body:
Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Constans, Camille (C.C.) a rit:
>>
>>>> And this is not even mentionning that the proper way to write is the
>>>> one suggested by the French Academy or the French Typographic Code.
>>>> Perhaps Canada has a chance as well here, but I doubt a decree in
>>>> Algeria about how to use french would be given much consideration :-)
>>>
>>>
>>> Difficult question too, i would like to know it works between
>>> American People and british people ?
>>
>>
>> More or less ok, I think. That is, if an article was written in
>> british english, american people are supposed not to entirely rewrite
>> it in american english. Same reversely.
>
>
> Exactly, and it seems like such a simple principle that it is hard to
> understand why others could not accept it.  But neither the Americans
> nor the British have an Academy tasked with insuring the purity of the
> language.  Tradition, precedence and usage form a greater part of the
> English speaking mind in language as in law.
> Unfortunately, some French seem to give the decrees of the Acad?mie
> fran?aise the weight of law, leading to the ridiculous conclusion that
> not following these decrees would be contrary to French law

Or...more precisely that the decree give what is "correct", giving to
the other word the notion that it is unproper language. If the
conclusion is that the word is unproper, then it should not be used on
Wikipedia, or at least mentionned as unproper.
It is not so much what is "illegal" (against the law) than what is
"incorrect".

Actually, if I understand well the current discussion going on on the
aubette/abribus word group (similar to the batonnet ouat?/coton tige
story is that

it is suggested that the whole article is put at batonnet ouat? (that is
the word nobody uses, but that is correct by Acad?mie opinion), and to
make the coton tige only a redirect.

For aubette, a word totally unknown in France, it will welcome the
article, and the word used by millions of people will just be a
redirect. I just feel numbed with the idea of a person typing a usual
word falling on an article which title means absolutely nothing to her.
But the argument given is that oral language is very often full of
imprecisions and mistakes, while the written language (wikipedia) should
teach people the proper way to speak.

What to answer to this ? That likely, there are at least two
significances with what NPOV means :-)

Actually, to add a lighter note on this, several french people think
that NPOV mean biaised.

Look Ec, this is a funny extract a user *just* put on Le Bistro

"Perso je supporte compl?tement l'id?e de mettre un peu de gait? et je
ne vois pas en quoi mettre un logo pour certain ?v?nement de l'ann?e
(noel,fin du ramadan, hannuka, etc) est NPOV, car a ce moment la tout
devient NPOV. Un article sur la th?orie de l'?volution en lui m?me est
NPOV pour un cr?ationiste. Pensez vous qu'il faille mettre une notice de
NPOV en haut de l'article. Ceci est un exemple mais il y en a des
centaines du meme genre. Le fait d'utiliser le fran?ais est d?j? un peu
NPOV car cette langue est poss?de une attache culturel sp?cifique. Quand
je vois les r?actions de certaines personnes qui brandissent le NPOV ?
tort et ? travers, je me demande comment continuer ? contribuer ? cette
enclo devant autant d'intol?rance.
[[Utilisateur:Greatpatton|Greatpatton]] 12 d?c 2003 ? 00:16 (CET)"

The person referred to at the end of the paragraph is likely Tarquin or
I. Holding high and against all reasons the NPOV etendard, perfect
examples of intolerance :-)))

>>>> It is just another step. Dominancy over content, over style, logo :-)))
>>>
>>>
>>> Do you think we're really pov ? We're working to prevent that, I hope...
>>
>>
>>
>> CK is suggesting that it is perfectly ok to add to wikipedia that some
>> words should preferably be used instead of others.
>> We can laugh upon the aubette, but there are about a dozen other words.
>>
>> He says it is ok that wikipedia article contains that
>> *"people should preferably use the word "batonnet ouat? rather than
>> "cotton tige""
>
>
> Saying that one usage is to be preferred is a POV that should be
> considered.  "Prefer" is not "oblige".  A person should not be condemned
> for using the other term, and its consistent usage in a single article
> should not automatically be changed.  When I saw this I went to see what
> was written on the "Q-Tip" box where they use "cotton swab" in English
> and "coton-tige" in French.  (with one "t" and a hyphen)  Under the
> circumstance I would feel rightfully offended if someone chose to change
> my usage of "coton-tige".

Then, I fear you will be offended because you are gonna clean your ears
with a batonnet ouat? :-)

Unless, you consider going to the french wikipedia to defend usages ?

>> 4) Tarquin will add on top of that, that Wikipedia is not a
>> dictionary, we are not discussing over words, but over concepts, hence
>> it is not a good idea to have two articles, one for cotton tige, the
>> other for batonnet ouat we all clean our ears just the same way, so
>> one article is enough.
>
>
> If it's a question of an article related to the generic Q-Tip the title
> used by the person who first wrote the article should prevail.  The WP
> is not a dictionary argument is a completely different and irrelevant
> issue.  I am assuming that there is enough material about the history
> and use of the little stick to warrant a WP article.

Question is : even if we do consider that we have enough matter to make
a serious encyclopedic article on Q-Tip (say), do we have enough
material to make a serious article on Coton Tige, and another one on
batonnet ouat? ?
Either we make two articles, which require enough content
Or we make only one. Right ? If so, which one is the redirect ?
On one hand is the one only used by belgium people and preferred by the
acad?mie
On the other hand, is the one used likely by *all* other french speaking
people in the world, which usage is said wrong by the Acad?mie
Which one should be the redirect ?
I think the academic one should, because we should not surprise people.
Other think the Coton Tige should be, because it is the "incorrect" one.

>> So we do discuss again. Meanwhile, there are a couple of very
>> interesting exchanges on typographic rules
>
>
> One that I thought strange was the insistance that the "oe" digraph be
> used.  That seemed terribly pedantic.

yup :-)

>> Then what is CK answer, in an open letter to Tarquin and I
>> 2) that he is a long-lasting professional (28 years old expertise on
>> typography)
>
>
> A logical fallacy when used to insist that a POV is correct.

Absolutely, CK provided me a nice paragraph that included about 6 or 7
types of different classical fallacies.

Now, what can be seriously done against someone who is repeating over
and over and over the same bad argument, to the point one feel like he
is talking chinese to him ?

>> 3) that the word comes from Belgium anyway
>
>
> Huh?

Yeah, that is a word used in Belgium. It is frequent that Acad?mie
Fran?aise pick up words created in other countries than France.
I may be wrong, but I suppose they promote the use of courriel, over
email, and courriel was invented in Canada.

>> 4) that the Acadie Franise does not respect NPOV itself
>
>
> Probably true
>
>> How reasonable is it to spent hours on such a trivial matter ? :-))))
>
>
> Not at all, but it happens with great regularity on WP in all languages. :-)

Sure. Then perhaps the more reasonable action is to just drop the whole
matter, wait some months before fixing that oddity, and cross fingers
that he writes not too much.
missing the teaching step entirely ?

>>>> As a matter of interest, I would be curious to know how those
>>>> internationals, that are split between wikipedias assume that. I
>>>> find extremely disconcerting to see two parts of a "common" project
>>>> being so different. It is a bit like that psychological disorder :-)
>>>
>>>
> If that's a psychological disorder, you should listen to the comments
> from people who have nothing to do with Wikipedia. :-D

:-)

>>> Do you think we're really different ? I'm sure there's some probleme
>>> as ours on en, de, nl, oc,   oups not oc, there's no yet enough
>>> people :)
>>
>>
> Yes, but that's OK.  See your own comments to Ruimu.

The above comments are not mine, but Shai ones.
I never doubted we were different.
I already feel different from french :-)

>> Of course, there are problems on every wikipedia. But, I was trying to
>> think about it, and on every single rule or usage I could think of,
>> fr: and en: are different.
>> We don't use the same rules to delete, or to undelete
>> We don't use the same rules to name people sysops
>> We don't put the interlanguage links in the same order or the same
>> place I think
>> We don't use page protection in edit wars the same way
>> We accept or do not accept the same way foreign languages in articles
>> The etiquette is different
>
>
> That's healthy.  Vive la diff?rence!
>
> E
> c

That may be healthy, to the point you consistently forget that such a
usage is ok here, but not ok there, or you just don't remember, or
perhaps you go read the rules, and later discover that the rules do not
match the reality.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] HomePage

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> >Notice that in bridge, there's a dead...
> >
> I know that "le mort" is the correct term in French,
> but the literal
> translation doesn't work here. In English we call it
> "the dummy".
>
> Eclecticology

quite amazing the number of things I am learning in
Wikipedia...

the dummy...thanks Ec !

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list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] HomePage

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> >Notice that in bridge, there's a dead...
> >
> I know that "le mort" is the correct term in French,
> but the literal
> translation doesn't work here. In English we call it
> "the dummy".
>
> Eclecticology

quite amazing the number of things I am learning in
Wikipedia...

the dummy...thanks Ec !

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposed table restructuring

body:
Richards,Michael wrote:
> I don't know the exact impact combining them back will have to
> response times.

Nobody does until it has been tested with realistic amounts of
traffic.  And since we don't have a staging site with a traffic
simulator, it will have to be tested on the real thing.  But what if
it turns out to be really bad?  Will there be a switch that can be
easily flipped to restore the old system?  The conversion back and
forth doesn't seem trivial to me.

My old prejudice about databases say that the bandwidth (bytes/sec) of
the database socket is a common bottleneck, which makes it a bad idea
to pump blob data through there.  Blob-like data can be stored on file
instead, with only a filename in the database.  I have no idea if this
design decision has had any impact on Wikipedia's performance, and I
realize it would be just as hard to test as the proposed merger
between cur and old.

According to the Webalizer tables, on November 20th, 13 GB was flowing
out of the English Wikipedia server, for an average of 158 KB/second
(1.2 Mbit/s) (over 24 hours).  But do we have any idea what the peak
bandwidth is?  I guess the amount of traffic between Apache/PHP engine
and the MySQL database should be at the same order of magnitude, if
every page view reads the text from the cur table.

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


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Differences in the language versions,
 was RE: Re: Press release : Logo putsch   onthe FrenchWikipedia !

body:
The Cunctator a ?crit:
>>From: Ray Saintonge on Thursday, December 11, 2003 2:45 PM
>>Anthere wrote:
>>
>>>Ruimu a rit:
>>>
>>>>"Constans, Camille (C.C.)" :
>>>>
>>>>>Each wikipia has his own rules. Often the same than en:, but
>>>>>not everytime. I think each wikipedia must have his own rules.
>>>>>Respecting
>>>>>some choosed by the wikimedia fundation, npov for instance.
>>>>
>>>>Each wp have its own customs, but should share the same rules, I
>>>
> guess.
>
>>>>In theory, each wp entry should be the perfect translation of the
>>>>same entry
>>>>in any language, don't you think ? (IMO encyclopedic goal is to try
>>>>to reach
>>>>universalism.)
>>>>Then, basic rules should be the same, and the Chinese NPOV is to be
>>>>the same
>>>>as French one or Rwandese one.
>>>
>>>I do not think in theory each wp entry should be a translation of
>>
> the
>
>>>other languages. It is too ideal :-)
>>>I think each should have its specificity, its special taste. Then we
>>>can inspire from the other versions to set each local version.
>>>you are true that chinese npov should be the same than french or
>>>rwandese one of course. But that might be expressed differently.
>>
>>I agree with Anth?re.  There are very few rules that should apply in
>
> the
>
>>same way to all languages.  The idea of NPOV should apply to all
>>languages, but the way it's implemented is going to change.  Something
>>might be a problem  for one language, but not for another.
>
>
> I have to say that on principle and as a matter of policy I strongly
> disagree with Ray and Anthere. The overall goal *does* need to be that
> each wp entry should be the perfect translation of the same entry in any
> language.
>
> Each language version should *not* have its own special taste.
>
> As a matter of course the fact that languages are intertwined with
> ethnicity, nationality, and modes of expression means that the same
> content will be discussed differently in different languages.

I must admit I see not how you reconcile the idea that an entry "should
be a perfect translation" and the idea the content of an entry "will be
discussed differently in different languages".

> As a matter of course the fact that Wikipedia is a volunteer project
> means that contributions are shaped by the contributors' individual
> priorities. As French-speakers have statistically different priorities
> than English-speakers or Chinese-speakers, as a matter of course the
> language versions will have differently weighted contributions.
>
> But we should not have *as a goal* different priorities, different
> discussions of the same content.

I agree with this

The goal, as Ruimi said, is to try to
> reach universalism.

Ruimi is very right here.

> It's a lot easier for Wikipedia contributors if we celebrate ethnic
> differences--and no matter how you slice it, celebrating the forking of
> the Wikipedia concept for each language is doing just that (and I'd be
> happy to hear convincing arguments otherwise)--but it's not better for
> Wikipedia.
>
> That said, we're still growing and I think there are many significant
> errors in judgment in terms of establishing policy for the
> English-language version of Wikipedia, and I'm not advocating using
> universalism as a club to make every language follow en.wiki's example.
>
> I *am* advocating two things:
> 1. Making it clear that the ultimate goal is universalism and
> consistency across all languages.
> 2. Improving the software to allow for better integration of the
> different languages (e.g. one user account, the option to have multiple
> languages in recent changes and watchlists, etc.)
> 3. Stop using mailing lists and use bulletin-board type systems
> integrated with Wikipedia.
>
> This is all we'd have to do, I suspect, to make sure that we do work
> towards the ultimate goal of universalism and consistency.
>
> --tc

very well said :-)


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories simplified

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Your idea of letting the software interpret [[List of ...]]
>>as in [[List of biology topics]] is interesting,
>>although Magnus' category code is much further along.
>>Also, [[List of actors]] is a rather different page;
>>it's encyclopedic, whereas [[List of biology topics]],
>>by listing pages in Wikipedia, is /about/ Wikipedia.
>>(By rights, it should be [[Wikipedia:List of biology topics]].)
>>So the [[Category:]] plan can replace [[List of biology topics]]
>>but should leave [[List of actors]] as it is.

>Which in no way hinders us to take one (existing) list or the other
>(e.g., [[List of biology topics]]), and run a bot (once) adding
>"[[Category:Biology]]" on all pages listed there. The [[List of biology
>topics]] will then be obsolete and can be redirected to
>[[Category:Biology]].

Yes, this is the straightforward way to apply your code,
and it's consistent with Cunc's plea that we start with a small change
to the way that people currently use Wikipedia.  Your code does this.

My point is that [[List of actors]] isn't quite the same thing.
(Although it's iffy -- a better example might be
[[List of monarchs of Great Britain]], which any encyclopedia should have
among its articles, rather than among its backroom [[Category:]] namespace.)
So no bot should be run on [[List of monarchs of Great Britain]] --
or in any case, only a modified bot that won't create the redirect.

Thus, I must decide that ''merely'' changing the software's interpretation
of [[List of ...]] pages is insufficient; we should introduce [[Category:]].
Thus your code (or maybe [[Category=]] to avoid overloading the colon)
is the way to go, IMO.

We can complicate it more later if we need to. ^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: [Wikitech-l] Categories simplified

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote in part:

>I also think that we can use a bot to move [[list of X]] to [[X]],
>where X doesn't already exist, mark that article as a category
>([[type=category]]), and add ([[category=X]]) to any links in a list
>on that page.

We don't want to do this!

[[List of presidents of the United States]]
and [[President of the United States]]
are quite different articles, but both are encyclopedic.
(That is, neither was created just to help ''us'' write Wikipedia,
in contrast to [[List of biology topics]].)
We started the [[List of ...]] naming convention in part
to help distinguish these articles naturally.

-- Toby


body:
Magnus Manske wrote in part:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>Magnus Manske wrote:

>>>Which in no way hinders us to take one (existing) list or the other
>>>(e.g., [[List of biology topics]]), and run a bot (once) adding
>>>"[[Category:Biology]]" on all pages listed there. The [[List of biology
>>>topics]] will then be obsolete and can be redirected to
>>>[[Category:Biology]].

>>How does this deal with, say, [[list of sports]] which is not just a
>>alphabetical list?

>I am aware that not all the "list of" things can be dumped into a bot
>like that. I looked at [[list of sports]], and several of the "groups"
>already have their own article (e.g., [[gymnastics]]). So, what I'd do
>is, mark *all* the articles on [[list of sports]] as [[Category:sport]],
>and then some also as [[Category:Extreme sports]] etc., with
>[[Category:Extreme sports]] marked as [[Category:sport]].

And you would ''not'' redirect [[List of sports]] at all, right?
That's a fine article for an encyclopedia as it is,
and not quite the same thing as [[List of sport topics]].
[[Category:Sport]] should more closely resemble [[List of sport topics]]
(which has additional entries such as [[Sport medicine]]).
Granted, [[List of sport topics]] doesn't actually exist currently,
but it might have done; and if so, it would be different.

In fact, we might ''start'' running a bot, set to create redirects,
on pages of the form [[List of ... topics]] (with human confirmation).
Then we can set up a bot for other [[List of ...]] articles
that does ''not'' create redirects -- but this one will require
a great deal more help from the human operator.

-- Toby


from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

body:
>-----Message d'origine-----
>De : Karl Eichwalder [mailto:ke at gnu.franken.de]
>Envoy? : vendredi 12 d?cembre 2003 07:54
>? : wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>Objet : [Wikipedia-l] Re: Database server trouble
>
>
>Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
>
>> Honestly, I'd love it if we made the wiki a little more
>> database-independent. But none of the postgres advocates have yet
>> submitted actual working code for it.
>
>It's on my list to work in this area (try to port the WP to
>PostgreSQL);
>since I'm not a database hacker, this might take some time.  I wouldn't
>waste my time on a database system like mysql which lacks SQL key
>features and does not conform to the standard.
>
>mysql is a tool for small web applications.

I'm sorry to say that, but mysql 3.23.xx worked fine until now on pliny. No ?
Maybe an upgrade of the mysql server ?

Shaihulud


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] French usage

body:
Matt M. wrote:

>>This might all be easier in English than other languages though: most
>>Americans accept British English as a valid and correct form of English
>>and many have at least some exposure to it,...
>>
>except that none of them can figure out that we spell it "spelt," and they
>keep reverting it... ;)
>
>>I'm not sure to what extent
>>French people are familiar with French-Canadian speech, or vice-versa.
>>
>Ben l y'en savent pas grand'chose, pantoute, mais on fait de not' possib',
>nous-aut'.
>
>I may have partially shoved through a policy similar to the en:wiki (use the
>dialect appropriate to the subject of the article) when I insisted that
>discussion of gay people in [[fr:Montrl]] use the spelling "gai," which is
>official in Canada, instead of the European "gay."
>
>And when I write an article on the French wiki, if I use a standard Quebec
>French usage and someone alters it, I will revert it right back... just like
>with "spelt" on the en:wiki.
>
I can be understanding when I know that the person making the correction
doesn't know any better.  It's more irritating when somebody insists
that their own way is the only right way.  I tend to go after the ones
who use "practice" as a verb.  When I went to school "practice" was the
noun, and "practise" was the verb.  If I see "gay" in a French text, it
looks like the writer has used the English word.  Letting these
so-called corrections can't be right, because it acquiesces to something
that not everybody will see as a correction.

Ec

>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: French wiki argument on language

body:
John C. Penta a ?crit:
> [snip abstruse French language argument]
>
> No offense meant to Anthere, but it's a huge post.:-)

My apologies :-)
That was my last attempt on a npov topic I have been dealing with for
nearly 2 years :-)
I'll shut up now.

> My personal opinion, as a distinctly monolingual English speaker:
>
> Go with what people *use*, not with what's officially correct.

Agreed.
But tired to swim against the flow.

> Wikipedia, by its very nature as a mass-edited compendium, is *not* going to be the preserve of the higher-class.

Let's wait for lower class to get here then :-)

> We're blue-collar, and better for that, I suppose. Also, purely out of usability, we're the better for keeping up with the language.

Agreed as well :-)

> John

PomPom


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Virus

body:
Anthere wrote:

>--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>>Anthere wrote:
>>
>>>Notice that in bridge, there's a dead...
>>>
>>I know that "le mort" is the correct term in French,
>>but the literal
>>translation doesn't work here. In English we call it
>>"the dummy".
>>
>>>Eclecticology
>>>
>
>quite amazing the number of things I am learning in
>Wikipedia...
>
>the dummy...thanks Ec !
>--------
>
>Guys, naturally, you all understood that
>anthere6 at sleep-dream-die.com is not me. This is copy
>of an old public email, perhaps a year ago.
>
>I received a personal copy of that stuff myself on
>anthere6. It looks like there was a dirty thing
>attached to it (I am not sure, PC virus on macintosh
>are luckily not very efficient :-)).
>
>I hope no one had problem.
>Might be wise to add this adress to the list of
>forbidden adress. I suppose someone liberated the mail
>by mistake. It should have been stop by the spam virus
>killer, no ?
>
I had no problems, but then I rarely notice when attacments are there
unless the correspondent makes a point of saying so.  The subject of the
correspondence was so simple that there would be no point to an attachment.

I received three copies of this posting, and now I'm glad to hear that
Anth?re is not so bored with us that she has to resurrect eMails from
last February. :-)

Ec


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Angelique

body:
I've just blocked User:Angelique for the same reason
that Allan blocked NightCrawler. She was yet another
reincarnation of DW, and again showed the same
behaviour and was the same IP as DW did.

Angela.

[WikiEN-l] Re: User:NightCrawler
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-November/008493.html)

> I looked up a single NightCrawler log entry. It came
from the same small
> range DW was using.

OK. I put a block on User:NightCrawler.

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)

________________________________________________________________________
BT Yahoo! Broadband - Save ?80 when you order online today. Hurry! Offer ends 21st December 2003. The way the internet was meant to be. http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=21064/*http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Categories simplified

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>[[List of presidents of the United States]]
>>and [[President of the United States]]
>>are quite different articles, but both are encyclopedic.
>>(That is, neither was created just to help ''us'' write Wikipedia,
>>in contrast to [[List of biology topics]].)
>>We started the [[List of ...]] naming convention in part
>>to help distinguish these articles naturally.

>What specifically do you mean here by "encyclopedic"?

The bit in parentheses just after I used the word:

>>(That is, neither was created just to help ''us'' write Wikipedia,
>>in contrast to [[List of biology topics]].)

This shouldn't be taken as a complete definition of the term, of course!
This is a rough operational definition, asking why we created the page:
to improve the encyclopedia directly for the reader ("encyclopedic"),
or to help us in our task of writing the encyclopedia ("backstage").

-- Toby


from_name: Green Mountain

subject: [Wikitech-l] slow downs

body:
Wikipedia usually runs very smoothly ans quickly, but there are some
times (such as now), where wikipedia doesn not respond at all.  Why is
this?

Greenmountainboy


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
> From: Magnus Manske on Friday, December 12, 2003 3:59 AM
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Categories simplified
>
> Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> >Your idea of letting the software interpret [[List of ...]]
> >as in [[List of biology topics]] is interesting,
> >although Magnus' category code is much further along.
> >Also, [[List of actors]] is a rather different page;
> >it's encyclopedic, whereas [[List of biology topics]],
> >by listing pages in Wikipedia, is /about/ Wikipedia.
> >(By rights, it should be [[Wikipedia:List of biology topics]].)
> >So the [[Category:]] plan can replace [[List of biology topics]]
> >but should leave [[List of actors]] as it is.
> >
> >
> Which in no way hinders us to take one (existing) list or the other
> (e.g., [[List of biology topics]]), and run a bot (once) adding
> "[[Category:Biology]]" on all pages listed there. The [[List of
biology
> topics]] will then be obsolete and can be redirected to
> [[Category:Biology]].
>
How does this deal with, say, [[list of sports]] which is not just a
alphabetical list?


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
This seems a minor dispute about how the article is to be organized. Lir
seems to want to provide an introductory summary at the beginning of the
article, but this is very much 172's article, he having written the bulk of
it. 172's attitude is not very good, but our practice has never been to ban
anyone for being mildly aggressive. Should 172 also request mediation,
perhaps that could happen.

Fred

> From: A [name omitted for privacy reasons] <wikilir at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 19:10:18 -0800 (PST)
> To: A [name omitted for privacy reasons] <wikilir at yahoo.com>, wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration (or Mediation)
>
> I believe numerous requests have been made for
> mediation, at New Imperialism, over the past year.
> ?
> I would like to request arbitration at [[New
> Imperialism]], where 172 is reverting several
> paragraphs I have added; on the grounds that "some" of
> the information belongs "elsewhere".
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=New_Imperialism&diff=0&oldid=1936
33> 6
>
> I think such reversions should be a bannable offence,
> it is inappropriate to make mass reverts, simply
> because you are aesthetically unhappy with a portion
> of a user's edits.
>
> I am trying to improve the Wiki, and my attempts are
> constantly opposed by a small group of hostile users;
> who make no attempt to collaborate, instead, they
> attack and revert for any minor mistake. I expect the
> arbitration committee to deal with this issue.
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
> http://photos.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
> From: Toby Bartels on Friday, December 12, 2003 5:07 AM
>
> [[List of presidents of the United States]]
> and [[President of the United States]]
> are quite different articles, but both are encyclopedic.
> (That is, neither was created just to help ''us'' write Wikipedia,
> in contrast to [[List of biology topics]].)
> We started the [[List of ...]] naming convention in part
> to help distinguish these articles naturally.
>
What specifically do you mean here by "encyclopedic"?


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Database server trouble

body:
Brion-
> Database server is down; it really, _really_ didn't like being asked
> how many rows are in the old revisions table for the English Wikipedia.

Who did that? And if it was a sysop query, why the hell are we still/again
allowing those? That's like putting a big red "DoS me" sign on our server.

Regards,

Erik


subject:
[Intlwiki-l] Differences in the language versions,
	was RE:[Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo putsch onthe
	FrenchWikipedia !

body:
> From: Andre Engels on Friday, December 12, 2003 5:36 AM
> On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, The Cunctator wrote:
<snip>
> > But we should not have *as a goal* different priorities, different
> > discussions of the same content. The goal, as Ruimi said, is to try
to
> > reach universalism.
>
> I disagree. Strongly. If universalism as a goal is made official, I'm
> out of here. I find this one of the problems with Wikipedia as it
> currently is (although there are other, even greater problems). I do
> not think Wikipedia should tell everything about everything. An
> encyclopedia should select and summarize information.
>
> > This is all we'd have to do, I suspect, to make sure that we do work
> > towards the ultimate goal of universalism and consistency.
>
> Your ultimate goal is not mine. Farewell.

I won't even get into that. The idea that slightly different ideas about
what the perfect Wikipedia would be in the far future is enough to make
you leave is, frankly, bizarre.

I think you also misinterpreted what I meant by universalism.

>From the dictionary,

u.ni.ver.sal:
   1. Of, relating to, extending to, or affecting the entire world or
all within the world; worldwide: "This discovery of literature has as
yet only partially penetrated the universal consciousness" (Ellen Key).
   2. Including, relating to, or affecting all members of the class or
group under consideration: the universal skepticism of philosophers.
   3. Applicable or common to all purposes, conditions, or situations: a
universal remedy.
   4. Of or relating to the universe or cosmos; cosmic.
   5. Knowledgeable about or constituting all or many subjects;
comprehensively broad.

Huh. That's strange, I have trouble finding some definition which seems
antithetical to what you've said are your goals.

By the way, what I (and I suspect Ruimi) specifically mean by having
universalism as a goal for Wikipedia is that my goal is for Wikipedia to
be applicable or common to all purposes, conditions, or situations.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Localized image logo

body:
First upload your image then from the URL copy its location then put the
following in LocalSettings.php:

$wgLogo             = "the location";

Takes more than sysop or developer access, Brion Vibber (and others with
access to the coding could do this)

Fred

> From: Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
> Organization: Evan Prodromou
> Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 19:10:41 -0500
> To: wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Localized image logo
>
>>>>>> "AP" == Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> writes:
>
> AP> Maybe it's just a stupid question, but if one wanted to change
> AP> the logo in the top-left corner (we have some localized ones),
> AP> I don't know where to put it to make it appear in the right
> AP> spot. Does this it require just sysop access? or developer
> AP> access?
>
> I think it needs to be in /upload/wiki.png, and yes, you need access
> to the file system.
>
> ~ESP
>
> --
> Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
> Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
> The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] sysop on fr

body:
Hello,

2 weeks ago, on fr, we nominated traroth and jeffdelonge as sysop. But only traroth is sysop now ! Can you give the sysop statut to jeffdelonge please ?

Thank you

Shaihulud


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Brilliant prose rename brainstorm

body:
On Fri, 2003-12-12 at 01:59, Erik Moeller wrote:

I believe the name "Brilliant prose" is problematic for several reasons:

- It emphasizes writing, while a good article needs to be written well,
factually accurate, neutral, reasonably complete, nicely illustrated and
well organized. It has to cite its sources, link to related pages and
present all data in a meaningful and comprehensible fashion. I believe
these criteria are not properly encompassed by the word "prose".

    The only things I disagree with in the above are the requirements
    to "cite its sources, link to related pages", as the first one
    only comes into play, if the content is contested. I can think of
    several areas of knowledge, where citing sources, while nice, is
    largely unnecessary. (Physics articles about very easily confirmable
    phenomena for example.)

    Linking to related pages? Well there are really some subjects which
    truly are self contained, and then the links will tend to be to
    subjects not related. I see nothing wrong with this. We should not
    go around removing valid links, because they are not relevant to the
    article. I know there are views which diverge from this, but to
    posit
    this as a requirement for "brilliant prosehood" (for lack of a
    better
    term); well I don't agree with it (at least not yet).

- The word "brilliant" is very vague and difficult to define. Accordingly,
many Wikipedians have different ideas as to what is "brilliant prose".
Some interpret the term pragmatically, feeling that every article that
satisfies certain criteria should end up on BP eventually, even if it's
short and to the point. Others understand BP to be always just a
selection, that is, if the average Wikipedia article was on par with most
traditional encyclopedias, BP should only list the very best.

    How about if we define it communally? As the result of what all
    wikipedians as an editorship point to when the term is uttered?

- Last but not least, it conveys a sense of arrogance, and makes us look
foolish if we list an article that is only slightly "non-brilliant". The
likelihood that this happens seems very high. That also makes the title
sound slightly unprofessional (reminiscent of the fun and games days of
the early Wikipedia)

    Well, a case in point was the article on Rhazes. (First article I
    remember reading on wikipedia BTW) It was simultaneously listed on
    Brilliant prose and Pages needing attention. Thus the likelihood of
    what you claim is one. One for some values of "non-brilliant", that
    is.

I would therefore like to ask you to brainstorm for a better title. My own
understanding of BP is the pragmatic one, that is, I see BP as our
certification mechanism, and every article should eventually pass through
it. As a matter of fact, I would like to see discussions on every talk
page at a certain point to the effect of "When can we get this listed on
BP, what needs to be done, let's do it".

As with all brainstorming, we should begin by just collecting possible
titles without criticizing them. If one of them clearly stands out, we'll
pick it. Otherwise we can vote on it.

    A counter proposal, if you please; expanding on your comments above.
    Why not have several different ways to characterize the articles we
    think are our best, maybe even having different grades, like say
    0.5 Wikipedia, 0.8 Wikipedia, 0.9 Wikipedia and 1.0 Wikipedia?

Here are my ideas:

Certified articles
Certified content
Trusted pages
Trusted area
Safe zone
Approved articles
Golden..
Verfied..

My favorite so far is "Trusted pages".

    Sorry, no offence, but don't like any of those, and haven't got a
    better designation on the lines you are thinking.

    Respectfully:

    Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)

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from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Database server trouble

body:
> However it shouldn't _crash_ the server; that shows (along with the two
> spontaneous MySQL crashes we've had earlier) that there's still a lot
> of work to be done on this new machine before we can declare it to be
> stable and happy.

www.postgresql.org? :-)

Uli


from_name: John C. Penta

subject: [Wikipedia-l] French usage

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
Date: Friday, December 12, 2003 5:33 am
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] French usage

> I can be understanding when I know that the person making the
> correction
> doesn't know any better.  It's more irritating when somebody
> insists
> that their own way is the only right way.  I tend to go after the
> ones
> who use "practice" as a verb.  When I went to school "practice"
> was the
> noun, and "practise" was the verb.  If I see "gay" in a French
> text, it
> looks like the writer has used the English word.  Letting these
> so-called corrections can't be right, because it acquiesces to
> something
> that not everybody will see as a correction.

I suppose that it would be a lost cause to note that practice as noun AND verb is the standard US English spelling?

It may be unusual to someone from Canada (going off your domain, here), but I've never seen it split-hairs style like that even in UK English.

This is sort of pedantic, granted...

But I'm Pedantic-Man.:-)

*whistles 'Triangle Man'*

John


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo putsch on
	the	FrenchWikipedia !

body:
Ruimu wrote:
> In theory, each wp entry should be the perfect translation of the same entry
> in any language, don't you think ? (IMO encyclopedic goal is to try to reach
> universalism.)

I see what you're getting at, but I'm not so sure that it's right.

Consider an article on the [[Statue of Liberty]], which was a gift
from France to the United States.  Both articles will state that fact,
and give some details, but the French language article might quite
naturally and properly say more about some of the particularly French
aspects of the story.

Readers in different languages will have somewhat different
backgrounds and interests.  Different backgrounds mean that we must
take into account different assumptions on what the reader will
already be familiar with.  Different interests mean that we must take
into account different emphasis on what the reader will expect to
learn from an article.

> Then, basic rules should be the same, and the Chinese NPOV is to be
> the same as French one or Rwandese one.

But yes, NPOV is the same, and in the _essentials_, there should be
very little difference between articles in different languages.

--Jimbo


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Database server trouble

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> Honestly, I'd love it if we made the wiki a little more
> database-independent. But none of the postgres advocates have yet
> submitted actual working code for it.

It's on my list to work in this area (try to port the WP to PostgreSQL);
since I'm not a database hacker, this might take some time.  I wouldn't
waste my time on a database system like mysql which lacks SQL key
features and does not conform to the standard.

mysql is a tool for small web applications.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: you seem to have a virus

body:
Dear Vicky and others who wrote me

It is not me who sent this message, but someone with a different adress

If you look very carefully at the heading of the email, you will see that the adress used is not mine (I have always been at yahoo, as anthere5, anthere6, anthere7 and now anthere8).

The person/bot used Anthere as nickname to appear to be me.

The person/bot also used a copy of a mail I send as Anthere6 to the mailing list last february, as an answer to a mail from Eclecticology, on a game issue.

That email was send at my anthere6 adress, as well as on the english and the main list. I had only three though, I am surprised you had 4 Vicky :-)

Yes, it appears to contain a virus.

Yes, it should have been stopped by the anti-virus anti-spam stuff of the mailing list. Either it was not, or someone thought it was a mail from me, and freed it.

I will insist that my email adress is very well registered on all mailing lists. And if I could ever send a mail from another mail adress, I can very well go to the admin interface and liberate the message myself . So should any other messages from someone looking like me be blocked, be careful before freeing it people. And perhaps be careful for any usual editor blocked email as well these days :-)

Vicky, please look at Brion comment on the topic as well.

My Macintosh is well behaved and does not breed with PCs to make ugly little dummy and deadly emails :-)

She is just yearning for Brion new friend.

Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
I got a "virus detected, repair failed" message on four of the
messages you sent to wikipedia-l yesterday.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: you seem to have a virus

body:
Dear Vicky and others who wrote me

It is not me who sent this message, but someone with a different adress

If you look very carefully at the heading of the email, you will see that the adress used is not mine (I have always been at yahoo, as anthere5, anthere6, anthere7 and now anthere8).

The person/bot used Anthere as nickname to appear to be me.

The person/bot also used a copy of a mail I send as Anthere6 to the mailing list last february, as an answer to a mail from Eclecticology, on a game issue.

That email was send at my anthere6 adress, as well as on the english and the main list. I had only three though, I am surprised you had 4 Vicky :-)

Yes, it appears to contain a virus.

Yes, it should have been stopped by the anti-virus anti-spam stuff of the mailing list. Either it was not, or someone thought it was a mail from me, and freed it.

I will insist that my email adress is very well registered on all mailing lists. And if I could ever send a mail from another mail adress, I can very well go to the admin interface and liberate the message myself . So should any other messages from someone looking like me be blocked, be careful before freeing it people. And perhaps be careful for any usual editor blocked email as well these days :-)

Vicky, please look at Brion comment on the topic as well.

My Macintosh is well behaved and does not breed with PCs to make ugly little dummy and deadly emails :-)

She is just yearning for Brion new friend.

Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
I got a "virus detected, repair failed" message on four of the
messages you sent to wikipedia-l yesterday.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo putsch
	onthe	FrenchWikipedia !

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> > Readers in different languages will have somewhat different
> > backgrounds and interests.  Different backgrounds mean that we must
> > take into account different assumptions on what the reader will
> > already be familiar with.  Different interests mean that we must take
> > into account different emphasis on what the reader will expect to
> > learn from an article.
>
> I'm not convinced that we should have as a goal that the articles
> reflect the biases of the readership. I would expect both entries on the
> Statue of Liberty to tell the complete story. I have trouble seeing this
> as anything other than a defense of provincialism.

Well, I didn't mean "biases".  Perhaps my example is not so good.

Suppose you were writing an introductory article on Macintosh OS X for
an audience of Windows users, and another introductory article for
audience of Linux users.  The two audiences will naturally have
different backgrounds and interests, and so each article will
naturally take that into account, even if the two articles cover much
of the same ground.

> If NPOV is the same, then we shouldn't have as a goal articles which
> reflect different biases.

Yes, I do agree with this, but I think that there can be differences
between article versions, even where both are NPOV.

--Jimbo


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Differences between languages (Was: Press release :
	Logo putsch on the	FrenchWikipedia !)

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Ruimu wrote:

>>In theory, each wp entry should be the perfect translation of the same entry
>>in any language, don't you think ? (IMO encyclopedic goal is to try to reach
>>universalism.)

>Consider an article on the [[Statue of Liberty]], which was a gift
>from France to the United States.  Both articles will state that fact,
>and give some details, but the French language article might quite
>naturally and properly say more about some of the particularly French
>aspects of the story.

I'm not sure that people are in as much conflict as they think.
Contrast these items:

* Given the various proclivities of the writers on [[en:]] and [[fr:]],
  we would naturally expect [[fr:Statue de la Libert?]] to have
  more info on the French aspects than [[en:Statue of Liberty]].
  This is the way things would probably develop, and it's perfectly OK.

* Whatever may be written on [[fr:Statue de la Libert?]]
  about the French aspects, anybody that rewrites that information
  for [[en:Statue of Liberty]] is doing a good thing.
  If it's good for [[fr:]], then it's good for [[en:]], and vice versa.

You can continue to make subtler contrasts along these lines.
For example, when do you break a new article
[[History of the Statue of Liberty in France]]
because too much has been written on the French aspects
for the main article?  Different languages will do this differently,
but in the limit of increasing depth of Wikipedia's coverage,
they will both do something like this eventually.  And so on.

One may say that all languages are headed forthe same goal
but that we expect each language to follow a somewhat different path.
When we are all finished with all of the perfect encyclopedias,
then they may well all be perfect translations of each other.
But of course, we will never be finished!!!  It's potential vs actual.

-- Toby


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Erik,

Thanks for bringing up the brilliance/excellence issue again. I note how
you have related it to 'completion', 'trust' & 'certification' as well.
It reminds me of Larry's idea of the Sifter project, and both your idea
and his really go back to the original Nupedia project.

A WikiWiki is always going to have quality control problems. If any user
can edit any page any time, then there's really no way to guarantee the
conformance of ANY ONE PARTICULAR ARTICLE to our standards.

Of course, on the whole, we can still be confident of having 99.5%
adhering to those standards (here I assume that only 1 in 200 are out of
whack at any given moment). But many people find that statistic
unsatisfactory.

As an American, I have a 99.98% chance of NOT dying in a car crash next
year. 45,000 out of 250,000,000 people, however, WILL die that way,
though. So a lot of people think cars should be made safer, and the auto
industry, highway engineers and legislators have been making slow
progress: the death toll has dropped 5,000 in recent decades, althought
the total population has increased.

I think we ought to revive the concept of certification. I'm not saying
I have a completely satisfactory proposal in mind, of course. But I
think if we all put our heads together we can come up with something.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


body:
----- Original Message -----
From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
Date: Friday, December 12, 2003 9:37 am
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Brilliant prose rename brainstorm

> The idea that articles can have different degrees (or different
> categories) of certification also has a certain appeal. But I
> prefer to
> make small steps to a full-fledged certification system, so that
> we can
> always turn around if something goes wrong.

    Much agreement. IMHO, a cert system would be a good idea for one very simple reason: As it stands, NONE of my profs will trust ANYTHING from Wiki. I imagine many professors and teachers are like that; It would help immensely if there was some credibility built up.

    Really, really annoying when Wiki has a fact I can't easily find anywhere else.

   John


body:
I'm convinced that for Wikipedia to be a feeder for a free, open source
encyclopedia WHICH READERS CAN HAVE CONFIDENCE IN, we must have some
sort of certification system. Again, precisely what that system will be,
I don't know. I'm a software engineer, and I can't predict the design of
a system before I start coding it; just knowing the requirements is
never enough.

The first thing I'd like to try would involve /specific versions/ of
Wikipedia articles, which if I recall correctly was central to Larry
Sanger's "sifter" proposal. This, of course, raises the question of how
we decide which version to certify. But, being a software engineer (and
a very confident, optimistic person :-) I see no reason not to go down
that road even if I can't see past the first turn.

 Two roads diverged in a snowy wood
 And looking down one as far as I could
 .
 .
 .
 I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Ed Poor


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories simplified

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Your idea of letting the software interpret [[List of ...]]
>as in [[List of biology topics]] is interesting,
>although Magnus' category code is much further along.
>Also, [[List of actors]] is a rather different page;
>it's encyclopedic, whereas [[List of biology topics]],
>by listing pages in Wikipedia, is /about/ Wikipedia.
>(By rights, it should be [[Wikipedia:List of biology topics]].)
>So the [[Category:]] plan can replace [[List of biology topics]]
>but should leave [[List of actors]] as it is.
>
>
Which in no way hinders us to take one (existing) list or the other
(e.g., [[List of biology topics]]), and run a bot (once) adding
"[[Category:Biology]]" on all pages listed there. The [[List of biology
topics]] will then be obsolete and can be redirected to
[[Category:Biology]].

Magnus


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Load balancing

body:
Please don't post in HTML.

Best,
Sascha Noyes

On Friday 12 December 2003 09:39, GreenMountain wrote:
>

>
Is the load balancing on en the cause of the
> slowdown?  It seems that a lot of times, en2 might be down,
> but en one will redirect me to en.  The French wikipedia
> never has the problems that en exhibits, so I don't see why
> there couldn't be load balancing between all languages, with a
> removal of en2.

>

>
Greenmountainboy

>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>----------

Get your free 15 Mb POP3 email @alexandria.cc

>
Click here ->  target="_blank">http://www.alexandria.cc/

--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikinotes

body:
I think Wikinotes is a great idea. It should include, besides synopses of the
chapters/acts, character sketches, historical context, notes on language and
style. Other information, such as biographies of the authors, could reference
existing Wikipedia articles.

Danny
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from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

body:
> Yes, and it's a great pity.
> The colours on the main page are more than kitsch, they are revolting.
> The community on fr: seem far more concerned with style over content. I
> understand that there is a natural desire to make our environment
> "pretty", but this xmas logo is a step too far.
>
> I will no longer be working on fr: until this situation is resolved.

What it is so revolting to have some colors on the main page?

Why have concerned with style mean necessary haven't concerned with content?

Can't we have concerned with both?

Sure all those things are POV, but don't believe in illusion, all in
Wikipedia is POV.

Just as an example, the name of our project, Wikipedia, comes from a Latin
word carrying western notions and can be consider as not fully NPOV.

Knowledge sharing must not be necessary a cold thing, keep cool :o)

About the Christmas logo:

- First, contrarily to English world Christmas, French translation "Noel"
doesn't make any allusion to the Christ. I don't see well the religious
issue. Personally, I have more concern in commercial issue of this
celebration ;o)

- Secondly, if you really think encyclopedia must stay a cold thing, what
about to put the logo only in user, meta and talk pages?

Aoineko


subject:
Telling the whole story RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release :
	Logoputsch ontheFrenchWikipedia !

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:
> Which is what this is, and I didn't see until I wrote that last line-
> censorship. What's being suggested in the argument that the different
> languages of Wikipedia should have different content is that some people,
> because they don't think speakers of my language would be interested in a
> topic, block our access to information on it.

Jake, I have to just say bluntly that this bit is just complete
nonsense.  No one is talking about censorship nor about blocking
access to information.  I frankly don't know where you get off
suggesting such a thing.

What we are talking about is whether we should expect that, ideally,
every individual-language article in wikipedia will be essentially a
translation of every other language.  I say no, we shouldn't expect
that, even while we expect the totality of the encyclopedias to
contain essentially the same information.

The reason is that issues of presentation and emphasis to take proper
account of reader backgrounds and interests will naturally lead us to
organize things slightly differently in different languages.

That's not to say that we should keep secret from Jake the political
reasons why France gave the Statue of Liberty to the U.S., but merely
that the way that information is presented may differ significantly
(NOT in terms of bias, I don't mean that) for French readers versus
American readers.

Sorry if I sound grumpy, but after all that we do around here to
preserve openness, I don't like to be accused of advocating censorship
when nothing I'm saying could even remotely plausibly be construed as
an advocacy of censorship.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Table restructuring: Plan B

body:
There recently are two threads on this list: Table restructuring and
Postgres. Which made me thinking: Why not use the opportunity to support
both?

Here's the plan (V0.1alpha):
* A new table (or two) for the database, storing the proposed "essentials"
* No changing of the cur/old tables due to speed concerns
* Creation of a high-level database wrapper class

My vision (random thought, actually;-) is this: No SQL statements *at
all* in the PHP, except for the database wrapper. Advantages:
* Use of all the goodies (simple PHP code, simple identification of any
article version etc.)
* Easy switching to postgres/sqlite/whatever

So the wrapper will present a "universal" database, and do all the ugly
work. I'd imagine "DBmysql", "DBpostgres", etc. as classes. That will
not only make the wiki-part of the script more flexible (imagine an
intranet installation running sqlite - only apache and PHP needed!), it
will also make debugging and future extension easier.

One downside, though: major refactoring...

Magnus


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>>From: Magnus Manske on Friday, December 12, 2003 3:59 AM
>>
>>
>>Which in no way hinders us to take one (existing) list or the other
>>(e.g., [[List of biology topics]]), and run a bot (once) adding
>>"[[Category:Biology]]" on all pages listed there. The [[List of
>>
>>
>biology
>
>
>>topics]] will then be obsolete and can be redirected to
>>[[Category:Biology]].
>>
>>
>>
>How does this deal with, say, [[list of sports]] which is not just a
>alphabetical list?
>
>
I am aware that not all the "list of" things can be dumped into a bot
like that. I looked at [[list of sports]], and several of the "groups"
already have their own article (e.g., [[gymnastics]]). So, what I'd do
is, mark *all* the articles on [[list of sports]] as [[Category:sport]],
and then some also as [[Category:Extreme sports]] etc., with
[[Category:Extreme sports]] marked as [[Category:sport]].

That will result in a *long* alphabetical list on [[Category:sport]],
but that page will also show links to its immediate subcategories,
[[Category:Extreme sports]] among them. There, you can find that section.

We can work on the display details, though: On a category page with more
than 100 articles and more than 5 subcategories, we could skip the list
of articles by default and present only the links to the sub-categories,
as well as a link "show all articles in this category". That will save
rendering and bandwith.

Magnus


body:
> From: Of Jimmy Wales on Friday, December 12, 2003 10:43 AM
>
> Ruimu wrote:
> > In theory, each wp entry should be the perfect translation of the
same
> entry
> > in any language, don't you think ? (IMO encyclopedic goal is to try
to
> reach
> > universalism.)
>
> I see what you're getting at, but I'm not so sure that it's right.
>
> Consider an article on the [[Statue of Liberty]], which was a gift
> from France to the United States.  Both articles will state that fact,
> and give some details, but the French language article might quite
> naturally and properly say more about some of the particularly French
> aspects of the story.

> Readers in different languages will have somewhat different
> backgrounds and interests.  Different backgrounds mean that we must
> take into account different assumptions on what the reader will
> already be familiar with.  Different interests mean that we must take
> into account different emphasis on what the reader will expect to
> learn from an article.

I'm not convinced that we should have as a goal that the articles
reflect the biases of the readership. I would expect both entries on the
Statue of Liberty to tell the complete story. I have trouble seeing this
as anything other than a defense of provincialism.

> > Then, basic rules should be the same, and the Chinese NPOV is to be
> > the same as French one or Rwandese one.
>
> But yes, NPOV is the same, and in the _essentials_, there should be
> very little difference between articles in different languages.

If NPOV is the same, then we shouldn't have as a goal articles which
reflect different biases.


from_name: Mark Christensen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo
	putschonthe	FrenchWikipedia !

body:
> If NPOV is the same, then we shouldn't have as a goal
> articles which reflect different biases.

We're not saying that articles should reflect different biases, but that
they will reflect different interests, and therefore different
emphasis's.

We don't just want every article to include the maximum amount of
information. That's just going to overload the reader.  Instead, we want
articles that people will think are worth reading.  That means
emphasizing the things people are most likely to care about.  It also
means not explaining things everybody already knows in great detail.

Different audiences require different presentation, but not different
facts.

Does that make sense?


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> A few points: that's not what we do on Wikipedia. We write [[Macintosh
> OS X]] with the goal of writing it from an omniscient perspective for an
> unknown audience.

Not "for an unknown audience" but "for readers of a given language".

And we should not pretend that we don't make assumptions aboout what
our readers know.  When we mention New York City, we don't normally
say "New York, a large city in the United States" because we can
naturally assume that English speakers know such a thing.  But if we
mention Tianjin, we might very well say such a thing, because we don't
naturally assume that English speakers would know.

> "Backgrounds and interests" is another way of saying "biases".

No, it isn't.  It's entirely different.  Backgrounds and interests can
lead to biases, of course.  But they aren't the same thing _as_
biases.

> I simply don't think it's possible to come up with an example of text on
> Wikipedia which would benefit from being substantively different in
> different languages. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Well, I think it's hard to come up with examples of articles that
could not, in some way, benefit from being substantively different in
some aspect, in at least some different languages.

Imagine an article about an event in World War II that happened in
Catalonia, Spain.  In English, that article ought to contain _within
it_ an explanation of where Barcelona is, how close it is to France,
or whatever.  Sure, we could leave it to a click for readers to figure
out for themselves, but the narrative is much more smooth if we
acknowledge that the typical "unknown" reader in English will need
that basic information in order to process the article.

That same section would be boring and stupid for speakers of Catalan,
and we can safely assume that a mere link will suffice for the
majority of readers in that case.

> (And one would expect the Wikipedia in English--or in any language--to
> discuss Chapman, Pope, Leconte de Lisle and Chen Minhua.)

Yes, we do agree about that of course.

> Now, when we're dealing with content that ideally is perfectly factual,
> that avoids implied meaning, a lot of the problem of judging translation
> goes away.
>
> And guess what? At Wikipedia we strive to avoid implied meaning.

Yes, but at the same time, we frequently and wisely make assumptions
about our readers all the time.

> Do you believe that an article can be truly neutral?

Yes, very much so.  Neutrality is an ideal, but it is an achievable
ideal.

--Jimbo


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo putsch onthe
	FrenchWikipedia !

body:
John C. Penta wrote:
> > I don't agree. "The full story" is always much too long to tell.
> > Instead,we give a summary of it. And that might well be different
> > for different
> > languages. The Dutch page on [[Stabilisation Force Iraq]] has a
> > separatesection on the Dutch presence in it, and the opinion of
> > the Dutch political
> > parties on that subject. I'd expect the English language version
> > to mention
> > that there are Dutch in SFIR, but not that it takes half of the first
> > paragraph, or the discussion in the Dutch parliament.
>
> Bad example. Some Anglophones may well be curious about such things, y'know, but can't read Dutch.
>
> Include it...in a separate article.

Then I think you should say that it's a "good example" of how the
layout and organization of articles can quite properly differ across
different languages.  No one is suggesting that information be
*omitted*, merely that the organization and presentation, the choice
of what to put in a main article versus a sidebar article, can
legitimately be different to the extent that the audiences differ.

--Jimbo


from_name: Murray Woodman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Narrowing focus

body:
* Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
|
| I also added a proposal for applying this feature to categorization;
| see here:
|
|
| http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorization_with_field-value_pairs

Hi. I'm new to the list but have been following the discussion regarding
metadata with some interest. I welcome this discussion because I believe
that Wikipedia could gain a lot from adding "metadata" to the articles.
I am a complete newbie when it comes to Wikipedia but have been
interested in the categorisation of content for a while. I have just had
a look at the above document and wish to make a few comments. There has
also just been a flourish of mails on the list and this post applies to
them as well.

1. What actually meant by category?

I believe that the relationship "category" is perhaps being used too
liberally and that it could lead to problems down the track. Certainly I
can see some problems in the example already given. The main problem I
see so far is that category has been used to cover different concepts:
"type/instance", "type/subtype", "whole/part" and "related". Mixing
these up will cause problems for those wanting to etract the metadata
and do something with it. From a web surfers or a display perspective it
looks OK because these three concepts can some kind of containment. Type
pages can list instances. Type pages can list subtypes, pages can list
related.

I'll take a quick look at one of the examples given so far to show what
I mean:

Example A:

w:William Carlos Williams
[[category=American poets]]
[[category=20th-century Americans]]

In this example category is being used as a type/instance:
- William Carlos Williams IsA American Poet
- William Carlos Williams IsA 20th-century American

Example B:

w:American poets
[[category=Americans]]
[[category=poets]]

In this example category is being used as a type/subtype
- American poet IsASubType of American
- American poet IsASubType of Poet

Example C:

w:Canada
[[category=History of Canada]]

In this later example it is being used as a "related" link. Maybe this
could be considered a "facet" of the article.
- History of Canada isAbout Canada

Example D:

w:Muffler
[[category=Car]]

And here is a "part/whole" relationship thrown in for good measure.
- Muffler IsAPartOf Car

The point is that "category" is really disguising all of these
"containment" relationships. I believe that it would be a big mistake
for users to apply the term liberally across the whole site as you are
really hiding just as much as you are revealing. You will have achieved
you aim of being able to provide lists but I also believe that you would
have missed a big opportunity to provide some structure to the textual
content you already have.

I therefore beieve that a reaosnable case could be made for the
following basic roles:
[[category=x]]    type/instance
[[superType=x]]   type/subtype
[[related=x]]     related
[[whole=x]]       part/whole

IMO the "category" or type/instance relationship will be the one most
commonly used. This is where all of the low hanging fruit is - what with
the list pages and all.

There are a few further short comings (but I guess that these were non
aims anyway)
- How do you express properties?. eg: Elvis hasProperty diedAtAge 42.
- How do you express other relationships? eg Elvis played Rock

If you were going to deal with these two situations then things get a
bit more complicated syntax wise. You would also need to loosen up the
kinds of roles which were allowed.

2. Where can assertions be made?

The current formulation assumes that the current page is the subject,
however, there will be circumstances where this won't bethe case. This
will happen in situations where it is easier to group assertions
together. For example, on any "lists" page an author is listing out
instances of a certain type (x isA y). In this case x is the subject of
the assertion but not the subject of the page - the subject is "List of
Ys". It therefore might be of benefit to be able to specify all three
parts of a triple on these pages.

eg.List of Colours
red [red: category=colour]
blue [blue: category=colour]

[nb: I am not proposing a syntax here - just showing that all three
parts of a triple should be able to be expressed.]

This means that type information can be managed in one place and that
the author doesn't have to open up every Colour page to add the info. If
this were possible then it would be very easy to mark up type
information quickly. The same could probably be said for timelines.
However, I do note that the rationale for the proposal was to avoid just
this type of thing as it is tedious to keep lists of things. Personally,
I do agree with this rationale, however, it might be more natural for
the maintainers of lists to specify all of the relationships in one
place. This would lead to duplication of information however.

A stronger case for being able to supply a full triple can be made by
considering that some pages deal with complex relationships and it makes
sense to be able to include the full triple on that page.

eg.Complementary Colours
Blue and Green should never be seen. [blue:clashesWith=green]
Blue and Orange are cool. [blue:complements=orange]

These last features probably fall outside the 80/20 for the
categorisation system. I'm just flagging them as something that users
may want to do in the future.

[I have just seen that there has been some recent conversion on this on
the list!]

3. What do the parts of the triple represent?

The point has been made by others that all parts of the triple can be
represented by Wikipedia pages. IMO this is an amzingly strong point of
the system. ie. Every page represents a subject and the subjects can be
all parts of a triple: "objects" and "predicates" as well as "subjects".
Don't forget the predicate!

The area where it falls down is in trying to represent discrete values
which are generally represented by properties - the value doesn't really
represent a subject. eg.
Elvis ageAtDeath 42
Life hasMeaningOf 42

"42" could be a subject in Wikipedia by being given a page (eg. this has
been done for representing years) but this doesn't mean that all
property assignments should necessariy link to this page. In the Elvis
example it probably shouldn't link. In the Life example it could.

So, I am arguing that a metadata system needs a way of specifying plain
property values. I guess that maybe I should get with the Wiki program
and realise that "42" could just be a blank page waiting for someone to
add some content to it. Wikis are very good at growing in the areas they
need to.

4. A look at some of the Disadvantages listed at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorization_with_field-value_pairs

* Huge amount of manual work to do to categorize English Wikipedia

There is a hell of a lot of info contained in the lists pages. Wikipedia
is largely about proper nouns and instances of things. This is all
contained in the lists pages. You can get up and running very quickly
with this.

* Lists of articles and sub-categories may get unreasonable long
(although this can be ameliorated with careful categorization schemes).

If you output the lists with a script then in must be able to support
paging. Imagine a list of all of the "people" in Wikipedia. Lists of
types high in the type hierarchy will always have many instances.

* Unclear generalization of what the "type" field means. What other
types would there be?*

I didn't understand what you were trying to achive with
[[type=category]]. Assuming that categories are for type/instance
relationships then you could have:

w:American poets
[[category=type]]
- American poets IsA Type

This way you can have a "Types" page which would list American Poet and
all other types in the system. I would just drop the the [type=x]
because that is exactly what [category=] is doing, assuming that
category represents type/instance :)

* Unclear whether categories refer to the article or to the subject of
the article. For example, would [[category=biography]] be appropriate fo
r w:William Carlos Williams?*

Good question. In general I would say the "subject of the article". When
I say "Blue isA Colour" I am talking about the subjects (Blue and
Green), not about the articles (the resources). This proposal is
therefore about making assertions between subjects, rather than applying
metadata to articles.

Having said that, the biography is clearly about the article and I would
feel uneasy about saying [[category=biography]] as it would not be
strictly correct. The subject is a person not an article. If you were
doing it properly you would have to create a "articleType" role,
[[articleType=biography]]. If you were being anal about it and wanted to
signify that the articleType role was not about the subject you could
say about article type [[category=resourceRole]]. Also, "biogrpahy"
could be an instance of "article type". Wikipedia readers would be happy
enough to see "Article Type: Biography" and a link to "biography" which
would list all of the biographies.

Erik has just stated that:
| 2) Category pages are not articles. Like talk pages and meta pages,
they
| should be logically separated from articles, which has numerous
benefits
| (easier searching/filtering, counting etc.)

I would disagree and so that all pages represent subjects. Each article
is designed to represent a subject in a computer in an addressable way.
The subjects can be anything we wish to talk about - instances and
types. This is a huge advantage for Wikipedia - all subjects are treated
the same. Why should they be logically seperated. You already have a
create system for managing the textual content for all subjects. This
proposal is just a layer on top. Seperation = complexity. The system is
ultra flexible at the moment and drawing lines through it would be a
difficut task.

eg. The "american poet" page has some text which explains what an
american poet is. It then gets the added goodies of the categorisation
system offers.

* May get abused for purposes other than categorization where more
specific fields may be more appropriate. For example, a status field for
articles ([[status=stub]]) may be useful, but could be preempted by
[[category=stub]] before the "status" field is implemented.*

This is the same case as [[category=biography]]. The assertion is about
the article not the subject. So, if it were possible to create new roles
for things such as status you could do:

Article X
[[status=stub]]

Status
[[category=resourceRole]]

resourceRole
[[category=type]]

* Fuzzy distinction between part-whole relationships and category-member
relationships.*

I agree that this is a disadvantage for the reasons outline above. I
think that you can get around this by specifying that "category=" can
only be used for type/instance kinds of relationships. Don't forget
type/subtype and related as well.

5. Back to work

Maybe the subject line of this email is a bit erroneous - I've broadened
things out. Sorry about that. Just a few thoughts I had to get down. You
might want to take a look at an italian opera topic map which provides
examples of Subject Indexes, Resource Indexes and Role Indexes, as well
as the instances of these types. There are a few features in this topic
map which we would never be able to do in wikipedia but the basics are
achievable with a few well selected relationship types.

http://www.ontopia.net/omnigator/models/topicmap_complete.jsp?tm=opera.x
tm

cheers

Murray Woodman
--
http://www.murraywoodman.com/
http://www.veryhappening.com/
http://www.topicmap.com/


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Intlwiki-l] Differences in the language versions, was RE:
	[Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo putsch onthe FrenchWikipedia !

body:
On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, The Cunctator wrote:

> I have to say that on principle and as a matter of policy I strongly
> disagree with Ray and Anthere. The overall goal *does* need to be that
> each wp entry should be the perfect translation of the same entry in any
> language.

Well, I do agree with them. Each Wikipedia should on its own try to be
as good as possible. If two Wikipedias have different articles on the
same subject, cross-fertilizing might be one way of improving the articles,
but I see no need whatsoever to wish that they would be the same.

> Each language version should *not* have its own special taste.

I disagree. Dutch Wikipedia will mostly be read in the Netherlands and
Belgium, Spanish in Spain and the Americas. Thus it is very logical to
me that Dutch Wikipedia on its page "province" discusses, apart from
the general definition of what a province is, the Dutch and Belgian
situation in more depth, while referring to a separate page for the
Spanish provinces, and that the Spanish Wikipedia does it the other
way around.

> As a matter of course the fact that languages are intertwined with
> ethnicity, nationality, and modes of expression means that the same
> content will be discussed differently in different languages.
>
> As a matter of course the fact that Wikipedia is a volunteer project
> means that contributions are shaped by the contributors' individual
> priorities. As French-speakers have statistically different priorities
> than English-speakers or Chinese-speakers, as a matter of course the
> language versions will have differently weighted contributions.
>
> But we should not have *as a goal* different priorities, different
> discussions of the same content. The goal, as Ruimi said, is to try to
> reach universalism.

I disagree. Strongly. If universalism as a goal is made official, I'm
out of here. I find this one of the problems with Wikipedia as it
currently is (although there are other, even greater problems). I do
not think Wikipedia should tell everything about everything. An
encyclopedia should select and summarize information.

> This is all we'd have to do, I suspect, to make sure that we do work
> towards the ultimate goal of universalism and consistency.

Your ultimate goal is not mine. Farewell.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Narrowing focus

body:
* Murray
| I therefore beieve that a reaosnable case could be made for the
| following basic roles:
| [[category=x]]    type/instance
| [[superType=x]]   type/subtype
| [[related=x]]     related
| [[whole=x]]       part/whole

And of course i forgot one: contains. Thanks for reminding me Toby.

* Toby
| That's why [[List of biology topics]] exist now, of course.

Biology
[[contains=Aerobiology]]

cheers

Murray


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories simplified

body:
Brion,

Would you like some help, putting the pieces of your brain back in your
skull? ;-)

I appreciate your attention to the categorization issue. But don't let
the pressure cause any more explosions, please: your mind is Wikipedia's
number one National Treasure.

Ed Poor


body:
> From: Jimmy Wales
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > > Readers in different languages will have somewhat different
> > > backgrounds and interests.  Different backgrounds mean that we
must
> > > take into account different assumptions on what the reader will
> > > already be familiar with.  Different interests mean that we must
take
> > > into account different emphasis on what the reader will expect to
> > > learn from an article.
> >
> > I'm not convinced that we should have as a goal that the articles
> > reflect the biases of the readership. I would expect both entries on
the
> > Statue of Liberty to tell the complete story. I have trouble seeing
this
> > as anything other than a defense of provincialism.
>
> Well, I didn't mean "biases".  Perhaps my example is not so good.
>
> Suppose you were writing an introductory article on Macintosh OS X for
> an audience of Windows users, and another introductory article for
> audience of Linux users.  The two audiences will naturally have
> different backgrounds and interests, and so each article will
> naturally take that into account, even if the two articles cover much
> of the same ground.

A few points: that's not what we do on Wikipedia. We write [[Macintosh
OS X]] with the goal of writing it from an omniscient perspective for an
unknown audience.

"Backgrounds and interests" is another way of saying "biases". It's true
that Windows and Linux users have different background knowledge, but on
Wikipedia that is accounted for in that when we write [[Macintosh OS X]]
is built on a [[BSD]] variant, the Linux users don't need to click on
[[BSD]]. One man's background knowledge is another man's click.

I simply don't think it's possible to come up with an example of text on
Wikipedia which would benefit from being substantively different in
different languages. I'd love to be proven wrong.

I should note that when I say that "perfect translation" is a goal, I'm
more or less using that as a tautology, where "perfect translation"
means "communicating with equal success all of the meaning (denotation
and connotation) in either language." It does not mean a one-to-one word
translation, nor does it actually exist. (I always think that goals
which can be approached but not achieved are the best ones for Wikipedia
to have.)

For example Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf and George Chapman's
translation of the Iliad are certainly better than word-for-word
translations; then again, is Chapman's version better than Pope's? Is it
better than the translation by Leconte de Lisle? What about Chen
Minhua's translation? Chapman's better for English speakers, but no
matter what, something is changed in the translation.

(And one would expect the Wikipedia in English--or in any language--to
discuss Chapman, Pope, Leconte de Lisle and Chen Minhua.)

Now, when we're dealing with content that ideally is perfectly factual,
that avoids implied meaning, a lot of the problem of judging translation
goes away.

And guess what? At Wikipedia we strive to avoid implied meaning.

> > If NPOV is the same, then we shouldn't have as a goal articles which
> > reflect different biases.
>
> Yes, I do agree with this, but I think that there can be differences
> between article versions, even where both are NPOV.

Well, since I don't believe that an article can be neutral point of
view, or even that an article can be truly neutral, I can't disagree
with the proposition.

Do you believe that an article can be truly neutral?


from_name: Makoto & Guillaume

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] French sabotage

body:
From: Aoineko
> From: "Lars Aronsson"
> > I think some admin on fr.wikipedia.org wants to block  195.15.129.46
> > right now.  Sorry to disturb the list.
>
> Thanks Lars.
> This vandal come almost every night, we are very familiar with this
problem
> ;o)
> 2 or 3 admin watching regularly the French RC and we have bot to revert
him
> automaticaly.
> There are nothing else we can do because he have dynamic IPs.
>
> Aoineko

In fact, the only thing very annoying with this vandale is he pollute the RC
pages with long upper case letters comments. Prevent to save a page if the
comment lien contain to many upper case letters (more then 10 for example)
may be solve this problem. What do think about it ?

Aoineko

PS : Sorry to post on both list, but imho this is not language specific
issue.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
Telling the whole story RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo
	putsch ontheFrenchWikipedia !

body:
> From: Andre Engels on Friday, December 12, 2003 11:45 AM
>
> On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, The Cunctator wrote:
>
> > I'm not convinced that we should have as a goal that the articles
> > reflect the biases of the readership. I would expect both entries on
the
> > Statue of Liberty to tell the complete story. I have trouble seeing
this
> > as anything other than a defense of provincialism.
>
> I don't agree. "The full story" is always much too long to tell.
Instead,
> we give a summary of it. And that might well be different for
different
> languages. The Dutch page on [[Stabilisation Force Iraq]] has a
separate
> section on the Dutch presence in it, and the opinion of the Dutch
> political parties on that subject. I'd expect the English language
version
> to mention that there are Dutch in SFIR, but not that it takes half of
the
> first paragraph, or the discussion in the Dutch parliament.
>
> Likewise, in the above Statue of Liberty example, I'd expect that the
> French version might more about the French reasons to give it, and the

> political opinions about it, while the English version might tell more
> about the reaction that the gift got in the U.S.

> We cannot tell the whole story, telling the whole story is cumbersome,
> unreadable and laughable. Instead, we have to summarize it.

This is so very, very true....

For stories written on paper.

It is a simple impossibility to tell the whole story in a linear
narrative. But a hyperlinked text is fractal, and has an arbitrary
perimeter of coverage.

> Give a good
> deal of relevant information, so that at the end people actually get
> informed. Information is more important than facts.

"Information is more important than facts"? Information consists of
facts.

> And when deciding
> at what level we are going to summarize, what would be better than to
> watch at what our readership would _want_ to read?

Oh, I don't know, maybe watching at what level tells them the truth.

Look: I make a strong distinction between the tactics and efforts of
individual Wikipedians and what is the intended overall effect. I only
expect individual Wikipedians to work on what they're interested in and
to include the information that they believe is important.

As long as once information (not "facts") is included in Wikipedia, it
isn't removed, then the end result--for Wikipedia, not a particular
entry--is the complete story.

For individual entries, I expect individual Wikipedians to keep entries
as short as possible, and to extract content that forms a
distinguishably distinct (sometimes largely subordinate, sometimes not)
concept to a separate entry. (see [[user:The Cunctator/Agglomeration]]).

As long as that is done, then the end result for each individual entry
is highly readable, concise and authoritative.

Finally, as a reader I would love to know about what the Dutch
parliament's debate on the occupation of Iraq is.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Differences between languages (Was: Press release
	:Logo putsch on the	FrenchWikipedia !)

body:
> From: Toby Bartels on Friday, December 12, 2003 11:57 AM
> You can continue to make subtler contrasts along these lines.
> For example, when do you break a new article
> [[History of the Statue of Liberty in France]]
> because too much has been written on the French aspects
> for the main article?  Different languages will do this differently,
> but in the limit of increasing depth of Wikipedia's coverage,
> they will both do something like this eventually.  And so on.
>
> One may say that all languages are headed forthe same goal
> but that we expect each language to follow a somewhat different path.
> When we are all finished with all of the perfect encyclopedias,
> then they may well all be perfect translations of each other.
> But of course, we will never be finished!!!  It's potential vs actual.

Much better said than I could. The only thing I'd say different is the
text of a single language can't be a perfect encyclopedia--only the work
that exists in all languages is the perfect encyclopedia.


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Differences between languages

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Much better said than I could.

Thanks!

>The only thing I'd say different is the
>text of a single language can't be a perfect encyclopedia--only the work
>that exists in all languages is the perfect encyclopedia.

Ah, but both of these are goals that we will always approach but never achieve.
I strive to make Wikipedia (as a whole) the best encyclopedia possible,
and I strive to make [[en:]] the best Anglophone encyclopedia possible.
Neither will ever happen, but ''both'' are our goals!

(Also the goal for [[fr:]] to be the best Francophone encyclopedia, etc.
But personally, I write almost exclusively on [[en:]].
That is the ''individual'' Wikipedian's parochial interests.)

-- Toby


body:
----- Original Message -----
From: Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de>
Date: Friday, December 12, 2003 11:45 am
Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo putsch onthe FrenchWikipedia !

> I don't agree. "The full story" is always much too long to tell.
> Instead,we give a summary of it. And that might well be different
> for different
> languages. The Dutch page on [[Stabilisation Force Iraq]] has a
> separatesection on the Dutch presence in it, and the opinion of
> the Dutch political
> parties on that subject. I'd expect the English language version
> to mention
> that there are Dutch in SFIR, but not that it takes half of the first
> paragraph, or the discussion in the Dutch parliament.

Bad example. Some Anglophones may well be curious about such things, y'know, but can't read Dutch.

Include it...in a separate article.

John


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Telling the whole story

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>I'd like to chime in in support of what Cunctator's saying. I've yet to see
>an example of those given that isn't a clear case of what should NOT happen.
>I would like to know about the Statue of Liberty in France, the Dutch
>parliament's position on Iraq, and all of that, but I'm only good with
>English.

We fully expect, and accept as tolerable, the practical state of affairs
that [[nl:]] will (in all probability) always cover this better than [[en:]].
But under no circumstances can somebody argue that this sort of material
is ''not'' appropriate for [[en:]] even if it's appropriate for [[nl:]].
It may not get to [[en:]] very well, due to [[en:]]'s writers' proclivities,
but it is always welcome on [[en:]] whenever somebody wants to write about it.

I dont' think that my views are quite as strong as what Cunc has expressed;
for example, [[nl:]]'s main page on the current war might very justifiably
say more about the Dutch parliament than [[en:]]'s main page on the war.
This is because introductory material must choose arbitrary examples,
and these can be chosen (and dynamically changed) based on reader interest.
But in either case, an ''in depth'' coverage of the parliament's position
would need to go on [[Parliamentary debate in the Netherlands
about the 2003 war in Iraq]] (or something along those lines),
and such an article would be a Good Thing on both [[en:]] and [[nl:]].
We won't reach the perfect encyclopedia without that article on both! ^_^

-- Toby


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nupedia? (was: Brilliant prose rename brainstorm)

body:
Erik wrote:
>....
>But before we move further into that direction I'd
>like to streamline the BP process, improve
>organization and build a culture of certification.
>Picking a proper name for the BP page is an
>important part of that.
>....

Why not call it [[Wikipedia:Candidates for inclusion
in Nupedia]]? We might as well do something with the
excellent Nupedia name. IMO making Nupedia into a
stable distribution of Wikipedia content would be a
great idea (this would be similar to how the Linux and
GNU tools are made into stable distributions; Nupedia,
of course, would be more like Debian than RedHat).

Nupedia could then also be tasted with creating a
paper version of our content in addition to having the
full web-hosted versions of articles. Since space on
paper is not cheap, many articles would have to boiled
down to their basics for a paper version. A separate
project would be better suited to do that so that
Wikipedians could concentrate on what we have and
continue to do best - add more content to Wikipedia
and fix errors. This would also generate a great deal
of interest among Wikipedians to make their articles
shine enough for Nupedia-inclusion.

Of course all proper credit (and then some in the form
of diffs comparing the Nupedia version with the
current Wikipedia version) will be given to Wikipedia
(Wikipedia's name should even be the subtitle of the
revived Nupedia project).

-- mav

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Narrowing focus

body:
* The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com>

| My god, this is getting ugly. Please don't take that judgment
| personally--I've had plenty of flights of baroque fancy when I've
| engaged in a brainstorming process, and I've been helped when someone
| reminded me that the goal was to make something that's usable by
| normal people, not something that's perfect and insanely complex.
| ...
| Simple is better. Natural is better. Don't try to reinvent language or
| account for every possibility, because you'll fail.
|
| Instead, look at what already works and identify what the gaps are,
| and start from that point.

Sure. I'm sorry if it was a bit over the top. I was just throwing a few
ideas into the ring. I did however, state somewhere in the ramble that
"category" dealing with type/instance is what most people would use, ie.
wikipedia is mostly about proper nouns and instances and that "category"
is good for this. Category will be fine in the majority of places.
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler."

I can just see problems when "category" it is used in a way which it
loses its meaning. If you guys want to build type hierarchies and
subject containment then "category" might be too simple in these cases.
I just tried to show this. If it is a hold all for everything then a
"lists" page as it currently stands already serves that purpose. You
have gained only a little over what the lists pages offer. If you want
to provide something which has wider applications then maybe a couple of
more relationship types (type/subtype, contains) would be very helpful.

cheers

Murray


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Brilliant prose rename brainstorm

body:
John C. Penta wrote:

>>The idea that articles can have different degrees (or different
>>categories) of certification also has a certain appeal. But I
>>prefer to
>>make small steps to a full-fledged certification system, so that
>>we can
>>always turn around if something goes wrong.
>>
>>
>
>    Much agreement. IMHO, a cert system would be a good idea for one very simple reason: As it stands, NONE of my profs will trust ANYTHING from Wiki. I imagine many professors and teachers are like that; It would help immensely if there was some credibility built up.
>
>    Really, really annoying when Wiki has a fact I can't easily find anywhere else.
>
>
This is going to need more verification than just saying "yeah, this is
a good article" though.  To be able to trust the content of any
Wikipedia article, someone with knowledge of the field has to check up
on the facts in reliable primary or secondary sources.  The vast
majority of Wikipedia articles, as far as I can tell, currently draw
their facts from the internet, which is filled with incorrect facts
propagated from website to website.  Even things like birth dates are
suspect, with it not being uncommon for a typo on a single website to
propagate to others and eventually into Wikipedia.  So, to get something
reliable, we need to find people who are willing to verify facts in
libraries, not just in google.  The only major exception I see to this
are facts taken from US government websites (census bureau, NASA, etc.),
which I'd be more likely to trust than facts taken from some random
biography on geocities (at least when we're dealing with strictly facts,
not subjective analysis).

-Mark