That's 5pm PST, 8pm EST, 1am GMT, 2am CET
Not long, but thought I'd give some slight warning for the
Wikipediholics among us... ;)
I'll be upgrading MySQL to support InnoDB tables which have row-level
locking which should help with the lag problem (actual conversion of the
tables will be done later, after I've double-checked it on
test.wikipedia.org).
Should only be down for a couple minutes.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
http://test.wikipedia.org/ contains math extension to Wikipedia.
It is possible to write math markup with <math></math>
and it will be converted to nice PNG. Markup is more or less LaTeX+AMS.
Please test it.
Some error reporting has been added.
Oh, and for translators.
The following messages should be translated:
(preference page):
"Rendering math"
"Aways render PNG"
"Try HTML first, fallback to PNG if too complex"
"Leave it as TeX (for text browsers)"
What looks like:
=== Rendering math ===
(*) Aways render PNG
( ) Try HTML first, fallback to PNG if too complex
( ) Leave it as TeX (for text browsers)
(errors)
"Failed to parse"
"unknown error"
"unknown function "
"lexing error"
"syntax error"
What looks like:
Failed to parse (syntax error): ^_^
Failed to parse (unknown function \elephant): \elephant^2 = \mouse
Martin Harper writes:
> If I understand Julie correctly, historians tend to refrain from making
> moral judgements about history, particularly when the people of that
> period had a significantly different world view. So it's not OK to say
> that "women were treated unfairly", but it is OK to say that "women were
> not able to vote or own property" - the former being a statement of
> morality and the latter being one of historical fact. ..[snip to save
space]...
>
>
> The historical NPOV would seem (if I read Julie right) to be to ignore
> these later moral judgements as fundamentally ahistorical, anachronistic,
> and irrelevant.
I can't speak for all historians, but the way I understand it, most
historians see their job as to find the facts. Moral judgements, by
definition, are not confirmable facts. However, this is not to say that
moral judgements are irrelevant; a moral society cannot exist without making
such judgements. Without making such judgements societies can - and sadly,
do - fall into immoral situations such as Communism (which in practice is
totalitarian, even if not in theory), Facism, etc. Also, without making
informed and reflectiv moral judgemens societies societies can - and sadly,
do - descend into a malestrom of self-accusation, in which men sometimes
oppress and virtually enslave women; in which gentiles sometimes oppress or
kill Jews; in which heterosexuals sometimes oppress and kill homosexuals; in
which demnocracy is perverted into a violent dictatorship of the majority
(however slight) such as in many African nations today. The list of examples
goes on and on.
But how can anyone make any moral judgements at all without first having
strictly NPOV historical facts? (And also a large helping of common sense,
self-relfection, and the intellectual modesty to admit that other ways of
thinking about a situation must always be considered!) So I affirm the
strict historical NPOV that Julie suggest, and hold that this is how
Wikipedia should _start_ to deal with each historical issue. However, just
because we agree with this standard and start from this position, we don't
need to end here:
> My question is, is the wikipedian NPOV "wider" than the
> historical NPOV: should we include content that historians would
> judge inappropriate? If so, how can we include it so that the historical
> view is not damaged or confused by non-historical approaches?
I believe that Wikipedia articles should indeed contain material that
includes a definition of NPOV that is wider than the strictly historical
NPOV. Wo perhaps the solution is that we address and describe historical
issues first from the strictly narrow historical NPOV, and then add after
this description a few sentences that say "Today most people hold value
belief X about this situation, because of the following reasons."
Robert (RK)
Hi folks.
I'm curious about the relationship between historical NPOV and wikipedian
NPOV.
If I understand Julie correctly, historians tend to refrain from making
moral judgements about history, particularly when the people of that
period had a significantly different world view. So it's not OK to say
that "women were treated unfairly", but it is OK to say that "women were
not able to vote or own property" - the former being a statement of
morality and the latter being one of historical fact. Similarly,
historians explain things in terms of the temporal context, so the Rape of
the Sabines in Rome would be explained in terms of how the romans viewed
women, sex, marriage, and the necessity of making lots of little Romans
who would grow up to throw weird-shaped spears and feature in historical
novels.
However, certain periods in history have been reinterpreted by later
generations. The inquisition is a classic example, in that some neopagan
religions have used as a quasi-historical basis. Also, (IIRC) later
christian leaders have retrospectively apologised for the inquisition, so
clearly they were judging the morality of the period against modern
morality. The inquisition has been used as evidence for the claim that
christianity and/or organised religion is amoral. Finally, the term "witch
hunt" is an idiom for an irrational search for evil-doers that works
similarly to the way the Salem trials and the Inquisition are supposed (in
popular imagination) to have been conducted.
The historical NPOV would seem (if I read Julie right) to be to ignore
these later moral judgements as fundamentally ahistorical, anachronistic,
and irrelevant. My question is, is the wikipedian NPOV "wider" than the
historical NPOV: should we include content that historians would judge
inappropriate? If so, how can we include it so that the historical view is
not damaged or confused by non-historical approaches?
Martin Harper
What is the fear of Jimbo's proposed moderation experiment?
All he's saying is that wikiEN-l will be moderated for a little over 2 months, i.e., until March 1, 2003. At that point we will decide whether to unmoderate it, or to continue.
Anyone who wants to participate on a moderated English-language list, to discuss the English Wikipedia, is welcome. All others are still free to post to wikipedia-l which will remain unmoderated. Those who like their scum or slush or whatever unfiltered will still get plenty this way.
What could possibly be wrong with such an experiment?
Ed Poor
Can someone PLEASE ban clutch? The community has reached a consensus on the
"Jehovah's Witnesses: Controversial Issues" article, and Clutch has kept
unilaterally vandalizing it. Worse, today he he started a campaign of lying
about what the consensus is. Comments from others indicate that Clutch may
well, in fact, be a pathological liar.
The vandal is out of control, and *everyone* who has been commenting keeps
saying. Wiki Sysops, please stop shirking your responsibility, and stop
allowing vandals to ride rougshod over Wikipedia community consensus by
deleting articles. Whether you like it or not, the _fact_ is that your
silence effectively implies consent.
Robert
Folks,
I woke up this morning dreaming about Wikipedia. I think I'm devoting too much time and energy to the project.
I'm the 6th-most-frequent contributor. That's crazy. I don't need to do that much work. It's not like the project will fail without my constant daily attention.
So I'm going to follow Larry's advice and example. Better than that, I'm going to stay off the mailing lists *and* the encyclopedia for the rest of the month.
See you all next year!
Ed Poor
I wonder how feasible and desirable you consider presenting a
slightly different page to queries from user agents recognised
as search engine bots.
Google queries seem to return results like this;
International Phonetic Alphabet - Wikipedia
216.239.46.98 Log in | Help. International Phonetic Alphabet. From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia. The International Phonetic Alphabet ...
where they should return results like this;
International Phonetic Alphabet - Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The International Phonetic Alphabet
was originally developed by British and French phoneticians ...
--
jason(a)jasonandali.org.uk http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/
With Jimbo's blessings, Brion Vibber has now officially launched the
Wiktionary project:
http://wiktionary.wikipedia.org
Many thanks to him for setting this up!
Where "Wikipedia is not a dictionary", "Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia"
-- it focuses on brief definitions, etymology, usage notes etc.
Everyone who has, in the past, called for a wiki dictionary now has the
opportunity to become a pioneer for this new project! Help create the rules and
policies for the first (well, probably not) collaborative, multi-language
dictionary in the world. Start the first flamewar or be the first banned user!
;-) Most importantly, by creating a user account *now*, you will get one of the
low user ID numbers you will be able to impress your friends with or sell on
eBay years from now. It's like Slashdot, only spelled correctly!
Please spam^H^H^H^Hinform your friends and family where appropriate.
Regards,
Erik
--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr für 1 ct/ Min. surfen!
Can we do the following?
(A) Automatically send EVERY wikiEN-l post to the newsgroup
(B) Still filter the mailing list according to Jimbo's moderation plan?
Ed Poor