from_name: Craig Franklin

body:
Scr?obh Mark Williamson:

> Yes, I tried it. So what?

So, it means that there seems to be a technical way of doing these things,
which most of the Chinese-speaking people on this list agree is either
adequate, or close to being adequate.  Lets just look at what has been said
thus far:

- Most Chinese people who understand "Traditional" can also read/write in
"Simplified".  This does not necessarily apply in reverse, however.
- There appears to be an automated technical way to translate from one
system to the other, albeit one that occasionally mucks things up.
- Most zh-language Wikipedians are in favour of a unified system.
- There doesn't seem to be anyone who wants to split the project except,
well, you.
- I believe official policy is that splitting Wikipedias for
nationalistic/patriotic reasons is that it doesn't happen.  See the
Brazilian/Portugese debate that pops up every now and then for what happens.

Based on these opinions that have been put out over the past few days, I
think it's obvious that the action that has been taken is the correct one.
I've no idea of the quality of your submissions, but if they're good, why
not port them over to the unified Wiki (under a seperate page, if necessary,
ie: [[Topic]] and [[Topic (Traditional)]].  As far as I can see, nothing has
been deleted yet, and numerous tools have been pointed out in the discussion
that would make it an automated process.

- Craig Franklin

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IHT gets Wikipedia founder wrong

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:
> Argh! IHT gets it wrong, so wrong... http://www.iht.com/articles/538271.html
>
> "Telephones, mobile phones, e-mail and instant messaging were
> novelties for the knowledgeable at first," said Howard Rheingold,
> founder of Wikipedia and author of several books on the subject, "and
> then they became widely accepted media for social interaction.
> [...]
>
> When the folks are done writing to Washington Post re: Britannica, get
> cracking on this one. :)

Probably just a slip in editing. I've sent them a friendly e-mail
notifying them of the error.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Jewish Social-Marxist Censorship of Wikipedia is
	quite obv...

body:
In a message dated 9/11/2004 5:38:39 PM Eastern Standard Time,
fun at thingy.apana.org.au writes:
I'm not entirely sure there's hard guidelines on when to ban someone
from posting to the list ... unless they're pretty much a spambot.
As opposed to mere gross obnoxiousness. Are there any?
I dont think that Paul Vogel should be banned from the list per se, as silly
as his rants are. In fact, it would only serve to support his argument about
free speech if he were banned. On the other hand, I would hope that people will
follow the policy and stop feeding the trolls. There is no need to answer
him, or even to engage him in dialogue. Nothing anyone here says will convince
him to change his views. Instead, I suggest that people just delete his stuff as
it comes. That, at least, reduces the impact of its sheer volume.

Danny
(who happens to be both Jewish and Socialist)


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Foundation-l] An urgent Proposal: A fair,
	effective and free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
--- Kiss All <kissall at gmail.com> wrote:
> * We ***MUST*** find fair,effective, and free ways to reward, either
> spiritually or financially, those volunteers who are diligently,
> consistently creating and editing high-quality articles in wikipedia
> site family.

We are rewarding good work on the English Wikipedia through the featured
article selection process. I for one have switched from making a great many
small edits and creating a great many small articles to concentrating my
attention on just a few articles at a time in order to make them good enough to
go successfully go through the featured article selection process.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Krzysztof Kowalczyk

subject:
[Wikitech-l] An urgent Proposal: A fair,
	effective and free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
I find your insistance on *MUST* a bit strange. Wikipedia already is a
great success by any definition without any artificial rewards system
so there's a proof in the pudding that artificial rewards system is
not crucial to Wikipedia success therefore is not  a *must*.

The problem with your proposition is that it radically alters how the
system works. While you're of course convinced that the new system
will work so much better, I personally don't see it that way.

First there's a very flawed assumption that just giving people ability
to donate will create enough dontations to support the system.
Historically we can say that this is not the case. Despite constant
fund-rising efforts by Wikipedia foundation, donations barely cover
the cost of hardware necessary to keep up with Wikipedia's growth. So
I don't see how you can make suddenly turn the trickle of donations
into a stream big enough to support not only basic needs of Wikipedia
but also leaving enough money for paying contributors meaningful
amounts of money.

There there's also this fact that, while the issue isn't completely
settled, there is psychological research saying that extrinsic
rewards, contrary to naive but popular belief, not only doesn't
increase performance, but actually lowers it, see e.g.:
http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/cont_reward.html
http://www.nwrel.org/request/oct00/motivate.html
http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap4/chap4q.htm

The important conclusion is that there is lack of conclusive evidence
that extrinsic rewards actually help and there is psychological
research showing the opposite.

Krzysztof Kowalczyk | http://blog.kowalczyk.info


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> > blindly trust what the experts say). If we want to have them read our
> > content,
> > then we will have to give them that bit of comfort.
> >
> > -- mav
>
> No. We. Don't.

We don't want them to read our content? Sorry, but you are in an extreme
minority around here if you think that.

-- mav

__________________________________
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from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Questions: How to bulk-copy/clone MediaWiki:namespace
	pages from Wiki A to Wiki B (same server)

body:
Follow-up question to TIM STARLING:

you kindly answered me about 10 days - I have one additional question, see at the END

Thomas Gries wrote:
> (1) Is there a simple way to bulk copy (clone) the whole
> MediaWiki:namespace from one wiki to another wiki (on the same server) ?

Yes, there's maintenance/dumpMessages.php. Pass the resulting file as a
parameter to maintenance/rebuildMessages.php. The other option is to use
SQL, e.g. SELECT INTO OUTFILE.

> (2) Is there a simply way to extract let's say five MediaWiki:pages so
> that I can put it together with a patch into the CVS ?
> In my case, the coming e-mail notification patch for 1.3.2 (see my
> recent (pre)documentation pages on the MetaWiki) uses  a couple of
> MediaWiki:namespace pages for composing the notification mails and other
> purposes and I want to publish these important pages together with the
> program patch in one "package".
>
> But I don't know, how.

Language.php is the canonical location for message text, not the
MediaWiki namespace. The namespace will be automatically initialised
from the language file by the installer, for new wikis. Copy your
default message text into Language.php and create a patch in the usual way.

-- Tim Starling

Applying my patch needs to add let's say 2 messages. How can this be done automatically, I mean, a sysop can patch files
Skin.php (for example) and Language.php (with the new 2 messages) as proposed by you - see above, but ....

Question:
... when (how) are these changes in Language.php reflected in the running wiki? In other words: the change in Skin.php is effective immediately, but when(how) will the change in Language.php be effective (e.g. "copied" to the MediaWiki:namespace) ?
My program patch uses for example a call to wfMsg('EmailnotificationMessage1') and wfMsg('EmailnotificationMessage2')

Tom


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> There must be a way to make the review process work that lets the wiki
> process do the heavy lifting, and gives sane results.

A process ala the featured article selection process will be do the heavy
lifting - since no special degrees are required to gage basic completeness,
grammar, spelling and formatting. Each subject area approval board will develop
its own criteria for marking a sub-set of those articles as stable or needing
additional work. As noted, some areas of knowledge rely more on people with
academic credentials than others. So the relative importance of needing
somebody with formal training in the area will vary from one approval board to
another.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
If I'm not mistaken, it was Theresa Knott, not sj, who started it.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Matthew Larsen wrote:

>you started this thread!
>
>
>On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 13:10:54 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 09:50:46 +0100, KNOTT, T <tknott at qcl.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I don't think you understand. People have tried to talk to him.
>>>
>>>
>>< [...]
>>
>>I'm a big fan of moderation and arbitration, but can we please not
>>have these discussions on the mailing list?  "Please check out this
>>RfC and comment on it" is a fine mailing list topic; an ensuing
>>discussion of the RfC (which should really be included on that page)
>>clutters up the list...
>>
>>--
>>+sj+
>>_ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>


from_name: Sj

body:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 18:44:45 EDT, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> That, at least, reduces the impact of its sheer volume.

+2

--
+sj+


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
It might move quite quickly, but trying to skip mediation may make it move
slower that it otherwise would.

Fred

> From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 00:45:19 +0000
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes
>
> (The RFC is remarkable. A question for arbcom members: how long
> would a new arbcom case take to come to a decision on? And is
> "go to mediation" considered appropriate for a case of repeated
> personal abusiveness?)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia? Academic degrees have
	real	usefulness

body:
Robert wrote:

>There is an evident distrust towards academic degrees here,
>and it doesn't help us. It seems to stem from a
>misunderstanding of egalitarianism that many Wikipedia
>contributors have. Some people seem to think that
>egalitarianism means that all people are equally competant
>to review an article. This is just as true as saying that
>all people are equally tall, and that all food in a
>supermarket is equally nutritious.  In other words, the
>proposition is violently false.
>
Violently???

It's not the degrees themselves that provoke distrust.  Sometimes it's a
close-minded attitude that plays a major role in the student/teacher
relationship.  That attitude is even more pronounced in secondary
schools where teachers can often appear unapproachable.  The impression
that that leaves on the student is often carried by them into
post-secondary learning..  Many professions promote a closed shop
mentality that relies on the economic premise that restricting the
supply of professionals will increase the amount that those already
there can command for their services.  They cannot afford to allow
groups that will significantly compete for their share of the revenue.
This does not mean that every single professional engages in this
practice; a lot of rank-and-file professionals undoubtedly recognize the
problem, and some of those have been very supportive of the wiki way.

I strongly believe that critical thinking is one of the most important
things that can be taught in schools, but that competes with the
tradition of the teacher as an authority figure.  Teachers need to be
questioned at all levels, by kindergarteners as much as by doctoral
candidates.  There was a comment I heard in some TV news program in the
last few days, but I can't quite remember whether it was in the context
of US foreign policy or education; it is equally applicable to both.
Respect is best achieved when it is commanded rather than demanded.
Within a military structure an officer who leads by example commands
respect; one who insists on "pulling rank" demands respect.

In our own realm I know that we have had academically degreed
contributors, but among those the ones who do the greatest service are
the ones who make no virtue of their credentials.  Perhaps we don't even
know exactly who they are.  In contrast those who demand respect because
they have Ph. D.'s tend to breed resentment.  They too often substitute
the authority of their degrees for the authority of academic rigour.

Equality of rights does not imply equality of competence.  The rights of
all Wikipedians to review all articles should remain, but having made a
personal choice of a very limited number of articles to review we are
all equally faced with the same standard of verification.  For the
career academic it is a standard that is more easily met, because he has
more tools at his fingertips.

>I'd honestly be willing to bet my life that a dozen Ph.D.s
>in Physics will produce better editorial oversight and
>corrections than a dozen self-selected Internet junkies,
>when it comes to reviewing Physics articles.  I'd honestly
>be willing to bet my life that a dozen Ph.D.s in American
>Literature will produce better editorial oversight and
>corrections than a dozen self-selected Internet junkies,
>when it comes to reviewing American literature articles.
>
Spoken this way it is an expression of pure arrogance.  If the "internet
junkie" is able to support his research it is just as worthwhile.  There
are many people out there whose passion for a narrow subject area makes
them better informed about it than the academics.  You're probably right
about your numbers game of the dozen reviewers, but so what?

>Accepting the fact that some people have studied a lot and
>have earned an academic degree does not prevent anyone else
>from contributing. It does not prevent anyone else from
>offering corrections or edits.  It isn't even
>anti-egalitarian.  True egalitarianism only means that all
>people have a right to study a subject, and to try and
>become experts in said subject.  It does *not* mean that
>all people are already experts on said subject!
>
>
What about the people who have studied just as much but have NOT earned
the academic degree?  If it were workable a good rule might be to forbid
reviewers from saying if they have a degree.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Making a stable version more prominent

body:
Robert wrote:

>Robert (RK), Zionist Conspiracy member #100709,
>sub-committee on controlling the weather and this season's
>hem-lines.
>
Ahhh!  Now I understand.  You are the one responsible for Charley, and
Frances, and Ivan ... :-)

Ec


subject:
[WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia? Academic degrees
	have	real	usefulness

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Or to pick an example closer to home, take a look at all the academic
> literature on the use of websites as a collaborative tool---it by and
> large ignores Wikipedia and MediaWiki, parading inferior software and
> discussing problems Wikipedia encountered and solved 2 years ago.

In all fairness, Wikipedia is only 3.5 years old.  One cannot expect
academia to work so swiftly.

Ec


from_name: Delirium

body:
Robert wrote:

>There is an evident distrust towards academic degrees here,
>and it doesn't help us. It seems to stem from a
>misunderstanding of egalitarianism that many Wikipedia
>contributors have. Some people seem to think that
>egalitarianism means that all people are equally competant
>to review an article. This is just as true as saying that
>all people are equally tall, and that all food in a
>supermarket is equally nutritious.  In other words, the
>proposition is violently false.
>
>
I obviously can't speak for others, but this isn't my particular problem
with academic degrees.  I certainly don't think all people are equally
qualified, but I am not confident that having a PhD is as strong an
indicator of qualification as some people seem to think it is.  Note
also that this is not out of some sort of self-interested jealousy, as
I'm currently a PhD student myself, so it would benefit me personally if
people would continue to hold PhDs to be worth their weight in gold
(hopefully with a similarly-sized paycheck!).  But I don't think they are.

>I'd honestly be willing to bet my life that a dozen Ph.D.s
>in Physics will produce better editorial oversight and
>corrections than a dozen self-selected Internet junkies,
>when it comes to reviewing Physics articles.  I'd honestly
>be willing to bet my life that a dozen Ph.D.s in American
>Literature will produce better editorial oversight and
>corrections than a dozen self-selected Internet junkies,
>when it comes to reviewing American literature articles.
>
>
This depends very highly on the field.  If we are talking about quantum
physics, then I agree that academics in the field of quantum physics are
the people to talk to.  There are many fields in which academia is quite
a bit of an ivory tower though, generally unaware of anything going on
outside its walls.  Pick up an academic treatise on "internet culture"
sometime if you want a good laugh---you might get a bit of a taste of
what the Native Americans might have felt like when 18th-century
academics wrote journal articles about their culture.  Or to pick an
example closer to home, take a look at all the academic literature on
the use of websites as a collaborative tool---it by and large ignores
Wikipedia and MediaWiki, parading inferior software and discussing
problems Wikipedia encountered and solved 2 years ago.  If it's not done
by someone with a PhD, a lot of academia doesn't know it exists, so
academia tends to miss a lot of things.

So, sure, give academia its due, but not more than that.  It is very
good at some things, and very bad at others.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> We don't have to give them "that bit of comfort". They will get around
> to reading and trusting our content anyway.

And yet they are not and are in fact warning others to stay away from it. My
best friend, whose opinion I regard very highly, is a grade school teacher. She
is very intelligent, liberal minded, and has listened to me describe Wikipedia
and how it works. It pains me greatly to concede that she will not allow any of
her students to use our content as a reference due to the fact that it is not
approved by people with relevant degrees. She went so far as insinuate that the
mere existence of Wikipedia is harmful due to the fact that children *will*
innocently use it, thinking it is an authoritative source. The librarian at her
school is similarly convinced as well as the two other librarians I've talked
to about this.

We can only go so far with FA-like selection processes (granted that will often
be upwards of 90% - the rest largely being perception). I in fact pointed to
our FA list as an example and my best friend repeated the same objections.
Again, each subject area board should formulate their own selection criteria
and it is *they* who should decide what mix of criteria are needed to approve
articles and who can approve them. Limiting what they can do at this point is a
huge mistake.

-- mav

_______________________________
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Shop for Back-to-School deals on Yahoo! Shopping.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/backtoschool


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Norwegian and Chinese

body:
All fair points.

Re accurate conversion though, have you seen the converter Microsoft
just release? It supposedly takes into context things that previous
converters didn't.

Best,
Mark/Junshu
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 12:55:26 +1000, Bjarte Sorensen
<bjarte at pingpingping.com> wrote:
> In Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 14, Issue 13, Mark/Jin Junshu wrote:
>
> > Not to muck up the ongoing discussion regarding Nynorsk/Bokm?l, on
> > which I have read a bit, but I'd like to point out something relevant
> > to the Chinese discussion.
> >
> > Nynorsk and Bokm?l are for the most part mutually intelligible. They
> > use basically exactly the same writing system.
> >
> > Yet Nynorsk has recently been awarded its own Wikipedia which has
> > around 60 articles (vs the over 700 "legitimate" articles in the
> > database of zh-tw:); not that I disagree with that but that for
> > various reasons, no: who had previously believed they could cooperate
> > are now splitting. Very accurate computer conversion between the two
> > is possible and exists although it is not 100% accurate. Nynorsk and
> > Bokm?l are close enough together that they wouldn't nessecarily even
> > need separate articles like Trad. and Simp. do ATM (pending the
> > implementation of the "solution" proposed by some of the Simplified
> > users) but could in most cases be in the same article, following a
> > similar policy to that of en: regarding US vs International English.
> >
> > This is clearly a very sticky subject as is the other issue, but
> > ultimately it should be up to those raised using Nynorsk who use it in
> > their everyday lives who get to make the decision, not those who use
> > Bokm?l.
>
> First of all, thanks for your support in nn.wikipedia.org. I would just like to
> point out that there are even more profound reasons for having nynorsk and
> bokm?l wikipedias separate for the time being.
>
> As Olve also recently said, Nynorsk (Neo-Norwegian) and Bokm?l (Dano-Norwegian)
> differ not only orthographically, but also very often morphologically,
> syntactically and semantically. As even users of Bokm?l often point out, Bokm?l
> and Danish are linguistically closer than Bokm?l and Nynorsk, even though the
> former pair are normally distuingished as different languages (for historical
> reasons) and the latter as two official written forms of Norwegian.
>
> > Very accurate computer conversion between the two
> > is possible and exists although it is not 100% accurate.
>
> The computer conversions I have seen are far from accurate, and usually don't
> take into account much of the syntactic and semantic aspects of translation.
> Also, all current methods AFAIK are copyrighted. To merely take a Bokm?l article
> and translate word by word into Nynorsk does not make good Nynorsk.
>
> As it stands today, I think many nynorskusers (of which there are an estimated
> 400,000-800,000 compared to 3,000,000-4,000,000 bokm?lusers) will be
> discouraged from participating in the mainly Bokm?l environment of the
> Norwegian wiki and probably turn away at its main page, both because of its
> Bokm?l UI and because of fears of discrimination and discouraging comments
> (something nynorskusers are all too used to).
>
> When all this is said, we are all looking forward to the day when we have a
> unified (possibly Scandinavian languages, possibly international) wiki, where,
> through improvement of MediaWiki, the language of the UI can be chosen by the
> user, as well as language _preference_ for articles (not to mention the ability
> to see the same article in multiple languages on the same page).
>
> I think this is a point Mark is making in regards to a Chinese wiki,
> too, and until such a day comes I think both Chinese and Norwegian wikis are
> best served with their forks in order to encourage maximum total proliferation
> (while encouraging concomitant activity in both forks for all that are able of
> course), and hopefully the products can be joined in the future for the benefit
> of all.
>
> Cheers, Bjarte Sorensen (User BjarteSorensen on :en, :nn and :no)
>
> PS: This is another appeal for the granting of "official" status to
> nn.wikipedia.org, and to give SysOp status to some of its users (so that e.g.
> the already completed (by Olve) LangageNn.php file can be uploaded). Thanks :)
>
> PPS: This is also an appeal to all that are able (programmers etc) to keep
> working towards a unified wiki, where UI-language is customizable at
> client-level (not to mention a common photo-library).
>
> PPPS: For some informative, relatively non-biased (English) articles on the
> language-situation of Norway, look at http://www.sprakrad.no/engelsk.htm (The
> Norwegian Language Council).
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Kiss All

subject:
Fwd: [Foundation-l] An urgent Proposal: A fair,
	effective and free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kiss All <kissall at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 22:03:36 -0500
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] An urgent Proposal: A fair, effective and
free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers
To: Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com>

I know I wrote too much in my proposal and readers will lost in it.
I'd like to simplify it as this :
1. I just want to add major authors' names under each article, it is
an option for authors.
2. give the authors' option to get direct donation from their readers.
Both of them are optional. Nothing more and nothing less. Isn't it
better to give more choices to authors of articles?
 I guess you are one of those persons who don't need any external
reward to do excellent wiki work I already mentioned in this proposal.
:-).  However, would you feel even better if you could see the
exciting rating number from readers about your work and their
continuous attempt to donate some money to you? It is not late for you
to choose refusing themt at that time.
  People sometimes are too confident about what they are doing and
ignore other's feelings and what it is really good for . My current
poposal is a typical example. I thought it is a terrific idea. But the
responses to it till now are mostly negative.
 Therefore, I still think it is good to to let authors and readers
interact more by providing direct rating facilities . An attempt does
not harm anybody I think. Personally, I would like to to see direct
feedback from readers of my articles. Just like I know my proposal got
a 2 out of 5 :(
 Anyway, thank you very much for your response in your valuable
weekend time. I have the same confident in my this proposal as you do
in your wiki editing. I will insist it.

Best Regards.

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 15:28:01 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Mahan >

> Personally, no.
>
> My reward to volunteering for Wikipedia is that I get to do something
> mostly fun with mostly fun people.
>
> =====
> Chris Mahan
> 818.943.1850 cell
> chris_mahan at yahoo.com
> chris.mahan at gmail.com
> http://www.christophermahan.com/
>
>
> _______________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Shop for Back-to-School deals on Yahoo! Shopping.
> http://shopping.yahoo.com/backtoschool
>

--
Be good....

--
Be good....


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] An urgent Proposal: A fair,
	effective and free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers


subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] An urgent Proposal: A fair,
	effective and free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kiss All <kissall at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 22:14:19 -0500
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] An urgent Proposal: A fair, effective and
free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers
To: Krzysztof Kowalczyk <kkowalczyk at gmail.com>

I revoke my MUST here. Thank you for your good comments. I think what
I said are better to be optional.

1. let authors choose to appear their names under the articles or not
2. let authors choose to get direct donation from readers or not

> The problem with your proposition is that it radically alters how the
> system works. While you're of course convinced that the new system
> will work so much better, I personally don't see it that way.

I agree you. The existing works good enough. I think it would work
better with these two more options.

> First there's a very flawed assumption that just giving people ability
> to donate will create enough dontations to support the system.

I may not clear express my idea. I never mentioned the funds to
wikipedia. All I concerns are about those volunteers. And I really
know even for volunteers, the donation cannot pay them rent or food ,
not to mention wikipedia sites.

> There there's also this fact that, while the issue isn't completely
> settled, there is psychological research saying that extrinsic
> rewards, contrary to naive but popular belief, not only doesn't
> increase performance, but actually lowers it, see e.g.:

Why don't we try it if this isn't settled ? All I propose now is to
provide two more options to authors. It would be more convincing to
see the difference from our own practice rather than showing some
extra research. Research results could only be used as references I
guess.

Best Regards.

--
Be good....


subject:
Fwd: [Wikitech-l] An urgent Proposal: A fair,
	effective and free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] When Powerful Jewish or Social-Marxist-PC Lobbies
	Censor the Internet....

body:
Would an admin of this list kindly remove Mr Paul Vogel and ban his address
from posting.  He is not welcome to post this kid of trash here.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
>
>>We don't have to give them "that bit of comfort". They will get around
>>to reading and trusting our content anyway.
>>
>
>And yet they are not and are in fact warning others to stay away from it. My
>best friend, whose opinion I regard very highly, is a grade school teacher. She
>is very intelligent, liberal minded, and has listened to me describe Wikipedia
>and how it works. It pains me greatly to concede that she will not allow any of
>her students to use our content as a reference due to the fact that it is not
>approved by people with relevant degrees. She went so far as insinuate that the
>mere existence of Wikipedia is harmful due to the fact that children *will*
>innocently use it, thinking it is an authoritative source. The librarian at her
>school is similarly convinced as well as the two other librarians I've talked
>to about this.
>
Bear in mind that your sample is very small; don't freak out because
not everybody understands the concept (and if they're gating on
experts' blessings, whatever that's suppoed to mean, they don't
understand it yet).

To trot out yet another GNU comparison, most components of GNU and
Linux have been disparaged by computer scientists and leading
technologists ("just a hobby system", "no one would ever use it
for anything important", etc). The interesting thing that happened
is that over time, some experts (like me) got pulled into the
projects, and in other cases, the less-expert simply tried
imitating what experts did, sometimes several times before
settling on something that worked in practice. The cumulative
result has shut up a lot of skeptics (and I've had the distinct
pleasure of some of them saying "Stan, you were right" - aaah...).
But it did take a long time - GNU is almost 20 years old, and Linux
is 13, at 3 1/2 years only the true believers worked on them.

Getting back to WP, one of the things I don't think people appreciate
is the number of bonafide experts already reviewing WP articles on a
daily basis. It would be very hard for someone to get something by me
in the GCC or GDB articles for instance; I know articles in other
areas also have experts' eyes watching intently. It would be a
pretty low impact simply to have a place to document the existing
experts (real names with CVs, no hiding behind pseudonyms). The
recognition alone, even without any special privileges, would attract
some experts, and the power structure works right - editors will
tend to defer to the known experts (that happens already) but
still be able to challenge those who get out of line.

Going a little further, I could imagine pages having a link going
to a list of real-name editors who have publicly declared themselves
to be watching the article. Those seeking reassurance can then
peruse the list to see if they're sufficiently impressed. Conversely,
it's an incentive to the watchers, whose reputation will suffer if
the articles they're publicly watching are poor in some way.

Stan


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Database shema : let's start the fun

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> The main holdup so far has been the knowledge that we'll need to convert
> the current Wikipedias, so any change needs to be constrained to reduce
> downtime.

I know I'm a bit late to reply to this, but here goes.

I don't think we need to take down the Wikipedias or any other project
for the purpose of converting the DBs.

My suggestion would be to get the 1.4 release out first, and then make a
completely new database schema for 1.5. Then make it so that:

- When someone updates from 1.4 to 1.5, they will at first have two
   databases: the old one, with all their data in it, and one with the
   brand sparkling new redesigned better database schema, but empty.
- When a page is requested that is not in the new DB, but in the old,
   then convert the newest revision instantly and display it. Then add
   the page to a queue for later conversion of its history.
- Similarly, when a user logs in, their account data is converted.
- A cronjob or something similar would work through said queue to
   convert the articles' histories. The frequency by which the cronjob is
   executed can be tweaked according to the current visitor load.
- A new Special page could be used to find pages that are still in the
   old DB and not in the queue.
- When a page is requested that is already in the queue, it is moved
   half-way up the queue. This way very popular pages get converted very
   soon.
- At some point, the new DB will have everything and the old DB will now
   be empty. The old DB can then be deleted.

Of course, during the time of this conversion, article histories will be
incomplete, and user contribution lists also, but they will be complete
eventually, and this transition period is better than downtime.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Bugs and feature request: submitting to Bugzilla or to
 Sourceforge ?

body:
Perhaps, this is a stupid question, but I am confused about the correct
and unique place for this.

Brion told me, that I should use http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org .
But now I found evidence on Kissall's users page that also
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia exits with thousands of bugs
and proposals. Could someone of you, please, place clear instructions
what system to use ?

What I understood recently is, that the Bugzilla is the new system for
bug reports (and feature requests) and I would like to get a short
confirmation, whether I am right.

Tom, somehow confused at the moment


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Arrogant? Why is that arrogant? I never said "Look, you guys suck, I'm going".

I think one major issue here is that you are under the impression that
I am totally new to this issue and that I have decided to jump in and
speak for a userbase of which I am not part and know very little
about, which is very far from the truth.

I do not need Shizhao to explain this issue to me.

And I think that others have shown that they are irritable although
many have shown goodwill instead or as well, yet you cannot deny that
I took pains to emphasise that this is not meant as a threat but
simply as a notice to those who weren't aware because I was afraid the
first paragraph might be perceived by some as an attempt to scare
others into agreeing with me.

Best,
Mark/Jin Junshu

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 09:51:50 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 17:44:03 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Please realise I am not threatening anyone, just letting you know that
> > this is going to happen no matter what, and that really what we are
> > discussing here is whether it can be hosted by Wikipedia and be
> > officially part of Wikipedia, or not.
>
> This is remarkably arrogant given the patient explanations and
> goodwill from Shizhao and others.
>
> --
> Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>


from_name: Stephan Walter

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Bugs and feature request: submitting to Bugzilla
 or to Sourceforge ?

body:
As you can read on sf.net:

"We are moving bugs to bugzilla.wikipedia.org which is easier to search
and not as cluttered and intimidating.

Please file new bug reports there."

Regards,
Stephan

--
Stephan.Walter at epfl.ch  --  http://lart.info/~stw/  --  PGP: B2421799
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Stw


body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Would an admin of this list kindly remove Mr Paul Vogel and ban his address
> from posting.  He is not welcome to post this kid of trash here.

I agree. I also think that is hard ban covered WikiEN-l from the start, since
that is part of the ArbCom's jurisdiction.

-- mav

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subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
--- "Samuel J. Howard" <samueljhoward at comcast.net> wrote:
> > --- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> >> We don't have to give them "that bit of comfort". They will get around
> >> to reading and trusting our content anyway.
> >
> > And yet they are not and are in fact warning others to stay away from it.
> > My
> > best friend, whose opinion I regard very highly, is a grade school
> > teacher. She
> > is very intelligent, liberal minded, and has listened to me describe
> > Wikipedia
> > and how it works. It pains me greatly to concede that she will not allow
> > any of
> > her students to use our content as a reference due to the fact that it is
> > not
> > approved by people with relevant degrees.

<strawman>
> I'm sorry, but that is just ridiculous.  Most books out there are not
> peer-reviewed, only a very small portion of books published by university
> presses are.  Magazine articles are even less likely to be so.
</strawman>

And similar objections are made to using those sources as references as well
(but even then magazines have editorial staff who approve content and
publishers also approve content). It is, however, ridiculous to mention other
media and how they do things in this context when we are an encyclopedia;
seeing what other encyclopedias do *is* relevant. It is also ridiculous to
mention peer review since I did not mention that.

-- mav

__________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Milestones

body:
Congrats to he: on 10000, ar:, ast:, and sk: on 1000!

Those Wikipedias which seem dangerously close to a milestone are
(please add to this list if I've left any out):

almost 1000: lt:, ku:, lb:

almost 10000: bg:, ca:, fi:, no:, ro:, sl:, uk:

A word of encouragement to all of them, and here's hoping many other
Wikipedias reach milestones soon!

Of course, we shouldn't forget that quality is more important than quanity...


from_name: Andrew Cleveland

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
I think that another wiki with "approved" versions of articles is a good
idea, so that it can be an authoritative source by current standards.
However, it shouldn't get in the way of editing articles on the regular
wiki. Requiring approval for edits would ruin the dynamics of being able to
modify an article anytime and having those changes be visible by anon users
(people just happening upon it) and editable immediately.

>From: Keith Maxwell <cremedelacreme04 at yahoo.com.au>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?
>Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:54:21 +1000 (EST)
>
>Fellow Wikipedians,
>
>I agree with this proposal providing that all experienced users who over a
>period of time have made valuable contributions to the subject in question
>are eligible to approve edits after an election.
>
>I would think that the editorial board would consist of a number of people
>with qualifications in the relevant area and people with an interest in the
>topic. For example while most if not all people in technical areas like
>maths and physics would have degrees if not advanced degrees, the people
>who write articles on areas of general interest such as sport or popular
>culture would be more varied.
>
>It should be seen as a method of ensuring that we consolidate what we have
>and provide assurances that Wikipedia is a generally reliable information
>source rather than excluding anyone from making a contribution. The
>individuals contributions to Wikipedia rather than just credentialism
>should be the key to becoming part of the editorial board.
>

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Jewish Social-Marxist Censorship of Wikipedia
	is	quite obvious, Mirv.

body:
On 09/10/04 17:59, Charles Podles wrote:

> If you want to appeal your ban, take it up with  those "lying
> hypocritical Jewish Social Marxists"
> on the arbitration committee; ranting on this list will only get you
> banned from here as well.

A word on this, as a list admin: I see the job of the list admins as
being to clear the spam and forward the mails from real people (even
the stupid and annoying mails, as long as they're from real people)
to the list.

I'm not entirely sure there's hard guidelines on when to ban someone
from posting to the list ... unless they're pretty much a spambot.
As opposed to mere gross obnoxiousness. Are there any?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
On 09/09/04 23:52, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Yeah, let's try to relax a bit.  I'm sure she's right about the
> situation, but we don't have to get all heated up about it.

Nah. But we do need a way to deal with these people. Robert
Brookes is to anti-circumcision as Mr-Natural-Health is to
alternative medicine. He's a strident POV-pusher on a crusade,
given to personal abusiveness, with no intention of stopping
until his mission is accomplished.

(We need a name for this phenomenon. "Abusive crusader"?)

I see our options as follows:

1. Do little or nothing while he wreaks havoc as per MNH. That's
not havoc with the articles, but with the contributors. Remember
that one of MNH's most damaging effects was scaring other editors
off having ANYTHING to do with alternative-medicine-related articles.

2. Deal with this variety of problem child a little faster than MNH.
The arbcom came to a suitable decision the second time (the first
one having proven inadequate because a second was needed, but it
was early days for the arbcom) with MNH; one can hope this style
of abusive editor can be dealt with quicker in future.

3. Come up with a hithertho-unknown method of reforming this sort
of user. This would presumably exclude anything that was tried with
MNH and failed, for the idealists reading this.

I *strongly* suggest option 2. But I could of course be wrong.

So. What will it be?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
On 09/10/04 00:17, Jens Ropers wrote:

> I would PLEAD with everyone to '''not''' go the road of requiring
> academic certifications for approval (or even to value them excessively).
> I would be very disappointed to say the least if this community now
> turned around to go the "traditional academic" way and proved my view of
> things wrong.

Indeed. Although I can't phrase it off the top of my head, there seems
something very unWikipedian about it.

There must be a way to make the review process work that lets the wiki
process do the heavy lifting, and gives sane results.

We can't get a 1.0 out if heavy lifting that can't be done by volunteers
is required as part of the process. Let the wiki do the work - just ask
it the right question.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
On 09/10/04 07:42, Charles Matthews wrote:

> A) There is an argument that _someone else_ can do this - take selected WP
> articles, get them refereed, post them on a web site.  WP lays the golden
> eggs.

Yes. It's something for someone else to do somewhere.

I had a job interview recently where I was asked about Wikipedia - it's
mentioned at the end of my CV under 'interests'. So I had to give a one-liner
on Wikipedia - "a web page that anyone can edit, with version control ...
amazed it works as well as it does ... not up to life or death, but up to
pub quiz level [thanks to Jimbo for that one, at the recent UK talks!] ...
technical articles are usually very good ..." I think I might have recruited
one of the interviewers ;-) I did add: "A review process is being put
together."

> C) What happens to 'be bold' if people's qualifications to edit are an
> issue?

This is why we have to come up with a sane review process that lets the
wiki do the work.

> D) You are not going to get top academics interested.

Not with what we have now. And think of the reactions of, e.g., many of
wikien-l to academics such as user:172, who does just happen to be very
knowledgeable and good at what he does as well as unimpeachably qualified.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Of course your request is "proper", however you are speaking from the
viewpoint of a primarily Simplified user. Nonetheless, your request is
proper.

However my request isn't simply for a TC UI, but also for the default
Main Page to be only a page with two links, one to the TC mainpage and
one to the SC mainpage, and for the rules regarding usage in articles
to be more strict and better enforced (for example, Traditional
articles shouldn't just be redirects to Simplified articles).

I personally think that at least for now, the best solution is a fork
and perhaps at some time in the future the two can be united again.

--Jin Junshu/Mark

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:14:00 +0800, yuanml <yuanml at pku.org.cn> wrote:
> I had said your request is proper, the SC UI scare away TC users.
>
> If we split the community now, then how about the combination of the two
> after we develope the software into real.
> We talk about the software seriously in Chinese Wikipedia now.
> In my opinion, the combination will benefit the two ultimately.
> Just like your request is proper, is my request of the combination proper?
> please give me an answer.
>
> let's design a solution for all.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: yuanml

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
let us sum up basic fact, pro and con we had discussed in a NPOV manner.

==basic fact==
*The same language: Chinese.
*Two writing systems: TC & SC.
*Chinese Wikipedia now mix TC and SC together.
*Chinese Wikipedia community now have a consensus on unity.
*SC artical vs TC artical at Chinese Wikipedia is about 10:1.
*a unified solution is workable, although it is also acknowledged that
there are significant challenges.
*Someone tried to develop a solution for the differences in vocabulary
among Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland, Singapore and Macau,
the basic idea of the solution works.
*there are huge and permanent implications of splitting up the two

==pros of a single version==
*it makes the most sense from a language point of view
*it makes the most sense from the point of view of having a top
quality NPOV resource.
*zh would work towards a traditional-simplified solution.
*The advantage of a technical fix to the character problem
to have one version is that the problems don't grow with time
*The problem set of making two characters sets work isn't
a fast moving target.

==cons of a single version==
*The SC UI is uncomfortable and scared away some of the TC users.
*It is difficult for the TC users to look up some material such as
names of places and people from traditional.

==pros of two seperate version==
*attract more TC users.
*there is a larger corpus of texts, many of them
fundamental texts, which exist as originals
in traditional characters.

==cons of two seperate version==
*low quality on NPOV.
*a technical fix to the character problem to
diverged versions grow with time.
*keeping up with two sets of wikipedians is
a fast moving target.


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
It's alright.. I tend to overreact. heh.

>From: Keith Maxwell <cremedelacreme04 at yahoo.com.au>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?
>Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 16:41:27 +1000 (EST)
>
>Fellow Wikipedians,
>
>I apologise for failing to make it clear earlier that the stable edition
>was what I was talking about and who would have the authority to decide
>that an article was ready for publication. I think that the editorial board
>or committee for a particular subject elected by all registered members
>should approve articles published on that medium. The board should be
>elected regularly say yearly.
>
>
>The wikipedia should continue as it is with everyone being able to edit
>freely.
>
>Regards
>

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Samuel J. Howard

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2004 12:07 AM
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

> --- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
>> We don't have to give them "that bit of comfort". They will get around
>> to reading and trusting our content anyway.
>
> And yet they are not and are in fact warning others to stay away from it.
> My
> best friend, whose opinion I regard very highly, is a grade school
> teacher. She
> is very intelligent, liberal minded, and has listened to me describe
> Wikipedia
> and how it works. It pains me greatly to concede that she will not allow
> any of
> her students to use our content as a reference due to the fact that it is
> not
> approved by people with relevant degrees.

I'm sorry, but that is just ridiculous.  Most books out there are not
peer-reviewed, only a very small portion of books published by university
presses are.  Magazine articles are even less likely to be so.

Sam Howard


subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
On 09/11/04 23:29, Jens Ropers wrote:
> From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>

>> (We need a name for this phenomenon. "Abusive crusader"?)

> ''POV crusader''.

The abusiveness needs mention - carrying it to Mr-Natural-Health
or Robert Brookes extremes is notable.

(The RFC is remarkable. A question for arbcom members: how long
would a new arbcom case take to come to a decision on? And is
"go to mediation" considered appropriate for a case of repeated
personal abusiveness?)

- d.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Timwi-

this would require code changes throughout the software just to do the DB
conversion "on the fly", and there's many many stages where we can wind up
with inconsistent data that is difficult to recognize and fix (because you
only have puzzle pieces), not to mention that whole-database operations
(search, query pages etc.) would suddenly have to be split over two DBs.

I don't understand what the big deal is about making the site read-only
for n days. Heck, we've had the site inaccessible for days in the past,
people would be pleasantly surprised about a properly scheduled
maintenance operation. And if n is too large, we should think about why
that is so (mainly because we story every single revision of every page,
so a single edit war can easily generate 2 megabytes of wasted space).
IMHO redesigning revision storage from scratch should be part of a schema
change.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: David

subject: [Wikitech-l] MEdiawiki and XHTML writing?

body:
Hello,

I want to create a dictionary wiki so Mediawiki seems perfect. Problem
is I also want to be able to enter pure XHTML (and not one or two tags)
if I want to. This is a sine qua non condition for me.

Xwiki, a French open source wiki, allows it. What about Mediawiki? If
it doesn't, it is planned to?

Thank you

--
</david_latapie>
blog.empyree.org


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
On 12 Sep 2004, at 01:08, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 7
> Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:41:38 +0000
> From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>
> (We need a name for this phenomenon. "Abusive crusader"?)

''POV crusader''.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: nn (Norw. Nynorsk) wikipedia

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> I was told by a Norwegian that the Scandanavian languages are all so
> closely related that they are effectively one language -- if you want to
> look at it that way; or all quite different -- if you want to look at it
> the other way. If that's true, it's certainly inconsistent to accept
> "Norwegian" and Swedish as different languages, but regard Nynorsk as
> merely a dialect of "Norwegian".
>
> Perhaps the nearest equivalent might be "Scots" vs. "English". Read
> http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/language/scots/index.htm to get a
> flavor of Scots, which is an official language of the Scottish Parliament.

Norway was in union with Denmark from 1450 to 1814, during which time
the elite, and eventually city-dwellers around them, began to speak
Danish. Bokm?l split off from Danish after they left. Nyorsk is based on
the non-standardised language the peasants spoke during Danish rule.
Both Danish/Bokm?l and Nyorsk have their roots in Old Norse.

Here's the first four lines of the Lord's Prayer in these languages,
courtesy of Pater Noster.

Nyorsk:

Fader v?r, du som er i himmelen!
Lat namnet ditt helgast.
Lat riket ditt koma.
Lat viljen din r?da p? jorda som i himmelen.

Bokm?l:

Fader v?r, du som er i himmelen!
La ditt navn holdes hellig.
La ditt rike komme.
La din vilje skje p? jorden som i himmelen.

Danish:

Vor Fader, du som er i Himlene!
Helliget vorde dit navn;
komme dit rige;
ske din vilje p? jorden, som den sker i Himmelen;

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
> Message: 11
> Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 18:50:47 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
>
>> No. We. Don't.
>
> We don't want them to read our content? Sorry, but you are in an
> extreme
> minority around here if you think that.
>
> -- mav

You're misreading me.

We don't have to give them "that bit of comfort". They will get around
to reading and trusting our content anyway.

Related posts:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030551.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030552.html

Sorry for maybe not being clear.

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Goethe-Institute about wikipedia

body:
http://www.goethe.de/kug/mui/int/thm/en162039.htm

Free knowledge for free citizens of the world

The Wikipedia online encyclopaedia
Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia to which anyone can contribute and
whose articles can be read and reused free of charge. The German
language version now contains over 100,000 articles. But opinions about
this grass-roots encyclopaedia differ widely: some people are talking
about a free knowledge revolution, while others criticise Wikipedia?s
unreliability as a source of information.


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
There is a quote from the article which I find interesting, "People who make
their knowledge available to the internet community ? as with the open
source programs from e.g. Linux ? gain neither reputation nor royalties."

While I'm pretty sure we don't want to start paying each other royalties I
think we could provide references to Wikipedia editors who might be applying
for college, for a job, making a book proposal, etc.

Fred

> From: Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 06:09:56 +0200
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org, Mailingliste der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia
> <wikide-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Goethe-Institute about wikipedia
>
> http://www.goethe.de/kug/mui/int/thm/en162039.htm
>
> Free knowledge for free citizens of the world
>
> The Wikipedia online encyclopaedia
> Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia to which anyone can contribute and
> whose articles can be read and reused free of charge. The German
> language version now contains over 100,000 articles. But opinions about
> this grass-roots encyclopaedia differ widely: some people are talking
> about a free knowledge revolution, while others criticise Wikipedia?s
> unreliability as a source of information.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

body:
Just to say my usual bit about this, I'm all for rewarding volunteers,
and the best way to do that is with kind words, mutual respect, and
admiration for good deeds.  Mathematical formulas can never replace
taking the time to say "thank you" or "I am a fan of your work" when
you see an article that you like.

Algorithmic reputation systems are always a temptation, just because
they are possible.  But human reputation systems are much more nuanced
and powerful.

--Jimbo

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] IHT gets Wikipedia founder wrong

body:
Argh! IHT gets it wrong, so wrong... http://www.iht.com/articles/538271.html

"Telephones, mobile phones, e-mail and instant messaging were
novelties for the knowledgeable at first," said Howard Rheingold,
founder of Wikipedia and author of several books on the subject, "and
then they became widely accepted media for social interaction.
[...]

When the folks are done writing to Washington Post re: Britannica, get
cracking on this one. :)
----

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] IHT gets Wikipedia founder wrong


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 17:11:11 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "most of the Chinese-speaking people"? You mean yuanml, shizhao,
> fuzheado? All primarily users of Simplified.

It's obvious you've not spent time on ZH, otherwise you would know I
am not a simplified Chinese user. My user page there since February
2004 has a message in traditional characters, my system of choice.
Shizhao (yuanml) has been very patient to explain things so far, and I
have held off writing any response to you other than "Dialogue with
the ZH community," hoping you'd engage in friendly cooperation. I hope
you will.

> > - There appears to be an automated technical way to translate from one
> > system to the other, albeit one that occasionally mucks things up.
>
> The same can be said for machine translation between any two given languages.

Wikipedia is a human-oriented wiki. The task at hand is different than
purely automated machine translation. That should be clear by now that
this allows a different approach to the problem.

> ...who has voiced their opinion on this list thus far. And it *does*
> appear we have some Chinese speakers on this list at least who are
> wanting to stay neutral but have said things in my favour.

Not exactly what I'd call "support" for the cause. Most users in the
ZH community see the value of keeping the critical mass together, at
least for now, given its small size.

> Nationalistic/patriotic reasons? These languages use TWO DIFFERENT
> WRITING SYSTEMS.

This is incorrect. Both simplified and traditional use the same
logogrpahic "writing system", the differences are an issue of glyphs.
As others have said, a relatively small subset of characters have been
changed to make writing and learning simpler, and there are  problems
with many-to-one mappings. However, let's make this clear:

Traditional vs. simplified is one issue. Another whole issue is
vocabulary, idioms and usage in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, United
States, PRC (and provinces within), etc. They are largely orthogonal.
They are more alike than dissimilar, so there is value in keeping them
together, and finding a technical solution for managing the
differences using methods that are less disruptive than a full fork.

Node, there is no doubt you are a smart guy, and your schooling has
served you well. But consider this a case of learning how to work with
others and the community, something that is much harder to learn.
Thanks.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 17:44:03 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Please realise I am not threatening anyone, just letting you know that
> this is going to happen no matter what, and that really what we are
> discussing here is whether it can be hosted by Wikipedia and be
> officially part of Wikipedia, or not.

This is remarkably arrogant given the patient explanations and
goodwill from Shizhao and others.

--
Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
John Lee wrote:

> The article in question can be found at:
> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1302435,00.html
>
> Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>> A positive article 'Wiki's wacky but it works' in today's London
>> Observer,
>> Business section, by John Naughton who typically writes on Internet
>> topics.
>> It takes the line that WP is good at 'self-healing', and is generally
>> better
>> (more comprehensive) than Britannica Online.
>
I particularly liked the comments in the closing paragraph.   These
clearly suggest that this revolution is much bigger than Wikipedia.

> We have become so imbued by the conventional wisdom of managerial
> capitalism that we think the only way to do things is via
> hierarchical, top-down, tightly controlled organisations that are
> highly tuned and incredibly fragile. Wikipedia is none of these
> things, yet it works brilliantly. There's a lesson there for control
> freaks.

Ec


from_name: J.F. de Wolff

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: If you want to include a point-of-view,
	then write it.

body:
As Robert wants to have the final word: I wrote to the list initially in
defence of Danny, and felt this was an opportune moment to unload some
frustration with RK.
Robert's point: "If you want to include a point-of-view, then write it" is
well taken. However, someone who is aware that another POV is extant should
try to include that POV to prevent an article from becoming lopsided
towards one view, while "the other side" is doing its research.
I agree that RFM would not have resolved the differences of opinion we have
been expressing on the list. RFAr might have.

--Jfdwolff


body:
Stephan Walter wrote:

> As you can read on sf.net:
>
> "We are moving bugs to bugzilla.wikipedia.org which is easier to search
> and not as cluttered and intimidating.
>
> Please file new bug reports there."

It also says it on MediaZilla's homepage
(http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/) ...


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: An urgent Proposal: A fair, effective and free
	rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote:
>
>> There there's also this fact that, while the issue isn't completely
>> settled, there is psychological research saying that extrinsic
>> rewards, contrary to naive but popular belief, not only doesn't
>> increase performance, but actually lowers it, see e.g.:
>> http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/cont_reward.html
>> http://www.nwrel.org/request/oct00/motivate.html
>> http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap4/chap4q.htm
>>
>> The important conclusion is that there is lack of conclusive evidence
>> that extrinsic rewards actually help and there is psychological
>> research showing the opposite.
>
>
> I wouldn't take this "research" too seriously. I'm not doubting the
> seriousness and/or competency of the researchers, but this seems like
> one of those "scientific conclusions" that are made once and then
> taken for instant truth by a large group of people (volunteer online
> project participants, in this case) because it simply "fits the
> picture". In other words, the conclusion is backed up by wishful
> thinking more than concrete evidence. Not surprisingly, the first time
> I heard of this "scientific evidence" was on a page on the server of
> the Free Software Foundation, and in general you hardly ever hear of
> it outside of free-software or open-source communities.

I first read about this study in an issue of "Scientific American" last
spring.  Thank you for letting us know that the theme has also been
taken up by the Free Software Foundation.  I would never have thought to
look there for more information.

> It's like with the milk and the lightning. People have observed that
> milk tends to go sour when there is a thunderstorm. They conclude from
> that that the thunderstorm causes the milk to go sour, because that
> would fit the picture. But the conclusion is false. In reality there
> is a third factor, namely humidity, which causes both the milk to go
> sour and a thunderstorm.

This kind of analogical argument is extremely unsound.  In that
investigation proposing the initial hypothesis that thunderstorms caused
milk to go sour was perfectly valid.  It was a hypothesis, not a
conclusion.  Subsequent experimentation showed the hypothesis to be
false, and that was what science is all about.  At best raising this
issue is completely irrelevent.

> Similarly it is possible that people produce less-quality work for
> money not because of the money, but because of some undetermined third
> factor. Work for money tends to be less volunteered (i.e. you're stuck
> in a contract with an employer, you can't opt out at any time). Work
> for money tends to involve other people (colleagues or a boss) whom
> you might not like, but can't walk away from. Loads of possibilities.

There are certainly undetermined factors involved.  A long accepted
premise among economists is that people would act rationally.
Rationality in this context was defined in terms of bettering one's
economic situation.  This thread of rationality could be applied very
conveniently at both the micro- and macroeconomic level.  For the
economist taking time off work to care for a sick child is not a
rational act.  Where does the economist ask the question, "What
motivates people when their economic goals are achieved?"  Are the
economics of greed a universal motivator?  If my 10-year old automobile
adequately gets me wherever I want to go, why would I ever want a bigger
fancier one?  Why work a 40-hour week when the pay for a 30-hour week is
sufficient?  Is it the big salary that motivates you to keep working for
Wikipedia?

Ec


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Academics are Useful to Wikipedia

body:
I've watched this topic get debated endlessly here, & I feel some
contributors misunderstand the importance of having academics (i.e.,
people with advanced degrees in their fields who also either teach
or publish) contribute to Wikipedia. As with any resource, asking
Academics to contribute has its weaknesses & strengths:

Weaknesses:
* Training or certification does not mean they are infallible in
judgement. There have been countless examples of an academic
abusing his or her authority to furtherher/his view, at the cost
of delaying the advancement of human knowledge. (Ec & I mentioned
2 some months ago in this maillist: the delay in translating Mayan
writing, & the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls.) And anyone
who has attended college probably can recite examples of various
professors asserting as incontrovertible truth apalling howlers
of judgement. (I could quote a few myself, but that would likely
lead to OT arguments.)

* Arrogance. By the fact they have arrived at the end of a long
road of training, academics tend to be prima donnas; some handle it
better than others. I feel this is one reason that some academics
have problems dealing with the Internet. It's not so much that they
have to respond to every objection -- even if it comes from a crank,
a child, or someone quoting an out-of-date textbook -- but that
when an Internet group works, it is because its members only care
for accuracy & correctness & are equally harsh on anyone who
violates these terms whether they are a tenured professor, a crank,
a child, or someone quoting an out-of-date textbook.

* Careerism. It's an open secret that competition for academic
posts is fierce, if not vicious. And if a person knows that she/he is
not the brightest & best in a gvien field, there is a temptation
to compromise standards. Instead of Wikipedia receiving the benefit
ofexpert knowledge, it may instead be victimized by someone only
seeking to advance a career.

Strengths:
* Their training or education is systematic, which means they usually
know what they don't know. Self-educated people frequently don't
realize that, despite their deep amount of knowledge, that what the
holes in their nkowledge are.

* By teaching or publishing papers, they confront the problem of
communicating the subject. They have dealt with the problem of explaining
jargon & complex ideas into words a non-expert can understand, & again,
know what points need to be covered for an article on a given subject
to be considered complete.

* They usually are up to date on the secondary literature; they know
what are important POVs that need to be included. The problem
with importing so many articles on ancient Greece & Rome from EB 1911
is not that facts have changed. The ancient Greks are still considered
the victors in the Persian Wars, Augustus is still considered a Roman
Emperor, Plotinus is still a philosopher. The problem is that in the
last 90 years scholarship has turned to other issues that the editors
of the EB 1911 did not think of covering, most noteably the social &
economic history of ancient Greece & Rome -- which is contained entirely
in the secondary literature published since 1911. And much of that
secondary literature is in the form of specialized periodicals only
available at University libraries -- & sometimes not even there.

In short, if faced with choosing between an expert who does not care to
conform to the Wikipedia way (by which I mean is willing to engage in
give-&-take in the writing of material) & a non-expert who is willing
to learn & "play nice" with other contributors, I would choose the
latter. And I hope I am not alone in this preference.

Geoff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Database schema

body:
Hi Erik,

thanks for your comments.

> this would require code changes throughout the software just to do the DB
> conversion "on the fly",

That is correct. But it would be a minor part of it considering the code
changes necessary for a whole new DB schema. I don't think it's a problem.

> and there's many many stages where we can wind up
> with inconsistent data that is difficult to recognize and fix (because you
> only have puzzle pieces),

One could regard each of the individual DBs (the old and the new) as
"inconsistent", but they (and the queue) form a whole that is in itself
consistent. Yes, some pieces might be scattered across the two DBs, but
the queue tells you exactly which. Hence, I don't think this is a
problem either.

But then again, I also don't think it would be too much of a problem to
keep the new DB consistent at every stage during the transition.

> not to mention that whole-database operations
> (search, query pages etc.) would suddenly have to be split over two DBs.

No, they wouldn't have to. Part of my proposal was to not mind that such
queries will at first generate incomplete results. Once the conversion
is complete, they will be back to full functionality.

> I don't understand what the big deal is about making the site read-only
> for n days.

But other people do think it's a big deal, so we have to cater for them.
I can totally understand people's frustration with not being able to
edit, *especially* for several days. Someone like me who likes to fix
little errors (spelling etc.) as they read along, would either have to
forego them (not ideal) or keep a list and come back to them later (too
much hassle).

> And if n is too large, we should think about why
> that is so (mainly because we store every single revision of every page,
> so a single edit war can easily generate 2 megabytes of wasted space).

Removing edit wars from the histories (assuming for a moment that this
would be easy) would reduce the size of the DB by only a small constant
factor. That's not worth it. It doesn't reduce the rate of growth of the DB.

But regardless of that, here's an idea. We could "filter out" duplicate
revisions while converting an article's history to the new schema. We
are planning anyway to have a 'revisions' table where a 'text' column
would be an integer ID, and we would have a 'texts' (or 'blobs' or
whatever) table where these IDs are mapped to actual text.

The idea is as follows:
* Read the old revision from the old DB and generate its MD5 checksum
* See if any of the revisions in the new DB already have that checksum
   (could be done with an indexed 'md5' column in the 'texts' table)
* Check if any of those are actually identical to the one we've read
* If so, re-use the revision's ID instead of storing a new one

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Chris Wood

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: VfD is broken

body:
It hasn't been much publicized yet. The previous version (which redirects to
Wikipedia:Importance) was listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment -
Wikipedia:Importance is itself listed there now.

You don't have to abide by it. However, as far as policy goes, it doesn't
add much, rather it clarifies existing policies.

> Where has it been publicized that this article exists, and that it
requests open discussion?  And how can you say that we have to abide by it,
if it's not yet policy?
>
> RickK
>
>
> Chris Wood <standsongrace at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > How did something which was only first created on August 26 suddenly
> become policy without a vote or an open discussion?
>
> It's a proposed policy, and it requests open discussion.


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>While I'm pretty sure we don't want to start paying each other royalties I
>think we could provide references to Wikipedia editors who might be applying
>for college, for a job, making a book proposal, etc.
>
Hmmm! Like, "We welcome the opportunity to have Mr. Vogel's staunch
full-time defence of his principles applied to your work environment." ;-)

Ec


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
A positive article 'Wiki's wacky but it works' in today's London Observer,
Business section, by John Naughton who typically writes on Internet topics.
It takes the line that WP is good at 'self-healing', and is generally better
(more comprehensive) than Britannica Online.

Charles


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: An urgent Proposal: A fair,
 effective and free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote:

> There there's also this fact that, while the issue isn't completely
> settled, there is psychological research saying that extrinsic
> rewards, contrary to naive but popular belief, not only doesn't
> increase performance, but actually lowers it, see e.g.:
> http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/cont_reward.html
> http://www.nwrel.org/request/oct00/motivate.html
> http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap4/chap4q.htm
>
> The important conclusion is that there is lack of conclusive evidence
> that extrinsic rewards actually help and there is psychological
> research showing the opposite.

I wouldn't take this "research" too seriously. I'm not doubting the
seriousness and/or competency of the researchers, but this seems like
one of those "scientific conclusions" that are made once and then taken
for instant truth by a large group of people (volunteer online project
participants, in this case) because it simply "fits the picture". In
other words, the conclusion is backed up by wishful thinking more than
concrete evidence. Not surprisingly, the first time I heard of this
"scientific evidence" was on a page on the server of the Free Software
Foundation, and in general you hardly ever hear of it outside of
free-software or open-source communities.

It's like with the milk and the lightning. People have observed that
milk tends to go sour when there is a thunderstorm. They conclude from
that that the thunderstorm causes the milk to go sour, because that
would fit the picture. But the conclusion is false. In reality there is
a third factor, namely humidity, which causes both the milk to go sour
and a thunderstorm.

Similarly it is possible that people produce less-quality work for money
not because of the money, but because of some undetermined third factor.
Work for money tends to be less volunteered (i.e. you're stuck in a
contract with an employer, you can't opt out at any time). Work for
money tends to involve other people (colleagues or a boss) whom you
might not like, but can't walk away from. Loads of possibilities.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>Why do you think that he will never write about wikipedia again?
>Because i wrote him and to correct a mistake i made?
>
>I think you overestemate his fragility as a journalist.
>
>On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:02:12 +0100, Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>and he will probably never write about it again! nice one!
>>
>><avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I contacted him about this misstatement and hopefully he'll correct it.
>>>
Pointing out his error does not detract from the thrust of his message.
Although we are conscious of the important difference between PD and
GFDL, it is still secondary to the point that he was trying to make.  I
would speculate that he will view the pointing out of this error as a
natural part of the "self healing" process that he praised.

Ec


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: An urgent Proposal: A fair,	effective and free
	rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 11:47:13AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>There are certainly undetermined factors involved.  A long accepted
>>premise among economists is that people would act rationally.
>>Rationality in this context was defined in terms of bettering one's
>>economic situation.  This thread of rationality could be applied very
>>conveniently at both the micro- and macroeconomic level.  For the
>>economist taking time off work to care for a sick child is not a
>>rational act.
>>
>>
>But of course it is rational. The benefit due to improvement in one's child's
>health is much greater than loss because of not working.
>
Rationality operates from a set of premises, and a strict reasoning from
those premises.  Unless it can be shown that caring for the sick child
has economic value (e.g. the child is a precocious film star) it is an
irrational act because we are inserting a premise from outside the
system.  Within a strictly rational system euthenasia may be the only
rational act, and one must not confuse that with the natural human
emotional response to such an act.

>Even in the most diehard classical economy, the money is just a means for
>getting the actual goods, and in this case you can obtain much more valuable
>goods some other way.
>
In that case one needs to compare the net loss from not working with the
net economic effect of working while paying someone else to care for the
child.  The healing effect of being personally present to care for the
child cannot be economically quantified.

Ec


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Le Sunday 12 September 2004 02:44, Mark Williamson a ?crit :
> Also, I think I should add that a split is inevitable.
>
> If the Wikimedia Foundation chooses to not host it, those of us who
> believe a separate Wikipedia is nessecary will fork - not just
> linguistically, but the serious type of
> different-server-different-domainname fork entailed in for example
> Enciclopedia Libre (enciclopedia.us.es), wikinfo, wikiznanie.ru, etc.
> I'm not 100% sure but I think a similar thing happened some years ago
> when fr: was allowed to decide whether or not wa: was created, and
> eventually it was transferred to Wikimedia Foundation servers.

This is wrong. Wa: never was a fork. It was an experiment made outside the
Foundation simply because it was not sure it was workable (sufficient number
of editors, etc.). I think only Creole could be said to be a French dialect,
and no Creole Wikipedia exists, nor any request was made for it, AFAIK.

Again here, I think you are using something you don't know to serve your
purpose, and threatening rather than discussing.

[...]

> Best,
> Jin Junshu/Mark

Regards,
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


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to safely update from 1.3.2 to 1.3.3?

body:
On Thu, Sep 09, 2004 at 11:56:25AM -0500, Kiss All wrote:
> I am worrying about some configuration will lost and database crash
> and something like this.
> Any successful experience here?

No reason to worry, just make a backup prior to updating.

JeLuF


from_name: Bjarte Sorensen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Norwegian and Chinese

body:
In Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 14, Issue 13, Mark/Jin Junshu wrote:

> Not to muck up the ongoing discussion regarding Nynorsk/Bokm?l, on
> which I have read a bit, but I'd like to point out something relevant
> to the Chinese discussion.
>
> Nynorsk and Bokm?l are for the most part mutually intelligible. They
> use basically exactly the same writing system.
>
> Yet Nynorsk has recently been awarded its own Wikipedia which has
> around 60 articles (vs the over 700 "legitimate" articles in the
> database of zh-tw:); not that I disagree with that but that for
> various reasons, no: who had previously believed they could cooperate
> are now splitting. Very accurate computer conversion between the two
> is possible and exists although it is not 100% accurate. Nynorsk and
> Bokm?l are close enough together that they wouldn't nessecarily even
> need separate articles like Trad. and Simp. do ATM (pending the
> implementation of the "solution" proposed by some of the Simplified
> users) but could in most cases be in the same article, following a
> similar policy to that of en: regarding US vs International English.
>
> This is clearly a very sticky subject as is the other issue, but
> ultimately it should be up to those raised using Nynorsk who use it in
> their everyday lives who get to make the decision, not those who use
> Bokm?l.

First of all, thanks for your support in nn.wikipedia.org. I would just like to
point out that there are even more profound reasons for having nynorsk and
bokm?l wikipedias separate for the time being.

As Olve also recently said, Nynorsk (Neo-Norwegian) and Bokm?l (Dano-Norwegian)
differ not only orthographically, but also very often morphologically,
syntactically and semantically. As even users of Bokm?l often point out, Bokm?l
and Danish are linguistically closer than Bokm?l and Nynorsk, even though the
former pair are normally distuingished as different languages (for historical
reasons) and the latter as two official written forms of Norwegian.

> Very accurate computer conversion between the two
> is possible and exists although it is not 100% accurate.

The computer conversions I have seen are far from accurate, and usually don't
take into account much of the syntactic and semantic aspects of translation.
Also, all current methods AFAIK are copyrighted. To merely take a Bokm?l article
and translate word by word into Nynorsk does not make good Nynorsk.

As it stands today, I think many nynorskusers (of which there are an estimated
400,000-800,000 compared to 3,000,000-4,000,000 bokm?lusers) will be
discouraged from participating in the mainly Bokm?l environment of the
Norwegian wiki and probably turn away at its main page, both because of its
Bokm?l UI and because of fears of discrimination and discouraging comments
(something nynorskusers are all too used to).

When all this is said, we are all looking forward to the day when we have a
unified (possibly Scandinavian languages, possibly international) wiki, where,
through improvement of MediaWiki, the language of the UI can be chosen by the
user, as well as language _preference_ for articles (not to mention the ability
to see the same article in multiple languages on the same page).

I think this is a point Mark is making in regards to a Chinese wiki,
too, and until such a day comes I think both Chinese and Norwegian wikis are
best served with their forks in order to encourage maximum total proliferation
(while encouraging concomitant activity in both forks for all that are able of
course), and hopefully the products can be joined in the future for the benefit
of all.

Cheers, Bjarte Sorensen (User BjarteSorensen on :en, :nn and :no)

PS: This is another appeal for the granting of "official" status to
nn.wikipedia.org, and to give SysOp status to some of its users (so that e.g.
the already completed (by Olve) LangageNn.php file can be uploaded). Thanks :)

PPS: This is also an appeal to all that are able (programmers etc) to keep
working towards a unified wiki, where UI-language is customizable at
client-level (not to mention a common photo-library).

PPPS: For some informative, relatively non-biased (English) articles on the
language-situation of Norway, look at http://www.sprakrad.no/engelsk.htm (The
Norwegian Language Council).


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] [mvogrein@cogeco.ca: Re: Wikipedia - Prescott Bush page]

body:
----- Forwarded message from Mitch Vogrein <mvogrein at cogeco.ca> -----

From: "Mitch Vogrein" <mvogrein at cogeco.ca>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 11:43:46 -0400
To: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
Subject: Re: Wikipedia - Prescott Bush page

Yes, please. Or maybe you're fine with it the way it is. I understand that Wikipedia is a unique resource in that it's open to contibutors, and I wish I could, but I'm not a writer.  Your email address is the single apparent address in the "contact us" page.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
To: "Mitch Vogrein" <mvogrein at cogeco.ca>
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 11:35 AM
Subject: Re: Wikipedia

Right, well, I'm not the person to talk to about directly making changes,
may I forward your letter to some editors who can fix this?

Mitch Vogrein wrote:

> No actually.  I'm just pointing out that this author is contradicting something stated earlier in the piece and eroniously vilifying some mysterious Canadian loggers.  A lot of my friends are in forestry and they don't have a malevolent bone in their body.  KIDDING!
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
> To: "Mitch Vogrein" <mvogrein at cogeco.ca>
> Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 9:59 AM
> Subject: Re: Wikipedia
>
>
> Can you make an edit to fix this?
>
> Mitch Vogrein wrote:
>
> > Your Prescott Bush page has the bullshit below on it.
> >
> > The New York Herald-Tribune never referred to him as "Hitler's Financial Angel". The Tribune referred to a German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, as "Hitler's Angel," and mentioned Bush only as an employee of an investment banking firm Thyssen used in the USA. The label was ironic, since by the time the Tribune article appeared, Hitler had turned on Thyssen and imprisoned him. There has been a determined effort by Canadian bloggers, apparently connected with Lyndon LaRouche, to circulate reports that Bush
 h
> imself was known as "Hitler's Angel".
> >
> >
>
> --
> "La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org
>

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org

----- End forwarded message -----

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


from_name: Krzysztof Kowalczyk

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: An urgent Proposal: A fair,
	effective and free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 12:06:14 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > The important conclusion is that there is lack of conclusive evidence
> > that extrinsic rewards actually help and there is psychological
> > research showing the opposite.
>
> I wouldn't take this "research" too seriously. I'm not doubting the
> seriousness and/or competency of the researchers, but this seems like
> one of those "scientific conclusions" that are made once and then taken
> for instant truth by a large group of people (volunteer online project
> participants, in this case) because it simply "fits the picture". In
> other words, the conclusion is backed up by wishful thinking more than
> concrete evidence.

Well, I have a research to back up my "wishful thinking". You have
only wishful thinking to back up  your "wishful thinking". I still
think that research carries more weight.

> Not surprisingly, the first time I heard of this
> "scientific evidence" was on a page on the server of the Free Software
> Foundation, and in general you hardly ever hear of it outside of
> free-software or open-source communities.

Which is most likely due to your limited exposure. As far as I know,
those results were confirmed in multiple experiments spanning multiple
years. Hit the google and the library and then start proclaiming that
"you hardly ever hear of it outside of free-software or open-source
communities." One of the driving reasons for the research is to
determine how to improve people's (student's, employee's) productivity
and well-being and therefore has very broad applications and is
non-neglible field of study in psychology.

The fact that *you* didn't hear about it outside free-software
communites prooves only that you're not exactly qualified to comment
on quality of the research and its conclusions.

> It's like with the milk and the lightning. People have observed that
> milk tends to go sour when there is a thunderstorm. They conclude from
> that that the thunderstorm causes the milk to go sour, because that
> would fit the picture. But the conclusion is false. In reality there is
> a third factor, namely humidity, which causes both the milk to go sour
> and a thunderstorm.

You're arguing that "some people made inccorect conclusions in the
past (example) therefore researches in question (that have nothing to
do whatsoever with those people) made incorrect conclusions as well".
Faulty logic if I ever saw one.

If you want to debate the merits of a very specific research, provide
links to research that counters the result.

> Similarly it is possible that people produce less-quality work for money
> not because of the money, but because of some undetermined third factor.
> Work for money tends to be less volunteered (i.e. you're stuck in a
> contract with an employer, you can't opt out at any time). Work for
> money tends to involve other people (colleagues or a boss) whom you
> might not like, but can't walk away from. Loads of possibilities.

Of course it's possible that they're wrong for multiple reasons.
Researches could be really stupid. They could have suffered from
temporary insanity. Maybe they were sponsored by evil goverment
agency so secret, that they don't even have 3-letter acronym and
created wrong results on purpose.

However, just pointing the fact that its possible that the research
migh be wrong is not an argument. You can apply this silly reasoning
to any research ever done, especially in psychology, given that
isolating primary factors isn't easy in psychological studies.

Krzysztof Kowalczyk | http://blog.kowalczyk.info


from_name: yuanml

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Yacht(one of the first members of zh) mentioned such a point at zh:Village pump
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%81%8A%E5%A4%A9#zh-tw_WP
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E4%BA%92%E5%8A%A9%E5%AE%A2%E6%A0%88

"Well, my point is 'a completely TC UI' and 'sharing the same database'(i thought it was workable).
the most important thing is the 'TC UI' (as Mark mentioned, a lots TC users complain about the SC UI).
of course, that's not an 'entire split', i disapprove of that too (as i was upset by the minnan WP before)."