subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> The difference here Tim is that while Klingon is 1. a conlang with a
> fairly small number of speakers intended as the language of an
> imaginary alien race from a scifiseries 2. afaik completely without
> native speakers altogether, save maybe a handful, while Gothic is a
> natural language with perhaps 4000~5000 speakers [...]

I'm aware of their differences, but neither can be justified in terms of
the reasons I work on this project. I'm just not interested in
supporting linguistic research. I'm happy to leave it to other people as
long as they don't waste my time.

 > Oh also I would like to add that I'd be very happy to help anybody
 > wanting help setting up a new Wikipedia, beyond the most technical
 > aspect I can handle it very well, and I think I have a fair grasp of
 > that too. Of course dev tasks I couldn't do, but beyond that...

We can talk about that offlist. Suffice to say that there are certain
dev tasks you *would* have to do.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] I just had a *REALLY BAD IDEA*

body:
It's really, really bad. Everyone's going to hate it.

1) Take the fact that people create vanity pages and prank pages about
their friends. Often when they come up in VfD they will even say "Sure,
remove it, I just wanted my friend to see it."

2) Add a dash of the International Star Registry and a soup?on of
Google sponsored links, and you have my really bad idea.

*** Put your friend in the encyclopedia for a week! For just $X.00! ***

Make your PayPal or credit card donation here, then email to this
address (that of a responsible sysop), giving your friend's name and
whatever you want the article to say, as long as it's decent and not
insulting. Feel free to submit as Wikimarkup if you happen to know it.
If your is unacceptable for any reason, your money will be promptly but
grumpily refunded. Otherwise, within three business days, your friend
will have a handsome article about them in Wikipedia, complete with a
garish and un-missable banner that explains that this is a Paid
Article, that the information in it is not to be trusted, and that it
will be removed by thus-and-such-a-date.

But wait, there's more! Act today, and you can also attach a .jpg image
of up to 240x320 pixels in size! NOW how much would you pay?

But email today! Sysops are standing by!

Yes, I know. I'm ashamed of myself for even thinking about it.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> It's important for all of us to all remember that we are all
>
>volunteers, and "I don't feel like it" is always a valid reason for
>not doing anything at all.
>
I know that that has a lot to do with what I do or don't do.  Our
richness in things to do goes beyond imagination.  For as much as I may
do I still leave many of my own projects incomplete.  I can't say that
I'm proud of that personal shortcoming, but it is heartening when
someone takes up an idea of mine and develops it far beyond what I ever
could have done.  Being aware of that makes me a little more tolerant of
the failings of others, but not less frustrated.

>I share Tim's concerns about small wikis, and some more besides.  For
>example, we don't have a big problem with wiki spam on large busy
>wikis, but it is a problem that is only going to grow worse, and small
>wikis without active communities will be ripe targets.
>
The one big advantage they still have on the smaller wikis is that the
"Recent changes" remains at a manageable size.  That makes it easier for
the regulars to spot something out of the ordinary like spam or vandalism.

>There was a time when we tended to say yes (accidentally or otherwise)
>to just about every proposed language.  But the simple fact of the
>matter is that we've already done all the easy cases of general
>interest, and the languages that we don't have are all going to need
>some scrutiny.
>
The audience should be one factor in any decision.  Without an audience
what's the point?  There are still some significant languages without a
wiki, and with a population that could be helped. (Singhalese, Hausa,
Navajo, Quechua are examples from four different continents.)  These
might even be encouraged if there were an inkling of desire to participate.

>I express no opinion on Gothic; I simply don't know enough to know.
>But I do make these observations... (1) while there appear to be
>somewhere between several hundred and several thousand speakers, to my
>knowledge *none* of those speakers use Gothic as their primary
>language or would have difficulty finding encyclopedia information in
>a language that they do understand (2) therefore, this is more of a
>linguistic research matter, so I wonder if perhaps what is really
>wanted is a wikibook type of place where speakers can share texts in
>the language, write texts in the language, write textbooks to help
>others learn the language, etc.
>
The community that speaks a dead or artificial language needs to exist
beyond the walls of academia or Hollywood.  There is plenty in the
various existing projects to accomodate these languages: Grammar guides
in Wikibooks, ancient texts in Wikisource, vocabulary entries in
Wiktionary.  It's difficult to justify a whole encyclopedia for a dead
or constructed language that has done none of these.  In the early days
such a language proposal could be viewed more favorably because none of
these other projects existed.

Scaling the overall project involves balancing two extremes.  If a
project is too big it bureaucratizes itself.  Rules and rule-making
become ends in themselves for some parts of the community.  The average
contributor can't keep up with it in any kind of informed way.  There
are frequent votes to decide questions that only affect part of the
community, and an old-timer who has gone off to deal with topics on
another part of the pedia comes back to his old topic to find that it
has been flooded with rules that make no sense to him.  It becomes very
difficult to re-open the debate in the face of a rule-bound opposition.
New projects can offer new ways of looking at a situation; this is why I
was moderately supportive of the new Wikispecies project.  The way
things are done on a new project where contributors can take the risks
necessary for original development, with a reasonable chance of
defending those risks is what will keep the wiki complex alive and in a
state of dynamic growth.  Proposals that impose a certain regimentation
on an entire family of projects need to be resisted; such would be the
case with any insistance that all Wiktionaries follow the same format
for articles.

The other extreme that scaling must face is the premature development of
small projects, or ones with extremely limited growth potential.  The
idea of a separate project to deal with the chemical elements had
limited growth potential because on a practical level the number of
elements is finite.  In theory that list could be expanded infinitely,
but such a prospect within our lifetimes is not at all realistic.  There
also appear to be some efforts to create some communities based on an
absence of effort by a small number of individuals to work together with
others.  The recent debate over separate traditional and simplified
chinese wikipedias is a good example of this.  Although the zh-tw
Wikipedia was set up in error, the debate that followed did show us how
incredibly difficult it can be to get the genie back in the bottle.
Similar proposals have been made for separate German and Hebrew language
Wikisources.  I can understand where in the absence of  technical
expertise the request for a separate project for an RTL  language would
be sensible.  The arguments for German, however, seem to focus on the
concept of being able to work better in an environment in their own
language.  True as that may be it reflects an unwillingness to seek
solutions to how to work together in a multilingual environment.  The
underlying texts in whatever language are stable, and the difficulties
relate to meta-matters about how we discuss the treatment of those
texts.  How do we make the texts of one language more available to the
readers of another?  To me that is one of the fundamental questions that
Wikisource should seek to address.   Wikisource currently has a little
less than 4,000 articles of which maybe 100 are German language texts.
Considering that number is affected by having Bible and Book of Mormon
entries on a one chapter = one article basis reduces the 4,000
significantly for independant articles.

Synchrinized side-by-side edit boxes still remain just a dream.

Ec


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Hi,

Le Sunday 19 September 2004 07:19, Mark Williamson a ?crit :
>
> If you were looking for "dead languages" and conlangs, that would
> exclude Breton, Faroese, Latvian, Kashubian, and Nynorsk (Nynorsk is
> basically an official codification of rural SW Norwegian speech forms,
> it can hardly be considered a conlang).

Breton is not a dead language.
There are schools where children are teached mathematics and history in
Breton.
cf. look Diwan at Google
i.e. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/diwan.bro.roazhon/

> best,
> node

Regards,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes ZhConversion.php,
	1.1, 1.2

body:
On Sep 19, 2004, at 1:02 PM, zhengzhu wrote:
> Indeed I have a bunch of scripts that generate that file. I will try
> to clean them up and put it in cvs. Where should I put them?

Maybe under maintenance/ somewhere? Or in a subdirectory in includes...
We can move them later if we need to, so no pressure. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Attempts to ban me by Raul654, Zero and Simonides

body:
I just found out today that there was a formal arbitration
case against me, yet I had no idea such a case was going
on. It is grossly improper to do this without me being part
of it.

The arbitrator of this case against me, Raul654, refuses to
read any of the Talk sections of the articles in question,
and is accepting without question charges against me made
by Zero, Simonides and a handful of others.

Raul654 was unaware that Simonides was himself nearly
banned for his non-stop damage of several Wikipedia
articles. Simonides launched into abusive polemics against
nearly everyone on the [[Philosophy]] and [[Anti-Semitism]]
articles. (Many people are upset with the way that
Simonides's kept hurling ad homenim attacks at so many
people, so many times.) Since I was one of the many people
who did not allow him to unilaterally rewrite all of our
articles to match his own peculiar POV, he tried to ban me.

When I merely asked the arbitator, Raul654, to check on
this, he refused to do so, and shockingly accused me of
making an ad homenim attack. That is just too much. It
seemed a clear indication that the facts do not matter to
him, the history of the people in question do not matter,
and that he is just going to try and get me banned
regardless. That alone is reason to recuse him from his
role.

The case with Zero is both puzzling and disappointing. We
rarely have any conflict. Zero does have a great deal of
anger, and I am sure that he is a sockpuppet for another
user. So what did I do? Fight?  No. Argue?  No.  I instead
did the following:

* I requested that in the one area we have a significant
difference, we mediate (i.e. the [[Israel Shahak]]
article.) For whatever reason, nothing occured.  For this I
should be banned?

* I've thanked Zero a number of times for good suggestions
he has made.

* As for many other articles that we could have had
disagreements on (relating to the Arab-Israeli wars), I
unilaterally removed nearly all of those articles from my
Watchlist!   I let him have his way on over a dozen
articles, no matter how I may disagree. I did this of my
own accord; if this is not a sign of compromise and good
faith, then nothing is.

What was Raul654's response to learning this?  He accused
me of making ad homenim attacks!  Such a response is
indicative of imparital hostility to me.  Raul654 makes it
clear, further, that Jimbo is supporting these efforts to
ban me, which is news to me!  (Simonides is claiming that
Jimbo is on his side, which Raul654 unquestioningly
accepts.)

At this point, I have to formally make a request for
arbitration against Raul654, Zero and Simonides. Given the
way that I am being harassed and threatened, I don't see
much option. But isn't this a huge waste of time? For the
good of Wikipedia, and to save everybody's time so we can
actually work on articles, please stop this nonsense.  It
is hard to move forward when two people get an arbitator to
bring progress to a halt based on their personal animosity.

In distress at this time-wasting nonsense,

Robert (RK

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Robert wrote:

>I just found out today that there was a formal arbitration
>case against me, yet I had no idea such a case was going
>on. It is grossly improper to do this without me being part
>of it.
>
>
You got a note on your talk page two weeks ago. Does the big orange
box with "You have new messages" carry no meaning for you?

Stan


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] email notification patch - publication postponed one
	week to 26.09.2004

body:
Dear wikitechnicians and developers,

the publication of the patch - which was announced for today - needs to
be postponed for some days, because we need to check it into the 1.4 CVS.

However, for those of you being curious about the features:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EmailNotification (and subpages) has the
documentation.

Tom and Markus


from_name: zhengzhu

body:
Indeed I have a bunch of scripts that generate that file. I will try
to clean them up and put it in cvs. Where should I put them?

On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 21:00:54 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at ikso.net> wrote:
> On Sep 18, 2004, at 6:30 PM, zhengzhu wrote:
> > !    The character-to-character mappings are mainly extracted from the
> > !    Unihan database from the 4.0.1 version of the Unicode standard,
> [snip]
> > !    The phrases are extracted from various phrase tables in the SCIM
> > !    package (http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/scim), and the
> > mappings
> > !    of the phrases are computed using the character-to-character
> > !    mappings.
>
> Would it be possible to provide an automated script for deriving this
> file from the source material? If there's a need to change it in the
> future, it would be very helpful to have that ready to go.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
>

--
zhengzhu


list: foundation-l

from_name: epzachte at chello.nl

subject: [Foundation-l] New fundraising page version

body:
Mav, I miss the edit box where people can specify any amount for a periodic contribution,
as was agreed in the wikimeet last Friday.

Also I wonder what the ''Tier x" prefix before each amount in the drop down box means.
To me it suggests different Tiers bring different payback to the donator,
or establish any other hierarchy which is it probably not what you meant.

Erik Zachte


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Delay in press release

body:
Hi Michael,

Thanks again for coordinating this.  :)
So people should start mailing the press tonight at 2400 UTC?  There is
a global press-release-log at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Press_release_logbook ;
please note which groups you plan to contact there before you contact them, and
then verify you've done so (with a timestamp) once you've send the letter.

--Sj

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 21:09:08 -0700, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> In connection with the upcoming press release celebrating one million
> Wikipedia articles, we are working to translate not only the press
> release itself, but also make the Wikimedia Foundation website available
> in languages other than English. This is needed for us to make the best
> use of the publicity and also to help our fundraising efforts. However,
> this project will carry us through the weekend.
>
> Therefore, at the request of the Board of Trustees, I am delaying the
> distribution of the press release until Monday, September 20. That will
> be the day for the official announcement, although we may actually reach
> the million-article milestone earlier. This will allow us sufficient
> time to get things ready in as many languages as possible. Also, it may
> be helpful to have the press release come at the beginning of the weekly
> news cycle, as this may allow for better exposure over the course of the
> week.
>
> Please pass this on to your respective projects and anyone who is
> planning to help with this effort. In the meantime, everyone who will
> help distribute the press release could make good use of the time to
> identify the right contact people at the media organizations you plan to
> send the press release to.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Delay in press release


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 1000 articles in lb: (was:Starting a new wiki)

body:
Caroline,

congrats on your first 1000 articles in lb:!

--node

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 01:06:07 +0200, Ewen Caroline <caroline at www.web.lu> wrote:
> Discriminatory indeed. I strongly disagree.
>
> If we (luxembourgish wiki, around 10 regulars so far, working on it :) had
> to go that way to get our own wiki, I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten it,
> since noone would have found us etc. Now at least we have a chance to create
> something original in our language (for those who aren't that familiar with
> lux, we're only about 250.000 native speakers :)).
>
> Caroline aka Bris?is.
>
> On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 13:34:59 -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote
>
>
> > Mark Williamson said:
> >
> >  >> Anyways: I think the best strategy is to tell people who want to
> > have a >> Wikipedia in their language to go start a wiki somewhere
> > else. If they can >> show that they have a robust community that can
> > support a Wikipedia, then >> they should get an xx.wikipedia.org
> > domain (as well as other >> xx.wikisomething.org stuff). > > I find
> > that horribly discriminatory.
> >
> > I find it appropriately discriminatory. As a project, the Wikimedia
> > Foundation has to apply some judgement about where to devote its
> > physical resources and the time and effort of its volunteers. If we
> > waste the time and energy of those volunteers for unimportant tasks,
> > they won't come back.
> >
> > You very well may disagree about what choices the Foundation makes.
> > I'm just saying that it's a really big Internet, and that if you
> > want to create a wiki that no one else wants, you can do that. You
> > don't have to have the Wikimedia Foundation's machines and
> > volunteers to do it.
> >
> > ~ESP
>
>
> --
> Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
At the risk of feeding the trolls.

1. Raul did not say you made an ad hominem attack. He said that your
defense was ad hominem - that is, you were defending yourself by
criticizing your accusers, instead of by engaging the evidence in any
way.

2. Raul did not refuse to look at evidence. He asked you to present him
with evidence. "Read this talk page" is not evidence. Evidence would be
a link to a specific problem edit.

3. I'm not sure why you just found out today when Raul left a message
on your talk page on the 6th, especially since it's not as though you
weren't around between now and then.

That said, if this case has been going since August 1st, why didn't
anyone leave a note on RK's talk page until  a month into the case?

-Snowspinner

On Sep 19, 2004, at 4:44 PM, Robert wrote:

> I just found out today that there was a formal arbitration
> case against me, yet I had no idea such a case was going
> on. It is grossly improper to do this without me being part
> of it.
>
> The arbitrator of this case against me, Raul654, refuses to
> read any of the Talk sections of the articles in question,
> and is accepting without question charges against me made
> by Zero, Simonides and a handful of others.
>
> Raul654 was unaware that Simonides was himself nearly
> banned for his non-stop damage of several Wikipedia
> articles. Simonides launched into abusive polemics against
> nearly everyone on the [[Philosophy]] and [[Anti-Semitism]]
> articles. (Many people are upset with the way that
> Simonides's kept hurling ad homenim attacks at so many
> people, so many times.) Since I was one of the many people
> who did not allow him to unilaterally rewrite all of our
> articles to match his own peculiar POV, he tried to ban me.
>
> When I merely asked the arbitator, Raul654, to check on
> this, he refused to do so, and shockingly accused me of
> making an ad homenim attack. That is just too much. It
> seemed a clear indication that the facts do not matter to
> him, the history of the people in question do not matter,
> and that he is just going to try and get me banned
> regardless. That alone is reason to recuse him from his
> role.
>
> The case with Zero is both puzzling and disappointing. We
> rarely have any conflict. Zero does have a great deal of
> anger, and I am sure that he is a sockpuppet for another
> user. So what did I do? Fight?  No. Argue?  No.  I instead
> did the following:
>
> * I requested that in the one area we have a significant
> difference, we mediate (i.e. the [[Israel Shahak]]
> article.) For whatever reason, nothing occured.  For this I
> should be banned?
>
> * I've thanked Zero a number of times for good suggestions
> he has made.
>
> * As for many other articles that we could have had
> disagreements on (relating to the Arab-Israeli wars), I
> unilaterally removed nearly all of those articles from my
> Watchlist!   I let him have his way on over a dozen
> articles, no matter how I may disagree. I did this of my
> own accord; if this is not a sign of compromise and good
> faith, then nothing is.
>
> What was Raul654's response to learning this?  He accused
> me of making ad homenim attacks!  Such a response is
> indicative of imparital hostility to me.  Raul654 makes it
> clear, further, that Jimbo is supporting these efforts to
> ban me, which is news to me!  (Simonides is claiming that
> Jimbo is on his side, which Raul654 unquestioningly
> accepts.)
>
> At this point, I have to formally make a request for
> arbitration against Raul654, Zero and Simonides. Given the
> way that I am being harassed and threatened, I don't see
> much option. But isn't this a huge waste of time? For the
> good of Wikipedia, and to save everybody's time so we can
> actually work on articles, please stop this nonsense.  It
> is hard to move forward when two people get an arbitator to
> bring progress to a halt based on their personal animosity.
>
>
> In distress at this time-wasting nonsense,
>
> Robert (RK
>
>
>
> _______________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
> http://vote.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Proposal for multilingual coordination on
	foundation website

body:
Nicolas Weeger a ?crit:
> <snip>
>
>> *the title being in original language is problematic. If the original
>> language is in japanese, that means all I will see from this page
>> title is ?????/fr.
>> I fear it is not very informative to me to help me guess what is on
>> the page.
>
>
> Well, if you don't understand japanese, you'll need to wait for en: or
> fr: or <insert languages you speak here> translation anyway :) So not
> knowing what the title means isn't that harmful, is it?

Well, depends whether you want to avoid missing something :-)

> And actually, we could also do something like: create [[My page/fr:]] as
> a redirect to [[Ma page]]. We'll then know that ''My page'' does exist
> in french, make it easy to find it through the redirect, but still have
> a meaningful title.
> And/or, for ''static'' pages, once translated, we can move'em, and if
> required use bots to fix links (or fix manually)

True. Redirects. We can do that :-)

>> *at least on the wmf site, I can not really say which article is the
>> original one. Languages are alternatively worked on.
>
> <snip>
>
> But at some point you need to decide ONE version is the base one, imo.
> Else, when we'll have 25+ languages, it'll be a real ugly mess to follow
> changes. For instance en: makes a draft, translated in fr: ja: de:, then
> ja: gets an idea, changes something in ja:, other languages need to
> synch, then de: had another idea and changed something else and.... you
> get the point :)
>
> Ryo

I do get it.
But what do you suggest ? That we declare one language to be the default
one in all cases (in this case, only english able people will have the
possibility to change a page, since all the others will be translation),
or that we set up committees to decide for each case which one will be
the official ?
I fear this is unworkable.
My own position is that we will never have perfect translations, there
will be drifts and as long as the spirit is there, that is enough to me.


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

body:
> I do get it.
> But what do you suggest ? That we declare one language to be the default
<snip>

Sorry, wasn't clear :)
Two cases: simple page, complex page

Simple page, one person does the first version in whatever language
s/he wants, that's the "original" language. Of course people can
suggest changes & such. This page is though considered "master" one,
ie people should translate it (if they know the language, of course!)
and not another. Hint: the talk page of "my page" can be used to
discuss changes.

Complex page, with many people writing: split "master" page in some
subpages, each one in its language. Maybe even use templates. When all
bits are ok, make a page including those templates.
Example: [[Complex page]] => [[Template:CP1]], [[Template:CP2]],
[[Template:CP3]]
Translate CP1, CP2 & 3. To make [[Complex page/fr:]] just do
{{CP1/fr:}} {{CP2/fr:}} {{CP3/fr:}} => there you go.
And to make other versions, just subst fr: to language code - you can
then do ONE time the page layout, and include tidbits around.

*wonders if that's clear O.o*

Ryo


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New fundraising page version

body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> --- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>5, 10, 20, 35, 50, 100.
>
>
> Done.
>
> See
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/monthly
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/yearly
>
> I've also created versions for CAD, JPY, EUR, and GBP.
>
> The templates I'm using are now fully translatable (using variables).
>
> Example:
> {{creditcards|1=PayPal accepts the above payment options}}
>
> {{DonationForm/Onetime/JPY|OnetimeDonation=One time donation|OneTimeGiftOf=One
> time gift of:|MoneyName=yen|ShortComment=Short public comment (200
> characters)|MentionName=Do you want your name mentioned in a donor
> list?|Yes=Yes|No=No|IfNo=If you say no or don't answer, the amount and comment
> (if any) will be published as "Anonymous".|Optional=Optional
> field|Submit=Submit form to PayPal|Clear=Clear form}}
>
> Calls upon:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Template:DonationForm/Onetime/JPY
>
> To yield:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/JPY/onetime
>
> (everything between = and | in the example can be changed and thus create a
> language-specific version)
>
> Major changes also made by Erik, Angela and I at:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
>
> Non-English versions now need to be created.
>
> -- mav

I entirely changed the french version which was not working at all any more.
Hopefully works better now.

I have a problem though. I think no language version will be identical
one to another.
It is a pain to just do translations and not be creative as well.
I change the french page in a way that seemed nice to me.
I come back the next day, and the english page is entirely changed and I
should entirely do the french version again ?
How are we gonna update all languages each time the english version is
changed ? This will be a very difficult task. I am at a loss of how we
can handle this properly, in a way not to discourage translators.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 22:19:38 -0700 Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
wrote:

>Similarly, Toki Pona which although at
>the time of its creation was not controversial many Wikipedians appear
>to resent today has only 190 articles and has not been growing really
>at all for quite some time.

I disagree with your statement that Toki Pona "at the time of its creation
was not controversial". I have spoken out my doubts BEFORE it was created,
and major objections came in within _days_ of it being created - see
timeline below. If there was no major objections before its creation, that
was only because those against it:
1. Did not know there were any plans to create Tokipona, or
2. Assumed that objecting was not necessary to stop those plans.

At the time several languages were proposed, and none had been created for
quite a while. I was definitely with the second group.

Andre Engels

Timeline regarding Toki Pona:
31 March: Request by Sonia to start Toki Pona
1 April: Yours humbly says tokipona should get a 3- not a 2-letter code, and
in this message writes: "[...] for me personally it's getting to the level
where I doubt whether having it would be good at all."
4 April: Brion tells that Toki Pona, Ido and Tok Pisin have been created
4 April: Evan Podromou write: "On this subject: isn't the toki pona
Wikipedia just going to have, like, 12 articles?"
5 April: Erik Moeller writes a rather long mail rejecting Toki Pona.
Discussion starts between Erik attacking and Brion defending.
5 April: Erik proposes to remove Toki Pona and move it to the Unilang wiki
5 April: Erik adds another argument: Toki Pona is copyrighted


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Anthere-
> How are we gonna update all languages each time the english version is
> changed ? This will be a very difficult task. I am at a loss of how we
> can handle this properly, in a way not to discourage translators.

I see two strategies:
1) Agree on one language to finish it in first, then freeze (protect) it
and do all the translations. Make this freeze deadline clear from the
start.
2) Make a checklist of facts. Don't worry about the differences in design
as long as the facts are presented accurately.

In this case, I prefer strategy 2).

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 23:54:39 -0700 Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
wrote:
>I find that horribly discriminatory.
>
>And where do we draw the line? 3 speakers? 300? 3000? 30000? 300000? 3
>million? 30 million?

No hard line. The question is: Do we expect this to be a succesful project,
and help Wikipedia's mission to spread information? There's no hard limit
for that, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. If I make a language
tomorrow, should it get a Wikipedia? If I work on it for a year? If I get 2
other people to speak it? 10 other people? 1000? A million? Half the world?

Andre Engels


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] What should I buy?

body:
Jimmy-
> 3.  I have here in the office 12 4U servers (11 mobos, 12 cases) of
> extremely questionable quality.  Details are posted on meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_donation_September_2004

Can these machines be refurbished to turn them into Wikireader terminals?
Do we have any plans to do so? It seems to me that in the mid to long
term, we will want to set up a hardware donation and refurbishing
programme for that purpose, but the logistics of that could be quite
intimidating.

Rather than set up a central, dedicated storage and testing facility, we
could try a decentralized approach and let trusted volunteers store and
refurbish as many machines as they can. We only would provide money for
shipping the machines to their eventual destination. (We'd have a catalog
of destinations and each volunteer would be assigned a destination close
to them to save costs.)

We'd need an easy to install Linux Terminal Software (based on Knoppix?)
at least. And we would need a setup in place where we can easily ship
updates to clients, preferably without affecting other data on the client
machines.

So - what are our plans in this regard? Is there a page on Meta for this
already?

(Copied to foundation-l.)

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] What should I buy?


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikitech-l] What should I buy?

body:
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> We have no current plans.  These machines are simply sitting in my
> office waiting for a plan.
>
> I should add that I'm extremely busy and my own judgment of how I
> ought to most wisely spend my time would suggest that me working very
> much on creating 12 crappy computers to donate to a charity would not
> be effective; I can do a lot more good working on big picture stuff.

Beyond a certain point, old hardware becomes a problem for an organization. I
suggest you just donate them on to charity (or a school perhaps) immediately.

You could probably easily buy the equivalent hardware new for the work you
could do im the time you've already spent posting this on meta and discussing
it here.

Let it go.

--
Daniel Mikkelsen
Copyleft Software AS


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> The reasons you work on the project can't justify helping to build an
>  encyclopedic resource for a fledgling community of native speakers
> who will start growing into such a resource in the next couple of
> years? Just curious, but what exactly are the reasons you work on
> this project, and what requirements must a language meet to be
> justifiable in terms of them?

I already said what my reasons for working on this project are, and I'm
not required to justify them to you. You're welcome to learn how to
write language files, obtain shell access and CVS access, and add all
the languages the community will tolerate. But don't tell me how I
should be spending my time.

I agree with Delirium, who wrote:

: ...I can't seriously see people using the Gothic Wikipedia as a
: source of general encyclopedia-type information.  If you want to know
: some random fact (say, the biography of Charlemagne), why would anyone
: look for it in a Gothic-language encyclopedia?

I think that's an important point.

I think your assertion that parents will teach their children Gothic as
a first language is ridiculous. In fact I sincerely hope they don't.
There's a difference between language preservation and language revival,
and I'm not ashamed about supporting one but not the other. No doubt
linguistics is an interesting field, but there are lots of interesting
fields and I can't get involved in all of them.

There are 16 people with shell access, and any one of them can do what
I'm suggesting. I suggest you go and bug one of them instead of wasting
your time interrogating me about my motives.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Official Wikimedia roadmap?

body:
Without wanting to overburden the Board of Trustees which I am sure is
already working at their personal limits, I'd like to suggest that we
create an official Wikimedia roadmap for the next 3 years.

When working on the fundraising pages, I could not find a good, officially
sanctioned "future activities" page on meta or elsewhere (if I missed
something, please let me know). I think that this, together with a well-
written mission statement, would be quite important to educate people
about what Wikimedia is about. This could address many common criticisms
(Wikipedia is not reliable etc.) and hopefully put to rest the
misconception that Wikimedia and Wikipedia are essentially the same
project.

What I am thinking of is a document roughly with three columns:

Quarter   Projects               Technology            Financial
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Q4/2004   - Launch Wikinews [*]  - MW: Database schema - Quarterly
          - German Wikipedia CD    redesign              fundraising

with each of these items linking to detailed project pages. This could
then be combined with some prose that outlines our vision for future
projects and needs.

I want us to become better aware of the interdependencies between and
financial needs of our projects, otherwise we might run into some serious
trouble when e.g. we start some well-intended offline edition without a
solid peer review process in place.

There's a problem with this, however, in that the board would have to
decide *now* which projects it thinks will be executed in the future, even
if there has not yet been a vote or a full feasibility study on these
projects. In order to address this problem, I added a "[*]" above, which
would then be resolved to

  [*] Tentative. There is consensus among board members that this
      [[m:Category:Proposed projects|proposed project]] is a good idea
      worth pursuing, but no extensive community review has happened yet.

Hence, I would suggest that the roadmap essentially would reflect the
board's collective bias on the various proposed projects.

What are your thoughts on that? We could try to write this together on
Meta, but the Board would at least have to provide a rough "consensus
paper" to base it on (e.g. which projects the board definitely wants to
do, which technology needs it definitely sees etc.). After some community
work, it would then be handed back to the board for editing and the final
stamp of approval.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Test my lex/yacc parser!

body:
On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 10:19:56 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Things I know I haven't done yet:
> - HTML tags (currently everything between <something> and </something>
>    is treated as an 'extension'; I need to limit that to <nowiki>, <pre>,
>    <math>, <hiero>, <music> and <chem> for now)
> - [http://url/ These sort of links]
> - hrs (horizontal rules)
> - the new -{ language variants }- syntax
>
> If there is absolutely anything else missing, please let me know!

Have you worked out how to deal with "MagicWord" i18n yet? I ask
because in the current not-a-parser, there is no definition of what a
magic word looks like, just a class that can be asked "is this a one
of those". Probably with a properly defined grammar, we would have to
limit the style of magic-words, so that just likely tokens could be
checked against the current list of magicwords. [I don't actually know
if any translations make use of this feature, but it would be a shame
to lose it.] I think all default magic words currently fall into one
of:
"#"<word>  (as in "#REDIRECT")
"__"<word>"__" (as in "__NOTOC__" et al)
"<"<word>">" and matching "</"<word>">" (for extensions, and
whitelisted HTML tags)

You may already have thought this through and come to your own
conclusions, but this approach certainly seems more efficient than
having to check *every* token against a run-time list.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
come over to wmf, and give it a try :-)

Nicolas Weeger a ?crit:
>> I do get it.
>> But what do you suggest ? That we declare one language to be the default
>
> <snip>
>
> Sorry, wasn't clear :)
> Two cases: simple page, complex page
>
> Simple page, one person does the first version in whatever language s/he
> wants, that's the "original" language. Of course people can suggest
> changes & such. This page is though considered "master" one, ie people
> should translate it (if they know the language, of course!) and not
> another. Hint: the talk page of "my page" can be used to discuss changes.
>
> Complex page, with many people writing: split "master" page in some
> subpages, each one in its language. Maybe even use templates. When all
> bits are ok, make a page including those templates.
> Example: [[Complex page]] => [[Template:CP1]], [[Template:CP2]],
> [[Template:CP3]]
> Translate CP1, CP2 & 3. To make [[Complex page/fr:]] just do {{CP1/fr:}}
> {{CP2/fr:}} {{CP3/fr:}} => there you go.
> And to make other versions, just subst fr: to language code - you can
> then do ONE time the page layout, and include tidbits around.
>
> *wonders if that's clear O.o*
>
> Ryo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Clear and obvious harssment: This case has never
	happened before

body:
> That said, if this case has been going since August 1st,
> why didn't anyone leave a note on RK's talk page until
> a month into the case?

Because Zero, Simonides and their sockpuppets want me
banned for good.

In a court of law, when someone says, "What is your
defense?", and you say "Here it is", and they respond
"Well, I refuse to listen to what you ask me to hear" that
is a clear sign that the court is rigged.

Apparently, Zero and Simonides have dug up every quote they
could find in the last year to make it look like Jayjg,
Jimbo and the entire Wikipedia community want me banned.
Funny, though, how they never say any such thing
themselves.  Worse, they take entire discussions, and cut
sentence fragments out-of-context.  More disgustingly,
Raul654 admits that he will refuse to read the actual
articles, and admits that the context of the sentence
fragments means nothing to him.  That is not merely wrong,
it is mean-spirited and unjustifiable.

When I look at the "evidence" presented against me, all I
find are sentence fragments, out of context, usually in
which I am asking other people to stop being abusive, and
to stop censoring pages.  Further, many of those are about
old disagreements WHICH HAVE LONG BEEN RESOLVED, and with
people that I now HAVE FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH.  If these
facts mean nothing, then the entire process is obviously a
dishonest farce.

Raul654 again let me know that Jimbo has given him the
authority to ban me, and that he is probably going to do so
unless I spend hour after hour rebutting each comment, one
at a time. As far as I can tell, this entire arbitration
process is a set-up meant to have me banned no matter what
I do.

These three people (Raul654, Simonides and Zero) are
treating me like a troll or vandal, and this is totally
outrageous. In the meantime, real trolls and vandals get
unbanned as long as they pester this list with multiple
e-mails.  Even Jimbo admitted that the process is broken,
and he allowed back a real troll just because he was tired
of arguing.

In the meantime, I might be banned any moment now, for
absolutely no reason at all:

1* I am not involved in any flame wars.

2* I am not involved in any revert wars or edit wars.

3* The supposed problems are in articles in which the
articles HAVE ALREADY BEEN RESOLVED.

4* I repeatedly take week-long (or longer) Wiki-breaks
(like the last 10 days) to let things cool down and allow
other people to have their say without any problem.

5* I have taken many contentious articles OFF of my
Watchlist, and simply let others do what they want, rather
then engage in multiple arguments.

6* I have asked for and successfully used mediation when
necessary.

7* I have been successfully working with a large group of
others on potentially acrimonious articles, without revert
wars, and with great progress being made on many articles.

And in this situation Raul654 is threatening to ban me?
This has NEVER happened to anyone else in this situation
before. There is no reason for a ban, and the current
situation is clear and obvious harassment. The Request for
Arbitration process does not work if the arbitrator is
dishonest, which he must be if he ignores the seven
critical facts listed above.

Robert (RK)

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> >  "Here is what I have assembled on my own without any wiki.  Could I
> >   please have a wiki so that my friends could help me in this
> >   project?  My friends have collected these $500 to help it happen."
> >
> Where did the $500 come from?  By that standard, we shouldn't have the vast
> majority of the current languages.  AFAIK, only the US, UK, France, and
> Germany have donated a total of over $500.  Perhaps we oughtn't to have
> Polish, Greek, Portuguese, Chinese, etc. Wikipedias because obviously they're
> not serious enough to donate $500?

I didn't say that languages or groups with less money should be
refused.  All I said was that groups that can collect $500 (as I am
sure that the Gothic language supporters can) are sure to get their
wiki off the ground, with or without the Wikimedia Foundation.

In a western country, an experienced IT contractor would charge
something like $80 per hour for this kind of job and the estimate we
were given was that six hours of work might be required.  Thus, $500
is sure to cover the cost of paying someone to do the job.
Alternatively, this amount is also enough to pay for hosting a website
outside of Wikimedia for a year or two, depending on traffic volume.
If you can collect $500 from your community, you are sure you can
start a wiki of your own.  You might be able to get away with less.
But the amount $500 is sure to remove the counter-argument that time
or money is insufficient.  It boils down to: Do you want to argue for
ever, or do you want your new wiki off the ground?

I'm sure that Klingon, Latin and Gothic can collect $500, since they
have many supporters in wealthy western economies.

The community that started to build the Polish Wikipedia did start
their own server (Rosetta, remember).  That proved they were able to
do it.  With their smartness, I'm sure they managed with less than
$500.  When they decided to un-fork and rejoin Wikipedia, it wasn't
because they had to, but because they wanted to.  If there was any
disagreement, they were negotiating from a position of strength.

Lars Aronsson, lars at aronsson.se
--
  Aronsson Datateknik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

body:
Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>> Apparently you have not been reading a single word I have said,
>> because I have said already that there are already kids being raised
>> in Gothic, yet to the best of my knowledge one couple claimed to be
>> raising their child(ren?) in Klingon but it turned out they weren't or
>> something.
>>
>>
> That sounds like a great way to raise disfunctional kids. :-(
>
> Ec

Thanks :-)
You gave me a nervous "fou rire" ;-)


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
Robert, you're very wrong about a lot of things here, too many to even
bother to refute.  All I can really say is: take it off the mailing
list.

> In the meantime, I might be banned any moment now, for
> absolutely no reason at all:

You are in no danger of being banned at "any moment now", except for
from this mailing list, which is the wrong forum for this discussion.

Please post in the appropriate place, the arbitration committee pages.

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


body:
On 19 Sep 2004 17:55:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Without wanting to overburden the Board of Trustees which I am sure is
> already working at their personal limits, I'd like to suggest that we
> create an official Wikimedia roadmap for the next 3 years.
<kerrr-snip!>

This seems like quite a sensible idea, if people are willing to give
it due consideration. It's always good to have a definite focus and
deadlines, even if they are self-imposed and easily altered. For
instance, deciding *when* (or over what timescale) something like
"Wikipedia 1.0" or single-sign-on should be achieved would help define
when people should move from broad discussion to detailed plans and
actual action. It's all too easy in a democratic type structure to do
a lot of talking, and not get round to acting. [Either that, or I'm
psychologically transferring my own faults onto the entire Wikimedia
community... ;)]

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: al Beri

subject: [Wikitech-l] l18n: tt

body:
As far as I understand, l18n of http://tt.wikipedia.org/ works over "MediaWiki
namespace".

I have 3 questions:

1. How to translate incoming 8-bit URLs: should be used windows-1254 or ISO-
8859-9.

2. How to localize a calendar in Wiki (for {{CURRENT_MONTH}} and other)
'sunday' => "Y?k??mbe",
'monday' => "D???mbe",
'tuesday' => "Si??mbe",
'wednesday' => "??r??mbe",
'thursday' => "P?nce??mbe",
'friday' => "Com?a",
'saturday' => "?imb?",
'january' => "??nwar",
'february' => "Febr?l",
'march' => "Mart",
'april' => "?pril",
'may_long' => "May",
'june' => "Y?n",
'july' => "Y?l",
'august' => "August",
'september' => "Sent?ber",
'october' => "?kt?ber",
'november' => "N?y?ber",
'december' => "Dek?ber",
'jan' => "??n",
'feb' => "Feb",
'mar' => "Mar",
'apr' => "?pr",
'may' => "May",
'jun' => "Y?n",
'jul' => "Y?l",
'aug' => "Aug",
'sep' => "Sen",
'oct' => "?kt",
'nov' => "N?y",
'dec' => "Dek",

3. how to fix $wikiUpperChars and $wikiLowerChars in LanguageUtf8.php special
for tt:, tr:, and az:
Upper cased "i" should be &# x130;
Lower cased "I" should be &# x131;

Thanks,
http://tt.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Al_Beri


from_name: Daniel Mayer

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

> Without wanting to overburden the Board of Trustees which I am sure is
> already working at their personal limits, I'd like to suggest that we
> create an official Wikimedia roadmap for the next 3 years.
> ...

All great ideas. Creating a 3 and/or 5 year masterplan is simply good operating
procedure. This was part of my failed candidate bid and something I think is
*very* important. But we first need to get a handle on short and mid-term
planning (specifically an official quarterly and yearly budget) before we dive
too much into the long term, IMO. Both can and should be done at the same time,
but more effort is needed (esp. initially) to get the short term systems in
place (in progress).

I really could use a tech person to help me figure out projected
hardware-related costs.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now.
http://messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

references:
<20040915214037.25D4A1AC0307@mail.wikimedia.org>
	<cih1gp$nem$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.58.0409181908060.17106@sara.aronsson.se>
	<ciiqht$qb7$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<849f98ed04091819407bf3047f@mail.gmail.com>
	<ciiusr$1p9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<849f98ed04091822082de7ee63@mail.gmail.com>
	<cijdop$n9o$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<849f98ed0409190940191dd3c6@mail.gmail.com>
	<cilesc$9t3$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 12:22:04 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > When did I say parents *will* teach their children Gothic as a first
> > language? Plenty already have.
> >
> > What's important to remember is that while in Western Europe, Gothic
> > died quite some time ago, in the Crimea, Gothic died perhaps around
> > the same time as Cornish did, or maybe even later, in Cornwall. And we
> > have a Cornish Wikipedia...
>
> According to our article on the Gothic language, Crimean Gothic is a
> different language to the older Gothic language known from the Codex
> Argenteus. I assumed we were talking about creating an encyclopedia
> based on the ancient language. Again according to our article on the
> subject, all that is known about the language comes from a single 16th
> century letter, giving a vocabulary of about 80 words. I fail to see how
> parents can teach their children a language of which only 80 words are
> known.

Theoretically, it is treated as a separate language although
essentially it is more of a dialectal variety (they're very very
close). Apparently there are sources available in the Ukraine (or so I
have been told) with more information about Crimean Gothic which
supposedly survived into the late 1800s in some rural agrarian
communities; the letter you speak of is the only one readily
accessible from Western European libraries I believe.

Then there is also Gotlandic. Sweden and Denmark both say it is a
dialect of their respective national languages, but many Gotlanders
claim that Gotlandic is an East Germanic language descended directly
from (ie the modern offspring of) the Gothic language. How valid this
is, I am not sure.

> All that is known about Ancient Gothic comes from a bible translation
> plus a few fragments, which at least gives you enough to work with that
> you might plausibly consider writing an encyclopedia in it.

No, no, not really. All that is known about Gothic ("western gothic"
rather than "ancient gothic" might be more appropriate) comes from 1.
Wulfilas' translation of the bible (which you mentioned), 2. A great
deal of religious commentaries and the like, and 3. A few legal
contracts written in the language. However that is only counting the
known documents in Gothic that are written *in the Gothic script*
presumed to have been invented by Wulfilas (some people believe it
already existed), there is also apparently a large body of texts in a
slightly modified fu?ark alphabet (Nordic runic alphabet).

> Can you please provide a reference for your statement that 400 children
> are currently being raised in Gothic? I couldn't find anything with a
> quick web search. Which variety of Gothic are they taught?

No, I cannot provide a reference. But I do remember the movement was
associated with an "M. Carver", and there were neologisms too ie for
computer, email, electric bill, and the like.

--node


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Oh, and as regards the variety, apparently it wasn't really any
existing variety (since apparently even Western Gothic was highly
dialectal) but sort of the type of thing that nations have done when
trying to codify a highly dialectal national language.

But if I recall correctly it *was* based primarily on Western Gothic -
not sure about that, though.

--node

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 19:40:37 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 12:22:04 +1000, Tim Starling
> <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > > When did I say parents *will* teach their children Gothic as a first
> > > language? Plenty already have.
> > >
> > > What's important to remember is that while in Western Europe, Gothic
> > > died quite some time ago, in the Crimea, Gothic died perhaps around
> > > the same time as Cornish did, or maybe even later, in Cornwall. And we
> > > have a Cornish Wikipedia...
> >
> > According to our article on the Gothic language, Crimean Gothic is a
> > different language to the older Gothic language known from the Codex
> > Argenteus. I assumed we were talking about creating an encyclopedia
> > based on the ancient language. Again according to our article on the
> > subject, all that is known about the language comes from a single 16th
> > century letter, giving a vocabulary of about 80 words. I fail to see how
> > parents can teach their children a language of which only 80 words are
> > known.
>
> Theoretically, it is treated as a separate language although
> essentially it is more of a dialectal variety (they're very very
> close). Apparently there are sources available in the Ukraine (or so I
> have been told) with more information about Crimean Gothic which
> supposedly survived into the late 1800s in some rural agrarian
> communities; the letter you speak of is the only one readily
> accessible from Western European libraries I believe.
>
> Then there is also Gotlandic. Sweden and Denmark both say it is a
> dialect of their respective national languages, but many Gotlanders
> claim that Gotlandic is an East Germanic language descended directly
> from (ie the modern offspring of) the Gothic language. How valid this
> is, I am not sure.
>
> > All that is known about Ancient Gothic comes from a bible translation
> > plus a few fragments, which at least gives you enough to work with that
> > you might plausibly consider writing an encyclopedia in it.
>
> No, no, not really. All that is known about Gothic ("western gothic"
> rather than "ancient gothic" might be more appropriate) comes from 1.
> Wulfilas' translation of the bible (which you mentioned), 2. A great
> deal of religious commentaries and the like, and 3. A few legal
> contracts written in the language. However that is only counting the
> known documents in Gothic that are written *in the Gothic script*
> presumed to have been invented by Wulfilas (some people believe it
> already existed), there is also apparently a large body of texts in a
> slightly modified fu?ark alphabet (Nordic runic alphabet).
>
> > Can you please provide a reference for your statement that 400 children
> > are currently being raised in Gothic? I couldn't find anything with a
> > quick web search. Which variety of Gothic are they taught?
>
> No, I cannot provide a reference. But I do remember the movement was
> associated with an "M. Carver", and there were neologisms too ie for
> computer, email, electric bill, and the like.
>
> --node
>


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 01:34:59PM -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> Mark Williamson said:
> > I find that horribly discriminatory.
>
> I find it appropriately discriminatory. As a project, the Wikimedia
> Foundation has to apply some judgement about where to devote its physical
> resources and the time and effort of its volunteers. If we waste the time
> and energy of those volunteers for unimportant tasks, they won't come back.
>
> You very well may disagree about what choices the Foundation makes. I'm
> just saying that it's a really big Internet, and that if you want to create
> a wiki that no one else wants, you can do that. You don't have to have the
> Wikimedia Foundation's machines and volunteers to do it.

I'm sure this discussion wasted a lot more machine resources and volunteers' time
than establishing those few Wikipedias.


from_name: Joshua Swink

subject: [Wikipedia-l] favicons

body:
Sometimes I like to have several 'pedias open at once, in tabs,
and it would be nice if they had different favicons. These icons
are in the tabs, so if they did, I could tell which pedia was
in a tab quickly.

I have made some simple ones for Meta, Wikibooks and Wikiquote,
and was wondering if someone could put them on the wikis. They
are at http://yath.phreadom.net/wikicons/.

Thanks!

--
Joshua Swink
yathster at yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 09:08:50 -0400, zhengzhu <zhengzhu at gmail.com> wrote:
> As someone pointed out before, the problem is not just on the
> character-to-character mapping. Some concepts are expressed entirely
> differently, for example, ??(electronic brain) vs. ???(calculator or
> computer). A second example will be translations of foreign names, for
> example, Croatia is translated in Mainland China as ?????but ?????in
> Taiwan. This kind of difference can be arbitrary, and will likely
> evolve along time. It is mainly this kind of difference that requires
> a special markup.

This does seem to be a different issue: there are bound to be multiple
variations in the language over and above the character conversion,
but these are *cultural*, and there's no guarantee [or I doubt there
is] that there won't be people that write in Traditional, but use the
vocabulary/whatever normally associated with Simplified. You can also
be pretty sure that there are plenty of cases where there are more
than two ways of saying something; or more than one way within
mainland China, say (it's a big place, is it not?). As I said before,
this is true of en:, but given that we can all basically understand
each other, most people seem to consider trying to find a technical
solution a waste of time.

If:
a) there are genuinely *exactly two* dialects of Chinese [written]
vocabulary, and users of each of these map *exactly* to users of each
of the character systems
or:
b) we want to create a system that can store any number of related
languages/dialects in one database: e.g. all the Scandinavian
languages [and are prepared to support *more than two* versions of
Chinese]
then:
we need to worry about differences in vocabulary/usage
else:
we can use Mark's simplified system as a special case for converting
between Traditional and Simplified Chinese.

I could of course be entirely wrong, but that's how I read the situation.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Matthew Larsen

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC - Diderot WikiWriter Project - Pre-Release Announce

body:
alarm bells! This could be open to serious abuse! Is there some sort
of safeguard to prevent 'edit flood?ng'?

sorry for we?red characters, typ?ng this on a turk?sh keyboard

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 13:54:14 -0700 (PDT), Mark Richards
<marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Something that lets you seamlessly view, search and
> edit Wikipedia, Wikiquote and Wiktionary would be
> great, so you could basically treat all of them as one
> big source without having to worry about multiple
> logins, multiple search engines etc.
> Short of actually integrating them, this would be
> fabulous.
> Mark R.
>
>
>
> --- nospam at mussenbrock.de wrote:
>
> >
> > ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE
> > ###
> >
> > The '''Diderot''' WikiWriter alpha is soon to be
> > released.
> >
> > '''Diderot''' is going to become the first
> > full-featured, offline-online
> > Wikipedia Editor with
> >
> > * Source Coloring
> > * Source Folding
> > * integrated Browser Window
> > * Category Browser
> > * Asynchronous Put and Get of Wikipedia Pages (you
> > don't have to wait
> > until a page is saved)
> > * Parallel Editing of Multiple Articles
> >
> > In the future, we plan to add a variety of new
> > features:
> >
> > * Recent Change Agent with Notification Function,
> > able to process RegEx
> > * Search & Replace with RegEx
> > * Integrated Watchlist with automated update
> > * Automatic resolving of Redirects
> > * and many other ... participate and submit a
> > Feature Request on our
> > Project Summary Page at
> > http://wikiwriter.sourceforge.net!
> >
> > On the Project Homepage at
> > http://wikiwriter.sourceforge.net you can
> > find some Screenshots.
> >
> > The package will currently only run under WinXP, but
> > in the future we
> > will try to support unix platforms as well.
> >
> > This will depend on volunteers to tackle some
> > developement tasks.
> > Any pythonists are welcome to participate.
> >
> > The project is based on python and comes with a PSF
> > licence.
> > Sources can be found on the project page on
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikiwriter.
> >
> > ==IMPORTANT==
> > This announce is in some way a test on how many
> > interest there is in
> > such a tool. So please put your vote on
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dedicated Dedicated
> > Wikipedia
> > editor/Diderot.
> >
> > If there is positive feedback from the community,
> > the project should
> > soon grow into some stable beta release.
> >
> > Please use the sourceforge trackers to submit your
> > feature requests or
> > mailto:wikiwiki(at)vr(dash)web(dot)de.
> >
> > The final alpha release announce will be posted in
> > the next days.
> >
> > Enjoy!
> >
> > Shannon
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Thijs van Domburg: Sesame Street]

body:
Thats pretty naughty the dude who d?d the direct copy. What d?d you
send in reply?

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 23:17:59 +0800, John Lee <johnleemk at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have placed the boilerplate copyvio message on the page and listed it
> on [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
>
>
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> >----- Forwarded message from Thijs van Domburg  -----
> >
> >From: Thijs van Domburg
> >Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 15:50:10 +0200
> >To: jwales at bomis.com
> >Subject: Sesame Street
> >
> >Dear mister Wales,
> >
> >I found an article about Fat Blue on wikipedia, a character from sesame street. I created the Sesame Street Encyclopedia www.sesame-encyclopedia.com . The article is exactly copied from my site. I do not mind if some facts are used from my site, but I do not tolerate exact copies of my writings. I hope you'll remove it soon, or write your own version of it.
> >
> >Thijs van Domburg
> >
> >----- End forwarded message -----
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


body:
sounds like a good idea actually! It can be a 'fake' advert - but it
m?ght well work in putting people off posting silly articles.

Just make ?t as a test th?ng - making it real is like you say - a
really really bad idea.

:-)

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 13:40:36 -0400, Daniel P. B. Smith
<dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> It's really, really bad. Everyone's going to hate it.
>
> 1) Take the fact that people create vanity pages and prank pages about
> their friends. Often when they come up in VfD they will even say "Sure,
> remove it, I just wanted my friend to see it."
>
> 2) Add a dash of the International Star Registry and a soup?on of
> Google sponsored links, and you have my really bad idea.
>
> *** Put your friend in the encyclopedia for a week! For just $X.00! ***
>
> Make your PayPal or credit card donation here, then email to this
> address (that of a responsible sysop), giving your friend's name and
> whatever you want the article to say, as long as it's decent and not
> insulting. Feel free to submit as Wikimarkup if you happen to know it.
> If your is unacceptable for any reason, your money will be promptly but
> grumpily refunded. Otherwise, within three business days, your friend
> will have a handsome article about them in Wikipedia, complete with a
> garish and un-missable banner that explains that this is a Paid
> Article, that the information in it is not to be trusted, and that it
> will be removed by thus-and-such-a-date.
>
> But wait, there's more! Act today, and you can also attach a .jpg image
> of up to 240x320 pixels in size! NOW how much would you pay?
>
> But email today! Sysops are standing by!
>
> Yes, I know. I'm ashamed of myself for even thinking about it.
>
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
> "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
> Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer bio

body:
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 04:57:38 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> he has been working 13 years in...
>
> Afaik, he wrote himself that sentence
> Agreed, I also find it confusing :-)

Actually, that whole paragraph strikes me as a joke:
"At 6 years old, he started contract work for Compuserve"

In fact, I think I can catch him out on that one:
"James also spent a decade managing online communities for CompuServe."
If he started at 6, and is now 13, he can only have done it for a
maximum of 7 years - barely what I'd call "a decade". But that's
probably pedantry in the face of a joke....

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Nathan Russell

body:
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 16:52:16 -0500, Phil Sandifer
<sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> At the risk of feeding the trolls.
>
> 1. Raul did not say you made an ad hominem attack. He said that your
> defense was ad hominem - that is, you were defending yourself by
> criticizing your accusers, instead of by engaging the evidence in any
> way.
>
> 2. Raul did not refuse to look at evidence. He asked you to present him
> with evidence. "Read this talk page" is not evidence. Evidence would be
> a link to a specific problem edit.
>
> 3. I'm not sure why you just found out today when Raul left a message
> on your talk page on the 6th, especially since it's not as though you
> weren't around between now and then.
>
> That said, if this case has been going since August 1st, why didn't
> anyone leave a note on RK's talk page until  a month into the case?

FWIW, I don't think PP was *ever* notified about my case against him.

Pak


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia reaches millionth article in 100 languages

body:
&c, &c.

Please find the right language (there are ~30 to choose from), draft a
quick cover letter if appropriate, and send to your favorite bloggers
and news outlets around the world.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_press_releases/One_million_Wikipedia_articles_%28US%29

--
+sj+


from_name: Tom at folsoms.net

body:
This is my first post to the mailing list, but I've been reading it for awhile, and this
post is something I really wanted to reply to and put my support behind.

One of the ways I always attract people to Wikipedia is to say something like "well,
this is the main project, the first one. It's pretty amazing... here are all the cool
features (list). But look at this! There are also wikiquote, Wikibooks, etc etc, and
proposals for lots more".  Normally that's enough to get people interested, but that's
when my trouble starts- questions. The latest one I got was repeated several times-
I like Wikipedia, but I want to work on 1.0.... do we know what plans are for that,
what timing? Is there a more updated page? an organizer for the project? Things
like that are common questions that I get. Also some technical issues, although
really the only main thing is the "I have to have multiple accounts for all these
projects?".

Any way, a single page that could act as a clearing-house for all of the proposed
projects and features would be a great way to not only get people involved in new
things, but make sure everyone knows what is really going on.

I really like this idea- especially because I want to be able to add WikiReader and
1.0 information to it (what I'm waiting to get involved with more).

Lyellin


from_name: Andries Krugers Dagneaux

subject: [WikiEN-l] Criticism on Prem Rawat, formerly called Guru Maharaj Ji

body:
Ed Poor wrote:
>Anybody remember Guru Maharaj Ji?

>Well, there's a long running controversy at Wikipedia over how to
>characterize him. Apparently, it's the single biggest edit war we've
>ever had.

>One scholar has spent over 8 months researching the man, and a group of
>several dozen ex-followers is reverting like crazy.

>I think the way we handle this has important implications for our
future
>credibility.

>Ed Poor
>Bureaucrat and NPOV Maven

I do not think that there is a need to worry about Wikipedia's
reputation. User Gary D is doing excellent work on the articles
[[Criticism on Prem Rawat]] and [[Prem Rawat/temp1]]. For everybody's
information, I am the most vocal critic of [[Prem Rawat]] here in
Wikipedia.

It is not true that ex-followers are reverting like crazy. This has
never been the case with this article.

I became a member of the university library, just to get more reference
about him and I even went to a meeting of his students/followers.

I regret that one contributor received emails with threats because of
his edits on this article. I also regret that some ex-followers
discontinued contributing to the article because their edits were
reverted, sometimes without good reason.

Andries K.D.


body:
--- epzachte at chello.nl wrote:

> Mav, I miss the edit box where people can specify any amount for a periodic
> contribution,
> as was agreed in the wikimeet last Friday.

Our choices with PayPal are limited; we either get a drop down or an input
field , not both.

> Also I wonder what the ''Tier x" prefix before each amount in the drop down
> box means.

Nothing other than being able to easily keep track of amounts over 4 languages
and two periods. I might remove them.

> To me it suggests different Tiers bring different payback to the donator,
> or establish any other hierarchy which is it probably not what you meant.

In the future they could mean that, but not yet.

To everybody:
And I thought that the fund drive was starting at 20:00 UTC on Monday. Why is
there a fund drive note at the top of the English Wikipedia? PLEASE take that
down until the fund drive starts - I'm still working on the fund drive pages
and WILL NOT have time to update the goal bar until I'm done.

-- mav

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
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from_name: John Lee

body:
I have placed the boilerplate copyvio message on the page and listed it
on [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>----- Forwarded message from Thijs van Domburg  -----
>
>From: Thijs van Domburg
>Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 15:50:10 +0200
>To: jwales at bomis.com
>Subject: Sesame Street
>
>Dear mister Wales,
>
>I found an article about Fat Blue on wikipedia, a character from sesame street. I created the Sesame Street Encyclopedia www.sesame-encyclopedia.com . The article is exactly copied from my site. I do not mind if some facts are used from my site, but I do not tolerate exact copies of my writings. I hope you'll remove it soon, or write your own version of it.
>
>Thijs van Domburg
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] One suggestion for donation

body:
--- Kiss All <kissall at gmail.com> wrote:

> I just looked at the donation page. It is good. However, I think you
> may provide more methods to get money for wikimedia. For example,
> selling T-shirt printed with wikipedia log, similar sticker for
> volunteers to put on car bumpers.

We do that with a CafePress account. See
http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia

> Sometimes, people are more willing to get something while
> contributing. And those things I mentioned are useful to spread the
> effect of wikipedia.

IIRC we haven't broke $1000 profit yet for our CafePress account. Yet we took
in well over $50,000 the first half this year in pure donations.

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] l18n: tt

body:
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 18:38:15 +0000 (UTC), al Beri <amichauer at gmx.de> wrote:
> As far as I understand, l18n of http://tt.wikipedia.org/ works over "MediaWiki
> namespace".

Actually, I think the "correct" way is to do the main translation in
LanguageTT.php, and only customise things specific to one site in
MediaWiki:* Certainly that's where you'd define things like the months
of the year.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] En-GB/en-US syntax

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> It horrifies me personally to think about doing anything of this sort,
> i.e. having markup to specify en-us and en-gb spellings.  What a waste
> of energy, if you ask me.

Jimmy... out of everyone here, you should know best that Wikipedia isn't
about what you or anyone thinks is a waste a time, but what people
*actually* waste their time on.

If people are willing to spend some time using this syntax to specify
both spellings, why not let them? It might seem like a little thing to
many if not most people, but it would certainly give Wikipedia's content
a more professional and consistent overall appearance.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Test my lex/yacc parser!

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

> Have you worked out how to deal with "MagicWord" i18n yet?

Not entirely, but mostly :)

Here are my thoughts:

* Redirects are not passed through the lex/yacc parser at all. They can
   be recognised with a regular expression that takes the magic words
   into account.

* Things like __NOTOC__ and stuff can be handled like this:
   * Regard *everything* of the form __CAPITALLETTERS__ as a special
     token
   * Have the post-processing step remove and process them
   * What to do with unrecognised ones is open to debate. Options:
     1. turn them back into text
     2. ignore them. They're rare enough to require <nowiki> if you
        want to actually write them.

* The "Media", "Image" and other namespaces are handled in
   post-processing. The parser sees them as text within the link target.

* The template pseudo-variables (e.g. CURRENTMONTH) are similarly
   handled in post-processing.

* HTML tags and extension names are either not internationalised, or all
   translations of them are made to work on all Wikipedias.

Timwi


from_name: Craig Franklin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Scr?obh Mark Williamson:

>Apparently you have not been reading a single word I have said,
>because I have said already that there are already kids being raised
>in Gothic, yet to the best of my knowledge one couple claimed to be
>raising their child(ren?) in Klingon but it turned out they weren't or
>something.

For the parents teaching their kids Klingon, the attempt failed, because
Klingon doesn't (or didn't, at that point) have enough words to describe
everyday objects like "table".  The children didn't take to it, and the
experiment was abandoned.  However, I do remember reading a news story
awhile ago about Child Protection officers raiding some caravan in the deep
South, where they found, in addition to a lot of squalor, that the father of
three children only addressed them in Klingon.  So, I guess that they could
be termed first-language speakers of the language.

As for Latin, anyone who went to a Catholic school can probably recount
horrible experiences of learning that.  There are lots of people with decent
Latin out there, even if nobody much speaks it as a first language.  I think
there's a place for a Latin-language wiki though.

- Craig Franklin

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.


from_name: Ewen Caroline

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
Discriminatory indeed. I strongly disagree.

If we (luxembourgish wiki, around 10 regulars so far, working on it :) had
to go that way to get our own wiki, I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten it,
since noone would have found us etc. Now at least we have a chance to create
something original in our language (for those who aren't that familiar with
lux, we're only about 250.000 native speakers :)).

Caroline aka Bris?is.

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 13:34:59 -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote
> Mark Williamson said:
>
>  >> Anyways: I think the best strategy is to tell people who want to
> have a >> Wikipedia in their language to go start a wiki somewhere
> else. If they can >> show that they have a robust community that can
> support a Wikipedia, then >> they should get an xx.wikipedia.org
> domain (as well as other >> xx.wikisomething.org stuff). > > I find
> that horribly discriminatory.
>
> I find it appropriately discriminatory. As a project, the Wikimedia
> Foundation has to apply some judgement about where to devote its
> physical resources and the time and effort of its volunteers. If we
> waste the time and energy of those volunteers for unimportant tasks,
> they won't come back.
>
> You very well may disagree about what choices the Foundation makes.
> I'm just saying that it's a really big Internet, and that if you
> want to create a wiki that no one else wants, you can do that. You
> don't have to have the Wikimedia Foundation's machines and
> volunteers to do it.
>
> ~ESP

--
Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)


subject:
[Foundation-l] Fund drive progress (was Re:New fundraising page
	version)

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> To everybody:
> And I thought that the fund drive was starting at 20:00 UTC on Monday. Why is
> there a fund drive note at the top of the English Wikipedia? PLEASE take that
> down until the fund drive starts - I'm still working on the fund drive pages
> and WILL NOT have time to update the goal bar until I'm done.

Nevermind. I'm done for now with the changes I wanted to make to the English,
French, and German versions of the fundraising page and Suisui is doing the
same thing for the Japanese version.

So I went ahead and updated the fund drive template on the WMF wiki.

See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising

We are at $1,294.34 USD so far (the green bar needs to be a bit wider before it
will show any text).

The bar is updated by hand by those people with read access to the PayPal
account. I'll be able to update the fund drive bar at least a couple times a
day - others who have access are welcome to make updates as well. :)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Starting a new wiki

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

> There are a _lot_ of free or low-cost PHP hosting services that can host
> a wiki. Mediawiki can be hard to set up on these services, since MySQL
> usually costs significantly more, but there are a number of other wiki
> engines* that work with  flat files and don't require a database.

Yes, but MediaWiki is the best :)  Besides, the annual fees that go into
paying "low-cost" hosting services could well go to our developers.
It's only a few hundred US dollars but not too stingy for an hour of
setting-up.

> Anyways: I think the best strategy is to tell people who want to have a
> Wikipedia in their language to go start a wiki somewhere else. If they
> can show that they have a robust community that can support a Wikipedia,
> then they should get an xx.wikipedia.org domain (as well as other
> xx.wikisomething.org stuff).

So they go find an ad-supported PHP hosting service, run a non-MediaWiki
installation, build up a small but active community, finally have a
Wikipedia subdomain approved.  And then have to start all over again?
Won't migrating the database consume even more developer time?  Or do
the speakers of this language have to hire a developer to do that?  Or
just copy-and-paste and lose the history?

The Walon Wikipedia was fortunate to have received assistance in
migrating its data into Wikipedia.  The Minnan Wikipedia still has
articles sitting out there.  But knowing the developers' time is highly
constrained, we have not complained nor do we see it as a "right" to
receive such help.  But I do want to point out some possible consequences.

> ~ESP
>
> * I can hear it now: "Huh? There are other wiki engines? There are other
> wikis? I can set up my own? Huh?"

That's an awful impression.


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] A few common sense suggestions for election day

body:
I was trying to imagine what [[template:In the News]] is going to
look like come election night, and my mental projections are not good.
I'd like to suggest a few common sense things that we should agree upon
*now* while we still have plenty of time to agrue about it:

1) Template:In the News should have a single link to [[2000 election in
progress]]
or a page to that effect. Rather than having people in a deathmatch to edit
the main page template, they can fight there instead.

2) Absolutely no one is allowed to call any states until 24 (or more) hours
after the
polls close.

3) I also suspect there's going to be a lot of vandalism to the main page
templates
(especially in-the-news), so we might consider protecting it in advance (or
at first
sign of trouble) for the duraction of the election.

--Mark


from_name: Delirium

body:
Mark Pellegrini wrote:

>2) Absolutely no one is allowed to call any states until 24 (or more) hours
>after the
>polls close.
>
>
I don't see any reason for this rule.  We, as Wikipedia, are not going
to be calling any states, and some Wikipedians running statistical
projections on their own would of course be original research we don't
publish.  But if some major news organization calls states, we can
report what they said and attribute it to them.

-Mark


from_name: Angela

body:
I completely agree with the need to document the longer term plans of
the Foundation.

Danny started a page on this a while ago at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Three-year_plan

It would helpful if people used that page to give their own
suggestions of what they would like Wikimedia's goals to be over the
next three years to help the Board come up with a more concrete plan.

Angela.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer bio

body:
I think... that the personality of a person counts just as much as his
abilities.

If I were someone willing to hire James, his quiet personality, his
smiles, his humour and his stories, would just have as much importance
than what he actually does technically... as soon as he has to work in a
team.

If James feels like letting a funny paragraph to describe himself,
that's  okay I think :-) (if only, that makes people talk and wonder :-))

Rowan Collins a ?crit:
> On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 04:57:38 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>he has been working 13 years in...
>>
>>Afaik, he wrote himself that sentence
>>Agreed, I also find it confusing :-)
>
>
> Actually, that whole paragraph strikes me as a joke:
> "At 6 years old, he started contract work for Compuserve"
>
> In fact, I think I can catch him out on that one:
> "James also spent a decade managing online communities for CompuServe."
> If he started at 6, and is now 13, he can only have done it for a
> maximum of 7 years - barely what I'd call "a decade". But that's
> probably pedantry in the face of a joke....
>


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] En-GB/en-US syntax

body:
Timwi wrote:
> If people are willing to spend some time using this syntax to specify
> both spellings, why not let them? It might seem like a little thing to
> many if not most people, but it would certainly give Wikipedia's content
> a more professional and consistent overall appearance.

One reason is that adding more syntax increases a problem that I
already think is growing -- which is excessive syntax for newcomers.
When you click "edit this page", you should be presented with
something as obvious as possible.

I'm not making a decree or anything, mind you.  Rather, I'm expressing
an opinion that adding software features to deal with US/UK spelling
differences is a bad idea.  I feel the same way about auto-conversion
of units.  If community opinion differs overwhelmingly from mine, I will
not stand in the way of course.  But I don't think community opinion
differs on these points.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
Ewen Caroline wrote:
> If we (luxembourgish wiki, around 10 regulars so far, working on it :) had
> to go that way to get our own wiki, I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten it,
> since noone would have found us etc. Now at least we have a chance to create
> something original in our language (for those who aren't that familiar with
> lux, we're only about 250.000 native speakers :)).

There would be no question about setting up a wikipedia when there are
250,000 native speakers.  There would be no question, in fact, for
much smaller language communities than that.

Node tends to engage in invalid FUD.  It's a very different thing to
contemplate a population of 250,000 native speakers who actually use a
language, versus an academic exercise.

The question is more about dead languages and conlangs which are
spoken only by very small numbers of people, and especially when those
speakers primarily from the perspective of language preservation,
academic interest, or just as a fun subculture.  For those types of
communities, it is certainly in line with our educational mission to
assist them, but it is fairly clear to me that setting up an
encyclopedia project is not likely to be the best way to help.

It is my opinion that we should revisit some of our existing wikipedia
projects for which no community has developed or seems likely to
develop, and see if we might not better serve those communities (and
the goals of Wikimedia more broadly) by encouraging wikibooks and
wiktionaries first.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> There is plenty in the various existing projects to accomodate these
> languages: Grammar guides in Wikibooks, ancient texts in Wikisource,
> vocabulary entries in Wiktionary.  It's difficult to justify a whole
> encyclopedia for a dead or constructed language that has done none
> of these.  In the early days such a language proposal could be
> viewed more favorably because none of these other projects existed.

I think this is very well said.

--Jimbo

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Mark Pellegrini stated for the record:

> 2) Absolutely no one is allowed to call any states until
> 24 (or more) hours after the polls close.

With 0.00% of the polls reporting in, we can now state with certainty
that Massachusetts' 12 electoral votes will go to Kerry.

--
  Sean Barrett     | She is the kind of woman who lives for
  sean at epoptic.com | others. You can spot the others by
                   | their hunted expression. --C.S. Lewis


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
RK, you need to go to your arbitration case and mount a defense. (I,
although an arbitrator, play no role due to my prejudice against you). If
you feel you are in a dispute with Raul654 please follow Wikipedia's dispute
resolution procedure. I'm sure he would apologize for not checking to see if
you had notice of the pending case. As to Zero and Simonides, you are
already in an arbitration case with them.

They were wrapping this case up when you discovered it. I would suppose they
would delay to hear whether you can present any valid defenses.

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 14:44:21 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Attempts to ban me by Raul654, Zero and Simonides
>
> At this point, I have to formally make a request for
> arbitration against Raul654, Zero and Simonides. Given the
> way that I am being harassed and threatened, I don't see
> much option. But isn't this a huge waste of time? For the
> good of Wikipedia, and to save everybody's time so we can
> actually work on articles, please stop this nonsense.  It
> is hard to move forward when two people get an arbitator to
> bring progress to a halt based on their personal animosity.


body:
The arbitration procedure requires notice by the person who initiated the
request for arbitration. The arbitrators are to blame for not checking. As I
am often the one who checks and had recused myself, it slipped through the
cracks.

Fred

> From: Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 16:52:16 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Attempts to ban me by Raul654, Zero and Simonides
>
> That said, if this case has been going since August 1st, why didn't
> anyone leave a note on RK's talk page until  a month into the case?
>
> -Snowspinner


body:
If true we definitely need to tighten up. If it was your case, at the time
you made the request for arbitration it was your responsibility.

Fred

> From: Nathan Russell <windrunner at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Nathan Russell <windrunner at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 21:16:39 -0400
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Attempts to ban me by Raul654, Zero and Simonides
>
> FWIW, I don't think PP was *ever* notified about my case against him.
>
> Pak


subject: [Wikitech-l] What to buy, part 2

body:
Well, the 'what to buy' discussion fizzled out, and in the meantime
Tim Starling did some tests which suggest that the squids are
bandwidth-limited, so buying more squids no longer seems like the slam
dunk that it did the other day.

I'm leaving for Switzerland in less than 24 hours, but we can continue
a longer term discussion of what needs to be bought next, and I can
just as easily make an order from there as here.

One concept that came up in IRC that sounds good to me -- the older
apache machines accept cheaper non-Ecc non-Registered RAM.  It would
be relatively inexpensive (say $130/GB) to fill those up with 4Gb of
RAM each (which will really only give 3.5GB each usable due to
motherboard limitations, so maybe I will just fill them with 3.5GB
each to start with).

This RAM could be used for memcached.

We have no really firm data, but Tim believes (reasonably, but he
cautions that it is uncertain) that the parser cache hit rate could go
from 50% to maybe 85% with enough RAM.  A back-of-the-envelope
calculation suggests that as much as 50GB could be put to use.

One naturally supposes that the best bang for the buck is at the low
end, i.e. taking memcached from 6GB (current, if I'm not mistaken) to
say 12GB or 18GB or whatever, would likely result in a significant
increase in that hit rate.

My understanding is that increasing the parser cache hit rate is a
great way to leverage our apache infrastructure.  Spending $1300 for
10 Gb of RAM is likely to do a great deal more good than spending
$1050 for another apache.

Comments?

--Jimbo

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Starting a new wiki

body:
On Sep 19, 2004, at 11:34 PM, Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:
> The Walon Wikipedia was fortunate to have received assistance in
> migrating its data into Wikipedia.  The Minnan Wikipedia still has
> articles sitting out there.  But knowing the developers' time is
> highly constrained, we have not complained nor do we see it as a
> "right" to receive such help.

If someone had *asked* we'd have been happy to help... I at least never
heard any request to do this.

At this point it would be harder to merge two separate wikis that have
undergone separate development, but we can probably arrange something
if that's desired.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] l18n: tt

body:
On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 11:40:40PM +0100, Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 18:38:15 +0000 (UTC), al Beri <amichauer at gmx.de> wrote:
> > As far as I understand, l18n of http://tt.wikipedia.org/ works over "MediaWiki
> > namespace".
>
> Actually, I think the "correct" way is to do the main translation in
> LanguageTT.php, and only customise things specific to one site in
> MediaWiki:* Certainly that's where you'd define things like the months
> of the year.

MediaWiki namespace is fine. We'll dump the translations from there and
merge them into the MediaWiki code.

In release 1.3, month names can't be translated using the MediaWiki namespace.
This is coming with release 1.4.

I added the request as http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=535

Regards,

JeLuF