body:
On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 23:15:12 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Wow! That is totally awesome! Did they compare the English versions or German
> versions of each encyclopedia (all the better if it were the German versions)?
> Reading... Oh, it does look like they looked at the German version - sweet.

It is terribly exciting... and yes, German to German.

> Two words: PRESS RELEASE!

Absolutely!    Monday wouldn't be too soon.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR/c't

> Seriously, once the fund drive is over we should have a press release about
> this and also mention the fact and result of our 'recent successful fund
> drive.' We should also quote Jimbo when he said that commercial encyclopedias
> will be out of business in 5 years if they keep doing as they have been.

"crushed out of existence," I love that quote...

> Working URL: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_vs_Brockhaus_and_Encarta
> Is the copyright cleared on that translation (since a translation is a

Ahh, thank you.  No, there's no copyright clearance... it may be too long
and too detailed a paraphrase to be fair use.  We should check with c't to
make sure they don't mind.

--
+sj+


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Vandalism problem

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> We've been having a bit of trouble with a vandal [[User:Hi332211]] at
> Wiktionary.  He has been using the move function to transfer the Main
> Page to silly places.  I managed to get the Main Page back to where it
> belongs, but lost its history in the process.  By using the history link
> in Recent Changes corresponding to when he made the move I find the
> entire history is now at
> http://en.wiktionary.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=You_are_an_idiot%21&curid=58201&action=history
> but I don't know how to put it back where it belongs.

* Delete [[Main Page]]
* Move [[You are an idiot!]] to [[Main Page]]
* Delete [[Main Page]] again
* Undelete [[Main Page]]

The last step undeletes all of the revisions you deleted in the previous
two deletions and thereby merges the two histories.

Timwi


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Vandalism problem

body:
Since the only edits to [[You are an idiot!]] relate to a page of that
title, they should not be merged with the main page. I expect the page
history was in the right place, but appeared to be somewhere else due
to the current database lag. Normally waiting ten minutes and then
refreshing the page will show a normal history.

The only thing you still need to do is delete [[Talk:Main Page]] and
move [[Wiktionary talk:Main Page]] there.

Then decide if [[You are an idiot!]] is a page you really want to
keep, and whether [[Wiktionary:Main Page]] is a useful redirect, or
whether it should be deleted.

Angela.

On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 02:58:31 +0200, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> * Delete [[Main Page]]
> * Move [[You are an idiot!]] to [[Main Page]]
> * Delete [[Main Page]] again
> * Undelete [[Main Page]]
>
> The last step undeletes all of the revisions you deleted in the previous
> two deletions and thereby merges the two histories.


list: foundation-l

body:
> Working URL: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_vs_Brockhaus_and_Encarta

Right now this is just a summary and note that the article is coming
out; if they eventually allow a translation, hopefully one will be put
up there.

--
+sj+


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Membership and payment

body:
Thanks for your clarification Jens :-)

(I am relieved to see you could understand me)

PS : she, not he, she.

Jens Ropers a ?crit:
>
> On 1 Oct 2004, at 16:39, Timwi wrote:
>
>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>> Roughly, the goal is
>>> * to add to preferences a mention of default joining the foundation
>>> when  creating an account, and adding a link to an opt-out option
>>
> He wants to add and option (possibly a tickbox) to the account creation
> page, allowing the person creating an account to automatically join the
> Wikimedia Foundation as well.
>
>>> * set a form to join as a contributing member.
>>
> He wants that there be an optionally accessible form allowing people to
> sign up as a contributing member of the Wikimedia Foundation right at
> account signup.
>
>>> The paiement itself should be multilingual, include several different
>>> amounts, and allow the person to enter a preference for use of part
>>> of the fee.
>>
> Not sure if I understand him correctly on this one, but he probably
> wants to offer people who sign up as contributing members different
> amounts of recurring contribution/member fees.
>
>>> Generate a tax receipt for us contributors (desactivated for now).
>>
> He wants an option to get tax receipts for the contributions (which
> would remain deactivated until the Wikimedia Foundation is fully
> accredited as tax exempt in all of the U.S. (and thus, by merit of
> international treaties, abroad as well).
>
>>> * Find a solution to add as contributing members, editors who paid
>>> fees in a local chapter.
>>
> He wants to allow people who already pay membership fees/recurring
> contributions to local chapters of the Wikimedia Foundation to get
> registered with the Wikimedia Foundation proper as contributing members
> without paying twice -- they'd continue to pay the local chapter but
> would hold equal standing as people who hold their membership directly
> with the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
>>> * store all data about the member as "confidential" data (another db
>>> or encryption).
>>
> He wants to have all pertaining personal data securely stored in another
> database or encrypted in the same database.
>
>>> Make it available automatically for voting.
>>
> He wants mechanisms that would allow Wikimedia Foundation members to
> seamlessly participate in Foundation elections, possibly w/o having to
> log in separately.
>
>>> * Generate an access and interface of some sort, so that someone can
>>> consult/manage the list of members.
>>
> He wants to allow for the list of Wikimedia Foundation members to be
> retrievable and manageable via an appropriate interface to the database
> holding that list.
>
>>
>> No offense to you, Anthere, but I don't understand any of this. Quite
>> frankly, this is quite poor English, which for me (as a non-native
>> speaker) is impossible to parse. I understand the task is to add an
>> option in the preferences. That's all I can figure out. What is the
>> option supposed to do?
>>
>> Sorry :/
>> Timwi
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] In the news: S.Africa, Interzone, clusty.com

body:
The S.African Mail and Guardian online cottons to us:  they like the
"crushed out of existence" quote, too.
http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=Insight-Online&o=138404&sa=106

Cosmodelia from Barcelona introduces Wikiversity to "the Interzone"
http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/reportsept04.html

...and Vivisimo's "clusty.com", "powered completely by breakthrough
clustering technology" [and buzzwords], "changes forever how consumers
do general Web searches as well as shopping, blogs, gossip, images,
Wikipedia and people searches".

Aside from having a name my friend's kid brother would have picked out
of a hat for his domain-squatting business, this is really neat.  They
have a separate tab for searching wikipedia. What do you know, our
main page looks pretty good in that blue-on-taupe color scheme.

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/Sep/1078405.htm

--
+sj+


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus

body:
On 02 Oct 2004 11:04:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> This is great and should help to combat some of the FUD about Wikipedia
< and wikis in general. Now imagine the result when ... newspapers, magazines,
> academics and anyone else can cite a specific certified version of a Wikipedia
> article and be sure that it's 1) accurate, 2) not a redirect to goatse.cx.

For starters, we need a permanent link to the current revision.

> Let's not get cocky and keep that goal in mind. The road to credibility is
> long and requires constant innovation. The next review might very well

Quite right.  Both innovation and communication about what works and
what doesn't.  en: could learn something from the de: and zh: quality
offensives, for instance... and everyone could learn from the cleanup
processes involved in
preparing snapshots for our distribution partners.

> include an article on [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] or in [[Category:NPOV
> disputes]]. Unless we can then say, "this is the unstable version - check
> the stable one, which already has 10,000 articles", we're on the defensive

Until we can actually provide a view of Wikipedia which never shows a
link to an unstable or unedited page, we will be on the defensive
about certain things.
It is natural to desire a site that you can visit, or take your
children to, without worrying that they will randomly end up on a talk
page full of curse words and
vitriol.

Wikipedia is still lacking in a great many departments; we have little
reason to be cocky.  c't may have been nice to Wikipedia because they
are a tech mag and we were the underdog, but once we are actually seen
as comparable to traditional encyclopedias, there will be ten times as
many writers and researchers eager to tarnish our image.

By then we should have better tools for community review, better
browsing options for readers, and support from widely respected groups
in research and academia.

+sj+


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I liked this:

"...Wikipedia, and other projects like it, give a voice to many people who
would not have been able to contribute their own knowledge to the creation
of an encyclopedia. It is infinitely more democratic and open as a process
and promises to give a voice to those who have traditionally be marginalised
by the centralised and closed truth making processes of the non-digital
world."

Fred

> From: Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 04:25:10 -0400
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] In the news: S.Africa, Interzone, clusty.com
>
> http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=Insight-Online&o=138404&sa=106


from_name: David Carson

subject: [WikiEN-l] A plea - live and let live

body:
Mark Richards wrote:

>The trouble with VFU is that only admins can even see
>what was deleted. The process is proundly un wiki.
>
>

Perhaps it would be helpful if listings on VFU were accompanied by an
admin copying the deleted article to a temporary subpage a.s.a.p. ?

Cheers!
David...


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [Wikitech-l] RFC: Approved Edits Only

body:
On Friday 01 October 2004 13:36, Randy Becker wrote:
> This is part of the reason I'm swaying away from the current course
> I've taken, and towards a cleaner approach, but I will bring up the
> "stable time" to see if it's an acceptable solution. Also, part of the

I think that stable time is not possible solution. Most articles rarely remain
stable for any longer amount of time. Someone will fix grammar, remove a
comma... there will always be minor or major changes, especially as the
changes don't propagate to the article, and the time will always be resetted.

> problem with this is how does it reach a stable point, as *all*
> evidence of an edit by a user should not be evident from the wiki,
> except to sysops or the like. (editing should display the previously
> approved entry, and only approved entries should appear in the history
> etc.) Because of all of this, I'm thinking of trying to implement a
> kind of queue of edits, which would bee looked at, and then approved
> or rejected, and if rejected, just dropped, if approved, added as if
> the user which submitted them had added them themselves.

This is possible approach, but who is going to do the approving and rejecting?


subject:
[WikiEN-l]
	Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus

body:
On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 15:39:58 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> oh, I read elsewhere it was german to german.
> Why did you sent it to this ml Sj ?

Yes, just german to german.  Perhaps it will inspire other researchers
to do serious comparisons in other languages as well.  (and I meant to
send it to wikipedia, wikien was an accident).  --sj

> > Grab a copy of the original at your local international-pubs shop, if you can.
> >
> > http://www.heise.de/ct/
> >
> > Encyclopedias: Wikipedia vs. Brockhaus and Encarta (pg. 132)
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] A plea - live and let live

body:
Erm, not sure - have you got any numbers on this?
Maybe we should count ;)
Mark

--- Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> Which is what is almost always done.  Very few
> articles are actually deleted.
>
> -Matt
>
> On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 17:35:32 -0700 (PDT), Mark
> Richards
> <marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > That would be better, but it still denies future
> > generations of Wikipedian the right to edit and
> > improve. There are a few circumstances where
> legal,
> > ethical reasons or simple nonsense compel
> deletion,
> > but blanking, redirecting or refactoring is almost
> > always better.
> > Mark
> >
> >
> >
> > --- David Carson <david at hemiware.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Mark Richards wrote:
> > >
> > > >The trouble with VFU is that only admins can
> even
> > > see
> > > >what was deleted. The process is proundly un
> wiki.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > Perhaps it would be helpful if listings on VFU
> were
> > > accompanied by an
> > > admin copying the deleted article to a temporary
> > > subpage a.s.a.p. ?
> > >
> > > Cheers!
> > > David...
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
> > http://vote.yahoo.com
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia and sustainable development

body:
(just going through my mail, finally)

I think participating in tic21 is a good idea.  Even if it is only to
have a minimal
booth on the floor, to hand out wikimedia flyers; it would be worth
the cost (800
Eu, all told?) to have those contacts... and a simple target for
small-scale fundraising.

The general principles of copyleft, reusability, and preserving the
information in fields where people have expertise from their everyday
lives -- these are all  very
much in the spirit of sustainable development, so I do not think it is
a stretch to
say that Wikimedia projects strive towards those goals.

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 01:29:15 -0700 (PDT), Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> A second newsletter will be send to all participants soon.  This newsletter will include a collection of texts written by several implicated actors, such as french administration, french academics, France Telecom, Unesco, Fing, Agora21, local committee 21 etc...
> I have been asked to participate to it for Wikipedia.
> The organiser of the meeting suggested that I explained how the website www.planetecologie.com and Wikipedia could collaborate together (an idea on which we have been working before summer), and how and if collective intelligence could possibly be useful within sustainable development.

What I would say to this is, that collective intelligence is essential
for developing
a robust social and technological infrastructure.

There are advantages to mass production, specialization, and high
technology.  If you want these advantages without the risk of losing
the ability to recreate the tools that you use (if the wrong
specialist dies, the wrong library burns down, the wrong factory
collapses), you need a repository for collective intelligence.

If you want to be able to quickly pass on your knowlege of how to
perform certain tasks, how to create a certain social or environmental
equilibrium, you again need a repository for collective intelligence.

> However, I would love being *much* more practical, and give REAL examples of our work :
>
> * my pet topic, the ecoregions project
> * the brand new wikispecies and the tree of life
> * the Gemet

I wish I knew more about all three of these.
Wikispecies seems to be progressing slowly; ToL is still active and
probably receptive to posts on their project talk page.
 http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies%3AVillage_pump
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk%3AWikiProject_Tree_of_Life
 http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Wikip%C3%A9dia%3AProjet%2C_Arbre_de_la_Vie

the Gemet... well, I still have no idea what that is all about.

+sj+


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Sj-
> Brockhaus "must concede defeat" to Wikipedia

This is great and should help to combat some of the FUD about Wikipedia
and wikis in general. Now imagine the result when we have a solid
community-based peer review mechanism for every article, where every page
is evaluated in different categories - accuracy, copyright status,
comprehensiveness, images, neutrality, and so on - and where we can make a
guarantee that it has passed all these criteria, and that every factual
claim in the article has a source. Then newspapers, magazines, academics
and anyone else can cite a specific certified version of a Wikipedia
article and be sure that it's 1) accurate, 2) not a redirect to goatse.cx.

Let's not get cocky and keep that goal in mind. The road to credibility is
long and requires constant innovation. The next review might very well
include an article on [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] or in [[Category:NPOV
disputes]]. Unless we can then say, "this is the unstable version - check
the stable one, which already has 10,000 articles", we're on the defensive
again.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiMedia +WikiTech

body:
> Andre Engels wrote:
>> But WikiTex IS already included in MediaWiki since a year or so (at
>> least it's older than 1.3). Just type <math>some LaTeX</math>.

That's texvc, not WikiTex.

On Oct 2, 2004, at 12:47 PM, Stephan Walter wrote:
> He's talking about the other features such as chess, chemistry
> formulae, musical scores, semantic trees etc.

WikiTex is in the extensions module in CVS, and can be checked out from
there. Please see http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=34373

I'm not sure what the current state is; Peter checked in some updates a
little while ago, but I think wanted some improvements to the
extensions interface to pass parameters (attributes on the 'tag') which
I don't think are in yet.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] clean up

body:
I also think it's a poor idea to list an article for cleanup - via any
method - without explaining what you think is wrong with it.  In fact,
my biggest issue with the cleanup concept is that it encourages the
'someone else's problem' mentality, though it does help for when you
feel like a little Wiki-tidying and need some pointers for problem
areas.

-Matt

On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 16:16:06 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Angela wrote:
>
> >I strongly feel these should only appear on talk pages, but I gave up
> >arguing that a while ago because people insist on having them on
> >articles, supposedly because they feel readers need to be warned the
> >article is not good enough.
> >
> >
> I think they ought to go on articles, but with a higher threshold of
> "suckiness".  An article that needs a little work shouldn't go on
> cleanup, by my understanding of its intent.  An article that was
> wholesale copy/pasted from a PD source with no wikification or rewriting
> should get the tag, as should an article that appears to be completely
> incoherent.
>
> -Mark
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Fred Bauder wrote

> I liked this:
>
> "...Wikipedia, and other projects like it, give a voice to many people who
> would not have been able to contribute their own knowledge to the creation
> of an encyclopedia. ..."

Has a point; would be rather more convincing  in an era when it was as easy
to contribute from a mobile phone as now is from a personal computer with a
boardband connection and keyboard.  Which we may see.

Charles


body:
Waou.

Could someone translate this properly please ?

Is it german language comparison or english one ?

What does c't mean ?

Anthere

Sj a ?crit:
> Brockhaus "must concede defeat" to Wikipedia
>
> c't, the popular german magazine for computer engineering, just
> released a study they conducted of the three major digital
> encyclopedias in germany -- Brockhaus, Encarta, and (most recently)
> Wikipedia.  They tested the encyclopedias on breadth, depth, and
> comprehensibility of content, ease of searching, and quality of
> multimedia content.
>
> The content test was the most elaborate : first they divided content
> in three broad fields, Science, Society, and Culture.  They further
> subdivided these into 22 total subject areas, and within each subject
> selected an easy, a moderate, and a difficult topic.  They then
> searched for the best matching article (and supplementary content) in
> the encyclopedia.
>
> Finally, they brought in experts in each broad field who rated the
> articles from 1 to 5, based on technical correctness and completeness
> of the texts, and on their comprehensibility.  Once this was finished,
> the results were totalled at each level of conceptual difficulty,
> within each broad field, and across all 66 topics.
>
> The net result: Wikipedia ran away with the top prize, a comfortable
> distance ahead of its stately predecessors.  "Brockhaus Premium
> surpassed the competition from Redmond," the review reported, "but
> must however concede defeat to Wikipedia".
>
> Happily, the full breakdown of the experts' ratings were published
> along with the article, so that each encyclopedia may benefit from the
> spot check.
>
> A full translation will be available on meta presently :
>  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia vs Brockhaus and Encarta
>
>
> Grab a copy of the original at your local international-pubs shop, if you can.
>
> http://www.heise.de/ct/
>
> Encyclopedias: Wikipedia vs. Brockhaus and Encarta (pg. 132)
>


body:
oh, I read elsewhere it was german to german.
Why did you sent it to this ml Sj ?

Sj a ?crit:
> Brockhaus "must concede defeat" to Wikipedia
>
> c't, the popular german magazine for computer engineering, just
> released a study they conducted of the three major digital
> encyclopedias in germany -- Brockhaus, Encarta, and (most recently)
> Wikipedia.  They tested the encyclopedias on breadth, depth, and
> comprehensibility of content, ease of searching, and quality of
> multimedia content.
>
> The content test was the most elaborate : first they divided content
> in three broad fields, Science, Society, and Culture.  They further
> subdivided these into 22 total subject areas, and within each subject
> selected an easy, a moderate, and a difficult topic.  They then
> searched for the best matching article (and supplementary content) in
> the encyclopedia.
>
> Finally, they brought in experts in each broad field who rated the
> articles from 1 to 5, based on technical correctness and completeness
> of the texts, and on their comprehensibility.  Once this was finished,
> the results were totalled at each level of conceptual difficulty,
> within each broad field, and across all 66 topics.
>
> The net result: Wikipedia ran away with the top prize, a comfortable
> distance ahead of its stately predecessors.  "Brockhaus Premium
> surpassed the competition from Redmond," the review reported, "but
> must however concede defeat to Wikipedia".
>
> Happily, the full breakdown of the experts' ratings were published
> along with the article, so that each encyclopedia may benefit from the
> spot check.
>
> A full translation will be available on meta presently :
>  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia vs Brockhaus and Encarta
>
>
> Grab a copy of the original at your local international-pubs shop, if you can.
>
> http://www.heise.de/ct/
>
> Encyclopedias: Wikipedia vs. Brockhaus and Encarta (pg. 132)
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] clean up

body:
There is something I do not understand.

Some editors are putting some "clean up" flag on some articles. The
resulting information is ugly and defacing the article. There is no
indication of why the article should be cleaned up, neither in the talk
page, nor in the clean up page.

Ex : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flax or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat

I doubt not there is still work to do on the articles, just as on most
articles. Why showing so much to our readers the imperfections ? What
about not just putting per default this flag on ALL articles ? Why just
not fixing the article you think is bad instead of mentionning so
proeminently it is bad ?

How long will these flags stay up ?

Would it not be nicer to have a less visible mention on the article
itself at least ? If putting the flag is necessary to mark them and have
them listed for improvement, could it be made more discreet ?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Importing RFEs from sourceforge

body:
On Oct 2, 2004, at 3:57 PM, Rowan Collins wrote:
> I therefore suggest/request that whoever ran the bot to import the
> bugs (Timwi, was it?) do so for the RFEs - perhaps labelling them with
> a keyword such as "sf-import".  Someone can then look through these
> (yes, I'm volunteering) and make sure they are labelled appropriately,
> close any that are out-dated or invalid anyway, etc.

As an alternative, if I give you permission bits on the sourceforge RFE
tracker, would you be willing to go through them there and only move
the relevant ones?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Nod.

Well, this is probably happening at the perfect time, and could be
advertised along with the CD version ! :-)

Sj a ?crit:
> On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 15:39:58 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>oh, I read elsewhere it was german to german.
>>Why did you sent it to this ml Sj ?
>
>
> Yes, just german to german.  Perhaps it will inspire other researchers
> to do serious comparisons in other languages as well.  (and I meant to
> send it to wikipedia, wikien was an accident).  --sj
>
>
>>>Grab a copy of the original at your local international-pubs shop, if you can.
>>>
>>>http://www.heise.de/ct/
>>>
>>>Encyclopedias: Wikipedia vs. Brockhaus and Encarta (pg. 132)
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] clean up

body:
Angela wrote:

>I strongly feel these should only appear on talk pages, but I gave up
>arguing that a while ago because people insist on having them on
>articles, supposedly because they feel readers need to be warned the
>article is not good enough.
>
>
I think they ought to go on articles, but with a higher threshold of
"suckiness".  An article that needs a little work shouldn't go on
cleanup, by my understanding of its intent.  An article that was
wholesale copy/pasted from a PD source with no wikification or rewriting
should get the tag, as should an article that appears to be completely
incoherent.

-Mark


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedia proposal

body:
I thought Interlingue already had a Wikipedia?

Anyhow I think we should at least consider a Wikipedia for Solresol.

However Frater I have never heard of, but of course it would still be
open to discussion.

--node

On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 16:22:07 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> User:Oui tried to start a new wiki on meta.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Lr:&oldid=66726
>
> I offered him to join this list to discuss this.
>
> Here is a copy of his explanation
>
> ------
>
> Hello
>
> I do not think this belongs to meta my friend.
>
> Explain to me what you want to do on my talk page please (fran?ais or
> english)
>
> Anthere 13:12, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
>
> Hi
>
> As you see, I dont understand the only page I know explaining "How to
> create a new linguage" because it is in a not-easy-English and I never
> did learn English (I can write a lot in "my" own English but in case
> that I read, I am of course dependant of that what I find!) and would
> need help for that. To wait as long I find one good man, how can help me
> to do that for 2 languages (frater and solresol) I work to prepare as
> much pages I will re-link after the languages exist in the official
> form! For me it is important to dispose of this "working surface" in
> "solresol" (oo:) and frater (lr:) because I help a lot friends in the
> language "interlingue" (ie:) (interlingue is not my own "special matter"
> but I can help) and can economisate a lot of energy if I do all
> completely synchron in the 3 languages because I have to control a lot
> in a lot of dictionaries and it is the same work for only one as for the
> 3 languages.
>
> The 3 languages solresol (now re-renamed Langue musicale universelle as
> did do it the inventor sudre in 1827 - the name of solresol is from
> gajewski in 1902), interlingue and frater are very special:
>
> solresol is the only one of more than 8000 languages with an integraded
> interface for handicapped people. solresol can be learnd in an hour (the
> mecanic of the language of course. but in our time it is easy to enter
> the word at the keyboard of a computer and the computer search the right
> word. i use such a programm... and in the other direction, it is the
> same: I copy my text with CTRL C and with CTRL V i can get the words
> transleted into an other language!)
>
> interlingue is the only one language that all speakers of English,
> French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Roman, Dutch, Dansk,
> Swedish, Norwayish (?) can read with more or less difficulties of
> course, BUT completely without to need to learn it! And it is
> important... But they need a dictionary (for this reason, my work in
> Wikipedia will be mainly in Wiktionary but I have also problems in
> Wiktionary: I dont understand the way to active the Templates in the new
> language! Look please at Interlingue, the first and only one word with
> the meaning of "dictionary"!)!
>
> Frater is a) one of the extremly rare artificial languages invented
> outside of the occidental world. It was invented and publish in Saigon,
> Vietnam, in 1950 and not in French (French people was yet engaged in
> Vietnam) but in English! b) frater is one the the rare language with a
> reduced alphabet and for this reason special adapted for people with a
> little or no education. It is also easier for handicaped people. c)
> really surprising is that the asiatic autor did prefer a completely
> occidental word choice because of the internationality! but he did take
> especialy care to make a convenient language for asiatic people!
>
> you know all now!
>
> can you perhaps help me or recommand to me a man how has experience in
> creating new languages in wik and in using of templates?
>
> i thank you for your help an wish you a good weekend --Oui 14:03, 2 Oct
> 2004 (UTC)
>
> Hmmm.
>
> For the template issue, I recommand you ask Brion Vibber or user:Tim
> Starling. They should be able to help you.
>
> For the new languages, I must say that creating synthetic languages
> wikis is somewhat controversial. I think this should result from
> community discussion and approval. I invite you to join one of our
> mailing list to discuss this :
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l.
>
> Meanwhile, I post your comment there :-)
>
> Cheers. Anthere 14:18, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedia proposal

body:
User:Oui tried to start a new wiki on meta.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Lr:&oldid=66726

I offered him to join this list to discuss this.

Here is a copy of his explanation

------

Hello

I do not think this belongs to meta my friend.

Explain to me what you want to do on my talk page please (fran?ais or
english)

Anthere 13:12, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi

As you see, I dont understand the only page I know explaining "How to
create a new linguage" because it is in a not-easy-English and I never
did learn English (I can write a lot in "my" own English but in case
that I read, I am of course dependant of that what I find!) and would
need help for that. To wait as long I find one good man, how can help me
to do that for 2 languages (frater and solresol) I work to prepare as
much pages I will re-link after the languages exist in the official
form! For me it is important to dispose of this "working surface" in
"solresol" (oo:) and frater (lr:) because I help a lot friends in the
language "interlingue" (ie:) (interlingue is not my own "special matter"
but I can help) and can economisate a lot of energy if I do all
completely synchron in the 3 languages because I have to control a lot
in a lot of dictionaries and it is the same work for only one as for the
3 languages.

The 3 languages solresol (now re-renamed Langue musicale universelle as
did do it the inventor sudre in 1827 - the name of solresol is from
gajewski in 1902), interlingue and frater are very special:

solresol is the only one of more than 8000 languages with an integraded
interface for handicapped people. solresol can be learnd in an hour (the
mecanic of the language of course. but in our time it is easy to enter
the word at the keyboard of a computer and the computer search the right
word. i use such a programm... and in the other direction, it is the
same: I copy my text with CTRL C and with CTRL V i can get the words
transleted into an other language!)

interlingue is the only one language that all speakers of English,
French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Roman, Dutch, Dansk,
Swedish, Norwayish (?) can read with more or less difficulties of
course, BUT completely without to need to learn it! And it is
important... But they need a dictionary (for this reason, my work in
Wikipedia will be mainly in Wiktionary but I have also problems in
Wiktionary: I dont understand the way to active the Templates in the new
language! Look please at Interlingue, the first and only one word with
the meaning of "dictionary"!)!

Frater is a) one of the extremly rare artificial languages invented
outside of the occidental world. It was invented and publish in Saigon,
Vietnam, in 1950 and not in French (French people was yet engaged in
Vietnam) but in English! b) frater is one the the rare language with a
reduced alphabet and for this reason special adapted for people with a
little or no education. It is also easier for handicaped people. c)
really surprising is that the asiatic autor did prefer a completely
occidental word choice because of the internationality! but he did take
especialy care to make a convenient language for asiatic people!

you know all now!

can you perhaps help me or recommand to me a man how has experience in
creating new languages in wik and in using of templates?

i thank you for your help an wish you a good weekend --Oui 14:03, 2 Oct
2004 (UTC)

Hmmm.

For the template issue, I recommand you ask Brion Vibber or user:Tim
Starling. They should be able to help you.

For the new languages, I must say that creating synthetic languages
wikis is somewhat controversial. I think this should result from
community discussion and approval. I invite you to join one of our
mailing list to discuss this :
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l.

Meanwhile, I post your comment there :-)

Cheers. Anthere 14:18, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiMedia +WikiTech

body:
> He's talking about the other features such as chess, chemistry formulae,
> musical scores, semantic trees etc.

     We've actually expanded a bit since then into go, Feyn-
man diagrams, XyMTeX et alia:

     http://wikisophia.org/wiki/WikiTeX

SVG is on the imminent horizon.

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiTeX for 1.4

body:
Salvete,

     Does  anyone have any objections to roadmapping WikiTeX
for the upcoming 1.4; and how could  we  accomplish  getting
WikiTeX on the test server?

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


body:
> From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com>, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 23:31:25 +0100
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus
>
>
> Hmm, something that strikes me looking at those results is that on
> several categories Wikipedia seems to do worse on the "easy" topics
> but better on the "hard" ones. I don't know if I'm just imagining it,
> and it could just be a coincidence, but that seems like an interesting
> finding (were there any graphs in the article? one could probably
> construct a graph that demonstrated patterns like that).
>
> Maybe the tendency to write about interesting subjects leads people to
> go in depth on subjects that they can become really fascinated by
> looking into, causing the more advanced topics to get better
> articles...
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]


body:
This problem plagued the Oxford English Dictionary (1st edition), only the
most dedicated volunteers were willing to tackle the dull words like "put"
"see" "art" "the" etc, words like "transmogrify" or "fandango" were much
easier.

Fred

> From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com>, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 23:31:25 +0100
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus
>
> Hmm, something that strikes me looking at those results is that on
> several categories Wikipedia seems to do worse on the "easy" topics
> but better on the "hard" ones. I don't know if I'm just imagining it,
> and it could just be a coincidence, but that seems like an interesting
> finding (were there any graphs in the article? one could probably
> construct a graph that demonstrated patterns like that).
>
> Maybe the tendency to write about interesting subjects leads people to
> go in depth on subjects that they can become really fascinated by
> looking into, causing the more advanced topics to get better
> articles...
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> ________


subject: [Wikitech-l] error message (info)

body:
When wikipedia gets unavailable, the message displayed is this one :

'''Wikimedia Fundraising Drive 2004'''. Help us raise $50,000. See
[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/fundraising our fundraising page]
for details.
[http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_site_notice Information on
this message] - [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:MediaWiki:Sitenotice|action=edit}}
Edit this message]


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [WikiEN-l] clean up

body:
On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 15:58:30 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There is something I do not understand.
>
> Some editors are putting some "clean up" flag on some articles. The
> resulting information is ugly and defacing the article. There is no
> indication of why the article should be cleaned up, neither in the talk
> page, nor in the clean up page.
>
> Ex : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flax or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat

I notice both these examples have now been reverted. Personally, I see
very little point in any "labelling" of this kind. Any issues with an
article should surely be discussed on that article's Talk: page;
that's what it's there for. In fact, I've just had a thought:

For cleanup listings, all we want to do is have a central point to
draw attention to issues, which should be explained on Talk: pages.
Therefore, why don't we have Category:Cleanup consisting of the Talk
pages, rather than the articles?

Personally, I quite like the idea of Cleanup as a category, with
justifications on talk pages. This would give us a central list to
work through (the category listing) but also have equal access to the
reasons and discussions from both ends (there's a complaint on
Wp_talk:Cleanup about a page where things were mentioned on
[[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] but not the talk page). And removing a category
tag automatically removes the listing, without having to hunt through
reams of archives to see if it is, actually, listed somewhere.

The only thing we (or rather, people who actually use the list; I
can't say I ever have) *lose* is being able to glance down summaries
of what needs doing, but this could be mitigated by splitting it into
sub-categories. This could also let people put big fat labels on pages
in really dire need of attention, but not ones where they just weren't
sure what to do about a particular passage.

OK, so it's Yet Another Article Cleanup Suggestion, but categoires are
still relatively new and unexplored, so what are people's thoughts?

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Two words: PRESS RELEASE!
>
> Seriously, once the fund drive is over we should have a press release about
> this and also mention the fact and result of our 'recent successful fund
> drive.' We should also quote Jimbo when he said that commercial encyclopedias
> will be out of business in 5 years if they keep doing as they have been.

I've seen that work already started on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_press_releases/Wikipedia_vs_Brockhaus_and_Encarta

I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea to send a separate press
release. We discussed this yesterday among the german wikipedians,
feelings were mixed.

It's one thing to have an independent media giving wikipedia credit as a
valuable encyclopedia, but we know that in many areas it's still far
from being that. If we pick up the results of this test and boast about
them, we will be measured by this in the future. Closed season would be
over for us.

Please let's stick to "we are a project building an encyclopedia" and
let the media do the job of praising us. They do it quite well, as we
can see. Let's mention the c't test discreetly in future press releases
(like the one about the fund raising drive), but not send a separate one.

For the german wikipedia, we are planning to mention the test results in
our next press release about the publication of the wikipedia cd version.

One last important thing: If something like this happens, please don't
start actions without consulting the local people involved. So far we
have good contacts to the c't. But things like a full text translation
of the article can seriously damage this relationship. And it would fall
back to us, not the international crowd.

greetings,
elian


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia spanks
	Encarta, Brockhaus


subject: [WikiEN-l] clean up

body:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 17:25:08 +0100, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> Therefore, why don't we have Category:Cleanup consisting of the Talk
> pages, rather than the articles?

Adding the cleanup tag automatically puts the page into the cleanup
category. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cleanup already has
over 1100 entries.

The advantage of also listing the article on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cleanup is that it allows you
to see which are most recent, and also gives a brief summary of the
problem, so if you're only interested in finding articles with POV
issues you can focus just on those. Dividing the cleanup category into
different types, in a similar way to the division of stub tags might
lessen the need for the separate Cleanup page.

I strongly feel these should only appear on talk pages, but I gave up
arguing that a while ago because people insist on having them on
articles, supposedly because they feel readers need to be warned the
article is not good enough.

Angela


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: UTF-8 problem

body:
On Sunday 12 September 2004 13:07, Yann Forget wrote:
> Le Sunday 12 September 2004 16:46, Tim Starling a ?crit :
> > Yann Forget wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > There are problems to make links to Wikipedias which use non Latin
> > > scripts on Wikipedias which are still not in UTF-8 (en:, sv:, da:,
> > > etc.). It would be good if they get converted soon.
> > >
> > > i.e. Link to [[gu:??????]] in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat
> > > and http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat
> > >
> > > Does someone know how to correct this now?
> >
> > You need to use a browser which converts unicode into numeric character
> > entities rather than a series of question marks. For example, Internet
> > Explorer or Mozilla are suitable. If you don't have a system capable of
> > this automatic conversion, you could try one of the many client-side and
> > web-based tools written for this purpose, e.g.
>
> I use Konqueror, and yes, it creates [[gu:??????]].

What version? I use 3.0.99 (haven't had time to recompile the latest), and it
works. It just looks like boxes, but it has a category, so there must be
something there.

phma
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa


from_name: Lothar Kimmeringer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus

body:
On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 15:23:17 +0200, Anthere wrote:

> Is it german language comparison or english one ?

German of course.

> What does c't mean ?

The complete title is "c't Magazin f?r Computer Technik"
What c and t mean should be obvious now ;-)
It's not the first time they mention Wikipedia in an
article, e.g. they already had an article about online-
encyclopaedias AFAIR two years ago.

Regards, Lothar
--
Lothar Kimmeringer                E-Mail: spamfang at kimmeringer.de
               PGP-encrypted mails preferred (Key-ID: 0x8BC3CD81)

Always remember: The answer is forty-two, there can only be wrong
                 questions!


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] On press releases and boasting

body:
On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 17:41:43 +0200, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> > Two words: PRESS RELEASE!
> >
> > Seriously, once the fund drive is over we should have a press release about
> > this and also mention the fact and result of our 'recent successful fund
> > drive.' We should also quote Jimbo when he said that commercial encyclopedias
> > will be out of business in 5 years if they keep doing as they have been.
>
> I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea to send a separate press
> release. We discussed this yesterday among the german wikipedians,
> feelings were mixed.

Well, it would be combined with other notices for the coming week.
But this professional content test (and it would not be a bad idea to
commission more of the same) is more newsworthy than the
successful completion of our fundraiser.

> Please let's stick to "we are a project building an encyclopedia"
> and let the media do the job of praising us. They do it quite well, as we
> can see. Let's mention the c't test discreetly in future press releases
> (like the one about the fund raising drive), but not send a separate one.
>
< If we pick up the results of this test and boast about them,
< we will be measured by this in the future. Closed season would be
< over for us.

Modesty is never out of fashion.  And if there were any chance that we
would somehow stop improving, stop growing, and end up looking silly
alongside the other great encyclopedias, it might be appropriate to be
embarrassed that c't happened to catch us on a good day.

But they didn't just catch us on a good day.  I would welcome a
hundred tests like this, by people far less friendly to us than the c't
experts (although I suspect that this test was at least a single-blind
study).  To pretend that this test was not a big deal would be to do
ourselves a disservice.  This is the kind of content test we want
people doing, all the time, rather than inserting vandalism and
seeing how long it takes for it to be reverted.

My initial post was intentionally outrageous, but is it boasting
to announce the results of our first third-party "taste test"?  The
results speak for themselves; however gracefully we respond
to this initial content test, closed season is already closing.

> For the german wikipedia, we are planning to mention the test results in
> our next press release about the publication of the wikipedia cd version.

For when is that planned?

I hope you will discuss some of these issues - including what to title the
next press release and what to emphasize in it - on the meta: page
itself, with links to related discussions about the german press releases.
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR/Content-test

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requests for logos

body:
On Wednesday 22 September 2004 04:28, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Speaking of which, there is a list of logos that need to be updated
> here: meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-development_tasks_for_developers

Thanks for the Lojban logo - but it should be "la uikipedias po'u le zifre
vricyjuncku"; without "la" it isn't grammatical. (Of course other things on
the Lojban Wikipedia aren't grammatical either, such as an abbreviated date
in a sentence; I should be a developer, if I had the time.)

phma
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa


subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] On press releases and boasting

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 18:56:03 -0400
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] On press releases and boasting
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org

On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 17:41:43 +0200, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> > Two words: PRESS RELEASE!
> >
> > Seriously, once the fund drive is over we should have a press release about
> > this and also mention the fact and result of our 'recent successful fund
> > drive.' We should also quote Jimbo when he said that commercial encyclopedias
> > will be out of business in 5 years if they keep doing as they have been.
>
> I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea to send a separate press
> release. We discussed this yesterday among the german wikipedians,
> feelings were mixed.

Well, it would be combined with other notices for the coming week.
But this professional content test (and it would not be a bad idea to
commission more of the same) is more newsworthy than the
successful completion of our fundraiser.

> Please let's stick to "we are a project building an encyclopedia"
> and let the media do the job of praising us. They do it quite well, as we
> can see. Let's mention the c't test discreetly in future press releases
> (like the one about the fund raising drive), but not send a separate one.
>
< If we pick up the results of this test and boast about them,
< we will be measured by this in the future. Closed season would be
< over for us.

Modesty is never out of fashion.  And if there were any chance that we
would somehow stop improving, stop growing, and end up looking silly
alongside the other great encyclopedias, it might be appropriate to be
embarrassed that c't happened to catch us on a good day.

But they didn't just catch us on a good day.  I would welcome a
hundred tests like this, by people far less friendly to us than the c't
experts (although I suspect that this test was at least a single-blind
study).  To pretend that this test was not a big deal would be to do
ourselves a disservice.  This is the kind of content test we want
people doing, all the time, rather than inserting vandalism and
seeing how long it takes for it to be reverted.

My initial post was intentionally outrageous, but is it boasting
to announce the results of our first third-party "taste test"?  The
results speak for themselves; however gracefully we respond
to this initial content test, closed season is already closing.

> For the german wikipedia, we are planning to mention the test results in
> our next press release about the publication of the wikipedia cd version.

For when is that planned?

I hope you will discuss some of these issues - including what to title the
next press release and what to emphasize in it - on the meta: page
itself, with links to related discussions about the german press releases.
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR/Content-test

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


from_name: Johanna & François Comparot

subject:
[Wikipedia-l]
	re:http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-October/035334.html

body:
Hi

"I must say that creating synthetic languages wikis is somewhat controversial."

Yes, I understand this point of view. It is legitim. But ...

We are now x milliards of human in the world. How many, I don't know (can the encyclopedie answer this question?). And we did never live in peace live without hunger live without racialism. Perhaps it is not a matter for wiki.

But we did did never transmit the knowledge. And that is a self-given objective of wikipedia. An example: I did leave in West-Africa about 30 years ago. My colleague had a cousin studying medicine. Her professor was a Chinese medicine professor. He spok only and always Chinese! No one African student did have learn Chinese. I know that it was terribly difficult for the poor African students to follow her professor. I am certain that a lot of the students did become doctor and have different deficits because of this very unadapted situation.

I did participate a long time to the messages board www.africa.com . A frequent opinion was that this continent will never more get any chance because of the division. I am not an African. I can not think like an African. But I am certain that different African people will never forget that her neighbours did fetch them to sell them as slaves. You are surprising of my opinion? And however different European people maintain an antipathy because of facts very older (French against Englishman, French and other European people against Turkish or different Arab people, etc.). It is a matter of culture, it is a matter of religion and it is mainly an matter intercomprehension too because the respective languages have a realy little diffusion in the other country. You can see that people with analog approach of comprehension like German, Japanese and Turkish (in all the 3 languages has the verb the same place at the end of sentence! and there are more languages in the world with this kind of construction as the construction in English, French, Russian or Chinese). The matter of the language is a main peace factor! But the matter of the faculty of comprehension also!

Artificial language can work as bridge between the people. You will be surprising: We need such bridges even under an uniform country with only one official language too...!

Consider for example the situation of deafs without hearing since the birth. They can't have make a begining to think though they  think in spoken words because they never did realy listen to spoken words (deaf persones live all the live thinking in a different language or change into the (for them) foreign language of her nation in a second stage of the life after many years language education). Her thoughts are formed in different manner. For this reason they prefer sign languages created especially for her. But the use of sign languages needs a terrible long experience and the healthy people are totaly "deaf for sign language" generally. For this reason deaf people learn to read on the lips, a very difficult exercise and highly dependent of the "quality of the speaker", and try to speak herself words that they will speak but never listen. In the same country, the communication of 2 handicaped person can become a wonder.

In different countries is this intercomprehension not possible between handicaped persones and sometimes very difficult between normal people!

In all this cases can an artificial language sometimes help and be a good bridge between the people.

But all the articificial languages are not equivalent. Only one offers an build-in interface for deaf and different handicaped people. Only one can be readen with more or less difficulties by milliards of humans (all speakers of English, Spanish, French, German etc.; and relatively light by Grec and Russian people: E. de Wahl was himself Russian speaker at home - he was a Baltic born in Ukrain. But only after learning of the Latin alphabet). Only one is certainly 1000 time more spreads as the other each (Esperanto). Etc.

Next problem:

Different sources of knowledge have a extremly difficult nearly impossible access for normal people:

As I did begin to publish solresol in different languages I did constate that the (complete material of gajewsky!) material that I did have was not the best. I did search the original material from inventor. But the book of solresol was a timid effort of a widowed woman to try to make a little money with the invention of her man after he was dead. I suppose, she did print only a minimal quantity. Today this book is one of the rarest books on the world and a lot of languages specialists try to get it, because only a minimal number of big libraries (Biblioth?que national in France, Biblioth?que royale in Belgium, "Germanisches Museum", M?nchen, and, perhaps, Biblioth?que historique des sourds, Paris) have the old extremely rare book. I did search months and months for this book only to copy him. Months along, more that on year, without result. And "I" did be the happy man who did can buy it after one year of daily search in ebay, amazon etc...

I can now give all other people how are searching for this information the content of this work and start practice experience in the use of the language in a place that a lot of people will find easy.

Or I can close my new acquisition on my books board.

As I did constate which importance such secondary language can become for important groups of the world population (the European Union of 15 members did have 37 Million of handicaped people in 1995 and about 10 Million of completely analphabet. See please OCDE-statistic), I did find indications about Frater. The same problem in other form: The Vietnamese Publisher seems  not to be any more existent. I did ask a friend for a copy of the book of the library of the US-Congres (I live in Germany!!!). Why? This book also is extremely rare now, because it was published in Vietnam and all people know that Vietnam was an especialy tourmented country. It is not possible to become the book in Europe (stand: Internet middle of 2004). It exist only an examplar at the University of W?rzburg but it is only possible to see it in W?rzburg.

I did decide that I invest the time to transmit my knowledge to other.

Naturally you can prevent it and say: Wiki is for knowledge pure!

My best friend on the internet is an intermediate person: Her man works at the university. Her mother is illetterate...

That is our world and I will change that...

Trully yours

oui (yes/ja/da/sh? etc...)


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 01:46:25 -0400
  Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>Brockhaus "must concede defeat" to Wikipedia
>
>c't, the popular german magazine for computer engineering, just
>released a study they conducted of the three major digital
>encyclopedias in germany -- Brockhaus, Encarta, and (most recently)
>Wikipedia.  They tested the encyclopedias on breadth, depth, and
>comprehensibility of content, ease of searching, and quality of
>multimedia content.
>
>The content test was the most elaborate : first they divided content
>in three broad fields, Science, Society, and Culture.  They further
>subdivided these into 22 total subject areas, and within each subject
>selected an easy, a moderate, and a difficult topic.  They then
>searched for the best matching article (and supplementary content) in
>the encyclopedia.
>
>Finally, they brought in experts in each broad field who rated the
>articles from 1 to 5, based on technical correctness and completeness
>of the texts, and on their comprehensibility.  Once this was finished,
>the results were totalled at each level of conceptual difficulty,
>within each broad field, and across all 66 topics.

I'd be interested to see this list of 66 topics and what scores the three
candidates got. Also - did they use the German or the English Wikipedia?

Andre Engels


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: On press releases and boasting

body:
Sj wrote:

>On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 17:41:43 +0200, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
>
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Two words: PRESS RELEASE!
>>>
>>>Seriously, once the fund drive is over we should have a press release about
>>>this and also mention the fact and result of our 'recent successful fund
>>>drive.' We should also quote Jimbo when he said that commercial encyclopedias
>>>will be out of business in 5 years if they keep doing as they have been.
>>>
>>>
>>I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea to send a separate press
>>release. We discussed this yesterday among the german wikipedians,
>>feelings were mixed.
>>
>>
>Well, it would be combined with other notices for the coming week.
>But this professional content test (and it would not be a bad idea to
>commission more of the same) is more newsworthy than the
>successful completion of our fundraiser.
>
On this one, I agree with Elian. I doubt that a press release of this
nature would have much impact because we haven't done anything worth
mentioning (completing the fundraiser precipitated by our last press
release doesn't qualify), this is something somebody else did. The best
time to send a press release is when *we ourselves* have done something
newsworthy. And if the wikipedians on de: are skeptical about the value
of a press release here, when the test relates specifically to them, I
think that's a pretty good indication for the rest of us. An alternative
idea might be to play this up as part of a rollout for whatever new
quality control system we develop - as in "Look how good we already are,
now we're getting better".

By the way, as we wrap up the fundraiser portion, let me take this
opportunity to again thank everyone who worked on the last press
release. There are too many names to list, and some weren't logged in
anyway, but to anyone who helped write, translate, or distribute the
press release - Great work! I think the resulting press coverage has
been about as good as we could have hoped for, as the 1,000,000-article
milestone got mentioned on numerous websites and in quite a few print
newspapers and magazines, including a widely reprinted AP story. While I
don't understand every language, I was able to decipher that the
coverage spread across quite a few different languages, which is even
better.

And now, time to get back to work on improving the encyclopedia, so that
this amounts to more than just our 15 minutes of fame.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiMedia +WikiTech

body:
> Hi. I'm Paginazero, an Italian user/contributor to it.wiki.

> As most of my contributions are related to the chemistry, I'm eagerly
> waiting to have the WikiTeX functions included in MediaWiki - that would
> be a great help to avoid image uploading and to define a common
> standard for writing chemical formulae and reaction schemes.
> I'm so impatient that I already began to prepare a tutorial for the Italian
> users!

> Looking forward to getting rid of ASCII-art formulae, I thank you all for
> your kind attention. If I can be of any help, let me know.

But WikiTex IS already included in MediaWiki since a year or so (at least
it's older than 1.3). Just type <math>some LaTeX</math>.

Andre Engels


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> On this one, I agree with Elian. I doubt that a press release of this
> nature would have much impact because we haven't done anything worth
> mentioning

I agree with Elian too.  I've been using these results in a low-key
way when I talk to the press, but usually I down play it.  When the
question of quality comes up, I prefer to stress that we know we
aren't perfect, and that we have a long way to go, but that we are
proud of what we have already accomplished.

The idea is that we should continue to portray ourselves as "a project
to create..." rather than as a finished product.  Because, frankly, we
do have a long way to go in many ways.

Putting out a press release crowing about this test just invites more
hostile reviews to conduct the same type of test, but with an eye
toward showing how broken we are in many ways.

--Jimbo


from_name: Stephan Walter

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiMedia +WikiTech

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> But WikiTex IS already included in MediaWiki since a year or so (at least
> it's older than 1.3). Just type <math>some LaTeX</math>.

He's talking about the other features such as chess, chemistry formulae,
musical scores, semantic trees etc.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitex

I would welcome that, too

Regards,
Stephan


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Copyright concerns (was Wikipedia
	spanks Encarta, Brockhaus)

body:
On 2 Oct 2004, at 17:41, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> One last important thing: If something like this happens, please don't
> start actions without consulting the local people involved. So far we
> have good contacts to the c't. But things like a full text translation
> of the article can seriously damage this relationship. And it would
> fall back to us, not the international crowd.
>
> greetings,
> elian

<AOL>I STRONGLY second that.</AOL>

Without sounding too much like a prick, reading the previous emails,
where someone (IIRC) tried to argue that a translation of an existing
text was an original work--

IT IS NOT!!!

U.S., E.U. and international laws are '''quite''' clear on this point.
You absolutely CANNOT publish the translation of a copyrighted work w/o
the original author's consent!
Please DO NOT go there.

I'm seeing _a lot_ of naivety lately, as regards copyright:

1. That's a '''problem''' for the submitter (because they--not the
Wikipedia--are legally fully liable for the text they are submitting to
the Wikipedia).

2. It's a '''bigger problem''' for the wiki process -- because if a
copyright-infringing text gets submitted and then that text sees a lot
of development, it will be an absolute MESS to sort things out later.
(Positions and interpretations on what to do vary from "delete
everything as the successive edits are derivative works of a work that
was not licensed in the first place" right through to "keep it if more
than <insert arbitrary number here> percent of the sentences are
different from the unlicensed original source." Legally the tendency is
to argue for deleting everything which potentially scraps many, many
people's hard work.)

3. It's a '''shit-has-hit-the-fan situation of absolutely stellar
proportions''' if such problems arise with respect to Wikipedia PR.
Because with our PR, not only does the Wikipedia likely become liable
for the screw-up (instead of the submitter being liable), it also will
cause the public to view us as wholesale intellectual bootleggers.

PLEASE, let's ensure that things never get so fubar.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


body:
On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 20:41:12 +0200, Andre Engels wrote:

> I'd be interested to see this list of 66 topics and what scores the three
> candidates got. Also - did they use the German or the English Wikipedia?

German Wikipedia as already said.

Here's the list (replicated by hand). The words are kept
in German. You should switch to a non-proportional font.

The first number in the table is the number of characters,
the second number the qualitiy (1 is not good, 5 is best,
0 means not existant).

EP: Encarta Pro
BH: Brockhaus
WP: Wikipedia

==========================================================
Scientific area
==========================================================

Philosophy
   Sprachspiele (easy)
                EP      4004/3
                BH     10831/4
                WP      1198/3

   kathegorischer Imperativ (medium)
                EP      3929/4
                BH       564/3
                WP      7415/5

   transzendentale Apperzeption (hard)
                EP       430/2
                BH       311/3
                WP      5178/3

Mathematics
   Asymtote (easy)
                EP      2093/3
                BH       796/3
                WP      2365/5
   Fibonacci-Zahlen (medium)
                EP      2446/3
                BH      2678/4
                WP      3510/4
   Banachraum (hard)
                EP         0/3    * here I'm not sure how a non-existant
                                    article can be "average"
                BH      1348/2
                WP      6911/5

Physics
   Tr?gheitsmoment (easy)
                EP       127/1
                BH       939/4
                WP      4996/5
   M??bauer-Effekt (medium)
                EP      2123/2
                BH      2970/4
                WP       632/3
   Bose-Einstein-Kondensation (hard)
                EP      2567/3
                BH      8072/5
                WP      2997/4

Chemistry
   Massenwirkungsgesetz (easy)
                EP      2390/4
                BH       870/2
                WP      1335/5
   polyaromatische Kohlenwasserstoffe (medium)
                EP      3400/5
                BH       632/1
                WP       457/2
   FTIR-Spektroskopie (hard)
                EP      1131/1
                BH       909/3
                WP       715/5

Psychology
   Rorschachtest (easy)
                EP       847/5
                BH       662/5
                WP       811/2
   Elektrakomplex (medium)
                EP      2358/4
                BH       320/4
                WP       790/2
   Hawthorne-Effekt (hard)
                EP       951/4
                BH       791/4
                WP      1347/4

Biology
   Gnu (easy)
                EP      1826/5
                BH       661/2
                WP      3903/3
   genetischer Fingerabdruck (medium)
                EP      4493/3
                BH     13630/5
                WP      4837/2
   t-RNS (hard)
                EP      1073/1
                BH       886/2
                WP       762/4

Computer Science
   Algorithmus (easy)
                EP      7476/3
                BH     15441/5
                WP     15417/5
   Kryptographie (medium)
                EP     20636/4
                BH     16072/5
                WP      7494/5
   Backus-Naur-Form (hard)
                EP         0/0
                BH      4666/5
                WP      9350/5

Medicine
   Hyperventilation (easy)
                EP       482/4
                BH       587/4
                WP      2073/5
   Fontanelle (medium)
                EP       348/3
                BH       519/2
                WP         0/0    * exist now
   Amygdala (hard)
                EP       230/3
                BH         0/0
                WP       376/2

Geography/geology
   Grundmor?ne (easy)
                EP       618/5
                BH       172/3
                WP       949/2
   Black Somker (medium)
                EP      3005/5
                BH       342/4
                WP      2600/5
   Epeirophorese (Kontinentalverschiebung) (hard)
                EP         0/0    * only exists with the german word
                BH      2325/5
                WP         0/5    * number of characters missing, the
                                  * article exist

Electronics
   Dolby Digital (easy)
                EP         0/0
                BH      2025/5
                WP       865/4
   DVB-T (medium)
                EP      2130/2
                BH       807/3
                WP     10824/5
   photonische Netze (hard)
                EP         0/0
                BH      3997/4
                WP         0/0

==========================================================
Social area
==========================================================

Current events
   Hartz-Reform (easy) * strange definition of easy - even
                       * the bureaucrats don't understand it
                       * completely ;-)
                EP      3499/1
                BH      1837/3
                WP     17765/5
   Yukos/Jukos (medium)
                EP         0/0
                BH       829/3
                WP      5720/5
   3. Golfkrieg (insbesondere sunnitisches Dreieck) (hard)
                EP     70338/5     * wow
                BH      7766/2
                WP     30838/4

World history
   Boxeraufstand (easy)
                EP      9134/4
                BH      7572/4
                WP      9479/2
   McCarthy (medium)
                EP      3192/4
                BH       448/2
                WP      3124/3
   Philipp Scheidemann (Weimarer Republik) (hard)
                EP      2334/4
                BH      2388/5
                WP      3390/3

Politics
   Horst K?hler (easy)
                EP      3887/4
                BH       592/2
                WP      9086/5
   Vietcong (medium)
                EP     17103/4
                BH     36219/5
                WP     24768/2
   Plebiszit (hard)
                EP      7179/5
                BH       856/3
                WP      7111/3

Economy
   Bruttosozialprodukt (easy)
                EP       517/3
                BH      5440/5
                WP      1208/1
   Stagflation (medium)
                EP         0/0
                BH      5380/5
                WP      1890/3
   Leverage-Effekt (hard)
                EP         0/0
                BH       473/3
                WP       744/5

Religion
   Augustinus (easy)
                EP      9534/4
                BH     12879/5
                WP      9002/4
   Pantokrator (medium)
                EP       446/4
                BH       251/4
                WP       352/4
   Monophysiten (hard)
                EP      1600/4
                BH      1438/5
                WP      2811/4

Sport
   Rochade (easy)
                EP      1108/4
                BH       209/2
                WP      1635/5
   Eishockey: Abseitsregel (medium)
                EP       397/4
                BH         0/0
                WP       505/5
   Pauschenpferd (hard)
                EP         0/0
                BH       379/5
                WP       307/4

Eating/drinking
   Ouzo (easy)
                EP       210/4
                BH        41/3
                WP       612/5
   Schupfnudeln (medium)
                EP         0/0
                BH         0/0
                WP       704/5
   Kapaun (hard)
                EP         0/0
                BH       428/3
                WP      1547/5

==========================================================
Cultural area
==========================================================

Educating art (?)/architecture
   Bauhaus (easy)
               EP       8882/4
               BH       3959/3
               WP       9191/5
   dorisches Kapitell (medium)
               EP       3257/4
               BH       1225/3
               WP        263/4
   Sfumato (hard)
               EP        847/3
               BH       1344/3
               WP        506/3

Literature
   Alexandriner (easy)
               EP       1216/5
               BH        399/3
               WP        745/4
   Ulysses (medium)
               EP       4561/5
               BH        817/3
               WP       1438/3
   Albert Vigoleis Thelen (hard)
               EP       2748/5
               BH        337/3
               WP        679/4

Music
   Maultrommel (easy)
               EP       960/5
               BH       883/4
               WP       546/2
   wohltemperiertes Klavier (medium)
               EP       799/3
               BH         0/0
               WP      3146/4
   Quartsext-Akkord (hard)
               EP       510/3
               BH       121/5
               WP       470/3

Movie/theatre
   Br?der Lumi?re (easy)
               EP      4294/3
               BH      3619/4
               WP         0/0
   Katharsis (medium)
               EP      5439/5
               BH      5245/2
               WP       838/4
   Pina Bausch (hard)
               EP      1359/3
               BH      1759/4
               WP      1480/3

Myths/sagas/fairy tales
   Charybdis (easy)
               EP      2193/4
               BH      2136/5
               WP       855/2
   Leprechaun (medium)
               EP         0/0
               BH         0/0
               WP       788/5
   Yggdrasil (hard)
               EP       562/4
               BH       768/4
               WP       877/3

Now I need a new keyboard.

Regards, Lothar
--
Lothar Kimmeringer                E-Mail: spamfang at kimmeringer.de
               PGP-encrypted mails preferred (Key-ID: 0x8BC3CD81)

Always remember: The answer is forty-two, there can only be wrong
                 questions!


from_name: Victor Fariña

subject: [Wikitech-l] making a Graph extension to mediawiki

body:
Hi
I am developing a graphviz extension to mediawiki, basically it is
usefull to make graphs online
using the graphviz program , i think its very usefull , and i am using
it at my wiki (http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Graphviz_extension)
you can download and test it if you like.
there are samples on the wiki page .

best regards

--
Problems with Windows - Reboot.
Problems with Linux   - Be root.

Vic (aKa CoffMan)
vic at wickle.com


body:
On 2 Oct 2004, at 15:12, Charles Matthews wrote:

> would be rather more convincing  in an era when it was as easy
> to contribute from a mobile phone as now is from a personal computer
> with a
> boardband connection and keyboard.  Which we may see.
>
> Charles

WLCUM 2 SMS-O-PDA! A FRE CNTNT NCYCLOPDA IN MANY LNGS
IN THS EN VER STARTD SEP04 V R WRKNG 1 123 ARTCLS
LEARN HOW 2 ED PP XPERIMT IN T SANDBX N VISIT R COMMNTY PORTL 2 FIND
OUT HOW U CN ED ANY ARTCL RITE NOW


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus

body:
On 2 Oct 2004, at 07:46, Sj wrote:

> Grab a copy of the original at your local international-pubs shop, if
> you can.
>
> http://www.heise.de/ct/
>
> Encyclopedias: Wikipedia vs. Brockhaus and Encarta (pg. 132)
>
> --
> +sj+

Note:
The original (German) article IS NOT online.
What sj means it that you could *potentially* get hold of the mag at
international newsagent (that would have to be a major or specialist
international newsagent, though, to carry a German language IT mag).
Plus, again, the original article is in German.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Copyright concerns (was Wikipedia spanks Encarta,
	Brockhaus)

body:
Resending this email (which I earlier sent to foundation-l to
wikipedia-l, as the main discussion seems to be ongoing there:

On 2 Oct 2004, at 17:41, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> One last important thing: If something like this happens, please don't
> start actions without consulting the local people involved. So far we
> have good contacts to the c't. But things like a full text translation
> of the article can seriously damage this relationship. And it would
> fall back to us, not the international crowd.
>
> greetings,
> elian

<AOL>I STRONGLY second that.</AOL>

Without sounding too much like a prick, reading the previous emails,
where someone (IIRC) tried to argue that a translation of an existing
text was an original work--

IT IS NOT!!!

U.S., E.U. and international laws are '''quite''' clear on this point.
You absolutely CANNOT publish the translation of a copyrighted work w/o
the original author's consent!
Please DO NOT go there.

I'm seeing _a lot_ of naivety lately, as regards copyright:

1. That's a '''problem''' for the submitter (because they--not the
Wikipedia--are legally fully liable for the text they are submitting to
the Wikipedia).

2. It's a '''bigger problem''' for the wiki process -- because if a
copyright-infringing text gets submitted and then that text sees a lot
of development, it will be an absolute MESS to sort things out later.
(Positions and interpretations on what to do vary from "delete
everything as the successive edits are derivative works of a work that
was not licensed in the first place" right through to "keep it if more
than <insert arbitrary number here> percent of the sentences are
different from the unlicensed original source." Legally the tendency is
to argue for deleting everything which potentially scraps many, many
people's hard work.)

3. It's a '''shit-has-hit-the-fan situation of absolutely stellar
proportions''' if such problems arise with respect to Wikipedia PR.
Because with our PR, not only does the Wikipedia likely become liable
for the screw-up (instead of the submitter being liable), it also will
cause the public to view us as wholesale intellectual bootleggers.

PLEASE, let's ensure that things never get so fubar.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] clean up

body:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 18:16:23 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> The advantage of also listing the article on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cleanup is that it allows you
> to see which are most recent, and also gives a brief summary of the
> problem, so if you're only interested in finding articles with POV
> issues you can focus just on those. Dividing the cleanup category into
> different types, in a similar way to the division of stub tags might
> lessen the need for the separate Cleanup page.

Please see my proposal at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Cleanup#Yet_Another_Proposed_Replacement
Basically, I think dividing into sub-categories by type/degree of
cleanup needed makes *more* sense than dividing by time listed.

One of the biggest problems with a time-based list is how to find a
particular entry on it if you're following the link from the article
to Cleanup, not vice versa. When an article on a tag tells you to look
up, and remove, its entry on a page which is split into time-based
archives, where do you begin?

On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 13:53:18 -0700, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I also think it's a poor idea to list an article for cleanup - via any
> method - without explaining what you think is wrong with it.  In fact,
> my biggest issue with the cleanup concept is that it encourages the
> 'someone else's problem' mentality, though it does help for when you
> feel like a little Wiki-tidying and need some pointers for problem
> areas.

That's why I think we should primarily encourage people to put a
message on the talk: page saying "this needs X doing, but I don't have
time/skills/confidence to do it", with an accompanying category tag
which brings it to the attention of people looking for something to
fix.

On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 16:16:06 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I think they ought to go on articles, but with a higher threshold of
> "suckiness".

I'd agree to that: really bad articles don't lose anything by having a
big "please edit me" begging label. Ones that just need more attention
than they seem to be getting just need labelling more subtly and/or on
the talk page - possibly subtly to the point of adding them to a
category but otherwise not drawing attention to the fact.

Every article needs work, and if you want to look what other people
think needs doing on the article you're looking at, you should click
"discussion" and should be able thereby to read people's thoughts.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


references:
<742dfd060410012246178b3445@mail.gmail.com>
	<web-107146256@freemail.nl> <876qrq3v1olr.dlg@kimmeringer.de>

body:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 21:55:29 +0200, Lothar Kimmeringer
<wikipedia at kimmeringer.de> wrote:
> Here's the list (replicated by hand). The words are kept
> in German. You should switch to a non-proportional font.
>
> The first number in the table is the number of characters,
> the second number the qualitiy (1 is not good, 5 is best,
> 0 means not existant).
>
> EP: Encarta Pro
> BH: Brockhaus
> WP: Wikipedia
<snip; like I'm going to quote that lot back to the list!>

Hmm, something that strikes me looking at those results is that on
several categories Wikipedia seems to do worse on the "easy" topics
but better on the "hard" ones. I don't know if I'm just imagining it,
and it could just be a coincidence, but that seems like an interesting
finding (were there any graphs in the article? one could probably
construct a graph that demonstrated patterns like that).

Maybe the tendency to write about interesting subjects leads people to
go in depth on subjects that they can become really fascinated by
looking into, causing the more advanced topics to get better
articles...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
I gather that all bugs from sourceforge have now been migrated to
MediaZilla. However, sourceforge stores feature requests in a seperate
"RFE" tracker, and these *haven't* been migrated.

I presume the reason for this is that there are many more
unnecessary/out-dated RFEs than there were unnecessary/out-dated bugs.
But since few people have the rights to do more than add a comment to
them on sourceforge, this will never change (they won't be closed);
and meanwhile, existing discussions are unavailable to be searched on
the new DB. Searching both, and then importing by hand to
cross-reference, is laborious to say the least.

I therefore suggest/request that whoever ran the bot to import the
bugs (Timwi, was it?) do so for the RFEs - perhaps labelling them with
a keyword such as "sf-import".  Someone can then look through these
(yes, I'm volunteering) and make sure they are labelled appropriately,
close any that are out-dated or invalid anyway, etc.

(This message was occasioned by my desire to mark
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378 as a duplicate of
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=594421&group_id=34373&atid=411195
- if you see what I mean)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> Without sounding too much like a prick, reading the previous emails,
> where someone (IIRC) tried to argue that a translation of an existing
> text was an original work--
>
> IT IS NOT!!!

Why not *read* those posts to find out? Who argued that? Certainly not me.

> U.S., E.U. and international laws are '''quite''' clear on this point.
> You absolutely CANNOT publish the translation of a copyrighted work w/o
> the original author's consent!
> Please DO NOT go there.

A longish summary translation was created and I asked if the copyright on that
were cleared. SJ then deleted the summary stating that such a long paraphrase
was probably not fair use. I originally thought that it was a direct
translation, which most certainly would be a derivative work. But it was more
of loose paraphrase summary from what I gather - so it was not clear whether or
not it was OK.

> I'm seeing _a lot_ of naivety lately, as regards copyright:

I just saw and responded to a post on the English Wikibooks Staff Lounge (their
version of the Village Pump) of a person who wanted to create a Portugese
textbook by translating a commercial one in English! God I hope nobody is doing
that type of thing.

> 1. That's a '''problem''' for the submitter (because they--not the
> Wikipedia--are legally fully liable for the text they are submitting to
> the Wikipedia).

Yep - we need to make that more clear by having Wikimedia-wide official
submission standards enacted. A draft version is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Submission_Standards

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

_______________________________
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Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
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body:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 16:03:44 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Oct 2, 2004, at 3:57 PM, Rowan Collins wrote:
> > I therefore suggest/request that whoever ran the bot to import the
> > bugs (Timwi, was it?) do so for the RFEs - perhaps labelling them with
> > a keyword such as "sf-import".  Someone can then look through these
> > (yes, I'm volunteering) and make sure they are labelled appropriately,
> > close any that are out-dated or invalid anyway, etc.
>
> As an alternative, if I give you permission bits on the sourceforge RFE
> tracker, would you be willing to go through them there and only move
> the relevant ones?

The disadvantage is that for those that *do* need importing, the bot
does [that is, seems to have done with the bugs] a better job than I
would manually: reversing the order of the sourceforge comments so
that they are oldest-first, for instance.

However, I could go through and close some on sf anyway, so that we
wouldn't have to import all 403 currently open. If you'd prefer it
this way round, grant some permissions to sf-user 'imsop', and I'll
have a look for obvious candidates for closure tomorrow.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia langage solresol

body:
So, to sum it up, Johanna (I understood it was Johanna at least) would
like to create two new languages wikipedias.

I know neither of these two, which is in no way more than just a statement.

Generally, I think two things should govern a new language settings
which are

* Audience : who will read this new language, how many people does that
represent, if few people, are they likely to be better served by another
language ?

* Editors : who will work on that new project, how many people ?

Otherwise, waiting community feedback :-)

anthere

Johanna & Fran?ois Comparot a ?crit:
> Hi
>
> "I must say that creating synthetic languages wikis is somewhat controversial."
>
> Yes, I understand this point of view. It is legitim. But ...
>
> We are now x milliards of human in the world. How many, I don't know (can the encyclopedie answer this question?). And we did never live in peace live without hunger live without racialism. Perhaps it is not a matter for wiki.
>
> But we did did never transmit the knowledge. And that is a self-given objective of wikipedia. An example: I did leave in West-Africa about 30 years ago. My colleague had a cousin studying medicine. Her professor was a Chinese medicine professor. He spok only and always Chinese! No one African student did have learn Chinese. I know that it was terribly difficult for the poor African students to follow her professor. I am certain that a lot of the students did become doctor and have different deficits because of this very unadapted situation.
>
> I did participate a long time to the messages board www.africa.com . A frequent opinion was that this continent will never more get any chance because of the division. I am not an African. I can not think like an African. But I am certain that different African people will never forget that her neighbours did fetch them to sell them as slaves. You are surprising of my opinion? And however different European people maintain an antipathy because of facts very older (French against Englishman, French and other European people against Turkish or different Arab people, etc.). It is a matter of culture, it is a matter of religion and it is mainly an matter intercomprehension too because the respective languages have a realy little diffusion in the other country. You can see that people with analog approach of comprehension like German, Japanese and Turkish (in all the 3 languages has the verb the same place at the end of sentence! and there are more languages in the world with th
is kind of construction as the construction in English, French, Russian or Chinese). The matter of the language is a main peace factor! But the matter of the faculty of comprehension also!
>
> Artificial language can work as bridge between the people. You will be surprising: We need such bridges even under an uniform country with only one official language too...!
>
> Consider for example the situation of deafs without hearing since the birth. They can't have make a begining to think though they  think in spoken words because they never did realy listen to spoken words (deaf persones live all the live thinking in a different language or change into the (for them) foreign language of her nation in a second stage of the life after many years language education). Her thoughts are formed in different manner. For this reason they prefer sign languages created especially for her. But the use of sign languages needs a terrible long experience and the healthy people are totaly "deaf for sign language" generally. For this reason deaf people learn to read on the lips, a very difficult exercise and highly dependent of the "quality of the speaker", and try to speak herself words that they will speak but never listen. In the same country, the communication of 2 handicaped person can become a wonder.
>
> In different countries is this intercomprehension not possible between handicaped persones and sometimes very difficult between normal people!
>
> In all this cases can an artificial language sometimes help and be a good bridge between the people.
>
> But all the articificial languages are not equivalent. Only one offers an build-in interface for deaf and different handicaped people. Only one can be readen with more or less difficulties by milliards of humans (all speakers of English, Spanish, French, German etc.; and relatively light by Grec and Russian people: E. de Wahl was himself Russian speaker at home - he was a Baltic born in Ukrain. But only after learning of the Latin alphabet). Only one is certainly 1000 time more spreads as the other each (Esperanto). Etc.
>
> Next problem:
>
> Different sources of knowledge have a extremly difficult nearly impossible access for normal people:
>
> As I did begin to publish solresol in different languages I did constate that the (complete material of gajewsky!) material that I did have was not the best. I did search the original material from inventor. But the book of solresol was a timid effort of a widowed woman to try to make a little money with the invention of her man after he was dead. I suppose, she did print only a minimal quantity. Today this book is one of the rarest books on the world and a lot of languages specialists try to get it, because only a minimal number of big libraries (Biblioth?que national in France, Biblioth?que royale in Belgium, "Germanisches Museum", M?nchen, and, perhaps, Biblioth?que historique des sourds, Paris) have the old extremely rare book. I did search months and months for this book only to copy him. Months along, more that on year, without result. And "I" did be the happy man who did can buy it after one year of daily search in ebay, amazon etc...
>
> I can now give all other people how are searching for this information the content of this work and start practice experience in the use of the language in a place that a lot of people will find easy.
>
> Or I can close my new acquisition on my books board.
>
> As I did constate which importance such secondary language can become for important groups of the world population (the European Union of 15 members did have 37 Million of handicaped people in 1995 and about 10 Million of completely analphabet. See please OCDE-statistic), I did find indications about Frater. The same problem in other form: The Vietnamese Publisher seems  not to be any more existent. I did ask a friend for a copy of the book of the library of the US-Congres (I live in Germany!!!). Why? This book also is extremely rare now, because it was published in Vietnam and all people know that Vietnam was an especialy tourmented country. It is not possible to become the book in Europe (stand: Internet middle of 2004). It exist only an examplar at the University of W?rzburg but it is only possible to see it in W?rzburg.
>
> I did decide that I invest the time to transmit my knowledge to other.
>
> Naturally you can prevent it and say: Wiki is for knowledge pure!
>
> My best friend on the internet is an intermediate person: Her man works at the university. Her mother is illetterate...
>
> That is our world and I will change that...
>
> Trully yours
>
> oui (yes/ja/da/sh? etc...)