I have made the ANNOUNCE-L list stop advertising itself on http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo. Also, I have added wikitech-l and wikipedia-l as subscribers to the list.
To my knowledge (and from looking at the archives), this list has never been used, except to discuss whether or not it should be used for announcements. This being the case, I was getting tired of having to discard the spam messages that come in on it. I'm hoping that removing the list from those advertised on the listinfo pag, I will reduce the amount of junk that comes in on the list.
This list was originally meant as THE place for wikipedia announcements (software changes, policy changes, etc.). So, it only makes sense that all lists that might be interested in such information should be on the memberlist. Of course, none of this matters unless poeple start using it.
I'm happy either way.
Hello,
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AEmbassy is a good place to announce such things.
Regards Youssef
[...] Of course, none of this matters unless poeple start using it.
I?ll do so now. Could you annonce that the German Wikipedia has hit 13.000 articles tonight?
Is that a magic number or something? No offense, but please do not spam the lists with useless announcements.
Thanks,
Erik
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
[...] Of course, none of this matters unless
poeple start using it.
I?ll do so now. Could you annonce that the German Wikipedia has
hit 13.000 articles tonight?
Is that a magic number or something? No offense, but please do not spam the lists with useless announcements.
Thanks,
Erik
Greetings Erik,
You may not know for sure, but maybe the 13000 is a magic number for German speaking people, just as 100 000 was for the english. Maybe they had set a sort of a goal...
In any case, maybe an announcement for the new system of pages counting could be on the way ? We know little of it since you announced the result. Usually, after something is voted, it is enforced/applied. Unless there are some issues about the validity of the vote ?
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--- "Thomas R. Koll" tomk32@gmx.de wrote:
[...] Of course, none of this matters unless
poeple start using it.
I�ll do so now. Could you annonce that the German Wikipedia has hit 13.000 articles tonight?
Eh great ! good for you
We will soon be at 9000 on the fr
Hum, that leads me to the following points
1. Was the count system for pages changed ? If it was, when was it ? When it is changed, could it be announced on the "announced list" please ? It will also need to be made obvious on the stats pages
2. When are we going to have the counts of hits per page up again on the english wiki ? with the new server ? when is that new server expected ? could we have any time line here ?
3. Could it be possible that the "random page" be (per option) chosen with a size threashold ? This would be to avoid all these pages about dates and french little villages that keep on appearing on random pages :-). Editors would put the option without threashold for article-to-improve, and readers would have a threashold to remove stubs when just chasing interesting articles to *read* (this request reported from some french people)
4. Could we slightly improve the search box, maybe by having a drop down menu aside from it : search in encyclopedia by default as right now, search in personnal pages, search in meta pages...but have it at first level, not on a second page, after a first unfruitful search.
Some French people have replaced "comma" hunting, by "redirect" hunting, and it is making very tough (and very server demanding) to repeat two times the search when you don't remember how to get to the page about mispellings
5. About mispellings : French people are suffering a lot each time they see a mispelling; that's a biological issue I guess. Some started removing any redirection of common mispellings, upon the reason having these mispelled pages is somehow a way to give officiality (to recognise) to the mispelling. So, since others protest and undelete the redirections, some asked if it would be possible to somehow catch mispellings, redirect the mispelled title to the right-spelled page, *and* dynamically display a message at the top of the article saying "you asked for "fachisme", this word does not exist, and is probably a mispelling of "fascisme".
In short, google.
This is a reported suggestion
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On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 23:52, Anthere wrote:
- Was the count system for pages changed ? If it was,
when was it ? When it is changed, could it be announced on the "announced list" please ? It will also need to be made obvious on the stats pages
The official vote results were to count pages in article space that are: * not completely empty (size greater than 0 bytes) * contain at least one link (search for "[[" should do)
Unless someone else snuck it in and forgot to tell me, the change has not yet been put in effect, as I'm a lazy, grumpy bastard and way way too busy of late. :)
- When are we going to have the counts of hits per
page up again on the english wiki ? with the new server ?
Maybe. I'm not terribly interested in the counts, so it's a very low priority for me. If performance picks way up (or someone else contributes a more server-friendly count method), it'll go back in.
when is that new server expected ? could we have any time line here ?
I know nothing... Jason? Jimbo? While I'm asking, Jimbo, how's that foundation coming along? :)
- Could it be possible that the "random page" be (per
option) chosen with a size threashold ? This would be to avoid all these pages about dates and french little villages that keep on appearing on random pages :-).
Hehe... Traditionally people asked for that to keep out the city pages on the English wiki, which wouldn't help at all since those pages are at or _above_ the median article size...
Editors would put the option without threashold for article-to-improve, and readers would have a threashold to remove stubs when just chasing interesting articles to *read* (this request reported from some french people)
Hmm, maybe. Personally I may find short articles more fun to read than 20-page dense monstrosities on n-dimensional topology. My personal opinion is simply that if you don't like what the random selection turns up, you should keep pushing the button! It isn't clear to me that fudging the selection in one direction or another is a better default.
- Could we slightly improve the search box, maybe by
having a drop down menu aside from it : search in encyclopedia by default as right now, search in personnal pages, search in meta pages...but have it at first level, not on a second page, after a first unfruitful search.
Yes, that would be lovely.
So, since others protest and undelete the redirections, some asked if it would be possible to somehow catch mispellings, redirect the mispelled title to the right-spelled page, *and* dynamically display a message at the top of the article saying "you asked for "fachisme", this word does not exist, and is probably a mispelling of "fascisme".
It has in the past been suggested to have a special type of redirect for misspellings. These could have a "you're an illiterate idiot, from now on please type 'X'" message display when visited or searched, but be hidden from lists like the Allpages list or general search results.
Would that be a help?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
So, since others protest and undelete the redirections, some asked if it would be possible to somehow catch mispellings, redirect the mispelled title to the right-spelled page, *and* dynamically display a message at the top of the article saying "you asked for "fachisme", this word does not exist, and is probably a mispelling of "fascisme".
It has in the past been suggested to have a special type of redirect for misspellings. These could have a "you're an illiterate idiot, from now on please type 'X'" message display when visited or searched, but be hidden from lists like the Allpages list or general search results.
I've never favoured automatic redirects for misspellings. A lot of them are really typos that can come from just hitting the key on the keyboard that's beside the one that you want. With common misspellings the sort of thing that Brion (oops I just had to go back and correct this from Brian) suggests has a lot of merit. A simple redirect presumes what a person wants, and the worst offenders will probably not even realize that they have been redirected.
Ec
Brion Vibber wrote:
It has in the past been suggested to have a special type of redirect for misspellings. These could have a "you're an illiterate idiot, from now on please type 'X'" message display when visited or searched, but be hidden from lists like the Allpages list or general search results.
Would that be a help?
yup :-) #MISSPELLING [[Napoleon]] for "Napolean", say
I also suggested non-English wikipedias might find it easier to have a synonym of the keyword #REDIRECT in their own language -- so on fr:, #REDIRECT or ... #{whatever} would work
tarquin wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
It has in the past been suggested to have a special type of redirect for misspellings. These could have a "you're an illiterate idiot, from now on please type 'X'" message display when visited or searched, but be hidden from lists like the Allpages list or general search results.
Would that be a help?
yup :-) #MISSPELLING [[Napoleon]] for "Napolean", say
I also suggested non-English wikipedias might find it easier to have a synonym of the keyword #REDIRECT in their own language -- so on fr:, #REDIRECT or ... #{whatever} would work
What about those situations where "napolean" is correct? I would find it quite acceptable as an adjective in some circumstances. The glossary on the website for the Farrier & Hoofcare Resource Center refers to a "napolean shoe" as a "backwards shoe".
Eclecticology
On Sun, 2003-03-30 at 11:54, Ray Saintonge wrote:
tarquin wrote:
#MISSPELLING [[Napoleon]] for "Napolean", say
What about those situations where "napolean" is correct? I would find it quite acceptable as an adjective in some circumstances. The glossary on the website for the Farrier & Hoofcare Resource Center refers to a "napolean shoe" as a "backwards shoe".
Well that wouldn't be used as a redirect to [[Napoleon]], would it?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
--- tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
It has in the past been suggested to have a special
type of redirect for
misspellings. These could have a "you're an
illiterate idiot, from now
on please type 'X'" message display when visited or
searched, but be
hidden from lists like the Allpages list or general
search results.
Would that be a help?
yup :-) #MISSPELLING [[Napoleon]] for "Napolean", say
I also suggested non-English wikipedias might find it easier to have a synonym of the keyword #REDIRECT in their own language -- so on fr:, #REDIRECT or ... #{whatever} would work
Good idea Tarquin
Also, just a personnal suggestion...could [[user:xxx]] work on any pedia (as well as the local word) ?
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Tarquin wrote:
Brion VIBBER wrote:
It has in the past been suggested to have a special type of redirect for misspellings. These could have a "you're an illiterate idiot, from now on please type 'X'" message display when visited or searched, but be hidden from lists like the Allpages list or general search results. Would that be a help?
yup :-) #MISSPELLING [[Napoleon]] for "Napolean", say
It's been suggested at least twice before. I said #DEPRECATED (because it could be for more than misspellings -- old CamelCase, for example, or anything else that unneede for searches). Somebody else said something else a while earlier than that.
I also suggested non-English wikipedias might find it easier to have a synonym of the keyword #REDIRECT in their own language -- so on fr:, #REDIRECT or ... #{whatever} would work
This is a good idea too.
-- Toby
At 12:51 AM 3/30/03 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 23:52, Anthere wrote:
- Could it be possible that the "random page" be (per
option) chosen with a size threashold ? This would be to avoid all these pages about dates and french little villages that keep on appearing on random pages :-).
Hehe... Traditionally people asked for that to keep out the city pages on the English wiki, which wouldn't help at all since those pages are at or _above_ the median article size...
While on the subject of the "random page" link, why is it that the page it takes me to is apparently not very random? Sometimes when I've got nothing specific to do I'll just start clicking random page repeatedly searching for an interesting article to tinker with, and I find that I start visiting the same small set of pages over and over again. Also, it seems that an unusually large number of these random pages are ones which have been just recently edited, though I haven't done a rigorous count of this. Is there some sort of non-random algorithm being used?
On Sun, 30 Mar 2003, Bryan Derksen wrote:
At 12:51 AM 3/30/03 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 23:52, Anthere wrote:
- Could it be possible that the "random page" be (per
option) chosen with a size threashold ? This would be to avoid all these pages about dates and french little villages that keep on appearing on random pages :-).
Hehe... Traditionally people asked for that to keep out the city pages on the English wiki, which wouldn't help at all since those pages are at or _above_ the median article size...
While on the subject of the "random page" link, why is it that the page it takes me to is apparently not very random? Sometimes when I've got nothing specific to do I'll just start clicking random page repeatedly searching for an interesting article to tinker with, and I find that I start visiting the same small set of pages over and over again. Also, it seems that an unusually large number of these random pages are ones which have been just recently edited, though I haven't done a rigorous count of this. Is there some sort of non-random algorithm being used?
If I remember correctly, there are 1000 pages being selected once a day or so, which are then cycled through. So once you get a significant portion of this 1000 pages, you would indeed often be getting the same pages again.
The second thing is similar - if you see something on random page, it is like others have seen it in the same way as well. Pages that are on random page are thus more visited, and therefore more edited, in the last day.
Andre Engels
On Mon, 2003-03-31 at 02:07, Andre Engels wrote:
If I remember correctly, there are 1000 pages being selected once a day or so, which are then cycled through. So once you get a significant portion of this 1000 pages, you would indeed often be getting the same pages again.
No, that's not correct. Random selection is made from the set of all articles. Each page is assigned a random number. The set of pages is sorted by the random number, and a random index into this set is selected. The selected page's random number is then reassigned to a new random number so it should not be reselected even if the same random index came up on a subsequent random load.
If that's not random enough, it may be due to an allegedly defective RAND() function in MySQL 3.x.
At one time, random selection was made by picking 1000 articles at random, then picking random indexes from that queue for the next X number of random selections (a 1 in 800 chance of resetting the queue on each random load). This was abandoned because the queue system was problematic (high probability of duplicates; too-slow queue refill operation; would sometimes bring up deleted pages; on smaller wikis it didn't update, etc).
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
--- Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 23:52, Anthere wrote:
- Was the count system for pages changed ? If it
was,
when was it ? When it is changed, could it be announced on the "announced list" please ? It will also need to be made obvious on the stats pages
The official vote results were to count pages in article space that are:
- not completely empty (size greater than 0 bytes)
- contain at least one link (search for "[[" should
do)
Unless someone else snuck it in and forgot to tell me, the change has not yet been put in effect, as I'm a lazy, grumpy bastard and way way too busy of late. :)
You are nothing like a lazy grumpy bastard Brion ! Just don't forget to tell us just before (so the interested ones will be able to see the difference :-))
- When are we going to have the counts of hits
per
page up again on the english wiki ? with the new server ?
Maybe. I'm not terribly interested in the counts, so it's a very low priority for me. If performance picks way up (or someone else contributes a more server-friendly count method), it'll go back in.
I'm interested. So, i'll come back back when performance issues are solved
when is that new server expected ? could we have any time line here ?
I know nothing... Jason? Jimbo? While I'm asking, Jimbo, how's that foundation coming along? :)
- Could it be possible that the "random page" be
(per
option) chosen with a size threashold ? This would
be
to avoid all these pages about dates and french
little
villages that keep on appearing on random pages
:-).
Hehe... Traditionally people asked for that to keep out the city pages on the English wiki, which wouldn't help at all since those pages are at or _above_ the median article size...
Sigh. Yes. Well...most of these are under the median article I guess. If above, they provide information at least. The best option would be to set categories, and to shuffle through the categories we like of course When I was a kid, I always picked up the same couple of books from my parents 20 tomes encyclopedia...
But...well...would it be feasible...?
Editors would put the option without threashold
for
article-to-improve, and readers would have a threashold to remove stubs when just chasing interesting articles to *read* (this request reported from some french people)
Hmm, maybe. Personally I may find short articles more fun to read than 20-page dense monstrosities on n-dimensional topology. My personal opinion is simply that if you don't like what the random selection turns up, you should keep pushing the button! It isn't clear to me that fudging the selection in one direction or another is a better default.
hum...quite true. Unless pushing the button takes 30 seconds each time :-( But, here, you hold the position of an editor; not of a reader.
- Could we slightly improve the search box, maybe
by
having a drop down menu aside from it : search in encyclopedia by default as right now, search in personnal pages, search in meta pages...but have
it at
first level, not on a second page, after a first unfruitful search.
Yes, that would be lovely.
yes, yes, yes !
Say...this could improve performance issues, no ?...so...could it be planned if nobody disagrees ?
Does someone disagree ? Which categories would we define ?
So, since others protest and undelete the redirections, some asked if it would be possible
to
somehow catch mispellings, redirect the mispelled title to the right-spelled page, *and* dynamically display a message at the top of the article saying "you asked for "fachisme", this word does not
exist,
and is probably a mispelling of "fascisme".
It has in the past been suggested to have a special type of redirect for misspellings. These could have a "you're an illiterate idiot, from now on please type 'X'" message display when visited or searched, but be hidden from lists like the Allpages list or general search results.
Would that be a help?
That's what some people ask for... I'll report... Question : even if hidden, would it be known by google ?
given the number of times I mispell neartic instead of nearctic (who had the weirdest idea to put a c here), I could be convinced I am an illiterate idiot...:-(
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Le Dimanche 30 Mars 2003 23:21, Anthere a écrit :
- Could we slightly improve the search box, maybe
by having a drop down menu aside from it : search in encyclopedia by default as right now, search in personnal pages, search in meta pages...but have
it at first level, not on a second page, after a first unfruitful search.
Say...this could improve performance issues, no ?...so...could it be planned if nobody disagrees ?
Does someone disagree ? Which categories would we define ?
I think this is a high priority. The categories now proposed for a second search are fine (Talk, User, User Talk, Wikipedia, Wikipedia Talk, Image, Image Talk, Redirect). And a selection Search title / Search content, with "Search title" as default. I think this last would most reduce charge on the server.
Yann
On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 11:05:20 +0200, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
I think this is a high priority. The categories now proposed for a second search are fine (Talk, User, User Talk, Wikipedia, Wikipedia Talk, Image, Image Talk, Redirect). And a selection Search title / Search content, with "Search title" as default. I think this last would most reduce charge on the server.
Having a "Go" button as well as a search one on every page (not just the index page) would also reduce server load. If I want to get to a specific article I end up either searching (wasting resources) or reloading the index page (ditto) to get there.
On 30 Mar 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 23:52, Anthere wrote:
- Was the count system for pages changed ? If it was,
when was it ? When it is changed, could it be announced on the "announced list" please ? It will also need to be made obvious on the stats pages
The official vote results were to count pages in article space that are:
- not completely empty (size greater than 0 bytes)
- contain at least one link (search for "[[" should do)
Unless someone else snuck it in and forgot to tell me, the change has not yet been put in effect, as I'm a lazy, grumpy bastard and way way too busy of late. :)
Well, I did notice that the article count for Japanese has skyrocketed (from 251 to 3337 in two weeks); I thought this was because of the new counting method. If not, the Japanese are to be congratulated on their productivity.
- Could we slightly improve the search box, maybe by
having a drop down menu aside from it : search in encyclopedia by default as right now, search in personnal pages, search in meta pages...but have it at first level, not on a second page, after a first unfruitful search.
Yes, that would be lovely.
I agree.
So, since others protest and undelete the redirections, some asked if it would be possible to somehow catch mispellings, redirect the mispelled title to the right-spelled page, *and* dynamically display a message at the top of the article saying "you asked for "fachisme", this word does not exist, and is probably a mispelling of "fascisme".
It has in the past been suggested to have a special type of redirect for misspellings. These could have a "you're an illiterate idiot, from now on please type 'X'" message display when visited or searched, but be hidden from lists like the Allpages list or general search results.
Would that be a help?
Please do not use this kind of message - in most cases the person ending up on a misspelled page is NOT the one who MADE the misspelling, just the one who READ it.
Andre Engels
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