from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
> Thanks to everyone for their contributions :-)
>
> 1. there are many different subgroups that makes up the deaf community - but
> often it's the national sign language that unites us.

Yes, but here we are talking about how there is a language barrier
between, for example, American Sign Language speakers and Indian Sign
Language speakers since they are not related.

> 2. there are hundreds of different sign languages around the globe - that's
> why I have asked for sign.wikipedia.org to put them together instead of us
> asking for say, bsl.wikipedia.org, asl.wikipedia.org etc etc - it would be a
> central point for sign languages - and once we go to sign.wikipedia.org we
> can go into subgroups there in whatever group suits - for instance, there
> would be a NISL section for Northern Ireland Sign Language community etc.

I don't see why we should do this if we don't also have an
oral.wikipedia.org to unite spoken languages. Interlingual
communcation is just as difficult as between any other two Wikipedias,
and there is just as much of a potential for growth.

> It can be in any written languages or sign-writing systems - but the main
> thing is that we need a central point for the national sign languages to be
> in the same category - and it can help us build information up etc.

The main problem here is that there is no consensus on what writing
system to use, and it's impractical to create differnet Wikipedias for
a single signed language to such a degree where we end up with
thousands for all signed languages.

> 3. There are 3 "sign-writing" systems out there - Sutton Writing System,
> Stokoe Notation System and HamNoSys (Hamburg Notation System) but it is felt
> that the Sutton one will become the most popular as its simple to use and
> easy to use - whereas Stokoe and Hamnosys are more used by academics (deeper
> note-keeping really)

This is not true, there are many more. Most of them are derivatives of
Stokoe and used in educated (not nessecarily academic, though)
communities. There are quite a few more that are used by individuals
or small groups of individuals which they invented themselves.

As far as the names for the systems, yours are inaccurate. They are
Sutton Sign Writing (which is copyrighted and difficult to compute
with, but popular), Stokoe (William Stokoe didn't name it himself, so
it only has one word in its name), and HamNoSys (which you got right).

Stokoe was invented first and isn't really very complicated - in fact,
it's easier than SSW - but there's really only two books that will
teach it to you (Stokoe's ASL dictionary, a different BSL dictionary
which made minor improvements to the system).

HamNoSys was derived from Stokoe but is meant to be more exact, so you
can write allophones, it's sort of like the IPA of signed languages,
and it's very very difficult to learn.

Sutton Sign Writing came last, and was invented by a woman who
invented some sort of dance writing. It has had by far the most
promotion (Stokoe just put his out there, expecting people would use
it, and HamNoSys was intended only for the scholarly community), is
copyrighted, and is by far the most difficult to encode. It's
definitely more difficult than Stokoe, but easier than HamNoSys.

Mark


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia???

body:
Why not one in Middle Franconian (Mittelfr?nkisch) instead, so it's
more general?

Mark

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 02:56:29 +0100, Florian Pranghe <florian at pranghe.de> wrote:
> Hello,
> I wanted to ask, it is possible to start a new Wikipedia for the dialect
> "K?lsch", which is spoken into and around Cologne (Germany). In Cologne
> I know a few persons, would have interest at this Wikipedia (-Language).
> Yours sincerely Florian Pranghe
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Individual Wikipedias for different Sinitic
	vernaculars (Cantonese debate) - update

body:
On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 10:26:43 +0100, Skriptor <skriptor at jhenning.de> wrote:
> > 3. Why are you so much against these Wikipedias being created if they
> > are as you say so useless? Could it hurt?
>
> That would depend on how much difference there is in the written
> languages/dialects in China, wouldn't it?
>
> Owing to my very limited knowledge of Chinese, I have to hypothesize
> here. It seems to have been said that Chinese writing is the same all
> over the country - same glyphs, same meaning attached to the glyphs.
> Only the spoken language appears to differ so much as to be mutually
> incomprehensible.

This is far from the truth. There is a standard written language, yes,
but it is based on Mandarin. Colloquial writings in regional varieties
use different grammar, different vocabulary, and even different
characters. (The popular book "he zanhwa" had to be translated to
Mandarin before it could be read by non-Wu speakers)

> If this is indeed the case, I cannot quite see the point of different
> Chinese wikipedias. This would appear to me similar to having a British
> wikipedia, an American one, and an Australian one, on the grounds that
> both spelling and pronounciation varies. And that would, IMHO, hurt,
> because you'd have needless duplication and fragmentation of articles.
> It would be so much more difficult for the reader to find information
> on a given subject, which is after all the main point of a wikipedia.
>
> Of course, it would be different if there were significant differences
> among the way the various Chinese languages/dialects were written.

Which there are, if you write them instead of an artificial written
standard which is really based on the vocabulary and grammar of a
different language.


body:
People like you are far too worried about the "disproportionately
small"-ness of zh.wikipedia. Given the small percentage of zh.wiki
users that would actually gravitate to a new Wikipedia of this type,
it would make almost no difference in the size of zh.wiki, and zh.wiki
is already huge (it used to have a few hundred articles, then 10k
would've been huge, but now it just has got to be bigger or it is way
too small) and is growing at a good enough rate that such a minor draw
away from it would be compensated for completely in less than two
months.

In addition, this shouldn't be the choice of zh.wikipedians or even of
the speakers of these languages/dialects, but rather the
native-speaking proposers who appear willing to dedicate a great deal
of time (Nishishei, for one, is dependable because of his reputation).
Chances are it won't affect many of the native speakers already at
zh.wikipedia, and if it did they would probably edit bilingually (just
as most editors on non-hi: Indic-language wikipedias edit their
language AND hi: on a regular basis). Perhaps if they are a huge
success they will attract more usersers from zh.wikipedia, but that
wouldn't be in the very near future and ZH would be much bigger by
then.

This is not like a TC/SC split where it's really a good deal of the users.

Mark

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 08:35:32 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 02:14:29 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 3. Why are you so much against these Wikipedias being created if they
> > are as you say so useless? Could it hurt?
>
> Mark, the dialect-specific Wikipedias don't "hurt" per se.
>
> But the ZH Wikipedia is already disproportionately small, even
> miniscule, given the worldwide population of speakers. That's why some
> are afraid of splintering the effort too early.
>
> Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)
>


from_name: John Collison

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia.ie portal

body:
Hi all,

I did not no until recently about the existence of the wikipedia.ch
portal, but when I found it I thought it was a very good idea. Checking
out wikipedia.ie, I found that it does not exist. Wouldn't it be a good
idea to register this and set up an Irish portal? Admittedly, there are
only two languages to show on it (English and Irish) but it would be
good for the spread of wikipedia in Ireland and the spread of the Irish
wikipedia ( http://ga.wikipedia.org ). What do people think?

-- John Collison
[[User:Ludraman]]


from_name: Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Thanks to everyone for their contributions :-)

1. there are many different subgroups that makes up the deaf community - but
often it?s the national sign language that unites us.

2. there are hundreds of different sign languages around the globe - that?s
why I have asked for sign.wikipedia.org to put them together instead of us
asking for say, bsl.wikipedia.org, asl.wikipedia.org etc etc - it would be a
central point for sign languages - and once we go to sign.wikipedia.org we
can go into subgroups there in whatever group suits - for instance, there
would be a NISL section for Northern Ireland Sign Language community etc.

It can be in any written languages or sign-writing systems - but the main
thing is that we need a central point for the national sign languages to be
in the same category - and it can help us build information up etc.

3. There are 3 "sign-writing" systems out there - Sutton Writing System,
Stokoe Notation System and HamNoSys (Hamburg Notation System) but it is felt
that the Sutton one will become the most popular as its simple to use and
easy to use - whereas Stokoe and Hamnosys are more used by academics (deeper
note-keeping really)

Shane

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-
> bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andre Engels
> Sent: 27 January 2005 18:16
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?
>
> Neil:
> > The important question is: what do our potential deaf users _themselves_
> > want? Then we can worry about who's going to find the motivation to
> > adapt the software appropriately to support their needs.
>
> Not to discourage, but I can well imagine that many deaf users are
> quite happy with what is already there. Sign language is probably
> their first language, but many will have their literacy in the spoken
> language - that's the language they read and write, often on a daily
> basis.
>
> It's the same with many other speakers of dialects and smaller
> minority languages - the 'big' language is the language of schooling
> and written communication. Smaller languages often remain just oral
> languages - or in the case of sign language, signed languages.
>
> Of course this is all spoken by someone who does not have any direct
> experience with deaf people, so I gladly admit I'm wrong if someone
> else with more direct experience tells me differently. :-)
>
> Andre Engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Stanislav Traykov

subject: [Wikipedia-l] MediaWiki:pages not used

body:
Hello,

we have a problem on bg.wikipedia. Our MediaWiki namespace pages aren't
used for system messages anymore. The pages are still there, of course,
but it's as if someone had turned off message substitution.

... Who broke it?

Stanislav


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Would it be feasable to just have a program that takes the normal English, French, Hindu... Wikipedia, and just creates a Flash character that signs the article out?

The animation would, in my dream world, change automatically, as the normal English Wikipedia was updated in its normal Latin text format.

Nick/"Zanimum"

---------------------------------
 ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Kaixo!

On Fri, Jan 28, 2005 at 01:59:17AM +1100, David Gerard wrote:

> A lot of small dialects don't have teribly standardised
> orthography and their Wikipedia choosing one is already likely to have a
> fair bit of [[observer effect]].

On the other hand, the very nature of collaborative work of wikipedia
drives toward writting standardization. While the writting production
of a language is limited to authors works like poetry, novels, etc;
it can remain unstandardized, each author using his own spelling,
and all is right; but when several people can work on a same article,
with a signle phrase being potentially written by several different
people, then common spelling conventions are a necessity.
And it is quite interesting for me to see how the wikipedia work
has given increased focus on the standardization problem for languages
that until then didn't thought much about it.

Think simply about articles titles and linking; how would you be able
to correctly link articles if you can't guess what the article title
may be because of lack of standardization?

> Is there a sign language with an accepted
> standardised notation already, or are we talking about inventing one?

There is a writting system yes (actually several, it seems),
it is standardized in its principles; now, it seems sign languages
have quite a large dialectal variation (maybe the almost inexistant
writting in sign language is an explanation of that); but that problem
is no bigger than for any spoken language in a similar situation (that
is, with a weak written tradition).

That being said, I'm not sure that the initial question was about
a wikipedia written *in* sign language; maybe it was just about
providing information in other languages (like English) about
sign language, in such case of course a different wikipedia is not
needed, and specialized articles could perfectly fit the existing
wikipedias.
Until a reply about that question isn't done, we can't know what
the initial intent was.

If it is about writting in sign language, a difficulty is that what
seems the most widespread writting system is not encoded in unicode,
so it needs extra work; but as hyerogliphs are supported in wikipedia
(the only site I know that allows to type and read hyeroglyphs, btw),
and as the writting system for sign language I saw has some similarity
to egyptian hyeroglyphs (not in shape, in logic) a similar solution
could be done if that is actually needed.

Now, as said previously, I don't know if that is what was asked for;
but even if it isn't, it won't surprize me if some day there would
be sign languages wikipedias; Wikipedia has made so many inroads
and pioneering in languages support it is likely that the first
wiki site for a written sign language would be in wikipedia;
and it is definitively in the scope of the project.

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] MediaWiki:pages not used

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Stanislav Traykov wrote:
> | we have a problem on bg.wikipedia. Our MediaWiki namespace pages aren't
> | used for system messages anymore. The pages are still there, of course,
> | but it's as if someone had turned off message substitution.
>
> Please point to a specific instance of the problem so that it can be
> confirmed and checked.

The obvious place:

http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages

Actual result:

No rows appear pink, columns 2 and 3 (default text, current text) are
completely identical.

Expected result:

Some rows appear pink, columns 2 and 3 are not completely identical.

Specific sample:

http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload

displays some ugly messages from the language file, where it should look
like:

http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:uploadtext


body:
19k articles is huge. It is more than decent. It makes zh a usable
encyclopedic resource with only a few omissions in normal browsing.

With all due respect, 19k is huge because Wikipedias which actually
celebrate breaking 300 or 500 are so much smaller, even Wikipedias
which celebrate breaking 1k or 5k or even 10k are a great deal smaller
and yet can sometimes be useful.

Your only giving actual figures for "very active" Wikipedians is also
selective spin. "Active" Wikipedians are obviously much higher in
number and are what makes zh.wikipedia a community rather than a
closed group of friends.

You try to make it sound as if zh.wikipedia is devoid of all life
except for the lone Wikipedian here and there - that's ridiculous.

If neither you, nor Yacht, nor Mountain, nor Shizhao, nor any of the
other important figureheads are planning to defect to a fangyan-pedia,
there's probably not much to worry about - that means that a minimal
amount of "lesser" users will move rather than a significant one. (and
again, I believe that especially with Wu the situation would be
similar to that between hi: and kn:)

Nishishei is the head of a slowly growing online BBS about
"zanhe-?wo", so if he starts alone he wil surely find other users
easily (this is how scn.wikipedia reached its present state - I
motivated one person and he motivated everybody else)

If Nishishei really wants to work on a Wu Wikipedia, and he can draw
other editors/readers, then why do you want to redirect his efforts to
zh.wikipedia? That's a bit selfish.

Mark

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 15:11:49 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 21:27:58 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > People like you are far too worried about the "disproportionately
> > small"-ness of zh.wikipedia. Given the small percentage of zh.wiki
> > users that would actually gravitate to a new Wikipedia of this type,
> > it would make almost no difference in the size of zh.wiki, and zh.wiki
> > is already huge (it used to have a few hundred articles, then 10k
> > would've been huge, but now it just has got to be bigger or it is way
> > too small) and is growing at a good enough rate that such a minor draw
> > away from it would be compensated for completely in less than two
> > months.
>
> With all due respect, this is selective spin.
>
> 19,000 articles is decent, but it's not "huge."
>
> Most everyone in the ZH community knows the periodic inaccessibility
> in the PRC starting in June 2004 has hurt growth, so every dedicated
> member is important. If you look at the stats, only at the end of last
> year did ZH get "active wikipedians" back to the level of May 2004.
> There are only about 40 "very active" Wikipedians, and the number of
> "new Wikipedians" has not recovered, regressing back to February 2004
> levels.
>
> A wiki with one person can be a very lonely place. Seems a better use
> of resources to have the Suzhou, Hangzhou, Wu (linguistics) and
> related pages in better shape, than to start a new Wikipedia with one
> person.
>
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/??
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/??
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/???
>
> --
> Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)
>


list: wikien-l

from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speaking of Apple Mac and Wikipedia

body:
Has anyone else noticed the following? Often, though not always, when
I edit a page containing accents like umlauts and acutes, when I press
"preview" or "save," the accents come out mangled: for example, a "u"
with an umlaut above it, comes out as a weird-looking Y, and it
happens to words I haven't edited. In addition to changing the letter,
this breaks the links to pages with accents in the title, leaving red
links. I was told this happened with Macs, and I use a Mac, but I've
only noticed it myself in the last week or so. Is there anything I can
do my end to stop it from happening? I use OS 10.2.8 and the browser
is usually Safari 1.0.3.

Sarah


subject: [Wikipedia-l] MediaWiki:pages not used

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Stanislav Traykov wrote:
> | The obvious place:
> |
> | http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages
> |
> | Actual result:
> |
> | No rows appear pink, columns 2 and 3 (default text, current text) are
> | completely identical.
>
> Did you try editing any of the messages to force it to update the
> message cache?

I did now; it doesn't help. Everybody was discussing it on our IRC
channel earlier today, so it's most probably not a dumb user error.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Neil Harris (usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk) [050128 01:44]:

> The important question is: what do our potential deaf users _themselves_
> want? Then we can worry about who's going to find the motivation to
> adapt the software appropriately to support their needs.
> Given the choice of an underlying notation, a nice general way to
> proceed would to be able to define a vocabulary in some notation, and to
> then reference that vocabulary using {{template}}s, thus allowing the
> re-use of the quite complex gestural symbols units that make up sign
> language. Multi-layered templates could allow whole phrases or sentences
> to be built up.
> Presumably the Holy Grail of any such notation would be that it would be
> expressive enough to allow the generation of sign-language animations at
> some later date...

The other important question is: to what extent is this [[original
research]]?  A lot of small dialects don't have teribly standardised
orthography and their Wikipedia choosing one is already likely to have a
fair bit of [[observer effect]]. Is there a sign language with an accepted
standardised notation already, or are we talking about inventing one?

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright status of press releases

body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> Maybe some of you would like to respond to this interesting question,
> are press releases copyrighted?:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:News_release

To quote what I responded there: In strict terms I would see press
releases as covered by copyright, but not the information in them. They
are theoretically issued to inform, but in some cases to spin an air of
truth into misinformation. When you use them as is, and in their words
you are likely helping to propagate their spin. That result is sure to
outweigh their losses arising from copyright infringement. I would be
surprised to see any cases on this.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Florian Pranghe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia???

body:
Hello,
I wanted to ask, it is possible to start a new Wikipedia for the dialect
"K?lsch", which is spoken into and around Cologne (Germany). In Cologne
I know a few persons, would have interest at this Wikipedia (-Language).
Yours sincerely Florian Pranghe


subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
David, there is a {{Cite sources}} tag, which reads: "This article
does not adequately cite its sources and may contain unverified
information or original research. Please help Wikipedia by adding
references or removing unreferenced material. See the talk page for
details."

Slim

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 21:11:46 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> One that occurred to me was an {{unreferenced}} tag, for an article that
> does not have any sources, references or external links listed. I've just
> created [[Template:Unreferenced]], with the following content:
>
> :''This article does not include its [[Wikipedia:Cite sources|references or
> sources]]. Please add references or [[Wikipedia:External links|external
> links]].''


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] monitoring/management and snmp

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

Hello,

Looks like we are waiting for the new switch before doing any network
redesign. Still we can probably prepare the servers right now.

We can start changing ip address of our servers for the future VLANs:
 1/ public ips : for squids, (download|noc).wikimedia.org and future
bastion hosts.
 2/ squid <-> apaches
 3/ apaches <-> databases
 4/ management

Actually we got our servers under 10/8. 192.168/16 is used for network
stuff (switch, bgp?). We can use 172.16/20 block for monitoring and
management purpose, with the new switch we can assign it high priority
in case the site got a trouble.

Larousse can probably be the monitoring host as it already hosts cricket
servmon and nagios. Cricket currently only graph squids and it can be
interesting to get more graphs for memcached usage, apache usage, disk
space ... Nagios actually require the nrpe daemon running on every host
and rely on custom scripts being run on host to feed data.

To get something a bit easier to manager, I think we should install snmp
daemon on all servers and make them send snmp traps to Larousse, then we
can have snmptrapd log the traps somewhere, send notifications to nagios
and feed the irc bots.

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews & Bloggers: Open Chat on February 5

body:
Jimmy suggested that we should get the blogosphere more involved in the
Wikinews project. Indeed, many bloggers do the kind of work that
Wikinews requires: summarizing the news from a large number of sources.
True, bloggers are often less than neutral, but their entries may serve
as a useful basis for Wikinews articles, if we can convince them to put
them under an open license. There is also the question of how to raise
visibility of Wikinews within the world of blogs. RSS is essential here.
We do have one useful RSS feed, namely the one of Special:Newpages, but
few people are aware of it.

In order to communicate to bloggers what Wikinews is all about, and to
get them excited about the project, we are holding an open IRC chat on
February 5, 22:00 UTC, on #wikinews (irc.freenode.net). Please help in
setting the agenda and working on the list of invitations to bloggers. I
think it would be nice if we could personalize those.

The Meta page is on

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

which will also be used to organize the agenda for future project-wide
chats. Please register yourself there if you intend to come.

All best,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
David, I see no reason not to put {{Cite Sources}} on the article
itself. There's no point in putting it on the Talk page because it's
not the Talk page that needs the references. ;-)  Like the neutrality
tag, it's a warning to the reader, in this case that the article has
not been properly sourced. I think either that one or your
{{unreferenced}} tag would be a good thing to use on some articles.
Yes, I can think of quite a few. ;-)

Sarah

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 22:06:13 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> David Gerard (fun at thingy.apana.org.au) [050128 21:24]:
> If you look at [[Tamplate talk:Cite sources]], you will see considerable
> debate about {{Cite sources}} - and people asserting it should *only* go on
> the talk page.
>
> I was thinking of {{unreferenced}} as an article-space tag, to encourage
> creators to add their sources and suggest to those wanting to raise
> Wikipedia's quality another good thing to work on.
>
> (Did I mention I'm a big fan of the de: quality drive?)
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] nl.wikinews.org (Dutch Wikinews) set up

body:
According to the requirements defined in the Wikinews proposal as well
as on

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition

and

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

I have set up a Dutch edition of Wikinews at

  http://nl.wikinews.org/

This is the first time I've created a Wikimedia wiki, so please let me
know if anything doesn't work properly.

If everything is OK, and the board is happy with this language being set
up, I will go ahead and create the other ones which have sufficient
community support.

All best,

Erik


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mark Schmidt on wikipedia

body:
http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/01/the_wikipedia_d.html

This reflects what many people in politics are starting to say. While
Blogging is a news source, wikis are seen as a possible way of getting
the work of governing done. Open source politics, if you will.


subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
Yes, I agree. In fact, given how many articles don't have sources, it
might make more sense to create a {{Sources have been cited}} tag. ;-)

Sarah

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 11:18:45 +0000, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would suggest that such a tag should only be added to articles that
> are obviously in dire need of references/sources. (i.e., although all
> articles ideally should have references/sources, only focus on those
> with information that some question). In fairness, the vast majority
> of Wikipedia would otherwise be subject to tagging.


from_name: W Yin

body:
I am replying to Sheng Jiong's opposition to the proposals for various Chinese
vernaculars.

Quoting Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com>:
> It is totally absurd to set up so many Wikipedias for various Chinese
> dialects. Being a native Shanghainess, my mother tongue is Wu. But I
> have never seen any books written in the Wu dialect in my entire life,
> and I have only heard of one book that was written in Wu in the 1930s,
> and apparently it received very limited attention.

There are many novels written in Wu since the late 1800's and they were quite
popular and highly acclaimed; if you are not aware of them, then selective
education has played a big part in your misconceptions.  Their popularity only
faded with the singular promotion of vernacular Mandarin by the Republican and
later Communist governments.  The idea of a vernacular Wu encyclopedia is not
very absurd so long as there are people willing to give the project a try.

> Wikipedia being a *written* encyclopedia would mean that we
> only need *one* Chinese Wikipedia, written in Chinese characters.
> Speakers of the different dialects can pronounce each characters in
> very different ways (A Wu speaker can hardly understand Cantonese or
> Min-nan, and vice versa), they all have the same grammar and similar
> ways of expression, after thousands years of cultural integration
> within the unified country.

The grammar is different, the expressions are even more different. I want to
remind you that written vernacular Chinese in *any* dialect, including
Mandarin Baihua, is a relatively recent development; the "thousands years of
cultural integration" mean little and can be quite frankly compared to
the "cultural intergration" that is western civilization. We no longer write
in Classical Literary Chinese.  Currently the Chinese written form is solely
based on the Mandarin vernacular; you are suggesting that it is normal for a
French speaker to read and write only in English (with English grammar) but
pronounce the words "as if in French," making quick mental changes for the
grammar and words without equivalents along the way.

> (And by the way Mandarin also has a long
> history of being the "offical" spoken language in China: since Qing
> dynasty in the 1600s it has been adopted as the language spoken in
> Emperor's palace, and during the Republic of China period it was
> selected by the parliament as the official spoken language of the
> government after a democratic voting.)

The officiality of a language should not be a primary reason for the
opposition of any new language Wikipedia. If so, many existing Wikipedias
(such as the 3 dialects of German, Esperanto, Anglo Saxon, etc) ought not to
exist as well. The success of Catalan on Wikipedia is a good reason to give
different vernacular Chinese languages a try; especially for a couple
culturally rich and high-population Chinese languages.

> Interestingly also Mark seem to neglect the fact that really no native
> speakers of all these dialects support the proposal, knowing that it
> is a totally unworkable proposal.

I am a native speaker of Shanghainese and Ningbo-hua, two very close dialects
of Wu. I personally know several people willing to work on such a project, and
that number will surely expand as the project grows. If my username shows only
a few Wikipedia edits, it is because I have just recently signed up, but have
for the past 2 years edited anonymously hundreds of China and Chinese related
articles.

Best,
William Yin

User:nishishei


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal - Wikibuilder

body:
SJ wrote:
> Why not have a standalone "wikilabs" project for new potential
> wikimedia projects?

There are a lot of questions that would need to be addressed before
this could be answered. How do you decide when a test wiki hosted at
Wikilabs has failed and it is time to remove it? What about the risks
of breaking links? How will different ideas be developed within the
same wiki and how will this content be moved to the real site if the
idea turns out to be successful. How many ideas will be accepted for
the Wikilabs? Wikicities has had over 120 requests for new wikis in
the last three months. Wikimedia is far better known, so this number
will be much larger if Wikilabs were part of Wikimedia.

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Because Wikimedia is not a free hosting service for just any wiki idea and
> Wikicities already exists to fill that role.
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> [[Proposals for new projects]] clearly states that "Wikimedia is not a
> free hosting company for any kind of wikis.

I would like to point out that Wikicities is not purely a free hosting
company either. We aim to build communities, not just host wikis. I
reject around a third of applications that are made, and of the
remaining requests, at least half are adapted between the initial
proposal and the creation of the wiki.

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Wikilabs isn't needed at all due to the existence of Wikicities. After being
> hosted at Wikicities for some time we can then see if Wikibuilder is 1) a
> viable idea and 2) if it is something that will fit with our mandate.

I don't think the existence of Wikicities, which is not officially
affiliated with Wikimedia, completely removes the need for a
Wikimedia-based Wikilabs. The connection with existing projects, and
possibly even the prestige of being a Wikimedia project, might make
people more likely to contribute to wikis hosted there rather than at
Wikicities.

I also want to reiterate Jimmy's point that wikis on Wikicities can
later be moved to Wikimedia if the Wikimedia community supports this.
I expect that with some proposals, there would be greater support
following a period at Wikicities once the wiki has proven successful.

Angela

----
Angela Beesley
www.wikicities.com


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright status of press releases

body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> Maybe some of you would like to respond to this interesting question,
> are press releases copyrighted?:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:News_release

Press releases are clearly copyrighted.  An argument could be made
about this in court, but I have no interest *at all* in making such an
argument.  On Wikinews and elsewhere, we can make use of a press
release as factual information, but it would be absurd for us to just
publish them or base stories directly on them, license or no license.

Our journalistic standards should be higher than that of lazy
reporters who simply regurgitate whatever a company tells them.

--Jimbo


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Robert Brookes stated for the record:

> The use of a
> (Gestapo-style) heavy hand in controlling the actions
> of people is not something Wikipedia should create an
> environment to florish. (So stated to commemorate the
> liberation of the prisoners from Auswitz 60 years ago)
>
> Robert

There speaks someone who has never experienced any oppression however
slight or witnessed the least evil however banal.  It takes a truly
ignorant and undiscriminating person to compare Auschwitz to Wikipedia.

Your na?vet? is amazing.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Great literature deals with the
  sean at epoptic.com | universal themes of love and war. Trashy
                   | fiction is just full of sex and violence.


from_name: David Monniaux

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Individual Wikipedias for different
	Sinitic	vernaculars (Cantonese debate) - update

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>Mark, the dialect-specific Wikipedias don't "hurt" per se.
>
>But the ZH Wikipedia is already disproportionately small, even
>miniscule, given the worldwide population of speakers. That's why some
>are afraid of splintering the effort too early.
>
>
What is exactly the level of compatibility *in writing* between those
different dialects? Is it only a question of slightly different
grammatical habits and some specific vocabulary? Or is it more diverse?

I note that some of the languages represented on WP, such as French and
English, have moderate regional variations in grammar and vocabulary;
but it is possible to write articles that are understable by all (by
avoiding local peculiarities, for instance).


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia???

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Why not one in Middle Franconian (Mittelfr?nkisch) instead, so it's
>more general?
>
>
One question is whether there is a sufficient interested user base.
For instance, the Breton and Occitan wikipedias veyr much lack
contributors, and also viewers (as shown by stats from the servers).
Now, I'm not against creating Wikipedias for minor languages; I just
don't expect them to grow.


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>Yes, I agree. In fact, given how many articles don't have sources, it
>might make more sense to create a {{Sources have been cited}} tag. ;-)
>
>
It would require less work, but in terms of design, it would be entirely
wrong. All of these article tags (NPOV dispute, current, protected, the
various stub categories) are supposed to be temporary, to be removed
when the occasion that warranted the tag no longer applies. We should
avoid having tags of this nature that are permanent fixtures on the
article, and we should not allow the existing tags to become fixtures,
as currently they often do.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
On 28 Jan 2005, at 5:17 am, Angela wrote:

> SJ wrote:
>> Why not have a standalone "wikilabs" project for new potential
>> wikimedia projects?
>
> There are a lot of questions that would need to be addressed before
> this could be answered. How do you decide when a test wiki hosted at
> Wikilabs has failed and it is time to remove it? What about the risks
> of breaking links? How will different ideas be developed within the
> same wiki and how will this content be moved to the real site if the
> idea turns out to be successful. How many ideas will be accepted for
> the Wikilabs? Wikicities has had over 120 requests for new wikis in
> the last three months. Wikimedia is far better known, so this number
> will be much larger if Wikilabs were part of Wikimedia.

Anagela, could you post these good questions to:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilabs
or
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikilabs

Christiaan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Excellent point. Though a stub with {{unrefenced}} *and* {{stub}} looks a
>little overwhemled and may not have the desired effect, i.e. suggesting
>someone fix it.
>
>
Quite so, and in fact one of the big problems with the proliferation of
tags is their indiscriminate use. I have seen plenty of substubs (a
category I despise, and think should all be organized into the much
better stub categories organized by their content) where you could
barely see the content for all of the tags that had been placed on it -
{{substub}}, {{expansion}}, {{cleanup}}, and {{attention}} all at once.
And then dispute tags are simply used as bargaining chips in edit wars.

There are some people who don't seem terribly inclined to do the real
research necessary to actually contribute to the encyclopedia, so they
just go around slapping tags on whatever articles they run across. I
would much rather they spent their time adding appropriate categories
instead, which is something else that can be done with relatively little
prior knowledge about a subject. The category system still needs serious
organization and improvement, and would bring more real benefit to the
encyclopedia than happy-go-lucky tag-slapping.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Robert Brookes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
--- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:

> It takes a truly
> ignorant and undiscriminating person to compare
> Auschwitz to Wikipedia.
>

I did?

__________________________________
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from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 02:14:29 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 3. Why are you so much against these Wikipedias being created if they
> are as you say so useless? Could it hurt?

Mark, the dialect-specific Wikipedias don't "hurt" per se.

But the ZH Wikipedia is already disproportionately small, even
miniscule, given the worldwide population of speakers. That's why some
are afraid of splintering the effort too early.

Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
--- JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

> >From: Robert Brookes <the_robert_brookes at yahoo.com>
> >The use of a
> >(Gestapo-style) heavy hand in controlling the
> actions
> >of people is not something Wikipedia should create
> an
> >environment to florish. (So stated to commemorate
> the
> >liberation of the prisoners from Auswitz 60 years
> ago)
>
> I feel that any comparison between blocking an
> editor from editing an
> on-line encyclopedia for 24 hours, and the actions
> of the Gestapo or Nazis
> in Auschwitz, is an insult to the memory of the
> victims of the Gestapo and
> Auschwitz.
>
> Jay.
>

Was there a comparison?

No!

The holocaust started with the first brick thrown
through the window of a Jewish owned shop ... or with
the first racist taunt. We have people here now
exhibiting the same intolerance and actions of the
brown shirts then ... and you know something Jay? Like
then ... no one is saying anything. Nothing has been
learned. The same racism, bigotry and intolerance has
just been passed from one generation to the next.

Sad ... very sad.

__________________________________
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All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com


body:
Maybe some of you would like to respond to this interesting question,
are press releases copyrighted?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:News_release

Christiaan


body:
I don't have this problem with Safari 1.2 (v25) under OS 10.3.8 Sarah,
so one option might be to upgrade to 10.3.

The other option might be to use the rather nice Firefox web browser:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Christiaan

On 28 Jan 2005, at 7:40 am, <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Has anyone else noticed the following? Often, though not always, when
> I edit a page containing accents like umlauts and acutes, when I press
> "preview" or "save," the accents come out mangled: for example, a "u"
> with an umlaut above it, comes out as a weird-looking Y, and it
> happens to words I haven't edited. In addition to changing the letter,
> this breaks the links to pages with accents in the title, leaving red
> links. I was told this happened with Macs, and I use a Mac, but I've
> only noticed it myself in the last week or so. Is there anything I can
> do my end to stop it from happening? I use OS 10.2.8 and the browser
> is usually Safari 1.0.3.
>
> Sarah


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopaedia standards

body:
That gives me an idea; hows about "extreme wiki" as an activity during
wikimania? The person who can make an edit in the craziest way wins.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 22:30:46 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> Editing from an iPod? On a skateboard?
>

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

> Most everyone in the ZH community knows the periodic inaccessibility
>
>in the PRC starting in June 2004
>
I'm interested. Do we have a page explaining when and why Wikipedia is
inaccessible from the PRC? (By "why" I don't mean "because the
government blocks it", but "for which reasons does the government block
it".)


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
I think it's a HORRIBLE idea!!!!!

There are far too many articles with no references.  This would be everywhere.

RickK

---------------------------------
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from_name: Charles Podles

subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 00:01:43 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
<snip>
> (Though that raises the question: what does a stub need *first*: references
> or more text? Both, obviously, but pick one.)

References. A stub with references is simply easier to expand than one
without: a difficult part of the research necessary to a good article
(i.e. finding good sources) is already taken care of.


from_name: Jim Redmond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Robert Brookes wrote (in part):

>The use of a
>(Gestapo-style) heavy hand in controlling the actions
>of people is not something Wikipedia should create an
>environment to florish. (So stated to commemorate the
>liberation of the prisoners from Auswitz 60 years ago)
>
[[Godwin's law]].... does that mean the discussion is now over?  (please?)

[[User:Jredmond]]


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>
>See, a lack of references is a real problem with Wikipedia's reliability
>and perceived reliability. That means you have nothing to start with on
>seeing if an article has a source or is just off the top of someone's head.
>It might be crap with a reference that doesn't support it, but at least
>then you have a chance to find out.
>
This particular tag seems a little redundant, because the presence
or absence of references is pretty obvious when one is looking at
an article. If the purpose of the tag to build up a category of
articles for bored WPians to fix up, why not just add a simple
"[[Category:Add references]]" to the bottom of the article?
Not in readers' faces, still allows building up of the list to
work on.

Or we could borrow the strategy of the recently-successful
untagged images project, and use tools to build up a mega-list
of articles missing "References"/"External links"/"Further readings"
sections. All those US cities should just be able to have a
boilerplate cite of the US census, etc. Seeing a lot of unsourced
articles listed together should help inspire new techniques for
efficient referencing too, just as the tagging project engendered
a number of useful new image tags that have replaced the mishmash
of license statements that people used to use.

Stan


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Please check and test language files before
	committing them

body:
Where?

Andre Engels

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:26:58 -0800, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I've reverted LanguageNl.php in HEAD back a couple revisions to the last
> version that didn't contain corrupt Unicode or extra whitespace at the
> end of the file which, either of which would break proper functioning of
> the wiki to some degree.
>
> Please remember to check your check-ins for validity.
>
> - -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (Darwin)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFB+WqywRnhpk1wk44RApMmAJ4nJvjJQJNBQ92nNYIvR5boARRS6wCgk7pQ
> Bn4tBvGozyIWZr+j5zHZw4Y=
> =GgsT
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
At 08:28 AM 1/28/2005 -0800, Robert Brookes wrote:
>--- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > It takes a truly
> > ignorant and undiscriminating person to compare
> > Auschwitz to Wikipedia.
>
>I did?

 From your email of Jan. 27:
>The use of a
>(Gestapo-style) heavy hand in controlling the actions
>of people is not something Wikipedia should create an
>environment to florish. (So stated to commemorate the
>liberation of the prisoners from Auswitz 60 years ago)

You didn't even realize you were making that comparison here?


body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>Has anyone else noticed the following? Often, though not always, when
>I edit a page containing accents like umlauts and acutes, when I press
>"preview" or "save," the accents come out mangled: for example, a "u"
>with an umlaut above it, comes out as a weird-looking Y, and it
>happens to words I haven't edited. In addition to changing the letter,
>this breaks the links to pages with accents in the title, leaving red
>links. I was told this happened with Macs, and I use a Mac, but I've
>only noticed it myself in the last week or so. Is there anything I can
>do my end to stop it from happening? I use OS 10.2.8 and the browser
>is usually Safari 1.0.3.
>
Wow, I heard about those versions in archaeology class - but
Professor Jobs said that all known copies had been lost in the
Great Disk Crash of 2003.

You're in possession of the truly rare! Do the window backgrounds
have more of a vellum or a papyrus look? Officially the papyrus
versions were only sold in Egypt, but apparently there were
rumors of pirated copies being sold in the markets of Rome,
and an obscure passage in "Cult of Mac" has been interpreted
as meaning that one of them made it all the way to Eboracum
(modern-day York).

:-)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
At 08:38 AM 1/28/2005 -0800, Robert Brookes wrote:
>Was there a comparison?
>
>No!
>
>The holocaust started with the first brick thrown
>through the window of a Jewish owned shop ... or with
>the first racist taunt. We have people here now
>exhibiting the same intolerance and actions of the
>brown shirts then

Your denial of comparing Wikipedia to the Holocaust was immediately
followed by a comparison of Wikipedia to the Holocaust. This is not helping
your argument any.


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
>From: Robert Brookes <the_robert_brookes at yahoo.com>
>The use of a
>(Gestapo-style) heavy hand in controlling the actions
>of people is not something Wikipedia should create an
>environment to florish. (So stated to commemorate the
>liberation of the prisoners from Auswitz 60 years ago)

I feel that any comparison between blocking an editor from editing an
on-line encyclopedia for 24 hours, and the actions of the Gestapo or Nazis
in Auschwitz, is an insult to the memory of the victims of the Gestapo and
Auschwitz.

Jay.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Shane Gilchrist ? hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa at francismaginn.org) [050128 09:43]:

> 3. There are 3 "sign-writing" systems out there - Sutton Writing System,
> Stokoe Notation System and HamNoSys (Hamburg Notation System) but it is felt
> that the Sutton one will become the most popular as its simple to use and
> easy to use - whereas Stokoe and Hamnosys are more used by academics (deeper
> note-keeping really)

Can they be machine translated with usable accuracy? (Even as much as
Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?) That would help a *lot*!

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Proposals

body:
Phil Sandifer (sandifer at sbcglobal.net) [050128 09:46]:

> I have also, through a small fiat, created [[Wikipedia:Don't be a
> dick]]. As this policy is explicitly unenforced and unenforcable, and
> meant as a joke with serious content, I did not forsee any problems
> with it.

I concur wholeheartedly and move a commendation for Snowspinner for writing
this. Huge swathes of [[m:instruction creep]] are caused by having to
explain particular instances of this to the hard of thinking.

Also, remember the handy shortcut: [[WP:DICK]].

- d.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Our journalistic standards should be higher than that of lazy
> reporters who simply regurgitate whatever a company tells them.

Exactly. But at the same time *our* press releases should be in the public
domain say that lazy reporters can just regurgitate whatever we say. :)

-- mav

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> David, I see no reason not to put {{Cite Sources}} on the article
> itself. There's no point in putting it on the Talk page because it's
> not the Talk page that needs the references. ;-)  Like the neutrality
> tag, it's a warning to the reader, in this case that the article has
> not been properly sourced. I think either that one or your
> {{unreferenced}} tag would be a good thing to use on some articles.
> Yes, I can think of quite a few. ;-)

The talk page is where editors interested in the article hang out. While the
*great majority* of people visiting the article are readers only. Thus putting
such a message on talk pages is directing the message to the group of people
most likely able to fix the issue.

This is not the same as an {{NPOV}} tag - which is both a call to arms for
editors and a warning to readers. An {{unreferenced}} tag is just a call to
arms for editors - the article itself is much more likely than not to contain
as accurate of info as any other encyclopedia even without references (and
every encyclopedia I've ever used does not have references anyway).

Don't get me wrong - I think that references are very important. But instead of
adding a tag for something that is obvious to anybody looking at the article,
why don't people find references that can be used to confirm at least some of
the information in articles? Developing those skills are much more important
than encouraging the mindless adding of tags.

-- mav

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from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
I would suggest that such a tag should only be added to articles that
are obviously in dire need of references/sources. (i.e., although all
articles ideally should have references/sources, only focus on those
with information that some question). In fairness, the vast majority
of Wikipedia would otherwise be subject to tagging!

Zoney

--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
The writing systems, not exactly, but machine conversion would for
sure be possible (I think).

Mark

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 01:56:59 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Shane Gilchrist ? hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa at francismaginn.org) [050129 01:38]:
> > David Gerard:
> > > Shane Gilchrist ? hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa at francismaginn.org)
> > > [050128 09:43]:
>
> > > > 3. There are 3 "sign-writing" systems out there - Sutton Writing System,
> > > > Stokoe Notation System and HamNoSys (Hamburg Notation System) but it is
> > > felt
> > > > that the Sutton one will become the most popular as its simple to use
> > > and
> > > > easy to use - whereas Stokoe and Hamnosys are more used by academics
> > > (deeper
> > > > note-keeping really)
>
> > > Can they be machine translated with usable accuracy? (Even as much as
> > > Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?) That would help a *lot*!
>
> > (by machine) from English to the Sutton SignWriting - yeah - but from
> > SignWriting to English, I don't think so.
> > It will take us a while before we can reach an agreement on this.
>
>
> I meant between each other - Simplified and Traditional Chinese are
> *mostly* a one-to-one correspondence between characters (with a few dodgy
> bits). Do the three sign systems have a 1-1 or mostly 1-1 correspondence?
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikinews-l] Wikinews & Bloggers: Open Chat on
	February 5

body:
Erik, this is a great idea. Though I'm wondering if there's a way to
establish a dialogue that isn't necessarily real-time, but something
we can keep open and have a continuing conversation.

RSS is essential for Wikinews. For example, for a page like
[[en:Current_events_in_Hong_Kong_and_Macao]], it would be great to
have an RSS feed of the latest news headlines that blog sites can
incorporate. It would be great for a blog site I'm overseeing,
http://www.chattergarden.com.

Another question is how to address all the "Current events..." pages
in Wikipedia, and how they relate to what Wikinews is doing.

-Andrew

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 04:10:07 +0100, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Jimmy suggested that we should get the blogosphere more involved in the
> Wikinews project. Indeed, many bloggers do the kind of work that
> Wikinews requires: summarizing the news from a large number of sources.
> True, bloggers are often less than neutral, but their entries may serve
> as a useful basis for Wikinews articles, if we can convince them to put
> them under an open license. There is also the question of how to raise
> visibility of Wikinews within the world of blogs. RSS is essential here.
> We do have one useful RSS feed, namely the one of Special:Newpages, but
> few people are aware of it.
>
> In order to communicate to bloggers what Wikinews is all about, and to
> get them excited about the project, we are holding an open IRC chat on
> February 5, 22:00 UTC, on #wikinews (irc.freenode.net). Please help in
> setting the agenda and working on the list of invitations to bloggers. I
> think it would be nice if we could personalize those.
>
> The Meta page is on
>
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews_Chat
>
> which will also be used to organize the agenda for future project-wide
> chats. Please register yourself there if you intend to come.
>
> All best,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikinews-l mailing list
> Wikinews-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


from_name: shi zhao

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Individual Wikipedias for different
	Sinitic	vernaculars (Cantonese debate) - update

body:
Mark Williamson <node.ue at ...> writes:

>
> Hi all,
>
> In this e-mail I don't want to personally introduce new arguments but
> I want people to know that further debate on this topic is continuing
> at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
>
> Some speakers of these languages have lent their support: Steve,
> Instantnood, and Felix Wan for Yue/Cantonese, and Nishishei,
> Pangguanzhe, and alaya for Wu/Shanghainese (Wu also includes the
> varieties of the surrounding areas including for example Suzhou).
>
> Interestingly, on that page, no native speakers have directly
> condemned the idea (only direct opposition is from Shizhao), although
> Toytoy, a Cantonese speaker, has some concerns.
>
> Mark
>
Or should let them write a few articles to see first how, then make the
decision.I doubt the Yue very much, how does the Wu write?Also is to use
Chinese?If what to use is a Chinese characters what I am a resolute objection,
if be like the South Fukien dialect similar colloquially a type writings of
word write I has no objection to, and approve.Just I do not know the Yue ,
does the Wu have to write the system otherly?

[[zh:user:shizhao]]


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> Judging from all the conflicting information on the net, a lot of it
> from reputable sources, it seems anything but clear. I've yet to see
> one person cite a conclusive source in regard to law.
>
> There is the argument that anything published is copyrighted unless
> stated otherwise, however it is possible that the very word "release"
> could be construed as such a statement. Who knows? I don't. And nobody
> I've discussed this with on Wikimedia, so far, seems to know either.

You have been given a direct clear answer, but you don't seem to like
it.

Under the law, "Your work is under copyright protection the moment it
is created and fixed in a tangle form that it is perceptible either
directly or with the aid of a machine or device."
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#what

Someone calling something a "press release" DOES NOT qualify as a
license which is compatible with the GNU FDL.  I do not know of any
court cases arising out of this, and it is easy to understand why
there wouldn't be any: companies love it when people just post their
PR, and have no reason to sue or complain over it.  Even in our case,
where we would be modifying heavily, a case would be unlikely to
arise, due mostly to our NPOV policy.

> If the status of press releases proves to be inconclusive

The status of press releases is *not* inconclusive.  It is
*conclusive*.

> The idea that news readers should be sheltered from press releases by
> groups of people with superior powers of deduction is elitist (can the
> masses be allowed to decipher the world for themselves?)

This is a straw man argument.  I do not think that "news readers
should be sheltered from press releases".  On the other hand, of
course I am very elitist, so if this was meant to be an argument to
persaude me, it fails on those grounds. :-)

> Of course this is all beside the point if there are copyright issues. :)

O.k., well, there are.

If you can approach the major press release bureaus and persuade them
to release all their work, or some portion of it, under a free
license, or if you can secure a direct release from individual
companies who would like to do the same, then by all means we can
surely publish these on wikisource.

--Jimbo


from_name: nas ral

subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
I think its a good idea, but you should always remember

[[m:instruction creep]]

>
>I'm struck by how many articles have *no* sources. That's what this is for.
>
>I see there is also [[Template:Unsourced]], which is probably the same
>thing. Except that contains the following text:
>
>  This article lacks references. Members of WikiProject Fact and Reference
>  Check and the Forum for Encyclopedic Standards are working to correct this
>  problem. Please help Wikipedia become more credible and useful by adding
>  sources.
>
>To me, that seems to say "go away, we have a special group to fix it, not
>you." Or, at best, "don't bother, someone else will do it." Is there any
>good reason to keep that second sentence at all? More words on a tag muffle
>the point.
>
>
>- d.
>
>


from_name: André Müller

subject: AW: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia???

body:
K?lle alaaf,
The problem isn't that there might be only a few contributors to it,
it's that it cannot be considered a language in any way. It's clearly a
dialect of German, much more so than, say, Swiss German or Plattdeutsch.
It's neither far enough from Modern High German nor does it have an
orthography.
Wikipedia shouldn't include regional dialects. Otherwise I'd vote for a
Wikipedia in Saxon. ;)

Tsch?,
- Andr?

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] Im Auftrag von Florian
Pranghe
Gesendet: Freitag, 28. Januar 2005 02:56
An: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Betreff: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia???

Hello,
I wanted to ask, it is possible to start a new Wikipedia for the dialect

"K?lsch", which is spoken into and around Cologne (Germany). In Cologne
I know a few persons, would have interest at this Wikipedia (-Language).
Yours sincerely Florian Pranghe
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Mark Williamson said:
> All of these notations are standardised and can be used for any signed
> language. Unfortujnately, nonve of them are widespread and the only
> universally understood option would be to use video clips, which is
> horrendus (vrml might work too, but it's still not a viable option)
>
I like that latter idea, though it's probably way beyond the scope of the
MediaWiki project.  Presumably it should be possible to have some kind of
VR mannequin that takes any of these alphabets and produces understandable
sign.


subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
>Yes, I agree. In fact, given how many articles don't have sources, it
>might make more sense to create a {{Sources have been cited}} tag. ;-)

Given how articles on Wikipedia tend to degenerate quickly unless closely
watched and vigorously maintained, that should probably be time-stamped,
e.g. {{Sources have been cited as of Jan 28, 2005}}.

Jay.


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
I hope this isn't someone from Apple mocking my very nice computer
that, incidentally, I didn't buy that long ago by normal-person
standards.

But yes, it's papyrus, seeing as how you asked.

S

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 09:54:47 -0800, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
I use OS 10.2.8 and the browser is usually Safari 1.0.3.
> >
> Wow, I heard about those versions in archaeology class - but
> Professor Jobs said that all known copies had been lost in the
> Great Disk Crash of 2003.
> You're in possession of the truly rare! Do the window backgrounds
> have more of a vellum or a papyrus look?


from_name: Gavin Chait

subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal:  Wikineur

body:
Regarding the queries sent through.

I have spent the past ten years working in economic development in South
Africa.  My organisation (Business Beat) has been quite successful off a
very low base.

I think the queries have made an assumption regarding both wealth and the
idea of a state.  In countries throughout Africa (and developing countries
elsewhere) poverty is endemic.  Most of this is as a result of war,
dictatorships are kleptocracies.  Anyone who knew how to do anything has
left the country.  In places like Liberia, Mozambique, etc the only people
who run businesses are foreigners who come in and set up shop.  No-one knows
how to farm.  The government basically runs as a proxy of the IMF.

In South Africa we have 40% unemployment.

All across the world creating an "ideal" environment for entrepreneurs has
become vitally important.  WTO conferences, GEM report ... lots of research
and information.  What is emerging as a standard set of criteria.  Tax
harmonisation being one of them.

I'm not suggesting that we give specific advice on how to fill in your
income tax return.  But, there are ways in which taxation can be made
simpler.  I have spent a year on a panel set up by the South African
government to simplify taxation for small business (I'm the nominal
entrepreneur on the team).  We studied 15 countries systems across both the
developed and developing world - while the specific numbers (i.e. tax rates)
may be different, there is surprising conformity in the way good systems
work, and where bad systems break down.

However, even if you have doubts about introducing recommendations on
policy, I believe that a resource that informs people as to how specific
types of businesses work would be extremely helpful.  The resource will not
be able to tell you how to become Bill Gates.  99.9% of businesses are
"lifestyle" businesses - places run by families doing mundane things like
laundromats, diners, stationery shops, and so on.  More importantly, the
simplest businesses are the most important in states where everything is
broken.

A friend of mine is currently working with the UN in Liberia.  There is
nothing.  No roads.  No electricity.  No running water.  No sanitation.  All
that is left are a few bombed out buildings.  A resource that says - this is
how you farm, this is how you dig irrigation, etc - and most importantly -
this is how it all fits in a business context so you don't have to wait for
international donor aid (which is probably all going to tsunami victims
right now).

As for everyone's "shock" at my claim that wealth is easy.  Four years ago I
developed a project to demonstrate just how easy it is to earn a living.  I
called it The Thousand Rand Challenge.  R 1 000 :: $ 200.  We invited people
to send us business ideas that would cost only $ 200 to start.  We selected
the best ideas and candidates, helped them develop their business plans,
provided them with the money, and got them started.  On average, over the
past four years of running this event, people turn $ 600 per month by the
end of the fourth month.  That may not sound like much, but going from
nothing to an income that (in a poor country) allows you to feed your
family, send the kids to school and live in a proper house (instead of a
plastic and cardboard shack) is outstanding.

The Western Cape government likes the idea so much that we are currently
preparing to launch a project that would create 1 000 businesses based on
this model.  None of these businesses would excite you:  painting, building,
welding, cookies, fried fish.  Nothing world beating.  It doesn't have to
be.

I'm suggesting setting up a how-to manual.  It doesn't have to be
prescriptive.  There is no suggestion of setting up monopolies (no
anti-trust problems).

As for me and why I feel I can do this (but need help simply because it
would take me forever to do this on my own):  I have developed training and
methodology used widely in South Africa for teaching entrepreneurship and
supporting new businesses.  I am happy to make this publicly available.  I
have chatted to other industry professionals who are willing to put up
generic plans for different types of businesses.  We'll make it part of
future Thousand Rand Challenges.

I work on paid consulting work about 5 hours per week and earn $ 100 000 per
year.  That may not sound like much in the US, but it's quite a lot here.
The rest of the time I work on economic development in nearby shanty towns,
or go kayaking or climbing the mountain.

Poverty is horrifying.  It is raining today and down the road from me half a
million people are living inside plastic and cardboard single room shacks.
I have assisted over 1 000 businesses to start in the past ten years,
creating 15 000 jobs.  But, to even touch poverty in this country, we have
to find employment for over 6 million people.  No matter how hard I work, I
cannot put together enough information or disseminate it quickly enough.  As
for governments, our president doesn't even believe that AIDS exists.

Only something like Wikineur could put a dent in the problem in our
lifetimes.

Really, it won't be hard.  We just have to start.

Gavin


from_name: Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
(by machine) from English to the Sutton SignWriting - yeah - but from
SignWriting to English, I don?t think so.

It will take us a while before we can reach an agreement on this.

Shane

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-
> bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard
> Sent: 27 January 2005 23:24
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?
>
> Shane Gilchrist ? hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa at francismaginn.org)
> [050128 09:43]:
>
> > 3. There are 3 "sign-writing" systems out there - Sutton Writing System,
> > Stokoe Notation System and HamNoSys (Hamburg Notation System) but it is
> felt
> > that the Sutton one will become the most popular as its simple to use
> and
> > easy to use - whereas Stokoe and Hamnosys are more used by academics
> (deeper
> > note-keeping really)
>
>
> Can they be machine translated with usable accuracy? (Even as much as
> Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?) That would help a *lot*!
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
> On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 00:38:38 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 19k articles is huge. It is more than decent. It makes zh a usable
> > encyclopedic resource with only a few omissions in normal browsing.
>
> Not wanting to debating this to death, but here are some numbers:
> World Book Concise Encyclopedia - 25,000 entries
> Britannica Concise Encycloepdia - 24,000 to 28,000 depending on edition
> Oxford Concise Encyclopedia, paperback - 12,000 entries
>
> I'd consider ZH decent, not huge, considering many of the 19,000 ZH
> articles are not "production quality."
>
> Following some links from today's featured article and checking on
> their ZH counterpart:
> Economics (sparse)
> Population (stubby)
> Litre (substubby)
> Ecology (missing)
>
> Look, ZH is a very good achievement so far. No one is trashing it. It
> just can't 't be considered as on a healthy S-curve yet. Given the
> number of Chinese speakers, there's work to be done. I'm not the first
> to point this out. See this previous post and look for "zh:"
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-March/032596.html
>
> > Your only giving actual figures for "very active" Wikipedians is also
> > selective spin. "Active" Wikipedians are obviously much higher in
> > number and are what makes zh.wikipedia a community rather than a
> > closed group of friends.
>
> Active Wikipedians follows the same trend - ZH in December *just*
> climbed back to May 2004 levels in terms of active Wikipedians. See
> for yourself:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/ChartsWikipediaZH.htm

Same trends, so what? There are 180 active users.

> Calling very active Wikipedians a "closed group of friends" is
> inaccurate. There are plenty of active Wikipedians in EN that I can't
> stand. :)

I meant the difference between a group of 40 and a group of 180.

> > You try to make it sound as if zh.wikipedia is devoid of all life
> > except for the lone Wikipedian here and there - that's ridiculous.
>
> Please quote anything from previous emails that comes close to saying
> "devoid of life."

"make it sound as if" implies that you didn't say it directly.

> > If Nishishei really wants to work on a Wu Wikipedia, and he can draw
> > other editors/readers, then why do you want to redirect his efforts to
> > zh.wikipedia? That's a bit selfish.
>
> I don't think asking someone to work on a GFDL project, putonghua or
> Wu, can be considered "selfish."

I think it's selfish to say "No, you cannot have a new Wikipedia
because we want you to work on ours instead."

Mark


body:
Hi Yin,

I understand everything you say but I have a small request for you.

Can you provide a short sample in coloquial written Wu using Hanzi (if
you can't find all the correct characters, I can insert them for you
if need be)? I think that is wht doubters like Shizhao need, to see
that there really is a huge difference between baihua and zanhe-?wo in
hanzi.

Until then Shizhao will continue to believe that Baihua is
grammatically and vocabularically identical to all fengyan-kouwen
because he can onlky speak and write Mandarin himself.

Mark

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 04:34:14 -0600, W Yin <yin at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> I am replying to Sheng Jiong's opposition to the proposals for various Chinese
> vernaculars.
>
> Quoting Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com>:
> > It is totally absurd to set up so many Wikipedias for various Chinese
> > dialects. Being a native Shanghainess, my mother tongue is Wu. But I
> > have never seen any books written in the Wu dialect in my entire life,
> > and I have only heard of one book that was written in Wu in the 1930s,
> > and apparently it received very limited attention.
>
> There are many novels written in Wu since the late 1800's and they were quite
> popular and highly acclaimed; if you are not aware of them, then selective
> education has played a big part in your misconceptions.  Their popularity only
> faded with the singular promotion of vernacular Mandarin by the Republican and
> later Communist governments.  The idea of a vernacular Wu encyclopedia is not
> very absurd so long as there are people willing to give the project a try.
>
> > Wikipedia being a *written* encyclopedia would mean that we
> > only need *one* Chinese Wikipedia, written in Chinese characters.
> > Speakers of the different dialects can pronounce each characters in
> > very different ways (A Wu speaker can hardly understand Cantonese or
> > Min-nan, and vice versa), they all have the same grammar and similar
> > ways of expression, after thousands years of cultural integration
> > within the unified country.
>
> The grammar is different, the expressions are even more different. I want to
> remind you that written vernacular Chinese in *any* dialect, including
> Mandarin Baihua, is a relatively recent development; the "thousands years of
> cultural integration" mean little and can be quite frankly compared to
> the "cultural intergration" that is western civilization. We no longer write
> in Classical Literary Chinese.  Currently the Chinese written form is solely
> based on the Mandarin vernacular; you are suggesting that it is normal for a
> French speaker to read and write only in English (with English grammar) but
> pronounce the words "as if in French," making quick mental changes for the
> grammar and words without equivalents along the way.
>
> > (And by the way Mandarin also has a long
> > history of being the "offical" spoken language in China: since Qing
> > dynasty in the 1600s it has been adopted as the language spoken in
> > Emperor's palace, and during the Republic of China period it was
> > selected by the parliament as the official spoken language of the
> > government after a democratic voting.)
>
> The officiality of a language should not be a primary reason for the
> opposition of any new language Wikipedia. If so, many existing Wikipedias
> (such as the 3 dialects of German, Esperanto, Anglo Saxon, etc) ought not to
> exist as well. The success of Catalan on Wikipedia is a good reason to give
> different vernacular Chinese languages a try; especially for a couple
> culturally rich and high-population Chinese languages.
>
> > Interestingly also Mark seem to neglect the fact that really no native
> > speakers of all these dialects support the proposal, knowing that it
> > is a totally unworkable proposal.
>
> I am a native speaker of Shanghainese and Ningbo-hua, two very close dialects
> of Wu. I personally know several people willing to work on such a project, and
> that number will surely expand as the project grows. If my username shows only
> a few Wikipedia edits, it is because I have just recently signed up, but have
> for the past 2 years edited anonymously hundreds of China and Chinese related
> articles.
>
> Best,
> William Yin
>
> User:nishishei
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>I hope this isn't someone from Apple mocking my very nice computer
>that, incidentally, I didn't buy that long ago by normal-person
>standards.
>
Sorry - if truth be known, 95% of my WP editing is with Mozilla
on my home machine, which is still running 10.2.8. We're in the
final stages of Tiger here, which means daily test builds of the
system - it's not uncommon to hear in the halls "you're still
running that version?? It's over a week old!!"

Stan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Mark,

You are very right on this - it is built on the visual reception (and all
that) so it has to be built on that way.

Often people find it a pity when they start to realise that its not just
signs that can accompany English (it doesn?t work that way!!! It will end up
looking VERY boring and meaningless - even if one is good with one's
English) - it is often into their 3rd sign lang class ;)

Shane

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-
> bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mark Williamson
> Sent: 28 January 2005 02:01
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?
>
> Signed languages are not, as many believe, mere gestural equivalents
> of the national spoken language, rather they have different
> grammatical structures, different idioms, and different semantic
> categories. Thus, conversion between English and ASL is nothing les
> than machine translation, except that you also need a synthesizer for
> the signs.
>
> Mark
>
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 23:58:04 +0000 (GMT), Nicholas Moreau
> <beaubeaver at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Would it be feasable to just have a program that takes the normal
> English, French, Hindu... Wikipedia, and just creates a Flash character
> that signs the article out?
> >
> > The animation would, in my dream world, change automatically, as the
> normal English Wikipedia was updated in its normal Latin text format.
> >
> > Nick/"Zanimum"
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> >  ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 21:27:58 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> People like you are far too worried about the "disproportionately
> small"-ness of zh.wikipedia. Given the small percentage of zh.wiki
> users that would actually gravitate to a new Wikipedia of this type,
> it would make almost no difference in the size of zh.wiki, and zh.wiki
> is already huge (it used to have a few hundred articles, then 10k
> would've been huge, but now it just has got to be bigger or it is way
> too small) and is growing at a good enough rate that such a minor draw
> away from it would be compensated for completely in less than two
> months.

With all due respect, this is selective spin.

19,000 articles is decent, but it's not "huge."

Most everyone in the ZH community knows the periodic inaccessibility
in the PRC starting in June 2004 has hurt growth, so every dedicated
member is important. If you look at the stats, only at the end of last
year did ZH get "active wikipedians" back to the level of May 2004.
There are only about 40 "very active" Wikipedians, and the number of
"new Wikipedians" has not recovered, regressing back to February 2004
levels.

A wiki with one person can be a very lonely place. Seems a better use
of resources to have the Suzhou, Hangzhou, Wu (linguistics) and
related pages in better shape, than to start a new Wikipedia with one
person.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/??
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/??
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/???

--
Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 12:09:12 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Someone calling something a "press release" DOES NOT qualify as a
> license which is compatible with the GNU FDL.  I do not know of any
> court cases arising out of this, and it is easy to understand why
> there wouldn't be any: companies love it when people just post their
> PR, and have no reason to sue or complain over it.  Even in our case,
> where we would be modifying heavily, a case would be unlikely to
> arise, due mostly to our NPOV policy.

Releasing something as a press release is giving a broad implicit
permission to reuse the content.  However, this is not the same as PD,
legally.  All rights are not given up.

However, there's nothing wrong with quoting a press release for
relevant portions; that's fair use.  For NPOV, of course, we should
attribute anyway.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopaedia standards

body:
On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 22:25:08 +1100, Robin Shannon
<robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> wow, he has 16 000 articles on his watchlist AND he works for apple
> (im guessing from the email address); can this guy get any cooler?

Yes, if he can sneak a Wikipedia lookup app into Tiger's Dashboard. :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: Robert Brookes <the_robert_brookes at yahoo.com>
>>The use of a
>>(Gestapo-style) heavy hand in controlling the actions
>>of people is not something Wikipedia should create an
>>environment to florish. (So stated to commemorate the
>>liberation of the prisoners from Auswitz 60 years ago)
>
> I feel that any comparison between blocking an editor from editing an
> on-line encyclopedia for 24 hours, and the actions of the Gestapo or
> Nazis  in Auschwitz, is an insult to the memory of the victims of the
> Gestapo and  Auschwitz.

How about this? "The use of a (teacher style) heavy hand in controlling
the actions of people is not something Wikipedia should create an
environment to flourish. (So stated to commemorate the time I was sent to
stand in the naughty corner for interrupting Mrs Sissons' algebra class)"


body:
On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 00:38:38 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> 19k articles is huge. It is more than decent. It makes zh a usable
> encyclopedic resource with only a few omissions in normal browsing.

Not wanting to debating this to death, but here are some numbers:
World Book Concise Encyclopedia - 25,000 entries
Britannica Concise Encycloepdia - 24,000 to 28,000 depending on edition
Oxford Concise Encyclopedia, paperback - 12,000 entries

I'd consider ZH decent, not huge, considering many of the 19,000 ZH
articles are not "production quality."

Following some links from today's featured article and checking on
their ZH counterpart:
Economics (sparse)
Population (stubby)
Litre (substubby)
Ecology (missing)

Look, ZH is a very good achievement so far. No one is trashing it. It
just can't 't be considered as on a healthy S-curve yet. Given the
number of Chinese speakers, there's work to be done. I'm not the first
to point this out. See this previous post and look for "zh:"
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-March/032596.html

> Your only giving actual figures for "very active" Wikipedians is also
> selective spin. "Active" Wikipedians are obviously much higher in
> number and are what makes zh.wikipedia a community rather than a
> closed group of friends.

Active Wikipedians follows the same trend - ZH in December *just*
climbed back to May 2004 levels in terms of active Wikipedians. See
for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/ChartsWikipediaZH.htm

Calling very active Wikipedians a "closed group of friends" is
inaccurate. There are plenty of active Wikipedians in EN that I can't
stand. :)

> You try to make it sound as if zh.wikipedia is devoid of all life
> except for the lone Wikipedian here and there - that's ridiculous.

Please quote anything from previous emails that comes close to saying
"devoid of life."

> If Nishishei really wants to work on a Wu Wikipedia, and he can draw
> other editors/readers, then why do you want to redirect his efforts to
> zh.wikipedia? That's a bit selfish.

I don't think asking someone to work on a GFDL project, putonghua or
Wu, can be considered "selfish."

--
Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Robert Brookes said:
>
>
> Was there a comparison?
>
> No!
>
> The holocaust started with the first brick thrown
> through the window of a Jewish owned shop ... or with
> the first racist taunt. We have people here now
> exhibiting the same intolerance and actions of the
> brown shirts then ... and you know something Jay? Like
> then ... no one is saying anything. Nothing has been
> learned. The same racism, bigotry and intolerance has
> just been passed from one generation to the next.
>
> Sad ... very sad.

So is it true to say that what you're what you're actually doing is
comparing Wikipedia to Nazi Germany, Jake to a Jewish shopkeeper, fvw to a
Nazi, and fvw's blocking of Jake for repeatedly messing with someone
else's user page to racist or antisemitic brick-throwing or taunting?


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portal article numbers, and nl: has made 50k

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

David Gerard wrote:
> Could someone please update the article totals on the www.wikipedia.org
> template, and put nl: into the top rank?
>
> - d.

Hello,

The portal page can be edited by any meta: sysop at:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/www.wikipedia.org

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

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from_name: Mark Horner

subject: [Foundation-l] Question about other "free" stuff

body:
Hi all

I wasn't sure who to ask about this so I just came to the top (I think?).

If you look at the bottom of the page:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Electronics

There is reference to

"Resources that are not yet covered by the Permission Form

    1. Tony R. Kuphaldt's Lessons in Electric Circuits
(http://www.faqs.org/docs/electric/DC/index.html)"

I'll be honest and say that I would be super keen on someone getting
hold of this author and at least finding out if they could be convinced
to release their content. Is there anyone who does this on behalf of
Wiki* or is it just something that happens spontaneously sometimes?

I have tried to contact Tony Kuphaldt but he's never responded to any of
my emails. Has anyone else ever actually discussed releasing his content
with him?

Thanks,

Mark

--
--
Mark Horner

Jabber/AIM/Yahoo:   marknewlyn

Co-author:
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst

"Life is but a seg-fault away ...

Life received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x42074d40 in calloc () from /lib/i686/liblife.so.6"


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] {{unreferenced}} tag?

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>I've been looking at and thinking about the quality project page on de:.
>(I would link to it but I've lost the URL! Anyone got it to hand?) A lot of
>what they do is simply tagging deficient articles. As well as tags
>corresponding to en:'s {{cleanup}}, {{stub}}, etc. (article-space tags
>intended to provoke work to allow their removal), they have ones that speak
>only of a particular national POV (German, Swiss or Austrian, with a flag
>on and a request to add detail for other places).
>
>One that occurred to me was an {{unreferenced}} tag, for an article that
>does not have any sources, references or external links listed. I've just
>created [[Template:Unreferenced]], with the following content:
>
>:''This article does not include its [[Wikipedia:Cite sources|references or
>sources]]. Please add references or [[Wikipedia:External links|external
>links]].''
>
>I'm picturing this going at the bottom of an article, where you would
>expect to see sources or references.
>
>Before I go wild adding this, what do others think of the idea?
>
>
>- d.
>
>
I would suggest clarifying that external links and sources are different.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia???

body:
I'm in K?ln right now, and I really don't hear much K?lsch other than the
unfriendly ladies in Toom at the cash register and a few people here and
there.  I hear more Swabish, Hessisch, and Bairisch, really (that's just the
people I live with in the student housing).

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andr? M?ller
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 12:35 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: AW: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia???

K?lle alaaf,
The problem isn't that there might be only a few contributors to it,
it's that it cannot be considered a language in any way. It's clearly a
dialect of German, much more so than, say, Swiss German or Plattdeutsch.
It's neither far enough from Modern High German nor does it have an
orthography.
Wikipedia shouldn't include regional dialects. Otherwise I'd vote for a
Wikipedia in Saxon. ;)

Tsch?,
- Andr?

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] Im Auftrag von Florian
Pranghe
Gesendet: Freitag, 28. Januar 2005 02:56
An: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Betreff: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia???

Hello,
I wanted to ask, it is possible to start a new Wikipedia for the dialect

"K?lsch", which is spoken into and around Cologne (Germany). In Cologne
I know a few persons, would have interest at this Wikipedia (-Language).
Yours sincerely Florian Pranghe
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Robert Brookes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
--- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

> At 08:38 AM 1/28/2005 -0800, Robert Brookes wrote:
> >Was there a comparison?
> >
> >No!
> >
> >The holocaust started with the first brick thrown
> >through the window of a Jewish owned shop ... or
> with
> >the first racist taunt. We have people here now
> >exhibiting the same intolerance and actions of the
> >brown shirts then
>
> Your denial of comparing Wikipedia to the Holocaust
> was immediately
> followed by a comparison of Wikipedia to the
> Holocaust. This is not helping
> your argument any.
>

A comprehension problem perhaps?

Let this reply by Skyring help you;

"You used the phrase "Gestapo-like" to illustrate
heavy-handed admins. That was entirely appropiate. The
Gestapo image is one that all can appreciate. You then
used that to mention the liberation of Holocaust
survivors, a day which should receive more
commemoration, rather than less."

Hope that helps.

regards
Robert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Alex Regh

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia???

body:
Hi!

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 18:25:21 +0100, James R. Johnson wrote:

>I hear more Swabish, Hessisch, and Bairisch, really (that's just the
>people I live with in the student housing).

Yes, well, that is to be expected in student housing, those from Cologne are
somewhat less likely to move into Cologne student housing. (In fact, they
probably have a problem getting into it even if they want to, with the scarity
of student housing in Germany.)

I would, of course, support the idea of a K?lsch Wikipedia, and would point
out that there is, after all, one for plattd?tsch (sp?) as well. There are
also quite a few books in K?lsch, as well as an institute for learning it. So
I see no problem there.

Greetings from Cologne
Alex
--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de