body:
Timwi wrote:

> Rotem Dan wrote:
>
>> More things: I would like to remove:
>>
>> * "Main page", "Recent changes", "Edit this page", "Previous
>> versions" from both the top and bottom (Which also contains "What
>> links here" and "Related changes" to remove) -- Simply redundant and
>> confusing, this is not good website design, I mean, links should be
>> single and clear, otherwise it's confusing and cluttered.
>
>
> Why exactly do you want to diverge this heavily from the site design
> that all the other Wikipedias use? That seems inconsistent and confusing.
>
> If it's that important to you, you could just set the Hebrew
> Wikipedia's default skin to 'Nostalgia'. This should be possible
> (Esperanto has 'Cologne Blue' as the default, while others use
> 'Standard').
>
The top bar of links is currently very cluttered.
I need to find some spare time to work on my redesign.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Requests for the Hebrew 'pedia

body:
>. And since I worked
> a lot on the language file, I saw that it was pretty easy to change
> things on PHP to make the site more easier to use, and that's not a bad
> thing.

I hope you didn't put "more easier" in the language file.

Just messing with you, just a joke.

Lightning


from_name: Timwi

body:
Rotem Dan wrote:

> More things: I would like to remove:
>
> * "Main page", "Recent changes", "Edit this page", "Previous versions"
> from both the top and bottom (Which also contains "What links here" and
> "Related changes" to remove) -- Simply redundant and confusing, this is
> not good website design, I mean, links should be single and clear,
> otherwise it's confusing and cluttered.

Why exactly do you want to diverge this heavily from the site design
that all the other Wikipedias use? That seems inconsistent and confusing.

If it's that important to you, you could just set the Hebrew Wikipedia's
default skin to 'Nostalgia'. This should be possible (Esperanto has
'Cologne Blue' as the default, while others use 'Standard').

Timwi


list: wikien-l

from_name: steve vertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Requests for the Hebrew 'pedia

body:
>
> --- Rotem Dan <rotem_dan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I think that reagardless of geographical, national
> > etc. differences on
> > wiki users demographies (that I think has nothing
> to
> > do with anything
> > here anyway). he.wikipedia.org is a complete,
> > (almost) independent site,
> > that has its users and readers, they should be the
> > ones who vote for
> > decisions related to their site, including policy,
> > wiki code, layout,
> > licensing and logo.

Well, here is a problem with the En:wiki policy -- as
its applied accross boundaries.  Do you agree that the
GNU FDL is required also for the he. wiki? How about
NPOV?

Its certainly impractical to say that the en:wiki can
impose controls upon the he:wiki -- therefore, yes --
the he:wiki is almost fully under the command of its
30 users, and anyone else who can read/write Hebrew
and wants to contribte...  I agree that the he:wiki
deserves a Hebrew logo, layout, etc.  and that a
Hebrew consensus will be the default --as if
non-readers people could monitor everything that goes
on.  A loyalty to GNU is required.

But all *that is different from saying "Were an island
unto ourselves --  we dont have to obey offlander laws
like "GNU" or so called "principles" of
"professionality," "NPOV", etc... this is simply not
the case, (If that is what Dan is saying)  regardless
of the language or the language gap -- all Wikipedias
are a part of Wikipedia.org, (*not en.wikipedia) and
as such are commonly steered by consensus..

To facilitat communication, there will be a greater
need for open discourse about these issues on the
international mailing list,  (in whatever language.)
Everyone interested in anything other than just their
own language should join that list as well   No doubt
thats whyDan  (you)  is (are) talking about this. But
to say that the language barrier represents something
more than what little it is - is a common  (and
honest) misconception among a great many Wikipedians.

-S-

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from_name: Gareth Owen

references:
<bf8gub$2b3$1@main.gmane.org> <bf8jre$i0s$1@main.gmane.org>
	<bf8mom$120$1@main.gmane.org> <20030718122050.GA16477@tavaiah>

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> writes:

> No, that's site design what's broken. Everyone should be using
> nonunderlined links with something more like Cologne Blue. Standard sucks,
> underlined links suck double.

Yeah, the idea that wikipedia's links should look consistent with practically
everyone else on the web really sucks.

People understand that underlined means hyper-link.
Therefore underlined links are good.
--
Gareth Owen
"I love the wikipedia, but sometimes I get the impression that certain people
 on this list are very bored, and so argue about something when there's really
 bugger all to argue about. Edit some articles, for god's sake." -- LP


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] No new wikis

body:
I agree with all of what Eric wrote below, except
that"Wiktionary was a good idea."  It was not a good
idea to start a sectioned, English only dictionary.
The merits of the idea would have been rested in a
facile connectivity to the main Wp, and for it to be
international. The [[wiktionary:article]] link is not
facile -- it should just be [[d:article]] -- like the
[[w:article]] link on wiktionary and meta.

As for internationality -- From wikitionary main page:
"Please note that this is the *English Wiktionary:
while it aims to describe all words of all languages,
the definitions and descriptions are in English only.
Similar Wiktionaries in other languages will be set up
gradually."

Fortunately, this kind of above nonsense is being
actively contradicted : as in:
http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A3%AB
http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Cake  etc...

All suggestions improvements best understood with
time.  ;) Im out of time,
-s-

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> I am a bit concerned about the pace at which new
> Wikipedia spinoff
> projects are created. Wiktionary was a good idea,
> because it filled a gap
> that was there -- we received lots of dictionary
> entries, so it seemed
> like the logical conclusion to start a
> wiki-dictionary.
>
> But now we have a new "Textbook-Wiki" which was
> started without much
> discussion - possibly a good idea, but also possibly
> too specific - and
> shortly afterwards, a "Wiki-Quote" project was
> created. Now people are
> talking about creating a "Wiki-Piki" for pictures.
>
> This is all nice and good, but haven't we learned
> anything from the
> Wiktionary experience? Wiktionary was set up without
> much thought as to
> how the wiki process could be applied to a
> dictionary; it took months to
> formulate some kind of standard template, and we
> still don't have
> Wiktionaries in other languages. Wiktionary could
> have benefitted a lot
> from better planning before it was set up. I'm not
> sure I like the Wiki-
> Quote idea at all, as it intersects a lot with
> Project Sourceberg, is not
> very wiki-like (a quote is a quote) and not very
> compatible with the open
> content idea. Wiki-Quote was only very briefly
> discussed.
>
> Furthermore, it's not exactly like we have lots of
> free resources. Our
> database server, pliny, is down on its knees, the
> full text search on the
> English wiki is now permanently disabled, we have
> only a couple of active
> server administrators, and hardly enough developers
> to address problems in
> the software.
>
> I propose that
> 1) we do not start any new Wiki spin-off projects
> until our current
> resources have been substantially expanded;
> 2) we formalize a process for starting such
> projects, e.g. a planning
> period of at least 3 months on Meta with exact
> specifications as to what
> is to be placed there. After this period, users on
> the Meta wiki should
> vote on whether the new wiki should be set up or
> not. 3 months may seem
> long, but if interest can't be kept up that long,
> the idea may not be so
> great after all.
>
> Otherwise I see the danger that we'll end up with
> lots of nice ideas that
> all go nowhere, like the sep11.wikipedia.org (which
> IMHO should never have
> been set up in the first place).
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Sexist pronouns

body:
I think you just coined Law, Eric -- Moller's Law : As
a gender discussion continues the probablility that an
 appeal for the use of Spivac pronouns will approach
one.  At such a point, the discussion is forfeited and
must cease on the spot.

:D-s-

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> steve-
> > Im surprised nobody has mentioned Sie, Hir, It,
> not to
> > mention the awesome Spivak pronouns:
>
> God, someone had to bring up Spivak pronouns. I
> think the discussion
> usually ends at this point.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 01:47:54PM +0200, Timwi wrote:
> Rotem Dan wrote:
>
> >More things: I would like to remove:
> >
> >* "Main page", "Recent changes", "Edit this page", "Previous versions"
> >from both the top and bottom (Which also contains "What links here" and
> >"Related changes" to remove) -- Simply redundant and confusing, this is
> >not good website design, I mean, links should be single and clear,
> >otherwise it's confusing and cluttered.
>
> Why exactly do you want to diverge this heavily from the site design
> that all the other Wikipedias use? That seems inconsistent and confusing.
>
> If it's that important to you, you could just set the Hebrew Wikipedia's
> default skin to 'Nostalgia'. This should be possible (Esperanto has
> 'Cologne Blue' as the default, while others use 'Standard').

No, that's site design what's broken. Everyone should be using
nonunderlined links with something more like Cologne Blue. Standard sucks,
underlined links suck double.


references:
<bf8gub$2b3$1@main.gmane.org> <bf8jre$i0s$1@main.gmane.org>
	<bf8mom$120$1@main.gmane.org> <20030718122050.GA16477@tavaiah>
	<r5iel0o6kr8.fsf@gill.maths.keele.ac.uk>
	<20030718133913.GA1240@tavaiah>

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> writes:

> Era of consistency online is over, can't you see it ?
> Everyone and his dog is abusing CSS and stuff.

Well, I use links, and edit wikipedia exclusively with netscape 3, so I'd
imagine that I don't see it...

Let me check my favourite sites with Mozilla :

www.guardian.co.uk => links underlined
news.bbc.co.uk     => links underlined (when I mouse-over them)
slashdot.org       => links underlined
wikipedia.org      => links underlined
espn.com           => links underlined
baseballprospectus.com => links underlined
google.com         => links underlined
www.quotationspage.com => links underlined
    (except in nav-bars when they underline on mouse-over)
ussmariner.blogspot.com => Yea!  Found one.  Links *not* underlined
    They are bold though, which looks just as silly when chained together

1 out of 9.  Colour me unimpressed.
--
Gareth Owen
"I love the wikipedia, but sometimes I get the impression that certain people
 on this list are very bored, and so argue about something when there's really
 bugger all to argue about. Edit some articles, for god's sake." -- LP


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >>it is more helpful to Wikipedia's image as an
> international and
> >>multilingual project if all pedias have a common
> logo & default skin.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >No it wouldn't. It'd be better for half Wikipedias
> to have sane settings and half
> >have broken settings than for all 'pedias to have
> broken settings.
> >
> Which settings are broken?
> I am working on a design for a new default skin, so
> any criticisms of
> the current default would be useful to me :)

un francophone a report? aujourd hui un probleme avec
la page d accueil sous Mozilla. Il semble qu'il manque
encore des balises.

__________________________________
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body:
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 02:13:15PM +0100, Gareth Owen wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> writes:
>
> > No, that's site design what's broken. Everyone should be using
> > nonunderlined links with something more like Cologne Blue. Standard sucks,
> > underlined links suck double.
>
> Yeah, the idea that wikipedia's links should look consistent with practically
> everyone else on the web really sucks.

Era of consistency online is over, can't you see it ?
Everyone and his dog is abusing CSS and stuff.

> People understand that underlined means hyper-link.
> Therefore underlined links are good.

No, they're horrible. Normal page has something like 5 links,
normal wiki article has something like 50. Underlining every second word
sucks big.


body:
--- Rotem Dan <rotem_dan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:

> Licensing is actually not an issue here, since if we
> choose, say, to go
> with creative commons license. Then we wouldn't be
> able to translate
> articles from english because of the licensing
> problem so that's not
> really an option.

you not following the same license than the others
would be more a problem than just you having trouble
translating english articles. It is an issue for all
wikipedias. On the french wiki, many editors work on
several wikis at the same time, esperanto, spanish,
japanese, chinese...If we start not respecting a
couple of "essential" rules, we won't be able to work
together

> What I asked was either to get developer priviledge
> (or other developer
> would help) to remove a couple of duplicate links
> that are hard-coded
> into the site ("edit this page", "recent changes",
> duplicate
> interlanguage links etc. on top and bottom), make
> all links
> non-underlined by default (horrible!), and have the
> ability to fix bugs
> related to several browsers.

bugs related to browsers are a wikipedia wide issue,
not only an hebrew issue (believe me on this :-)). If
you are able to fix these annoying bugs for all of us,
I see not why we would not be happy.

And also we are having
> a contest for a logo
> (that may or may not be similiar to the English
> wikipedia logo) -- to
> understand how to replace the default one.

As for the logo issue, there is certainly an easy
solution since several different logos exist on
wikipedia. I don't think a non english wikipedia
should be exptected to necessarily welcome a certainly
niced but definitly english-oriented logo.

Links made default with question mark rather than red
underlined links is certainly possible as a default
option.

I remember that I ask it for the french wikipedia
nearly a year ago, and that it was agreed upon
(agreed).

Well, in short, I think some of your comments are
receivable :-) Perhaps taking one after the other ?

__________________________________
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body:
--- Rotem Dan <rotem_dan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
> > Well, in short, I think some of your comments are
> > receivable :-) Perhaps taking one after the other
> ?
>
> (taking a deep breath)
>
> Yes I guess I have a habit of pouring all the guts
> at once, thanks for
> the friendly attitude, Anthere :-)
>
> *sigh* I have been working too much on the hebrew
> 'pedia, I really
> despise the administrative/public relations/embassy
> stuff but no other
> user on the wiki seem to do that.
>
> I will retire now and resign from my temporary
> position as an
> unsuccesful
> initiator/administrator/embassador/wannabe-developer
> and
> work solely on creating Mathematical articles (In my
> quest for creating
> the first math encyclopeia in hebrew, that's also
> free! hurray!).
>
> Rotem

Do not resign :-) Just take it easy and slowly.

Working with Tarquin on the skin (eh Tarquin, where is
that skin ?) is a good start.

Begin to get an agreement among he.wiki on your logo
first (the french already started two times
discussions about changing it...but some things just
never go on as long as no one takes the lead).

Btw, your logos are nice (honestly this is the only
thing I can see on your site, the rest of it is just a
full screen of question marks to me); I regret that we
all don't have a common logo, or at least one with a
share little something to show unity, but
well...nothing's perfect. No big deal.

But, there is no hurry, having all your issues solved
in a month is *not* gonna happen. We are here for a
long time anyway :-)

__________________________________
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from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Templates (Was: Requests for the Hebrew 'pedia)

body:
Lightning wrote:

>hey kids.
>
>Ok, you know what, i know we've talked about this before, and nobody seemed
>to care, but what about templates?
>
I care heaps!
This would make working on Wikipedia skins much easier!


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Requests for the Hebrew 'pedia

body:
Rotem-
> More things: I would like to remove:

> * "Main page", "Recent changes", "Edit this page", "Previous versions"
> from both the top and bottom (Which also contains "What links here" and
> "Related changes" to remove) -- Simply redundant and confusing, this is
> not good website design, I mean, links should be single and clear,
> otherwise it's confusing and cluttered.

Untrue. Redundant links are helpful in navigation because they reduce the
average mouse path and increase visibility of important elements.
Inconsistency across wikis in this area is a very bad thing, and I
strongly discourage you from specifically altering the Hebrew Wiki to that
effect.

If you wish to change our defaults, then suggest the changes to the
defaults. But if your arguments are correct, they should be applicable to
all wikis, so don't try to take a shortcut by sneaking in your favorite
changes on "your" wiki. It's bad enough that Esperanto uses a different
skin by default, making it look entirely different from all other wikis.
And we should have a single international logo for all Wikipedias. This is
one project, after all.

Making links non-underlined by default is fine with me, there is, however,
some strong opposition to such a change.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sexist pronouns

body:
>Im surprised nobody has mentioned Sie, Hir, It, not to
>mention the awesome Spivak pronouns:
>
>Spivak :
>E laughed 	I hit em 	Eir face bled 	I am eirs 	E
>shaves emself
>
>Spivak (alternative):
>Ey laughed 	I hit Em 	Eir face bled 	I am Eirs 	Ey
>shaves Eirself
>
>Sources:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sie_and_hir
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/It (pronoun)
>
Considering how absolutely hideous they are, it is no wonder. Personally I
think they belong in a bin.

JT

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Replacing the standard wikipedia logo on the Hebrew wikipedia

body:
> Logo contest (just look at the original proposals):
>
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%95_%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA

yeah see.. ican't see them and i cant understand anything... i have hebrew
and bi-di text installed, but that doesnt mean i understand it. So i see a
bunchy of chracters and stuff that resembles something i recognize, except
in mirror image. wait wait wait, back to my point.. where's the logos ? I
just want to see pretty pictures.

Lightning


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] No new wikis

body:
Erik wrote:
>I am a bit concerned about the pace at
>which new Wikipedia spinoff projects are
>created.

Isn't spin-offs the whole point of the Wikimedia idea?

>Wiktionary was a good idea, because it filled
>a gap that was there -- we received lots of
>dictionary entries, so it seemed like the logical
>conclusion to start a wiki-dictionary.

We also get a lot of very long articles that are more suited for a textbook.
Oh wait...

>But now we have a new "Textbook-Wiki" which
>was started without much discussion -

Not much discussion? There was so much discussion that we very quickly got our
own mailing list.

>possibly a good idea, but also possibly too
>specific -

Too specific? Have you browsed any online book seller for textbooks? There are
thousands of different types - if anything it is a far more ambitious project
that creating just one encyclopedia. We plan on writing hundreds of different
textbooks. Specific indeed.

>and shortly afterwards, a "Wiki-Quote" project was
>created.

That one blindsided me too - where was the discussion for that?

>Now people are talking about creating a
>"Wiki-Piki" for pictures.

Terrible names - sounds like a fast nose picking. But having a centralized
database for images that all Wikimedia projects can share is a very good
thing. But that is a longer term goal and (as you say below) there are more
important immediate needs to take care of.

>This is all nice and good, but haven't we learned
>anything from the Wiktionary experience? Wiktionary
>was set up without much thought as to how the wiki
>process could be applied to a dictionary; it took
>months to formulate some kind of standard template,

Huh? The template and the processes you speak of were worked out the WikiWay
on live data. Wikipedia was similarly chaotic during its first few months. To
work this stuff out you have to work with real data - mock-ups on meta are
little help here (and having them "clog" meta's RC would probably be frowed
upon).

So we have learned something from the Wiktionary experience; we started with a
project with the vague goal of having it be a dictionary. We experimented on
different ways to make that happen with a great variety of different data. So
different ways to organize those data were explored. Ambiguity problems arose
between different meanings of words so we reorganized articles. Somebody had
the idea of having translations in entries - similar ambiguity problems arose
and were taken care of. Now instead of just a dictionary we have a dictionary
to end all dictionaries whose entries will be all words of all languages.

It is difficult to imagine all that being worked out on meta.

>and we still don't have Wiktionaries in other languages.

In time. Wikitionary has the goal to define every word in every language so in
a sense it is already somewhat internationalized (of course the descriptions
are in English). This, IMO, brings down the demand for other language
versions (they are still needed though).

>Wiktionary could have benefitted a lot
>from better planning before it was set up.

Perhaps. But do read the above.

>I'm not sure I like the Wiki-Quote idea at all,
>as it intersects a lot with Project Sourceberg,

That has been my reaction too and I unsuccessfully tried to expand the focus
of the project to include really big quatations (such as books).

>is not very wiki-like (a quote is a quote) and not
>very compatible with the open content idea.

Giving the source of the quotations and giving commentary about them  is
wiki-like.

>Wiki-Quote was only very briefly discussed.

I don't remember the discussion at all...

>Furthermore, it's not exactly like we have lots
>of free resources. Our database server, pliny, is
>down on its knees, the full text search on the
>English wiki is now permanently disabled, we
>have only a couple of active server administrators,
> and hardly enough developers to address
>problems in the software.

These are all very valid points.

>I propose that
>1) we do not start any new Wiki spin-off
>projects until our current resources have
>been substantially expanded;

I agree - that may have to wait until well after Wikimedia has a bank account
set-up and is able to accept donations/grants. But that should encourage much
discussion on how Wikimedia will function and on how to organize additional
projects.

>2) we formalize a process for starting such
>projects, e.g. a planning period of at least 3
>months on Meta with exact specifications as
>to what is to be placed there.

I wouldn't put such a time period on it since many ideas never are discussed
much. I would set milestones (such as figuring out a name, the parameters of
what just should and should not be in such a project etc.).

>After this period, users on the Meta wiki should
>vote on whether the new wiki should be set up
>or not. 3 months may seem long, but if interest
>can't be kept up that long, the idea may not be
>so great after all.

Hm. I wonder if there would have been a Wikipedia at all if a similar process
was vetted at Nupedia... Sometimes the best thing to do is jump in head
first. But dead wikis are bad so something is needed to keep the still born
rate low.

>Otherwise I see the danger that we'll end up with
>lots of nice ideas that all go nowhere, like the sep11.
>wikipedia.org (which IMHO should never have been
>set up in the first place).

Call me Cassandra but I predicted that. I suggested several times that we
should have a general tribute wiki and that we shouldn't limit such a project
to a single event. I still think that that would be a viable project.

So yeah - until our load/server/software problems are fixed the non-developers
should concentrate their efforts on the already existing Wikimedia projects
and subprojects and on devising processes on how to best form new ones. In
short; no new Wikimedia projects.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikide-l] Löschung

body:
Summary in English follows below.  This is from the German list.

Timwi wrote:
> 	[[Heilige[s|n] R?mische[s|n] Reich[|es] Deutscher Nation]]
> oder
> 	[[Heiliges^n R?misches^n Reich ^es Deutscher Nation]]
> oder sowas.

oder einfach [[Heilgen R?mischen Reiches Deutscher Nation]] und ein
bisschen "fuzzy matching" in der Liste existierenden Artikeln?

So ein Algorithmus k?nnte auch den Schwedischen und D?nischen
Wikipedien n?tzlich sein.  Hier ein Vorschlag:

1. Wenn ein Klammerlink kein direkten Match hat (es gibt kein Artikel
"Heiligen R?mischen Reiches...").

2. Und wenn das Klammerlink aus drei oder mehr W?rter besteht.

3. Ers?tzt mit ".*" (oder SQL "%") die zwei letzten Buchstaben in
jedes Linkwort.  ("Heiligen R?mischen Reiches" wird zur Regexp
"Heilig.* R?misch.* Reich.*" oder SQL "Heilg% R?misch% Reich%")

4. Wenn das Suchmuster genau _eine_ Artikel?berschrift antrifft,
diesen Artikel automatisch verlinken.

SUMMARY IN ENGLISH:

The German language has a problem with making wiki links from phrases
where word endings need to change to make the link text fit in a
sentence, something like "calf -> calves", but on a much greater
scale.  For example an article heading might be "Heiliges R?misches
Reich Deutscher Nation" (the Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality)
but a in typical phrase where you in English can simply write

  This was a typical property of the [[Holy Roman Empire of ...]]

where the article heading appears unmodified as the link text.
But the German text would have to be:

  Das war ein typisches Eigenschaft des
  [[Heiliges R?misches Reich Deutscher Nation |
    Heiligen R?mischen Reiches Deutscher Nation]]
          ^^        ^^      ^^

In German, these different word endings are never (?) longer than the
last two characters of a word, which made me suggest the following
algorithm, from which I think the Swedish and Danish Wikipedia could
also benefit:

1. When a bracket link doesn't have a direct match,

2. And the bracket link consists of three words or more,

3. Replace with ".*" or SQL "%" the last two characters of each word
in the link text.

4. If this search pattern matches exactly *one* article heading,
make a link directly to that article.

This would make it possible to write [[Heiligen R?mischen Reiches
Deutscher Nation]] without the pipe character and real form, the
WikiToHtml conversion would not find a direct match (1), but since the
link contains more than two words it tries a search for "Heilig%
R?misch% Reich% Deutsch% Nati%" and thus finds the correct article to
link to.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] No new wikis

body:
I am a bit concerned about the pace at which new Wikipedia spinoff
projects are created. Wiktionary was a good idea, because it filled a gap
that was there -- we received lots of dictionary entries, so it seemed
like the logical conclusion to start a wiki-dictionary.

But now we have a new "Textbook-Wiki" which was started without much
discussion - possibly a good idea, but also possibly too specific - and
shortly afterwards, a "Wiki-Quote" project was created. Now people are
talking about creating a "Wiki-Piki" for pictures.

This is all nice and good, but haven't we learned anything from the
Wiktionary experience? Wiktionary was set up without much thought as to
how the wiki process could be applied to a dictionary; it took months to
formulate some kind of standard template, and we still don't have
Wiktionaries in other languages. Wiktionary could have benefitted a lot
from better planning before it was set up. I'm not sure I like the Wiki-
Quote idea at all, as it intersects a lot with Project Sourceberg, is not
very wiki-like (a quote is a quote) and not very compatible with the open
content idea. Wiki-Quote was only very briefly discussed.

Furthermore, it's not exactly like we have lots of free resources. Our
database server, pliny, is down on its knees, the full text search on the
English wiki is now permanently disabled, we have only a couple of active
server administrators, and hardly enough developers to address problems in
the software.

I propose that
1) we do not start any new Wiki spin-off projects until our current
resources have been substantially expanded;
2) we formalize a process for starting such projects, e.g. a planning
period of at least 3 months on Meta with exact specifications as to what
is to be placed there. After this period, users on the Meta wiki should
vote on whether the new wiki should be set up or not. 3 months may seem
long, but if interest can't be kept up that long, the idea may not be so
great after all.

Otherwise I see the danger that we'll end up with lots of nice ideas that
all go nowhere, like the sep11.wikipedia.org (which IMHO should never have
been set up in the first place).

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sexist pronouns

body:
steve-
> Im surprised nobody has mentioned Sie, Hir, It, not to
> mention the awesome Spivak pronouns:

God, someone had to bring up Spivak pronouns. I think the discussion
usually ends at this point.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Rotem-
> Please, I would not like to argue about something silly as this, my
> arguments are nor "correct" nor "incorrect"

They are incorrect.

> I was just trying to make
> small improvements to the HTML layout

Your improvements would be no improvements.

> to make it more simpler and easier
> for users to use. If they won't like it it would have been reverted to
> the previous version.

By whom? By them? They don't have access to the skin code. If we give you
access to the code, you'll effectively be the gatekeeper for the Hebrew
wiki. I don't like that idea given the kind of misconceptions you have
about so-called "autonomy". Now you're even talking about different
licenses!

> As for trying to "sneak" things in, I thought different language
> versions gets autonomy regarding decisions like this.

What made you think that? The only code autonomy is in the language files.
If every language gets its own little "fixes", code maintenance becomes a
nightmare. This is not going to happen. If you want improvements, or if
your users ask for improvements, tell this to the mailing list and we'll
discuss whether these improvements would truly be improvements, and
implement them for all wikis *or not at all*. This is not bureaucratic,
this is the way we have always done things. It's the only way to maintain
a common codebase.

> I have
> many ideas and I know a bit of PHP. If the users (that actually use that
> wiki) want a feature, bug fix, or a change on wiki X, why not just let
> them have it?

1) Because it will then become more and more difficult to update the code
of that wiki from the CVS versions as the two code trees start to diverge
from each other, and your users will start whining that they don't get
feature X that's in the English Wikipedia, because adding said feature to
the Hebrew Wikipedia causes a merge conflict with the special code that
Rotem Dan added there;
2) Because if that feature, bug fix or change is useful, than all other
wikis should have it. The Hebrew wiki is running on our server with
manpower invested by people who have nothing to do with its contents,
there's no way you are going to make a bug fix without making the same
bugfix to the rest of the project as well. You benefit from our work, we
benefit from yours. Simple, no? And if it isn't useful, then well,
obviously the Hebrew wiki shouldn't have it either.
3) Because that feature, bug fix or change may have implications or
effects that your users do not understand; this makes it necessary to
discuss it first. The place to have such discussions is *here*, on the
wikitech mailing list.
4) Because consistency across the different Wikipedia projects is
essential for usability; bilingual users or users of several wiki-projects
will expect the different wikis they are on to operate in the same way,
and will be confused if each wiki makes it own little adaptations.
Furthermore, this weakens the Wikimedia brand, which is important for
being recognized internationally.

> I think that reagardless of geographical, national etc. differences on
> wiki users demographies (that I think has nothing to do with anything
> here anyway). he.wikipedia.org is a complete, (almost) independent site,
> that has its users and readers, they should be the ones who vote for
> decisions related to their site, including policy,

Key elements of the policy, such as NPOV, are the same for all wikis. A
wiki that does not follow the NPOV convention but makes up its own in its
place would likely be kicked off the server quite quickly.

>  wiki code

The code is the same for all wikis. The only differences are language-
specific additions. Most layout "fixes" are *not* language-specific.

> layout,
> licensing

The licensing is the same for all wikis. The fundamentals of the layout
are also the same.

> and logo.

There should be a common look and feel for all wikis. Small variations in
the logo are acceptable, though.

Look, if you don't want to be part of the Wikipedia/Wikimedia project,
just say so. If you want to do everything by your own rules and ignore
common conventions and policies, you will have to set up your own wiki,
preferably with your own code. But don't waste our time if you don't want
to play by the rules.

Slightly annoyed,

Erik


body:
Rotem-
> What I asked was either to get developer priviledge (or other developer
> would help) to remove a couple of duplicate links that are hard-coded
> into the site

Did it ever occur to you that people have given some thought to the
current layout? Take a look at a 30 kilobyte page. Now consider how long
it takes you to find the "Recent changes" link if it's only at the top, or
only at the bottom, especially if you do not / cannot use the floating
menu bar. These links are there to increase usability, and when I first
saw Wikipedia's layout I was very positively surprised that people had
actually been smart enough to do this, something many other sites forget.
Why does Google put the search box at the top and at the bottom of the
result screen (which is much smaller than long Wikipedia articles)? Trust
me, they know what they are doing.

> I really think autonomy is needed here in order to get things going. If
> you really expect me to wait for Brion Vibber to return from his
> time-out (and then nag him) then you are wrong. There is no-one except
> him with developer rights on the Hebrew wikipedia. This is beaurocracy
> in action, and I don't really like politics.

That's incorrect. Everyone with server access can change the Hebrew
Wikipedia. That includes me, Lee and Magnus. Brion understands the various
internationalization problems best, though. I don't care if you like
politics or not, but you'll have to deal with Wikipedia's rules and
conventions, especially regarding the development and maintenance of the
codebase. We have just formalized a new development policy which will make
it much faster to update all the wikis to the latest version. But for that
it is of fundamental importance that all code improvements go through the
same process, instead of people doing their own stuff!

Regards,

Erik


body:
steve vertigo wrote:

>I agree that the he:wiki
>deserves a Hebrew logo, layout, etc.
>
I think it is more helpful to Wikipedia's image as an international and
multilingual project if all pedias have a common logo & default skin.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] No new wikis

body:
steve vertigo wrote:

>The [[wiktionary:article]] link is not
>facile -- it should just be [[d:article]] -- like the
>[[w:article]] link on wiktionary and meta.
>
>
>
[[w:article]] on meta only exists for backwards compatibility. Please
use [[en:article]]


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikide-l] L?schung

body:
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 09:51:30PM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> SUMMARY IN ENGLISH:
>
> The German language has a problem with making wiki links from phrases
> where word endings need to change to make the link text fit in a
> sentence, something like "calf -> calves", but on a much greater
> scale.  For example an article heading might be "Heiliges R?misches
> Reich Deutscher Nation" (the Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality)
> but a in typical phrase where you in English can simply write
>
>   This was a typical property of the [[Holy Roman Empire of ...]]
>
> where the article heading appears unmodified as the link text.
> But the German text would have to be:
>
>   Das war ein typisches Eigenschaft des
>   [[Heiliges R?misches Reich Deutscher Nation |
>     Heiligen R?mischen Reiches Deutscher Nation]]
>           ^^        ^^      ^^
>
> In German, these different word endings are never (?) longer than the
> last two characters of a word, which made me suggest the following
> algorithm, from which I think the Swedish and Danish Wikipedia could
> also benefit:
>
> 1. When a bracket link doesn't have a direct match,
>
> 2. And the bracket link consists of three words or more,

Why three? Why not apply this to the [[Englischer Kanal]], too?

>
> 3. Replace with ".*" or SQL "%" the last two characters of each word
> in the link text.
>
> 4. If this search pattern matches exactly *one* article heading,
> make a link directly to that article.

4. If the edit-link is hit, automatically propose to create a
#REDIRECT to the already existing page.

mod_speling from apache automatically fixes spelling errors, and
sometimes does not exactly what one might have expected. So I would
prefer to have a human judge whether [[Haus der B?rse]] and
[[Hausse der B?rse]] are really articles covering the same topic.

Regards,

	JeLuF


subject: [Wikipedia-l] No new wikis

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>
>I propose that
>1) we do not start any new Wiki spin-off projects until our current
>resources have been substantially expanded;
>2) we formalize a process for starting such projects, e.g. a planning
>period of at least 3 months on Meta with exact specifications as to what
>is to be placed there. After this period, users on the Meta wiki should
>vote on whether the new wiki should be set up or not. 3 months may seem
>long, but if interest can't be kept up that long, the idea may not be so
>great after all.
>
Seconded.

>Otherwise I see the danger that we'll end up with lots of nice ideas that
>all go nowhere, like the sep11.wikipedia.org (which IMHO should never have
>been set up in the first place).
>
>
>
basically... Sep11,wikipedia.org was created to appease people
protesting against the deletion of acticles on victims of the Sep11
attacks who were pure nobodies and didn't belong in Wikipedia.


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>>it is more helpful to Wikipedia's image as an international and
>>multilingual project if all pedias have a common logo & default skin.
>>
>>
>
>No it wouldn't. It'd be better for half Wikipedias to have sane settings and half
>have broken settings than for all 'pedias to have broken settings.
>
Which settings are broken?
I am working on a design for a new default skin, so any criticisms of
the current default would be useful to me :)


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: An Off-Topic Comment

body:
Geoff Burling said:

> I can't quite explain how, but in the paragraph that Theophanes' translator
> describes this event (sorry, I don't read Greek, either Ancient or Medieval),
> I found myself suddenly drawn back to a time over 1200 years ago in a
> place I have never been, which became more real for me than any television
> or movie recreation of history could ever be. All because a writer,
> otherwise devoid of personality, happened to share with posterity a vibrant
> childhood memory.
>
> And so I will keep on reading, ostensively because I want to correct
> mistakes & fill in omissions in Wikipedia, but in the actual hope I will
> encounter another surpise like this from a time & place far away.

I just had a moment like that this evening reading Georges Ifrah's /The
Universal History of Numbers/. All cultures that we have any record of
developed independently the same basic structure for tallying, and the
Roman numeral system seems to be a direct descendant from one of those
systems. The numerals I, V and X are probably older than written
language.

Wikipedia has more readers than writers. Please continue sharing your
iceberg stories with the world.

Stephen Gilbert


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Script available for uniform statistics for all Wikipedias

body:
I have written a PERL script that parses the SQL dumps (cur & old) and
generates a html file, containing for each month since the project
started:

1 = number of wikipedians who contributed at least 10 edits
2 = increase in (1) in the past month
3 = wikipedians who contributed > 5 edits in the past month, idem > 100
4 = total number of articles according to new (link) counting system
5 = mean number of revisions per article
6 = mean size of article in bytes
7 = total edits in past month
8 = combined size of all articles
9 = total number of links

The reports also list most active wikipedians, ordered by # edits

Please note that the script produces historical growth figures per
Wikipedia based on the >> new (link) counting system << right from the
first month.

See results for de: fr: nl: eo: (and Perl script itself) at
http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Statistics

A.
Feedback is appreciated

B.
I propose to run this script weekly on the new SQL dumps for all WP's
and put the resulting html files in a public folder.

C.
I'd like to test the script with the huge English SQL dumps, but I can't
download a 1600Mb file without transmission errors. Could someone please
split the file in 50 Mb chuncks, generate MD5 checksums, put all in a
temp folder (public!) and inform me? Thanks! xxx at chello.nl
(xxx=epzachte)

D. Open issues: unicode support, possibly further optimization for
English version (e.g. sort)

Erik Zachte

----
ad B
The English version will run for a while, but at least it will not tie
up the live database. I expect it will take under an hour, the German
files (650 Mb) were processed in 4.5 minutes on my 1.2 GHz PC.

Ad C.
As a test I downloaded the same 100Mb TomeRaider file eight times, four
times the checksum failed, FTP is too unreliable for huge files.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: No new wikis

body:
Erik Moeller said...
> I am a bit concerned about the pace at which new Wikipedia spinoff
> projects are created.

<snip>
I share Erik's concerns. I think we may be suffering what some people
call WikiAddiction: we love wikis, and so we want to use them for every
good idea that comes up as fast as possible.

> I propose that
> 1) we do not start any new Wiki spin-off projects until our current
> resources have been substantially expanded;

Agreed. Many of Wikipedia's useful functions are still unavailable. Our
computing resources and volunteer programming staff are already stretched
too thin trying to support the projects we already have.

> 2) we formalize a process for starting such projects, e.g. a planning
> period of at least 3 months on Meta with exact specifications as to what
> is to be placed there. After this period, users on the Meta wiki should
> vote on whether the new wiki should be set up or not. 3 months may seem
> long, but if interest can't be kept up that long, the idea may not be so
> great after all.

Or something like that. One of the important things to consider is that
perhaps a wiki is not the best tool to use for the project you have in
mind. I haven't seen the discussions (and so my opinion should be taken
with a grain of salt), but using a wiki to create an image respository is
like using a claw hammer and a dull screwdriver to do fine woodworking.

Stephen G.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: No new wikis

body:
Tarquin wrote:

> basically... Sep11,wikipedia.org was created to appease people
> protesting against the deletion of acticles on victims of the Sep11
> attacks who were pure nobodies and didn't belong in Wikipedia.

They weren't pure nobodies, just not people you would look up in an
encyclopedia... even one that isn't paper.

The attempt at appeasement didn't really work, and so the Sep11 wiki is
little more than a warehouse for the tributes that people wrote to their
loved ones.

- Stephen G.


body:
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 10:58:03PM +0100, tarquin wrote:
> steve vertigo wrote:
>
> >I agree that the he:wiki
> >deserves a Hebrew logo, layout, etc.
> >
> I think it is more helpful to Wikipedia's image as an international and
> multilingual project if all pedias have a common logo & default skin.

No it wouldn't. It'd be better for half Wikipedias to have sane settings and half
have broken settings than for all 'pedias to have broken settings.


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] No new wikis

body:
Erik wrote:
>The fundamentals of the [textbook] project (what
>kind of material is to be placed there; do we need
>a textbook project or should it be part of a larger
>project) were not discussed much,

What kind of material? I don't understand that part of your statement. A
textbook is a way to organize non-fictional information in a way that can be
used to lead a student through that information. Given the vast number of
courses we could make textbooks for I fail to see how that is too specific.

>the specifics (how to write textbooks NPOV etc.)
>were discussed in great detail. I don't remember
>a timetable or a deadline for suggestions ever
>being brought up.

? Was there for Wikipedia? This type of micromanagement can kill volunteer
projects.

>But what about HOWTOs and manuals of all
>kinds?

Why not? That seems similar enough for me. I think you are reading too much
into the temporary name of the project.

>These are not textbooks. Yet, the two have
>similarities in style, and both are at least
>in part procedural knowledge.

I agree and would like to add that much of the current "How-tos" in Wikipedia
should be moved.

>The name "textbook" usually implies use in
>an educational setting. Yet much of the material
>that is currently there is also of interest outside
>such use.

Symantics. Wikipedia is far more than just an encyclopedia too (it is also an
almanac and gazetteer; not to mention an encyclopedia of encylopedias). Same
goes for Wiktionary (which is also a thesaurus, and translating dictionary).

>IMHO "textbook" is too limited. It only encourages
>the creation of yet another spin-off project in the
>near future for other types of non-fictional works.

Like what? I already mentioned that how-tos can be reformatted into
courses/textbooks. Big deal. We instruct = Wikinstruct (possible name that
doesn't include "textbook").

>What I would prefer is a
>structure like this:
>
>        encyclopedia
>        dictionary
>        non-fictional works (books.wikipedia.org)
>        fictional works     (tales.wikipedia.org)

? Why the Wikipedia.org sub-domains? I already own wikibook.org/.com and that
can be used for any miscellaneous project that is in book form (that is, any
project requiring a specific overall organization for each of its books).
Wiktion might be a fun name for a wiki fiction project (or else it goes at
fiction.wikibook.org).

>....And a place to write all types of non-fictional
>works may be better than just a place to write
>textbooks -- the procedures for writing textbooks
>are in part specific, but in large part also applicable
>to writing other non-fictional works.

If the needs of a particular project require separation then let's provide it.
Having a project that is so broad that is has no focus is also a realy bad
thing (Everything2 plays that role already).

>Many templates we successfully use on the 'pedia
>were worked out that way.

Partly true - the WikiProjects always use at least one real article as a test
case but then many modifications are made as that template is applied to
other articles - the template evolves. But a WikiProject is a far cry from a
new Wikimedia project (which has a vastly larger focus).

>I have nothing against a little chaos, but Wiktionary
>had far too much of it for my taste. The chaos and
>ugliness on Wiktionary, the lack of any real leadership
>was what discouraged me from working on that project.

Different strokes for different folks. Some people like chaos and newness -
let them work out the rough spots and you can join later when the project has
more or less stabilized.

>Can you name a single idea that would not benefit
>from prior discussion?

That wasn't my point - in fact I agreed that some discussion is a good thing.
But I am a bit skeptical that we need to have so much of the ground work
settled before actually working on the project. Too much planning for a
project is like the birth of Athena in which she sprung forth from the head
of Zeus fully-grown, educated and in full battle armor - what a headache.

I prefer a more organic approach in which the rules are made based on actual
experience on what does and does not work. Yeah, of course, some basic
parameters should be decided before that but those should be minimal.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] No new wikis

body:
Erik wrote:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-July/010944.html

Response on Textbook-l

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l

--mav


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: machine translation - once and for all

body:
steve vertigo wrote:

> Theres a fundamental rule in journalism That youre
> missing Tarq -- (and Wikipedians ARE journalists -- in
> the best sense, perhaps)  The rule is:
>
> "Get Something On the Page -- Period."
>
> Imagine a big burly fat guy with a cigar yelling that
> in your ear as your typing it up against your
> deadline.

Now imagine you hand him this:

"Wikipedia is project encyclopedia working together. It is available many
languages and is permitted with the GNU Free Manual Permission."

And so on.

Burly Fat Guy: "You're fired, Vertigo!"

It's far better to "get something on the page" by:

1. writing your own article (even if it's just a stub)
2. doing the translation yourself

> Im not saying that I can go around
> recommending machtransware as a cure for cancer -- I
> am saying it is fast arriving -- and can be useful to
> some people -- those talented at turning crap into
> custard. If one is not so talented -- and does not
> wish to be bothered with using it -- this should not
> translate into them being bothered that its by others
> being used. Is regular and assisted use can solve the
> issue of perhaps seeding a modest degree of interest
> in some of the other WP's -- which remain as they are,
> stillborn. Translate that.

If one is so talented, why couldn't he or she could use machine
translation as an translation aid individually, without putting the
unaltered results into Wikipedia? Given where the technology is at this
point, this seems to be the prudent choice.

Stephen G.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Requests for the Hebrew 'pedia

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> > I think it is more helpful to Wikipedia's image as an international and
> > multilingual project if all pedias have a common logo & default skin.
>
> No it wouldn't. It'd be better for half Wikipedias to have sane settings and half
> have broken settings than for all 'pedias to have broken settings.

Well, sure, but it would be best for all the wikis to have the same sane
settings. ;-)

Stephen G.


from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] No new wikis

body:
Daniel Mayer:

......
> But I am a bit skeptical that we need to have so much of the ground work
> settled before actually working on the project. Too much planning for a
> project is like the birth of Athena in which she sprung forth from the
head
> of Zeus fully-grown, educated and in full battle armor - what a headache.
>
> I prefer a more organic approach in which the rules are made based on
actual
> experience on what does and does not work. Yeah, of course, some basic
> parameters should be decided before that but those should be minima.
-----------
Good advice.

Regarding any textbook project that hopes to impact K-12, the only thing
necessary to have is the general framework in pace as a guideline, and
possibly a few working examples (existing textbooks) in hand to get a feel
for the 'demeanor' of the kind of material that is used 'on the ground' -
it's a good starting point.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki API in Python project

body:
Michael-
> I (and current 5 other people) are planning on writing an API for
> wiki[pedia] in Python

Please contact marco.krohn at gmx dot de, who has already written a Python
library for Wikipedia access.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Erik:

body:
Rotem-

> I find your previous message insulting, Erik, I was just asking for a
> little bit of trust on my doings or misdoings, but I'm in no position to
> prove that my intentions were positive, judge it as you like. I hope
> we'll both learn to collaborate better in the future as I (and it seems
> that you, too) intend to donate a lot of time and thought for this
> project, in its various forms.

I'm very willing to cooperate, but this can only happen within our
existing framework of rules and conventions. Letting each Wikipedia do its
own thing is not an option for the reasons which I have given. Please see

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_policy

and

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks

for some things which need to be done. I also encourage you to work with
Tarquin on a new skin which meets your expectations; whether this will
become the new default can then be decided by a vote among all interested
Wikipedians.

I certainly understand your frustration given how long it took to set up
the Hebrew wiki. We always need volunteers who are willing to do necessary
administration tasks. But to allow them to do so, we need to also reach an
understanding about the process and policies which we use. Please do
recognize my strong objections to violating that process as an attempt to
keep the Wikipedia project as a whole functioning.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikide-l] Löschung

body:
Earlier, I wrote:

> oder einfach [[Heilgen R?mischen Reiches Deutscher Nation]] und ein
> bisschen "fuzzy matching" in der Liste existierenden Artikeln?
>[...]
> In German, these different word endings are never (?) longer than the
> last two characters of a word, which made me suggest the following
> algorithm, from which I think the Swedish and Danish Wikipedia could
> also benefit:

My suggested algorithm is far too simple and leads to too many false
positives.  I've tried it (on susning.nu) and disabled it again.
A working algorithm probably must recognize typical endings, which
makes it language specific (-er, -es in German; -a, -t in Swedish).
Existing "stemming" algorithms might be worth trying. I'm not going
any deeper into this.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Erik:

body:
On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 01:12:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Rotem-
>
> > I find your previous message insulting, Erik, I was just asking for a
> > little bit of trust on my doings or misdoings, but I'm in no position to
> > prove that my intentions were positive, judge it as you like. I hope
> > we'll both learn to collaborate better in the future as I (and it seems
> > that you, too) intend to donate a lot of time and thought for this
> > project, in its various forms.
>
> I'm very willing to cooperate, but this can only happen within our
> existing framework of rules and conventions. Letting each Wikipedia do its
> own thing is not an option for the reasons which I have given. Please see

It is not only an option but the only correct way.
If people from one Wikipedia will try to force their views on other Wikipedias,
Enciclopedia Libre-like fork will happen again.


body:
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 11:14:00PM +0100, tarquin wrote:
>
>
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >>it is more helpful to Wikipedia's image as an international and
> >>multilingual project if all pedias have a common logo & default skin.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >No it wouldn't. It'd be better for half Wikipedias to have sane settings
> >and half
> >have broken settings than for all 'pedias to have broken settings.
> >
> Which settings are broken?
> I am working on a design for a new default skin, so any criticisms of
> the current default would be useful to me :)

Most broken things:

* horribly ugly default skin
* very small default rc size
* underlined links
* new article counter is completely broken - it counts all the stubs


subject: [Textbook-l] No new wikis

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 12:46 AM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] No new wikis

> Daniel-
> > Erik wrote:
> >> The fundamentals of the [textbook] project (what
> >> kind of material is to be placed there; do we need
> >> a textbook project or should it be part of a larger
> >> project) were not discussed much,
>
> > What kind of material? I don't understand that part of your statement. A
> > textbook is a way to organize non-fictional information in a way that
can be
> > used to lead a student through that information. Given the vast number
of
> > courses we could make textbooks for I fail to see how that is too
specific.
>
> As I already said, there's a lot more non-fictional material that does not
> meet the definition of "textbook", but the creation process of which
> nevertheless shows sufficient parallels with the authoring of textbooks to
> warrant inclusion in a common project.
>
> >> the specifics (how to write textbooks NPOV etc.)
> >> were discussed in great detail. I don't remember
> >> a timetable or a deadline for suggestions ever
> >> being brought up.
>
> > ? Was there for Wikipedia? This type of micromanagement can kill
volunteer
> > projects.
>
> A timetable is micromanagement? Boy, you should read more Dilbert :-). A
> timetable is essential for allowing all potentially interested parties to
> voice concerns and suggestions before something goes live and it becomes
> difficult to revert certain decisions that have already been made.
>
> >> But what about HOWTOs and manuals of all
> >> kinds?
>
> > Why not? That seems similar enough for me. I think you are reading too
much
> > into the temporary name of the project.
> ...
> > Symantics. Wikipedia is far more than just an encyclopedia too
>
> "Encyclopedia" is a vague enough term to fit almost anything into it that
> we want; "textbook", on the other hand, refers to a quite specific type of
> work. I think this should be changed. Semantics are important -- the
> semantics we define now will be the foundations for policies and
> conventions that develop later.
>
> > ? Why the Wikipedia.org sub-domains? I already own wikibook.org/.com
>
> That seems like a reasonable project name to me. But please, no further
> names that are bastardizations of the word "wiki" like "Wiktion". These
> really don't work well in other languages.
>
> > If the needs of a particular project require separation then let's
provide
> > it. Having a project that is so broad that is has no focus is also a
realy
> > bad thing (Everything2 plays that role already).
>
> Obviously. Combining non-fiction and fiction on the same site would be a
> bad idea, for example.
>
> Discussing things on Meta:
> > Partly true - the WikiProjects always use at least one real article as a
> > test case but then many modifications are made as that template is
applied
> > to other articles - the template evolves. But a WikiProject is a far cry
> > from a new Wikimedia project (which has a vastly larger focus).
>
> Sure, but I fail to see how the discussion of a substantially larger
> project would somehow "overtax" Meta. The number of changes on Meta is
> only a fraction of those on the English wiki, and yet, the English wiki
> still scales. What's the problem with planning these things in an
> organized way?
>
> > Different strokes for different folks. Some people like chaos and
newness -
> > let them work out the rough spots and you can join later when the
project
> > has more or less stabilized.
>
> And stabilized to what? A chaotic process does not always lead to good
> results. It is better to at least define the ground rules before starting
> the project.
>
> > That wasn't my point - in fact I agreed that some discussion is a good
> > thing. But I am a bit skeptical that we need to have so much of the
ground
> > work settled before actually working on the project. Too much planning
for a
> > project is like the birth of Athena in which she sprung forth from the
head
> > of Zeus fully-grown, educated and in full battle armor - what a
headache.
>
> Just the basics:
> 1) Name of the project
> 2) Types of content that are to be covered
> 3) Key policies
> 4) Timetable for setting things up
> 5) Potential changes that need to be made to the software
> 6) Templates
> 7) Internationalization
> 8) Participants
>
> Formalize these things, then have a vote on whether the project should in
> fact be started. Is that too much to ask?
---------------
This is also good advice. Extrapolating from my last post (to Daniel),
Erik's points (above), along with frameworks (as content guidelines), would
be a good place to start any textbook project. The only quibble I have is
with 'timetable'. A timetable will help to create a sense of urgency; it can
be set up to remind people that a project has a 'delivery' deadline, while
at the same time leaving the door open to anyone who wants to contribute
past the deadline, as long as they understand that post-deadline
contributions will remain unofficial addendums (while being completely
useful to users who don't mind dealing with the dynamic nature of a
theoretically open-ended textbook project, as far as time is considered)

Sanford

> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logos-a-gogo

body:
No,

Freedom within important policy limits is our policy. Changing logos is so
simple I was even able to do it.

Fred Bauder

http://wwww.internet-encyclopedia.org

> From: tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 08:50:59 +0100
> To: Wikipedia-L <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>, intlwiki-l
> <intlwiki-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] logos-a-gogo
>
> The hebrew Wikipedia is holding a logo competition:
>
> http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:
> %D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%95_%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA
>
>
> I really think that it is best if all 'pedias share a common logo and a
> common "look".
> It is bad enough that the French wikipedia has a different logo.
> Do we have a hebrew ambassador who could tell them to hold off -- or
> suggest their logos as project-wide proposals?
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] No new wikis

body:
Daniel-
>> I am a bit concerned about the pace at
>> which new Wikipedia spinoff projects are
>> created.

> Isn't spin-offs the whole point of the Wikimedia idea?

No, it's not the *whole* point of the Wikimedia idea. Wikimedia has many
different purposes:

- Have a non-profit in place that can accept donations
- Have an organization with a board that can make decisions
- Develop a common "brand" for our existing wiki projects
- Create a central entry point for all the Wikipedia projects (the
Wikimedia homepage)
- Possibly (!) have a central place for depositing media files -- images,
sounds etc.
- Have a nice webpage that Jimmy's mom can visit without reading anything
at all about felching.

Yes, one raison d'etre for the Wikimedia project is to find new ways to
successfully apply the wiki principles, and I'm all in favor of doing
that. But not at the present pace.

>> But now we have a new "Textbook-Wiki" which
>> was started without much discussion -

> Not much discussion? There was so much discussion that we very quickly got
> our own mailing list.

The fundamentals of the project (what kind of material is to be placed
there; do we need a textbook project or should it be part of a larger
project) were not discussed much, the specifics (how to write textbooks
NPOV etc.) were discussed in great detail. I don't remember a timetable or
a deadline for suggestions ever being brought up.

>> possibly a good idea, but also possibly too
>> specific -

> Too specific? Have you browsed any online book seller for textbooks? There
> are thousands of different types - if anything it is a far more ambitious
> project that creating just one encyclopedia. We plan on writing hundreds of
> different textbooks. Specific indeed.

Maybe. But what about HOWTOs and manuals of all kinds? These are not
textbooks. Yet, the two have similarities in style, and both are at least
in part procedural knowledge. The name "textbook" usually implies use in
an educational setting. Yet much of the material that is currently there
is also of interest outside such use. IMHO "textbook" is too limited. It
only encourages the creation of yet another spin-off project in the near
future for other types of non-fictional works. What I would prefer is a
structure like this:

        encyclopedia
        dictionary
        non-fictional works (books.wikipedia.org)
        fictional works     (tales.wikipedia.org)

See, I prefer generalized projects to specific ones. As you say, a tribute
wiki is better than a specific September 11 wiki. An encyclopedia is
better than just an encyclopedia of birds. A dictionary for every language
is better than just a dictionary for English. And a place to write all
types of non-fictional works may be better than just a place to write
textbooks -- the procedures for writing textbooks are in part specific,
but in large part also applicable to writing other non-fictional works.

I was hoping to be able to bring this up in a discussion, but the
textbook-wiki was set up before I could even read through the existing
postings.

>> This is all nice and good, but haven't we learned
>> anything from the Wiktionary experience? Wiktionary
>> was set up without much thought as to how the wiki
>> process could be applied to a dictionary; it took
>> months to formulate some kind of standard template,

> Huh? The template and the processes you speak of were worked out the WikiWay
> on live data.

The "wiki way" does not necessarily mean that you have to avoid any notion
of planning or foresight :-)

> To work this stuff out you have to work with real data - mock-ups on meta
> are little help here

I disagree. Many templates we successfully use on the 'pedia were worked
out that way. I have nothing against a little chaos, but Wiktionary had
far too much of it for my taste. The chaos and ugliness on Wiktionary, the
lack of any real leadership was what discouraged me from working on that
project.

Wikiquote:
> Giving the source of the quotations and giving commentary about them  is
> wiki-like.

Maybe. Then again, such commentary will likely end up being very POV,
whereas Wiktionary and Wikipedia try to follow NPOV, and Textbook-Wiki
tries to follow DPOV.

>> Wiki-Quote was only very briefly discussed.

> I don't remember the discussion at all...

This was more or less done on Fonzy's private request to Brion.

>> 2) we formalize a process for starting such
>> projects, e.g. a planning period of at least 3
>> months on Meta with exact specifications as
>> to what is to be placed there.

> I wouldn't put such a time period on it since many ideas never are discussed
> much.

Can you name a single idea that would not benefit from prior discussion? I
don't see this as a substantial hurdle for new ideas, as any proposal that
has gone through the discussion stage *would* eventually be voted upon, so
the good ideas would end up being implemented.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Erik Z.-
> I have written a PERL script that parses the SQL dumps (cur & old) and
> generates a html file, containing for each month since the project
> started:

Nice work, and all without using an actual database. Impressive. I have
split up the English OLD tarball into 50 megs file and put it up on

http://pliny.wikipedia.org/tarballs/tmp/

together with the md5sums. Please let me know when you have downloaded it
so I can remove the files.

However, I find it a bit strange that you get these transmission errors.
Normally TCP/IP should take care of that, no? Have you experienced this
before?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] necrology wiki (Re: No new wikis)

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> writes:

> Call me Cassandra but I predicted that. I suggested several times that
> we should have a general tribute wiki and that we shouldn't limit such
> a project to a single event. I still think that that would be a viable
> project.

Like necrologies of the monks in the Middle Ages?  That's an interesting
idea.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>>Which settings are broken?
>>I am working on a design for a new default skin, so any criticisms of
>>the current default would be useful to me :)
>>
>>
>
>Most broken things:
>
>* horribly ugly default skin
>
Specifics please? I think it's horribly ugly too, but I need to know
*how* you think it is so I can do something about it.

>* very small default rc size
>
The list of pages? Looks normal to me

>* underlined links
>
That *IS* normal

>* new article counter is completely broken - it counts all the stubs
>
Not a skin thing


subject: [Wikipedia-l] logos-a-gogo

body:
The hebrew Wikipedia is holding a logo competition:

http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%95_%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA

I really think that it is best if all 'pedias share a common logo and a
common "look".
It is bad enough that the French wikipedia has a different logo.
Do we have a hebrew ambassador who could tell them to hold off -- or
suggest their logos as project-wide proposals?


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikis and uniformity

body:
I like the idea of a shared logo. *However*, I don't see how we
can expect the Hebrew wikipedia to adopt a logo that consists
of English text, any more than the English wiki would adopt a
logo in Hebrew.

And I like the current English logo _for an English encyclopedia_,
which is the project I've been putting my energy into.

But I dreamed about editing Wikipedia last night, so maybe it's
time I take a break.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Proposal for new default skin

body:
I am working on a new default skin.

Here is the current rough version:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/0/00/Paddington-2.html

comment on it here:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddington_skin

I won't have time to do much work on this for another few weeks -- but
if people put comments in now it would be a great help.
Please could ambassadors mention this on their wikipedias, so we can get
feedback from all the different languages.

-- tarquin


subject: [Textbook-l] No new wikis

body:
Daniel-
> Erik wrote:
>> The fundamentals of the [textbook] project (what
>> kind of material is to be placed there; do we need
>> a textbook project or should it be part of a larger
>> project) were not discussed much,

> What kind of material? I don't understand that part of your statement. A
> textbook is a way to organize non-fictional information in a way that can be
> used to lead a student through that information. Given the vast number of
> courses we could make textbooks for I fail to see how that is too specific.

As I already said, there's a lot more non-fictional material that does not
meet the definition of "textbook", but the creation process of which
nevertheless shows sufficient parallels with the authoring of textbooks to
warrant inclusion in a common project.

>> the specifics (how to write textbooks NPOV etc.)
>> were discussed in great detail. I don't remember
>> a timetable or a deadline for suggestions ever
>> being brought up.

> ? Was there for Wikipedia? This type of micromanagement can kill volunteer
> projects.

A timetable is micromanagement? Boy, you should read more Dilbert :-). A
timetable is essential for allowing all potentially interested parties to
voice concerns and suggestions before something goes live and it becomes
difficult to revert certain decisions that have already been made.

>> But what about HOWTOs and manuals of all
>> kinds?

> Why not? That seems similar enough for me. I think you are reading too much
> into the temporary name of the project.
...
> Symantics. Wikipedia is far more than just an encyclopedia too

"Encyclopedia" is a vague enough term to fit almost anything into it that
we want; "textbook", on the other hand, refers to a quite specific type of
work. I think this should be changed. Semantics are important -- the
semantics we define now will be the foundations for policies and
conventions that develop later.

> ? Why the Wikipedia.org sub-domains? I already own wikibook.org/.com

That seems like a reasonable project name to me. But please, no further
names that are bastardizations of the word "wiki" like "Wiktion". These
really don't work well in other languages.

> If the needs of a particular project require separation then let's provide
> it. Having a project that is so broad that is has no focus is also a realy
> bad thing (Everything2 plays that role already).

Obviously. Combining non-fiction and fiction on the same site would be a
bad idea, for example.

Discussing things on Meta:
> Partly true - the WikiProjects always use at least one real article as a
> test case but then many modifications are made as that template is applied
> to other articles - the template evolves. But a WikiProject is a far cry
> from a new Wikimedia project (which has a vastly larger focus).

Sure, but I fail to see how the discussion of a substantially larger
project would somehow "overtax" Meta. The number of changes on Meta is
only a fraction of those on the English wiki, and yet, the English wiki
still scales. What's the problem with planning these things in an
organized way?

> Different strokes for different folks. Some people like chaos and newness -
> let them work out the rough spots and you can join later when the project
> has more or less stabilized.

And stabilized to what? A chaotic process does not always lead to good
results. It is better to at least define the ground rules before starting
the project.

> That wasn't my point - in fact I agreed that some discussion is a good
> thing. But I am a bit skeptical that we need to have so much of the ground
> work settled before actually working on the project. Too much planning for a
> project is like the birth of Athena in which she sprung forth from the head
> of Zeus fully-grown, educated and in full battle armor - what a headache.

Just the basics:
1) Name of the project
2) Types of content that are to be covered
3) Key policies
4) Timetable for setting things up
5) Potential changes that need to be made to the software
6) Templates
7) Internationalization
8) Participants

Formalize these things, then have a vote on whether the project should in
fact be started. Is that too much to ask?

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Textbook-l] No new wikis

body:
Erik wrote:
>....
>Just the basics:
>1) Name of the project
>2) Types of content that are to be covered
>3) Key policies
>4) Timetable for setting things up
>5) Potential changes that need to be made to the
>software
>6) Templates
>7) Internationalization
>8) Participants

That seems reasonable - so long as 2, 3 and 6 aren't too specific or time
consuming.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] google ranking of organic chemistry textbook page

body:
Check it out: a search on Google for "open content organic
chemistry textbook" brings up as its top result a page that
I created 3 days ago on the textbook WP site:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=open+content+organic+chemistry+textbook

I think it helps that I included key words in the page like
organic chemistry, open content, and textbook.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logos-a-gogo

body:
tarquin wrote:

> I really think that it is best if all 'pedias share a common logo and a
> common "look".
> It is bad enough that the French wikipedia has a different logo.
> Do we have a hebrew ambassador who could tell them to hold off -- or
> suggest their logos as project-wide proposals?

Can we agree that they also have to stop writing from right to left? It's
very confusing and I had the urgend pressure to get a mirror ;)

PS: Of course I can't speak or read what they write, I only took a look at
their pictures :)
--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Replacing the standard wikipedia logo on the Hebrew wikipedia

body:
i found a browser bug......

Ok, on IE i see nothing, while in moz I can see them.

ON IE all I see is a couple of words, and thats it.. im gonna get some
screen shots ans upload them. more later

Lightning

> Lightning wrote:
>
> >> Logo contest (just look at the original proposals):
> >>
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%95_%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA
> >
> > yeah see.. ican't see them and i cant understand anything... i have
hebrew
> > and bi-di text installed, but that doesnt mean i understand it. So i see
a
> > bunchy of chracters and stuff that resembles something i recognize,
except
> > in mirror image. wait wait wait, back to my point.. where's the logos ?
I
> > just want to see pretty pictures.
>
> There are five logo proposals on that page. You'll just have to ignore
> all the text you can't read ;-)
>
> Timwi
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Here is the screenshots. someone that cares about browser compatibility and
all that shebang do something about it if you care. I don't read bi-di
hebrew or particularily care about people using IE (the only reason i
happened to stumble upon this is because OE autmatically opens links in IE )
or  care to fight with html.. so good luck!!

Dont complain about my IE not being up to date either, all the bi-di and
hebrew shebang is installed, just look at how the scroll bar is on the
_left_ side and all the other stuff is like that too, and its characters,
not little boxes....

hope you people don't mind the attachments, i compressed them quite a bit,
so don't cry, its only like 30k.

Lightning

----- Original Message -----
From: "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 10:38 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Replacing the standard wikipedia logo on the
Hebrew wikipedia

> Lightning wrote:
>
> >> Logo contest (just look at the original proposals):
> >>
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%95_%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA
> >
> > yeah see.. ican't see them and i cant understand anything... i have
hebrew
> > and bi-di text installed, but that doesnt mean i understand it. So i see
a
> > bunchy of chracters and stuff that resembles something i recognize,
except
> > in mirror image. wait wait wait, back to my point.. where's the logos ?
I
> > just want to see pretty pictures.
>
> There are five logo proposals on that page. You'll just have to ignore
> all the text you can't read ;-)
>
> Timwi
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
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from_name: Rotem Dan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikis and uniformity

body:
Anthere wrote:
 > Do not resign :-) Just take it easy and slowly.
<snip>
 > But, there is no hurry, having all your issues solved
 > in a month is *not* gonna happen. We are here for a
 > long time anyway :-)

I'm an adherent of uniqueness, diversity and individuality, but the
responses here seem to show that there is a status quo on "how a wiki
should look and feel" that is maintained and all wikis are forced to
conform to, for some reason (with the exception of the Esperanto wiki,
and the french logo). I find that repressive and creatively discouraging.

Each wikis is, after all, an independent internet website. I find it
really boring and dull that all the wikis look and feel the same. (I
sometimes confuse between Wikipedia and Wiktionary because they look so
similar).

A basic rule in marketing is to satisfy your audience. Since the
audience of, for example, the Hebrew wiki, is not the audience of, say,
the Polish wiki. I think each audience should have the right to choose
how their website would look and work.

The argument that all wikis should be identical because there is a
minority of bilingual pepole who work on more than two wikis is really
weak. Here's a better argument: I will design the hebrew site so it will
be very intuitive and will take almost no effort to learn how to use it,
yes, it would be different but very easy to use.

Wikimedia's wiki sites have hundereds of thousands of different articles
and encompass many different subjects and languages, why not let them
develop their own unique look and character? There can be a universal
Wikimedia logo that each wiki would be required to show, I have to say I
would be /proud/ to put that logo on the Hebrew wiki.

Hoping I won't get flamed for this,

Rotem


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikis and uniformity

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> I like the idea of a shared logo. *However*, I don't see how we
> can expect the Hebrew wikipedia to adopt a logo that consists
> of English text, any more than the English wiki would adopt a
> logo in Hebrew.

well, yeah.
that is a problem.
We can either have each pedia translated the text, in which cae the
logos are different but the same.
Or we can have a language-neutral logo.

Rotem Dan wrote:
 >Each wikis is, after all, an independent internet website.

But whenever we talk about better links between them, people start
saying "it's ONE encyclopedia in many languages!".
Make up your mind!

The problem is that (YET AGAIN) people are focussing on STYLE OVER CONTENT.
You do NOT make the he: pedia good by designing a flashy new logo & a
new skin. You make it good by putting your nose to the grindstone and
writing ARTICLES. It shouldn't matter what it looks like as long as it's
clear and the content is good.

ONE skin, ONE logo, across all wikipedias, running the SAME SOFTWARE
please.
Let's present a unified front to the world, in many languages, instead
of a hotch-potch patchwork of different colours and styles.

-- tarquin
(and please pass on to the he: guys that their comments are welcome and
indeeed requested on my current work on a new default skin)


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikis and uniformity

body:
On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Rotem Dan wrote:

> I'm an adherent of uniqueness, diversity and individuality, but the
> responses here seem to show that there is a status quo on "how a wiki
> should look and feel" that is maintained and all wikis are forced to
> conform to, for some reason (with the exception of the Esperanto wiki,
> and the french logo). I find that repressive and creatively discouraging.

I think much of the reason Wikis are so similar is that wiki syntax sets a
limit on the design elements you can use - outside the border/skin stuff.

Wiki syntax is essential to the purity of the content. And the purity of the
content is essential to most Wiki sites. Especially to Wikipedia, where we want
the content to be ready to use in print, on PDAs, for blind people, etc.

I'm not saying you weren't aware of it. :) It's just that I think it's so
important, it has to be mentioned every time someone starts talking about
design for Wikipedia.

-- Daniel


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] change to default settings on pl.wikipedia.org

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Tomasz-

> > Warning to certain people: some Polish Wikipedians
> want to change default
> > skin too, and there's nothing non-Polish
> Wikipedians can do to stop it,
> > would consensus on it emerge among Polish
> Wikipedians.
>
> If the project leadership decides that Wikipedias
> are not allowed to
> change their default skin, they are not allowed to
> do that, and any change
> to that effect will be reverted. If, however, the
> project leadership
> approves of giving each wiki the right to change the
> default skin, this is
> indeed a choice you can make.

Please Erik, would you explain what you exactly mean
by "the project leadership" ?

Is it a person ? In that case who ?

Is it a group of persons ? In that case who is in that
group and who is not ?

When Tarquin is talking of the bilingual glue, I don't
think he is talking of those who put international
links between pedias. This is indeed very important,
but could actually be automated by a "dictionnary"
bot. I dare to think the glue has more humanity and
intelligence.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikis and uniformity

body:
Rotem Dan wrote:
>Each wikis is, after all, an independent
>internet website.

No - we are one project at one website. It was a mistake to internationalize
based on subdomains because it incorrectly gives the impression that we are
on different websites. A much better system is to have internationalization
based on folders; http://wikipedia.org/en/ = English version,
http://wikipedia.org/de/ = German version, ect.

>I find it really boring and dull that all the wikis
>look and feel the same.

Because they are all part of the same project silly!

The current logo at wikipedia en has caused a great deal of problems, though,
because it has quotations in English.

I think we should have all discussion on new logo ideas on meta.

I personally like this idea:
http://he.wikipedia.org/upload/f/fd/WikiPedia_Hebrew_Logo_copy.png

Of course all the words will have to be taken out - those should never be part
of the image itself when that image is intended for use by many different
languages. HTML text translations of "Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia"
should be placed in a prominent place at the top of each page.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikis and uniformity

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Rotem Dan wrote:
> >Each wikis is, after all, an independent
> >internet website.
>
> No - we are one project at one website. It was a
> mistake to internationalize
> based on subdomains because it incorrectly gives the
> impression that we are
> on different websites. A much better system is to
> have internationalization
> based on folders; http://wikipedia.org/en/ = English
> version,
> http://wikipedia.org/de/ = German version, ect.

Could the textbook site be made international then
please ?

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body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Anthere-
> > Please Erik, would you explain what you exactly
> mean
> > by "the project leadership" ?
>
> Currently the project leader is Jimbo Wales, in his
> absence represented by
> Magnus Manske. In the future there will possibly a
> Wikimedia board that
> can make decisions. For the remaining power
> structure, see
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_structure
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

So, to your opinion, Jimbo is the only one (currently,
since there is no board yet) to have the power to say
whether yes or no, an international wikipedia can have
a logo not written in english, or have a different
default skin (picked up in the list of all skins
available for all wikipedias of course) ?

I am sure Jimbo would not try to "force" the current
english logo over the non-english wikipedias, even if
he is the "leader project".

Curiously, your arguments yesterday to say no to Rotem
propositions were essentially technical. I agree with
most of those arguments. We already have too much to
do from a technical point of view to lose time with
"development conflict".

I also naturally agree over the arguments having to do
with NPOV, free encyclopedia, consensus, etc...

I am more dubious of the arguments given for not
allowing non similar default skin for example. I
maintain that very likely, a reader will limit himself
"most of the time" to one language only. Hopefully,
very soon :-), the encyclopedia will be big and
complete enough to allow this. Hence, most readers
will stay on the same language, and won't be
disturbed.
If they switch, they will perhaps not be "new" to
wikipedia concept, hence be able to recognise the
place.

As for editors, a default skin is no pb. If they want
to edit several wikipedia, they just need to go to the
prefs and set the same one.

as long as *all* skins are available to *all*
wikipedias, I see not why we would make one wikipedia
unhappy with refusing them something that appears to
be no big deal.

Why would not we have a very simple skin as Rotem
seems to suggest ?

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikis and uniformity

body:
Anthere wrote:
>Could the textbook site be made international
>then please ?

Can we figure out how to do the English one first? We are still in very basic
development and /are not/ in a position to set-up franchises yet. I don't
have the ability to do as you ask anyway and the developers are way
overloaded with simply keeping everything from crashing down as it is.
Otherwise visit textbook-l and help us get organized so that we can start to
think about how to internationalize.

--mav


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikis and uniformity

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> >Could the textbook site be made international
> >then please ?
>
> Can we figure out how to do the English one first?
> We are still in very basic
> development and /are not/ in a position to set-up
> franchises yet. I don't
> have the ability to do as you ask anyway and the
> developers are way
> overloaded with simply keeping everything from
> crashing down as it is.
> Otherwise visit textbook-l and help us get organized
> so that we can start to
> think about how to internationalize.
>
> --mav

Erik answers are fine by me.

Your is not. I am on textbook-l list. I read it from
the very second mail to it. In short you explain that
because it is in its very beginning development and
because we are not able yet to set up franchises, it
would not make sense to include non-english books yet.
Allow me to disagree with that opinion. I saw clearly
from your answers to my first mails on the topic, that
the market of textbook is in *no* way the same in
France and in the USA, and I think the direction you
decided to apply do not fit our needs. This might not
be very important, as long as we respect some basic
rules as underlined by Jimbo. However, if we start
going toward "uniformity", setting all new projects
based upon english choices, and ask other projects to
fit in the resulting frame later on is not likely to
be very appealing :-)

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body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
> >As for editors, a default skin is no pb. If they
> want
> >to edit several wikipedia, they just need to go to
> the
> >prefs and set the same one.
> >
> >as long as *all* skins are available to *all*
> >wikipedias, I see not why we would make one
> wikipedia
> >unhappy with refusing them something that appears
> to
> >be no big deal.
> >
> >Why would not we have a very simple skin as Rotem
> >seems to suggest ?
> >
> >
> Because all English-speaking mathematicians agree
> that we want maths
> articles to appear in the Cologne Blue skin.
> Mathematicians prefer it!
>
> The other articles in the english wikipedia can stay
> as they are. we
> don't care.

un r?ve fou Tarquin !

Puisque des cat?gories vont ?tre mises en
place...imagine...quelque soit la skin choisie par
d?faut, d?s qu'on arrive sur un article dans la
cat?gorie math?matique, hop, cologne blue (la plus
belle de toutes fa?ons)

pourrais-je avoir une Dublin verte ?

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body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
> >Puisque des cat?gories vont ?tre mises en
> >place...imagine...quelque soit la skin choisie par
> >d?faut, d?s qu'on arrive sur un article dans la
> >cat?gorie math?matique, hop, cologne blue (la plus
> >belle de toutes fa?ons)
> >
> c'etait de la rhetorique.
> quelle horreur!

tu me rassures :-))))

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from_name: Timwi

body:
Rotem,

I think you are working from a few assumptions, some of which may not
apply, and I would like to take some time to help you understand this.

Firstly, you seem to have a certain perception of possession. You seem
to think that if you are the one to create a Hebrew Wikipedia, you will
be the one to have full command over it. This is probably similar to how
some athors consider articles they write as "theirs" and get annoyed
when other people edit them; however, one of the fundamental basics of
Wikipedia is that we are a collaborative group, and neither an article,
nor a whole Wikipedia, is under the control of anyone.

Secondly, you seem to regard the Hebrew Wikipedia, or the idividiual
Wikipedias in general, as more separate than they actually are (or
should be). Although technically they are separate installations of the
Wikipedia software and use separate databases, they should ideally be,
or at least look like, parts of a whole. All the Wikipedias collectively
form the entire complete Wikipedia project. If you'd change the licence
of the Hebrew texts, it wouldn't be Wikipedia anyway. The different
language Wikipedias are interwoven in many ways not only by the
Inter-Wiki links, but also by ideologies like NPOV and the GFDL, as well
as a common PHP codebase that will remain the same for all of them.

Now the layout. You do know that we have three distinct layouts already,
right? We have "Standard", "Nostalgia" and "Cologne Blue". If you are
absolutely convinced that a significant majority of Hebrew readers will
dislike all three of them (which, frankly, I highly doubt, because I
don't see how the layouts are so overly dependent on a cultural
background or writing direction), then there is always the possibility
of creating a new layout. Although this new layout will, if the majority
agrees, be default on the Hebrew Wikipedia, it will automagically be
available to all Wikipedia users in their preferences.

I hope this clears up a few matters,
Timwi


body:
Lightning wrote:

>> Logo contest (just look at the original proposals):
>> http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%95_%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA
>
> yeah see.. ican't see them and i cant understand anything... i have hebrew
> and bi-di text installed, but that doesnt mean i understand it. So i see a
> bunchy of chracters and stuff that resembles something i recognize, except
> in mirror image. wait wait wait, back to my point.. where's the logos ? I
> just want to see pretty pictures.

There are five logo proposals on that page. You'll just have to ignore
all the text you can't read ;-)

Timwi