from_name: Gurumustuk Khalsa

subject: [Wikitech-l] EasyTimeline on Windows Server

body:
Hi everyone... I have been trying to get EeasyTimeline to work with
Mediawiki and I have been searching far and wide...and trying
everything I can think of to no avail.

I read the info at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:EasyTimeline_activation

And setup as specific...however I get the following error:

Timeline error: Executable not found. Command line was:
"C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\sikhiwiki\extensions\timeline\EasyTimeline.pl"
"C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\sikhiwiki/extensions/timeline/EasyTimeline.pl" -i
"C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\sikhiwiki/images/timeline/de9b591eeeff87ca8071fee846d112ac"
-m -P "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\sikhiwiki\pl.exe" -T
"C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\sikhiwiki/images/tmp" -A "/index.php?title=$1"

I am using a windows server with IIS as the webserver. I have perl
installed and configured in IIS

I am no perl/php expert so am running out of options. The only way I
can get rid of the error is to change this:

$ret = `{$cmdline}`;

to
$ret = '{$cmdline}';

(different apostrophy)

When I do that I can see that it creates file
"de9b591eeeff87ca8071fee846d112ac.map" but not the GIF file.

In terms of the path settings in EasyTimeline.php I have this:
$wgTimelineSettings->ploticusCommand = "C:\\Inetpub\wwwroot\\sikhiwiki\\pl.exe";
$wgTimelineSettings->perlCommand =
"C:\\Inetpub\\wwwroot\\sikhiwiki\\extensions\\timeline\\EasyTimeline.pl";

and included in the LocalSettings.php

Any ideas? Any windows users who have this working?

Please help!

Thanks

...Gurumustuk

http://www.sikhiwiki.org


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Redirect Pages: Text on them -> Text on article

body:
On 02/05/05, Rahul Sinha <quidire at gmail.com> wrote:
> This didn't go to the whole list; did you want to send it there?

Bah! I wish I could stop that happening - or at least easily predict
and spot *when* it would happen. I think it's when one reply goes to
the sender's address as well as the list, and GMail combines these so
that the next reply goes only to the person, and not the list.
Grrrr...

> On 2 May 2005, at 12.50 PM, Rowan Collins wrote:
>
> > On 02/05/05, Rahul Sinha <quidire at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>> #REDIRECT [[Foo]] BECAUSE For info on Foo, see [[#Foo]]
> >>> or maybe
> >>> #REDIRECT [[Foo]] #BECAUSE For info on Foo, see [[#Foo]]
> >>> to make it more clear that "#because" is a magic word, not part
> >>> of the
> >>> explanation.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Makes sense; I had thought the syntax should allow for arbitrarily
> >> long "because" explanations... thus an end delimiter would be of
> >> use...
> >>
> >
> > I guess the reason I didn't bother with that is that I can't think of
> > a reason to have content *other than* an explanation on the redirect
> > page. So everything from "#because" to the end of the page can be
> > safely treated as an explanation. As I say, the "#because" is only
> > really there so that existing redirects don't start behaving in ways
> > their creators didn't intend - if designing from scratch, one probably
> > wouldn't use that either.
> >
> > --
> > Rowan Collins BSc
> > [IMSoP]
> >
>
>

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Joe Flowers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Reloading WIKI database

body:
I am trying to use

mysql.exe --username=xxx -password=xxx myDatabaseName < LoadFile.sql

to restore the wikipedia database from the .sql files that they provide.
However, I am running into issues restoring the data.  I've been able to
restore from a file as large as 70mb but anything bigger than that seems to
fail.  It doesn't give any notification of failure but if it runs overnight it
appears to just stop, and I have to manually close the command prompt window.
This is on a windows server 2003 box.

Does anybody know of any tools that can help handle larger .sql files?  I am
planning on trying to load the cur database, which is a 2.5gb .sql file, and
I'd rather not have to split it into 50 different files.

Thanks!


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alex Krupp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
>Chad Perrin wrote:

>In short, though, you'll probably find pretty quickly that "everyone
>here" does NOT in fact agree with that, or that Wikipedia is run that
>way, as several responses to your email have already illustrated.

Good point. Looks like I was a bit overambitious in my initial email.

>>In truth, it seems to me that what makes Wikipedia work is exactly what
>>the book you mention claims is invalid: the input of experts.
>
>
The book does not claim that the input of experts is invalid, nor am I
claiming the advice of experts is invalid. The book argues that under
the right circumstances groups  of both experts and non-experts can make
better decisions than just experts. Whether this is true or not I don't
know, but I'm not claiming that it is gospel truth, only that I think
Wikipedians would enjoy the book. I did make the claim that people
reading this would agree with the claim, but apparently I was wrong on
that one.

I also disagree that the input of experts is what makes Wikipedia work.
I would make an educated guess that the majority of edits that the top
contributors make make are in topics they know nothing about: fixing
grammar, improving the flow, wikifying, placing articles in categories,
removing POV, reverting vandalism, etc. But is it true that the facts of
the article were originally added by domain experts? Not necessarily, a
lot of my favorite articles were written largely a sentence at a time,
where each person knew one fact or only a handful of facts about the
subject. Each of these contributors was most likely ignorant about the
topic as a whole, yet because each added a fact or two relatively good
articles have eventually been created. A good example of this is [[Tea]]
on en.

>>We are all experts in some things, and we all know where to find the words of
>>experts online.  Within our realms of knowledge, and within realms of
>>the knowledge we can find that is contributed to public circulation by
>>others, we contribute to the aggregate that is Wikipedia.
>
>
I don't disagree with this...

>>There's nothing "emergent" about that aside from the simple fact that when a lot
>>of time and effort is put into collecting expert data a nice collection
>>of expert data emerges.
>>
>
>
I agree that there is no emergence at the project level; we are all
trying to create an encyclopedia that is composed of a collection of
articles. But at the same time, Wikipedia isn't supposed to be the sum
of all human data, but rather the sum of all human knowledge. At the
article level it is possible for many people to each add a single fact,
that when combined allow conclusions to be drawn by readers that were
not known by any individual contributor. I would consider this to be
emergence, though if others want to say that this is only a
collaboration and is not emergent then I won't argue because I don't
think it particularly matters.

>>Meanwhile, there's nothing distributed about the intelligence involved -- only about the way work is accomplished.
>>
>
>
I don't know enough about what qualifies and what does not qualify as
distributed intelligence (outside of the mostly black and white
definitions used by computer science) to pass judgement on this, but
I'll take your word for it.

In another reply, Stirling Newberry says, "I've read it, it is the "Dow
36,000" for the 90s." I had never heard of this book so I looked it up
in Amazon, and the first review says that the main problem with the book
is that it is written by people who think they are smarter than the
market. This is interesting, considering the Wisdom of Crowds is about
how individuals aren't consistently smarter than the market and about
how to use the intelligence of markets to make good decisions. As a
practical example of how Surowiecki's ideas could be applied by
individuals in WP, consider the process for voting on which articles
should become featured. The task at hand is to separate the excellent
articles from the merely good. According to Surowiecki, when one has to
make a decision through a group then the best decisions are made by
groups which have diversity, independence, and decentralization (to
borrow from Joseph's mindmap).

This means that, according to Surowiecki, the quality of judging of
articles will increase the more diverse the group is in terms of what
they know, their values and beliefs, levels of intelligence, etc. The
takeaway would be that we should get as many people to participate in
choosing articles to go into WP 1.0 in order to make the best decisions
about what stays and goes.

Secondly, each individual should act independently. That means that s/he
should read the article and write down their reaction to it BEFORE
reading other people's comments. If their comment is completely
redundant then they should possibly delete it, but individuals should
not read other people's comments before reading the article.

Thirdly, the process should be decentralized. WP does an excellent job
of this already: there is no one telling people what to do, and everyone
just works on what they are interested in when they feel like it. Going
back to our example about choosing FA/WP 1.0 articles, our
decentralization is an asset because if there were someone giving orders
for people to vote on a certain number of articles per week or else have
their account banned, one could easily imagine a situation of people
voting and commenting without really reading the articles first.

Anyway, I didn't mean for my post to be offensive by putting words in
the mouths of othhers, nor did I mean to imply that I believe all of
what Surowiecki says is gospel truth. However, I did enjoy the book, I
do think that it relates to Wikipedia (even though Jimbo disagrees), and
it got me thinking more about the social dynamics of this project. On
that basis I still recommend the book.

Alex "pHatidic" Krupp
http://www.alexkrupp.com


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.5alpha1 coming soon

body:
On 5/2/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Peter Harkins wrote:
> > On Mon, May 02, 2005 at 06:41:17AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> >>>There are still plenty of rough edges, and some changes will yet be made
> >>>before the end.
> >
> > What's the context for "before the end": before 1.5 alpha 1 is out or
> > before 1.5 proper is out?
>
> Before 1.5.0 final, currently scheduled for circa June 1. Might do a
> couple more little tweaks yet before alpha1, though.
>
> > I'm starting a wiki and considering grabbing
> > 1.5 now to start rather than have to deal with the 1.4 -> 1.5 upgrade in
> > the future. Would I be signing up for more pain by doing this?
>
> Depends on how brave you are. :)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>

If it were me,  I'd stick with 1.4 for now.  There will be an upgrade
mechanism (1.4 -> 1.5) and if you're very concerned about how smooth
that might be, let some time go by after 1.5 is released before you
upgrade -- any major problems should be revealed after a few weeks,
and fixes or work-arounds available.

All of the Wikimedia projects will have to go through the 1.4 -> 1.5
upgrade, so you can be fairly certain that it will work before that
happens.

-Rich Holton

--

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Zeitgeist

body:
>So is there a way to get the Recent Changes of a week?

how about xml?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hideminor=0&hideliu=0&hidebots=1&hidepatrolled=0&limit=1000000&days=7&output=raw&feed=rss


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
Alex Krupp wrote:
> So after finishing this book I have been thinking a lot about emergence
> in general. Wikipedia displays emergent properties because each article
> is better than the contribution of each individual. Similarly, ants
> display emergence because an ant colony can accomplish things that each
> individual ant cannot even conceive.

I haven't read the book so please fill me in. Isn't the Wikipedia an
example of collaboration, not emergence? Emergence implies that the
large-scale behaviour is qualitatively different than the small-scale
behaviour. Wikipedia is composed of many articles, which are all similar
to each other. You'd be hard-pressed to tell whether a given article is
written by a single dedicated person or by a dozen. Its popularity is
proportional to its size, the value of the whole is roughly equal to the
sum of the articles. Where is the qualitative difference?

I know complexity theory is in vogue, it's tempting to rebadge an
ancient concept such as collaboration in terms of something new. But to
call it "emergence" seems to reduce the many intelligent people who knew
exactly what they wanted to create and who set out to create it, to a
mere colony of ants.

-- Tim Starling


body:
>Andre Engels wrote:

>Wikipedia does not have some kind of weighted vote between the various ideas.
>
I would argue that every single article is a weighted vote between
various ideas.

>It puts on one, and then either keeps it, corrects it, or goes into a revert war.
>Correction needs 1 person, revert war needs 2.
>
Every single edit has to stand up the scrutiny of every single person
(collectively, a crowd) who reads the article for the rest of time

>No "wisdom of the crowd" here, just "wisdom of different people".
>
>
Isn't a crowd just a group of people? A wise crowd is a group of
individuals who make a better decision than the smartest individual
could have made on their own. A dumb crowd is one that compromises to
the lowest common denominator.

Thinking about it, the title of the book is actually misleading because
according to the author the way to get a group of individuals to make
wise decisions is to prevent them from being anthropomorphized into a
crowd and adopting groupthink. So the "wisdom of the crowd" is really
just the "wisdom of different people", as you say. That is why WP has
the success it does, because it is just "wisdom of different people."

Alex Krupp
http://www.alexkrupp.com


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reloading WIKI database

body:
Hi,

I think you'll typically see that MySQL performs a great deal better on
Linux than it does on Windows. MySQL claims that it performs up to 50%
better on Unix based environments. That said, importing a huge table isn't
the best way to measure performance, and I wouldn't necessarily say that
MySQL on Windows 2k3 is 'bad' per se, but rather that MySQL runs much better
on Linux. Also, it's possible that a default installation on Windows is less
optimized than a default installation on Linux, given I suspect that MySQL
spends more time developing their Unix based servers. If you're really
committed to running on Windows you might want to spend some time
researching ways of optimizing your configuration.

We've been running MySQL on a Win 2k3 machine for almost a year now and we
serve up about 23 queries a second (which is not a lot) and have had no
problems at all.

Travis

On 5/2/05, John Fader <jfader at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/2/05, Joe Flowers <jflowers45 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'll try making those changes and let you know how it goes. Thanks for
> your
> > quick response, it is greatly appreciated!
>
> In a similar vein to Joe's problem, is it just me, or does MySQL
> performance on Windows *really* suck?
>
> On my 3GHz athlon XP box, importing that cur table took around 26
> hours, whereas the same job on an inferior linux box took around 8.
> Similarly, the same SQL query to count the rows in the cur table takes
> 0.1 seconds on linux and 6 minutes on windows.
>
> Surely MySQL on windows can't be *this* bad? Both MySQLs are running
> as default 4.x installations on otherwise unladen machines with ample
> RAM. Does this match others' experiences?
>
> --
> John Fader
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Travis Derouin <tderouin <at> gmail.com> writes:

>
> Hi Joe,
>
> Do you see any errors in your MySQL server log?
>
> You might need to increase the maximum size of an allowed packet, try adding
> this to your my.cnf in the mysqld section:
>
> set-variable = max_allowed_packet=32M
>
> Also, it's possible your Innodb tablespace is too small for the file you're
> trying to import, for example in your my.cnf file you might have to set the
> size of the innodb data file to be something larger like:
>
> innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:7800M
>
> Beware of doing this though if you already have information stored in inno
> db table, you'll have to export the data, change the size of the tablespace
> and then reimport the data.
>
> Travis

The most frequent error that I see in the log is along the lines of

050502 10:03:52  Aborted connection 89 to db: 'valcon' user: 'root' host:
`localhost' (Got an error writing communication packets)

but I also see an error that occurred a few times

050426 12:36:29  Aborted connection 57 to db: 'valcon' user: 'root' host:
`localhost' (Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet')

Max_allowed_packet is currently 1m and innodb_data_file_path is
ibdata1:10M:autoextend

I'll try making those changes and let you know how it goes.  Thanks for your
quick response, it is greatly appreciated!

-Joe


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Zeitgeist

body:
alright...this one works...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hideminor=0&hideliu=0&hidebots=1&hidepatrolled=0&limit=1000000&from=20050503030902

where the trailing digits are

2005   05         03    03       09   02
YEAR MONTH DAY HOUR MIN SEC

so just change the day to one less...browser beware...!

/Alterego

> Hm, testing it I got recent changes of the last 2 minutes.


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] committing to CVS

body:
If possible and and supported by you,
I would like to ask, whether I can apply for developers rights

   for committing changes for a limited time.

Then I can upload my http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454
changes easily.
Tom


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Edward Z. Yang wrote:
>> Current behavior of Redirects totally masks any text that comes
>> after the #REDIRECT [[]] declaration.
>
> The main reason this is done is that extra text containing links will
>  foul up the link database: the single outgoing link from a redirect
>  is used to keep track of where that redirect leads to.
>
> Redirect pages really oughtn't to be stored the way they are, it's a
> nasty hack. This should be recorded properly as metadata listing the
> exact target as a cleanly machine-readable field.

Ah... I see. Didn't do my research:

- From Wikipedia:Redirect
> Everything after the redirect line will be blanked when you save the
>  page. Any text on the same line as the redirect will stay, but will
>  not be visible unless someone edits the page.

Although I'm a bit confused with your last paragraph: did you mean that
the redirect pages are a hack, or the way they are being stored is a
hack? The technical specification was to serve as a suggestion, I think
you get the general gist of the idea though... leave it to the
developers to wrangle over the implementation.

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>> (Suggested redirection feature)
>
> Why add a complicated feature for what is simply a misuse of a
> current one?  The article you cite should simply be a one-sentence
> article with a link, not a redirect.
>
> There's absolutely nothing wrong with one-sentence articles.

IMHO:

- From Wikipedia:Redirect#What_do_we_use_redirects_for.3F
> * Sub-topics or closely related topics that should be explained
> within the text: Distributed denial of service redirects to Denial of
>  service

and

- From Template:R_with_possibilities
> This is a redirect from a title for a topic more detailed than the
> topic of the page this redirects to. Eventually if the target page
> becomes too big, this redirect may be replaced with an article carved
> out of the target page.
>
> For more info. follow the category link.

Interestingly, this template doesn't work right now, but it is included
in some articles under the syntax:

- From Asia Minor
> #REDIRECT [[Anatolia]]{{R with possibilities}}

An aside for a moment, I think people are jumping the gun adding these
sorts of templates, but I have found out there is sort of a demand for
this sort of feature.

I do not think that one sentence articles are acceptable, and the
current user guide suggests that redirects with possibilities should
stay redirects with possibilities, not one sentence articles. This idea
would help these redirects greatly when it comes to disambiguity.

Unfortunately, it's kind of difficult to tally exactly what links the
template "R with possibilities" because the template is on redirects,
and redirects automatically have their linkage expanded (so you get a
lot of irrelevant stuff in there).

Rowan Collins wrote:
> I can't say I'm keen on having things that aren't links bracketted
> like links - IIRC, the previous implementation had things like
> #redirect [[Foo|is a kind of]], which was just confusing. My
> suggestion would be
> #REDIRECT [[Foo]] BECAUSE For info on Foo, see [[#Foo]]
> or maybe
> #REDIRECT [[Foo]] #BECAUSE For info on Foo, see [[#Foo]]
> to make it more clear that "#because" is a magic word, not part of the
> explanation.
>
> The text would then be displayed below (and formatted with) the
> "redirected from" message (which should maybe be more obvious).

Very cool suggestion. I like it.

> I'd still like to see
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1521 implemented first
> though, or some other way of creating more stable section anchors.

At first I though this would be some controversial feature, but checking
out the bug page, it seems quite reasonable. It would help greatly in
all cases where anchors are used (although it would take a while to get
it standardized and stuff, plus, old links would break as soon as the
new ones were added even if the title itself didn't change).

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
 3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFCdtpVqTO+fYacSNoRAtn+AJ9AYyMRWGUFvFZvIP+MKdkzqBEfOgCePClJ
VUmNnKUO5e4lBNJH7hzSFAw=
=S+yV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] maintainance/refreshLinks.inc is broken

body:
Urs Muff wrote:
> There is a SQL syntax error in this line (134 of refreshLinks.inc):
> "DELETE $pTable FROM $pTable LEFT JOIN $cur ON cur_id=$field WHERE cur_id IS
> NULL";
>
> This will produce a DB error.

MySQL 3.x?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: John Fader

body:
On 5/2/05, Joe Flowers <jflowers45 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I'll try making those changes and let you know how it goes.  Thanks for your
> quick response, it is greatly appreciated!

In a similar vein to Joe's problem, is it just me, or does MySQL
performance on Windows *really* suck?

On my 3GHz athlon XP box, importing that cur table took around 26
hours, whereas the same job on an inferior linux box took around 8.
Similarly, the same SQL query to count the rows in the cur table takes
0.1 seconds on linux and 6 minutes on windows.

Surely MySQL on windows can't be *this* bad?  Both MySQLs are running
as default 4.x installations on otherwise unladen machines with ample
RAM.  Does this match others' experiences?

--
John Fader


subject: [Wikitech-l] committing to CVS

body:
Thomas Gries wrote:
>   for committing changes for a limited time.
> Then I can upload my changes easily.

 >Tom, to be perfectly honest ... I would definitely not consider giving
you CVS checkin rights at this time.

I was just asking, and as I was fully new last to year and had no
further friends then .. now knowing how you want to have software layout
and collaboration, I fully respect your decision, adn you hopefully saw,
that I have learnt and adopted a lot.

Something different, but related to
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 the (now lengthy)
ENotif basic bugzilla.

I personally would like to prefer to keep this 454 for publishing now
and then updates of my personal version, which are always strictly
related to CVS, but without insisting to have these changes really in
your HEAD versions.

You already closed that 454, I know.

I do not to intend to re-open it, but would like to use it as a kind of
my personal repository. Can you agree on that ? It also enables other
Mediawiki friend to watch this bugzilla and to automatically receive
mail, when I post a new version (there).

Can you perhaps agree on that, that I might still use (only the 454) for
my personal enhanced ENotif versions ?

Remark:
This question has nothing to do not with my contributions (patchlets for
CVS 1.5), which will be correctly submitted as you have expressed
several times :-)

Tom


from_name: Urs Muff

body:
There is a SQL syntax error in this line (134 of refreshLinks.inc):
"DELETE $pTable FROM $pTable LEFT JOIN $cur ON cur_id=$field WHERE cur_id IS
NULL";

This will produce a DB error.

- Urs


body:
Yes, MySQL 3.23.58.

On 5/2/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Urs Muff wrote:
> > There is a SQL syntax error in this line (134 of refreshLinks.inc):
> > "DELETE $pTable FROM $pTable LEFT JOIN $cur ON cur_id=$field WHERE
> cur_id IS
> > NULL";
> >
> > This will produce a DB error.
>
> MySQL 3.x?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com <http://pobox.com>)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews

body:
Timwi (timwi at gmx.net) [050502 23:19]:

> If I understand this right... and please correct me if I don't... you
> are "afraid" that censorship might happen, and so you preempt it by
> censoring it yourself?...

And never mind the Chinese speakers in Taiwan, the US, the rest of the
world ...

Let's imagine the UK government became ridiculously censorious. Would the
US-based Wikimedia then adopt the same attitude to English language
projects? Of course it wouldn't.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Dovi Jacobs

subject: [Foundation-l] Censorship discussion: Thanks to all

body:
I want to express my gratitude for all of the thoughtful responses to my post yesterday ("Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews"). I very much think the topic is an absolutely central one, and I guess I was bothered when it looked like it was just going to slide by and be ignored, or get a passive response of "let's see what the community does" (if anything).

Of all the responses (they were all fascinating), the one I thought was exceptionally perceptive was that of Tim Starling. Tim was 100% right in the distinction he drew between "free speech" in its "free software" context, as used by Richard Stallman, versus its normal political meaning (e.g. in the context of the constitutions of many nations). As Tim pointed out, Stallman's usage is based upon an analogy to the political meaning, but they are not the same. I hadn't thought enough about the distinction beforehand.

Tim writes that Wikimedia has always supported "free speech" as used in Stallman's analogy, but not "free speech" in its usual meaning. The question is whether this is completely true. It is true that endorsing the former meaning (Stallman's) does not *necessarily* imply endorsing the latter meaning. However, it is equally true that endorsing the former strongly suggests endorsing the latter as well, and many or most Wikimedia users probably assume that this is the case, and not wrongly. So it is a strong implication, but has never been made an explicit policy. What I suggest is that we formally honor the implication by making it explicit policy.

Anthere thought that I suggested the board was actively opposed to Chinese Wikinews. I never meant that, and apologise if I was not clear. What I meant was exactly what Anthere wrote, namely that the board is waiting for a clearer community decision. And that attitude is exactly what I am suggesting be changed.

I guess it is relevant pointing out that I have a personal relationship to this whole issue. In my real-life, over the past 6 years, I have been privileged to work on educational and cultural programs side-by-side with extraordinary people (some of them known worldwide) who were persecuted by totalitarian regimes and stood up to them. All of these people agree on one thing, which is relevant to Anthere's points: When it comes to an environment where speech is repressed, one cannot talk about "the will of the community" in an ordinary sense. On the contrary, to just leave things up to the community in question *is by definition* to take a stance *against* those who want to express their views but cannot do so.

That is why this whole issue goes way beyond waiting for a clearer consensus from the community, and to the guts of what Wikimedia stands for.

Do we really want "to make the sum total of human knowledge available for free"? If so, this implies doing so without making exceptions for languages or countries in which the expression of opinion is curtailed. So (to return to Tim) this is deeply implied by the current policies and self-image of Wikimedia. Let's make it explicit!

I suggest the following:

Wikimedia is committed to free software and free content: All of our projects are provided "free as in beer" and licensed to be used freely (as in "free speech"). We are also committed to "free speech" in the traditional sense, namely that fear or threats of censorship will not be allowed to interfere with the development of any existing or proposed Wikimedia project."

In the future it might not just be China. There are many other contries in the world that do not allow a free press. Or it might be financial corporations. Adopting a clear policy on censorship now (beginning with Chinese Wikinews) will set things in the right direction for the future as well.

Dovi

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews (Erik Moeller)
2. Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews (Tim Starling)
3. Re: wikiholidays (Cormac Lawler)
4. Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews (Andre Engels)
5. Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews (Marco Krohn)
6. Chinese wikinews and fundamentals (Anthere)
7. Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews (Timwi)
8. Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews (Timwi)
9. Re: Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews (David Gerard)
10. Re: Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews (Robin Shannon)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 09:39:15 +0200
From: Erik Moeller
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Message-ID: <4275D923.2080609 at gmx.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Anthere:

> This is a tricky issue. Either we consider it fully a fundamental policy
> and the fact part of users support and part of users oppose the creation
> should NOT be taken into account... or we decide it is important, but
> require clearer community support. Not so easy to all agree on what
> should be done :-)

Dovi makes an important point which I also made in my "State of the
Wiki" summary, which is that there are millions of Chinese speakers who
would not be affected by censorship in mainland China. So, effectively,
there are two communities: one that would feel the censorship, and one
that wouldn't. The question is, should lack of support in one of them be
sufficient to deny the project to the other?

Regards,

Erik

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 17:43:41 +1000
From: Tim Starling
Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews
To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Dovi Jacobs wrote:
> I recently stumbled upon the mailing-list discussion of the Chinese
> Wikinews. When I found the discussion, I couldn't believe what I was
> reading. Is this the Wikimedia Foundation that believes in free
> projects creating free content, "free" as in both "free beer" and
> "free speech"?

I think you're getting actual free speech confused with the paradoxical
terminology used by Richard Stallman to describe software with
restricted rights of use and distribution. Wikimedia supports the latter
but has never supported the former. Rightly or wrongly, Wikimedia
projects have been complicit in censorship of various kinds. I don't
think the discussion of censorship is aided by conflating these two
concepts.

-- Tim Starling

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 08:55:33 +0100
From: Cormac Lawler
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] wikiholidays
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 5/2/05, Anthere wrote:
> Hello
>
> I will be away (with no phone, no computer, no internet and likely no
> watch since I do not wear any) from next wenesday till tuesday the 10th.
> I will be in Agadir (Marocco) and surroundings.
>
> Cheers
>
> Anthere

A *real* holiday! Bon voyage..

Cormac

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 11:01:51 +0200
From: Andre Engels
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Message-ID: <6faf39c9050502020111bb4769 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 5/2/05, Dovi Jacobs wrote:

> When it came to the issue of audio file formats, for instance, Jimbo Wales made a very clear and correct decision that only file formats that could legally be used in free software would be allowed. Many tens of thousands of Wikimedia users would probably have liked to have been allowed to upload MP3 files. If an open vote had been held, MP3 would probably have been allowed. But no vote was held, because this is a fundamental Wikimedia policy.

Now, that's an interesting point. IF this were really the point, I
MIGHT just give up. You say that MP3 cannot be "legally used in free
software". So, what is going on? Is it indeed not used in free
software? In that case I agree with not including it. Or is it used,
but do we say that's illegal? In that case I still think we should
shut up and just allow it. The issue should be availability, not
politics. Especially not politics that noone else seems to care about.

Andre Engels

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 12:02:43 +0200
From: Marco Krohn
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Message-ID: <200505021202.43502.marco.krohn at web.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

On Monday 02 May 2005 11:01, Andre Engels wrote:

> Now, that's an interesting point. IF this were really the point, I
> MIGHT just give up. You say that MP3 cannot be "legally used in free
> software". So, what is going on? Is it indeed not used in free
> software?

FWIW: SuSE as well as RedHat removed the mp3 codecs from their recent
distributions.

best regards,
Marco

------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 04:55:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Anthere
Subject: [Foundation-l] Chinese wikinews and fundamentals
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Message-ID: <20050502115509.58720.qmail at web41804.mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

>>However, you also argue that till now, many chinese have asked for the wikinews and that we
>>are denying them a useful project. So... you fall back on an argument based on user >>request...""This is a tricky issue. Either we consider it fully a fundamental policy and the >>fact part of users support and part of users oppose the creation should NOT be taken into >>account... or we decide it is important, but require clearer community support. Not so easy >>to all agree on what should be done :-)"

>Thanks for your reply, Anthere! (That was fast, I was just about to go offline.)

Hello ;-)

>As far as I understand, normally when there is enough interest in a language version of >Wikinews, the language is launched.

>That is normal policy, so I have not fallen back on "community" in my argument.

It is "normal" policy only as far as "normal" indicates a "habit" and that this habit is supported. Note that the fact something is usually done does not mean it will be done forever.

Example : if you noticed, the "freedom" to open new wikipedia languages is actually more restricted today than it was in the past. Typically, we try not to be hasty in decisions regarding sublanguages versions, or artificial languages. It is very likely a language such as Klington could not be launched today. Why so ? Because what was once a "habit" (a sort of policy then) has changed.

Why did it changed ?
Mostly because many users expressed their disapproval with regards to some languages or sub languages. And felt it impacted the perception our audience could have of our work.

>Rather, the point is that *not* to act on normal policy here conflicts with a fundamental policy >of freedom.

>What you hint at is a slightly different issue, one which makes the *discussion* a bit more >"tricky" as you say, but not the gut issue.

>Namely: What if there is "opposition" to a new language wiki? Should there be a way not just >to express interest in building one, but also to vote against one? Intuitively, the answer is >"no", because anyone who doesn't want to work on that project in that language simply >doesn't have to!

>I understand that this latter question caused problems for the French Wikinews, though I >don't know the details.

>However, whatever happened with French Wikinews is connected only to the secondary >policy question, namely, should the policy for creating new languages, when the languages >are legitimate Wikimedia languages, also allow for opposition? Though I think in normal >circumstances probably not, this is completely unconnected to Chinese Wikinews!

>My point is to completely disengage the two issues: Whether or not "opposition" should be >allowed to creating a new language in a project is one question, and it is a completely >legitimate question (though I personally think the answer should be "no" in normal >circumstances).

You make a very good point here.

I would like to make a precision which might have escaped you. In your previous mail, you seem to consider the Foundation as being in sole responsability of the project not being started.

It is not really fair to say the project does not currently exist JUST because the Foundation opposed it. At some point, the chinese decided to express their desire that the project exist and voted. Whether people should be allowed to oppose or only to express support is a different issue; but generally, on wikipedia, people are allowed to oppose things. I think freedom of speech is a bit impaired if people are only allowed to support or to abstain. But well... anyway, the result of the chinese vote is .... unconclusive if one counts both support and opposition.

Since it was unconclusive, the board was asked to take the decision for the chinese community. This step in itself is interesting. Should we necessarily have the role of taking a decision when others can not find a consensus themselves ? Should it be our responsability ?

In any cases, we were requested to decide for others :-)

And just as others have been inconclusive, we have not been able to reach an agreement either :-) You say we oppose it... while amongst ourselves,
* one did not answer
* one opposed
* one thought the decision should be global community one
* one thought the decision should be local community one
* one supported

However, if the chinese community had globally supported it, there is no doubt in my mind that the above opinions voiced would not have mattered.

>But when such "opposition" is based on the threat or fear of censorship - there cannot even >be a question at all. Censorship is not a valid reason to oppose a Wikimedia project, if the >project stands

As explained above, our position is not opposition.

Which leaves the question : should it be a fundamental rule ? And should we enforce it ?

Ant

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------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 14:18:28 +0100
From: Timwi
Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews
To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Hi.

I haven't seen the original discussion about a Chinese Wikinews, so this
is the first time I hear why it was disallowed.

If I understand this right... and please correct me if I don't... you
are "afraid" that censorship might happen, and so you preempt it by
censoring it yourself?...

------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 14:21:16 +0100
From: Timwi
Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews
To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Dovi Jacobs wrote:
>
> What if there is "opposition" to a new language wiki? Should there be
> a way not just to express interest in building one, but also to vote
> against one? Intuitively, the answer is "no", because anyone who
> doesn't want to work on that project in that language simply doesn't
> have to!

Taking as an example the infamous Klingon Wikipedia, it was pretty clear
that a majority of people felt they were entitled to "vote against" it,
even though the argument you mentioned had already been brought up at
the time.

------------------------------

Message: 9
Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 00:12:13 +1000
From: David Gerard
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Message-ID: <20050502141213.GQ10417 at thingy.apana.org.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Timwi (timwi at gmx.net) [050502 23:19]:

> If I understand this right... and please correct me if I don't... you
> are "afraid" that censorship might happen, and so you preempt it by
> censoring it yourself?...

And never mind the Chinese speakers in Taiwan, the US, the rest of the
world ...

Let's imagine the UK government became ridiculously censorious. Would the
US-based Wikimedia then adopt the same attitude to English language
projects? Of course it wouldn't.

- d.

------------------------------

Message: 10
Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 02:28:08 +1000
From: Robin Shannon
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Message-ID: <623d733805050209281a7185ab at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 5/3/05, David Gerard wrote:
>
> And never mind the Chinese speakers in Taiwan, the US, the rest of the
> world ...
>
> Let's imagine the UK government became ridiculously censorious. Would the
> US-based Wikimedia then adopt the same attitude to English language
> projects? Of course it wouldn't.
>
>
> - d.

This isnt quite a fair comparision. It ignores the massive difference
in population. Britain is about 50 million people out of over a
billion english speakers. Mainland China is over a billion chinese
speakers out of a populaiton of one point something billion speakers.

paz y amor,
[[wikinews:User:The bellman]]

--
hit me:
jab me:

This work is released into the public domain.

------------------------------

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End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 14, Issue 4
*******************************************

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from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On 5/2/05, Joseph Reagle <reagle at mit.edu> wrote:

> It's important to understand *why* he argues there is wisdom in crowds. I
> don't know if you've read it and disagree with the fundamentals, but it
> requires three specific conditions: diversity, independence, and
> decentralization within the group. This seems very appropriate to WP.
> Excerpts from my mindmap [1] on this particular note are below:
>
> [[[
>    The wisdom of crowds
>      * p=Doubleday y=2004 a=USA  r=20040921
>        An argument that groups of people can make very good decisions
>        when there is diversity, independence, and decentralization within
>        the group. This is augmented by case studies in traffic, science,
>        committees, companies, markets and democracy.
>        The wisdom of crowds
>           + 4 In Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the audience got it right
>             91 percent of the time, the friend/expert at right 65 percent
>             10 the stock market identified Morton Thiokol because: the
>             diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization, and
>             aggregation
>             22 bookies, Google, IEM (election's), HSX (box-office), are
>             all successful decision markets

This seems to be very unlike Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not have some
kind of weighted vote between the various ideas. It puts on one, and
then either keeps it, corrects it, or goes into a revert war.
Correction needs 1 person, revert war needs 2. No "wisdom of the
crowd" here, just "wisdom of different people".

Andre Engels


subject:
[Wikitech-l] ENotif/EConfirm (Email notification new: also for new
 pages)/EConfirm (address confirmation) for Mediawiki 1.5alpha1

body:
Lovers of Enotif (e-mail notification for user_talk, user, watched and
new pages) can find download information, documentation and release
notes for the latest version on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enotif  .

I also offer a helpdesk for your questions on
http://test.leuksman.com/index.php/Enotif .

ENotif is strictly based on CVS HEAD and also available for several
release versions; the current version was updated from CVS HEAD =
1.5alpha1 May 2nd, 2005 UTC 22:30;
Tom


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
SV: [Wikipedia-l] Language policy agreement in
	theNorwegianWikipedia community

body:
People have been telling the new contributors about the Nynorsk
Wikipedia, I hope? It would be a shame to have these people donate
heaps of effort writing articles in Nynorsk for no: when they could be
doing it at nn: where they would fit in better.

Mark

On 01/05/05, Chris Nyborg <c-nybor at online.no> wrote:
>
>
> -----Opprinnelig melding-----
> Fra: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org]P? vegne av Mark Williamson
> Sendt: 1. mai 2005 05:07
> Til: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Emne: Re: SV: [Wikipedia-l] Language policy agreement in
> theNorwegianWikipedia community
>
> >I'm still curious re: Riksmal and Hognorsk.
>
> >Mark
>
> Mark, the Bokm?l-Wikipedia includes Riksm?l. There is an ongoing vote to
> decide the name used in language links, which may or may not include
> Riksm?l; no matter how that turns out, Riksm?l is welcomed.
>
> H?gnorsk is still welcomed on nn:; there are only a few hundred users of
> H?gnorsk, and although one or two of those found their way to Wikipedia,
> there hasn't been any contributions in the last months, as far as I can
> tell.
>
> I might also add that the accepted policy on no: is to not aggressively go
> after articles in Nynorsk and translating them to Bokm?l. In fact, several
> contributions have been made in Nynorsk after the new language policy was
> decided upon, and no one has been yelling about it. It's more a matter of
> having the right to translate them if you're a Bokm?l or Riksm?l user and
> want to work on the articles (ensuring first that the Nynorsk version or a
> better version exists at nn:), and to use Bokm?l/Riksm?l for all article
> names and Bokm?l for category names (it's accepted that categories should be
> in the majority form, since redirects don't work for categories). If we can
> keep things this way, it won't be as much a ban against Nynorsk on no: as a
> guarantee that where a Nynorsk article exists at nn:, there can also be a
> Bokm?l article at no:.
>
> Chris Nyborg
> [[:no:User:Cnyborg]]
>
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFDL works inside other published works

body:
Now shut your trap.

I'll remind you, I included a disclaimer.

"I'm not an expert, but I have a few thoughts.

My guess is that..." quote-unquote.

Mark

On 01/05/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/30/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My guess is that on the page near the beginning of the book where it
> > gives copyright information, it should say "some portions of this book
> > are (C) Wikipedia, and are released under the GNU Free Documentation
> > licence" or something of the sort.
>
> Excuse me?
> My contributions to wikipedia are MOST CERTAINLY not owned by
> wikipedia and are thusly not '(C) Wikipedia'.
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Zeitgeist

body:
On 5/3/05, Georg Jaehnig <georg.jaehnig at gmail.com> wrote:

> on German Wikipedia we've got the idea to have a Wikipedia Zeitgeist.
> Like Google Zeitgeist [1] it would show the most popular articles -
> not the most viewed, but the most edited of a week.

This is a nice idea.  Some steps would need to be taken to discount
vandalism and its reversion from the statistics.  Without that,
[[George W Bush]], [[Adolf Hitler]], [[Communism]], and [[Evolution]]
would eternally own the top of en.wikipedia.org's zeitgeist list.

Most viewed would probably be more accurate, although [[List of Sex
Positions]] is regularly very high on the viewed list.

--
John Fader


from_name: Robin Shannon

body:
On 5/3/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> And never mind the Chinese speakers in Taiwan, the US, the rest of the
> world ...
>
> Let's imagine the UK government became ridiculously censorious. Would the
> US-based Wikimedia then adopt the same attitude to English language
> projects? Of course it wouldn't.
>
>
> - d.

This isnt quite a fair comparision. It ignores the massive difference
in population. Britain is about 50 million people out of over a
billion english speakers. Mainland China is over a billion chinese
speakers out of a populaiton of one point something billion speakers.

paz y amor,
[[wikinews:User:The bellman]]

--
hit me: <robin.shannon.id.au>
jab me: <robin.shannon at jabber.org.au>

This work is released into the public domain.
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain>


from_name: Georg Jaehnig

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Zeitgeist

body:
Hello,

on German Wikipedia we've got the idea to have a Wikipedia Zeitgeist.
Like Google Zeitgeist [1] it would show the most popular articles -
not the most viewed, but the most edited of a week.

This feature would reveal, which are the current "hot" topics among
the authors and where there might be edit wars.

The easiest way to realize this would be a log of the IRC-channel
#derc.wikipedia. Even better would be a direct log of the
"stupidbot's" output. The counting would be done by a simple Perl
skript.

A RecentChanges log might be also useful for other purposes, therefore
it could be saved weekly (or daily) in a zip file and made available
for download at http://download.wikimedia.org/.

So is there a way to get the Recent Changes of a week?

[1] http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

--
| Jorge | Nur lernen, was man will:
          http://www.sudbury.de


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Borders of Language Variety Tolerance

body:
It is my opinion that as long as you are not allowed to write in a
variety on any existing Wikipedia, you should be allowed to write on
it in a new Wikipedia.

In private discussions before, Jimbo has used AAVE as a sort of
measuring stick to judge whether or not some language should or should
not get a Wikipedia, ie that AAVE itself should not.

I'm perfectly aware of many of the reasons he has for this, but I
disagree primarily on the following grounds:

If we allow people to write in the vernacular on en.wikipedia and do
not chase after them 'correcting' their grammar, then it is a more
complicated question whose answer lies more in whether or not there is
a community desire among proponents of AAVE to use entirely separate
literature.

However, since this is not the case - if I wrote a new, detailed,
thoughtful, complex, well-researched non-stub article in AAVE, Scots,
Singlish, or any other language which is considered by some to be a
"non-standard form of English" (whether correctly or incorrectly), I
think there is a 25% chance it would be listed of VfD for being 'utter
nonsense', a 25% chance it would be "corrected" right away - ie,
translated to standard English - a 25% chance it would be listed for
cleanup, and a 25% chance that nobody would know what on earth to do
with it. But I know there would be a 0% chance that people would agree
to let it stay in its current form: the current trend on Wikipedia is
towards prescriptivist enforcement, "correcting" others' "incorrect"
spellings, their "bad grammar", "poor punctuation", etc. While some
"misspellings" or "grammatical errors" on Wikipedia are in fact typos
or unintentional, the simple fact is that the majority of them were
intentional, either because the user did not know the so-called
"correct" spelling, or in the case of grammar because they based it on
WHAT REAL PEOPLE ACTUALLY SAY where they come from rather than the
stuffy middle-aged millionaire bureaucratic language that the DoE
tried so diligently but ultimately failed to make them use.

If an article is entirely beyond understanding, that's one thing - if
I write "Zuwolojii z' dh'sayints v'kritrs 'n sotx. Yi 'z tri maan
brons o'zuwologii, alvim 'ndivizali 'portnt n' ts' oon raat" I would
expect it to be deleted as vandalism, and while I would certainly
rather somebody changed it to make it more understandable, I have no
particular problem with its deletion. However, if I write "A creol
langage is a langage who is fairmed whin a pijin-langage is gains
native speakres", I do not believe that should be changed -
pijin-langage should be wikified as [[pidgin language|pijin-langage]]
and native speakres should be [[native speaker|native speakres]], but
the rest should be left alone.

Of course there will probably be dozens of responses about how people
should use proper language, understand, comprehension, blah blah blah,
what is really _correct_, blah, blah, blah, but this is my opinion.

Mark

On 03/05/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Dear fellow list subscribers,
>
> Following on the discussion on the two or even four written and standardised
> variants of Norwegian, I would like to see how much two language varieties
> must differ from one another to be apt for a new wikipedia. Don't get me
> wrong: my intention is NOT to dispute the validity of two coexisting
> Norwegian wikipedias. Those variants have a long history and tradition of
> mutual incompatibility. I just think all of us agree that somewhere it has
> to stop - or should we wish a Texan wikipedia? "e freea cundent engcyclep~e
> thad annywun can eddit"? - but we might disagree where. Probably you held
> this discussion many times before, but I am a relative newbe on this list.
>
> Now I would like to pose my question in a casuist way: Could requests for
> wikipedias in Zeelandic and Town Frisian be granted. Neither is generally
> considered a seperate language (those some linguists do call them
> languages), but Zeelandic is a clearly bordered regional language which
> differs about as much from Dutch proper as Nynorsk from Swedish (as far as I
> can judge) and is, when spoken, very problematic to be understood for Dutch
> speakers, while Town Frisian is a mixed language with a 16th century
> Hollandic vocabulary and Frisian grammar and phonetical principles.
> Moreover, it goes without saying that these variants (to avoid both the term
> "language" and "dialect") are not allowed on nl:, being a standardised
> language.
>
> I don't necessarily support requests for wikipedias in those (thogh I would
> be willing to contribute), but I would like to know where the community
> draws the borders.
>
> Thanks for reading this,
> Wouter
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school
> http://webmessenger.msn.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
I disagree with what you have said about ISO - Ainu has no ISO code,
yet nobody would argue that it is part of the same language as one
that does have one, and this is the case with many more languages as
well.

A language not having an individual ISO code does not nessecarily mean
that the ISO organisation considers it to be a dialect of another
language.

Mark

On 03/05/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Now I would like to pose my question in a casuist way: Could requests for
> > wikipedias in Zeelandic and Town Frisian be granted. Neither is generally
> > considered a seperate language (those some linguists do call them
> > languages), but Zeelandic is a clearly bordered regional language which
> > differs about as much from Dutch proper as Nynorsk from Swedish (as far as I
> > can judge) and is, when spoken, very problematic to be understood for Dutch
> > speakers, while Town Frisian is a mixed language with a 16th century
> > Hollandic vocabulary and Frisian grammar and phonetical principles.
> > Moreover, it goes without saying that these variants (to avoid both the term
> > "language" and "dialect") are not allowed on nl:, being a standardised
> > language.
> >
> > I don't necessarily support requests for wikipedias in those (thogh I would
> > be willing to contribute), but I would like to know where the community
> > draws the borders.
>
> I don't think there's any clear definitions yet, but the points that I
> think would be worth considering are:
> * The amount of difference to an existing language
> * Whether it is generally, somewhere or hardly anywhere considered a
> language rather than a dialect
> * Whether there exists a well-defined and generally accepted orthography
> * Whether there are Wikipedians willing to write for the Wikipedia and how many.
>
> In general, we have gone with ISO-639 in deciding what is a language
> and what a dialect, only Allemanish and Aromanian have been accepted
> without such a code. However, that too is not an official policy, just
> a "the way we have done it till now".
>
> Andre Engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Zeitgeist

body:
Hi.

2005/5/3, Brian <reflection at gmail.com>:
> >So is there a way to get the Recent Changes of a week?
>
> how about xml?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hideminor=0&hideliu=0&hidebots=1&hidepatrolled=0&limit=1000000&days=7&output=raw&feed=rss

Hm, testing it I got recent changes of the last 2 minutes.

--
| Jorge | Nur lernen, was man will:
          http://www.sudbury.de


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] free speech and wikinews

body:
I want to express my gratitude for all of the thoughtful responses to my post yesterday ("Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews"). I very much think the topic is an absolutely central one, and I guess I was bothered when it looked like it was just going to slide by and be ignored, or get a passive response of "let's see what the community does" (if anything).

Of all the responses (they were all fascinating), the one I thought was exceptionally perceptive was that of Tim Starling. Tim was 100% right in the distinction he drew between "free speech" in its "free software" context, as used by Richard Stallman, versus its normal political meaning (e.g. in the context of the constitutions of many nations). As Tim pointed out, Stallman's usage is based upon an analogy to the political meaning, but they are not the same. I hadn't thought enough about the distinction beforehand.

Tim writes that Wikimedia has always supported "free speech" as used in Stallman's analogy, but not "free speech" in its usual meaning. The question is whether this is completely true. It is true that endorsing the former meaning (Stallman's) does not *necessarily* imply endorsing the latter meaning. However, it is equally true that endorsing the former strongly suggests endorsing the latter as well, and many or most Wikimedia users probably assume that this is the case, and not wrongly. So it is a strong implication, but has never been made an explicit policy. What I suggest is that we formally honor the implication by making it explicit policy.

I tried to put down a bit on the topic here (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_and_free) as I wanted to clarify those terms to those people not developers (such as me). The concept is very much used by developers, but is not so well understood by others.

I actually got stuck with misunderstanding on the english article on what [[free content]] mean... I would welcome your feedback on such issues. Please do.

Anthere thought that I suggested the board was actively opposed to Chinese Wikinews. I never meant that, and apologise if I was not clear. What I meant was exactly what Anthere wrote, namely that the board is waiting for a clearer community decision. And that attitude is exactly what I am suggesting be changed.

I guess it is relevant pointing out that I have a personal relationship to this whole issue. In my real-life, over the past 6 years, I have been privileged to work on educational and cultural programs side-by-side with extraordinary people (some of them known worldwide) who were persecuted by totalitarian regimes and stood up to them. All of these people agree on one thing, which is relevant to Anthere's points: When it comes to an environment where speech is repressed, one cannot talk about "the will of the community" in an ordinary sense. On the contrary, to just leave things up to the community in question *is by definition* to take a stance *against* those who want to express their views but cannot do so.

True.
But is our goal to explain governments what is wrong and where they should change the way they set up things in their nation ?
I understand what you mean Dovi, and as an individual, I support it. I am not sure every editor would be glad that the Foundation takes a political position on the matter, so I do not feel the Foundation should do it. Just my feeling. I am aware this is a highly contentious point and that not all will agree with me.

It might be that wikinews in chinese IS important to create, but I do not think this is the Foundation role to force its existence somehow against some editors choice. I do not think it is the Foundation role to take a stance against repression of speech. It is a bit tricky... but there is at the same time a strong expectation that the Foundation should not lead the project or impact in the way a project works... and an expectation that we fix issues the communities do not fix themselves.

All with... generally speaking... extremely little feedback on what we do (so, I really thank you for giving feedback on this topic).

I have all along the year wondered where was the limit of what community expected from us. Taking political positions or not ? Taking care of information distribution ourselves or focusing on helping the projects to grow only ? Getting deeply involved in distribution in third world countries thanks to grants or not ? Trying to stimulate release of information under free licences by contacting govermental agencies for example, or not ?

I have my own opinions. I try to listen to others opinions. I do not hear so many :-(

That is why this whole issue goes way beyond waiting for a clearer consensus from the community, and to the guts of what Wikimedia stands for.

Do we really want "to make the sum total of human knowledge available for free"? If so, this implies doing so without making exceptions for languages or countries in which the expression of opinion is curtailed. So (to return to Tim) this is deeply implied by the current policies and self-image of Wikimedia. Let's make it explicit!

I do not define what we want to do as "to make the sum total of human knowledge available for free"

What I think we try to do is "to make the sum of human knowledge available to the largest number of people on Earth".

That makes a huge difference :-)

The information being free (as in free speech) or free (as in free beer) is only a MEAN, not an END.
To give access to information to the largest number of guys, the following can help
* help information to spread (through using a free licence)
* provide information for free (to reduce financial bottleneck)
* provide information in people mother language (to reduce misunderstanding)

Ideally, we should also work on plateform, since we today only provide information through the net, to which not everyone has access to.

I suggest the following:

Wikimedia is committed to free software and free content: All of our projects are provided "free as in beer" and licensed to be used freely (as in "free speech"). We are also committed to "free speech" in the traditional sense, namely that fear or threats of censorship will not be allowed to interfere with the development of any existing or proposed Wikimedia project."

In the future it might not just be China. There are many other contries in the world that do not allow a free press. Or it might be financial corporations. Adopting a clear policy on censorship now (beginning with Chinese Wikinews) will set things in the right direction for the future as well.

Dovi

I am not sure how to express it exactly, but...
We are committed to free software and free content and gratis content in particular because it helps our goal.
Most of us ALSO support free software, but it is not our "political goal".
Our goal is collecting information, gathering it and making it available.

I feel it is touchy to say this... but at the same time... when I read the article defining [[free content]], when I see how few people mind it being incorrect, or how few people understand and agree on what it means... I feel the ground is much stronger when I focus on our goal than on fluttery concepts :-)

There is a tiny difference here, but relevant. Imho.

In any cases, I appreciate very much your mails :-)

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] free speech and wikinews


from_name: V. Ivanov

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Strange Statistics page
	(os.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics)

body:
While the interwiki links are broken because of some major problem,
the NUMBEROFARTICLES problem seems to be local. Can somebody tell me,
what's it about?

See our strange statistics page:
http://os.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

2005/4/11, V. Ivanov:
> - I don't know where the person took the data, for the variable
> NUMBEROFARTICLES doesn't work at os.wikipedia.org (as it can be seen
> at the bottom of the front page: it shows "-1" exactly).

--
Esperu cxiam!


body:
Robin Shannon (robin.shannon at gmail.com) [050503 02:28]:
> On 5/3/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> > And never mind the Chinese speakers in Taiwan, the US, the rest of the
> > world ...
> > Let's imagine the UK government became ridiculously censorious. Would the
> > US-based Wikimedia then adopt the same attitude to English language
> > projects? Of course it wouldn't.

> This isnt quite a fair comparision. It ignores the massive difference
> in population. Britain is about 50 million people out of over a
> billion english speakers. Mainland China is over a billion chinese
> speakers out of a populaiton of one point something billion speakers.

My point is that rather than shying away from it, I think the "FUCK THAT"
in response would be audible from orbit.

- d.


from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
On 5/3/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now shut your trap.
>
> I'll remind you, I included a disclaimer.

Please be more civil.  Whatever abruptness or rudeness was present in
the sender's tone or content was matched and exceeded by the rudeness
of "shut your trap".

Steve


body:
Urs Muff wrote:
> Yes, MySQL 3.23.58.

Fixed version with hack for MySQL 3.x:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/wikipedia/phase3/maintenance/refreshLinks.inc?rev=1.10.2.4

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.5alpha1 released

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

MediaWiki 1.5alpha1 is a testing preview release, being put out mainly
to aid testers in finding installation bugs and other major problems. It
is strongly recommended NOT to run a live production web site on this
alpha release.

**  WARNING: USE OF THIS ALPHA RELEASE MAY INFEST YOUR HOUSE WITH  **
**  TERMITES, ROT YOUR TEETH,  GROW HAIR ON YOUR PALMS, AND PASTE  **
**  INNUENDO  INTO  YOUR  C.V.  RIGHT  BEFORE  A  JOB  INTERVIEW!  **
**  DON'T SAY WE DIDN'T WARN YOU, MAN. WE TOTALLY DID RIGHT HERE.  **

See the release notes and the public test wiki set up at
http://test.leuksman.com/ for more details on the wacky new world of
MediaWiki 1.5.

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=324854

Download:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.5alpha1.tar.gz?download

Before asking for help, try the FAQ:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.5 upgrade test

body:
I set up a copy of nl.wikipedia.org on my test PC from the public dumps,
and ran the updater to upgrade it to 1.5. This is a medium-sized wiki,
in Latin-1 encoding.

The good news:
* It worked -- the updater ran through to completion without exploding.
* After setting $wgLegacyEncoding = 'windows-1252', it seems to properly
convert article text encoding to UTF-8 on page load.

The bad news:
* The UTF-8 converstion necessary for the other database fields (titles,
usernames, comments etc) hasn't been quite finished yet, so wasn't auto-run.
* The updater ran for a few minutes shy of 10 hours. Most of that time
was spent shuffling cur entries into the old table, where they
eventually become plain old text entries. The pulling of revision data
out of old (by now renamed to text) seemed to take a smaller portion of
the time, but I foolishly didn't time the individual steps.

Most CPU time was spent in I/O wait state in the MySQL server. This
machine has IDE disks purchased for size & cost, not speed, has
relatively little memory (512M), I haven't attempted to optimize the
MySQL configuration for memory usage, and I kept doing things like
installing Debian in VMWare in the foreground... ;)

It probably ought to go faster on the big Wikimedia servers, but I can't
say just how much.

There may be ways to further optimize the conversion process; dropping
some of the indexes first, for instance, might be an overall win if it
makes the importing faster.

Even in the ideal case it'll be kinda slow to run these, but it really
is necessary... at least the schema change should make future changes
less painful.

For the final live updates we'll probably want to do them one at a time,
keeping all other wikis open for editing, and the in-conversion one open
for read-only on a backup.

With the way we've got shared document roots this might require some odd
configuration shuffling to load up either 1.4 or 1.5 code depending on
update state, but I think it should be possible.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Matt McLauchlin

body:
I'm not sure about this 'one wiki per language.' To me, the practice seems
to be more on the order of 'one language per written form.'

Identifying a written statement as being, say, English is much different
from identifying a spoken statement as being English. Any speaker of English
who can read will identify this e-mail as being written in English. An
American (or a Briton? I can never remember which does what) might be
somewhat surprised at the fact that I spelled "practice" in the first line
with a penultimate C rather than S, but this will not prevent the text from
being recognized as written English. Even if I were to throw in a bunch of
detail about how I went to the dep for a two-four and then went and got the
bumf for my carte-soleil, it will be recognized as written English, albeit
with a bunch of words thrown in that they don't recognize and will have to
have explained.

In the case of Wikipedia, an expression that gives others pause may be
defended quite simply. For example, on the fr:wiki, someone changed my
discussion of Montreal's "village gai" to read "village gay," which would be
standard in France. I simply reverted the change and noted that in Canada,
we write "gai" for this meaning, and this was relevant since we were talking
of a Canadian toponym.

Note here that it is standard written usage that is at issue: a Quebecer who
writes "gai" for "gay" will nevertheless not attempt to write encyclopedia
articles as "L'Village gai c'est quet'part o? on s'en va pour ?t' su'l party
pis tenter de pogner, viarge..." Non-standard written forms that attempt to
closely mimic English speech will, paradoxically, *not be recognized as
written English.'Fi ruyt luy hlis, it is certainly a representation of a
form of English, but it will not be viewed as written English, and on the
English Wikipedia will be reverted.

What does this all mean? I disagree with Mark where he says that highly
nonstandard writing should not be reverted simply because it is English. The
medium of en:wiki is not English meaning 'anything produced by an English
speaker'; it is English meaning 'English written according to one of the
prevailing standards for written English.' That's what's usually meant when
"written English" is said. I don't think there's anything wrong with this,
as this will be what is, in general, expected by someone who sets out to
read something in English. His example is English, but it's not "written
English."

If it were to be the case that some form of English were to acquire a
written form other than standard English, such that there was a demand for a
Wikipedia in that written form, I doubt there would be any difficulty in
creating it. AAVE, although a highly distinctive and well-defined form of
English, does not, in general, have a written form: a speaker of AAVE who
wishes to write in the standard register will use standard English to do so.
If transcribed AAVE were to come into use as a common medium of written
exchange in the standard register, I would support an AAVE wikipedia.

I'm speaking here, by the way, of lects that are agreed upon to be
dialects -- i.e. ones in which the speakers agree that they are speakers of
the broader language. This doesn't apply if the speakers believe their
language to be distinct -- AFAIK, the case of Scots -- or of independent
languages that don't have a long-standing written form or literary
translation and are therefore recorded as transcribed speech. In either type
of case I would support a wikipedia.

There obviously isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. In general, though, the
problem is self-regulating: a speaker of a dialect without an independent
written form will generally choose to write in the standard form, or if not
the writing will be altered to be in the standard if it cannot be defended
contextually; and only written forms of some kind will be able to form
independent wikipedias.

Matt

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.11.0 - Release Date: 4/29/2005


body:
Thank you so much, that worked just great!
 - Urs

 On 5/3/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Urs Muff wrote:
> > Yes, MySQL 3.23.58.
>
> Fixed version with hack for MySQL 3.x:
>
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/wikipedia/phase3/maintenance/refreshLinks.inc?rev=1.10.2.4
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com <http://pobox.com>)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Zeitgeist

body:
On 5/3/05, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> Rather than simply most views, it might be a better idea to show which
> articles are gaining the most popularity compared to their usual level
> of activity and which are losing popularity. This will prevent
> advertising the Hitler and Evolution type of articles. Google
> Zeitgeist also does something like this.

Still, that would need some more refinement. First, is the comparison
done by substraction or by division? In the first case, you will still
get the high-base-level pages (such as [[Wikipedia:Village pump]] if
you go beyond articles) pop up often; in the latter case it is the
low-base-level pages that can pop up without having anything special
("This article was created 1 year ago, and hasn't been edited since,
but now it has had a spelling correction - that's 52 times its usual
level"). Then there is the problem of people incrementally editing a
page, giving it many edits. This could be solved by counting the same
editor twice only if there is another editor in between. We could even
count the number of editors sec. The advantage of that is that an edit
war is 'cooled down', counting only as 2 editors, the disadvantage
that the number might be quite low even for hot pages. Finally, there
is the question of what to do with new articles - Do we define some
kind of 'base level for new articles', or are they simply disregarded
for Zeitgeist purposes?

Perhaps the best is a formula that counts in various factors (basic
number of edits, number of 'edit strings', number of editors, time
between edits (if something is edited twice in a short time, the
second edit is more likely to be caused by the first one directly
rather than both be caused by a 'Zeitgeist'), non-reversion edits,
etcetera). Disadvantage of that would be that base levels are hard to
calculate.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Article validation feature in 1.5?

body:
I thought [[m:Article validation feature]] would be showing up, at least
for data gathering, in 1.5. Is it on test.leuksman.com, is there no
interface to it unless you know where it is?

- d.


body:
Travis Derouin (tderouin at gmail.com) [050503 10:08]:

> I think you'll typically see that MySQL performs a great deal better on
> Linux than it does on Windows. MySQL claims that it performs up to 50%
> better on Unix based environments. That said, importing a huge table isn't
> the best way to measure performance, and I wouldn't necessarily say that
> MySQL on Windows 2k3 is 'bad' per se, but rather that MySQL runs much better
> on Linux. Also, it's possible that a default installation on Windows is less
> optimized than a default installation on Linux, given I suspect that MySQL
> spends more time developing their Unix based servers. If you're really
> committed to running on Windows you might want to spend some time
> researching ways of optimizing your configuration.

The bad performance on Windows is actually a feature. This is so that you
can get a MediaWiki installation past your boss by saying "It runs on
Windows! Windows is standard!!" Then, when the organisation is utterly
dependent on your wiki and you're looking at a performance upgrade, you
switch the operating system out from under the software stack and your boss
renowns you as a genius for tripling the performance. Result!

- d.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry

body:
I notice a couple of things: "While an old-style encyclopedia has a minimum
standard of grammar, readability and fact-checking, Wikipedia has none"

We do expect all of those and there are written Wikipedia policies about
them.

Another: "Assuming four hours per article and a three-hour work day, two
thousand hardcore Wikipedians could paraphrase Britannica's entire content
in eighty days"

I have an almost new set of Britannica, but I seldom refer to it or use
facts from it. Paraphrasing a Britannica article would be a very dull thing.
On articles I have a serious interest about I often buy read and then sell
books on the subject (but then I sell used books for a living). I don't
think very many other editors would bother to paraphrase an encyclopedia
article. If they did it ought to be listed as one of the references. Many of
my edits are derived from newspaper articles, especially the New York Times.

Fred

> From: Lawrence Nyveen <nyveen at videotron.ca>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 11:55:05 -0400
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry
>
> Hey, all -
>
> Reader's Digest (Canada) plans to reprint a version of this article:
> http://legadoassociates.com/wikipedi.htm
>
> My job is to fact-check the article before it goes into the magazine,
> and to do that, I would like to talk with some Wikipedia
> contributors.  Anyone interested in helping me fact-check the article
> should contact me through e-mail.  A lot of the article is not base
> so much on strict facts but is rather the author's opinion on
> WIkipedia's place in the encyclopedia ecosystem, yet I still have to
> check that.  I need to report to my editors whether the author has
> defensible ideas.
>
> To do his, I wouldn't mind speaking to both avid contributors and
> those with criticisms.  Thanks in advance, all.
>
> (Jimmy - I would like to get in touch with you about this, since
> you're mentioned by name.  I left voicemail for Terry Foote on
> Friday, but I haven't heard back.)
>
> --
>
> Laurie Nyveen                                  nyveen at videotron.ca
> __________________________________________________________________
> Editor, Netsurfer Digest -   http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/index.html
> "All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys."
> - Grandma Woody (Northern Exposure)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
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from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
Dear fellow list subscribers,

Following on the discussion on the two or even four written and standardised
variants of Norwegian, I would like to see how much two language varieties
must differ from one another to be apt for a new wikipedia. Don't get me
wrong: my intention is NOT to dispute the validity of two coexisting
Norwegian wikipedias. Those variants have a long history and tradition of
mutual incompatibility. I just think all of us agree that somewhere it has
to stop - or should we wish a Texan wikipedia? "e freea cundent engcyclep~e
thad annywun can eddit"? - but we might disagree where. Probably you held
this discussion many times before, but I am a relative newbe on this list.

Now I would like to pose my question in a casuist way: Could requests for
wikipedias in Zeelandic and Town Frisian be granted. Neither is generally
considered a seperate language (those some linguists do call them
languages), but Zeelandic is a clearly bordered regional language which
differs about as much from Dutch proper as Nynorsk from Swedish (as far as I
can judge) and is, when spoken, very problematic to be understood for Dutch
speakers, while Town Frisian is a mixed language with a 16th century
Hollandic vocabulary and Frisian grammar and phonetical principles.
Moreover, it goes without saying that these variants (to avoid both the term
"language" and "dialect") are not allowed on nl:, being a standardised
language.

I don't necessarily support requests for wikipedias in those (thogh I would
be willing to contribute), but I would like to know where the community
draws the borders.

Thanks for reading this,
Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school
http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Lawrence Nyveen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry

body:
Hey, all -

Reader's Digest (Canada) plans to reprint a version of this article:
http://legadoassociates.com/wikipedi.htm

My job is to fact-check the article before it goes into the magazine,
and to do that, I would like to talk with some Wikipedia
contributors.  Anyone interested in helping me fact-check the article
should contact me through e-mail.  A lot of the article is not base
so much on strict facts but is rather the author's opinion on
WIkipedia's place in the encyclopedia ecosystem, yet I still have to
check that.  I need to report to my editors whether the author has
defensible ideas.

To do his, I wouldn't mind speaking to both avid contributors and
those with criticisms.  Thanks in advance, all.

(Jimmy - I would like to get in touch with you about this, since
you're mentioned by name.  I left voicemail for Terry Foote on
Friday, but I haven't heard back.)

--

Laurie Nyveen                                  nyveen at videotron.ca
__________________________________________________________________
Editor, Netsurfer Digest -   http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/index.html
"All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys."
                              - Grandma Woody (Northern Exposure)


body:
On 5/3/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Now I would like to pose my question in a casuist way: Could requests for
> wikipedias in Zeelandic and Town Frisian be granted. Neither is generally
> considered a seperate language (those some linguists do call them
> languages), but Zeelandic is a clearly bordered regional language which
> differs about as much from Dutch proper as Nynorsk from Swedish (as far as I
> can judge) and is, when spoken, very problematic to be understood for Dutch
> speakers, while Town Frisian is a mixed language with a 16th century
> Hollandic vocabulary and Frisian grammar and phonetical principles.
> Moreover, it goes without saying that these variants (to avoid both the term
> "language" and "dialect") are not allowed on nl:, being a standardised
> language.
>
> I don't necessarily support requests for wikipedias in those (thogh I would
> be willing to contribute), but I would like to know where the community
> draws the borders.

I don't think there's any clear definitions yet, but the points that I
think would be worth considering are:
* The amount of difference to an existing language
* Whether it is generally, somewhere or hardly anywhere considered a
language rather than a dialect
* Whether there exists a well-defined and generally accepted orthography
* Whether there are Wikipedians willing to write for the Wikipedia and how many.

In general, we have gone with ISO-639 in deciding what is a language
and what a dialect, only Allemanish and Aromanian have been accepted
without such a code. However, that too is not an official policy, just
a "the way we have done it till now".

Andre Engels


body:
>I don't think there's any clear definitions yet, but the points that I
>think would be worth considering are:
>* The amount of difference to an existing language
>* Whether it is generally, somewhere or hardly anywhere considered a
>language rather than a dialect
>* Whether there exists a well-defined and generally accepted orthography
>* Whether there are Wikipedians willing to write for the Wikipedia and how
>many.
>
>In general, we have gone with ISO-639 in deciding what is a language
>and what a dialect, only Allemanish and Aromanian have been accepted
>without such a code. However, that too is not an official policy, just
>a "the way we have done it till now".
>
>Andre Engels

I am aware of most of this, but my concern is: how much must a poorly
recognised and unstandardised language variety differ from its prestigious
sister to be granted a wikipedia?

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
> many times before, but I am a relative newbe on this list.

Why don't you take a look in the list archives.

> Now I would like to pose my question in a casuist way: Could
> requests for wikipedias in Zeelandic and Town Frisian be
> granted.

If you could organize an active crowd of serious contributors, and
have them write the first 3000 articles offline, and good
articles, I think the Wikimedia board would find it very hard to
refuse your request.  So the answer would be "yes", such requests
could be granted. And the new Town Frisian Wikipedia would be just
past the Icelandic, which now has 2500 articles.  But if you want
to start a Wikipedia that never gets beyond 20 articles, you would
instead find it very hard to convince the Wikimedia board.  So the
limit is somewhere in between.  How strong are your arguments?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


body:
>If you could organize an active crowd of serious contributors, and
>have them write the first 3000 articles offline, and good
>articles, I think the Wikimedia board would find it very hard to
>refuse your request.  So the answer would be "yes", such requests
>could be granted. And the new Town Frisian Wikipedia would be just
>past the Icelandic, which now has 2500 articles.  But if you want
>to start a Wikipedia that never gets beyond 20 articles, you would
>instead find it very hard to convince the Wikimedia board.  So the
>limit is somewhere in between.  How strong are your arguments?
>
3000 articles off line is too much, it is the fun of contributers,
especially new ones, that their edits are immediately visible and accessible
for anyone. But I will certainly try to find willing contributers first. On
the other hand, I might gain little willing contributers if they can't be
sure the encyclopedia will ever be a real wikipedia.
How strong are my arguments? You mean for granting them a wikipedia for
themselves? Well, some basic dates about both regional languages then:

Town Frisian
Mixed language, spoken in the Dutch province of Friesland, in towns.
Originated around 1500, when Frisian had little prestige. Akin dialects in
some rural areas. Total number of speakers (Ameland, Bildt, Heereveen and
Midsland dialects incl.): 100,000
Differences from Dutch: maintanance of the pronoun '?u' (realised 'dou')
whereas Dutch dropped it; retention of [i] and [y] instead of the modern
diphthongs [Ei] and [Ey]; maintanace of inlaut [f] and [s] rather than
weakened [v] and [z]; absence of the prefix ge- in past participles; a lot
of Frisian loan words; predominantly Frisian idiom; typical Frisian
pronunciation (with a.o. nasalisations of n's between vowels and
consonants). Best described as Frisian in Dutch disguise.

Zeelandic
Regional language in southeast of the Netherlands, spoken mainly in rural
areas (replaced by Dutch proper in towns). Total number of speakers: at
least 250,000
Differences from Dutch: three genders rather than two, maintenance of the
old [i] and [y] rather than breaking into [Ei] and [Ey] (see above under
Town Frisian), consewuent mutation of the [a:] into [E:]; rendering of old
Germanic ai and au as [e@] and [O@], not [ei] and [ou] as in Dutch;
maintenance of final schwas; consequent dropping of the h.

Would that be enough?

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Nieuw: Download nu MSN Messenger 7.0 http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: EasyTimeline on Windows Server

body:
Gurumustuk Khalsa wrote:
> In terms of the path settings in EasyTimeline.php I have this:
> $wgTimelineSettings->ploticusCommand = "C:\\Inetpub\wwwroot\\sikhiwiki\\pl.exe";
> $wgTimelineSettings->perlCommand =
> "C:\\Inetpub\\wwwroot\\sikhiwiki\\extensions\\timeline\\EasyTimeline.pl";

Set $wgTimelineSettings->perlCommand to the path to perl.exe. If you
opened Timeline.php you might have seen that the default is
/usr/bin/perl, this needs to be changed for Windows.

-- Tim Starling


body:
>
>Zeelandic

>consewuent mutation of the [a:] into [E:];

Oops, forget about the wordt "consequent", apart from the typing error. The
[a:] mostly turns into [E:], but not consequently.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school
http://webmessenger.msn.com/


body:
Also, the English word "consequent" does not have the meaning of the
Dutch "consequent" as one of its meanings. The word you meant is
"consistently".

Andre Engels

On 5/3/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >Zeelandic
>
> >consewuent mutation of the [a:] into [E:];
>
> Oops, forget about the wordt "consequent", apart from the typing error. The
> [a:] mostly turns into [E:], but not consequently.
>
> Wouter
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school
> http://webmessenger.msn.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
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>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry

body:
Lawrence Nyveen wrote:

> Reader's Digest (Canada) plans to reprint a version of this article:
> http://legadoassociates.com/wikipedi.htm
>
> My job is to fact-check the article before it goes into the magazine,
> and to do that, I would like to talk with some Wikipedia
> contributors.  Anyone interested in helping me fact-check the article
> should contact me through e-mail.  A lot of the article is not base so
> much on strict facts but is rather the author's opinion on WIkipedia's
> place in the encyclopedia ecosystem, yet I still have to check that.
> I need to report to my editors whether the author has defensible ideas.

I have two observations about the National Post article.  One thing that
Quon does not mention about the Indian-Ocean-Tsunami article is how
quickly it was put together.  I looked at it within a week of the event,
and its writing was already substantially advanced.  This sort of
writing carves out a niche that cannot easily be matched by the
laborious editorial process of traditional encyclopaedias, the rushed
publication deadlines of daily nespapers, or the throw-away impermanence
of the weeklies.

More amusing was Quon's reference to the "article on U.S. president,
Alexander Hamilton".  That "fact" did not come from Wikipedia, and
McHenry did not fall into that hole.  Certainly we Canadians do a better
job of reciting the list of U.S. presidents than the Americans do with
the shorter list of Canadian prime ministers.  Still, the portrait on a
$10.00 bill can be deceiving.  What's more important here is the simple
process of falling into error.  It can happen anywhere, and to anybody.
It can involve the most easily checkable of facts.  For Wikipedia that
mental slip would be corrected very easily, but a newspaper would be
loath to print a retraction over an historical person from two centuries
ago.  A print encyclopaedia would be stuck with such a statement for a
least a decade until a new edition be [sic!] published.  Good
scholarship requires vigilance that does not yield to reliable sources.

Ec


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
FYI, a related thread from last year:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-July/033649.html

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)