Wikitech-l August 2002

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

22 participants
59 discussions

Edit conflict when making redirect causes wrong page to be replaced
by Pierre Abbat 16 Aug '02

16 Aug '02

I just saw a page [[Ethymology]], which resulted from a misspelled link on [[Science]]. I edited it, replaced it with a redirect to [[Etymology]], and got an edit conflict on [[Ethymology]] in which the left side was the redirect and the right side the original text. I then erased the original text, pasted the redirect, and hit submit. This resulted in replacing [[Etymology]] with a redirect to itself. Can anyone figure out how this happened? phma

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statistics: page views, edits
by Lars Aronsson 16 Aug '02

16 Aug '02

The statistics page for Wikipedia says "There have been a total of 2445066 page views, and 49482 page edits since the software was upgraded (July 20, 2002)." Will these counters be reset the next time the software is upgraded? Or will they ever be reset or reduced? What do we really learn from these numbers? Could they be more useful if calculated differently? Once the new software is launched for all languages, can we compare the German Wikipedia against the Polish, using these numbers? In addition to the accumulated value, I think it would be useful to have a value that indicates the current rate of activity, either by beginning a new counter each month (or week), or by having a decaying average (i.e. an accumulated value filtered through a hi-pass filter). Either way, it should use the same definition for different sites, so we can compare values. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

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Where'd the non-English tarballs go?
by Brion VIBBER 16 Aug '02

16 Aug '02

http://www.wikipedia.org/tarballs/ now contains only intermittent backups of the English wiki, I can't find any trace non-English tarballs on the new server, and the "old.wikipedia.com" get-at-the-old-server trick no longer seems to work. It's a little worrying. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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Static HTML tree: search function?
by Axel Boldt 14 Aug '02

14 Aug '02

I was thinking about creating a static HTML tree from the database dump. The only thing I can't figure out is how to provide a decent search function. Are there any ready-made solutions for this problem? The possibilities I see are * ship a minimal web server, and use some sort of htdig cgi search script. * hack together some javascript code which doesn't need a server. (Something like this exists already at http://www.javascript.freeuk.com/oldindex.html, but they recommend it only for "up to 50 pages") * Use some format other than HTML which provides search capabilities, such as MS help files or pdf. I don't like either option. Axel

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Re: [Wikitech-l] SVG graphics
by lcrocker＠nupedia.com 12 Aug '02

12 Aug '02

> SVG graphics support was suggested on wikipedia-l. I like the > idea; that's why I tried it for Nupedia once, but... :-( > Proposal: [[svg:foobar]] is just plain-text editable, but > displays as an image; A link to [[svg:foobar]] is displayed as > an image as well. Optional, after saving an edit to > [[svg:foobar]], an image (foobar.png) could be created via > svg2png (never tried that, though). The image would then be > displayed instead of the SVG, and "real" SVG display could be > turned on in the user options (until most browsers support > native SVG). That's pretty much what I had in mind as well, but SVG isn't mature enough yet to think about. For now, people can upload the "source file" for a drawing in SVG, as well as uploading a PNG version, and just link to the PNG in the article.

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SVG graphics
by Magnus.Manske＠t-online.de 12 Aug '02

12 Aug '02

SVG graphics support was suggested on wikipedia-l. I like the idea; that's why I tried it for Nupedia once, but... :-( Proposal: * [[svg:foobar]] is just plain-text editable, but displays as an image * A link to [[svg:foobar]] is displayed as an image as well Optional, after saving an edit to [[svg:foobar]], an image (foobar.png) could be created via svg2png (never tried that, though). The image would then be displayed instead of the SVG, and "real" SVG display could be turned on in the user options (until most browsers support native SVG). I didn't make this a feature request yet. Magnus

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Easton's Bible Dictionary
by Lars Aronsson 07 Aug '02

07 Aug '02

daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote: > To me, a major part of the problem is that the material is so out of date. It > fails to take into account the past hundred years of archeological research, > which is essential. Furthermore, the statistics it gives about places are > hopelessly outdated. For example, Anatoth, currently 'Anata, is a fair sized I think I have a working solution to this sort of problem: Old texts should be scanned (in facsimile if possible) and put on a read-only website which allows deep linking. For example, the article on the Electric Telegraph from a 19th century Swedish encyclopedia is available on the URL http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/nfad/0192.html (have a look, nice pictures, all public domain). The URL up to ...runeberg/ is the name of the website and "nf" is for the encyclopedia and "nfad" is the 4th volume of the 1st edition. Then in the wiki, a rule is added so the shorthand "nf:ad0192" is automatically recognized and converted into a hypertext link, in a fashion similar to ISBN numbers. The example is found on the wiki page http://susning.nu/Telegraf where the wiki text "nf:ad0192" is converted into (my translation) See [http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/nfad/0192.html the article] in the 1st edition of [[Nordisk familjebok]], volume 4, 1881. and then into HTML. So, what you need is a stable and deep-linkable read-only website with the old contents that you want to use, and a shorthand linking scheme in the wiki software. You do not want old text copied into the wiki. Easton's Bible Dictionary is available in a deep-linkable, stable, read-only website, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, starting on http://www.ccel.org/e/easton/ebd/ For example, the article on Anatoth is available on the URL http://www.ccel.org/e/easton/ebd/ebd/T0000200.html#T0000233 apparently with 100 articles per HTML page, and this is article 233. If this is a work that you often want to refer to, add the following pattern rule to the wikipedia source code for the English Wikipedia, ebd:([0-9]+) e.g. ebd:233 translated into 'See [http://www.ccel.org/e/easton/ebd/ebd/' + sprintf("T%05d00.html#T%07d", $1/100, $1) + ' the article] in [[Easton's Bible Dictionary]] (1897) Adding this "ebd:" rule to the wikipedia software doesn't hurt anybody, since 99.99% of all articles will not contain the ebd: pattern. But as soon as anybody, who knows EBD and this rule, starts to use it, it saves a lot of time and effort in creating links instead of copying useless text into the wiki. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

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Deletion log is out of order
by Pierre Abbat 06 Aug '02

06 Aug '02

I just deleted Asianlove.wma at 8:33 according to the server. Jeroen Heijmans previously deleted it at 16:53, before which I deleted it at 7:45. 1. How can 16:53 be before 8:33 on the same day? 2. How can a file be deleted thrice if it was uploaded only twice? 3. Why is the server not on UTC? phma

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what links here - and how often
by Lars Aronsson 06 Aug '02

06 Aug '02

Perhaps this could be interesting for the Wikipedia as well... Inspired by Wikipedia's "What links here" function, I implemented a in susning.nu, my Swedish wiki website, a MySQL table that contains a line for each link, with a column for the source (the page that contains the link) and one for the destination (the page the link leads to). Fine. But I also added a counter to each row of that table, and that counter is updated on each access (no sweat, it works fine, no performance degradation), based on the referer URL. And if the referer URL isn't already in the table, a new record is created. This means also external referer URLs will be recorded. And if they belong to Google or some other wellknown search engine, the script extracts the search expression. This is a way to find out who or what links to wiki page and how often those links are used, without access to the server logs. If you want to check it out, my version of the "what links here" is called "Länkar" and is available in the menu bar at the top and bottom of each page. The displayed page lists links to and links from each page, ordered by the frequency of their use. For example, the page on Ericsson T68, http://susning.nu/Ericsson_T68 has a Link page on the URL http://susning.nu/susning.fcgi?action=links&id=Ericsson_T68 Since the function was introduced four days ago, that page has seen this access pattern (my translation): Most frequently used links to [[Ericsson T68]] 6 - HomePage 5 - external link(-) - external search(t68) 2 - external search(ericsson+t68) 1 - external search(t68+and+t68i+difference) - external search(wap+settings+for+t68+i) 0 - Ericsson - Xpedio A total of 8 links, that have been used 20 times. Most frequently used links from [[Ericsson T68]] 2 - RecentChanges 1 - Buzzword - GPRS - SyncML 0 - Bluetooth - Ericsson - Nokia 8210 - POP3 - SMTP - WAP A total of 10 links, that have been used 5 times. The links with zero count are links that exist between wiki pages, but haven't been used. External referer URLs never get a zero count. >From the statistics we can learn that people who found the page were searching for "wap settings" and "differences between t68 and t68i", so maybe that should be explained by the page. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

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Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Special pages menu
by lcrocker＠nupedia.com 06 Aug '02

06 Aug '02

>Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: > >>"Show "s and "List "s should be removed. >>They are only distracting. > >I was just thinking the same thing earlier today. Must have been about the time I was doing it. I love easy fixes.

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Wikitech-l August 2002