subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Policy clarification: separate Wikipedias for
	cultures, peoples, and countries, or for languages?

body:
In addition, Robin Patterson recently made 3 new sysops and 1 new
bureaucrat without any vote.

New sysops were: Gangleri, Prevert, Rocastelo; the new bureaucrat was Vardion.

According to http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Administrators
, Rocastelo and Prevert are both in Galicia, which is in Spain, far
removed from New Zealand. It appears that  the changes they make are
almost exclusively wikifying, adding categories, images, templates,
and other things that would imply they do not know _any_ Maori.

The same page says that Robin Patterson can recognise only "a couple
of hundred Maori words" and "can create short sentences" -- I can list
16 Maori words myself, and recognise quite a bit more (probably
between 50 and 100).

It also says that A Pakeha, another admin, "[does] not speak, or read
Maori"; Gangleri is as many will know a German born in Romania, he
does not make any claim as to his ability but he is much more active
on the German, Romanian, Esperanto, and English Wikipedias.

Perl, as some will know, got all the Maori he knew from a dictionary
(or so it is said). The other sysops, Vardion and Steven Cope, don't
make any claims either way.

Mark

On 13/07/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, but the mainpage on the Nahuatl Wikipedia has Nahuatl at the very
> top, you have to scroll to see Spanish content.
>
> I would not encourage the addition of non-Nahuatl content to the
> Nahuatl Wikipedia, especially by a prominent user such as yourself,
> but I don't think it needs to be deleted unless it's 1) a long page or
> 2) one of many.
>
> Also, the Nahuatl Wikipedia is written mostly in Nahuatl -- no
> obnoxious notes at the beginning and end of all pages, no commented
> translations (well, very few; I removed many months back since a
> Nahuatl version existed), instead of having a sentence in Nahuatl and
> then 3 or 4 sentences in English, most articles are Nahuatl-only
> stubs.
>
> The sentences are so short that the quality of the Nahuatl is
> virtually guaranteed.
>
> However, none of this is true with the Maori Wikipedia.
>
> If you show me a Wikipedia that has a site notice in the "wrong
> language" for a purpose other than correcting display problems (see
> many Indian languages), I will be very surprised (this of course
> excludes mi.wiki).
>
> The most recent Wikis to become active -- Armenian, Georgian, Maltese,
> Friulian... all became active ONLY after *I* /translated the TOC/.
> This attracts people better than a website only in English that says
> "Add something here", or something that has an English-language
> sentence as the first sentence of a page and places English very
> prominently.
>
> In the past, of course, languages have surely become active with prior
> text in the "right" language, but I think it takes a more motivated
> person. There are no recent examples of this; I think most of the
> larger Wikipedias probably had this though.
>
> Yet, the fact that only Wikipedias for which I translated the ToCs
> have become active recently is, I think, a testament to the importance
> of native-language content presence. Surely, the Navajo Wikipedia,
> with its medium-quality Navajo used thruought, will be more
> appreciated than the Maori Wikipedia, with its medium-quality Maori
> mixed frequently with English.
>
> I would like to close this letter by reminding you --and everybody
> else -- that Maori is not Robin Patterson's first language, __AND HE
> HIMSELF CLAIMS TO *NOT* BE FLUENT__.
>
> Yet, this is my situation with Navajo, and that Wikipedia is mostly
> the fruit of my labour (as with mi.wiki, Rocastelo is a primary
> contributor, however he has mostly added interwikis and images rather
> than actual Navajo-language content), yet I have written none of it in
> English (granted, I did not translate the entire interface, but much
> of it is translated, and there is no English on the pages).
>
> Robin Patterson has not deleted entire pages added by others in
> English, and in most cases he has not made an attempt to translate
> them. I also don't see why the note has to be *at the top of the
> mainpage* in English, and *in the site notice* -- Robin Patterson's
> reason is that 80% of all Maori speak English, and similar reasons.
> This points to a Wikipedia for a peoples or a culture rather than a
> language --- why is it a concern what percent of Maori _people_ speak
> English, if it's a Wikipedia for the Maori _language_?
>
> Would a Maori speaker who is a primary speaker of English agree with
> the primary postition of English on the Maori Wikipedia? No, Maori is
> the language in all contexts where it would be expected: Te marae, te
> iwi... even people who don't speak Maori will try in the marae.
>
> Mark
>
>
> On 13/07/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/11/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > M?ori is certainly not the only Wikipedia doing this.
> > > http://kn.wikipedia.org/ also has English in its site notice and that
> > > project has many native speakers of Kannada and is about to reach 1000
> > > articles. http://gu.wikipedia.org and others do the same. The Arabic
> > > village pump contains an English introduction, and the early
> > > discussion in the project was mostly English
> > >(<http://ar.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project:%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86/%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%B4%D9%8A%D9%81&oldid=10984>).
> >
> > Thank you for pointing this out.  The Nahuatl wikipedia likewise has a
> > good bit of both Spanish and English.   (you can see the 100th
> > "article" here, just a Spanish stub:
> > http://nah.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaloc ; I imagine node would argue for
> > deleting or blanking it, but I only added interlanguage links to
> > highlight the existence of much better Spanish content.  Eventually a
> > "needs translation" tag should be devised.  [when was the first such
> > tag used on en?] )
> >
> > Every small project grows and finds initial contributors in its own
> > way; I'm not sure it would be wise to impose some universal rules on
> > how new languages should go about this.
> >
> > This debate about whether non-local (english, french, spanish) content
> > should be allowed to help seed new articles feels a lot like the
> > debates about whether or not to allow substubs to exist.  I find both
> > types of seed content useful for small projects.
> >
> > --
> > ++SJ
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>

--
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


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] A plea

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

This is a plea to all mailing list users, especially people using gmail.

PLEASE, if you are starting a new thread (a new topic for discussion),
can you start a new email/message, rather than just hitting reply to an
existing message and changing the topic. If you reply to an existing
topic, email clients will assume that it is continuing the discussion
(when it actually isn't).

This means that people may miss your message because they aren't
particularly interested in the thread you hit reply to, so they aren't
reading all replies. Using threaded mode to display emails, in clients
such as Thunderbird, means that new discussion topics do not actually
show up as new discussion topics, which is inconvenient.

Thanks,
Chris
(Talrias on en)

- --
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFC1xsvEq6+ijeBrJ8RAgntAJ9qvzdJPy7fc+JNwJNB2LiPp0wmAgCfVR3u
jnPEMKiRfNwi3NqpvnNY32U=
=GJ7D
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd

body:
On 7/14/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > Can we really expect unpaid volunteers to put themselves under
> > heavy and unrelenting pressure?
>
> We can, do, and should.
>
> How do you think we got this far?

We've got this far, to the point where editors are burning out,
because of the long and relentless pressure. I agree, it's something
to be expected.

--
Peter in Canberra


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Case sensitivity on Afrikaans Wiktionary

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> A request by nl:Gebruiker:Jcwf
> <http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gebruiker:Jcwf>  has been posted on the
> en:Beer parlour to have first letter case sensitivity on the inactive
> Afrikaans Wiktionary.
>
> Ec

Please give some references on af.wikipedia.org with users supporting
this change.

Thanks

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Poll on templates

body:
--- Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> I've always felt that the featured label belongs
> in the article namespace. A small star accompanied
> with the words "Featured article", linking to more
> information, would be enough.

Featured status can and should be part of any article validation feature.

Thus the article *itself* would be free from the tag but readers would
nontheless see the star or whatnot.

-- mav

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Poll on templates

body:
--- Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> As I see it the primary goal of the Wikipedia project
> is to *create* an encyclopedia - not to *be* an
> encyclopedia. Thus editors are more important than
> readers.

And yet throughout the creation process what we have already still needs to be
maximally useful to readers and reusers. If we had a production schedule
whereby articles are not published until ready, then what you say would have
validity.

-- mav

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


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Proposal to modify / supplement request: request for Stellingwarfs, Grunnegers, Drèents, Tweants, and Achterhooks Wikipedias.

body:
> OK Mark,
>
> it is dangerous to feed the trolls, but there are some things that
> need to be sorted out.

Meaning, again, "I have no response to most of your assertions because
they are probably correct, so I have ignored those and answered only
those I have a good response for rather than conceding you are right".

> > > Point C: No one cares if it's patentplatt, if they have a problem with
> > > it they will change it!
> >
> > Noone cares if it's patentplatt? You obviously didn't read Point C --
> > Jonny Meinbohm and Ron Hahn __DO__ care. Ron tried to change it, but
> > Heiko was as always very cold towards him and took a very uninviting
> > stance, as usual, rather than welcoming in and being thankful for a
> > native speaker as it should be.
> 1) we are on a good way in nds.wikpedia.org. The flooding with low quality
> articles has stopped. There has been a lot of cleanup, and recently some
> nice new articles were written.

"Katt" had been edited by Sarcelles just before Ron edited it. There
is a difference between low-quality articles and poor-grammar articles
-- someone who writes articles with bad grammar will not easily be
able to fix it. Someone who makes low-quality articles, can easily fix
it.

> 2) I am interested in building up, but your intention is tearing down. I can
> live

You are twisting the words in my mouth. "your intention is tearing
down"... like all the pages I blanked? Oh wait, I didn't blank any
pages! All the pages I proposed for deletion? Oh wait I didn't do
that! Where do you get the idea that my "intention is tearing down"?
My single concern about nds.wikipedia is quality. It has been pointed
out by both Jonny Meinbohm and Ron Hahn that the entire Wikipedia --
not just large parts of it -- are written in Patentplatt, and I trust
them both more than I trust you because 1) they are both native
speakers and you are not and 2) I have known them longer, and 3) they
are always kind and they do not say things like they will not allow
that on THEIR Wikipedia!

> with a certain abount of problems in nds.wikpedia.org and I prefer helping
> people instead of accusing them. The one user who wrote lots of low quality
> articles is doing a quite good job at the moment with edits where he has
> sufficient competence. I think you would just have kicked him out.

Again, you are twisting the words in my mouth. I don't mind about
articles of poor quality, in that they need cleanup -- they exist on
ALL Wikipedias. What I do mind is articles written in Patentplatt.
According to Ron and Jonny, this is the vast majority or even all of
the articles at nds.wiki.

> 3) For the record: several of Ron's proposals are still kept in the current
> article, this includes grammar fixes, choice of words, but it specifically
> EXCLUDES changes in spelling. The text originally came from Ron, but was

What is your point here? When you reverted me, each time in addition
to the spelling changes you discarded about half of the changes in
grammar and choice of words.

Please see http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=22196&oldid=22047
http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=22047&oldid=22032

This is extremely arrogant considering that: 1) Platt is his native
language, it is not yours and 2) In the second diff, perhaps you did
not know it was made by a native speaker, but by the first one, you
certainly knew it was from Ron Hahn.

> made
> in anonymous edits. Anonymous edits are suspicious. We do have lots of
> trouble
> with anonymous spamming and (as said before) anonymous edits are living a
> dangerous life. Most of his changes were spelling, and these changes went
> against our spelling policy on nds. Therefore I took his article, and
> reverted
> the spelling changes. Even at that time I checked the grammar changes and
> kept
> some of them. Then you started a spelling war on nds. This I reverted. I

Some of them? You "checked the grammar changes"? Again, you are
pretending that your Platt is better than Ron's. There is no good
explanation for reverting so many grammar fixes made by a native
speaker, when it isn't your native language.

> will
> continue to do so, unless there is a broad consensus in nds to switch
> spelling.

When and where was the "broad consensus" on nds.wiki to use the older
Sass spelling in the first place?? I searched for 15 minutes using
Google, with terms like "sass", "schriefwies", "orthographie", etc.
and yet I never did find a page where people voted on orthography.

> (And besides: any further edit war by you on nds will be ansered with a
> swift blocking.)

Ahh, so you don't block people who flood "your" Wikipedia with
poor-quality articles, but you DO block people who revert spelling?
Hmm. That seems a bit hypocritical.

> Ron's suggestions about grammar fixes will always be welcome.
> I liked his lowlands-l, but it has much too much traffic, and therefore I
> have unsubscribed from this list. I appreciate his experience in Low Saxon.

If you "appreciate his experience", then why did you revert some of
his grammar fixes even AFTER you found out it was him??

> We
> have been in contact concerning "Linux op platt", and he has helped us with
> several words about computers. If the first edit had not been anonymously,
> things might have been different.
>
> > 2) It's quite self-serving of you to say, "Well, they're officially
> > one language" just because you want them to have a single Wikipedia. I
> > can't find very many pages that say "dutch low saxon":
> OK, would you prefer to say "Plattd??tsch" and "Nedersaksisch", or would
> you still complain that "Nedersaksisch" should also include the area of
> "Niedersachsen"? That is the problem with you. You twist the words in our
> mouth.

What on earth are you talking about?? Please, read what I said again
-- "I can't find very many pages that say 'dutch low saxon'". And it
is true -- there are none, really, except messages from Servien.

Of all the pages in English about Low Saxon, none of them says
anything about it.

And you twisted the words in my mouth too just now before I even had
the chance to say them. "or would you still complain... ? That is the
problem with you.", as if I had complained about it already... again
you are being a hypocrit.

And again you have not responded to the most important points, writing
them off as "trolling".

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage

body:
> > As it so happens, it appears Heiko sends all communication in
> > Hochdeutsch, occasionally proceeded by "moin moin" to make it sound
> > more Platt-ish. Slomox, the other most active current admin, is also
> > not a native speaker of Low Saxon (but rather Hochdeutsch),
>
> > With these people running this nokieksel op 't patentplatt, it's no
> > wonder it's... in patentplatt.
>
> It really looks like the Low Saxon edition of Wikipedia has not yet achieved the level of language quality it should have. On the other hand many of the deficits are due to the fact that the Platt spoken nowadays in most areas is highly influenced by High German.

This is certainly true. Yet, I was surprised at the resentment from
Slomox and Heiko over the accusations. They both insist that it isn't
in Patentplatt. Yet, they are not native speakers (they both admit
this), while Ron Hahn and Jonny Meinbohm (the ones making the
accusation originally) actually are native speakers.

If instead they had admitted "You are right that most of nds.wiki is
in Patentplatt. We are working on fixing it." or "You are right that
most of nds.wiki is in Patentplatt. We wish we could change it, but
are not native speakers and so need help to fix it."

> > Also, the nds.wiki mainpage says it's in Plattd??tsch (ie, flat
> > german)... and in parenthesis after it says "Plattd??tsch", it says
> > "neddersassisch un oostnedderd??tsch" (Low Saxon and East Low German).
> > Hmm... according to the ISO, "nds" does not include East Low German.
> > Only Low Saxon. Seems this Wikipedia is not in accordance...
>
> I noticed quite a while ago that this could cause a lot of confusion, especially among people from abroad. Generally, people in Northern Germany uniformly refer to their multiple regional or local dialects as "Platt" or "Plattd??tsch", in High German we say "Plattdeutsch" or "Platt" and sometimes in more formal, written High German the term "Niederdeutsch" is used (to avoid the somewhat negative connotation of "flat"). This refers, as far as I know, to all dialects from the Dutch border to the Polish border (except the Frisian ones, of course). While people are well aware of the existance of many different dialects a distinction between Low Saxon and East Low German dialects is not made among the "general public". Everything is perceived as "Platt(deutsch)".

This is true. But I think the main issue here is not orthography, or
"Dutch Low Saxon" and "German Low Saxon" varieties, but rather shades
of mutual intelligibility. We would do well to have separate
Wikipedias for different dialects or dialect-groups.

The question is, how far do we divide?

There are a few options:

Western (Ostfriesland, Oldenburg, Emsland, all Netherlands varieties,
Westphalia, Eastphalia), Eastern (Mecklenburg, West Pomerania, Mercia,
Brandenburg), and Plautdietsch (the Mennonite varieties which today
are spoken mostly in the Americas), would be the least number of
divisions.

If that isn't enough divisions, it can be split to Northwestern LS
(Ostfriesland, Oldenburg, Emsland, Groningen, Drenthe, W. Overijssel,
Stellingwerven), Westphalian (Westphalia, Twente, Salland,
Gelderland), Eastphalian (Eastphalia), Northeastern LS (Mecklenburg,
West Pomerania), Southeastern LS (Mercia, Brandenburg), and
Plautdietsch...

And then, the most divisions would be Ostfreesk, Oldenburgisch,
Emslandisch, Grunnegers, Dreents, Overyssels, Stellingwarfs,
Westfaelsch, Tweants, Sallands, Gelderlands (Veluws + Achterhooks),
Eastphalian, Mecklenburgish, West Pomeranian, Mercian, Brandenburgish,
and Plautdietsch.

Of course, you could introduce even more divisions than *that*, but
that would be bordering on mentally insane: a separate Wikipedia for
Hoogeveen Dr?ents and Zuidwolde Dr?ents, for example... given, there
_are_ differences, eg "h" in Zuidwolde Dr?ents is usually silent in
Hoogeveen Dr?ents, Zuidwolde "zi'j" vs. Hoogeveen "ze", Zuidwolde
"pruugels" vs. Hoogeveen "jonchies" (children), but within a paragraph
there are not very many differences, and most of them are regular
sound-changes that make it easier (a Hoogeveen-Dr?ents speaker can
read Zuidwolde Dr?ents words such as "heur", "hummelties", "huus",
"hier", and the like, keeping in mind that the "h" of Zuidwolde is
silent in Hoogeveen).

> Interestingly, the term "Low Saxon" which we use so frequently here (because that`s the term used in English and apparently in Dutch, too) is _never_ used in Germany, only in scientific contexts. It seems like the somewhat clumsy headline on the nds homepage was chosen in order to include users from the Netherlands (who would be excluded by solely using the term plattd??tsch because the "German" part would alienate them).

True... but it's rather pointless that they made that effort to not
alienate people from the Netherlands, since they have already
alienated them quite a bit by using Sass spelling with no special
provisions.

Mark


from_name: Sebastian Stabinger

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem with ImageDump with Windows

body:
Hi

I just wanted to inform you, that it seems to be nearly impossible to
extract the
image dumps with Windows. Or at least I like to complain about it ;)
The newest gnutar-version for cygwin seems to be 1.13 and it
cant handle the archive.

The link you gave the windows-users
(http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libarchive.htm)
is rather useless because its not an utility but only a library.

It would realy be nice if you could use another file format for the next
dumps.

By the way: I got the best results with bsdtar. At least this program
did find all the files but they came out corrupt.

Best regards, Sebastian Stabinger


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage

body:
Hi Boris,

In fact, he does claim Low Saxon as his native language, please see:
http://www.sassisch.net/rhahn/pers-engl.html

It says: "Native languages:
    * German ("High German")
    * Low Saxon ("Low German") "

in contrast to his non-native languages, which he lists as English,
Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Modern Uyghur,
Uzbek, Kazakh, and "reading proficiency in all Germanic and most
Romance languages, and Mongolian".

And I'm pretty sure it's Jonny Meinbohm's native language: the way he
writes is basically the exact opposite of Patentplatt, he uses a lot
more expressions and grammar that would not work in German, than even
Ron does. However, there is the possibility that it is not Jonny's
native language.

Also, I'm not exactly sure, but I think Ron has only lived in the US
for 10 or 15 years (he was born in Hamburg). Certainly, he has kept
abreast of what changes may have occurred in Low Saxon while he was
gone by his huge involvement in Low Saxon studies on the Internet --
he reads hundreds of e-mails in and about Low Saxon to the list each
week, he has written websites in Low Saxon, and it is my guess that he
also reads many websites, and probably also magazines and newsletters,
in Low Saxon.

Cheers
Mark

On 15/07/05, Boris Lohnzweiger <BorisLohnzweiger at web.de> wrote:
>
> Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 11.07.05 02:37:59:
>
> > Although Ron isn't subscribed to this list, so far as far as I can
> > tell he's the only native speaker who has even contributed to this
> > discussion.
>
> Mark,
>
> since you quote Ron so frequently I checked out his user page at "Lowlands-L" a while ago to get a vague idea who he is. His academic accomplishments are obvious. But interestingly however, he doesn't claim being a native speaker of Low Saxon himself ! Instead, he writes "my native German". Furthermore, from what can be read there he seems to have emigrated overseas decades ago, so his idea of Platt might be slightly outdated because the Platt used today is surely different from to one used a generation ago.
>
> Boris
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS!
> Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193
>
>

--
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:
> > > OK Mark,
> > >
> > > it is dangerous to feed the trolls, but there are some things that
> > > need to be sorted out.
> >
> > Meaning, again, "I have no response to most of your assertions because
> > they are probably correct, so I have ignored those and answered only
> > those I have a good response for rather than conceding you are right".
> No Mark, ich habe einfach keine Lust mehr, daf?r ist mir meine Zeit zu
> schade.

Which language you write your excuse in, does not change the fact that
you are only saying it because you have realised my arguments are
sound and cannot think of a good response.

> > "Katt" had been edited by Sarcelles just before Ron edited it.
> Mark, please read, what is there, and not, what
> isn't.
> http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&action=history&offset=0&limit=500
> shows a list of all edits on nds:Katt ever since it was created on July
> 16th, 2004.
> Sarcelles is not listed here.

You are indeed right. I meant Slomox. They both start with an "S" ;p

> > Again, you are twisting the words in my mouth. I don't mind about
> > articles of poor quality, in that they need cleanup -- they exist on
> > ALL Wikipedias. What I do mind is articles written in Patentplatt.
> > According to Ron and Jonny, this is the vast majority or even all of
> > the articles at nds.wiki.
> Low quality can mean
> 1) Low quality of content
> 2) Low quality of grammar
> 3) Low quality of vocabulary
> etc.

"in that they need cleanup", means "low quality of content". I do not
mind these pages, they exist on every Wikipedia. Low quality of
grammar and low quality of vocabulary, however, are detestable.

> > > 3) For the record: several of Ron's proposals are still kept in the
> > current
> > > article, this includes grammar fixes, choice of words, but it
> > specifically
> > > EXCLUDES changes in spelling. The text originally came from Ron, but was
> >
> > What is your point here? When you reverted me, each time in addition
> > to the spelling changes you discarded about half of the changes in
> > grammar and choice of words.
> >
> > Please see
> > http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=22196&oldid=22047
> > http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=22047&oldid=22032
> Shall we count it?
> http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=prev&oldid=22032
> shows 39 words in red. I count All but 4 are spelling. 3 are words, 1 is
> grammar.
> What do you count?

You changed "oder koter" to "ok koter schr?ven", "v?rweser" to
"v?rfohr", "d?r" to "d?rch", "al de olen buurn in ?gypten" to "al de
buern in 't ole ?gypten", "Un de Katten weern hillig." to "Katten
weren dor dunntomaal as hillig ankeken.",  "Un wenn se doodbleven" to
"Wenn 'n Katt doodbleev", "wen" to "jichteneen", "slieken" to
"anslieken" (this in particular is a typical Patentplatt construction
-- not all Platt words are direct cognates of their German
counterparts), "kan dat mal??rn" to "kan dat maal mal??rn", and a few
other changes which weren't spelling, but also were more like adding
content than changing grammar.

> > it was made by a native speaker,
> yada, yada, yada
> but by the first one, you
> > Some of them? You "checked the grammar changes"? Again, you are
> > pretending that your Platt is better than Ron's.
> I still state that
> http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=22047&oldid=22032
> did leave the grammar changes intact, apart from "Un Katten doot w?ten"
> which I consider to be out of place for an excyclopedia.

Uhh... no.

> > > (And besides: any further edit war by you on nds will be ansered with a
> > > swift blocking.)
> >
> > Ahh, so you don't block people who flood "your" Wikipedia with
> > poor-quality articles, but you DO block people who revert spelling?
> > Hmm. That seems a bit hypocritical.
> Actually Sarcelles had been warned several times and then he was blocked for
> two days.

I apologise for calling you hypocritical, I wasn't aware of this.

> > If you "appreciate his experience", then why did you revert some of
> > his grammar fixes even AFTER you found out it was him??
> Again, I have shown you that I did not.

And, in return, I have shown you that you did.

Best
Mark


from_name: SJ

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Documenting Wikimania; Help wanted

body:
Greetings,

Wikimania is just around the corner.  I am really looking forward to
seeing everyone there; you can browse "everyone" here --
http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/registration/attendees.php
If you've been thinking about coming, please register to let us know.

There has been some talk of  having a documentary crew come to
wikimania; if you are interested in helping make this happen, leave a
note on the main talk page:
    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania:Main_Page

As you can see from that page, we could also use some help: with site
design,  podcasting, transcription, descriptions of the area around
Frankfurt, and preparation of the upcoming press release.  Please sign
up there if you'd like to help.

Cheers from Boston,
      SJ


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and Reverting all edits (was: Odd)

body:
On 7/13/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Forget 3RR. It's mechanical and therefore (nearly) senseless. Let's
> start using our judgment. We are all smart enough to do that.

It's the senseless aspect of it which makes it good. Nobody has to
guess what good judgment it -- it should be a mechanical way of
preventing endless revert wars. It forces people to do what they want
to do and then go take a break somewhere else, come back tomorrow if
need be. The mechanical aspect of it isn't accidental.

FF


body:
Right.  I already noted your help in the help wanted section :)  If
people want videos of all presentations (do they?), we will need at
least 5 cameras...

SJ

On 7/15/05, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just as we said on IRC, I am planning to come with 1 or 2 cameras and
> try to vlog Wikimania. I think I'll make one documentary a day, plus
> a small final one for the complete Wikimania.
>
>
>
> Le 15 juil. 05 ? 13:18, SJ a ?crit :
>
> > Greetings,
> >
> > Wikimania is just around the corner.  I am really looking forward to
> > seeing everyone there; you can browse "everyone" here --
> > http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/registration/attendees.php
> > If you've been thinking about coming, please register to let us know.
> >
> > There has been some talk of  having a documentary crew come to
> > wikimania; if you are interested in helping make this happen, leave a
> > note on the main talk page:
> >     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania:Main_Page
> >
> > As you can see from that page, we could also use some help: with site
> > design,  podcasting, transcription, descriptions of the area around
> > Frankfurt, and preparation of the upcoming press release.  Please sign
> > up there if you'd like to help.
> >
> > Cheers from Boston,
> >       SJ
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>

--
++SJ


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: cookfire

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: ERD

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Rodolfo Raya wrote:
>
>> On 7/14/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>>
>>> I have started anew on an ERD for the UW.
>>
>>
>> Have you considered designing an XCS template to use with TBX exports?
>> You may want to take a look at the default template included in TBX
>> specs and  remove the fields that you consider irrelevant. Once you
>> define the template, it would be easier to identify the requirements
>> of the application and write an UML or ERD diagram.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Rodolfo
>>
> Hoi,
> The first thing I need to do is to make sure that we can host the data
> in the database. To do that there are several requirements that I have
> to allow for;
> * The user interface must be in the language indicated by the user.
> * Ultimate Wiktionary is to use its own dog food or, if some
> terminology required in the UI is not there, it must be possible to
> add it within Ultimate Wiktionary
> * It must be possible to host all words of all languages in this
> database.
> * We need cooperation of many people to make it all possible so I need
> to acknowledge glossaries and thesauri that we are given to host
> within UW
> * Users must be able to select the languages that they want to see.
>
> The budget that we have to create UW is minimal. We will be happy if
> we can get it to work and host the data.within a limited amount of
> time.We have considered TBX. There are however TWO crucial things
> before we can consider exporting to TBX, the first is IMPORT, the
> second one is analysis of what the export should be for. If the Dutch
> content will be 222.000+ words to start of with and everyone starts
> hitting our servers because you can, it makes for some optimalisation.
> If the export is based on a need of only the changed content, it is
> different again. When the need is associated with the projected
> reference implementation, it makes sense to consider how we will ask
> translators to aid in the content of the UW.
>
> Sabine for instance already adds content to the Italian wiktionary
> based on her translations. When we ask it as part of the reference
> implementation for a translation glossary, we want to encourage
> translators to work on the content like Sabine does, finding the right
> way is crucial. When we start with UW, it may be important to have
> some Quality Assurance measures built in. This is also very much
> intrinsic to the database design and that is what is currently being
> worked on. Currently there are some 17 tables that make up the ERD,
> there is need for some more.
>
> Over the last year I have had many conversations about what should be
> in an Ultimate Wiktionary. Now I am trying to integrate it all. I have
> posted the design to the uw-creations at googlegroups.com and I have
> posted it at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:ERD.jpg As you
> should understand it is a working document and if you have questions
> of suggestions do not hesitate to discuss them with me and with others.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM

Hi Gerard,

They can say what they want about Dutch people, but they can't say you
aren't persistent! I'm looking at the ERD. The first remark I have is
that English people won't understand what wordtype means. The term they
use is 'part of speech' or POS.

Keep up the good work. I'll give you more remarks later, when I
encounter something to say.

Polyglot


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Poll on templates

body:
--- Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally, I couldn't care any less about reusers.  The existence of
> reusers is simply a byproduct of the license of the project.  I don't
> think we should go out of our way to either accomodate or
> inconvenience them in any way.  They get exactly zero weight my
> decisions.

Reuse is at the heart of what free content is all about and having everything
as free content is a very large part of our goal and mission. Having too many
Wikipedia/editor-specific references makes reuse harder than it needs to be and
thus goes against our goals.

> I only care about the readers and editors.  What is useful to the
> readers is the same thing that is useful to the editors.

Not so. A WikiProject tag has very little use to readers. The only exception
would be in the references section where an external link styled link to a
WikiProject page may be appropriate. I have done this for some WikiProject
Elements articles where I state where the data came from for the tables. The
WikiProject ref is for readers who may want to know what references where used
for different parts of the table.

And, as I have already said, this does not apply to sub-standard articles.
Those need extra help and asking readers for help is valid. Thus a WikiProject
link as part of a subject area stub message is OK. In the future it would be
nice to be able to add meta tags to all stub, clean-up and POV messages that
could be used to exclude any article with those tags from being included in a
special download dump for reusers and anybody interested in making a print
version.

The point is to limit messages aimed at editors to talk pages except in cases
of clearly sub-standard articles. When the tagged article gets fixed, then the
message goes away.

> That is
> blunt and obvious honesty about the amorphous nature of any Wikipedia
> article.  I've already seen reports that cite articles in Wikipedia as
> if they're complete and static.  This is absolutely wrong, and occurs
> because we're not obvious enough about the nature of the Wiki.

'Edit the page' is already at the top of every page and awareness of how we
work is spreading very rapidly. The fact that many articles do stay so stable
for so long is a testament to how fast vandalism and other rubbish is
cleaned-up. This is a good thing.

> Finally, templates and tags can easily be stripped from the articles
> for anyone who wants it that way, by reusers, or by the team that puts
> together a "static content" version of any form.

This would be true if such messages where few in number and every reuser used
MediaWiki software.

-- mav

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


from_name: andyl2004 at sympatico.ca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Account migration

body:
I've abandoned my AndyL account on wikipedia and have moved to homeontherange

At the moment I'm still signing my talk posts as AndyL but that will end soon.

I'm wondering if it's possible to move my admin privleges from the AndyL account to homeontherange?

Thanks


subject: GMail's threading (was Re: [WikiEN-l] A plea)

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

Skyring wrote:
> While I endorse your comments, Chris, may I note that the reason I use
> GMail for mailing list traffic is because it is so very good at
> handling threads (which it calls conversations).
>
> So long as the subject doesn't change, all unread messages are
> presented on a single page one after the other. Messages already read
> are shown in a "stacked up" manner. I keep my normal email for
> personal stuff, but I've transferred all of the several lists to which
> I subscribe onto GMail.

Well, not that I want to start moaning about gmail, but if the way it
works is not in line with existing email clients and email servers,
which it does, as it ignores the in-reply-to header, I wouldn't really
call it "very good". :)

Chris

- --
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFC13uYEq6+ijeBrJ8RAjQLAKCbujATWXQN8qQiRbWnJkfhbC7I3wCfT3UM
HMPG0SYqvgkx/8adORpr/Rg=
=DwBm
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] William M. Connoley, admin? (was: Running the asylum)

body:
Poor, Edmund W (Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com) [050715 02:53]:

> I'm thinking of deciding this one myself.
> Dr. William M. Connolley can be trusted not to abuse admin powers, and
> it's not supposed to be a big deal. He got 70% to 30%, but a lot of the
> objections were irrelevant in my opinion.
> I had objected vociferously at first (go ahead, look it up ;-) but Erik
> (user:Eloquence) convinced me to change my vote to neutral. I have been
> reading the comment stream, and now I feel I should take matters into my
> own hands.
> Any objections?

70-30 is good but not quite there. Almost anyone with a score like that
makes it through the next time. I think this is a "when in doubt, do
nothing" case.

Someone will renominate him in a month or two and he'll be a shoo-in.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Poll on templates

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson (haukurth at hi.is) [050715 09:32]:

> As for the WikiProject tags I don't actually feel
> that strongly about them. I wouldn't mind having
> them in the article space but I'm not upset that
> more people seem to lean the other way.

I'm appalled by the idea. The articles are part of Wikipedia; a project's
work should be *invisible* except the results themselves.

- d.


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Poll on templates

body:
On 7/15/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> > As I see it the primary goal of the Wikipedia project
> > is to *create* an encyclopedia - not to *be* an
> > encyclopedia. Thus editors are more important than
> > readers.
>
> And yet throughout the creation process what we have already still needs to be
> maximally useful to readers and reusers. If we had a production schedule
> whereby articles are not published until ready, then what you say would have
> validity.
>
> -- mav

Personally, I couldn't care any less about reusers.  The existence of
reusers is simply a byproduct of the license of the project.  I don't
think we should go out of our way to either accomodate or
inconvenience them in any way.  They get exactly zero weight my
decisions.

I only care about the readers and editors.  What is useful to the
readers is the same thing that is useful to the editors.  That is
blunt and obvious honesty about the amorphous nature of any Wikipedia
article.  I've already seen reports that cite articles in Wikipedia as
if they're complete and static.  This is absolutely wrong, and occurs
because we're not obvious enough about the nature of the Wiki.

Finally, templates and tags can easily be stripped from the articles
for anyone who wants it that way, by reusers, or by the team that puts
together a "static content" version of any form.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:KAAWRGFDB2]]

body:
Remember: a vote for [[WP:ASS]] is a vote against querulous idiocy on VFD.
It's not like VFD isn't sufficiently active or something.

- d.


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] HowStuffWorks article on Wikipedia and [[wing warping]]

body:
HowStuffWorks has a very nice article on "How Wikis Work" that
features Wikipedia quite prominently.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wiki.htm

It uses the [[wing warping]] article as an example of how to edit
articles. While this will undoubtedly add more good faith edits than
bad faith edits, due to the typical HowStuffWorks reader (indeed, two
IPs have already added some good contributions), it wouldn't hurt to
add it to your watchlists, just in case.

-DPh


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

Skyring wrote:
> No offence at all, but you may be in the position of someone who
> doesn't like TiVo because it's not the way they are used to, or
> someone who doesn't see the need for a scroll wheel on a mouse.

Not at all. The position I'm in is that Google have made an email client
which 'breaks' existing conventions for threading, and so it makes
people (possibly unintentionally) take shortcuts, which work for them,
but don't work for others.

> I use GMail for list traffic because it presents a host of posts in an
> accessible manner, not because it works well with Outlook or whatever.
> Perhaps you should try it and see why I do this, and why others do the
> same thing.

I have a gmail account and indeed I used to use it to post to this
mailing list. I prefer a dedicated email client, such as Thunderbird,
however. I do agree that gmail displays it in an accessible manner, with
some clever functionality. This, of course, can be achieved without
breaking existing conventions.

In the meantime, please don't take shortcuts to start new threads. The
post reply button is for exactly that, and nothing else! :)

Chris

- --
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFC14xVEq6+ijeBrJ8RAizNAKCS6ESZh3pm2Tsd5e60R025xKFQ8QCglEdg
Fu3E+OyELrI+6pTiFtXGMDs=
=Rf5V
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Poll on templates

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson (haukurth at hi.is) [050715 10:59]:

> > I'm appalled by the idea. The articles are part
> > of Wikipedia; a project's work should be *invisible*
> > except the results themselves.

> As I said I don't care as strongly about placement
> of the WikiProject tags as the other metadata tags
> under consideration.
> I'd like to note that one of the things that
> initially pulled me into Wikipedia was the humble
> {{stub}} template.
> "... you can help Wikipedia by expanding it."
> I can? Really? Where do I sign up?!

:-)

The thing about templates like {{stub}}, {{NPOV}} and so on is that they
are temporary by their nature - they indicate a problem that needs fixing.
The problem is fixed and the tag goes away.

Project tags on an article would be permanent by nature. That's not so
good IMO.

- d.


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] geographical maps

body:
Hi, I know we have some people here who know how to create geographical
maps.

Now I need to create some detailed maps for Italian regions such as the
Amalfi Coast and some others. These are going to be uploaded to commons.

But: I would like to know how one can create such maps and where to get
the data from. Is there a software that can help in this? Open Source?

Where can I find information on that?

Thank you!

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] A plea

body:
On 15/07/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:

> While I endorse your comments, Chris, may I note that the reason I use
> GMail for mailing list traffic is because it is so very good at
> handling threads (which it calls conversations).
>
> So long as the subject doesn't change, all unread messages are
> presented on a single page one after the other. Messages already read
> are shown in a "stacked up" manner. I keep my normal email for
> personal stuff, but I've transferred all of the several lists to which
> I subscribe onto GMail.

The problem is that GMail is not the only threaded mailreader, and
that some of them (esp. older ones) work in a different way.

In the mail to which I'm replying, there's two header lines showing
the threading information:

In-Reply-To: <42D71B2F.5020808 at starglade.org>
References: <42D71B2F.5020808 at starglade.org>

Many systems use *these* to thread, rather than subject line (which
can be very handy when subject lines start picking up or losing extra
Re:'s), in much the same way as Usenet posts. Hence the desire to send
a new message, which wouldn't have this internal information, and thus
wouldn't be threaded...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] A plea

body:
On 7/15/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> This is a plea to all mailing list users, especially people using gmail.
>
> PLEASE, if you are starting a new thread (a new topic for discussion),
> can you start a new email/message, rather than just hitting reply to an
> existing message and changing the topic. If you reply to an existing
> topic, email clients will assume that it is continuing the discussion
> (when it actually isn't).

While I endorse your comments, Chris, may I note that the reason I use
GMail for mailing list traffic is because it is so very good at
handling threads (which it calls conversations).

So long as the subject doesn't change, all unread messages are
presented on a single page one after the other. Messages already read
are shown in a "stacked up" manner. I keep my normal email for
personal stuff, but I've transferred all of the several lists to which
I subscribe onto GMail.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: William M Connolley

body:
On Fri, 15 Jul 2005, Fastfission wrote:
> On 7/13/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> > Forget 3RR. It's mechanical and therefore (nearly) senseless. Let's
> > start using our judgment. We are all smart enough to do that.
>
> It's the senseless aspect of it which makes it good. Nobody has to
> guess what good judgment it -- it should be a mechanical way of
> preventing endless revert wars. It forces people to do what they want
> to do and then go take a break somewhere else, come back tomorrow if
> need be. The mechanical aspect of it isn't accidental.

3RR is good, and should be more strictly applied. A 3-2-1-0 rule would be even
better, though harder to police: 3 on day1, 2 next, then 1, then a day with none
at all before you get back to 3 again. I say this as an experienced reverter :-)

-W.

William M Connolley | wmc at bas.ac.uk | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/
Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | (01223) 221479
If I haven't seen further, it's because giants were standing on my shoulders


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] The relevance of this list and the endless
	discussions

body:
That's all fine with me, but for a problem like this there's still no
end in sight.

Is there a vote? Is it taken to the board (my preference)? Does
everyone have to agree, and if they don't it just isn't created?

Does there have to be a native speaker / fluent speaker, or just
people interested in the language?? Actually, does there have to be a
certain number of native speakers / fluent speakers?

5 supporters seems to be the current standard. Do any of them have to
be native speakers? Do /all/ of them have to be native speakers?

I don't think we should definite cases where a Wikipedia *will* be
created, but I think we should define those cases in which it won't,
to reduce confusion and keep people aware of what not to do.

Mark

On 15/07/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/15/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [...]
> > The sad thing is that Mark has some
> > valid points to make, points that are drowned out by the torrent of
> > e-mails that he sends to make these points.
>
> Mark does have valid points, which is why I have objected to him being
> blocked from the list. He does a lot of research into languages in
> order to post about them, but I am concerned the discussion (not only
> Mark's posts) is now getting to the stage where it is doing more harm
> than good. As I mentioned on meta earlier today
> (<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_new_languages#Discussion_isn.27t_always_a_good_thing>),
> the amount of discussion surrounding language requests is leading to
> it becoming impossible for developers to ascertain when they should be
> making a new wiki.
>
> > I hope Mark is willing to accept this because if things go on as they
> > do, I will ask if it is possible to have him banned from this list.
>
> It isn't only Mark who needs to adapt his behaviour, but everyone
> involved in the requests for new languages procedure. I would prefer
> if all these language discussions could be kept in one place on Meta,
> making it much easier to see when the issues were resolved, and
> hopefully making the process to getting a new wiki a little bit
> easier. Currently, the requests page asks for a link to the mailing
> list discussion, but perhaps this should be coming later, after
> discussion between interested parties on the wiki, rather than being
> the first step in a new language request.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> 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


from_name: Heiko Evermann

subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Proposal to modify / supplement request:=?ISO-8859-1?Q?_request_for_Stellingwarfs, _Grunnegers, _Dr=E8ents, _Tweants?= , and Achterhooks Wikipedias.

body:
OK Mark,

it is dangerous to feed the trolls, but there are some things that
need to be sorted out.

> > Point C: No one cares if it's patentplatt, if they have a problem with
> > it they will change it!
>
> Noone cares if it's patentplatt? You obviously didn't read Point C --
> Jonny Meinbohm and Ron Hahn __DO__ care. Ron tried to change it, but
> Heiko was as always very cold towards him and took a very uninviting
> stance, as usual, rather than welcoming in and being thankful for a
> native speaker as it should be.
1) we are on a good way in nds.wikpedia.org. The flooding with low quality
articles has stopped. There has been a lot of cleanup, and recently some
nice new articles were written.
2) I am interested in building up, but your intention is tearing down. I can
live
with a certain abount of problems in nds.wikpedia.org and I prefer helping
people instead of accusing them. The one user who wrote lots of low quality
articles is doing a quite good job at the moment with edits where he has
sufficient competence. I think you would just have kicked him out.
3) For the record: several of Ron's proposals are still kept in the current
article, this includes grammar fixes, choice of words, but it specifically
EXCLUDES changes in spelling. The text originally came from Ron, but was
made
in anonymous edits. Anonymous edits are suspicious. We do have lots of
trouble
with anonymous spamming and (as said before) anonymous edits are living a
dangerous life. Most of his changes were spelling, and these changes went
against our spelling policy on nds. Therefore I took his article, and
reverted
the spelling changes. Even at that time I checked the grammar changes and
kept
some of them. Then you started a spelling war on nds. This I reverted. I
will
continue to do so, unless there is a broad consensus in nds to switch
spelling.
(And besides: any further edit war by you on nds will be ansered with a
swift
blocking.) Ron's suggestions about grammar fixes will always be welcome.
I liked his lowlands-l, but it has much too much traffic, and therefore I
have unsubscribed from this list. I appreciate his experience in Low Saxon.
We
have been in contact concerning "Linux op platt", and he has helped us with
several words about computers. If the first edit had not been anonymously,
things might have been different.

> 2) It's quite self-serving of you to say, "Well, they're officially
> one language" just because you want them to have a single Wikipedia. I
> can't find very many pages that say "dutch low saxon":
OK, would you prefer to say "Plattd??tsch" and "Nedersaksisch", or would
you still complain that "Nedersaksisch" should also include the area of
"Niedersachsen"? That is the problem with you. You twist the words in our
mouth.

Regards,

Heiko

--
GMX DSL = Maximale Leistung zum minimalen Preis!
2000 MB nur 2,99, Flatrate ab 4,99 Euro/Monat: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Poll on templates

body:
On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 10:27:07AM -0400, Michael Turley wrote:
> Personally, I couldn't care any less about reusers.  The existence of
> reusers is simply a byproduct of the license of the project.  I don't
> think we should go out of our way to either accomodate or
> inconvenience them in any way.  They get exactly zero weight my
> decisions.

Thoroughly agreed.

Open-source / free-content projects seem to fall into two categories
along these lines:  those whose direct contributors and consumers are
end-users, and those whose direct contributors and consumers are
redistributors.

Take the Linux kernel for instance.  Most people who use Linux do not
get their kernel directly from the kernel developers.  They get it from
a redistributor -- Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, or the like.  At the
same time, much of the kernel development is done by people working for
redistributors or resellers -- not just companies like Red Hat, but
companies like IBM.

Nor is this a coincidence:  most end-users of Linux are not *able* to
use the Linux kernel in the form produced by the developers.  They lack
the necessary technical skills and time, to say nothing of the desire,
to deal with raw kernel source.  Redistributors provide an essential
service by taking the raw kernel source and packaging it (along with a
great deal of other software) in such a way that end-users can make use
of it.

Wikipedia, in contrast, does not enjoy this kind of relationship with
redistributors.

First off, there are only a tiny number of *legitimate* redistributors,
such as Wikinfo.  The vast majority of redistribution of Wikipedia
content is illegal and illegitimate -- Web sites which copy Wikipedia
content without attribution, using our high-quality writing to place
high on search engines, score advertisement revenue, and push spyware.
We have no interest whatsoever in helping people violate our rights.

Second, redistributors' contribution to the project is quite small by
comparison with the contribution of end-users.  (Sorry, Fred.)  Thus, in
any (rare!) case where the interests of end-users vie against the
interests of redistributors, we need to consider that Wikipedia gets
vastly more benefit from end-users than from redistributors.

Third, redistributors are not essential to the project, in the manner
that Linux redistributors are.  End-users can (and do!) use Wikipedia
just as easily as they can use a redistributor.  Indeed, Wikipedia has
substantial benefits over most (illegal) redistributors:  it's legal;
it's more up-to-date; it doesn't run ads; it doesn't reformat the
articles in brain-dead ways.

> I only care about the readers and editors.  What is useful to the
> readers is the same thing that is useful to the editors.

There's a corollary here:  anyone who claims to be speaking "for the
readers" (as _opposed_ to editors) is likely talking out his hat.  We've
seen this a number of times -- folks who purport that the interests of
readers and those of editors are somehow at odds with one another, and
that editors should change their ways in order to benefit the "silent
majority" of readers.

But that's just "the lurkers support me in email" all over again.  :)

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Poll on templates

body:
On 7/15/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Personally, I couldn't care any less about reusers.  The existence of
> > reusers is simply a byproduct of the license of the project.  I don't
> > think we should go out of our way to either accomodate or
> > inconvenience them in any way.  They get exactly zero weight my
> > decisions.
>
> Reuse is at the heart of what free content is all about and having everything
> as free content is a very large part of our goal and mission. Having too many
> Wikipedia/editor-specific references makes reuse harder than it needs to be and
> thus goes against our goals.

If something makes it easier to generate content, but happens to make
it harder to reuse content off site, I'm still all for it.  Free
content does not mean we should reduce the value on the main site to
satisfy third parties.  Reuse rights are simply "take it or leave it
as it is".  However, if there's something that increases the value of
reuse without having any impact on content generation, then I'm all
for that as well.

> > I only care about the readers and editors.  What is useful to the
> > readers is the same thing that is useful to the editors.
>
> Not so. A WikiProject tag has very little use to readers. The only exception
> would be in the references section where an external link styled link to a
> WikiProject page may be appropriate. I have done this for some WikiProject
> Elements articles where I state where the data came from for the tables. The
> WikiProject ref is for readers who may want to know what references where used
> for different parts of the table.

WikiProject tag locations should be decided primarily by the
WikiProject members.  If they think it is useful enough to the reading
public to put on the article page, then it almost certainly is.
Assume good faith among the WikiProject members.  Join their
discussions and perhaps you can convince them that your way is
correct.  Please don't campaign for policy votes to empower people to
dictate personal preferences to others.

> And, as I have already said, this does not apply to sub-standard articles.
> Those need extra help and asking readers for help is valid. Thus a WikiProject
> link as part of a subject area stub message is OK. In the future it would be
> nice to be able to add meta tags to all stub, clean-up and POV messages that
> could be used to exclude any article with those tags from being included in a
> special download dump for reusers and anybody interested in making a print
> version.
>
> The point is to limit messages aimed at editors to talk pages except in cases
> of clearly sub-standard articles. When the tagged article gets fixed, then the
> message goes away.

All articles are sub-standard in one way or another.  There is no
state of perfection that articles can reach.  Even if there were, our
process doesn't allow locking an article if it ever did reach that
fictional stage.  We acknowledge this, sometimes very openly; while
other encyclopedias often pretend to present absolute truth instead.
Of course the tag messages are transient in nature; but they go away
when consensus forms that they aren't required anymore, not when an
article is fixed. They reappear again when someone sees something that
could be improved.  There is no "final version" of a Wikipedia
article.

> > That is
> > blunt and obvious honesty about the amorphous nature of any Wikipedia
> > article.  I've already seen reports that cite articles in Wikipedia as
> > if they're complete and static.  This is absolutely wrong, and occurs
> > because we're not obvious enough about the nature of the Wiki.
>
> 'Edit the page' is already at the top of every page and awareness of how we
> work is spreading very rapidly. The fact that many articles do stay so stable
> for so long is a testament to how fast vandalism and other rubbish is
> cleaned-up. This is a good thing.

This might be a good point, except that the articles referenced were
not stable, nor can we count on them ever being stable.  Also, we
cannot count on readers' prior knowledge of how we work.  We should be
clear and explicit at all times.  I also won't assume our readers will
learn how we work when they come here because if all they're coming
for is the content, their purpose for visiting is not to explore how
we create the content.

> > Finally, templates and tags can easily be stripped from the articles
> > for anyone who wants it that way, by reusers, or by the team that puts
> > together a "static content" version of any form.
>
> This would be true if such messages where few in number and every reuser used
> MediaWiki software.
>
> -- mav

Templates are easily removable with a simple script.  Part of the
value of using templates and tags across many articles is that their
uniformity makes them easy to find (and remove, if desired).  How many
there are is irrelevant.  What software a reuser chooses is unrelated
trivia.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


body:
A Wikipedia was requested for Cantonese. That was simple they
requested a language because it's too different from Mandarin, and
people would only benefit.

It didn't need to be complicated.

Besides, they would've had two sides to choose from, whichever they
preferred -- and yet it has not been created because there have been
issues, even though Cantonese has many more native speakers than Low
Saxon.

Regardless of actual differences, people are going to be a bit
hesitant to oblige a request that appears on the surface to be
dividing by country. Even if you do not believe it divides by country,
you must admit that it looks this way on the surface. Anybody who
reads the topic will see "nds-nl", and if they know that "nl" is a
country code will say "That doesn't sound right".

Also, in this case, as in any case, if the Wikipedia /is/ going to be
created, it will likely be a while. Scots and V?ro were in a similar
situation -- actually better -- they had a few native speakers, a few
extra supporters, and growing test Wikipedias. Nobody seemed to
believe that the new Wikipedias shouldn't be created. And yet, it took
a long time between when they became such popular requests, and their
actual creation.

All I can suggest is to be patient.

Mark

On 15/07/05, Servien Ilaino <servien at gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay are we now gonna have an endless discussion about endless
> discussions? It's simple we requested a language because it's too
> different from the other dialects used in Germany, people will only
> benefit, so I don't understand the whole thing. Why be complicated if
> you don't have to? (besides then they'll 2 to choose from, which ever
> they prefer)
>
> Servien
>
>
> 2005/7/15, Angela <beesley at gmail.com>:
> > On 7/15/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > That's all fine with me, but for a problem like this there's still no
> > > end in sight.
> >
> > True. That's why this policy needs to be moved out of its "proposed"
> > stage into something real.
> > <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>
> >
> > > I don't think we should definite cases where a Wikipedia *will* be
> > > created, but I think we should define those cases in which it won't,
> > > to reduce confusion and keep people aware of what not to do.
> >
> > I agree. Perhaps cases where it won't could be documented at
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages
> > in an attempt to find some sort of consensus on this issue. I would
> > rather have a vote on the general policy than a vote on every new
> > proposal.
> >
> > Angela.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> 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


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:KAAWRGFDB2]]

body:
> On 7/15/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>>
>> Remember: a vote for [[WP:ASS]] is a vote against querulous idiocy on
>> VFD.
>> It's not like VFD isn't sufficiently active or something.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>
> And you guys complained over the Chess Championship! :P

Indeed. Where did all the alarmists go?
Surely this detracts from the seriousness
of the project, overloads recent changes,
takes up costly hardware resources and
soon people will come to Wikipedia solely
to formulate silly policies. It's clearly
the end of Wikipedia as we know it.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Boris Lohnzweiger

body:
Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 10.07.05 16:12:26:

> As it so happens, it appears Heiko sends all communication in
> Hochdeutsch, occasionally proceeded by "moin moin" to make it sound
> more Platt-ish. Slomox, the other most active current admin, is also
> not a native speaker of Low Saxon (but rather Hochdeutsch),

> With these people running this nokieksel op 't patentplatt, it's no
> wonder it's... in patentplatt.

It really looks like the Low Saxon edition of Wikipedia has not yet achieved the level of language quality it should have. On the other hand many of the deficits are due to the fact that the Platt spoken nowadays in most areas is highly influenced by High German.

> Also, the nds.wiki mainpage says it's in Plattd??tsch (ie, flat
> german)... and in parenthesis after it says "Plattd??tsch", it says
> "neddersassisch un oostnedderd??tsch" (Low Saxon and East Low German).
> Hmm... according to the ISO, "nds" does not include East Low German.
> Only Low Saxon. Seems this Wikipedia is not in accordance...

I noticed quite a while ago that this could cause a lot of confusion, especially among people from abroad. Generally, people in Northern Germany uniformly refer to their multiple regional or local dialects as "Platt" or "Plattd??tsch", in High German we say "Plattdeutsch" or "Platt" and sometimes in more formal, written High German the term "Niederdeutsch" is used (to avoid the somewhat negative connotation of "flat"). This refers, as far as I know, to all dialects from the Dutch border to the Polish border (except the Frisian ones, of course). While people are well aware of the existance of many different dialects a distinction between Low Saxon and East Low German dialects is not made among the "general public". Everything is perceived as "Platt(deutsch)".

Interestingly, the term "Low Saxon" which we use so frequently here (because that`s the term used in English and apparently in Dutch, too) is _never_ used in Germany, only in scientific contexts. It seems like the somewhat clumsy headline on the nds homepage was chosen in order to include users from the Netherlands (who would be excluded by solely using the term plattd??tsch because the "German" part would alienate them).

Boris

______________________________________________________________
Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS!
Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

body:
Just as we said on IRC, I am planning to come with 1 or 2 cameras and
try to vlog Wikimania. I think I'll make one documentary a day, plus
a small final one for the complete Wikimania.

Le 15 juil. 05 ? 13:18, SJ a ?crit :

> Greetings,
>
> Wikimania is just around the corner.  I am really looking forward to
> seeing everyone there; you can browse "everyone" here --
> http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/registration/attendees.php
> If you've been thinking about coming, please register to let us know.
>
> There has been some talk of  having a documentary crew come to
> wikimania; if you are interested in helping make this happen, leave a
> note on the main talk page:
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania:Main_Page
>
> As you can see from that page, we could also use some help: with site
> design,  podcasting, transcription, descriptions of the area around
> Frankfurt, and preparation of the upcoming press release.  Please sign
> up there if you'd like to help.
>
> Cheers from Boston,
>       SJ
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:KAAWRGFDB2]]

body:
On 7/15/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> Remember: a vote for [[WP:ASS]] is a vote against querulous idiocy on VFD.
> It's not like VFD isn't sufficiently active or something.
>
>
> - d.

And you guys complained over the Chess Championship! :P


from_name: James Gibbon

body:
On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:02:16 +0100
Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:

> Well, not that I want to start moaning about gmail, but if the
> way it works is not in line with existing email clients and
> email servers, which it does, as it ignores the in-reply-to
> header, I wouldn't really call it "very good". :)

Agreed, was thinking the same thing myself! "Rather poor" is
probably a better description if that's the case.

--
Dig It : a forum for Euro Beatles fans - http://beatles.dyndns.org/


body:
Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 11.07.05 02:37:59:

> Although Ron isn't subscribed to this list, so far as far as I can
> tell he's the only native speaker who has even contributed to this
> discussion.

Mark,

since you quote Ron so frequently I checked out his user page at "Lowlands-L" a while ago to get a vague idea who he is. His academic accomplishments are obvious. But interestingly however, he doesn't claim being a native speaker of Low Saxon himself ! Instead, he writes "my native German". Furthermore, from what can be read there he seems to have emigrated overseas decades ago, so his idea of Platt might be slightly outdated because the Platt used today is surely different from to one used a generation ago.

Boris

______________________________________________________________
Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS!
Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193


body:
Hi Mark,
> > OK Mark,
> >
> > it is dangerous to feed the trolls, but there are some things that
> > need to be sorted out.
>
> Meaning, again, "I have no response to most of your assertions because
> they are probably correct, so I have ignored those and answered only
> those I have a good response for rather than conceding you are right".
No Mark, ich habe einfach keine Lust mehr, daf?r ist mir meine Zeit zu
schade.

> "Katt" had been edited by Sarcelles just before Ron edited it.
Mark, please read, what is there, and not, what
isn't.
http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&action=history&offset=0&limit=500
shows a list of all edits on nds:Katt ever since it was created on July
16th, 2004.
Sarcelles is not listed here.

> Again, you are twisting the words in my mouth. I don't mind about
> articles of poor quality, in that they need cleanup -- they exist on
> ALL Wikipedias. What I do mind is articles written in Patentplatt.
> According to Ron and Jonny, this is the vast majority or even all of
> the articles at nds.wiki.
Low quality can mean
1) Low quality of content
2) Low quality of grammar
3) Low quality of vocabulary
etc.

> > 3) For the record: several of Ron's proposals are still kept in the
> current
> > article, this includes grammar fixes, choice of words, but it
> specifically
> > EXCLUDES changes in spelling. The text originally came from Ron, but was
>
> What is your point here? When you reverted me, each time in addition
> to the spelling changes you discarded about half of the changes in
> grammar and choice of words.
>
> Please see
> http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=22196&oldid=22047
> http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=22047&oldid=22032
Shall we count it?
http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=prev&oldid=22032
shows 39 words in red. I count All but 4 are spelling. 3 are words, 1 is
grammar.
What do you count?

>
> it was made by a native speaker,
yada, yada, yada
but by the first one, you
> Some of them? You "checked the grammar changes"? Again, you are
> pretending that your Platt is better than Ron's.
I still state that
http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katt&diff=22047&oldid=22032
did leave the grammar changes intact, apart from "Un Katten doot w?ten"
which I consider to be out of place for an excyclopedia.

> > (And besides: any further edit war by you on nds will be ansered with a
> > swift blocking.)
>
> Ahh, so you don't block people who flood "your" Wikipedia with
> poor-quality articles, but you DO block people who revert spelling?
> Hmm. That seems a bit hypocritical.
Actually Sarcelles had been warned several times and then he was blocked for
two days.

> If you "appreciate his experience", then why did you revert some of
> his grammar fixes even AFTER you found out it was him??
Again, I have shown you that I did not.

Heiko

--
5 GB Mailbox, 50 FreeSMS http://www.gmx.net/de/go/promail
+++ GMX - die erste Adresse f???r Mail, Message, More +++


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal

body:
On 11/07/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
:
>
> [[Image:Carrie_Buck.jpg]] is used in two articles: [[Carrie Buck]] and
> [[Buck v. Bell]]. I think it is fair use in both contexts, though they
> have separate purpose (in one it illustrates the main subject of a
> biographical article, in another it is illustrating a plaintiff in a
> court case. Such dual-fair use should be made explicit; it would not
> be necessarily fair use on any other page. Under my proposal, it would
> contain two separate fair use notices, one for each page it was used
> on.

Here's another I've just run across.
[[Image:Teutonic_order_charge.jpg]] is a (cropped, I believe) version
of the front of a box of miniatures. It's been tagged {{Gamecover}},
which is a bit flaky but I can live with.

But it's got a fair-use claim on it now - "it's fair use since it came
from a game box" - and so has been used in two different articles,
[[Teutonic Knights]] and [[Battle of Grunwald]]. Some poking around
finds that the artist himself is still selling prints of the image.

I'm fairly sure this claim wouldn't hold up - we're not using the
image to illustrate anything about the material it was used with,
there's no critical reason to use this not another image, &c &c.

Yet {{gamecover}} (and {{bookcover}}) are pretty much poster-boy
examples of fair use claims. How many images do we have filed away
that are like this, *sections* of a book cover, used irrelevantly to
the book, but tagged fair use?

It's a good exception, and I'm pleased we're making use of it for all
the many images we'd otherwise have to neglect, but it hides a
multitude of reasonable-sounding but logically problematic usages.
Perhaps the use of "this image is fair use due to being of type X"
templates is a possible problem here? It's safe to say that using a
book cover when discussing the book is fair use; it's certainly not
safe to say that an image on a book cover is thereby inherently fair
use.

Your proposal to start auditing through them has a lot of merit, I
think. We have maybe 200-250ish {{book cover}}s, and pushing a
thousand {{gamecover}}; a lot of work, there.

Any more thoughts since you last posted on it?

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikipedia-l] geographical maps

body:
On 7/15/05, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Hi, I know we have some people here who know how to create geographical
> maps.
>
> Now I need to create some detailed maps for Italian regions such as the
> Amalfi Coast and some others. These are going to be uploaded to commons.
>
> But: I would like to know how one can create such maps and where to get
> the data from. Is there a software that can help in this? Open Source?

Maybe you should take a look at Demis maps
(http://www2.demis.nl/mapserver/mapper.asp), they are free to use (see
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Demis_Best%C3%A4tigung.gif for the
respective letter).

Regards,
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
If the problems William M. Connoley presents were temporary, I would
not have objected to Administrator status for him. He believes a
Wikipedia article should prominently feature the "truth." While this
sounds ok on its face, in practice any method of arriving at the
truth though reference to expert editors such as himself presents
prospects of sustained conflict. Our references need to be to
reputable published information.

Fred

On Jul 15, 2005, at 3:21 PM, Dan Grey wrote:

> Y'know, one thing leaps out at me - how can 70/30 for/against possibly
> be a 'no'? Turn it on it's head for a moment - 30/70 for/against, yet
> it (whatever it is) is passed - that would madness, right? But that's
> what we're saying here.
>
>
>> Someone will renominate him in a month or two and he'll be a shoo-in.
>>
>
> No doubt.
>
>
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Poll on templates

body:
--- Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> If something makes it easier to generate content, but happens to make
> it harder to reuse content off site, I'm still all for it.

Then there is no point in furthering this conversation with you. You obviously
value the process of content generation over the actual use of that content.
This is directly counter to the goals of the project.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
There is no list of rules for Wikipedia-l.

Thus, there is no rule that says we must stay on topic.

We have a little fun every once in a while because we don't have rules
-- we can make jokes, stray a little from the topic, things like that.

So, while you may prefer that we stay on topic, it is by no means a rule.

Mark

On 15/07/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> Like the posting that this is a reply to, it is not relevant to what the
> thread was about. Please stay on topic.
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >A Wikipedia was requested for Cantonese. That was simple they
> >requested a language because it's too different from Mandarin, and
> >people would only benefit.
> >
> >It didn't need to be complicated.
> >
> >Besides, they would've had two sides to choose from, whichever they
> >preferred -- and yet it has not been created because there have been
> >issues, even though Cantonese has many more native speakers than Low
> >Saxon.
> >
> >Regardless of actual differences, people are going to be a bit
> >hesitant to oblige a request that appears on the surface to be
> >dividing by country. Even if you do not believe it divides by country,
> >you must admit that it looks this way on the surface. Anybody who
> >reads the topic will see "nds-nl", and if they know that "nl" is a
> >country code will say "That doesn't sound right".
> >
> >Also, in this case, as in any case, if the Wikipedia /is/ going to be
> >created, it will likely be a while. Scots and V?ro were in a similar
> >situation -- actually better -- they had a few native speakers, a few
> >extra supporters, and growing test Wikipedias. Nobody seemed to
> >believe that the new Wikipedias shouldn't be created. And yet, it took
> >a long time between when they became such popular requests, and their
> >actual creation.
> >
> >All I can suggest is to be patient.
> >
> >Mark
> >
> >On 15/07/05, Servien Ilaino <servien at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Okay are we now gonna have an endless discussion about endless
> >>discussions? It's simple we requested a language because it's too
> >>different from the other dialects used in Germany, people will only
> >>benefit, so I don't understand the whole thing. Why be complicated if
> >>you don't have to? (besides then they'll 2 to choose from, which ever
> >>they prefer)
> >>
> >>Servien
> >>
> >>
> >>2005/7/15, Angela <beesley at gmail.com>:
> >>
> >>
> >>>On 7/15/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>That's all fine with me, but for a problem like this there's still no
> >>>>end in sight.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>True. That's why this policy needs to be moved out of its "proposed"
> >>>stage into something real.
> >>><http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I don't think we should definite cases where a Wikipedia *will* be
> >>>>created, but I think we should define those cases in which it won't,
> >>>>to reduce confusion and keep people aware of what not to do.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>I agree. Perhaps cases where it won't could be documented at
> >>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages
> >>>in an attempt to find some sort of consensus on this issue. I would
> >>>rather have a vote on the general policy than a vote on every new
> >>>proposal.
> >>>
> >>>Angela.
> >>>
>

--
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


from_name: Nicholas W. Miller

subject: [Wikitech-l] loading data

body:
Hello,

I've installed a fresh wiki and I'm looking to seed it with about
1000 initial entries.  I've written a PHP script to load the
categorylinks, cur and searchindex tables, however I get the Edit
Conflict error anytime I try to apply an edit within the wiki interface.

Can anyone explain why this is happening and how I can fix it?

Thanks,

Nicholas Miller
Intercast Media, Inc.
229 19th Ave.  Suite 4
San Francisco, CA  94121
415-379-9500
415-520-9501 (fax)
nick at intercastmedia.com


body:
Because they speak Afrikaans, and would be able to give the view of a
native speaker.

Mark

On 15/07/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Angela wrote:
> >
> > Ashar's request was to ask af.wikipedia, not Wiktionary about this,
> > and they have 4000 articles and a reasonably active, though small,
> > community.
>
> If none of them participates in Wiktionary, why does their opinion count
> any more than anyone else's?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-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


from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
Ic n?fde ungergieten, hw?t h? ?s t? s?gde, ac m? ?ync? ??t w? finda? ?nr?dnesse mid ?issum ?inge, ??t h? t? oft sende? his ?rendas t? ?s eallum.  Gew?ne is g?d, ??t he ne cann eft ong?an cuman...

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Servien Ilaino
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 3:34 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] The relevance of this list and the endlessdiscussions

Hoi Gerard,

Hopelijk is de discussie nu eindelijk klaar... heb hem uitgelegd hoe
het zit, als ie daar geen genoegen mee neemt, klaar, zijn probleem,
Wiki is aangevraagd hier en op Wikitech-l, dus bok voor 'm!

Servien

2005/7/15, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> Hoi,
> At this moment the wikipedia-l is becoming increasingly irrelevant. This
> is because more and more people are turning of because of the endless
> discussions. Particularly the contributions of Mark Williamsom are both
> excessive in number, he thinks this list is his personal soap box, and
> increasingly agressive, het tells people what they have to do and in
> turn gets banned on wikipedias as the appreciation for his behaviour.
> The consequence is, that more and more people are not interested in what
> the wikipedia-l has to say. There are people who have added Mark to
> their spam list, there are people who disregard all threads that he
> writes to, there are people that unsubscribed. Mark has been told on the
> list and of the list, repeatedly by many people, that he is not
> communicating effectively this way. The sad thing is that Mark has some
> valid points to make, points that are drowned out by the torrent of
> e-mails that he sends to make these points. I do not want him banned
> because this is "throwing the child away with the washing water" (het
> kind met het waswater weggooien).
>
> I have discussed this with several people and Angela came up with a good
> point. Her point was that in the "language discussions" it often is a
> rehashing of positions and missing is the refactoring of this
> information as you have on a Wiki. It is exactly right to have articles
> on Meta discussing the languages and their issues. This makes for some
> refactoring and persistency in the discussions and it allows for
> discussions on the talk page. The wikipedia-l would then be used to give
> a heads up about when things are disucussed on Meta and when there is a
> tentative conclusion of these discussions.
>
> I hope that this scheme is seen for what it is; it allows Mark to have
> his say. It allows for better information on these issues on Meta. The
> consequence is that the wikipedia-l will have less trafic and hopefully
> other subjects important to the global wikipedias start to get some
> space as well.
>
> I hope Mark is willing to accept this because if things go on as they
> do, I will ask if it is possible to have him banned from this list.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use and Registered Trademarks

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

>>It can mean that the author has no right to be credited, but does it
>>mean that someone else can claim to be the author ?
>>
>>
>
>[[en:Moral rights]] states: "...[the US] still does not completely
>recognize moral rights as part of copyright law, but rather as part of
>other bodies of law, such as defamation or unfair competition." In
>other words, the inalienable right to attribution does not exist in
>any form (except for a limited coverage for visual works).
>
>Meanwhile, a quick bit of research shows that, while "moral rights"
>are now partially enshrined in UK law, they expire along with the
>copyright on the work in question. [Since these are fairly recent
>rights and also require explicit assertion, no qualifying work is yet
>old enough for them to have existed and then expired, but
>theoretically they will.]
>
>As far as I can see, it is perfectly logical from this that there is
>no legal protection in either of these jurisdictions against a work
>whose copyright has expired being passed off as the work of someone
>else. That may seem surprising, but I think it is true.
>
>
This was one of the motivations for the GNU Public License (GPL), as
well as the Berkley Software Distribution License (BSD), at least in
respect to American law.  If for some reason you put computer source
code in a public domain setting, there is nothing that would stop
somebody else from simply taking the content and claiming authorship, or
for that matter re-copyrighting the content under a new name.  Among
many goals of the Gutenberg Project is to openly declare and provide a
source for public domain works, so that their content can't be locked up
in some copyrighted work in the future that can't be extracted without a
huge legal hassel.

Getting back to the topic, however, if something has passed into the
public domain, can you use a trademark that is related to that
copyrighted work?  For instance, if and when "Steamboat Willie" goes
into the public domain (Disney fights real hard to keep that from
happening), can you use Micky Mouse in a manner that the Walt Disney
Corporation would find offensive?  Like wearing a swastika or burning a
cross or flag?  Can you even refer to the movie clip as "Steamboat
Willie"?  Is the name Disney even trademarked so can you even
acknowledge that Walt Disney was one of the animators for that movie?

More to the point at hand, can you use the term "Encyclop?dia
Britannica", which is a registered trademark even though a creative work
with that name has its copyright expire?  This question is of particular
personal importance because my name is now attached to the project on
Wikisource, even though people other than I have made the edits to put
that name on the project.  If we need to rename the project, it needs to
be done sooner than later.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Case sensitivity on Afrikaans
	Wiktionary

body:
Gerard.

It is very much like you to attack someone for a short comment with
little meaning attached.

I said:
> >Because they speak Afrikaans, and would be able to give the view of a
> >native speaker.

And you told me that I may know a lot about languages, but nothing
about Wiktionary. That response is uncalled-for. It is insulting,
untrue, and on top of that a slap in the face after my having just
begun to monitor inactive Wiktionaries a week or so ago.

You do not speak Afrikaans (this, not "African", is the English name
as well). Different languages may have peculiar capitalisation rules,
which require headwords to be capitalised.

The simple input of a native speaker is not difficult to obtain, and
we would do well to get it. We can ask them, "in Afrikaans
dictionaries, are headwords capitalised?". And they will answer us.
Very easy.

But you choose instead to make blanket assumptions about all
languages, and to tell me what I do and don't know.

My brain is my own, and only I know which things I do and don't know.
I do not plan on giving you my brain anytime soon, either, thank you
very much.

Good day to you, sir.

Mark

On 15/07/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark,
> You may now something about languages, but you have no clue about
> Wiktionary. And if you did, I would welcome your comments about the ERD
> that I posted here http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:ERD.jpg It is
> a work in progress and it is working towards the Ultimate Wiktionary. I
> can put dialects in there but I am not yet happy about this aspect as I
> cannot truly enter simplified Chinese in there in a proper way. It also
> places etymology on a different place from where it is traditionally
> placed in the wiktionaries due to the fact that there are some that
> differ depending on the meaning of a word.
>
> As to capitalisation; any paper dictionary does not capitalise the words
> that are in there unless they are capitalised as a rule. It is due to
> some unfortunate history that it took so long to change the English
> wiktionary. There are currently 19 articles in the African wiktionary,
> Jcwf may want to use the same system of templates that are used in many
> of the other wiktionaries. To do this it helps to have capitalisation
> turned off.
>
> I second his request to turn capitalisation on the af.wiktionary off.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>

> >Mark
> >
> >On 15/07/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Angela wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Ashar's request was to ask af.wikipedia, not Wiktionary about this,
> >>>and they have 4000 articles and a reasonably active, though small,
> >>>community.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>If none of them participates in Wiktionary, why does their opinion count
> >>any more than anyone else's?
> >>
>

--
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: Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Re: Case sensitivity on Afrikaans Wiktionary

body:
Gerard.

It is very much like you to attack someone for a short comment with
little meaning attached.

I said:
> >Because they speak Afrikaans, and would be able to give the view of a
> >native speaker.

And you told me that I may know a lot about languages, but nothing
about Wiktionary. That response is uncalled-for. It is insulting,
untrue, and on top of that a slap in the face after my having just
begun to monitor inactive Wiktionaries a week or so ago.

You do not speak Afrikaans (this, not "African", is the English name
as well). Different languages may have peculiar capitalisation rules,
which require headwords to be capitalised.

The simple input of a native speaker is not difficult to obtain, and
we would do well to get it. We can ask them, "in Afrikaans
dictionaries, are headwords capitalised?". And they will answer us.
Very easy.

But you choose instead to make blanket assumptions about all
languages, and to tell me what I do and don't know.

My brain is my own, and only I know which things I do and don't know.
I do not plan on giving you my brain anytime soon, either, thank you
very much.

Good day to you, sir.

Mark

On 15/07/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark,
> You may now something about languages, but you have no clue about
> Wiktionary. And if you did, I would welcome your comments about the ERD
> that I posted here http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:ERD.jpg It is
> a work in progress and it is working towards the Ultimate Wiktionary. I
> can put dialects in there but I am not yet happy about this aspect as I
> cannot truly enter simplified Chinese in there in a proper way. It also
> places etymology on a different place from where it is traditionally
> placed in the wiktionaries due to the fact that there are some that
> differ depending on the meaning of a word.
>
> As to capitalisation; any paper dictionary does not capitalise the words
> that are in there unless they are capitalised as a rule. It is due to
> some unfortunate history that it took so long to change the English
> wiktionary. There are currently 19 articles in the African wiktionary,
> Jcwf may want to use the same system of templates that are used in many
> of the other wiktionaries. To do this it helps to have capitalisation
> turned off.
>
> I second his request to turn capitalisation on the af.wiktionary off.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>

> >Mark
> >
> >On 15/07/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Angela wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Ashar's request was to ask af.wikipedia, not Wiktionary about this,
> >>>and they have 4000 articles and a reasonably active, though small,
> >>>community.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>If none of them participates in Wiktionary, why does their opinion count
> >>any more than anyone else's?
> >>
>

--
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

--
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