from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
 Since there has been some talk about candidates' statements and translating them into multiple languages, I thought that I would toss my $0.02 into the fray.

 I recently finished writing a book (due for released in 2007). I was commissioned to write 25,000 words. It is a small book, but it is a complete book nonetheless. Based on the following categorization below, it would qualify as a novella:

 SuperPlus novel: 100,000 + words
 Plus Novel: 70,001 - 99,999 words
 Novel: 45,001-69,999 words
 Category: 30,000-45,000 words
 Novella: 15,000-29,999 words
 Quickie: up to 15,00 words
 (see http://www.ellorascave.com/about/length.htm)

 Accordng to Gmaxwell, the largest candidate statement is approximately 20,000 words, i.e., a novella. We have 17 candidates this election. If each one wrote a statement of that length, we would have 340,000 words to read, i.e., statements totalling several times the length of "War and Peace" or a standard Dickens novel. We are talking "A la recherche du temps perdu."

 I suggest that the time of Wikimedians can be better spent than reading statements of this length by, for example, researching articles. I would suggest that the time of our translators could be better spent working on making high quality content available in all languages.

 In the first election, I set a limit of 500 words on each candidate's statement. Despite the complaints back then, there was a reason for that.

 Danny

________________________________________________________________________
Check out the new AOL.  Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> it is my conviction that for the future, more than "just" translations for
> elections (i take them as an example of a bigger thing to consider here) are
> mandatory to evercome this *gap in culture*. (a point of attention for the
> board retreat imho)
>
> oscar

A reasonable conclusion.  In trying to think of a solution, I found
myself searching for a precedent of a truly international/global
direct election.  I couldn't think of any.  Can anyone else?

Becoming a truly global organization, where the representatives
represent the entire membership and not just their "constituents", is
going to be a really big challenge.  What do you (and anyone else for
that matter) think can be done to accomplish it?


list: wikien-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Weird Al's White and Nerdy mocks the Wikipedia

body:
On 9/21/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Just pointing out that Weird Al Yankovic's new video shows (though clearly
> photoshopped) the nerd vandalising the Wikipedia.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw&eurl= (at about 1:50)

For those of us without that shockwave gunk installed, or whom don't
want to watch several minutes of video for a few frames:

http://myrandomnode.dyndns.org/white_and_nerdy_wikipedia.png

is all there is to the Wikipedia bit.


from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL conflicting with transfer of content?

body:
On 9/20/06, valdelli at bluemail.ch <valdelli at bluemail.ch> wrote:
>
> In Wikipedia we have sometimes the transfer of content among
> different projects Wikipedia <--> Wikisource, Wikipedia <-->
> Wikinews, Wikipedia <--> Wiktionary for example.
>
> I don't know very well the status of all wikipedia but I am
> following my personal experience.
>
> But this usage is in in conflict with GFDL?
>
> I could read here http://en.wikisource.
> org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License some points which are not
> respected like:
>
> 1.Preserve the section Entitled "History"....
> 2.Preserve the network location...
>
> and so on.
>
> IMHO it's possible to transfer but the original version must remain
> in its original place (in this case it's a simple copy) or the
> transfer is possible respecting some rules for example the transfer
> of all history, of list of all author and maybe with agreement of
> them.
>
> If an article is transfered without taking care of all point listed
> in the GFDL could an author request the reintegration of the article
> in the original place? IMHO it is in its own rights!

In Wikipedia > Wikisource transactions, not necessarily. If a text is in
public domain, no reason to keep original credits for a cut-and-paste action
(IMHO).

Also the transfer of an article from a project in another is not
> valid if the original place has got a place card who redirect at new
> place where there is a modified version (adding also the lost of
> history due to the transfer)!
>
> What is your suggestion?

Stop manual transwikis and use only Special:Import method.

I ask because in a Wikipedia some people vote for transfer of some
> articles which are accepted by the community in a previous call for
> cancellation. In other words the article which are not cancelled
> after some days are proposed for transfer.
>
> Ilario
>
>


from_name: David Gerard

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

body:
On 21/09/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd like to second this - don't relax requirements whatsoever.

Of course, it would make the goal silly to do so. I'm putting
[[WP:100K]] as working to the Featured Article criteria ...

> But don't be afraid to reform the process. The meaning of FA should
> not be to be one of 365 produced each year to show up on the front
> page.

... but am explicitly not assuming the current FA process.

[[WP:100K]] seems to have a nascent process outlined:

1. Check various sources for better-than-average articles. (FA, GA,
A-rated by a project, collaboration-of-the-week, etc.)
2. Rate these per the FAC. I expect FAs and probably GAs will get an
automatic pass to save effort.

An idea I have for step 2 is: no self-nominations. I am *suspecting*
self-nominations are why FA has to explicitly say "don't take it
personally" - they've set up an environment almost designed to make it
personal.

Now then, for the bilinguals ... does translating FAs from one project
to another sound like something that would arouse your interest at
all?

[cc: back to wikien-l]

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

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


body:
On 21/09/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:

> Let's call a spade a spade.  Raul654 calls himself whatever he calls
> himself whilst running FA in en:wp.  Great - I'm glad some"one" does
> it.  But the project requires much much more than just one person's
> work.  That is the whole point.  One person isn't going to manage 100K
> top-notch articles.  We are pushing the quality up across the board
> and fulfilling Jimbo's challenge at WM06 this year - less about new
> articles - more about better articles.

I'm certainly not going to knock Raul's work managing that particular
herd of cats - I spent a lot of time participating in FAC over 2004
and 2005, and a Featured Articles *Dictator* who doesn't take crap is
what the job as it stands needs and he does it well.

(That it needs a dictator is somewhat worrying, and that it gets
personal is also somewhat worrying, but those are different
questions.)

But en:WP:FAC can't scale because it's based on an individual review
process by an ad-hoc committee, and a committee can't possibly scale.
So we can't assume the present FAC process.

However, the standards set by FA are as exemplary for Wikipedia as
they aim to be.

- d.


from_name: Andreas Vilén

body:
Above all: Do not ease the requirements of the featured articles, just to
have more of them.

/Andreas

On 9/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [[:en:WP:100K]] is a page about Danny's wild idea to have 100,000
> featured-quality articles on en: in a year or so.
>
> Featured articles from other language Wikipedias may be a marvellous
> source for quality material.
>
> If you write well in both English and the other language, you may be
> able to do very well for en: by going through the other language's
> featured articles and bringing the en: article up to scratch.
>
> (And for the other Wikipedia by doing it the other way.)
>
> How do those of you who write well in two languages feel about this idea?
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Gallagher Mark George

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Creation Procedure

body:
G'day Carl,

> On 9/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 09:09:54 -0700, Ray Saintonge
> > <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> > >Since we also have five members of the Board, was this intended
> to be an
> > >allegory?
> >
> > No, it's *ape*, not alligator.
>
> Allegory: a story with a deeper level of meaning, where elements
> of the
> stories generally represent something else in real life. The
> question was if
> the apes were supposed to stand for the Board, not if "alligators"
> wereintended instead of apes.

That joke is either a wonderful example of deadpan humour so subtle and profound that a poor pleb like me can't hope to understand it, or you missed Guy's point completely.  Apparently AGF compels me[0] to believe the best of the situation, so one must assume you're just taking Guy's joke to another, more beautiful, level.

In which case: well played, sir.  Well played.

[0] One day I'm going to post a long list of the CW-like
     misunderstandings of policy I've seen put forth by CVU
    types[1].  I suspect there isn't a single policy that hasn't
    seen someone bitten by an officious Enforcer who
   doesn't actually know what the policy really means.

[1] Actually, "AGF means you can't say someone is wrong"
     is quite common, and even one or two admins have
    been known to spout it.  I've tried to bring this silliness to
    the admins' attention, but they just think I'm assuming
    bad faith on their behalf.[2]

[2] But this post isn't about AGF.  I'm actually being
     humorous and not at all political.  So you can stop
     looking at me like that and start assuming GF.

--
Mark Gallagher


from_name: Aphaia

body:
As I wrote as responce to Birgitte in another time in this thread,

On 9/21/06, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> As for translation, which is of course very important, I think the best
> solution is probably more or less what's been done for this election -- make
> sure that every candidate provides a short statement of approximately equal
> length; make sure that this statement is assiduously translated into as many
> languages as possible;

So I think.

> but then allow (and encourage) candidates to post as
> much additional material as they wish, in whatever language(s) they are
> comfortable in, with no guarantee it will get translated.

and that I object (except "no guarantee" part). As I stated before, it
means "if you can read language A, you are provided more materials
than language non-A speakers". On local projects, I found some signs
some people thought such additional materials would be just a sign of
those candidates are anglo-centric.

Since the Election is not yet closed, I stop my wording here at this
moment. But frustration of non-English communities will follow a
conclusion which may be a nightmare for English people, I predict, and
perhaps for other language speaking people too.

Considering such reactions and frustrations on non-English speaking
communities, regarding equal-oppotunity of electrates, I strongly
oppose this idea.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Global Text Project

body:
phoebe ayers wrote:

>The Global Text project has been getting some press lately:
>
>

Need to see it get some editors and a lot more content though ... :-)

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Global Text Project


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

body:
On 21/09/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:

> There are so many ideas out there as to how we can do it. Let's share them.
> Other, easy steps--

I've added this to [[WP:100K]].

- d.

[re-add cc to wikien-l - please preserve this]


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


body:
On 21/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, it's certainly an interesting idea, but it's usually a lot of hard work
> to get a decent translation going. The article subject would have to be
> interesting to keep me motivated.

If you could pick an FA in another language and port it to the best
English-language article you can, and let us know what sort of numbers
of hours this takes, that would be most useful to know.

(and, as Danny says, it beats arguing about people, process or policy)

- d.


list: wikitech-l

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

body:
On 21/09/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:

> There's a link suggesting tool I'm temporarily putting out there for you all to have a play with and to give feedback and comments
> on.
> If you want to play with it now, it's at: http://can-we-link-it.nickj.org/

That's fantastic! I just tried it on [[Xenu]] and it's IMO improved the article.

One caveat: quite a lot of the suggested links were of random phrases
to pop-culture articles on e.g. album titles of that name. These are
not so useful for articles that aren't pop-culture.

Also: it took a reload to get the PHP pages to load.

But this is a really nice tool.

- d.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Anthony wrote:
> On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> it is my conviction that for the future, more than "just" translations for
>> elections (i take them as an example of a bigger thing to consider here) are
>> mandatory to evercome this *gap in culture*. (a point of attention for the
>> board retreat imho)
>>
>> oscar
>>
>
> A reasonable conclusion.  In trying to think of a solution, I found
> myself searching for a precedent of a truly international/global
> direct election.  I couldn't think of any.  Can anyone else?
>

The Debian project organizes itself largely around direct elections, and
has a pretty international base of voters.  They do only let official
Debian developers vote, though, which is maybe more like if we only let
admins vote in our elections.

They do seem to be moderately successful at it.  I don't recall much
controversy about the nationalities of project leaders---disputes about
the direction of the project and technical issues play a much bigger
role in voting than whether someone comes from the same country as you.

-Mark


body:
On 21/09/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> Trying to make the Board literally representative of all languages or
> cultures is trying the impossible. However, making the ability to
> speak English no longer a requirement to participate in Foundation
> matters, _is_ possible. And perhaps, as part of that process, it will
> even become possible for a person who does not speak English to be
> elected to the Board.

... I'm not sure this objective as stated makes sense for the moment.
The Board is of a US-based nonprofit and must deal with matters of
legal consequence in English, the language of local jurisprudence.

- d.


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

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

I don't think that's true at all.  The entire point of Wikipedia is to
produce a good reference that didn't previously exist.  We take the huge
amount of information out there and produce high-quality, reliable,
referenced summaries.  If we do that, we become the best reference on a
number of things---not because we're conducting original research, but
because we've summarized widely-spread information into a readable
summary all in one place.

-Mark


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

body:
On 21/09/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:

> > How do those of you who write well in two languages feel about this idea?

> IMHO we mostly already do it. EN.wiki is the largest knowledge base
> available on the net, so it's absolutely natural for multilingual people to
> go there and use it. And once you are there it's also natural to check and
> correct the info, add missing bits etc.

In that case, could you (and anyone else reading) please do an
experiment for me? Pick a featured article on a Wikipedia not in
English; translate it to as high a quality article on en: as you can;
and tell us how long it takes for each part of the process. This will
be useful in seeing how many man-hours we would need.

- d.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Yes, it's certainly an interesting idea, but it's usually a lot of hard work
to get a decent translation going. The article subject would have to be
interesting to keep me motivated.

Mgm

On 9/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 21/09/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'd like to second this - don't relax requirements whatsoever.
>
>
> Of course, it would make the goal silly to do so. I'm putting
> [[WP:100K]] as working to the Featured Article criteria ...
>
>
> > But don't be afraid to reform the process. The meaning of FA should
> > not be to be one of 365 produced each year to show up on the front
> > page.
>
>
> ... but am explicitly not assuming the current FA process.
>
> [[WP:100K]] seems to have a nascent process outlined:
>
> 1. Check various sources for better-than-average articles. (FA, GA,
> A-rated by a project, collaboration-of-the-week, etc.)
> 2. Rate these per the FAC. I expect FAs and probably GAs will get an
> automatic pass to save effort.
>
> An idea I have for step 2 is: no self-nominations. I am *suspecting*
> self-nominations are why FA has to explicitly say "don't take it
> personally" - they've set up an environment almost designed to make it
> personal.
>
>
> Now then, for the bilinguals ... does translating FAs from one project
> to another sound like something that would arouse your interest at
> all?
>
>
> [cc: back to wikien-l]
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
I'll see if I can chip in with a Dutch article.

On 9/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 21/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Yes, it's certainly an interesting idea, but it's usually a lot of hard
> work
> > to get a decent translation going. The article subject would have to be
> > interesting to keep me motivated.
>
>
> If you could pick an FA in another language and port it to the best
> English-language article you can, and let us know what sort of numbers
> of hours this takes, that would be most useful to know.
>
> (and, as Danny says, it beats arguing about people, process or policy)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 9/21/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> > for example, the few amount of voters on ja: is striking, in view of the
> > size of the project.

> This is certainly an argument for the indirect elections using an
> elector-style system.

I think the fundamental issues we are dealing with are quite simply
culture and language barriers. Electing electors, creating councils or
forming multilingual committees does not help us to cross those
barriers. We're only going to end up encountering the same barriers on
a smaller scale: in the Board, in a council, in the committees.

We are trying to build one of the most multilingual, multicultural
organizations on the planet, one which is driven and enabled by modern
communications technology. Yet, the technology we're using right now
-- an e-mail list -- is quite outdated. Indeed, this very message does
not even carry the most basic information what language it is written
in. There's no way for any translator to easily attach (in a
machine-readable way) a version in another language. Filtering by
language is non-trivial. There's no method to assign priorities for
translation, and to manage these tasks. The Wikimedia Foundation does
not employ any language or culture experts, or translators.

As a consequence, the possibilities for a non-English speaking
Japanese Wikipedian who wants to be involved in Foundation matters, or
to even just follow what's happening, are very limited. There may also
be cultural barriers -- some cultures may be reluctant to use e-mail
addresses for communications.

I'm not aware of any forum system which handles multiple content
languages well. Indeed, building such a system may be a great service
not just to our community, but to organizations in very similar
situations. With the technology in place, we can build sensible policy
around it, and enable people to participate who couldn't before.

David McCabe has made great progress on implementing LiquidThreads, a
new forum system for MediaWiki. With some funding and management, it
could lead us in that direction.

If we can enable multilingual and multicultural participation on a
_large_ scale, it will be relatively easy, I think, to transfer that
model to smaller scales if we deem it necessary. The opposite is not
true.

As for the Board, so far no candidate has ever been elected who does
not respect the multilinguality of our community. In fact, the two
community-elected members, Angela and Anthere, are both outspoken
supporters thereof. Yes, they both speak English, one of them
natively. However, nobody can deny that speaking English is a useful
skill.

Trying to make the Board literally representative of all languages or
cultures is trying the impossible. However, making the ability to
speak English no longer a requirement to participate in Foundation
matters, _is_ possible. And perhaps, as part of that process, it will
even become possible for a person who does not speak English to be
elected to the Board.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


body:
On 21/09/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:

> While I know using online translators is discouraged, if a person is
> familiar enough with a subject to be able to root out mistranslations and to
> rewrite it as coherent English (good prose in one language doesn't
> necessarily make good prose in another, hence the "it looses something in
> the translation" cliche), then I don't see why familiarity with another
> language is necessarily a requirement. I've found with the couple of
> articles I've looked at through Google's translation service that it does a
> passable job, especially if one is familiar with the the subject matter. The
> nice thing about Google's translator is that if you click a link on the
> translated page, the linked page will be translated for you as well.

I've tried this. It's somewhat better than nothing. But mostly I've
only used it for expanding a bare stub and only in an area I'm already
familiar with, and even that's too painful to do much.

- d.


body:
On 9/21/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
> > On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> it is my conviction that for the future, more than "just" translations for
> >> elections (i take them as an example of a bigger thing to consider here) are
> >> mandatory to evercome this *gap in culture*. (a point of attention for the
> >> board retreat imho)
> >>
> >> oscar
> >>
> >
> > A reasonable conclusion.  In trying to think of a solution, I found
> > myself searching for a precedent of a truly international/global
> > direct election.  I couldn't think of any.  Can anyone else?
> >
>
> The Debian project organizes itself largely around direct elections, and
> has a pretty international base of voters.  They do only let official
> Debian developers vote, though, which is maybe more like if we only let
> admins vote in our elections.
>
> They do seem to be moderately successful at it.  I don't recall much
> controversy about the nationalities of project leaders---disputes about
> the direction of the project and technical issues play a much bigger
> role in voting than whether someone comes from the same country as you.
>
> -Mark

Interesting.  Debian seems to accomplish the task of having a direct
election by, just having a direct election.  Translation issues seem
to be handled ad hoc and totally "unfairly" - the 2005 debate for
instance is available in English and French.  Presumably the nominees
could all speak English to some extent, but maybe this is an incorrect
assumption.

You also mention that nationalities of project leaders don't play much
of a part in Debian's elections.  I do think it is somewhat inevitable
for Wikimedia to get caught up in this to a bit greater of an extent,
as most Wikimedia projects and therefore communities are quite
naturally segregated by language.  With Debian translations certainly
play a large role, but the meat of the product is language-neutral.

Anthony


from_name: David Alexander Russell

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

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

David Gerard wrote:
>
> I've tried this. It's somewhat better than nothing. But mostly I've
> only used it for expanding a bare stub and only in an area I'm already
> familiar with, and even that's too painful to do much.
>
>
> - d.

The other problem is that unless you're really on the ball there will be
 mistranslations that you will miss. Something that seems to make
perfect, coherent sense in English might be entirely different from what
the original text meant, but all machine translators (and Google's is
comparatively good, to give them credit) simply have a list of rules as
to which Spanish/French/German/[insert as required] phrases translate
into which English phrases.

Cynical
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from_name: Fastfission

body:
On 9/19/06, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi at gmx.net> wrote:

> * Wasn't WikiNews designed to be for news?

Wikinews usually does short little articles and is usually written in
an entirely different style than a Wikipedia article. Having one
centralized encyclopedia article allows constant update rather than
the spawning of a dozen new stories everytime something changes.

> * Is at a good idea to write an encyclopedia article based a news tickers and CNN?

Is it a bad idea? It'll evolve like everything else, perhaps even
better than most other things because it will be highly attended to.
It will no doubt need a little more synthesis from the vantage point
of a few month's hindsight but that's no reason not to have it
operating concurrently.

FF


body:
On 9/19/06, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Shouldn't we draw a line now and
> leave the news to WikiNews, only remerging into Wikipedia once
> importance is clearer and deeper analysis is available from
> secondardy sources?

Where exactly would one draw a line? And how could one draw one in a
case like this that would not put huge amounts of beloved material on
the wrong side of it? What advantage would that have over just letting
things work out the way they always have so far? Is there any great
reason to undertake a policy which would potentially 1. lead to the
removal of articles which had been heavily worked on by many
contributors and contained copious footnotes and references, 2. create
arbitrary barriers to the creation of new articles, 3. only
acknowledge an academia-centric POV over what is relevant or not?

FF


body:
On 9/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/20/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > I guess as a reader I don't see the benefit in *not* covering
> > everything.  I agree there is a slant towards more coverage of recent
> > news events, but that's simply because they're easier to cover.  The
> > solution, IMO, is not to cover recent events less, but to cover older
> > events more.  I want to know the equivalent of this stuff for other time
> > periods!  Were there short-lived but at the time massively-covered
> > events in the 1890s, equivalent to today's frenzies over child
> > kidnappings?  What about the thousands of political scandals, major and
> > minor, that have at various times shortened governments' tenures, forced
> > cabinet reshuffles, etc., etc.?  It's all good info we're missing!
> >
> Problem is that a lot of the data that would be useful in answering
> your question is stored on microfilm and there isn't really a quick
> way to scan that.

Actually ProQuest has massive microfilm newspaper databases which are
fulltext searchable that would fit the bill (the entire contents of
the NY Times, Wash Post, LA Times, Chicago Trib, etc. which go back to
the 1840s in some cases) as well as the American Periodicals Series
which goes back to 1740. It's out there, though it helps to have an
institutional account to get access to it.

FF


body:
On 21/09/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't really know what articles you all typically work on, but I've been
> concentrating on Mathematics articles, which I've noticed have fewer
> problems than a usual translation. Fortunately, the Pythagorean Theorem,
> which I'm working on right now, is available as an FA in two languages (de
> and fr), one of which I know well enough to make a translation, especially
> since a lot of the mathematics terms are spelling variations on the English
> (or vice versa, depending on how one chooses to look at it).

Yes. The more technical the field, the more likely the words are the same.

My most painful translation experience was [[Karin Spaink]], where I
tried to import data from the Dutch article (which is more detailed
because she's much more generally famous in NL) without knowing Dutch.
Note that she's someone I know from Usenet, and she actually added a
note to the article herself and we emailed about it. But whoooo, I
never want to try the translation trick on a living bio again.
*shudder*

- d.


body:
On 21/09/06, Luiz Augusto <lugusto at gmail.com> wrote:

> Non-english users need to have access for at least read decisions made by
> that "US-based nonprofit". This is very simple.

I'm not questioning that; I'm questioning that the goal of having a
board member not need to speak English at all makes any sense at
present. Please reread what I responded to.

- d.


from_name: Berto

body:
Hi!

> How do those of you who write well in two languages feel about this idea?

IMHO we mostly already do it. EN.wiki is the largest knowledge base
available on the net, so it's absolutely natural for multilingual people to
go there and use it. And once you are there it's also natural to check and
correct the info, add missing bits etc.

B?rto


body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> The second-order point on that is, well, WP shouldn't _anticipate_ the scientific revision, so the same should apply to history. But I think the policy on original research then enters: it can correctly be said of WP that its current affairs coverage should _not_ be doing the job of historical synthesis, ahead of the historians.
>

I agree with that, and I think that the fact that our articles do
sometimes wander into that territory is the source of some of the
sentiment that we shouldn't have them in the first place.  The articles
on the 2004 U.S. presidential election were the worst set of them, *just
now* finally being cleaned up of literally dozens of articles filled
with novel syntheses, Wikipedian-produced data analysis, and all manner
of other original research.  We do need to find some better way to keep
that sort of thing out.

-Mark


from_name: adam

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> If you could pick an FA in another language and port it to the best
> English-language article you can, and let us know what sort of numbers
> of hours this takes, that would be most useful to know.
>
> (and, as Danny says, it beats arguing about people, process or policy)
I translated an Italian featured article ([[Carlo Airoldi]]) earlier
this year. It was short (only about 600 words) and it took probably
about two or three hours. I have very little experience as a translator,
though, and i think it could be done much quicker by a better Italian
speaker with more experience of translation. The article in question
would never have been featured on en, since it had no inline references
and I wouldn't have even called it NPOV, which illustrated the problems
with this sort of approach.

adam


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Carl Peterson wrote:

>I don't really know what articles you all typically work on, but I've been
>concentrating on Mathematics articles, which I've noticed have fewer
>problems than a usual translation. Fortunately, the Pythagorean Theorem,
>which I'm working on right now, is available as an FA in two languages (de
>and fr), one of which I know well enough to make a translation, especially
>since a lot of the mathematics terms are spelling variations on the English
>(or vice versa, depending on how one chooses to look at it).
>
Technical subjects tend to be easier to translate because language there
tends to be more precisely defined.

Humanities based subjects depend a lot more on subtle variations and
connotations of language, and are more likely to generate false
friends.  In a controversial subject where people have had long
arguments about the right word the situation won't get any easier for
translators into a language where the median POV will be different from
that found in the source language.

Ec


body:
On 21/09/06, adam <underthechair at gmail.com> wrote:

> I translated an Italian featured article ([[Carlo Airoldi]]) earlier
> this year. It was short (only about 600 words) and it took probably
> about two or three hours. I have very little experience as a translator,
> though, and i think it could be done much quicker by a better Italian
> speaker with more experience of translation. The article in question
> would never have been featured on en, since it had no inline references
> and I wouldn't have even called it NPOV, which illustrated the problems
> with this sort of approach.

Heh. Yes, the translated version is definitely not en: FA standard ...
but it's a vast improvement on what was there before and was clearly
work of value to the project. Hmm. Would you ever do one again?

- d.


body:
On 21/09/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ehm, Dutch: two candidates :P (although kim is mostly active on en:,
> he is Dutch)

I thought he was from NZ ;-)

- d.


body:
Hi!

Okay, I'll do it next week. Just bear in mind that I'm used to do it, and
that translating from a romance language into another will always be quicker
than (say) from chinese to en, or from RU to EN. It's the shape of the
phrases that it's already close enough since the very start.

B?rto

----- ???????? ????????? -----
??: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
????: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
??????????: 21 ???????? 2006 ?. 16:14
????: Re: [Wikipedia-l] [[WP:100K]] - who here writes well in
Englishandanother language?

> On 21/09/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
>
> > > How do those of you who write well in two languages feel about this
idea?
>
> > IMHO we mostly already do it. EN.wiki is the largest knowledge base
> > available on the net, so it's absolutely natural for multilingual people
to
> > go there and use it. And once you are there it's also natural to check
and
> > correct the info, add missing bits etc.
>
>
> In that case, could you (and anyone else reading) please do an
> experiment for me? Pick a featured article on a Wikipedia not in
> English; translate it to as high a quality article on en: as you can;
> and tell us how long it takes for each part of the process. This will
> be useful in seeing how many man-hours we would need.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>


from_name: Ivan Krstić

subject: [Wikitech-l] Memcached layer for revision text extraction

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Has memcached's allocator changed?   I'm somewhat surprised that that
> widely varying size of the page text isn't causing us fragmentation
> problems.

As I mentioned during the hacking days, the allocator granularity and
semantics have been improved (along with a pile of other things) by
Facebook in what is about to become memcached 1.2.0. If we see
fragmentation errors, a switch to 1.2 is in order.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] test

references:
<eeqq7b$g5o$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4510F0CE.6030406@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<BAY120-DAV10D4CB10658553E67F69C5B4200@phx.gbl>

body:
Are you sure? From my end, it bounced a good 15 feet in the air. Maybe you
need to install a patch on your e-mail client/browser?

On 9/21/06, Johan Bos <skatinghacker at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, if this is a bouncing test, then it didn't work. It actually didn't
> bounce.
>
> Johan
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jeffrey V. Merkey" <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com>
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 9:42 AM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] test
>
>
> > Anthere wrote:
> >
> >>sorry, bouncing test
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>foundation-l mailing list
> >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > I got it Anthere. It worked.
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > Jeff
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] test


body:
Stephen Bain wrote:

>On 9/21/06, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>>"Stephen Bain" <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>The articles on last year's London bombings are also good examples.
>>>[[2006 transatlantic aircraft plot]], within a few hours after the
>>>story broke, was just about the best source available.
>>>
>>>
>>If a Wikipedia article is "the best source available", it has
>>become original research.
>>
>>
>Note that I'm referring specifically to current events articles. While
>online media outlets and the print media do occasionally offer
>"in-depth" stories on current events, setting out background
>information and historical context, they're rarely (if ever) as
>comprehensive or as timely as Wikipedia's articles are.
>
>Also note that I'm talking about sources that Wikipedia would be
>competing against. A personal account written by a veteran journo on
>the scene may well be the best thing to read about an event, but it's
>not something that's comparable to Wikipedia.
>
In avoiding original research we create a composite.  With thousands of
eyes watching the development of a topic from different angles we are in
a better position to represent multiple sources.  A for-profit media
outlet can't possibly afford to take into account whether its sources
are independent of each other.  In the interest of getting the
information out quickly, or at least more quickly than its competitors
it needs to go with what it considers reliable sources,. like the
wireservices.  Once the story is public it can't unprint the
newspapers.  The opportunities for broadcast media are a little better.
We (especially in Wikinews) are in a position where we can more easily
adapt our report based on evolving information.  Not only that, but our
article histories are able to chronicle how the story developed.
Background information can be tracked down almost on demand.

Ec


from_name: Amgine

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 21-Sep-06, at 4:46 PM, Angela wrote:

>> If you mean the talk pages, those are intended to work out the
>> nuances of
>> articles. In effect, they are an essential--integral--part of
>> article building.
>> If you mean policy pages, they are a small percentage of our 1.3
>> million
>> article  pages. Other than that, I have no idea what you are
>> talking about. Do you?
>
> Also, user pages, user subpages, user talk, templates, categories,
> portals, images and other files and their descriptions, guidelines,
> essays, proposals, FAC. RfA, AfD, other "votes" and discussions,
> interface pages, help pages, draft articles, archives, WikiProjects,
> vandalism reports, mediation, arbitration, other committees, etc, etc.
> Articles only make up 25% of the English Wikipedia.
>
> Angela.

Actually, I just requested a run against the database on Toolserver.
48% of entries in the dataset are in the main namespace, and 13% are
Talk pages. This number includes redirects and stubs, of course, but
it's a rather different number than is being discussed here.

Amgine
-------------- next part --------------


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: Joe Anderson

body:
Just pointing out that Weird Al Yankovic's new video shows (though clearly
photoshopped) the nerd vandalising the Wikipedia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw&eurl= (at about 1:50)

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


from_name: David Gerard

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

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

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

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

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 21/09/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:

>  Accordng to Gmaxwell, the largest candidate statement is approximately 20,000 words, i.e., a novella. We have 17 candidates this election. If each one wrote a statement of that length, we would have 340,000 words to read, i.e., statements totalling several times the length of "War and Peace" or a standard Dickens novel. We are talking "A la recherche du temps perdu."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_novels (which I started)
gives it as 1.5 million words. A better comparison might be
[[:en:Mission Earth (novel)]] ... in all sorts of ways.

>  I suggest that the time of Wikimedians can be better spent than reading statements of this length by, for example, researching articles. I would suggest that the time of our translators could be better spent working on making high quality content available in all languages.

Yes, but is suggesting that articles are more productive work than
process out of process?

>  In the first election, I set a limit of 500 words on each candidate's statement. Despite the complaints back then, there was a reason for that.

Seconded. They can write the novel on their own pages, but expecting
people to read it is ridiculous.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


body:
geni wrote:

>On 9/20/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>I guess as a reader I don't see the benefit in *not* covering
>>everything.  I agree there is a slant towards more coverage of recent
>>news events, but that's simply because they're easier to cover.  The
>>solution, IMO, is not to cover recent events less, but to cover older
>>events more.  I want to know the equivalent of this stuff for other time
>>periods!  Were there short-lived but at the time massively-covered
>>events in the 1890s, equivalent to today's frenzies over child
>>kidnappings?  What about the thousands of political scandals, major and
>>minor, that have at various times shortened governments' tenures, forced
>>cabinet reshuffles, etc., etc.?  It's all good info we're missing!
>>
>>
>Problem is that a lot of the data that would be useful in answering
>your question is stored on microfilm and there isn't really a quick
>way to scan that.
>
This is a Wikisource function, but that dosn't make it easier.  I have
most of the first 20 years of McClure's Magazine.  It was a monthly that
became famous for muckraking journalism, and exposing the behaviour of
big companies and government administration in the pre WWI era.  1,200
pages per year for 20 years gives 24,000 pages, and is a daunting task.
Weeklies and dailies don't make things any easier.

Ec


from_name: effe iets anders

body:
Hi Aphaia,

I think you make a good point, At the other hand, I have to say that I
can get pretty frustrated too when someone refuses to say something in
English, although (s)he is capable to do so. I think at the moment we
cannot avoid English being the major communication language, the
center of translations. It is quite logical that when something should
be translated or communicated as broad as possible, it should first be
translated into English, and then people can start translating from
english to other languages.
(I do not intent to critizize your attempts, I think they are good,
I'm just still a little frustrated because of a candidate who means
hopefully all well, but just refuses to give a clear answer in
English... :s)

Greetz, Lodewijk

2006/9/21, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>:
> As I wrote as responce to Birgitte in another time in this thread,
>
> On 9/21/06, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > As for translation, which is of course very important, I think the best
> > solution is probably more or less what's been done for this election -- make
> > sure that every candidate provides a short statement of approximately equal
> > length; make sure that this statement is assiduously translated into as many
> > languages as possible;
>
> So I think.
>
> > but then allow (and encourage) candidates to post as
> > much additional material as they wish, in whatever language(s) they are
> > comfortable in, with no guarantee it will get translated.
>
> and that I object (except "no guarantee" part). As I stated before, it
> means "if you can read language A, you are provided more materials
> than language non-A speakers". On local projects, I found some signs
> some people thought such additional materials would be just a sign of
> those candidates are anglo-centric.
>
> Since the Election is not yet closed, I stop my wording here at this
> moment. But frustration of non-English communities will follow a
> conclusion which may be a nightmare for English people, I predict, and
> perhaps for other language speaking people too.
>
> Considering such reactions and frustrations on non-English speaking
> communities, regarding equal-oppotunity of electrates, I strongly
> oppose this idea.
>
> --
> Kizu Naoko
>   Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
>   * vox populi, vox dei *
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
Ehm, Dutch: two candidates :P (although kim is mostly active on en:,
he is Dutch)

2006/9/21, Angela <beesley at gmail.com>:
> On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > yesterday a friend of mine gave me this (script-generated) counting of votes
> > cast over the languages in the various projects so far
>
> I think this partly reflects the number of candidates per language. I
> remember checking this for the earlier elections and seeing that a
> candidate in a language increased the number of voters above what
> you'd expect if the number of votes had any relation to the number of
> editors. It's to be expected that people be more interested in voting
> if they know at least one candidate, even if they don't want to vote
> for that candidate.
>
> The top 6 are the 6 with candidates who speak that language:
>
> english - 1003 (10 candidates)
> german - 320  (2 candidates)
> french - 124 (1 candidate)
> dutch - 101 (1 candidate)
> spanish - 89 (1 candidate)
> finnish - 52 (1 candidate)
>
>
> Angela
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 9/21/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Just pointing out that Weird Al Yankovic's new video shows (though clearly
>> photoshopped) the nerd vandalising the Wikipedia.
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw&eurl= (at about 1:50)
>>
>
> For those of us without that shockwave gunk installed, or whom don't
> want to watch several minutes of video for a few frames:
>
> http://myrandomnode.dyndns.org/white_and_nerdy_wikipedia.png
>
> is all there is to the Wikipedia bit.
>
>
Ah. That would explain edits like

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atlantic_Records&oldid=76521938

then.

-- Neil


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 21-Sep-06, at 5:22 PM, Angela wrote:

> On 9/22/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>>> Articles only make up 25% of the English Wikipedia.
>> Actually, I just requested a run against the database on Toolserver.
>> 48% of entries in the dataset are in the main namespace
>
> I was defining "article" in the same way [[Special:Statistics]] does.
>
> Angela.

Ah... when we attempted apply that metric (http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article) to all the namespaces the numbers
did change dramaticaly. Main namespace articles dropped to 33%, and
article talk pages climbed to 16%. So then the articles *do* drop
below 50% of the content.

Amgine

-------------- next part --------------


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Last two days of the election

body:
On 9/20/06, Dariusz Siedlecki <datrio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since tommorow the voting ends, I wanted to remind everyone to cast
> your vote, if you still haven't done so. I hope we'll be able to
> announce the final results next week.

And if you have once voted and now would like to alter your choice -
please vote on the project where you voted.
Regarding votes threw after September 5, Election officials tend to
have struck questionable votes without notifications to the users in
question. If you find any questionable "strikeing" on a vote which
must be saved, please inform us Election Officials without any
hesitations.

If you have accounts on multiple wikis, consider to make it clear on
your user page on the project you are most active, where you may have
voted. Also if your user name are different from project to project,
please inform the community on your user page. It will help both you
and us to avoid being worried with unnecessare doubt if you are
someone's sockpuppet or not.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *


from_name: Raphael Wiegand

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

body:
I don't like to do so, but obviously I am the first one to interrupt
you, lessen your enthusiasm and get kind of realistic.

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

English WP has now exactly 1118 featured articles on 1,395,220 total
articles which means that there is 0.0008 FA on one "normal" article
(=NA), or, better, 8 FA on 10,000 NA. On de, we have 869 FAs on 469,065
total, what is somerwhere around 0,19% or 1,8 FA on 1,000 NA. If we take
an average of these numbers (which is not realistic, I know), we'll have
0,135% of FA compared with total articles on en and de. Taking together
the 16 biggest wps (according to
[[en:Wikipedia:Multilingual_statistics]]) there would be about 4 million
total articles. If you take our FA-average of 0,135% FA on total article
number, there are at the moment 5,400 (!!) FA _in total_ on _all_
Wikipedias, including those 1118 already existing on en. This means you
would have to write about 96,000 FAs during only 365 days - that's
impossible, imagine how long it took you to get just these 1118... [1]

So far on numbers, you see, that's kinda irrealistic to set such a goal,
because of the huge amount of articles needed to be created from the
beginning. And that's not the only argument: As already said, for
non-native speakers, it takes lots of more time to write an really
excellent article in a foreign language so they probably would thing
"what the hell to to with en.wp, I'll better invest my time on improving
articles on my "home"-wp, that'll be more efficient, it's less
depressing, it's easier for me" - I think (also because I know what I
can do and what I can't) you'll not get real support from other language
wps except of people who are used to write on en: only.

Third, I think that - as on de: - probably many of the really active
users who write FAs have other jobs like vandalfighting which have do be
done also. People who are capable of writing a really good wp article
have to be familiar with regulations, with the community, they have to
be used to write long articles - especially the first two
characteristics qualify an user for adminship (I doubt that this is
completely different on de: and en:...). One cannot take the risk of a
completely destroyed (yes!) Wikipedia just to have another FA, so admins
can't give all their time on the FA project, and the many RC patrollers
either.

Well, to get to an end: I think, this big aim number is too big. It's
just depressing and nothing else to work on the 5,000th FA in july and
there is just another 6 months to complete further 95,000 articles. If a
smaller number like, probably, 10,000 or even just 5,000 was set, it
would be easier to reach and a better motivation for all writers.

Nevertheless, if [[Wikipedia:Featured Articles]] shows a number higher
than 50,000 on this time in 2007, I'd oblige me to write at least 50 FAs
for en: until december '08 ;)

rdb

[1] To get some more numbers: To create 96,000 FA in 365 days means 263
FA per day. 50 hours per FA - 13,150 hours of work per day. A day has 24
hours - you'd need about 550 editors per day working on FA. But - don't
forget - they'd have to work 24/7 per one year ;)

David Gerard schrieb:

>[[:en:WP:100K]] is a page about Danny's wild idea to have 100,000
>featured-quality articles on en: in a year or so.
>
>Featured articles from other language Wikipedias may be a marvellous
>source for quality material.
>
>If you write well in both English and the other language, you may be
>able to do very well for en: by going through the other language's
>featured articles and bringing the en: article up to scratch.
>
>(And for the other Wikipedia by doing it the other way.)
>
>How do those of you who write well in two languages feel about this idea?
>
>
>- d.
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Simetrical

body:
Very neat.  I tried it on [[C programming language, criticism]] and I
think it built the web in very useful and interesting ways.  While
arguably linking "computer scientist" and "programming language" was a
bit excessive, certainly someone with a more tenuous grasp of C would
benefit from linking things like "pointer" and "null character" (even
if they could never fully get the criticism just from reading
Wikipedia), and articles like "High and low level (description)",
"Type I and type II errors", and "classic example" (!) either have
potential or are already interesting.

Now, the bugs.  :)  First of all, it seems to do a string
search-and-replace for the *first* instance of each string.  That's no
good: it tried replacing "The '''[[C (programming language)|C
programming language]]''' is a very widely used programming language"
with "The '''[[C ([[programming language]])|C programming
language]]''' is a very widely used programming language" rather than
"The '''[[C (programming language)|C programming language]]''' is a
very widely used [[programming language]]".

Second, there were a few odd suggestions.  It suggested linking
"source code" to "[[Source Code|source code]]", for instance, rather
than just "[[source code]]".  And in the string "''precompiled
headers'', a system where declarations are stored in an intermediate
format that is quick to parse. Building the precompiled header", it
suggested replacement of the second instance of "precompiled header",
not the first (presumably confused by the apostrophes -- although in
this case the first bug I mentioned canceled this out :P).

All in all, a very neat tool.  Here's my diff (I did tweak the output
slightly, but these changes were basically all suggested):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=C_programming_language%2C_criticism&diff=77060717&oldid=74931618


from_name: Mark Clements

body:
"Nick Jenkins" <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKKELOIOAA.nickpj at gmail.com...

> * "Yes" adds the link, "no" doesn't, and "don't know" doesn't add the link
either; but "Don't know" will make the exact same link
> suggestion in future, whereas "yes" and "no" bring closure in that the
same suggestion will no longer be made for that page in
> future.
> * If you don't make any choice for a suggestion, that's treated the same
as choosing "don't know".

Why not have "don't know" selected for each item when the page loads - it
will make things clearer, and then you only need to change the ones you are
sure about.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 21/09/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > it is my conviction that for the future, more than "just" translations for
> > elections (i take them as an example of a bigger thing to consider here) are
> > mandatory to evercome this *gap in culture*. (a point of attention for the
> > board retreat imho)
>
> A reasonable conclusion.  In trying to think of a solution, I found
> myself searching for a precedent of a truly international/global
> direct election.  I couldn't think of any.  Can anyone else?

Elections to the governing councils of major scientific bodies? In
some cases a direct vote by the membership... but then again, usually
a membership comprised of well-educated people who are more likely
than the average to have a common language.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 21/09/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:

>  I recently finished writing a book (due for released in 2007). I was
> commissioned to write 25,000 words. It is a small book, but it is a
> complete book nonetheless.

What's the book? Go on, you have to tell us...

>  Accordng to Gmaxwell, the largest candidate statement is approximately
> 20,000 words, i.e., a novella. We have 17 candidates this election. If each
> one wrote a statement of that length, we would have 340,000 words to read,
> i.e., statements totalling several times the length of "War and Peace" or a
> standard Dickens novel. We are talking "A la recherche du temps perdu."

Your list there seems a bit odd - the standard three-decker Victorian
novel, which are usually not hideously long by modern standards,
weighed in at ~170,000 words.

But I agree with the actual point! Keep it short and succinct, people
will read the things, people might even care.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
What amazes me is how *little* space we all devote to writing about
the fundamental issues the projects as collections, their communities,
and the foundation face.  We have spurts of conversation that trail
off, with many interested parties not joining in at all (though they
surely have strong and interesting opinions).

On 9/21/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>  Accordng to Gmaxwell, the largest candidate statement is approximately 20,000 words, i.e., a novella. We have 17 candidates this election. If each one wrote a statement of that length, we would have 340,000 words to read, i.e., statements totalling several times the length of "War and Peace" or a standard Dickens novel. We are talking "A la recherche du temps perdu."

What I wouldn't give to have such material to read!  350,000 words of
serious statements about what the future of the foundation and
projects should be, or about how to come to shared understandings of
these goals and how to work better together...  I could fill a
bookshelf, if not a library, with that kind of discourse, and it would
still be too little.  Extend this idea to the span of all possible
collaborative projects, and one could fill a library.

There *will* be libraries filled with such writing someday; what a
pity if it is all done by sociologists and historians who were not
part of these events, rather than by those of us who were.

>  I suggest that the time of Wikimedians can be better spent than reading statements of this length by, for example, researching articles. I would suggest that the time of our translators could be better spent working on making high quality content available in all languages.

Those with better things to do will not read.  Those who are willing
and able to write, please do so.  The sooner and the more attentively
to detail, the better.

--SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
In a message dated 9/21/2006 6:24:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
2.718281828 at gmail.com writes:

Those  with better things to do will not read.  Those who are willing
and  able to write, please do so.  The sooner and the more attentively
to  detail, the better.

I thought we were busy writing an encyclopedia.

Danny


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


body:
Catching up with mail... Birgitte, this post was spot on.

On 9/18/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> For some reason people at this level just cannot just
> work together for the greater good without political
> maneuvering.  Someone *must* be called out for past
> misdeeds.  So and so simply *cannot* work together.
> Foo must be mentioned to try and embarass X.  I am
> nearly certain proposals are run through back chat
> rooms before being made public.  I begin to wonder
> sometimes if certain groups have actually developed
> "talking points" on some issues.  Far too many
> disscussions on this list are approached with a
> noticable lack of sincerity from several parties.

...and many critical discussions are left hanging, to the detriment of
the organization -- or left without comment from the parties most
directly interested, and with only bystanders chatting among
themselves -- because it would be politically troublesome to engage in
them.

> Most issues are just another battle-ground in larger
> power-struggle.  If I haven't been clear on this
> already.  Infighting is  really harming this
> organization.  Cut it out!  Everyone!
>
> Stop gossiping
>
> Socialize in public channels
>
> Assume Good Faith

Timely reminders.  Ignoring this advice really is harmful, in deep and
lasting ways.  Not only do these things happen, but a culture is
growing up in which it is acceptable, if not expected of some, to
gossip, to speak one's mind only in private channels, to assume bad
faith when expedient.

If you are reading this thread, please pause to consider how much
Wiki[pm]edia time you spend in private IRC channels, on private lists
or pages, sharing gossip in private rather than engaging in public
debate.  And consider how often you have assumed bad faith over the
past year.

Wikipedians naturally share personal exchanges and disagreements in
open channels... on a wiki there is little choice.  Interesting how,
once backchannels and private correspondence become socially
acceptable options, the advantages to other standards may be
forgotten.

> As long as working at the Foundation level involves
> picking sides and which chat rooms you are invited
> too, it will not be something everyone can be a part of.

This is not only a matter of personal preference; working in a charged
environment makes it more time-consuming and draining to be involved.

++SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
Encyclo-WHAT? :D

On 9/21/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
> In a message dated 9/21/2006 6:24:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> 2.718281828 at gmail.com writes:
>
> Those  with better things to do will not read.  Those who are willing
> and  able to write, please do so.  The sooner and the more attentively
> to  detail, the better.
>
>
>
> I thought we were busy writing an encyclopedia.
>
> Danny
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: Angela

body:
On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> yesterday a friend of mine gave me this (script-generated) counting of votes
> cast over the languages in the various projects so far

I think this partly reflects the number of candidates per language. I
remember checking this for the earlier elections and seeing that a
candidate in a language increased the number of voters above what
you'd expect if the number of votes had any relation to the number of
editors. It's to be expected that people be more interested in voting
if they know at least one candidate, even if they don't want to vote
for that candidate.

The top 6 are the 6 with candidates who speak that language:

english - 1003 (10 candidates)
german - 320  (2 candidates)
french - 124 (1 candidate)
dutch - 101 (1 candidate)
spanish - 89 (1 candidate)
finnish - 52 (1 candidate)

Angela


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
In a message dated 9/21/2006 6:43:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
gerard.meijssen at gmail.com writes:

Danny,
We are not writing an encyclopaedia. We are also writing an
encyclopaedia. It is just one of the things that we do. The Foundation
is NOT about writing an encyclopaedia. The Foundation is about enabling
projects like Wiktionary in many languages, Wikibooks in many languages,
Wikiquote Wikinews and ALSO Wikipedia in many languages.

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

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

Thanks,
GerardM

Thankl you for the reminder, Gerard. Without it I would have forgotten my
15,000 edits in Wikisource over the past two months.

Wait ... you forgot to list Wikisource ... I guess that doesnt count.

Danny


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 9/16/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On 16 Sep 2006, at 08:01, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > I invite an open discussion here of the candidates.  This is your
> > community, speak openly of who you trust and why.
>
> Well, I'll start off then.

I've missed a week of mail.  What was the spur for this thread?  Was
there a sudden drop in candidate discussions online?  A rise in
disendorsement?  An announcement of election results?

I recall discussions of a more general nature -- involving input from
the candidates -- the week that voting started.  Those never quite got
off the ground... I suppose we could start building ad-hoc trust
networks now to identify statistically-sound community reps for the
future, but is this the way to go?  (are trust nets in use anywhere
any more on de:wp?)

I do wish that more wikimedians -- candidates and community members,
in and out of election-time -- would write more often about their
interests and concerns, in ways that support direct comparison and
editing of one anothers' writing.  One of the strengths of wikis as
media for conversations is how powerfully they allow subtle
point-by-point disagreement without requiring* the rhetorical dance of
ad hominems and clashing sweeping statements.

SJ

* ad hominems and sweeping statements are still allowed, but not
required; and regularly lose out to persistent subtle discourse.  Of
course more memorable cases may be those where they do not...

--


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Board Elections


from_name: Keith Old

body:
On 9/21/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Andrew Lih" wrote
>
> > I'm curious if there is a reasonable reason against Wikipedia serving
> > this function, other than "encyclopedias are not news", which I would
> > argue is old-style thinking (and something I've heard from more than
> > one so-called "academic" committee.)
>
> It's a reasonable argument, re current affairs and 'first draft of
> history', that two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back is less convincing. It is
> not one I support - I'm with Andrew on this. After all, in science, this is
> the norm, and we have no problem with saying that when the science changes,
> we change the articles.
>
> The second-order point on that is, well, WP shouldn't _anticipate_ the
> scientific revision, so the same should apply to history. But I think the
> policy on original research then enters: it can correctly be said of WP that
> its current affairs coverage should _not_ be doing the job of historical
> synthesis, ahead of the historians.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
> Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

G'day folks,

It seems to me that we have a valuable function in giving the news a context
such as who public figures are and the importance of public events. As long
as our articles are based on reliable sources rather than unorthodox
versions of events such as Queen Elizabeth II is a drugs smuggler.

We first came to widespread public awareness as a result of the work on the
2004 tsunami. It is one of our strengths and our coverage of contemporary
events cannot be matched by our rivals.

We cannot afford to wait for the historians to eventually write articles
before we cover publid figures and events. We should do it right but we
should do it.

Regards


body:
In short:

--Jimbo endorses Oscar and Mindspillage
--Everyone comes to criticise Jimbo for treating Mindspillage as if everyone
has heard of her
--Some other things... I haven't really been paying attention.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 9/21/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> In a message dated 9/21/2006 6:24:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> 2.718281828 at gmail.com writes:
>
> Those  with better things to do will not read.  Those who are willing
> and  able to write, please do so.  The sooner and the more attentively
> to  detail, the better.
>
> I thought we were busy writing an encyclopedia.

Not while on mailing lists, we're not; certainly not on this one.

But consider Wikipedia: the vast majority of pages are not in the main
namespace.  Is this in accordance with, or in opposition to, the
natural order of what we are supposed to be busy doing?

++SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


body:
GFDL does not mean you have to keep the content at that
location/address forever; it means that whenever you use content --
for isntance on ws after moving it from wp -- you have to attribute
the source properly.  Copying the entire history from wp onto the talk
page of the target on ws would be a comprehensive way to do this.  You
can probably get away with only copying the names of 5 of the original
authors... but why go half way?

Yes, sometimes things up for deletion get transwikied.  Not sure that
any content has a 'right' to be somewhere, but a project can set
policies about what consensus is needed to remove sth to another
project...  a case for setting clearer policies, perhaps especially
with regard to wikisource.

SJ

On 9/20/06, valdelli at bluemail.ch <valdelli at bluemail.ch> wrote:
> In Wikipedia we have sometimes the transfer of content among
> different projects Wikipedia <--> Wikisource, Wikipedia <-->
> Wikinews, Wikipedia <--> Wiktionary for example.
>
> I don't know very well the status of all wikipedia but I am
> following my personal experience.
>
> But this usage is in in conflict with GFDL?
>
> I could read here http://en.wikisource.
> org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License some points which are not
> respected like:
>
> 1.Preserve the section Entitled "History"....
> 2.Preserve the network location...
>
> and so on.
>
> IMHO it's possible to transfer but the original version must remain
> in its original place (in this case it's a simple copy) or the
> transfer is possible respecting some rules for example the transfer
> of all history, of list of all author and maybe with agreement of
> them.
>
> If an article is transfered without taking care of all point listed
> in the GFDL could an author request the reintegration of the article
> in the original place? IMHO it is in its own rights!
>
> Also the transfer of an article from a project in another is not
> valid if the original place has got a place card who redirect at new
> place where there is a modified version (adding also the lost of
> history due to the transfer)!
>
> What is your suggestion?
>
> I ask because in a Wikipedia some people vote for transfer of some
> articles which are accepted by the community in a previous call for
> cancellation. In other words the article which are not cancelled
> after some days are proposed for transfer.
>
> Ilario
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
++SJ


from_name: oscar

body:
On 9/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > it is my conviction that for the future, more than "just" translations
> for
> > elections (i take them as an example of a bigger thing to consider here)
> are
> > mandatory to evercome this *gap in culture*. (a point of attention for
> the
> > board retreat imho)
> >
> > oscar
>
> A reasonable conclusion.  In trying to think of a solution, I found
> myself searching for a precedent of a truly international/global
> direct election.  I couldn't think of any.  Can anyone else?
>
> Becoming a truly global organization, where the representatives
> represent the entire membership and not just their "constituents", is
> going to be a really big challenge.  What do you (and anyone else for
> that matter) think can be done to accomplish it?

on my meta talk page i [
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AOscar&diff=437999&oldid=437759addressed
some of these questions today]. in this regard i like to
especially point out the passage at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Oscar#answers , from which i quote
"*special attention to the communication, starting through key persons,
especially with all non-english projects and languages, thus starting a
process of bridging worldwide cultural differences (if we don't succeed in
this who will???). creation of a council-level, intermediate between board
and projects."**

*i believe this is just the beginning of a process of analysis, and
developing of strategies, together, to overcome this. a solution must grow
gradually, and cannot be one person's "magical idea" imho: it needs close
collaboration, worldwide. many more comparative statistics may be mandatory.
personally i am reading up on the subject as well.
**
oscar*
*


body:
On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> GFDL does not mean you have to keep the content at that
> location/address forever; it means that whenever you use content --
> for isntance on ws after moving it from wp -- you have to attribute
> the source properly.

(though the fact that deletion / migration happens means book
publishers might want to host their own digital copies of their
excerpts in addition to linking back.)

sj.


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> ... snip ...
>
> for example, the few amount of voters on ja: is striking, in view of the
> size of the project.

This is certainly an argument for the indirect elections using an
elector-style system. In ja: a great many of the editors are
anonymous, and not that interested in the same level of involvement
you see in Chapter organization as in the Wikipedias of Western
Europe. (Aphaia can give some numbers to back this up.) The efforts of
smaller Wikipedias in Asia don't get very well represented and for
Chinese, where potential users are behind the Great Firewall, there
are ready ways to get read access but not as much participation as a
community.

In effect, you do have whole communities that slip between the cracks
of an election modeled upon a type of "citizenship."  The Wikimedia
projects and the welfare of the  users of the may not fit that model.
In fact, it's increasingly clear that model is not serving the project
well in the long run, especially if the size of the board expands.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 9/21/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> At Wikimania 2006, I described this phenomenon - Wikipedia uniquely
> fills the gap between "the news" and the history books. It's an
> instantaneous cumulative view of the state of the world, given the
> best information at that point in time. Rather than shedding this
> function, we should be embracing and celebrating it.

An excellent way of viewing it, I agree wholeheartedly. This is an
area, in my view, where the wiki model really shows its strengths
compared with traditional formats. Rolling news coverage from the
large outlets can offer detail and nuance that a Wikipedia article
can't match, but there's really no equivalent to a Wikipedia article
in terms of providing a comprehensive overview of a news story,
including its historical context, as it happens.

Take [[2006 Thailand coup d'?tat]], already a pretty strong article
with plenty of references. It covers the immediate events, the current
state of affairs politically, and summarises the responses in Thailand
and abroad. It's even beginning to synthesise a little analysis
emerging from the media.

The articles on last year's London bombings are also good examples.
[[2006 transatlantic aircraft plot]], within a few hours after the
story broke, was just about the best source available.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 9/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/09/06, Andreas Vil?n <andreas.vilen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Above all: Do not ease the requirements of the featured articles, just to
> > have more of them.
>
>
> There's a question of the FAC process on en:, though - it's
> deliberately raised its requirements with time because the regulars
> want to keep it special, for the very best of the best. e.g. articles
> are seriously nominated for defeaturing for reasons such as not
> fitting current FAC referencing fashions. Which is fine for them, but
> less than useful for any comparison of how we're doing.

I'd like to second this - don't relax requirements whatsoever.

But don't be afraid to reform the process. The meaning of FA should
not be to be one of 365 produced each year to show up on the front
page.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
In a message dated 9/21/2006 7:02:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
2.718281828 at gmail.com writes:

Not  while on mailing lists, we're not; certainly not on this one.

But  consider Wikipedia: the vast majority of pages are not in the  main
namespace.  Is this in accordance with, or in opposition to,  the
natural order of what we are supposed to be busy  doing?

++SJ

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

Danny


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [[WP:100K]] - who here writes well
 in	Englishandanother language?

body:
Hi, please consider also Jeff's machine translation way to do this - if
things go correctly we all can have less work with better effects. The
thing is: we need the terminology + we need to go very much into detail
when it comes to determine which domain a text is in (general,
historical, technical, chimical etc. just to name some) to get better
results.

We will very likely have such a tool for OmegaT (one that detemines the
domain a text belongs to) - so if it works there it will work also for
other software.

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

I don't know if Wikitrans creates problems to translate the other way
round - from other languages to English, if there are not too many
issues it would make sense to consider it. Otherwise or additionally I
would consider to use OmegaT as CAT-Tool since you will be able to
exchange the translation memories + will have a direct connection to
WiktionaryZ (in future - I have no exact time frame on the last feature
now). The programming of a WikiRead WikiWrite feature for OmegaT is
already on its way and will be a question of .... have to ask ... I need
it for a project at the beginning of October - so hopefully we will have
it ready by that date.

Anyway: there will be an OmegaT-how-to meeting on skypecast next week.
Who is interested can of course participate: it's free. I don't know the
exact time frame now since I have to co-ordinate  the translators
working on the project. Anyway it would be interesting to know who wants
to attend such a online course. So I created a page on my wiki for
people who want to let me know
(http://wordsandmore.org/index.php?title=Wordsandmore:OmegaT_online_courses
). I am doing this there, because it interesses not only people from the
wikimedia foundation. The course will be held for a group of 10
translators who will need to work with the tool in a project, and of
course everyone is welcome).

Futher info about OmegaT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OmegaT

Probably I will write another crosspost to several lists when I have the
date and time set.

Sorry, have to go now :-)

Best, Sabine

Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
 http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>  In the first election, I set a limit of 500 words on each candidate's statement. Despite the complaints back then, there was a reason for that.
>
>  Danny

You just raised a memory here...

I remember trying to have the statement fitting in those 500 in 2004.

Except it was not 500 words. It was 500 caracters.
I was counting those with Word, and I had just a few less than 500.
I was delighted. I published the statement.

Then Erik complained that I was over 500 caracters. Uh ?
Counted again. Got less than 500. He insisted I was above.
I then realised he was counting the spaces as caracters, and I was not
counting them. So, of course, I had maybe 20 spaces to separate words. I
was around 510. Invalid. Too lengthy !

I considered removing a couple of spaces, hence merging some words to
got to exactly 500... maybe not such a good idea for readability.

Then, we discussed whether the 500 caracters should be the limit in
english... or in the original language the candidate was writting in...
But I had no door out, since french tends to be longuer than english, so
I was maybe 600 in french.

So I decided to make an effort, did a bit of rewritting of my english
text... and got it under 500 in the end !!!

SO proud !

Ahum. What happened in reality, is that the official statement on the
candidate page was restricted to 500.... but several candidates wrote
another page, much more lengthy. This is no different from what was done
this year. Each candidate had the short statement and some had a long
statement.

Frankly... I find such issue... a little bewildering :-)

Errrr. I like reading what candidates propose to do if they are on
board. It is interesting. It is enlightning.

And then, if they get elected, we can later complain an issue was on
their election plateform and they did not take care of it ;-)

------

Sorry, I am certainly over the 500 threashold here...


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 9/21/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> In a message dated 9/21/2006 6:24:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> 2.718281828 at gmail.com writes:
>
> Those  with better things to do will not read.  Those who are willing
> and  able to write, please do so.  The sooner and the more attentively
> to  detail, the better.
>
>
>
> I thought we were busy writing an encyclopedia.
>
> Danny

Right now you're busy writing about being busy writing an encyclopedia.


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


body:
On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/21/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:

> > If you have accounts on multiple wikis, consider to make it clear on
> > your user page on the project you are most active, where you may have
> > voted. Also if your user name are different from project to project,
> > please inform the community on your user page. It will help both you
> > and us to avoid being worried with unnecessare doubt if you are
> > someone's sockpuppet or not.
>
>
> question: will there also be any checking of ip's of the voters to see if
> users sockpuppeted under varying names in different projects?
> (shouldn't be too difficult, or?)

IP addresses are automatically recorded and any Election Official can
see it, however the duplicated votes should be removed by hands, and
there is always the possibility all of us (currently four) fail to
detect them. (Today I stroke three votes which have survived until
today).

So please don't make any disruptions intentionally. Someone called
once such "test", and I think he just was on a good faith but just
unwise, but even you are just unwise, if the effect is unignorable, or
it is apparently of intention, we should go to react. We haven't
banned any user currently due to duplicate voting, but it doesn't mean
we indulge any attempt of disruptions.

Cheers,

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

body:
Sorry, I've not followed this thread at start but I've read something
about Citizendium some days ago and I've a question... which is the
difference with Nupedia (except the temporal sequence)?

Ilario

----Messaggio originale----
Da: fallout at lexx.eu.org
Data: 21.09.06 11.50
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Citizendium, a new venture,	will "fork"
off from online encyclopedia Wikipedia

For a fork to really *take over* it would have to be multilingual
and
I doubt we'll see any fork in the nearest future that will start
with
even all of the major Wikipedia languages.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject:
[Foundation-l] Citizendium, a new venture,
 will "fork" off from online e


from_name: Kim Bruning

subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

in_reply_to:
<fbad4e140609210843y2e710d8asbfc1be6d4f80d9a6@mail.gmail.com>;
	from dgerard@gmail.com on Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 04:43:06PM +0100

body:
On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 04:43:06PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> On 21/09/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Ehm, Dutch: two candidates :P (although kim is mostly active on en:,
> > he is Dutch)
>
>
> I thought he was from NZ ;-)

Eia is trying to claim me  :-P

--
[Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
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5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72


from_name: ting wang

subject: [Wikitech-l] tag extension

body:
Hello all,

Is there an extension, with it user can add tags to the pages?

Thanks

Ting

--
"The bane of my existence is doing things
that I know the computer could do for me"
                        -- Dan Connolly


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 21/09/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/20/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > I guess as a reader I don't see the benefit in *not* covering
> > > everything.  I agree there is a slant towards more coverage of recent
> > > news events, but that's simply because they're easier to cover.  The
> > > solution, IMO, is not to cover recent events less, but to cover older
> > > events more.  I want to know the equivalent of this stuff for other time
> > > periods!  Were there short-lived but at the time massively-covered
> > > events in the 1890s, equivalent to today's frenzies over child
> > > kidnappings?  What about the thousands of political scandals, major and
> > > minor, that have at various times shortened governments' tenures, forced
> > > cabinet reshuffles, etc., etc.?  It's all good info we're missing!
> > >
> > Problem is that a lot of the data that would be useful in answering
> > your question is stored on microfilm and there isn't really a quick
> > way to scan that.
>
> Actually ProQuest has massive microfilm newspaper databases which are
> fulltext searchable that would fit the bill (the entire contents of
> the NY Times, Wash Post, LA Times, Chicago Trib, etc. which go back to
> the 1840s in some cases) as well as the American Periodicals Series
> which goes back to 1740. It's out there, though it helps to have an
> institutional account to get access to it.
>
> FF
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 21/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/09/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry, this was me hitting 'send' instead of 'archive' ...


from_name: effe iets anders

body:
you are in denial! :o

2006/9/21, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl>:
> On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 04:43:06PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> > On 21/09/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Ehm, Dutch: two candidates :P (although kim is mostly active on en:,
> > > he is Dutch)
> >
> >
> > I thought he was from NZ ;-)
>
> Eia is trying to claim me  :-P
>
> --
> [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
> gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
> 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
On 21/09/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/20/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > I guess as a reader I don't see the benefit in *not* covering
> > > everything.  I agree there is a slant towards more coverage of recent
> > > news events, but that's simply because they're easier to cover.  The
> > > solution, IMO, is not to cover recent events less, but to cover older
> > > events more.  I want to know the equivalent of this stuff for other time
> > > periods!  Were there short-lived but at the time massively-covered
> > > events in the 1890s, equivalent to today's frenzies over child
> > > kidnappings?  What about the thousands of political scandals, major and
> > > minor, that have at various times shortened governments' tenures, forced
> > > cabinet reshuffles, etc., etc.?  It's all good info we're missing!
> > >
> > Problem is that a lot of the data that would be useful in answering
> > your question is stored on microfilm and there isn't really a quick
> > way to scan that.
>
> Actually ProQuest has massive microfilm newspaper databases which are
> fulltext searchable that would fit the bill (the entire contents of
> the NY Times, Wash Post, LA Times, Chicago Trib, etc. which go back to
> the 1840s in some cases) as well as the American Periodicals Series
> which goes back to 1740. It's out there, though it helps to have an
> institutional account to get access to it.

Non-institutional UK users have the entire /Times/ archive (1790ish
on) via local libraries, which is a similar situation. Goodness only
knows what you can get if you *pay* for it.

(And then, of course, there's actual printed contemporary sources. I'm
doing a lot of work at the moment by paraphrasing material in old
almanacs, rewriting it to be slightly more comprehensible, slap on a
couple of contextual sentences at the beginning and end... and, bingo,
a biographical stub on a contemporary politican, or a short article
summarising some 1840s law, or the like. No microfilm required...)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk