subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:

> Delirium wrote:
>
>> If it did work, Wikipedia would suddenly become the source of 99% of
>> extant Gothic texts, which would be somewhat interesting.
>
>
> Perhaps the Gothic writers could start off with Wikisource.  Various
> technical issues could be worked out there (encoding, font, spelling).
> Just annotating the texts in Gothic could be a small, yet
> unprecedented (?) step toward more original writing.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
Another good place to start is wiktionary; to me artificial or dead
languages make themselves more credible if a wikipedia customer can find
what the words actually mean. I would propose that a minimum of say 1500
of the most used words have entries in one wiktionary. After this is
done, the people who propose a new wikipedia have proven themselves to
be serious by giving our users a change to understand what is says.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jens Frank

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

body:
On Sat, Sep 18, 2004 at 10:19:56AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
>
>     http://timwi.dyndns.org/wiki/tmp.php
>
> In particular, please test to see whether any invalid mark-up produces
> an error.

There is no invalid Wiki markup :-)

	JeLuF


from_name: Timwi

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

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

> INPUT:
> {{stub}}
> OUTPUT:
> <error />

Please send me your *entire* test string, as otherwise I can't reproduce
the problem! If I type just "{{stub}}", with or without a trailing
newline, I do not get an error. I get:

<paragraph><template>stub</template></paragraph>

> INPUT:
> [[stub|''link]]trail''
> OUTPUT:
> Proxy error message: "Document contains no data". Segmentation fault?

Whoa! Thanks loads for this one, Segmentation faults are of course very
important to catch.

The error was that in parsetree.c:convertPipeSeriesToText(), I used a
freeRecursively() where it should have been just free(). While I was at
it, I've also performance-optimised it. :)

Thanks,
Timwi


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

body:
On Sat, Sep 18, 2004 at 10:19:56AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> I've posted about this before, but here it is again! :) In my
> lex/yacc-based parser, I have now finished the table wiki syntax as well
> as template inclusions. Please test everything! :)
>
>     http://timwi.dyndns.org/wiki/tmp.php
>
INPUT:
{{stub}}
OUTPUT:
<error />

Regards,

	JeLuF


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

body:
On Sat, Sep 18, 2004 at 10:19:56AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> I've posted about this before, but here it is again! :) In my
> lex/yacc-based parser, I have now finished the table wiki syntax as well
> as template inclusions. Please test everything! :)
>
>     http://timwi.dyndns.org/wiki/tmp.php

INPUT:
[[stub|''link]]trail''
OUTPUT:
Proxy error message: "Document contains no data". Segmentation fault?

Regards,

JeLuF


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Multiple recipients issue

body:
Each time a mail is sent to many lists at the same time, even from
registered users, the mail is stopped and requires approval from the
admin of the list.

Is there a way to fix this ?

Thanks

Anthere
Admin of this list...


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Craig Franklin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Scr?obh Mark Williamson:

>Also I feel that as long as it isn't a conlang, it doesn't matter how
>many speakers there are as long as there are people interested in
>writing an encyclopedia.

You do realise that Esperanto is a conlang, and it has one of the most
active Wikis out there?  There are some other conlang-Wikis out there too,
like tlhIngan Hol, Interlingua, and Sindarin (Tolkeinese, I seem to remember
this existing, although I can't remember the code).

I think that so long as a language has modern speakers, some of whom are
interested in writing an encyclop?dia, there should be no restrictions.

That said, while a Gothic wikipedia would be interesting (I'm sure this is
the Robert Smith fan inside me speaking ;-) ), I'd wonder whether there
really is that much interest in it.  Even being optimistic and taking a high
estimate for the number of speakers (say, 5,000), I don't know if anyone
would actually be willing to add to it.  Not that having a Gothic Wiki with
no entries would really tax the foundation, but I don't think we need
*another* deserted Wiki with five articles in it.

As always though, it's not up to me to decide ;-)

- 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.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Biased "current events" stories

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Delirium-
>
>
>>That is completely irrelevant to my comment.  The American Psychiatry
>>Association represents a particular faction within psychology, with a
>>particularly extremist viewpoint that there is no such thing as mental
>>illness, but only physical illness, and all mental illnesses are
>>actually "brain diseases" that they will begrudgingly call "mental
>>disorders" for historical reasons, with the understanding that they are
>>wholly the result of physiological medical conditions.
>>
>>
>
>At least Wikipedia is biased in the right direction, then.
>
>
>
Perhaps you meant "biased in the direction of stupidity" but mistyped?
The current articles expound on a view that only MDs with no
philosophical sophistication hold, because they simply make no sense.
If you pick up any book on the philosophy of mind, or read a philosophy
journal on the subject,  you'll see these views of the mind/body problem
not even being discussed, because they're too ridiculous to merit
serious consideration.

>Held by whom? Since when is the general public relevant when it comes to
>scientific claims? By that standard, we would have to preface every
>article on biology with creationist claims, because they are so widely
>held. Overall popularity is the worst possible standard to use when it
>comes to NPOV.
>
>
>
And who makes the decision that the creationists' claims are inferior to
the biologists' claims?  If Wikipedia is to neutrally document the
world, it cannot take its own members' biases into such strong
consideration.  Sure, most of us think the creationists have invalid
arguments, but Wikipedia is not the place to claim that, just to
document what the arguments are.  We can report studies that debunk
their claims, and report who thinks what of the studies, but we should
just be reporting.  We can say things like "the majority of the
mainstream scientific community thinks [blah], although the majority of
the population thinks [blah]."

>If there are distinct scientific traditions, then I agree with you that we
>should not favor one over the other.
>
>
>
What if there are distinct scientific and philosophical traditions, and
they conflict?  Science is not the arbiter of all knowledge, and often
scientists are philosophically unsophisticated (bioethics being a good
example).

-Mark


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

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

body:
Sunday or Monday, I want to spend $10,000 on new hardware.  What
should it be?

1.  2 gigabit switches are ordered already, so don't say anything
about that.  :-)

2.  Rackspace is now at a premium, HOWEVER, we should not worry a LOT
about that, since we are going to have to get a 2nd Rack very soon no
matter what we decide today.  There is approximately 3U left in the
rack, maybe 4U.

A 2nd rack is going to add $700 per month to our colocation bill, not a
big deal in the grand scheme of things.

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

4.  Some have suggested more squids?  Is there consensus on that?

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


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Fundraising drive 2004

body:
Wikimedia are holding a cross-project fundraising drive from September
20 to October 3. We hope to raise $50,000 during this two week period.

Donations can be made via the new fundraising pages at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising which are being
finalized this weekend.

This was discussed at a meeting yesterday. A summary is at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_meeting%2C_September_2004
and the full log is at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_meeting%2C_September_2004/Log

The fundraising drive will be publicized via a site notice, which will read:

"Wikimedia Fundraising Drive 2004. Help us raise $50,000. See our
fundraising page for details."

This default can be translated by editing [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] on
your own wiki. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_site_notice for further
instructions. If the message is protected and your wiki has no admins,
please translate it on [[MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice]] of your own wiki
and ask a steward to make the edit for you at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Fundraising_notices

Please translate this message and ensure people on your project are
aware of it. Thank you.

Angela


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikimedia Fundraising drive 2004


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Fundraising drive 2004


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Wikimedia Fundraising drive 2004


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.

Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours?  Either
more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required
work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be
collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new
wiki can be set up.

As a consultant, I have found that a good way to avoid boring work
tasks is to put a price tag on them.  Oh yes, I would love to fix
your spelling errors -- at $10 per page or $150 per hour.  :-)

The current discussions of whether or not to start new projects are
tiresome and frustrating for all parties.  It would be better to allow
anybody to start new projects, so that the hard part will not be
convincing the Wikimedia Foundation, but convincing the community to
fill the new wiki with contents.  Perhaps such communities should be
required first to collect 250 articles (off-wiki, by e-mail) and when
this is achieved, the new wiki will be started.

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


from_name: Aliter

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at ...> writes:

> ... The compromise agreed to by Erik and Timwi is to allow the Klingon
> Wikipedia, but to avoid interlanguage links. Accordingly, I have
> commented out the Klingon entry in $wgLanguageNames. This means that
> markup of the form [[tlh:wIqIpe'DIya]] will create an external link
> rather than an interlanguage link, just like links to meta or sep11.
> Otherwise the wiki is fully functional. ...

Hi,

I've tried to read this entire discussion in an effort to find the cause of a
bug on Fy:.

1 Speaking in general, I don't understand the discussion at all.
2 I don't understand why the policy change to no longer treat all languauges
equal, is discussed and apparently decided upon in the tech forum.

These are not my intended topic, however, just an indication of my starting
point. (Feel free to mail me any explanations or arguments off-list.)

3 The solution above does not result in the objective above, but rather does
the opposite.
- Intended is to not show the incomprehensible language to others (I think).
- Without this measure, just the Klingon word for "Klingon language" appears,
and it only appears in the languages lists, to be read by multilingual visitors
trying to switch languages, most of whom are accustomed to seeing names there
that they don't understand.
- With this measure, the entire page title in Klingon appears, and it appears
in the text of the article, whereit is encountered by all visitors, who would
expect to see only readable text there.

What was done here doesn't prevent Klingon links; it just makes them more
noticable(especially on pages that still have their language links at the top).

Until there is a way to actually remove those links you do compromisingly don't
want to show, please place them in the languages lists again. There at least
they don't mess up the pages. (I expect they would actually go unnoticed there,
except for those who can read the Klingon word for "Klingon".)

--
Thanks in advance,
Aliter <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Aliter>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
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, the only well-known
East Germanic language and as such very important to linguistic
reasearch (the others ie Vandalic and Burgundian are known only from
proper names), a language with its own unique and beautiful (well at
least I think it is) alphabet, and has a (though not clustered in the
same neighbourhood, city, or even country as most such movements are)
revival movement going to teach the language to children as a native
language with (supposedly) upwards of 400 children so far. In the near
future it is forseeable that these 400 children (and probably teens
too by now; I think this started in the 80s or something) will be
ready to use an encyclopedic resource which they would benifit a great
deal more from if it were in Gothic; then what about *their* kids if
they are raised in Gothic as well? This could eventually lead to
upwards of 10000 native gothic speakers (perhaps up to 2 million if
the movement eventually finds a geographical location they can use as
a gothic-only environment) in the foreseeable future.

Latin, however, (ttbomk) has no such movement (which is surprising, in
the very least), and the chances that somebody will be able to read
Latin sufficiently better than any other language with an extant
Wikipedia are fairly low (Latin has other justifications though I
believe).

Of course its still up to you to decide whether or not you'll
ultimately be OK with supporting such a language or not, but I do hope
you'll reconsider.

best,
node

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 12:23:03 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Tim Starling wrote:
> >
> >>People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
> >
> >
> > Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours?  Either
> > more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required
> > work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be
> > collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new
> > wiki can be set up.
>
> I suggest you read my post again. I'll quote it here in part.
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
> > People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of
> > the tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis.
> > Adding the wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the
> > language file, mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki
> > links. From establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of
>                                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > developer work involved.
>
> That's just a very rough guess. Some wikis take a lot more than that. I
> just finished writing a new feature specifically for the Finnish
> Wikipedia which probably took 6 hours alone, although you wouldn't see
> me giving that level of service to Gothic or Klingon.
>
> The task of creating a wiki is already automated. As I explained above,
> the problem is in ongoing tech support and system administration, not
> creation. There are ways to reduce that too, but there's always going to
> be someone who doesn't bother reading the manual.
>
> That's why I suggested that if anyone is interested in providing ongoing
> support for this wiki, they should offer themselves as a point of
> contact. They should do their best to fix any problems, but *never* pass
> the problem on to the rest of the community.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
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...

best,
node

On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 19:40:04 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> 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, the only well-known
> East Germanic language and as such very important to linguistic
> reasearch (the others ie Vandalic and Burgundian are known only from
> proper names), a language with its own unique and beautiful (well at
> least I think it is) alphabet, and has a (though not clustered in the
> same neighbourhood, city, or even country as most such movements are)
> revival movement going to teach the language to children as a native
> language with (supposedly) upwards of 400 children so far. In the near
> future it is forseeable that these 400 children (and probably teens
> too by now; I think this started in the 80s or something) will be
> ready to use an encyclopedic resource which they would benifit a great
> deal more from if it were in Gothic; then what about *their* kids if
> they are raised in Gothic as well? This could eventually lead to
> upwards of 10000 native gothic speakers (perhaps up to 2 million if
> the movement eventually finds a geographical location they can use as
> a gothic-only environment) in the foreseeable future.
>
> Latin, however, (ttbomk) has no such movement (which is surprising, in
> the very least), and the chances that somebody will be able to read
> Latin sufficiently better than any other language with an extant
> Wikipedia are fairly low (Latin has other justifications though I
> believe).
>
> Of course its still up to you to decide whether or not you'll
> ultimately be OK with supporting such a language or not, but I do hope
> you'll reconsider.
>
> best,
> node
>
>
>
> On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 12:23:03 +1000, Tim Starling
> <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > > Tim Starling wrote:
> > >
> > >>People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
> > >
> > >
> > > Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours?  Either
> > > more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required
> > > work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be
> > > collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new
> > > wiki can be set up.
> >
> > I suggest you read my post again. I'll quote it here in part.
> >
> > Tim Starling wrote:
> > > People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of
> > > the tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis.
> > > Adding the wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the
> > > language file, mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki
> > > links. From establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of
> >                                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > developer work involved.
> >
> > That's just a very rough guess. Some wikis take a lot more than that. I
> > just finished writing a new feature specifically for the Finnish
> > Wikipedia which probably took 6 hours alone, although you wouldn't see
> > me giving that level of service to Gothic or Klingon.
> >
> > The task of creating a wiki is already automated. As I explained above,
> > the problem is in ongoing tech support and system administration, not
> > creation. There are ways to reduce that too, but there's always going to
> > be someone who doesn't bother reading the manual.
> >
> > That's why I suggested that if anyone is interested in providing ongoing
> > support for this wiki, they should offer themselves as a point of
> > contact. They should do their best to fix any problems, but *never* pass
> > the problem on to the rest of the community.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
REALITY CHECK:
How many people actually WANT this?

Are we discussing at length whether we should be ready to cater for
this *in the event* that there be people wanting a Gothic WP or IS
there actual, genuine demand beyond a handful of (say more than 5)
users?

-- ropers


subject: [Wikitech-l] Developer bio

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_activity

Hi, some people updated their bios, others added their as well, thank you.

I added a few names on it today; very shortly :-)
Please check and add to the (very short) comments.

Any contributor to the software or hardware maintenance should feel free
to add his/her name as well.

I will update the wikimedia website within 48 hours with this page.

Note : if some people would like to be on this page for the information
it provides for contributors, but DO NOT wish to be on the foundation
website, please add yourself to the meta page and mention you do not
want to be on the Foundation website.

Thank you.


from_name: Stephan Walter

body:
Timwi wrote:
> If there is absolutely anything else missing, please let me know!

Try some UTF-8 salad:

* a Umlaut: ?
* o Umlaut: ?
* u Umlaut: ?
* c cedilla: ?
* Euro: ?
* en-dash: ?

The euro and en-dash sign just get removed, the others are replaced by
some &#xxx; stuff.

This is probably just a problem with the different encodings of php/lex,
but still annoying for most non-english speakers...

Cheers,
Stephan


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of the
tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis. Adding the
wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the language file,
mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki links. From
establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of developer work
involved. Then there is a similar cost to the rest of the community --
stewards have to deal with creating bureaucrats and administrators, and
for small conlangs, the community has to deliberate over visibility on
the larger wikis.

This is all no big deal for important projects, I spend many hours per
week on Wikipedia. But there's a reason I spend that time on Wikipedia
rather than some other project, and that is because I think providing
general information to as large an audience as possible is a noble goal.

I was annoyed at having to support the Toki Pona wiki, and I wasn't keen
on Klingon either. I researched the Lojban language to see if there was
any way I could motivate myself to work on it by relating it to
Wikipedia's mission, but I didn't find one. I added it to the language
list with no intention of supporting it. It was painful turning down the
inevitable support requests, directing them to a more general forum. I
decided that if no developer was willing to support a wiki, then
creating it would only lead to frustration on the part of the contributors.

So, if any developer is willing to support the Gothic Wikipedia (or by
the same token, the Old English Wikipedia), I invite you to follow the
instructions at:

http://wp.wikidev.net/Wiki_farm#How_to_add_a_language

Don't forget to give the contributors your contact details, in case they
have any problems.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>I strongly suspect, however, that sooner or later all articles on biology
>will end up with a "creationist disclaimer". That would seal Wikipedia's
>fate as a serious encyclopedia.
>
>Now, reasonable people can differ on whether an article such as [[human]]
>deserves to be treated as a strictly biological topic. In general,
>however, the creationist claims are discussed at length in the articles on
>[[creationism]], and that is where they belong.
>
>
I do agree with that... I'm not sure if it'll solve all the problems,
but it seems that positioning articles within disciplines might serve to
avoid at least some of them.  If we say something like "In
[[evolutionary biology]], blah blah...", then it can serve as a
pseudo-disclaimer that this article is being written according to what
evolutionary biologists have to say on the matter, and the reader can
decide whatever they want about that.  I do agree we shouldn't have
disclaimers everywhere: the big "worldview differences" sorts of things
should be discussed in one place, not hashed out on every single article
relating to them.  But then we need to properly position the articles
that don't discuss them within one of the worldviews.  Surely even
creationists would agree that a statement "evolutionary biologists say
[blah]" is a neutral one?

Alternately, perhaps on some issues splitting things would be best?  For
example, [[human (biology)]] could be a strictly biological discussion
of the subject, while [[human]] would be a more general article.  We
already have a few such splits due to differing frameworks in
less-controversial fields, such as a few of the physics articles which
have multiple versions giving alternate treatments of the subject that
happen to each be favored by different folks.

I suspect part of the problem is that Wikipedia is trying to neutrally
report human knowledge, while even the terminology one uses to report
human knowledge (and how one organizes it) requires some presuppositions.

-Mark


from_name: Brion Vibber

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

body:
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)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving log-in bar

body:
On Sep 18, 2004, at 7:22 PM, James R. Johnson wrote:
> I have a question - when my mouse hovers over the "log in, my
> watchlist, my
> contributions" at the top right, it jumps to the left of the page,
> behind
> the wikipedia logo.  Anyone know why?

This is a bug in some versions of Internet Explorer for Windows.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 13:37:09 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

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?

>  > 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.

My point is that I do not have dev access, and I would be surprised if
it was given to me at least before the end of next year. I'm sure I
could do a lot of the dev tasks if I had the access, but I don't have
the nessecary knowledge to be able to mess with code until it works
the way I want, with only a few exceptions; thus for example the
Finnish thing you referred to I could probably not've done.

--node


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
I find it quite sad that anybody but the creator and sole speaker of a
conlang would have to set up their own Mediawiki-based encyclopedia
because of lack of support from the Foundation. (the same goes for
conlangs in my mind unless they have at least 500 speakers and maybe
even past then)

Of course the nature of this project means that the community will
decide on things like this, so however much I may disagree with the
ultimate decision of the community and/or Jimbo, I accept that it is
final.

Now Lars, some of the Wikipedias you give statistics for are deserving
of explanatory notes.

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).

If you were looking for Wikipedias with small numbers of articles,
perhaps it should be noted that Nynorsk got started very recently and
the fact that they already have 528 articles is something we should
admire them for. The Faroese wikipedia does seem to be... well... a
bit dead that the moment, as does the Breton wikipedia. The Klingon
wikipedia was very controversial. It too appears to be dead - I wonder
why we have a Wikipedia whose very existance is controversial, which
is not even being worked on anymore, that has not been trashed or at
least moved elsewhere? If it had over 100 articles maybe I would feel
differently, but it has *47*. 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. If this does not change in the near
future, I would suggest that we ask for it to be moved to the Toki
Pona official website.

best,
node

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 05:55:32 +0200 (CEST), Lars Aronsson
<lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> 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
>
> See, these are the tiresome arguments that we have to hear over and
> over again for every little language or project idea.  So much time
> and effort is wasted in this boring argumentation that could be better
> spent if you just started to write some 250 encyclopedic articles in
> Gothic and then said:
>
>   "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."
>
> Can you imagine how much more convincing that kind of argument is?
> This way, instead of fighting against the arguments of other
> wikipedians, you would have to fight against your own abilities.
>
> Current articles in Latin: 2648, Nynorsk: 528, Kashubian: 266,
> Toki pona: 190, Latvian: 137, Faroese: 51, Klingon: 47, Breton: 28.
>
> What if you cannot write 250 articles on your own?
> What if your friends cannot collect $500?
> Then what are your chances of ever writing an encyclopedia?
>
> What if the Wikimedia Foundation still would not accept your 250
> Gothic articles and $500?  To heck with them, run your own wiki!
> You've got the contents and the resources.  You're strong.  Be happy!
>
>
>
>
> Lars Aronsson, lars at aronsson.se
> --
>   Aronsson Datateknik
>


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving log-in bar

body:
I have a question - when my mouse hovers over the "log in, my watchlist, my
contributions" at the top right, it jumps to the left of the page, behind
the wikipedia logo.  Anyone know why?

James


from_name: Jeff Warnica

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

body:
On Sat, 2004-18-09 at 16:20 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Sunday or Monday, I want to spend $10,000 on new hardware.  What
> should it be?

Has anyone ever approached any of the name brand hardware providers for
donations, or at least deals? If rack space is a problem - while it may
be OK now, there is no reason to spend money there if you don't have to
- something like IBMs blade system may be worth looking at. Downloading
their (overly complex) spreadsheet, a chassis lists at $2789(us), which
is a lot for a box. OTOH, it isn't just a box, it includes integrated
network stuff, dual GigE per blade. I don't know what a 28 port GigE
switch is worth, but that definitely makes that price seem far more
reasonable. The "smallest" blade, Xeon 2.4GHz, 1 GB ram lists at $2629.
I have no idea how flexible IBM is for people off the street, but I
think Wikipedia qualifies as a special case.

Speculating, I wouldn't be surprised if you could get 4 blades for $10k,
and have them throw in a blade center for free.

Even if you cant get, or dont want, corporate sponsorship, I think
spending $10k warrants more then a day of pondering. Ive never been
involved with any organization large enough to even dream about hardware
on this scale, so this might be completely insane, but that kind of gear
is good for something, wikipedia may be on that list.


body:
Stephan Walter wrote:

> Try some UTF-8 salad:

The page has its encoding declared as ISO-8859-1. The behaviour you
described is correct in this case.

Timwi


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

body:
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.

--node

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 23:00:49 -0400, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
> On Sep 17, 2004, at 10:41 PM, James R. Johnson wrote:
>
> > Would you be writing in the Gothic script or Latin?
>
> http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/gotica/
>
> There are no recent Gothic texts, though there are critical editions of
> fragments that exist which are of recent origin.
>
> I'm not taking sides on the issue, but I am dubious that the scholars
> who are involved in the study of the Gothic language would be
> interested, or would put in any time. I think there is more likelihood
> of there being a native Klingon speaker in the next 10 years than a
> native Gothic  speaker.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
There are *some* texts written recently in Gothic, however most of
them are short and are either private correspondence, diaries, or
poetry (I believe there is an ML as well which uses Gothic), with some
of the poetry actually available on the internet.

--node

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 22:41:44 -0400, James R. Johnson
<modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Would you be writing in the Gothic script or Latin?  I think it'd be more
> sensible to do it in the Gothic script, since it's designed for the language
> moreso than the Latin script.
>
> Do you have any modern (in the last 15-20 years) texts written in Gothic
> (language and/or script)?  Can you either attach them or provide an URL for
> them?
>
> James
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Fredrik Adev?g
> Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 6:18 AM
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia
>
> I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
> gothic.
>
> Full name: gothic
>
> Language code: got
>
> Number of speakers: 0
>
> Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
> much more.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Auktioner: Tj?na en hacka p? gamla prylar http://tradera.msn.se
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Latin? No idea. Esperanto? The same reason you'd look it up in
English, except chances are Esperanto is not their first language, and
there's a good chance the same information is available in whatever
their native language actually *is*.

--node

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 22:26:48 -0400, James R. Johnson
<modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Why would anyone look for that same article in the Latin-language
> encyclopedia, or an Esperanto-language encyclopedia?
>
> James
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Delirium
> Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 3:22 PM
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >Uhh... what about Hebrew? Manchu? Manx? Cornish? Since when do
> >languages not revive successfully by teaching them to children?
> >
> >
> They revive successfully by teaching them to children as a daily-use
> language.  Is Wikipedia related to that?  I suppose it could be in some
> ways, but 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?
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Delirium-

> Perhaps you meant "biased in the direction of stupidity" but mistyped?
> The current articles expound on a view that only MDs with no
> philosophical sophistication hold, because they simply make no sense.
> If you pick up any book on the philosophy of mind, or read a philosophy
> journal on the subject,  you'll see these views of the mind/body problem
> not even being discussed, because they're too ridiculous to merit
> serious consideration.

I view philosophy as a sort of protoscience between religion and science,
but that doesn't really belong on this list. This, however, does:

> And who makes the decision that the creationists' claims are inferior to
> the biologists' claims?

Nobody. However, we do recognize the reality of the situation that
virtually all modern universities teach evolutionary biology, not the
creationist equivalent. Among trained biologists, creationism is virtually
non-existent. Hence, our articles on biology adopt the dominant view of
those highly educated in the field.

I strongly suspect, however, that sooner or later all articles on biology
will end up with a "creationist disclaimer". That would seal Wikipedia's
fate as a serious encyclopedia.

Now, reasonable people can differ on whether an article such as [[human]]
deserves to be treated as a strictly biological topic. In general,
however, the creationist claims are discussed at length in the articles on
[[creationism]], and that is where they belong.

> What if there are distinct scientific and philosophical traditions, and
> they conflict?

That happens a lot - that's why they're distinct in the first place. Our
job is to document these differences in a reasonable and consolidated
manner without having them spill over into unrelated articles.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On 18 Sep 2004, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Delirium-
>
> > What if there are distinct scientific and philosophical traditions, and
> > they conflict?
>
> That happens a lot - that's why they're distinct in the first place. Our
> job is to document these differences in a reasonable and consolidated
> manner without having them spill over into unrelated articles.
>
And then, sometimes unrelated articles can become related to our surprise.

What prompts me to contribute to this discussion is my recent revision of
the article on [[Apelles]], an ancient Greek painter whom I doubt anyone
here has heard of & even fewer care about. As I read the passage in
Pliny the Elder's _Natural History_ about Apelles the first time, I could
not help but feel that the anecdote where Apelles introduces
himself to Protogenes was the inspiration for a scene in the 1950's movie
"The Day the Earth Stood Still".

(It's conceivable: a high school or college graduate in those days was
expected to know more about the Greek & Roman Classics than students now.
Then then is the case that good all writers tend to be omnivorous &
far-ranging readers; my translation of Pliny was first published in 1952,
& either the author of the original short story or someone involved in
the movie could have read the same book.)

That is why I added a bit of commentary, although in a negative manner.
Hopefully someone with the time & interest will investigate the coincidence
& determine if there is more to it than one crank's idle musings.

On the other hand, while I was tempted to find a way to tie the lesson of
Apelles' lost varnish recipie & the concept of free knowledge together,
I decided it was not worth the effort. My intent in writing this article was
to present information, not a sermon.

Geoff


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
I find that horribly discriminatory.

And where do we draw the line? 3 speakers? 300? 3000? 30000? 300000? 3
million? 30 million?

--node

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 02:15:30 -0400, Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
> > People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
>
> Once again I'd like to point out that having a language-specific Wikipedia is
> not usually the best way to organize, promote, or develop a language.
>
> It's probably much better for a group of interested people working on a small or
> endangered language to set up a general-purpose wiki that encompasses the
> Wikimedia ideas of a Wikipedia, Wiktionary, a language-learning Wikibook, and
> perhaps a few other community- or discussion-oriented purposes.
>
> 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.
>
> 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).
>
> ~ESP
>
> * I can hear it now: "Huh? There are other wiki engines? There are other wikis?
> I can set up my own? Huh?"
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
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


body:
Klingon, Gothic, or both?

--node

ps What exactly is wrong with either language as a language to raise kids in?

On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 23:59:53 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> 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
>
>


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

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

body:
Hello.

Sorry if this has been discussed before, or the place would be better
on meta (in which case could someone post there and/or gimme the
appropriate url? :)

Here's a (rough) proposal for managing different language of pages,
heavily based on [[m:Translation requests]].

When someone creates a new page (not translate an existing one), s/he
creates two pages like that:
* My page (title in original language)
* My page/<language code>

In the first page, put link the 2nd, stating that's the original
language. Then fill in 2nd. Maybe put timestamps of last change on 1st
so easy to check when original changed.
When someone translates ''My page'' to language xx, do translation in
[[My page/xx]], and link from [[My page]].

When writing another page that links to ''My page'', try to link to
[[My page/xx]]. If nothing, link to [[My page]] - it'll make people
want to translate ''My page'', and point the page does exist - though
not (yet) in language you'd want.

If you want to link to a page you know doesn't exist, just link to
[[Future page]], without /. This way, when [[Future page]] does get
created, ''what links here'' will tell us which links need to be fixed
to correct language.

I hope it's clear lol.

The benefits i see are:
* when translating another document, easy to know which articles are
translations of articles - either [[link/<my language>]], and if red
[[link]] (assuming original link is not broken)
* each page have a ''disambiguation''-like page, to link all versions
and not forget a page here & there :)
* you won't have someone translate [[Board]] to [[Conseil
d'administration]] and someone else to [[Board/fr]], and thus don't
need to check broken links or duplicates and whatever
* software could prolly (though developers will know better'an me ;p)
be tweaked to check for [[article/<browser language>]] when someone
asks for [[article]], and fallback on latter if not found - thus one
day we can link straight to [[article]]

On the bad side:
* page title is always ''original language'' title, whatever the
language the page actually is

Nicolas 'Ryo'


from_name: samuel

subject: [Wikitech-l] Developer bio

body:
Umm.. is James Day really 13 years old?

Anthere wrote:

> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_activity
>
> Hi, some people updated their bios, others added their as well, thank
> you.
>
> I added a few names on it today; very shortly :-)
> Please check and add to the (very short) comments.
>
> Any contributor to the software or hardware maintenance should feel
> free to add his/her name as well.
>
> I will update the wikimedia website within 48 hours with this page.
>
> Note : if some people would like to be on this page for the
> information it provides for contributors, but DO NOT wish to be on the
> foundation website, please add yourself to the meta page and mention
> you do not want to be on the Foundation website.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.

Once again I'd like to point out that having a language-specific Wikipedia is
not usually the best way to organize, promote, or develop a language.

It's probably much better for a group of interested people working on a small or
endangered language to set up a general-purpose wiki that encompasses the
Wikimedia ideas of a Wikipedia, Wiktionary, a language-learning Wikibook, and
perhaps a few other community- or discussion-oriented purposes.

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.

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).

~ESP

* I can hear it now: "Huh? There are other wiki engines? There are other wikis?
I can set up my own? Huh?"
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subject: [Wikitech-l] What should I buy?

body:
On 19 Sep 2004, at 01:20, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Sunday or Monday, I want to spend $10,000 on new hardware.  What
> should it be?
>
> 2.  Rackspace is now at a premium, HOWEVER, we should not worry a LOT
> about that, since we are going to have to get a 2nd Rack very soon no
> matter what we decide today.  There is approximately 3U left in the
> rack, maybe 4U.
>
> A 2nd rack is going to add $700 per month to our colocation bill, not a
> big deal in the grand scheme of things.
>
> 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
>
> 4.  Some have suggested more squids?  Is there consensus on that?

DISCLAIMER: I am an IRRATIONAL and biased religious fanatic about these
things.

That said...
...since you're asking...
Yellow Dog Linux Xserve's of course!

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/apple/xserves.shtml
http://www.apple.com/xserve/
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/

Best bang for your buck!
They're Apple Servers (with full hardware warranty) from an official
Value Added Reseller, they're running a very decent Linux distro,
they're ready for 64bit computing (Y-HPC) -- and they're 1U! Given the
above details, you could probably fit in THREE of these beauties.

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


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
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?

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving log-in bar

body:
Unless it's SPECIFICALLY and exclusively as Wikipedia problem I would
suspect graphics cards  issues (because they are know to cause errant
mouse behaviour, believe it or not). (Of course you might first want to
tick off the usual "my-computer's-acting-up" checklist: Firewall? AV
scanner? OS and browser/application patches? Ad-aware?)

Or have you been making mad alterations to your CSS via
User:Username/blahblah.css?

-- ropers

On 19 Sep 2004, at 04:22, James R. Johnson wrote:

> I have a question - when my mouse hovers over the "log in, my
> watchlist, my
> contributions" at the top right, it jumps to the left of the page,
> behind
> the wikipedia logo.  Anyone know why?
>
>
>
> James
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer bio

body:
he has been working 13 years in...

Afaik, he wrote himself that sentence
Agreed, I also find it confusing :-)

samuel a ?crit:
> Umm.. is James Day really 13 years old?
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_activity
>>
>> Hi, some people updated their bios, others added their as well, thank you.
>>
>> I added a few names on it today; very shortly :-)
>> Please check and add to the (very short) comments.
>>
>> Any contributor to the software or hardware maintenance should feel
>> free to add his/her name as well.
>>
>> I will update the wikimedia website within 48 hours with this page.
>>
>> Note : if some people would like to be on this page for the
>> information it provides for contributors, but DO NOT wish to be on the
>> foundation website, please add yourself to the meta page and mention
>> you do not want to be on the Foundation website.
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>


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

body:
Nicolas Weeger a ?crit:
> Hello.
>
> Sorry if this has been discussed before, or the place would be better on
> meta (in which case could someone post there and/or gimme the
> appropriate url? :)
>
> Here's a (rough) proposal for managing different language of pages,
> heavily based on [[m:Translation requests]].
>
> When someone creates a new page (not translate an existing one), s/he
> creates two pages like that:
> * My page (title in original language)
> * My page/<language code>
>
> In the first page, put link the 2nd, stating that's the original
> language. Then fill in 2nd. Maybe put timestamps of last change on 1st
> so easy to check when original changed.
> When someone translates ''My page'' to language xx, do translation in
> [[My page/xx]], and link from [[My page]].
>
> When writing another page that links to ''My page'', try to link to [[My
> page/xx]]. If nothing, link to [[My page]] - it'll make people want to
> translate ''My page'', and point the page does exist - though not (yet)
> in language you'd want.
>
> If you want to link to a page you know doesn't exist, just link to
> [[Future page]], without /. This way, when [[Future page]] does get
> created, ''what links here'' will tell us which links need to be fixed
> to correct language.
>
> I hope it's clear lol.
>
> The benefits i see are:
> * when translating another document, easy to know which articles are
> translations of articles - either [[link/<my language>]], and if red
> [[link]] (assuming original link is not broken)
> * each page have a ''disambiguation''-like page, to link all versions
> and not forget a page here & there :)
> * you won't have someone translate [[Board]] to [[Conseil
> d'administration]] and someone else to [[Board/fr]], and thus don't need
> to check broken links or duplicates and whatever
> * software could prolly (though developers will know better'an me ;p) be
> tweaked to check for [[article/<browser language>]] when someone asks
> for [[article]], and fallback on latter if not found - thus one day we
> can link straight to [[article]]
>
> On the bad side:
> * page title is always ''original language'' title, whatever the
> language the page actually is
>
> Nicolas 'Ryo'

Hmmm
Well, I think you are suggesting this by reference of the newsletter and
the wikimedia site translation.
This could work for some translations I guess.

But I see two problems with this :

*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.

*at least on the wmf site, I can not really say which article is the
original one. Languages are alternatively worked on.
Similarly, if I refer to the newsletter, though I wrote a big part of it
in french, which was translated in english by someone else, the version
of the newsletter considered original was the english one... even though
the original text was french. When the english text was edited, I had to
edit back the "original" text in french, so it could fit the english text.
After a while, this gets very confusing :-) This mix of origin does not
goes much in the direction of having original and original/fr.

But for other situations (true translations), that might work yes.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Communication catalysts

body:
I am not absolutely sure what the appropriate timezone is.
I succeed to talk to Angela (in my time zone), to Jimbo (in another time
zone - middle of the night) and to Tim Starling (late night, early
morning). On #wikipedia, there seems to be always activity.

We try to centralize as much as we can on meta. This is the only real
good place ultimately, as it can be multilingual and it is remanent.

I'll try with Elian and Mav to improve this.
You are welcome to join :-)

John Lee a ?crit:
> I completely agree. That was the crux of my initial problem with
> Wikispecies - sure, most of us active users are on IRC and the mailing
> list. But as Sj says, those of us not in an appropriate timezone (such
> as me; I sleep when most of Wikimedian daily activity just starts) don't
> have as much a say, nor even much information on these things,
> especially with the IRC channel. As Sj has said, this isn't scaling. We
> need a centralised source for these without having to log on to meta
> everyday, read the mailing lists, and be present on two or three IRC
> channels.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]] on en.wikipedia.org)
>
> Sj wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:59:32 +0200, Anthere
>> <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> We will try to do better in the future, to listen more and longer. But I
>>> must warn you of one point. Jimbo, Angela and I are all three already
>>> streching our time limits. If you all want us to listen better, you will
>>> have to help us by providing better insight, summaries and such... and
>>>
>>
>>
>> One thing which I would very much like to see, is a group trusted to
>> act as ombudsmen or secretaries, who stay on top of these issues of
>> communication.  These are not tangential issues which matter only to
>> those who are complaining right now, they are central to scaling our
>> community.
>>
>> Many of the people most likely to be involved with important decisions
>> have a hundred things to worry about, to draft, and to discuss.  There
>> should be a single
>> sink into which they (and community members) can toss updates and
>> announcements, confident that from there, such tidbits will be
>> collated and distributed to every appropriate community channel.
>> * "I just created page <foo>on meta that everyone should know about,"
>> * "I created a meetup list on my user-talk page, and posted to
>> wikipedia-l about it,"
>> * "Jimbo just sent a notice about global problem <fee> to
>> foundation-l," * "The Board just agreed that <fi> and said as much on
>> the AC Talk page,"
>> * "There's a big debate about page-capitalization going on at page <fo>"
>> * "This group of users says nobody is paying attention to their
>> troubles with <fum>"
>>
>> Currently, I feel that one has to read three+ mailing lists, watch new
>> pages and RC on meta, and keep up with a sizeable watchlist on one's
>> local wiki, to stay abreast of developments, or even to show up in
>> time to have a say in certain important discussions.
>>
>>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] New fundraising page version

body:
--- 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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Lars Aronsson a ?crit:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>>People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
>
>
> Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours?  Either
> more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required
> work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be
> collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new
> wiki can be set up.
>
> As a consultant, I have found that a good way to avoid boring work
> tasks is to put a price tag on them.  Oh yes, I would love to fix
> your spelling errors -- at $10 per page or $150 per hour.  :-)
>
> The current discussions of whether or not to start new projects are
> tiresome and frustrating for all parties.  It would be better to allow
> anybody to start new projects, so that the hard part will not be
> convincing the Wikimedia Foundation,

I really did not have the feeling convincing us was the hard part...

but convincing the community to
> fill the new wiki with contents.  Perhaps such communities should be
> required first to collect 250 articles (off-wiki, by e-mail) and when
> this is achieved, the new wiki will be started.
>
>
> Lars Aronsson, lars at aronsson.se

I agree
Start with articles and with a minimum of interested editors.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

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

See, these are the tiresome arguments that we have to hear over and
over again for every little language or project idea.  So much time
and effort is wasted in this boring argumentation that could be better
spent if you just started to write some 250 encyclopedic articles in
Gothic and then said:

  "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."

Can you imagine how much more convincing that kind of argument is?
This way, instead of fighting against the arguments of other
wikipedians, you would have to fight against your own abilities.

Current articles in Latin: 2648, Nynorsk: 528, Kashubian: 266,
Toki pona: 190, Latvian: 137, Faroese: 51, Klingon: 47, Breton: 28.

What if you cannot write 250 articles on your own?
What if your friends cannot collect $500?
Then what are your chances of ever writing an encyclopedia?

What if the Wikimedia Foundation still would not accept your 250
Gothic articles and $500?  To heck with them, run your own wiki!
You've got the contents and the resources.  You're strong.  Be happy!

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


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

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?

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 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.

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.

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 same argument could be given for other dead languages, but it's
important to remember that we don't have to be consistent, when there
are historical factors (historical to our project) involved.  Reading
about the moon landings in Latin is a fun curiosity, not a necessity
for our project, and presumably the Latin wikipedia might have such a
thing.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> The Klingon wikipedia was very controversial. It too appears to be
> dead - I wonder why we have a Wikipedia whose very existance is
> controversial, which is not even being worked on anymore, that has
> not been trashed or at least moved elsewhere? If it had over 100
> articles maybe I would feel differently, but it has *47*. 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. If this does not change in the near future, I would suggest
> that we ask for it to be moved to the Toki Pona official website.

These were kept because it was felt that there was or would soon be an
active community of interested parties, and that these projects were
obviously not potentially forks or otherwise problematic for existing
communities.

Given that neither seems to be active communities, I agree with you
that we should consider helping them to find new homes.

--Jimbo


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

body:
----- 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 -----

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


body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqtada_al-Sadr

is my own favorite example, and also the site of one of my extremely
rare personal ventures into editing.

There was a time when this article was heavily slanted in an anti-US
fashion.  The important tidbit is that the article went significantly
beyond all mainstream sources in claiming that the U.S. broke the
truce agreement.  In fact, all mainstream sources were very vague on
that point; there seems to be little information about what the truce
agreement actually consisted of, and little information about how the
fighting started again.

However, my experience in helping on the article was quite good, but
of course people may pay me more deference than I would otherwise
deserve on the merits of my writing.  My sense of it, though, and I do
a *lot* of reading on talk pages and edit histories of controversial
pages, is that the majority of contributors are willing to work with
others to find a way to ensure that we don't make claims that go
beyond the best available evidence.

(I have not read the current version of the article.)

--Jimbo


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

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Can these machines be refurbished to turn them into Wikireader terminals?

It is theoretically possible, yes.  The cases themselves are quite
nice.  If the computers can be used for something extremely
lightweight like that, this would be perfectly fine.

> Do we have any plans to do so?

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.

There are a few but not many local wikipedians who might take an
interest.  (To understand how few, though, note that we tried to have
a local meetup of the type that I always have in Europe, and only 1
person beside me signed up to attend.)

At least some of these machines could fairly easily be turned into
real servers for us, with a motherboard upgrade and so on.  But even
that will be a drain on my time (or someone's time), and so the cost
savings would have to be fairly substantial for it to make sense for
us to do that.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Simplified/Traditional Chinese conversion

body:
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.

Rowan Collins wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 17:30:23 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > Wow. I wonder if we could use the same syntax to specify the various
> > spellings of English. Then finally users will no longer need to see a mix.
>
> I guess this presupposes a nice way of choosing between en-us and
> en-gb in the wiki preferences: I wouldn't put much money on many
> people's browsers being set up to request the right variant (just
> think how many people still complain that they can't type "?", because
> Windows thinks they have a US keyboard!)
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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


from_name: Kiss All

subject: [Foundation-l] One suggestion for donation

body:
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.

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

I saw a lot of bumper stickers everyday. And some are very interesting
and very impressive while some hurt my feeling a lot such as "Free
Tibet". I don't like the idea of fission my country with the excuse of
wrong behaviors of government.

 I would definitely buy one with WikiMedia slogan and put it on my
rear bumper to proudly declare: I am a wikipedian! Joint us! And I
would wear the T-shirt often too :-). But make sure you provide size M
suitable for asians. Most T-shirts in USA are too large for us.

--
Be good....


subject: [Wikitech-l] One suggestion for donation


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] One suggestion for donation

body:
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 08:05:15 -0700 (PDT), andrew fabbro
<andrew at fabbro.org> wrote:
of government.
>
> The rest of the world's feelings are hurt by Chinese imperialism and the
Your word of "the rest of the world" here is a little bit strange for
me. You only have right to express your own opinion. But never, please
never assume you are the rest of the world. How to define the "rest of
the world" and how do you know its feeling is the same as yours?

> destruction of Tibetan culture.  Until China can behave like a modern,
> grown-up nation, no one gives a shit about your "feelings".
Again, your word of "no one" here is strange for me. As far as I know,
you gave a shit-about my feelings, but it does not mean "no one". You
are assuming you are the reprentative for anybody except me? I am
confident many people in this world care my feelings.

I can only draw a conculsion from your words that you are little bit
arrogant. But that is not fully your fault.

For me, I am trying to care anybody's feeling when doing things.
Forgive my word if what I saying is a kind of offend in your culture.
Thanks for your attention for this suggestion. though it is a little
bit off-topic
>
> andrew fabbro                                            [andrew at fabbro.org]
> ------------------------------[ quote-o-matic] -----------------------------
> "I've been thinking about all my cool electronic gadgets and how they've
>  never brought me real happiness.  I guess it's because I don't have
>  enough of them."  -- Matt Diamond
>

--
Be good....


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Ooh... somebody's grumpy.

I wasn't interrogating you or anything. At least I didn't mean to.

Sorry.

--node

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 17:50:59 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Yes, that's what I was saying. "that would exclude".

--node

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 14:11:19 +0200, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> 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
>

Pawel wrote:
>MW> If you were looking for "dead languages" and conlangs, that would
>MW> exclude Breton, Faroese, Latvian, Kashubian, and Nynorsk (Nynorsk is
>MW> basically an official codification of rural SW Norwegian speech forms,
>MW> it can hardly be considered a conlang).
>
>Kashubian is not a dead language. There are still many native speakers
>in Kashubia.


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Erik Moeller wrote

> I strongly suspect, however, that sooner or later all articles on biology
> will end up with a "creationist disclaimer". That would seal Wikipedia's
> fate as a serious encyclopedia.

I agree that such a disclaimer would be a bad thing.  Surely, though, it is
enough to wikilink [[evolution]], [[evolved]] etc. just once in any article
that uses these concepts.  After all, theres is also criticism of 'species'
as a concept on WP; it hardly means that every single article assuming the
species concept needs to cite it directly.

Charles


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 06:01:09 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> 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?
>
> 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.

Sure, but Tim didn't simply say he didn't feel like it but simply that
helping such languages in Wikipedia cannot be supported by his reasons
for working on the project, I asked him about his reasons, I didn't
say anything like "Well, you suck and should do it anyhow!" because
that is not how I feel.

> 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.

What I still wonder about is why we have so many Wikis that have not
been created per se but have working subdomains, ie bo:, oj:, etc. If
there are people willing to create a Gothic or an Anglo-Saxon wiki,
yet we know of nobody willing to create a Tibetan or Ojibwe wiki, then
why is it the former exist and the latter don't?

> 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.

Would that include all the languages we don't have, or just those with
under 1 million speakers (at present, not in the past)?

> 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.

As I said before, there is a movement to "revive" Gothic by teaching
it to kids as a native language. If I recall correctly, this started
in the 80s so these kids should be about the right age for
encyclopedia usage now, and if not they presumably will be in a couple
of years. I think so far this movement has produced about 400 native
speakers (spread out across the world), and presumably more to come.

> The same argument could be given for other dead languages, but it's
> important to remember that we don't have to be consistent, when there
> are historical factors (historical to our project) involved.  Reading
> about the moon landings in Latin is a fun curiosity, not a necessity
> for our project, and presumably the Latin wikipedia might have such a
> thing.

The difference here is that Latin, whilst being a "language of high
prestige" among much of the scientific community, does not (to the
best of my knowledge) have any native speakers whatsoever, whereas
Gothic does. The same goes for Sanskrit which now has a Wikipedia
(ahem - but look at the articles........), the language has been a
liturgical language and a language of scholarship with no native
speakers for centuries, however quite recently a movement started to
teach it to children as a native language and now there are upwards of
4000 native speakers.

--node


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia--a compromise position

body:
Tired as I am of receiving emails about Gothic (it seems to me that I have
more emails about the language than there are speakers), I want to suggest a
compromise.

Rather than create a Gothic Wikipedia, we start with a Gothic Wiktionary.
This has potential to be a valuable resource for researchers. It could be
multilingual, translating Gothic words into English, French, German, Spanish, and any
other languages. Then, if the Gothic Wiktionary takes off (say 10,000 words
and phrases), we can revisit the question of creating a Gothic Wikipedia.

Danny


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
> 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.

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...

--node


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
I'm not referring to conlangs as they are more controversial and
should be dealt with separately.

However I would ask you the following questions: 1. does anybody speak
your conlang as their native language? 2. if not, does anybody use it
in their daily life significantly more than any other language? 3. How
many speakers does it have overall?

If your answer to 1 was "yes", I would definitely consider supporting
it. If your answer to 2 was yes and your answer to 3 was over 1000 or
so, I would consider supporting it. However, the majority of conlangs
(especially newly-created ones) do not have very many speakers, and
even those that do oftentimes have no native speakers or nobody who
uses them more than any other language in their day-to-day life.

--node

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 17:21:50 +0200, Andre Engels <andrewiki at freemail.nl> wrote:
> 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
>


body:
<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?

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)

> *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


from_name: Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
MW> If you were looking for "dead languages" and conlangs, that would
MW> exclude Breton, Faroese, Latvian, Kashubian, and Nynorsk (Nynorsk is
MW> basically an official codification of rural SW Norwegian speech forms,
MW> it can hardly be considered a conlang).

Kashubian is not a dead language. There are still many native speakers
in Kashubia.

--
Ausir
mailto:fallout at lexx.eu.org
http://fallout.scifi.pl
ICQ 41090834 GG 2730728


body:
RS> That sounds like a great way to raise disfunctional kids. :-(

I don't think anyone is raising kids with Gothic or Klingon as the
only language, but they're raising them as bilingual - with Gothic and
the parents' native language.

--
Ausir
mailto:fallout at lexx.eu.org
http://fallout.scifi.pl
ICQ 41090834 GG 2730728


from_name: Pawe³ 'Ausir' Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

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

Actually, this is how Polish Wikipedia started - it was first on a
different server, with a different domain, and then moved to
pl.wikipedia.org.

--
Ausir
mailto:fallout at lexx.eu.org
http://fallout.scifi.pl
ICQ 41090834 GG 2730728


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
Indeed.

If I recall correctly Jimbo once said something along the lines of
Wikipedias for small, threatened, and endangered languages fit in well
with the mission of the Foundation (though I may well be wrong, this
may've been someone else, if that is the case please let me know), and
I agree there.

I think Wikipedia could play a very significant role in bridging the
gap between the "have"s and the "have not"s in many parts of the
world. (ie acc'd to Hemanshu, in India there is a widespread belief
that you have to know English to use a computer; perhaps this would
change if there was a huge online encyclopedia in local languages;
many people in many regions of the world could use the internet if
they wanted but don't because they can't understand a single word of
the content currently available)

For languages like Maori and Hawai'ian, an encyclopedic resource
written entirely in them would undoubtedly provide a much-needed
resource for their language nest movements (maori -> kohanga reo,
hawai'ian -> punana leo). As of right now there is no Hawai'ian
wikipedia but I'm sure it would be very easy to solicit Punana Leo
educators (as well as educators from Hawai'ian-language primary and
secondary schools) to come and build a wikipedia, and I bet they'd do
it quickly too with that kind of motivation (as it is, they have
nights where parents come in and translate textbooks paragraph by
paragraph, pasting Hawai'ian translations on over the English
paragraphs; imagine if a similar effort were applied to Wikipedia
except in addition rather than on top of)

Similarly with a Gothic Wikipedia, the 400 or so children that are
currently being raised in Gothic (some of whom may well not be
children anymore, I'm not sure) as well as those to come in the future
would have an encyclopedic resource which could be of tremendous help
to them. Objections on the grounds that Gothic died too long ago are
baseless unless you are also agaisnt the Cornish wikipedia because
Gothic, although it died a really long time ago in Western Europe,
persisted until maybe even into the industrial age in the Crimea, as
long or maybe even longer than Cornish. And the Cornish wikipedia
already has over 120 articles over a couple of weeks with only two
active contributors and only one really active contributor. And
Gothic, unlike Cornish, does not have the multiple varieties and the
infighting.

--node

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 20:02:19 +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski
<taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>>People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
>
>
> Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours?  Either
> more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required
> work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be
> collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new
> wiki can be set up.

I suggest you read my post again. I'll quote it here in part.

Tim Starling wrote:
> People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of
> the tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis.
> Adding the wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the
> language file, mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki
> links. From establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of
                                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> developer work involved.

That's just a very rough guess. Some wikis take a lot more than that. I
just finished writing a new feature specifically for the Finnish
Wikipedia which probably took 6 hours alone, although you wouldn't see
me giving that level of service to Gothic or Klingon.

The task of creating a wiki is already automated. As I explained above,
the problem is in ongoing tech support and system administration, not
creation. There are ways to reduce that too, but there's always going to
be someone who doesn't bother reading the manual.

That's why I suggested that if anyone is interested in providing ongoing
support for this wiki, they should offer themselves as a point of
contact. They should do their best to fix any problems, but *never* pass
the problem on to the rest of the community.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
Hi,

Le Sunday 19 September 2004 08:54, Mark Williamson a ?crit :
> I find that horribly discriminatory.
>
> And where do we draw the line? 3 speakers? 300? 3000? 30000? 300000? 3
> million? 30 million?

Not at all. I find it very reasonable that any project show at least some
support from a minimum of contributors. As an example, Wikitravel has a rule
to get 5 contributors before staring a new language project.

I think a rule like this should be necessary to start any project within the
WMF.

> --node

Best wishes,
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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
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
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