User talk:David.Monniaux

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le monde diplomatique

I think that we should avoid describing anything as "left wing", because that really is dependent on your point of view, as are most political labels. That's why I put in the assertion that it is merely generally considered left-wing. It's readers (those I know) don't describe it like that.Vintermann 10:37, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)

Unfinished Dreyfus Affair

Has the page The resolution of the Dreyfus Affair ever been written? Or has it become lost due to restructuring? David.Monniaux 16:06, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

As far as I can tell (as an admin) it's never been written. Perhaps you could solve that problem? ;-) Martin 20:01, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I dropped a whole lot of public domain text there, but its huge so annoyin to wikify--Wonderfool 17:42, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Re: Welfare reform

Well, I wrote what I knew. Feel free to add in or edit details. See Wikipedia:Be bold in editing. Meelar 03:38, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Here is a copy of what i put on the talk page: I'm new on this page...Canadian. Maybe the difference is in how you view the term of "welfare reform". It isn't positive or negative on its own. In the US it has a particular value though: cuts to funding (a POV way of getting to my point).Use the term "Common Sense Revolution and you'll get a huge reaction in Ontario....for or against...but the term itself doesn't mean anything...it was a slogan for a set of political changes to (mainly) social programs--Marcie 07:01, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)... ....i'm not sure since you are a sysop if you work different then the rest? I'd be willing to give this one a stab, but i don't think it can neccesasarily go under the term "welfare reform", which is a vague term and can mean both improving services or decreasing them or any number of combinations depending on culture. Is there some way to put it like "decreases in social programs/income supports funding" and go from there? Just an idea...i can't really work around the term welfare reform that well...but i know a hell of a lot of what the equivalent was in ontario and it was called "The Common Sense Revolution"...it wasn't all of the "revolution" but that and ODSP and Workfare are the terms you will find associated with it. Want to drop by my talk page...it interests me but i'm still fairly new here...i think it needs renaming if you want it to be broadened (which could be a good idea...and someone did put a lot of good work into the US version of it from what i read--Marcie 07:13, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Re: 1905 Law

I really don't know much about the 1905 French law on secularism. I'm pretty strong on the early years of the French Revolution, but other than that I wouldn't consider French history one of my areas of expertise. Sorry. -- Jmabel 04:04, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Details about the Capetian beginnings (Paris)

Hey, thanks for the quick clarification, I was translating the article in Romanian and didn't know how to interpret the old version. Your changes do make it a lot clearer, I'll go back into the Romanian version and integrate your changes. --Gutza 15:08, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

List of regions in France

If the Regions don't have legislative autonomy, what do their legislatures do? Presumably you mean they have limited legislative autonomy? Adam 00:20, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Regions don't really have legislatures, because they don't pass legislation. :-) As explained in the Politics of France article, the national parliament passes statutes, and the prime minister issues regulations (other ministers or lesser administrative authorities, such as mayors, may also issue some subordinate forms of regulations). Regions can issue neither. Regional councils and their presidents basically have a budget to manage, maybe half of which go to building and supporting highschools (the main function of regions is, indeed, to support highschools), and the rest of which is spent discretionarily on supporting job creations, research, infrastructures etc... That's why those positions are politically important: while regions are not responsible for much, in the sense that they will be blamed if things go wrong, they manage large sums of money that they have wide latitude for spending. Contrast that with the far bigger budget of the national government, which is largely tied down with paying fixed costs (salaries, retirement pensions for former civil servants).

There was a proposal to offer some legislative autonomy to, say, Corsica, but such things are highly controversial (if only because the Corsicans themselves turned down a proposal increasing Corsican autonomy).

Oversea countries and territories etc... have legislative autonomy on many topics.David.Monniaux 06:26, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

merci beaucoup. Adam 07:26, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

User:WHEELER on reactionary

I agree with most of your assessment. I think he does have something to offer, though -- there are kernels of important fact in his otherwise frustratingly confusing, contradictory, and biased writing. Furthermore, we can't really do anything but what we've been doing. We should discuss things on the talk page, and edit his writing mercilessly (that's the Wiki way). He is, however, very good at citing his sources, so we need to be even better at it. He has an advocate in Sam Spade who is very aware of policy here and who has defended WHEELER almost unilaterally, so WHEELER knows policy and knows he's not alone. The only approach we can adopt is to follow policy in opposing his work, which really isn't difficult. His work follows policy in citing sources -- our work needs to match that, and then go beyond it simply by being truly NPOV. As yet he's done nothing that would deserve a larger reprimand. I ask that you remain patient, and work with Andy and I to edit the articles back with the use of sources -- do you have any that would suffice? Part of the problem is that WHEELER finds positions so strange that there are few sources to contradict him (as I've noted before) simply because people see no need, for instance, to assert that the founding fathers were not reactionary. Let's work together to edit the articles he works on so that we preserve the good material he adds, and to remove the biased and unwarranted assertions he adds. That's the only way to do this, I think. If you continue to be frustrated, let me know: I'm happy to help. I've been trying to work with WHEELER for 6 weeks, and I understand your perspective completely, believe me! :-) Jwrosenzweig 17:26, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

My point is that it's almost impossible to discuss with somebody that does not make sense. To criticize a point of view, there must be a point of view to criticize, not series of mad exclamations and off-the-point accusations. Wikipedia is not a weblog or a soap box.

Of course, he finds SOME sources - but what he quotes from them has little connection with the matter, or is posted in the wrong section etc... On the other hand, I contend that for many of his offending statements, he does not have any valid source. Think, for instance, of when he pretended that Russia was enlightened like the United Kingdom – this is blatant historical untruth, and he had no source.

Furthermore, I'm a bit wary about his alleged "sources". If you go to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, you'll find all kinds of "historical" writings to cite as source. Would they be relevant? Are they unbiased? What is their agenda? David.Monniaux 17:35, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you. But we must avoid even the appearance of evil. :-) Therefore, we must cite sources. It irks me also, especially when I can see sources that have an obvious bias. And even when sources are provided that contradict WHEELER, he ignores them or insists that he will only accept them if he can see them with his own eyes. But at least if he does that regularly to us, we'll have grounds for censuring him. And perhaps he will surprise us and change his approach. I know, I know, but believing in the ability of others to change and become productive is part of what we're doing here. All we can do is edit articles and cite our sources. You're right: sometimes we can't argue with him. So we won't argue, we'll just edit and explain. That's my advice. :-) Sorry if it's not what you wanted to hear. :-) Jwrosenzweig 17:39, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Publishing photographs of convicted children

Je répond en français c'est plus simple. Je ne suis pas une référence en droit. Normalement ca devrait être dans le Code Pénal dans la section relative aux "Délits de Presse". Sinon je pense que c'est une loi de 1948 qui organise la liberté de presse en France. Ericd 18:35, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Non, c'est une loi de 1881 [1] (http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/texteconsolide/PCEAA.htm), et on n'y parle pas, si je ne m'abuse des coupables mineurs, seulement des victimes mineures. Par contre, en effet, les procès de mineurs sont à huis clos.

Je pense qu'il faut être très prudent quand on parle de lois, car, souvent, on pense que telle ou telle chose est légale ou non sans qu'on sache vraiment si c'est vrai ou en vertu de quoi. David.Monniaux 18:58, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Je ne trouve pas le texte mais j'ai trouvé quelque élémentq. Je pense qu'en fait ce n'est pas un délit de presse mais une interdiction plus large s'adressant à la police et aux juges mais je n'arrive pas à trouver un texte prévoyant des sanctions pénales.

Ericd 19:31, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ordonnance n° 45-174 du 2 février 1945 - Article 14. 6000 ? d'amende (seulemnt).

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/texteconsolide/PJFAP.htm Ericd 19:54, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Merci beaucoup. David.Monniaux 20:32, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Une preuve que la législation française est bordélique....

Ericd 21:44, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Pas vraiment. Là, on parle de loi pénale punissant des agissements de la presse à l'égard de mineur délinquants. On peut donc valablement penser que cette information puisse être dans le code pénal, la loi sur la presse, ou la loi sur les mineurs délinquants. C'est difficile de ranger les choses quand on a plusieurs catégories au choix... David.Monniaux 21:48, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You wrote: "Why change Great Britain to Britain? Great Britain is the official name used in the full name of the United Kingdom, isn't it? If what was meant was that Mireille Mathieu (or others) toured England, Scotland or Wales, wasn't it ok?"

This is a frequent question. The issue is that people use the wrong name for the country all the time. Occasionally they will be lucky and it might be possible for them to argue that they knew exactly what they were doing. It is much better if people use the correct name.

It would be a similar issue if the United States had been called "The Thirteen States" and for people to say "He toured The Thirteen States". It might sometimes be true but we should not use the wrong name.
Bobblewik 12:17, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

where to begin?

Honestly the whole thing is a mess, I would say. The intro is perhaps the worst of it, esp. as it now stands. Sam Spade 19:15, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The mentioning of "left" and "right" within the body of the article w/o clarification that these terms are so flexable and evolutionary as to be worse than useless oftentimes... this is another factual error. Sam Spade 19:20, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ah... Well, I would not call this a factual error (which would imply saying something that does not fit reality) but a factual imprecision. Indeed, you are very right in saying that "left" and "right" have definitions that have vastly varied with time and place. In articles explaining differences between political doctrines, such words should be avoided except when alluding to the particular circumstances of a defined time and place (and then explained). David.Monniaux 19:24, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Arguing with WHEELER

An admirable job arguing with WHEELER, but I fear the fellow is utterly impervious to, well, I would say logic, but really more broadly, to any kind of communication (at least in English) with other human beings. My main hope is that he give up on Wikipedia and go away - I don't think he's ever contributed anything even vaguely useful.

As to your discussion with Mr. Spade above, I think that the Nazism and socialism article, as far as I can tell, the usage of "right" and "left" in the article either refers to 1) left and right as they existed in Imperial and Weimar Germany; or 2) to present day notions of left and right; and that it's very clear which is meant at which points. Sam is just continuing his crusade to make all articles about political phenomena useless. john 21:04, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually I think it is not clear, and that removing these terms, and using more precise terms might make articles on the subject of politics a good deal less useless. I wish you could see thru your blinding assumption of bad faith against me to be able to understand that I also want a sensible article. Your writing on the article is/was very good, but you need to understand it is also a persuasive argument for nazism being a form of socislism, and your usage of left/right terms (while it may help you make your argument more convincing) is POV. You can write well and still fail to be NPOV, and this is what you have done. I am simply trying to reduce the imbalance and (un)intentional (unintentional w you I believe, clearly intentional w other editors) bias. Sam Spade 00:23, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Not sure about the first name issues. I can't find anything. It would be a useful table, though, certainly. As to WHEELER, he's been nominated for adminship! john 06:59, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I basically agree with you about WHEELER, although I think it goes further than that, to a strange ideology involving ancient Greece, and so forth. I don't think the guy is purposefully being difficult (as Andy says, perhaps too generously, his heart's in the right place), but I think he's so set in his ideas as to be unwilling to accept, or possibly even understand, any criticism of his work. john 07:08, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I suspect his poor English expression goes a long way in explaining why he comes across so badly. I think, for instance, that he still has not understood that if you explain some political group's positions, you have to express a distance between and the group's position, otherwise you're endorsing their position.

He also (like many right-wing Americans, I should say) has an obsession with "Socialism" and "private property" which he applies to many issues that have fairly little to do with private property or socialism. David.Monniaux 07:11, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but it's all rather more idiosyncratic than a right wing quasi-troll like User:TDC. He proudly calls himself a reactionary, and tries to make just about everybody in history whom he likes a reactionary! I don't know that I've ever met an American who was willing to call himself reactionary (and I'm American). It's almost exclusively a pejorative used by people on the left. People on the right tend to identify themselves as conservatives or, if they are particularly literate, claim for themselves the mantle of 19th century liberalism. john 07:15, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Witness how WHEELER resisted the notion that the general usage of "reactionary" today was pejorative! He then cited Hoover describing proudly himself as a reactionary, and challenged me to pro

removing your comment

Hi, a quick question, just curious: has this edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Sokal_Affair&diff=0&oldid=3254672) been agreed to by you? ("Deleted a response to me that belonged on a different talk page.") Regards, High on a tree 04:57, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Admin nomination

It was a pleasure to support your admin nomination. Your participation in the Peter Lynds debate was most appreciated. I have a feeling we have not seen the last of it. -- Decumanus | Talk 02:12, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

David, prends ton plus beau keyboard, et va mettre ton approbation ici si tu ne veux pas que l'instit aux grosses lunettes et au chignon, te tape sur les doigts avec sa plus belle règle :-). SweetLittleFluffyThing 04:44, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Sysop

Congratulations! You are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. Good luck. Angela. 14:52, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

Learning Project (http://amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h0444e1w/vokeng.htm)

Hi there, I saw you speak both French and English, so maybe you are interested in this projet I describe on my user page. Get-back-world-respect 19:16, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Anti-French sentiment article

The current state of the article Anti-French sentiment in the United States appalls me, and I just tried moving the egregious "Accusations" section to the Talk page, but I was reverted by user Sam Spade shortly thereafter. Care to weigh in with your opinion on whether this material should be included in the article? I fully understand if you don't. -- Viajero 17:53, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, the problem is that you erased some text without looking at the talk page where that text was discussed. This is not the proper procedure. David.Monniaux 19:48, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Je ne suis pas du tout d'accord avec ton opinion sur cet article, mais peu importe. Fait juste attention où tu met les pieds avec Sam.

Oui, je vois un peu comment est le personnage... Mais, en l'espèce, il avait raison: il y avait une discussion en cours avec des arguments des deux côtés, et un type débarque, ne lit pas la discussion et vire le paragraphie litigieux. Ce n'est pas la bonne manière.

En ce qui concerne cet article, je pense que Wikipedia n'a pas à faire la bégueule: si des insultes ou des thèmes d'insultes reviennent sans cessr dans le discours anti-français, il est approprié de les lister. Je dois dire que ma liste originale était largement plus courte, et centrée sur les problèmes politiques, mais il est vrai que, souvent, les remarques désobligeantes sur la politique sont souvent associées à des clichés sur le mode de vie.

C'est un peu comme certains en France pour qui tout américain est un gros beauf semi-crétin et obèse... David.Monniaux 06:20, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Je crois que cet article et l'article sur l'anti-Americanism devrait aller à VfD. -- Cecropia | Talk 16:25, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Pourquoi donc? On documente la realite, meme si celle-ci n'est pas flatteuse. Si on commence comme ca, autant virer tous les sujets d'actualite et ne mentionner que les evenements dont les principaux protagonistes sont morts, voire uniquement les evenements qui n'attisent plus les passions. David.Monniaux 16:30, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Ce semblerait insulte de ces articles tellement et enflamer tant de passions, celle elles rendent des personnes fâchées plutôt qu'informer. En outre, les gens sont encouragés à exprimer leur préjudice plus laid. -- Cecropia | Talk 16:51, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Sorry to say so, but I can hardly understand you. Would you mind speaking English?

I think that documenting prejudice is by no means encouraging it. If we were to write about nazism, we would, understandably, talk about the anti-Jewish Nazi hysteria and the nazi allegations on Jews. Does this mean we support the Nazis?

Controversies exist, and they should be documented objectively. David.Monniaux 16:54, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

My French teacher always did call me (and two others) "the unHoly three." Anyway, my point is that these articles have no proportion and I think they more reflect people's individual prejudice and are blown out of proportion. No one says "Freedom Fries" except as a joke, and not even that any more. I will admit that when I bought French butter recently I jokingly called it "Freedom Butter" but obviously if I were that annoyed with France I wouldn't be buying it at all. Americans respect the French for many things, including support against Britain through most of the 19th century, French food and much of French culture.

But my broader problem is that these things antogonize people--I'm thinking of Anthere. To what end? -- Cecropia | Talk 18:29, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, of course, we must keep some proportion. Still, I've heard the said jokes many times. What's worse, sometimes they were heard from people who should know better - national politicians, or editorialists in national newspapers. I am pretty sure that Americans would label "anti-American" any person who made remarks of the same kind on the United States.

Of course, such remarks antagonize people - they are meant so. Still, we cannot pretend that they do not exist, or that they are negligible. We should not apply a rosy tint to reality. David.Monniaux 19:10, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

NED

Well, tongue-in-cheek devil's advocacy aside, I think we can agree to disagree on this one. A question--what instance were you referring to re: Church of Scientology? Yours, Meelar 15:05, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Throughout the Clinton administration, the US government bombarded France and other countries (I think that Germany was in the lot) with accusations of religious intolerance, lack of freedom of religion etc... because of the way those countries treat the Church of Scientology and other groups. In France, the Church of Scientology is widely regarded as a mafia-like organization that extorts money from disoriented people seeking assistance, and masquerades as a religious organization. Groups like the Jehovah witnesses also made some quite unreasonable claims.(*)

That pressure went quite far. If I remember well, there was a law that mandated the US government to apply "sanctions" to countries that, according to these reports, did not respect freedom of religion (the executive could waive the law, I presume to avoid very awkward diplomatic hassles when it came to close allies like NATO countries).

For most of tthose who noticed it in France, these actions were unwarranted meddling into French internal affairs, probably induced by some funding from those allegedly persecuted political groups. This view is corroborated by the cessation of the pressures when the Bush administration came in power - you would have thought that if there was real substance behind them, and not mere lobbying, the Bush administration, quite in favor of religion, would also have pushed them.

(*) I think I remember some declaration before the US congress that it was a shame that France did not recognize the Jehovah witnesses as a religion, whereas this religion had a long history. The speaker apparently totally missed the point that, by law, France officially recognizes no religion, and thus that what he required was essentially illegal. This is, I think, a clear example of the difficulty of meddling into other countries' affair: some very important background information is missing, and people act based on biased and uninformed reporting. David.Monniaux 15:25, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, I can't say I know about the controversy (before my time), but it's certainly been interesting to get a foreign perspective. Best wishes, Meelar 15:54, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Middle Eastern portion of "Foreign Relations of France"

Hi David,

I'd like to take a shot at fixing bias in the Foreign relations of France article. Could you tell me where you believe the problems are?

Thanks, Ta bu shi da yu 05:54, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The section on the Middle East is highly critical of France's policies in that region. Even if some of the points are true, it's an incredibly one-sided commentary. David.Monniaux 06:34, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sys op help please

User:K1 keeps deleting my contributions to several articles (currently mostly) Religious minorities in Iran and William C. Rogers III either without comment or with abusive comment only. I do not want to participate in a revert war, but rather debate matters on the talk pages. Could you please protect both pages at whatever stage you feel ok to force some debate ? If you have other suggestions to make matters a bit better, that would be great too. I have put the matter onto the RfC pages [[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/--K1)] Thanks a lot ! I have already asked User Morwen who declined as she had previous conflicts wth K1 and User:Roozbeh who declined as he had asked unsuccessfully K1 to tone down and feared getting abuse too. I am a bit at a loss, particulartly as I do not know many people yet. Refdoc 09:17, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Laïcité

I'm a bit unsure as to the meaning of civil religion and the link between it and laïcité. Does this suggest, for instance, that the French government is pushing some kind of set of official religious practices? David.Monniaux 20:36, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No. You will note that the civil religion article says that in France, the religious and and the non-religious forms of "civil religion" are separated from each other. I had in mind that the civil religion article bears on the general topic of varying degrees and varying styles of separation of church and state.

Search applet

David, some comments and observations:

1. I figure that when the applet first starts, it has to load some or all of the .idx files. Right now it appears that the applet doesn't draw anything until it has done so - so even on my broadband connection the applet languishes for many seconds (a time in which one could mistake it for having crashed). Perhaps a "loading..." paint or something is in order?

It loads one of the .idx files. I'm considering splitting it too. I can also probably make progress bars.

1. hmm, the button appears to have some kind of fancy texture. Surely the jar doesn't contain a swing LnF?

Actually, no, it uses the default LnF on your Java installation.

1. I get the search to work, and it brings up a window listing the matches - but hitting a given match doesn't do anything. I imagine its supposed to launch another browser window or something, but I don't get anything (and there's no exception in the console either). FYI I'm using

 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) 
 Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9

and

 Sun j2se 1.5.0-beta (build 1.4.0-beta-b32c)

Bitter experience tells me you're more likely to be able to manipulate a preexisting browser window via the appletcontext, and so using the otherframe-target thing seems to be the safest idea (i.e. where your search applet is in one small frame, and the wikipedia itself in another). Still, the search seemed to be fairly sensible, and that's assuredly the hard task :) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:47, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If you check off the checkbox at the top of the search window, it'll open another window.

Thanks for your remarks. David.Monniaux 19:03, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It works okay on Opera 7.51 and IE, but not on Firefox (regardless of whether the box is checked or not). It's not caused by firefox's built-in popup blocker either, as disabling that didn't help. Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:40, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Works here with

Linux/x86, Debian, Mozilla Firefox Version: 0.8-12, j2sdk-1.4.2

Linux/x86, Fedora Core 1, Mozilla 1.4.1, j2eesdk-1.4.2

There's definitely some mystery here! I'll build a framed version. Ah, and I'll put in some progress bars! David.Monniaux 21:08, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The progress bars are in (but they don't seem to kick in unless your connection is really slow). See the new version (http://quatramaran.ens.fr/~monniaux/wikipedia_en/search_applet.html) and the test version (http://quatramaran.ens.fr/~monniaux/wikipedia_en.test/search_applet.html). David.Monniaux 20:12, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't see the progress bar at all. Assuming it's a swing applet, you'd need to be doing the network IO asynchronously in another thread, and be mailing the swing event thread back messages telling it to update the status bar (otherwise the updates will all just pile up until the download is done). I have some code that does just this somewhere, let me know if you want it. Things are worse than before on firefox - I get a zip exception during that download - but I'm running a beta jdk, so I won't whinge properly until I've updated it to the latest 1.5. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:54, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, the applet on the page had a bug with respect to the thread handling.

If you get a Zip exception, it's probably a bug in your JDK, unless I was upgrading the index at the same time. David.Monniaux 16:57, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The current version of the applet is slow, but the reason for the slowness is understood and the problem will be fixed at the expense of some added memory costs (I may try some more subtle strategy later). I tried to be "too clever" with some of the caching code. David.Monniaux 23:44, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fixed. David.Monniaux 05:58, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Search engine

I've made a simple search engine (http://quatramaran.ens.fr/~monniaux/wikipedia_en/search_applet.html) in Java. The engine can work off-line (i.e. if you copy all the files in the directory to your hard disk, the engine can be run off the hard disk), which, coupled with a static HTML copy of Wikipedia, would make a portable, searchable encyclopedia.

You need a recent Java Virtual Machine to use it; in particular, the one shipping with Microsoft Windows won't work. There's a link pointing to Sun Microsystems' virtual machine.

I'm working on reducing the memory consumption.

I'm interested in hearing impressions from people on various computing platforms.

Comments on my talk page or here.

If you mean that you just want to copy the names of articles onto your hard disk, then what would be the point? If you mean that you're trying to create an offline version of Wikipedia, then that's essentially impossible for most people. The Wikipedia database is more than 16GB in size, and it would be obsolete within seconds because of the number of edits to Wikipedia. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 19:07, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

False. The current Wikipedia database, which I downloaded (see the download page (http://download.wikipedia.org), is about 600 Mbytes long in compressed for, 1.4 Gbytes long in uncompressed form. This means that one could conceivably generate all HTML pages for Wikipedia and obtain a static version in less than the capacity of a DVD, and certainly well within the reach of current hard drives. The only issue is the size of the images (21 Gbytes).

There are many people on there without a good Internet connection, often without any Internet connection at all. It makes sense to me that these people would like to use an offline version; it also makes sense that they would like to use a search engine that does not require the installation of a SQL database or other complex stuff. ;-) David.Monniaux 20:27, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, but this could mean a Wikipedia snapshot DVD. Consider the possibilites, releasing a new DVD every month. Post the image on the wikipedia website. It'd be like Encarta for Wikipedia — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:34, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Putting an ISO up for download would be a huge hit on our bandwidth - instead, make it a BitTorrent file, which can soften the blow. - jredmond 22:18, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the ability to put a CD version out would be fantastic for areas of the world with some access to computers, but no internet - many areas of the former Soviet Union have libraries without many resources, but with a computer or two that are not used for much, even pre-loading computers that are donated. Mark Richards 21:37, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A CD version is a bit unrealistic, but we have been considering the feasibility of making a DVD version. MandrakeSoft have been pondering putting such a DVD in their distro. The images are about 3.5 GB for en, not 21 GB, and MySQL on ariel uses 108 GB in the InnoDB data files, not 16 GB. -- Tim Starling 01:36, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

The current version of the applet is slow, but the reason for the slowness is understood and the problem will be fixed at the expense of some added memory costs (I may try some more subtle strategy later). I tried to be "too clever" with some of the caching code. David.Monniaux 23:41, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fixed. David.Monniaux 05:58, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hi David. I wasn't sure if the above comments would still be useful to you so I've moved them here in case you need them as it was time to clean the village pump. Angela. 19:22, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Javascript "automatic" wikilinks

Read this page (http://quatramaran.ens.fr/~monniaux/wikilinks/pagea.html). When the mouse hovers over a wikilink, the top of the linked definition is brought out in a "tooltip" popup. This is done client-side with Javascript; the generation of the page does not require more database requests.

It works on Mozilla and related browsers, on Opera and on Internet Explorer; it is broken on Konqueror. (Apparently, Konqueror lacks support for some CSS properties.)

Comments on my talk page or here. David.Monniaux 22:00, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Doesn't it need more database requests, though? Either through the server sticking the text in the generated page, or through the client loading something from another page? =/ - Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 02:07, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The server does not stick the text in the generated page. The client indeed needs to download the text for the boxes (on-demand), but this is text without decorations or personal options, so it's perfectly cacheable by the Squids. David.Monniaux 07:39, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

FYI. This seems to require IE 5.5 or later. (I can get the exact 5.0 version # it fails on later today). Niteowlneils 17:35, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It works on Mozilla 1.7.1 for me (and nicely I might add). No sane individual would use IE, unless in a public environment. --TIB 05:19, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

Fine, just so long as folk remember to optimise wikipedia for the insane, who make up the vast majority of visitors. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 01:55, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

Cult#France. See also talk:cult. Thanks Andries 08:23, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)