palestinian POV *but* understands NPOV and why
it's good - to show those who hold that POV how to do things properly here.

I'm not sure how you would go about recruiting one or more ...

- d.


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

in_reply_to:
<41EDCD65.4060508@arcsy.co.jp> (Guillaume Blanchard's message of
	"Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:00:53 +0900")

body:
Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> writes:

> We can wrote all information into templates like this:
>
> {{image_description|Picture of the Yokohama harbour}}
> {{image_author|G. Blanchard}}
> {{image_source|From my homepage http://foo.oeg}} or some pre-made
> template like {{image_source|{{Personal_work}}}}
> {{image_licence|{{GFDL}}}}

This template syntax does not look inviting (on the German discussion
list we already encountered several complaints).  I'm still wondering
why we cannot go for proper SGML, e.g.:

<description>
<image_description>Picture of the Yokohama harbour
<image_author>G. Blanchard
<image_source>From my homepage http://foo.oeg
<!-- or: <image_source>&Personal_work -->
<image_licence>&GFDL

And yes, displaying the most recent description from common on the local
project page read-only would be a good idea.  Then local users can
easily add a translation below.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> like google labs, only wikilabs? a place to put all our crazy dreams...
> sounds like a good idea.

Not as a stand-alone Wikimedia project. Having this on Wikicities (or as a set
of Wikibooks) seems to be much better fit.

-- mav

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body:
--- "Jimmy (JiJimboWales" <jwjwalesiwikiaom> wrote:

> Rich HoHoltonrote:
> > My greatest concern is that there are continuing performance issues
> > with little apparent progress over an extended period. Without
> > hesitation I presume that we have good people volunteering their
> time
> > and working hard to resolve these issues.
>
> I think you're overlooking our staggering growth rate, though.  There
> has been enormous progress on a great many fronts, but we continue to
> grow grow grow at an astonishing rate.
>
> It isn't as if we have steady traffic and the dedevsre working this
> hard and achieving nothing.  It's that we have remarkable progress on
> all fronts and enough growth to make it not seem very impressive if
> you don't recognize what's going on.

There are continuing performance issues without _apparent_ progress
over an extended period. It's not a question of whether the dedevsre
achieving nothing, it a question of whether WiWikipediaWiWikiMediais
able to handle it own growth. Do we have the organization and structure
necessary to be a top 100 site? Can we effectively respond to spurts in
usage, hardware failures, or the loss of key developers?

I am not bitching about the developers. I've tried to make that clear,
though I may not have always succeeded. We have volunteers who are
making extraordinary efforts, and achieving extraordinary things. But
have we reached a point where that is not enough?

According to Alexa, our traffic rank has dropped significantly over the
past two weeks -- to the point where we are now at a level comparable
to our lolowpointsver Mid November to Mid December.

To look at this as purely a tetechnicalssue is, in my opinion, a huge
mistake. This is a challenge to the entire organization, and
particularly to "the management". That's why I'm bringing this up on
the Foundation mailing list.

If I am missing something here, it's safe to assume that I am not the
only one. There are limited sources of information for the typical
editor:

* The tech section of VP (on en) still points to this LiLiveJournalage:
hthttp/wwwwwilivejournalom/community/wiwikitech432.hthtml* Error
messages point to: hthttp/wwwwwilivejournalom/community/wiwikitechand
also to:
hthttp/opopenfactseberliosedendex-en.phphtmlitle=WiWikipediatatus,
where I see that JaJamesDayas finally given some response to people's
questioning and complaining. Check out the archive for the first part
of January though:
hthttp/opopenfactseberliosedendex-en.phphtmlitle=WiWikipediatatus/archive2005

As far as I can tell, none of these give an adequate indication of what
the issues are and what progress is being made. I would try to add
something somewhere to point to more up-to-date and reliable
information, but I don't know where to find such information.

>
> > Sometimes it is necessary for an organization to consider the
> > possibility that internal resources are not sufficient to address
> an
> > immediate need. WiWikipediaas come a long way relying almost
> entirely
> > on volunteer workers. I do not believe this can continue
> indefinitely.
>
> I would tend to agree with you on this, but we should not expect paid
> work to be a cure-all.  In some well-defined areas, yes.  But in
> general, it is not so clear.
>

No, there is no panacea. But there are times when a small but focused
action can achieve sisignificantesults.

I very much value what WiWikipedias and stands for. That's exactly why
I'm concerned.

-Rich HoHolton

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from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> I'm inclined to agree. It looks legit from a markup perspective (ie it
> shouldn't cause HTML validators to bitch at us; rel _is_ a defined
> attribute for <a>, and the set of values is open-ended.)
>
> Of course it won't prevent wikispam, but with luck it will discourage it
> by reducing its value.

Would this tag apply to all external links, even to the "yes, this is a
good link"-links? In the long run, we wouldn't hurt not just spammers
but even the good guys by not linking to them in a way search engines
would consider this link to be relevant.

Or is this just PageRankParanoia?

Mathias


body:
--- Rich Holton <rich_holton at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- "Jimmy (JiJimboWales" <jwjwalesiwikiaom> wrote:
>
> > Rich HoHoltonrote:
> > > My greatest concern is that there are continuing performance
> issues
> > > with little apparent progress over an extended period. Without
> > > hesitation I presume that we have good people volunteering their
> > time
> > > and working hard to resolve these issues.
> >
> > I think you're overlooking our staggering growth rate, though.
> There
> > has been enormous progress on a great many fronts, but we continue
> to
> > grow grow grow at an astonishing rate.
> >
> > It isn't as if we have steady traffic and the dedevsre working this
> > hard and achieving nothing.  It's that we have remarkable progress
> on
> > all fronts and enough growth to make it not seem very impressive if
> > you don't recognize what's going on.
>

There are continuing performance issues without _apparent_ progress
over an extended period. It's not a question of whether the dedevsre
achieving nothing, it a question of whether WiWikipediaWiWikiMediais
able to handle it own growth. Do we have the organization and structure
necessary to be a top 100 site? Can we effectively respond to spurts
in usage, hardware failures, or the loss of key developers?

I am not bitching about the developers. I've tried to make that
clear,
though I may not have always succeeded. We have volunteers who are
making extraordinary efforts, and achieving extraordinary things. But
have we reached a point where that is not enough?

According to Alexa, our traffic rank has dropped significantly over
the
past two weeks -- to the point where we are now at a level comparable
to our lolowpointsver Mid November to Mid December.

To look at this as purely a tetechnicalssue is, in my opinion, a huge
mistake. This is a challenge to the entire organization, and
particularly to "the management". That's why I'm bringing this up on
the Foundation mailing list.

If I am missing something here, it's safe to assume that I am not the
only one. There are limited sources of information for the typical
editor:

The tech section of VP (on en) still points to this LiveJournal page:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/1432.html

Error messages point to:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/

and also to:
http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_status

where I see that JamesDay has finally given some response to people's
questioning and complainings. Check out the archive for the first part
of January though:
http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_status/archive2005

As far as I can tell, none of these give an adequate indication of what
the issues are and what progress is being made. I would try to add
something somewhere to point to more up-to-date and reliable
information, but I don't know where to find such information.

>
> > > Sometimes it is necessary for an organization to consider the
> > > possibility that internal resources are not sufficient to address
> > an
> > > immediate need. WiWikipediaas come a long way relying almost
> > entirely
> > > on volunteer workers. I do not believe this can continue
> > indefinitely.
> >
> > I would tend to agree with you on this, but we should not expect
> paid
> > work to be a cure-all.  In some well-defined areas, yes.  But in
> > general, it is not so clear.
> >
>
No, there is no panacea. But there are times when a small but focused
action can achieve sisignificantesults.

I very much value what WiWikipedias and stands for. That's exactly why
I'm concerned.

-Rich HoHolton

>
> __________________________________
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> _______________________________________________
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
I'm sympathetic to this view but the corollary is that a special
Wikimedia project (i.e. not buried in Wikibooks) would encourage
interest in an area where, comparatively speaking, you don't have a
natural base of editors. Compare say the amount of builders, architects
and musicians to the number of mathematicians and programmers. It's a
systemic bias issue.

I would rather see such new projects *that have recognised potential
and a good plan* given a prominent domain space such as:
beta.wikimedia.org/Wikibuilder
or beta.wikibuilder.org
..and advertised along side Wikisource, Wikispecies and other Wikimedia
projects under a Wikibetas heading or something.

I think this is especially pertinent to projects that may need special
code to reach their true potential, such as presenting music notation
in Wikiscores or previews of 2D and 3D CAD files in Wikibuilder.

Christiaan

On 19 Jan 2005, at 4:25 am, Sj wrote:

> I would like to see the process for creating new factual/specialist
> Wikimedia projects include a stage at whic hthe new project is a
> Wikibook, which serves as a demonstration of what project content will
> include (and a rough topic mesh for the project), proof of interest in
> the project, and a source of inspiration to new project contributors.
>
> After this initial overview book could come full-fledged project
> development.
>
> +sj+
>
>
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:43:41 +0000, Christiaan Briggs
> <christiaan at last-straw.net> wrote:
>> Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
>>
>>> Can't it be a part of Wikibooks?
>>
>> It could, but then so could all the Wikimedia projects. I'm not sure
>> it
>> would suit Wikibooks. I see this as a "commons" project covering the
>> design and construction of the built environment *in its entirety* in
>> all languages. Plus the prominence of being a separate Wikimedia
>> project will help in attracting builders and designers. It may even
>> need special code introduced into MediaWiki to deal with
>> presenting/previewing up-and-coming 2D and 3D file formats, etc.
>>
>> Christiaan_______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
> --
> +sj+
>  _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050119 07:34]:

> >For this particular conflict, it would help if someone could be found who
> >knows and even holds the Palestinian POV *but* understands NPOV and why
> >it's good - to show those who hold that POV how to do things properly here.

> We had one.  He basically left in frustration over POV warriors and
> Wikipedia's failure to deal with them.   There's one more, but he isn't
> very active in this area right now.

How ... annoying.

The trouble with trying to make rules from extreme cases is that they'll
become a bludgeon for idiots to wield in other places. Look how hard the
idiots wield rules like 3RR - trying to treat it as a floor rather than a
ceiling.

Can we think of rules that will ameliorate the effects of stupidity in
these contentious areas, but be light on the unintended side effects
elsewhere? It's a huge wiki. And, of course, rules that are likely to
actually be accepted by the volunteers. Every proposal will drive away
someone.

- d.


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
Will it help? It only works when the spammers think/know we have this
implemented. And it does also harm the 'valid' links that are created.

Andre Engels

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 03:58:54 +0000 (UTC), shi zhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:
> see http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html
>
> Are we can join in the exterior links (rel="nofollow") , preventing wikispam?
>
> [[zh:user:shizhao]]


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Everyking

body:
Surely a rollback should be classed as a revert?

TBSDY

Angela wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 23:05:51 +1100, David Gerard
> <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>
>>Apparently you can still do rollbacks when unblocked.
>
>
> Blocking only blocks you from editing, not from using any admin
> powers. You can still rollback, delete, undelete and block users when
> you are blocked.
>
> Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Signpost's second issue published

body:
I would suggest you feel free to create a "Back Issues" subpage :)

TBSDY

Cormac Lawler wrote:
> Firstly, just to add my enthusiasm for this
> development - I think it's great.
>
> Also (and pardon me if I've missed it) but will there
> be a catalogue of sorts to see "back issues" in order
> to retrieve articles in the future? I notice that the
> old page has been replaced with the new one - will one
> have to access back issues through the history page?
> [[User:gbog]] has already made a similar point on the
> talk page.
>
> But thanks again,
>
> Cormac [[User:Cormaggio]]
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Sigachev Alexander

subject: [Wikipedia-l] images on commons and gfdl

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> This would automatically translate the most important part of any such message
> (the license) and give prominent placement to the author's name. Any other
> parts of the transcluded text (such as a caption) would need to be translated
> by somebody from the local wiki and placed below the original transcluded text
> box on the local wiki's image description page.

The name of the author needs to be translated also.

Exemple:
Orig. name:         John Lennon
In cyrillic script: ???? ??????

or

my orig.  name: ????????? ???????
transliterated: Aleksandr Sigachov
in foreign passport: Alexander Sigachev

--
Cxion la plej helan
Ajvol


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

body:
> movement may be used on articles "closely related" to LaRouche. A
> consequence of this is that the article [[Lyndon LaRouche]] now cites
> claims that LaRouche developed the Star Wars program, properly
> referenced to someone interviewed on LaRouche cable television. This
> is just one of scores of similar claims in the 17 articles on the
> LaRouche template, but you have to be knowledgeable to sort out which
> claims are LaRouche nonsense, because they're not always as obvious as
> the Star Wars one.

I don't know, the Lyndon LaRouche article
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche) reads:

"He [LaRouche] claims to have pioneered such ideas as the
International Development Bank, the Strategic Defense Initiative or
'Star Wars,' and the so-called Eurasian Land-Bridge."

I don't see what the problem with that line is, it seems to be factual
in that LaRouche has claimed to have invented SDI. You have to find a
better example, because I have read the LaRouche article and I
couldn't find any obvious NPOV faults.

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Dealing quickly with rogue editors (was The 3RR policy
	should not always be blindly followed)

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Is there anyone on this list with serious objections to short (12hr or
> 24hr) blocks for personal abuse? I'd like to see what can be done about the
> objections to the idea, with the hope of getting it through again.

I would support that. As is, our no personal attacks policy has little by way
of teeth to it.

The only problem, and this is a big one, is what constitutes a personal attack?
Use of profanity in a provocative way is an obvious criteria, but there are
*many* ways a person can demean another person without resorting to base
language.

What do you do when you come across a complete piece of trash article or edit?
Criticizing something like that, even when it is justified, may be seen as a
personal attack by the author.

So we must tread a fine line here due to the subjective nature of the offense.

RfC may be a way for the community to quickly decide the less than clear cases.
A short term poll could be held on someone's RfC page to see whether or not
that person violated the 'no personal attacks' policy. If <75% agree, then that
person gets blocked for a small period of time (24hrs to a week; anything
longer would need an ArbCom ruling).

Obviously safeguards will need to be developed to minimize abuse. Otherwise mob
rule will be used to punish merely unpopular users - Hemlock anybody?

> >  I understand that
> > temporary injunctions by ArbCom were supposed to help with this, but,
> > ironically, in more cases than not the final rulings are brought down
> > before any temporary injunctions get the necessary votes.
>
> This is one thing we're trying to get better with!

We could lower the vote threshold for temp injunctions. My original idea was to
use the same criteria we use to open and close cases - just 4 yes votes needed.

-- mav

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blindly following the 3+ revert rule

body:
You know, I've tended to find that the whole problem of reverting comes
down to two main issues:

1. Not using the talk page when reverting, and
2. Not citing sources when adding information

If you don't use the talk page when you revert, or optimally if you
don't use the talk page and THEN revert, then you can expect that other
editor to get a bit annoyed. Then a revert war starts. I might note that
using the edit summary for discuss is an abuse of the edit summary!
Objections to the material (unless it's obvious vandalism) should be
placed on the talk page for all reverts.

If you cite your sources, then you are much less likely to get reverted
as then it is obvious you are not editting as original research and your
information can get checked out.

I think people have to bare this in mind when they revert and when they
edit.

TBSDY

Sam Korn wrote:
> [[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]
>
> If one has a citation and the other doesn't, then the uncited one is
> likely to be correct.  If neither has one, then the item probably
> ought to be removed.  There would be a citation somewhere about the
> correct answer to the dispute, and this ought to be displayed.
>
> It doesn't matter how right your reverts are, if you break the 3RR,
> you get blocked.  Period.
>
> Smoddy
>
>
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:21:39 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
> <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>>Robert said:
>>
>>>In practice very often we cannot easilly get someone else
>>>to help us revert or edit, at least not for a few days.
>>>I've asked for help on articles, only to have other editors
>>>say "I don't know enough about the topic; I can't do
>>>anything."  JayJG points out this same issue.
>>>
>>
>>if out of the thousands of Wikipedia editors you cannot find one single
>>person qualified to examine an article and spot editing so seriously bad
>>that it would justify your asking for us to set aside the three-revert
>>rule, your subject must be very arcane indeed.  How are we to tell which
>>of the two people editing the article is right?  What if *he* petitions
>>for the 3RR to be relaxed so that he can out-revert *you*?  How would we
>>know which was which?
>>You say "at least not for a few days", but you are allowed to perform
>>three reverts per day, so you don't have to wait for a few days to
>>continue with your precious edit-war.
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] "See also" section heading

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Zoney (zoney.ie at gmail.com) [050120 03:32]:
>
>
>>I hadn't known that the heading "related articles" had indeed
>>previously been used. Is it still acceptable or was there a definitive
>>decision to only use "see also"?
>>
>
>
>Not that I know of, but it deos appear to be the convention. I sometimes
>change it, sometimes leave it.
>
"See also" is less verbose and thus quicker to read/recognize
(especially for non-native speakers), is common in print media,
and is basically identical in meaning. I don't see why anything
else would be preferred.

It's more slick to embed the "see alsos" in article text that
tells the reader *why* they're worth seeing also, but sometimes
creativity fails us. :-)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Everyking

body:
csherlock at ljh.com.au (csherlock at ljh.com.au) [050119 09:53]:

> Surely a rollback should be classed as a revert?

Rollbacks of simple vandalism (as defined by policy) are not counted as
reverts for 3RR, and evidently they're not reverts as we know them in the
design of Mediawiki either.

Using rollback to perform an article edit that constitutes a revert in the
3RR sense would be a *severely* dodgy thing for a 3RR-blocked admin to do,
though. I'd hope Everyking wouldn't do that.

- d.


from_name: NSK

body:
On Wednesday 19 January 2005 05:58, shi zhao wrote:
> see http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

Not a good idea. See http://nsk.wikinerds.org/blog/index.php?p=119

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


body:
On Wednesday 19 January 2005 10:11, NSK wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 January 2005 05:58, shi zhao wrote:
> > see http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html
>
> Not a good idea. See http://nsk.wikinerds.org/blog/index.php?p=119

Sorry, I mean: http://nsk.wikinerds.org/blog/index.php?p=118

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Not as a stand-alone Wikimedia project. Having this on Wikicities
> (or as a set of Wikibooks) seems to be much better fit.

Anything that wants to get started on wikicities would gladly be moved
to Wikimedia if the communities both wanted it that way.  That is,
anything which fits with the Wikimedia charitble public purpose
mission which gets started at wikicities will not be held there.

And any wikimedia castoffs (tokipona, klingon?) are welcome there.

Wikicities is commercial, but I intend for it to support the
foundation.

Also: Angela and I have decided to reject any proposals at wikicities
which appears to be a fork of anything at wikimedia.

--Jimbo


body:
Still, I find such of secondary importance. The important thing is
that there _is_ information on the author and license; if author or
description is in the wrong language (or alphabet) is of secondary
importance, in my opinion.

Andre Engels

> The name of the author needs to be translated also.
>
> Exemple:
> Orig. name:         John Lennon
> In cyrillic script: ???? ??????
>
> or
>
> my orig.  name: ????????? ???????
> transliterated: Aleksandr Sigachov
> in foreign passport: Alexander Sigachev


from_name: Verma Atul (extern)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem in conversion of Formula on Wiki

body:
Hi,

I have installed Wiki server on Windows platform, and I have configured
the wiki server as per the guidelines provided in Running Media Wiki on
Windows. But now when I give a mathematical expression like:

<math>\sqrt{2}</math>

and try to preview the page to see the results I get an error given
below:

Failed to parse (PNG conversion failed; check for correct installation
of latex, dvips, gs, and convert): \sqrt{2}

I tried to run the commands latex, dvips and convert from command line,
they run perfectly fine. I'm not able to understand what the problem is?
Please suggest asap.

Regards
Atul Verma


body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>> We could lower the vote threshold for temp injunctions. My original idea
>> was to use the same criteria we use to open and close cases - just 4 yes
>> votes needed.
>
> That's a *very* good idea. What do we do to change ArbCom powers in this
> manner?

The ArbCom reserves the right to make minor changes to Arbitration Policy.

See "All of the following guidelines are subject to change." at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_policy

and "The Arbitration Policy may be tweaked as the Committee gains experience
and learns better ways of doing things" at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_policy_ratification_vote#What_will_be_the_effects_of_this_vote.3F

The vote threshold needed in the ArbCom to make minor changes has not been
specified so, IMO, consensus (>75% of active ArbCom members) would be needed to
make this happen.

-- mav

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 10:38:43AM +0100, Verma Atul (extern) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have installed Wiki server on Windows platform, and I have configured
> the wiki server as per the guidelines provided in Running Media Wiki on
> Windows. But now when I give a mathematical expression like:
>
> <math>\sqrt{2}</math>
>
> and try to preview the page to see the results I get an error given
> below:
>
> Failed to parse (PNG conversion failed; check for correct installation
> of latex, dvips, gs, and convert): \sqrt{2}
>
> I tried to run the commands latex, dvips and convert from command line,
> they run perfectly fine. I'm not able to understand what the problem is?
> Please suggest asap.

Have you checked if ocaml is installed ?
It's needed to compile texvc.


body:
Yes I have installed ocaml. Can you suggest me how to test the
expression from say a command line.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tomasz
Wegrzanowski
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 10:51 AM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: [<SPAM>] - Re: [Wikitech-l] Problem in conversion of Formula on
Wiki - Email found in subject

On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 10:38:43AM +0100, Verma Atul (extern) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have installed Wiki server on Windows platform, and I have
configured
> the wiki server as per the guidelines provided in Running Media Wiki
on
> Windows. But now when I give a mathematical expression like:
>
> <math>\sqrt{2}</math>
>
> and try to preview the page to see the results I get an error given
> below:
>
> Failed to parse (PNG conversion failed; check for correct installation
> of latex, dvips, gs, and convert): \sqrt{2}
>
> I tried to run the commands latex, dvips and convert from command
line,
> they run perfectly fine. I'm not able to understand what the problem
is?
> Please suggest asap.

Have you checked if ocaml is installed ?
It's needed to compile texvc.
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> You may of course turn it off on your own wikis (as you may configure
> or recode them in any way). Unless we decide not to support the
> campaign, the option will ship on by default.

I strongly agree with Brion on this.  It should ship on by default.

Whether or not *we* should use it is a tougher question.  It is
primarily of value to small blogs with small communities which are
ripe targets for wikispam.  For us, there is direct and indirect value
in the fact that our links are human-chosen and _mean something_.

We help the world by reducing the cost of wikispam.  We help the world
by helping google and other search engines find websites that don't
suck.  It's a tradeoff.

There's an additional irony if you think about it.  One "cost" of this
campaign to google is if the ignore links of value, thus reducing the
quality of their search results.  If we add the nofollow attribute, we
remove our collective wisdom from the google dataset.  This might
cause google to rethink the wisdom of paying attention to this tag.

The general ethical principle seems to be something like this:

A good webmaster will identify links that appear on his or her website
which may be of low quality (because not validated by trusted parties)
and hint to search engines accordingly.  This means that by default,
MediaWiki should ship with this feature turned on, because small wikis
do have a problem in this area.  But it also means that wikipedia
itself probably should turn the feature off.

(This is not a decree or anything, just one voice in the discussion.)

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] original research, sources, and verification

body:
--- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> I think we should either expand the brief of the mediation and arbitration
> committees to enforce content guidelines or, if those committees prefer
> having a more limited brief, form some other clear process to resolve
> conflicts over content and enforce content policies.

As you pointed out, what constitutes reputable sources varies a great deal by
discipline and is still very subjective. So, IMO, the ArbCom cannot directly
touch content disputes until much better content guidelines and policies are
developed (not to mention the fact of community support for extending that
power to the ArbCom).

In my experience, those who violate NPOV and/or who push crank theories are
opposed by other editors and eventually violate behavioral policies and
guidelines. So this is somewhat self-correcting as-is. Of course it would be
more efficient to deal with this before it becomes a behavioral issue, but
doing so in a fair way is not at all easy.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: JAY JG

body:
> >
> > >For this particular conflict, it would help if someone could be found
>who
> > >knows and even holds the Palestinian POV *but* understands NPOV and why
> > >it's good - to show those who hold that POV how to do things properly
>here.
>
> > We had one.  He basically left in frustration over POV warriors and
> > Wikipedia's failure to deal with them.   There's one more, but he isn't
> > very active in this area right now.
>
>
>How ... annoying.
>
>The trouble with trying to make rules from extreme cases is that they'll
>become a bludgeon for idiots to wield in other places. Look how hard the
>idiots wield rules like 3RR - trying to treat it as a floor rather than a
>ceiling.

True, "hard cases make bad law."

>Can we think of rules that will ameliorate the effects of stupidity in
>these contentious areas, but be light on the unintended side effects
>elsewhere? It's a huge wiki. And, of course, rules that are likely to
>actually be accepted by the volunteers. Every proposal will drive away
>someone.

I think swift but light justice helps.  The way things work now, a rogue
editor runs rampant over Wikipedia for a couple of months, till ArbCom can
finally deal with it.  By that point their "rap sheet" is so long that the
only reasonable remedy is a lengthy ban of many months.  If we were able to
hand out one or two day "cooling off" bans very soon after the behaviour
started, I believe it would make the rogue editors start taking Wikipedia
policies seriously enough that they might actually move their disputes and
concerns to the Talk: pages, rather than the articles.  I understand that
temporary injunctions by ArbCom were supposed to help with this, but,
ironically, in more cases than not the final rulings are brought down before
any temporary injunctions get the necessary votes.

Jay.


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> We could lower the vote threshold for temp injunctions. My original idea was to
> use the same criteria we use to open and close cases - just 4 yes votes needed.

What's the typical time-delay on getting the four votes for a temporary
injunction?


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
<slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote

>Or maybe a citation has been
> offered, but it's a terrible one, yet other editors don't see that
> because they don't know the area.

So point this out on the talk page.  I don't want to sound unsympathetic,
but _document first_ where there is a burning issue.  Invoking some sort of
'higher vigilantism' is a long way behind trying to meet unreasonable
behaviour with reasoning.

Charles


body:
On Wednesday 19 January 2005 11:22, Tim Starling wrote:
> feature is implemented in MediaWiki by default, because that reduces the
> incentive for them to spam everything with a <textarea>.

The nofollow proposal is not a good idea IMO; people will use it for
commercial gain.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject:
[Fwd: Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be
	blindlyfollowed]

body:
>Tony Sideway wrote:
>
>Okay, so if you won't get into an edit war and you won't hve a problem
>with 3RR enforcement if you do, what is the problem?  Has the topic of
>this discussion drifted while I wasn't looking?

The problem is how to deal with POV warriors, who insert POV and original
research into articles and then defend it to the death.

> >>I think this is a highly contentious way of interacting on Wikipedia,
> >>and not one to be condoned.  Talk pages exist for a good purpose.
> >
> > Indeed they do.  If only people used them, rather than POVing and
> > "original  research"ing articles, and then edit-warring to preserve
> > their POV and  original research insertions.
>
>So this is all about "other" people, then?

Why, did you think it was about you, Tony?

> >>Revert
> >>limits and guidelines counseling against edit warring also exist for a
> >>good purpose.  Edit warring is *not* considered a good way of dealing
> >>with problems.
> >
> > No, it's not; however, it is sometimes the best of a number of bad
> > choices.   If only there were other remedies that actually worked
> > effectively all the  time.
> >
>
>Perhaps I didn't put it clearly enough: edit warring is seen as a major
>problem.  It is never "the best of a number of choices" to engage in
>silly warring.

It is your opinion, of course, that it is never the best of a number of
*bad* choices, and that trying to preserve ensure that content in Wikipedia
actually follows its policies is "silly warring".

>Where there is an edit dispute, get more people to look
>at the article.  That solves the problem far quicker and more effectively
>than tit-for-tat editing.

Have you not been following the discussion? People have been pointing out
that that simply doesn't work in many cases, due to lack of time, or
interest in, or knowledge of, the subject area.

>I simply don't buy your claim that you alone
>are capable or and willing to determine which of two people, you and the
>other edit warrior, is doing good edits.

This is not about me, and I haven't made that claim.  For the third time,
please avoid personalizing this, and please avoid strawman arguments.

Jay.


from_name: Christof Damian

body:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Andrew Miller wrote:
>
> In terms of using it with Wiki, perhaps this should interact with
> validation(when it is implemented) or patrolling in some way. An ad
> hoc approach would be to drop the nofollow in links first added in a
> change which has already patrolled pages. This would, however,
> require that this state be stored , maintained, and read in some way
> on a per-link basis, which may be to costly to justify(unless it
> also offered some other benefit to the Wiki users).

I would also make this work with patrolling pages. If patrols are
limited to a trusted group you can remove the nofollow flag from
patrolled pages. I think a per-page flag would be enough for this.

Christof

--
Christof Damian
christof at damian.net


list: commons-l

from_name: Richard Palmer

subject: [Commons-l] Photo Information

body:
Hi,

 I posted a message about this to the Village Pump but got no replies,
so either I'm making no sense or everybody agrees with me (perhaps
not!).

My proposal was to prompt for specific information on the file upload
form for photos, such as Location, Country, Date and some technical
information. All of this information could then be embedded into the
file page, and displayed with the photo. I think this would help in
categorising the photos, gives some information to users in all
languages, and at some future point could allow for searching by
country/date/photographer etc. Given the amount of meta-data digital
cameras now save automatically with each photograph it seems daft not
to use it.

I did a quick mock-up of what I mean at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wombat/Upload
although the forms are not interpreted.

please respond!,

Richard.


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
>
>> Unify licence template ({{GFDL}}, {{CC-BY-SA}}, etc.) on all Wikipedia
>> may help a lot.
>> When we use an image from Commons on local Wikipedia, the software may
>> include the Commons' description page next to local description (both on
>> the same page). So, even if people don't enter local information (say
>> translation), we may be able to see the original information.
>> For example :
>
>
> Transcluding the raw wikitext from Commons and running it through the
> local
> wiki's parsar should do that automatically so long as templates with the
> correct names exist on each wiki (which you already mentioned).
>
> For this to work though, these templates will all have to be able to
> take an
> {{{Author}}} variable - otherwise the author's name may get lost in a
> jumble of
> words from a different language in that part of the transcluded text.
>
> This would automatically translate the most important part of any such
> message
> (the license) and give prominent placement to the author's name. Any other
> parts of the transcluded text (such as a caption) would need to be
> translated
> by somebody from the local wiki and placed below the original
> transcluded text
> box on the local wiki's image description page.
>
> -- mav

We can wrote all information into templates like this:

{{image_description|Picture of the Yokohama harbour}}
{{image_author|G. Blanchard}}
{{image_source|From my homepage http://foo.oeg}} or some pre-made
template like {{image_source|{{Personal_work}}}}
{{image_licence|{{GFDL}}}}

Like this, if we parse the Commons' message on local project we can
translate automatically main part the messages (except non-standard
messages like 'description'). Editable part of the local page may be use
for 'real' translation.
I think automatically half-translated description available on local
project is many time better than fully non translated description on
Commons (especially for licence information).

Aoineko


body:
On Wednesday 19 January 2005 11:55, Tony wrote:
> I can't see the point. Look at the losses and gains:

I don't see the point, too.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Add $wgNoFollowLinks option to add rel="nofollow" on
	external links (on by default)

body:
such a major change should be discussed thouroughly before implementation in
MW1.4. I don/t think this is a good idea. Read my blog where I explain why
this technique could lead to fuirther commercialisation of the Internet:
http://nsk.wikinerds.org/blog/index.php?p=118

[MediaWiki-CVS] phase3 RELEASE-NOTES,1.40.2.119,1.40.2.120

From:
Brion Vibber <vibber at users.sourceforge.net>

To:
mediawiki-cvs at wikimedia.org

Date:
Today 11:58:41

Update of /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3
In directory sc8-pr-cvs1.sourceforge.net:/tmp/cvs-serv9436

Modified Files:
      Tag: REL1_4
        RELEASE-NOTES
Log Message:
* Add $wgNoFollowLinks option to add rel="nofollow" on external links (on by
default)

Index: RELEASE-NOTES
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES,v
retrieving revision 1.40.2.119
retrieving revision 1.40.2.120
diff -C2 -d -r1.40.2.119 -r1.40.2.120
*** RELEASE-NOTES       19 Jan 2005 03:53:00 -0000      1.40.2.119
--- RELEASE-NOTES       19 Jan 2005 09:58:38 -0000      1.40.2.120
***************
*** 257,260 ****
--- 257,262 ----
  * Call-tree output mode for profiling
  * (bug 730) configurable $wgRCMaxAge; don't try to update purged RC entries
+ * Add $wgNoFollowLinks option to add rel="nofollow" on external links
+   (on by default)

  === Caveats ===

_______________________________________________
MediaWiki-CVS mailing list
MediaWiki-CVS at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-cvs

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] recipes

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I discovered today that recipes are now legally deleted from the english
> wikipedia where they are not welcome any more.

I think this is wrong.  A rule which says "no recipes" is really quite
misguided, and I have never found the arguments against _all_ recipes
to be very compelling.  Some recipes, to be sure, are not compelling,
and Wikipedia is not a cookbook.

But, I don't always get my way.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> I personally believe that receipes as they are should go in wikibooks
> and have nothing to do with an encyclopedia. Having an history,
> description, use of a dish is another matter and can fit well in the
> encyclopedia. The receipe does not.

There is no finer description of a dish than a recipe, with major
variants noted.  This is why I say that a simple rule is wrong.  It is
true that a recipe should make up a part of a larger overall entry
which explains the history, description, use, cultural context,
geographical extent, etc.  But such descriptions can be very well
enhanced by having a recipe as well.

--Jimbo


body:
On Wednesday 19 January 2005 12:11, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I've already added it; if for some reason we change our minds we can
> turn it off at any time.

Could you please turn it off in the non-Wikipedia MediaWiki distribution?

> The rel attribute is standard, validating HTML4 & XHTML1.

That's true. However the values of the rel element are open to extensions, so
maybe someone else already uses "nofollow" for another reason.

Note that as long search engines don't support this extension, it just uses
extra bandwidth for no reason.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org/freehosting


subject: [Wikitech-l] Add $wgNoFollowLinks option to add rel="nofollow"on	external links (on by default)

body:
On Wednesday 19 January 2005 12:12, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> I don't agree your statement. If people can make money choosing to apply

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050118-4536.html

"Many people believe that by blindly applying this tag to all links left in
comments and guestbooks, online publishers are singlehandedly destroying a
community that was built upon linking to one another."

btw: you can post your comments on the blog, too. I welcome constructive
criticism.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org/freehosting


from_name: shi zhao

body:
shi zhao <shizhao <at> gmail.com> writes:

>
> see http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html
>
> Are we can join in the exterior links (rel="nofollow") , preventing
wikispam?
>
> [[zh:user:shizhao]]
>

We can use the similar to  Trackback Pings of blog.

[[zh:user:shizhao]]


body:
On Wednesday 19 January 2005 12:37, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Having it on by default is a significant factor to its having the
> desired effect (wide distribution of potential spam targets which will
> produce no gain for the spammer if attacked).

But the links are still clickable by humans, so the spammers will continue
inserting their links in Wikipedia.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org/freehosting


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
Steve raises an interesting point about expertise. There is currently
a journalist helping to edit the LaRouche pages, or trying to, who is
an expert on the LaRouche movement. Because of his expertise, he has
access to professional research archives about the movement, which
needless to say the LaRouche editors are freaking out about, because
finally there's someone in Wikipedia with the knowledge to nail them.
They are calling this researcher a liar and a cheat; have accused him
of cooking quotes; and I stand accused of knowing he has cooked them
but pretending not to notice.

My fear is that, if I take this matter to the arbcom, there will be a
"plague on both your houses" attitude, so that, if any action is taken
against the LaRouche editors (e.g. that they be asked to stop editing
those pages) similar action will be taken against the researcher,
which I know the LaRouche editors will demand (and probably against me
too). I worry that this attitude exists because admins and arbitrators
usually don't examine quality of content when making decisions. Yet
editorial content is the most important aspect of Wikipedia, if it
wants to be a good encyclopedia.

I suppose what I'm arguing for is more respect for expertise, not at
the cost of the open-access philosophy, which I support, but I believe
that openness and respect for quality can co-exist. The process
matters but it's a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Slim

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:57:02 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> > I think we should either expand the brief of the mediation and arbitration
> > committees to enforce content guidelines or, if those committees prefer
> > having a more limited brief, form some other clear process to resolve
> > conflicts over content and enforce content policies.


from_name: Matthew Trump

body:
As for implementing it in the software as an configurable option, I
think it's a good thing. But I think it would a shame to institute
this in blanket form on Wikipedia itself.

My experience is that spam gets cleaned up very quickly.

Conversely, I find pleasure in adding legitimate external links,
knowing it will help raise the page rank of those sites.


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
This concerns the exchanges between SlimVirgin and others on policing POV
and the quality of sources.

It seems that most people, including Jimbo, are committed to the quasi
anarchic aspect of Wikipedia in which a large community of diverse editors
are always available to edit or comment on controversial articles.  I share
this commitment and agree that when editors come into conflict over content
or sources, the first thing to do is to invite others to look and comment,
and to give this process time so that as many people who might want to
comment as possible, do.

But we all recognize that sometimes these informal processes are not
sufficient, which is why we have mediation and arbitration mechanisms.

I think SlimVirgin is calling attention to another situation where these
informal processes are not sufficient, but I don't think that our mediation
or arbitration mechanisms as currently conceived are of help.  I have two
points I'd like to make.

If I understand her correctly,  SlimVirgin is pointing out that in some
cases concerning content, one must have special knowledge in order to
identify and evaluate bias (or POV), and to evaluate the quality of
sources.  This is especially important when there is division over the
repute of sources.  Our "official policy" of "cite sources" explains that
claims should come from reputable sources, but there is not clear standard
of what a reputable source is -- nor do I think we can come up with one,
clear, inclusive explanation, it varies so much from field to field.  In
some cases, our normal procedures work fine (I am thinking specifically of
a fellow a couple of years ago who thought he had proven Einstein wrong;
enough folks here know enough about physics and the world of physicists
that over time it was clear that there was an informed consensus to revert
what this fellow had been adding.  In other cases, however, this does not
happen.  There may be different reasons why -- my sense is that even now
there are far more people who regularly contribute to Wikipedia who know a
lot about computers, than about ancient Near Eastern history.  Also, I (as
an outsider to this world) get the sense that there are lots of people who
really are quite expert in matters concerning computers, even if they do
not have PhD's in computer science and don't teach in Universities.  But
there may be some topics where the gulf in knowledge and understanding
between experts and laypeople is immense.

My first point is that the standard (and in my opinion ideal) process for
dealing with edit-conflicts is biased to work very well in some areas, and
less well in others.  In areas where there are very few editors
knowledgeable enough to evaluate accuracy and the reputation of sources, we
often end up with edit wars that go in circles for weeks if not months.

My second point is that we don't really have a good mechanism for resolving
conflict in these cases.  I have a high regard for our mediation and
arbitration processes, but in my experience mediators and arbitrators
usually focus on violation of behavioral guidelines.  We do not have a
comparable mechanism for dealing with violations of content guidelines.  On
the guidelines and policies page we do distinguish between behavioral and
content guidelines, and there are a variety of policies in each
category.  But we have institutional recourse for one category, and not the
other.

I think we should either expand the brief of the mediation and arbitration
committees to enforce content guidelines or, if those committees prefer
having a more limited brief, form some other clear process to resolve
conflicts over content and enforce content policies.

I believe very strongly that any mechanism we come up with should be a last
resort.  I believe it should be employed only when it is clear that the
ordinary anarchic way of dealing with such problems is not, even given
considerable time, working.  But I do think we need some mechanism.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
If we program it right and throw in some [[Rapid manufacturing]] we
should be able to have a nice side business in building manufacture in
no time. :)

On 19 Jan 2005, at 9:50 am, Gordon Joly wrote:

>
> Does a Wikibuilder build your house very quickly?
>
> Gordo
>
> :-)


body:
Yeah "Wikilabs", that's sounds better.

On 19 Jan 2005, at 12:04 pm, Robin Shannon wrote:

> like google labs, only wikilabs? a place to put all our crazy dreams...
> sounds like a good idea.
>
>
> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:56:58 +0000, Christiaan Briggs
> <christiaan at last-straw.net> wrote:
>> I'm sympathetic to this view but the corollary is that a special
>> Wikimedia project (i.e. not buried in Wikibooks) would encourage
>> interest in an area where, comparatively speaking, you don't have a
>> natural base of editors. Compare say the amount of builders,
>> architects
>> and musicians to the number of mathematicians and programmers. It's a
>> systemic bias issue.
>>
>> I would rather see such new projects *that have recognised potential
>> and a good plan* given a prominent domain space such as:
>> beta.wikimedia.org/Wikibuilder
>> or beta.wikibuilder.org
>> ..and advertised along side Wikisource, Wikispecies and other
>> Wikimedia
>> projects under a Wikibetas heading or something.
>>
>> I think this is especially pertinent to projects that may need special
>> code to reach their true potential, such as presenting music notation
>> in Wikiscores or previews of 2D and 3D CAD files in Wikibuilder.
>>
>> Christiaan
>>
>> On 19 Jan 2005, at 4:25 am, Sj wrote:
>>
>>> I would like to see the process for creating new factual/specialist
>>> Wikimedia projects include a stage at whic hthe new project is a
>>> Wikibook, which serves as a demonstration of what project content
>>> will
>>> include (and a rough topic mesh for the project), proof of interest
>>> in
>>> the project, and a source of inspiration to new project contributors.
>>>
>>> After this initial overview book could come full-fledged project
>>> development.
>>>
>>> +sj+
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:43:41 +0000, Christiaan Briggs
>>> <christiaan at last-straw.net> wrote:
>>>> Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Can't it be a part of Wikibooks?
>>>>
>>>> It could, but then so could all the Wikimedia projects. I'm not sure
>>>> it
>>>> would suit Wikibooks. I see this as a "commons" project covering the
>>>> design and construction of the built environment *in its entirety*
>>>> in
>>>> all languages. Plus the prominence of being a separate Wikimedia
>>>> project will help in attracting builders and designers. It may even
>>>> need special code introduced into MediaWiki to deal with
>>>> presenting/previewing up-and-coming 2D and 3D file formats, etc.
>>>>
>>>> Christiaan_______________________________________________
>>>> foundation-l mailing list
>>>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> +sj+
>>>  _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> foundation-l mailing list
>>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
> --
> hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
> jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au
>
> This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
> Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs (christiaan at last-straw.net) [050120 00:44]:
>
>> Yeah "Wikilabs", that's sounds better.
>
> Sounds like a more generalised version of Wikicities
> (http://www.wikicities.com/) - presumably with viewers for types of
> data
> other than MediaWiki-text.
>
> Presumably implementing this is just a Simple Matter Of Programming ;-)

I'm not sure I see the relationship. I think Robin Shannon got it right
the first time when he compared it to google labs.

Christiaan


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Everyking

body:
To be fair, Evercat was NOT using his reverts on the article he was blocked for.

RickK

"csherlock at ljh.com.au" <csherlock at ljh.com.au> wrote:
Surely a rollback should be classed as a revert?

TBSDY

Angela wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 23:05:51 +1100, David Gerard
> wrote:
>
>
>>Apparently you can still do rollbacks when unblocked.
>
>
> Blocking only blocks you from editing, not from using any admin
> powers. You can still rollback, delete, undelete and block users when
> you are blocked.
>
> Angela.

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from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
JAY JG said:
>
>
>>I mean, you expect to
>>get into an edit war and then ask others to either come to your
>>assistance or relax the 3RR so you are permitted to continue?
>
> I don't "expect to get into an edit war", nor have I ever suggested
> "relaxing" the 3RR;.

Okay, so if you won't get into an edit war and you won't hve a problem
with 3RR enforcement if you do, what is the problem?  Has the topic of
this discussion drifted while I wasn't looking?
>
>>I think this is a highly contentious way of interacting on Wikipedia,
>>and not one to be condoned.  Talk pages exist for a good purpose.
>
> Indeed they do.  If only people used them, rather than POVing and
> "original  research"ing articles, and then edit-warring to preserve
> their POV and  original research insertions.

So this is all about "other" people, then?

>
>>Revert
>>limits and guidelines counseling against edit warring also exist for a
>>good purpose.  Edit warring is *not* considered a good way of dealing
>>with problems.
>
> No, it's not; however, it is sometimes the best of a number of bad
> choices.   If only there were other remedies that actually worked
> effectively all the  time.
>

Perhaps I didn't put it clearly enough: edit warring is seen as a major
problem.  It is never "the best of a number of choices" to engage in silly
warring.  Where there is an edit dispute, get more people to look at the
article.  That solves the problem far quicker and more effectively than
tit-for-tat editing.  I simply don't buy your claim that you alone are
capable or and willing to determine which of two people, you and the other
edit warrior, is doing good edits.


subject:
[Fwd: Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly
	followed]

body:
JAY JG said:
>
>
>>I mean, you expect to
>>get into an edit war and then ask others to either come to your
>>assistance or relax the 3RR so you are permitted to continue?
>
> I don't "expect to get into an edit war", nor have I ever suggested
> "relaxing" the 3RR;.

Okay, so if you won't get into an edit war and you won't hve a problem
with 3RR enforcement if you do, what is the problem?  Has the topic of
this discussion drifted while I wasn't looking?
>
>>I think this is a highly contentious way of interacting on Wikipedia,
>>and not one to be condoned.  Talk pages exist for a good purpose.
>
> Indeed they do.  If only people used them, rather than POVing and
> "original  research"ing articles, and then edit-warring to preserve
> their POV and  original research insertions.

So this is all about "other" people, then?

>
>>Revert
>>limits and guidelines counseling against edit warring also exist for a
>>good purpose.  Edit warring is *not* considered a good way of dealing
>>with problems.
>
> No, it's not; however, it is sometimes the best of a number of bad
> choices.   If only there were other remedies that actually worked
> effectively all the  time.
>

Perhaps I didn't put it clearly enough: edit warring is seen as a major
problem.  It is never "the best of a number of choices" to engage in
silly warring.  Where there is an edit dispute, get more people to look
at the article.  That solves the problem far quicker and more effectively
than tit-for-tat editing.  I simply don't buy your claim that you alone
are capable or and willing to determine which of two people, you and the
other edit warrior, is doing good edits.


from_name: Benjamin Esham

subject: [Commons-l] Photo Information

body:
On Jan 19, 2005, at 11:51 AM, Fruggo wrote:

> I'm not sure the shutter speed / camera model are really relevant

This information can be interesting, though... instead of asking
uploaders
to add this information themselves, it would be nice if MediaWiki could
extract EXIF data and display it automatically.  I'm pretty sure most
digital cameras support the embedding of EXIF info.

--
Benjamin D. Esham        {        http://bdesham.net
bdesham at gmail.com        }        AIM: bdesham 1 2 8
Six Gmail invites -- e-mail me if you're interested.


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] "See also" section heading

body:
On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:19:55 -0000, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Zoney wrote
>
> > Ah, but you see, that's exactly the kind of thing that would be nice
> > to stop (in my opinion). If for example, [[Gilbert O'Sullivan]] is
> > likely to be confused with [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] (and I'm not
> > certain about that, but yes, there are other plausible examples), it
> > should surely be treated as disambiguation, not lumped in with a list
> > of *related* articles. "See also" is too much of a "catch all" title.
>
> Well, you seem to be on several crusades.  I don't myself see much future in
> trying to regulate what internal links people make - it's one of those
> things that wikis handle by consensus.
>
> Charles
>

I wouldn't call it a crusade - it's simply that I would rather use
"Related articles" in articles I edit - and without any support from
others for this title (either as the preferred option or an acceptable
alternative), I would have to face people randomly changing it to "See
also".

I hadn't known that the heading "related articles" had indeed
previously been used. Is it still acceptable or was there a definitive
decision to only use "see also"?

Zoney

--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fun with files

body:
To everybody who thinks it's a great idea to take machines out of the
dsh group "apaches":
PLEASE DON'T DO IT.

When the machines get put back into apache service by some other
person, they have OUTDATED INVALID CODE including OUTDATED INVALID
CONFIGURATION which leads to ARTICLES SAVED TO THE WRONG DATABASE
SERVER. Of course this wouldn't be so bad if we had THE BROKEN OLD
MASTER SET TO READ-ONLY.

Thanks.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Eid 'l-kabir

body:
Yes,

ciydu mubarr?kum everybody! (????? ?????????????)

Mark

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:14:43 +0100, pinco <pinco at kiesperanto.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> tomorrow muslims celebrate the 'id-l-kabir.
>
> Is in wikipedia a page similar to
> http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo
>
> where I can find wishes in the languages of wikipedia?
>
> Thanks a lot... and Happy Eid ul Kabir to muslims.
>
> Nino
>
> --
> http://www.vessella.it (italiano, esperanto, kiswahili, english)
> http://www.changamano.org (Iniziative di solidariet? per la Tanzania)
> http://www.lernado.it (Articoli di quotidiani della Tanzania, Corso di lingua swahili, Corso di lingua esperanto, Vocabolario esperanto-italiano, Jifunze lugha ya Kiesperanto, Kamusi ya Kiesperanto)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fun with files

body:
On Jan 19, 2005, at 4:41 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
> When the machines get put back into apache service by some other
> person, they have OUTDATED INVALID CODE including OUTDATED INVALID
> CONFIGURATION which leads to ARTICLES SAVED TO THE WRONG DATABASE
> SERVER. Of course this wouldn't be so bad if we had THE BROKEN OLD
> MASTER SET TO READ-ONLY.

I've set suda's mysqld to read-only, and also shut it down for good
measure as nothing should be using it until it's been resynchronized
with the civilized world (ariel and friends).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] recipes

body:
My main problem with the transwiki'ing thing is that Wikibooks has
considerably different rules, where the major contributors to a
specific "book" get more say in what can go in and what cannot, or
what they want it to look like.

I personally think that is downright antiwiki, but when I tried to get
involved I was met with stiff opposition from Gentgeen who is obsessed
about territorialism and the like, and said that the current antiwiki
policy had been decided by "community consensus".

Among other things decided on Wikibooks by "community consensus", at
least one addition to [[b:en:What Wikibooks is not]] was added by
"consensus" with the final poll results being 1-0, Gentgeen having
been the only one to vote for it. In addition, voting by Wikipedians
in matters such as VfD, VfU, RfA, and just about anything else is
completely disregarded by Gentgeen unless they are "regular"
contributors to Wikibooks, although notably he DOES count them when it
benefits his position.

The current policy on Wikibooks is tantamount to me saying on
Wikipedia "OK, I wrote this article, so since I'm the main
contributor, I have a large amount of control over what goes".

Mark

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:58:23 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I discovered today that recipes are now legally deleted from the english
> wikipedia where they are not welcome any more.
>
> Still, I had the memory there was no clear agreement on doing so, and
> for months, there was a sort of balance with removing all those of minor
> dishes, while keeping those from typical ones.
>
> When I tried to make a policy on the topic, clearly, there was no
> agreement. Neither to keep, neither to delete. Mostly two factions.
>
> Today, I realised all had been deleted. I restored one and was
> immediately reverted by Gentgeen (of course, he is the one who deleted
> them) and he pointed to me a policy on "what Wikipedia is not".
>
> On this page, it is written that recipes should not be kept in
> Wikipedia. So, now, Gentgeen has a argument to revert me, and possibly
> even the right to block me if I restore a recipe.
>
> My question :
>
> * why is it so that rules are written in the big book (what wikipedia is
> not) which makes reference, while these rules are not widely agreed on
> the project ? If not agreed but by a couple of bold people, should they
> be used to revert the others ?
>
> I realised the recipes were not welcome any more at all today, because a
> couple of french people wish to delete them as well on the french
> wikipedia. And one of their arguments is that the english wikipedia
> decided to delete them (and so, they must be right !).
>
> I removed the rule as is now, and asked the editor who initially added
> it to show me where this was supported initially.
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>