from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> We form a "review club" with the following membership criteria:
> - A non-trivial edit history that
> - demonstrates constructiveness and
> - an ''ambition'' to work towards the NPOV.
> A person's supposed "knowledge level" should NOT be a criterion (see
> below).

But this does nothing to address the criticism that our content is not vetted
by experts. I agree that appeal to authority is largely a logical fallacy, but
it nonetheless is followed like a religion by a great many people (who then
blindly trust what the experts say). If we want to have them read our content,
then we will have to give them that bit of comfort.

That said, I think that a hybrid system (trusted users with some experts mixed
in *where* appropriate) would be best along with splitting this by subject
area; each subject review board will have its own set of criteria on how they
select articles for the stable branch. As noted, some areas of knowledge
require more input by so-called experts than others.

And again, this would be *in addition to* our current best practices.

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Shop for Back-to-School deals on Yahoo! Shopping.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/backtoschool


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] EmailNotification on page changes - a question to
	Wiki-Sysops

body:
Thomas Gries wrote:
> Please can you send me recent statistical data about the amount of
> ***User_talk page changes*** per time unit (hour or day) on the big
> WikiPedias ?

About 950 per day on en.wikipedia.org over the last week. About 1/5 of
those are edits by the users themselves.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Thomas Gries wrote:
>> Please can you send me recent statistical data about the amount of
>> ***User_talk page changes*** per time unit (hour or day) on the big
>> WikiPedias ?
>
>
> About 950 per day on en.wikipedia.org over the last week. About 1/5 of
> those are edits by the users themselves.

Also about 1/5 are for IP addresses rather than logged-in users.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Edward Peschko

subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki portability

body:
everyone -

I was wondering if the following list of files and directories sufficed to transfer
a mediawiki installation from one machine to another..

	./LocalSettings.php
	./config/
	./images/
	./stylesheets/
	/var/mysql/  (assuming mysql is stored under /var
	/var/wikidb/ (assuming wikidb is the user name that you used to configure
                       everything)

And do you need to do any translation in going between two OSes (ie: is mysql
the same binary format everywhere, or do you need to have a conversion script that
unloads/loads the data?)

And finally - if you need to move one mediawiki on top of another, is there a
conversion script out there which allows you to deploy data, users, etc
on top of another wikidb?

Thanks much,

Ed


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On 10 Sep 2004, at 05:41, wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org wrote:

> Message: 8
> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 20:40:54 -0700
> From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
>
> <snip>
>
> It is not merely a difference in characters as perhaps some would like
> you to believe, but much more than that. It is very easy to convert
> traditional characters to simplified, but it is much trickier to do so
> vice-versa. zh: is almost completely in simplified chinese.

<insert user="delirium">
>> But is it going to be possible from a language point of view?  People
>> have talked about automatic conversion, but several others have
>> pointed
>> out multiple academic studies on the subject, some from the Unicode
>> committees, that have concluded it's nearly impossible to do automated
>> conversion from one to the other (without fully solving AI anyway), as
>> it's not a one-to-one mapping.  The only reasonable thing I've heard
>> proposed is doing a partial automatic conversion, and flagging the
>> characters that can't be automatically converted for human
>> intervention,
>> but this doesn't sound like something that's going to be implemented
>> in
>> the forseeable future.
>>
>> -Mark
</insert>

Well, there doesn't HAVE to be an exclusively automatic conversion. It
can be done by humans and yes, in an ideal world there'd be one
traditional and one simple version for every article
(non-transliterated/translated articles in the "other" writing style
should be shown along with a header that the article is in the "other"
character set and that the user is invited to translate/transliterate).
But I would agree that there should be a combined version, one that is
linked more closely than the mere concept of two different language
Wikipedias (simple and traditional).

Yes, this does require techies to lay additional groundwork and whether
that's gonna happen "in the foreseeable future" or not depends on our
kind developers and how nicely people interested in this will ask them.

> In addition, the entire user interface is in simplified. This makes it
> extremely uncomfortable for a person who uses *exclusively*
> traditional to use zh:, and it will scare many users away (as
> Laurentius admits, sie was at first scared away because of the
> dominance of simplified; for every user that comes back after being
> initially scared away by this there are perhaps 300 that never come
> back). zh-tw:, on the other hand, the last I checked, had a UI
> completely in Traditional.
>
> <snip>
>
> --Jin Jun-shu (Mark Williamson)

Then it seems obvious to me what needs to be done:
There needs to be a prominently featured preference on the Chinese
Wikipedia for switching the user interface between traditional and
simplified. As a traditional version of the interface already exists
(as you write) it should not be too much work for a person competent in
both traditional and simplified to add the traditional UI to the
current simplified one.

The plumbing for this again needs to be laid by our techies.

>> tech to-do list:
>> - add feature of preference-dependent dual article version (probably
>> under the same URL) and a dual user interface to go with it.

<sidenote>
	OMG. THAT's gonna be a war on what (trad/simple) is gonna become the
default! ;-)
</sidenote>

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Which French dialects are talking about?
>There are regional languages in France, the main ones being Breton, Basque and
>Occitan (spelling?), but I don't think there are "French" dialects. You
>should also note that Basque and Breton are very different from French.
>Occitan is a roman language, but any French speaker may not understand it
>better than, say, Italian or Catalan.
>
>
I had in mind Walloon, which is either a separate language or a dialect
of French, depending on who you ask (it's certainly a langue d'o?l in
any case), and is currently a separate Wikipedia, wa:.  I suppose
whether Walloon and French differ more or less than the various Chinese
dialects is a matter of debate.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On 10 Sep 2004, at 13:16, wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org wrote:

> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 20:43:50 -0700
> From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
>
> <snip>
>
> Exactly. Conversion between the two scripts is technically very
> difficult. We can use the Chinese version of ms word to convert, but I
> believe this may not be 100% legal and even if it is, it is not a good
> solution because it is not a server-side solution.
>
> -Mark/Jin Junshu

Maybe I'm naive, but if MS can code a working automatic conversion,
then is there any reason why the open source community couldn't do the
same?

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
 --- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> Again, I hold that the "review club" should be very open to all comers,
> just as the "edit club". We may choose a more disciplined approach
> within the "review club" and be more harsh about disturbances, but we
> absolutely should not ask for (and entrants should not mention their)
> academic qualifications at the doorstep. Their ''actual writing''
> should be their sole guarantor. With reference to this post:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030499.html
> If renowned academic Alice cannot conclusively prove and defend her
> view of things and layman Bob can, then we should follow Bob. We should
> NOT believe something is right just because "the right people" say it.
> That's a reverse ad-hominem. Go read the [[ad hominem]] article. Do it
> now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Or rather, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority

Can we put aside the specific issue of academia, for a moment, and deal with
the more general concept of "experts"? I'd like to address one specific
instance: would you object to requiring at least one expert to review an
article, in addition to laymen? (Let's make the non-trivial assumption that
experts exist and are identifable by some means).

I would argue that Wikipedia needs at least one expert to review each article.
A non-expert can check things like grammar, spelling, formatting, etc;
moreover, a layman can take any fact within an article and, by policy, should
be able to verify it to himself. This is a good thing, and is very necessary.

However, there are some things that a non-specialist cannot do, or is limited
in his ability to do. A non-expert will struggle to determine whether an
article is comprehensive. Unless you have a sufficiently detailed knowledge of
the subject, you cannot know what is missing. While obvious omissions can be
spotted using common sense (or by looking at a textbook table of contents, say)
subtle gaps in more technical areas can only be detected by someone conversant
with the field. More generally, a non-expert cannot be certain that the article
treats the topic in a balanced way. Here I don't mean NPOV, but the amount of
text devoted to various subtopics.

A non-specialist will likely be unaware as to which of the sources cited are
out-of-date or erroneous. As an example, I found that when reading about the
[[Enigma machine]], I discovered that early publications (in the late 1970s)
were riddled with mistakes and errors, which were subsequently acknowledged by
the authors and corrected in later literature; however some errors have
propogated rapidly and persist on the Internet today, and even, I discovered,
within Wikipedia.

These are problems which Wikipedia faces both when writing and when reviewing
articles. However, we can tolerate these problems when writing articles --
"eventually" they will get fixed. However, when we review an article and
certify it to pass muster, we are in effect claiming that "eventually" has
arrived in some measure. The risk is that a dozen competent and diligent
non-experts could agree that an article is accurate and well-written, when in
fact it has significant flaws detectable only by an expert.

-- Matt (User:Matt_Crypto)

___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!  http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On 10 Sep 2004, at 13:16, wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org wrote:

> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 21:00:18 -0700
> From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
>
>> So far as I know, there is no major movement afoot to split the two.
>> A few people support it, and one of the main ones, the only one who
>> was actually working on the accidentally-created website, is a 15 year
>> old American living in Arizona.  I mention this not to say that a 15
>> year old American living in Arizona can't possibly be right about
>> this, but rather to indicate what I understand *at the moment* to be
>> the situation on the ground.
>
> Just curious, Jimbo, but how is my *age* any more relevant to /this
> particular issue/ than the number of pets I have or my favourite
> colours?
>
> -Jin Junshu/Mark

Good point. Age and nationality should not be drawn into consideration.
The number of active contributors however should.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On 10 Sep 2004, at 13:16, wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org wrote:

> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 21:20:16 -0700
> From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
>
> Sorry everybody, I'd like to apologise for being so... well, so...
> agressive.
>
> I hope you can understand why I might find it hard now to keep my
> cool: over 600 articles I am almost singlehandedly responsible for are
> to be deleted, I have been told to copy-and-paste them but come on,
> this is 600 ARTICLES we're talking about. Also, I did not even know
> this was going on until I tried to go to wantedpages on zh-tw: and
> found that I was redirected to wantedpages at zh:, and then asked in
> #wikipedia and was told to check the ML to which I am not subscribed
> (even if I were, I don't check my inbox on even a  daily basis
> usually)
>
> apologies...
>
> --Mark/Jin Junshu

I for one don't feel you have to apologize.
I don't remember you saying anything rude.
Our views differ, but that doesn't preclude a civilized discussion.

Your input has already been very beneficial because it has highlighted
an issue which warrants a solution and has given people a push to solve
it. It may not be your initially attempted solution (zh-tw), but it's
still a step forward (towards fully integrated simple and traditional
interoperability in zh).
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis! ;-)

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki portability

body:
Edward Peschko wrote:
> I was wondering if the following list of files and directories sufficed to transfer
> a mediawiki installation from one machine to another..
>
> 	./LocalSettings.php
> 	./config/
> 	./images/
> 	./stylesheets/
> 	/var/mysql/  (assuming mysql is stored under /var
> 	/var/wikidb/ (assuming wikidb is the user name that you used to configure
>                        everything)

You may need to adjust pathnames and other options in LocalSettings.php
for those things that aren't detected at runtime.

Note that due to filesystem differences you may have trouble with
non-ASCII uploaded filenames on some computers.

> And do you need to do any translation in going between two OSes (ie: is mysql
> the same binary format everywhere, or do you need to have a conversion script that
> unloads/loads the data?)

I believe MySQL's binary format is platform-independent, though you may
need to adjust my.cnf if using different settings or perform other magic
incantations if moving across major versions of MySQL.

> And finally - if you need to move one mediawiki on top of another, is there a
> conversion script out there which allows you to deploy data, users, etc
> on top of another wikidb?

Not afaik.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Kiss All

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wouldn't it be better to store Most of values in
	LocalSettings.php into database?

body:
I mean storing most local settings into database, and administrators
can modify it online via a dedicated configuration php page. Thus less
efforts are needed for administration and updating to new version of
mediaWiki.
   Most page interface messages can be stored in DB, why not to store
those essential configuration information?
  The best case would be to use newversion immediately after unpacking
mediawiki-x-x.tar to the original www root.
  I am tired of editing LocalSettings.php for already. :-)  It is like
programming, not administration.
--
Be good....


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
http://www.nettranslation.co.uk/resources_about_language_chinese.htm

Goes into some of the details, but the bottom line is that culturally
and in underlying technical architecture, the two writing systems have
differences, and more over, Simplified is "lossy" - that is there are
characters which represent several characters of Traditional. More over
there is, indeed, a political and cultural dimension here, which is no
different than many other languages, namely there is a political
dimension: from the point of view of a Taiwanese person, this action
says that you support unification under the current mainland
government, which may not be what you want to say to people.

The other problem not covered here is the most encyclopedia oriented
one: looking up material. Names of places and people from traditional
are now difficult to look up, since many of them are transliterated
differently in simplified versus traditional.

I fear an overly hasty decision was made to stop what seemed like a
"maverick" project, when, in fact, there are non-trivial, and
non-technical user issues raised by "one or two". My personal
preference would be for one: the problems of two character set worlds
are a nightmare which are recognized around the world as creating
difficulties between the three major sets of chinese characters in use
(Simplified, Traditional and Japanese) which have just enough in the
way of differences to make life difficult.

The three important technical/user issues to address are:

1. Disambiguation pages are going to be needed in larger numbers, as a
reference in simplified which has multiple renderings in traditional.
There should be some process which makes tracking down and dealing with
such references easier.

2. Where there is a discontinuity in character mapping, the search
should be made to work for both. Example: unicode maps "guo" (country)
to separate characters between simplified/japanese and traditional.
Someone typing in the traditional character would get no article, and
be invited to create one.

3. Many sources are originally from "traditional" characters, and their
simplified versions, as noted, are "lossy".

My suggestion is that some method of encoding an "alternate"
traditional character be made. For example [[[ ? | ? ]]] would say that
in this context the simplified ? should be replaced by ?.


from_name: Lorenzarius

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
I myself is a traditional Chinese user, and I am also one of the first
zh wikipedians. I don't agree that we should have one TC wp and one SC
wp, because I know they are the same language, it's just some
characters are written differently... if I read any article out-loud
to you, you won't know whether the article I am holding is written in
TC or SC. It's just like Russian can be written using Cyrillic
alphabet or Latin alphabet, or Japanese can be written using hirakana,
katakana or romanji.

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 20:40:54 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Because until just now, I was not subscribed to wikipedia-l because I
> had no good reason to be, I was not aware of this and nobody bothered
> to notify me, which irritates me since quite a few people knew I was
> pursuing this project.

The sudden appearance of zh-tw.wikipedia.org irritates me very much
too, because we have been discussing this problem since the very
beginning of zh.

> The thing here is this: "One China, Two Systems" applies to HONG KONG,
> and not TAIWAN. The "tw" in zh-tw: stands for Taiwan. If it *were* to
> apply to Hong Kong, it couldn't be said to be a single language
> because the language spoken in Hong Kong is Cantonese.

So do you mean what you're pursuing is a "Taiwanese Chinese"
wikipedia? But not a "traditional Chinese" wikipedia? Then shall we
have a separate British English wp and an American English wp too?

Yes, we speak Cantonese in Hong Kong, but formally we don't write
Cantonese. We write what we call "written language", which is the same
"written language" in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Fuzhou or Taipei.

> Wikipedia would be the first major website to pursue a unified zh:,
> with IBM, Microsoft, Linux, and just about everybody on the face of
> the earth having separate versions for simplified and traditional
> Chinese. To have a unified version is not workable.

Three years ago, some guys want to create a free, serious, online
encyclopedia which allows everyone to edit its articles. People would
say these guys are nuts. "Such an encyclopedia is not workable." They
would say. Because the existing Encyclopaedia Britannia, Microsoft
Encarta and many other serious works are all created by experts and
authorities.

> It is not merely a difference in characters as perhaps some would like
> you to believe, but much more than that. It is very easy to convert
> traditional characters to simplified, but it is much trickier to do so
> vice-versa. zh: is almost completely in simplified chinese.

How much "trickier" exactly?

Even if it's very much "trickier", do you think that instead of
developing a way to overcome the problem, we should just avoid it?

> zh: has in the past had a few different systems for interlinking
> articles between the two, and there are hundreds if not thousands of
> articles that still use the old systems instead of the current system.
>
> In addition, the entire user interface is in simplified. This makes it
> extremely uncomfortable for a person who uses *exclusively*
> traditional to use zh:, and it will scare many users away (as
> Laurentius admits, sie was at first scared away because of the
> dominance of simplified; for every user that comes back after being
> initially scared away by this there are perhaps 300 that never come
> back). zh-tw:, on the other hand, the last I checked, had a UI
> completely in Traditional.

Yup, this is surely a problem, which we need to _solve_ but not to _evade_.

> Also, another issue is that currently the article count of zh: is
> inflated by the fact that many pages have two versions.

So? That's not a sufficient reason to have one TC wp and one SC wp.
(Plus I don't really care about the article count anyway.)

We're currently in the process of combining pages which have two
versions, in preparation for the conversion software.

> Laurentius is wanting to mischaracterise (no pun intended) the
> difference between simplified and traditional chinese as minimal,
> which they most certainly are NOT.
>
> If we are to have one dominant version, it should be traditional since
> traditional characters are much easier for a simplified user to read
> than vice-versa since they already have to learn them to read
> classical literature and such.
>
> For example, any random 50 characters you choose in Simplified might
> map to any of 100 or so characters in Traditional chinese, as you can
> imagine this leads to a great deal of ambiguity.

Wrong, very wrong. Here's some fact. In the "List of simplified
characters" issued by the PRC, there are 2338 simplified characters.
Among them, only 32 SC can map to two TC and only 2 can map to 3 TC.

> Also, Laurentius and others are trying to portray events on zh: as
> complete 100% consensus that a united version should be kept although
> this is far from the truth.

Sorry, Mark, I have never ever seen you on Chinese Wikipedia before.
Nor have I seen you try to participate in our discussion on how to
solve this TC/SC problem.

You just don't know or understand what's really happening/what had
happened on Chinese Wikipedia.

Regards
Lorenzarius


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship by China or bigots in Wikipedia?

body:
Pedro wrote:
 "Paul Vogel's editing privileges on Wikipedia are revoked for a period of
one year." which to me does not mean "renewed each time he tries to edit".

The ban renewal is not specifically mentioned in the decision because it applies to all
Arbcom decisions. If you attempt to evade an arbcom ban, it gets renewed, period.
That's what the punishment for attempting to evade a ban is. If there were no punishment
for attempting to evade an arbcom ban, then there  would be nothing to stop people from doing it.
Effectively, it means that people who ignore the arbcom end up banning themselves indefinitely.

--Mark


from_name: Charles Podles

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Paul Vogel's Ban (was: Censorship by China or bigots in
	Wikipedia?)

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I don't know either where this extension of his ban is coming from. How many
>times has he been trying to edit?
>
>Fred
>
>
He has tried to edit repeatedly; see [[User:Paul Vogel]] and history
thereof for the IP addresses he's been using,
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Penalty_for_evasion
for the rationale
behind the extensions of the ban.

C. Podles ([[en:User:Mirv]])


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] A technical problem with blocking

body:
On Fri, Sep 10, 2004 at 07:16:29AM -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> Ip blocks for vandals is a good idea, but there should be some easy
> ways to poke through them.  For example, the ip blocks could simply be
> blocks against anonymous (ip-only) editing and new-account editing,
> permitting existing users to seamlessly connect anyway.  Or, we could
> have a whitelist.

I'd suggest using sessions/cookies
For IPs (or only the proxies) we could write the edited
article/id into their cookies and if the admins wants to block
him the software uses this informations.
An advantange would be that cookies can be timed for a certain time.

Of course this solution ain't perfect but I doubt that AOL user know
what a browser-cookie is and how to delete it.

ciao, tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


subject:
[Wikitech-l] What is the size limitation for uploading files
	in	mediawiki?

body:
Kiss All wrote:
> I want to upload a word document of 8M, but always failed without any
> warning or error information. The upload page just refreshed.
>    Could anybody tell me why and how to deal with it?
> For internal research group, file of 8M is not a big size at all.

You may want to look at these settings in php.ini:

; Maximum size of POST data that PHP will accept.
post_max_size = 8M

; Maximum allowed size for uploaded files.
upload_max_filesize = 2M

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
Matt R  matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk
  Fri Sep 10 14:25:56 UTC 2004

> --- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
>> Again, I hold that the "review club" should be very open to all
>> comers,
>> just as the "edit club". We may choose a more disciplined approach
>> within the "review club" and be more harsh about disturbances, but we
>> absolutely should not ask for (and entrants should not mention their)
>> academic qualifications at the doorstep. Their ''actual writing''
>> should be their sole guarantor. With reference to this post:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/
>> 030499.html
>> If renowned academic Alice cannot conclusively prove and defend her
>> view of things and layman Bob can, then we should follow Bob. We
>> should
>> NOT believe something is right just because "the right people" say it.
>> That's a reverse ad-hominem. Go read the [[ad hominem]] article. Do it
>> now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
>
> Or rather, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority

Yea.
Thanks for actually looking up the [[ad hominem]] and [[appeal to
authority]] articles! :-)

My referencing of a "reverse [[Ad hominem]]" instead of [[Appeal to
authority]] had the "subtle" ;-) advantage of carrying a negative
connotation:
Because I regard what I described before as a ''bad'' thing (at least
in the WP context) -- whereas an [[Appeal to authority]] per definition
needn't necessarily be bad.
Sneaky me.
;-)

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Sep 10, 2004, at 4:36 PM, yuanml wrote:
>
> Yes, if you setup zh-tw, people will go there and write articles.
> But the split of the community will only weaken the growth of the
> small project
> and bring more difficult in the future. Suppose two project zh-cn and
> zh-tw now,
> and someday we want to synchronize them, and you will find it is very
> difficult.
>
> Yes, if you don?t want synchronize the two, there is no problem.

This is not the case - the two writing systems in the same documents do
cause problems - merely different problems. The advantage of a
technical fix to the character problem to have one version is that the
problems don't grow with time, where as diverged versions do. The
problem set of making two characters sets work isn't a fast moving
target, where as keeping up with two sets of wikipedians is.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re:
	[googlealerts-noreply-hpIqsD4AKlfQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org:
	Google Alert - wikipedia]

body:
--- Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:

> I agree. And funny to;
>
> http://www.bizreport.com/news/7945/
>
> <quote> /Britannica's editors are among those who take a skeptical view,
> noting that Wikipedia publishes a disclaimer stating that it does not
> vouch for its own validity. "We very much take responsibility for all
> the content we include in any of our products," said Britannica editor
> in chief Dale Hoiberg./ </quote>
>
> +
>
> http://corporate.britannica.com/termsofuse.html
>
> /THE SITE AND ALL INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND OTHER CONTENT (INCLUDING
> THIRD-PARTY INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND CONTENT) INCLUDED IN OR
> ACCESSIBLE FROM THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF
> ANY KIND (EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
> THE WARRANTIES OF TITLE AND NONINFRINGEMENT AND THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
> OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE), ALL OF WHICH
> BRITANNICA EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW./
> /*YOUR USE OF BRITANNICA.COM IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.*/

Somebody should tell the reporter that and ask that the record be set straight.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
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body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> It's also odd that Larry is said to have "co-founded" Wikipedia, which
> AFAIK he did not.

With all due respect, that is an unfounded statement.

"The history of Wikipedia began in a conversation between two old Internet
friends, Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief of Nupedia, and Ben Kovitz, a computer
programmer and polymath, on the evening of January 2, 2001, in San Diego,
California."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia

-- mav

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Sep 10, 2004, at 5:15 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:

> But the difference between the two isn't merely a "difference of
> character sets". Rather than converting on the level of the individual
> character which will inevitably produce poor results, it is nessecary
> to convert documents on the level of lexemes, for which one needs some
> sort of artificial intelligence capable of separating Chinese texts
> into individual lexemes before conversion.

Having done document conversion, the number of cases is managable here,
and belong in the realm of "things that can be searched for and tagged.
A cumbersome, but not hard, problem.

> It is also nessecary to
> convert names of countries, special terminology (including Wikipedia
> terminology:

True, but again an enumerateable change, solveable in software, or by
the same process that we have now for proofing documents: namely people
go through and make intelligent changes. The process would be to flip
the toggle, scan the document for problems and then edit the underlying
wiki-material, inserting the metacodes needed. Much as people now scan
documents to find broken, redirected or ambiguated links, spelling
errors and so on.

> the first two characters in the Simplified Chinese name
> for "wikipedia" would be translated alone into English as the name
> "Vicky", which would be converted into Traditional in a specific way,
> but the current way to write "wikipedia" in Traditional Chinese is not
> like that), etc; also Simplified Chinese is more tolerant of the usage
> of English words in the Roman alphabet than is Traditional (except
> perhaps in Hong Kong where anglicisms are often even more frequent) as
> is exemplified by various article texts.

That's a dialectical, not linguistic, issue.

> Some people here are saying that "if I read this text in simplified
> aloud, a Taiwanese person can understand it". That is not the issue at
> hand. If zh: were in Pinyin, perhaps, that would be the issue, or if
> it was a spoken encyclopedia, maybe. But this is a written
> encyclopedia. zh-cn: and zh-tw: may be largely the same spoken
> language, but they are hardly the same written language.
>
> --Jin Junshu/Mark

The general consensus of linguists is that you are overstating the
differences - that traditional and simplified represent the same
"written" language because the grammar is the same, most of the syntax
is the same. The visual difference is rather like the difference
between using the Latinate Greek characters, the one most people
associate with greek, and the older characters used in the classical
age. A person who can read one can't read the other, but translation
between the two is mainly a mechanical process that needs intervention
occassionally. While the traditional/simplified problem is a couple of
orders of magnitude more complicated, it isn't more complex in lexical
theory.

Which is not to minimize the differences - if the community consensus
is just "squash this!" then that is a mistake as larger as simply brute
force creating two versions. There are technical and methodological
hurdles that should be addressed, otherwise someone will reach the same
conclusion that Jin Junshu has - namely that a traditional Wiki is
needed, because there is a user community not well served by the
simplified version. Part of this is based on political forces that are
in operation out there: there is no desire among the Chinese reading
and writing community to break chinese into separate written languages
- that is to continue increasing differences until mutual
intelligibility is a difficult hurdle to pass. At the same time, there
is a desire among traditional users to continue to use traditional
characters, and there is a larger corpus of texts, many of them
fundamental texts, which exist as originals in traditional characters,
and which argue for wiki handling traditional characters in a
appropriate way.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re:
	[googlealerts-noreply-hpIqsD4AKlfQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org:
	Google Alert -   wikipedia]

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

> http://www.bizreport.com/news/7945/

I find this article kind of weird.  Larry Sangers takes issue with the
current state of the philosophy articles, some of which he started,
claiming they've gone backwards.  However, the philosophy articles Larry
Sanger started were, at the time he wrote them, by and large, utter
crap, essentially cut and pasted from his lecture notes, filled with
colloquialisms, outright biases, and no attempt to make them into
paragraphs or any sort of coherent style.  They're now mostly at least
decent.  Compare the abysmal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism/Larry%27s_text --- which
doesn't even mention the existence of non-reductive physicalism,
currently the most active research area! --- with the current
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism, which at least gets its basic
definitions reasonably close to correct.

It's also odd that Larry is said to have "co-founded" Wikipedia, which
AFAIK he did not.

-Mark


from_name: David Wendt

subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki portability

body:
Edward Peschko wrote:

>everyone -
>
>I was wondering if the following list of files and directories sufficed to transfer
>a mediawiki installation from one machine to another..
>
>	./LocalSettings.php
>	./config/
>	./images/
>	./stylesheets/
>	/var/mysql/  (assuming mysql is stored under /var
>	/var/wikidb/ (assuming wikidb is the user name that you used to configure
>                       everything)
>
>And do you need to do any translation in going between two OSes (ie: is mysql
>the same binary format everywhere, or do you need to have a conversion script that
>unloads/loads the data?)
>
>And finally - if you need to move one mediawiki on top of another, is there a
>conversion script out there which allows you to deploy data, users, etc
>on top of another wikidb?
>
>Thanks much,
>
>Ed
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
I dont see a problem with porting, except for the dependancies on the
math rendering engine, which is an external program


list: foundation-l

from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia meetup 2005

body:
Hello,

At ars electronica in Linz Jimbo and I had the idea to hold a Wikipedia
meetup next summer.

Since people from as many wikimedia projects as possible should be able
to participate we decided on Europe as the best place to do this, and
we'll be trying to get funding for wikipedians from other continents to
join in the fun.

Now, the exact location is to be decided. There are several important
criterias, like number of local wikipedians, closeness to an
international airport, costs and abilities of conference facilities...

The details can be found on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetup_2005

Where the conference is hosted will be a community decision along the
lines of the Olympic games selection:

I'd like to encourage everyone to place proposals on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetup_2005 with detailed
information so we can choose the place which offers the most advantages.
Most important are of course conference facilities and dates where they
are still free.

Since most conference facilities have to be booked long in advance and
there will be enough organisational stuff left to do, I suggest a
deadline of one month, ending 10th of october.

Please translate this posting and make it public in your project so that
as many wikipedians as possible have a chance to participate in the
discussion and the choice.

greetings,
Elian


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia meetup 2005


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia meetup 2005


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia meetup 2005


from_name: Peter Zaitsev

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using MySQL in Wikipedia

body:
Hi,

I've been looking at Wikipedia today, which I installed locally,
checking how it uses MySQL database, here are few things I've found so
far.  might be I'll find more later on :)

- pack_keys=1 is used. You do not really want this option in most
cases.  Varchar keys are compressed by default and integer keys
get a lot slower while only a bit smaller.  pack_keys=default usually
behaves best.

- There is some key duplication:
  KEY `name_title_timestamp`
(`cur_namespace`,`cur_title`,`inverse_timestamp`),
  KEY `cur_namespace` (`cur_namespace`),

Having first key you do not need the second one as MySQL will use
prefix from previous key automatically.

- It looks like you have long keys for ie "cur_title" which on other
hand you only match as "=".  Hash keys would be perfect for you, but
MySQL does not have these for anything but heap tables yet. One could
create such key manually by using crc32 function -
add the column which contains crc32 of the title and index it instead.

select * from cur where cur_title="Mommy" will need to be transformed to

select * from cur where cur_title="Mommy" and my_hash=3162572977;

Note it will give case sensitive match.

- Why do you have  cur_id as UNIQUE key instead of PRIMARY KEY ?

- Looking at MySQL log while pages are loaded I can see there are a lot
of queries being run for each page load.  With your number of
page loads per day that should hurt :)

Few notes about such queries. Sorry If I'm commenting without
understanding application very well, I really do not :)

                     10 Query       DELETE FROM objectcache WHERE
exptime<'2004-09-11 00:51:39'

This looks like a purge - why do not do purge in the background,
especially having lifetime for the objects of about 6 hours ?
This will require some extra steps during installation but at least
for heavy loaded servers this looks like a good option.

                      10 Query       SHOW COLUMNS FROM cur LIKE
"cur_title"

Why this would be needed ?

                             10 Query       SELECT cur_id FROM cur WHERE
cur_namespace=3 AND cur_title='Pz'
                     10 Query       SELECT cur_id FROM cur WHERE
cur_namespace=3 AND cur_title='Pz'

Interesting, same query going twice.

Please tell me if this is wrong list for such issues.

And thanks for Wikipedia, this is a great web resource.

--
Peter Zaitsev, Senior Support Engineer
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
It is great for Serbian Wikipedia, too. We have similiar problem to
Chinese. We have Latin and Cyrillic alphabet in usage. If someone can
choose sr-Cyrillic, sr-Latin or sr-ASCII localization, we will solve a
lot of our problems.

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 12:04:03 +0200, Ashar Voultoiz <thoane at altern.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> <snip>
> > In addition, the entire user interface is in simplified. This makes it
> > extremely uncomfortable for a person who uses *exclusively*
> > traditional to use zh:, and it will scare many users away (as
> > Laurentius admits, sie was at first scared away because of the
> > dominance of simplified; for every user that comes back after being
> > initially scared away by this there are perhaps 300 that never come
> > back). zh-tw:, on the other hand, the last I checked, had a UI
> > completely in Traditional.
> <snip>
> > --Jin Jun-shu (Mark Williamson)
>
> Hello,
>
> I am currently trying to patch MediaWiki so users can choose their own
> language interface. One will then be able to choose zh-tw, zh-cn,
> english or even german as an interface language for zh:  :o)
>
> Not sure if it will be available in version 1.4 of MediaWiki though :p
>
>
>
> --
> Ashar Voultoiz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] What is the size limitation for uploading files in
	mediawiki?

body:
I want to upload a word document of 8M, but always failed without any
warning or error information. The upload page just refreshed.
   Could anybody tell me why and how to deal with it?
For internal research group, file of 8M is not a big size at all.

--
Be good....


subject: [Wikitech-l] Using MySQL in Wikipedia

body:
Peter Zaitsev wrote:
> - pack_keys=1 is used. You do not really want this option in most
> cases.  Varchar keys are compressed by default and integer keys
> get a lot slower while only a bit smaller.  pack_keys=default usually
> behaves best.

Haven't gotten around to removing them. The original files were much too
specific, for instance specifying MyISAM type for every table. :P

> - There is some key duplication:
>   KEY `name_title_timestamp`
> (`cur_namespace`,`cur_title`,`inverse_timestamp`),
>   KEY `cur_namespace` (`cur_namespace`),

Yes, that one is redundant.

> - It looks like you have long keys for ie "cur_title" which on other
> hand you only match as "=".  Hash keys would be perfect for you, but
> MySQL does not have these for anything but heap tables yet. One could
> create such key manually by using crc32 function -
> add the column which contains crc32 of the title and index it instead.

Can't comment on this other than to note that changing the table
structure on major tables like cur isn't done lightly as it requires
downtime [read-only mode] on large sites (eg Wikipedia) to alter the tables.

> - Why do you have  cur_id as UNIQUE key instead of PRIMARY KEY ?

Probably no good reason.

> 10 Query       DELETE FROM objectcache WHERE
> exptime<'2004-09-11 00:51:39'
>
> This looks like a purge - why do not do purge in the background,
> especially having lifetime for the objects of about 6 hours ?
> This will require some extra steps during installation but at least
> for heavy loaded servers this looks like a good option.

That table generally contains just one row, actually. :) On heavily
loaded servers consider using memcached (which will handle more things
than just the message cache) which handles its purging internally. Also
you can probably just up the expiry time for that as there's no real
need to purge it; updates to the message pages will update the cache blob.

> 10 Query       SHOW COLUMNS FROM cur LIKE "cur_title"
>
> Why this would be needed ?

It seems to have been added to detect the length of the title field. I
don't understand why anyone thought this would be necessary, since we
know how big it is having created it...?

> 10 Query       SELECT cur_id FROM cur WHERE
> cur_namespace=3 AND cur_title='Pz'
> 10 Query       SELECT cur_id FROM cur WHERE
> cur_namespace=3 AND cur_title='Pz'
>
> Interesting, same query going twice.

This is the talk page check I believe. Yes it's doubled but it's a quick
index-based query.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Lorenzarius wrote:
> Sorry, Mark, I have never ever seen you on Chinese Wikipedia before.
> Nor have I seen you try to participate in our discussion on how to
> solve this TC/SC problem.

Node_ue, this is the heart of the problem. The creation of ZH-TW is
not inherently problematic, but doing so without discussing it with
the folks in the ZH community is. Please dialogue with them first.
Thanks.

Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)


body:
Thanks a lot.
And what are the max numbers I can fill in?

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 16:50:31 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
> Kiss All wrote:
> > I want to upload a word document of 8M, but always failed without any
> > warning or error information. The upload page just refreshed.
> >    Could anybody tell me why and how to deal with it?
> > For internal research group, file of 8M is not a big size at all.
>
> You may want to look at these settings in php.ini:
>
> ; Maximum size of POST data that PHP will accept.
> post_max_size = 8M
>
> ; Maximum allowed size for uploaded files.
> upload_max_filesize = 2M
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
>

--
Be good....


subject: [Wikitech-l] Using MySQL in Wikipedia

body:
On Fri, 2004-09-10 at 18:57, Brion Vibber wrote:

>
> Haven't gotten around to removing them. The original files were much too
> specific, for instance specifying MyISAM type for every table. :P

:)

> > - It looks like you have long keys for ie "cur_title" which on other
> > hand you only match as "=".  Hash keys would be perfect for you, but
> > MySQL does not have these for anything but heap tables yet. One could
> > create such key manually by using crc32 function -
> > add the column which contains crc32 of the title and index it instead.
>
> Can't comment on this other than to note that changing the table
> structure on major tables like cur isn't done lightly as it requires
> downtime [read-only mode] on large sites (eg Wikipedia) to alter the tables.

The same would apply to creating the index, but it is not really the
case, especially in your case when you have timestamps to track when
object was last modified.

You can create  "cur_new" table of the needed structure and run

insert into cur_new select ... from cur where <id>  from N  to M;

Running last query in the loop to cover all table.  After you have done
that you can lock table and  copy all modifications based on timestamp.

The only thing you can't sole such way is deleted rows, it requires more
job but i hesitate it is actually needed in your case.

You may wonder why  single  insert ... select can't be used.
The problem is it sets shared lock on all rows it scans for replication
to work properly which would make system read only gradually.

>
> That table generally contains just one row, actually. :) On heavily
> loaded servers consider using memcached (which will handle more things
> than just the message cache) which handles its purging internally. Also
> you can probably just up the expiry time for that as there's no real
> need to purge it; updates to the message pages will update the cache blob.

Sure. I've seen something about memcache but have not tried it myself.
As soon as you do not have this query on your main loaded servers it is
Ok.

> It seems to have been added to detect the length of the title field. I
> don't understand why anyone thought this would be necessary, since we
> know how big it is having created it...?

Right. Also  why its maximum length is significantly important.

>
> > 10 Query       SELECT cur_id FROM cur WHERE
> > cur_namespace=3 AND cur_title='Pz'
> > 10 Query       SELECT cur_id FROM cur WHERE
> > cur_namespace=3 AND cur_title='Pz'
> >
> > Interesting, same query going twice.
>
> This is the talk page check I believe. Yes it's doubled but it's a quick
> index-based query.

I do not say it is slow query, but it is some extra overhead, at least
it requires round trip over network.    The problem with minor items is
- they tend to add up :)

--
Peter Zaitsev, Senior Support Engineer
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com


from_name: Pedro Fortuny Ayuso

body:
(snip)
> Anyone *can* edit the article, this is true. You, however, *may not*
> edit the article: your editing privileges have been revoked for a year.
> This revocation began on 7 May 2004 and is extended every time you try
> to edit; its current expiration date is 10 September 2005.
>

Wow, I did not know this kind of punishment was on at the Wikipedia: it
sounds too strong to me (what harm does he do just trying to edit, if he
cannot?).

Pedro.

> I hope that clears things up.
>
> --C. Podles ([[en:User:Mirv]])
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> ---
> Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.757 / Virus Database: 507 - Release Date: 09/09/2004
>
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Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.757 / Virus Database: 507 - Release Date: 09/09/2004


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
On 10 Sep 2004, at 16:52, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 8
> Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 15:25:56 +0100 (BST)
> From: Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk>
>
> Can we put aside the specific issue of academia, for a moment, and
> deal with
> the more general concept of "experts"? I'd like to address one specific
> instance: would you object to requiring at least one expert to review
> an
> article, in addition to laymen? (Let's make the non-trivial assumption
> that
> experts exist and are identifable by some means).

Just to clarify myself: I don't have a problem with academics/academia.
IMHO it's the dichotomous distinction between "experts" and
"non-experts" that's at the root of the problem, not the issue whether
we're talking about academics or other "experts".

Traditional knowledge review works as follows:
1. A person demonstrates an ability to consistently produce non-trivial
knowledge work.
2. This leads to the possibility of that person being awarded "expert"
status (traditionally in the form of academic accreditation.)
3. Once expert status is attained, the person's views are valued
''more'' than the views of persons who (for whatever reason) have not
also become "experts".
4. This implicit credence of "experts" is rarely ever revoked and
[[appeal to authority]] arguments are frequently made.

This system has the advantage (or disadvantage) that an expert rarely
has to justify his/her views to "non-experts".
If also has the massive disadvantage that it tends to lead to the
exclusion of an enormous amount of valid input. Some "experts" ''do''
happily take on board input from all comers, but even with them, most
laymen don't dare contacting them.

Traditionally, it was very difficult to imagine a working alternative
to the "expert/non-expert"-approach to the "authoritative
knowledge"-problem.
I believe we now have the tools to do things better. We don't need the
dirty shortcut of recognizing (or affording anyone our own)
"expert"-labels. Because everybody is an expert to some degree. All we
need is a sufficiently disciplined, self-policing and workable forum of
peer review. Our future review system could work as follows:

We keep editing like we've always done, but going forward, we consider
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ the "unstable" branch.
As mav and myself have proposed, we create a stable branch
http://en.wikipedia.org/stable/.

We form a "review club" with the following membership criteria:
- A non-trivial edit history that
- demonstrates constructiveness and
- an ''ambition'' to work towards the NPOV.
A person's supposed "knowledge level" should NOT be a criterion (see
below).

Membership in the review club should be open to everybody but will have
to be applied for. Once the above criteria are met, membership should
be granted to any comers.
The review club would not edit. No editing would take place on the
stable branch. The job of the review club would only be to determine
whether "wiki" versions can be promoted to "stable". If an article
needs editing, the review club would say so on the talk page. Review
club members could edit ''in their other role of being regular
contributors'', but these edits would be treated ''the same as any
other contributor's edits''.
The discussion in the review club should be more disciplined than in
other Wikipedia fora, but here, too, no appeals to authority should be
permitted. Every argument will have to stand on it's own merit. But:
laymen may find it harder to convince others, because of what they
don't know (not because of what accreditations they don't possess).
Review club members would need to be very aware of their limits and
they should clearly say when they don't feel qualified enough to make a
judgment on an article. This is where the review club ''could'' also
solicit outside opinions, but only if the review club ''agrees'' it
lacks the relevant knowledge to do the work alone. When soliciting an
outside opinion, the outside person should be able to convince '''by
merit of an explanation, not by merit of their title''' (where s/he has
one). Crucially, if no-one in the review club understands the
explanation given by the outside person, the said input should be
disregarded.

This should neatly avoid the pitfalls associated with a fallacious
appeal to authority ("reverse ad-hominem" ;-) .

To remain workable, the review club could split into different working
groups as it grows, such as:
- a molecular biology group,
- a car mechanics group,
- a soap opera group,
etc. etc.

Where necessary, the groups could appoint moderators on a rotating
basis (or elect them for limited terms). Here too, a moderator's main
job would not be "being an expert who can overrule people", but "being
a moderator who can facilitate and sum up the group's consensus". If
required, the entire review club could have a "grand moderator" as
well.

The Wikipedia has come far.
 From a previous email I wrote:

>> The Wikipedia will continue to be successful as long as we continue
>> to attract more well-intended contributors than malicious folks.
>>
>> If well-meaning users make a mistake and/or persist in a
>> misconception, then it's possible to have a (sometimes admittedly
>> heated) discussion about it and straighten things out. Well-intended
>> but erring users we can deal with and convince. Only "trolls", people
>> who genuinely WANT to sabotage the system do present a real threat.
>> Fortunately most people in the world are well-meaning. The fewest
>> people in the world actively want to do something wrongful.
>> Misguided, perhaps, but not actively trying to be wrongful.
>> Misguided, we can deal with. We can convince or vote down such people
>> as long as they are well-meaning. Wrongful, we have to labour
>> against. Either way: in our system, the majority wins. So again, as
>> long as we can attract more reasonable people than maniacs, as long
>> as we can do that, we'll be successful.

We have every reason to believe that the same principle would work in a
review club. Because most well-meaning people will recognize their own
limitations and not claim to be an "expert" of medical imaging when
they really haven't got a clue. Malicious imposters will be noticed
very quickly because they cannot trow the weight of a (fake or actual)
title around -- and their explanations will rarely be cogent. And
that's all we need.

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


from_name: Matthew Larsen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Jewish Social-Marxist Censorship of Wikipedia is
	quite obvious, Mirv.

body:
grow up

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:47:08 -0700 (PDT), Mr Paul Vogel
<bannedneedle at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Anyone can edit this article, but, active Jewish
> bigots and Social-Marxists have been deliberately
> distorting and censoring any factual and accurate
> information there."
>
> Thank you for confirming your lying and hypocritical
> censorship, Mirv. :D
>
> "Anyone *can* edit the article, this is true. You,
> however, *may not* edit the article: your editing
> privileges have been revoked for a year."
>
> Indeed, due to the lying hypocrisy of Jews and Marxist
> censors and bigots like your, Mirv, and your ilk. What
> else isn't new?
>
> "This revocation began on 7 May 2004 and is extended
> every time you try to edit; its current expiration
> date is 10 September 2005."
>
> I am not the only one that is trying to correct your
> slander and deliberate lies about Cosmotheism, Mirv.
> You can extend your Jewish-Marxist Censorship for 100
> years, but, the Whole Truths of Reality will always
> remain so, nevertheless, especially to those with the
> actual intellectual honesty and personal integrity and
> moral courage to see them.
>
> "I hope that clears things up.
> --C. Podles ([[en:User:Mirv]])"
>
> It is clear to me and to anyone else that can pay
> attention that Wikipedia is being censored by Jews
> and Social Marxists and that their whining about the
> Chinese censorship of Wikipedia is just more and
> typical lying hypocrisy on your and their part.
>
> Best regards,
> Paul Vogel aka the NEEDLE
> http://www.cosmotheism.net
>
> _______________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Shop for Back-to-School deals on Yahoo! Shopping.
> http://shopping.yahoo.com/backtoschool
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


body:
last message aimed at Mr Paul Vogel

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 20:18:22 +0100, Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> grow up
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:47:08 -0700 (PDT), Mr Paul Vogel
> <bannedneedle at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > "Anyone can edit this article, but, active Jewish
> > bigots and Social-Marxists have been deliberately
> > distorting and censoring any factual and accurate
> > information there."
> >
> > Thank you for confirming your lying and hypocritical
> > censorship, Mirv. :D
> >
> > "Anyone *can* edit the article, this is true. You,
> > however, *may not* edit the article: your editing
> > privileges have been revoked for a year."
> >
> > Indeed, due to the lying hypocrisy of Jews and Marxist
> > censors and bigots like your, Mirv, and your ilk. What
> > else isn't new?
> >
> > "This revocation began on 7 May 2004 and is extended
> > every time you try to edit; its current expiration
> > date is 10 September 2005."
> >
> > I am not the only one that is trying to correct your
> > slander and deliberate lies about Cosmotheism, Mirv.
> > You can extend your Jewish-Marxist Censorship for 100
> > years, but, the Whole Truths of Reality will always
> > remain so, nevertheless, especially to those with the
> > actual intellectual honesty and personal integrity and
> > moral courage to see them.
> >
> > "I hope that clears things up.
> > --C. Podles ([[en:User:Mirv]])"
> >
> > It is clear to me and to anyone else that can pay
> > attention that Wikipedia is being censored by Jews
> > and Social Marxists and that their whining about the
> > Chinese censorship of Wikipedia is just more and
> > typical lying hypocrisy on your and their part.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Paul Vogel aka the NEEDLE
> > http://www.cosmotheism.net
> >
> > _______________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Shop for Back-to-School deals on Yahoo! Shopping.
> > http://shopping.yahoo.com/backtoschool
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Matthew Larsen
>   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
>   > 07739 785 249
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Hi,

Le Friday 10 September 2004 17:24, Delirium a ?crit :
> Sort of a tangential issue: Wikipedians should keep in mind here that
> whatever they do is a positive political and social/cultural act; there
> is no correct answer to this question.
>
> Whether Chinese should be one language or diverge into multiple
> languages is somewhat similar to the question 180 years ago over whether
> the various Greeks spoken throughout the former Ottoman Empire should
> remain distinct, or be merged into a "common Greek", and perhaps also
> similar to the eternal disputes in France over the differences between
> the various regional dialects.  If we, for example, say we support
> having a separate Wikipedia for a particular French dialect (which we
> do), but we oppose having one for a particular Chinese dialect, then
> we're making a rather odd political statement.  Not that we can't do
> that, but it should be done on purpose.

Which French dialects are talking about?
There are regional languages in France, the main ones being Breton, Basque and
Occitan (spelling?), but I don't think there are "French" dialects. You
should also note that Basque and Breton are very different from French.
Occitan is a roman language, but any French speaker may not understand it
better than, say, Italian or Catalan.

> -Mark

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


from_name: Jochen Magnus

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: A technical problem with blocking

body:
Jimbo,

another technical option is to use a kind of statistical information
which every browser sends in its Environment. This is not absolutly save
and real technicans (or good filter programs) can avoid the blocking to,
but most people don't know how.

A Perl example:
$checkEnv=$ENV{'HTTP_USER_AGENT'}.$ENV{'HTTP_ACCEPT'}.$ENV{'HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET'}
.$ENV{'HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'}.$ENV{HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING}.$ENV{'HTTP_COOKIE'};

It is improbable (but not impossible) that this compound key is equal
for two browsers. The blocking due to this reason should be made for a
limited span of tim, i.e. 24 or 48 hours in addition to the common IP
blocking.

jo

> We are having a technical probem with blocking on en which is causing some important social
> problems.


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] mouses and rats

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> cookfire wrote:
>
>> I see what you mean, and it is true that we should be careful before
>> transferring translations from one Wiktionary to an other. But don't
>> you think less errors will happen if a larger group of people will be
>> able to see and correct one version of translations? Each from their
>> own viewpoint/background and with an interface in the language of
>> their choice? Now all the Wiktionaries are 'parochial' and if one
>> takes something from one to another, then somebody else
>> changes/corrects this, it is probably never going to be changed in
>> the Wiktionary where the content came from in the first place. The
>> same is true when something gets changed in the original Wiktionary
>> after the transfer has happened. This change/correction will never
>> get notified to the second Wiktionary. In an integrated system, they
>> could be marked 'fuzzy' to indicate something has changed, meaning
>> that things have to be checked again.
>> I agree that this has to be given a lot of thought to set up though.
>
>
> One thing that I have noted about the initial examples for this
> proposal is that they started in a subject area where the translations
> are reasonably well behaved, the names of nationalities and languages,
> even if there are occasional problems such as choosing between
> Netherlands and Holland.  When you try to extrapolate an idea that
> works well in particular circumstances to a more general situation you
> can expect some very serious difficulties.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>
>
When an English word is entered into a wiktionary all truisms in the
en:wiktionary for that word should be true in the nl:wiktionary, the
ja:wiktionary as well. We are after all talking about the same word.
When the translation for an English word is XYZ in language F, this
should still be true when you describe word English word XYZ in any
other language.

What is problematic to be expressed about an English word in English is
still dificult to be expressed in any other language.The reason is
simple: you are talking about the same thing: the relation of a word in
a language to an other language. In whatever language you describe it,
you describe that specific relation.

The aim of the excercise is to have a fixed format in which these
relations are described. This will result in data about a word that will
result in data about the same word presented in another language. When
this turns out to be wrong, it is also wrong in the first language.

Thanks,
    Gerard


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
> >English people and Japanese people also have the same universe, sun,
> >planet, species, maths, logic, and universal history, yet we have
> >separate Wikipedias for English and Japanese...
> >By your logic, there shouldn't even be a zh: and we should only have
> >one Wikipedia (which would probably be en: although I would much
> >prefer is: or lb: or something of that sort)
>
> You just missed my point. That's my fault not to express my point clearly.
> I mean we have the same vocabulary in most cases,
> we call things using the same name and same concepts in most cases,
> this is important, this means we enjoy the same language.
> The writing system is different, but most of them can be mapped each other.

So what? The writing system is different. That is what counts. A
unified zh: might work, but only extremely clumsily.

> >So what? One could make the same arguments for not having separate
> >Wikipedias for different languages.
>
> You can't synchronize en: and jp: easily,
> because they are different language.
> But we can someday find a way to synchronize zh-cn: and zh-tw: easily.
> That is the different.

Chances are, someday there will be a way to synchronize en: and jp:
easily too. How is that relevant?

> >But the difference between the two isn't merely a "difference of
> >character sets". Rather than converting on the level of the individual
> >character which will inevitably produce poor results, it is nessecary
> >to convert documents on the level of lexemes, for which one needs some
> >sort of artificial intelligence capable of separating Chinese texts
> >into individual lexemes before conversion. It is also nessecary to
> >convert names of countries, special terminology
>
> Did you not try the link I mentioned above?
> please visit http://fengzz.net/wiki/ to try.
> We are using some markup to solve this lexemes problem,
> and it works.

Yes, I tried it. So what?

> I agree with you that it is inconvenient for traditional Chinese users now.
> and I think the request on creating zh-tw version is proper.
> But we'd better have a good evaluation of different solutions before we decide.
> In my opinion, to keep a single version is benefit for future,
> and this is also the consensus of the Chinese Wikipedia community now.
> Maybe we should discuss this issue more.

"Community consensus"? Let me give you a scenario here which I find
comparable to the "community consensus" on zh:

The People's Republic of China decides to hold a vote on the fate of
Taiwan. Taiwanese people as well as mainlanders get to vote. The
result is an overwhelming majority in favour of immediate
"reunification" using force if nessecary. This is not a fair vote,
because since the PRC is by far the majority here their opinion is
much more well-represented than that of Taiwan. I think this is
similar to the situation on zh:, with a group of simplified users -
including you - and a mere handful of traditional users who agree with
them reaching a "consensus" to keep a unified zh:.

So, you have two choices here: we can run Wikipedia like it is the PRC
and hold a sham vote where one group of people gets to decide the fate
of another group of people, or we can run it *fairly* where we have
private e-mail discussions between Traditional users and the relevant
Wikipedia people, ie Tim Starling, Jimbo, etc etc.

rsy Jin Junshu/Mark


body:
I (obviously ?) do not want to mess up with any arbitration decission,
but for me the RfAR page decision only says

"Paul Vogel's editing privileges on Wikipedia are revoked for a period of
one year."

Which to me does not mean "renewed each time he tries to edit". However,
IANAL and
the exact meaning of the phrase in the context may differ from what I
understand.

I also am not advocating pro-Vogel, just stating that in any judgement
(afaik & ianal):

a) the punishment must be clearly stated
b) in case it has several interpretations, the lighter one has to be applied
c) forthcoming actions (after the trial) cannot modify the penalty

and what is being done to Vogel looks to me like breaking at least b) and
c)...
Not a special problem to me in this case: but an important issue for future
arbitration committees.

Pedro.

> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]En nombre de Fred Bauder
> Enviado el: viernes, 10 de septiembre de 2004 20:40
> Para: pfortuny at sdf-eu.org, English Wikipedia
> Asunto: Re: [WikiEN-l] Censorship by China or bigots in Wikipedia?
>
>
> The decision is at [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Paul Vogel]]
>
> Fred
>
> > From: "Pedro Fortuny Ayuso" <pfortuny at sdf-eu.org>
> > Reply-To: pfortuny at sdf-eu.org, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 19:38:53 +0200
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Censorship by China or bigots in Wikipedia?
> >
> > Wow, I did not know this kind of punishment was on at the Wikipedia: it
> > sounds too strong to me (what harm does he do just trying to edit, if he
> > cannot?).
> >
> > Pedro.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> ---
> Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.757 / Virus Database: 507 - Release Date: 09/09/2004
>
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.757 / Virus Database: 507 - Release Date: 09/09/2004


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Friday 10 September 2004 15:17, Jens Ropers wrote:
> Then it seems obvious to me what needs to be done:
> There needs to be a prominently featured preference on the Chinese
> Wikipedia for switching the user interface between traditional and
> simplified. As a traditional version of the interface already exists
> (as you write) it should not be too much work for a person competent in
> both traditional and simplified to add the traditional UI to the
> current simplified one.
>
> The plumbing for this again needs to be laid by our techies.

I'm reminding that I wrote a patch which does exactly that.


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] alleged censorship of Wikipedia

body:
On 10 Sep 2004, at 21:19, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:47:08 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Mr Paul Vogel <bannedneedle at yahoo.com>
>
> It is clear to me and to anyone else that can pay
> attention that Wikipedia is being censored by Jews
> and Social Marxists and that their whining about the
> Chinese censorship of Wikipedia is just more and
> typical lying hypocrisy on your and their part.
>
> Best regards,
> Paul Vogel aka the NEEDLE
> http://www.cosmotheism.net

Please refrain from making sweeping politico-racial generalizations.

You're putting that as if you were implying that being a follower of
Jewish faith or adhering to Social-Marxist ideology was something
inherently objectionable.

It isn't.
For the record: Judaism is a perfectly valid and time-honored religion
and Social Marxism is a perfectly valid POV as far as political
ideology. Not that I'm buying into your allegations that either of the
two had anything to do with the disputed article.

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


from_name: Thomas Gries

body:
Hello WikiPedia Sysops,
for most of you: good evening ....

my (coming soon as promised) E-MailNotification patch is two-fold:
one part is for general page changes (perhaps only suited for
low-traffic MediaWiki installations, but not for worldwide WikiPedia, or
we have to limit the amount of (mail-) watched pages per user), the
other is for user_talk page changes.

Question to you (Sysops of the big WikiPedias):
=====================================
Please can you send me recent statistical data about the amount of
***User_talk page changes*** per time unit (hour or day) on the big
WikiPedias ?

For user_talk page changes only one E-mail is sent to the owner of that
User_talk page, and not for own edits. This feature could ***perhaps***
be enabled generally or switched on for privileged contributors,
developers and sysops only. But is written above, I am just curious
about this number, if it you can supply me with this.

Tom
Berlin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Apparently, you underestimate the power of nationalism.

I am well aware they do not read SC exclusively. HOWEVER, SC is by far
their prefered script and in most cases their edits are around 99% or
95% to Simplified articles.

Jin Junshu/Mark

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 14:44:36 +0800, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 21:43:55 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Chances are, someday there will be a way to synchronize en: and jp:
> > easily too. How is that relevant?
>
> You are using an inappropriate comparison. How can one compare the
> difference between English and Japanese to the difference between TC
> and SC? Linguists would laugh to death on hearing this.
>
> > Yes, I tried it. So what?
>
> So what? That means we are solving the problem. While you're evading
> the problem, by simply splitting zh into zh-tw and zh-cn.
>
> > "Community consensus"? Let me give you a scenario here which I find
> > comparable to the "community consensus" on zh:
> >
> > The People's Republic of China decides to hold a vote on the fate of
> > Taiwan. Taiwanese people as well as mainlanders get to vote. The
> > result is an overwhelming majority in favour of immediate
> > "reunification" using force if nessecary. This is not a fair vote,
> > because since the PRC is by far the majority here their opinion is
> > much more well-represented than that of Taiwan. I think this is
> > similar to the situation on zh:, with a group of simplified users -
> > including you - and a mere handful of traditional users who agree with
> > them reaching a "consensus" to keep a unified zh:.
> >
> > So, you have two choices here: we can run Wikipedia like it is the PRC
> > and hold a sham vote where one group of people gets to decide the fate
> > of another group of people, or we can run it *fairly* where we have
> > private e-mail discussions between Traditional users and the relevant
> > Wikipedia people, ie Tim Starling, Jimbo, etc etc.
>
> This is not a comparable scenario.
>
> Mainland Chinese does not live in Taiwan. They are not the people of
> Taiwan. Thus they have no right to decide whether Taiwan should do
> anything.
>
> However, wikipedians from mainland does not only read SC exclusively.
> Most of them can read both TC and SC. That makes them eligible to vote
> on this TC/SC issue.
>
> And why do you think mainlanders would vote in favor of unification?
> Is that because you have some prejudice against people from mainland?
> If this is so, this again shows you that you don't understand the zh
> community.
>
> Lorenzarius
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
By the way, since when am I trying to compare en/jp and tc/sc? I was
merely responding to something somebody else said about SC and TC
users "living in the same universe" or something.

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 14:44:36 +0800, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 21:43:55 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Chances are, someday there will be a way to synchronize en: and jp:
> > easily too. How is that relevant?
>
> You are using an inappropriate comparison. How can one compare the
> difference between English and Japanese to the difference between TC
> and SC? Linguists would laugh to death on hearing this.
>
> > Yes, I tried it. So what?
>
> So what? That means we are solving the problem. While you're evading
> the problem, by simply splitting zh into zh-tw and zh-cn.
>
> > "Community consensus"? Let me give you a scenario here which I find
> > comparable to the "community consensus" on zh:
> >
> > The People's Republic of China decides to hold a vote on the fate of
> > Taiwan. Taiwanese people as well as mainlanders get to vote. The
> > result is an overwhelming majority in favour of immediate
> > "reunification" using force if nessecary. This is not a fair vote,
> > because since the PRC is by far the majority here their opinion is
> > much more well-represented than that of Taiwan. I think this is
> > similar to the situation on zh:, with a group of simplified users -
> > including you - and a mere handful of traditional users who agree with
> > them reaching a "consensus" to keep a unified zh:.
> >
> > So, you have two choices here: we can run Wikipedia like it is the PRC
> > and hold a sham vote where one group of people gets to decide the fate
> > of another group of people, or we can run it *fairly* where we have
> > private e-mail discussions between Traditional users and the relevant
> > Wikipedia people, ie Tim Starling, Jimbo, etc etc.
>
> This is not a comparable scenario.
>
> Mainland Chinese does not live in Taiwan. They are not the people of
> Taiwan. Thus they have no right to decide whether Taiwan should do
> anything.
>
> However, wikipedians from mainland does not only read SC exclusively.
> Most of them can read both TC and SC. That makes them eligible to vote
> on this TC/SC issue.
>
> And why do you think mainlanders would vote in favor of unification?
> Is that because you have some prejudice against people from mainland?
> If this is so, this again shows you that you don't understand the zh
> community.
>
> Lorenzarius
>


from_name: Sj

body:
We should definitely set the record straight; that was on the first
page of section E in the Washington Post...

Please help draft a reply here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_department/WashPost-20040909#Quotes

You need an email/password to get to the Washington Post site for the
original, but you can use mine.

+Sj+

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 00:30:18 +0200, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> > This is a fascinating article in many respects.  It's particularly
> > interesting that Britannica talks about our disclaimer.  It's also
> [cut]
>
> I agree. And funny to;
>
> http://www.bizreport.com/news/7945/
>
> <quote> /Britannica's editors are among those who take a skeptical view,
> noting that Wikipedia publishes a disclaimer stating that it does not
> vouch for its own validity. "We very much take responsibility for all
> the content we include in any of our products," said Britannica editor
> in chief Dale Hoiberg./ </quote>
>
> +
>
> http://corporate.britannica.com/termsofuse.html
>
> /THE SITE AND ALL INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND OTHER CONTENT (INCLUDING
> THIRD-PARTY INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND CONTENT) INCLUDED IN OR
> ACCESSIBLE FROM THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF
> ANY KIND (EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
> THE WARRANTIES OF TITLE AND NONINFRINGEMENT AND THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
> OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE), ALL OF WHICH
> BRITANNICA EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW./
> /*YOUR USE OF BRITANNICA.COM IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.*/
>
> --
> [[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


subject:
[Foundation-l] new stuff on meta-wiki: ars electronica report and
	calendar

body:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 04:36:48 +0200, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> In Linz we had also the idea of creating a Wikipedia calendar to better
> keep track of important stuff such as events, deadlines for funding
> proposals, press releases etc. It's on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar

This is cool, since we added a calendar to the end of the newsletter
at the same time.  The newsletter's calendar also includes a few major
events from the past year; you can see (and update) its outline at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/NL-1/En%3A#8

Liking the idea of color-coding certain events,
   +Sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject:
[WikiEN-l]
 Re: [googlealerts-noreply-hpIqsD4AKlfQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org:
 Google Alert -   wikipedia]

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> This is a fascinating article in many respects.  It's particularly
> interesting that Britannica talks about our disclaimer.  It's also
[cut]

I agree. And funny to;

http://www.bizreport.com/news/7945/

<quote> /Britannica's editors are among those who take a skeptical view,
noting that Wikipedia publishes a disclaimer stating that it does not
vouch for its own validity. "We very much take responsibility for all
the content we include in any of our products," said Britannica editor
in chief Dale Hoiberg./ </quote>

+

http://corporate.britannica.com/termsofuse.html

/THE SITE AND ALL INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND OTHER CONTENT (INCLUDING
THIRD-PARTY INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND CONTENT) INCLUDED IN OR
ACCESSIBLE FROM THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF
ANY KIND (EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
THE WARRANTIES OF TITLE AND NONINFRINGEMENT AND THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE), ALL OF WHICH
BRITANNICA EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW./
/*YOUR USE OF BRITANNICA.COM IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.*/

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


from_name: yuanml

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:
> No technical solution will, of course, address the differences in
> vocabulary among Taiwan, PRC-Hong Kong, PRC-Mainland (and God forbid,
> Singapore and PRC-Macau).  The differences are sometimes considerable in
> certain technical and pop cultural fields, though they should not be
> exaggerated.

In fact, some member of the Chinese Wikipedia community, is just working hard to solve
this problem. We discussed this problem since the beginning of the community.
I don't think it is a difficult problem, We can introduce new markup to solve it easily.
Some programmer had setup a Wiki to test this idea, and it was worked,
please visit http://fengzz.net/wiki/ to try.

I think it is really important not to split the Chinese Wikipedia community,
we have the same language, and we needn't to write the same thing twice.

Automatic conversition between SC and TC is very important for Chinese Wikipedia.
we have been discussing this problem for a long time. From our discussing, you can see that:

* CJK Unified Ideographs and CJK Compatibility Ideographs in Unicode chart contains
about thirty thousand Chinese characters, both simplified and tradational Chinese characters.
* simplified Chinese are only 2235 frequent characters.
* most of the 2235 simplified characters can be mapped to the tradational version
in a one-to-one way.
* only about 100 simp-trad pairs is not one-to-one.

In fact completely automatic conversition between SC and TC is really difficult,
but we can convert the difficult part manually, we can introduce some markup.

I really want to solve this problem, and I think I have the ability,
but just now i only have no time. The other difficulty for me is that
I don't have a thorough understand of the Squid cache.

I think, to solve this problem, we must design a solution are conformable with the
url, database and Squid cache requirement. Chinese Wikipedia community had discussed these problems
for a long time, The real problem so far is that no programmer take the real step.

I plan th solve it in the next year when I finnished my graduate thesis, if no one take the real step.
It is very welcome that someone is interesting about the problem and work hard to solve it.


from_name: Stephan Walter

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Remove this Google Alert:
> http://www.google.com/alerts/remove?s=239e2e51c626dd22&hl=en

Oops. I just clicked on that link. :-( Sorry

Stephan

--
Stephan.Walter at epfl.ch  --  http://lart.info/~stw/  --  PGP: B2421799
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Stw


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wiktionary-l] mouses and rats

body:
Muke Tever <muke at frath.net> wrote:On Fri, 10 Sep 2004
05:08:26 +0100 (BST), Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> The only kinds of translations which will be
> transferable between different language Wiktionaries
> are those with standardized definitions. The ones I
> can think of off the top of my head are:
>
> * Atomic element symbols
> * Scientific species names
>
> I'm sure there are others but besides these rare
> cases each and every term has to be inspected very
> care fully.

Hmm, also:
* Names of countries and other political regions
* Numbers, at least the cardinals
...

Oh yes there is another category which would consist
of both a fairly rigid definition and one or more
vernacular definition. Country names probably fall
into this category. Official "long form" names will
probably be more standardized.
For many languages the cardinal "one" is also used for
an indefinite article or a generic pronoun but that's
not so bad.

Andrew (hippietrail)

*Muke!
--
website: http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/
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=====
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___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!  http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
On 11 Sep 2004, at 00:47, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 22:51:14 +0200
> From: Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com>
>
> On 10 Sep 2004, at 21:19, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:47:08 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: Mr Paul Vogel <bannedneedle at yahoo.com>
>>
>> <snip>
>
> Please refrain from making sweeping politico-racial generalizations.

OMG.
That was a massive, MASSIVE shameful blunder from me.
I would like to apologize, deeply apologize to everybody for saying
"politico-racial".

Referring to Jews as a race -- that's a classification which was
utterly abused and discredited through its use in Nazi ideology; and I
would DEEPLY apologize for having made the moronic, idiotic, appalling
and shameful mistake of using it unqualifiedly and unthinkingly.

For the record: I utterly and totally recant the respective words
(referring to Jews as a racial group).

I do of course recognize that Judaism IS A RELIGION and that in a
worldly context, unqualified reference to Jews as a race smacks of Nazi
ideology -- something I would wish I could distance myself from as far
as possible.

'''The Israeli people''' are what potentially could in a worldly
context be regarded as a race -- if one ''has'' to use the grossly
inaccurate and dangerous term of "race".

I do realize that in the context of Jewish religion, there is the
notion of "the Jewish people", but that's '''in a religious context'''
and doesn't excuse my idiotic labeling of Vogel's reference to "Jews"
as "racial".

I should have said "religio-political generalizations".

With apologies to everybody,

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


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
> You are using an inappropriate comparison. How can one compare the
> difference between English and Japanese to the difference between TC
> and SC? Linguists would laugh to death on hearing this.
>
> > Yes, I tried it. So what?

Ummm...English is Indo-European (or Indo-Germanic, if you prefer).  Japanese
isn't.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mark Williamson
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 2:59 AM
To: Lorenzarius
Cc: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

By the way, since when am I trying to compare en/jp and tc/sc? I was
merely responding to something somebody else said about SC and TC
users "living in the same universe" or something.

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 14:44:36 +0800, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 21:43:55 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
wrote:
> > Chances are, someday there will be a way to synchronize en: and jp:
> > easily too. How is that relevant?
>
> You are using an inappropriate comparison. How can one compare the
> difference between English and Japanese to the difference between TC
> and SC? Linguists would laugh to death on hearing this.
>
> > Yes, I tried it. So what?
>
> So what? That means we are solving the problem. While you're evading
> the problem, by simply splitting zh into zh-tw and zh-cn.
>
> > "Community consensus"? Let me give you a scenario here which I find
> > comparable to the "community consensus" on zh:
> >
> > The People's Republic of China decides to hold a vote on the fate of
> > Taiwan. Taiwanese people as well as mainlanders get to vote. The
> > result is an overwhelming majority in favour of immediate
> > "reunification" using force if nessecary. This is not a fair vote,
> > because since the PRC is by far the majority here their opinion is
> > much more well-represented than that of Taiwan. I think this is
> > similar to the situation on zh:, with a group of simplified users -
> > including you - and a mere handful of traditional users who agree with
> > them reaching a "consensus" to keep a unified zh:.
> >
> > So, you have two choices here: we can run Wikipedia like it is the PRC
> > and hold a sham vote where one group of people gets to decide the fate
> > of another group of people, or we can run it *fairly* where we have
> > private e-mail discussions between Traditional users and the relevant
> > Wikipedia people, ie Tim Starling, Jimbo, etc etc.
>
> This is not a comparable scenario.
>
> Mainland Chinese does not live in Taiwan. They are not the people of
> Taiwan. Thus they have no right to decide whether Taiwan should do
> anything.
>
> However, wikipedians from mainland does not only read SC exclusively.
> Most of them can read both TC and SC. That makes them eligible to vote
> on this TC/SC issue.
>
> And why do you think mainlanders would vote in favor of unification?
> Is that because you have some prejudice against people from mainland?
> If this is so, this again shows you that you don't understand the zh
> community.
>
> Lorenzarius
>
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
>Answer me this question: Are you a traditional or a simplified user,
>primarily? Your e-mail address ends in .cn so I am just assuming you
>are primarily a Simplified user, please correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, I?m from Beijing, a mainlander. But just as you said,
how is my *nationality* any more relevant to /this particular issue/ than
the number of pets I have or my favourite colours?

>The reason there was only one active contributor is because zh-tw: was
>not being advertised at all. I assume if I had really looked for
>contributors there would have been at least one or two other people
>working on it w/me.

Yes, if you setup zh-tw, people will go there and write articles.
But the split of the community will only weaken the growth of the small project
and bring more difficult in the future. Suppose two project zh-cn and zh-tw now,
and someday we want to synchronize them, and you will find it is very difficult.

Yes, if you don?t want synchronize the two, there is no problem.
But why we write the same things twice, we just have the same language.
It?s really true there are some terminology are different in technical and
pop cultural fields. But how about the same part of zh-tw and zh-cn?
We have the same universe, the sun, the planet, species,
and same mathematic, logic, and the same thousands-years history.
Because these knowledge are formed into their modern shape
mostly before 1950s when Jiang?s government retreat to Taiwan.
Even in pop cultural fields, I don?t think the difference is so big.
Please notice the fact that A-mei has more fans in mainland than in Taiwan.


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Hiho,

The report of Wikipedia at the ars electronica in Linz can be found on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Linz_cyberarts_festival_2004

In Linz we had also the idea of creating a Wikipedia calendar to better
keep track of important stuff such as events, deadlines for funding
proposals, press releases etc. It's on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar

Please use it freely. There's not much in there at the moment, later we
could introduce more color codes to separate certain type of events.

greetings,
elian