from_name: nospam at mussenbrock.de

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

body:
### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ###

The '''Diderot''' WikiWriter alpha is soon to be released.

'''Diderot''' is going to become the first full-featured, offline-online
Wikipedia Editor with

* Source Coloring
* Source Folding
* integrated Browser Window
* Category Browser
* Asynchronous Put and Get of Wikipedia Pages (you don?t have to wait
until a page is saved)
* Parallel Editing of Multiple Articles

In the future, we plan to add a variety of new features:

* Recent Change Agent with Notification Function, able to process RegEx
* Search & Replace with RegEx
* Integrated Watchlist with automated update
* Automatic resolving of Redirects
* and many other ... participate and submit a Feature Request on our
Project Summary Page at http://wikiwriter.sourceforge.net!

On the Project Homepage at http://wikiwriter.sourceforge.net you can
find some Screenshots.

The package will currently only run under WinXP, but in the future we
will try to support unix platforms as well.

This will depend on volunteers to tackle some developement tasks.
Any pythonists are welcome to participate.

The project is based on python and comes with a PSF licence.
Sources can be found on the project page on
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikiwriter.

==IMPORTANT==
This announce is in some way a test on how many interest there is in
such a tool. So please put your vote on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dedicated Dedicated Wikipedia
editor/Diderot.

If there is positive feedback from the community, the project should
soon grow into some stable beta release.

Please use the sourceforge trackers to submit your feature requests or
mailto:wikiwiki(at)vr(dash)web(dot)de.

The final alpha release announce will be posted in the next days.

Enjoy!

Shannon


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Felipe Sanches

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WIKI to .DOC/ .DOC to WIKI

body:
I'd like to know if it's possible to have a wiki page converted to
MSWord documents or any other file format that would keep the style,
font size ,colors , etc... (and vice-versa).

It seems to me that a webtool able to do it in a WYSIWYG way would be nice!

Thanks...
Felipe Corr?a da Silva Sanches


list: wikien-l

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

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

body:
Much Wikipedian rewriting of AP, Guardian and other news stories about
the Bush Administration and Iraq slants the coverage even more those
anti-US sources had already slanted the stories. This has got to stop.

Wikipedia news coverage should not be slanted in ANY direction.

Don't argue your points in news stories. Don't omit one side and
emphasize another side, especially when the source you are quoting
includes both sides.

The US point of view is that they are liberating an oppressed Iraqi
populace from a bloodthirsty, power-mad dictator. We should neither
endorse nor oppose this POV.

The rebels' point of view as that they are fighting against an imperial
takeover aimed at subjugating an independent Iraqi populace for selfish
and nationalistic purposes. We should neither endores nor oppose this
POV.

News stories tend to play up the "rebels vs. US" angle. They are quick
to quote local witnesses who insinuate that the US is killing civilians
wontonly in a war of aggression; this bolsters the argument that "the US
is wrong". Please note that Wikipedia must not endorse or oppose this
argument.

If you want to argue that the US is guilty of war crimes, start a blog.
Or write a general article which QUOTES prominent sources as making this
argument. But don't sneak it into news stories. I'm asking you, please.

Ed Poor
A supporter of Jimbo's NPOV policy


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] meta main page refactoring

body:
Sounds good to me. :)

--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I made some experiment on fr, and integrated the goings-on in the
> community page. You can have a first look here :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3APortail_communaut%C3%A9
>
> The idea is that the community page hosts the ongoing information (at
> least the most recent one). A link allow to easily go to history.
>
> The edition follow a timeline. Most recent on top. The beginning of the
> line, in bold, indicate roughly the type of topic (Foundation, Tech, New
> project, Publishing etc...).
>
> Of course, on meta, the community page is ... the main page.
>
> So, roughly, on one side, we would have the ongoing information, on the
> other side, the permanent references.
>
> Add a pinch of rework on the various "current events", "news" and other
> announcements, plus a big spoon of translation...
>
> What do you think ?
>
> Ant
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Register, Round Three

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> The article said we had no entry on a famous British moral philosopher.
> But by the time I did a search, our article was the best article
> available on Google. So either they WERE wrong, or they have BECOME
> wrong.
>
> All actors and politicians know that "There is no such thing as bad
> publicity."
>
> You want to kill something? Ignore it. (What you pay attention to,
> grows.)

Just like what Kerry at first did with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
propaganda?

-- mav

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list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] The ultimate Wiktionary RFC

body:
Hoi,
On META I have written a piece
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_wikitonary In it I describe
what I think the Ultimate wiktionary would be like.

In the article I assume that things like etymology, pronounciation all
the good stuff that we need in a wiktionary are a given. Therefore this
article is about how it works and what functionality makes it possible.
The article is intended as a Request For Comments.

I also want to direct your attention to the article
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_for_a_Wiktionary_proof_of_concept
.. In it I propose to implement a subset of what is required for a
wiktionary that understands XML. I really welcome comments.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

<snip> But don't sneak it into news stories. I'm asking you,
> please.

And you think they are going to listen to you? They listen to nobody.

There should be a rule that if you deliberately misinform, with
proper warning yadda yadda, it's a (lifetime) bannable offense.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Huge misunderstanding which arose from

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> Is this democracy or bureaucracy? I'm not sure. If I read it
> correctly, your proposal is to:
>
> 1) discuss the merites of something
> 2) make a decision on basis of that discussion
> 3) discuss the merites of the decision
> 4) implement the decision

The idea is to propose the decision before implementing it, so if it
turns out to be based on false assumptions or misunderstandings, it can
be noted.  This is how we usually do things around here: if there's a
discussion and you think it's reached a consensus (say, on moving an
article), you don't just do it, you post saying: do we have a consensus
to move this to [[blah]] then?  Then you wait a day or two before
actually moving it.

-Mark


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikitech-l] Zonealarm

body:
Hello,

I know this might not be the right place to ask, but
since wikipedia is the only site giving problems I'll
start here.

I have recently gotten internet in my home. As opposed
to working in an internetcafe and installed zonealarm.
I checked the tabs so wikipedia was allowed for
cookies,' "adds" and everything. Somehow I hot an ip
address (number) not a www.wikipedia.org or for me
nl.wikipedia.org.

Everything worked fine. No problems could see the
pictures and everything.

Now I was forced to reinstall. But this time for some
reason I have no IP number showing up, just the name.
So I gave it the same settings as the IP number
before. But I have constant problems, no pictures and
forced logouts. The only way everything works is if I
switch off zonealarm which is not exactly the idea off
a firewall?

Anybody got any clues or got the IP number so I can
add that?

Walter (user:waerth nl,en,de etc etc etc)

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from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 10:28:22 -0400 Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>My general decision-making objection is that in all cases, it should be:
>1) Wikipedian discussion
>2) Determination that there is a consensus
>3) Statement that there appears to be a consensus, and propose something
>based on that
>4) Wait for comments on that proposed consensus-based whatever-it-is
>5) Implement it
>
>There doesn't appear to have been an interest in 3-4 here: instead it was
>straight from "board determines there is a consensus" to "board
>implements", which should *never* happen---it should go from "board
>determines there is a consensus" to "board *proposes* an action to the
>community."

Is this democracy or bureaucracy? I'm not sure. If I read it correctly, your
proposal is to:

1) discuss the merites of something
2) make a decision on basis of that discussion
3) discuss the merites of the decision
4) implement the decision

But who is going to decide that the conclusion after 3 (4 in your list) is
any more applicable than the one after 1 (conclusion 2 in your list)? So if
we go with you, the correct procedure seems to be:

1) Wikipedian discussion
2) Determination that there is a consensus
3) Statement that there appears to be a consensus, and propose something
based on that
4) Wait for comments on that proposed consensus-based whatever-it-is
5) Determination that there is a consensus on the something
6) Repeat 3-5 until everyone is too tired of the subject to make another
posting
7) Implement

Andre Engels


from_name: Mark Williamson

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

body:
Uhh... what about Hebrew? Manchu? Manx? Cornish? Since when do
languages not revive successfully by teaching them to children?

--node

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 00:00:11 -0500, Phil Sandifer
<sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Actually, if history is any indication, the effort will go nowhere, the
> language will stay dead, and a Gothic Wikipedia will be nothing more
> than a curiosity. Then again, we have a Klingon one.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
>
>
> On Sep 16, 2004, at 10:59 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> > I know plenty of people *can* speak/write Gothic, I just don't know
> > that they *do*.
> >
> > However the movement to bring Gothic back to life as a language with
> > native speakers, which I mentioned before, will undoubtedly result in
> > quite a few children who will in the future want to read encyclopedias
> > in Gothic as their preferred language.
> >
> > Best, Mark/Jin Junshu
> >
> > On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:08:02 +0200, Andre Engels
> > <andrewiki at freemail.nl> wrote:
> >> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000 Fredrik Adev?g
> >> <gadrauhts at hotmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>> I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
> >>> gothic.
> >>>
> >>> Full name: gothic
> >>>
> >>> Language code: got
> >>>
> >>> Number of speakers: 0
> >>>
> >>> Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400,
> >>> probably
> >>> much more.
> >>
> >> I still am very wary about putting Wikipedia in dead languages.
> >> Reason is
> >> that in my opinion the first function of Wikipedia is to bring over
> >> the
> >> information content in the articles; the language, in my opinion, is
> >> just a
> >> means to do this, it should not be a goal in its own. Because, as far
> >> as I
> >> can see, nobody would _prefer_ to have Gothic as the language in
> >> which s/he
> >> gets this information, I don't think having a Gothic Wikipedia aids
> >> in this
> >> goal (and yes, there are languages in which Wikipedia already exists
> >> with
> >> which I have the same objections).
> >>
> >> My doubts would be much lessened if you could give me evidence that
> >> the
> >> language is actually used - in the sense of being written/spoken
> >> rather than
> >> just read. I would like to ask this:
> >>
> >> Can you specify a body of literature written in Gothic, from recent
> >> date
> >> (say, after World War II)?
> >>
> >> Andre Engels
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> 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: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Minimalistic Web-API for use by Tools nad Bots

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Sep 15, 2004, at 9:34 PM, Wil Mahan wrote:
>
>> For me, what would be most useful would simply be a way of getting the
>> timestamp of the most recent revision. Right now, I can use a simple
>> script to get the wiki text with action=raw, but I can't submit
>> modifications because I don't have the edittime.
>
>
> Use Special:Export.

And that's how works the "Python Wikipedia Framework" :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Ctrl-C is our friend

body:
On Sep 17, 2004, at 9:19 AM, Timwi wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> on en.wikipedia.org the random selection has been hacked not to
>> return pages last edited by the accounts Ram-Man or Rambot.
>
> Did you do this by hacking the code (adding to the SQL query) or the
> DB (setting the relevant cur_random fields to 0)?

It wasn't me that did it, but here's the hack in the settings:

'wgExtraRandompageSQL' => array(
     'enwiki' => 'cur_user<>3903 AND cur_user<>6120',
),

>  What you said sounded like the former, but personally I think the
> latter makes more sense (it would automatically heal over time as
> articles are edited by other people and are assigned a cur_random that
> way).

That would *not* heal, as currently cur_random is assigned only at
creation time, not on further edits. The current hack *does* heal, as
the last-editor user ID will change when it's further edited. As long
as Ram-Man is not still editing with his own account, anyway. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
I wonder if you could share some specific links, so that we might
constructively discuss what a better wording might have been in
particular instances?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] (no subject)

body:
> I think that if there are people who speak the language, even if in a
> merely academic context, a Wikipedia is worthwhile. What about the
> Latin Wikipedia?

It depends on what you call 'speak the language'. I want to be sure that
there are people who _use_ the language, that is, communicate in it. For
example, if there is a journal that comes out once a year, where articles
are written in Gothic.

But in this case I have the feeling that 'speak the language' means that
they _know_ the language, and the only use of the language is to read
centuries old texts that were written in Gothic or as an object of study
itself. And then I don't think a Wikipedia is worthwhile.

Regarding Latin: It's still being used on a daily basis in the Roman
Catholic church, for one thing.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Zonealarm

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I know this might not be the right place to ask, but
> since wikipedia is the only site giving problems I'll
> start here.
>
> I have recently gotten internet in my home. As opposed
> to working in an internetcafe and installed zonealarm.
> I checked the tabs so wikipedia was allowed for
> cookies,' "adds" and everything. Somehow I hot an ip
> address (number) not a www.wikipedia.org or for me
> nl.wikipedia.org.
>
> Everything worked fine. No problems could see the
> pictures and everything.
>
> Now I was forced to reinstall. But this time for some
> reason I have no IP number showing up, just the name.
> So I gave it the same settings as the IP number
> before. But I have constant problems, no pictures and
> forced logouts. The only way everything works is if I
> switch off zonealarm which is not exactly the idea off
> a firewall?
>
> Anybody got any clues or got the IP number so I can
> add that?
>
> Walter (user:waerth nl,en,de etc etc etc)

Hello Walter,

$ dig +short www.wikipedia.org
207.142.131.247
207.142.131.248
207.142.131.235
207.142.131.236
207.142.131.245
207.142.131.246
$

btw, it could change without any notice.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz


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

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Wow. I wonder if we could use the same syntax to specify the various
> spellings of English. Then finally users will no longer need to see a
> mix.

It seems like it should, although it may complicate things by making for
some messy syntax.  The main cases I can think of offhand that would
require some marking up are ones that shouldn't be "translated", such as
proper names (you don't want to do color->colour if it's the American
Color Movie Association or something).

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: domain name administrator--> Trust level

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>I peronally think that the job is highly critical, and should not be
>left to a volunteer. You should either hire someone who does this
>already for a living, as a professional, or jimbo should handpick
>someone he trusts explicitely. I think Jimbo does the DNS stuff now,
>and probably will in the future.
>So the point is probably moot.
>
>
If it's already taken care of, it is indeed moot, but I think all that's
really needed is a responsible volunteer who can be trusted to be
contactable and keep the information in order.  What we really need is
to make sure we have all the information when it's needed, so if a
developer were redoing our DNS setup, and needed some stuff changed,
they would be able to get the information and access they needed.  It's
mostly having a dozen different people registering different domains at
different registrars that would really be a mess.

-Mark


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Wouldn't it be better to store Most of values in
 LocalSettings.php into database?

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 07:57:06AM +0200, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
>
>>Lo JeLuF,
>
>
> Salut,
>
>
>>Probably better to get one row per setting, that will allow us to sort
>>settings per categories and define the type of data.
>>
>>Ex:
>>category | setting    |  value      | type
>>---------------------------------------------
>>General  | ScriptPath |             | string
>>General  | UploadDir  | /mnt/upload | string
>>Tidy     | UseTidy    |           0 | boolean
>>---------------------------------------------
>>
>>Then we can get different administrations pages.
>
>
> I already have different pages, much like the User Preferences page.
> Also grouping and sorting them in the single pages, I think hardcoding
> this in PHP is fine, no real need to get the layout of the forms from
> the DB.
>
>
>>For older versions, we probably just want to diff changes and saves them
>>directly in the new log system.
>
>
> Good idea. Visible to sysops and developers only.
> Special:Sitesettings for developers only.
>
> Draft is at
> http://mediawiki.mormo.org/index.php/Special:Sitesettings
>
> Not all messages are defined yet. Prototype. Save not implemented.
>
> Regards,
>
> JeLuF

Hello,

Looks good JeLuF. My idea of a "category" field is to allow developpers
to add new options easily and get the interface to update itself
automaticly. This way we will just care about the code and can forget
the interface.

With a new user right system, we can even have different administrators,
with some being able to access the "general" changes but not the "tidy"
or "memcached" settings.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Mark Richards

body:
Something that lets you seamlessly view, search and
edit Wikipedia, Wikiquote and Wiktionary would be
great, so you could basically treat all of them as one
big source without having to worry about multiple
logins, multiple search engines etc.
Short of actually integrating them, this would be
fabulous.
Mark R.

--- nospam at mussenbrock.de wrote:

>
> ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE
> ###
>
> The '''Diderot''' WikiWriter alpha is soon to be
> released.
>
> '''Diderot''' is going to become the first
> full-featured, offline-online
> Wikipedia Editor with
>
> * Source Coloring
> * Source Folding
> * integrated Browser Window
> * Category Browser
> * Asynchronous Put and Get of Wikipedia Pages (you
> don?t have to wait
> until a page is saved)
> * Parallel Editing of Multiple Articles
>
> In the future, we plan to add a variety of new
> features:
>
> * Recent Change Agent with Notification Function,
> able to process RegEx
> * Search & Replace with RegEx
> * Integrated Watchlist with automated update
> * Automatic resolving of Redirects
> * and many other ... participate and submit a
> Feature Request on our
> Project Summary Page at
> http://wikiwriter.sourceforge.net!
>
> On the Project Homepage at
> http://wikiwriter.sourceforge.net you can
> find some Screenshots.
>
> The package will currently only run under WinXP, but
> in the future we
> will try to support unix platforms as well.
>
> This will depend on volunteers to tackle some
> developement tasks.
> Any pythonists are welcome to participate.
>
> The project is based on python and comes with a PSF
> licence.
> Sources can be found on the project page on
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikiwriter.
>
> ==IMPORTANT==
> This announce is in some way a test on how many
> interest there is in
> such a tool. So please put your vote on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dedicated Dedicated
> Wikipedia
> editor/Diderot.
>
> If there is positive feedback from the community,
> the project should
> soon grow into some stable beta release.
>
> Please use the sourceforge trackers to submit your
> feature requests or
> mailto:wikiwiki(at)vr(dash)web(dot)de.
>
> The final alpha release announce will be posted in
> the next days.
>
> Enjoy!
>
> Shannon
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikidata: wiki-style databases

body:
Excerpt from

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

Wikidata is a proposed wiki-like database for various types of content.
This project requires significant changes to the software (or possibly a
completely new software) but has the potential to centrally store and
manage data from all Wikimedia projects, and to radically expand the range
of content that can be built using wiki principles.

Imagine that you can edit the content of an infobox on Wikipedia (e.g. the
country box for Germany) with one click, that you get an edit form
specific to the infobox you are editing, and that other Wikipedias
automatically and immediately use the same content (unless it is local and
needs to be translated).

Imagine that some data in an article can be automatically updated in the
background, without any work from you - whether it is the development of a
company stock, or the number of lines of code in an open source project.

Imagine that you can easily search wiki-databases on a variety of
subjects, without knowing anything about wikis.

This project is separate from the Wikimedia Commons, because a Wikidata
database does not necessarily have to be useful for another Wikimedia
project, and because it is larger in scope.

Applications

Astronomy - '''space.wikidata.org''' (spc.wikidata.org)
* astronomical objects
* constellations
* craters
* observatories and telescopes
* surveys
* space missions

Society - '''society.wikidata.org'''
* Schools and universities
* Cities, Countries, Subdivisions
* Ethnic groups
* Radio and television stations

...
<end excerpt, more examples on Meta>

----------------------------------------

Jimmy has just registered wikidata.org. We both agree that such a project
makes sense. I've had similar ideas before, but the (IMHO premature)
existence of Wikispecies has compelled me to put some of this down and
develop the idea further.

There's a GUI mock-up on the meta page of what data entry could look like,
and there's a (very rough) proposed implementation strategy. If someone is
willing to do so, it may make sense to create a proof-of-concept from
scratch.

I'm putting this idea out there for now so that it can be picked up at any
later time. This is not urgent in any way, but it could open up a huge new
range of projects where Wikimedia can compete with proprietary content
producers. (Oh, and corporate users of MediaWiki would love us for this.)

----------------------------------------

I see two immediate consequences for us:

1) I believe that, if we do a database redesign, the needs of a project
   like Wikidata should be considered; that is, we should come up with an
   abstract scheme that allows storage and revision-handling for many
   different data structures. Otherwise we'll have to do another huge
   conversion later.

2) For Wikispecies, I suggest that those involved with the project make
   sure that all data entered into the wiki is in a *structured form* so
   that it can then later be easily converted into a real database
   structure.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikidata: wiki-style databases


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Excerpt from
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata
>
>Wikidata is a proposed wiki-like database for various types of content.
>This project requires significant changes to the software (or possibly a
>completely new software) but has the potential to centrally store and
>manage data from all Wikimedia projects, and to radically expand the range
>of content that can be built using wiki principles.
>
>Imagine that you can edit the content of an infobox on Wikipedia (e.g. the
>country box for Germany) with one click, that you get an edit form
>specific to the infobox you are editing, and that other Wikipedias
>automatically and immediately use the same content (unless it is local and
>needs to be translated).
>
>Imagine that some data in an article can be automatically updated in the
>background, without any work from you - whether it is the development of a
>company stock, or the number of lines of code in an open source project.
>
>Imagine that you can easily search wiki-databases on a variety of
>subjects, without knowing anything about wikis.
>
>This project is separate from the Wikimedia Commons, because a Wikidata
>database does not necessarily have to be useful for another Wikimedia
>project, and because it is larger in scope.
>
>Applications
>
>Astronomy - '''space.wikidata.org''' (spc.wikidata.org)
>* astronomical objects
>* constellations
>* craters
>* observatories and telescopes
>* surveys
>* space missions
>
>Society - '''society.wikidata.org'''
>* Schools and universities
>* Cities, Countries, Subdivisions
>* Ethnic groups
>* Radio and television stations
>
>....
><end excerpt, more examples on Meta>
>
>----------------------------------------
>
>Jimmy has just registered wikidata.org. We both agree that such a project
>makes sense. I've had similar ideas before, but the (IMHO premature)
>existence of Wikispecies has compelled me to put some of this down and
>develop the idea further.
>
>There's a GUI mock-up on the meta page of what data entry could look like,
>and there's a (very rough) proposed implementation strategy. If someone is
>willing to do so, it may make sense to create a proof-of-concept from
>scratch.
>
>I'm putting this idea out there for now so that it can be picked up at any
>later time. This is not urgent in any way, but it could open up a huge new
>range of projects where Wikimedia can compete with proprietary content
>producers. (Oh, and corporate users of MediaWiki would love us for this.)
>
>----------------------------------------
>
>I see two immediate consequences for us:
>
>1) I believe that, if we do a database redesign, the needs of a project
>   like Wikidata should be considered; that is, we should come up with an
>   abstract scheme that allows storage and revision-handling for many
>   different data structures. Otherwise we'll have to do another huge
>   conversion later.
>
>2) For Wikispecies, I suggest that those involved with the project make
>   sure that all data entered into the wiki is in a *structured form* so
>   that it can then later be easily converted into a real database
>   structure.
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik
>
>
>
This is extremely good news. Wikispecies really needs a database to make
things possible. I have a 42 related table database to do this. This
database CAN be simplified but the current free format is not the best
fit. I would really prefer to have it in an open content database.

An other project that may really benefit from a database is Wiktionary,
on META there are discussions on the need for importing and exporting
using XML, earlier today I did send a mail to the wiktionary maillist
that describes how I envision how it would work (article on Meta as well).

As to the consequences you mention in point 2 they equally apply to
Wiktionary.

Great stuff,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] BBC planning to open source its archives

body:
On Sep 17, 2004, at 2:39 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> I read this story on Newsforge, the imminence of this (expected THIS
> fall) makes it really something. The material is of such a quality,
> the breath of their data, the pictures alone, this is really big news
> ! As the article says, openining up this content to the public, will
> make the British culture much more important.
>
> The license they will use will be the Creative Commons license.

Which of the several Creative Commons licenses will be used? Many of
them are very restrictive (eg noncommercial-noderivs). One thing I've
found very unfortunate about the Creative Commons project is that their
overarching name gets bandied about in public as though it referred to
a particular license -- the opposite of what they intend, which is to
be able to label things distinctly with human- and machine-readable
license information.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Uhh... what about Hebrew? Manchu? Manx? Cornish? Since when do
>languages not revive successfully by teaching them to children?
>
>
They revive successfully by teaching them to children as a daily-use
language.  Is Wikipedia related to that?  I suppose it could be in some
ways, but I can't seriously see people using the Gothic Wikipedia as a
source of general encyclopedia-type information.  If you want to know
some random fact (say, the biography of Charlemagne), why would anyone
look for it in a Gothic-language encyclopedia?

-Mark


from_name: zhengzhu

body:
I guess it could. There is now a way to specify preferred language
variant in the user's preference setting page. See
LanguageZh.php:getVariants(). I guess it will be nice to have a more
general way of parsing the -{}- tag, to handle more general
situations.

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 18:27:06 +0100, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 17:30:23 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > Wow. I wonder if we could use the same syntax to specify the various
> > spellings of English. Then finally users will no longer need to see a mix.
>
> I guess this presupposes a nice way of choosing between en-us and
> en-gb in the wiki preferences: I wouldn't put much money on many
> people's browsers being set up to request the right variant (just
> think how many people still complain that they can't type "?", because
> Windows thinks they have a US keyboard!)
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
---------------------
gmail.com at zhengzhu


body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Ed Poor
>A supporter of Jimbo's NPOV policy
>
>
Ah, the eternal debate over NPOV. =]

My current empirical theory is that on highly-controversial topics,
Wikipedia converges on a sort of compromise consensus of the main
editors on the topic.  If you pick random stories, you can see that the
slants are generally towards what you might expect given the sorts of
people working on Wikipedia: rather strongly pro-civil-liberties,
moderately anti-US (but with proper caveats usually mentioned), vaguely
anti-religion, etc.

But, and I think it's an important point, I think we're coming closer
than anyone else has so far.  There are no neutral biographies of John
Kerry that I'm aware of, and I think ours is as close as I've seen.

-Mark


from_name: Sj

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Foundation newsletter frozen,
	ready for proofreading and final translation

body:
Hello all,

The first edition of the Foundation newsletter is ready for preview
and proofreading.  It includes a lot of information about the Board,
overviews of the ongoing and
newly-started projects, and an enthusiastic interview with Ward Cunningham.

Please take a look :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/NL-1/En%3A

Feedback, factual corrections, or requested updates may be left on the
talk page.

-- Sj


body:
On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 15:21:39 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> >Uhh... what about Hebrew? Manchu? Manx? Cornish? Since when do
> >languages not revive successfully by teaching them to children?
> >
> They revive successfully by teaching them to children as a daily-use
> language.  Is Wikipedia related to that?  I suppose it could be in some
> ways, but I can't seriously see people using the Gothic Wikipedia as a
> source of general encyclopedia-type information.  If you want to know

There is a Rosetta Project which focuses on cataloguing texts in all
the world's languages.  Unfortunately, it has been developing very
slowly and has had trouble
generating a community around its efforts, because there is no direction to its
content, beyond an effort to translate basic word lists into all
languages.  Wikipedia provides both a forum and a direction for
building a corpus in a dying or marginal language.

This isn't to demean the rosetta project in any way; they already have
content in
thousands of languages, and a million dollar grant from the US
government to continue their work.  But I think one of Wikipedia's
important side-effects is its
potential to preserve (and store useful, even self-bootstrapping,
content in) disappearing languages.

--
+sj+


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

body:
On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 10:59:54AM -0300, Felipe Sanches wrote:
> I'd like to know if it's possible to have a wiki page converted to
> MSWord documents or any other file format that would keep the style,
> font size ,colors , etc... (and vice-versa).

With OpenOffice.org you can simply copy'n'paste the wikipedia articles
into a doc-file. Didn't try such a thing with MSWord, no windows here.

Much better is PDF, either export via OOo after copy'n'paste or
use wiki2pdf at http://wiki.auf-trag.de/

> It seems to me that a webtool able to do it in a WYSIWYG way would be nice!

The Mozilla browsers have a feature for wysiwg but it produces HTML
which is not want we need for wikipedia.

ciao, tom

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


from_name: John Lee

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Communication catalysts

body:
I completely agree. That was the crux of my initial problem with
Wikispecies - sure, most of us active users are on IRC and the mailing
list. But as Sj says, those of us not in an appropriate timezone (such
as me; I sleep when most of Wikimedian daily activity just starts) don't
have as much a say, nor even much information on these things,
especially with the IRC channel. As Sj has said, this isn't scaling. We
need a centralised source for these without having to log on to meta
everyday, read the mailing lists, and be present on two or three IRC
channels.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]] on en.wikipedia.org)

Sj wrote:

>On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:59:32 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>We will try to do better in the future, to listen more and longer. But I
>>must warn you of one point. Jimbo, Angela and I are all three already
>>streching our time limits. If you all want us to listen better, you will
>>have to help us by providing better insight, summaries and such... and
>>
>>
>
>One thing which I would very much like to see, is a group trusted to
>act as ombudsmen or secretaries, who stay on top of these issues of
>communication.  These are not tangential issues which matter only to
>those who are complaining right now, they are central to scaling our
>community.
>
>Many of the people most likely to be involved with important decisions
>have a hundred things to worry about, to draft, and to discuss.  There
>should be a single
>sink into which they (and community members) can toss updates and
>announcements, confident that from there, such tidbits will be
>collated and distributed to every appropriate community channel.
> * "I just created page <foo>on meta that everyone should know about,"
> * "I created a meetup list on my user-talk page, and posted to
>wikipedia-l about it,"
> * "Jimbo just sent a notice about global problem <fee> to foundation-l,"
> * "The Board just agreed that <fi> and said as much on the AC Talk page,"
> * "There's a big debate about page-capitalization going on at page <fo>"
> * "This group of users says nobody is paying attention to their
>troubles with <fum>"
>
>Currently, I feel that one has to read three+ mailing lists, watch new
>pages and RC on meta, and keep up with a sizeable watchlist on one's
>local wiki, to stay abreast of developments, or even to show up in
>time to have a say in certain important discussions.
>
>


body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

> Well, then I must have been dreaming when I removed all these "what
> would Jesus say" - Christiospams from totally unrelated topics.
> And the folks insinuating that the "Vietcong", not the U.S. had used
> Napalm in Vietnam must have been entirely correct as well, I guess.

I didn't say all articles, but the general slant.  There are attempts to
bash Bush thrown into completely unrelated articles; the "Rumsfeld
shaking hands with Hussein" images gets shoved into any article that
could possibly be related by five degrees of separation; the
"anti-American sentiment" articles are mostly a laundry-list of "why the
US sux"; the mother theresa article is about 50% "why mother theresa
sux"; and there's a whole pile of "what would Marx say" spams in totally
unrelated topics.  There's also an odd strong pro-science-establishment
bias, as evidence by the fact that most of our psychology articles are
basically the (controversial) "party line" from American Psychiatry
Association's _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual_.

-Mark


body:
Sj wrote:

>This isn't to demean the rosetta project in any way; they already have
>content in
>thousands of languages, and a million dollar grant from the US
>government to continue their work.  But I think one of Wikipedia's
>important side-effects is its
>potential to preserve (and store useful, even self-bootstrapping,
>content in) disappearing languages.
>
>
Well, if the goal is to preserve ancient texts in the language, I could
see wikisource as being a better location.  To have a viable Wikipedia,
there needs to be an interest in using it as a living language, one in
which you would write about everyday topics in.  I can see this for some
recently-revived languages---people might be interested in there being a
Cornish Wikipedia their children can look up information in.  But is
anyone going to look up anything in a Gothic encyclopedia?  Will there
be articles on global warming written in Gothic?  etc.

-Mark


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Register, Round Three

body:
On 09/17/04 02:08, Michael Snow wrote:
> Jim Redmond wrote:

>> Ah, but the problem is that, as a grassroots effort, we have no control
>> over the impulses of our participants.  Our more... fanatic... devotees
>> are likely to respond to this latest slight with mouths a-foaming and
>> fingers a-misspelling.

> Oh well, at least while they're busy flaming The Register they won't be
> foaming misspelled POV all over our nice articles.

And someone at the Economist thinks we're just unbelievably fantastic.
Probably more than we actually are, but anyway ...

- d.


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: "general audience"  was: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
On Thursday 16 September 2004 15:54, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> > and don't agree with usage of the term 'general audience' since that
> > implies (to me at least) a forking of content based on detail alone.
>
> I don't think the term "general audience" implies any such thing.
>
> I have here a book on stochastic differential equations from my old
> days in hardcore mathematical financial theory.  When I open the book
> and start to read, I immediately notice that the book assumes a
> certain context that I, sadly, no longer have.  The book is
> inappropriate for a general audience.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_mathematics on the other hand,
> is a list of articles which, by and large, are appropriate for a
> general audience.  Many of them are quite challenging, to be sure, but
> they are all written quite differently from a text on the subject
> which assumes that you already know what you need to know to get
> started.

It might be true for financial mathematics, but the level of detail presented
in category theory is far beyond "general audience", e.g.,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(category_theory)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell's_embedding_theorem

This is why _I_ would say that we are not a "general audience" encylcopedia
anymore.

I would put it this way: topics the general audience could be interested in,
e.g. financial mathematics, should be written in such a way that they are
understandable for "general audience". But this does not imply that articles
beyond "general audience" should be forbidden. Articles about category theory
are fine, as are article about stochastic DE, even if they are not
understandable for "general audience".

best regards,
  Marco


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Ctrl-C is our friend

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>  From all articles that meet the above criteria, with one exception: on
> en.wikipedia.org the random selection has been hacked not to return
> pages last edited by the accounts Ram-Man or Rambot. This is a crude
> (and in my view unfortunate) hack to appease complaints that the random
> page function returned articles on cities and towns in the US too often.

Did you do this by hacking the code (adding to the SQL query) or the DB
(setting the relevant cur_random fields to 0)? What you said sounded
like the former, but personally I think the latter makes more sense (it
would automatically heal over time as articles are edited by other
people and are assigned a cur_random that way).

Timwi


from_name: Jens Ropers

body:
On 17 Sep 2004, at 16:12, Thomas R. Koll wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 10:59:54AM -0300, Felipe Sanches wrote:
>> I'd like to know if it's possible to have a wiki page converted to
>> MSWord documents or any other file format that would keep the style,
>> font size ,colors , etc... (and vice-versa).
>
> With OpenOffice.org you can simply copy'n'paste the wikipedia articles
> into a doc-file. Didn't try such a thing with MSWord, no windows here.
>
> Much better is PDF, either export via OOo after copy'n'paste or
> use wiki2pdf at http://wiki.auf-trag.de/

Nah, too complicated.
Just sit down in front of any friggin Mac OS X browser and select File
- Print - Save as PDF.


body:
zhengzhu wrote:

> A new wiki tag was introduced to specify
> special conversions without using the conversion tables, for example,
> -{zh-cn some_phrase zh-tw some_other_phrase zh-hk
> yet_some_other_phrase}-. Using -{some_phrase}- along will display
> some_phrase for all without any conversion.

Wow. I wonder if we could use the same syntax to specify the various
spellings of English. Then finally users will no longer need to see a mix.

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Washington Post letter to the editor

body:
On Monday I sent the Wash Post our response to their "Spreading
Knowledge, the Wiki Way" article, where they compare Brittanica Online
favorably to our disclaimered site.  It is slated for publication in
their letters section tomorrow.
So take a look at a copy if you can!

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_department/WashPost-20040909#Response

--
+sj+


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Zonealarm

body:
On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 11:57:25 +0100 (BST), Walter van Kalken
<waerth at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Now I was forced to reinstall. But this time for some
> reason I have no IP number showing up, just the name.
> So I gave it the same settings as the IP number
> before. But I have constant problems, no pictures and
> forced logouts. The only way everything works is if I
> switch off zonealarm which is not exactly the idea off
> a firewall?
>
> Anybody got any clues or got the IP number so I can
> add that?

This may be a stupid question (I've never used Zone Alarm, and have no
idea what settings you are referring to here) but is there really no
way of just telling it to "trust" "*.wikipedia.org"? Or, come to that,
just trust your browser, and not trust any dubious programs that
install themselves but aren't your browser (this is how Norton's
firewall seems to work, when I can be bothered to get it to work).

Please ignore me if this is, indeed, a stupid question.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
In Linz, Austria at the Ars Electronica festival, elian and I chatted
with the woman who is spearheading this initiative.  They are
interested in free licenses, but have certain difficulties within
their organization in terms of needing assurance that it benefits the
people they are legally obliged to benefit (UK taxpayers), and they
have some concerns about their competitive position, I gather, thus
the non-commercial restriction.

I view it as an amazing positive first step, and get the feeling from
nearly everyone that Angela and I met at the BBC in London that they
are spiritually all for it, it's just a matter of big organizations
moving very slowly and cautiously.

--Jimbo


body:
On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 17:30:23 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Wow. I wonder if we could use the same syntax to specify the various
> spellings of English. Then finally users will no longer need to see a mix.

I guess this presupposes a nice way of choosing between en-us and
en-gb in the wiki preferences: I wouldn't put much money on many
people's browsers being set up to request the right variant (just
think how many people still complain that they can't type "?", because
Windows thinks they have a US keyboard!)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Gerard Meijssen <gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:

> I read this story on Newsforge, the imminence of this (expected THIS
> fall) makes it really something. The material is of such a quality, the
> breath of their data, the pictures alone, this is really big news ! As
> the article says, openining up this content to the public, will make the
> British culture much more important.
>
> The license they will use will be the Creative Commons license.
>
> http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/04/09/14/0715249.shtml

Hm. "... so long as it is not put to commercial use."

-- mav

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


body:
On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 16:31:54 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Well, if the goal is to preserve ancient texts in the language, I could
> see wikisource as being a better location.  To have a viable Wikipedia,
> there needs to be an interest in using it as a living language, one in

I'm not sure we currently have a better way than a "Wikipedia" instance for
people to build a new corpus in a language they are trying to preserve.
Wikisource is for existing source documents...

Sj


body:
Way kewl.

You've gotta turn off straight quote/smart quote substitution though,
both in "Tools - AutoCorrect - AutoFormat" and in "Tools - AutoCorrect
- AutoFormat as you type" (exact feature location depends on your Word
version).

NOW I'm seriously considering moving all my stuff to Wiki markup.

-- Jens

On 17 Sep 2004, at 18:50, Aoineko wrote:

> Hi,
> I created a dot file (Word template) to convert Word document to
> WikiSyntax.
> You can download it from:
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/upload/d/de/Wikipedia52.dot
> Sorry help only available in French at:
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip?dia:Macro_Word
> I don't plane to make the WikiSyntax to Word version but it can be
> done easily looking at the macros codes.
> Hope it help.
>
> Aoineko
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] New fundraising page version

body:
Still working on http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising and its subpages. Per
Friday's meeting, here is my suggested tier scheme for the currency-specific
versions of
http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/monthly and
http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/yearly

MONTHLY
Tier	USD	JPY	EUR	CAD	GBP
1	2.5	300	2	3.5	1.5
2	5	500	4	7	3
3	10	1100	8	15	5
4	15	1500	10	20	8
5	20	2000	15	25	10
6	25	3000	20	30	15
7	35	4000	30	45	20
8	50	6000	40	65	30
9	70	8000	60	90	40
10	100	11000	80	130	55

YEARLY
Tier	USD	JPY	EUR	CAD	GBP
1	30	3600	24	42	18
2	60	6000	48	84	36
3	120	13200	96	180	60
4	180	18000	120	240	96
5	240	24000	180	300	120
6	300	36000	240	360	180
7	420	48000	360	540	240
8	600	72000	480	780	360
9	840	96000	720	1080	480
10	1200	132000	960	1560	660

Whatever we use, I would like to have the yearly amounts be exactly 12 times
the monthly ones but will do whatever most people want. NOTE: PayPal recognizes
at most 10 options and the above are *not* exact currency conversions; a good
deal of rounding - sometimes up, sometimes down - was used on many values.

If there are no suggestions for improvement, I'll go ahead and start to
implement the above in 24 hours (first for English, then for the other
languages; translators can start work now by using the visible text as a
guide). The handful of people who have WMF wiki accounts should feel free to
suggest changes by making them (I plan to mirror each of these pages on Meta
once everything settles down; but that is just too much work right now).

NOTE: I already plan to add more explanatory text. Any suggestions welcome.

See aslo: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fundraising_pages

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Quarto] The first Wikimedia newsletter is finished

body:
Great work!

--- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Wikimedia Quarto #1 is finished.
> It is being translated; please help if you can.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/NL-1/En%3A
>
> - Sj
>
> --
> [[m:User:Sj]]  ~  Huo dao lao, xue dao lao, hai you san fen xue budao
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

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

Zhengzhu is currently coding a UI in the user preferences which will
allow Chinese users to select between Traditional Chinese and Simplified
Chinese. The same interface could be used for variants of any language.

Timwi


body:
--- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps fewer than 10 options would also work?  Anything over 6 starts
> to make my head spin.  I can't remember seeing so many options on many
> donation forms in the past.

I agree - but which of the current tiers should be dropped?

We must balance information overload with giving people choice.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Anthere

body:
I made some experiment on fr, and integrated the goings-on in the
community page. You can have a first look here :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3APortail_communaut%C3%A9

The idea is that the community page hosts the ongoing information (at
least the most recent one). A link allow to easily go to history.

The edition follow a timeline. Most recent on top. The beginning of the
line, in bold, indicate roughly the type of topic (Foundation, Tech, New
project, Publishing etc...).

Of course, on meta, the community page is ... the main page.

So, roughly, on one side, we would have the ongoing information, on the
other side, the permanent references.

Add a pinch of rework on the various "current events", "news" and other
announcements, plus a big spoon of translation...

What do you think ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] [Quarto] The first Wikimedia newsletter is finished

body:
Hello all,

Wikimedia Quarto #1 is finished.
It is being translated; please help if you can.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/NL-1/En%3A

- Sj

--
[[m:User:Sj]]  ~  Huo dao lao, xue dao lao, hai you san fen xue budao


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Quarto] The first Wikimedia newsletter is finished


subject: [WikiEN-l] Criticism of Prem Rawat

body:
Huh?
I see no [[Guru Maharaj Ji]] here.

Are you referring to this bloke?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Ji_Maharaj

If not, pls explain.

- ropers

(PS: I shall start mostly referring to myself as "ropers" as there
seems to be another Jens around.)

On 17 Sep 2004, at 18:20, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Anybody remember Guru Maharaj Ji?
>
> Well, there's a long running controversy at Wikipedia over how to
> characterize him. Apparently, it's the single biggest edit war we've
> ever had.
>
> One scholar has spent over 8 months researching the man, and a group of
> several dozen ex-followers is reverting like crazy.
>
> I think the way we handle this has important implications for our
> future
> credibility.
>
> Ed Poor


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: meta main page refactoring

body:
Neat :-)
Elian is interested as well.

I think that once the press release is on its good way; meta is gonna
undergo a little clean up :-)

Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> Sounds good to me. :)
>
>
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I made some experiment on fr, and integrated the goings-on in the
>>community page. You can have a first look here :
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3APortail_communaut%C3%A9
>>
>>The idea is that the community page hosts the ongoing information (at
>>least the most recent one). A link allow to easily go to history.
>>
>>The edition follow a timeline. Most recent on top. The beginning of the
>>line, in bold, indicate roughly the type of topic (Foundation, Tech, New
>>project, Publishing etc...).
>>
>>Of course, on meta, the community page is ... the main page.
>>
>>So, roughly, on one side, we would have the ongoing information, on the
>>other side, the permanent references.
>>
>>Add a pinch of rework on the various "current events", "news" and other
>>announcements, plus a big spoon of translation...
>>
>>What do you think ?
>>
>>Ant
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
>
>
> 		__________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


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

body:
On 17 Sep 2004, at 21:26, Delirium wrote:

>  the slants are generally towards what you might expect given the
> sorts of people working on Wikipedia: rather strongly
> pro-civil-liberties, moderately anti-US (but with proper caveats
> usually mentioned), vaguely anti-religion, etc

ANTI-religion?!?!
ANTI-US !?!?!

Well, then I must have been dreaming when I removed all these "what
would Jesus say" - Christiospams from totally unrelated topics.
And the folks insinuating that the "Vietcong", not the U.S. had used
Napalm in Vietnam must have been entirely correct as well, I guess.

Yea, right.

- ropers


from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
Why would anyone look for that same article in the Latin-language
encyclopedia, or an Esperanto-language encyclopedia?

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Delirium
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 3:22 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

Mark Williamson wrote:

>Uhh... what about Hebrew? Manchu? Manx? Cornish? Since when do
>languages not revive successfully by teaching them to children?
>
>
They revive successfully by teaching them to children as a daily-use
language.  Is Wikipedia related to that?  I suppose it could be in some
ways, but I can't seriously see people using the Gothic Wikipedia as a
source of general encyclopedia-type information.  If you want to know
some random fact (say, the biography of Charlemagne), why would anyone
look for it in a Gothic-language encyclopedia?

-Mark

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


body:
Perhaps fewer than 10 options would also work?  Anything over 6 starts
to make my head spin.  I can't remember seeing so many options on many
donation forms in the past.

SJ


body:
Would you be writing in the Gothic script or Latin?  I think it'd be more
sensible to do it in the Gothic script, since it's designed for the language
moreso than the Latin script.

Do you have any modern (in the last 15-20 years) texts written in Gothic
(language and/or script)?  Can you either attach them or provide an URL for
them?

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Fredrik Adev?g
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 6:18 AM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
gothic.

Full name: gothic

Language code: got

Number of speakers: 0

Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
much more.

_________________________________________________________________
Auktioner: Tj?na en hacka p? gamla prylar http://tradera.msn.se

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


from_name: Dan Drake

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

body:
On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 20:29:03 UTC, Delirium
<delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Jens Ropers wrote:
>
> > Well, then I must have been dreaming when I removed all these "what
> > would Jesus say" - Christiospams from totally unrelated topics.
> > And the folks insinuating that the "Vietcong", not the U.S. had used
> > Napalm in Vietnam must have been entirely correct as well, I guess.
>
> I didn't say all articles, but the general slant.  There are attempts to
> bash Bush thrown into completely unrelated articles; the "Rumsfeld
> shaking hands with Hussein" images...  There's also an odd strong pro-science-establishment
> bias, as evidence by the fact that most of our psychology articles are
> basically the (controversial) "party line" from American Psychiatry
> Association's _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual_.

Columbus: ...That reminds me, I want to take some of you folks home with
me to show that I discovered you.

Indian: What you mean, you discover us?  WE discover YOU!

Columbus: *You* discovered *us*?  Just how to you get that?

Indian:  We discover you on beach here.  It all in how you look at it.

--Stan Freberg, in an innocent time when NativeAmericanPidgin was a
humorously outdated stereotype, not a punishable offense

It's all in how you look at it.

We all have selective perceptions.   Nearly everyone thinks that those bad
Other Guys dominate the press and (by some unscrupulous means) the
government and Wikipeida and on and on.  Hell, half the US believes that
there is a Liberal Media Bias.  Phaugh.  And perhaps a Martian would
perceive that I'm as bad in my own way as they, or as the super-patriot
Ronald Reagan who constantly bemoaned the terrible danger that the poor
little USA was in from powerful dictators in Cuba and Nicaragua.

One does not have to be a right-winger (by world standards -- those of the
USA are irrelevant) to perceive a widespread active hostility to anything
American around here, often accompanied by the "they're all alike" dogma
of the true [fill in inflammatory word for yourself].  This is annoying.
There are also lots of All-American Yahoos, whose works have been cited in
(but did not originate) this thread.  This is annoying.  Which is worse?
Wrong damn question.  But the answer is NPOV.

If we were not determined to avoid agreeing on the obvious, we might
conclude something like this:
Wikipedia has a whole lot too much political POV stuff, and it should be
fixed.

But meanwhile, I respectfully commend Delirium's attention to articles on
Cold Fusion, Pathological Science, and other centers of dissidence where
Establishment ideas of science have not suppressed the fans of the weird.
I notice these, of course, because  it seems to me that Reason is under
serious threats in such articles.

[Bets being accepted on whether responses will point out that the stupid
American is unwittingly showing his own bias in that last sentence.]


from_name: Jimmy O'Regan

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> I read this story on Newsforge, the imminence of this (expected THIS
> fall) makes it really something. The material is of such a quality, the
> breath of their data, the pictures alone, this is really big news ! As
> the article says, openining up this content to the public, will make the
> British culture much more important.
>
> The license they will use will be the Creative Commons license.
They will use *a* Creative Commons licence - there are several.

The Newsforge story title is misleading, as this will not be open
source; they will not be allowing commercial use of their material.
>
> http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/04/09/14/0715249.shtml
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM


from_name: Stirling Newberry

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

body:
On Sep 17, 2004, at 10:41 PM, James R. Johnson wrote:

> Would you be writing in the Gothic script or Latin?

http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/gotica/

There are no recent Gothic texts, though there are critical editions of
fragments that exist which are of recent origin.

I'm not taking sides on the issue, but I am dubious that the scholars
who are involved in the study of the Gothic language would be
interested, or would put in any time. I think there is more likelihood
of there being a native Klingon speaker in the next 10 years than a
native Gothic  speaker.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
I read this story on Newsforge, the imminence of this (expected THIS
fall) makes it really something. The material is of such a quality, the
breath of their data, the pictures alone, this is really big news ! As
the article says, openining up this content to the public, will make the
British culture much more important.

The license they will use will be the Creative Commons license.

http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/04/09/14/0715249.shtml

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
5, 10, 20, 35, 50, 100.

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 19:45:21 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps fewer than 10 options would also work?  Anything over 6 starts
> > to make my head spin.  I can't remember seeing so many options on many
>
> I agree - but which of the current tiers should be dropped?

--
+sj+


body:
On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 23:39:11 +0200, Gerard Meijssen
<gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> I read this story on Newsforge, the imminence of this (expected THIS
> fall) makes it really something. The material is of such a quality, the
> breath of their data, the pictures alone, this is really big news ! As
> the article says, openining up this content to the public, will make the
> British culture much more important.

Sorry to add more nit-picking, but "expected THIS fall" is a slight
exaggeration on your part. The original announcement that they were
going to spend the next few years working out how to put all their
archives online was a few months ago; this is just a little "taster"
of a couple of thousand clips, presumably to float some ideas, see if
the public will get interested, etc. Not that that's not great in
itself, just don't hold your breath for the whole "breadth of their
data".

On the other hand, their embrace of Open Source is a welcome shift -
things move slowly in the beeb, and their insistence on using Real
streaming (yuck!) has irked a lot of people. They actually flirted
rather casually with Ogg-base streams, but they were practically in
secret, and I've never heard what it was exactly that was deemed a
failure about them. (Perhaps nobody used them, since they only covered
one program, and nobody knew they existed; that could be it ;).

Sorry, I think I may be rambling. Or maybe not, it's a while since I
looked at this window. My eyes hurt. Good night!

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Dan Drake wrote:

>[Bets being accepted on whether responses will point out that the stupid
>American is unwittingly showing his own bias in that last sentence.]
>
We all show our biases periodically, and in fact most of the complaints
both here and elsewhere that Wikipedia slants toward a certain POV in
fact reveal more about the POV of the writer than some overriding POV in
Wikipedia itself. Some individual articles do have serious POV problems
depending on what the last author did with them. But Wikipedia as a
whole is, if I may borrow Cimon Avaro's pogo stick, occasionally bumpy
but not actually slanted in any particular direction.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Angela

body:
The impression I got from talking to the BBC when Jimbo and I were
there last month, and from the meeting I had with iCan this week, was
that they are intending to release some of their content under a free
CC licence, rather than one of the more restrictive non-commerical
ones. They have also shown an interest in using Wikipedia content
under the GFDL, although this isn't going to happen immediately since
such things need to be checked with their lawyers first.

Related links:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_meetings_in_Europe/BBC%2C_August_2004
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BBC_iCan

Angela.


from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] Washington Post letter

body:
pg A24:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30326-2004Sep17.html

Of course, the subtly misguided original was on the front page of the
Tech section... I'm sure the Wikipedia disclaimer will be a point of
debate for a long time to come.

+sj+


from_name: Delirium

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>There's also an odd strong pro-science-establishment
>>bias, as evidence by the fact that most of our psychology articles are
>>basically the (controversial) "party line" from American Psychiatry
>>Association's _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual_.
>>
>>
>
>Established mainstream scientists whose views are favored by the majority
>are given more space than minority views. See
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV#Pseudoscience
>
>
That is completely irrelevant to my comment.  The American Psychiatry
Association represents a particular faction within psychology, with a
particularly extremist viewpoint that there is no such thing as mental
illness, but only physical illness, and all mental illnesses are
actually "brain diseases" that they will begrudgingly call "mental
disorders" for historical reasons, with the understanding that they are
wholly the result of physiological medical conditions.  This is perhaps
unsurprising, given that psychiatrists are MDs.

As you might expect, this view is not universally held within
psychology; indeed, the majority of PhDs in the field are members of the
rival American Psychological Association, which holds rather contrary
viewpoints.

So Wikipedia siding with MDs over PhDs has nothing to do with mainstream
vs. pseudoscience, but with one faction of science vs. another faction
of science.

Furthermore, it's inherently POV to favor "mainstream scientists".
Mainstream scientists who also have mainstream public acceptance,
perhaps, but simply giving experts in a field undue credence, even if
their viewpoints are not generally held, is taking an explicit position
on the matter.  I'm quite alright with statements appropriately
attributed, of course, like "the latest APA conference said [blah],
although this remains controversial."  But if you take a look at
[[schizophrenia]], [[bipolar disorder]], etc., it's just straight
pro-psychiatry partisanship.

-Mark


from_name: Aoineko

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WIKI to .DOC/ .DOC to WIKI

body:
Hi,
I created a dot file (Word template) to convert Word document to WikiSyntax.
You can download it from:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/upload/d/de/Wikipedia52.dot
Sorry help only available in French at:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip?dia:Macro_Word
I don't plane to make the WikiSyntax to Word version but it can be done
easily looking at the macros codes.
Hope it help.

Aoineko


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Craig Franklin wrote:

>That said, while a Gothic wikipedia would be interesting (I'm sure this is
>the Robert Smith fan inside me speaking ;-) ), I'd wonder whether there
>really is that much interest in it.  Even being optimistic and taking a high
>estimate for the number of speakers (say, 5,000), I don't know if anyone
>would actually be willing to add to it.  Not that having a Gothic Wiki with
>no entries would really tax the foundation, but I don't think we need
>*another* deserted Wiki with five articles in it.
>
>
Come to think of it, I suppose I wouldn't mind it being created really,
for the reason you mentioned---there's really not much to lose.  We
might gain some publicity in certain circles, and we're unlikely to be
negatively affected.

I'm still somewhat dubious, of course---a reasonable Wikipedia needs at
least a few hundred articles to be written, and it appears there has not
been a single piece of text written in Gothic in the past few decades.
If it did work, Wikipedia would suddenly become the source of 99% of
extant Gothic texts, which would be somewhat interesting.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Washington Post letter

body:
On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 01:20:09 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> pg A24:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30326-2004Sep17.html
>
> Of course, the subtly misguided original was on the front page of the
> Tech section... I'm sure the Wikipedia disclaimer will be a point of

...or rather, the front page of the Business section.

And I take no responsibility for that choppy last paragraph;
it was grammatical (and a few characters shorter!) before they edited it.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 01:59:07 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> If it did work, Wikipedia would suddenly become the source of 99% of
> extant Gothic texts, which would be somewhat interesting.

This would be a nice example to be able to point to.  --Sj
(The fact that this is already true for tokipona, is not nearly as interesting)


from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:

> If it did work, Wikipedia would suddenly become the source of 99% of
> extant Gothic texts, which would be somewhat interesting.

Perhaps the Gothic writers could start off with Wikisource.  Various
technical issues could be worked out there (encoding, font, spelling).
Just annotating the texts in Gothic could be a small, yet unprecedented
(?) step toward more original writing.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Delirium-
> Jens Ropers wrote:

>> Well, then I must have been dreaming when I removed all these "what
>> would Jesus say" - Christiospams from totally unrelated topics.
>> And the folks insinuating that the "Vietcong", not the U.S. had used
>> Napalm in Vietnam must have been entirely correct as well, I guess.

> I didn't say all articles, but the general slant.

The general slant on Wikipedia is that articles are biased towards the
point of view of the group that does the most work on them. In the case of
religious topics, these are very frequently people who are strongly
convinced of that religion's divine truth (and occasionally former members
of that religion/cult).

Wikipedia reflects the conclusions most educated people make at some point
in their lives less than most people realize, because there aren't all
that many highly educated people involved.

> There are attempts to
> bash Bush thrown into completely unrelated articles;

There are attempts to bash Kerry thrown into completely unrelated
articles.

> the "Rumsfeld
> shaking hands with Hussein" images gets shoved into any article that
> could possibly be related by five degrees of separation;

I see it linked from [[Donald Rumsfeld]] and [[Saddam Hussein]] (a very
low-res version). Where else?

> the
> "anti-American sentiment" articles are mostly a laundry-list of "why the
> US sux";

Uh, yes, that's why it's an article about anti-American sentiments. It
details the grievances people have about the United States. Whether that
article should exist in the first place in this form is another question.

> the mother theresa article is about 50% "why mother theresa
> sux";

>From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mother_Teresa/FAQ

Is it NPOV to devote that much space to criticism?
--------------------------------------------------
The neutral point of view is primarily about the inclusion and attribution
of separate points of view ("XYZ says .. But ABC responds .."). It is one
of the non-negotiable Wikipedia policies -- every article has to comply
with it. As such, we take all allegations of POV (the opposite of NPOV)
very seriously.

The question of balance is always a tricky one, and there are few specific
recommendations that are generally applicable. One very common one is that
if you feel a view is overrepresented, try adding more information about
the opposite view. Removing or shortening a point of view is very likely
to lead to heated discussions, as the other side may have invested
considerable work in researching and summarizing it in the first place.

There is no rule that criticism needs to have a 50/50 weight with positive
claims. The absurdity of such a rule becomes apparent when you try to
apply it to articles about persons who are almost universally regarded as
criminals, for example. Then what should the balance be? In a biography,
different people will have different opinions as to which aspect of a
person's life was the most important.

That does not mean that all opinions are equally valid, of course -- if
one were to write a long subsection about how Mother Teresa affected a
single individual's life, that might be considered balanced by the
individual in question, but it would be easy to argue that this particular
impact is so specific that it does not deserve much space. Even in cases
like this, it is often better to split away information rather than to
remove it entirely.

Generally, however, it will be difficult to determine with certainty how
much space particular events or opinions deserve. In the case of events,
NPOV is not really very applicable -- instead, it is useful to watch out
for the overall length of the article, and for keeping the level of detail
fairly even, at least within a section. See also the question below on
splitting up the page.

In the case of opinions, it depends a lot on whose opinions they are.

So whose view matters?
----------------------

This question is addressed specifically in Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial. The
response to it bears repeating here:

  Generally speaking, it is acceptable to include points of view of
  recognized experts on a subject. Who is or is not an expert is a matter
  of debate. Wikipedia tends to favor including almost all verifiable
  theories and opinions somewhere as long as there is some logic and
  reasoning behind them. Whether they may be included in the main article
  on a subject depends on a large number of criteria, including:

     * what the standing of the expert is
     * whether the expert uses the common methods of the field or
       completely different ones
     * whether the expert has or has not failed to respond to criticisms
     * whether the expert's claims have been undeniably refuted (i.e. no
       other considers them to be true anymore)
     * whether the expert is part of a defined set of people whose points
       of view might be discussed in an entirely different article (e.g.
       evolution vs. creationism)

  The last example in the list is a good one for the case at hand.
  Evolution is a scientific theory, and as such, the article about it
  grants space primarily to scientific views on evolution published in
  peer reviewed journals. The article about creationism is an article
  about a subject that matters to both religious people and scientists. It
  gives space to the views of creationists and, where they challenge the
  dominating scientific paradigm, addresses the responses by scientists. A
  last example might be the article about Trinity, a purely religious
  concept. It gives no space whatsoever to secular views.

Where does Mother Teresa fall in this spectrum? Like all human beings,
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was part of the physical world, the realm of
scientists, researchers and analysts. Already canonized and on the way to
becoming a Saint, she was clearly a religious figure to millions of
persons. As such, the article should be considered "between the worlds",
like creationism is. These articles are often the most controversial as
religious and secular views collide directly.

There is no way around including the views from the secular community.
Among this community, it is of course fair to discriminate between the
experts who have written about Mother Teresa. The rhetoric of Christopher
Hitchens needs not be given as much space as the sources he cites, such as
the Editor of The Lancet or former employees of Mother Teresa's homes. A
less polemical work like Aroup Chatterjee's may be considered more
credible than a pamphlet like The Missionary Position.

Where are the rebuttals?
------------------------
There are very few. Within the religious community, opinions by secular
authors are often not given much weight. This is also related to the fact
that the secular view has been given very little exposure in the media,
Hitchens' Hell's Angel being a notable exception. It appears that the
Catholic Church does not care much about refuting accusations which are
not widely known, perhaps an understandable position.

This has the unfortunate side effect of overrepresenting the secular point
of view. However, Wikipedia has no obligation to invent rebuttals, nor can
we presume that they exist if the concerned institution or person does not
defend itself. There are many historical controversies about persons who
are long dead, such as Thomas Jefferson. We do not fail to report these
controversies if they have a reasonable degree of logical consistency,
plausibility and verifiability, only because no rebuttals exist. The same
logic is applicable to Mother Teresa.

Why not split away the controversy section?
-------------------------------------------
Such a split might indeed reduce the amount of heated discussion. The same
would be the case if we created a separate page Religious views about
Mother Teresa. The different communities -- secular and religious -- would
work on their respective pages, and not get much in each other's way.

It is however highly problematic in NPOV terms to split articles according
to the emotional impact of the information contained therein, or according
to the communitiies which are primarily interested in that information. It
reduces the likelihood even more that rebuttals to the criticisms of
Mother Teresa's work will be found. It increases the likelihood that
either one of the pages will read like a hagiography. And it would likely
be done in such a way that the main article Mother Teresa would focus on
one side of the issue and ignore the other, giving increased exposure to a
single perspective or standard of reasoning.

This is not so much about proselytizing or shoving secular (or religious)
views down people's throats. It is about being fair to both sides of the
issue.

That does not mean that a split up is completely out of the question. The
general rule of splitting articles is that it is acceptable to do so once
the page has reached a certain size (often taken to be 32K, the limit at
which some browsers have problems editing a page). However, such a split
should never occur according to the emotional impact of the information or
according to which community (secular, religious) is affected by it.
Instead, all sections should be treated equally and content should be
split to separate pages by subject.

That means that a separate "Controversies" page would probably be a bad
idea in any case, but Mother Teresa's life, Mother Teresa and abortion,
Mother Teresa and donations, Mother Teresa's concept of care and similar
split ups according to clearly defined subject lines may be acceptable
once a certain size is reached. In any case, a summary -- usually taken to
be a paragraph long or so -- and a link to the main article about each
subject should be left in place. See country pages like Germany for an
example.

Should we include views of people who are not trustworthy? Is it proper to
cite newspapers and TV shows as sources in an encyclopedia?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some have argued that a person like Christopher Hitchens does not deserve
to have their view represented for various reasons. Generally Wikipedia
does not pass judgment on the views of the experts it cites, but instead
it makes use of the judgment which other people have made. So if someone
is virtually universally considered untrustworthy in the secular and
religious community, their views may deserve little or no exposure outside
their respective articles. But take someone like Duane Gish or James
Dobson as counter examples -- these are individuals disdained by the
secular community but highly respected by some religious groups. Spanking
being an issue relevant to both groups, someone like Dobson deserves
representation in the article even though most scientists find his views
utterly implausible (and as such might find him completely untrustworthy
on the matter).

We're not trying to write articles that are identical to what you would
find in Britannica or Encarta. Wiki is not paper -- we have no size
constraints. We also cover many subjects that not traditional encyclopedia
would touch with a ten foot pole -- compare MKULTRA or felching. Our goal
is to summarize the state of human knowledge on a subject, and to draw
from all credible sources to do so. This includes websites, newspapers,
magazines, TV interviews and 60 minutes style shows, books, scientific
papers, and so forth.

Traditional encyclopedias don't do that. They provide merely an overview
of a particular subject, intended to answer some of the most basic
questions, and they only accept knowledge as such if it has spent several
years (or decades) aging and seeped into all the literature. They are not
very concerned with representing different points of view. For example,
the Britannica article on circumcision cites all of its supposed
advantages as fact, while giving no space to the genital integrity
argument. Traditional encyclopedias are very dogmatic and usually don't
even cite their sources -- they are the sources.

None of this would work for Wikipedia. We have to cite our sources because
we're just regular persons writing articles in our spare time with no
strictly enforced fact checking standards. We have to give space to
differing points of view because collaboration would otherwise be
impossible (and because it has many philosophical advantages -- we leave
it to the reader to decide between different arguments). We have no space
or time limits and are not limited by political concerns either. We have a
detailed article about a major disaster the day it happens.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in that it gathers and summarizes human
knowledge in a structured, readable form. But it is an encyclopedia built
under an entirely new working model, with very broad standards of
inclusion, and highly ambitious goals.

Why is the level of flaming so high in these discussions? Isn't the fact
that such an FAQ is needed a sign that something is very wrong?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As explained earlier, when secular and religious communities collide,
things often become very unpleasant. Persecution of scientists during the
Renaissance is well known, communists punished the free exercise of
religion. When the two groups clash, even murder can be the result. It is
remarkable that it is even possible for members of both groups to try to
work together on an encyclopedia article about a person who was revered by
millions, often cited in the same breath as Jesus Christ.

For many people who participate in this discussion, their emotional
reaction may be their initial motivation to do so, and hence they begin
searching for arguments to justify that reaction. That is completely
normal and entirely acceptable. However, with such a regular "violent
entry" of new contributors, the same concerns are likely to be raised over
and over again. This FAQ is an attempt to consolidate some common answers
and as such, will hopefully contribute to a more pleasant discussion
atmosphere.

> and there's a whole pile of "what would Marx say" spams in totally
> unrelated topics.

As there are libertarian, neoconservative or even Nazi spams.

> There's also an odd strong pro-science-establishment
> bias, as evidence by the fact that most of our psychology articles are
> basically the (controversial) "party line" from American Psychiatry
> Association's _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual_.

Established mainstream scientists whose views are favored by the majority
are given more space than minority views. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV#Pseudoscience

Regards,

Erik


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [Mediawiki-l] Special-purpose MediaWiki clones,
	relation to MediaWiki family

body:
Chris-
> Yes, I was thinking of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects.  Would
> Wise-Nano or Nanopedia (the hoped-for end product) be a good addition to
> that group of projects?

> If my site uses a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, does
> that fulfill the Gnu license, or do I have to include Gnu boilerplate on
> any text I copy from a Gnu'd site?

1) The appropriate list to discuss whether a particular project can be
part of the Wikimedia set of projects is
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I've therefore CC'd my response there.

2) Generally, Wikimedia projects are very broad. There is only one notable
exception to that rule, the recently created Wikispecies (which is why I
think it should be incorporated into a larger Wikidata project).

It has been proposed in the past to have a "Wikipolicy" project as a sort
of open brainstorming space for determining useful political policies on
various issues. That might be an idea worth developing further, but I
would oppose a narrow project like Wise-Nano.

3) All text-centric projects are under the GNU FDL (Wikispecies licensing
is not decided yet), so that would have to be the license to use.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Delirium-
> That is completely irrelevant to my comment.  The American Psychiatry
> Association represents a particular faction within psychology, with a
> particularly extremist viewpoint that there is no such thing as mental
> illness, but only physical illness, and all mental illnesses are
> actually "brain diseases" that they will begrudgingly call "mental
> disorders" for historical reasons, with the understanding that they are
> wholly the result of physiological medical conditions.

At least Wikipedia is biased in the right direction, then.

> Furthermore, it's inherently POV to favor "mainstream scientists".
> Mainstream scientists who also have mainstream public acceptance,
> perhaps, but simply giving experts in a field undue credence, even if
> their viewpoints are not generally held, is taking an explicit position
> on the matter.

Held by whom? Since when is the general public relevant when it comes to
scientific claims? By that standard, we would have to preface every
article on biology with creationist claims, because they are so widely
held. Overall popularity is the worst possible standard to use when it
comes to NPOV.

If there are distinct scientific traditions, then I agree with you that we
should not favor one over the other.

Generally speaking, we should favor the views of the majority of the best
thinkers in a particular belief system, and present primarily the views of
thinkers within the belief system relevant to an article (so we don't have
to have a huge section on atheist views within [[Christianity]], nor a
huge section on creationist views within [[Ephemeroptera]]).

The current NPOV policy is incomplete in that it does not properly
elaborate on the differences between different traditions of belief. This
has led to many edit wars where belief systems intersect, with one group
arguing that the other group's views don't matter. Sometimes that is
correct, and the other group's views are more appropriately dealt with in
a separate article.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Bill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Washington Post letter

body:
Sj wrote:
> pg A24:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30326-2004Sep17.html
[...]

In the print edition it's very prominently displayed.  The letter
appears about half-way down the page and is boxed.

Bill


from_name: Muke Tever

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: language codes

references:
<20040905020000.55731.qmail@web53708.mail.yahoo.com>
	<opsdt8vang2okkek@arcadia.attbi.com> <413AB294.7000509@yahoo.it>

body:
On Sun, 05 Sep 2004 08:30:44 +0200, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> We first of all need the codes for known languages - and the better they
> are known, the better it is. Therefore the first option is for ISO-639
> two letter.
>
> Let's see:
> 1) ISO 639 two letter
> 2) ISO 639 three letter
> 3) SIL (adding the prefix "sil-")
> 4) linguist.org codes for ancient languages  (adding prefix "lnga-")
> 5) linguist.org codes for constructed languages (adding prefix "lngc-")
> 6) wiktionary internal code (adding prefix "wkt-")
>
> Could this be a feasible solution? For now I created a list made up oft
> ISO 639 two + three letter codes (only in English yesterday).

Actually we may not need to do this.  It seems that the SIL codes and the linguist.org codes are being incorporated wholesale into ISO 639-3 ("Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages").

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

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

These are all excellent suggestions.  The other thing that should be
considered is a Gothic grammar in Wikibooks.  These are all broad
considerations that could go into establishing criteria for determining
whether a dead language should have its own Wikipedia.

The 1500 word minimum may be somewhat arbitrary, but the principle is
good.  I would even say that it does not have to be in "one" wiktionary,
but it could be the total of all Gothic words in all Wiktionaries.  I'm
not at all supporting the premature establishment of a uniquely Gothic
Wiktionary.

Ec


from_name: Timwi

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

body:
Hi!

I've posted about this before, but here it is again! :) In my
lex/yacc-based parser, I have now finished the table wiki syntax as well
as template inclusions. Please test everything! :)

     http://timwi.dyndns.org/wiki/tmp.php

In particular, please test to see whether any invalid mark-up produces
an error. It shouldn't. It is always supposed to generate *something*.
If you do find an error, please e-mail me the full test case you entered
that produces it. (Alternatively, of course, ICQ and AIM work just as well.)

Things I know I haven't done yet:
- HTML tags (currently everything between <something> and </something>
   is treated as an 'extension'; I need to limit that to <nowiki>, <pre>,
   <math>, <hiero>, <music> and <chem> for now)
- [http://url/ These sort of links]
- hrs (horizontal rules)
- the new -{ language variants }- syntax

If there is absolutely anything else missing, please let me know!

(Please notice that the above URL is a bit slow at times when my
computer is a bit loaded. Also notice that it is only available when my
computer is turned on, which is during the day-time in the UK.)

Thanks!
Timwi


body:
Sj wrote:

>On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 16:31:54 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Well, if the goal is to preserve ancient texts in the language, I could
>>see wikisource as being a better location.  To have a viable Wikipedia,
>>there needs to be an interest in using it as a living language, one in
>>
>>
>I'm not sure we currently have a better way than a "Wikipedia" instance for
>people to build a new corpus in a language they are trying to preserve.
>Wikisource is for existing source documents...
>
>
I think there is a general consensus on Wikisource that is similar to
the one in Wikipedia.  It's not the place for the first publication of
original research.  Perhaps the only exception to that has been in the
Source code section, and I admit that I often wonder whether it would be
better placed in Wikibooks.  Perhaps the problem here is that tech
people tend to use the word "source" in a different way from the rest of
us.  It would be interesting to haver comments from Wikibooks people on
how they consider the treatment of source code.

Annotations and translations of texts are certainly welcome on
Wikisource, but I don't think that that particular feature can really
take off in the absence of synchronized side-by-side edit boxes.

Ec


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] South Slavic NPOV page

body:
I made on Meta page [[South Slavic NPOV page]] for (primary) NPOV
coordination for South Slavic Wikipedias (Bosnian, Bulgarian,
Croatian, Rusyn [they live in South Slavic region even it is East
Slavic language; also, they don't have Wikipedia, but they would
have], Serbian and Slovenian).

Official lanugages are South Slavic (+Rusyn), but if you don't know
any other, you can participate using English language.