from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a new
	project: Wikisomething)

body:
Dan Grey wrote:

>On 23/09/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>If there are genuine technical issues that need to be addressed so that
>>starting en.wikiversity.org is somehow harder than to.wikibooks.org, I
>>would like to know what those issues are that developers seem to be
>>screaming about.
>>
>>
>
>Can you show me where developers have objected?
>
>
>Dan
>
>
I'll post some comments from the Wikiversity vote page to start with:

* This project doesn't seem well focused, we need first to stabilize our
current projects before starting new ones, and solve technical
bottlenecks. Yann <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Yann> 15:51, 16
September 2005 (UTC)
*Rgf <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Rgf&action=edit>
19:37, 20 September 2005 (UTC) Too early. We must mature the other
projects before thinking in something so big.
*Micru <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Micru> 16:52, 22 September
2005 (UTC) We're spreading too thin. Other projects still haven't
consolidated, so it's too early for starting another one. Please, wait
at least a year, and solve the technical issues in the meanwhile.

I'll also bring up a comment by Brian Vibber on this mailing list:

"Our software was written for Wikipedia; our development team has
primarily gotten into it from and for Wikipedia, and we haven't really
seen much specialized software development coming from the communities
for these other projects. "

"I would generally recommend against tossing in _yet more_ different new
projects when our existing ones are so poorly supported, without a
better idea of who's going to support them and with what. "

My reply is:  What are the specific issues that need to be addressed?  I
think the problems are more social than technical.  In other words, it
is not the technical difficulty of trying to turn on a wiki portal for a
particular project but rather the social aspect of trying to get people
organized to help support the projects.  Some of these projects, like
Wikibooks or Wiktionary are still tyring to recruit people to join the
project and get a critical mass necessary to get the project running
smoothly.  In terms of what is needed to get some technically inclined
people to help write the necessary specialized software needed for each
project, that will come in time.

Wikipedia has developed a number of unique tools that are already well
developed, and for the most part each other sister project takes
advantage of those tools as well as they can.  Categories, for instance,
are all but absent from Wikibooks and are not really appropriate.  This
is one thing that does need to be revisited for Wikibooks, as an
example.  On the other hand, Commons uses categories extensively and
very few images don't have at least one category, and often have several.

I'm not saying that there are any organized efforts on the part of
developers, but when people are saying that we need to "wait a year"
(I've seen that repeated over and over again elsewhere) before starting
any new project, I would like to know what kind of technical issue is a
problem.  In the case of Wikiversity, is 125 people a sufficient kernel
of support to get it going?  Is that not enough people that would be
able to form a good stable community?  From the stand point of those who
are objecting to new projects being started, I don't thing 1000 people
supporting a new project is going to be sufficient in terms of people
willing to do the heavy lifting to get the new project started.

Of course, this is up to the board to decide on their own, and the
polling is just a way to attempt to guage general community sentiment.
 They are free to do whatever they want (the board), but there certainly
are a bunch of people who are shooting down every proposal, no matter
how well thought out and how much support it may have.  When objections
describe technical issues may be a problem, they seem to be speaking on
behalf of the developers even if that may not be the case.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: foundation-l

from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews is now CC-BY

body:
On 25/09/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/25/05, Dariusz Siedlecki <datrio at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Quick question - does that mean Wikinews is going out of Beta now?
>
> No, it doesn't. I'd say it's certainly a step towards moving out of
> beta, but not the only condition.

> Erik proposed some
> criteria earlier this year, which suggested that before moving out of
> beta, a Wikinews site should have a large number of new stories every
> day, RSS feeds, regular original reporting and associated policies,
> solid fact-checking, review and an archival process. See
> <http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikinews-l/2005-March/000079.html>
> and related mails in that thread.

En has all of the above now.

Dan


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews is now CC-BY


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6

body:
Pawe? Dembowski wrote:

>>Consider the folks who were at the meeting part of the "no" votes.
>>
>>
>They should have voted where they were supposed to vote then.
>
>
An interesting observation.  Is there a policy anywhere saying where
people are "supposed" to vote?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigrammar proposal

body:
Mihai Floran wrote:

>It is a fact that today we must improve our language skills and this not just in our native language but we can learn by internet other languages. The grammar of each language must be at anyone's hand nowadays not just if he/she buyes an expensive book or e-book. Even in our native languages we have something to learn all the time.
>
>That's why I propose a new project: Wikigrammar
>
>
It would seem that all this could be adequately covered by Wikibooks.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigrammar proposal


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: No more new Wikipedias !

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> 1) Find a sysadmin who is willing to get involved
> 2) Develop a language creation policy, with the close involvement of
> your chosen sysadmin. Get their agreement on every detail, give whatever
> concessions are necessary to acheive this.
> 3) With help from me or Brion, your chosen sysadmin should then become
> familiar with the technical details of wiki creation, and should be able
> to perform it in the future with little fuss.

Hello,

I am willing to handle the task of new wiki creation ;) Going to test
the installation process this afternoon and hopefully pending wikis will
be made available soon.

<snip>
> I will support this process. I'll offer technical advice to the
> developer or sysadmin involved, I'll commit patches to CVS and I'll
> activate the automated interface on the live site, assuming it works. I
> reserve the right to express my opinions in the policy discussion, but I
> promise I won't resort to silly stunts like threatening to leave.

Thanks for your support ;p

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Hello,

>This was not a group without expertise. Among those present -
>Lorenzarius, one of the original zh: Wikipedians; Little Alex,
>currently studying for a degree in translation; Mcy_jerry, studying
>medicine in Chinese University (an institution coping with
>Mandarin/Cantonese/English issues as the medium of instruction); and
>Simon Shek, Carlsmith, W.F. Siu, Mapocathy, all folks who've grown up
>in the mixed language school environment.
>
>
And another time someone on this list quotes offlist people. I should
get some celebrity names in my posts as well. It seems to be the trend
to quote offlist people to strengthen ones arguments. I

>And to quote from Mark's previous message:
>
>"The whole point here is that Waerth and I both think it's unfair to
>let anybody but the actual language community make decisions about
>whether or not they should get a Wikipedia, with exceptions for
>artificial languages perhaps."
>
>
Yes, and many people from that language community have voted in favour
as well. Why are the votes of the people you quoted Andrew more
important than those of the ones that already voted?

>[...]
>Obviously, one of the biggest issues was Cantonese Wikipedia. After
>discussing it for a while, there was consensus (in fact unanimity)
>that though there is legitimate and desirable use for vernacular
>written Cantonese in casual use, arts, film, newspaper columns and the
>like, the conclusion about Cantonese Wikipedia was - "not at this
>time."
>
>
Ok so the concensus was that the Cantonese users found it a legitimate
request ...... interesting.

>
>* Current state of Chinese Wikipedia. There was agreement that the
>general quality of the average article in Chinese Wikipedia is
>relatively poor, even though it has 40,000+ articles. The recent stats
>on "short articles" showed zh: contained unusually high number of
>them, and empirically Mcyjerry made the point that they are generally
>lacking in content. Folks felt that it was more important to shore up
>the existing zh: Wikipedia instead of splitting the effort.
>
>
This is another repetition of the same argument that so many have
rebunked. It is an argument with little to no value. You cannot measure
a gain or downfall in activity on the Chinese wikipedia. Has Minnan
effected it? With the same reason we could delete all languages but the
5 major ones. I am happy this debate wasn't held when wikipedia started.
It might have ended with .... we need to shore up Nupedia before we can
start up Wikipedia.

>* Universities and Cantonese use. Mcyjerry and Lorenzarius, students
>at Chinese University of Hong Kong explained that their science and
>medicine classes were not done in Cantonese, and if they were it would
>be confusing. They can elaborate more as to why, but Chinese
>University was setup to promote Chinese education in a (then) British
>Colony.
>
>
And??? We have an Esperanto wikipedia .... are there science and or
medicine classes in Esperanto. There are many languages we support that
do not have education in them. and why because little has been written
in those languages because a national government oppresses it in favour
of the "national" language.

I personally feel that while you have actually concluded amongst
yourselves that a Cantonese is a legitimate request  but you are still
trying to find excuses not to open it! Why are you still coming up with
these excuses? Now I am going to draw a parallel here with Thailand.

Thailand has Thai as its national language and a couple of minority
languages, like Khmer (Thai-Khmer) and Isaan (Lao-Thai). While big parts
of the population speak these languages and media is being produced in
these, the Central Thais and especially the higher educated ones either
laugh at these folksy people (they use a Thai word that roughly
translates to hillbillies) or rather deny its importance in daily life.
Most would like to see it stamped out and replaced by "proper"
Central-Thai.

I personally see the same attitude in your arguments here. Although you
actually do recognise the legitimacy of the request ... which would give
many educated Thais in the similar situation a fit. You are still trying
to stop the start of a wikipedia in this "folksy" language.

Offcourse this discussion is actually useless. Because nobody wants to
set up new language wikipedias anymore with totally hilarious arguments
like ... but these people speak another language as wel, let them go
there. So I am actually waisting my breath here.

I feel that the debaters/conservatives have finally won and managed to
stall any further development in wikimedialand. If these debates had
been had when wikipedia was started, it would never have gotten of the
ground. What we do not need is more voting on starting new
wikipedialanguages, but a clear ruleset so every language gets a clear
chance because there will always be people against starting a new language!

Waerth/Walter van Kalken


body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> My reply is:  What are the specific issues that need to be addressed?
> I think the problems are more social than technical.  In other words,
> it is not the technical difficulty of trying to turn on a wiki portal
> for a particular project but rather the social aspect of trying to get
> people organized to help support the projects.  Some of these
> projects, like Wikibooks or Wiktionary are still tyring to recruit
> people to join the project and get a critical mass necessary to get
> the project running smoothly.  In terms of what is needed to get some
> technically inclined people to help write the necessary specialized
> software needed for each project, that will come in time.

I agree that the problem is more social than technical.  That being
said, it seems pointless to have technical people running around
developing software when you aren't sure what you want that software to do.

> I'm not saying that there are any organized efforts on the part of
> developers, but when people are saying that we need to "wait a year"
> (I've seen that repeated over and over again elsewhere) before
> starting any new project, I would like to know what kind of technical
> issue is a problem.  In the case of Wikiversity, is 125 people a
> sufficient kernel of support to get it going?  Is that not enough
> people that would be able to form a good stable community?  From the
> stand point of those who are objecting to new projects being started,
> I don't thing 1000 people supporting a new project is going to be
> sufficient in terms of people willing to do the heavy lifting to get
> the new project started.

It's not a question of the number of supporters.

> Of course, this is up to the board to decide on their own, and the
> polling is just a way to attempt to guage general community sentiment.
> They are free to do whatever they want (the board), but there
> certainly are a bunch of people who are shooting down every proposal,
> no matter how well thought out and how much support it may have.  When
> objections describe technical issues may be a problem, they seem to be
> speaking on behalf of the developers even if that may not be the case.

One thing that would help to convince me that this is a well thought out
proposal would be to see a single course in ANY subject, with the
equivalent of one semester's duration, presented and brought to its
logical conclusions.  With that experience to guide us we would be in a
much better position to evaluate what we need to take the idea further.
Without it the entire project is nothing more than an adventure in
wishful thinking.
.
Ec


list: wikien-l

from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF? Is it suddenly OK to ignore consensus on AfD?

body:
The deletion of one (or even a couple of dozen) school articles doesn't hurt
Wikipedia. This action may affect the reputation of the administrator
involved for a short term, but that also will recover.

The following AfD closes by Neutrality also seem a little odd. I see no
evidence of consensus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Manila_Waldorf_School

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Saint_Michael%27s_School_%28Cranford%2C_New_Jersey%29

The following close by Neutrality was technically in order, except that
someone seems to have tampered with the nomination two days ago, so that the
article linked to was not the article originally nominated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion%2FOceanview_Elementary_School%2C_Albany%2C_California

Neutrality was clearly aware of the switch, because he deleted *both*
articles, although none of those voting on deletion had had any opportunity
to view the Albany article, as at the time all votes were made the article
listed for deletion was the Oceanview school in Clovis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Oceanview_Elementary_School%2C_Albany%2C_California


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
Hi Ashar,

you cannot even imagine which mail I was writing right now. So thank
you! And really the community should say a giant thank you!

I was sincerely asking me what Wikipedia is about considering what was
going on here. If it was really that great like I believed. What it
really stands for.

Thank you for considering the most fundamental policy of Wikipedia - "an
effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest
possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own
language".

See: in my answer I made it clear that it is not a question of creating
that wikipedia - this can be done anywhere, but the fact to be able to
create easily interwiki-links, to create cross references, to use and
provide material for commons/wikibooks/wiktionary/ultimate wiktionary -
this is the mayor reason for having such an Encyclopedia with the
Wikimedia Foundation (at least for me).

Have a great Sunday!

Sabine

>I am willing to handle the task of new wiki creation ;) Going to test
>the installation process this afternoon and hopefully pending wikis will
>be made available soon.
>
>
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 25/09/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > The deletion of one (or even a couple of dozen) school articles doesn't hurt
> > Wikipedia. This action may affect the reputation of the administrator
> > involved for a short term, but that also will recover.
> >
>
> The lurking of users on AfD for the sole purpose of voting to keep or
> delete articles /with no thought given to the votes/ does.
>
> Hence I've opened [[Wikipedia:Request for comments/AfD]], against all
> members of the Associations of Inclusionist and Deletionist Wikipedians,
> respectively.

For those, like me, who got lost trying to find it, that's
[[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/AfD]] ;-)

Good luck. I don't know if it'll help anything, I don't know what it
can possibly achieve, but it's worth a try. I looked at AfD last
night; it was simply impossible to read some of the day-by-day pages
(21st, 23rd) without trying to throw heavy objects at people ranting
(for|against) schools.

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


from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
Unfortunately it seems that lately, that statement -

"an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest
possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language"

Should be changed to:
"an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest
possible quality to every single person on the planet in only the most
populous or their respective state-sponsored languages."

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Sabine Cretella
Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2005 7:15 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: No more new Wikipedias !

Hi Ashar,

you cannot even imagine which mail I was writing right now. So thank
you! And really the community should say a giant thank you!

I was sincerely asking me what Wikipedia is about considering what was
going on here. If it was really that great like I believed. What it
really stands for.

Thank you for considering the most fundamental policy of Wikipedia - "an
effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest
possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own
language".

See: in my answer I made it clear that it is not a question of creating
that wikipedia - this can be done anywhere, but the fact to be able to
create easily interwiki-links, to create cross references, to use and
provide material for commons/wikibooks/wiktionary/ultimate wiktionary -
this is the mayor reason for having such an Encyclopedia with the
Wikimedia Foundation (at least for me).

Have a great Sunday!

Sabine

>I am willing to handle the task of new wiki creation ;) Going to test
>the installation process this afternoon and hopefully pending wikis will
>be made available soon.
>
>
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Arbeo M

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
.
> > ... especially when no
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>
> > has ever been agreed upon?
>
> If you board guys could stamp your approval on that
> policy and
> explicitly state I have authority for new-language
> addition following
> those rules as Chief Technical Doohickey, I'd be
> happy to do it.

That would indeed mean a huge step forward. If those
clear, objective rules are officially implemented they
will provide security to both developers and proposers
of new languages. A win-win situation. That proposed
policy really ought to become effective ASAP.

Arbeo

P.S.: Those requests listed at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages
 are already fulfilling all requirements of the
proposed policy.

___________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de


body:
--- Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it>
schrieb:

> Hi Ashar,
>
> you cannot even imagine which mail I was writing
> right now. So thank
> you! And really the community should say a giant
> thank you!

Btw: Ashar was the only one I received a reply from
when I first asked for the creation of nap-Wiki a
couple of weeks a ago at wikitech-l. He was willing to
help but unsure about the technical details back then.

So here's a big "Thank You" from me, too!

I'd also like to express my respect for Tim's
willingness to provide some very useful hints despite
his personal objections against adding new languages.

Looks we're on the right track now.

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
Was denken Sie ?ber E-Mail? Wir h?ren auf Ihre Meinung: http://surveylink.yahoo.com/wix/p0379378.aspx


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Angela wrote:
> On 9/24/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
>>I created 5 new Wikipedias in June because I received a request from a
>>Wikimedia Board member. If I receive another such specific request, I'll
>>carry it out. I do that out of loyalty to them, not because I think it
>>contributes to our mission.
>
>
> I doubt you'll get another such request since I've been told that new
> language wikis is not a Board issue and I shouldn't be taking
> decisions on these or asking developers to start them. What people
> fail to realise is that if the Board doesn't take these decisions (and
> perhaps they're right and the Board shouldn't) - then who is going to
> take them? There is increasingly resistance to the Board doing
> anything, but also resistance to them delegating any authority they
> may have had, which is just leading to stagnation. So, who should be
> taking the decision on new language wikis (and also on new projects),
> especially when no
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>
> has ever been agreed upon?

There's no stagnation, Wikipedia is growing faster than ever. I'm happy
to make decisions regarding how I use my time, and I've done so on many
occasions. I'm hardly going to agree to a policy which puts that
decision in the hands of others.

I'm not asking for the Board to approve new language requests, in fact
I'd be happier if they didn't. I'm just saying I'd honour them if they did.

Arbeo M wrote:
> If this the current attitude of Wikipedia's
> decision-makers on the issue I'll accept it, of
> course. However, I think the fact that Wikipedias for
> new languages are created solely upon requests from
> Wikimedia board members needs to be annouced to the
> "general public". Because, at the moment, most users
> don`t seem to be aware of this fact (at least I wasn't
> as yet). Several pages like e. g.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:How_to_start_a_new_Wikipedia
> still create a very different impression, i. e. that
> you _can_ actually have a new WP in your language if
> you request it, find supporters, convince the
> community etc. Given the reality you just informed me
> about, that's quite misleading. I guess we should
> change those pages so they don't cause people to put a
> lot of time and effort into projects that don't have a
> change of success.

Of course it's not announced anywhere, it's a bureaucratic black hole.
We cover up the fact that there is no procedure by pretending the
procedure is just really difficult.

Mark Williamson wrote:
> Tim, we're not talking about dead languages or conlangs.
>
> We're talking about languages that are spoken by real, tangible people
> as their everyday native language, and which have at least 5
> supporters, native speaker support, and no oposition at all.
>
> Specifically, now people are waiting for Ladino, Waray-Waray, and
> Neapolitan. You can look any of them up on Ethnologue if you like.
> Waray-Waray and Neapolitan have millions of speakers; Ladino has at
> least tens of thousands but might have more.

Literate speakers of Neapolitan can all read Italian. Italian is the
language of instruction in state schools in the area. The same can be
said for Ladino with respect to Turkish or Hebrew. Waray-Waray now
rarely appears in print in its local area, having been displaced by
English, both in local schools and in print.

In all three cases, the majority of speakers are accustomed to obtaining
information in a national language. Even if we create it, the Wikipedia
in Waray-Waray or Neapolitan will never be comparable in size to the
Wikipedia in English or Italian. So regardless of what we do, they'll
have to continue to obtain most of their information in the same way.
The function of these wikis, it seems to me, would be pride rather than
education. That's not the function I volunteered to promote when I
signed up with Wikipedia.

> These requests have many supporters, native speaker support
> (especially in the case of Ladino and Neapolitan, where heaps of
> native speakers dropped by to show their support), and no opposition.

There are always many vocal supporters, and there are always people who
are silently opposed. Or rather, they are silent until those in power
give in to the lobby and create new wikis, and then they open up with
ridicule and criticism. We've seen it many times before.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 9/25/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
> And another time someone on this list quotes offlist people. I should
> get some celebrity names in my posts as well. It seems to be the trend
> to quote offlist people to strengthen ones arguments. I

When did membership to the email list constitute any more legitimacy
than folks who are "offlist"? That's one of the more odd arguments
I've seen about this issue.

> Yes, and many people from that language community have voted in favour
> as well. Why are the votes of the people you quoted Andrew more
> important than those of the ones that already voted?

No, because the vote pertaining to Wu and Yue (Cantonese) was all
stuck together into one combined poll, which I pointed out as a flaw
very early on. In effect, the "votes for" became a union of folks
interested in one or the other. You shouldn't take the AND of an OR
vote.

> >Obviously, one of the biggest issues was Cantonese Wikipedia. After
> >discussing it for a while, there was consensus (in fact unanimity)
> >that though there is legitimate and desirable use for vernacular
> >written Cantonese in casual use, arts, film, newspaper columns and the
> >like, the conclusion about Cantonese Wikipedia was - "not at this
> >time."
> >
> Ok so the concensus was that the Cantonese users found it a legitimate
> request ...... interesting.

How do you draw that conclusion? The issues brought up were that
written Cantonese is used today in nonstandard ways, and that it is
unusual to use it in formal writings. That might change over the
years, but for now, to folks at the meetup it was not desirable to
embark on the starup of an entire project in writing Cantonese
encyclopedia entries the way you find in zh:, en:, de:, etc.

> This is another repetition of the same argument that so many have
> rebunked. It is an argument with little to no value. You cannot measure
> a gain or downfall in activity on the Chinese wikipedia. Has Minnan
> effected it? With the same reason we could delete all languages but the
> 5 major ones. I am happy this debate wasn't held when wikipedia started.
> It might have ended with .... we need to shore up Nupedia before we can
> start up Wikipedia.

Pretty weak strawman argument. See Tim Starling's post earlier today.
Wikipedia's goal is to make the sum of all human knowledge available
for free. And right now, zh: is one, if not the most, prominent
weakness in the Wikipedia universe.

> Now I am going to draw a parallel here with Thailand.

The parade of parallels and comparisons are deeply flawed. Debate this
case on its own merits.

There are few situations similar to the one with Cantonese and baihua
(what zh: has), in that Cantonese speakers who are literate read/write
baihua. There is a reading grammar and vocabulary which is very
different than the spoken vernacular. This is a situation unfamiliar
to most people. And usually when other "parallels" are drawn, it's to
project other types of irrelevant ethnic/cultural conflicts onto a
situation one does not understand. And all simply to make an
uninformed point.

To quote Mark again: "Waerth and I both think it's unfair to let
anybody but the actual language community make decisions about whether
or not they should get a Wikipedia whether or not they should get a
Wikipedia."

Yet here we are, with non-Cantonese folks spearheading the effort, and
a Cantonese-based
meetup saying no, they don't want one.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why is this an emergency?

body:
On Sun, 25 Sep 2005, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

> Oldtimers: is the school struggle just par for the course, or does it
> represent an emerging and deepening _lack_ of consensus on important
> issues?
>
Well, about the only people who still post here when I started at
Wikipedia (October, 2002) are Ed Poor & Maverick, so I'll take the
heat & offer my opinion on the matter.

I think the "school struggle" is a result of three or four principles
present in Wikipedia, & that have been interpreted in numerous ways
by various partisans:

* Wikipedia is a collection of knowledge. This ideal has been expressed
in a number of ways, & Jimbo is not the only one who gets quoted about
this, but in its most sucinct phrasing, the Wikipedia community does not
want to exclude any information that might be reasonably useful to
someone.

* Do not datadump. In the old days, the immediate goal of Wikipedia was
to attract enough contributions to reach the tipping point where
the non-Wikipedians might actually bother to use what we created. (At
some point before I landed here, the joke was that Wikipedia was the
site that was mostly about Ayn Rand.) But when that tipping point was
reached -- & passed -- & people actually considered Wikipedia useful,
we started to get picky about what was in Wikipedia. (I suspect that
is part of the ongoing controversy with the contributions of Daniel C.
Boyer.) To repeat what I wrote in another email, many Wikipedians
beleive that there is some kind of threshold beneath which we should
not accept articles.

* Notability is a subjective measure, & often faddish. I happen to
own a one-volume encyclopedia that was published in 1920, & I find
it interesting to see which authors from the 19th century they have
listed as notable. I consider myself informed about the period, yet
this book both mentions authors I have not heard of (e.g. Margaret
Fuller Ossoli & Stephen Collins Foster), while omitting authors I
believe any current work of reference would include (e.g. Emily Dickinson
& Theodore Dreiser). My point is that far too often something people
assume one day that is not not notable, tomorrow another generation
wishes we had taken the time to document more fully.

* With all honesty, few high schools are worth a Wikipedia article.
As I write this, I have to wonder if this is just another version of
David Gerard's observation about Geogre & alternative rock bands:
because they are familiar, we depreciate their value. However, the
high school I attended is in no way notable: none of the
faculty has done anything worthy of especial attention; few of the
former students went on to do world-changing activities (with one
exception -- who is not me); even the building is, architecturally
speaking, nondescript. The fact that it has a Wikipedia article I
find embarassing.

Having an article about any person or place endows it with a certain
amount of fame. And there will always be a certain number of subjects
which people will think does not deserve the attention a Wikipedia
article gives it -- even if that fame or attention is "not that big
of a matter" (to paraphrase Jimbo out of context).

Geoff


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar proposal

body:
--- Mihai Floran <mihai at emma.ro> wrote:
> Other thing is the comparations. Wikigrammar should have comparations
> beetween languages in different articles. It is not something like a book.
> It's sepparatly, grammar.  By comparation i see something like noun cases -
> for example - latin has six cases meanwhile romanian has just 5 and the
> article about noun case must provide informations about using and
> transforming theese.

Things like conjugations, declinations, prefixes, suffixes and infixes along
with other word modifications should be covered on Wiktionary.

-- mav

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar proposal


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Formal request for the creation of the Neapolitan
	Wikipedia

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:
> Good morning!
>
> Now all the requirements on meta for the creation of the Neapolitan
> Wikipedia have been fulfilled. At this stage I am asking for the opening of
>
> http://nap.wikipedia.org
>
> I already received the first bits of the User Interface that are going
> to be integrated in the table that is online in my user profile on the
> Italian wiktionary.
>
> Thank you for creating it asap.
>
> Have a great Sunday!
>
> Ciao, Sabine

Napolitan wikipedia got created some minutes ago and can now be edited at:
	http://nap.wikipedia.org/

Pending wikis will most probably be created today.

Thanks Tim Starling for the technical support :)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


body:
Arbeo M wrote:
> Btw: Ashar was the only one I received a reply from
> when I first asked for the creation of nap-Wiki a
> couple of weeks a ago at wikitech-l. He was willing to
> help but unsure about the technical details back then.

Yup, and at that time I was too lazy to bother searching how to create
new wikis. I looked at the script with Tim Starling behind my back
giving me tips / fixing stuff etc...

The addwiki.php script got fixed by Tim and we updated the developer
how-to ( http://wp.wikidev.net/Add_a_language ).

So now anyone with cvs/shell access will be able to create a newwiki
just by following the how-to.

> I'd also like to express my respect for Tim's
> willingness to provide some very useful hints despite
> his personal objections against adding new languages.

I object adding most new languages too although we can probably give
them a chance and eventually lock them in a few months if they are not
successful.

(note: pending wikis will be created soon)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] nap, war, lad wikipedias created

body:
[fu2:wikitech]

Hello,

With the technical assistance of Tim Starling, I created three new
wikipedia projects which were pending somewhere on meta: .

The projects are:

  Ladino :  http://lad.wikipedia.org/
  Waray-Waray :  http://nap.wikipedia.org/
  Neapolitan : http://war.wikipedia.org/

For any trouble with those newly created projects, please reply to
wikitech-l mailing list only (followup-to set).

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


body:
--- Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> schrieb:

> [fu2:wikitech]
>
> Hello,
>
> With the technical assistance of Tim Starling, I
> created three new
> wikipedia projects which were pending somewhere on
> meta: .
>
> The projects are:
>
>   Ladino :  http://lad.wikipedia.org/
>   Waray-Waray :  http://nap.wikipedia.org/
>   Neapolitan : http://war.wikipedia.org/
>
> For any trouble with those newly created projects,
> please reply to
> wikitech-l mailing list only (followup-to set).
>
>
> --
> Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
> http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
> IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

Thanks so much! You're clearly Wikipedia's Hero of the
Day ;-)

Cheers,

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 9/25/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> In the meantime, though, I've checked the VfD in question:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Crescent_Park_Elementary_School
> and it appears that the basic complaint is true - this was clearly _not_
> a consensus to delete. It's very clear that it isn't, too, since as
> pointed out there's actually a clear majority of votes for keep/merge
> versus delete. I'm putting this on VfU, but really, I think this should
> be a speedy undelete.

While I don't necessarily agree with the decision (I think there was
no consensus either way), one can see how some of the votes might have
been given greater weight than others. For example:

"Keep, we winning the fight aginst school deletionism."
"Keep. I heard from Aranda56 that we needed more votes for this article."
"Keep I heard from Radman's sisters' aunts' brothers' cousins'
girlfriends' sister that this needed to be kept!"
"Keep."

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: uncertainty of CC (Was: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikinews is now CC-BY)

body:
Well I guess it will be my turn to "try" to explain the meaning and the
legal issues of the CC licenses.

But, this legal uncertainty will stay for long (there are several other
issues), it is the reason why I strongly recommended the WNL License for
precision and legal safety, as well as dual-licensing for good and
simple compatibility with other projects.

I hope the legal policy will continue evolving between WN emerges from
beta to its final stage.

Angela wrote:
>>> Any edits made previously remain public domain - it is only new edits
>>> that will need to be under this Creative Commons License.
>> you meant in fact "remain public domain or the other licence which
>> each project had chosen", I suppose.
>
> Yes, that is what I meant. Edits remain whatever they originally were
> (often PD, but I realise this wasn't the case for some wikis). If any
> text was licensed under something not compatible with CC-BY, it might
> be best to protect those pages and note on them that they were
> licensed under <whatever>.
>
>> One technical question: can "CC-By-2.1-(a certain country) or later"
>> switch to merely "CC-By-2.5" or "CC-By-2.5-(another certain country)?
>
> I don't know enough about the iCommons licenses to know whether that
> switch is permitted.

Being the translator of the CC licenses for France and an IP license
specialist, I can say that there  is no clear answer for this question.
It mainly depend from national legislations, but it also depends from
the practical process that it will follow.

Still, I doubt it would be valid if it's only done through an
annoucement on the WN website. One way or another, it would necessarily
need the authors of WN to express their agreement for this change.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
CERSA-CNRS PARIS 2


from_name: Alphax

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Stephen Bain wrote:
>
>> While I don't necessarily agree with the decision (I think there was
>> no consensus either way), one can see how some of the votes might have
>> been given greater weight than others. For example:
>>
>> "Keep, we winning the fight aginst school deletionism."
>> "Keep. I heard from Aranda56 that we needed more votes for this article."
>> "Keep I heard from Radman's sisters' aunts' brothers' cousins'
>> girlfriends' sister that this needed to be kept!"
>> "Keep."
>>
>>
> Also:
> "*Delete."*
> *"Delete*. Usual reasons."
> "*Delete* not worthwhile"
>
> So disregarding "low value" votes doesn't look like it swings the vote
> clearly in one direction or the other to me, unless one selectively
> disregards poorly-supported votes on one side but not on the other. I
> certainly wouldn't mind a policy encouraging disregarding such votes,
> mind you, I just don't think it would make a difference here.
>

Ok, that's it. As soon as I get the chance (eg. in a few days time), I
will launch open a request for comments with everyone listed on
[[m:AIW]] and [[m:ADW]], and I invite anyone who is sick of the way AfD
is being run to join me.

And if that doesn't go anywhere, I'll open an arbitration case.

--
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OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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body:
Alphax wrote:
> Ok, that's it. As soon as I get the chance (eg. in a few days time), I
> will launch open a request for comments with everyone listed on
> [[m:AIW]] and [[m:ADW]], and I invite anyone who is sick of the way AfD
> is being run to join me.
>

Ok, opened at [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/AfD]]. Diffs and complete
listing of members needed.

--
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OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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body:
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!

Ciao, Sabine

>  Ladino :  http://lad.wikipedia.org/
>  Waray-Waray :  http://nap.wikipedia.org/
>  Neapolitan : http://war.wikipedia.org/
>
>For any trouble with those newly created projects, please reply to
>wikitech-l mailing list only (followup-to set).
>
>
>
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
>>
>>>> Consider the folks who were at the meeting part of the "no" votes.
>>>
>>> They should have voted where they were supposed to vote then.
>>
>> An interesting observation.  Is there a policy anywhere saying where
>> people are "supposed" to vote?
>>
>> Ec
>
> Hoi,
> When there is a vote, when this vote is considered in a meeting like
> it has, they should either put up or shut up. When a small group of
> people meets and decide on something, in essence this is just what
> happened: a small group of people who decided something. Nothing
> special in and of itself. Obviously they do not need to vote, but when
> they do not vote, they should not moan when their voice is not
> considered when the vote is evaluated.

Perhaps, but then those who did vote should not moan when the vote is
not considered definitive and binding by others. Taking your reasoning
to its logical conclusion, the only significance of a vote is that it
had a certain result. The vote does not dictate a course of action or
have any further consequences.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
Is it possible for Wikinews to be dual-licensed with both CC-BY 2.5
and WNL? If it is, it should be.

I think a lot of people voted for BY 2.5 because they recognize the CC
"brand" without understanding the full legal implications of the
license, while at the same time not believing that an effective
license could be as short and simple as our home-grown WNL.

Dan


body:
On 9/25/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The conclusion was emphatic among the Cantonese speakers. The
> > consensus was - "not at this time." In fact, it was unanimous. (See
> > below for full description of the meetup).
>
> I have a hard time believing this, since Littlalex was in fact an
> ardent supporter of a Cantonese Wiki the last time around.

> That seems a bit silly to me. If you take a look at the vote, and
> exclude all non-Cantonese speakers (at least, as far as I am aware):

Consider the folks who were at the meeting part of the "no" votes.

> That _still_ gives a majority for "support". Now, just because 7
> people at a meetup agreed "unanimously", according to you (which I
> still doubt, given the fact that it would mean a drastic change in
> position for Littlalex),

If you look at the photo from the meeting, you'll see I am sitting
right next to Little Alex. But why not ask her yourself?

> You are still spreading the silly idea that a Cantonese Wikipedia will
> take away lots of people and resources from zhwiki. Why not use an
> example based on experience -- zh-min-nan?? How much did that take
> away?

Your exaggeration again. I never said it will take away "lots of
people and resources" away. But every bit put behind zh: would help.
The exaggerated case helps you try to make your case, but that's your
error.

> It's a shame we don't have an audio or video recording of this meetup.
> I sort of doubt the veracity of your claims here. And if these people
> have these feelings, they're welcome to vote, as they have always
> been.

LOL.

The meeting was attended by eight Wikipedians and two guests. The
summary is sitting on a public wiki that anyone who attended could
amend. Shek translated it into Chinese, so that's one more check on
the record. Feel free to leave a message for any and all the folks who
showed up, and ask for verification of the meeting observations.

But you, sitting in Arizona have a better sense of it, I'm sure.

This is bordering on tinfoil hat territory now.

> > * Current state of Chinese Wikipedia. There was agreement that the
> > general quality of the average article in Chinese Wikipedia is
> > relatively poor, even though it has 40,000+ articles. The recent stats
> > on "short articles" showed zh: contained unusually high number of
> > them, and empirically Mcyjerry made the point that they are generally
> > lacking in content. Folks felt that it was more important to shore up
> > the existing zh: Wikipedia instead of splitting the effort.
>
> I'd not be surprised if you were the one who brought this up in the
> first place, trying to make it sound logical when it makes no sense
> whatsoever.

Wrong. It was Mcy_jerry who brought it up, talking about the generally
poor article quality of the average zh: article compared to others.

> "splitting the effort" is not going to happen. There will
> be no mass-exodus.

"Mass exodus" - these are your words, not mine or those of anyone at
the meetup. It is not a case that was made.

> > * Universities and Cantonese use. Mcyjerry and Lorenzarius, students
> > at Chinese University of Hong Kong explained that their science and
> > medicine classes were not done in Cantonese, and if they were it would
> > be confusing. They can elaborate more as to why, but Chinese
> > University was setup to promote Chinese education in a (then) British
> > Colony.
>
> Well, others have testified here to the exact opposite. How are we to
> sort out which is correct, and which is not?

Again, this shows the whole flaw with the "Sinitic policy" vote,
because there was no finding of fact laid out or debated to provide
proper background on the merits of the idea, not to mention the
selective publicity it received. It became a straight up or down vote
with the flaw of roping Wu and Yue into one bin, pandering to the
inclusionist, embrace anything-and-everything-attitude at the expense
of any subject knowledge or first hand experience with the language,
culture or issues.

The reason why I (and others) have not participated in the vote, is
because of the major flaws with it. Participating in it would be
implicitly endorsing the flawed methodology and structure setup by the
originator of it (ie. you). The hope was that the existing discussion
would dissipate with folks realizing the invalid "vote". But since it
keeps being brought up as an indication of the will of the community,
here's directly why it's not only nonbinding, but flawed and useless.

A few folks commented to me they did not want to get involved in the
rancorous nature of the vote or the mailing list debate, even though
they had opinions on the matter. To me, that's understandable and
disappointing. I can only speak for myself here.

A properly run vote would have:

- Laid out the issues in an NPOV-like manner using community input,
with historical background and a preset amount of time for crafting
the parameters of the vote. A list of liks to generic articles about
Chinese and Cantonese is not good enough.
- Had separate voting sections for Wu, Yue and Hakka, like other
proper votes in Wikipedia. See how reform of speedy deletion was
handled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Proposal
- Made an open call for participation in all relevant communities.
Certainly, not advertising it on wikizh-l until late was problematic.
Even the after-the-fact advertisement was not adequate, as the yea/nay
lists had already been influenced by one particular set of
constituents.
- Avoided singling out folks right away as this one did with Shizhao
and myself as the main opposition. I don't particularly care about
being singled out, but it's improper to personalize a vote on the
issues.

So we get to this point - you have somehow disregarded your own advice:

"The whole point here is that Waerth and I both think it's unfair to
let anybody but the actual language community make decisions about
whether or not they should get a Wikipedia, with exceptions for
artificial languages perhaps."

The fact is with the prevailing mood - the case for creating a
Wikipedia has to meet a very high threshold with respected members of
the Wikipedia community, and it's not there now.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


body:
See my explanation later in the email about the flaws of that vote.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 9/25/05, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> > Consider the folks who were at the meeting part of the "no" votes.
>
> They should have voted where they were supposed to vote then.
>
> --
> Ausir
> Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
> http://pl.wikipedia.org
>
>


from_name: Angela

body:
On 9/25/05, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> [fu2:wikitech]
>
> Hello,
>
> With the technical assistance of Tim Starling, I created three new
> wikipedia projects which were pending somewhere on meta: .

Thanks Ashar, and thanks to Tim for the assistance. The only problem
seems to be that the interlanguage links are not working. For example,
on <http://lad.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>, Ladino links to
<http://lad.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=En:Ladino&action=edit>
rather than to the English Wikipedia.

Angela.


from_name: Han Dao

subject: [Foundation-l] Wiki projects

body:
I do not think this project is a good idea. The goal of wikimedia is to work
on projects that will represent the sum of all human knowledge not help
people with their problem
On 9/25/05, rebk_rebelde_14 at hotmail.com <rebk_rebelde_14 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
>
>
> I'm a wikipedian. Like 3 or 2 years ago I opened a page that was from
> your project, Wikipedia. Then the last 7 months I've been using this
> page to increase my knowledge, informing me, etc. Just a month ago I
> suscribe. And during that month I saw that you have a complete company
> of wikis. And my project proposal is to make a wiki website of advisor,
> counsillors from everyone's problems. Not like a forum of ordinary
> websites, I mean by a wiki project and anonym persons searching for
> help, and anonym advisors. Or as you wish! Please think about this
> project and email me, if you don't understan it.
>
>
>
> Rebk_rebelde_14otmail.com
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wiki projects


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Generally, for a proposed policy to be implemented, it requires some
degree of consensus and compromise.

So far, there is no consensus, although there have been some attempts
at compromise.

Of course, if the Board wants to go ahead and make it policy, that's
their decision to make, but I don't support it in its current form
(see my comments on the talkpage).

Mark

On 25/09/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de> wrote:
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> .
> > > ... especially when no
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>
> > > has ever been agreed upon?
> >
> > If you board guys could stamp your approval on that
> > policy and
> > explicitly state I have authority for new-language
> > addition following
> > those rules as Chief Technical Doohickey, I'd be
> > happy to do it.
>
> That would indeed mean a huge step forward. If those
> clear, objective rules are officially implemented they
> will provide security to both developers and proposers
> of new languages. A win-win situation. That proposed
> policy really ought to become effective ASAP.
>
> Arbeo
>
> P.S.: Those requests listed at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages
>  are already fulfilling all requirements of the
> proposed policy.
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
> Is it possible for Wikinews to be dual-licensed with both CC-BY 2.5
> and WNL? If it is, it should be.

Of course it would be possible, and I would say that it would be one of
the best solution. Maybe even WNL+CCBY2.5+GFDL

> I think a lot of people voted for BY 2.5 because they recognize the CC
> "brand" without understanding the full legal implications of the
> license, while at the same time not believing that an effective
> license could be as short and simple as our home-grown WNL.

Exactly.

And that's why I hope the license policy of wn will evolve.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron,
CERSA-CNRS PARIS 2


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Collaboration with Romanian Organisation for Gifted
	and Talented Children

body:
Hi,

I have just received a message from IRSCA, the
Romanian
Organisation for Gifted and Talented Children. They
said they would be interested in collaborating with
Wikimedia for the publication of free curricula and
study material for gifted children, in the Romanian
language. They said that they would like to know where
this information could be placed (under what project)
and any further information necessary.

Personally, I believe the Romanian Wikibooks would be
the best place for this material. I also think
collaboration with
IRSCA is a great new opportunity for the Romanian
Wikipedia community. IRSCA do some wonderful things
for Romanian gifted and talented children, including
funding for cultural pursuits, curriculum development,
etc.

What is the Wikimedia policy towards these types of
collaborations? What are the next steps?

Thanks,

Ronline from the Romanian Wikipedia

PS: More about IRSCA in English can be found at:
http://www.supradotati.ro/en/index.html

__________________________________________________
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body:
You are wrong, because so far the only languages on the list are ones
with no opposition. Nds-nl, Triestin, and Murcian all have opposition
(especially significant in the case of Triestin and Murcian).

Lombard might qualify though.

Now, that's not to say that Wikis can't be created for languages to
which there is opposition, rather that it isn't such a simple process
(Arbeo moved the non-opposed languages to "approved requests", I think
there would be big objections if anybody did that for any with
opposition).

As an example, despite the fact that Cantonese Wikipedia has lots of
supporters, the significant opposition means that it will be more
difficult to get its own Wikipedia.

Mark

On 25/09/05, Servien Ilaino <servien at gmail.com> wrote:
> IT'S A MIREKOL! ...New Wiki's have been created, Pope Benedictus
> should declare those Wiki's holy haha... I was just wondering, Nds-nl
> has 10 people or something, but does it qualifity to be on the list, I
> think Triestin, Murican and Lombard and some others also qualify... or
> am I wrong?
>
> Regards,
> Servje!
>
> 2005/9/25, sumuroy1998 <sumuroy1998 at yahoo.com>:
> > To all:
> >
> > On behalf of the Waray-Waray speakers who recently got their wikipedia created: Thank you very much!!!  We pledge to make this project as active as the others.  And to our Ladino and Neapolitan-speaking friends who also got their wikipedias: we salute and congratulate you as well!!!
> >
> > Madamo nga salamat ha iyo nga tanan!
> > (Many thanks to all of you!)
> >
> >
> > --Harvey Fiji
> > en:user: Harvsf
> > ceb:user:Harvs
> > meta:user:Harvsf
> > es:user:Harvzsf
> > tl:user:Harvzsf
> >
> > Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/25/05, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> > > [fu2:wikitech]
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > With the technical assistance of Tim Starling, I created three new
> > > wikipedia projects which were pending somewhere on meta: .
> >
> > Thanks Ashar, and thanks to Tim for the assistance. The only problem
> > seems to be that the interlanguage links are not working. For example,
> > on , Ladino links to
> >
> > rather than to the English Wikipedia.
> >
> > Angela.
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Yahoo! for Good
> >  Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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body:
On a related (though perhaps irrelevant note), all three new
Wikipedias have subdomains which are very widely-known nouns in
English.

In the past, there has been vandalism to Wikipedias because of a
perceived connection to an English word, such as aa.wikipedia (for
tests), so.wikipedia ("so" as in "so what"), etc.

Hopefully, nobody writes any long articles in English about wars for
war:, and nobody tries to add gay-porn links to lad:.

Having said that, perhaps the most fearful subdomain for any proposal
past and present is gay: (for the Gayo Wikipedia). If this Wikipedia
were to be created, it would probably have more problems with
vandalism than others.

Mark

On 25/09/05, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> [fu2:wikitech]
>
> Hello,
>
> With the technical assistance of Tim Starling, I created three new
> wikipedia projects which were pending somewhere on meta: .
>
> The projects are:
>
>   Ladino :  http://lad.wikipedia.org/
>   Waray-Waray :  http://nap.wikipedia.org/
>   Neapolitan : http://war.wikipedia.org/
>
> For any trouble with those newly created projects, please reply to
> wikitech-l mailing list only (followup-to set).
>
>
> --
> Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
> http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
> IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
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POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked, but did nothing wrong

body:
I don't do much editing. Occasional spelling corrections and a few
entries on talk pages and what have you. However, a few weeks ago I
found out that I was blocked. This means that not only can't I edit
articles but I can't take part in discussions on talk pages, make
suggestions on the village pump, or even edit my own user page. What
did I do wrong? Absolutely nothing.

It seems that my entire dialup range was banned because of one
butthead called Alberuni who likes to evade bans by creating sock
puppet accounts and apparently the only way to deal with this loser is
by banning any IP address he has access to which also happens to be
any IP address I have access to since we both seem to either share the
same ISP or he uses another ISP that uses the same Level3 Rent-a-pop.
I contacted Jayjg who placed the ban and he unbanned what was then my
current IP address but this only lasted until I hung up. The next time
I connected to the net, I was banned again.

Here's the ban in question...

# 20:32, 26 August 2005, Jayjg blocked 4.153.192.0/19 (expires 20:32,
26 September 2005) (contribs) (massive vandalism from this range from
banned User:Alberuni; we apologise for the inconvenience)

Even though it expires tomorrow I think this sets a bad precedent. Is
it really necessary to block such a large range of IP addresses for a
month to deal with one problem user? There has to be some other way to
deal with trolls that doesn't impact innocent users.

If it turns out that there is no other way to deal with trolls and
vandals then one idea might be to exempt logged in users from such
bans after a "probation period" of let's say 30-90 days. (or upon
request in some cases) This would minimize the impact of broad IP bans
on non-troublemakers but still allow you to catch sock puppet
accounts.

PS. My real name and WP account are the same.


body:
> Gerard and Pawe, you perhaps already know the voting process was badly
> flawed (even rigged). Plenty of folks on this list have noted the same
> thing.

... That's Pawel (slash-l).

> With a lack of due process and due diligence for this vote, there's
> only so much [[Sofixit]] can repair.

Name one thing wrong with the vote that you couldn't have easily fixed
with a quick edit.

Mark


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 9/25/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > The deletion of one (or even a couple of dozen) school articles doesn't
> hurt
> > Wikipedia. This action may affect the reputation of the administrator
> > involved for a short term, but that also will recover.
> >
>
> The lurking of users on AfD for the sole purpose of voting to keep or
> delete articles /with no thought given to the votes/ does.
>

It would indeed. However your accusation seems to fly in the face of the
evidence. The arguments for and against deletion of schools have been
elaborated over several months. As it happens very few school article
deletion attempts have been successful in the time--a little less than 13%
of all school article deletion listings have resulted in deletion.


body:
I don't see how it's interesting.

If you take a look at the vote, and exclude all non-Cantonese speakers
(at least, as far as I am aware):

Support:
Jasonzhuocn
Bourquie
Connie
Eternal
Jogloran
Felix Wan
Enochlau
CantoneseWiki
Xingmu
Ffootballchu
Seasurfer (Maybe -- Seasurfer is a Malaysian Chinese; in most of
Malaysia, Chinese people can speak Cantonese, including Kuala Lumpur,
but there's the notable exception of Penang where the main language is
Hokkien, so it could be either way and we'd have to ask)

Oppose:
Sl
Zektonic
Crosstimer
Jeromy~Yuyu
Simon Shek

Now, you may claim the vote was rigged all you want.

But if it _was_ rigged, it was actually _in favour_ of Cantonese
speakers, given that I personally informed everyone who had a
Cantonese babel template and was accepting Wikipedia e-mails. AND,
_all_ of the Cantonese speakers who voted "oppose", with the exception
of Simon Shek, were informed by me of the vote via e-mail.

Now, even if you add the 7 users from the meetup (not counting Simon
Shek, who voted as well) as "oppose" votes, you end up with equal
numbers in favour and opposed.

Having said that, I'm still a bit surprised that Alex would change her
mind when it seemed before like she was really interested in a
Cantonese Wikipedia...

And it also seems suspect to me that while the majority of Cantonese
speakers who VOTED were in favour, those at the meetup were
"unanimous" in their opposition.

You may think that this has to do with the alleged vote rigging,
however all that consisted of was me e-mailing Cantonese speakers to
tell them about the vote. The message said, quite basically, that
there was a vote, and that their input was requested. I didn't include
my views, an endorsement of either side, etc.

Mark

On 25/09/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Walter van Kalken wrote:
> >
> >> Yet here we are, with non-Cantonese folks spearheading the effort, and
> >> a Cantonese-based
> >> meetup saying no, they don't want one.
> >>
> >>
> > And all the voting Cantonese speakers were there? Why are your Cantonese
> > speakers who met there more valuable than the many supporters? You act
> > like the group that met has Veto rights on the issue.
>
> No, but it sure is interesting, isn't it?
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Indeed... [[gay:(insert famous person here]].

Mark

On 25/09/05, Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/25/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Having said that, perhaps the most fearful subdomain for any proposal
> > past and present is gay: (for the Gayo Wikipedia). If this Wikipedia
> > were to be created, it would probably have more problems with
> > vandalism than others.
>
> It would make for some interesting interwiki links though.
>
> Dori
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>> There are always many vocal supporters, and there are always people who
>> are silently opposed. Or rather, they are silent until those in power
>> give in to the lobby and create new wikis, and then they open up with
>> ridicule and criticism. We've seen it many times before.
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>
> This is in my opinion a really nasty argument. It basically says, that
> anything can be frustrated because there are people who are silently
> opposed. It negated all the need of building a visible consensus or
> opinion. In essence, given this as a "reasonable" argument, anything
> goes as long as you are able to support yourself.
>
> Basically you say to the people who want these new languages that they
> should piss off. That your Wikimedia Foundation is not their Wikimedia
> Foundation. That they do not need information in their language.

Look, I know my views are extreme, and I know they're not representative
of the community. I never said those people who were silently opposed
were in the majority, I'm just saying that I have some support. But if
you can't get a single sysadmin out of about 15 to support your cause,
or a single Board member, where is the consensus in favour?

Yes, I'm biased, but why don't you ask Brion instead? He has generally
been in favour of adding languages, his only concern is the criticism
he'll receive if he does so.

If you like, go to [[m:Developers]], work your way down the list of
people with shell access, and make a request to each one in turn. I'll
even give them a tutorial if they want to create a wiki.

What I'm saying is, don't make this about me. I have my opinions, but
there's no reason you can't work around them.

I can't help but feel sympathetic here, the politics involved are
complex, the method for "working around" my opinions might not be
obvious. So let me give you some advice. Here's what I think you should
do to get new languages created:

1) Find a sysadmin who is willing to get involved
2) Develop a language creation policy, with the close involvement of
your chosen sysadmin. Get their agreement on every detail, give whatever
concessions are necessary to acheive this.
3) With help from me or Brion, your chosen sysadmin should then become
familiar with the technical details of wiki creation, and should be able
to perform it in the future with little fuss.

If you can't find a sysadmin (i.e. someone with shell access) for item
1, find someone with CVS access instead. Have them develop a web
interface for language addition. I've already developed a script for
adding wikis (remember the create wiki button), so they can use that as
a base. Make it so that anyone with steward access (or something) can
add languages. That widens your field from 15 to about 60.

If there's no one with CVS access willing to do it, then find anyone at
all who knows PHP. Have them develop the web interface as a patch, then
ask someone with CVS access to commit it.

I will support this process. I'll offer technical advice to the
developer or sysadmin involved, I'll commit patches to CVS and I'll
activate the automated interface on the live site, assuming it works. I
reserve the right to express my opinions in the policy discussion, but I
promise I won't resort to silly stunts like threatening to leave.

I generally don't fix bugs or upload language files for wikis such as
jbo and got, and I reserve the right to extend that to any particularly
objectionable new wikis. That shouldn't be a problem though because
Brion is happy to work on any Wikimedia wiki.

I know this all seems like a lot of work, but I'm am telling you
honestly, this is what I think is required. It'll satisfy the Board
(they don't have to ratify the policy), it'll satisfy the developers and
it'll allow a compromise between those for and against new languages.
All you need is one developer. If your cause really is a worthy one, you
should be able to find one.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: charles matthews

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote

> Oldtimers: is the school struggle just par for the course, or does it
> represent an emerging and deepening _lack_ of consensus on important
> issues?

Hmmm ... from a cynic's point of view it is a fairly harmless outlet for
negative vibes.

Look at it this way: how important is a school page _as reference
information_?  Not that important, in that it will matter to few people who
will have no other way of getting information.  (Information about a school
might matter greatly to a parent, but WP can hardly expect to satisfy
parental requirements on that.)

To take another example, also marginal, postcodes: WP might actually be
helpful to those who want reference information about a specific postcode,
and who didn't have another easy source.  And to be able to satisfy
someone's immediate need, by giving the geography.

 In short, WP can't do a particularly good job as a reference on a
particular school - education is more complex than (say) public transport.
For an average school, the pages we can have typically do not add or detract
much from the encyclopedia.  People who want to make a point of principle
are looking at an unpromising issue there.

Charles


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>> Yet here we are, with non-Cantonese folks spearheading the effort, and
>> a Cantonese-based
>> meetup saying no, they don't want one.
>>
>>
> And all the voting Cantonese speakers were there? Why are your Cantonese
> speakers who met there more valuable than the many supporters? You act
> like the group that met has Veto rights on the issue.

No, but it sure is interesting, isn't it?

--Jimbo


body:
And, if I can, let me try to provide concise counterarguments for what
I understand to be Andrew's reasons for not creating a Cantonese
Wikipedia:

1) That it's not used in formal situations (at least not in written
form). Neither are languages such as Sicilian, Javanese, Sundanese,
Cebuano, and many other languages which already have Wikipedias. And
just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it can't be done
now. If there are people willing and ready to create real
encyclopaedic content in Cantonese, then how is this one a problem?
2) That all people literate in Yutyuh-Bakwahman are also literate in
Mandarin (= Puntonghua-based Baihuawen). The same applies to many
other languages which already have Wikipedias, and often quite large
(although Mandarin isn't nessecarily the language in which all or most
are literate): Catalan, Basque, Galician, Asturian, Aragonese (with
Spanish) Ukrainian, Belarusian (with Russian, at least to a great
degree), Sicilian, Sardinian, Friulian (with Italian), Corsican,
Catalan, Basque, Breton, Occitan, Walon, Haitian Creole, Luxembourgish
(with French), Sundanese, Javanese (with Indonesian), Frisian,
Limburgish (with Dutch)... and the list goes on. Some might even argue
that those literate in Finnish are all literate in Swedish, or even at
an extreme that those literate in Dutch are all literate in English
(certainly not true, but perhaps it would be in the future). And,
again, just because a Wikipedia isn't "needed" doesn't mean it
shouldn't be created, if there are people willing to work on it and it
has at least some possible uses.
3) That it will take away contributors and potential contributors from
the already-starving Chinese Wikipedia. Now, you have said that "every
little bit counts", but in all likelyhood that's just what it will be:
a little bit. I don't have a factual argument against this since both
of our arguments on this seem to be purely conjecture, but I think
it's rediculous to think that enough users would leave (or never
arrive in the first place) zhwiki to cause even the tiniest noticable
decrease in productivity and/or growth.

If I have missed one, please forgive me.

Mark

On 25/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't see how it's interesting.
>
> If you take a look at the vote, and exclude all non-Cantonese speakers
> (at least, as far as I am aware):
>
> Support:
> Jasonzhuocn
> Bourquie
> Connie
> Eternal
> Jogloran
> Felix Wan
> Enochlau
> CantoneseWiki
> Xingmu
> Ffootballchu
> Seasurfer (Maybe -- Seasurfer is a Malaysian Chinese; in most of
> Malaysia, Chinese people can speak Cantonese, including Kuala Lumpur,
> but there's the notable exception of Penang where the main language is
> Hokkien, so it could be either way and we'd have to ask)
>
> Oppose:
> Sl
> Zektonic
> Crosstimer
> Jeromy~Yuyu
> Simon Shek
>
> Now, you may claim the vote was rigged all you want.
>
> But if it _was_ rigged, it was actually _in favour_ of Cantonese
> speakers, given that I personally informed everyone who had a
> Cantonese babel template and was accepting Wikipedia e-mails. AND,
> _all_ of the Cantonese speakers who voted "oppose", with the exception
> of Simon Shek, were informed by me of the vote via e-mail.
>
> Now, even if you add the 7 users from the meetup (not counting Simon
> Shek, who voted as well) as "oppose" votes, you end up with equal
> numbers in favour and opposed.
>
> Having said that, I'm still a bit surprised that Alex would change her
> mind when it seemed before like she was really interested in a
> Cantonese Wikipedia...
>
> And it also seems suspect to me that while the majority of Cantonese
> speakers who VOTED were in favour, those at the meetup were
> "unanimous" in their opposition.
>
> You may think that this has to do with the alleged vote rigging,
> however all that consisted of was me e-mailing Cantonese speakers to
> tell them about the vote. The message said, quite basically, that
> there was a vote, and that their input was requested. I didn't include
> my views, an endorsement of either side, etc.
>
> Mark
>
> On 25/09/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Walter van Kalken wrote:
> > >
> > >> Yet here we are, with non-Cantonese folks spearheading the effort, and
> > >> a Cantonese-based
> > >> meetup saying no, they don't want one.
> > >>
> > >>
> > > And all the voting Cantonese speakers were there? Why are your Cantonese
> > > speakers who met there more valuable than the many supporters? You act
> > > like the group that met has Veto rights on the issue.
> >
> > No, but it sure is interesting, isn't it?
> >
> > --Jimbo
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Ah, and to add to #3:

There is at least one person who doesn't seem to have contributed much
or any to zhwiki, but seems a very likely candidate to be one of the
biggest contributors on a Cantonese WP, namely CantoneseWiki (that's
their username), who has been primarily active on Commons, but also
Meta and Wikispecies (translating the mainpages and occasional other
things to written Cantonese).

Also, I'm not sure, but I think that worries of failure may play some
part in this. But I think that the support shown by native Cantonese
speakers so far should be enough to dispell these worries.

Mark

On 25/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> And, if I can, let me try to provide concise counterarguments for what
> I understand to be Andrew's reasons for not creating a Cantonese
> Wikipedia:
>
> 1) That it's not used in formal situations (at least not in written
> form). Neither are languages such as Sicilian, Javanese, Sundanese,
> Cebuano, and many other languages which already have Wikipedias. And
> just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it can't be done
> now. If there are people willing and ready to create real
> encyclopaedic content in Cantonese, then how is this one a problem?
> 2) That all people literate in Yutyuh-Bakwahman are also literate in
> Mandarin (= Puntonghua-based Baihuawen). The same applies to many
> other languages which already have Wikipedias, and often quite large
> (although Mandarin isn't nessecarily the language in which all or most
> are literate): Catalan, Basque, Galician, Asturian, Aragonese (with
> Spanish) Ukrainian, Belarusian (with Russian, at least to a great
> degree), Sicilian, Sardinian, Friulian (with Italian), Corsican,
> Catalan, Basque, Breton, Occitan, Walon, Haitian Creole, Luxembourgish
> (with French), Sundanese, Javanese (with Indonesian), Frisian,
> Limburgish (with Dutch)... and the list goes on. Some might even argue
> that those literate in Finnish are all literate in Swedish, or even at
> an extreme that those literate in Dutch are all literate in English
> (certainly not true, but perhaps it would be in the future). And,
> again, just because a Wikipedia isn't "needed" doesn't mean it
> shouldn't be created, if there are people willing to work on it and it
> has at least some possible uses.
> 3) That it will take away contributors and potential contributors from
> the already-starving Chinese Wikipedia. Now, you have said that "every
> little bit counts", but in all likelyhood that's just what it will be:
> a little bit. I don't have a factual argument against this since both
> of our arguments on this seem to be purely conjecture, but I think
> it's rediculous to think that enough users would leave (or never
> arrive in the first place) zhwiki to cause even the tiniest noticable
> decrease in productivity and/or growth.
>
> If I have missed one, please forgive me.
>
> Mark
>
> On 25/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't see how it's interesting.
> >
> > If you take a look at the vote, and exclude all non-Cantonese speakers
> > (at least, as far as I am aware):
> >
> > Support:
> > Jasonzhuocn
> > Bourquie
> > Connie
> > Eternal
> > Jogloran
> > Felix Wan
> > Enochlau
> > CantoneseWiki
> > Xingmu
> > Ffootballchu
> > Seasurfer (Maybe -- Seasurfer is a Malaysian Chinese; in most of
> > Malaysia, Chinese people can speak Cantonese, including Kuala Lumpur,
> > but there's the notable exception of Penang where the main language is
> > Hokkien, so it could be either way and we'd have to ask)
> >
> > Oppose:
> > Sl
> > Zektonic
> > Crosstimer
> > Jeromy~Yuyu
> > Simon Shek
> >
> > Now, you may claim the vote was rigged all you want.
> >
> > But if it _was_ rigged, it was actually _in favour_ of Cantonese
> > speakers, given that I personally informed everyone who had a
> > Cantonese babel template and was accepting Wikipedia e-mails. AND,
> > _all_ of the Cantonese speakers who voted "oppose", with the exception
> > of Simon Shek, were informed by me of the vote via e-mail.
> >
> > Now, even if you add the 7 users from the meetup (not counting Simon
> > Shek, who voted as well) as "oppose" votes, you end up with equal
> > numbers in favour and opposed.
> >
> > Having said that, I'm still a bit surprised that Alex would change her
> > mind when it seemed before like she was really interested in a
> > Cantonese Wikipedia...
> >
> > And it also seems suspect to me that while the majority of Cantonese
> > speakers who VOTED were in favour, those at the meetup were
> > "unanimous" in their opposition.
> >
> > You may think that this has to do with the alleged vote rigging,
> > however all that consisted of was me e-mailing Cantonese speakers to
> > tell them about the vote. The message said, quite basically, that
> > there was a vote, and that their input was requested. I didn't include
> > my views, an endorsement of either side, etc.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 25/09/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > Walter van Kalken wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> Yet here we are, with non-Cantonese folks spearheading the effort, and
> > > >> a Cantonese-based
> > > >> meetup saying no, they don't want one.
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > > And all the voting Cantonese speakers were there? Why are your Cantonese
> > > > speakers who met there more valuable than the many supporters? You act
> > > > like the group that met has Veto rights on the issue.
> > >
> > > No, but it sure is interesting, isn't it?
> > >
> > > --Jimbo
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> > QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> > POSSIT MATERIARI
> > ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> >
>
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Mihai Floran

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigrammar proposal

body:
It is a fact that today we must improve our language skills and this not just in our native language but we can learn by internet other languages. The grammar of each language must be at anyone's hand nowadays not just if he/she buyes an expensive book or e-book. Even in our native languages we have something to learn all the
time.

That's why I propose a new project: Wikigrammar

More details can be seen here : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikigrammar

Michael


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigrammar proposal


from_name: Dori

body:
On 9/25/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Having said that, perhaps the most fearful subdomain for any proposal
> past and present is gay: (for the Gayo Wikipedia). If this Wikipedia
> were to be created, it would probably have more problems with
> vandalism than others.

It would make for some interesting interwiki links though.

Dori


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigrammar proposal

body:
> That's why I propose a new project: Wikigrammar

And why can't it be part of Wikibooks?

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigrammar proposal


from_name: Servien Ilaino

body:
IT'S A MIREKOL! ...New Wiki's have been created, Pope Benedictus
should declare those Wiki's holy haha... I was just wondering, Nds-nl
has 10 people or something, but does it qualifity to be on the list, I
think Triestin, Murican and Lombard and some others also qualify... or
am I wrong?

Regards,
Servje!

2005/9/25, sumuroy1998 <sumuroy1998 at yahoo.com>:
> To all:
>
> On behalf of the Waray-Waray speakers who recently got their wikipedia created: Thank you very much!!!  We pledge to make this project as active as the others.  And to our Ladino and Neapolitan-speaking friends who also got their wikipedias: we salute and congratulate you as well!!!
>
> Madamo nga salamat ha iyo nga tanan!
> (Many thanks to all of you!)
>
>
> --Harvey Fiji
> en:user: Harvsf
> ceb:user:Harvs
> meta:user:Harvsf
> es:user:Harvzsf
> tl:user:Harvzsf
>
> Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/25/05, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> > [fu2:wikitech]
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > With the technical assistance of Tim Starling, I created three new
> > wikipedia projects which were pending somewhere on meta: .
>
> Thanks Ashar, and thanks to Tim for the assistance. The only problem
> seems to be that the interlanguage links are not working. For example,
> on , Ladino links to
>
> rather than to the English Wikipedia.
>
> Angela.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! for Good
>  Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> The deletion of one (or even a couple of dozen) school articles doesn't hurt
> Wikipedia. This action may affect the reputation of the administrator
> involved for a short term, but that also will recover.
>

The lurking of users on AfD for the sole purpose of voting to keep or
delete articles /with no thought given to the votes/ does.

Hence I've opened [[Wikipedia:Request for comments/AfD]], against all
members of the Associations of Inclusionist and Deletionist Wikipedians,
respectively.

VfD was deleted because of the mindless voting. It was even renamed to
try and discourage the mindless voting. Well, it's time some more
concrete action was taken.

(Personally I would like to have listed the memberships of these
"organisations" in full, but there are so many it would have taken
pages, and hours)

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar proposal

body:
>> That's why I propose a new project: Wikigrammar
>
>And why can't it be part of Wikibooks?
>
>--
>Ausir
>Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
>http://pl.wikipedia.org

Normaly, Wikibooks contains books or manuals as entire edition. This project is intended to be something different than normal language courses on Wikibooks.
First of all the accent is on the language in which is created. For example English Wikigrammar must have all informations about English grammar and more than that must have useful tools for this.

Other thing is the comparations. Wikigrammar should have comparations beetween languages in different articles. It is not something like a book. It's sepparatly, grammar.  By comparation i see something like noun cases - for example - latin has six cases meanwhile romanian has just 5 and the article about noun case must provide informations about using and transforming theese.

Mike


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar proposal


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
>Yet here we are, with non-Cantonese folks spearheading the effort, and
>a Cantonese-based
>meetup saying no, they don't want one.
>
>
And all the voting Cantonese speakers were there? Why are your Cantonese
speakers who met there more valuable than the many supporters? You act
like the group that met has Veto rights on the issue.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
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Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

> Oldtimers: is the school struggle just par for the course, or does it
> represent an emerging and deepening _lack_ of consensus on important
> issues?

I'd like to jump in here and say that it's merely one of the unfortunate
side effects of our community not scaling perfectly in all directions at
once, but I don't think that I really count as an "oldtimer" - I've only
been here AFAICT for 9 months or so longer than yours, and my account is
barely 6 months the elder. :-)

However, on the topic at hand... well, we've always (that I've seen) had
divisions over what exactly our purpose and scope should be. Nowadays it
is more pronounced because people are feeling less in touch, and perhaps
a bit more alienated, with their fellow editors.

As to disputes in general, though, I'd say 'twas e'er thus, sadly.

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
>
>>> Consider the folks who were at the meeting part of the "no" votes.
>>>
>>
>> They should have voted where they were supposed to vote then.
>>
>>
> An interesting observation.  Is there a policy anywhere saying where
> people are "supposed" to vote?
>
> Ec

Hoi,
When there is a vote, when this vote is considered in a meeting like it
has, they should either put up or shut up. When a small group of people
meets and decide on something, in essence this is just what happened: a
small group of people who decided something. Nothing special in and of
itself. Obviously they do not need to vote, but when they do not vote,
they should not moan when their voice is not considered when the vote is
evaluated.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Nathan Reed

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thank you from AJ Jacobs at Esquire

body:
On 9/23/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/23/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Presumably GFDL will apply when he publishes this in Esquire.
> >
> > Ec
> >
>
>
> No. All text on that page was PD.
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________

So is it possible to specify that other pages are PD, even within the
context of the GFDL Wikipedia?

-N.


from_name: Jan Kulveit

subject: [Wikitech-l] Voting software

body:
Hi,

we would like to elect something similar to ArbCom on cs: wiki
using the same voting software which was used in en: ArbCom elections.
I'm wondering how to do that.

Thanks

Jan Kulveit ([[User:Wikimol]])


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal for a new project: Wikisomething

body:
On 9/24/05, Roberto Frangi <rfrangi at coopetition.it> wrote:
> I want to propose "something completely different": Wikisomethingelse!
> For all the multilingual something else, that is outside the scope of
> Wikisomething.

Well, you see, in an attempt to keep the project(s) as international
as possible, I would propose that wikisomething be called wikistuff,
it's easier to pronounce and I believe more easily translated.
Wikitruc would be the French name of it, and it sounds good.

As for the license, I propose "some-license v.0.0" (compatible onwards
up to v.99999999.0) as the ground license for both those projects.

My two cents.

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 9/25/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, you see, in an attempt to keep the project(s) as international
> as possible, I would propose that wikisomething be called wikistuff,
> it's easier to pronounce and I believe more easily translated.
> Wikitruc would be the French name of it, and it sounds good.

Why not use the international lingua france, Greek?  And we want to
educate people in all these "something" matters, don't we?  So why not
call it Wiki-education, which, translated, is wikipaidia.  Bastardise
it into American English, and we get Wikipedia.

Damn, that name's taken.

Sam


from_name: ilooy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 45

body:
Thank you so much Ashar and Tim,
for the setting up of the new subdomains!
With regards,
Jay B.

2005/9/25, wikitech-l-request at wikimedia.org <wikitech-l-request at wikimedia.org>:
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 15:29:50 +0200
> From: Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org>
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] nap, war, lad wikipedias created
>
> Hello,
>
> With the technical assistance of Tim Starling, I created three new
> wikipedia projects which were pending somewhere on meta: .
>
> The projects are:
>
>   Ladino :  http://lad.wikipedia.org/
>   Waray-Waray :  http://nap.wikipedia.org/
>   Neapolitan : http://war.wikipedia.org/
>
> For any trouble with those newly created projects, please reply to
> wikitech-l mailing list only (followup-to set).
>

--
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: lucene search doesn't work with my wiki

body:
Markus.Herb at de.TRUMPF.com wrote:
> I am running a media wiki with the following versions:
>
> *	MediaWiki <http://www.mediawiki.org/> : 1.5rc4
[snip]
> I've downloaded lucene search via cvs and compiled it.
> when I start the indexer with the following command:
>
> C:\apachefriends\xampp\lucene>java -Djdbc.drivers=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
> org.wiki
> media.lsearch.MWSearch -rebuild dewiki

The Java version currently in CVS is unmaintained and does not support
MediaWiki 1.5. You can try to use the C# version if you're adventurous,
or you can wait until a future version that's ready for third-party use.

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

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigrammar proposal

body:
On 9/25/05, Mihai Floran <mihai at emma.ro> wrote:
> It is a fact that today we must improve our language skills and this not just in our native language but we can learn by internet other languages. The grammar of each language must be at anyone's hand nowadays not just if he/she buyes an expensive book or e-book. Even in our native languages we have something to learn all the
> time.
>
> That's why I propose a new project: Wikigrammar

If the aim is to make a textbook of grammar, that can go at
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/English:Grammar. Any other content
(non-encyclopedic and non-textbook content) can go at the Grammar
Wikicity <http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/c:grammar>.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigrammar proposal


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: No more new Wikipedias !

body:
On 9/25/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> > <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>

> If you board guys could stamp your approval on that policy and
> explicitly state I have authority for new-language addition following
> those rules as Chief Technical Doohickey, I'd be happy to do it.

It's up to the community to approve it. I rewrote the policy, so it
obviously has my approval, but the rest of the Board don't see this as
something within their jurisdiction. If a developer thinks the policy
has consensus, they can abide by it and make new wikis. If they don't,
they can tell the people requesting new wikis to go and fix the policy
and get a consensus on it. I've responded to a lot of the concerns at
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>
but there are really too few people giving any opinion at all to
determine whether or not there is consensus for this yet.

Angela.