WikiEN-l November 2004

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

97 participants
111 discussions

Re: Learn PHP
by Sheldon Rampton 28 Nov '04

28 Nov '04

Learning PHP is something that people can do on their own. I learned what I know about it by doing a Google search for the words "PHP" and "tutorial." Here are a couple of links that I have found useful: http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/99/21/index2a.html?tw=programming http://www.php.net/manual/en/ If you want to attract volunteers to help with coding, I think thoroughly documenting the project's existing code would accomplish more than trying to offer help learning PHP. People can get help with PHP from lots of places, but Wikimedia is the only place they can go to find specific answers about the MediaWiki codebase. --Sheldon Rampton

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The Larouche issue: Strawman criticisms
by Robert 28 Nov '04

28 Nov '04

Snowspinner writes: > I'm seriously concerned about a recent arbcom > enforcement. A ban was ordered against [[User:C Colden]] > as per the ruling in the case of Lyndon LaRouche. > > ....However, the ruling of the case, apparently, was a > ruling against the insertion of "original research > originating with the LaRouche movement" (Which seems > to be an interchangable phrase with "the LaRouche point > of view") into any article by any user. This is a false charge. You are making this up. No one is claiming that an NPOV description of LaRouche's point of view is original research, or is forbidden. Your claim is nonsense. The problem here is that many Larouche supporters violate Wikipedia editorial policy by shoving in their own original research, or pushing their own personal point-of-view as fact. Further, they systematically distort many Wikipedia articles by pushing the Larouche POV in places where it has no meaning or relevance. They are taking the POV of a fringe, cult-like convicted criminal, and falsely presenting it as a POV that is just as widely accepted as those of any mainstream political party. One could do the same thing with any of a dozen other fringe self-styled political leaders who have been convicted of crimes. However, the views of a self-styled political messiah with little following does not deserve the grand attention and treatment that a handful of LaRouche supporters are giving it. Further, his views certainly must be presented in an NPOV way without any original research, which is not what his supporters do. > This seems to me to reflect a hard arbcom ruling that > the LaRouche POV is not something that need be included > under the Wikipedia NPOV policy. Nonsense. This is a strawman argument against a position that no one has made. > As loathesome as I find the LaRouche movement to be, > I am seriously troubled by the notion that the arbcom > can and will make blanket rulings that certain > perspectives are not part of NPOV. Nonsense. You are arguing a strawman criticism that a number of LaRouche supporters have been doing here for some time. We aren't falling for it. Robert (RK) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

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user RickK - vote rigging
by R E Broadley 27 Nov '04

27 Nov '04

Hi, Someone else spotted RickK up to no good, and referred to the following on his talk page:- http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia%3AVotes_for_deletion%2… The diff above is all by RickK in one edit, so I can't see how he can possibly claim he thought the vote was by an anonymous person. I'm confused, looking at RickK's user page, he looks like a well respected user, but given this and other recent strange reverts, does anyone think it's likely his account has been stolen? Regards, Edmund

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[[Abu Graib prisoner abuse (no pictures)]] on VfD
by csherlock＠ljh.com.au 27 Nov '04

27 Nov '04

I have placed [[Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse (no pictures)]] on VfD because this it sets a very bad precedent. There is absolutely no way of keeping the articles in sync properly (not everyone who edits will be willing to edit two pages, especially if there Internet connection is slow or Wikipedia is running slowly). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Abu_Ghraib_prison… I think people are going to have to come to a better solution than this, or the software will need some modification (for instance, flagging images as potentially offensive and giving users a setting to see/not see these images). I really hope that other articles won't take up this, for instance [[clitoris]] might decide to fork over disputes over the image of a women's vagina on the page (I personally think that these people need to just get over it, but I'm not everyone). My concern, however, is how to keep the articles in sync once they have been duplicated. Further: it's a slipperyly slope when we start allowing dupes: we have a similar situation where we had [[Zionist revisionism]] and [[Israeli-Palestinian history denial]]. Two seperate articles, yet both talking about very similar things. Perhaps not quite the same, but you can see how messy things get when we allow duplication of articles! Ta bu shi da yu

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Re: JoeM hard-ban
by Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales 27 Nov '04

27 Nov '04

The username "Today Iraq, Tomorrow France!" is inherently offensive trolling and sufficient grounds for a ban on the spot. Writing to the list from an email address advocating "nuking iraq" is not helpful, either. > So please unblock me now. I'm known primarily as a naively optimistic and trusting person, but even *I* see little hope for that. If you're ready to put aside hateful comments and edit pages in a neutral manner, then you'll need to demonstrate it by talking to a lot of people and apologizing for your past behavior. --Jimbo

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP
by rose.parks＠att.net 27 Nov '04

27 Nov '04

Hi... I would like to learn PHP, too. I think a PHP Learning Group would be great. As Ever, Ruth Ifcher [[User:RoseParks]] -- -------------- Original message from Catherine Munro <artslave(a)usa.net>: -------------- > > > Robin Shannon wrote: > > > Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to > > > contribute but > > > dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else? > > > > > > [[User:The bellman]] > > > rjs > > I'd be willing to learn PHP too; it has just seemed very daunting to take > on by myself. A small group that can work together to learn the ropes > (and not take up too much of the developers' precious time with repeating > the same answers for a dozen different individual students) would be a > great thing. > > BTW, I ran across an article about analyzing the development of large-scale > PHP projects, which might help for something like MediaWiki that's been > developed in so many small pieces. A Development Infrastructure for PHP > (by Tony Marston) is > here: http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/infrastructure.html It's a > little over my head, I've only been skimming it to get some ideas on what > I'm getting into, but it looks like it *might* be of use to our heroic > development team. > > Anyway, count me in. > > Catherine > [[User:CatherineMunro]] > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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A user seems to have spent the day reverting articles which appeared to be legitamite edits
by R E Broadley 26 Nov '04

26 Nov '04

Hi, I am concerned. I don't often do this, but I had a look at the change logs earlier this evening, just to get an idea of the kind of activity that was going on. I noticed that a user, RickK, had reverted an article without giving a reason. When I looked at the diff, it was not obvious vandalism, and from what I could tell, it didn't look like something that should have been reverted, especially as it was by a registered user. As I wanted to understand better the policy being user, I asked the user on their talk page if they would be willing to explain. As I was waiting for a reply, I continued through the change log, and noticed many other reverts by the same person, all with no reasons given. A lot of these reverts were things such as reverting formatting improvements, and I started to get quite shocked how out of control it appeared to be. When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version where the discussion was still there. It is here below:- http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165#Ar… I am quite concerned about this, as putting myself in the shoes of the people who are having their work reverted, I can imagine it is enough to put anyone off wanting to revisit Wikipedia, or continue providing any useful input. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here? Many thanks, Ed Broadley

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP
by Catherine Munro 26 Nov '04

26 Nov '04

> Robin Shannon <robin.shannon(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to > > contribute but > > dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else? > > > > [[User:The bellman]] > > rjs I'd be willing to learn PHP too; it has just seemed very daunting to take on by myself. A small group that can work together to learn the ropes (and not take up too much of the developers' precious time with repeating the same answers for a dozen different individual students) would be a great thing. BTW, I ran across an article about analyzing the development of large-scale PHP projects, which might help for something like MediaWiki that's been developed in so many small pieces. A Development Infrastructure for PHP (by Tony Marston) is here: http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/infrastructure.html It's a little over my head, I've only been skimming it to get some ideas on what I'm getting into, but it looks like it *might* be of use to our heroic development team. Anyway, count me in. Catherine [[User:CatherineMunro]]

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Could we swap list names please ?
by Anthere 25 Nov '04

25 Nov '04

Could the whole discussion on Erik issues over Mother Teresa MOVE to the english list where it is relevant WHILE The whole discussion on watch list issues move from the english list to the general list, where it is relevant OR could we just swap mailing list names since discussions relevant on english matter are on the general list, while discussions relevant to the whole community are on the english list ? __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP
by KNOTT, T 25 Nov '04

25 Nov '04

I'm up for it - though when I say I know nothing - I really do mean I know absolutely nothing. ~~~~ -----Original Message----- From: Robin Shannon [mailto:robin.shannon@gmail.com] Sent: 25 November 2004 02:50 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to contribute but dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else? [[User:The bellman]] rjs On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:13:36 -0500 (EST), Shaun MacPherson <shaun_macpherson2001(a)yahoo.ca> wrote: > --- Tim Starling <t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> > wrote: > > > > Matt R wrote: > > > --- Tim Starling wrote: > > > > > > > > >>Unfortunately it seems most programmers on > > Wikipedia would rather think > > >>of excuses, complain about the lack of progress > > and file bug reports. > > > > > > > > > There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to > > suppose that if you identify a > > > problem that you can fix, then you have an > > obligation to fix it. Even if you > > > have the capability, there is no moral imperative > > for volunteers to do anything > > > at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is > > already a positive > > > contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of > > course, to grumble or whine > > > about a problem that you've identified is > > churlish, as you have no right to > > > expect that others fix things on your behalf. > > > > > > But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the > > developers. I would quite > > > like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but > > right now I prefer to spend my > > > time contributing to the content of articles -- > > this is not an *excuse*; this > > > is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such > > implication. > > > > I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to > > impress on everyone that > > Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever > > wondering why some > > feature hasn't been written yet, it's because > > there's been no-one around > > to write it. Most of the active developers seem to > > be more interested > > writing features for a general audience than for > > Wikimedia projects. > > There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia > > than there are > > developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help, > > and that's fine. I > > get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there > > anyone? Every second > > Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We > > just need, say, two > > or three developers willing to put in a few hours > > per week. > > > > -- Tim Starling > > I currently have some time on my hands and I'd love to > be able to learn how to contribute. What do you need > exactly, only people who know PHP? > > I little about PHP but I would be willing to learn > from scratch :). Hopefully there are other people who > want to learn, we can form a little group and go > though a few tutorials. This way people who know PHP > could help multiple people at once learn saving time. > How long would you guess it take before a person would > learn enough PHP to be useful on MediaWiki? > > ShaunMacPherson > > ______________________________________________________________________ > Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > -- hit me: robin.shannon.id.au jab me: saudade(a)jabber.zim.net.au This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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WikiEN-l November 2004