[Wikipedia-l] Reactions to the list and its discussions

Wed Feb 6 22:15:55 UTC 2002

Right.  Talk about private clubs.  I understand that
the list serves mostly to facilitate improvements on
the site, and therefore runs to programming
conversations.  HOWEVER, even though I have worked on
a development team where I had to deal with SQL
developers on a regular basis, I can't follow you guys
at all. 

This is all in the way of showing that the geekspeak
is a bit exclusionary.  Probably not in and of itself
a problem -- except that you guys are talking about
changes (and in the case of the new site, implementing
changes) that affect all of us other users -- AND YOU
AREN'T COMMUNICATING THEM.  The FAQ's haven't really
been updated, lots of people seem unaware that the
/subpage no longer exists....  and even those of us
who would be happy to help document changes and spread
the word can't, because we don't speak programmer well
enough to be sure.

For pity's sake -- can we please clean up the
documentation for rev2 before going to rev2a?  I'll
help -- but not unless somebody helps me first!

Thanks for letting me rant -- [[JHK]]
--- wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com wrote:
> Send Wikipedia-l mailing list submissions to
> 	wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web,
> visit
> 	http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body
> 'help' to
> 	wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com
> 
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> 	wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
> 
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it
> is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikipedia-l digest..."
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. Re: Modest proposals (Uri Yanover)
>    2. Re: Modest proposals (Tim Chambers)
>    3. Re: Copyrights (Larry Sanger)
>    4. Re: Copyrights (Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen)
>    5. Re: Modest proposals (Uri Yanover)
>    6. Re: Re: Modest proposals (Jan Hidders)
>    7. Re: Modest proposals (Jan Hidders)
>    8. Re: Modest proposals (Uri Yanover)
>    9. Re: Re: Modest proposals (Jan Hidders)
>   10. MySQL dump available (Jan Hidders)
>   11. File upload Copyright notice (Axel Boldt)
>   12. Re: MySQL dump available (Jimmy Wales)
>   13. Summary of pseudo-subpage discussion (Magnus
> Manske)
>   14. RE: MySQL dump available (Magnus Manske)
>   15. Re: Summary of pseudo-subpage discussion
> (Michel Clasquin)
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 1
> From: "Uri Yanover" <uriyan_subscribe at yahoo.com>
> To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Modest proposals
> Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 22:00:20 +0200
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
> 
> > (4) When we think about policy options, it often
> helps to consider
> > carefully what problem we're trying to solve, and
> to make sure that our
> > solution is the most elegant solution to that
> problem.  It is not entirely
> > clear to me what the problem is, in this case. 
> Originally, Uri Yanover
> > said:
> >
> > >The problem is in the following: it is extremely
> inconvenient
> > >(as a policy) to write "[[Middle
> Earth/Elrond|Elrond]] was
> > >the lord of [[Middle Earth/Rivendell|Rivendell]]"
> than it is
> > >to write "[[Elrond]] was the lord of
> [[Rivendell]]"
> >
> > This suggests that the problem is *just* one
> involved in typing long page
> > titles in order to create a link, but the solution
> offered by Uri solves a
> > lot more than that, so I'm not sure this is
> exactly the problem he wants
> > to solve.
> 
> I used to think so when I'd written that post, but I
> no longer do.
> Having considered the subject for long enough, I
> reached the
> concept of aliases (more details in the mailing
> list). The general
> usefullness of aliases is for disambiguating (that
> is, making [[root]]
> point at [[root (mathematics)]] on pages concerning
> with algebra
> and at [[root (botanics)]] at pages concerning with
> plants).
> 
> However, the other useful thing that could be done
> with aliases
> is facilitating the editing of pages like [[Middle
> Earth]], so that
> ineed [[Elrond]] on an a page that uses aliases
> becomes
> [[Elrond (Middle Earth)]]. But this use is
> secondary, and
> confined only to pages that describe a specific
> universe.
> The fact that the vast majority of the other
> articles does not
> use subpaging indicates that probably there won't be
> too much
> abuse of aliasing in this way.
> 
> What I don't like about Tim's idea is the fact that
> it converts
> the link automatically basing on parsing of the
> article title.
> But not only that would be inconvenient (making it
> more
> difficult to edit the article afterwards and
> sometimes creating
> links that the author doesn't want), it would also
> be out
> of policy, as it would essentially be a substitute
> for subpages.
> 
> Sincerely yours,
>             Uri Yanover
> 
> 
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 2
> From: "Tim Chambers" <tbchambers at yahoo.com>
> To: "Wikipedia List" <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Modest proposals
> Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 15:28:33 -0700
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
> 
> I haven't seen a need to write again since making my
> proposal, but today Uri
> Yanover <uriyan_subscribe at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> >What I don't like about Tim's idea is the fact that
> it converts
> >the link automatically basing on parsing of the
> article title.
> 
> My proposal is archived at
>
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/001230.html
> 
> There it can be seen that in addition to the simple
> solution that does
> convert links based on the article title, I did
> include Uri's idea. To
> summarize:
> 
> #base [[Fantasy Fiction]]
> 
> [[/elves]]
> 
> could be translated into this:
> 
> See also: [[Fantasy Fiction]].
> 
> [[elves (Fantasy Fiction)|elves]]
> 
> The system could remove the #base line completely
> instead of translating it,
> but I think it's useful to reflect by default that
> there's a relationship
> between the content of a given page and some other
> related page. After all,
> if the author doesn't like that behavior, he or she
> can simply type the
> links manually instead of using #base. Or the author
> can edit twice: the
> first is a major edit, and the second is a minor
> edit to remove the See
> also: line.
> 
> Uri's original #base idea is archived at
>
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/001220.html.
> He
> also proposed an Alias: namespace
>
(http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/001218.html),
> but
> the features are very similar.
> 
> The key differences between my proposal and his are:
> 
> 1. I propose a solution that converts text during
> save, while Uri proposed
> adding to the wikipedia's source syntax.
> 2. I propose the disambiguating syntax -- [[title
> (context)]] -- while Uri
> proposed subpage syntax -- [[context/title]].
> 
> However, Uri also said yesterday in
>
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-February/001288.html
> that
> he "didn't mean to use aliaes mainly to categorize,
> but rather to
> _disambiguate_ (e.g. [[root (botanics)]] vs. [[root
> (mathematics)]])." So I
> assume he's flexible on #2.
> 
> I take it that there's consensus on the part that
> deals with link
> conversion.
> 
=== message truncated ===

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings!
http://greetings.yahoo.com