subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spanish Wikipedia; Negotiation

body:
Here is a run-down of what I feel should be the ground rules for negotiation.

What we concede;
1) Make sure this is done in Spanish
2) Ask them what we need to do in order to get them back into the Wikipedia
community.
3) Promise that we will never have any ads. ?
4) We will strive to make Wikipedia as non-U.S./English-centric as possible
and ask them what we should do in order to accomplish this.
5) Explain the benefits of being part of the more general Wikipedia community
(inter-language links that work both ways, funding, publicity, cross-traffic
and cross-collaboration and contributions)
6) State that we have no intention of ever removing es.wikipedia.com but we
could point that URL to the Seville server is they wish to stay on that
server.

What we want;
1) Have them formally rejoin our project by changing their primary name back
to Wikipedia or a convenient Spanish version of that word ("Huiquipedia"
maybe).
2) For them to use Phase III software.
3) Provide inter-language links to all Wikipedia language projects.
4) For them to use Intl-wiki-L.
5) Update their about page to remove misleading statements about Wikipedia,
especially the English Wikipedia.

What would be nice;
1) For them to return to our server.

If negotiations break-down;
We set-up es.wikipedia.org with Phase III and ignore EL. OR
We set-up es.wikipedia.org with Phase III and provide el: inter-language
links to their project.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 01:49 PM 10/1/02 -0400, Ed Poor wrote:
>My church tried to create a "Unification Encyclopedia" several years ago.
>It was edited by Andrew Wilson, and was sponsored by one of the many
>non-profit organizations members of my church have set up (possibly the
>International Cultural Foundation).
>
>I wonder if it's even worth discussing the possibility of Wikipedia
>seeking sponsorship from the Unification movement. Of course, editorial
>independence would have to be guaranteed (no church slant allowed to creep
>in). I'm talking about a "no strings attached" kind of grant, maybe.
>
>I know people with money -- the question is whether this Wikipedia
>community could stomach an associaton with "those Moonies".

My feeling is that if/when we set up the nonprofit, anyone can donate as
long as they
understand that all they get is a tax deduction, if applicable.

I'd be strongly against the Wikipedia being sponsored by *any* religious,
political,
or ideological organization--they have agendas that don't match that of
this project.

>Ed Poor     <-- member of Unification Church since 1977
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: The Cunctator [mailto:cunctator at kband.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 1:36 PM
>To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Propects for future growth
>
>
>On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 13:14, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
><snip call for staff>
>
>
>This is why we need to set up the non-profit.
>
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Image maps

body:
On Monday 30 September 2002 04:25 am, brion vibber wrote:
> ....
> * Image maps are likely to be shared over many articles, either with the
> same image or over a group of related images (ie, 58 maps of California,
> each with a different county highlighted; 100-odd periodic tables, each
> with a different element highlighted). Thus, it _might_ be useful to
> have the maps in a magic namespace, which could be linked from the image
> description page -- thus, one image map can be cleanly shared over many
> almost-identical images, in any articles that link the images.

This would be most cool. Should you or I make the feature request?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Metacomments

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:

>You Wrote:
>
>
>>I'd like to know exactly what the consensus is on "metacomments" within
>>an article text - "More should be written here", "See WikiProject Foo
>>for help with editing this page", "Is this correct?", and so on.
>>
>>
>
>I don't like them, personally, and typically move them to talk pages.  As far as I'm concerned, *all* articles on wikipedia are works in progress, so I expect all of them to need expansion in one way or another.  I also think they're a bit jarring.  I guess I'm not postmodernist enough.  :-/
>
>
IMHO we could avoid most of these metacomments with the vote function back.


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] the OsmosisTwo pest

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I'm inclined to agree in the light of day.
>>You should have seen his comments on OsmosisTwo, he kept editing that
>>page to say "tarquin is part of the cabal and wants to delete OsmosisTwo".
>>Annoying.
>>
>>
>
>And wrong-headed besides...
>
>It's probably not good to characterize him as vermin, however (pest).
>
>Fred
>
That could be a language difference. over here, calling someone a "pest"
is not very strong. It implies someone who is mildly irritating, not
damaging or harmful.
His repeated edits of OsmosisTwo, despite my invitation to discuss the
matter on the talk page qualifies him / her.
in the end I left a subject messgae on the subject page itself,
explaining that I didn't find his actions funny, but that s/he would be
welcome as a contributor, providing s/he kept in mind that the 'pedia is
a serious project. :-)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Propects for future growth

body:
On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 15:35, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
> >Can a few hundred Wikipedians make a world-class encyclopedia? Will all of human knowledge fit on Jimbo's server farm? Is there a way to keep such a massive collection free of vandalism yet freely changeable?
> >
> >Much as I admire the spirit of pure voluntarism, I must say that Larry is right about the need for paid staff. We already have a sponsor for the server and bandwidth, and although the physical expenses might be dropping I haven't heard anyone volunteering to take that burden off of Jimbo's shoulders.
> >
> >What do we need paid staff to do? Primarily, reach out to the academic and professional community and seek their help. With a modest budget for travel to conferences, or for payments to copyright holders, such a leader could bring in some very high quality material.
> >
> The presence of paid staff can profoundly affect the nature of a
> volunteer organization.  A tendency develops to depend on them for all
> sorts of things that people should be doing for themselves.  I've seen
> several edit wars where someone has lamented that Larry was no longer
> around to settle the argument.  A part of growing up is being able to
> find your own way to settle arguments without waiting for a thunderbolt
> from Zeus.

Indeed. Just about the only thing a volunteer-centered non-profit should
need paid staff for is fundraising. And that is not a pressing need
right now.

There are certainly mechanisms for reaching out to the academic and
professional community that don't require paid staff. Most _do_ require
a more formal incorporation of some kind, sticking people on a board,
etc.


body:
On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 17:42, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Here is a run-down of what I feel should be the ground rules for negotiation.

That seems like a lot. All that seems necessary as a starting point is
interlanguage links.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] [rubenste@ohiou.edu: Re: help?]

body:
The system gives these error messages sometimes. However, if you get them
repeatedly, it usually means that the second and further times, you are NOT
loading the page again, but are retrieving it from some cache. The best thing
to do is to go to the page, and when you get the error message, hit 'reload'
or 'refresh'. For most browsers and configurations that would solve the
problems.

Andre Engels

> I'm forwarding this to wikitech-l so more knowledgeable people might
> comment and help Steven.
>
> ----- Forwarded message from "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> -----
>
> From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
> Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2002 11:59:38 -0400
> To: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Subject: Re: help?
>
> Hi,
>
> For the past three days or so, whenever I try to access my "watchlist," I
> get this:
>
> Warning: open(/tmp/sess_f0af9a7ae314037cd076e6d2ae285f73, O_RDWR) failed:
> Too many open files in system (23) in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml
> on line 7
>
> Warning: Failed opening 'Setup.php' for inclusion
> (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in
> /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 12
>
> Fatal error: Undefined class name 'outputpage' in
> /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 14
>
> Warning: open(/tmp/sess_f0af9a7ae314037cd076e6d2ae285f73, O_RDWR) failed:
> Too many open files in system (23) in Unknown on line 0
>
> Warning: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the
> current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in Unknown on line 0
>
>
> Is this a bug in the system, or am I doing something wrong (and remediable)?
>
> Thanks,
> Steve
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at nupedia.com
> http://nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Here is a run-down of what I feel should be the
> ground rules for negotiation.

I think such a negotiation would go much better if we
were at least in the process of setting up a
non-profit free encyclopedia foundation. Otherwise,
the perceptions that the American megacorporation
Bomis intends to turn Wikipedia into a vast
money-making empire will remain.

> What we concede;
> 1) Make sure this is done in Spanish
> 2) Ask them what we need to do in order to get them
> back into the Wikipedia
> community.
> 3) Promise that we will never have any ads.
> 4) We will strive to make Wikipedia as
> non-U.S./English-centric as possible
> and ask them what we should do in order to
> accomplish this.
> 5) Explain the benefits of being part of the more
> general Wikipedia community
> (inter-language links that work both ways, funding,
> publicity, cross-traffic
> and cross-collaboration and contributions)
> 6) State that we have no intention of ever removing
> es.wikipedia.com but we
> could point that URL to the Seville server is they
> wish to stay on that
> server.

7) Make .org the default for all language projects. I
realize that this means getting Phase III rolled out
on all the Wikipedias, as the internal link names need
to be changed.

> What we want;
> 1) Have them formally rejoin our project by changing
> their primary name back
> to Wikipedia or a convenient Spanish version of that
> word ("Huiquipedia"
> maybe).
> 2) For them to use Phase III software.
> 3) Provide inter-language links to all Wikipedia
> language projects.
> 4) For them to use Intl-wiki-L.
> 5) Update their about page to remove misleading
> statements about Wikipedia,
> especially the English Wikipedia.

6) To integrate the articles at es.wikipedia.com with
their own.

> What would be nice;
> 1) For them to return to our server.
>
> If negotiations break-down;
> We set-up es.wikipedia.org with Phase III and ignore
> EL. OR
> We set-up es.wikipedia.org with Phase III and
> provide el: inter-language
> links to their project.

I vote for option 2 in this case.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Metacomments

in_reply_to: <20021001130734.GN97146@mrtall.compsoc.man.ac.uk>; from jason@jasonandali.org.uk on Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 02:07:34PM +0100

body:
On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 02:07:34PM +0100, Khendon wrote:
> I'd like to know exactly what the consensus is on "metacomments" within
> an article text - "More should be written here", "See WikiProject Foo
> for help with editing this page", "Is this correct?", and so on.
>
> I'm of the opinion that things like this should almost always
> be in the Talk page. Having them in the article looks tacky and
> unprofessional.

I disagree. I don't know about the WikiProject references, but 'is this
correct?' and 'more should be written about <whatever>' both seem
valuable to me.

I prefer an article which points out its weaknesses to one which
glosses them over; I think it's more useful to the reader, as well as
more encouraging to potential editors. I don't think there's anything
unprofessional about work in progress.

In general, if someone thinks its worth their while to add something to
a page, I think it's best to give them the benefit of the doubt, even
if it's something you wouldn't have added yourself.

-M-


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Possible bug

body:
I've encountered weirdness on Talk:Wikipedians
(http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AWikipedians). I
get a listing of "Other language" versions, but all of
the links are to other Wikipedia pages.

Can someone confirm that I'm not the only one seeing
this? Then I'll go file a bug report.

Stephen

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Possible bug

body:
Ok, I see the problem. 24 prefaced many of his links
with w:. The parser is interpreting them as
interlanguage links. I'm off to file a report...

Stephen G.

--- Stephen Gilbert <canuck_in_korea2002 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> I've encountered weirdness on Talk:Wikipedians
> (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AWikipedians).
> I
> get a listing of "Other language" versions, but all
> of
> the links are to other Wikipedia pages.
>
> Can someone confirm that I'm not the only one seeing
> this? Then I'll go file a bug report.
>
> Stephen
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
The following translations are off the top of my head and a few quick
trips to the dictionary.  If there is any interest, I will work harder
to make better translations.  I did the "what we concede" part only.
Anyone else who knows Spanish is welcome to join in, but it would
probably be prefereable to do this on a page in the wikipedia format
so there could be proper accents.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

Presento mis excusas antes leer a todos el mundo hispanohablante.

|From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
|Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 14:42:34 -0700
|
|Here is a run-down of what I feel should be the ground rules for negotiation.

Aqui es un resumen de que quiero deber las reglas fundamental para
negociacion.

|What we concede;

Lo concedemos

|1) Make sure this is done in Spanish

Hay que todo en castellano

|2) Ask them what we need to do in order to get them back into the Wikipedia
|community.

?Que necesitamonos hacer para que podemos colaborar in la comunidad Wikipedia?

|3) Promise that we will never have any ads. ?

Nunca tendremos anunciados comercial

|4) We will strive to make Wikipedia as non-U.S./English-centric as possible
|and ask them what we should do in order to accomplish this.

No esforzaramos hacer Wikipedia internacional, y no demasiado ingles o
norteamericano

|5) Explain the benefits of being part of the more general Wikipedia community
|(inter-language links that work both ways, funding, publicity, cross-traffic
|and cross-collaboration and contributions)

Hay muchas ventajas ser participantes juntos en la comunidad Wikipedia
general (los enlaces bilingual, los fondos [en el futuro,
posiblemente], la publicidad comun, visitantes bidireccional, y
tambien contributantes y otra colaboracion

|6) State that we have no intention of ever removing es.wikipedia.com but we
|could point that URL to the Seville server is they wish to stay on that
|server.

Tenemos no intencion de remover es.wikipedia.com, pero podemos unirse
con el "server" americano o el "server" sevilliano si quieren
|

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

|What we want;
|1) Have them formally rejoin our project by changing their primary name back
|to Wikipedia or a convenient Spanish version of that word ("Huiquipedia"
|maybe).
|2) For them to use Phase III software.
|3) Provide inter-language links to all Wikipedia language projects.
|4) For them to use Intl-wiki-L.
|5) Update their about page to remove misleading statements about Wikipedia,
|especially the English Wikipedia.
|
|What would be nice;
|1) For them to return to our server.
|
|If negotiations break-down;
|We set-up es.wikipedia.org with Phase III and ignore EL. OR
|We set-up es.wikipedia.org with Phase III and provide el: inter-language
|links to their project.
|
|-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
|[Wikipedia-l]
|To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
|http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|


body:
On Tuesday 01 October 2002 11:58 pm, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> I think such a negotiation would go much better if we
> were at least in the process of setting up a
> non-profit free encyclopedia foundation. Otherwise,
> the perceptions that the American megacorporation
> Bomis intends to turn Wikipedia into a vast
> money-making empire will remain.

I think you might be right about this. What is the status of the non-profit
Jimbo? The schedule for this needs to be moved up.

In the mean time I've been gathering everyone's great ideas (and
translations) and have pasted a quick and dirty synopsis over at;
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Open_letter_to_the_Enciclopedia_Libre_group/Notes

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <1033507107.8844.17.camel@venus.mit.edu>; from cunctator@kband.com on Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 05:18:27PM -0400

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Indeed. Just about the only thing a volunteer-centered non-profit should
> need paid staff for is fundraising. And that is not a pressing need
> right now.

I think that's right, although at some point I have a dream that we
produce an edited paper-friendly version (GFDL'd) so that the
encyclopedia can be distributed at cost to countries where Internet
access is so far beyond "luxury" that it is difficult for us to
imagine it.

So long as we're in the stage we're in now -- and I foresee that
continuing for a couple of more years at _bare minimum_ -- we don't
really need funding beyond what I can easily and gladly supply.

> There are certainly mechanisms for reaching out to the academic and
> professional community that don't require paid staff. Most _do_ require
> a more formal incorporation of some kind, sticking people on a board,
> etc.

That's right, too.

Also, I'd like to set up a system whereby people can sign up to
automatically donate, say, $20 a month via credit card.  My vision of
this is that people could earmark the money to several categories -
"promotion", "hardware", and whatever else people felt was worthwhile.

Later on, there might be a large organization similar to Consumer Reports
or the Red Cross.  But right now, we're doing great building basic
infrastructure.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <20021001214002.BZSD22381.sccrmhc03.attbi.com@there>; from maveric149@yahoo.com on Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 02:42:34PM -0700

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> 6) State that we have no intention of ever removing es.wikipedia.com but we
> could point that URL to the Seville server is they wish to stay on that
> server.

I don't think this is acceptable.  Without sever unity, there is no
way for us to enforce openness.  If they start to ban people for
political reasons, forming a 'cabal', we would be powerless to stop
them.

--Jimbo


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
Andre Wrote:
>Reacting on Stephen Gilbert's "possible bug report", I went through searching
>for other pages that also contain w: links. As such I got to
>[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]. And from the page talk it seems that everyone
>but 24 agreed with it at the time. Nowadays I see _noone_ citing sources on a
>regular basis (or even an irregular basis). Would it not be time to remove
>this 'Rule to consider', or else at least change the 'Talk' page such that
>it is clear that it is not a majority opinion nowadays?

Wikipedia and "cite your sources" have an uncomfortable history.  AFAIK, it's mostly a tool used against minority opinions, esp. left-wing ones.  I've used it myself on occasion, and had it used against me.  I can understand why no one cites sources for e.g. the value of pi or the fact that the earth revolves around the sun, but if we're going to update the policy, we should first think hard about whether we want to admit that we value sources most when something in the article challenges our own inherent assumptions.  It takes the work off us and puts it on the person making claims we disbelieve.  That's valuable, I guess, since in some regards it's a bar against original research, and wikipedia is not a place for original research.  But the result is also that it tends to favor mainstream views, and NPOV is still imperfectly applied at wikipedia.  Personally, I would like to see articles on e.g. green criticisms of capitalism, communist criticisms of socialism, etc., provided they are done from the NPOV.  Of course doing it would not be easy, and not necessarily be anything I wanted to take part in.

Personally, I'm quite certain that we've often used "cite your sources" as a means to silence minority opinions.  (But, really, 24 was left of me politically and I was in the chorus asking for sources so I'm just another hypocrite).  :-/

There may be other (more legitimate) reasons for valuing sources most in controversial articles, and if so, we should state them: everything "aboveboard," as it were.  Certainly the policy needs to be revamped.

kq


body:
Adam Williamson wrote:
> 3000x12 = 36000
>
> (If matched by Jimbo)
>
> 3000x2x12 = 72000

Ai yi yi.  I used to be rich, I'm not anymore.

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
>Andre Wrote:
>>Reacting on Stephen Gilbert's "possible bug report", I went through searching
>>for other pages that also contain w: links. As such I got to
>>[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]. And from the page talk it seems that
>>everyone
>>but 24 agreed with it at the time. Nowadays I see _noone_ citing sources on a
>>regular basis (or even an irregular basis). Would it not be time to remove
>>this 'Rule to consider', or else at least change the 'Talk' page such that
>>it is clear that it is not a majority opinion nowadays?
>
>Wikipedia and "cite your sources" have an uncomfortable history.  AFAIK,
>it's mostly a tool used against minority opinions, esp. left-wing ones.
>I've used it myself on occasion, and had it used against me.  I can
>understand why no one cites sources for e.g. the value of pi or the fact
>that the earth revolves around the sun, but if we're going to update the
>policy, we should first think hard about whether we want to admit that we
>value sources most when something in the article challenges our own
>inherent assumptions.  It takes the work off us and puts it on the person
>making claims we disbelieve.  That's valuable, I guess, since in some
>regards it's a bar against original research, and wikipedia is not a place
>for original research.  But the result is also that it tends to favor
>mainstream views, and NPOV is still imperfectly applied at wikipedia.
>Personally, I would like to see articles on e.g. green criticisms of
>capitalism, communist criticisms of socialism, etc., provi!
>ded they are done from the NPOV.  Of course doing it would not be easy,
>and not necessarily be anything I wanted to take part in.
>
>Personally, I'm quite certain that we've often used "cite your sources" as
>a means to silence minority opinions.  (But, really, 24 was left of me
>politically and I was in the chorus asking for sources so I'm just another
>hypocrite).  :-/
>
>There may be other (more legitimate) reasons for valuing sources most in
>controversial articles, and if so, we should state them: everything
>"aboveboard," as it were.  Certainly the policy needs to be revamped.
>
>kq

When I wrote [[Great Salt Lake]] I got most of the facts out of an issue of
High Country News. I put that down at the bottom of the page, but for my
trouble got a rather persistant inquiry as to whether I had copied the
article from there, i.e. wasn't this a copyright violation and had to spend
time saying no, I had just extracted the facts from there. Then they
removed the information that that was the source of the information. So I
kind of got out of the habit after that. That's kind of petty since
information on Great Salt Lake is kind of common. Now, especially if I work
from a book I just put it in '''Further Reading'''. It would help in lots
of cases for checking information if we all did get into the habit of
citing sources though.  Sometimes it can be kind of ephemeral like a NPR
interview, but even then at least one might know.

Fred


from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > 6) State that we have no intention of ever removing
es.wikipedia.com > > but we could point that URL to the Seville server
is they wish to
> > stay on that server.
>
> I don't think this is acceptable.  Without sever unity, there is no
> way for us to enforce openness.  If they start to ban people for
> political reasons, forming a 'cabal', we would be powerless to stop
> them.

In other words: we want them back on our US server, so that we, and not
they, are in control. We know who should be banned, but we don't trust
them with such decisions. Maybe we should say that clearly at the
beginning; it will shorten the discussion considerably.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spanish translation (slightly revised)

body:
> |Here is a run-down of what I feel should be the ground rules for
negotiation.

Aqu? presento un resumen de lo que creo deben ser los regulos de base para
cualquiera negociaci?n.

> |What we concede;

Concedemos:

> |1) Make sure this is done in Spanish

que todo trabajo tiene que hacerse en castellano.

> |2) Ask them what we need to do in order to get them back into the
Wikipedia
> |community.

Preguntamos qu? hay que arreglar para que vuelvan a ser parto de la
comunidad Wikipedia.

> |3) Promise that we will never have any ads.

Prometemos que nunca habr? ning?n anuncio comercial en Wikipedia.

> |4) We will strive to make Wikipedia as non-U.S./English-centric as
possible
> |and ask them what we should do in order to accomplish this.

Nos esforzamos para que Wikipedia sea tan poco am?rico/angloc?ntrico como
pos?ble, y les preguntamos su aviso sobre qu? cosas debemos hacer para
cumplir eso.

> |5) Explain the benefits of being part of the more general Wikipedia
community
> |(inter-language links that work both ways, funding, publicity,
cross-traffic
> |and cross-collaboration and contributions)

Explicamos las muchas ventajas de participar en la comunidad Wikipedia
general (enlaces bilinguales ambidireccionales, recursos fiscales
(posiblemente), publicidad, y tr?fico, colaboraci?n y contribuci?n
compartidos)

> |6) State that we have no intention of ever removing es.wikipedia.com but
we
> |could point that URL to the Seville server is they wish to stay on that
> |server.

Decimos que no tenemos ninguna intenci?n de jam?s eliminar es.wikipedia.com;
pero podemos redirigirlo para que indique el server sevillano se deciden
quedarse all?.

> |What would be nice;
> |1) For them to return to our server.

Lo que nos gustar?a:
1) Que regresaran a nuestro server.

> |If negotiations break-down;
> |We set-up es.wikipedia.org with Phase III and ignore EL. OR
> |We set-up es.wikipedia.org with Phase III and provide el: inter-language
> |links to their project.

Si las negociaciones fracasan:
Estableceremos es.wikipedia.org con Fase III y no haremos caso a EL. ?:
Estableceremos es.wikipedia.org con Fase III y ofrecemos EL: enlaces
interling??sticos a su proyecto.

I would feel most comfortable with a native speaker looking over it of
course, preferably someone who unlike myself has half a clue what's going on
;)

Matt (Montrealais, Hispanic studies minor)


body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> In other words: we want them back on our US server, so that we, and not
> they, are in control. We know who should be banned, but we don't trust
> them with such decisions. Maybe we should say that clearly at the
> beginning; it will shorten the discussion considerably.

This is a distortion of my position, but definitely we need to make
perfectly clear that local control does _not_ extend to such issues as
allowing various wikipedias to become non-NPOV, or allowing various
wikipedias to abandon the spirit of openness.  If they don't like that
restriction, then that's fine -- they can do their own non-NPOV and
non-open thing.  We're better off without them.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
Reacting on Stephen Gilbert's "possible bug report", I went through searching
for other pages that also contain w: links. As such I got to
[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]. And from the page talk it seems that everyone
but 24 agreed with it at the time. Nowadays I see _noone_ citing sources on a
regular basis (or even an irregular basis). Would it not be time to remove
this 'Rule to consider', or else at least change the 'Talk' page such that
it is clear that it is not a majority opinion nowadays?

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:

> In general, I think this is a good use for Talk pages.

I disagree: sources are a vital part of the article and should not be
hidden away in an area that most readers will never find. I think of
Talk as short term discussions aimed at improving an article, not as a
depository of meta information. If all Talk pages are deleted tomorrow,
the encyclopedia should  still be self-contained and complete.

Sources are extremely useful information; it's impossible to evaluate
material without sources. Why would we possibly hide that information
from readers?

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
>Reacting on Stephen Gilbert's "possible bug
>report", I went through searching for other pages
>that also contain w: links. As such I got to
>[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]. And from the page
>talk it seems that everyone but 24 agreed with it
>at the time. Nowadays I see _no one_ citing sources
>on a regular basis (or even an irregular basis).
>Would it not be time to remove this 'Rule to
>consider', or else at least change the 'Talk' page
>such that it is clear that it is not a majority
>opinion nowadays?
>
>Andre Engels

I cite sources frequently, although I don't think that "cite your sources" needs to be a general rule. If an expert like Axelboldt tells us something abouthis area of expertise, I don't need to double-check him in his area of expertise.

But for controversial subjects -- particularly matters which are the object of historical revisionism (medieval Poland) or political controversy (Palestine); or scientific theories which have widespread but not unanimous support (evolution, global warming) -- citing sources makes it much easier for readers to evaluate claims made in the article.

Often I have been able to end (or at least ameliorate) edit wars by suggesting to the contending parties that they cite their sources. Usually they do so, leading to properly attributed POV (X said Y, althogh P said Q) and the dust settles.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Andre Engels [mailto:engels at uni-koblenz.de]
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 2:54 AM
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

Reacting on Stephen Gilbert's "possible bug report", I went through searching
for other pages that also contain w: links. As such I got to
[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]. And from the page talk it seems that everyone
but 24 agreed with it at the time. Nowadays I see _noone_ citing sources on a
regular basis (or even an irregular basis). Would it not be time to remove
this 'Rule to consider', or else at least change the 'Talk' page such that
it is clear that it is not a majority opinion nowadays?

Andre Engels
[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
I didn't say "match dollar for dollar" ;-)

3000x12 = 36000

(If matched by Jimbo)

3000x2x12 = 72000

Am I missing something, or should Ed be restrained from editing the
maths pages? =)
--
adamw


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
At 07:16 AM 10/2/02 -0700, Fred Bauder wrote:

>When I wrote [[Great Salt Lake]] I got most of the facts out of an issue of
>High Country News. I put that down at the bottom of the page, but for my
>trouble got a rather persistant inquiry as to whether I had copied the
>article from there, i.e. wasn't this a copyright violation and had to spend
>time saying no, I had just extracted the facts from there. T

If you'd said "based on information from High Country News", I'd have known
what you meant in the first place. And it was only a "persistent inquiry"
because copyright violation is our big no-no and you ignored my first query.

>hen they
>removed the information that that was the source of the information. So I
>kind of got out of the habit after that. That's kind of petty since
>information on Great Salt Lake is kind of common. Now, especially if I work
>from a book I just put it in '''Further Reading'''. It would help in lots
>of cases for checking information if we all did get into the habit of
>citing sources though.  Sometimes it can be kind of ephemeral like a NPR
>interview, but even then at least one might know.

In general, I think this is a good use for Talk pages.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
>Reacting on Stephen Gilbert's "possible bug report", I went through searching
>for other pages that also contain w: links. As such I got to
>[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]. And from the page talk it seems that everyone
>but 24 agreed with it at the time. Nowadays I see _noone_ citing sources on a
>regular basis (or even an irregular basis). Would it not be time to remove
>this 'Rule to consider', or else at least change the 'Talk' page such that
>it is clear that it is not a majority opinion nowadays?
>
>Andre Engels

Well, it's part of:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

And going to [[Wikipedia:cite_your_sources]] seems to contemplate citing
sources on the article page.

It seems pretty clear how to cite internet sources, but not too clear on
what language to use to cite paper sources, except perhaps in a separate
bibiliography section at the very bottom, perphaps in addition to further
reading. It is possible to create footnotes for paper sources, but a tiny
bit complicated. I guess those who can should start. The internet footnotes
create automatically if one does it right. I guess it would be a good
standard and the more of these articles are around the faster everyone will
catch on.

Fred


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

body:
> I think you might be right about this. What is the status of
> the non-profit Jimbo? The schedule for this needs to be moved up.

Jimbo and I have been talking about it, and he's waiting for me
to do some research.  I just got back from a 5-day weekend in Reno
(poker tournament), so I'll be able to get that done soon.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Yes, I mean that I will not point es.wikipedia.org at their server.

wiki pedista wrote:
> All that said, I do think being in a common server would be
> preferable, but a member of their community (their current
> webmaster, juanan, for example) should have developer access to the
> wikipedia server, to be able to do maintenance of the software and
> database, and create their own sysops.  That should be true for all
> wikipedias that have a size large enough and have a developer-type
> person among them.

I totally agree with this.  Their webmaster and Edgar and whoever else
is technically qualified is welcome to have developer access to the
server.

What is not possible is to have a false unification that means that we
point es.wikipedia.org at a different organization with no guarantee
that they will do things in the wikipedia way.  Doing so would cut off
any possibility of the development of a true wikipedia community, and
would set a bad precedent against true unification and harmony.

--Jimbo


from_name: wiki pedista

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Jimbo,
    there is people that has suggested that, if
enciclopedia libre wants to belong to the wikipedia
community again, a possibilty is to point
es.wikipedia.org to their site.
You said "I don't think that's acceptable".
I just want to make sure I understand the real
meaning of it. Is it, "in my opinion is not
acceptable,
but if the rest of the comunity, including the
developers
that will handle the techical aspect of it agree, so
will
I", or "I, as the owner of the name es.wikipedia.org
do
not agree"?

The answer is important, because that will tell the EL
people if they are dealing with the wikipedia
community,
or with Jimbo Wales, owner of wikipedia.

As for the NPOV, even it is not put so
prominently in their pages, their goal seems to me
the same us ours, create  a neutral enciclopedia,
not a collection of opinions. Probably the only think
i consider not very NPOV are some of their references
to wikipedia. If they flagrantly violate the NPOV,
as you think could happen, the enforcement would be
simply point es.wikipedia.org back to the wikipedia
server, copy the contents, do a "fork back" and clean
it up. I do not see the presence on the wikipedia
server as necessary for the NPOV enforcement, then.

All that said, I do think being in a common server
would be preferable, but a member of their community
(their current webmaster, juanan, for example) should
have developer access to the wikipedia server, to
be able to do maintenance of the software and
database,
and create their own sysops.
That should be true for all wikipedias that have
a size large enough and have a developer-type person
among them.

AstroNomer

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Robert L Frasier

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
Quoting Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com>:

>
> --- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
>
> > In general, I think this is a good use for Talk pages.
>
> I disagree: sources are a vital part of the article and should not be
> hidden away in an area that most readers will never find. I think of
> Talk as short term discussions aimed at improving an article, not as a
> depository of meta information. If all Talk pages are deleted
> tomorrow,
> the encyclopedia should  still be self-contained and complete.
>
> Sources are extremely useful information; it's impossible to evaluate
> material without sources. Why would we possibly hide that information
> from readers?
>
> Axel

I tend to agree -

It seems that the bottom line is who are your users (or who would you like them
to be) and the goals of wikipedia. If I know that Axel does impeccable research
and in an expert in the field of biometrics, then I may be satisfied - but the
casual user or the user that comes in via Google doesn't know Axel & may not be
able to evaluate/use the information.

If you want wikipedia to be primarily a source for information on popular
culture  - (and there is nothing wrong with that) - then you probably don't need
a lot of sources - that information is readily available from a variety of
sources. If you want any kind of scholarly (perhaps credible is a better word)
reputation then you have to give sources -

It's hard for me to get excited about the particular format - so long as I can
find the source.

Plus - there are contributors who take it as a personal insult to be asked for
sources - perhaps if it were a general requirement, some of the ruffled feathers
syndrome might be avoided.

bob


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
At 08:55 AM 10/2/02 -0700, you wrote:

>--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
>
> > In general, I think this is a good use for Talk pages.
>
>I disagree: sources are a vital part of the article and should not be
>hidden away in an area that most readers will never find. I think of
>Talk as short term discussions aimed at improving an article, not as a
>depository of meta information. If all Talk pages are deleted tomorrow,
>the encyclopedia should  still be self-contained and complete.
>
>Sources are extremely useful information; it's impossible to evaluate
>material without sources. Why would we possibly hide that information
>from readers?

I was thinking of notes like "this is based on an article from X paper"
or "I googled and found a few sites", when the specific article or sites aren't
given, not references to books or research papers.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
I usually cite stuff that I think people would want to check into, especially if it challenges what was previously in an article [1].

Links:
* [name of source] -- used in footnote one above

Ed Poor


body:
If there's no "common base", then there's no way to engage in "give and take" (this is a fundamental premise of Unification Church theology, besides being just plain good common sense).

Maybe before trying to sell our product, we should find out what our "customer" actually needs.

What are their goals, and how do those goals match ours?

Why did they split off?

What are the slanderous (or libelous) statements they've made?

What can we possibly offer them, that would make them recant those statements?

Without knowing the answers to ALL of those questions, I'd rather swim with sharks than try to negotiate with the other group.

Ed Poor


from_name: Mark Christensen

body:
I think the key problem here is a breakdow of trust on both sides.  I
think we are all in agreement that Wikipedia branded encyclopedias
should all be open and NPOV. If we want them to trust us not to abuse
the wikipedia for advertizing purposes, we should trust them to keep the
encyclopedia open and NPOV.

Probably we should ask them to prommise to maintain certain standards of
openness and NPOV, just as we prommise not to make the various
wikipedia's into a giant avertizing site.   Hopefully everybody will
keep their word, but if not the loss can be minimized by the fact that
both projects use the GNU-FDL, and so a breach on either part would just
mean that --at the time when violation occurs-- either party can fork
the project.

As long as it's just fear that somebody will violate the principles we
stand for, we should try to get over those fears and work together.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 11:52 AM
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Spanish Wikipedia; Negotiation

Axel Boldt wrote:
> In other words: we want them back on our US server, so that we, and
> not they, are in control. We know who should be banned, but we don't
> trust them with such decisions. Maybe we should say that clearly at
> the beginning; it will shorten the discussion considerably.

This is a distortion of my position, but definitely we need to make
perfectly clear that local control does _not_ extend to such issues as
allowing various wikipedias to become non-NPOV, or allowing various
wikipedias to abandon the spirit of openness.  If they don't like that
restriction, then that's fine -- they can do their own non-NPOV and
non-open thing.  We're better off without them.

--Jimbo
[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Adam Williamson

body:
On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 18:14, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Suppose each of us kicks in, say $10 a month -- or even $50 a month -- towards staff salaries.
>(It must be clearly settled beforehand what extra privileges subscribers would get: my vote would
>be for NONE WHATSOEVER.) For example, if twenty of us give $50 a month and fifty of us give $20
>a month, and maybe a hundred more give $10 a month, that would be around $3,000 a month. If Jimbo
>could match that (not that he should, he's already done and is doing plenty) -- we would have
>$48,000 a year for staff.

Hmm...

3000x12 = 36000

(If matched by Jimbo)

3000x2x12 = 72000

Am I missing something, or should Ed be restrained from editing the
maths pages? =)
--
adamw


subject: [Wikipedia-l] AntiWikipedic -- was "the OsmosisTwo pest"

body:
>The person who has been repeatedly creating the pages "wikipedic" &
>"antiwikipedic" is this same OsmosisTwo person.
>Take a look at the deletion log: he keeps creating it again & again.
>According to the Vandalism in Progress page, LDC has banned him, but
>he's back with another IP.

Brion, I, April, and possibly other sysops have all blocked
him at one dynamic IP or another, but he seems more persistent
than the usual kid.  If he doesn't give up soon we may have to
escalate, but I still hold out some small hope of reform.


from_name: James Zitzmann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
wiki pedista is gay.
---
Earn free ringtones - go to:
http://www.earnfreeringtones.com/?src=jzcool
James's Domain - Your source for Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, Anime, Manga, and more! http://www.jzcool.net

On Wed, 2 Oct 2002 12:25:42
 wiki pedista wrote:
>
>Jimbo,
>    there is people that has suggested that, if
>enciclopedia libre wants to belong to the wikipedia
>community again, a possibilty is to point
>es.wikipedia.org to their site.
>You said "I don't think that's acceptable".
>I just want to make sure I understand the real
>meaning of it. Is it, "in my opinion is not
>acceptable,
>but if the rest of the comunity, including the
>developers
>that will handle the techical aspect of it agree, so
>will
>I", or "I, as the owner of the name es.wikipedia.org
>do
>not agree"?
>
>The answer is important, because that will tell the EL
>people if they are dealing with the wikipedia
>community,
>or with Jimbo Wales, owner of wikipedia.
>
>As for the NPOV, even it is not put so
>prominently in their pages, their goal seems to me
>the same us ours, create  a neutral enciclopedia,
>not a collection of opinions. Probably the only think
>i consider not very NPOV are some of their references
>to wikipedia. If they flagrantly violate the NPOV,
>as you think could happen, the enforcement would be
>simply point es.wikipedia.org back to the wikipedia
>server, copy the contents, do a "fork back" and clean
>it up. I do not see the presence on the wikipedia
>server as necessary for the NPOV enforcement, then.
>
>All that said, I do think being in a common server
>would be preferable, but a member of their community
>(their current webmaster, juanan, for example) should
>have developer access to the wikipedia server, to
>be able to do maintenance of the software and
>database,
>and create their own sysops.
>That should be true for all wikipedias that have
>a size large enough and have a developer-type person
>among them.
>
>AstroNomer
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
>http://sbc.yahoo.com
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

____________________________________________________________
Tired of all the SPAM in your inbox? Switch to LYCOS MAIL PLUS
http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus


from_name: tarquin

body:
The person who has been repeatedly creating the pages "wikipedic" &
"antiwikipedic" is this same OsmosisTwo person.
Take a look at the deletion log: he keeps creating it again & again.
According to the Vandalism in Progress page, LDC has banned him, but
he's back with another IP.

come back 24, all is forgiven!!!

tarquin wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'm inclined to agree in the light of day.
>>> You should have seen his comments on OsmosisTwo, he kept editing that
>>> page to say "tarquin is part of the cabal and wants to delete
>>> OsmosisTwo".
>>> Annoying.
>>>
>>
>>


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
> What is not possible is to have a false unification that means that we
> point es.wikipedia.org at a different organization with no guarantee
> that they will do things in the wikipedia way.

But what guarantee do you have that e.g. the German Wikipedia is "doing
things the wikipedia way"? And what would you do if you knew we aren't?

I think it's very important that the people (often just one or two)
working on a new international Wikipedia are already indoctrinated with
our ideals (or have a social Wp-habitus, if that sounds nicer ;-).
Otherwise a new Wikipedia could become totaly tendentious, and it would
be very unattractive for others to participate. I fear this will happen
in the future, but hopefully enough multilingual "old hands" will
allways keep an eye on upcoming Wikipedias.

Kurt


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] trolling

body:
On Wednesday 02 October 2002 11:12 pm, James Zitzmann wrote:
> wiki pedista is gay.

If you don't have anything productive to say, then don't say anything at all.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
This is a great question!

Kurt Jansson wrote:
> But what guarantee do you have that e.g. the German Wikipedia is "doing
> things the wikipedia way"? And what would you do if you knew we aren't?

Let's say that we found out that sysops on the German wikipedia were
banning people for minor disagreements.  Let's say, for example, that
a group of German libertarians (I use this example because my
political sympathies lie in this direction) started banning Marxists
and socialists.  And they did so, not because of vandalism, but in an
effort to maintain a pro-libertarian and pro-capitalist slant to
various important articles.

Then, I would remove their sysop privileges for abuse.  (Only after
considerable discussion, of course, and efforts to get them to
straighten up.)  But if that same group had legal, technical, and
practical control over the server, I could do nothing.

> I think it's very important that the people (often just one or two)
> working on a new international Wikipedia are already indoctrinated with
> our ideals (or have a social Wp-habitus, if that sounds nicer ;-).
> Otherwise a new Wikipedia could become totaly tendentious, and it would
> be very unattractive for others to participate. I fear this will happen
> in the future, but hopefully enough multilingual "old hands" will
> allways keep an eye on upcoming Wikipedias.

I think that's right.

--Jimbo


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> But what guarantee do you have that e.g. the German Wikipedia is "doing
> things the wikipedia way"? And what would you do if you knew we aren't?
>
> I think it's very important that the people (often just one or two)
> working on a new international Wikipedia are already indoctrinated with
> our ideals (or have a social Wp-habitus, if that sounds nicer ;-).

I think this is an important question, and my best suggestion is to
appoint one or two ambassadors for each language, who can act as
site owners towards the other users and as translators/reporters to
Bomis and developers.  Therefore I welcome the newly set up embassies.

Maintaining the neutral point of view and avoiding copyright
violations should be the easiest part of the job.  But how strict are
the non-English Wikipedias on issues such as "Wikipedia is not a
dictionary" (not a gazetteer, not a product catalog, not a consumer
report, etc.)?  Is it or will there be a problem to assert authority
to weed out poor contributions in the small and slow-growing
non-English Wikipedias?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] trolling

in_reply_to: <20021003074048.HWSU18767.rwcrmhc53.attbi.com@there>; from maveric149@yahoo.com on Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 12:43:06AM -0700

body:
I asked him what he was doing, and I will take him off the mailing
list if he does this again.

Daniel Mayer wrote:

> On Wednesday 02 October 2002 11:12 pm, James Zitzmann wrote:
> > wiki pedista is gay.
>
> If you don't have anything productive to say, then don't say anything at all.
>
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
> From root at monica.bomis.com (Cron Daemon) Wed Oct  2 23:51:37 2002


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> wikipedias to abandon the spirit of openness.  If they don't like that
> restriction, then that's fine -- they can do their own non-NPOV and
> non-open thing.  We're better off without them.

While perfectly logical, this kind of argument is funny, considering
that their break away was motivated by a perceived commercial or
corporate touch of Wikipedia.  It seems likely to me that the EL
people would set higher standards ("be more picky") than Wikipedia for
who they will cooperate with.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
Khendon wrote:
> Why are article names case sensitive? There doesn't seem a good reason for
> it - multiple articles that differ in case would be unnecessarily confusing.
>
> Changing it to be case insensitive would make it simpler to get links
> right, reduce the need for redirects, and just generally (as far as
> I can see) be a Good Thing.
>
> I'm sure there's arguments against that I can't see - what are they?

Mainly that we'd have to think up a clean way to define the "official"
display case of the title, and use it consistently, and change it when
it's wrong. Simply Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Word Like Most
Of The Non-English Wikis Have Been Forced To Deal With For Some Time Is
Not Acceptable.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> But what guarantee do you have that e.g. the German Wikipedia is "doing
> things the wikipedia way"? And what would you do if you knew we aren't?
> I think it's very important that the people (often just one or two)
> working on a new international Wikipedia are already indoctrinated with
> our ideals (or have a social Wp-habitus, if that sounds nicer ;-).

Hum Kurt, I have no idea what "Wp-habitus" means. But I would strongly suggest not to use the word indoctrination.

First because, it smells Stalinism, Goulag and little red book (but maybe it doesnot smell that way in english ?)

Second because it is slightly disrespectful of people freedom of mind; I know we are influenced. But I am equally sure that we wouldnot be there in the first place if we didnot basically agree beforehand with these ideals.

Third because, even if it sadly sounds like talking "politically correct" not to use that word, I think there are some truths that don't necessarily benefit to be said so bluntly.

>Lars Aronsson wrote:
>I think this is an important question, and my best suggestion is to
>appoint one or two ambassadors for each language, who can act as
>site owners towards the other users and as translators/reporters to
>Bomis and developers. Therefore I welcome the newly set up embassies.

Ah, and who do you think would appoint a "site owner" ???

Jimbo ? I think it will be perceived the wrong way by most...
People on this list ? most internat wikipedians would probably consider it an anglosaxon decision
Internat wikipedians themselves ? They could appoint anybody with a good reputation, rather than somebody caring about these "ideals".
Self-appointement ? Reporting and translating is one thing. "Owning" is another.

>Maintaining the neutral point of view and avoiding copyright
>violations should be the easiest part of the job.

Nope, I, unfortunately, do not think so. People are not naturally neutral. That is not so bad when many people can work at the same time on an article (though...). But just *defining* neutrality is an issue on the french wiki. If you are sure it is easy, and if you speak french, come and help me please. Right now, it is on hold till courage, time and opportunity come back :-)

>But how strict are
>the non-English Wikipedias on issues such as "Wikipedia is not a
>dictionary" (not a gazetteer, not a product catalog, not a consumer
>report, etc.)?

Some of us support it is also a dictionary... :-)

>Is it or will there be a problem to assert authority
>to weed out poor contributions in the small and slow-growing
>non-English Wikipedias?

I rather support keeping poor contributions, they might grow better in time.

I agree with you all your comments are important points, but some are much more than others.

The fact is I think most contributors basically agree with the main issues (such as encyclopedia, collaboration, neutrality, consensus) but they are not necessarily the ones that speak up. When you are a small number, the effect of somebody speaking loudly to challenge these "ideals" gets a lot of power, far too much power on others. I don't think a central power "asserting authority" will solve that point : some contributors just don't want to hear anything about what an english might have said on that subject (like Jimbo's opinion on what neutrality is), they just consider that, being on an international wikipedia, their opinion has more weight.

I don't know what to answer to that type of comment, so nationality/langage oriented, and so soapy...

So either we find a way to mix more the different wikis, so that ultimately other langages people will durably influence matters on a given wiki, or we need more of these "indoctrinated" people in each langage :-)

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021003/f77fbe2a/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
 Khendon wrote:On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 04:20:04AM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> Khendon wrote:
> >Why are article names case sensitive? There doesn't seem a good reason for
> >it - multiple articles that differ in case would be unnecessarily
> >confusing.
> >
> >Changing it to be case insensitive would make it simpler to get links
> >right, reduce the need for redirects, and just generally (as far as
> >I can see) be a Good Thing.
> >
> >I'm sure there's arguments against that I can't see - what are they?
>
> Mainly that we'd have to think up a clean way to define the "official"
> display case of the title, and use it consistently, and change it when
> it's wrong. Simply Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Word Like Most
> Of The Non-English Wikis Have Been Forced To Deal With For Some Time Is
> Not Acceptable.

Simple enough to deal with; have the title adopt the case given in
the URL.

No, it is not acceptable. Some words in many langages do not have the same meaning with big or small letters. Sometimes for grammar reasons, sometimes for conceptual reasons. We need to be able to make the difference.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021003/db531b55/attachment.htm


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
Khendon wrote:
>Simple enough to deal with; have the title adopt the case given in
>the URL.

I can't remember where all the discussion took place, but: capitalizing all leading letters looks odd and isn't natural to English (especially on articles and prepositions).  Also, capitalizations sometimes distinguish one subject from another.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
Khendon wrote:
>If not, surely it's possible to disambigute in other ways? Say, if flirble
>meant "big red house", but Flirble meant "a kind of jelly", then flirble
>could be a disambiguation page to "flirble (architecture)" and "Flirble
>(jelly)".

Isn't that making things more complicated than they need to be?

kq


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Hmmm. Didn't you like being a respected member of the
community, James?

Stephen G.

--- James Zitzmann <jzcool at lycos.com> wrote:
> wiki pedista is gay.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] trolling

body:
On Thu, 3 Oct 2002, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> On Wednesday 02 October 2002 11:12 pm, James Zitzmann wrote:
> > wiki pedista is gay.
>
> If you don't have anything productive to say, then don't say anything
> at all.

Actually, I think that goes for quite a few messages I've seen lately.

Hoping that this, on the other hand, is productive,
Larry


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
On Thu, 3 Oct 2002, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
> > Ah, and who do you think would appoint a "site owner" ???
> > Jimbo ?
>
> Yes, of course.  He owns the system, the name, and the machines.  He
> is very generous and liberal, but he is the owner.

Not that I speak for Jimbo of course, but this might be misleading, Lars.
Jimmy has *always* been responsive to community concerns--he doesn't just
do things without consulting anybody.  (Except, of course, *starting* the
project of an open content encyclopedia--and I trust we can all be glad
that he did that without consulting anybody.)  What you're saying here (in
several places in your post) makes it sound as if Jimmy holds all the
cards, and he makes all the decisions, and if you don't like it, you're
going to have to go to the trouble of starting a competing open content
project.  But this is just completely false.  In one very attenuated
sense, sure, he's *ultimately* responsible for the decisions about the
projects, but that's *only* insofar as the projects happen to reside on
his servers.  As we all know (you were writing as if this weren't the
case), the Wikipedia and Nupedia projects and their policies (or lack
thereof!) now take almost all of their cues from rank and file
participants.

> > Some of us support it is also a dictionary... :-)
>
> If the trademark Wikipedia has some meaning (NPOV, etc.), perhaps
> defined by some charter, that meaning should be the same for all
> languages.  A year ago, Larry Sanger was very clear on the point that
> "Wikipedia is not a dictionary".  So if the French Wikipedia is
> becoming a dictionary, somebody is breaking this rule.  Either the
> French Wikipedia should straight up, or the rule should be revised.
> Since it is the trademark owner's (Jimmy's) interest to make sure the
> trademark keeps its meaning, he should appoint ambassadors who can
> help him maintain his policy in the various languages.

Again, this is misleading on a number of points.  First of all, what
Wikipedia stands for has **NOTHING** to do with the fact (if it is a
fact--I honestly don't know) that "Wikipedia" is a commercial trademark.
By suggesting that, Lars, you are suggesting that it is somehow quite
important that Wikipedia policies, as promulgated so far, are bound up
with "Wikipedia" being a trademark.  But why think that?  I'm sorry, but
that just sounds silly.

Second, my declaring "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" one year ago
obviously is not what would make that (still) Wikipedia policy, if indeed
it is (still) Wikipedia policy.  Your implication, that policy
declarations from Larry are policy by fiat, is precisely the sort of nasty
misleading implication I felt throughout my tenure, and it's something I
should have thought we had gotten over long ago.

Third, you say that if someone on the French Wikipedia is breaking the
"Wikipedia is not a dictionary" rule, they should be stopped or the rule
changed; but this implies that *all* rules as formulated on the English
Wikipedia are rules for all the rest.  This isn't my understanding at
all--at least, if nothing has changed since we last visited this issue,
the non-English Wikipedias enjoy (and in my opinion *should* enjoy) an
extreme amount of autonomy.  Jimbo has declared that all wikipedias should
share a few very basic policies in common.  In fact, the only two that
spring to mind immediately are the nonbias policy and the policy that
we're working on an encyclopedia.  The line between encyclopedia and
dictionary is admittedly vague.  I personally would insist that we risk
producing something of poor quality and little use if we tolerate many
stubs that are of dictionary definition length (not to say that we should
just delete them outright--we *should* either expand or simply discourage
them before they get written in the first place).  This is my opinion, and
I'll argue for it strenuously, but under no circumstances would I want to
say that it should *necessarily* be the policy for the English Wikipedia,
let alone all Wikipedias.  *Whether* it is accepted as policy rests
entirely with community consensus.  Not fiat.

Fourth, we have a long and respectable tradition of letting articles go to
hell on Wikipedia, as far as policy is concerned, and when people want to
clean them up so that they're in accordance with policy, that's grand.
So it hardly follows from the fact that one or two people are writing a
bunch of dictionary definitions on the French Wikipedia that the policy--
even the French policy, is there is one--on this point should be changed.

> > >Is it or will there be a problem to assert authority
> > >to weed out poor contributions in the small and slow-growing
> > >non-English Wikipedias?
> >
> > I rather support keeping poor contributions, they might grow better
> > in time.
>
> This has not been the conclusion of previous discussions on this list
> regarding the English Wikipedia.  People are now actively deleting
> "stub" articles.

Again, Lars, you misleadingly imply something that makes people look a lot
worse than they really are.  Please get it right.  People are now actively
deleting articles that are so completely useless that they don't deserve
to be called "stub" articles.  If I write an article called "Grant's Tomb"
and the content is "The place where Grant is buried," there's nothing at
all seriously or obviously wrong with removing that article, or its ilk.

> > small number, the effect of somebody speaking loudly to challenge
> > these "ideals" gets a lot of power, far too much power on others.
> > I don't think a central power "asserting authority" will solve that
> > point : some contributors just don't want to hear anything about
> > what an english might have said on that subject
>
> This is why I think that an appointed ambassador or governor is
> needed, who knows the language and has the authority (from Jimmy) to
> tell people what the policy is, that they can join this list if they
> want to discuss the policy, and if they cannot accept this policy,
> then they must leave and start their own project.  If you eat in a
> restaurant or stay in a hotel, you must behave as the owner tells you.

This is ridiculous, for reasons above stated.  I'm certain that Jimbo
would agree with that assessment, too.  The authority for virtually all
decisions comes from the community, Lars, and those of us in the community
who like it that way would appreciate it if you would not imply otherwise.

Larry


from_name: Khendon

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spanish Wikipedia

body:
On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 01:08:39PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> But if this issue turns out to be an intractable one, I vote for moving the
> English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org -- such a trivial thing is not worth
> arguing much about. Then all www.wikipedia.org would be is just a gateway to
> the various projects (I still think this is a waste of a URL but I am willing
> to acquiesce).

I like that idea. The main gateway page should attempt to negotiate a
preferred language with the browser, too.

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Trademark, and policy for non-English Wikipedias (was: spanish wikipedia)

body:
Just to quickly echo two of Larry's points:

--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:

> If the trademark Wikipedia has some meaning

"Wikipedia" is neither a registered trademark nor a registered service
mark. As such, it enjoys at best common law status in the state of
California, but has no protection in inter state or international
commerce.

> needed, who knows the language and has the authority (from Jimmy) to
> tell people what the policy is, that they can join this list if they
> want to discuss the policy, and if they cannot accept this policy,
> then they must leave and start their own project.

This list discusses policy for the English Wikipedia. If I argue
against stubs on this list, I say precisely nothing about the
desirability of stubs in the French Wikipedia, nor do I intend to.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
Why are article names case sensitive? There doesn't seem a good reason for
it - multiple articles that differ in case would be unnecessarily confusing.

Changing it to be case insensitive would make it simpler to get links
right, reduce the need for redirects, and just generally (as far as
I can see) be a Good Thing.

I'm sure there's arguments against that I can't see - what are they?

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
Khendon wrote:
>> Also, capitalizations sometimes distinguish one subject from another.
>
>Often enough to justify the problems case-sensitivity brings?

Refresh my memory on what the problems are again, if you would please.

kq


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
One good thing about case sensitivity in article URLs is when there are two separate articles: one about a subject in general (a state fair is an exhibition of agricultural products), and another about a particular person, place or thing having the same name (State Fair is a musical by Rodges and Hammerstein).

Here are some more examples:
* A ring bearer carries the wedding ring up the aisle vs. The Ring Bearer in Tolkien's book.
* A big brother as a family role vs. Big Brother (the 1984 bad guy or 1990s TV show).

Yes, any of these can be disambiguated with parentheses into their separate articles, or they can be lumped into a single page. But it's easier in enough instances to use case sensitivity, I think.

Ed Poor


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Kurt Jansson wrote:
> > I think it's very important that the people (often just one or two)
> > working on a new international Wikipedia are already indoctrinated with
> > our ideals (or have a social Wp-habitus, if that sounds nicer ;-).
>
> Hum Kurt, I have no idea what "Wp-habitus" means. But I would strongly
> suggest not to use the word indoctrination.
>
> First because, it smells Stalinism, Goulag and little red book (but
> maybe it doesnot smell that way in english ?)
>
These connotations of "indoctrination" depend on the context.  I would
object if such a sentence were used in and article, but not on the
mailing list where it is clearly informal and reflects a developed set
of habits rather than something that has been imposed by higher powers.

> >Lars Aronsson wrote:
> >I think this is an important question, and my best suggestion is to
> >appoint one or two ambassadors for each language, who can act as
> >site owners towards the other users and as translators/reporters to
> >Bomis and developers. Therefore I welcome the newly set up embassies.
>
> Ah, and who do you think would appoint a "site owner" ???
>
Ambasadors as site owners seems like a contradiction in terms.  Talking
about directors of a non-profit organization would make more sense.

With a non-profit corporation, the corporation would become the owner
rather than any individual.  One criterion should be that no one country
should have 50% or more of the directors.  This may conflict with a
frequent requirement that a majority of directors be from within the
incorporating jurisdiction, but this varies considerably (at least
across North America).  If this becomes a problem a little jurisdiction
shopping would be in order.

> Jimbo ? I think it will be perceived the wrong way by most...
> People on this list ? most internat wikipedians would probably
> consider it an anglosaxon decision
> Internat wikipedians themselves ? They could appoint anybody with a
> good reputation, rather than somebody caring about these "ideals".
> Self-appointement ? Reporting and translating is one thing. "Owning"
> is another.
>
The first set of directors might very well be arbitrary, but one of its
duties would be to develop a set of rules acceptable by Wikipedians for
the naming of future directors.

I believe that in addition to directors, the group should also have a
set of Trustees.  They would not normally have corporate decision making
powers, but would be in a position to step in to ensure survival of the
project if the directors completely screw up.  Their right to step in
would need to be strictly defined.

> >Maintaining the neutral point of view and avoiding copyright
> >violations should be the easiest part of the job.
>
> Nope, I, unfortunately, do not think so. People are not naturally
> neutral. That is not so bad when many people can work at the same time
> on an article (though...). But just *defining* neutrality is an issue
> on the french wiki. If you are sure it is easy, and if you speak
> french, come and help me please. Right now, it is on hold till
> courage, time and opportunity come back :-)
>
You're right!  Defining neutrality will always be a problem.  Don't
think that the English Wikipedia is exempt just because it's bigger.
 People with prejudices never see them as prejudices.  As for copyright,
protecting the GFDL nature of Wikipedia copyrights is a far greater
challenge than catching copyright violations by contributors.

> >But how strict are the non-English Wikipedias on issues such as
> "Wikipedia is not a
> >dictionary" (not a gazetteer, not a product catalog, not a consumer
> report, etc.)?
>
> Some of us support it is also a dictionary... :-)
>
I would consider three of these four to be secondary issues where
different languages could easily develop their own guidelines.  Product
catalog is a different matter because it relates to issues of
advertising and consumerism

> >Is it or will there be a problem to assert authority
> >to weed out poor contributions in the small and slow-growing
> >non-English Wikipedias?
>
> I rather support keeping poor contributions, they might grow better in
> time.
>
Yes.  Who makes the judgement that something is a "poor" contributions?
 Asserting authority would certainly be worse than anything we have now.
 The ones complaining so much about the poor articles should simply
improve them themselves. If they feel that there are so many that they
don't have enough time to improve them, that's their problem for being
such perfectionists.  Maybe they should just lighten up.

> The fact is I think most contributors basically agree with the main
> issues (such as encyclopedia, collaboration, neutrality, consensus)
> but they are not necessarily the ones that speak up. When you are a
> small number, the effect of somebody speaking loudly to challenge
> these "ideals" gets a lot of power, far too much power on others. I
> don't think a central power "asserting authority" will solve that
> point : some contributors just don't want to hear anything about what
> an english might have said on that subject (like Jimbo's opinion on
> what neutrality is), they just consider that, being on an
> international wikipedia, their opinion has more weight.
>
Most political revolutions, coups-d'?tat, etc. are the work of dedicated
minorities, without regard to where they come from on the political
spectrum.  Naturally, they want to diminish the influence of those with
opposing points of view.  The large majority of people is not
confrontational, and they prefer the path of least resistance.  The
majority will concede issues where they disagree for the simple purpose
of avoiding a fight.  This can be a problem for  a small group that has
not enough strong-willed people with opposing views.  I think each
language group will need to deal with these problems separately, and,
apart from the need to adhere to a very limited number of core
principles, each may end up very different.

Eclecticology


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Anchor

body:
Bonjour,
Do Wikipedia have already a support to HTML anchors ?
It can be fine to be able to define anchors and add it to links.
Those following lines are not interpreted by the parser :

Go to my anchor
It can be usefull to target a paragraph in an article.
Any solution ?
If there are no support yet, I prose the fellowing :

[[anchor:MyAnchorName]] to set an anchor, and

[[ArticleName#MyAnchorName|DisplayText]] to link to anchors in an other articles, and

[[#MyAnchorName|DisplayText]] to link to anchors in same article.

What do you think about that ?

Guillaume (as Aoineko)

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20021003/7cca7e00/attachment.html>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:

>Khendon wrote:
>
>>Simple enough to deal with; have the title adopt the case given in
>>the URL.
>>
>
>I can't remember where all the discussion took place, but: capitalizing all leading letters looks odd and isn't natural to English (especially on articles and prepositions).  Also, capitalizations sometimes distinguish one subject from another.
>
This is one of those "easier said than done" kind of issues.  Sometimes
the difference has subtle aspects.  How do we account for the difference
between "small c" and "big C" conservatives.

I think this policy is fine the way it is.

It has the added benefit of forcing people to be a little more
disciplined in their contribution habits.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
>....., the instances where it would
>*actually* be a problem are vanishingly
>small. I've yet to hear of or think of an
>example, in fact (although I'm sure there
>are a few).

Here is some previous discussion and some examples
(its all been said before);
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Feature_requests&oldid=96067

>And the instances where capitalisation causes
problems are many.
>
>Khendon  (Jason Williams)

I can think of many more reasons why it is better to
enforce proper capitalization via the software than
there isn't. For example, [[united states]] and
[[UNITED STATES]] shouldn't work unless a human has
taken the time to make a redirect (which would be
waste of a redirect BTW). If the software
automatically links to our article [[United States]]
then there is little reason for users to be careful
about correctly capitalizing and naming their links.
There are also many hundreds, if not more,
encyclopedic terms that have generic meanings that are
lower-cased and then specific legal meanings that are
capitalized ([[environmental protection agency]] vs
[[Environmental Protection Agency]] or [[space
shuttle]] vs [[Space Shuttle]]). Many books, movies,
and plays have as their tiles terms that are of
encyclopedic interest ([[Quantum Leap]] vs [[quantum
leap]] or [[Red Dwarf]] vs [[red dwarf]]).

If an article is Incorrectly Capitalized Or Otherwise
MisNamed Or Missspelt Then fix the title by moving the
article and fix any incorrectly titled edit links.
Several months ago I fixed many many hundreds
(probably thousands) of incorrectly capitalized and
pluralized pages and edit links. Since then I've
really only seen the occasional newbie mis-titling a
page and most of the time somebody else fixes the
capitalization before I do.

As one other person mentioned, this is even more
important in other languages -- and it should be
stressed that changes to the software will effect all
languages.

Only proper nouns and some other terms should be
capitalized -- anything else is just incorrect
grammar. We needn't encourage incorrect grammar.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
>Khendon wrote:
>It's easy to get the capitalisation on a link wrong.

That argument is AFAIK esentially a non-starter.  It's easy to get punctuation wrong, too; we don't dispense with it because of that.  We go through and correct it.

What exactly are you proposing?  That [[apocalypse now]] and [[Apocalypse Now]] lead to the same place?

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
Khendon wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 04:20:04AM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>>Mainly that we'd have to think up a clean way to define the "official"
>>display case of the title, and use it consistently, and change it when
>>it's wrong. Simply Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Word Like Most
>>Of The Non-English Wikis Have Been Forced To Deal With For Some Time Is
>>Not Acceptable.
>
> Simple enough to deal with; have the title adopt the case given in
> the URL.

The URL doesn't contain the title in the recentchanges list, user
contribs list, watchlist, short pages list, orphans list, long pages
list, image list, yadda yadda yadda.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>>Ah, and who do you think would appoint a "site owner" ???
>>Jimbo ?
>>
>Yes, of course.  He owns the system, the name, and the machines.  He
>is very generous and liberal, but he is the owner.  It is not self-evident that you
>can reuse the name "Wikipedia", since that would be regulated by U.S.
>trademark law.  Jimmy might decide to form a non-profit organization
>under U.S. law or perhaps Swiss law (like the U.N.?).
>
>I'm not unhappy with this.  I fully trust Jimmy.
>
This all depends on what importance, rights and responsibilities you
attach to the concept of ownership.  There are intangible aspects of the
project which are collectively owned.  In the short run I don't see
ownership as a problem, and I'm not in a hurry to see a debate on the
fine points of trademark law.

I'm willing to accept the presumption that Jimmy is acting in good
faith, and that he will give up personal ownership if he is confident
about where the project will head afterwards.  There's no need to
approach the subject with expectations of legal controversy.

>>Some of us support it is also a dictionary... :-)
>>
>
>If the trademark Wikipedia has some meaning (NPOV, etc.), perhaps
>defined by some charter, that meaning should be the same for all
>languages.  A year ago, Larry Sanger was very clear on the point that
>"Wikipedia is not a dictionary".  So if the French Wikipedia is
>becoming a dictionary, somebody is breaking this rule.  Either the
>French Wikipedia should straight up, or the rule should be revised.
>Since it is the trademark owner's (Jimmy's) interest to make sure the
>trademark keeps its meaning, he should appoint ambassadors who can
>help him maintain his policy in the various languages.
>
If the French Wikipedia feels that it is appropriate to include being a
dictionary that's their business.  I don't see the need for them to be
bound by one of Larry's rules from a year ago when thay had no
opportunity to participate in its development.  Demanding that they
"straighten up" would be unnecessarily dictatorial.  Trademarks are
irrelevant to this point.  Appointing ambasadors to maintain policy
would symbolize everything that most of us love to hate about the United
States; it could inspire the Spanish "Eciclopedia Libre" to become
multilingual.

>This is why I think that an appointed ambassador or governor is
>needed, who knows the language and has the authority (from Jimmy) to
>tell people what the policy is, that they can join this list if they
>want to discuss the policy, and if they cannot accept this policy,
>then they must leave and start their own project.
>
Frankly, (and speaking as an unrepentant leftist) from what I've seen of
Jimmy's posts on this list, he has not exhibited symptoms of being such
an autocrat.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 04:20:04AM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> Khendon wrote:
> >Why are article names case sensitive? There doesn't seem a good reason for
> >it - multiple articles that differ in case would be unnecessarily
> >confusing.
> >
> >Changing it to be case insensitive would make it simpler to get links
> >right, reduce the need for redirects, and just generally (as far as
> >I can see) be a Good Thing.
> >
> >I'm sure there's arguments against that I can't see - what are they?
>
> Mainly that we'd have to think up a clean way to define the "official"
> display case of the title, and use it consistently, and change it when
> it's wrong. Simply Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Word Like Most
> Of The Non-English Wikis Have Been Forced To Deal With For Some Time Is
> Not Acceptable.

Simple enough to deal with; have the title adopt the case given in
the URL.

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] interlanguage rules

body:
> Third, you say that if someone on the French Wikipedia is breaking the
> "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" rule, they should be stopped or the rule
> changed; but this implies that *all* rules as formulated on the English
> Wikipedia are rules for all the rest.  This isn't my understanding at
> all--at least, if nothing has changed since we last visited this issue,
> the non-English Wikipedias enjoy (and in my opinion *should* enjoy) an
> extreme amount of autonomy.

Indeed, some rules for non-English Wikipedias are actually MORE
restrictive - the Esperanto one has a firm rule about not being
Anglo/Europo/Americocentric, which is obviously more important in E-o than
an English-language Wikipedia.

Matt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
> Nope, I, unfortunately, do not think so. People are not naturally
> neutral. That is not so bad when many people can work at the same time
> on an article (though...). But just *defining* neutrality is an issue
> on the french wiki. If you are sure it is easy, and if you speak
> french, come and help me please. Right now, it is on hold till
> courage, time and opportunity come back :-)
>
I can try and help: what's the page?
BTW, when is fr: switching to phase III?
Is there anything I can do to help with that too?

(I'm fluent in french but I've hardly used it on the net, so I'm missing
great chunks of technical lingo. but I can pick up quickly)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 04:55:59AM -0700, Anthere wrote:
> No, it is not acceptable. Some words in many langages do not have the same meaning with big or small letters. Sometimes for grammar reasons, sometimes for conceptual reasons. We need to be able to make the difference.

Are these not normally small distinctions (like the English god -vs God),
where it make sense to cover both words on the same page anyway, explaining
what difference the case makes?

If not, surely it's possible to disambigute in other ways? Say, if flirble
meant "big red house", but Flirble meant "a kind of jelly", then flirble
could be a disambiguation page to "flirble (architecture)" and "Flirble
(jelly)".

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plural and was: Case sensitivity

body:
At 2002-10-03 09:52 +0100, Khendon wrote:
>Why are article names case sensitive? There doesn't seem a good reason for
>it - multiple articles that differ in case would be unnecessarily confusing.
>
>Changing it to be case insensitive would make it simpler to get links
>right, reduce the need for redirects, and just generally (as far as
>I can see) be a Good Thing.
>
>
>I'm sure there's arguments against that I can't see - what are they?

I think I agree with you.

By the way, I was just editing and adding about 20 articles
on the Dutch Wikipedia (mostly about vegetables and computer
languages) and I would like to draw the attention to the fact
that one should generally not use a plural as the name of an
article. If it's about 'herbs' call it 'herb'.

Greetings,
Jaap


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

body:
|From: Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com>
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
|Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 08:55:25 -0700 (PDT)
|
|
|--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
|
|> In general, I think this is a good use for Talk pages.
|
|I disagree: sources are a vital part of the article and should not be
|hidden away in an area that most readers will never find. I think of
|Talk as short term discussions aimed at improving an article, not as a
|depository of meta information. If all Talk pages are deleted tomorrow,
|the encyclopedia should  still be self-contained and complete.
|
|Sources are extremely useful information; it's impossible to evaluate
|material without sources. Why would we possibly hide that information
|from readers?
|
|Axel
|

If a book is heavily used, it should be listed under ==Further
Reading==.  Likewise, if a web site is important, it sould be given
under ==External Links==.  Depending on the value of the source, it
could also be given in the test of the article itself, if it's that
relevant.

On the other hand, it isn't a bad thing to list random, regular
sources like the 1911 britannica on the talk page for guidance of
future writers without being compulsive about it.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 06:03:20AM -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Khendon wrote:
> >Simple enough to deal with; have the title adopt the case given in
> >the URL.
>
> I can't remember where all the discussion took place, but: capitalizing all leading letters looks odd and isn't natural to English (especially on articles and prepositions).

Isn't that what my suggestion quoted above deals with?

> Also, capitalizations sometimes distinguish one subject from another.

Often enough to justify the problems case-sensitivity brings?

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] our images aren't being indexed

body:
Google isn't picking up our images.  does anyone know why?  (I for one would like them to be indexed--no point in giving pictures away if nobody knows they're there.)  ;-)

Maybe it's a non-issue.

cheers,

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 06:10:05AM -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Khendon wrote:
> >If not, surely it's possible to disambigute in other ways? Say, if flirble
> >meant "big red house", but Flirble meant "a kind of jelly", then flirble
> >could be a disambiguation page to "flirble (architecture)" and "Flirble
> >(jelly)".
>
> Isn't that making things more complicated than they need to be?

Not really, no. As far as I can tell, the instances where it would
*actually* be a problem are vanishingly small. I've yet to hear
of or think of an example, in fact (although I'm sure there are
a few).

And the instances where capitalisation causes problems are many.

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de> writes:

> 	Er hat in Moskau liebe Genossen.
> 	( he's got friendly comrades in Moscow )
> 	Er hat in Moskau Liebe genossen.
> 	( He enjoyed Love in Moscow )

My favourite sexual partner is French Polish.
My favourite sexual partner is French polish...

... Suddenly I wish I hadn't said that...
--
Gareth Owen


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 09:56:08AM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> One good thing about case sensitivity in article URLs is when there are two separate articles: one about a subject in general (a state fair is an exhibition of agricultural products), and another about a particular person, place or thing having the same name (State Fair is a musical by Rodges and Hammerstein).

*shrug* I don't see this as a good thing at all. Case is a very easy
distinction to miss.

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] cross-fertilization (was Wikipedias)

body:
On 01-10-2002, Daniel Mayer wrote thusly :
> On Tuesday 01 October 2002 12:01 pm, Kpjas wrote:
[snip]
> The importance of interlange links should not be understated; having them
> makes it very easy for bi/multi-lingual contributors to update the same
> article in two or more languages ("cross-fertilization"). Another advantage
> is that when any language gets increased traffic, this trickles down to the
> other languages via the inter-language links.
Cross-fertilization. This is such a great idea !
I think it needs much more publicity wherever approporiate. I think we
might put a line on main pages and newbie pages asking and motivating
bi/multilingual Wikipedists to work on several language versions in
parallel.

Regards,
kpjas.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
> If not, surely it's possible to disambigute in other ways? Say, if flirble
> meant "big red house", but Flirble meant "a kind of jelly", then flirble
> could be a disambiguation page to "flirble (architecture)" and "Flirble
> (jelly)".

In this way, I think this is a non-discussion, since the current software
already does not make distinction between 'flirble' and 'Flirble' - the first
word is automatically made upper-case, also when it is inserted as
lower case. So it is only when there is a difference in a further word
where we get a difference, for example between "Big flirble" and "Big Flirble",
or when there is a capital inside a word, between "Bigg" and "BigG".

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Obscuring some redirects in the search

body:
tarquin wrote:
> As for redirects like "Zimbabwe/History", we don't want people to link
> to those.
> I am of the opinion that we should simply delete them -- the only
> argument against is that Google has indexed them.

Also there are links from external sites and personal bookmarks. Maybe
nothing links Zimbabwe/History, but there's at least one link to
Zimbabwe/Geography at this page:
   http://www.geometry.net/basic_z/zimbabwe_geography.php

How would it help our project if people follow links to what they are
told are articles only to find "Describe the text of the new page here."?

Do not delete redirects just because you find them un-aesthetic.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)