subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:

>Not sure I understand. Italian and French are listed among the interwiki
>links with their local name, exactly like German or English. So where is
>the difference?
>
>Alfio
>
>On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>
Hoi,
You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is
different. If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will
make you learn the difference :) .
Thanks,
    Gerard

>>Hoi,
>>
>>When we indicate languages in interwiki links, we write the names of
>>those languages as it is written in that language. So we get English,
>>Nederlands, Deutsch, ??? etc. I think it is a nice feature.
>>
>>Some languages however are not written as they are written in that
>>language, think italiano, fran?ais or sicilianu. Basically, this is
>>wrong. The only reason I can think of why you want this, is for
>>"esthetic" reasons. These however take not into account the
>>sensibilities that are often associated with language names.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>GerardM
>>
>>
>>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Skriptor

subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
> You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is
> different. If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will
> make you learn the difference :) .

I am not in a primary school in Italy, never have been, and likely
never will be. I suspect that many of the other list participants are
in a similar situation.

Would it be too much to ask for you to explain your observation clearly
enough so that this group of people may also follow your reasoning?

Skriptor
[[de:Benutzer:Skriptor]]


from_name: André Müller

subject: AW: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
>Hoi,
>You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is
>different. If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will
>make you learn the difference :) .
>Thanks,
>    Gerard

Hi as well,
And where do you see the problem? I don't think this ought to be
changed, as capitalized beginnings is one usual way of doing lists. If
everything is kept with the first letter capitalized, then I don't see
any problems. And I doubt that any Italian, Frenchman, etc. would
either. ;)

Greetings,
- Andr?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Swedish, Spanish, French Wikinews set up

body:
Yann-

>I was surprised that the French Wikinews was created even without a mention on
>the French mailing list (wikifr-l) and fr.wikipedia Pump ("Bistro").
>
>
 From #fr.wikipedia:
Jan 29 04:23:21 <Xirzon>        http://fr.wikinews.org is now set up
Jan 29 04:23:26 <Xirzon>        maybe someone can put it in the topic
Jan 29 04:24:05 ---     phe has changed the topic to: Wikip?<83>??dia
francophone : http://fr.wikipedia.org | Statut du wiki
 : zavez qua aller voir ! | 77 400 + articles | Voir aussi
#frrc.wikipedia et #fr.wikimedia | Stats: http://mboquien.free.fr
/wikipedia/ Soir?<83>??e wp en vrai ?<83>?  Paris le samedi 29/01 - voir
avec Solveig | Testez le forum : http://test-wikipe
dia.saewyc.net/index.php/Special:Forum | http://fr.wikinews.org est ouvert
Jan 29 04:24:19 <phe>   Xirzon, there was enough people interrested ?
Jan 29 04:24:36 <Xirzon>        yes
Jan 29 04:24:53 <phe>   I put a notice on our village pump

>I am interested by the idea of Wikinews, but I won't have time to participate
>in the near future. I think that the requirement of 5 editors who pledge to
>*participate* in Wikinews is quite good before launching a project.
>
>
That's what the /Start a new edition page is about. But Anthere's
suggested changes are fine with me, since they are not too restrictive.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Swedish, Spanish, French Wikinews set up

body:
Anthere-

> No, this is not how things proceed, this is not the rules we set, and
> I recommand that we do not go along this way.

Fine with me. What I know is that a temporary sysop/bureaucrat procedure
was used in a number of cases.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Anthere-

> You can't claim that there is no objection when people are not even
> aware of something going on. You can't pretend the foundation list is
> a channel of information read by anyone. Nowhere is written that this
> is mandatory.

The Foundation list is effectively our cross-project announcement list.
I also posted to the international Wikinews mailing list. I'm sick of
people complaining that this or that hasn't been announced in this or
that place. In any case, as I have already said, I don't think it
matters at all if some French editors feel Wikinews is a bad idea. They
had their chance to vote. If there's anything *specific* to the French
community about Wikinews, that would be interesting to know. So far I
haven't heard it.

> Given the opposition there was on the project, I think it would have
> been appreciated that you at least mention the creation over there.

As I responded to Yann, I announced it in the #fr.wikipedia IRC channel,
and <phe> posted an announcement on the Pump after I did.

> Powerless user ?

Yes. Any privileges I may have can be instantly revoked by the Board, of
which you are a member. All my actions were taken in accordance with
previous agreements with the Board and written procedures that have been
sitting there for months.

> When a criteria must mention that an editor must be able to edit a
> wiki for its vote to be valid, I think we are reaching a level of
> bureaucracy that goes too far.

Not at all. This is a substantial requirement for something like
Wikinews, with lots of signatures to check for whether they have or have
not edited in that language - and if they haven't, it still doesn't give
you the secure knowledge that they can't. Instead of this rather complex
procedure, I have used a simple one, namely, 5 users with user pages
pledge to edit the project, and we assume good faith that their pledge
is serious. That doesn't mean I oppose the requirement, but it makes the
creation of new languages a substantially more time-consuming process
than it is now.

> You only made possible the existence of a local wiki with extremely
> little support and broken rules.

Stop accusing me of breaking rules. Which rule did I break? Put up or
shut up.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 20:01:48 -0800, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>
> >Let this reply by Skyring help you;
> >
> >"You used the phrase "Gestapo-like" to illustrate
> >heavy-handed admins. That was entirely appropiate.
>
> But this is exactly what I was disagreeing with; the comparison of the
> Gestapo to heavy-handed admins is emphatically not appropriate.

And I suppose you think the soupnazi episode in Seinfeld was about
mass murder? Get real. Trying to read more into a statement than was
ever put into it, especially where the original poster denies the
interpretation, is just plain stupid.

--
Peter in Canberra


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikisource images

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> | Could somebody please look at Wikisource to determine why none of the
> | images are working.  This thing happened before during last August.
>
> Should be fixed now. The symlinks were one subdirectory off, and files
> were being put in the wrong place.

Many thanks Brion.

Ec


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: Re: AW: [Wikipedia-l] About language names français

body:
Andr? M?ller wrote:

>>Hoi,
>>You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is
>>different. If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will
>>make you learn the difference :) .
>>Thanks,
>>   Gerard
>>
>>
>
>Hi as well,
>And where do you see the problem? I don't think this ought to be
>changed, as capitalized beginnings is one usual way of doing lists. If
>everything is kept with the first letter capitalized, then I don't see
>any problems. And I doubt that any Italian, Frenchman, etc. would
>either. ;)
>
>Greetings,
>- Andr?
>
Hoi,
Capitalising beginnings is a "usual" way of doing lists. But here we do
not have an ordinary list, this is a list where the intention is to have
the language written as it is written in that language. We call my
mother tongue "Nederlands" and not "Dutch" as a result. We have Arabic
Japanese Korean in their own script. All things that are NOT usual in a
list, stating that something is usually done in a certain way may be
true in an English language environment, but does not need to be the
done thing for this particular list.

When people ask what language I speak I say "ik ben Nederlands talig"
Meaning "I use the Nederlandse language" I do not say "Ik spreek
Nederlands" or "I speak Nederlands" my language is also spoken outside
the Netherlands. So I do doubt that there are no people who think this
policy is wrong; when I raised it on IRC someone said "I have always
been wondering about that for the last three years". She was French. so
maybe you find no Frenchman but it was no trouble at all to find a
fran?aise to wonder about the current practise.

Thanks,
    GerardM.


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

body:
> Stop accusing me of breaking rules. Which rule did I break? Put up or
> shut up.

Guys, gals, isn't it time to stop the escalation?

Take some deep breaths, cool down, go do something else (walk? fix
broken links on wikipedias? take a bath?).

Whatever happened with fr.wikinews happened. Now we can either have a
nice split/fight about it, which'll make everyone unhappy, or take it
easier, apologize when/if needed to the other, think about what happened
so that it doesn't happen again.

The point now is not anymore what to do with fr.wikinews, but whether we
want to have 2+ clans at each other's throat, or try to make the best
out of the situation.

Nicolas "Ryo"


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is different.
> If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will make you learn the
> difference :) .

If at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
you click the "Fran?ais" interwiki link, you will arrive at a page
where "Fran?ais" is spelled with a capital F because it is a title.
The first words of that article is "Le fran?ais est une langue
romane...".  In the fact box to the right, the "Organigramme
classification" begins with "Indo-europ?en" and ends with
"Fran?ais", once again with a capital "F", because it is an element
in a list. Clearly, the name of the language *can* be written with a
capital F, when it is a title or an element in a list.

If at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language
you click the "Italiano" interwiki link, you will arrive at a page
where the title is "Lingua italiano", but where the first words of the
article is "L'Italiano ? una lingua...".  In the fact box to the
right, there is a "Famiglie linguistiche" list that begins with
"Lingue indoeuropee" and ends with "Italiano".  Clearly, Italiano can
be spelled with a capital I if it begins a sentence or if it is a
member of a list.

If you try to deny this, I think your primary school teacher will
correct you.

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


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:.

>  ..... Aside from that, I am still skeptical that Wiktionary is at all
> feasible with the current software ....

This is as they say in Holland "een schot voor open doel"; on
opportunity to good to miss.

You may know that I am advocating the spend of money and energy to
produce "the ultimate wiktionary" (see the article on Meta) in essence
this is a relational database embedded in mediawiki that serves us with
wiktionary content. One database to serve us all ....

At this moment we are starting to use some bots in earnest. One bot
doing the interwiki.py (see the article on Meta) is running now for its
fourth day on the en:wiktionary and reached the word "Effort". It is
doing something that will be a funcionality of the proposed database.
Another bot is running on scn:wiktionary adding a word a minute, it has
something like 60.000 words and giving the ambitions of all wiktionaries
it should run on all wiktionaries. When it was adding content into the
"ultimate wiktionary" it would need to run only once. I have a file with
19.930 words that I can use to create articles for many wiktionaries. It
is a multiple of articles that are needed to seed all the different
wiktionaries and, it can be done but it just takes a LOONGGG time and it
is not really good because as content is added, the work done by the
interwiki.py should be done again as it may lead to different results.

Another big blob of content waiting to happen is the GEMET thesaurus
(see article on Me*ta) and the European multilingual thesaurus on health
promotion (see article on Meta).
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/European_multilingual_thesaurus_on_health_promotion>*

So, Eric is right where he says that working on our current wiktionary
using the current software is a debatable practice. It is as good as it
gets though. Luckily we do have this idea of something better. This is
what makes us go on, (this is the moment where you hear the song
"somewhere over the rainbow" with conotations of a pot of gold).. :)

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Swedish, Spanish,
	French Wikinews set up


body:
Ryo-

>
> The point now is not anymore what to do with fr.wikinews, but whether
> we want to have 2+ clans at each other's throat, or try to make the
> best out of the situation.

I'm all for it. I have already agreed to Anthere's suggested policy
change. As soon as she stops accusing me of breaking rules, I will stop
responding in kind.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is different.
>>If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will make you learn the
>>difference :) .
>>
>>
>
>If at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
>you click the "Fran?ais" interwiki link, you will arrive at a page
>where "Fran?ais" is spelled with a capital F because it is a title.
>The first words of that article is "Le fran?ais est une langue
>romane...".  In the fact box to the right, the "Organigramme
>classification" begins with "Indo-europ?en" and ends with
>"Fran?ais", once again with a capital "F", because it is an element
>in a list. Clearly, the name of the language *can* be written with a
>capital F, when it is a title or an element in a list.
>
>If at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language
>you click the "Italiano" interwiki link, you will arrive at a page
>where the title is "Lingua italiano", but where the first words of the
>article is "L'Italiano ? una lingua...".  In the fact box to the
>right, there is a "Famiglie linguistiche" list that begins with
>"Lingue indoeuropee" and ends with "Italiano".  Clearly, Italiano can
>be spelled with a capital I if it begins a sentence or if it is a
>member of a list.
>
>If you try to deny this, I think your primary school teacher will
>correct you.
>
>
>
Lars,
It is funny I was taught to be a primary school teacher so what can I say :)

However, your arguments deal with circumstances where a word might be
written in a capitalised manner. When you look for the word in a
dictionary it is not capitalised. The point is we use the name of the
language as it is written and the word on its own is italiano. Typically
we would not have an Japanese or a Georgian name in there but we do and
it is written in in their own fashion. So why should we do it in a
different way because the same script is used for Italian, French, etc ??

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Gavin Chait

subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur

body:
>This sounds like a project on Wikibooks - more or less writing textbooks.
>Is there more to it than that?

Yes, there is.  Firstly, it's on a rather specific theme - and a very wide
range of businesses.  Just like an encyclopedia is a set of books, any
information could be packaged as such.  But this is not meant as course
material for a school or university.  It is meant as a set of work manuals.

As such, each manual must cover information in a consistent way.  The same
set of headings, the same way of detailing information.

More importantly, every input that is required for a business is the product
of another business.  So too with every output.  These inputs and outputs
can be tracked to create a webwork showing the interaction of different
businesses (slightly different from just a set of textbooks).  This also
allows for the tracking of required infrastructure and support.

So, if I want to start a grain mill, then there have to be farms nearby.
There also needs to be transport, harvesting, maintenance for the mill.  If
there is no electricity, then that changes the type of mill I can operate.
And so on.  It provides insight into limiting factors preventing targetted
industries from getting off the ground (inputs unavailable) while providing
the necessary info on how to get input industries up and running.

Just as helpful is that the outputs must have a market.  No good producing
plastic bottles if no-one wants to use them.

This is very helpful for people looking for gaps in the market but who
aren't sure if it is worthwhile or what supply and demand is required.
Products have direct and indirect markets.  For example:  rubber washers are
used to make wheels in crafted wire cars; old wooden palattes (from the
logistics industry) are broken down to make prefabricated walls for houses.
Each topic can give novel ideas for inputs and outputs that may extend
products into new industries.

Each topic covers the necessary inputs, outputs - and how to get from the
one to the other.

In the long term it will become possible to develop a simple checklist to
ascertain what gaps exist for what opportunities (similar to the way
biologists have a species identification system:  does it have this type of
leaf, go to pg 73, does it have these nodules? .... until you get to a
specific set of possibilities).

This project is distinct.  Otherwise one could argue that wikibooks is just
another permutation of wikipedia.

Regards,

Gavin


subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: phase3/includes SpecialMovepage.php, 1.48,
 1.49 Title.php, 1.162, 1.163

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Ashar Voultoiz wrote: <snip>
>
>>> FIXME: sucess redirection for Special:Movepage pass through the
>>> parser, breaking the header relocation :-/
> When moving a page from FOO to BAR result is:
<snip>

Tip: $wgDebugRedirects = false;

:o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: Re: AW: [Wikipedia-l] About langu age names français

body:
The difference is that these are abbreviations of names of Wikipedias,
thus L?mburgse Wikipedia -> L?mburgs, Wikipedia Galego (Galipedia) ->
Galego, Wikip?dia Fran?ais -> Fran?ais.

Mark

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 15:54:43 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Andr? M?ller wrote:
>
> >>Hoi,
> >>You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is
> >>different. If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will
> >>make you learn the difference :) .
> >>Thanks,
> >>   Gerard
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Hi as well,
> >And where do you see the problem? I don't think this ought to be
> >changed, as capitalized beginnings is one usual way of doing lists. If
> >everything is kept with the first letter capitalized, then I don't see
> >any problems. And I doubt that any Italian, Frenchman, etc. would
> >either. ;)
> >
> >Greetings,
> >- Andr?
> >
> Hoi,
> Capitalising beginnings is a "usual" way of doing lists. But here we do
> not have an ordinary list, this is a list where the intention is to have
> the language written as it is written in that language. We call my
> mother tongue "Nederlands" and not "Dutch" as a result. We have Arabic
> Japanese Korean in their own script. All things that are NOT usual in a
> list, stating that something is usually done in a certain way may be
> true in an English language environment, but does not need to be the
> done thing for this particular list.
>
> When people ask what language I speak I say "ik ben Nederlands talig"
> Meaning "I use the Nederlandse language" I do not say "Ik spreek
> Nederlands" or "I speak Nederlands" my language is also spoken outside
> the Netherlands. So I do doubt that there are no people who think this
> policy is wrong; when I raised it on IRC someone said "I have always
> been wondering about that for the last three years". She was French. so
> maybe you find no Frenchman but it was no trouble at all to find a
> fran?aise to wonder about the current practise.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> However, your arguments deal with circumstances where a word might be written
> in a capitalised manner. When you look for the word in a dictionary it is not
> capitalised. The point is we use the name of the language as it is written and
> the word on its own is italiano.

But now we were discussing whether the language names should be
capitalized in the interwiki link list.  There, they are not "on their
own", but "members of a list".  And apparantly, both the French and
Italian Wikipedia capitalize list members.  Exactly the same rules
apply to the Scandinavian languages.

Another question is whether headwords (titles) in Wikipedia articles
should always be capitalized, as they are now.  This is not the case
in dictionaries, and not in some encyclopedias.  For example, in the
Danish (1915) http://runeberg.org/salmonsen/2/1/0927.html "apostoliske
F?dre" is not capitalized, but in the Swedish (1904)
http://runeberg.org/nfba/0681.html "Apostoliska f?der" is
capitalized.

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


from_name: Pawe³ 'Ausir' Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
LA> But now we were discussing whether the language names should be
LA> capitalized in the interwiki link list.  There, they are not "on their
LA> own", but "members of a list".  And apparantly, both the French and
LA> Italian Wikipedia capitalize list members.  Exactly the same rules
LA> apply to the Scandinavian languages.

In the Polish language, language names are not capitalized, and
neither are (for the most part) list members. And what about the
language list on the main page?

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Sure, but if Anthere complains about my bold actions regularly, that
> just means that everything is normal.

She is by far not the only one complaining.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> I disagree. The work being done on Wikinews is, as I have already
> explained before and as is also described in the Wikinews FAQ, very
> different from the work done on Wikipedia: in-detail coverage of
> individual events rather than summary-style overviews of a series of
> events. To give you an example, one of the first French Wikinews
> articles is this one about polling stations in Paris for the current
> Iraqi elections:

And that is a best case scenario. But one of the most cited reasons why
*Wikipedia* is so great is the fact that it is kept up-to-date. The same type
of person who is interested in current events is in the same pool of people who
would likely contribute to Wikinews. These are news junkies. If *any*
particular Wikipedia doesn't have enough contributors in this area, then
drawing upon that limited pool is going to do some harm.

You cited a Wikipedia regular as the author of this article. That's great but
the time it took to write and research that single story could have been spent
updating perhaps a half dozen existing Wikipedia articles. In this particular
case I think those edits will very likely be accomplished by other people
rather quickly. But if a great many news junkies are drawn away from the
encyclopedia, then this is going to have a negative effect on keeping the
encyclopedia up to date. I'm certain that this is not an issue for English and
German but beyond that I'm not so sure.

> Because it is different, Wikinews attracts different contributors than
> Wikipedia.

Your one example was of a Wikipedian creating a Wikinews story.

> We're not in a position to tell people what they should and shouldn't be
> doing. We should give people the option to work on Wikinews if they want
> to.

And you are not in a position to go against the will of any wiki user
community.

> The only thing your proposed requirement would accomplish is pissing
> off volunteers who are ready to put time and energy into a worthwhile
> project.

You have already managed to piss a great many people on the French Wikipedia
off. They *do* most certainly have a say - as do all language communities -
whether or not they are ready for another project. It is up to them, NOT YOU.

-- mav

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


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>Hoi,
>You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is
>different. If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will
>make you learn the difference :) .

If you look a the Italian main page, all links on the left bar are
capitalized, not just the language list. Writing capitalized lists is OK,
and no one would object to have:

*English
*Italiano

on any list. The contrary would be difficult to read, with mixed
capitalization.

Alfio


subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, Lars Aronsson wrote:

>If at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language
>you click the "Italiano" interwiki link, you will arrive at a page
>where the title is "Lingua italiano", but where the first words of the
>article is "L'Italiano ? una lingua...".

It was modified just a few hours ago to a lowercase "I" :-)

Alfio


from_name: Anthere

body:
Yes, it was used for very small wikipedias or very small projects not
expected to gather a big enough community soon.

Ant

Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere-
>
>> No, this is not how things proceed, this is not the rules we set, and
>> I recommand that we do not go along this way.
>
>
>
> Fine with me. What I know is that a temporary sysop/bureaucrat procedure
> was used in a number of cases.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sanger response and rating system experiment

body:
On Jan 31, 2005, at 6:46 PM, David Gerard wrote:

> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050201 07:13]:
>> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>> As Jimbo has said a couple of times (to me at the last London meet,
>>> and
>>> reported at a previous meet), the best thing to do with a rating
>>> system at
>>> the moment is ... nothing. Run the rating system for a time period,
>>> gather
>>> the data, *don't reveal it yet* for fear of affecting the rating
>>> experiment, *then* release the data for scrutiny and ideas. how
>>> people rate
>>> things given a simple system, see if the results of that rating
>>> accord with
>>> common sense, see if they approximate the desired Rating System That
>>> Scales
>>> (the way FAC doesn't quite).
>
>> Yes, perfect.
>
>
> I asked on wikitech-l, and Magnus said his rating code is not (in his
> opinion) ready for prime time yet. Anyone want to beat it into shape in
> short order?
>
>

Link to code?


from_name: Sulev Iva

subject: [Foundation-l] Võro Vikipeediä

body:
Dear members of the foundaton,
I'm a user of Estonian (V?rok) and English Wikipedia (V?rolang) and a native speaker,
researcher and activist of the V?ro language spoken in Estonia. V?ro (native name V?ro
or V?ro kiil?) belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. It has about
70.000 speakers mostly in southern Estonia.
Language codes (not yet official) are Vro and Vr. See more about V?ro in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V?ro and http://www.wi.ee/.

I and my friends would like to begin with V?ro language Wikipedia. We can translate
Estonian language file to V?ro (actually we have already started) and begin with
creation of new articles. Of course your objection may be that there are too few
speakers of V?ro. Yes, but the speakers are quite active and computerized people and
the V?ro language community needs an encyclopedia in their own language. I'm sure the
number of potential editors in V?ro is not smaller than the Kashoub, Cornish, Gaelic,
Faroese or Saami's or many other small languages' one. I have discussed the idea of
V?ro Wikipedia with Estonian Wikipedia developers: Andres, Ker, Klaus etc.
(http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipeedia:Community_Portal#V.C3.B5rukeelne_Wikipedia).
They are supporting the idea and will help us. I hope you will support us too.
Best regards, V?rolang -- 80.235.61.143 11:33, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)


subject: [Foundation-l] Võro Vikipeediä


body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere-
>
>> You can't claim that there is no objection when people are not even
>> aware of something going on. You can't pretend the foundation list is
>> a channel of information read by anyone. Nowhere is written that this
>> is mandatory.
>
>
> The Foundation list is effectively our cross-project announcement list.

Yes, but practically, that doesnot mean that people read it.
It certainly took you time to set that wiki. It also take you time to
set this blogging chat where you will present yourself as the foundator
of wikinews;
Was it so difficult to send a mail to the french mailing list or post on
our main pump ?
I am sure it would have been appreciated.

> I also posted to the international Wikinews mailing list.

You might be surprised, but I do not think editors read a list for which
they do not have a project.
Telling the wikinews list is nice, but not informing french speaking
people much. In short, not the right channel of communication.

I'm sick of
> people complaining that this or that hasn't been announced in this or
> that place.

Yes ? Well, consider it an important information : if people complain
about your bold actions regularly, there must be a reason.

  In any case, as I have already said, I don't think it
> matters at all if some French editors feel Wikinews is a bad idea. They
> had their chance to vote. If there's anything *specific* to the French
> community about Wikinews, that would be interesting to know. So far I
> haven't heard it.

Pardon me ?

Who is gonna edit the french wikinews ? You ?

If you consider that the french-speaking community has no authority to
decide if and when a french speaking project should be set, could you
explain me for which reason a german powerless editor not able to write
in French could have more authority upon this decision ?

I (and others) noticed with interest your chat planned with bloggers.
Obviously, it will be very beneficial for you to announce that the great
successful wikinews is already set in 6 or 7 languages. This will be an
important announcement for you. A sign of your success.

Has it occured to you that similarly the french speaking community would
have possibly planned to set a press release for the day it is started ?
Perhaps a special page for this ? A big meeting ? Whatever ?

No, you probably essentially thought you had to increase the number of
wikinews language for the meetup, quickly checked which languages could
meet the 5 editors requirement, set up the wiki, and casually mentionned
  on a couple of mailing lists and irc that it was done.

Sorry, but this is TOO easy.

I do not doubt you did it for good reasons and with good faith, and
certainty to act in your right. However, I just question the opportunity
of doing so, and the opportunity of doing so without asking us beforehand.

>> Given the opposition there was on the project, I think it would have
>> been appreciated that you at least mention the creation over there.
>
>
> As I responded to Yann, I announced it in the #fr.wikipedia IRC channel,
> and <phe> posted an announcement on the Pump after I did.

It was announced afterwards and took us by surprise.

Why did *you* decide to set it up ?
Since when is ONE user doing things rather than letting communities
decide at their rythme when things should happen ?

>> Powerless user ?
>
>
> Yes. Any privileges I may have can be instantly revoked by the Board, of
> which you are a member. All my actions were taken in accordance with
> previous agreements with the Board and written procedures that have been
> sitting there for months.

Yes, the problem is that you are hiding behind rules. And neglecting
just people are more important than rules.

You know what ?

Aurevilly said something one day. He said

Et l'harmonie dans tout ?a ?
y a un moment o? ?a me gonfle d'entendre parler de communaut? libre et
consensuelle pour ?carter toute id?e de r?gle. Alors qu'? la base une
r?gle c'est fait pour l'harmonie, pas pour emmerder le monde ...
w:fr:Utilisateur:Aurevilly.

Basically, it means "ultimately, a rule is here to allow harmony between
people, not to create conflict".

>> When a criteria must mention that an editor must be able to edit a
>> wiki for its vote to be valid, I think we are reaching a level of
>> bureaucracy that goes too far.
>
>
> Not at all. This is a substantial requirement for something like
> Wikinews, with lots of signatures to check for whether they have or have
> not edited in that language - and if they haven't, it still doesn't give
> you the secure knowledge that they can't. Instead of this rather complex
> procedure, I have used a simple one, namely, 5 users with user pages
> pledge to edit the project, and we assume good faith that their pledge
> is serious. That doesn't mean I oppose the requirement, but it makes the
> creation of new languages a substantially more time-consuming process
> than it is now.

There is no hurry. If that takes more time, then let us take the time to
do it.

>> You only made possible the existence of a local wiki with extremely
>> little support and broken rules.
>
>
> Stop accusing me of breaking rules. Which rule did I break? Put up or
> shut up.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Read better what I wrote. I spoke of "broken rules", not of "you
breaking up" the rules.

This said, if you ask me, I think you are borderline of a sort of
principle upon which Wikipedia relies. All Wikipedia is based on the
fact the power comes from the people, not from one person. You may talk
of all the rules you wish, when a group is submitted to the will of one
person, there is a problem.


body:
Nicolas Weeger a ?crit:
>> Stop accusing me of breaking rules. Which rule did I break? Put up or
>> shut up.
>
>
> Guys, gals, isn't it time to stop the escalation?

Well, I wrote broken rules, not breaking rules.

But I love you when you speak like this Ryo :-) (nota, en tout bien tout
honneur bien sur).

> Take some deep breaths, cool down, go do something else (walk? fix
> broken links on wikipedias? take a bath?).

Delete wikinews ? (just kidding)

> Whatever happened with fr.wikinews happened. Now we can either have a
> nice split/fight about it, which'll make everyone unhappy, or take it
> easier, apologize when/if needed to the other, think about what happened
> so that it doesn't happen again.

I see no reason to apology even if I am terribly naive.
I do expect this to happen again unfortunately.

> The point now is not anymore what to do with fr.wikinews, but whether we
> want to have 2+ clans at each other's throat, or try to make the best
> out of the situation.
>
> Nicolas "Ryo"

True. I know that it is no use expecting apologies from Erik. So best to
move on.


body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Ryo-
>
>>
>> The point now is not anymore what to do with fr.wikinews, but whether
>> we want to have 2+ clans at each other's throat, or try to make the
>> best out of the situation.
>
>
> I'm all for it. I have already agreed to Anthere's suggested policy
> change. As soon as she stops accusing me of breaking rules, I will stop
> responding in kind.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

I never wrote that. As soon as you stop behaving like you are the leader
of wikinews, and stop writing about my naivety, we can think of being
polite with each other again. But generally, I guess it is not gonna
happen. I like you as a human being because you can be very pleasant and
friendly and funny, which I appreciate. You are also a very bright
person, so it benefits us all. But I unfortunately do not always like
what you do with Wikipedia.

I have other things to do anyway.


body:
Anthere schrieb:

> Was it so difficult to send a mail to the french mailing list or post
> on our main pump ?

I already said that I announced the creation of fr.wikinews.org on
#fr.wikipedia, where someone else then replied that they put the
announcement on the French Village Pump. Why do you keep bringing up the
same already refuted accusations?

> Well, consider it an important information : if people complain about
> your bold actions regularly, there must be a reason.

Sure, but if Anthere complains about my bold actions regularly, that
just means that everything is normal.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:

>> Well, consider it an important information : if people complain about
>> your bold actions regularly, there must be a reason.
>
>
> Sure, but if Anthere complains about my bold actions regularly, that
> just means that everything is normal.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Eh !
Possibly you are right here :-)
Then, it would just mean we balance each other :-)

no ?

Ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
And Gerard, please note that Alfio, unlike you, is a native Italian speaker.

Mark

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 19:05:58 +0100 (MET), Alfio Puglisi
<puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
> >Hoi,
> >You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is
> >different. If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will
> >make you learn the difference :) .
>
> If you look a the Italian main page, all links on the left bar are
> capitalized, not just the language list. Writing capitalized lists is OK,
> and no one would object to have:
>
> *English
> *Italiano
>
> on any list. The contrary would be difficult to read, with mixed
> capitalization.
>
> Alfio
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strange idea

body:
I thought that perhaps, for a trial period, we could add a
prominently-placed button in articles for not-logged-in readers with
the title of "Report an Error or Suggest Information to Add".

Since so many people don't realise that Wikipedia is for anybody to
edit, this could take them to a new page that explained in bold
letters the concept of Wikipedia and that they could edit the article
themselves, but still have an error-report field in case they still
didn't get it.

While this would obviously be open to abuse, it might also provide
useful feedback from people who otherwise wouldn't contribute
anything, and would definitely serve to let these people know that the
power is in their hands, what with the boldly-placed notice that THEY
can fix it themselves and all.

I'm sure there would be way too much feedback to ever completely sift
through, but I still think it might be useful.

Mark


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Daniel Mayer schrieb:
>
>> And you are not in a position to go against the will of any wiki user
>> community.
>
> That is your opinion. In my opinion, it is the will of the Wikimedia
> community as a whole which counts. Wikimedia is a global project. It's
> not up to the French Wikimedia community to decide by majority that
> they don't want Wikinews, unless they have France-specific reasons for
> not wanting it. And I am supported in this both by policy and by
> statements of the Board to this effect, when I asked them this very
> question two months ago. Yes, I asked the Board whether we should
> treat the French Wikinews differently from the others because of the
> way the vote went, and the answer was no - I can document this with
> IRC chatlogs if necessary.

Yes, please do. Some of us would very much like to know why this was so
clear to you, based on your communications with the Board, and
apparently not clear to Anthere, given that she is part of this same Board.

--Michael Snow


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Nope. The work of writing a news story from scratch is very different
> from just summarizing what's going on. It is a very specific contributor
> profile which, as the history of the English Wikinews has shown, is hard
> to find among Wikipedians. You are just equating the groups because it
> suits your argument without any empirical evidence to back it up. Let's
> look at who actually edits the Current Events on en. This is a unique
> list of contributors from the second half of October 2004, before
> Wikinews was active:

You are comparing en.wikipedia users who edit the [[Current events]] page with
people on en.wikinews. In spite of the fact that that was not my point
(updating of the corresponding articles that are in the news, was) it is also
about two English-language project versions. I already said, very specifically
and a couple times, that Wikinews in English and German are fine due to the
size of the respective language bases. The others I'm less sure about and would
really like to know what those language communities think.

> Perhaps. People have a right to choose what they spend their time on.
> It's not up to you to decide that they shouldn't write news stories
> instead of updating Wikipedia articles. We don't have a hierarchy of
> projects. Wikinews has equal rights to Wikipedia.

I never said it was. My point is that each language community needs to decide
among themselves if they are ready to start a new Wikimedia project in their
language. This is a bottom-up approach, instead of a top down one where a small
group of people decide this for them (or worse, the majority of people who
don't even speak their language force it on them).

> That is your opinion. In my opinion, it is the will of the Wikimedia
> community as a whole which counts. Wikimedia is a global project. It's
> not up to the French Wikimedia community to decide by majority that they
> don't want Wikinews, unless they have France-specific reasons for not
> wanting it.

They cannot veto the Wikimedia project, but they should be able to prevent one
from starting in their language if they don't feel they are ready yet. The
issue is a bit moot now, since fr.wikinews exists and is not likely to be
closed down. But in the future we need to be more sensitive to the views of
different language communities. This whole ugliness has exposed a weakness in
the current guidelines that needs to be fixed.

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur

body:
> > Wikibooks was set up to be the home of textbooks. Not books, but
> > Textbooks. Hence why wikpedia, wiktionary and wikiquote are not on
> > wikibooks (other than historical accident). I really dont think it is
> > fair to the wikibooks community, that we tell every new wikiproject to
> > go set up on wikibooks. Its in risk of becoming the wikimedia dumping
> > ground.

While I created the Wikibooks name based on a combination of WikiWiki and
textbooks, that project has never been only about textbooks. It is a place to
build just about any non-fiction reference book with, and this is critical, a
finite end size (if you want to explore a subject area in more detail than
that, start other books). The 'finite' part excludes potentially huge or even
practically infinitely-sized things such as a general quote book, dictionary,
or encyclopedia.

The very different formats for these other projects is also a reason for the
separation; Modules in a wikibook need to be in in a hierarchy and should
ideally be read in a particular sequence, while articles in Wikipedia and
Wikiquote and entries at Wiktionary are anything but hierarchical and can be
read in any order.

True, the emphasis is on instructional-oriented material, but that is an
*emphasis* to encourage the most-potentially positive aspect of the project. It
is ''not'' an exclusionary principle.

ambi wrote:
> We can always take Wikimedia in new directions, and I laud such
> proposals, but I strongly despise these subject-specific works. They
> have limited potential in terms of both readers and participation, are
> much less likely to be successful, and would really be much better
> suited to, say, setting up a MediaWiki installation on a business
> website. Just because it is a wiki doesn't mean that it has to be
> under the Wikimedia banner.

I agree with this statement 100% and can't think of a thing to add.

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur


subject:
[Foundation-l] Language autonomy and "readiness" (was: Swedish,
	Spanish, French Wikinews set up)

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Aside from what people's feelings are, it is important to collect
> empirical data. So far, your claim that Wikipedia will lose contributors
> to in-the-news articles because of Wikinews is unproven. It may in fact
> be the other way around, given that Wikinews prominently links to as
> much Wikipedia material as possible.

Again, those data were in a language that I already noted was fine for
Wikinews. And English, being such an international language and spoken by so
many people can not be a used in such a test. The English-speaking community of
users working on Wikimedia projects is huge. So your results are not at all
surprising.

> But the arguments that have been brought up against the French Wikinews
> are just the same that have been brought up against Wikinews in general:
> It could harm our reputation, it could lead to legal problems, etc.
> Whether these arguments outweigh the benefits of the project has been
> addressed in a global vote.

Imposing the results of a global vote onto a language community which has a
great deal of opposition to the vote result, is not something that makes for
harmonious co-existence between languages. This is especially true when a large
plurality of the global vote is from a single language community.

So global votes are great for deciding if the foundation wants to start a new
project at all. But whether or not particular language communities are ready
for that project should be up to them - not forced onto them.

> What is a good solution to that problem? Perhaps, as soon as the
> required number of contributors is reached, there should be a vote on
> when the desired launch date is. "Never" would not be an option in that
> vote, but it could have a scope of, say, 4 weeks. This would also be a
> test of whether the people who pledged to participate are actually still
> around and interested, so the vote could have the same minimum number of
> participants.

'Never' is not a valid option. I can agree with that. But 'not in the immediate
future' *would* have to be an option, IMO.

> I am opposed to delaying the creation of Wikinews just because a
> Wikipedia in the language in question is still too small. That would
> create a hierarchy of projects. When there are participants, the project
> should be launched - but the timetable for the launch could be set by
> the community.

You are putting words into my mouth. I never said that Wikpedians in a certain
language decide this, I said that the relevant language community decides it
(well at least if I did say it, that was not what I meant :). *All* Wikimedia
projects in a particular language have a stake in a new project in their
language. Thus all Wikimedians who participate in those language project
versions need to be heard.

-- mav

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: alternatives to dbg

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

Edward Peschko wrote:
<snip>
> I suppose I could go through the UML class diagrams and assorted
> docs on wikipedia's code, but that sure as hell doesn't take the place
> of stepping through something to see how it works.
<snip>

We don't have UML class diagrams for the momment. It is on my todo list
if I ever finish my university UML course :o)

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
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from_name: Gordon Morehouse

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: per-article anon edit rights

body:
Frank v Waveren <fvw.wikipediaml <at> var.cx> writes:

> Perhaps you could protect all pages apart from those that are
> anon-editable and give all logged in users sufficient privileges to
> edit protected pages? Bit of a hack, but it might work for some
> specific cases.

Wouldn't I have to each new page to the config file by hand in that case?


body:
Erik,

But to be clear, I don't think you technically did anything wrong. It was all a
big misunderstanding that was based upon some fairly untested policies. What is
important for us now, is to make sure we don't make the same mistakes in the
future.

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> That's not my point. My point is that you have not presented data in
> support of your hypothesis at all.

I supplied arguments. You did the same and also supplied data that only proved
a point I had conceded at the very start of this whole thing. Thus the effect
of your data on this argument is moot.

> I do not see it as an imposition, but as the logical outcome of the
> global vote.

You are welcome to that view. Many other people in the language communities
that are affected by this 'logical outcome' have views that are contradictory
to yours. Their voices and opinion about what is logical are also important and
should be considered. Not just brushed aside because the global majority has
spoken.

> Running a global organization like Wikimedia is always a
> balancing act between preserving a coherent identity and respecting
> local variations.

Thus my proposal to have Wikimedia-wide votes about the establishment of a
project and if that passes (and gets board approval), then it would be up to
individual language communities to figure out when it is a good time to start
that project in their language.

This balances things very well. More importantly, it would have avoided the
current ugliness.

-- mav

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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Daniel Mayer schrieb:

>And that is a best case scenario. But one of the most cited reasons why
>*Wikipedia* is so great is the fact that it is kept up-to-date. The same type
>of person who is interested in current events is in the same pool of people who
>would likely contribute to Wikinews.
>
Nope. The work of writing a news story from scratch is very different
from just summarizing what's going on. It is a very specific contributor
profile which, as the history of the English Wikinews has shown, is hard
to find among Wikipedians. You are just equating the groups because it
suits your argument without any empirical evidence to back it up. Let's
look at who actually edits the Current Events on en. This is a unique
list of contributors from the second half of October 2004, before
Wikinews was active:

Admbws
Ahoerstemeier
Alan Liefting
Ambi
Ancheta Wis
Andrejj
Anonymous Cow
AntonioMartin
Arwel Parry
Avaragado
Bob rulz
Bogdangiusca
Bontenbal
CanisRufus
Chrism
ChrisO
Ctrl build
Danny
Davidcannon
David Gerard
David Newton
Dejitarob
Dobrien
Ed Cormany
Ed Poor
Eean
Eewing
Elf
Enceladus
Evercat
Evil saltine
Frazzydee
Fred Bauder
Gadfium
Get-back-world-respect
Golbez
Grunt
Harris7
Hooverbag
Infrogmation
Irishpunktom
Irismeister
JB82
JBradHicks
Jewbacca
Jiang
Johnleemk
Jongarrettuk
Joseph Dwayne
Jxg
Kaihsu
Ke4roh
Korath
Laguna72
Lance6Wins
MacGyverMagic
MarkPNeyer
Mateo SA
MathKnight
Matt Crypto
Mixcoatl
Modemac
Montrealais
Mrwojo
Nadavspi
Nickshanks
Nknight
Peter L
PFHLai
Poccil
Radagast
Rdsmith4
Remember
Richard Cane
RickK
Rje
Rmhermen
Saint-Paddy
Sbwoodside
Scooter
Scott Sanchez
Securiger
Seth Ilys
Simonides
Solitude
Spammer132
Spencer195
Sverdrup
The Anome
The King Of Gondor
Tillwe
TimothyPilgrim
Tirin
Toby Bartels
VeryVerily
Violetriga
Wernher
Whkoh
Ydorb
Youssefsan

This is a list of English Wikinews editors who have actually created
articles, as far back as Special:Newpages allows:

Amgine
Andrew pmk
Arwel Parry
BesigedB
Borofkin
Boud
Cafzal
Carlosar
Dan100
Dcabrilo
Dysprosia
Gadfium
Jiang
King Ho Cheung
Ronline
Snooo
Squeakfox
Submarine
The bellman
VikOlliver
VlSimpson

Now, even though we're searching in a very large set, of these people,
only 3 have actually edited Current Events on the English Wikipedia:

Arwel Parry
Gadfium
Jiang

Of these three, only Jiang has made a substantial number of edits on
Wikinews. and he still contributes to Current Events as well. Arwel made
11 edits on Wikinews, Gadfium made 9 edits. None of the really active
Wikinewsies, to my knowledge, are involved in Current Events on WP.

Try writing a Wikinews article. Doing the research, collecting the
references, writing a whole piece from scratch. This work is much more
tedious than just providing a one paragraph summary with a source. It
takes a different kind of person to do that. And the empirical data
shows that.

>You cited a Wikipedia regular as the author of this article. That's great but
>the time it took to write and research that single story could have been spent
>updating perhaps a half dozen existing Wikipedia articles.
>
Perhaps. People have a right to choose what they spend their time on.
It's not up to you to decide that they shouldn't write news stories
instead of updating Wikipedia articles. We don't have a hierarchy of
projects. Wikinews has equal rights to Wikipedia.

>And you are not in a position to go against the will of any wiki user
>community.
>
>
That is your opinion. In my opinion, it is the will of the Wikimedia
community as a whole which counts. Wikimedia is a global project. It's
not up to the French Wikimedia community to decide by majority that they
don't want Wikinews, unless they have France-specific reasons for not
wanting it. And I am supported in this both by policy and by statements
of the Board to this effect, when I asked them this very question two
months ago. Yes, I asked the Board whether we should treat the French
Wikinews differently from the others because of the way the vote went,
and the answer was no - I can document this with IRC chatlogs if
necessary. This, by the way, is an interesting test case for language
autonomy. And I firmly support the principle that Wikimedia-wide
decisions can overrule local ones.

>You have already managed to piss a great many people on the French Wikipedia
>off.
>
People who didn't like Wikinews won't like the French Wikinews edition
or any other. That doesn't matter. The time for voting on Wikinews is
over. The project is launched and it will be started in the editions
where there is sufficient interest to do so. Now, the real problem, I
think, was in setting up the Wikinews voting pages as subpages of the
languages. That gave some people the impression that the vote count of
the Wikinews/Vote/Fr page has relevance on its own. It doesn't. Global
votes should be counted and aggregated as such in the future.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strange idea

body:
A super idea.  I would love to see both a notice like the "Welcome!
you too can edit" notice on de: that Kurt describes, and a "Submit
feedback!" button (with that text, or with Mark's longer text below)
that takes you to the "Add a section to the talk page" form for the
current article.

+sj+

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 06:27:08 +0100, Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson schrieb:
> > I thought that perhaps, for a trial period, we could add a
> > prominently-placed button in articles for not-logged-in readers with
> > the title of "Report an Error or Suggest Information to Add".
>
> The German Wikipedia is already doing it, take a look at
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Externhinweis
>
> The notice is only displayed for not-logged-in users on pages that are not
> protected and not userpages, and only on the first Wikipedia page people reach
> from the outside (which in most cases means Google).
>
> Kurt
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Strange idea


subject: [Foundation-l] NIFT: Translations for WikiMania?

body:
Yes, there are lots of tips we can take from NOMAD.  Of course it
seems that even with their own home-grown software it takes them a bit
of work to get it set up each conference... and their documentation
leaves a family of little somethings to be desired.

The broadcasting bit of our simul translation will probably be thrown
in for free if we outsource the translation.  But especially if we're
thinking about ever having a larger conference with more languages, it
would pay to play with NIFT.

+sj+

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 09:16:50 +0100, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I just found NIFT [1], a free software for organizing and broadcasting
> simultanious translations of speeches. Something for WikiMania, maybe?
>
> Magnus
>
> [1] http://www.apo33.org/babels/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=18
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFB/zryCZKBJbEFcz0RAq5IAJsHHmVUFE2Wl1NP2bUQbfdtQKVKYACdFFw1
> HiS2XiJLULSFrhljkTfgViY=
> =iYeq
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
+sj+
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from_name: Frank v Waveren

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strange idea

body:
On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 09:15:48PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> I thought that perhaps, for a trial period, we could add a
> prominently-placed button in articles for not-logged-in readers with
> the title of "Report an Error or Suggest Information to Add".
>
> Since so many people don't realise that Wikipedia is for anybody to
> edit, this could take them to a new page that explained in bold
> letters the concept of Wikipedia and that they could edit the article
> themselves, but still have an error-report field in case they still
> didn't get it.
>
> While this would obviously be open to abuse, it might also provide
> useful feedback from people who otherwise wouldn't contribute
> anything, and would definitely serve to let these people know that the
> power is in their hands, what with the boldly-placed notice that THEY
> can fix it themselves and all.
>
> I'm sure there would be way too much feedback to ever completely sift
> through, but I still think it might be useful.
Sounds like a useful idea. No need for big codebase changes either,
the "add feedback" form could just be an "add new section" edit form
for the article's talk page.

--
Frank v Waveren                                      Fingerprint: BDD7 D61E
fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl] ICQ#10074100                      5D39 CF05 4BFC F57A
Public key: hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net/468D62C8              FA00 7D51 468D 62C8

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from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strange idea

body:
Mark Williamson schrieb:
> I thought that perhaps, for a trial period, we could add a
> prominently-placed button in articles for not-logged-in readers with
> the title of "Report an Error or Suggest Information to Add".

The German Wikipedia is already doing it, take a look at
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Externhinweis

The notice is only displayed for not-logged-in users on pages that are not
protected and not userpages, and only on the first Wikipedia page people reach
from the outside (which in most cases means Google).

Kurt


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strange idea

body:
In a message dated 31/01/2005 23:15:55 Eastern Standard Time,
node.ue at gmail.com writes:
I thought that perhaps, for a trial period, we could add a
prominently-placed button in articles for not-logged-in readers with
the title of "Report an Error or Suggest Information to Add".
I like it. It could be useful.

Danny


body:
 > But the evidence is clear that there was no wrongdoing on my part.

Erik -

I haven't seen anyone accuse you of wrongdoing, only of pissing people
off.   It feels as though the issue at hand is about handling loose
consensus with goodwill and a peaceful heart, more than it is about
following or breaking clearly-defined rules.

Early discussions and votes about wikinews were tactful - concerned
with consensus and discussion, not with empowering groups to act
unilaterally if they satisfied a set of conditions - and *very*
patient, and unarguably successful.  So were you. I hope we can get
back there.

+sj+

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 08:03:32 +0100, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
> > Yes, please do. Some of us
>
> Who is "some"? Who is "us"?
>
> > would very much like to know why this was so clear to you, based on

Please don't chafe at Michael.  I wanted to know the same thing, until
you and Anthere clarified the matter.  It is hard to know where you
are coming from when your are so combative.

+sj+


body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:

>> And you are not in a position to go against the will of any wiki user
>> community.
>>
> That is your opinion. In my opinion, it is the will of the Wikimedia
> community as a whole which counts. Wikimedia is a global project. It's
> not up to the French Wikimedia community to decide by majority that they
> don't want Wikinews, unless they have France-specific reasons for not
> wanting it. And I am supported in this both by policy and by statements
> of the Board to this effect, when I asked them this very question two
> months ago. Yes, I asked the Board whether we should treat the French
> Wikinews differently from the others because of the way the vote went,
> and the answer was no - I can document this with IRC chatlogs if
> necessary. This, by the way, is an interesting test case for language
> autonomy. And I firmly support the principle that Wikimedia-wide
> decisions can overrule local ones.

I am perplex of how you could document that. I remember well that I
agreed the creation of the new project would ultimately results in
possibly this project be created in all languages, and that the founding
principles would be the same in all languages. So, that obviously, all
languages would be treated the same in that perspective.
This is what I meant by "treated the same", of course, we need a project
to be consistant across all languages.

But here is also what I remembered we agreed upon (though obviously,
there was misunderstanding)

* a test site would be created in english

* after a certain time, the test site would go live and become a real
wikimedia site. At this point, we considered the concept validated by
the board

* each new site (new language) could start when enough people agree on
its creation (Obviously, we do not agree on "enough people"; I would
consider that when there is strong opposition from a community, among
other things due to legal fears, then enough people is not really one or
two)

* as long as real editors are below 5 and no sysop is on project, the
site would be demo for this language in any cases

* only when the board approves would the language specific site becomes
officially part of wikimedia.

This was what *I* understood and approved.
The reason of the last step was related to legal threats and such.

In all cases, I support that wikimedia-wide policies overrules local
ones only when it threatens consistency, image and functionning across
all projects.

As far as I remember, Wikimedia DOES NOT decide what the projects should
become and wha they should contain. This is up to communities, with the
benevolent support of the Foundation.

Anthere


body:
Michael-

>
> Yes, please do. Some of us

Who is "some"? Who is "us"?

> would very much like to know why this was so clear to you, based on
> your communications with the Board, and apparently not clear to
> Anthere, given that she is part of this same Board.

Here's a chatlog from October 29 on #wikimedia with Anthere and
Aurevilly. Angela and jwales were also present.

Okt 29 13:13:59 <Aurevilly>     Xirzon, what will you do with wikinews
poll result : lauch it globally or launch it only for languages that
approved it?
Okt 29 13:14:14 <Xirzon>        Aurevilly: I'm tending towards the
latter, but will have to discuss with the board
Okt 29 13:14:39 <Anthere>       hum ?
Okt 29 13:14:42 <Anthere>       euuuu
Okt 29 13:14:50 <Anthere>       I think there is a misunderstanding Here
Okt 29 13:14:57 <Anthere>       vote is global
Okt 29 13:15:06 <Xirzon>        Anthere: that's the way I always
intended it, yes
Okt 29 13:15:14 <Anthere>       we do not isolate decisions depending on
languages
Okt 29 13:15:18 <Xirzon>        I have no problem launching globally!
Okt 29 13:15:19 <Aurevilly>     Xirzon, OK ; I think it's better to stay
global, IMO
Okt 29 13:15:29 <Xirzon>        I'm just trying to make people happy.
Okt 29 13:15:32 <Anthere>       launch or not launch of specific
languages will be later
Okt 29 13:15:48 <Anthere>       I also think that isolating vote on
different pages
Okt 29 13:15:52 <Anthere>       is indeed confusing
Okt 29 13:15:58 <Anthere>       I am not very happy with this
Okt 29 13:16:00 <Xirzon>        Anthere: what would you suggest as an
alternative?
Okt 29 13:16:05 <Anthere>       all votes on one page

Now, as should be obvious from this excerpt, I was very willing to use
whatever approach the Board prescribed. Later I commented:

Okt 29 13:29:44 <Xirzon>        board:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Aggregation is now used on all
vote pages - please edit if needed

The template contains the text:

"Please note: The vote counts will be aggregated
[[Wikinews/Vote/All|from all languages]]. A global majority is needed."

It was prominently displayed on all voting pages. We also agreed not to
state at this point when the different Wikinews editions would be
launched ("leave it vague", Jimbo and Anthere said). Weeks after the
vote, on December 2, I wrote the following message to foundation-l:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2004-December/001601.html

-snip-

Now that we're about to move demo.wikinews.org to en.wikinews.org, we have
to think about a procedure for setting up other language domains. If any
decision on this matter has already been made by the Board, please let me
know.

It should be noted that on two of the language voting pages, no majority
was reached on starting the project. These are French and Chinese. Others
had very small participation.

In the original proposal, I suggested that Wikinews can be set up in any
accepted Wikimedia project language where there is at least one interested
participant, and that 4 more regulars are required for the language to be
recognized as "official", and for the firsts sysops to be created.

I would like to ask the Board if this procedure is acceptable.

If it is not, one possible alternative would be to immediately set up
language domains for any language where there are more than 10 votes on
the respective voting page on Meta, and more than 50% in favor. This would
currently mean Japanese and German. The vote could be re-opened, and kept
open permanently.

-snip-

Jimmy only responded that he was OK with creating de.wikinews.org.
Anthere did not respond at all. Angela wrote a detailed response:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2004-December/001607.html

-snip-

There is a proposed policy for new languages at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages

There may be reasons for Wikinews to follow a different procedure to
our other wikis though, since the process of creating a news site
really needs more users than an encyclopedia. The proposed language
policy currently states five users are needed. If this does not
change, then the same policy can be applied to Wikinews.

...

I don't think the vote on whether to start the project is the same as
a vote to have a language sub-domain once the project has started, so
these votes should be discounted now. Any creation of a new language
Wikinews should follow whatever the procedure is going to be used
without reference to the previous vote.

-snip-

The policy for new languages was not changed. The German edition was
launched on December 3.  On December 4, I created the [[Wikinews/Start a
new edition]] page. That sat there until January 29, collecting pledges,
and referencing the policy for new languages on Meta. I don't know if
Anthere was away when I sent the mail above, but she had several weeks
to respond or to contradict the agreed upon requirements, or to comment
on the "/Start a new edition" page that they were not acceptable. She
did not, nor did Jimmy.

As the chatlog above shows, I was willing to bend over backwards to make
the community happy, but was later authorized to follow a simpler
procedure, which I did. Now, I'm as always open to discussing ways to
improve our policy. But the evidence is clear that there was no
wrongdoing on my part.

Regards,

Erik


subject:
[Foundation-l] Language autonomy and "readiness" (was: Swedish,
 Spanish, French Wikinews set up)

body:
Daniel Mayer schrieb:

>The others I'm less sure about and would
>really like to know what those language communities think.
>
>
Aside from what people's feelings are, it is important to collect
empirical data. So far, your claim that Wikipedia will lose contributors
to in-the-news articles because of Wikinews is unproven. It may in fact
be the other way around, given that Wikinews prominently links to as
much Wikipedia material as possible.

>My point is that each language community needs to decide
>among themselves if they are ready to start a new Wikimedia project in their
>language.
>
That's a different subject deserving of its own thread. I feel that
whether or not a language community should have the right to decline a
project should depend in large part on what its reasons are to do so. I
am perfectly willing to say that the Chinese community should be allowed
to make that decision, since they will have to pay the consequences if
Wikipedia will be blocked because of Wikinews.

But the arguments that have been brought up against the French Wikinews
are just the same that have been brought up against Wikinews in general:
It could harm our reputation, it could lead to legal problems, etc.
Whether these arguments outweigh the benefits of the project has been
addressed in a global vote. So I don't see a reason why the French
community should be able to deny people the right to work on a French
edition of Wikinews.

Now, your argument is about "readiness". This is an interesting point,
and the question of readiness should perhaps be handled in a different
manner from the question of whether the project should be launched at
all. When I launched the French Wikinews, I did not talk to the
community beforehand and give them time to prepare for the launch. This
may have ruffled a few feathers, and made it look like a decision that
came from outside, rather than a genuine choice of the French Wikinews
participants.

What is a good solution to that problem? Perhaps, as soon as the
required number of contributors is reached, there should be a vote on
when the desired launch date is. "Never" would not be an option in that
vote, but it could have a scope of, say, 4 weeks. This would also be a
test of whether the people who pledged to participate are actually still
around and interested, so the vote could have the same minimum number of
participants.

I am opposed to delaying the creation of Wikinews just because a
Wikipedia in the language in question is still too small. That would
create a hierarchy of projects. When there are participants, the project
should be launched - but the timetable for the launch could be set by
the community.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>And Gerard, please note that Alfio, unlike you, is a native Italian speaker.
>
>Mark
>
>
Which is a totally irrelevant remark. fyi I asked Sabine, she thinks
that having it as it is written is to be preferrred; her argument is
that things that are "strange" atract more curiosity. Her credentials as
to the Italian language are obvious and adequate.

Using this argument is rich when it comes from the "tireless warrior for
more wikipedia's even though he does not speak all the languages he
champions". It basically disqualifies you and if you apply this logic to
yourself, we will not hear that much from you on the mailinglist.

Thanks,
    GerardM

>On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 19:05:58 +0100 (MET), Alfio Puglisi
><puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>
>
>>On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Hoi,
>>>You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is
>>>different. If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will
>>>make you learn the difference :) .
>>>
>>>
>>If you look a the Italian main page, all links on the left bar are
>>capitalized, not just the language list. Writing capitalized lists is OK,
>>and no one would object to have:
>>
>>*English
>>*Italiano
>>
>>on any list. The contrary would be difficult to read, with mixed
>>capitalization.
>>
>>Alfio
>>_______________________________________________
>>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
>
>
>


from_name: Magnus Manske

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

I just found NIFT [1], a free software for organizing and broadcasting
simultanious translations of speeches. Something for WikiMania, maybe?

Magnus

[1] http://www.apo33.org/babels/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=18
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iD8DBQFB/zryCZKBJbEFcz0RAq5IAJsHHmVUFE2Wl1NP2bUQbfdtQKVKYACdFFw1
HiS2XiJLULSFrhljkTfgViY=
=iYeq
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WYSIWYG editor

body:
I '''love''' the idea of a WYSIWYG extension.   Ward Cunningham has
said a couple of times he sees the lack of such editors as the biggest
remaining barrier between the bulk of users and the world of wiki...
which sounds reasonable to me.

I also like the idea of a mediawiki-bizarre SF project for bits and pieces.

+sj+

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 23:11:54 -0500, Jonah Bossewitch
<jonah at phantomcynthetics.com> wrote:
> I am interested in discussing and hashing out the challenges of WYSIWYG
> editing.  I also think that this kind of project is the kind of thing
> that would make alot of sense to develop in a sourceforge project
> dedicated to mediawiki extensions.
>
> I know that MW extensions are talked about centrally here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mediawiki_Extensions
>
> but I am talking about a sf project where the source itself is kept,
> and developers are granted access much more freely than on the
> mediawiki project itself.  Extensions may eventually be merged into the
> core distribution, or they could maintain a life of their own, used in
> MW installations, but not on the 'pedia.
>
> I brought this idea up once before, but nobody responded to my
> suggestion.  Does that mean there is no interest?  How about a project
> called mediawiki-extensions, or mediawiki-collective, or
> mediawiki-bizarre (the last two might make more sense if we conceive of
> this area as a collection of bot scripts, maintenance scripts, etc, in
> addition to just extensions).  I would be happy to request this project
> name, as well as add anyone who is interested in becoming a developer
> or admin on the project.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> /Jonah
>
>
> On Jan 29, 2005, at 10:25 PM, Urs C Muff wrote:
>
> > Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> >
> >> Urs C Muff <umuff71 at email.com> writes:
> >>
> >>
> >>> I would like to collect a list of dev's that want to contribute to a
> >>> WYSIWYG effort for MediaWiki.
> >>>
> >> Why do you think WYSIWYG effort is useful?  The current offering
> >> already
> >> does more harm than good.  People adding [[weird]] [[links]] [[all]]
> >> [[the]] [[time]]...
> >>
> >>
> > Well some people will just not be able to get comfortable with markup,
> > even thought the markup is designed to be human friendly it is still
> > markup.  To open the application to more users a WYSIWYG editor will
> > be required (for us), and since this is open source and we are sharing
> > resources I would like to coordinate that effort.  Of course if I'm
> > the only one interested, I will just do it my way...
> >
> > - Urs
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


body:
This whole huha about the Wikinews thing is in my opinion a storm in a
teacup. There are some issues though.

First, the wikipedia crowd is just that, the wikiPedia crowd. Many words
have been used to describe how a wikinews article is different from a
wikipedia article and, that you can atrackt different people to become
part of the wikinews crowd. People may be part of both crowds, it is
their prerogative. I object to the notion that the wikipedia crowd has
much say over what happens on other projects; walk the talk.

There is more to wikimedia than just wikipedia and, when people are part
of multiple crowds, there will be a spill over of energy and idea's from
one project to the next. Have a look at the nl:wikinews and you will
find that a small community like the nl:crowd just laps wikinews up.
Much work is done to make wikinews visually pleasing, much is done to
give it its structure and I am sure it will be cool with great content.
At this moment some of the best nl:wikipedia editors are working on
nl:wikinews. It is bound to atract people who will be mainly active on
wikinews but in the mean time it has a strong bond with the other
nl:projects and as such it strenghtens the nl:wikiMedia crowd.

The thing is, wikipedia is four years old, so what of it when a
wikipedia will grow less quickly ... so what ? It will grow and it will
reach the 500.000 mark for articles eventually. All in its own good
time. That is one resource we have plenty of, time. One resource we
should be jealous of is the coherency of a crowd within a language, in
my opinion this constant bickering is not good for the fr:crowd and it
is not good for the wikiMedia crowd. Please close ranks, be sensitive to
each others sensibilities and consider how what you do helps the
foundation. If it does not help the foundation and its projects, another
line of action, reasoning is called for.

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
Daniel -

>Again, those data were in a language that I already noted was fine for
>Wikinews. And English, being such an international language and spoken by so
>many people can not be a used in such a test. The English-speaking community of
>users working on Wikimedia projects is huge. So your results are not at all
>surprising.
>
>
That's not my point. My point is that you have not presented data in
support of your hypothesis at all.

>Imposing the results of a global vote onto a language community which has a
>great deal of opposition to the vote result, is not something that makes for
>harmonious co-existence between languages.
>
I do not see it as an imposition, but as the logical outcome of the
global vote. Running a global organization like Wikimedia is always a
balancing act between preserving a coherent identity and respecting
local variations.  My proposal takes into account local variations, such
as the China situation. In these cases, a local vote is justifiable. If,
however, we run it for every language community, this will just lead to
largely divergent identities forming over the long term, in part simply
due to statistical fluctuations or temporary shifts in opinion.
Wikimedia will no longer be recognizable as one, the risk of forks will
increase, and the pace of innovation will become ever more heterogenous.

The disharmony right now is the result of miscommunications and a
somewhat surprising launch. That's why I conclude from this experience
that the timetable should be up to the interested participants to decide
-- not to people who have no interest in the project at all, because it
would then effectively become another vote *on the project*, which I am
opposed to. "Not in the immediate future" makes little sense if you're
asking people who have pledged to participate in the project when they
want to do it.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Robin Shannon

body:
On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 15:57:31 +0100, Nicolas Weeger
<nicolas.weeger at laposte.net> wrote:
>
> Guys, gals, isn't it time to stop the escalation?
>
> Take some deep breaths, cool down, go do something else (walk? fix
> broken links on wikipedias? take a bath?).
>
> Whatever happened with fr.wikinews happened. Now we can either have a
> nice split/fight about it, which'll make everyone unhappy, or take it
> easier, apologize when/if needed to the other, think about what happened
> so that it doesn't happen again.
>
> The point now is not anymore what to do with fr.wikinews, but whether we
> want to have 2+ clans at each other's throat, or try to make the best
> out of the situation.
>
> Nicolas "Ryo"

Thank god for the gentle voice of sanity.

Mistakes may have been made, and if they were, we all have the
obligation to assume that they were made in good faith, and to make
sure that the same mistakes are not made again in the future.

paz y amor,
robin.

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur

body:
Wikibooks are on a specific theme. Work manuals can make good
Wikibooks. And Wikibooks, whether single or in a series, can be made
consistent, with the same set of headings and the same way of
detailing information. I just can't see any reason to make this a
seperate wiki - it'd just be a wikibook that we decided to promote
above all the others, which isn't fair.

-- ambi

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 16:36:06 +0200, Gavin Chait <gchait at gmx.net> wrote:
> >This sounds like a project on Wikibooks - more or less writing textbooks.
> >Is there more to it than that?
>
> Yes, there is.  Firstly, it's on a rather specific theme - and a very wide
> range of businesses.  Just like an encyclopedia is a set of books, any
> information could be packaged as such.  But this is not meant as course
> material for a school or university.  It is meant as a set of work manuals.
>
> As such, each manual must cover information in a consistent way.  The same
> set of headings, the same way of detailing information.
>
> More importantly, every input that is required for a business is the product
> of another business.  So too with every output.  These inputs and outputs
> can be tracked to create a webwork showing the interaction of different
> businesses (slightly different from just a set of textbooks).  This also
> allows for the tracking of required infrastructure and support.
>
> So, if I want to start a grain mill, then there have to be farms nearby.
> There also needs to be transport, harvesting, maintenance for the mill.  If
> there is no electricity, then that changes the type of mill I can operate.
> And so on.  It provides insight into limiting factors preventing targetted
> industries from getting off the ground (inputs unavailable) while providing
> the necessary info on how to get input industries up and running.
>
> Just as helpful is that the outputs must have a market.  No good producing
> plastic bottles if no-one wants to use them.
>
> This is very helpful for people looking for gaps in the market but who
> aren't sure if it is worthwhile or what supply and demand is required.
> Products have direct and indirect markets.  For example:  rubber washers are
> used to make wheels in crafted wire cars; old wooden palattes (from the
> logistics industry) are broken down to make prefabricated walls for houses.
> Each topic can give novel ideas for inputs and outputs that may extend
> products into new industries.
>
> Each topic covers the necessary inputs, outputs - and how to get from the
> one to the other.
>
> In the long term it will become possible to develop a simple checklist to
> ascertain what gaps exist for what opportunities (similar to the way
> biologists have a species identification system:  does it have this type of
> leaf, go to pg 73, does it have these nodules? .... until you get to a
> specific set of possibilities).
>
> This project is distinct.  Otherwise one could argue that wikibooks is just
> another permutation of wikipedia.
>
> Regards,
>
> Gavin
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur


subject: [Wikipedia-l] About language names

body:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2005, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>>And Gerard, please note that Alfio, unlike you, is a native Italian speaker.
>>
>>Mark
>>
>>
>Which is a totally irrelevant remark. fyi I asked Sabine, she thinks
>that having it as it is written is to be preferrred; her argument is
>that things that are "strange" atract more curiosity. Her credentials as
>to the Italian language are obvious and adequate.

Let's keep the tone relaxed, people. I'll just go on record saying that I
couldn't care less if "Italiano" is capitalized or not, and I think that a
vast majority of native speakers feel the same.

The old, formal rule was to always have language names and nationality
adjectives ("the English people") always capitalized, like one can find in
any book from, say, 50 years ago. Common use nowadays is less strict, one
can find both forms. A capitalized nationality adjective feels slightly
strange, a capitalized language name less so.

So the choice can be freely made on different grounds than language
correctness.

Alfio


subject: [Foundation-l] re: Project Wikineur

body:
Gavin,

Thanks for sharing such a wonderful idea.
This sounds like it could one day turn into a very large-scale
project, one more suited to its own wiki, with many local
wikiprojects, idiosyncratic policies about what kind of information
can and can't be shared, how one can be neutral while addressing legal
and political monetary issues that readers will take very much to
heart, and more.

One nice thing about this project is that its audience of active
editors would be fairly distinct from the audience of active
encyclopedia editors.ll

I think the right way to go about creating new project like this is to
find people who would contribute initial content, write up a few pages
on meta: addressing specific policy issues that would have to be
worked out for the project, and then write a handful of example
articles (in your userspace, perhaps, since we haven't agreed on
whether meta or wikibooks are suitable for such articles).

+sj+


subject: [Foundation-l] re: Project Wikineur


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: My rant

body:
Uh, RickK, he is quite permitted to have his opinion. It doesn't mean
we'll implement it.

TBSDY

Rick wrote:
> Yet again another attempt to make Wikipedia into something completely different.  Why do you keep doing this?  You are not going to succeed in getting the project corrupted into your version of reality.
>
> RickK
>
> NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On Tuesday 25 January 2005 03:09, Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
>>I'm pissed, and I want to rant. (you've been warned)
>
>
> I understand you completely; the problem in Wikipedia is that authors start
> writing without discussing, planning and organising their efforts. In my wiki
> projects I will try to follow a different approach, and I believe Wikipedia
> should consider a change in its attitudes. Here is my design:
> 1. The wiki is just a place to store articles. Discussions in the wiki are
> prohibited.
> 2. The Talk: pages are renamed Test: pages and all the writing and
> collaborative writing happens there.
> 3. Non-Test pages (i.e. the real articles) are protected and only admins can
> edit them.
> 4. The authors are using a mailing list, a phpBB forum and a special
> collaboration platform to discuss and decide how to write the article. An
> example of a very good collaboration platform is phpCollab.
> 5. There are Article Maintainers who check for copyright violations and check
> the references, et cetera.
> 6. Every article is developed in a software-like fashion, i.e. there are
> versions and when the mains (maintainers) approve an article it will be
> checked by the admins. The admins then publish the article in a non-Test page
> (i.e. the main namespace) and give to it a unique version number such as 1.4.
>
> You can learn more about this design at
> http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Editing_process
>
> Some additional info about versions exists at
> http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Article_versions
>


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050201 07:13]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > As Jimbo has said a couple of times (to me at the last London meet, and
> > reported at a previous meet), the best thing to do with a rating system at
> > the moment is ... nothing. Run the rating system for a time period, gather
> > the data, *don't reveal it yet* for fear of affecting the rating
> > experiment, *then* release the data for scrutiny and ideas. how people rate
> > things given a simple system, see if the results of that rating accord with
> > common sense, see if they approximate the desired Rating System That Scales
> > (the way FAC doesn't quite).

> Yes, perfect.

I asked on wikitech-l, and Magnus said his rating code is not (in his
opinion) ready for prime time yet. Anyone want to beat it into shape in
short order?

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Sanger response and rating system
	experiment


subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur

body:
Rebecca (misfitgirl at gmail.com) [050201 10:34]:

> Wikibooks are on a specific theme. Work manuals can make good
> Wikibooks. And Wikibooks, whether single or in a series, can be made
> consistent, with the same set of headings and the same way of
> detailing information. I just can't see any reason to make this a
> seperate wiki - it'd just be a wikibook that we decided to promote
> above all the others, which isn't fair.

Unless it's Wikipedia, which is fair cos it's by far the hugest wiki book!

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur


subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>>Wikibooks was set up to be the home of textbooks. Not books, but
>>>Textbooks. Hence why wikpedia, wiktionary and wikiquote are not on
>>>wikibooks (other than historical accident). I really dont think it is
>>>fair to the wikibooks community, that we tell every new wikiproject to
>>>go set up on wikibooks. Its in risk of becoming the wikimedia dumping
>>>ground.
>>>
>>>
>
>While I created the Wikibooks name based on a combination of WikiWiki and
>textbooks, that project has never been only about textbooks. It is a place to
>build just about any non-fiction reference book with, and this is critical, a
>finite end size (if you want to explore a subject area in more detail than
>that, start other books). The 'finite' part excludes potentially huge or even
>practically infinitely-sized things such as a general quote book, dictionary,
>or encyclopedia.
>
>The very different formats for these other projects is also a reason for the
>separation; Modules in a wikibook need to be in in a hierarchy and should
>ideally be read in a particular sequence, while articles in Wikipedia and
>Wikiquote and entries at Wiktionary are anything but hierarchical and can be
>read in any order.
>
>True, the emphasis is on instructional-oriented material, but that is an
>*emphasis* to encourage the most-potentially positive aspect of the project. It
>is ''not'' an exclusionary principle.
>
>ambi wrote:
>
>
>>We can always take Wikimedia in new directions, and I laud such
>>proposals, but I strongly despise these subject-specific works. They
>>have limited potential in terms of both readers and participation, are
>>much less likely to be successful, and would really be much better
>>suited to, say, setting up a MediaWiki installation on a business
>>website. Just because it is a wiki doesn't mean that it has to be
>>under the Wikimedia banner.
>>
>>
>
>I agree with this statement 100% and can't think of a thing to add.
>
>-- mav
>
>
>
One way of dealing with this is by having it as a "Wikicities" project.
If it pans out, it can always return into the wikimedia fold :) .
Thanks,
    Gerard


subject: [Foundation-l] Project Wikineur


from_name: Gavin Chait

subject: [Foundation-l] re:  Project Wikineur

body:
When I go to a library, I don't ask for a book.  I ask for books on a
specific subject.  When I go to a university, I don't just ask to do a
degree.  I get one in a specific subject.  The whole basis of education is
"subject-specific works".  That is how universities divide themselves up:
different schools run independently but under the broad "brand" of a single
institution.

The Wiki Foundation is your broad brand.

If Wikibooks is "a place to build just about any non-fiction reference book
with, and this is critical, a finite end size (if you want to explore a
subject area in more detail than that, start other books). The 'finite' part
excludes potentially huge or even practically infinitely-sized things such
as a general quote book, dictionary, or encyclopedia."  There is immediately
an exclusion since there are, potentially, an infinite number of different
types of businesses.  Take a walk down any main street in even the smallest
town and the number of different businesses present runs into the hundreds.

I'm also not too sure about "They have limited potential in terms of both
readers and participation."  In developed countries business owners spend a
vast amount of time networking and studying up on how to run their
businesses.  There are a large number of organisations catering to this
market (Business Network International, Entrepreneur Magazine, for
instance).  In the US 80% of people work for a small business - an
individual or partnership owned concern - as compared to an institution
owned by shareholders.  There are millions of business owners.  Even in
South Africa there are about 10 local magazines catering to the market.

The reference section in your local bookshop seems to be swamped with
business books. And, here's the interesting part, most of them deal with
business only in the most general of terms.  There are very few books on
specific businesses - mainly because most writers are consultants in general
employment.  Publishers are uncomfortable producing specific books for the
general market.  The information does exist.  In the heads of entrepreneurs
and NGO's (such as mine).

Take a search on any of the weblog groups and see just how many are
dedicated to business owners asking each other for advice (e.g.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/entrepreneurs as a tiny sample).

If you would like it to be inside Wikibooks, that is fine - but it does need
a clearly defined entry point; a clear set of "rules" regarding presentation
of information and a definite understanding of what business is (and is
not).

Even the simplest explanation for how to run (for instance) a farm producing
maize is going to be lengthy.

We don't go looking for food, we go looking for something specific.  We
don't want to watch just sport - we want something specific.  Services are
getting more specific, not less.  Only a specialist can offer insight into
the specialised needs of their clients.  A librarian is not a business
consultant.  This doesn't mean that the techniques of libraries can't be
used to present disparate information.

Regards,

Gavin


subject: [Foundation-l] re:  Project Wikineur