from_name: Carl Peterson

body:
In order,

I would agree with such a system, especially if the people running articles
through the translators already had a working knowledge of the language from
which they were translating. This would help in the rewrite as they would
generally be aware of common mistranslations.

I don't think that's a problem, especially if we state that we are adding
translated text from a given language Wikipedia.

Carl

On 9/21/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There are obviously some of us with excellent english and proofreading
> skills, so if we could set up a system where people run articles
> through online translators and rewrite the result into reasonable
> English it would work. Obviously this would involve reading through
> the whole thing, but it is possible. One thing I'm not too sure of -
> can we really copy FA text from a non-en:wp to en:wp and still comply
> with GFDL without stating every single contributor in the edit
> summary?
>
> On 9/21/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 21/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Yes, it's certainly an interesting idea, but it's usually a lot of
> hard
> > > work
> > > > to get a decent translation going. The article subject would have to
> be
> > > > interesting to keep me motivated.
> > >
> > >
> > > If you could pick an FA in another language and port it to the best
> > > English-language article you can, and let us know what sort of numbers
> > > of hours this takes, that would be most useful to know.
> > >
> > > (and, as Danny says, it beats arguing about people, process or policy)
> >
> >
> > While I know using online translators is discouraged, if a person is
> > familiar enough with a subject to be able to root out mistranslations
> and to
> > rewrite it as coherent English (good prose in one language doesn't
> > necessarily make good prose in another, hence the "it looses something
> in
> > the translation" cliche), then I don't see why familiarity with another
> > language is necessarily a requirement. I've found with the couple of
> > articles I've looked at through Google's translation service that it
> does a
> > passable job, especially if one is familiar with the the subject matter.
> The
> > nice thing about Google's translator is that if you click a link on the
> > translated page, the linked page will be translated for you as well.
> >
> > Carl
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia and the networked society

body:
Wikipedia is no longer a project or a club.  It is a society and a
component of society, a supporting beam in a new addition to the
castle of civilization.  Soon -- and for a long time to come[1] -- it
will touch every structure, every window, wall and fixture, from pipes
to minarets.  It will influence decisions about community-building and
knowledge production, publishing and broadcasting, by proxy if not
directly.

Brief discussions about the future surfaced at Wikimania, last year
and last month.  Other discussoins have surrounded the board
elections.  The latter have a very particular flavor; and are likely
to end once the elections do.  Other discussions have surfaced before,
largely in meta-space, and rarely with deep collaboration.  It is a
shame that introspection, statistics about our communities and
ourselves, internal research efforts, have not been a larger part of
recent years' growth.  It would be a further shame if the projects did
not find guidance in lessons of the distant past, in similar
organizations and initiatives of the recent past, or in similar trends
of the present.

We are doing the impossible, at a very rapid rate -- too rapid at
times for us to stop and collect our thoughts.  Today it was suggested
that spending too much time discussing or thinking about priorities
and future direction is a distraction from building the projects or
writing an encyclopedia.  In counter, here are three areas in
particular which deserve ongoing attention, and which will help the
projects scale another few orders of magnitude:

 1. Discussion of the dreams, goals, and milestones for the projects,
foundation, and community
 2. Discussion and launching of communal research projects to find out
more about the projects, communities, users and reusers
 3. Identification and investigation of parallel projects and
organizations, now and in the past, to offer perspective

Three emails follow on the above topics.  I hope the aftertaste of the
elections and the upcoming foundation retreat will encourage
addressing these issues in earnest.

SJ


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and the networked society


subject: [Foundation-l] Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3)

body:
(thread 1 in a 3-thread microseries)

The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing
on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not
just the 700 people subscribed to this list, nor the 2000 contributors
to Meta, nor just the 100,000 active editors across all the
projects... but also those who care enough to donate money or critical
rants or expert advice, readers who would not dare contribute to an
encyclopedia but have relevant experiences in other areas of life to
add to planning discussions, and the friends and colleagues and family
of the above, interested enough to participate in such discussions if
they knew about them but not yet aware they exist.[2]

Questions: what are the most important goals over the next few years
  a) for Wikipedia,
  b) for Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Commons and any further media
repository, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wikiversity
[I would forward to the other lists but for some of them it might
double their annual list traffic]
  c) for Wikipedia and its sister projects in their secondary
capacities of language preservation, debate facilitation, education,
archiving
  d) for the Wikimedia Foundation, as a supportive entity and as an organization
  e) for each of us individually as community members

[forgive me for lumping together all of the smaller projects; and all
languages, large, small, living, and dead]

Let us seed a longer discussion about planning for the future.   To
begin with, it would be helpful to gather together the many places
where related discussions have already been held.

For instance, here is a new page on the subject:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee/strategic_goals
And an older page:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Three-year_plan
And a series of essays:
 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads

There are similar pages on individual projects and mailing lists, and
in many languages other than English.  Perhaps you have run across one
before.  I've started an Yet Another MetaMeta page on meta.  Please
contribute links to it and translate it:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planning_for_the_future

++SJ

[1] Perhaps a very long time.
http://community.livejournal.com/wikipedians/17778.html

[2] For those who feel broad-based discussions are criminal, or wastes
of time: the process of discussing plans for the future helps
strengthen shared purpose and naturally passes on the message of the
projects.  And we don't have enough people talking about these ideas
now; even excellent suggestions for investigation and research are
allowed to lie fallow.  We are very far from having too many voices
offering their pearls of wisdom.


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3)

body:
(thread 1 in a 3-thread microseries)

The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing
on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not
just the 700 people subscribed to this list, nor the 2000 contributors
to Meta, nor just the 100,000 active editors across all the
projects... but also those who care enough to donate money or critical
rants or expert advice, readers who would not dare contribute to an
encyclopedia but have relevant experiences in other areas of life to
add to planning discussions, and the friends and colleagues and family
of the above, interested enough to participate in such discussions if
they knew about them but not yet aware they exist.[2]

Questions: what are the most important goals over the next few years
  a) for Wikipedia,
  b) for Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Commons and any further media
repository, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wikiversity
[I would forward to the other lists but for some of them it might
double their annual list traffic]
  c) for Wikipedia and its sister projects in their secondary
capacities of language preservation, debate facilitation, education,
archiving
  d) for the Wikimedia Foundation, as a supportive entity and as an organization
  e) for each of us individually as community members

[forgive me for lumping together all of the smaller projects; and all
languages, large, small, living, and dead]

Let us seed a longer discussion about planning for the future.   To
begin with, it would be helpful to gather together the many places
where related discussions have already been held.

For instance, here is a new page on the subject:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee/strategic_goals
And an older page:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Three-year_plan
And a series of essays:
 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads

There are similar pages on individual projects and mailing lists, and
in many languages other than English.  Perhaps you have run across one
before.  I've started an Yet Another MetaMeta page on meta.  Please
contribute links to it and translate it:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planning_for_the_future

++SJ

[1] Perhaps a very long time.
http://community.livejournal.com/wikipedians/17778.html

[2] For those who feel broad-based discussions are criminal, or wastes
of time: the process of discussing plans for the future helps
strengthen shared purpose and naturally passes on the message of the
projects.  And we don't have enough people talking about these ideas
now; even excellent suggestions for investigation and research are
allowed to lie fallow.  We are very far from having too many voices
offering their pearls of wisdom.
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Reflection and research: User surveys (2 of 3)

body:
A number of Wikipedians have advocated for a user survey for a very
long time.  Erik Zachte has been the most vocal and persistent.
Realizing a user survey was one of the top items on the agenda of the
Wikimedia research network before it stopped holding meetings.  It has
been the subject of long debates and conversations on IRC, has come up
this summer in Special Projects Committee discussions, and has been
the bugbear of dozens of student and professorial research projects.

Today I attended the wrapup discussion of a three-day conference on
open content and public broadcasting, with gathered luminaries from
WGBH, PBS, the Hewlett Foundation, the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, Yale law school, the Federation of American Scientists,
and so forth.  Of great relevance to them : good information on the
demographics of Wikipedians, segmented by activity in various areas of
the community and the projects.  Are we dominated by people with no
full-time jobs and no children?  The question was not posed to me, but
I could not have answered with certainty.

Noone outside of the projects can run a survey that ties reliably to
user login authentication.  Important sociology and technology
projects going on every month, talks given by Wikipedians and
Wikimedians every week, and literally thousands of third parties
making decisions about communities and creativity, wish they could be
informed by the results of such surveys.

With a brief discussion about preserving privacy in aggregate data,
randomizing test and control samples, and a tweak to allow web forms
on pages that are aware of your wikipedia userid, we could have a
simple projects-wide survey completed within a month.  Let's make this
a priority and make such a thing happen -- then figure out how to
optimize future iterations.

The latest discussions on meta are here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/General_User_Survey

I recall other pages on en:wp and other language wp's that are not
currently linked from there; if you were part of one of those efforts,
please add a link to your work.

SJ

--
ps - while looking for the link to the user survey on meta, I ran
across this: a poll applet that seems to be working as of last month.
Nice.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Poll

(thread 2 in a 3-thread microseries.  see also
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/010247.html
)


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
I am reminded of a wonderful commercial on American television.

A group of business people are sitting around a table and one of them  begins
to choke on his food. They then spend the next few minutes in a casual
discussion about the Heimlich manoeuvre, until someone from another table comes  up
and actually does it.

Danny


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tech demo: "Can We Link It?" - Link Suggesting tool

body:
G'day All,

There's a link suggesting tool I'm temporarily putting out there for you all to have a play with and to give feedback and comments
on.

What it does is it takes an article of your choosing from the English Wikipedia, and suggests bits of text in that article that
could potentially be linked. You can then accept or reject those individual suggestions, and then save your changes back to the
Wikipedia.

It tries to do this in a reasonably pleasant UI, where you see the list of suggestions, and then simply select "yes", "no", or
"don't know" for each suggestion, and click "Preview with Added Links".

Quick overview of the UI:
* On the landing page, you type the name of the article that you want to see links for. It should appear in the list as you type
(this bit uses suggestion searching).
* Press enter or click the relevant link, then wait for up to 10 seconds for it to fetch the current version and suggest links, and
then you'll be presented with a list of possible links that you can make.
* To go through the list, you can either use the mouse, or you can use the keyboard.
* For the keyboard, the keys are: Up arrow, Down arrow, "y" for yes, "n" for no, and "s" or "d" for skip/don't know.
* "Yes" adds the link, "no" doesn't, and "don't know" doesn't add the link either; but "Don't know" will make the exact same link
suggestion in future, whereas "yes" and "no" bring closure in that the same suggestion will no longer be made for that page in
future.
* If you don't make any choice for a suggestion, that's treated the same as choosing "don't know".
* Each suggestion has a link that opens in a new tab/window, so if you want to determine whether something is an appropriate link or
not, you can just click its link.

If you want to play with it now, it's at: http://can-we-link-it.nickj.org/

Some caveats to be aware of:
* Currently only works for the English Wikipedia. Although I haven't tried it yet, conceptually similar languages like French should
probably work (i.e. Left-to-Right, spaces between words to separate out ideas [no or quite limited compound words], general use same
characters in both article text and article names for the same idea, etc). No idea if this can be made to work for languages which
differ substantially from this.
* This site will disappear in a few days. It's just a temporary experiment to see what happens, and is currently running on a
development box which has other duties to perform.
* Super-alpha status. It may blow up, eat your homework, key your vehicle, trash your favourite article, etc.
* The tool will work much better if you have JavaScript turned on, and the front page won't work at all if you have JavaScript
turned off.
* It's SLOOOW (e.g. might take 7 seconds to generate suggestions for a 32 Kb page). It doesn't inherently have to be slow, but it is
currently - partially because it's behind a DSL link, but mostly because it's not very efficient currently. I'd rather put out an
early version though with some rough edges and slowness than wait until getting something perfect (which I may never get around to
doing).
* Currently the suggested links will include links to disambiguation pages. Shouldn't really do this (i.e. disambig pages should
ideally be excluded from the results).
* Saving suggestions back to the Wikipedia is a less than optimal process. Currently it goes to an intermediate page, which saves
the user's choices to a local database, and then uses a JavaScript form submission to transfer the user to a preview on the
Wikipedia with links added; ideally this intermediate step could be skipped. Also it would be nicer to go to "Show Changes" rather
than show a preview, but that's not possible currently because Show Changes is protected by an edit token, so you'll have to
manually click the "Show Changes" button if you want to see a highlight of what's been changed (a request that this be changed has
been logged as bug #7369).
* Someone reported that they saw the "null edit summary" detector complain at them when using this; Not sure why this happens, as
there is a default edit summary supplied.

Other things:
* It has "learning from its mistakes" functionality, in that a suggestion which is regularly rejected will no longer be suggested.
The current cut-offs are that a suggestion must be rejected at least 5 times, and also rejected 50% or more of the time; once this
threshold has been crossed the suggestion will no longer be made. Thus, the bad cruft should hopefully be progressively filtered out
as the tool is used more, and what remains should hopefully be mostly useful.
* There are some hidden switches, which you can add to the URL that shows the link suggestions, if you want to fiddle with stuff:
** The first is to add "&exhaustive" to the end of the URL, in which case it will stop trying to be smarter about suggesting links
based on grammatical structure (e.g. by excluding single word links), and will be exhaustive about showing you the links it finds.
This will result in roughly 4 times as many links being found.
** The second switch is that you can specify the number of characters to include in the "context" before and after the suggested
link. The default is 60 characters, but you can set this to anything between 0 and 100 characters inclusive, such as by adding
"&context=20" to the URL for 20 characters of context.
** Lastly you can specify to just check the wiki syntax. It performs some very simplistic checks on the wiki syntax automatically,
that are all about balance (e.g. checks number of [[ equals number of ]] and so forth), and if an article's syntax looks invalid
then it'll tell you what's wrong, but deliberately won't give you the link suggestions until you've fixed the syntax on the
Wikipedia :-)  However, if you don't want link suggestions, and only want syntax checking, then tack "&onlyCheckSyntax" onto the
URL.

I also want to give a big thank you to Julien Lemoine for writing his Suggestion Search daemon / server, which this tool uses (or
rather, abuses) in a rather cruel way to determine what's a valid article name and what's not :-) Also the front page uses a
modified version of his web form to help you find the right page that you want to suggest links for.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> (thread 1 in a 3-thread microseries)
>
> The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing
> on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not
> just the 700 people subscribed to this list, nor the 2000 contributors
> to Meta, nor just the 100,000 active editors across all the
> projects...

There are only 23,611* active registered editors (as of June 1, 2006)
on all projects.

Kelly

* "Active" is defined as "400 edits lifetime and 100 edits in the past
year on any given project".  This number is overstated because many
people are "active" on more than one project, and until we get SUL I
can't readily account for that.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 9/21/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> Actually, I just requested a run against the database on Toolserver.
> 48% of entries in the dataset are in the main namespace, and 13% are
> Talk pages. This number includes redirects and stubs, of course, but
> it's a rather different number than is being discussed here.

It's WAY more than 50% if you count by revision.

wikidb=> select page_namespace=0 as main_ns,count(page_title) from
analysis_user group by (page_namespace=0);
 main_ns |  count
-------------+----------
 t            | 42893625
 f            | 15652166
(2 rows)

If in fact waking about writing an encyclopedia were indeed more
popular, it would be a sad thing indeed... But I suppose it's only
natural for everyone to think their own involvement is the most
important...

I for one am glad that Wikipedia isn't MYSPACE... although I suppose
that the truth might suck for those from Wikia.


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


body:
On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Where is that definition from?  I was using Erik Zachte's definition
> of "active member", as used in a half dozen presentations on Wikipedia
> -- ~80k editors with over 5 edits in the past month... 210k with over
> 10 edits in all.  I think "100k active editors" is accurate, though
> perhaps "200k contributors" would be better.

It's one I came up with recently.  Five edits in a month is not a good
measure of "community".  400 edits lifetime and 100 edits a year shows
more of a commitment to a project than five edits in a month, which
could easily be a driveby editor who does not hang around.  I'm
considering running another stats run at 100 lifetime and 25 per year,
since I think the higher number shortchanges the community size of
smaller projects.  (Almost half of our projects have no active editors
by the 400/100 standard.)

Kelly


from_name: effe iets anders

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
I prefer 1000 characters of simple english above 500 of condensed
hard-to-read and high-level english though... I think every candidate
should be feeling responsible, and be nice to the readers :)

By the way, you were lucky then that there was no chinese or japanese
candidate, as they have characters that take up in english much more
space... :P

Lodewijk

2006/9/21, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> >  In the first election, I set a limit of 500 words on each candidate's statement. Despite the complaints back then, there was a reason for that.
> >
> >  Danny
>
> You just raised a memory here...
>
> I remember trying to have the statement fitting in those 500 in 2004.
>
> Except it was not 500 words. It was 500 caracters.
> I was counting those with Word, and I had just a few less than 500.
> I was delighted. I published the statement.
>
> Then Erik complained that I was over 500 caracters. Uh ?
> Counted again. Got less than 500. He insisted I was above.
> I then realised he was counting the spaces as caracters, and I was not
> counting them. So, of course, I had maybe 20 spaces to separate words. I
> was around 510. Invalid. Too lengthy !
>
> I considered removing a couple of spaces, hence merging some words to
> got to exactly 500... maybe not such a good idea for readability.
>
> Then, we discussed whether the 500 caracters should be the limit in
> english... or in the original language the candidate was writting in...
> But I had no door out, since french tends to be longuer than english, so
> I was maybe 600 in french.
>
> So I decided to make an effort, did a bit of rewritting of my english
> text... and got it under 500 in the end !!!
>
> SO proud !
>
> Ahum. What happened in reality, is that the official statement on the
> candidate page was restricted to 500.... but several candidates wrote
> another page, much more lengthy. This is no different from what was done
> this year. Each candidate had the short statement and some had a long
> statement.
>
> Frankly... I find such issue... a little bewildering :-)
>
> Errrr. I like reading what candidates propose to do if they are on
> board. It is interesting. It is enlightning.
>
> And then, if they get elected, we can later complain an issue was on
> their election plateform and they did not take care of it ;-)
>
> ------
>
> Sorry, I am certainly over the 500 threashold here...
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] tag extension

body:
"ting wang"
> Hello all,
>
> Is there an extension, with it user can add tags to the pages?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ting

AFAIK, tehre isn't and there're no plans about it.
However, you ahve categories, which can work almost in the same manner
(depends on the expected use).


from_name: Johan Bos

subject: [Foundation-l] test

body:
Well, if this is a bouncing test, then it didn't work. It actually didn't
bounce.

Johan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey V. Merkey" <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 9:42 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] test

> Anthere wrote:
>
>>sorry, bouncing test
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
> I got it Anthere. It worked.
>
> :-)
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] test


subject:
[Foundation-l] Parallels with other volunteer efforts & foundations
	(3 of 3)

body:
Wikipedians speculate about the future all the time.  And yet I say we
rarely engage serious discussion of priorities, dreams, timelines,
goals, and opportunity costs.  Why is this?  In part, it is because we
don't have detailed comparisons with other similar organizations and
situations; only hearsay and vague rules of thumb.

Threads and policy subpages about what should or should not happen,
with hypotheses about the results of community or policy or
organizational change, often go on for months and hinge on unknowns.
But people are far more willing to speculate absently about human
nature than they are to research what has happened to similar efforts
in the past.

Reading and learning about how other projects and international
volunteer efforts work, and how similarly bold historical efforts have
grown and transformed, can help turn these discussions from circular
arguments to analytical collaborations.  This can also help avoid
"reinventing the flat tire".

These comparisons *should* be made.  Fundraising; volunteer
attraction, empowerment, and retention; administration; handling of
software and article bounties; multilingualism; logo and trademark
licensing; partnership and promotion; selection of advisors -- these
are all general problems.  Wikipedia is different in details, but
shares a great deal with the thousands of thoughtful institutions that
have dealt with these issues in countless contexts, since before the
first Wikipedia logo was a twinkle in the Cunctator's eye.

Unfortunately, these discussions tend to peter out and get lost.
Mailing list threads are dropped and never wikified -- as happened
with the "Wikimedia in five years" thread from last August, and with
the interesting Apache Foundation thread.  Wiki pages are abandoned
and forgotten.

Help keep these discussions alive, and give them shared context.  Here
is a page for gathering links to these discussions, and for
encouraging investigations into groups (such as the Red Cross) that
have been suggested many times for comparison:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Parallels

Do you know someone who works at a multinational volunteer collective?
 At a major political campaign, grassroots news foundation, or a
branch of the UN?  At a global NGO?  Find out what they think the
parallels are between their organizations or projects and ours.  Ask
them for documents and essays, or even for their take on the greatest
obstacles our projects will face in the near future.  As with the
NetBSD essay, you may be amazed to discover how much of existing
discussions apply to our communities.

++SJ

ps - Reading over the discussions about Wikipedia's future that have
inspired or provoked me over the past few years, I noticed that
Anthere and Erik Zachte have been involved in, if not the initiators
of, a majority of them.  Rock on.

pps - this is thread 3 in a 3-thread microseries.  see also
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/010247.html

--


subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Parallels with other volunteer efforts
	& foundations	(3 of 3)

body:
Wikipedians speculate about the future all the time.  And yet I say we
rarely engage serious discussion of priorities, dreams, timelines,
goals, and opportunity costs.  Why is this?  In part, it is because we
don't have detailed comparisons with other similar organizations and
situations; only hearsay and vague rules of thumb.

Threads and policy subpages about what should or should not happen,
with hypotheses about the results of community or policy or
organizational change, often go on for months and hinge on unknowns.
But people are far more willing to speculate absently about human
nature than they are to research what has happened to similar efforts
in the past.

Reading and learning about how other projects and international
volunteer efforts work, and how similarly bold historical efforts have
grown and transformed, can help turn these discussions from circular
arguments to analytical collaborations.  This can also help avoid
"reinventing the flat tire".

These comparisons *should* be made.  Fundraising; volunteer
attraction, empowerment, and retention; administration; handling of
software and article bounties; multilingualism; logo and trademark
licensing; partnership and promotion; selection of advisors -- these
are all general problems.  Wikipedia is different in details, but
shares a great deal with the thousands of thoughtful institutions that
have dealt with these issues in countless contexts, since before the
first Wikipedia logo was a twinkle in the Cunctator's eye.

Unfortunately, these discussions tend to peter out and get lost.
Mailing list threads are dropped and never wikified -- as happened
with the "Wikimedia in five years" thread from last August, and with
the interesting Apache Foundation thread.  Wiki pages are abandoned
and forgotten.

Help keep these discussions alive, and give them shared context.  Here
is a page for gathering links to these discussions, and for
encouraging investigations into groups (such as the Red Cross) that
have been suggested many times for comparison:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Parallels

Do you know someone who works at a multinational volunteer collective?
 At a major political campaign, grassroots news foundation, or a
branch of the UN?  At a global NGO?  Find out what they think the
parallels are between their organizations or projects and ours.  Ask
them for documents and essays, or even for their take on the greatest
obstacles our projects will face in the near future.  As with the
NetBSD essay, you may be amazed to discover how much of existing
discussions apply to our communities.

++SJ

ps - Reading over the discussions about Wikipedia's future that have
inspired or provoked me over the past few years, I noticed that
Anthere and Erik Zachte have been involved in, if not the initiators
of, a majority of them.  Rock on.

pps - this is thread 3 in a 3-thread microseries.  see also
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/010247.html

--
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Parallels with other volunteer efforts & foundations
	(3 of 3)


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania jury decision - new board member?

body:
The resolution did not require the election judges to report the
results until October 1.  Perhaps someone should have read it before
making plans.

Kelly

On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Good point.  We were imagining a faster result.  We can still have a
> meeting to discuss the bids on Saturday; but may have to push back the
> jury vote.
>
> SJ
>
> On 9/21/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > according to
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007/Bids/Judging#Vote
> > "A general meeting (to discuss bids and ask/reply to last-minute
> > questions) will be held after the final deadline for completed bids.
> > The jury will be as above, plus the new Board member elected in
> > September to replace Angela. This meeting will be public and will
> > happen with bidding teams and whoever is interested in freenode
> > channel #wikimania on September 23rd at 15.00 UTC. The final vote will
> > be held by the jury afterwards."
> >
> > Given that the result of the election will likely not be announced
> > before Monday, should this Wikimania meeting be postponed?
> > --
> > Peace & Love,
> > Erik
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> ++SJ
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
[1] Perhaps a very long time.
http://community.livejournal.com/wikipedians/17778.html

On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia is no longer a project or a club.  It is a society and a
> component of society, a supporting beam in a new addition to the
> castle of civilization.  Soon -- and for a long time to come[1] -- it
> will touch every structure, every window, wall and fixture, from pipes
> to minarets.  It will influence decisions about community-building and
> knowledge production, publishing and broadcasting, by proxy if not
> directly.
>
> Brief discussions about the future surfaced at Wikimania, last year
> and last month.  Other discussoins have surrounded the board
> elections.  The latter have a very particular flavor; and are likely
> to end once the elections do.  Other discussions have surfaced before,
> largely in meta-space, and rarely with deep collaboration.  It is a
> shame that introspection, statistics about our communities and
> ourselves, internal research efforts, have not been a larger part of
> recent years' growth.  It would be a further shame if the projects did
> not find guidance in lessons of the distant past, in similar
> organizations and initiatives of the recent past, or in similar trends
> of the present.
>
> We are doing the impossible, at a very rapid rate -- too rapid at
> times for us to stop and collect our thoughts.  Today it was suggested
> that spending too much time discussing or thinking about priorities
> and future direction is a distraction from building the projects or
> writing an encyclopedia.  In counter, here are three areas in
> particular which deserve ongoing attention, and which will help the
> projects scale another few orders of magnitude:
>
>  1. Discussion of the dreams, goals, and milestones for the projects,
> foundation, and community
>  2. Discussion and launching of communal research projects to find out
> more about the projects, communities, users and reusers
>  3. Identification and investigation of parallel projects and
> organizations, now and in the past, to offer perspective
>
> Three emails follow on the above topics.  I hope the aftertaste of the
> elections and the upcoming foundation retreat will encourage
> addressing these issues in earnest.
>
> SJ
>

--
++SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and the networked society

body:
[1] Perhaps a very long time.
http://community.livejournal.com/wikipedians/17778.html

On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia is no longer a project or a club.  It is a society and a
> component of society, a supporting beam in a new addition to the
> castle of civilization.  Soon -- and for a long time to come[1] -- it
> will touch every structure, every window, wall and fixture, from pipes
> to minarets.  It will influence decisions about community-building and
> knowledge production, publishing and broadcasting, by proxy if not
> directly.
>
> Brief discussions about the future surfaced at Wikimania, last year
> and last month.  Other discussoins have surrounded the board
> elections.  The latter have a very particular flavor; and are likely
> to end once the elections do.  Other discussions have surfaced before,
> largely in meta-space, and rarely with deep collaboration.  It is a
> shame that introspection, statistics about our communities and
> ourselves, internal research efforts, have not been a larger part of
> recent years' growth.  It would be a further shame if the projects did
> not find guidance in lessons of the distant past, in similar
> organizations and initiatives of the recent past, or in similar trends
> of the present.
>
> We are doing the impossible, at a very rapid rate -- too rapid at
> times for us to stop and collect our thoughts.  Today it was suggested
> that spending too much time discussing or thinking about priorities
> and future direction is a distraction from building the projects or
> writing an encyclopedia.  In counter, here are three areas in
> particular which deserve ongoing attention, and which will help the
> projects scale another few orders of magnitude:
>
>  1. Discussion of the dreams, goals, and milestones for the projects,
> foundation, and community
>  2. Discussion and launching of communal research projects to find out
> more about the projects, communities, users and reusers
>  3. Identification and investigation of parallel projects and
> organizations, now and in the past, to offer perspective
>
> Three emails follow on the above topics.  I hope the aftertaste of the
> elections and the upcoming foundation retreat will encourage
> addressing these issues in earnest.
>
> SJ
>

--
++SJ
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
Where is that definition from?  I was using Erik Zachte's definition
of "active member", as used in a half dozen presentations on Wikipedia
-- ~80k editors with over 5 edits in the past month... 210k with over
10 edits in all.  I think "100k active editors" is accurate, though
perhaps "200k contributors" would be better.

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm

SJ

On 9/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > (thread 1 in a 3-thread microseries)
> >
> > The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing
> > on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not
> > just the 700 people subscribed to this list, nor the 2000 contributors
> > to Meta, nor just the 100,000 active editors across all the
> > projects...
>
> There are only 23,611* active registered editors (as of June 1, 2006)
> on all projects.
>
> Kelly
>
> * "Active" is defined as "400 edits lifetime and 100 edits in the past
> year on any given project".  This number is overstated because many
> people are "active" on more than one project, and until we get SUL I
> can't readily account for that.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
++SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 9/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's WAY more than 50% if you count by revision.
>
> wikidb=> select page_namespace=0 as main_ns,count(page_title) from
> analysis_user group by (page_namespace=0);
>  main_ns |  count
> -------------+----------
>  t            | 42893625
>  f            | 15652166
> (2 rows)
>
> If in fact waking about writing an encyclopedia were indeed more
> popular, it would be a sad thing indeed... But I suppose it's only
> natural for everyone to think their own involvement is the most
> important...

Now, now :-)

I like these numbers.  To restate my last question -- 25% of all
revisions are to non-article pages.  Is this in accordance with the
goal of producing a great encyclopedia, or is this noise that we
should eventually reduce to a more manageable level?

--SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


body:
On 9/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's one I came up with recently.  Five edits in a month is not a good
> measure of "community".  400 edits lifetime and 100 edits a year shows
> more of a commitment to a project than five edits in a month, which
> could easily be a driveby editor who does not hang around.  I'm
> considering running another stats run at 100 lifetime and 25 per year,
> since I think the higher number shortchanges the community size of
> smaller projects.  (Almost half of our projects have no active editors
> by the 400/100 standard.)

Interesting.  It seems to me that community is proportional to
attention and interest, not to edit count.  Until we have measures of
this, we are discounting the active readers and lurkers who edit only
occasionally.  On the other hand, we are overcounting people who edit
on more than one project.

I look forward to single login, a decent user survey, and better metrics.

SJ


body:
Good point.  We were imagining a faster result.  We can still have a
meeting to discuss the bids on Saturday; but may have to push back the
jury vote.

SJ

On 9/21/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> according to
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007/Bids/Judging#Vote
> "A general meeting (to discuss bids and ask/reply to last-minute
> questions) will be held after the final deadline for completed bids.
> The jury will be as above, plus the new Board member elected in
> September to replace Angela. This meeting will be public and will
> happen with bidding teams and whoever is interested in freenode
> channel #wikimania on September 23rd at 15.00 UTC. The final vote will
> be held by the jury afterwards."
>
> Given that the result of the election will likely not be announced
> before Monday, should this Wikimania meeting be postponed?
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
++SJ


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
Oh, but.... there was one. Shizao was candidate. He wrote in english :-(

Ant

effe iets anders wrote:
> I prefer 1000 characters of simple english above 500 of condensed
> hard-to-read and high-level english though... I think every candidate
> should be feeling responsible, and be nice to the readers :)
>
> By the way, you were lucky then that there was no chinese or japanese
> candidate, as they have characters that take up in english much more
> space... :P
>
> Lodewijk
>
> 2006/9/21, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
>
>>daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>> In the first election, I set a limit of 500 words on each candidate's statement. Despite the complaints back then, there was a reason for that.
>>>
>>> Danny
>>
>>You just raised a memory here...
>>
>>I remember trying to have the statement fitting in those 500 in 2004.
>>
>>Except it was not 500 words. It was 500 caracters.
>>I was counting those with Word, and I had just a few less than 500.
>>I was delighted. I published the statement.
>>
>>Then Erik complained that I was over 500 caracters. Uh ?
>>Counted again. Got less than 500. He insisted I was above.
>>I then realised he was counting the spaces as caracters, and I was not
>>counting them. So, of course, I had maybe 20 spaces to separate words. I
>>was around 510. Invalid. Too lengthy !
>>
>>I considered removing a couple of spaces, hence merging some words to
>>got to exactly 500... maybe not such a good idea for readability.
>>
>>Then, we discussed whether the 500 caracters should be the limit in
>>english... or in the original language the candidate was writting in...
>>But I had no door out, since french tends to be longuer than english, so
>>I was maybe 600 in french.
>>
>>So I decided to make an effort, did a bit of rewritting of my english
>>text... and got it under 500 in the end !!!
>>
>>SO proud !
>>
>>Ahum. What happened in reality, is that the official statement on the
>>candidate page was restricted to 500.... but several candidates wrote
>>another page, much more lengthy. This is no different from what was done
>>this year. Each candidate had the short statement and some had a long
>>statement.
>>
>>Frankly... I find such issue... a little bewildering :-)
>>
>>Errrr. I like reading what candidates propose to do if they are on
>>board. It is interesting. It is enlightning.
>>
>>And then, if they get elected, we can later complain an issue was on
>>their election plateform and they did not take care of it ;-)
>>
>>------
>>
>>Sorry, I am certainly over the 500 threashold here...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
To finally say a few words about the length debate:

The length limit on the candidate statements page is important.
Reading the statements should be sufficient to make a reasonably
informed decision. I tried to keep reasonably close to the limit this
time (the table of goals has 734 characters), which wasn't easy.

I think it should be up to the candidates to decide how much further
information they want to provide. This has been practice since the
2004 election. I tried to structure my platform in such a way that one
could read parts of it:
- a letter
- a summary in pictures
- sections on different topics
- an interview.

If it had gotten any longer, I would have started writing summaries
for the individual sections as well. Nobody has to read the whole
thing -- just the parts that interest you. Last time I checked, I
don't have a "By the way, I also eat babies" clause hidden anywhere.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-22

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 9/21/2006 6:24:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> 2.718281828 at gmail.com writes:
>
> Those  with better things to do will not read.  Those who are willing
> and  able to write, please do so.  The sooner and the more attentively
> to  detail, the better.
>
>
>
> I thought we were busy writing an encyclopedia.
>
> Danny
Danny,
We are not writing an encyclopaedia. We are also writing an
encyclopaedia. It is just one of the things that we do. The Foundation
is NOT about writing an encyclopaedia. The Foundation is about enabling
projects like Wiktionary in many languages, Wikibooks in many languages,
Wikiquote Wikinews and ALSO Wikipedia in many languages.

Given that the election is about governing the Foundation it is highly
relevant that people can be explicit in what they aim to do. When people
want to write a platform why they should be elected, it is for the
people that read it to comment on it and maybe even inform the rest
about potential silliness.

NB It has been said both by Anthere and Jimmy that the Foundation is
/not /about Wikipedia when commenting on some of the initial platforms
of Wikimedia Foundation board candidates.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


list: wikien-l

from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is Wikipedia a News Portal (among other things)?

body:
On 9/21/06, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> "Stephen Bain" <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The articles on last year's London bombings are also good examples.
> > [[2006 transatlantic aircraft plot]], within a few hours after the
> > story broke, was just about the best source available.
>
> If a Wikipedia article is "the best source available", it has
> become original research.

Note that I'm referring specifically to current events articles. While
online media outlets and the print media do occasionally offer
"in-depth" stories on current events, setting out background
information and historical context, they're rarely (if ever) as
comprehensive or as timely as Wikipedia's articles are.

Also note that I'm talking about sources that Wikipedia would be
competing against. A personal account written by a veteran journo on
the scene may well be the best thing to read about an event, but it's
not something that's comparable to Wikipedia.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: SJ Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] Process essay is almost essay-shaped now

body:
+++ David Gerard [14/09/06 20:31 +0100]:
>On 14/09/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> >Please look over
>> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/Process_essay and hack
>> >it to bits.

Not bad.  link to it from m:instruction_creep?
It should go into wp space or onto meta at some point.

>But then, they think we're complete idiots. Call this the Assumption
>of Symmetrical Stupidity. (I'll see if [[:en:WP:AGF]] would benefit
>from a refactor, and put that in there if it would.)

Perhaps there's a relativist law that any pair of people are of
necessity symmetrically stupid.  that would explain a lot of
stalemates.

SJ


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
SJ Klein wrote:

>+++ David Gerard [14/09/06 20:31 +0100]:
>
>
>>But then, they think we're complete idiots. Call this the Assumption
>>of Symmetrical Stupidity. (I'll see if [[:en:WP:AGF]] would benefit
>>
>>
>>from a refactor, and put that in there if it would.)
>
>Perhaps there's a relativist law that any pair of people are of
>necessity symmetrically stupid.  that would explain a lot of
>stalemates.
>
This suggests that long lasting marriages have have accomodated the
symetrical stupidity of stale mates.

Ec


from_name: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] [[WP:100K]] - who here writes well in
	English and another language?

body:
On 9/22/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are obviously some of us with excellent english and proofreading
> skills, so if we could set up a system where people run articles
> through online translators and rewrite the result into reasonable
> English it would work. Obviously this would involve reading through
> the whole thing, but it is possible. One thing I'm not too sure of -
> can we really copy FA text from a non-en:wp to en:wp and still comply
> with GFDL without stating every single contributor in the edit
> summary?
>

You only have to list 5 significant ones.

--
geni


body:
Hi,

according to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007/Bids/Judging#Vote
"A general meeting (to discuss bids and ask/reply to last-minute
questions) will be held after the final deadline for completed bids.
The jury will be as above, plus the new Board member elected in
September to replace Angela. This meeting will be public and will
happen with bidding teams and whoever is interested in freenode
channel #wikimania on September 23rd at 15.00 UTC. The final vote will
be held by the jury afterwards."

Given that the result of the election will likely not be announced
before Monday, should this Wikimania meeting be postponed?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Virgil Ierubino

subject: [Foundation-l] About The New Logos (Wikt, 'books & 'versity)

body:
It's all been very democratic, yes, the community has posted its ideas and
voted on them. But what if none of the ideas were ultimately any good? I'm
worried about the trend to rather boringly just rework the Wikimedia logo.

I think the "submit ideas" phase should have lasted a lot longer, at least
until a few logos came along which had massive support, rather than the
sporadic support the others have had, with only mild majorities. Indeed, I
think the foundation should be more active in this.

What we've now ended up with is refining and voting on ultimately
substandard logos. That's my opinion anyway, but can any of you really see
the voted logos dominating the three projects?

The Wikisource/Wikinews (and indeed 'pedia most of all) contests came out
with some fantastic results. We should have waited for equal gems.


from_name: Birgitte SB

body:
--- SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/21/06, Kelly Martin
> <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > It's one I came up with recently.  Five edits in a
> month is not a good
> > measure of "community".  400 edits lifetime and
> 100 edits a year shows
> > more of a commitment to a project than five edits
> in a month, which
> > could easily be a driveby editor who does not hang
> around.  I'm
> > considering running another stats run at 100
> lifetime and 25 per year,
> > since I think the higher number shortchanges the
> community size of
> > smaller projects.  (Almost half of our projects
> have no active editors
> > by the 400/100 standard.)
>
> Interesting.  It seems to me that community is
> proportional to
> attention and interest, not to edit count.  Until we
> have measures of
> this, we are discounting the active readers and
> lurkers who edit only
> occasionally.  On the other hand, we are
> overcounting people who edit
> on more than one project.
>
> I look forward to single login, a decent user
> survey, and better metrics.
>
> SJ
> ________

Active editor metrics should probably vary based on
the maturity of the comunity.  Many of the various
communities have barely existed for an entire year.

Birgitte SB

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


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] - who here writes well in English and another
	language?

body:
On 22/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, I'm relatively fluent in German so I could start by translating
> a de FA into English and seeing how it turns out. Anyone know where
> the list of FAs is for de:wp?

Go to [[WP:FA]], click on "Deutsch" in the list of other languages (on
the left in the default Monobook skin) and it will take you to
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Exzellente_Artikel .

- d.


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
On Sep 17, 2006, at 12:15 AM, geni wrote:

>>
>
> A popular vote of of scientists would not be the worst description of
> what goes on. Although of course the actual process is ar more
> complex.
>

I just see a massive amount of wishful thinking and naivete in the
proposals @ citizendium.org and mailing list... As if expert editors
do not have POVs to push, or that politics will not enter such a
system, or that expert editors with Phd's will be any better at text-
based social interactions and collaborative editing than mere mortals.

-- Jossi


from_name: Stephen Streater

subject:
[WikiEN-l] No derivatives (was: Would you like one of your
	videos posted on Wikipedia?)

body:
On 21 Sep 2006, at 13:49, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> dmehkeri at swi.com wrote:
>
>> digging, it does seem to be disallowed. For rationale, I get
>> pointed back to
>> either Jimbo's posts on disallowing non-commercial-use media
>> licenses, fair use,
>> or discussion of downstream use.
>>
>> None of these reasons seem to apply here. For the free
>> encyclopedia, a CC-BY-ND
>> media license, for example, is perfectly redistributable, allows
>> for possible
>> commercial use, and poses no issues for forks or other downstream
>> use, right?
>
> When we talk about Wikipedia being free, we refer to the 4 freedoms of
> free software, as defined by Richard Stallman many years ago:
>
> 0. The freedom to copy
> 1. The freedom to redistribute
> 2. The freedom to modify
> 3. The freedom to redistribute modified versions
>
> CC-BY-NC violates at least the last of these.
>
> Why do we care?  Because we want people to be able to adapt our
> work for
> their own purposes.  It is difficult for us to foresee what those
> purposes might be.
>
> Perhaps an artist wants to create a Digital Dream Booth... you walk
> into
> it, and say some concept like "Iraq" and dozens of images drawn from
> Wikipedia, interspersed with snippets of text, cascade down around you
> dissolving and forming in unusual ways.  The images are digitally
> morphed, one into the next.
>
> This is clearly going to involve making derivative works of our
> images.

This free policy is also being applied to formats:
4. No format can be used to encode data unless the source code
     is available under a free licence, even if tools to convert to a
free
     format are available


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

body:
>
> > digging, it does seem to be disallowed. For rationale, I get pointed
> > back to either Jimbo's posts on disallowing non-commercial-use media
> > licenses, fair use, or discussion of downstream use.
> >
> > None of these reasons seem to apply here. For the free encyclopedia,
> > a CC-BY-ND media license, for example, is perfectly redistributable,
> > allows for possible commercial use, and poses no issues for forks or
> > other downstream use, right?
>
> When we talk about Wikipedia being free, we refer to the 4 freedoms of
> free software, as defined by Richard Stallman many years ago:
>
> 0. The freedom to copy
> 1. The freedom to redistribute
> 2. The freedom to modify
> 3. The freedom to redistribute modified versions
>
> CC-BY-NC violates at least the last of these.
>

This is just an unfortunate typo, and you mean CC-BY-ND. Right?

> Why do we care?  Because we want people to be able to adapt our work for
> their own purposes.  It is difficult for us to foresee what those
> purposes might be.
>
> Perhaps an artist wants to create a Digital Dream Booth... you walk into
> it, and say some concept like "Iraq" and dozens of images drawn from
> Wikipedia, interspersed with snippets of text, cascade down around you
> dissolving and forming in unusual ways.  The images are digitally
> morphed, one into the next.
>
> This is clearly going to involve making derivative works of our images.
>
> --Jimbo
>

This is well explained. Thank you.

Regards,
Daniel


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
> If you mean the talk pages, those are intended to work out the nuances of
> articles. In effect, they are an essential--integral--part of article building.
> If you mean policy pages, they are a small percentage of our 1.3 million
> article  pages. Other than that, I have no idea what you are talking about. Do you?

Also, user pages, user subpages, user talk, templates, categories,
portals, images and other files and their descriptions, guidelines,
essays, proposals, FAC. RfA, AfD, other "votes" and discussions,
interface pages, help pages, draft articles, archives, WikiProjects,
vandalism reports, mediation, arbitration, other committees, etc, etc.
Articles only make up 25% of the English Wikipedia.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: effe iets anders

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
When will the results of the election been announced? (or have I
missed some email?) Congratz to the winner!

Lodewijk

2006/9/22, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>:
> In short:
>
> --Jimbo endorses Oscar and Mindspillage
> --Everyone comes to criticise Jimbo for treating Mindspillage as if everyone
> has heard of her
> --Some other things... I haven't really been paying attention.
>
> On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 9/16/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 16 Sep 2006, at 08:01, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > > > I invite an open discussion here of the candidates.  This is your
> > > > community, speak openly of who you trust and why.
> > >
> > > Well, I'll start off then.
> >
> > I've missed a week of mail.  What was the spur for this thread?  Was
> > there a sudden drop in candidate discussions online?  A rise in
> > disendorsement?  An announcement of election results?
> >
> > I recall discussions of a more general nature -- involving input from
> > the candidates -- the week that voting started.  Those never quite got
> > off the ground... I suppose we could start building ad-hoc trust
> > networks now to identify statistically-sound community reps for the
> > future, but is this the way to go?  (are trust nets in use anywhere
> > any more on de:wp?)
> >
> > I do wish that more wikimedians -- candidates and community members,
> > in and out of election-time -- would write more often about their
> > interests and concerns, in ways that support direct comparison and
> > editing of one anothers' writing.  One of the strengths of wikis as
> > media for conversations is how powerfully they allow subtle
> > point-by-point disagreement without requiring* the rhetorical dance of
> > ad hominems and clashing sweeping statements.
> >
> > SJ
> >
> > * ad hominems and sweeping statements are still allowed, but not
> > required; and regularly lose out to persistent subtle discourse.  Of
> > course more memorable cases may be those where they do not...
> >
> > --
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 9/22/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> > Articles only make up 25% of the English Wikipedia.
> Actually, I just requested a run against the database on Toolserver.
> 48% of entries in the dataset are in the main namespace

I was defining "article" in the same way [[Special:Statistics]] does.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: jf_wikipedia at mac.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
>
> Don't worry, Larry has different ideas than what you fear.
>
> Kim

Larry may have good intentions and a vision for a better pedia...
but I am following the discussions at Citizendium-I and all I can see
is an extraordinary amount of wishful thinking from participants, a
similar amount of naivete, and a basic misunderstanding of how on-
line collaboration works and what skills are needed to make it work.
I also observe a huge disparity on the expectations.

The attempt to "fix Wikipedia" by forking a new wiki with a new
process that "encourages experts" may be a good idea or a bad one,
but we will know if it works or not when it happens. Let's see in
three months time...

-- Jossi


from_name: Alison Wheeler

body:
On Fri, September 22, 2006 05:10, Kelly Martin wrote:
> The resolution did not require the election judges to report the
> results until October 1.  Perhaps someone should have read it before
> making plans.

>From a purely personal POV, this Saturday is the 'hen night' of a very
good friend of mine, starting at midday. I have had to tell her that I
cannot make most of it due to this meeting (which is fine as I very much
support our bid and will be representing it at the meeting).

If the meeting is to be postponed, could it be done sooner rather than
later in order that I can tell my friend I can be there please!

Thanks! ;-P

Alison


from_name: Akash Mehta

body:
There are obviously some of us with excellent english and proofreading
skills, so if we could set up a system where people run articles
through online translators and rewrite the result into reasonable
English it would work. Obviously this would involve reading through
the whole thing, but it is possible. One thing I'm not too sure of -
can we really copy FA text from a non-en:wp to en:wp and still comply
with GFDL without stating every single contributor in the edit
summary?

On 9/21/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 21/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Yes, it's certainly an interesting idea, but it's usually a lot of hard
> > work
> > > to get a decent translation going. The article subject would have to be
> > > interesting to keep me motivated.
> >
> >
> > If you could pick an FA in another language and port it to the best
> > English-language article you can, and let us know what sort of numbers
> > of hours this takes, that would be most useful to know.
> >
> > (and, as Danny says, it beats arguing about people, process or policy)
>
>
> While I know using online translators is discouraged, if a person is
> familiar enough with a subject to be able to root out mistranslations and to
> rewrite it as coherent English (good prose in one language doesn't
> necessarily make good prose in another, hence the "it looses something in
> the translation" cliche), then I don't see why familiarity with another
> language is necessarily a requirement. I've found with the couple of
> articles I've looked at through Google's translation service that it does a
> passable job, especially if one is familiar with the the subject matter. The
> nice thing about Google's translator is that if you click a link on the
> translated page, the linked page will be translated for you as well.
>
> Carl
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 9/22/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Good point.  We were imagining a faster result.  We can still have a
> meeting to discuss the bids on Saturday; but may have to push back the
> jury vote.

I think the proper response as a member of the jury is - the jury will
meet and consider this point with the members.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Peter Ansell

body:
On 22/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are obviously some of us with excellent english and proofreading
> skills, so if we could set up a system where people run articles
> through online translators and rewrite the result into reasonable
> English it would work. Obviously this would involve reading through
> the whole thing, but it is possible. One thing I'm not too sure of -
> can we really copy FA text from a non-en:wp to en:wp and still comply
> with GFDL without stating every single contributor in the edit
> summary?

I do not see how the GFDL is in any way linked to a pages "edit
summaries" or "revision histories". It is more knowing who has
contributed in the long run, a history of which would be kept on the
non-en:wp page. It would be more than sufficient to reference that
page if someone found the need to trace the contribution history for a
page.

Peter Ansell


from_name: Jon Harald Søby

body:
I can not say this with 100 % certainty, but the winner will most
probably be announced before Monday.

On 9/22/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/22/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, September 22, 2006 05:10, Kelly Martin wrote:
> > > The resolution did not require the election judges to report the
> > > results until October 1.  Perhaps someone should have read it before
> > > making plans.
> >
> > >From a purely personal POV, this Saturday is the 'hen night' of a very
> > good friend of mine, starting at midday. I have had to tell her that I
> > cannot make most of it due to this meeting (which is fine as I very much
> > support our bid and will be representing it at the meeting).
> >
> > If the meeting is to be postponed, could it be done sooner rather than
> > later in order that I can tell my friend I can be there please!
>
> Alison, if I'm reading correctly, the meeting with the candidate
> cities will be held at the schedule time. The only thing in question
> is the consequence of the "after" meeting of the jury. Thanks.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby


from_name: Kim van der Linde

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote:
> On Sep 17, 2006, at 12:15 AM, geni wrote:
>
>> A popular vote of of scientists would not be the worst description of
>> what goes on. Although of course the actual process is ar more
>> complex.
>>
>
> I just see a massive amount of wishful thinking and naivete in the
> proposals @ citizendium.org and mailing list... As if expert editors
> do not have POVs to push, or that politics will not enter such a
> system, or that expert editors with Phd's will be any better at text-
> based social interactions and collaborative editing than mere mortals.

Don't worry, Larry has different ideas than what you fear.

Kim

--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


from_name: Steve Sanbeg

subject: [Wikitech-l] labeled section transclusion

body:
I've implemented the feature that's been in discussion at
[[wikisource:project_talk:Labeled_section_transclusion]], and attached the
patch to [[bugzilla:5881]], since I don't have commit access.

I just wanted to see if anyone has feedback on that, and what the next step
is to move that along.

Thanks
  -Steve


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I like these numbers.  To restate my last question -- 25% of all
> revisions are to non-article pages.  Is this in accordance with the
> goal of producing a great encyclopedia, or is this noise that we
> should eventually reduce to a more manageable level?
>
Some of it is noise.  Some of it is necessary.  But pretty much none
of it can be reduced, as stopping people from creating noise would
produce more noise than it would eliminate.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Creation Procedure

body:
On 9/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Guy Chapman aka JzG stated for the record:
>
> > On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 09:09:54 -0700, Ray Saintonge
> > <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Since we also have five members of the Board, was this intended to be an
> >>allegory?
> >
> >
> > No, it's *ape*, not alligator.
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
>
> We deny the allegations and are working to identify the alligators.

This is newt the joke you're looking for.  It's neither benthic nor vagile.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Tony Jacobs

body:
>From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopedia of Earth appears to be now online...
>Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:34:48 +0100
>
>On 22/09/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > after being announced several times, the "Encyclopedia of Earth" (EoE)
> > has surfaced at http://www.eoearth.org/. It is published by the
> > Digital Universe Foundation and it is part of the Earthportal project.
> > It currently consists of 363 articles (according to the "All Articles"
> > list at http://www.eoearth.org/articles).
>
>
>And it's open content, too (cc-by-sa).
>
>A thousand flowers are blooming.
>
>
>- d.

Is it a WP:Reliable Source as well?  Reading their about page -
http://www.eoearth.org/eoe/about - it seems trustworthy...

Tony (GTBacchus)


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
On 9/22/06, jf_wikipedia at mac.com <jf_wikipedia at mac.com> wrote:
>
> Larry may have good intentions and a vision for a better pedia...
> but I am following the discussions at Citizendium-I and all I can see
> is an extraordinary amount of wishful thinking from participants, a
> similar amount of naivete, and a basic misunderstanding of how on-
> line collaboration works and what skills are needed to make it work.
> I also observe a huge disparity on the expectations.
>
> The attempt to "fix Wikipedia" by forking a new wiki with a new
> process that "encourages experts" may be a good idea or a bad one,
> but we will know if it works or not when it happens. Let's see in
> three months time...
>

Looking at the responses here and elsewhere, it seems that a lot of
Wikipedians following this WANT Citizendium to work, but doubt that it will.

DP


from_name: David Alexander Russell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] [[WP:100K]] - who here writes well in
 English and another language?

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

Akash Mehta wrote:
> There are obviously some of us with excellent english and proofreading
> skills, so if we could set up a system where people run articles
> through online translators and rewrite the result into reasonable
> English it would work. Obviously this would involve reading through
> the whole thing, but it is possible. One thing I'm not too sure of -
> can we really copy FA text from a non-en:wp to en:wp and still comply
> with GFDL without stating every single contributor in the edit
> summary?

Couldn't we put the link to the contributors list on the other wiki into
the edit summary when pasting in the translation?

Cynical
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3rc2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFE95Dg8fvtQYQevcRApiTAJwJG7l9dLFbFsBK6nML1Ze4OkJ2tACggQ17
EBM9NxX4avS5L1uLzLLw3Qw=
=MPht
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/22/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Akash Mehta wrote:
> > There are obviously some of us with excellent english and proofreading
> > skills, so if we could set up a system where people run articles
> > through online translators and rewrite the result into reasonable
> > English it would work. Obviously this would involve reading through
> > the whole thing, but it is possible. One thing I'm not too sure of -
> > can we really copy FA text from a non-en:wp to en:wp and still comply
> > with GFDL without stating every single contributor in the edit
> > summary?
>
> Couldn't we put the link to the contributors list on the other wiki into
> the edit summary when pasting in the translation?
>

Probably not because there is no way of guaranteeing that the link
will stay active.
--
geni


from_name: Kutahopia at aol.com

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [[WP:100K]] - who here writes well in English and
	another l...

body:
I have repetitively attempted to convert to
"digest"; however,  it's, ostensibly, stuck.

Thank You.

In a message dated 21-Sep-06 09:23:06 Pacific Daylight Time,
dgerard at gmail.com writes:

On  21/09/06, Raphael Wiegand <rdb_wikipedia at gmx.de>  wrote:

> Yes, of course it's important to improve quality,  espacially now when
> en: has reached an unbelievable high number  of articles, but I don't
> think you'll reach 100k of FAs without  easing the requirements for an
> article to be featured, even if  you go for it for three years. Let's
> explain:
> English WP  has now exactly 1118 featured articles on 1,395,220 total

The  current FAC process is known not to scale and is not expected  to
scale, which is why I'm not assuming it. Also, its requirements  have
been deliberately tightened - the Featured Article Criteria  haven't
changed, but the FA process's expectations have been ramped  *way* up
specifically to keep the numbers down.

(This is about  the fourth time I've said this in this thread, isn't it?)

-  d.
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l  mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
_http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l_
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l)

_wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org_ (mailto:wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org) ,
_wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org_ (mailto:wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org)

dgerard at gmail.com

I have repetitively attempted to convert to
"digest"; however,  it's, ostensibly, stuck.

Thank You.

Thank  You,

DonFphrnqTaub Persina
DONFPHRNQTAUB  PERSINA


from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and the networked society

body:
Hi!

> It is a
> shame that introspection, statistics about our communities and
> ourselves, internal research efforts, have not been a larger part of
> recent years' growth.
It is. But maybe here one of the pillars (no original research) is at least
partly responsible. Formally we cannot publish research on ourselves until
someone else does not publish it somewhere else first. Yes we have META for
this, but how many people go there? I suppose that a deeper introspection
will have to be encouraged somehow.

> that spending too much time discussing or thinking about priorities
> and future direction is a distraction from building the projects or
> writing an encyclopedia.
It's an understandable position. Yet once you have over 1 million articles
publihed maybe it's time to look for more than just horizontal growth.

> The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing
> on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not
> ...
> also those who care enough to donate money or critical
> rants or expert advice, readers who would not dare contribute to an
> encyclopedia but have relevant experiences in other areas of life to
> add to planning discussions, and the friends and colleagues and family
> of the above, interested enough to participate in such discussions if
> they knew about them but not yet aware they exist.[2]

Yes. Can't sell a thing unless you market it. Being a top-20 site may help,
yes we do get money and human resources anyway, but the real question is:
how much more we could get and are not getting?

>  those who feel broad-based discussions are criminal, or wastes
> of time:
Are invited to join the discussion and to prove their point :)))) If you
come and cannot prove your point by discussing it, then it really is just a
waste of time, so... help us prove OUR point to prove that you are right :)
Neat, isn't it? :))))))))))))))))

> Are we dominated by people with no full-time jobs and no children?
A new Middle Age? Clerics are an option, really. I can personally enroll in
the no children part, at least so far. I suppose this research should
include another determinant topic: what are the main interests of the
community, i.e., what are we writing about? Maybe the absence of a wide
amount of child-related articles might mean a lot... I personally noticed
astounding grey areas as much as food is concerned... are we mostly eating
in MacDonald's? I'm serious. Wikipedia content does have an impact on the
kind of contributors we are attracting. 99% of us got to know the wiki
because we found information on it by googling around. Eventually we ended
up in the wiki so frequently that we started to use it. If information on a
given subject is poor or lacking we may simply miss to attract the consumers
of such an information segment. Do we need to subside strategic information
segments to enlarge our user base?

> we could have a
> simple projects-wide survey completed within a month.  Let's make this
> a priority and make such a thing happen -- then figure out how to
> optimize future iterations.
Any start is better than nothing.

> ps - while looking for the link to the user survey on meta, I ran
> across this: a poll applet that seems to be working as of last month.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Poll
how can we localize it and put it in the local editions?

> Wikipedians speculate about the future all the time.  And yet I say we
> rarely engage serious discussion of priorities, dreams, timelines,
> goals, and opportunity costs.  Why is this?
Because we all love to chat, and this is a pretty casual approach to
problems. Making a decision takes time, and people often end up in making it
in closed circles of friends, instead of bringing the whole thing to public,
where it would be drawned in endless chatting and no decision at all. The
very capability of making decisions is one of the weakest points in the wmf.
Or maybe it is its best strenght? I would think twice before saying loud
that it's one of the two. As it is, the monster seems to have no head,
things just happen in the most chaotic fashion ever, yet they keep
happening.

Yes we do miss self-awareness, basically one can tell where we are going to
only once we already got there, based on pure evidence. But are we sure that
by becoming more aware of ourselves it would be any better? I mean... lots
of societies (just think of Italy, since I'm a citizen there I'll quote that
to avoid offending other cultures) simply ignore any rule. Laws are written
everyday and they all are blatantly ignored by the population, lawmakers
included. It sounds like hell, yet a number of people go there each every
year and the place managed to build up a number of great cities. Is
wikipedia an anarchistic-oriented latin society? Isn't the community simply
"doing it" and refusing to spend time in discussions while they can "do it
themselves their own way"? Most signals would suggest that this is what
users really do. So yes, we do need to plan and be aware of what we do, but
from the other hand... aren't we risking to damage our own wondertoy?

The problem is that we need to do both. We need a central administration to
get funds, to invest them and to make sure it's not 200k users all spending
their nights to make the very same template, but... we also have the problem
the users are not paid, so they are free. Free for wmf to use them, and free
for them to do whatever they wish. It's really a complex equilibrium we are
dealing with. How binding may a decision be, if made by a minority?
Obviously it is binding, to a certain extent. A project can be closed,
another can be funded, and by this very fact the flow of human resources
gets canalized. Having a wider discussion would mean that the opinion of low
level contributors may become more relevant to what this "technical elites"
decide. Only...

Only there is currently no barrier (let alone being able to speak decent
english) for anyone to join such "elites". Anyone wishing to do so is
absolutely welcome. Actually is more problems waiting to be solved than
volunteers wishing to undertake community work. So we have no "feudal
barrier" in wmf. IMHO, we cannot expect this to undego any substantial
change. People are NOT interested in WMF as such. A small minority of users
is interested into becaming a contributor, and an even smaller percent is
interested into wmf as such. Mostly it's people being not too young and
having a hip for "politics" (in the social, non-ideological sense of the
word). When you say that meta has 2k active contributors it looks small...
but how many would be left in the count, if you took off all those enrolling
just to fight pro or against a single language? Not many, I'm afraid.

So okay, we need a better marketing. We need to enroll people wishing to "go
meta". Where from?
1) the editions
2) the virtual streets

If we get these people from the editions, a lot of their time is going to be
lost for the edition(s) itself. So we engage into an internal competition
for human resources. Not nice. Okay, but if we get them from outside the
communities... than making the strategies will be in the hands of people who
do not even know what an interwiki link looks like. Will the community
accept such decision-makers? I for one would not. So possibly the only
sensible answer is: get more contributors. Let's see... 200k contributors
make (let's be optimistic) 2k meta-involved people. Where do we get some
100k contributors from, to enlarge the META-base?

Last but not least... what will we do once a growing number of people who
aren't speaking english at all will want to have a say in such decisions? If
we only push them all into national chapters and say "learn to speak
properly if you want make yourself a career" all we do is making grounds for
a number of de facto secessions... Honestly this last detail is worrying me
much more than anything else. And no, I have no idea whatsoever of how the
problem can be addressed. But it must be addressed, unless we want that
1/100 factor of "meta involvement" drop to 10 or 100 times less.

> These comparisons *should* be made.
Yes. absolutely right.

> Unfortunately, these discussions tend to peter out and get lost.
> Mailing list threads are dropped and never wikified
The problem is that it's hard to wikify a discussion. I'd publish an "essay"
on Meta, but what if I want to answer like this? Wikimedia is a wonderful
piece of software, but it makes a poor forum. I can wikify what you
published, I'll try and wikify the relevant parts of my answer, but... I
have the recurrent feeling that one of the reasons why we miss a wider
discussion is simply because it's hard to discuss on a wiki.

> Do you know someone who works at a multinational volunteer collective?
Myself. The Dutch Barge Association is organizing the 2009 Black Sea Rally
(from Ireland to Kiev and back by internal waterways and seas). It's very
complicated, as it means crossing the Bielorussian border on private boats,
and passing 200m away from Chernobyl. For the organization we use... a
closed wiki. Over 200 stubs were needed just to map small needs like gas
connectors, diesel availability, etc.

> Find out what they think the
> parallels are between their organizations or projects and ours.
1) DBA has an external goal. Wiki is a means to us. Here the means coincide
with the end.
2) DBA has but 1400 members (some 800 barges, I believe), a clear internal
hyerarchical structure, periodical mass meetings, a paper magazine. Internet
is very important to us, but we mostly do our stuff on real water and meet
in real life. The whole structure was born as a traditional english "user
group" in the 90's, when a growing number of englishmen started to buy old
dutch Tjalken and Luxemotors for them to cruise on european inland waters.
3) Projects are largely born much in the way they are born here. If anyone
has enough political ability to collect support for a project, than it will
eventually become an official thing.
4) While we do actively lobby whenever european laws come to touch our
interests, the only funding we request goes to canal dredging and lock-gates
maintainance. DBS is fully funded by the 50 quids we pay each every year to
get our memberships.
5) The community is keeping a constant eye on whatever happens, I can hardly
think of something like META for us. Our village is too small to have
unknown districts.
6) We do have minorities (sailing barges). Yes, I'm into minorities even
there :) Must be something in my DNA :)
7) Vandalizing pages is potentially dangerous for the life of our members
(all it takes is moving navigational data), so we do not accept anonymous
contributions. If you are not a member you need a member to grant for you in
order to be accepted.
8) There has been a long discussion before accepting to use a wiki for the
project. Many people rated wmf as "too chaotic" for them to accept anything
coming from here. Yet now consensus is that the wiki is useful, and IMHO it
really is. I forced the decision by setting up the wiki myself and emitting
the first users. Once it stopped to be a concept and it became "simply a
tool" all doubts vanished. I expect another major cruising association to
adopt a closed wiki in the next future.

B?rto


body:
Well, I'm relatively fluent in German so I could start by translating
a de FA into English and seeing how it turns out. Anyone know where
the list of FAs is for de:wp?

On 9/22/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There are obviously some of us with excellent english and proofreading
> > skills, so if we could set up a system where people run articles
> > through online translators and rewrite the result into reasonable
> > English it would work. Obviously this would involve reading through
> > the whole thing, but it is possible. One thing I'm not too sure of -
> > can we really copy FA text from a non-en:wp to en:wp and still comply
> > with GFDL without stating every single contributor in the edit
> > summary?
>
> I do not see how the GFDL is in any way linked to a pages "edit
> summaries" or "revision histories". It is more knowing who has
> contributed in the long run, a history of which would be kept on the
> non-en:wp page. It would be more than sufficient to reference that
> page if someone found the need to trace the contribution history for a
> page.
>
> Peter Ansell
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tech demo: "Can We Link It?" - Link Suggesting tool

body:
On 9/22/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Don't use pipe links for [[plural word]]s.
>
> Sounds good, that's been added now, and it should transform any proposed link variant of the form [[X|Y]], where X is a substring of
> Y, and where X and Y contain an equal number of spaces, into [[X]]rest-of-Y.

Better solution:
preg_replace("/\\[\\[([$linkprefixchars]*)([^]|]+)([$linktrailchars]*)\|$1\]\]/",
"$1[[$2]]$3", $text), where $linkprefixchars and $linktrailchars are
grabbed from the appropriate language file.  (Regex is untested and
might contain typos and/or other errors, but you probably get the
point: try to use the exact matching technique that MediaWiki itself
uses.)


from_name: Martin Walker

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and the networked society (SJ)

body:
The English Wikipedia is littered with many "big ideas" and longterm plans
that have evoked lively debate and high emotion at the time, but most of
these ideas die out when it becomes apparent that they lead nowhere.  That
does not mean that big ideas are bad, I happen to strongly agree with SJ,
it's just that we need to have processes to bring ideas forward into reality.

Let's consider one of the old chestnuts, article assessment.  One year ago,
I printed off 36 pages of discussion and ideas on article assessment,
produced over about two years.  But only one article had actually been
assessed.  Now just one year later, thanks to the efforts of thousands of
people, we are in a situation where over 100,000 articles have been
assessed, with over 50,000 done in the last month alone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team
What lessons can be learnt from this to help us get ideas off the drawing
board and into Wikipedia?  I've drawn the following conclusions:

1.  Set some specific goals: Some may be vague like "Write 100,000 featured
articles" but other goals should be very specific like "Write an FA from
this list of 100 articles by the end of the month" and perhaps a signup
that says "I have agreed to work on this specific articles".  Without
something tangible, the idea will remain pie in the sky forever.  At WP:1.0
we focussed initially on getting a system of article assessment up and
running, as a prerequisite to making CDs or DVDs.

2. These goals should visibly lead to a larger goal in the medium term: If
you want people to keep committing their time to your big idea, you have to
be able to see some serious progress towards the grander goal.  If you say,
"One FA done this month, only another 99,999 to go!" everyone will get
discouraged.  If you say, "Let's get every country in the world be an FA"
and you plot a graph of your progress, and you celebrate the halfway point
after 3 months, some people will probably stay involved.  When you finish
the project, celebrate and tell the Signpost - people will be proud that
they were part of it.

3. Lead by example: You can't expect others to do work for you - you have
to expect to do the lion's share of the work to get a big idea off the
ground.  If you think it's reasonable for an active Wikipedian to write one
FA per week, then you need to write three per week yourself.  When you've
done 100 FAs yourself in 30 weeks, people may start noticing you and trying
to emulate what you are doing.  Keep doing it - some who join you may move
on - you can only begin to back off once it's become an established part of
Wikipedia that many Wikipedians are writing an FA every week or two.

4. Find a way to scale it up: Just putting your idea on Wikipedia alongside
1000 other big ideas won't mean that everyone will stop writing articles on
their favourite sitcom and start helping you.  You have to set up a
mechanism for implementation, then find a way to scale that up.  There are
two ways I know of to scale things - delegate the work to others, and
automate the work.  The mechanisms that work best do both, of course - the
article assessments are done by WikiProject members (that's the delegation
part), while the data handling and compilation is done by templates,
categories and a bot (the automation).  Of course you can only delegate
work that falls within people's area of interest; I might be willing and
able to work on an FA on an organic chemical reaction (I'm an organic
chemist), but not on much outside chemistry.  You can really only delegate
work well if the work helps the person who does it reach their own personal
goals.  Finding the right infrastructure and process to do that may be hard
- you need (a) to get person X to hear about the project, (b) get them to
work on their little piece of it and (c) get some automation to put
together all the little pieces into a big piece.  Then (d) tell everyone
about the big piece you've made so they get excited about doing more and
get their friends to help.

5.  Listen to others: I think sometimes we're so busy pushing our own big
ideas we don't bother to listen to others.  Often we can put several big
ideas together to make one big idea that works.  Then you have a core of
people with ownership of the idea who can get the idea started.   One
person may have a good knowledge of process, another some technical skills,
so having a team helps.  If we let our big idea evolve through the input of
others it will probably get implemented - if we don't, it will probably
join the masses of "ideacruft" that lurk in many dusty corners of Wikipedia.

So I hope we come up with a vision for the future, and some big ideas to
help us get there, but we won't build a new networked society by simply
talking about it.  As Harvard chemist George Whitesides says (paraphrased),
until you get your big breakthrough into a paper - into reality - it means
nothing.  So by all means let us dream some dreams, but let's then
carefully design some targeted projects with real, tangible goals, and get
to work!

Martin Walker (User:Walkerma)


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 22/09/06, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:

> > When we talk about Wikipedia being free, we refer to the 4 freedoms of
> > free software, as defined by Richard Stallman many years ago:
> > 0. The freedom to copy
> > 1. The freedom to redistribute
> > 2. The freedom to modify
> > 3. The freedom to redistribute modified versions
> > CC-BY-NC violates at least the last of these.

> This is just an unfortunate typo, and you mean CC-BY-ND. Right?

I think the original was talking about cc-by-nc - you don't have
freedoms 1, 2 and 3 if it's commercial.

- d.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [[Portal:Current events]] (regarding is WP a
	news	portal?)

body:
"NSLE (Wikipedia)" wrote

> But I think it's ridiculous when things like
> [[Richard Hammond]]'s progress in hospital is being reported at Portal:CE
> daily.

Media stories about media people are typically incestuous, and, yes, can be ridiculous. And non-events in terms of their real consequences, though not always.

Charles

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