subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Great article!

body:
Sj wrote:

> [..]
> Thanks for lightening the mood... though I feel compelled to point out
> that our multimedia and "hey, cool!" offerings still pale  [..]

Which reminds me, I recently recorded a nice bit of audio of a muezzin
calling muslims to prayer at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.

Problem is the audio is trapped inside a .avi video file from my video
camera... wasn't there a tutorial somewhere about all the tricks and
tips you can get up to to get video/audio from the formats provided by
popular consumer gadgets into acceptable free formats?

If we don't have one, I am willing and only too able to play the role of
dumbo to try out a newly written tutorial on.... :)

Pete


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alex Y. Kwan

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request, and Chinese Wikipedia
	again

body:
Hello,

Sheng Jiong wrote:
> Because people choose to igonore it, and because it is just so small
> and it is almost non-existent. But I am not prepared to accept another
> Cantonese Wikipedia, and then Shanghainese, and then whatsoever trash.

I would appreciate it if you can argue using facts and not simply call
other people's proposals trash. It's highly disrespectful.

> There are not standard. No one has formalised these "characters", not
> the Hong Kong government (both before and after 1997),

The HK government has a page explaining and giving links to a code that
has all the Cantonese/Hong Kong-specific characters that the standard
Big5 code might not have. I don't know what is formalising if this isn't.

Here, you can see for yourself:
http://www.info.gov.hk/digital21/chi/structure/cli_main.html

> But put characters aside, the grammar is the same for Cantonese and
> Chinese.

That's...incorrect, to say the least.

> We are now seeing a small portion of Cantonese speakers who believe
> that there should be something as a Cantonese Wikipedia. But for most
> Cantonese speakers (even if you just limit that to Hong Kongers), most
> people object such proposals because most people know that Cantonese
> is NOT a written language.

All languages can be written down in one way or another, if the language
speakers want to.

And there's no evidence that most Cantonese speakers would object such a
  proposal. The three Cantonese speakers who had said anything here are
Felix, Cathy, and I. I doubt we three are the only Cantonese speakers on
this list or on zh.wikipedia.org.

> Again I want you to show me evidence that
> Cantonese IS a written language (do not tell me X books are written in

I'm now beginning to think that showing you the evidence when we find it
is pointless, since you seem to be holding onto your stance based on
emotions rather than facts. Any time Felix or I try (tries?) to show you
something, your reply is the same: oh, that doesn't count, that's just
an exception.

little Alex


list: wikien-l

from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not presently class-room
	safe

body:
>
>
> 2) We also need to be able to protect the young and the vulnerable
> adult who ARE upset by images like these, which in my view OUGHT to  be
> on WP.
>
> For the latter maybe something like the system UK newsagents have,
> with the raunchy stuff being on the 'Top shelf' , and everything else
> lower down where even children can reach it.
>
> But there is, in my view, no easy answer.
> A final thought is that a number of our editors are youngsters, one  or
> two not yet in their teens. How do we stand in regard to their  parents
> on this?
>
Wikipedia in its current form is not suitable for these people.  We should
be honest about this--at least as honest as other sites that contain,
among general material, some items that are not considered suitable for
children.


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
We already are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_disclaimer

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>> 2) We also need to be able to protect the young and the vulnerable
>> adult who ARE upset by images like these, which in my view OUGHT to
>> be
>> on WP.
>>
>> For the latter maybe something like the system UK newsagents have,
>> with the raunchy stuff being on the 'Top shelf' , and everything else
>> lower down where even children can reach it.
>>
>> But there is, in my view, no easy answer.
>> A final thought is that a number of our editors are youngsters, one
>> or
>> two not yet in their teens. How do we stand in regard to their
>> parents
>> on this?
>>
> Wikipedia in its current form is not suitable for these people.  We
> should
> be honest about this--at least as honest as other sites that contain,
> among general material, some items that are not considered suitable for
> children.


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 17:21:49 -0800, Nicholas Knight
<nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
> Zoney wrote:
> > There are views which are unacceptable in civilised society.
>
> There are actions which are unacceptable in civilised society. Any
> society that holds a given view/opinion to be unacceptable is not civilised.
>
>

No, rather than just actions, the expressing of such views is also unacceptable.

Zoney

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


body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
> We already are:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_disclaimer

I think some disclaimer should be displayed more prominently when I visit
any Wikipedia page without a cookie.  As prominently as, for instance, the
header that is now being used for the funding drive.


body:
apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk wrote:

> 1) We need to have a policy or policies which preserves Wikipedia'a
> reputation as a vehicle for liberal values, and does not make us
> liable for a concerted attack by bigots, with all that means in
> wasted energy for the management. [Jimbo et al]

> 2) We also need to be able to protect the young and the vulnerable
> adult who ARE upset by images like these, which in my view OUGHT to be
> on WP.

Both of which could be dealt with by:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/End-user_content_suppression

Christiaan


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: mailing list floods --> can't we have a
	wiki	with	E-mail notification ?

body:
Kate Turner schrieb:

>but for me it's significantly harder to receive every message as a notice in my inbox
>
_One_ email notification is sent once the page, you are watching, is
changed by someone else than you. Further changes do not trigger. Only
at the moment you are revisiting the page, then the flag is cleared (and
further changes by someelse than yourself would trigger a=one new
enotif. This is not so sexy as such and other wiki engines might have
this feature too, but:

With Enotif, you also receive in your personalized email a link to the
DIRECT DIFFERENCE VIEW BETWEEN YOUR LAST-SEEN(*) AND THE CURRENT
REVISION- (no matter when you read the enotif). This is so extremely
useful, that I need to ask a bounty for this ... but it was an idea by
Chris Phoenix ....(thanks again).

(*) The lvr-feature relies on oldid, which currently does not survive
delete/undelete cycles, but this will change at some time


body:
Hello,

Sheng Jiong wrote:
> Yes, I know that Cantonese has slight differences in the order of
> words compared with Mandarin.

That's like saying English has slight differences in the order of words
compared with Latin. That's part of the grammatical difference. It *is*
a different sentence structure.

> But again you are mixing Mandarin with Baihuawen.

Baihuawen is more or less the Mandarin vernacular, the grammar, the
syntax, sentence structure, etc. are based on the Mandarin vernacular.

> Hong Kongers speak only Cantonese, but they write in
> Baihuawen.

a) Many HKers also speak a smattering of Mandarin (and English) and we
*do* write in Cantonese for memos and for online BBS, etc. The common is
practice is use baihuawen for serious/complicated articles, but that's
because it was considered proper. Just because it's a long-held
tradition doesn't mean it's inherently right.

> English (Take Singapore English as a best example: "Would you be able
> to attend?" in English would become "You can go or not?" in Singlish.
> Totally different grammar, but is Singlish a written language? No. It
> is still a dialect in English).

I doubt "Singlish" and English is the best analogy.

little Alex


from_name: Sulev Iva

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request,
	and Chinese Wikipedia again

body:
Mark, you are right about V?ro (South Estonian). It has quite old separate literary tradition (First New Testamant 1686, last
1926, ABC-books and newspapers from 19. century) and many people write in V?ro. Now it is taught in 26 schools to children and
in Tartu University to students. Linguistically it is maybe the oldest and most peculiar language in Baltic Finnic language
branch. But many Estonian authorities and linguistst are used to think that V?ro is a dialect of Estonian. Ethnologue got their
info from them. This info is out of date, I beleave it will be soon refreshed.

I wish good luck to Wikipedias in Chinese "dialects". Of course they should be created!

Sulev

20.02.2005 12:14:00, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> kirot':

>Ethnologue considers Voro to be a dialect of Estonian, as do many
>linguists. But the mutual intelligibility with standard Estonian when
>written is not above 90% (I don't believe), many people write in Voro,
>and it has entirely separate literature.
>
>Platt is perhaps more comparable here. It was similarly said then,
>that standard German text can be read as regional pronunciation. But
>it meets these 3 criteria: Quite a few people (not the majority
>though) write often in Platt; when written its mutual intelligibility
>is below 90%, and there is some desires for a separate literature
>which is already emerging.
>
>This case is similar here. I estimate pure written Cantonese at
>between 70 and 89% intelligibility with Guanhua-Baihuawen depending on
>specific instance (maybe 85% on average). This is /casual/ mutual
>intelligibility, that you can read it without having to stop over and
>over to guess what words might mean. I'm much less sure about Wu but I
>think it is in the same range, especially when etymologically correct
>hanzi are used rather than using etymologically incorrect hanzi for
>their Baihuawen meaning. (the hanzi that means "run" in Minnan for
>example, means "walk" in Baihuawen, but often it is used for "walk" in
>Minnan because of uneducation of etymology)
>
>It makes no sense regularly to say "Bite is", but "m-sik" is Cantonese
>for "isn't" and the way it is written means "bite is" in
>Baihuawen/Mandarin which is the same.
>
>Mark
>
>On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:50:26 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > You are squarely wrong about Singlish. It is not a dialect of English,
>> > it is an English-based creole. The difference between the way you
>> > write that sentence and the way I write it is this: I write it "yu kan
>> > go o no'" but you write it "You can go or not?", this is because you
>> > use an English-based orthography that doesn't reflect extreme phonetic
>> > differences
>>
>> Everybody speaks English differently. Should we all "reflect extreme
>> phonetic differences" rather than using proper spellings?
>>
>> > I wouldn't support a Wikipedia for colloquial English because it is
>> > the exact same language as written English. A Wikipedia for Scots or
>> > AAVE or Singlish, I would support, but just normal colloquial English,
>> > I would not. Nor would I support separate Wikipedias for Mandarin and
>> > Baihuawen - they are one and the same.
>>
>> So now we have a person supporting Singlish Wikipedia. I think
>> Wikipedia will soon grow into an encyclopedia with 1 million
>> languages, rather than articles.
>>
>> And anyway you cannot split between Mandarin and Baihuawen: one is
>> spoken, one is written, how do you split?
>>
>> > > > Also there is much differences in Shanghainese too, if you want I can
>> > > > maybe type some examples later.
>> > >
>> > > Pray show me something I have never learnt about my own mother tongue.
>> >
>> > I have a story to tell you Mr Sheng Jiong. Sit back and read please.
>> >
>> > ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????
>> >
>> > The moral of the story is that nobody likes the sun and nobody likes
>> > the north wind either. But they both like to write in colloquial Wu.
>> > Very much.
>> >
>>
>> You are just using "extreme phonetic differences" to express. If it is
>> written in baihuawen, Shanghainese can still understand and read out
>> in Shanghainese.
>>
>> So now I begin to realise the difference between you and me: you think
>> there is a need to set up Wikipedias to "reflect extreme phonetic
>> differences" between a standard language and a not so standard spoken
>> language. But I want just to have 1 Wikipedia in the standard
>> language, and let the reader to read it in any different ways they
>> want. To me that is the most sensible thing to do because everybody
>> else do this: after all we created language to communicate, not to
>> "reflect extreme phonetic differences".
>>
>> formulax
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Hello,

Sheng Jiong wrote:
> All serious newspapers in Hong Kong write in Chinese that can be
> universally understood by everybody who knows Chinese.

http://trading-edge.tripod.com/cgi-bin/Tsoi/u_diary.cgi

I think this is the best example of something in a serious paper written
with Cantonese. Cho Yan Chiu (sp?) is the managing editor (I think) of
the Hong Kong Economic Journal, one of the most respected newspapers in
Hong Kong. It's a "quirk" of his to write in Cantonese when he wants to
make a point. But what it does say is that you can definitely write
about serious subjects in Cantonese.

> Extrememly few Hong Kongers have ever come across with materials that
> are entirely written in Cantonese written language, if there is ever
> such a thing.

And you presume to speak for all of us HKers? I assume from your claim
about books from all over the world that you've been to Hong Kong, but
have you live there? How many HKers have you talked to? And did you
demand that they speak Mandarin and/or write in baihuawen for your
benefit when you talk to them?

> No guidelines have been introduced or widely accepted by the general
> public on writing in Cantonese language.

I would discourage anyone to make such wide-swept statements without any
substantial proof.

> All Hong Kong students(except those who choose to learn English as
> their first language) learn to write in the standard Chinese in
> schools.

And you suddenly become the expert in the HK education system...when?

little Alex


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
<apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk> wrote

> John Lee wrote:
>
> As I said, in Europe and Australia, you guys are probably used to
> depictions of lifelike nudity and didn't really notice the image, but
> the  same cannot be said for those of us from America and Asia.
>
> I agree with John it is clearly a cultural problem. Yet it is a
> curious paradox that so much pornography comes from America, the
> nation that got so up-tight last year about exposed breasts in TV.

It's an interesting discussion, but not exactly relevant to Wikipedia.
People come to WP as individuals, not as representatives of cultures.
Importantly, they can expect to have their views individually treated, and
not written off under some blanket assumptions.

> 1) We need to have a policy or policies which preserves Wikipedia'a
> reputation as a vehicle for liberal values, and does not make us
> liable for a concerted attack by bigots, with all that means in
> wasted energy for the management. [Jimbo et al]

I'm alarmed to think that WP is getting dragged into being a 'vehicle'.
NPOV is good enough for me - that kind of vehicle sounds to be off-road.
Anyone equating NPOV with 'liberal' is confused.

> 2) We also need to be able to protect the young and the vulnerable
> adult who ARE upset by images like these, which in my view OUGHT to
> be on WP.

Upset - OK, we should not be trying to upset, and in many cases we should be
trying not to upset.  For example the Indian Ocean tsunami produced many
shocking, upsetting images.  We are not selling a newspaper, and should be
able to cover such a story without exploiting images -  just informing
people.  By the way, I think this kind of example, and the Abu Ghraib
stories, are much more to the point than the darker corners of sexology, of
which no one can possibly expect 'complete coverage'.

I would like to propose some different questions.  The present discussion,
phrased in generalities, is just going round and round.

Q1: What is WP's demographic?

A marketing question, if you like.  We know that the job is to get the
encyclopedia written.  My answer, FWIW, is that it is the Sopranos/Sex in
the City stratum.  (Neither of these are to my taste, by the way.)  That's
our natural station.

Q2: What does Wiki-en do to audit itself?

I would much rather be discussing this.  If there is offensive material, or
hate speech, or various other things on the site, we should have a clue
about it.  With half a million pages due as a landmark in a month or so, it
is no trite matter to claim that we - the community- even are aware of the
worst of it.

WP has, remarkably I think, avoided serious scandals.  Rather than devote
ever more time to reactive topics - the type that concern the
semi-professional offendee (a not-unknown media phenomenon) - I wonder if
there is not a pro-active way.

Charles


body:
apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk wrote:

> I agree with John it is clearly a cultural problem. Yet it is a
> curious paradox that so much pornography comes from America

It's no surprise or secret that where I come from it's the catholic
girls schools that have the highest rates of pregnancy and abortion.

The reasons for the paradox above are obviously complex but taboo and
suppression have a close relationship with curiosity and obsession.

Christiaan


body:
Hello,

Chad Perrin wrote:
> Lex Luthor did not, in any way, begin to occur to me when I read "Lexa".
>  I doubt I'm alone in that.

Yeah, but to me it does. ;)

little Alex,
the sci-fi geek


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Alex Y. Kwan

body:
Hello,

pinco wrote:
> I'm changing the page. You'll find a Chinese enter (?ina, in Esperanto)
> where you can add your sentences under "mandarena" (Mandarin) or
> "kantona" (Cantonese). I know nothing abour Chinese! What's the

Oh, can you please give me the link again? Was very clumsy and lost it.

little Alex


body:
Charles Matthews said:
>
> I would like to propose some different questions.  The present
> discussion, phrased in generalities, is just going round and round.

This sounds like a reasonable approach.

>
> Q1: What is WP's demographic?
>
> A marketing question, if you like.  We know that the job is to get the
> encyclopedia written.  My answer, FWIW, is that it is the Sopranos/Sex
> in the City stratum.  (Neither of these are to my taste, by the way.)
> That's our natural station.

I only have a broad idea of what The Sopranos might be about (a comic
drama about family of thugs and gangsters?) and I have a vague idea that
Sex in the City might have been some kind of heterosexual equivalent of
Queer as Folk.
Would it be fair to say they're more likely to be fans of The Office than
The Archers, or is that completely off your point?


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gutenberg, 1911 encyclopedia

body:
At [1] you'll find a Python script (GPL) that extracts the bold parts of
the new 1911EB format and brings them in reasonable (=linkable) shape.

I did that for the given example at [2]. What you get from that and the
script can be seen under [3]. I checked, and even the "red" ones are
already done under a similar title.

Are there any more parts on the 1911 done in that format yet? Where are
they? How can we keep track of the new ones?

Magnus

[1] http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/1911topics.py.txt
[2] http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/gutenberg/1/3/6/0/13600/13600-h/13600-h.htm
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/1911


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia
	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
John Lee wrote:

> "So? It's just inappropriate!" Even though that completely disregards
> all the facts, people are emotional beings. They don't think
> logically.

Right, so tell them stop sucking their own dick and help develop:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/End-user_content_suppression

Christiaan


body:
John Lee said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>Nor do I.  There should not be shock images on Wikipedia.  All images
>>should be there solely because they appropriately illustrate an
>>article.
>>
>>
> Shall I illustrate our article on shock sites with Goatse and Tubgirl
> then?

That may be appropriate.  I'd have to see the illustration and its use in
the article.
[IE]
>>
> That's not blocking them on an individual basis. That's _unblocking_
> them on an individual basis. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
> Nigh on completely useless.

I have no idea why you would say that.  All images are available, but none
of them are displayed unless the user selects them.  I find this to be the
optimal way of browsing.


body:
John Lee said:
> Even though that completely disregards all the
> facts, people are emotional beings. They don't think logically.

Might I politely suggest that we cannot legislate for irrationality.


body:
  Tony Sidaway wrote:

> I have no idea why you would say that.  All images are available, but
> none of them are displayed unless the user selects them. I find this
> to be the optimal way of browsing.

Tony, I think the operative term here might be "I find". If
browser-based _filtration_ was possible, as opposed to browser-based
blocking, I would be all for it.

Christiaan


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not presently
	class-roomsafe

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote

> I only have a broad idea of what The Sopranos might be about (a comic
> drama about family of thugs and gangsters?)

No, dark rather than comic.  I gave up on it, since the conceit was really
Godfather-style gang boss in modern New Jersey, sees shrink but every now
and then whacks people anyway.  Violent and coarse, and I thought amoral
(which is not the general opinion).

>and I have a vague idea that
> Sex in the City might have been some kind of heterosexual equivalent of
> Queer as Folk.

Recreational sex , shallow successful women in New York, very uninhibited
chat when everyone gets together for brunch (even less of this to convince
it's not for me),

> Would it be fair to say they're more likely to be fans of The Office than
> The Archers, or is that completely off your point?

Yes, in the sense that 'edgy' is taken to be good.

Charles


body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
>  If
> browser-based _filtration_ was possible, as opposed to browser-based
> blocking, I would be all for it.

To describe this as *blocking* of any kind is to misunderstand the process
of rendering a web page.  No blocking of any kind occurs; further requests
for material are simply deferred until the user requests them.  This is a
simple and elegant solution to the filtering problem; the user decides
precisely what he does and does not want to see.


body:
Charles Matthews said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote
>
>
>> Would it be fair to say they're more likely to be fans of The Office
>> than The Archers, or is that completely off your point?
>
> Yes, in the sense that 'edgy' is taken to be good.
>
If your assessment is correct, I'd cautiously suggest that we should let
carry on with our current editorical policy.  Our editors are very much
"edge" people.


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
I just made a wonderful table illustrating grammatical aspects of
Hakka which set it apart from Baihuawen: the existance of dual
pronouns, the trisyllabic nature of dual and plural pronouns, etc.

See the section of
http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Node_ue/Tiong-h%C3%B4a_hong-gi%C3%A2n_g%C3%BA-hoat-cho%CC%8Dah
labelled "kheh-oe"

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 18:03:13 +0800, Alex Y. Kwan <litalex at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Sheng Jiong wrote:
> > I have been called talking "crap". I would appreciate if you can argue
> > using facts and not simply call other people's opinions "crap" too.
>
> I, afaik, have never called your words "crap" and if I have, I
> apologize. What I object to, however, is your constant attempts to
> demean other people's entirely sincere efforts in creating another
> wikipedia. The point I'm trying to bring up isn't if their/our project
> is viable or not, but that your very attitude of disdain implies that
> you entered into this discussion merely to ridicule those of us who wish
> to see our proposal accepted.
>
> > Maybe you can. But has majority of the Hong Kongers start writing
> > Cantonese down?
>
> I don't know; I've never done a poll about it. But if push comes to
> shove, I'd say yes, of course yes. For fun, for short messages, for
> memos, for online BBS, whatever, but yes. You've been asking this
> question repeatedly, and I, along with everyone else, have been giving
> the same answer.
>
> > Well, that I should ask you people. I find myself engaged in a flame
> > war with three persons whose total number of contributions to
> > Wikipedia are less than that of mine alone.
>
> ...You consider this a flame war?! I've been trying to be nothing but
> perfectly polite. You're the one whom I consider...discourteous.
>
> And how'd you know whether your contributions are more or less than
> those of us?
>
> > And remind you, if you have not already known, one of Chinese
> > Wikipedia's founding member, [[User:Lorenzarius]], was from Hong Kong.
> > And he was one of the main opposer of splitting Chinese Wikipedia into
> > Simplified and Traditional version before there was a conversion
> > script. And [[User:Tomchiukc]] is still an active Hong Kong
> > Wikipedian.
>
> That's...not relevant to this particular discussion. Good for them, yay
> Hong Kong.
>
> And I'll refrain myself from any discussion about Traditional vs.
> Simplified Chinese.
>
> > Chinese Wikipedian community is relatively small(if you count active
> > contributors, I think there are less than 100), and to have 2 very
> > active users from Hong Kong is already an achievement, considering the
> > percentage of Chinese users in Hong Kong in comparison with mainland
> > China.
>
> Now you're implying something about HKers that I don't have the time to
> discern. I actually don't find it surprising at all that there are so
> "many" HKers contributing in wikipedia, but to get into the reasons
> would be...rude to the mainland Chinese.
>
> > Because you are showing me exceptions. I am sure your being able to
> > sit here and write means you should be able to understand what is
> > "widely accepted".
>
> Again, just because we're on different sides of an issue doesn't mean
> you need to try to insult your opponents.
>
> little Alex
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] UK Foundation (was Day 1 Fund Drive Report)

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 03:20:07 +0000, Scott Keir <scottkeir at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Given the UK support is about 10% of the total support, has there been
> consideration given to setting up a UK Foundation, to promote Wikimedia
> and raise funds in the UK?

Yes, there has. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/British_Wikimedia_chapter

There is currently an issue about exactly what area the chapter should
cover. British Isles or UK or only England & Wales (since those have a
separate charity law from Scotland etc)

There has been limited interest in the chapter so far. Only ten people
have pledged any interest, despite 86 people being listed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:UK_Wikipedians%27_notice_board

Angela.


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Great article!

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 14:07:48 +0100, Fredrik Johansson
<fredrik.johansson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are there any plans on cooperating with archive.org?

I don't know of any plans to cooperate directly with archive.org, but
archive.org will be hosting the files of ourmedia.org, which will be,
amongst other things, a video repository, when it launches (not sure
when that's happening now), and there has been discussion of how we
could cooperate with them. See
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Collaboration_with_ourmedia

Angela.


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia can never be fully "safe" and also open...

body:
Even if there were total agreement among Wikipedians proper content, so
long as Wikipedia is open to "zero-threshold" editing, it will always
contain a certain among of material that does not belong. The
equilibrium between the rate at which such material is inserted and the
rate at which it is removed guarantees this.

Even if we had a consensus so clear that "obscenity" could be a valid
speedy candidate, removal would still not be _instantaneous._ As things
stand, questionable articles will remain visible for at least five
days--and the very existence of the VfD discussions makes it easy for
anyone who wishes to attack Wikipedia to find them.

No matter what technical mechanism we put into place, tagging an
article as offensive likely to be considered debatable and require
several days to ascertain consensus before the tagging becomes stable.

This doesn't affect the broad questions we've been discussing, but it
does mean that Wikipedia will _always_ be vulnerable to those who wish
to attack it for containing offensive material. The only way to change
this would be to subject every article to _prior_ review before release
into the main namespace.

I think it's pointless to discuss making Wikipedia "safe for
classrooms." Any teacher who lets his or students access Wikipedia will
always be taking some risk with their career. The risk is small, and
that a prudent teacher in the right circumstances might deem it
acceptable, but it will always be there. The risk of a student running
across one of these pages _by accident_ is very small, but in the
fifties my little friends and I were certainly getting _our_ giggles
looking up "rape" and "carnal" and "vagina" in the dictionary, and
discoveries are quickly shared.

In George Orwell's novel, _A Clergyman's Daughter_, a schoolteacher
inadvisedly presents "Macbeth" to her students. They reach the words
"Macduff was from his mother's womb/Untimely ripp'd," and a student
asks the fatal question, "Please, Miss, what does that mean." She
explains "haltingly and incompletely--but she did explain," and the
following evening she is confronted by angry parents who feel "it is a
disgrace that schoolbooks can be printed with such words in them; I'm
sure if any of us had known that Shakespeare had that kind of stuff,
we'd have put our foot down at the start.... If I had my way, no
child--at any rate, no girl--would know anything about the Facts of
Life till she was twenty-one."

Fast forward to Holden Caulfield's tombstone, and Wikipedia.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


body:
Hello,

Sheng Jiong wrote:
> Is Baihuawen not the standard Chinese?

Currently, yes.

> It was created after the May Fourth Movement in 1919,

Was it? I seem to recall many novels and anthologies, etc. written in
something similar before the May Fourth movement. I actually think we
have a similar situation here. In the old days, the standard Chinese was
wenyanwen and baihua was seen as below par and people shouldn't write in
baihua because it's "only a spoken language".

The May Fourth movement changed that. And now...

> You are deliberately associating the concept of "standard Chinese"
> with classic Chinese (Wen Yan), which is actually not the standard
> Chinese today

I was trying to compare the two situations, which to me there are
similarities.

> (for it is neither taugt in schools as a way of writing,
> and neither is it used in most publications).

I can't speak for the situation in mainland China today, but it's
definitely taught, not as a way of writing, no, but I've seen many
people's attempt at writing it and some attempts are good enough to
pass. I think many people, especially the older generations in Hong
Kong, still write with a smattering of wenyanwen.

And I seem to recall something on the news a couple of years ago about a
young man who managed to write an essay completely in wenyanwen in his
university entrance exam or some such.

> there is any school teaching Cantonese is to question if written
> Cantonese has been widely accepted.

And yet as we keep pointing out examples of whether it's widely accepted
or not, you keep dismissing it, even when the evidence is valid.

> one of the most read Hong Kong tabloids. Among the six headlines in
> their main page, only one uses Cantonese characters;

It's a weekly magazine, I don't know if the headlines I read are the
same as those you've read, but I'd say that more than one uses Cantonese
characters and the sentence structure/grammar for all of them are in
fact Cantonese.

> and if you read
> the articles, all of them are written in baihuawen (if you prefer
> using this term and purposely confusing it with classic Chinese).

I don't think anyone is confusing baihuawen with Classical Chinese...

> 1)Not even Cantonese native speakers can understand an article
> entirely written in Cantonese written language, if it concerns
> encyclopediac topics;

I think I understood the examples Felix provided just fine, thank you
very much. Mind you, my Chinese education ended at Primary 5. So if I
can understand it, it's pretty understandable. And as the article is
written by a mainland Chinese, I assume there are at least some mainland
Chinese people who can understand an article written completely in
Cantonese.

> 2)Few people have written in Cantonese;

And both Cathy and I have said that we and many Hong Kong people do
write often in Cantonese. For short messages, granted, but for the
purpose of this experiment, I think it counts. Then again, who knows
what's your definition of "few people".

> 3)Wikipedia should not advocate the use of Cantonese written language.
> Instead we should only allow it when it has already been accepted by
> the society.

So says the person who keeps insisting that Cantonese can't even be written.

> But as I have
> suggested both Mandarin and Cantonese are just spoken languages, but
> when it comes to writing everyboy today in China, Hong Kong or Macau
> uses the same written language: Baihuawen.

And baihuawen is based on Mandarin grammar, syntax, etc. So essentially
baihuawen *is* Mandarin.

little Alex


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:55:04 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are we only getting comments in English? That doesn't seem right,
> considering how much of our donations were in Euros and Yen.
>
> Does PayPal not accept any other currencies? Or are the numbers just
> too insignificant to include?
>
> Mark

If you would glance at the detail page
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_2), you
would see that there are numerous non-English comments as well as
various currencies. Everything is converted to U.S. dollars, Paypal
and the Foundation being based in the U.S. and whatnot.

--Slowking Man


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: mailing list floods --> can't we have a wiki
	with E-mail notification ?

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 14:59:53 +0100, Thomas Gries <mail at tgries.de> wrote:
> >but for me it's significantly harder to receive every message as a notice in my inbox
> >
> _One_ email notification is sent once the page, you are watching, is
> changed by someone else than you. Further changes do not trigger.

I think Kate's point was not about how many notifications, but about
the difference between being notified that a change has been made, and
actually reading the message directly. Using a mailing-list
subscription, or a newsgroup viewer, there are 2 steps to reading the
message:
1) pick the conversation you want to read (by its subject)
2) read the messages therein
With a mail-notifying discussion forum *of any kind*, there are 3:
1) pick the conversation
2) follow the link in the notification
3) read the message
This would make it significantly *harder* to "browse" a large number
of discussions, because you would be constantly switching between
mail-client and browser, and you would be less able to use additional
features of your client to deal with the discussions in ways that
suited you personally.

What's more, the "receive one notif and then no more" feature is
actually something of a *disadvantage*, because (if I understand
rightly) it removes the behaviour common on traditional threaded
environments of new posts "bumping" a thread, even if it is a reply to
something that happened a long time ago. If you go away, don't check
the notifications, and come back, you will not know which are still
active.

Please don't think I'm criticising your work on eNotif *in general*,
but with the general consensus being that discussions on MediaWiki
leave something to be desired anyway, I don't see that just having
this one enhancement suddenly makes them better than longer
established mediums *for the same purpose*.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject:
[Wikitech-l] mailing list floods --> can't we have a wiki with
	E-mail notification ?

body:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 12:31:35 +0000, Tomer Chachamu <the.r3m0t at gmail.com> wrote:
> ... since gmail doesn't thread conversations, it would even be
> easier to read.

So don't use GMail! Either, as Kate suggests, find a usenet client,
and point it at the appropriate gmane group[s], or use a mail client
that supports fully threaded discussions - Mozilla, for instance (and
therefore, I presume, Thunderbird, which I haven't used) can switch
any mailbox into a collapsible tree [think Windows explorer] thread
view at the click of a button. And with GMail now offering POP access
[1], you don't even need a different account to direct your
subscriptions to!

While I (obviously) think Wikis are great, and MediaWiki in particular
has some great functions, threaded discussion is *not* something to
which they are well adapted.

[1] See http://gmail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=gmail&answer=12103

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Sheng Jiong

body:
> I would appreciate it if you can argue using facts and not simply call
> other people's proposals trash. It's highly disrespectful.

I have been called talking "crap". I would appreciate if you can argue
using facts and not simply call other people's opinions "crap" too.

> The HK government has a page explaining and giving links to a code that
> has all the Cantonese/Hong Kong-specific characters that the standard
> Big5 code might not have. I don't know what is formalising if this isn't.
>
> Here, you can see for yourself:
> http://www.info.gov.hk/digital21/chi/structure/cli_main.html

> All languages can be written down in one way or another, if the language
> speakers want to.

Maybe you can. But has majority of the Hong Kongers start writing
Cantonese down?

> And there's no evidence that most Cantonese speakers would object such a
>   proposal. The three Cantonese speakers who had said anything here are
> Felix, Cathy, and I. I doubt we three are the only Cantonese speakers on
> this list or on zh.wikipedia.org.

Well, that I should ask you people. I find myself engaged in a flame
war with three persons whose total number of contributions to
Wikipedia are less than that of mine alone.

And remind you, if you have not already known, one of Chinese
Wikipedia's founding member, [[User:Lorenzarius]], was from Hong Kong.
And he was one of the main opposer of splitting Chinese Wikipedia into
Simplified and Traditional version before there was a conversion
script. And [[User:Tomchiukc]] is still an active Hong Kong
Wikipedian.

Chinese Wikipedian community is relatively small(if you count active
contributors, I think there are less than 100), and to have 2 very
active users from Hong Kong is already an achievement, considering the
percentage of Chinese users in Hong Kong in comparison with mainland
China.

> I'm now beginning to think that showing you the evidence when we find it
> is pointless, since you seem to be holding onto your stance based on
> emotions rather than facts. Any time Felix or I try (tries?) to show you
> something, your reply is the same: oh, that doesn't count, that's just
> an exception.

Because you are showing me exceptions. I am sure your being able to
sit here and write means you should be able to understand what is
"widely accepted".

formulax


body:
> http://trading-edge.tripod.com/cgi-bin/Tsoi/u_diary.cgi
>
> I think this is the best example of something in a serious paper written
> with Cantonese. Cho Yan Chiu (sp?) is the managing editor (I think) of
> the Hong Kong Economic Journal, one of the most respected newspapers in
> Hong Kong. It's a "quirk" of his to write in Cantonese when he wants to
> make a point. But what it does say is that you can definitely write
> about serious subjects in Cantonese.

You call that writing in Cantonese? Apart from replacing ? with ? and
some other small substitutions there is really not much difference
from baihuawen. I do not know Cantonese at all, but I can still easily
understand him.

> > No guidelines have been introduced or widely accepted by the general
> > public on writing in Cantonese language.
>
> I would discourage anyone to make such wide-swept statements without any
> substantial proof.

If this statement is sweeping, then it should be easy to prove me wrong.

> > All Hong Kong students(except those who choose to learn English as
> > their first language) learn to write in the standard Chinese in
> > schools.
>
> And you suddenly become the expert in the HK education system...when?

Can you deny it?

And I do think it would be helpful if instead of argueing so much on a
mailing list, you would really do something about your
[[Test-WP/zh-yue]]. I don't see much edits there, nor many
contributors. Stubs remain stubs after several weeks, and no longer
essays written.

formulax


body:
> Sheng Jiong wrote:
> > Yes, I know that Cantonese has slight differences in the order of
> > words compared with Mandarin.
>
> That's like saying English has slight differences in the order of words
> compared with Latin. That's part of the grammatical difference. It *is*
> a different sentence structure.

Yes, but as I have said, Singlish has much bigger grammatical
difference with standard English, compared with Cantonese and
baihuawen. Shall we have a Singlish Wikipedia?

> > But again you are mixing Mandarin with Baihuawen.
>
> Baihuawen is more or less the Mandarin vernacular, the grammar, the
> syntax, sentence structure, etc. are based on the Mandarin vernacular.

Yes, but Hong Kong still accepts it, don't they?

> > Hong Kongers speak only Cantonese, but they write in
> > Baihuawen.
>
> a) Many HKers also speak a smattering of Mandarin (and English) and we
> *do* write in Cantonese for memos and for online BBS, etc. The common is
> practice is use baihuawen for serious/complicated articles, but that's
> because it was considered proper. Just because it's a long-held
> tradition doesn't mean it's inherently right.

Same thing with Singlish. People love using Singlish in BBS, but you
get an immediate F if you write your thesis in Singlish. So should we
have a Singlish Wikipedia?

> > English (Take Singapore English as a best example: "Would you be able
> > to attend?" in English would become "You can go or not?" in Singlish.
> > Totally different grammar, but is Singlish a written language? No. It
> > is still a dialect in English).
>
> I doubt "Singlish" and English is the best analogy.

Why? What makes Cantonese or Singlish suddenly so special?

formulax


body:
> You are squarely wrong about Singlish. It is not a dialect of English,
> it is an English-based creole. The difference between the way you
> write that sentence and the way I write it is this: I write it "yu kan
> go o no'" but you write it "You can go or not?", this is because you
> use an English-based orthography that doesn't reflect extreme phonetic
> differences

Everybody speaks English differently. Should we all "reflect extreme
phonetic differences" rather than using proper spellings?

> I wouldn't support a Wikipedia for colloquial English because it is
> the exact same language as written English. A Wikipedia for Scots or
> AAVE or Singlish, I would support, but just normal colloquial English,
> I would not. Nor would I support separate Wikipedias for Mandarin and
> Baihuawen - they are one and the same.

So now we have a person supporting Singlish Wikipedia. I think
Wikipedia will soon grow into an encyclopedia with 1 million
languages, rather than articles.

And anyway you cannot split between Mandarin and Baihuawen: one is
spoken, one is written, how do you split?

> > > Also there is much differences in Shanghainese too, if you want I can
> > > maybe type some examples later.
> >
> > Pray show me something I have never learnt about my own mother tongue.
>
> I have a story to tell you Mr Sheng Jiong. Sit back and read please.
>
> ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
>
> The moral of the story is that nobody likes the sun and nobody likes
> the north wind either. But they both like to write in colloquial Wu.
> Very much.
>

You are just using "extreme phonetic differences" to express. If it is
written in baihuawen, Shanghainese can still understand and read out
in Shanghainese.

So now I begin to realise the difference between you and me: you think
there is a need to set up Wikipedias to "reflect extreme phonetic
differences" between a standard language and a not so standard spoken
language. But I want just to have 1 Wikipedia in the standard
language, and let the reader to read it in any different ways they
want. To me that is the most sensible thing to do because everybody
else do this: after all we created language to communicate, not to
"reflect extreme phonetic differences".

formulax


subject: [WikiEN-l] ISPs are private when logged in? Good idea

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 09:28:01 -0800 (PST), Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> If I understood a previous recent letter here, then Admins
> and Sysops cannot find out a user's ISP when they are
> logged in.  Is this correct?

Replace "ISP" ("Internet Service Provider") with "IP" (short for "IP
address", the unique identifier every computer gives out during all
sorts of requests online) and yes, this is correct. It is one of the
benefits listed on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account?

As noted there and, more expansively, at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Draft_privacy_policy (see the sections
headed "Identification of an author" and "Private logging"), your IP
address is still recorded for a short period *as it is by almost any
web-site you visit*, and in particular circumstances may be retrieved
by developers, but it is most definitely *not* available through the
wiki software itself, even if the user has "sysop" (aka "admin")
privileges.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
Are we only getting comments in English? That doesn't seem right,
considering how much of our donations were in Euros and Yen.

Does PayPal not accept any other currencies? Or are the numbers just
too insignificant to include?

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 14:28:50 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Day 2 (Saturday eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not available in
> UTC) we made $9257.65 (USD equivalent) through PayPal (no updates available for
> other sources at this time).
>
> Day 2                       Day 1 comparison
> Breakdown:
>                USD equiv    USD equiv  %change
> PayPal
> AUD    326.13   256.80       247.27    + 3.85
> CAD    211.78   172.00       271.58    -36.67
> EUR   2354.98  3080.02      4464.75    -31.01
> GBP    454.36   860.37       899.77    - 4.38
> JPY  27182      257.80       269.00    - 4.16
> USD   4888.47  4888.47      3424.63    +42.74
>                9257.65      9576.78    - 3.33
>
> MoneyBookers
>                no data      362.69    -100
> ----------------------------------------------
> Total          9257.65    9,939.47    -6.86
>
> For the most recent grand total and other details visit
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1
>
> Some selected comments from Day 2:
> See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_2
>
> "A wonderful resource, which has already become the Amazon of online
> encyclopedias!" by Anonymous
>
> "Wikipedia is what the internet was meant for: The building of a great
> information network" by Industrial Hypertext
>
> "For one of the most exciting enterprises of mankind!" by Renato Cintra
>
> "Wikipedia is my favorite site and an extreme benefit to the world" by Seth
> Weisberg
>
> "Wikimedia captures the true spirit of the Internet, and is priceless for
> that." by Michael Herring
>
> "Probably the most useful website in the world (and proof that wiki's work).
> Well done!" by Mr D A Whiting
>
> "Continue doing your great work, I use wikipedia as much as google" by
> MetaFilter
>
> "This model of information transfer will change humanity." by Anonymous
>
> "What can I say? I owe half of what I know to the Wikipedia! Keep up the good
> work." by Jonathan Grose
>
> Some of my favorites:
>
> "Wikipedia is dangerous. It is free, it is fair, it is informative, it is fun.
> Nothing beats it. Nothing even comes close." by Christopher Hutten-Czapski
>
> "much much less annoying than an NPR fundraising drive, which just makes me
> reach for a blank check to stuff into my ears" by Anonymous
>
> "Because knowledge may be free, but servers are not." by Anonymous
>
> "Free knowledge is even better than free porn." by Steve Guy
>
> "What did we do before Wiki?" by Anonymous
>
> Daniel Mayer,
> Wikimedia CFO
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
> > It was created after the May Fourth Movement in 1919,
>
> Was it? I seem to recall many novels and anthologies, etc. written in
> something similar before the May Fourth movement. I actually think we
> have a similar situation here. In the old days, the standard Chinese was
> wenyanwen and baihua was seen as below par and people shouldn't write in
> baihua because it's "only a spoken language".
>
> The May Fourth movement changed that. And now...

And now you should start another movement and let the public accept it
before coming to ask for a Cantonese Wikipedia.

> I can't speak for the situation in mainland China today, but it's
> definitely taught, not as a way of writing, no, but I've seen many
> people's attempt at writing it and some attempts are good enough to
> pass. I think many people, especially the older generations in Hong
> Kong, still write with a smattering of wenyanwen.
>
> And I seem to recall something on the news a couple of years ago about a
> young man who managed to write an essay completely in wenyanwen in his
> university entrance exam or some such.

Yes, there was. But majority of the population know only how to read
some wenyanwen, but not write.

> It's a weekly magazine, I don't know if the headlines I read are the
> same as those you've read, but I'd say that more than one uses Cantonese
> characters and the sentence structure/grammar for all of them are in
> fact Cantonese.

If that is the case, that means the difference is to subtle to tell.
And if so, there would be no need to have a separate Wikipedia.

> > 1)Not even Cantonese native speakers can understand an article
> > entirely written in Cantonese written language, if it concerns
> > encyclopediac topics;
>
> I think I understood the examples Felix provided just fine, thank you
> very much. Mind you, my Chinese education ended at Primary 5. So if I
> can understand it, it's pretty understandable. And as the article is
> written by a mainland Chinese, I assume there are at least some mainland
> Chinese people who can understand an article written completely in
> Cantonese.

His examples are just stubs. And in fact I can read it as well. But
how about longer articles? Articles concerning obscure terms? There
are only two possible solutions: 1) do not translate these terms into
Cantonese, which makes a Cantonese Wikipedia a repetition of Chinese
Wikipedia, or 2) translate, and no one understands.

> > 3)Wikipedia should not advocate the use of Cantonese written language.
> > Instead we should only allow it when it has already been accepted by
> > the society.
>
> So says the person who keeps insisting that Cantonese can't even be written.
>
> > But as I have
> > suggested both Mandarin and Cantonese are just spoken languages, but
> > when it comes to writing everyboy today in China, Hong Kong or Macau
> > uses the same written language: Baihuawen.
>
> And baihuawen is based on Mandarin grammar, syntax, etc. So essentially
> baihuawen *is* Mandarin.

Whatever it is, it is written. Cantonese is not.

formulax


body:
Hello,

Sheng Jiong wrote:
> I have been called talking "crap". I would appreciate if you can argue
> using facts and not simply call other people's opinions "crap" too.

I, afaik, have never called your words "crap" and if I have, I
apologize. What I object to, however, is your constant attempts to
demean other people's entirely sincere efforts in creating another
wikipedia. The point I'm trying to bring up isn't if their/our project
is viable or not, but that your very attitude of disdain implies that
you entered into this discussion merely to ridicule those of us who wish
to see our proposal accepted.

> Maybe you can. But has majority of the Hong Kongers start writing
> Cantonese down?

I don't know; I've never done a poll about it. But if push comes to
shove, I'd say yes, of course yes. For fun, for short messages, for
memos, for online BBS, whatever, but yes. You've been asking this
question repeatedly, and I, along with everyone else, have been giving
the same answer.

> Well, that I should ask you people. I find myself engaged in a flame
> war with three persons whose total number of contributions to
> Wikipedia are less than that of mine alone.

...You consider this a flame war?! I've been trying to be nothing but
perfectly polite. You're the one whom I consider...discourteous.

And how'd you know whether your contributions are more or less than
those of us?

> And remind you, if you have not already known, one of Chinese
> Wikipedia's founding member, [[User:Lorenzarius]], was from Hong Kong.
> And he was one of the main opposer of splitting Chinese Wikipedia into
> Simplified and Traditional version before there was a conversion
> script. And [[User:Tomchiukc]] is still an active Hong Kong
> Wikipedian.

That's...not relevant to this particular discussion. Good for them, yay
Hong Kong.

And I'll refrain myself from any discussion about Traditional vs.
Simplified Chinese.

> Chinese Wikipedian community is relatively small(if you count active
> contributors, I think there are less than 100), and to have 2 very
> active users from Hong Kong is already an achievement, considering the
> percentage of Chinese users in Hong Kong in comparison with mainland
> China.

Now you're implying something about HKers that I don't have the time to
discern. I actually don't find it surprising at all that there are so
"many" HKers contributing in wikipedia, but to get into the reasons
would be...rude to the mainland Chinese.

> Because you are showing me exceptions. I am sure your being able to
> sit here and write means you should be able to understand what is
> "widely accepted".

Again, just because we're on different sides of an issue doesn't mean
you need to try to insult your opponents.

little Alex


subject: [Wikitech-l] I need to defeat the cache

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 12:43:58 -0500, Sebastien BARRE
<sebastien.barre at kitware.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> In my extension callback, I tried the following code:
>    $wgOut->addMeta("http:Pragma", "no-cache");
>    $wgOut->addMeta("http:no-cache", NULL);
>    $wgOut->addMeta("http:EXPIRES", "TUES, 31 DEC 1996 12:00:00 GMT");

The problem is (possibly) that there are multiple levels of caching
within MediaWiki, some of which are completely independent of the HTTP
dialogue with the browser. Don't ask me what they all are, or how they
do work, but I gather that they are many and complex. :)

See also another recent thread on the same topic:
* http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-February/thread.html#3609
(particularly http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-February/003632.html
and http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-February/003635.html)

Basically, MediaWiki is designed for dynamic editting of static
content; for static editting of dynamic content, you need a different
tool.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: John R. Owens

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandal on the loose on Wikispecies

body:
This isn't the right list for it, I know, but I only just found
Wikispecies and started exploring it, and found that almost all the
first page of its Recent Changes is vandalism replacing or creating
pages with crude ASCII "art" and remarks about mooning. I could go
through and replace them all manually, but if anyone on this list can do
the easy reversions there, that'd be much simpler.
Meanwhile, I'll go looking to see if there's a proper wikispecies-l or
whatever.
http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges

--
John R. Owens


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why
	Wikipedia	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
John Lee said:
>>
> Isn't it kind of obvious? I'd place appropriately resized screencaps of
>  both sites, and caption the Goatse one "Goatse is one of the most
> commonly used shock site on the internet" and the Tubgirl one "Although
>  not as commonly used as Goatse, Tubgirl is also used on a regular
> basis  to shock unsuspecting users".

Size is important.  A postage stamp picture of Tubgirl or Goatse would
not, in my opinion, be likely to shock many people, but it would give them
an idea of what to expect if they clicked to see the picture full-sized.
> Not all people would care
> to have  to click a few times every time they visit a webpage just to
> view its  images.

This only applies to those pages where you choose to suppress image
downloads.


from_name: Robert

subject:
[WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for everyone to
	edit Wikipedia

body:
Rich Holton writes:
> It seems to me that there are two separate but related
issues
> at hand:
> 1. Banning uses who make threats; and
> 2. Banning users due to their professed beliefs or
associations.
>
> For me, the first is beyond question. We even ban users
for
> making legal threats. If someone makes a threat to
health,
> life, family, safety, or even to privacy, that user
should
> be dealt with swiftly and emphatically. Such behavior has
no
> place on Wikipedia.

I am in complete agreement.

> However, the second is also beyond question -- in the
> negative. There is no way to reconcile such banning of
> contributors by POV with Wikipedia's mission and culture.
> How would we be able to claim NPOV when certain groups
> are not allowed to participate?.

In general, I agree. For most people, in most groups, this
would be true.   Yet some people are members of groups
whose goal is that which you described in issue 1 - part of
their goal is to make such threats!  If someone is a member
of an organization whose very goal is to make threats - and
eventually carry them out - then (in these cases) wouldn't
we be obligated to ban such users?

How can we say that it is wrong to make threats, let alone
harm people - but then allow Wikipedia to be used as a
forum to help strengthen Nazis and other groups who do make
threats as policy, and who do carry out violent acts?

There is no God-given right to use a Wiki or work on an
encyclopedia.  We have a rather open-minded editorial
policy, and it does not constitute censorship.  Thus, we
should not allow "contributors" whose admitted endgoal is
to intimidate, or to incite violence.  If we scare away the
blacks, the Jews, the gays and the Catholics by opening up
this encyclopedia to violent hate groups, then what are we
left with?  We will end up limiting the free speech of the
many other people who will certainly be driven away, and we
will be damaging our own reputation for no good reason.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Zoney wrote:
> No we don't give expression to all significant views. We write about

Yes, we do. It's _exactly_ what we do.

Please consult a dictionary.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Express

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=express


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
*clears throat*

What I meant is, although undoubtedly they do exist, why are they
excluded from the daily brief reports? Especially since the content of
some should be fairly obvious to a monolingual English speaker.

And I know there are currencies other than USD. What I meant is, are
there currencies other than USD, JPY, EUR, and CAN? If not, why?
Having CAN among the four seems a bit strange to me if not
Anglocentric - we have two for primarily English-speaking countries,
but none for example for Chinese-speaking countries (ie, Yuan
Renminbi, Singapore dollar, New Taiwanese Dollar, Malaysia dollar,
etc), given that zh.wikipedia is currently the fastest-growing on the
growth curve of all the larger Wikipedias (ie, it may be growing
slower than en and de currently are, but it is growing faster than
they were when they were at a similar period) and has 20k articles
(most of the other top Wikipedias are languages spoken primarily in
Euro countries)

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:01:51 -0800, Christopher Larberg
<christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:55:04 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Are we only getting comments in English? That doesn't seem right,
> > considering how much of our donations were in Euros and Yen.
> >
> > Does PayPal not accept any other currencies? Or are the numbers just
> > too insignificant to include?
> >
> > Mark
>
> If you would glance at the detail page
> (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_2), you
> would see that there are numerous non-English comments as well as
> various currencies. Everything is converted to U.S. dollars, Paypal
> and the Foundation being based in the U.S. and whatnot.
>
> --Slowking Man
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Yann Forget

subject:
[Foundation-l] WSIS: Summary report. Week 1/informe semana
	1/rapport semaine 1

body:
Hi,

Here is the summary report from the first week of the World Summit on
Information Society meeting in Geneva.
Divina Frau-Meigs was very helpful adding our concerns in this report.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Education_and_WGIG.pdf

Comments welcome.

Regards,
Yann
----------  Message transmis  ----------

Subject: Summary report. Week 1/informe semana 1/rapport semaine 1
Date: Sunday 20 February 2005 18:31

Text in three languages/texte en trois langues/texto en tres idiomas

Dear members of the list

General comments :
As I foresaw, the first week of prepcom 2 was rather hectic, and scattered.
The bureau (in which education holds a seat, that i share with Francis
Muguet for reasons of efficiency) is still plodding along to find its
legitimacy and you should see on the plenary list some of the
recommendations for the charter that we are elaborating (about membership,
role, responsibilities and duties). The content and themes group meets
everyday in the late afternoon to discuss the topics and texts of the
interventions in plenary. The education family should have a slot next week,
towards the end. I plan to insert the main themes of our response to the ?
friends of the president ?, with an emphasis on funding mechanisms and
post-tunis follow up.

A quick evaluation of the situation for education :
            -thank you for the text that you have helped elaborate. It has
been well received by most of you who have sent positive responses, and
added some details which i will integrate in the next version. The problem
remains one of language translation and we should endeavour to have at least
a French and  spanish version soon. The text  has been well received by the
other civil society caucuses and by the official delegations i have
submitted it to. It turns out that the long version is not a bad thing at
all : people are not all experts and they appreciate to have a rationale,
before being given recommendations. At this point, the way i summarize the
rationale is : ? education for shared knowledge societies and via open
access ? ; the plan of action is : ? for a change of scales ?. the long
version has allowed delegations to position themselves on specific points
they want to defend or support, as they are having to make priorities. So
the Tunisians are supporting the free software idea, as they have designated
a free software secretariat ; the  Europeans are expressing strong interest
in the open access recommendation idea ; unesco wants to follow up on
teacher training and digital literacy. This is the feedback so far.

For next week :
The document is not yet perfect. I am currently adding, with those present
on the spot, a new item, at the end of the political chapeau, about rights,
especially an exemption to Intellectual Property rights for education. The
European union has it already as a directive but most countries are
pretending they don?t know what it is?.
More to the point of prepcom 2, we need to finalize the input on finance
mechanisms and internet governance. We will be meeting with the finance
mechanisms caucus several times during the week to get their knowledgeable
input and to be coherent with civil society positions at large. Same thing
for internet governance, though it is a theme that will be deepened as the
main subject of prepcom 3, which gives us a little bit more time to make our
ideas concrete. A finalized version of the text should reach you by the end
of the week, to be still worked on and possibly translated in at least the 6
UN languages. This should be finalized by mid-march so that you can all
appropriate it.

For next month :
-once the text is finalized,   each and all of us should  distribute it to
our governement delegations, as a means of lobbying ;
-once the text is finalized, each and all of us should use it as ? language
? in whatever venue we are invited to talk and to participate? Bernard Loing
is also preparing a shorter version, on two pages, to serve as a leaftlet to
distribute in  the name of the taskforce.

for prepcom 3 :
Organize a roundtable, around one of our issues, maybe around the idea of
open access in education, or around media and ICT literacy?

On the homework for all those of you who are away, besides the input you can
give us it would be strategically important to create two annexes : one with
? inspiring examples ?, one of ? suggested or planned events ?. This is for
you to let other know what you are doing or suggest the taskforce to do.
Feel free of course to keep on providing feedback and reactions to the
version that you have now?

Also for your information, some  deadlines :
            Proposals for side events, to be channelled to the Tunisian
liaison people, are received until end of April, at the latest ;
            WGIG open input, for mid April, and again some time in May.
Please look at the 3 page document I am putting as annex (at the very bottom
of this message): it is the current state of the WGIG document on education,
that seems to have been open by an unknown member of the WGIG group. You
will see it is very incomplete. We should complete it as much as we can and
offer it for consideration to the taskforce. They are asking for input and
there is no deadline. I would like us to have a deadline, by end of March,
once we have our own response to the president?s friends finalized. What do
you think ?

Best
Divina Frau-Meigs
Co-ordinator, education, academia and research taskforce

ANNEX below, three pages : WGIG file on education and capacity building. To
be completed by us?
********************
chers membres de la liste :
commentaires g?n?raux :
Comme je l?avais pr?vu, la premi?re semaine de la prepcom 2 a ?t? plut?t
bouscul?e et tr?s ?parpill?e. Le bureau (dans lequel la famille ?ducation a
un si?ge, que je partage avec Francis Muguet pour des raisons d?efficacit?)
est encore ? la recherche de sa propre l?gitim?. Vous  avez du voir passer
dans la liste de pl?ni?re certaines des recommandations de fonctionnement
pour la charte que nous sommes en train d??laborer (sur les membres, le r?le
du bureau, ses responsabilit?s, ses devoirs). Le groupe des Th?mes et
contenus qui ?labore les textes de la soci?t? civile se r?unit chaque
apr?s-midi pour discuter des sujets et des textes ? proposer en pl?ni?re. La
famille ?ducation devrait avoir un cr?neau pour la semaine prochaine, jeudi
ou vendredi. Je pense que nous y ins?rerons les r?ponses principales que
nous avons faites aux ? amis du pr?sident ? avec une focalisation sur les
m?canismes de financement et le suivi de Tunis.

Une rapide ?valuation de la situation pour l??ducation :
Merci ? tous pour vos contributions au texte que nous avons pu ?laborer. La
plupart d?entre vous m?ont fait un commentaire positif, en ajoutant quelques
points de d?tail que je vais int?grer. Il y a cependant le probl?me de la
langue de travail et le besoin d?une traduction au moins en fran?ais et en
espagnol?. Le texte a ?t? tr?s bien re?u par les autres groupes de travail
de la soci?t? civile et par les d?l?gations officielles auxquelles je l?ai
soumis. Il s?av?re que d?avoir une version longue n?est pas une mauvaise
chose : les participants m?me c?t? ?tats ne sont pas des experts, et ils
appr?cient d?avoir un argumentaire, avant de consid?rer les recommandations.
A cette ?tape, je r?sume souvent notre argumentaire par le motto : ?
?ducation pour les soci?t?s du savoir partag?, par le biais de l?acc?s
ouvert ?, et le plan d?action par ? pour un changement d??chelles ?. La
version longue permet aux d?l?gations de se positionner par rapport ? des
th?mes sp?cifiques qu?elles ont envie de d?fendre, car la plupart des ?tats
doivent choisir des priorit?s. Ainsi les tunisiens sont pr?ts ? soutenir
l?id?e du logiciel libre, et ils ont d?sign? un ministre d?l?gu? au logiciel
libre ; les Europ?ens ont exprim? leur int?r?t pour la recommandation sur
les cours en acc?s ouvert ; l?Unesco veut faire le suivi de la formation des
ma?tres et de l??ducation aux m?dias et aux TIC. Voil? le retour pour le
moment?

 Pour la semaine prochaine :
Le document ? r?ponse aux amis du pr?sident ? n?est pas parfait, et c?est
celui sur lequel travaillent aussi les ?tats. Je suis en train de rajouter
un item suppl?mentaire, ? la fin du chapeau politique (avec ses
recommandations d?action en partie op?rationnelle), concernant les droits et
sp?cialement la cr?ation d?une exemption aux droits d?auteur pour
l??ducation. L?Union  europ?enne a d?j? une directive en ce sens, mais la
plupart des pays se font tirer l?oreille?
Pour coller davantage ? la prepcom 2, qui se focalise sur les m?canismes de
financement, il faut concr?tiser la section sur les m?canismes de
financement, sans n?gliger la gouvernance d?internet. Nous allons rencontrer
? plusieurs reprises le groupe de travail sur les m?canismes de financement
pendant la semaine, pour recevoir leurs remarques et int?grer leur point de
vue, afin de rester en coh?rence avec  les positions g?n?rales de la soci?t?
civile. De m?me avec la gouvernance d?internet, bien que ce soit un th?me
qui sera vraiment d?battu en prepcom 3, ce qui nous laisse un peu de temps
pour r?fl?chir. Donc une version finalis?e de ce texte devrait vous arriver
pour la fin de la semaine, que nous pourrons continuer ? ?laborer, et faire
traduire dans les six langues de l?ONU si possible. Ce texte devrait ?tre
finalis? vers la mi-mars, pour que vous puissiez tous vous l?approprier.

Pour le mois prochain:
            -une fois le texte finalis?, nous devrions tous les uns et les
autres le faire parvenir ? nos d?l?gations nationales et aux ambassadeurs
mandat?s au SMSI, comme une fa?on de faire du lobbying ;
            -une fois le texte finalis?, nous devrions tous utiliser son ?
langage ? dans les diff?rentes occasions et ?v?nements o? nous pouvons avoir
la possibilit? de nous exprimer. Bernard Loing est en train de pr?parer une
version courte, en recto verso, pour nous servir de brochure ? distribuer au
nom de la coalition.

Pour la prepcom 3 :
Il faudrait consid?rer la possiblit? d?organiser une table-ronde, avec des
personnalit?s, autour d?un de nos probl?mes principaux, peut-?tre l?id?e de
l?acc?s ouvert pour l??ducation, ou encore l??ducation aux m?dias et aux
NTIC?  Des suggestions ?

Pour ce qui est des devoirs ? la maison que tous ceux qui ne peuvent ?tre
pr?sents ? Gen?ve, ? part les remarques que vous pouvez nous donner sur le
texte, ce serait strat?giquement important de cr?er Deux annexes ? notre
texte : l?une sur les ? exemples ?difiants ? l?autre pour les ? ?v?nements
planifi?s ou sugg?r?s ?. cela nous permettrait de savoir ce que vous faites
ou ce que vous voudriez que la coalition fasse,  d?ici ? Tunis (Tunis y
inclus).  N?h?sitez donc pas ? nous faire part de vos r?actions et
suggestions.

Pour votre information, quelques dates limites :
            -les propositions pour les ?v?nements parall?les ? Tunis sont ?
faire passer par le personnel de liaison Tunisien, avant la fin avril.
            -le Groupe sur la gouvernance d?internet (WGIG) tiendra encore
des r?unions ouvertes ? Gen?ve en avril et en mai. Veuillez regarder les 3
pages que je vous envoie en annexe (? la fin de ce message) : il s?agit d?un
fichier qui est actuellement parmi les documents produits par le groupe.
Vous verrez qu?il est vide ou du moins tr?s incomplet. Je vous propose de le
compl?ter et de le soumettre au WGIG comme notre contribution. Il n?y a pas
de date limite, mais pour nous je dirais qu?il faudrait le leur envoyer fin
mars, apr?s avoir finalis? notre propre document. Qu?en pensez-vous ?

avec mes cordiales salutations
Divina Frau-Meigs
Co-ordinatrice, famille ?ducation, enseignement sup?rieur et recherche

PS : en annexe et seulement en anglais, le texte mentionn? concernant le
WGIG.
*********************************************
Estimados miembros de la lista educacion
Comentarios generales

Como se debia de esperar, la primera semana de la prepcom 2 fue bastante
precipitada y la gente bastante dispersada, con personas llegando por
primera vez, otra solo quedandose unos cuantos dias?  El buro de la sociedad
civil (en el que la familia educacion tiene una posicion, que comparto con
Francis Muguet, por razones de eficacia) todavia este en busqueda de su
legitimidad. Habeis visto pasar en la lista de plenaria algunas de la
recomendaciones que se proponen para una carta que estamos elaborando
(miembros, papel, responsabilidades y deberes del buro). El grupo de temas y
contenidos se reune cada tarde , para elaborar los textos que la sociedad
civil propone en la plenaria. La familia educacion tiene un tiempo de
palabra para la semana que viene, el jueves o el viernes. Pienso que
pondremos nuestras respuestas principales al texto que hemos escrito para
los amigos del presidente, con una focalizacion sobre los mecanismos de
financiamiento y la continuacion despues de Tunes.

Una rapida evaluacion de la situacion para la educacion :
Muchas gracias a todos por sus contribuciones al texto que hemos podido
elaborar. La mayoria me ha dado comentarios positivos, con ciertos detalles
suplementarios que voy a integrar en la nueva version. Hay un problema de
idioma y la necessidad de traduccion en espanol y frances que una persona ha
planteado y por el que les pido ayuda. .. el texto como esta ahora ha sido
bien recibido por los otros grupos de trabajo de la sociedad civil y
tarmbien por la delegaciones oficiales  que lo han visto. Tener una version
larga no es tan pesado como se hubiera podido pensar : la mayoria de la
gente presente, por parte de los estados, o es nueva en la cumbre o no es
especialista y entonces aprecian tener un argumentario, que les ayuda
entender nuestras recomendaciones. Por el momento, cuando sumo nuestro
argumentario digo ? educacion para sociedades del saber compartido por el
medio del acceso abierto ? y para el plan de accion ? la necessidad de un
cambio de escala ?. Esta version larga les permite a las delegaciones
positionarse sobre temas especificos, ya que los estados se estan dando
prioridades. Asi que los tunisianos apoyna la idea del free software, ya que
han creado un secretariado sobre este mismo tema ; la union europea ha
expressado interes por la recomendacion sobre los cursos en acceso abierto ;
la unesco quiere enfocarse con nosotros sobre la formacion de los maestros y
la educacion a los medios? mas la semana que viene sobre estos asuntos?

Para la proxima semana :
El documento de respuesta a los amigos del presidente tiene que ser
perfectionado, ya que los estados lo utilisan como base de trabajo. Estoy
anadiendo un tema suplementario, al fin del ? political chapeau ?, (con las
recomendaciones adecuadas en la parte ? operational ?), que trata de la
creacion de una exempcion especial para educacion por lo que toca a la
propriedad intellectual. La union europea ya tiene una directiva en este
sentido pero muchos estados arrastran los pies ? para responder mas al
enfoque de la prepcom 2, que es los mecanismos de financiacion, vamos a
vernos varias veces la semana que viene con el grupo tematico sobre los
mecanismos de financiacion, sin abandonar el tema de la governancia del
internet. Vamos a integrar ciertas sugerencias que nos haran, para coincidir
con la posicion general expressada por la sociedad civil. Por lo que toca a
la gobernancia del Internet, que sera un tema mas discutido en la prepcom 3,
tenemos un poco mas tiempo para prepararnos. Entonces, para sumir, os
mandare  una version finalizada del texto en fin de semana, para seguir
discutiendola, y si es possible, traducirla en los 6 idiomas de la ONU. Este
texto tendria que ser finalizado a mitad de marzo, para que cada uno se lo
pueda apropriar.

Para el proximo mes :
            -una vez el texto finalizado, tendriamos que mandarlo cada uno
de nosotros a nuestras delegaciones nacionales y a los embajadores de la
cumbre, para el nuesto lobbying ;
            -una vez el texto finalizado, tendriamos que utilisar nuestro ?
lenguaje comun ? en cualquiera ocasion se nos presente. Bernard Loing esta
preparando una version corta, de dos paginas no mas, para que nos sirva de
documentacion para distribuir en el nombre de la coalicion.

Para la prepcom 3 :
Habria que considerar la possibilidad de organisar une mesa redonda, con
varias personalidades invitadas, sobre uno de nuestros temas principales,
sea el acceso abierto o la educacion a los medios ?.. Algunas sugerencias ?

Por lo que toca a los deberes en casa, para los que no pueden ser presentes
en Ginebra, ademas de las sugerencias para anadir al texto de base, creo que
seria estrategico de anadir dos adjuntos al nuesto texto : uno sobre ?
ejemplos edificantes ? y otro sobre ? eventos planificados y sugeridos ?.
Nos permitiria saber lo que os proponeis hacer y lo que quereis que la
coalicion haga, desde ahora hacia Tunes (Tunes incluido). Vuestras
sugerencias son bienvenidas.

Para vuestra informacion, unas fechas limites :
            -la proposiciones para eventos paralelas en Tunes se tienen que
enviar al personal de liaison de Tunisia antes del final de Abril ;
            -el grupo de trabajo sobre la gobernancia del Internet (WGIG) se
va a reunir de modo abierto otra vez en Abril y otra vez mas en Mayo, en
Ginebra. Os mando en adjunto 3 paginas que nos tocan a nosotros (ver al
final del mensage). Se trata de un fichero, que alguien (anonimo) a abierto
por lo que toca a educacion. Como vereis esta casi vacio y muy incompleto.
Os propongo de completarlo con nuestra posicion y de enviarlo al WGIG como
nuestra contribucion. No hay fecha limite, pero creo que lo tendriamos que
enviar a fines de marzo, una vez nuestro propia texto finalizado. Que os
parece ?

saludos desde Ginebra
Divina Frau-Meigs
Co-ordinacion, familia educacion, ensenanza superior y investigacion

PS : en adjunto y solo en ingles, el fichero del WGIG

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking Nazis is not about blocking for mere insults

body:
Richard Holton wrote

>How would we be able to claim NPOV
> when certain groups are not allowed to participate?.

I think that is one of those over-interpretations of what NPOV says.

Take an example: non-English speakers.  In effect they can't access the
English Wikipedia.  Can we make the English Wikipedia reflect the aspect of
the world, that well under 10% of people are native speakers of English,
and, what, another 10% learn to speak English?  Well, I hope so; NPOV means
that all contributions should take into account that not everyone is a
native anglophone.  It is anyway not the same issue as saying writing in
English (or any other language) excludes most of the planet.

> Do we have confidence in the Wikipedia way, or do we not?

Actually, I do, pretty much.  The way says 'come one, come all'.  Doesn't
say that people can behave as they like.  What is more, the way is
distrustful of legalism - and all the better for that.  Those who push the
limits of the system start rowing away from the bulk of the community.  The
important part of that is that those who _do not do that_ should expect
protection.

Charles


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:20:45 +0000, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:19:36 +0000, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:10:52 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
> > <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> > > Zoney said:
> > > >
> > > > Nope. I will not accept anyone's right to express Nazi views.
> > >
> > > Wikipedia is probably the wrong place for you.  We don't do advocacy but
> > > we do give expression to all significant views.>
> > > > Seemingly though, you find it unacceptable for me to have the view that
> > > > some views are unacceptable. Evidently there are limits to what views
> > > > even you can accept.
> > >
> > > Is this a plural "you"?  I think you will find that your view can also be
> > > expressed, but not advocated on Wikipedia.  We adopt the neutral point of
> > > view here.
> > >
> >
> > No we don't give expression to all significant views. We write about
> > them - but we don't attempt to get the reader to emphasise with them.
> >
>
> That should read "empathise" of course.
>

No, we _do_ give expression of all significant views -- or at least
that is the objective, inasmuch as we give expression to any view.  Of
course we don't attempt to get the reader to empathize with _any_ POV.
That is contrary to NPOV.

There is a distinct difference between allowing a Neo-Nazi to
contribute, and allowing any article to have a Neo-Nazi POV.

As I see it, the best possible "weapon" to use against any extreme POV
on Wikipedia is to let people who support that POV contribute, hold
them to the rules, and beat their POV to a pulp with the
well-documented facts.

Sometimes we may actually find ourselves ceding a point where the
documented facts support their view. How is that bad?

-Rich Holton

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


subject: [Wikitech-l] Stats Wiktionary

body:
Hi,

The stats onf the Wiktionary are not updated since October 30, 2004.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/wiktionary/EN/Sitemap.htm

Can it be updated ?

Thanks,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Stats Wiktionary


from_name: Felix Wan

body:
On Sun, February 20, 2005 1:18 am, Sheng Jiong said:
>
> Well, that I should ask you people. I find myself engaged in a flame
> war with three persons whose total number of contributions to Wikipedia
> are less than that of mine alone.
>
Here I want to ask the community:
1. Do you consider this a flame war?  I believe I am discussing in a very
   rational manner.
2. How should we appeal to the community if not through the mailing list?
3. Does seniority and number of contributions count in the community
   during a discussion of issue at hand?

> And remind you, if you have not already known, one of Chinese
> Wikipedia's founding member, [[User:Lorenzarius]], was from Hong Kong.
> And he was one of the main opposer of splitting Chinese Wikipedia into
> Simplified and Traditional version before there was a conversion
> script. And [[User:Tomchiukc]] is still an active Hong Kong Wikipedian.
>
I don't understand why that is relevant to the issue.

I will very much like to hear their opinions on this issue.  They may
bring some good insights.  Can you invite them or should I?

Felix Wan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Great article!

body:
Mark Pellegrini wrote:
> In unix, to rip the audio out of most basic movie files (including mpg and avi)
> to mp3:
>
>
>>mplayer -dumpaudio file.mpg
>>mv stream.dump output.mp3
>
>
> The first command runs mplayer and dumps the audio to a stream file
> in the local directory (stream.dump)
>
> The second command moves (renames) it to an mp3.
>
> Sorry, but I don't know how to do it in Windows.

Same way. :) There's a Windows port that works quite well (I've been
using it for a while now while my desktop is trapped on Win2K).

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] Stats Wiktionary

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Hi,
>
>The stats onf the Wiktionary are not updated since October 30, 2004.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/wiktionary/EN/Sitemap.htm
>
>Can it be updated ?
>
>Thanks,
>Yann
>
>


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Stats Wiktionary


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
I notice that we had a US$1000 contribution. Which got me thinking...

Do we / should we give recognition of significant contributions?  My
wife works for a university  advancement office, and they have various
ways of acknowledging significant contributions.

Many of these seem to be little more than stroking the donor's ego.
But it is a well-accepted method of encouraging contributions from
those who have money and like to have their ego's stroked.

Of course, $10 from one person may be far more significant (in a
different sense) than $10,000 from another. There is probably no way
for us to recognize these contributions.

What do you think?

-Rich Holton

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


body:
On Sat, February 19, 2005 8:49 pm, Sheng Jiong said:
>> I believe that earlier on Sheng Jiong claimed that there is not even
>> one book written entirely in Cantonese.  Now obviously he has raised the
>> bar: even if X books are written in Cantonese, those are exceptions.  I
>> don't know how many will be significant.
>
> It would be sufficient if there begins a movement calling native
> Cantonese/Hong Kong writers to write in Cantonese (as in the May
> Fourth Movement, when scholars abaondoned classic Chinese and write in
> baihuawen), and when there start to be newspapers printed in Cantonese,
> scholars writing academic essays in Cantonese.
>
If you say that, then I can understand your requirement.

No, the level of acceptance of written Cantonese has not reached that of
baihuawen at the time of May Fourth Movement yet.

> Basically anyone with a common sense would know if Cantonese is widely
> accepted as a written language. But obviously you are deliberately
> making that seems difficult.
>
No, I was not making it difficult.  I was just expressing my frustration,
and trying to present an accurate image of how much written Cantonese is
accepted.

What was frustrating was that sometimes you said Cantonese did not meet
such and such requirement, and then when someone provided prove that it
did, you switched and said that that was an exception.

>> Even if we can find a school teaching written cantonese, I believe that
>> will be an exception.  He may require that it must happen in
>> government sponsored grade schools.
>
>> If we can many articles written in Cantonese, he may require a
>> newspaper or magazine written completely in Cantonese.  And if there is
>> one, then of course that on newspaper is an exception.
>
> Do you have common sense? If you decide today to found a school
> teaching only in Cantonese and have a grand total of 2 students, do you
> take it as a proof that Cantonese has been widely accepted?
>
Of course I will not take that as a proof.  However, even common sense
can differ from person to person.  If a university in Hong Kong starts
to offer courses on written Cantonese, I will count that as very
significant proof of acceptance, will you?  That evidence *alone* will
not proof *wide* acceptance though.

> You are purposely missing my central point of argument: Cantonese
> written language is not widely accepted. The rest are examples/proofs that
> they are not accepted. You try to prove me wrong on giving a
> counter-example to my example, but that does not touch the basis of my
> argument. Because you failed to prove it has been *widely* accepted.
>
I was not purposely missing your central point of argument because I
stated that clearly in the later part of my email, but either you forgot
to remove that comment after you read that part, or you purposely left
it there so that if I forgot to reply, people may get the impression that
I was really missing your point.

> Anyone can invent a language. If five people invented an artificial
> language and decide to set up a Wikipedia using that language, do we allow
> it? Of course Cantonese is quite different as you are just trying to write
> in the way you talk, and I have no problem with that if everybody does
> this. But the thing is, has this idea been accepted? Apparently no.
>
Apparently that is not done by everyone, but some people.  That means
this idea has been accepted by some people.  If the Wikimedia community
wants, we can set up criteria and start to measure the level of acceptence.

>> I understand that the main point of Sheng Jiong is that Cantonese has
>> to be widely accepted as a written language before we consider using it
>> to write Wikipedia.  However, we all understand that there are different
>> degrees of acceptance.  How much acceptance is enough?
>
> That is my main point. And I agree that it is impossible to give an
> accurate definition regarding the acceptance level. But we can all tell
> that Cantonese as written language is not yet accepted widely enough.
> Examples include the previous examples I have given. (which you take as
> a "bar" for the set up of Cantonese Wikipedia)
>
We may say that "Cantonese as written language is not as widely accepted
as Baihuawen circa 1920-1930". That is what I believe, and that is an
objective statement verifiable by scholars.  But "Cantonese as written
language is not yet accepted widely enough" is a subjective judgement.
What is enough and what is not enough differs from people to people.

>> But if that is not
>> the goal, I will invite the board to read all the arguments, learn the
>> facts, weigh the pros and cons, and make the best decision.
>
> I am not against letting the board making the decision at the end. But
> the Wikipedian tradition should be to let the community decide whenever
> possible.
>
I am confused.  First I thought there was a clear guideline on how to
start a new Wikipedia, then I found that it was ambiguious when there is
opposition, then I found this mailing list.  When I wrote to this mailing
list, of course I am appealing to the community.  But then someone here
said that the board will make the final decision.  So of course I will
address the board when I state my arguments.

So at the end, who should make the decision?

Felix Wan


body:
Richard Holton wrote

>Literacy in a particular
> language has nothing to do with dis-allowing participation based on
> beliefs or affiliations.

I thought I was illustrating why my reading of NPOV was not yours.

> Do you really believe that the Wikipedia way is "distrustful
> legalism"? I hope I have misunderstood you.

What I wrote was of course "distrustful of legalism".  Big difference.

Charles


subject: [Wikitech-l] Speed variations

body:
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Hash: SHA1

A few minutes ago, (German) wikipedia was really fast and responsive.
All of a sudden, it is down to the usual sluggishness, maybe even worse
than usual. The change between these two states was rather sudden and
quite big.

Did anyone plug in a new server or something? Or was it just my local net?

Just curious,
Magnus
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from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Stan Shebs said:

> There is also a large contingent who are all for the "wiki way"
> as long as all the editors of an article agree with them; one
> discordant voice, and it's "WP is doomed unless the system is
> changed to lock out morons and vandals". You can always tell,
> because further inquiry reveals that the deluge of "morons
> and vandals" just consists of the one person who disagrees.
>
Yep.  This is normal.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
>From my experience GBP and AUD are more common in short lists than is
CDN for whatever reason.

The "hard realities of international banking" should warrant the
exclusion of all currencies other than USD and EUR, should they not?
Why the 4 other currencies? What a drag.

Yuan RMB may not be "fully convertible", but it's converted many times
every day anyways.

Mark

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 10:53:44 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 18:50:28 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > And I know there are currencies other than USD. What I meant is, are
> > there currencies other than USD, JPY, EUR, and CAN? If not, why?
> > Having CAN among the four seems a bit strange to me if not
> > Anglocentric - we have two for primarily English-speaking countries,
> > but none for example for Chinese-speaking countries (ie, Yuan
> > Renminbi, Singapore dollar, New Taiwanese Dollar, Malaysia dollar,
> > etc), given that zh.wikipedia is currently the fastest-growing on the
> > growth curve of all the larger Wikipedias (ie, it may be growing
> > slower than en and de currently are, but it is growing faster than
> > they were when they were at a similar period) and has 20k articles
> > (most of the other top Wikipedias are languages spoken primarily in
> > Euro countries)
>
> This is an issue of the hard realities of international banking, and
> not of political correctness.
>
> Also, the yuan/RMB of the PRC is not a fully convertible currency.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>