Wikipedia-l July 2003

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

71 participants
114 discussions

Article about Wikipedia published on major Israeli newspaper
by Rotem Dan 24 Jul '03

24 Jul '03

I am glad to announce that Ynet, the online version of "Yediot Aharonot" , which is one of the two most read newspapers in Israel, has published an article about Wikipedia and its new Hebrew counterpart. A couple of days ago, I was contacted by Gal Mor, one of the journalists on Ynet's "Computers and technolgy" column, for a short interview (mostly by e-mail and phone). I hope I gave a good impression of the project, and I'm quite satisfied with the the resulting article. I was actually quite surprised of the length and the amount of research and detail given for it. :-) For those of you that are able to read a bit of Hebrew, the news article can be found here: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/1,7340,L-2703158,00.html Regards, Rotem Dan P.S: Hebrew wikiepdia's userbase jumped from 30 to 52 today. Article count is currently at 115. I guess that's a good sign ;-)

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New stuff on test.wiki
by Daniel Mayer 23 Jul '03

23 Jul '03

Erik wrote: >... >"Post a comment" is really only part >of a larger puzzle. "Edit section" is >part of the same puzzle and also makes >discussions a lot easier. However, >that's primarily intended for articles; >what we really need is a "Reply" function >to complement the "Post a comment" >function. This is tricky to implement, >because you need to auto-render the reply >links somehow (my idea is to use the sigs >as markers, but these are sometimes also u >sed in a non-comment context). At that >point we can also auto-sign comments that >are entered using either feature, so we >won't have to teach newbies the meaning of >the four tildes anymore. This, however, will >only be possible if we retain the "Post a >comment" functionality, because that is one of >the two ways to participate in a discussion >-- reply in an existing thread or start a >new one. >.... Interesting idea - let's see how this works. :) We don't allow ads in articles and are pretty good at enforcing this policy even though it is /very/ easy to post add links in articles. So just because the technical limitations regarding editing a really long page are taken away doesn't necessarily mean that really long articles and talk pages will be more common. We just need to establish a cultural norm that articles and talk pages should not be larger than 30KB. There are very valid reasons to have such a "policy" that do not touch on the technical limitations. The most important of which is that we are an encyclopedia and having articles of that length are exhausting to read through and difficult to add information to. In short, we need to encourage people to summarize article topics and create daughter articles that expand on particular points. Our Germany article on en.wiki does this well; [[Germany]] is a broad overview of all major aspects of Germany. In that article is a short very broad overview of German history and a link to [[History of Germany]]. That article is fully devoted to a broad overview of German history. And each of the sections of that article have links to individual articles that expand on the topic of that section (not to mention the regular wiki links to individual topics). This allows the reader to get a good idea of the various topics without forcing them to read too much about topics they are not interested in. This allows the contributor to quickly skip past the overviews and get to a particular article that is only about one part of German history so that they can add to it (very large articles are rarely so well organized that sections could play the same role - but TOCs should help that situation a bit...). >... >Discussions should not be endless, but they >should also not be cut short by an immediate >call to the polling box. That's just >frustrating for everyone involved and will >not produce good results, because we need >to listen to each other before we can really >make a decision based on more than just gut >feelings. >... I agree. We furthermore need an established process to decide when to vote and how to set up votes. Right now the decision to have a vote is rather arbitrary and the votes are very often /horribly/ set-up (the count reform vote is a notable exception) and the results very confused and open to drastically different interpretations (like the date format vote). IMO voting is next to the last thing we should try to resolve issues (the last being reliance on our benevolent dictator to make a decree - Hi Jimbo!). We should bend over backwards to reach a consensus first. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikis and uniformity
by b schewek 23 Jul '03

23 Jul '03

Von: Karl Eichwalder > [...] > Perhaps. Nevertheless, I'd like to give it a try; I'm seriously > interested in a Wiki using the TEI DTD as its markup language. > Unfortunately, my resources (time, knowlegde in hacking) are too > limited to such a project come true on my own. > Maybe the 'textbook' would be interested? They were/are discussing the 'print' business. -- Schewek -- ______________________________________________ http://www.linuxmail.org/ Now with e-mail forwarding for only US$5.95/yr Powered by Outblaze

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Proposal for new default skin
by tarquin 23 Jul '03

23 Jul '03

I am working on a new default skin. Here is the current rough version: http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/0/00/Paddington-2.html comment on it here: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddington_skin I won't have time to do much work on this for another few weeks -- but if people put comments in now it would be a great help. Please could ambassadors mention this on their wikipedias, so we can get feedback from all the different languages. -- tarquin

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New stuff on test.wiki
by erik_moeller＠gmx.de 23 Jul '03

23 Jul '03

The test.wiki at http://test.wikipedia.org has now a bunch of improvements/changes: 1) The default skin has been somewhat modified. I made the borders thinner, and added a box around the footer to separate it from the article contents. The font size of navigational links is also somewhat smaller, and the background color for non-article pages (special pages) has been changed to a light metallic blue. 2) You now get a "Post a comment" link on discussion pages. This takes you to an empty edit screen with a subject line. The subject line is used as an edit summary and is added as a ==headline== on top of the edit. The edit is appended to the current page. 3) There's now a cool way to edit sections: Instead of having ugly [edit] links next to each one, you can enable a user preference whereby you can edit sections by right-clicking on them. This only works in Mozilla and IE to my knowledge. 4) The Table of Contents can now be suppressed by adding the text "__NOTOC__" anywhere on a page. Note also that Brion and I wrote a JavaScript that allows you to dynamically show/hide the TOC on the page. The TOC itself has been slightly changed, with smaller font and a centered headline. Please report any bugs or objections, otherwise the current version of the code on test.wiki will replace the live version running all wikis soon. Regards, Erik

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Re: Arbitrary changes (was: New stuff on test.wiki)
by sgilbert＠nbnet.nb.ca 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

Erik Moeller wrote: > I thought you'd say this. I'm personally quite sick of the obnoxious > yellow, though, so I'd like to hear some other feedback before doing so. It's probably best just to change it back. Arbitrary changes like that are going to cause unnecessary friction. I may prefer purple as the background colour, but because I'm not a developer, I can't do anything about it. > We can also experiment with other colors. Maybe, but I doubt that everyone is going to pick the same colour. :) > Perhaps it should be a user > preference (then again, perhaps we should just support user-defined > stylesheets ..). That's the best course of action. - Stephen G. ------- Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia http://www.wikipedia.org

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Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout!
by Erik Zachte 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

Richard, Point taken, font type can be set through MSIE options. Fair enough. I also admit the option is not so hard to find. We might even provide a hint, e.g. a link on the preferences panel to [[non wiki options: hints for popular browsers]]. Still this is only one aspect of the readability issue. In MSIE I can also change text size from medium to small, but again this affects all text for all sites. Medium works fine for me on most sites, but if I would visit no other sites than Wp I would choose small (I don't do it since changing this option after every url change is just too awkward). My problem mainly centers on HEADERS. In a huge article, where h2's are widely spaced apart I do not mind the size that much. Yet very many articles have three, four or even five h2 headers in an article that has scarcely more than a screen full of content. Three h2 headers placed after each other use 141 pixels of screen height (MSIE, medium text). Often the problem is worse because people add extra linebreaks around headers. 141 is more than a fifth of my *effective* view window even on 1152x864 screen (see below). If people would use h3 or h4 to cut a six lines article in three parts, that would lessen the problem, yet they often don't and shouldn't have to. So my idea was make things like header size (and e.g. rendering h4 normal+italic in stead of bold) user configurable without server overhead (javascript, cookie). It will work for most visitors. Another option is to make the skin creation process more wiki like. Why can't we devise a personal stylesheet and upload this without lots of discussion and without reworking the preferences page to allow for a fourth choice. It will still be necessary to provide decent defaults, but regular users can pick any skin they like (we might sort the list by numbers of wikipedians that use it, something like Mozilla skin download sites do, the best skins will survive and be further optimized). Then after a while the most popular skin becomes the new default. Appendix: Screen height = 864 - MSIE title bar, MSIE menu bar, MSIE favourites bar, GOOGLE bar, MSIE bar, XP taskbar (double height). I know I could get more viewing space by forsaking some of these features, I can even switch to full screen mode, but that is not generally known and not very handy when surfing. I see a lot of people who do have a lot less actual view area: (1024*768 screen or less, they forget to maximize the window (wel those should blame themselves), have large icons hence higher navigation bars, have the address bar placed under the links bar, loose a quarter of the screen to a browser dside bar, etc). So I consider my viewing space average at least. I am not taking other browsers into account. I know some are more flexible, yet emerging rivals for MSIE at best. Regards, Erik Zachte |-----Original Message----- |From: wikipedia-l-admin(a)wikipedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l- |admin(a)wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of wikipedia-l-request(a)wikipedia.org |Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 14:00 |To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |Subject: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #1242 - 8 msgs | |Send Wikipedia-l mailing list submissions to | wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org | |To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit | http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l |or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to | wikipedia-l-request(a)wikipedia.org | |You can reach the person managing the list at | wikipedia-l-admin(a)wikipedia.org | |When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific |than "Re: Contents of Wikipedia-l digest..." | | |Today's Topics: | | 1. Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz) | 2. NPR has run a story on Wikis and Wikipedia ; great promo link for |Wikis and Wikipedia (Daniel Mayer) | 3. Re: Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Erik Moeller) | 4. Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! (Richard Grevers) (Erik |Zachte) | 5. Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Andre Engels) | 6. Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Andre Engels) | 7. Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Erik Moeller) | 8. Re: Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! (Richard Grevers) |(Richard Grevers) | |--__--__-- | |Message: 1 |Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 07:02:32 +0200 |From: "Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" <kpj(a)gower.pl> |To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki |Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org | |On 21-07-2003, Anthere wrote thusly : |> |> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: |> > Daniel- |> > > Please change that back. |> > |> > I thought you'd say this. I'm personally quite sick |> > of the obnoxious |> > yellow, though, so I'd like to hear some other |> > feedback before doing so. |> > We can also experiment with other colors. Perhaps it |> > should be a user |> > preference (then again, perhaps we should just |> > support user-defined |> > stylesheets ..). |> |> |> Feed back |> |> I like the new blue color. |I don't like the new blue colour. |> |> I don't like either the strong yellow of talk pages, |> so I would not mind it being changed. However, I think |> it important that colors distinguish between talk page |> and article page. A much lighter yellow would be fine. |> Or a light green perhaps. I shall not push for pink :-) |I've got used to this shade of yellow but I wouldn't object |to a change for a lighter one. | |Regards, |Kpjas. | |--__--__-- | |Message: 2 |From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> |To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:53:12 -0700 |Subject: [Wikipedia-l] NPR has run a story on Wikis and Wikipedia ; great |promo link for Wikis and Wikipedia |Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org | |National Public Radio in the United States has run a story on how Wikis are |being used on the Internet and within corporations to collaboratively |create |documents. There is a very prominent mention of Wikipedia in this story (in |fact about half the segment is about Wikipedia). | |Please email this link to your boss and co-workers! | |http://discover.npr.org/rundowns/segment.jhtml?wfId=1344426 | |-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) | |--__--__-- | |Message: 3 |Date: 22 Jul 2003 08:58:00 +0200 |From: erik_moeller(a)gmx.de (Erik Moeller) |To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New stuff on test.wiki |Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org | |Timwi- | |> I have the feeling your changes are only gradually taking effect on |> test.wikipedia.org. | |As I said, the software does not consider changes to the stylesheet |relevant enough to tag its cached pages as expired, so you'll have to log |in to see these changes immediately (only anons get static pages). | |> I'm not seeing this change, so I'll look back at it tomorrow, but I |> don't think this will convince me. | |Sorry, but you're simply a minority. There's only so much that can be |reasonably done to meet your concerns. Putting annoying fat borders on |every page is IMHO not an option. | |> Well, actually the previous heading appeared bolder to me than the |> current one does. However, this is due to the particular font I've set |> in my browser (Verdana) and its habit of suddenly getting quite a bit |> fatter from one point size to the next. I understand most people use |> Times New Roman instead. However, if it doesn't upset too many people, |> if you could change it just slightly from 125% to 130%? | |OK. | |> Yeah, sorry. At the time I still had the yellow backgrounds. I see the |> new colour now, and to be honest, it's too light for me to distinguish |> directly from the pure white of real articles (I'm on an LCD). | |I think that's great -- the colors should only give a weak indication that |you're on a different page type, not dominate the entire layout as the |yellow does. Wiki can be operated reasonably well without that |information. | |> What about the simple grey meta uses? But then again, it'd be |> indistinguishable from meta. | |I don't think every Wiki needs its own color set. | |Regards, | |Erik | |--__--__-- | |Message: 4 |From: "Erik Zachte" <e.p.zachte(a)chello.nl> |To: <wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org> |Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 11:34:37 +0200 |Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! |(Richard Grevers) |Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org | |> Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button |> on the first panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on |> Web pages and documents which do not have a specified text font" |> - it's generic as can be. And I have 13pt Trebuchet |> selected in every browser. | |So instead of waiting till 96% of all users change browser brand, you |want these poor people to find and change a default browser setting that |affects all web pages just for the sake of correcting Wikipedia design |decisions. | |Maybe we can discard all Wikipedias except the English one, if a user |really wants to read stuff in another language he can use Bable Fish. My |point: you'll have to design for the actual world, not the world as you |would like it be. | |Erik Zachte. | | |--__--__-- | |Message: 5 |Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:27:06 +0200 (CEST) |From: Andre Engels <engels(a)uni-koblenz.de> |To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki |Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org | |On 21 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote: | |> 1) The default skin has been somewhat modified. I made the borders |> thinner, and added a box around the footer to separate it from the |article |> contents. | |I like this one. | |> The font size of navigational links is also somewhat smaller, |> and the background color for non-article pages (special pages) has been |> changed to a light metallic blue. | |I do agree the yellow is not very good, but I don't like this one either. | |> 2) You now get a "Post a comment" link on discussion pages. This takes |you |> to an empty edit screen with a subject line. The subject line is used as |> an edit summary and is added as a ==headline== on top of the edit. The |> edit is appended to the current page. | |Not sure whether I like this one. | |> 3) There's now a cool way to edit sections: Instead of having ugly [edit] |> links next to each one, you can enable a user preference whereby you can |> edit sections by right-clicking on them. This only works in Mozilla and |IE |> to my knowledge. | |Worked with Netscape 6 under Unix/Xwindows as well, but strangely not the |first time I tried (I got a database error). Bug could not be replicated. | |> 4) The Table of Contents can now be suppressed by adding the text |> "__NOTOC__" anywhere on a page. Note also that Brion and I wrote a |> JavaScript that allows you to dynamically show/hide the TOC on the page. |> The TOC itself has been slightly changed, with smaller font and a |centered |> headline. |> |> Please report any bugs or objections, otherwise the current version of |the |> code on test.wiki will replace the live version running all wikis soon. | |Those lines below the section headers are really ugly. Please get rid of |them |before you even think of putting these on the sites. | |I do agree with previous posters that the smaller article title is not |an improvement. | | |Andre Engels | | |--__--__-- | |Message: 6 |Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:34:44 +0200 (CEST) |From: Andre Engels <engels(a)uni-koblenz.de> |To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki |Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org | |On 22 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote: | |> > 2. The size of the article titles was fine as it was, |> |> Several people complained about it, and I agree with them. Headlines are |> not supposed to dominate the entire page, they are supposed to give the |> viewer a quick overview of the different sections. The important thing is |> not to use the same font size/style for totally different things. | |The title is not supposed to give a quick overview of a the different |sections, it is supposed to give a quick overview of the whole page. | |> > 3. There seem to be faint horizontal rules below the headings. |> |> Wikipedia allows users to insert other types of large font text into |pages |> besides headings, such as <font..> formatted text, CSS formatted text |etc. |> These lines help to distinguish between the two, which is important for |> seeing why certain lines don't show up in the TOC, for knowing which |> sections can be edited with the new right click feature etc. Of all the |> ways to separate headlines from other large font text I've tried, I like |> this one the best. Feel free to make alternative suggestions. | |Options: |1. Don't bother about this. |2. Disallow the other ways of getting this, or change them so they don't | get the same thing. |3. Tell users who are bothered by this to switch on section numbering. | |I don't want Wikipedia to look ugly just so some option that I don't know |yet whether I will use it at all and certainly did not miss when it did |not exist works better. | |Andre Engels | | |--__--__-- | |Message: 7 |Date: 22 Jul 2003 12:42:00 +0200 |From: erik_moeller(a)gmx.de (Erik Moeller) |To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki |Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org | |Andre- |> I don't want Wikipedia to look ugly | |I disagree that it's ugly. | |Regards, | |Erik | |--__--__-- | |Message: 8 |Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 23:33:50 +1200 |To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! |(Richard Grevers) |From: Richard Grevers <lists(a)dramatic.co.nz> |Organization: Dramatic Design |Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org | |On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 11:34:37 +0200, Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte(a)chello.nl> gave |utterance to the following: | |>> Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button |>> on the first panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on |>> Web pages and documents which do not have a specified text font" |>> - it's generic as can be. And I have 13pt Trebuchet |>> selected in every browser. |> |> So instead of waiting till 96% of all users change browser brand, you |> want these poor people to find and change a default browser setting that |> affects all web pages just for the sake of correcting Wikipedia design |> decisions. | |You are so totally not getting this. The default browser setting will not |affect "every web page" - it will only affect web pages which do not |specify fonts and sizes, i.e. pages designed with accessibility as a |priority. The best design decision is to make no design decision regarding |font family and size - virtually every significant design website and forum |pushes this line. For every user there is an optimal text presentation that |they find easy to read, and only the user knows what that is - the designer |can't guess it. And there is no question of this being an adjustment "for |wikipedia only" - why should the user's optimal font for reading wikipedia |be any different from their optimal font for reading anything else on the |web? | |And as for this 96% IE figure, that's higher than any stat I've seen, even |for Win/Mac only. |Most stats seem to have IE6 at around 45%, IE5.5 28% and IE5 14%, and it |actually appears that IE's market share has topped out and is slowly |starting to erode. |> |> Maybe we can discard all Wikipedias except the English one, if a user |> really wants to read stuff in another language he can use Bable Fish. My |> point: you'll have to design for the actual world, not the world as you |> would like it be. |> |> Erik Zachte. |> |You were the one who posted "What about giving the reader more control over |things like font type and size?" |I simply pointed out that the mechanism for this already exists and is |supported by every visual browser since Mosaic. And it's exactly what |Wikipedia's default skin does, whereas Cologne Blue inflicts an (In my |opinion, which is pretty well supported among typographers) inferior font |at too small a size. | |-- |Richard Grevers | | | | | | |--__--__-- | |_______________________________________________ |Wikipedia-l mailing list |Wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l | | |End of Wikipedia-l Digest

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Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! (Richard Grevers)
by Erik Zachte 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

> Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button > on the first panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on > Web pages and documents which do not have a specified text font" > - it's generic as can be. And I have 13pt Trebuchet > selected in every browser. So instead of waiting till 96% of all users change browser brand, you want these poor people to find and change a default browser setting that affects all web pages just for the sake of correcting Wikipedia design decisions. Maybe we can discard all Wikipedias except the English one, if a user really wants to read stuff in another language he can use Bable Fish. My point: you'll have to design for the actual world, not the world as you would like it be. Erik Zachte.

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Vacation
by Jimmy Wales 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

I'm off for a few days. Brion is empowered to do whatever is necessary in case of an emergency to restore the peace, following of course our usual principles. Jason's generally available for techincal crises requiring physical intervention, and also Jason has my cellphone number, which will surely work at least some of the time. :-) --Jimbo

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NPR has run a story on Wikis and Wikipedia ; great promo link for Wikis and Wikipedia
by Daniel Mayer 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

National Public Radio in the United States has run a story on how Wikis are being used on the Internet and within corporations to collaboratively create documents. There is a very prominent mention of Wikipedia in this story (in fact about half the segment is about Wikipedia). Please email this link to your boss and co-workers! http://discover.npr.org/rundowns/segment.jhtml?wfId=1344426 -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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Wikipedia-l July 2003