HTML files uploaded to the wikis are now served as plain text, so
browsers will show the HTML source instead of interpreting it as a web
page.
This should reduce the possibility of stealing peoples' login cookies by
getting them to click on a link to an uploaded HTML file containing
javascript.
(Uploading HTML files has never been recommended. Preferably host 'live'
example HTML files on your own web site and link rather than uploading
them to the Wikipedia server.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion, did you receive any of my mails this week, or did they all fall into the spam filter?
I sent you a patch for the Wikipedia sort order, or you may edit
WikiReportsInput.pl line 186 change 13 to 14.
The visitor stats are missing, last week only zh: was present
which suggest to me that the wget job did not retrieve other index.html webalizer files.
Perhaps you generate the retrieval list on the fly and something went wrong there?
Lastly stats for the English wikipedia are missing altogether now.
Regards, Erik Zachte
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge(a)telus.net>
> >
> Whatever!!
>
> I'm sure that it will receive the same dilligent attention and
> understanding that we all apply when a software package asks us to
> "Click here if you understand and agree to our licensing terms" :-P
>
> Ec
If you want to see an annotated version of the proposed click text
I've tried to explain it a bit here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alex756/Annotated_edit_page_announcement
There are a few minor changes from the one posted on the lists.
In terms of making it a little shorter the indemnification stuff could
be put on the terms and conditions page; I'd rather some mention
of indemnification be on the edit page so someone can't say, "I didn't
read the terms and conditions. I don't know what they say." From
reading the archives there is a general (and understandable aversion)
to legal boilerplate, but some changes do appear necessary to get
people to think more about copyright, defamation and potential legal
responsibility.
Can we wait a few days (or a week) to see if there are any objections
or further suggestions? I've located a few other lawyers on Wikipedia
and am going to ask them to take a look at it and see if they have
any suggestions.
Alex756
Fixed a linebreak in one of the translations. V.1.35 is commited to CVS.
Greetings Smurf
--
Smurf
Logo, who cares about a logo, write Wikipedia in nice friendly letters
and there you are!
smurf(a)AdamAnt.mud.de
------------------------- Anthill inside! ---------------------------
Something have gone wrong with the backup of the french wikipedia.
The backup contain only one page and it is the main page of the welsh wikipedia.
-- Looxix
After writing some articles on animals I noticed two things which I would
like to discuss. I would like to know how I can help to improve them.
1) wikipedia seems to duplicate a lot of information which could be avoided.
2) there currently seems to be no way to change information in more than one
article at once.
I would like to give a few examples to illustrate this:
Ad 1: Most articles on animals use some kind of table, which is duplicated
for each article. Also, many articles may use the same references which are
duplicated on many pages. This is seen in a lot of other articles too and is
a huge waste of hard disk space and performance.
Ad 2: when I write many articles about closely related species, I may use
one article as a template and copy parts of it. If I discover a typo in this
copied part, I have to change it for each article by hand.
Another example would be if we decide to change the background colour of the
table used by most articles on animals. This may be no problem for a few
articles, yet with hundreds or thousands of articles it is a huge waste of
human resources.
The solution would probably be to use meta data. I tried to discuss this on
wikipedia, but the discussion was moved to feature requests. An argument
against the use of meta data and templates was that it would make it harder
to contribute to wikipedia. An Argument which I do not really understand.
So my real questions are: who is currently working on the database schema
for wikipedia and who decides if it would be useful to change this schema?
Cheers,
Jurriaan
tarquin wrote:
>
>
> Gutza wrote:
>
>>
>> Ok, but what can you do? The voting has been fair (give or take, but
>> the overall result can't be contested). That's what people want, what
>> can you do? Really, what *can* you do?
>>
> Well since we can "ratify", I'm voting to ratify a different finalist.
>
> The current winner should be disqualified on technical grounds -- it
> simply does not meet the design brief of the competition.
I agree. Indeed, the current winner should have been disqualified when
people first raised their objections to it. There doesn't seem to have
been made any effort to ensure that the submussions met the
requirements, as if they were merely suggestions. I also think that the
fact that currently there are 73 votes on the English Wikipedia
ratification, and 41% are against is a strong sign that there are a lot
of others who agree with me and tarquin. I think that in an organization
that prides itself on consensus, some effort should be made to address
the dissenters' concerns.
Part of the problem perhaps is that no one has been able to clearly
articulate exactly why the current winner will make a bad logo. Here's
my attempt:
(1) A logo should be simple. It should be possible to grok it entirely
in moments. It should be unambiguous. A logo should not be a diagram.
The current winner fails all these tests.
(2) The purpose of this logo selection is not just to select an image
for /upload/wiki.png. It is to selet an identity for the entire
Wikipedia project. It may be used on letterhead, clothes, hats, pens,
mousepads, etc. It will be used in tiny places, so it should look good
(not just "acceptable") in small sizes. The advice for logo designers I
once read is "if it's not simple enough to work as cufflinks, it's not
simple enough". The current winner will not look good at small sizes.
(It barely looks good at the current size).
(3) It will be used in conjunction with other visual elements. It should
be able to blend in aesthetically with a wide diversity of other
elements and not stand out or clash. It should be able to be used in
grayscale environments and black-and-white environments.
(4) *** This is the biggest one: a logo should NOT contain words that
are not part of the name or the slogan of the organization it
represents! I recognize that Wikipedia is mostly about text, but the way
that has been symbolized in the current winning logo, fails. The best
way to symbolize text is with 1, 2 or maybe 3 graphemes or as lines on a
page, but not a whole mess of them, reduced to point of illegibility.
My biggest objection to the current winner is all those words. I imagine
myself encountering it for the first time, and asking myself: What do
they mean? What is their significance? Why can't I read them all? Is
there some essential aspect of the Wikipedia embedded in these words
that I can't understand? I must be missing something! Why should I be
interested in this project if I can't even understand the logo?
I have a feeling, but I am not certain, that there would be a lot less
objection to the winner if all the text was removed from it. I still
think it would be ugly, but it would at least be a workable logo in that
state.
I have gone to the effort of collecting some famous and successful logos
from around the web and put them at http://www.nohat.net/logos.html. I
put them at my personal web site because I'm not sure how well deep
linking would work on the meta wiki. What makes these logos successful
is they are all simple, memorable, and can work in a variety of environments
I understand that it may be frustrating to those who put in a lot of
effort on the vote and process to have the final result disputed, and I
really am sorry for those people, but such is the way of the wiki...
- David [[User:Nohat]]