User talk:Thomas Larsen

Welcome to my discussion page!

I see some folks are starting to show up
Good morning!

Checked Tendrl today and noticed people are showing up. I'm glad to see the site grow as alternatives are a good thing.

After the holidays I'll be back to write some more articles.

Have a lovey day! Mary Ash 04:41, 24 November 2010


 * Thanks, Mary! :-) —Thomas Larsen 09:11, 24 November 2010

Thanks for your help
I'm up and running. Is your server large enough for a million articles? Obviously you can do without much of the crap that clogs WP, but a good encyclopedia could still be quite large.Steve Harris (Sbharris on Wikipedia) 19:09, 24 November 2010 (CST)


 * At this stage, the server isn't that large—I'm using hosting space on a site that I co-run, and it's fairly limited. If this project "takes off", we'll get dedicated servers sorted out, and then we'll be able to cope with millions of articles and pictures and the like.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 19:38, 24 November 2010 (CST)

Biographies of living persons (BLP)
This is the single worst ethical problem that plagues WP right now (I really mean moral/ethical, NOT aesthetic or operational). WP is becoming a repository of content on not so notable people, which is open to subversion by anybody.

It's worth remembering that even Encyclopedia Britannica which dates from the late 18th century, didn't start including biographies of people still alive at printing, until their 1911 edition. And even then, the people were kings, queens, and the very, very famous.

Wikipedia (WP), because it's not paper, has been dragged down the road of "notability creep", where its criteria for what makes a living person famous enough to have a bio (biography of living person = BLP) has gone down, and down. Presently, there are over 400,000 such bios of living people on WP, and they remain a rather constant 12 to 14% of all the articles on the site. Several HUNDRED are created each day. About the same fraction of THESE have no references at all. They are fought over by people with mental problems who are essentially information-hoarders.

Fixes have been suggested. One is that no person should have a BLP unless they are "dead-tree famous," which means they must already have a bio in a paper GENERAL encyclopedia, like the president of the United States. That leaves only room for the very, very famous. And it draws a bright line. The problem is that paper general encyclopedias are probably doomed, and we may not have that line much longer.

Another possible answer is simply to outlaw BLPs completely. There are other places on the web to find such info. At an arbitrary time after the person dies (I suggest a week) a bio can go up. (The time is to keep people from learning about the death from the encyclopedia-- a bigger problem for WP with its high google rank, than for Tendrl, at least right now.)

Anyway, is there any interest in getting this huge problem out of the way, RIGHT NOW, at the beginning? BLP is a constant battleground. It is also ripe for abuse. Indeed, it's abused on Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales was caught having one of his admins changing BLP information for one of his lovers, a couple of years ago. Another example: Wikipedia's COO, who was imprisoned on a drunk driving charge not too long after taking the helm at WP, had her BLP expunged, AFTER that happened. WP doesn't offer that courtesy to others, though-- only to people who embarass WP. Is all that the kind of thing we want on this site? Or shall we kill it, and the problems that go with it, NOW? Steve Harris (Sbharris on Wikipedia) 19:09, 24 November 2010 (CST)


 * I'm in the process of writing a detailed reply. Watch this space...—Thomas Larsen (talk) 19:48, 24 November 2010 (CST)


 * Sorry, I was writing a longer response (almost an essay exploration of the issue, actually), but I think I lost it when I exited my Web browser. So, for the time being, I'll summarise my position.


 * I was tempted to ask, "Which dead-tree encyclopedia?"


 * I would rather biographies about living people (BLPs) contain too little information than too much information. In every other kind of article, too much is usually preferable over too little, but that approach is not appropriate for articles about living people. I'm not suggesting that we limit ourselves to mere stubs about people like Barack Obama, of course, but gossip and speculation about living people has absolutely no place in an encyclopedia. So I think that, right from the start, we need to establish that it's unacceptable to make claims about people that can't be backed up with solid sources—particularly claims that reflect negatively on a person's character. We need to foster a culture where there is absolutely no stigma about removing such claims, immediately, on sight. And even then, there will need to be editorial discretion about which solidly-sourced facts we do include.


 * I'm sorry it's a vague answer, but the line is not always clear. I'd love to hear from anyone who has suggestions or ideas about how we should handle biographies of living people.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 17:50, 26 November 2010 (CST)


 * A small step is to include them all in Category:Biographies of living persons. That makes them easier to monitor. The problem is missing something that is not caught by those monitoring recent changes which then sits there until someone calls the victim's attention to it, months, or years, later. User:Fred Bauder Talk 20:36, 26 November 2010 (CST)


 * Yes, categorising BLPs would certainly help in monitoring them (via Special:RecentChangesLinked, for example). I support that idea.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 01:07, 27 November 2010 (CST)


 * There are too many solid sources. WP has a whole article on Mel Gibson's drunk driving arrest and his antisemitic and sexist comments while drunk. It's all solidly sourced. The article on WMF's drunk-driving COO could have been just as solidly sourced, and she then went on to prison, unlike Gibson. But that one was suppressed by WMF. We don't want to get into this. You probably have public records about YOU that you don't want on a top-google ranked site. Wikipedia does its damage partly through its sheer amplification effect. It's the BING of biography-revenge machines. You can't fix this mad tendency without simply pulling the plug on it. The ultimate "too little info" on living people, is zero info. Steve Harris (Sbharris on Wikipedia) 14:26, 27 November 2010 (CST)


 * Well, at this stage, we're too small to cause any real damage even if false information did make it into articles. I know that sounds rather bad, but it's true. If we end up having a lot of BLPs, the Community Council or its equivalent might need to consider establishing criteria for editing BLPs or developing other policies to address any problems that do arise.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 22:11, 27 November 2010 (CST)

Ah, that's more like it
Your talk page is set up like a Wiki. Everything in a thread can be edited all at once. The way it's set up on MY talk, with threads that have to be looked at one-at-a-time is just agony. What's wrong? Steve Harris (Sbharris on Wikipedia) 21:53, 24 November 2010 (CST)

MediaWiki:Common.css
Please import MediaWiki:Common.css from either Citizendium or Wikipedia and infoboxes will probably display better. It is both empty and protected so I can't do it, see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/wiki/Help:Templates#Copying_from_one_wiki_to_another That should resolve the way Template:Infobox Country is displaying at Lebanon. User:Fred Bauder Talk 10:02, 25 November 2010 (CST)


 * Thanks for letting me know! I'll see what I can do later in the afternoon—I have a visitor coming around this morning. Should be pretty easy to fix, though. The reason I don't want to import the whole Common.css from Wikipedia or the Citizendium without checking is because there may be unintended consequences (the CSS files used by those sites do alter the way some pages, like the main page, display).—Thomas Larsen (talk) 18:20, 25 November 2010 (CST)


 * Actually, I had a look at Wikipedia's MediaWiki:Common.css and found a section for infobox templates, which I imported. Infoboxes seem to be working now, but let me know if there are any problems. :-) —Thomas Larsen (talk) 18:27, 25 November 2010 (CST)

Images
I use Commons, and I still want to add our line to this list; any objections? Boris Tsirelson 03:44, 28 November 2010 (CST)


 * That's fine with me! Do you want to add it, or do you want me to add it?—Thomas Larsen (talk) 03:49, 28 November 2010 (CST)


 * I'd prefer you to do. Boris Tsirelson 03:52, 28 November 2010 (CST)


 * Done!—Thomas Larsen (talk) 03:56, 28 November 2010 (CST)


 * I've renamed it to Knowino on that list. --Boris Tsirelson 05:35, 17 December 2010 (EST)


 * Nice. By the way, did you think about name suggestions? Boris Tsirelson 04:05, 28 November 2010 (CST)


 * Yes, I did have a look at them. I don't think "ProudWiki" or "AmbitionWiki" would work, but a name with connotations of knowledge-growth is definitely a possibility! Right now I'm leaning towards names that don't have "wiki" or "pedia" in them; I'm wondering whether we could get away with using the name of some small animal (like "Aardvark", for example), or some mathematical term (like "Google" is a transmogrification of the number googol). What do you think?—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:50, 28 November 2010 (CST)
 * Do I understand correctly that I cannot (yet) upload my own drawings? (I don't have any on Wiki Commons but a lot on CZ) --Paul Wormer 02:25, 2 December 2010 (CST)


 * Unfortunately, you can't yet upload them here, if that's what you mean. But you might be able to upload them on Commons. Sorry for that inconvenience.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 02:36, 2 December 2010 (CST)

Approval
Please note my question on Tendrl:Village Inn. Boris Tsirelson 16:20, 2 December 2010 (CST)

Images again
Tom could you make an exception for two images that go with Van der Waals equation? I drew them with my own hands, together they are 266 kB, and I promise never to upload articles that require pictures again. I still have them at home, I could mail them, or you can borrow them from CZ. The reason that I ask this, is because the article needs a revision, which I will apply to the Tendrl version (not to the CZ version as long as CZ stays a bivirate dictatorship) and I like the article to be complete. At the moment the article refers to figures that are absent, which is silly. --Paul Wormer 03:29, 3 December 2010 (CST)


 * I've enabled file upload permissions for people in the "reviewer" user-group, which currently includes you, Boris, and I. Upload what you want, just use your discretion until we get dedicated server space sorted out! :-) Oh, and let me know if there are any problems. Cheers,—Thomas Larsen (talk) 03:45, 3 December 2010 (CST)


 * Question: how to link them? Just [[Image:the name]] ? Will the system seek itself the two image bases? Boris Tsirelson 03:49, 3 December 2010 (CST)


 * Yes, you should be able to use [[Image:The name.jpg]] (or, alternatively, [[File:The name.jpg]] —from memory, the two are equivalent); the system should be able to work out where to load the file from.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:20, 3 December 2010 (CST)


 * Paul, do not promise never to upload articles that require pictures! You see, I do it, by first (or a bit late) submitting the pictures to MediaWiki; and I'll keep doing so. Boris Tsirelson 03:51, 3 December 2010 (CST)


 * I got the message The upload directory (public) is not writable by the webserver --Paul Wormer 04:43, 3 December 2010 (CST)


 * There, I think it should work properly for you now.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:52, 3 December 2010 (CST)
 * OK the uploading was OK (I want to do yet another one). Next question: How do I shrink the drawing (see Van der Waals equation. --Paul Wormer 04:58, 3 December 2010 (CST)


 * You have to use something like . If you want to add a caption as well, you should probably use , or something along those lines.


 * I'm going to try installing ImageMagick to handle resizing properly (it's terrible at the moment). I'll let you know how it goes.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:10, 3 December 2010 (CST)


 * Hmm, it's proving more difficult than I had hoped (since I don't have shell access to the server). It's getting late in Melbourne; I think it would be best for me to wait until tomorrow morning before I try to do anything too major. Unfortunately, image resizing won't work properly until then; I'm really sorry, and I'll get to it first thing tomorrow.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:24, 3 December 2010 (CST)


 * What is the problem with resizing? See User:Boris Tsirelson; is works, doesn't it? Boris Tsirelson 05:39, 3 December 2010 (CST)

Van der Waals equation
Tom, I was editing Van der Waals equation and all of the sudden I can neither preview or save this file. I backed up my (fairly extensive) changes of today, but not of yesterday when I entered two figures. Do you have backups? I understand that we are in a pioneer phase, but what does the future look like? Do you see any possibilities of being able to pay for a regular provider including backups and space for drawings? --Paul Wormer 04:10, 4 December 2010 (CST)


 * This is probably related to some changes I made to the image configuration in the last hour or so. All your content should still be there. Hang on, I'll take a look.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:51, 4 December 2010 (CST)


 * Okay, Paul, I managed to fix the problem—it was related to the image configuration, and had nothing to do with the database (so at no stage was data corrupted or lost). I also managed to get ImageMagick working correctly, so images should scale nicely now. Sorry for the inconvenience(s).—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:26, 4 December 2010 (CST)

Our future
Pictures are much nicer. Further I streamlined the article, so that the Tendrl version is now better than the CZ version. With regard to your future plans with Tendrl, if you don't want to make them public yet, e-mail me. It seems to me that CZ is close to a schism, opponents and followers of MBE. It also seems to me that a schism was MBE's plan all the way. It is a pity for him that several of the people that do much of the actual writing in main space are against him, but from MBE's comments on RW I take it that he doesn't care, he seems to believe that he will catch new authors. --Paul Wormer 07:58, 4 December 2010 (CST)


 * Yes, the pictures are much nicer, right? :-) Glad I could help.


 * No, I'm pretty open about my plans for this site:


 * In the next week or so, we rename the site...?
 * Over the next few weeks, we create and expand essential pages (like Tendrl:About, for example) and write articles. (The articles don't have to be perfect—some stubs would encourage participation, probably—but we should have a selection of content that is distinguishable from Wikipedia's and Citizendium's.)
 * We then do a bit of recruitment work, posting announcements in various places and telling people about the wiki.
 * Early next year (probably in February) we run a fundraising drive. When we get enough money to acquire a server, we do so. Then we can install LaTeX locally, lift restrictions on things like image uploads, and do a pile of other good things.


 * At least, that's how I anticipate things working out. What are your thoughts?—Thomas Larsen (talk) 16:01, 4 December 2010 (CST)


 * (By the way, we need to factor into account that many people will be away over Christmas and New Year celebrations; that's why I don't think we should make our main announcements then.)—Thomas Larsen (talk) 16:03, 4 December 2010 (CST)


 * And, Paul, thanks for your work on the article—and indeed for all your contributions so far. They are much appreciated. (And it's always cool to create a wiki and see other people edit it.) :-) —Thomas Larsen (talk) 16:11, 4 December 2010 (CST)


 * Classic shared-hosting is definitely rough to bootstrap a wiki on. It doesn't take much for shared hosting to shut you down, and MW sucks up CPU cycles. Also a lot of the advance support and software that makes MW really shine will need non-standard software installed, sudo access is important. A 512 mb VPS should handle the wiki fine though and at less than $20 a month the price shouldn't be too big of an obstacle.


 * When setting up to run a wiki you want to make sure you have a few things off the bat. Your going to want a CAPTCHA program setup, reCAPTCHA works great for us, your going to want to get math setup as others have pointed out, imagemagick to handle svg and thumbnails. You will want memcached setup, and I recommend php apc as well for caching compiled php scripts. Take a look at google's new mod_pagespeed if your using apache. Apache/php sucks up a lot of resources. One of these days I want to play with getting MW working with lighthttpd. Anything that can decrease the footprint of each page load will be huge. You're going to want to get the cite and extended parser functions extensions setup and start importing citation templates from WP, as people are going to want to use those or copy from those.


 * But hardware/software aside the success or failure of a wiki is going to come down to getting people to show up and contribute. People won't really contribute to a wiki unless they are getting something out of it. The most common "rewards" people anticipate and enjoy from editing wiki content are a publishing platform, readership, collaborative editing (which is usually enjoyable), and a community. There is a bit of a catch-22 early on, in that most of what people want from a wiki in order to participate isn't present until you get enough people participating. I think this is the hardest hurdle to get over.


 * Ways to deal with it? Have a built in core group of editors ready to go at the starting gate. This is a bit like CZ or even RW, with enough core contributors at the start of the project to bootstrap up the community. This might be possible with Tendrl as there are several communities aware of it, but I wouldn't count on it.


 * So if you don't have the built in starter community to bootstrap your wiki, I think you have to focus on other ways to get people to stick it out even if the perceived readership is low. The first biggest one is to have a clearly defined niche. Why should someone contribute to this project, what can they do here that they can not do elsewhere? Wikinfo has their sympathetic pov, RationalWiki has its scientific/rationalist pov and original research, Wookipedia is all about Starwars and not topic is too small. The niche should also be attractive to new editors, frankly, the CZ niche of "expert guidance" and "real names" is more off putting than attractive. There are several directions you can go with this first is some sort of niche built around your editorial control of content (ala wikinfo or rationalwiki), or a niche built around specificity of topic (the wookiepedia approach).


 * Lastly I think wikis with only a few hundred or less contributors should really focus on the strengths that can provide particularly with community. You should do things that encourage community growth and discussion, it is the community that will suck people in and keep them here contributing even if perceived growth is limited. RW has perhaps gone to an extreme in this regard, but you can see the basic idea about how we have really setup the idea of supporting community interaction above and beyond the project as central to the site. When there are few enough people that everyone can know everyone it can be a real plus if the right tools are made available.


 * In summary:


 * Get a small VPS asap or the infrastructure just wont be here to run a wiki
 * Try and bootstrap your community by recruiting from other communities that are paying attention at the moment
 * Develop a clearly defined niche that allows editors to do something unique here they can't elsewhere (the niche should allow something new, not add additional restrictions ala CZ)
 * Develop tools and encourage communication within the community that develops


 * Tmtoulouse 10:23, 5 December 2010 (CST)


 * Tendrl is born as a fork of CZ. If not transmogrified into something else then the following suggests itself.
 * The class of readers is (I mean, will be in the happy end case) smaller than WP but not very small. Mostly university students. Here they get more reliable, coherent, readable information. More explanatory. Yes, more accessible. Sure, each article inevitably demands some prerequisite. But: believe it or not, many math articles in WP are too hard for me (a math prof) (not kidding).
 * The class of writers (that is, active registered users) is unusually small (on the Internet scale). Say, only 100 active writers. These are strange people that just like such writing. These are rather rare, but do exist (Paul Wormer is an example; see here for one of several reasons why he is dissatisfied by WP; Howard Berkovich is a fantastic example).
 * Then, what about money? Maybe 1000 students will bring 10 dollars each. Maybe 30 profs will add 100 dollars each.
 * Too optimistic? Yes, probably...
 * Boris Tsirelson 14:52, 5 December 2010 (CST)


 * Funding isn't a huge issue right now. There are decent virtual private server (VPS) plans, as Trent mentioned, for under $20 per month, or around $240 a year. To register several domain names for a year would cost around $20. So we could run this site for between $250 and $300 a year. Some monetary support (i.e. donations) would be nice, but I think we need to have something that actually deserves monetary support first. I'm not too worried about funding.


 * But, as Trent pointed out, the real challenge lies in finding a niche for Tendrl (or Knowino, or whatever we end up calling the wiki). I think the key might lie in having a "killer feature". For example, real, working what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) or what-you-see-is-what-you-mean (WYSIWYM) editing would motivate many people to join out of sheer interest; however, WYSIWYG editing is probably out of reach for us at the moment. Perhaps I should extend the question to you folks: What frustrates you most about editing wikis? If that frustration is shared by others, then we could probably increase participation by eliminating it.


 * Features aren't all, though. Two other things—content and community—are probably even more critical. A really good featured-article system would be useful. A friendly community is really important. That's what I hope we can establish here.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 21:25, 5 December 2010 (CST)


 * By the way, I'm going to be on a holiday / vacation / whatever you choose to call it over the next few days. I'll continue to check Tendrl (and hopefully expand some more project pages), read my e-mails, and so on, but I probably won't be able to make technical changes to the site. Please do report any problems, though, and I'll deal with them as quickly as possible when I return!—Thomas Larsen (talk) 21:25, 5 December 2010 (CST)


 * Happy holiday...
 * Another desirable distinction from WP. They disallow "content forks"; that is, no more than one article on a given topic. Maybe they do not want to see "Palestine-Israel conflict/Israeli view" and "Palestine-Israel conflict/Arab view" or something like that. I have no opinion about political sphere. But in sciences it is terrible.
 * For example, "Tensor". This notion is important for mathematicians, physicists, engineers and (last years) physicians (did I forgot someone?). And each group has its own approach to the notion "tensor". In the literature it makes no problem: there are many different books for different groups of readers. But in WP it creates inevitable, endless, antagonizing conflicts. Less important notions, interesting for a single group, are well-presented; but more important notions, interesting for more than one group, are ill-presented; what a pity! We must correct this error. Different presentation for different groups of readers is crucially needed and cannot be ruled out.
 * Boris Tsirelson 23:44, 5 December 2010 (CST)

George Bush or Richard Jackson
Thomas, what to do with this? Boris Tsirelson 23:54, 5 December 2010 (CST)


 * I would give "pseudonymi" the benefit of the doubt, provided they contribute something no-nonsensical to main space. If people register only to joke around or fight, then "we" (those with real names) better ban them. From CZ I learned that the number of words on the Forum over the number of words in  main space contributed by a single person can tend to infinity and that this ratio gives a spiraling effect downwards on the mood of other participants. Let Tendrl not be a social site, let it be about delivering information. People can go somewhere else if all they  want is showing their wit and critical powers. IMHO we don't want people (anonymous, pseudonymous, or otherwise) that come here just to stir the pot.


 * Further I would plead for tolerance, when it is clear that somebody made a serious effort to convey information in an article, be gentle. Only when you see definite errors, try to explain them. If an article is not quite like you would have written it yourself let it pass, don't strive for absolute perfection because that is unattainable anyway. Larry Sanger always stressed the Wiki character of CZ, i.e., he encouraged anyone to jump in and make changes. I would say be careful in doing that, people have feelings and may be hurt. I would only correct spelling/grammar mistakes without explanation, all other changes should be explained first on the talk page. Be Wiki with moderation.
 * --Paul Wormer 03:25, 6 December 2010 (CST)


 * If so, I got unsure and unblocked the two blocked accounts for now. However, I am waiting for a final decision of Thomas Larsen. --Boris Tsirelson 05:03, 6 December 2010 (CST)


 * I am all for a strategy of "playing by ear", making up rules along the way. In this case: if we don't hear from the two gentlemen (or ladies) anymore (as happens for 95% of the CZ registrants) no harm is done and they can stay as sleeping members. If they contribute to main space  they gain the right to speak about strategy and such, and if they came just to be bores  we can still ban them.--Paul Wormer 05:33, 6 December 2010 (CST)


 * Content tolerance is one thing, and login policy tolerance is quite another. We should decide, and say clearly, whether real names are obligatory or only recommended. And then we should follow our decision. --Boris Tsirelson 05:46, 6 December 2010 (CST)
 * I would say: real names are recommended. In addition, I would give people working under a pseudonym no rights other than contributing to main space. We don't want people to come here solely to play clown under a funny pseudonym. Also, it is conceivable that non-registered IPs get access too, some of my WP articles got good corrections from IPs. If vandalism gets out of hand the rule can be changed.--Paul Wormer 07:21, 6 December 2010 (CST)
 * Now we have both "George Bush" and "Tony Blair". I guess, "Vladimir Putin" and "Isaac Newton" will come soon (unless we'll be insisting). --Boris Tsirelson 23:39, 6 December 2010 (CST)
 * George Bush made his first contribution, which seems genuine. Hope Tony will do the same.--Paul Wormer 02:28, 7 December 2010 (CST)

← I was going to respond to this earlier, but my mobile phone wouldn't let me. I think the real-names policy is a complex issue. On one hand, it's nice to know who you're working with; also, encyclopedic credibility is enhanced when contributors are using their real names (although so many people use Wikipedia that I'm not sure people care much about credibility of that kind any more).

At this stage I don't think we need to be too strict about the real-names policy. That said, I really do want to encourage it. If a potential contributor would prefer not to use their full name, I'd consider it acceptable for them to use just their first or last name. I definitely prefer that administrators, at least, use their full real names.

What do you folks think?—Thomas Larsen (talk) 01:30, 12 December 2010 (CST)


 * Also reviewers should use their full real names, I think so. --Boris Tsirelson 06:48, 12 December 2010 (CST)


 * Agreed. I've suggested an approach in the Village Inn.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 07:25, 12 December 2010 (CST)

Templates
I came accross:

and

I have never used these templates, but I assume that they belong to the standard tools of CZ. If so, could you please implement them? --Paul Wormer 07:52, 8 December 2010 (CST)


 * I am not Thomas, but anyway, I can try; but let me know, on which page (for example) to you need them? --Boris Tsirelson 09:36, 8 December 2010 (CST)


 * ASTM International --Paul Wormer 10:27, 8 December 2010 (CST)


 * I did; apparently, it works. (I just copied Template:Col-begin, Template:Col-break and Template:Col-end from CZ; they work out of the box.) --Boris Tsirelson 11:05, 8 December 2010 (CST)

I'm BACK!
Don't know what happened but I am able to "see" Tendrl once again. I'll start contributing a few articles later next week. Glad to be back.Mary Ash 22:41, 11 December 2010 (CST)


 * Welcome back... --Boris Tsirelson 00:48, 12 December 2010 (CST)


 * Welcome back, Mary! I don't know what happened to stop your access to Tendrl; it sounds rather strange.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 01:09, 12 December 2010 (CST)

Captcha
The download from the recaptcha site includes a woefully outdated version of the ConfirmEdit extension, so it probably won't work properly. Fortunately, you can just download a newer version of ConfirmEdit and drop it in place of the one bundled with recaptcha.

Also, please set up autoconfirmed users ($wgAutoConfirmAge and $wgAutoConfirmCount are 0 by default, so everyone gets to be an autoconfirmed user), and give them skipcaptcha (make sure you put the $wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['skipcaptcha'] = true; line below the require_once line, because ConfirmEdit explicitly sets it to false)

I ask this because many wiki administrators simply forget to do this (it doesn't help that the default settings are not sensible) and recaptcha becomes an unnecessary annoyance - if you manage to register and get to autoconfirmed status, you're probably not a spammer/spambot so there's no need for a captcha. Spammers will be blocked before they get to autoconfirmed status, so it won't make a difference to them. Nx 03:49, 14 December 2010 (CST)


 * All done! Thanks, I really appreciate those pointers. The criteria used to decide whether an account should be autoconfirmed are now:


 * is the account is at least one day old?
 * does the account have at least five edits?


 * I think those will do for the time being. See Special:ListGroupRights for permissions restricted to autoconfirmed users.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:20, 14 December 2010 (CST)


 * Heh, that's more liberal than RationalWiki :D Thanks for getting that done so quickly, it's a pet peeve of mine. -- Nx  / talk 04:40, 14 December 2010 (CST)


 * No worries! :-) What are RationalWiki's criteria?—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:41, 14 December 2010 (CST)
 * 2 days and 20 edits, but people often get sysopped before that -- Nx  / talk 04:43, 14 December 2010 (CST)


 * Ah, okay. I don't think autoconfirmation requirements need to be particularly high—provided they're enough to slow down the vast majority of spammers, all should be well.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:45, 14 December 2010 (CST)
 * You're right, although in our case autoconfirmed users get rollback, upload and the ability to send intercom messages as well. Upload in particular was a problem, we used to allow it for all registered users, but then some vandal started uploading porn so I had to restrict it. Which reminds me, you should consider giving autoconfirmed users upload rights, but then you'd probably have to raise the requirements - or you can just create another autopromoted user group using $wgAutopromote (the instructions given there will overwrite the array, and that will disable autoconfirmed users, just use $wgAutopromote['groupname'] = cond;). -- Nx  / talk 04:59, 14 December 2010 (CST)


 * The reason upload rights are not currently enabled for autoconfirmed users is that server space is currently very limited. Once we move to our own VPS (hopefully next week), I'll enable uploads for all autoconfirmed users. If necessary, it would be trivial to increase the autoconfirmation criteria.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:04, 14 December 2010 (CST)
 * Yeah, I realized that after posting my comment. Anyway, I'm glad you're not taking the besieged fort approach to wikis, and I wish you good luck. -- Nx  / talk 05:22, 14 December 2010 (CST)


 * Thanks! I welcome any feedback and suggestions you might have...—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:26, 14 December 2010 (CST)

Appearance
Thomas, about an hour or so ago the appearance of Tendrl changed to a fat large font. --Paul Wormer 03:52, 15 December 2010 (CST)


 * Is the problem still there? If so, would you be able to e-mail me (see my user-page for the address) a screen capture showing the font?—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:48, 15 December 2010 (CST)

Import error
Sometimes, when importing many (20 and more?) articles at once, I get an error message: Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/basicpro/public_html/larsent/tendrl/includes/StringUtils.php on line 324 And then I have to check which files are imported and which are not, and prepare a new import of remaining files. Is it possible to increase the timeout (say to 60 sec)? --Boris Tsirelson 07:18, 16 December 2010 (CST)


 * I've updated the time limit to 60 seconds. Once we move to our own hosting (hopefully next week), I'll be able to enable some form of caching which might help resolve the problem in a less "hacky" way.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 15:39, 16 December 2010 (CST)


 * Nice, thank you. --Boris Tsirelson 23:40, 16 December 2010 (CST)

Wikipedia
What do you think of the possibility of bringing in some pages from Wikipedia, as well as Citizendium? Selectively, of course, but Citizendium had some major content holes - literature, theatre, history - and most of what IS in those topics is badly-imported Wikipedia articles anyway. Setting up some basis for them would be good, especially as once the rules that all articles must connect begins being enforced, we could hit a major problem if we haven't even put any of the groundwork in for such major fields. Adam 10:06, 18 December 2010 (EST)


 * I don't have a problem with it, provided proper attribution is given. (The rule about connection is more of a vague guideline than an inviolable policy—I suppose we'll flesh it out more as the community grows.) I think we need to avoid becoming yet another fork of Wikipedia, so it would be advisable to at least partially rewrite articles imported from that project.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 18:47, 18 December 2010 (EST)


 * I was thinking we could just import the featured articles (a.k.a, the ones judged as the best) from there, which would get us a good foundation, but a lot left to fill in. Adam 19:12, 18 December 2010 (EST)


 * I think it's probably better at this stage that we don't import all of Wikipedia's featured articles at once, for two reasons:


 * search engines will treat Knowino as if it were just another mirror of Wikipedia (and direct people to Wikipedia instead)
 * people will treat Knowino as if it were just another mirror of Wikipedia (and go to Wikipedia instead).


 * That said, I definitely support limited importation of good Wikipedia articles, provided they are changed a bit to (a) meet our style and (b) differentiate Knowino's articles from Wikipedia's articles. I consider this a very vague guideline which can be broken and bent if it improves the encyclopedia. And, as a disclaimer, this is just my own opinion; it might be a good idea to ask in the Village Inn if you plan to import a lot of articles.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 17:43, 19 December 2010 (EST)

Complaint
It is my sad duty to register a complaint, one of your first no doubt. This edit is an attempt by a member of Knowino to reveal details of my identity on this site, while I have chosen to personally not reveal such details. On other wikis this is called outing and is extremely frowned upon. How does Knowino, a wiki that professes to allow anonymous editing, treat such matters? Modek Ringburn 13:03, 18 December 2010 (EST)


 * I am extremely disappointed that you have chosen not to respond personally to this section. It was hardly worth my while writing it. You have left what may be personal details of mine in full view, despite a request that this should not be so. You have failed to deal with the malicious trolling of Mr Wormer - and yes, that is an adequate representation of his actions. So far you are failing to look professional in your efforts. Since you have shown no interest I shall remove the offending edits myself, and thanks for nothing. Modek Ringburn 00:50, 19 December 2010 (EST)


 * If I don't respond to a concern immediately, that does not mean I have ignored it. I'm sorry if it felt that way to you. There are three reasons why I did not act as soon as I read your comment:


 * This issue should have been taken up with Paul first, not me. Perhaps there is a background to this that I am unaware of, in which case I would appreciate you filling me in via e-mail. But I'm not sure why you would choose to take the matter directly to me.
 * The information cited by Paul was, indeed, accessible via a Google search. If Paul, or anyone else, released information about you that you had provided to them in private, I would call it "outing". But, in this case, the details of your comment were readily available to anyone willing to search for "Modek Ringburn" on Google. Perhaps there is a context I am unfamiliar with, but Paul's comments hardly qualified, in my view, as "outing".
 * I know who I sent e-mail invitations to, and none of those people identified themselves as "Modek". Therefore, I can assume you're using a pseudonym—am I correct? In which case, probably the only person on this site who would be able to determine your true identity is me, and I'm not about to "out" that information.


 * At any rate, I'm sorry you feel you've had a bad experience at this site so far, and I hope you'll reconsider your decision to leave. If you wish to fill me in on details that I currently have no knowledge of, you can always e-mail me.


 * Regards,—Thomas Larsen (talk) 01:22, 19 December 2010 (EST)


 * You make several points, none of which I can agree with.
 * This issue was taken up with you because you are the founder and hold sysop rights. If you wish not to deal with complaints then you could better establish a complaints mechanism. It is unreasonable to expect that members of your site should have no recourse to administrative action, and if you take no responsibility for what is printed on your site then you have failed in your duty as founder and sysop.
 * The information may be available via Google, but this is a wiki-based encyclopedia. You seem to be suggesting that if a member of Knowino can find information about another member then they may publish it on Knowino. I bet I can find your personal details if I try hard enough - would you like me to publish your personal details? What about those of your family? Would you like me to take a remark that you made a long time ago and recast it out of context, simply because I have access to the internet? Would you like me to go through your rubbish until I find your credit-card number? What has any of this to do with contributing to an encyclopedia? Paul Wormer made a suggestion, I asked him about it - and he responds with trawling the internet to publish personal information and out-of-context remarks.
 * You obviously do not understand the concept of "outing" - it is not the responsibility of Knowino to publish personal information about its members that they did not reveal onsite. An attempt was made by Wormer to tie a Knowino name to an offsite entity - hardly encyclopedic and of no place in an encyclopedia. Yet you are defending it. Once again, setting up a wiki means someone has to take responsibity for the content and the rules.
 * Correct, I am using a presudonym (I have already said that several times) but perhaps you could explain to your community why you then feel it appropriate for one of your members to attempt to tie that pseudonym to a real-life location. If someone worked hard enough they could, from the pseudonym, discover my identity. Why then do you feel that this investigation should take place on Knowino? You are making a mockery of the anonymous registration process, and once again not taking responsibility for a site that you started.
 * There is no need to reply to this for I shall not be ckecking back, but if you actually want this site to work you might consider asking your members to concentrate on the encyclopedia and not the personal lives of its members. Modek Ringburn 01:42, 19 December 2010 (EST)
 * Really, never back? Or is it a LaNCB? :-) --Boris Tsirelson 01:57, 19 December 2010 (EST)

Timeout, still
Same problem another day:

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /var/www/vhosts/knowino.org/httpdocs/w/includes/db/Database.php on line 1828

--Boris Tsirelson 17:30, 19 December 2010 (EST)


 * Oops, I probably reset it when I was moving over to Knowino. Hang on, I'll try to fix it... There, I've upped the limit to 60 seconds, hopefully that works.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 17:33, 19 December 2010 (EST)

Reviewing
Thomas, I tried to check as inadequate National_Security_Agency because it needs photos. Nothing happened when I checked the radio button.--Paul Wormer 05:15, 20 December 2010 (EST)


 * "Inadequate" is confusing terminology for, "This article doesn't deserve to be flagged right now." In other words, when you check that radio button, you can "unset" a flagged revision of the article (if there is one). But it doesn't mean that the article is marked as "Inadequate". Apologies for the wording.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 18:38, 20 December 2010 (EST)


 * I've changed the field to "None", which is more accurate.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 18:45, 20 December 2010 (EST)


 * Thomas, maybe a new category could be something like "Needs work". Work could be: better formatting (you would be surprised how many formatting errors I have fixed the last of couple of days); needs updates of drawing links (same remark); deserves expansion (short article on topic that deserves more info); needs update (for instance lists of Nobelists or tournament winners). When the "Needs Work" articles could be listed under Special Pages that would be great. Somebody who wants to be useful and has some time to spare could fix a couple.--Paul Wormer 05:44, 21 December 2010 (EST)


 * "you would be surprised how many formatting errors I have fixed the last of couple of days" — I, for one, know you fixed a lot, and a lot remain! :-) My robot is very dull. --Boris Tsirelson 09:31, 21 December 2010 (EST)


 * It's probably possible, although I can't think exactly how it could be done (in a way that wouldn't confuse readers) right now—I'm quite tired. It would be pretty easy to create a "to-do" template, or multiple "to-do" templates, which could be placed on articles...?—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:52, 21 December 2010 (EST)

Images, still
I am reluctant to upload images, except for my own, because I see no place to put licensing details. Probably you'll design it... --Boris Tsirelson 07:09, 20 December 2010 (EST)


 * I uploaded today a view images to Knowino and put in the comment field where I got them from. Usually I upload to WikiCommons, but I don't want to do this with images that come from CZ. Or with images that the WikiCommon bureacrats start bothering me about. For instance I uploaded today the Nobel medal, and since I haven't the foggiest idea what license to choose,  I uploaded it to Knowino instead of to WikiCommons. --Paul Wormer 07:21, 20 December 2010 (EST)


 * Knowino has to fear of legal problems no less than CZ or WC. --Boris Tsirelson 07:24, 20 December 2010 (EST)


 * But I don't do anything illegal, the Nobel organization allows downloading.  WikiCommon gives you about 20 different licenses to choose from and when you pick the wrong one, somebody starts to complain.--Paul Wormer 07:34, 20 December 2010 (EST)

← I'll try to create an image upload wizard to simplify the process in the next few days. For now, it would be good if you just put license information in the comment field.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 06:17, 21 December 2010 (EST)

"Welcome to Knowino!"
"Welcome to Knowino!" is now used instead of "Welcome!"; however, the navigation pane on the left still links to the nonexistent "Welcome!". --Boris Tsirelson 12:18, 21 December 2010 (EST)


 * I've fixed the link. Thanks for pointing it out! :-) —Thomas Larsen (talk) 18:10, 21 December 2010 (EST)

Cite template
Thomas Spectroscopic MASINT has a template error in reference 5 and 6. --Paul Wormer 09:17, 22 December 2010 (EST)


 * Fixed!—Thomas Larsen (talk) 17:20, 22 December 2010 (EST)
 * Thanks. --Paul Wormer 01:13, 23 December 2010 (EST)

Animated gif
Thomas, I have problems with animated gif, compare Wave equation (classical physics) on CZ and Knowino. The Knowino versions of the templates (both {{Image| and [[Image: ) cannot decrease the pictures and cannot give captions while the drawing is moving.--[[User:Paul Wormer|Paul Wormer]] 08:52, 24 December 2010 (EST)


 * That's interesting. I have a suspicion that the conversion program which creates image thumbnails wasn't compiled with GIF resizing support—that would be relatively trivial to fix. I'll take a look.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 18:22, 24 December 2010 (EST)


 * It's not as simple to address as I thought it would be, although it should be relatively easy.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 19:09, 24 December 2010 (EST)


 * Don't you want to enjoy your Xmas dinner? There is absolutely no rush. --Paul Wormer 04:58, 25 December 2010 (EST)
 * It was working a moment ago, and it generated the thumbnails for 50px and 99px. Try setting $wgMaxShellMemory to 0 again. I think it's the way mediawiki limits memory that's breaking convert, rather than the amount of memory available. -- Nx  / talk 05:01, 25 December 2010 (EST)
 * And as I said on RW, it's not supposed to upscale gifs server side. It makes no sense, the browser can do it anyway. -- Nx  / talk 05:16, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * A couple of tests have shown that the ImageMagick command is correct—therefore, it must be to do with the way MediaWiki is limiting memory.


 * Aha:

/bin/bash '/var/www/vhosts/knowino.org/httpdocs/w/bin/ulimit4.sh' 180 102400 102400 'OMP_NUM_THREADS='\1'\ '\/usr/local/bin/convert'\ -background white  '\/var/www/vhosts/knowino.org/httpdocs/w/images/e/ea/Test.gif'\ -coalesce -thumbnail '\27x27!'\ -set comment '\File source: http://knowino.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Test.gif'\ -depth 8  -fuzz 5% -layers optimizeTransparency +map '\/var/www/vhosts/knowino.org/httpdocs/w/images/thumb/e/ea/Test.gif/27px-Test.gif'\ 2>&1' convert: memory allocation failed `/var/www/vhosts/knowino.org/httpdocs/w/images/e/ea/Test.gif' @ error/quantize.c/QuantizeImages/2687.


 * —Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:18, 25 December 2010 (EST)

{{unindent|::::::}}

Ah, excellent—scaling seems to be working now! There is a catch, however—it doesn't appear to work on GIF animations from external repositories (like Wikimedia Commons). I don't know why, and for the time being I'm going to enjoy my Christmas dinner (or supper, at any rate). :-) So, Paul, you'll probably need to upload the GIFs locally.

I haven't performed extensive testing, so it's quite possible there are still problems with the configuration. We'll find out quickly enough, I suppose! Thanks should go to Nx for his helpful suggestions. (Yes, setting $wgMaxShellMemory to 0 did fix the problem, apparently.)—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:33, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * I will update them later. I saw above a mean piece of Unix. I used to use Unix when I was still working; Makefile was one of my favorites second only to AWK. Tom enjoy your supper (is that Australian for dinner, mate?) --Paul Wormer 06:04, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * No worries! :-) I love the power of Unix-like systems (I upgraded my computer to Fedora 14 today, and it's a treat), but the complexity can become frustrating at times. Unix really is mean, in both senses of that word.


 * And I use the word "supper" to mean an after-dinner snack, although I believe it has various other meanings in different parts of the world. ;-) I hope you're enjoying whatever meal you're up to now... Cheers!—Thomas Larsen (talk) 06:16, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * Hope you had a good night sleep. I still cannot get a scaled version of Normal_mode_of_string.gif to work. See here. --Paul Wormer 10:01, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * You need to upload it locally, I think.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 17:42, 25 December 2010 (EST)

[unindent] --Paul Wormer 01:25, 26 December 2010 (EST)
 * 1) See this: a non-local animated gif. I remembered it but couldn't find it, which is why I needed Google search.
 * 2) I tried to upload locally the first moving string (under a new name), but the system didn't allow me to do it. It said "the file is already present". This must be on Wikimedia Commons, where I uploaded it; I cannot delete it there, so I gave up for the time being.


 * (1) That's an interesting example, and shows that it is possible to properly scale animated GIFs from external repositories.


 * (2) You might have to select the "Ignore any warnings" check-box (near the bottom of Special:Upload). I'll try to sort out issue (1), however.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 01:32, 26 December 2010 (EST)


 * The animation is being scaled over at Wikimedia Commons before being cached at this site. Commons has a reasonably tough restriction on the maximum size an animated GIF can be before only the first frame will be used as a thumbnail, and File:Normal mode of string.gif is above that maximum size. However, Knowino's maximum size is somewhat larger; that's why the animation will scale properly (i.e., continue to move after being resized) if you upload it over here. (You'll probably need to select the "Ignore any warnings" radio-button, as I mentioned above.) The animated GIF in Particle in a box is small enough to be scaled properly by Commons, and that's why it's working on Knowino. Things are the same on Wikipedia. Cheers!—Thomas Larsen (talk) 01:53, 26 December 2010 (EST)

Google search
I guess you noticed that I tried to implement Google search here? --Paul Wormer 07:56, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * Yes. Your monobook.js searches in en.citizendium.org, I think, though—is that intentional?


 * I mean to improve the standard search facilities here pretty soon, but it's pretty hard to beat Google at its own game. :-) —Thomas Larsen (talk) 08:01, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * I wanted to adapt that later, I thought it should work (search in CZ). It seems to me that addOnloadHook is not executed on reload. --Paul Wormer 08:05, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * Have you tried the latest version (from )?—Thomas Larsen (talk) 08:08, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * Now I did and it still doesn't work. I know a fair amount of JS. In any case enough to see that the latest version is not essentially different from the older. My bet is on addOnloadHook. --Paul Wormer 08:14, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * It does look like addOnloadHook. I just can't figure out why it wouldn't be working.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 08:32, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * facepalm* I can't believe I didn't pick up on this earlier. MediaWiki has two variables to control whether users can create their own CSS and Javascript code, $wgAllowUserCss and $wgAllowUserJs. Both are  by default. I'm really sorry, and I hope everything is working properly now... (And if it's not, too bad, I'm off to bed. :-P) —Thomas Larsen (talk) 08:42, 25 December 2010 (EST)
 * Thank you, it works, and good night. --Paul Wormer 08:44, 25 December 2010 (EST)


 * Excellent.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 20:16, 25 December 2010 (EST)

IRC channel
Hi Thomas Larsen,

It has been long since I last edited this wiki, mainly due to my personal commitments. But do you guys have an IRC channel? Hydra 03:48, 26 December 2010 (EST)


 * No worries! And we don't have an IRC channel; I suppose it would be fairly easy to set one up.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 03:55, 26 December 2010 (EST)
 * In that case, I have taken the initiative to set one up. I hope you don't mind! It is on the Freenode network as #knowino. Hydra 05:16, 26 December 2010 (EST)


 * Thanks! I'll join it now.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:18, 26 December 2010 (EST)

Animated gif again
Tom, I have three of the four animated gifs working, see here. The fourth one, which is just over 1 MB, does not move. --Paul Wormer 03:25, 27 December 2010 (EST)


 * I'll take a look.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:09, 27 December 2010 (EST)


 * It should be working now.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:29, 27 December 2010 (EST)

LaTeX problems
Just a sec ago Knowino had some hickups (I wrote you an email about it). Now LaTeX has problems: It tells me:

Failed to parse (unknown errornable to run external programs in safe mode.): c_1 L_x + c_2 L_y + c_3 L_z \qquad c_1,\,c_2,\,c_3 \in \mathbb{C}

--Paul Wormer 04:14, 27 December 2010 (EST)


 * Yes, there are a couple of configuration problems that I'm trying to resolve right now. (Thanks for the e-mail, by the way.) I noticed the errors after restarting Apache and nearly had a heart attack. ;-) Once the safe-mode problem is sorted out, the fourth image on the article you mentioned above should be scaled correctly.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:16, 27 December 2010 (EST)


 * Fixed and working. Phew... Hopefully this won't happen again.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:28, 27 December 2010 (EST)

The reader feedback
Quite strange: looking at Cryptography I see on the bottom "Re-review this revision" but not "What do you think of this page?". In contrast, looking at Line (geometry) or Aleph-0 I see both. What could it mean? In fact, for "Cryptography" I put my feedback before changing it to "Presentation" and "Usefulness". --Boris Tsirelson 03:52, 5 January 2011 (EST)


 * Odd. I'll take a look.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 03:59, 5 January 2011 (EST)


 * Hang on, do you mean you rated Cryptography when we were still using "Accuracy", "Balance", and "Readability"? If so, the reason What do you think of this page? is not appearing is that the software thinks (correctly) that you've already rated the page, and it doesn't realise that you were using the old criteria. Obviously this feature is designed to stop people from spam-rating articles, but I think there should be a way for users to change their ratings.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:04, 5 January 2011 (EST)


 * Ah, I understand, OK. Yes, I did when we were still using "Accuracy", "Balance", and "Readability". Never mind. --Boris Tsirelson 04:35, 5 January 2011 (EST)


 * Curiously, an anonymous visitor appears to see What do you think of this page? repeatedly, but a new vote is quietly ignored. --Boris Tsirelson 05:01, 5 January 2011 (EST)


 * I wonder if that's the intended behaviour? In any case, it's not really desirable.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:20, 5 January 2011 (EST)


 * Extension:ArticleFeedback (currently being trialled on some Wikipedia articles, like "US Constitution") seems to function better than Extension:ReaderFeedback, which is the extension we are currently using. However, ArticleFeedback is still undergoing heavy development, so it's probably best to wait for a little while. Check out Article Feedback/Public Policy Pilot/Design Phase 2 for some information on where development is heading.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:41, 5 January 2011 (EST)


 * By the way, I observe that, when an article is edited, page rating remains. Sometimes it can be a problem. But of course, an utterly fragile page rating would be a harder problem. --Boris Tsirelson 05:59, 5 January 2011 (EST)

Blackboard bold (double struck font)
Tom, I hate inline LaTeX \mathbb letters. For ℝ and ℂ I usually use cut and paste. (I assume that your browser shows this as double struck R and C?). However, 𝔽 behaves peculiarly. When you mark with the mouse any symbol in the line containing the F you see a high block (at least I do). Try marking the line containing the double struck F. Do you understand where that comes from?--Paul Wormer 06:16, 8 January 2011 (EST)


 * Hmm, do you mean selecting a whole line that contains an 𝔽? I tried selecting the line above with the 𝔽 in it, but everything seemed to display properly. Would you be able to send me a screenshot, please?—Thomas Larsen (talk) 06:27, 8 January 2011 (EST)


 * I just received the screenshot—thanks.


 * Out of interest, does the "𝔽" display properly if you hit Ctrl-<+> (to zoom in)? I think it's just a font display issue.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 06:53, 8 January 2011 (EST)


 * Yes it looks good enlarged, but the odd behavior is still there after enlargement.--Paul Wormer 06:59, 8 January 2011 (EST)


 * Well, I'm pretty sure it's a font-display problem on your system, probably related to the way Firefox renders fonts. I'm not familiar with Windows, so I don't know how you could fix the problem (although it isn't really a terrible, show-stopping issue). Changing your Firefox fonts might work, but given that this is pretty minor flaw it's probably not worth it.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 07:06, 8 January 2011 (EST)

Strange fact
Looking at Covariance I see above it a "Links" in red, in spite of the fact that Links:Covariance exists, and does appear if I click on the red link. --Boris Tsirelson 15:01, 12 January 2011 (EST)

Wow, now it is blue. It was something temporary. --Boris Tsirelson 15:03, 12 January 2011 (EST)


 * It was probably a caching issue. If it happens again, you can either let it sort itself out or purge the affected page as according to these instructions.—Tom Larsen (talk) 17:17, 12 January 2011 (EST)


 * I see, thanks. --Boris Tsirelson 05:07, 13 January 2011 (EST)

List of unchecked pages
Thomas, would it be difficult to make a list of non-sighted pages? I would go through it and add graphs if needed. --Paul Wormer 01:34, 13 January 2011 (EST)


 * Is Special:UnreviewedPages what you're looking for? —Tom Larsen (talk) 03:42, 13 January 2011 (EST)
 * Yes thank you --Paul Wormer 06:58, 13 January 2011 (EST)


 * No worries!—Tom Larsen (talk) 16:40, 13 January 2011 (EST)

Amphetamine
Thomas, I'm working through the unchecked articles marking them as sighted. When a drawing is needed that I can't find, I skip the article. This way we end up with a list (hopefully short) of articles that need more attention. Now I came across Amphetamine, this needs a certain infobox. Do you think we should "borrow" the infobox from CZ? The problem is: I don't know how to do that. --Paul Wormer 04:07, 14 January 2011 (EST)


 * There was no missing infobox, but I see that there's no image for Amphetamine yet. That's why was being displayed. I've since replaced it with the text, "No image yet."


 * Thanks for going through the articles! I need to finish Knowino:Charter and get to work on the remaining core pages.—Tom Larsen (talk) 04:25, 14 January 2011 (EST)
 * I see that the amphetamine is screwed up at CZ, no picture there.--Paul Wormer 04:31, 14 January 2011 (EST)


 * I see you added an image—nice! I was in the process of doing the same. I ended up putting a 3D rendering below the picture you included.—Tom Larsen (talk) 04:39, 14 January 2011 (EST)
 * We were in each other's way. I tried to move the box lower because it interferes with the check mark. I also found a few spelling mistakes (I run an online spellcheck). BTW, it is very very good that you link to WikiCommons. Over at CZ it is a pain in the ass to get a drawing.--Paul Wormer 04:43, 14 January 2011 (EST)


 * Apologies for the edit-conflict. I managed to correct the position of the infobox by adding  at the top of Template:Chem infobox. It's now displaying correctly—for me, at least.


 * And I agree that Commons is pretty useful!—Tom Larsen (talk) 04:54, 14 January 2011 (EST)

File upload


Thomas, I tried to upload a png and got: "Error creating thumbnail: Invalid thumbnail parameters". --Paul Wormer 08:47, 1 February 2011 (EST) PS: I tried WikiCommons, and it gives the same error. It must be at my side.


 * The dimensions of the image were huge—4958x7017. I autocropped the picture using GIMP to get rid of the whitespace around the edges (particularly above the diagram) and uploaded it again. It's now thumbnailed correctly.—Tom Larsen (talk) 18:55, 1 February 2011 (EST)


 * I indeed had forgotten to crop it. I made a jpg version that uploaded correctly and then I saw the white space. The cropped file (Co-contravariant.jpg) is 108 K and is not better quality than your png (22 K). Later I will switch them. --Paul Wormer 02:03, 2 February 2011 (EST)


 * No worries.—Tom Larsen (talk) 02:39, 2 February 2011 (EST)

Link
In the first sentence of Determinant (mathematics) the link matrix appears in red (as it should). However, when I mouse it, it is not underlined (not activated). In preview mode it is activated. Do you have any idea how come? (Browser issue, perhaps? I use Firefox 3.6.13).--Paul Wormer 12:22, 5 February 2011 (EST)


 * For me now it works as it should. Maybe it was a temporary problem, because of cache or something like that? --Boris Tsirelson 12:58, 5 February 2011 (EST)


 * I tried Chrome and there it works; with Firefox it still doesn't. --Paul Wormer 13:02, 5 February 2011 (EST)


 * Strange. I use Iceweasel; it should be very close to Firefox. --Boris Tsirelson 13:51, 5 February 2011 (EST)


 * The link works fine for me under Firefox 3.6.10 (a slightly older version). Can you click on the link even though it's not underlined? I think it's probably a browser issue, though stranger causes have existed.—Tom Larsen (talk) 17:45, 5 February 2011 (EST)

Hey Tom
I like the site and will try to get on more often (I've been busy with Illogicopedia and the like). I noticed the good amount of math and science articles and am adding some history articles so this wiki will have a little variety. And if you guys decide to create wikis in other languages, let me know if you do a Danish one. Evening!--Colonel Battaleaxe 19:00, 12 February 2011 (EST)


 * I'm glad you like the site! Thanks for creating more articles. I do intend to create Knowinos in other languages—in fact, I mean to move this site to a "en." subdomain in the near future. (We're still trying to figure out a good name for the site, though; "Knowino" is okay, but not extraordinarily original or pronounceable for that matter.) I think it would be best to get the English-language project up and running first, and then create a "Meta" project for inter-language coordination. Any and all suggestions are welcome!—Tom Larsen (talk) 19:33, 12 February 2011 (EST)

Reply to Your Message
Hi Thomas,

I joined yesterday evening and you left me a message on my Talk page. I'm new to this so I don't know if I'm supposed to respond on your talk page or on my own so I. In response to your two points...

1) Your account name ("Td.software") is the name of a company. All accounts should be used by a single person only. You'll have to choose another account name that doesn't have the potential to confuse others in the community: if you provide another name (either your own real name or a pseudonym), I can rename your account for you.

My account name is my personal consulting business account and it's just used by one person, me, and no one else. However, if you feel you want change the account, you can use my personal: "Theresa.M.Dorman@gmail.com"

2) Information Technology is currently not written in an encyclopedic style. I'm not going to delete it right now, but it will require some work to introduce the topic of information technology in a concise, lucid, and comprehensive manner.

I'll gladly work to improve it to be more like an encyclopedia style but I'm not personally aware of what that format is. Can you please point me to what you feel are a couple of good examples that I can use as a baseline?

On a third note, I went back to review your changes to the entry I submitted and noticed that you cut out all the references with a short note about external references. Is it right or wrong to use links on reference entries and on examples and, if we're not supposed to use links, then what is the appropriate way of adding references and examples, especially if they're web related?

Thanks for your help,

Terri

Our first vandalism?
An anon blanked the "Wikipedia" page. Our first vandalism, isn't it? --Boris Tsirelson 01:02, 27 February 2011 (EST)


 * I believe it is! Pretty tame, though—it seems vandals haven't gotten more creative over the last four years...—Tom Larsen (talk) 05:08, 27 February 2011 (EST)
 * Did you know that blanking pages increases the threat to your future children to be autistic? Mr. Berty 11:59, 27 February 2011 (EST)
 * I guess a vandalism could mean the site is getting well known but blanking the Wikipedia entry seems a bit bizarre. Oh, and hey Berty! I hope this site suits you better than simple.--Colonel Battaleaxe 12:06, 27 February 2011 (EST)

Name change
I do want to continue to contribute and apologies for not doing much as my schedule has been most filled as of late. But it has slowed down a bit and I will be able to come to Knowino more often. Likewise, the site shows an atmosphere that encourages authors to use their real names (much like Conservapedia and CZ) and I request that you rename my account Fred Anderson. Much thanks and I hope to contribute much more to the site. --Colonel Battaleaxe 14:12, 27 February 2011 (EST)
 * Yes, with pleasure! Now you are Fred Anderson. Happy editing! --Boris Tsirelson 14:29, 27 February 2011 (EST)
 * Thanks!--Fred Anderson 14:43, 27 February 2011 (EST)


 * Thanks, Boris, for doing the rename, and no worries, Fred! :-) —Tom Larsen (talk) 17:54, 27 February 2011 (EST)

Theory (mathematics)
By the way, Thomas, after your edit to that page, my question is waiting for you on that talk page. --Boris Tsirelson 14:53, 16 April 2011 (EDT)

Little LaTeX problem.
Thomas, could you have a look at this? Thank you, Paul. --Paul Wormer 10:25, 20 May 2011 (EDT)


 * Paul, please look now. Is this what you want to see? I guess, (this?) LaTeX dislikes square brackets in (the beginning of?) "align". --Boris Tsirelson 11:35, 20 May 2011 (EDT)


 * Thanks, Boris! It would have taken me a while to figure out the problem; LaTeX has some strange quirks. ;-) —Tom Larsen (talk) 19:38, 20 May 2011 (EDT)


 * Yes {} fixes it. Amazing! --Paul Wormer 01:08, 21 May 2011 (EDT)


 * Many LaTeX commands can accept optional parameters, their syntax being "[...]". Maybe our LaTeX interpreted our "[...]" as optional parameters of something (of "\begin{align}"? of "\\"?) Anyway, I tried the same on my usual LaTeX (not related to wiki), -- no problem there. --Boris Tsirelson 12:19, 21 May 2011 (EDT)

Fonts
Thomas, I find the ratio in fontsize between preview and edit window not pleasant. When I change fontsize with my browser both sizes change with constant ratio. More specifically: I would like my preview font larger or my edit font smaller. I saw that I can define a personal stylesheet (CSS), but to prepare that I have to know names of HTML attributes (class= "..." or id = "...") used in the preview and edit windows. Could you be of help in creating a personal stylesheet, or does it go too deeply in the Wiki software? --Paul Wormer 11:44, 24 May 2011 (EDT)


 * I haven't done it before, but CSS is generally pretty easy. I think the font-size change you want can be done like this. Cheers!—Tom Larsen (talk) 21:22, 24 May 2011 (EDT)


 * I know CSS fairly well, but I have to be informed about class names like wikiPreview. I changed the font of class wikiPreview in User:Paul_Wormer/common.css to an unreasonably large value (50pt), but did not see any change.--Paul Wormer 01:37, 25 May 2011 (EDT)


 * You may need to refresh your cache: Ctrl-Shift-R, I think, will accomplish that in Firefox.—Tom Larsen (talk) 02:48, 25 May 2011 (EDT)


 * As usual you know the answer, thanks! --Paul Wormer 03:08, 25 May 2011 (EDT)


 * Glad it's working for you! :-) —Tom Larsen (talk) 03:27, 25 May 2011 (EDT)

Wrong statistics
Strangely, Popular Pages shows 1159 pages, while Statistics - only 1000 pages. --Boris Tsirelson 11:18, 1 June 2011 (EDT)


 * Interesting! I've got no idea why that would be the case, except perhaps for some caching issue. Maybe Special:PopularPages lists redirects as well?—Tom Larsen (talk) 23:44, 2 June 2011 (EDT)

FlaggedRevs
I wonder, should we be also mentioned here? --Boris Tsirelson 14:47, 2 June 2011 (EDT)


 * Isn't that page just for Wikimedia Foundation wikis that use Flagged Revisions? There might be another list for all wikis elsewhere, though.—Tom Larsen (talk) 23:46, 2 June 2011 (EDT)

I think you are mistaken about White Argentine
Greetings, Thomas Larsen. I think you are mistaken about this article. I'll give you some reasons.

1) First of all, I never stated it was an ethnic group; it is the cluster of all the Argentinians of European/Middle Eastern descent. Maybe you will understand me better because you are from a country which was made up by European immigration, just like mine. European immigrants who settled in Argentina intermarried within their own ethnicities (colectividades in Spanish) in the first and second generations of settlement, but they have intermingled extensively afterwards. See this article to get some idea of the process: Poverty has Criollo (Mestizo) features. (It is in Spanish, so you'll need a translating program). When I discuss this topic, I always put myself as an example of this intermingling of European ethnicities: I have four different ancestries, Italian (from Piedmont), Spanish, Basque and French. What am I, an Italo-Argentinian, a Spanish-Argentinian, a Basque-Argentinian? I am all of them, I am a White Argentinian, and my culture is the result of the mixing of my four ancestral origins.

2) Argentinians of European descent are considered by other people than me as an ethnic group. See Argentina's page in here. The Joshua Project: Ethnic people groups of Argentina. They list "Argentinians White" as a separate ethnic group which numbers 29,031,000 people, about a 72% of Argentina's population.

3) This article is an equivalent to White American, White Brazilian, or even European Australian. Those groups/categories collect together people from different European origins. In the case of Australia, although peopleof English/Irish/Scottish origin predominate, there are other ethnicities included. Eric Bana, for example, is of Croatian descent.

4) Concerning cultural matters, I must tell that all White Argentines share more or less the same culture, regardless of their ethnicity. Although those Argentines of Spanish, Italian or German descent retain certain aspects of their respective original cultures, all those cultural elements have melted into the mainstream Argentine culture. Today any Italo-Argentine may cook a paella (typical Spanish dish), any German-Argentine may enjoy a pizza, or dance a tarantella, or any Spanish Argentine may participate in the Oktoberfest that is celebrated yearly in Villa General Belgrano (a German colony).

5) Arabs and Jews have also integrated into that mainstream Argentine culture almost perfectly, and they may pass unnoticed as "strangers". Syrian/Lebanese Arabs, since they were mostly Christians -not Muslims- were assimilated pretty well; only in Buenos Aires City the Muslim Arabs have built several mosques, and they are only noticeable as different during the Ramadan because of their typical clothing. I watched a report on them on TV, and they dress like any Argentine even inside the buildings of their collectivity's schools and institutes. Jews in Argentina are mostly Askhenazi, so their culture was partly European on their arrival here. They retain some aspects of their culture, but they know Argentine culture pretty well; I supposed that inside their houses they may speak Yiddish (a German-based dialect, by the way) but outside they speak Rioplatense Spanish like any other Argentinian, and they share mate (a tea-like beverage typical here in Argentina) without any problem. I know this from my own experience. Also read this book, page 203. Some Jews have also married outside the community, so they are merging even more in mainstream Argentine society; some examples are TV news host Jorge Jacobson, and actor producer Adrián Suar.

6) Concerning Metapedia's version of the article, I must first tell you that I'm neither NS nor racist in any way. I agree with you that Metapedia's articles about Hitler and the Holocaust are completely biased, and I repeat that they were not my first choice to publish the article on. It was first written in June 2007 by other users, and I discovered it in April 2010, and began a major expansion of it, modifying almost all its inicial text. When an edit warring began in October 2010, and I was unsure of its outcome, I copied the article in Wikinfo:White Argentine, and Wikia:Argentinos Blancos. Almost in the same days, a friend adviced me to publish it in Metapedia:White Argentine, and so I did. I must admit that I was very naive, for when I began exploring Metapedia, I realized that it was a Nazi-biased wikisite, but it was too late to "unpublish" it. Any way, if you read any version of the article, you'll see that its wording is careful not to offend any other race, and in Wikinfo's version both Jews and Arabs are included. Wikipedia's version of this article is now named Argentines of European descent

After all these reasons, I would ask you to reconsider the relocation of the article into normal article space, for it is not a stub now. I plan to add some sections about literature, architecture and other cultural topics, but not modify what is already done in it. For you to know the immense direct and indirect influence of European culture on Argentina's culture, please read the book I cited above, pages 192 onwards. Thanks for your attention. --Pablo Zampini 11:53, 3 June 2011 (EDT)

Tom!
Nice to see the site is growing! I'm back, hopefully for a while.--Fred Anderson 18:00, 4 June 2011 (EDT)

Disclaimer
Our "unchecked" articles could contain a disclaimer, something like this: "No reviewer bears responsibility for accuracy of this article." By the way, on Citizendium we see: "This is a draft article, under development and not meant to be cited; you can help to improve it. These unapproved articles are subject to a disclaimer." What do you think? --Boris Tsirelson 07:43, 13 June 2011 (EDT)


 * That suggestion sounds reasonable. The disclaimer should probably apply to all articles, though: we don't want people using Knowino to make critical medical decisions, for example, no matter how broad and accurate the project's content turns out to be.—Tom Larsen (talk) 07:20, 19 June 2011 (EDT)


 * Newspapers do not bother to emphasize that their information is not always correct; should we? Well, if we should, maybe like that for reviewed articles: "Only the reviewer bears responsibility for accuracy of this article, and only to the extend claimed in the review." --Boris Tsirelson 10:34, 19 June 2011 (EDT)

Periodic Table
Hi Thomas, I copied Periodic table of elements from CZ, but it turns out that it requires some complicated template business. Do you know how to handle that? --Paul Wormer 10:42, 3 July 2011 (EDT)
 * Sorry for taking so long to respond! I played around with the templates a little, but I couldn't figure out the problem: fixing one issue led to another, and another, and so on. An image is probably best for the time being, unless you want to see if Wikipedia's version of the table works correctly on Knowino. Cheers!—Tom Larsen (talk) 01:14, 13 July 2011 (EDT)

JavaScript
Thomas, I've read somewhere that you are a computer programmer, so maybe you are interested in JavaScript? If you know JavaScript you may be able to improve this article. If you don't, you will certainly be able to spot sentences/paragraphs that are not clear. In any case, could you read the article (at your leisure, no rush!)  and either improve it, or let me know where you encounter difficulties? Thank you.--Paul Wormer 03:37, 27 October 2011 (EDT)


 * Yes, you're right, I am a programmer. I'm not very familiar with Javascript, though, but I'll take a look at the article and let you know if I find any issues!—Tom Larsen (talk) 05:49, 27 October 2011 (EDT)


 * Thomas, I don't want to seem pushy, but how about it? Even when you find the article completely non-understandable, it helps if you say so and point out the worst parts. --Paul Wormer 10:36, 24 January 2012 (EST)

Please close my account
Please close my account. Thanks! Mary Ash 21:45, 22 December 2012 (EST)