from_name: Felix Wan

body:
On Thu, February 10, 2005 11:14 am, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales said:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> The thing is you're still presupposing that an existing wikipedia has
>> a right to block the existence of a new Wikipedia.
>>
>> I ask the Board: is this the case?
>
> Not speaking here for the board, but only offering my own tentative
> opinion, the answer to this is "no" in the general case, but that such
> factors can be a part of the overall decision.
>
Nice to hear that.  I have never taken the resource argument seriously,
and no one here should. But I do take the similarity argument very
seriously.

> I am told repeatedly by many people that while Mandarian and Cantonese
> are mutually unintelligible in the spoken form, in written form they are
> the same.  This is pretty compelling for me.
>
I don't know how to convince you, but even the written forms are not the
same.  They are just similar, perhaps 80%-90% intelligible, depending on
the subject matter.  The written form eliminates phonetic differences,
leaving only differences in vocabulary and grammar.  Who told you that
they are the same?

> If there is a significant population of people who can not read/write
> standard written Chinese, but *can* read/write Cantonese in some writing
> system that is different, then I want to learn about that, because that
> would be a very compelling factor in the other direction.
>
The fact is, every literate Cantonese speaker can read standard written
Chinese, because that is what is taught in schools, not because written
Cantonese and written Mandarin are the same.

Do we want to set a language policy to disallow a Wikipedia if almost all
the literate speakers of that regional speech can read the written form of
another prestiged regional speech?  I am OK with that.  That may be good
for Wikipedias to limit the number of versions.  We just need to make it
clear and apply it consistently.

That policy will disallow Ebonics (African American Vernacular English)
and Singlish (Singaporean English) even though some linguists classify
them as creoles, but will not disallow Tok Pisin (we do have tpi:), which
is a creole with a distinct writing system.

I am not familiar with the European languages.  I remember I heard about
Catalan and three versions of Dutch, or something else.  Can other people
fill me in on how the language policy is applied to other regional
speeches?

Perhaps this is a good time for us to set a fair and workable language
policy.  We want our decision to set a good precedent, not a bad one.

Felix Wan


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jan Henning

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
>> Wikipedia Foundation money I hope it will be used to cover the
>> languages
>> of living humans in preference to languages of interest only to fans,
>> (...)
>
> Do you mean wikipedias like the latin one should not to exist?

IMHO, Latin is stil lused, e.g., for regular radio broadcasts by the
Vatican.

Skriptor
[[de:Benutzer:Skriptor]]


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Il love you - in many languages

body:
Pedro Fayolle wrote:

>"Te quiero" in Spanish should not translate as "I love you". "Te amo"
>is the actual phrase.
>
>Te quiero has a simiar meaning, but is just not as strong. Similar to
>"dai suki" (not taken in literal sense, as that would be [en]"I like
>you" = [es]"me gustas") vs. "aishiteru" in Japanese, I guess. I don't
>think there's any real equivalent in English.
>
A more literal translation of "Te quiero" might be "I desire you", and
that carries a lot of other implications that may not be there in the
broader meanings of "love".  We also need to take note of the inversion
in "me gustas".  In the extremes of literality that would be "You taste
me", but more practically "You are pleasant to my tastes."   For French
that becomes "Tu me plait," or "You please me."  The inversion based on
who is the subject of the verb suggests that the concept is more
aggressively self-centred in Germanic languages. :-)

Some people still believe in machine translations. :-D

Ec


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request

body:
Kaixo!

On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 08:26:20AM +0100, Boris Lohnzweiger wrote:

> But, a the end of the day, what is (or should be) an encyclopedia all
> about?  My definition is: a _comprehensive_ source of information.
> Now I'm afraid neither Klingon nor Quenyan nor any other fictional
> language wikipedia will ever achieve that status. Matter of fact,
> I think even most International auxiliary language wikipedias which
> have been set up so far won't get there.

I fully agree.
(note that for "most international auxiliary languages", their
wikipedias are not very healthy because the language itself isn't;
Esperanto is the most successful auxiliary language, used by
a lot of people and I have actually seen Esperanto in use in
various places; and eo: Wikipedia does quite well).

> So after all, those fantasy language wikipedias would all end up being
> creative playgrounds for small circles of people. Which surely woundn't
> be a bad thing. But would that really fit into the concept of this
> great project?

That is the problem; what the proposers of those languages want is
not a Wikipedia!
They want a playgroung, feature the wonderfull mediawiki software
(which has evolved to be the best wiki software out there).
Imho such demands should be redirected to wikibooks or a similar thing
(maybe not hosted by wikipedia foundation); it will be even better for
them, as there won't be the need to write NPOV encyclopedic articles.

As for people doing research, I can perfectly imagine people doing
research in Klingon about Klingon language topics (or about supposed
Klingon fictional universe); but indeed I don't imagine them doing
research in Klingon about chemistry, medieval European history
or Russian litterature...
So, a mediawiki site for those fictional language makes sense and
is legitimate, but it should definitively not be a wikipedia; it doesn't
has the same goels, and it should have the same constraints either.

(I feel the same about some dead non-fictional languages, like
classical Latin or Anglo-saxon)

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

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
>> IMHO, Latin is stil lused, e.g., for regular radio broadcasts by the
>> Vatican.
>
> The Vatican isn't exactly short of cash.  It could well afford a Latin
> Wikipedia of its own.

The Tolkien estate also is unlikely to be short of cash, same as the
producers of Star Trek... ;-)

Skriptor

[[de:Benutzer:Skriptor]]


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
David Gerard said:
>
> If we have a precedent that zh: can block the existence of a Cantonese
> Wikipedia, can en: block Quenya? Please?
>
I hope we have no such precedent.  Allowing the speakers of a rival
language to veto the production of a Wikipedia would not be right. Their
observations (and I've seen some potentially persuasive arguments on
either side in the Chinese Wikipedia discussion though I have not
investigated it closely) should not be dismissed as irrelevant, but they
shouldn't be allowed to block an otherwise viable Wikipedia.


body:
On Wed, February 9, 2005 8:11 pm, Mark Williamson said:
> I'm not so sure about that Stirling.
>
> In many contexts, yes, but as an independent sentence you would most
> definitely say "wo ai ni", although you could potentially say "ai ni"
> it's not as common.
>
A little bit more common than saying "Love you." in English in context.
All regional varieties of Chinese are more pro-drop than English, but way
less pro-drop than Japanese.

On the other hand, "Aishiteru." is an independent sentence with the 1st
person subject and 2nd person object implied, unless specified otherwise
in context.  It is grammatical, common, and preferred.

> I know that in Cantonese the phrase is "ngoh oi nei" - not sure of the
> tones though.
>
Jyutping: Ngo5 oi3 nei5.
Pitch contours: 13 33 13

Felix Wan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
Kaixo!

On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 01:24:41AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Tengwar, like Klingon, is not in the Unicode standard, although it is
> a part of the conscript registry. Spaces used by the conscript
> registry for Tengwar are used by diffferent fonts for different
> characters - I have one that uses it for Chinese characters, and
> another one that uses the Klingon space for Arabic calligraphic forms.

Conscript space should be avoided indeed. It was mostly useful
whe ncomputers couldn't handle real unicode (which isn't limited
to BMP).

Tengwar is alwo encoded on plane 17 (I think) in a space that
is guaranteed to not conflict with other writtings;
there are fonts supporting it.
So that should be the used encoding.

And there is always the possibility to convert from one encoding
to the other, like in the Chinese wikipedia.

A wiki were people could write in tengwar would indeed be a good
thing; but it shouldn't be a wikipedia.
It should be a different project (even if using the same software).

> On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 23:55:05 -0500, Stephen Forrest
>
>> It seems to me to be a reasonable thing to insist that a language must
>> have at one time been a native tongue of some human population in
>> order for it to be granted a wikipedia.

No!
With that criterium the Esperanto wikipedia would have been denied.

The focus shouldn't be on the language itself on a linguistic level
(that would be vain, as all languages are linguistically equal);
but on the sociologic level, focus on the speakers community and what
they want to do.
If there is a real will to write an encyclopedia, then it should be
accepted, whatever the language;
but if there isn't a will to write an encyclopedia of human knowledge,
then it shouldn't (and I insist on *human* knowledge; while an
encyclopedia on the world of the Middle Earth would be a very nice
project, it doesn't fit Wikipedia).

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

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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body:
David Gerard said:
>
> But let's start a Quenya Wikipedia instead. Hell, that's not grossly
> insulting! At all!
>
That Aussie^H^H^H^H^H^HBritish sarcasm gets me every time. :)


list: wikien-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
--- Frank Pinter <francis.pinter at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some of the templates, for example {{NPOV}}, provide as a warning to
> the reader that "this article has problems, we are working on it" so
> they should be kept on the page. Others, for example {{wikify}} would
> probably be better on the talk page for clutter reasons.

FYI - I've started a guerrilla template code moving campaign for {{expand}}. So
far I've moved about a hundred instances of {{expand}} and {{expansion}} to
talk pages and have left a couple dozen polite messages for the taggers.

As soon as I'm done, I'm going to add a line to [[template:expansion]] that
that template is *only* to be placed on talk pages.

I encourage others to mount similar guerrilla template code moving campaigns on
other semi-permanent meta templates ({{stub}} and its variants is a lost cause
- *way* too many). {{controversial}} is one that is ripe for conquest (I
started on this one some time ago - but never finished). {{wikify}} is also a
valid target, as well as {{cleanup}}.

-- mav

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


from_name: Anthere

body:
Ron H a ?crit:
>
>
>
>
> I would like to request adding Quenya to the list of languages on
> Wikimedia. Quenya is the language of the elves in the works of Tolkien.
> Other fictional languages, such as Klingon, already exist on Wikipedia.
> I speak passing Quenya. I have already prepared several articles,
> including one on constellations, and would like to add them to a
> quenya-language wiki.
>
>
>
> Firsfron on Wikipedia.

I fear this is not gonna happen in the near future Ron.
Addition of these types of languages tend to be rather controversial in
the community, so addition of those will probably be suspended until the
community widely approve them.

I have a suggestion though. Perhaps you could negociate to have a
wikibooks written in Quenya ?


body:
Tony Sidaway a ?crit:
I don't have any objection in principle to groups producing
> their own encyclopedias in any language, but when it comes to spending
> Wikipedia Foundation money I hope it will be used to cover the languages
> of living humans in preference to languages of interest only to fans,
> hobbyists and linguists.

Quite true... but note that these projects usually do not grow much, and
do not have much visitors, so they do not cost much ;-)

ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
> So sorry, well, i believe only "living humans" can write articles, so,
> i
> knew i should  not make a literal interpretating on what you said.
> Trying to understand you, certainly I  made a wrong presuming on what
> you
> meant. (But now I guess I understand you: Regular radio broadcasts by
> the
> Vatican are made by living humans; people writing the Quenyan wikipedia
> wouldn't be living humans).

Sorry, I guess I did not manage to correctly convey what I wanted to
get across: Latin is not a 'dead'  language, in the sense that it is
still used today by actual people to communicate information (as
opposed to being used because the speakers find the use of the language
itself interesting, cool or whatever positive feeling they get). In
other words: It is used by people in the same way that you and me are
using English.

Skriptor
[[de:Benutzer:Skriptor]]


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Valentine's day!

body:
In message <849f98ed05020914363e274be7 at mail.gmail.com>, Mark Williamson
<node.ue-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>Not to spoil your fun, but unlike Christmas there is a much more
>international greeting for the same holiday (Valentine's Day) that is
>much less likely to alienate or offend others.
>
>There is no way to say "Happy valentine's day" in O'odham
>(Pima/Papago) or Piipaash (Maricopa) or Xalychidoma (Halichidhoma)
>without sounding extremely strange and perhaps overly religious - it
>is definitely non-traditional and not all speakers of these languages
>(well, at least O'odham) know what it is.

Indeed. It's a cultural thing -- even in Europe, I'm not sure how we'd
say it in Welsh as our equivalent is St Dwynwen's Day (25th January). We
had plenty of our own saints and had no need to import Roman ones!

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikicite project pages (english versions only
	so far)

body:
On Feb 10, 2005, at 1:39 PM, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:
>
>> In fact, one of the seeds for wikicite should be the wikisource
>> database.
>
> wikicite is superflous.  Use technology that is state of the art, you
> will be able to extract interesting snippets from a document or a
> document system (XML with XPath resp. XPointer).  Zebra (idzebra) is
> such an iplementation (cf. indexdata.dk).
>

Which works only in a world without copyright and with everyone having
a 7 second attention span. I am willing to believe the second will
happen in my lifetime, but not the first.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikicite project pages (english versions only
	so	far)

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:
>
>
>>Which works only in a world without copyright and with everyone having
>>a 7 second attention span.
>>
>>
>Do you think you are allowed to store a collection of "citations" of
>copyright protected works?
>
Being copyright does not prevent a work from being cited.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Valentine's day!

references:
<4209EBFC.3040607@yahoo.it>
	<4209EBFC.3040607-whZMOeQn8C0@public.gmane.org>
	<849f98ed05020914363e274be7@mail.gmail.com>
	<UxHp7Zt4K3CCFwTm@cartref.demon.co.uk>

body:
Arwel Parry said:
> In message <849f98ed05020914363e274be7 at mail.gmail.com>, Mark Williamson
>  <node.ue-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>>Not to spoil your fun, but unlike Christmas there is a much more
>>international greeting for the same holiday (Valentine's Day) that is
>>much less likely to alienate or offend others.
>>
>>There is no way to say "Happy valentine's day" in O'odham
>>(Pima/Papago) or Piipaash (Maricopa) or Xalychidoma (Halichidhoma)
>>without sounding extremely strange and perhaps overly religious - it is
>>definitely non-traditional and not all speakers of these languages
>>(well, at least O'odham) know what it is.
>
> Indeed. It's a cultural thing -- even in Europe, I'm not sure how we'd
> say it in Welsh as our equivalent is St Dwynwen's Day (25th January).
> We  had plenty of our own saints and had no need to import Roman ones!

Hmmm, nice idea smashes into bedrock of cultural diversity.  I suggest
that unless there is substantial willingness to set up a Wikipedia
tradition of celebrating Diwali, Eid, Guru Nanak, Beltain, Chinese New
Year, and whatever, in multiple languages, it's probably best to steer
clear of this kind of thing altogether.


from_name: MilchFlasche瑋平

body:
On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 19:06:51 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Chinese: Wo ie ni
> >>
> > Wo3 ai4 ni3.
> >
>
> The Wo is often dropped in practical use.
How can you be so sure about that? (smile)

In my knowledge, no matter it's Mandarin, Minnan, or Cantonese, we all
keep the "I".

Where there is a drop-out should rather be Japanese, they say a lot
"Aishiteru.", omitting both the subject and the object. The Koreans
also often say only "Saranghae yo" or "Johahae yo".
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
2005, make signs happen!


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Board meeting, February 2005

body:
The approved notes of the Board meeting on 7 February are now at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/February_7%2C_2005

The meeting focused primarily on finance, and the budget is now at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Budget/2005

If you would like to comment on this meeting or discuss any of the
points raised there, please do so at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimedia_Board_meetings

Angela.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Neil Harris

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

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050210 23:50]:
>
>
>>David Gerard said:
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>>If we have a precedent that zh: can block the existence of a Cantonese
>>>Wikipedia, can en: block Quenya? Please?
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>I hope we have no such precedent.  Allowing the speakers of a rival
>>language to veto the production of a Wikipedia would not be right.
>>
>>
>
>
>Fuzheado's arguments appear to be along those lines - in particular the
>argument that zh: needs the resources instead (as if volunteers are
>employees who can be reassigned at will, even assuming the argument it
>needs the resources so desperately is valid).
>
>
>
>
>>Their
>>observations (and I've seen some potentially persuasive arguments on
>>either side in the Chinese Wikipedia discussion though I have not
>>investigated it closely) should not be dismissed as irrelevant, but they
>>shouldn't be allowed to block an otherwise viable Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>
>We have Wikipedias for things that are clearly dialects; Cantonese is
>mutually-unintelligible with Mandarin.
>
>But let's start a Quenya Wikipedia instead. Hell, that's not grossly
>insulting! At all!
>
>
>- d.
>
>
>
>
As I understand it, the argument against creating Wikipedias in Chinese
local languages is that it will diffuse the effort needed in creating
the Chinese Wikipedia. Whilst I have some sympathy with this argument,
the justification for it will get progressively weaker as the Chinese
Wikipedia grows in size and number of editors.

At some point, the diffusion of effort argument will become
indefensible. However, that moment will always be defined as "sometime
in the future" by die-hard supporters of that argument.

Here's a compromise proposal: the Chinese Wikipedia should be regarded
as having succeeded beyond doubt when it has reached an article count of
N articles, where N might be, say, 50,000. At that point, the barrier to
creating other Chinese-language should be dropped. At the current rate
of growth, that will probably be sometime next year.

Here's the nice, counter-intuitive consequence to this proposal: it
provides an incentive to alternative-Chinese-language proponents to add
content to the mainstream-Chinese Wikipedia, and recruit more people to
do so, so that it will grow as rapidly as possible. When the 50,000
target is reached, it is probable that many of these new editors will
start to concentrate on their own local language versions; however, many
of them will, I imagine, also continue to work on the main Chinese
Wikipedia, and there will be a major incentive for content to flow in
translation between the different Chinese Wikipedias. So it's a win-win
proposal.

This is also a fairly hard proposal to argue against, given that it is
parametric, and ultra-hard-liners can simply suggest very high values of
N (possibly infinity), and those who want the immediate creation of
local Chinese Wikipedias will find that their proposal reduces to
setting N to, or below, the current article count. I would imagine that
many people wound accept as reasonable some value in the range 20,000 -
400,000. Then (I hope)  the only question is what method to determine
the consensus value of N -- arithmetic mean, geometric mean, mode, or
median?

-- Neil


from_name: Frank Pinter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 21:02:48 +0000 (UTC),
<pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
> > Pete/Pcb21 (pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com) [050206 10:30]:
>
> > {{unreferenced}} has attracted references. Check my talk page.
>
> I am glad some templates are getting a response :).
> It does really get on my nerves though that if I have a specific comment
> on how a particular article might be improved, I have to use the talk
> page, but for some reason general comments that might apply to lots of
> pages (i.e. those that are ripe for templatizing) are allowed to be on
> the article page. It's illogical and not neat.
>
> Pete/Pcb21

Some of the templates, for example {{NPOV}}, provide as a warning to
the reader that "this article has problems, we are working on it" so
they should be kept on the page. Others, for example {{wikify}} would
probably be better on the talk page for clutter reasons.

Maybe there's already a discussion about that at [[Template
talk:Wikify]] but I'm just stating my opinion.

--
Double ROT13 Encoded - circumvention will be prosecuted.


from_name: Pedro Fayolle

body:
"Te quiero" in Spanish should not translate as "I love you". "Te amo"
is the actual phrase.

Te quiero has a simiar meaning, but is just not as strong. Similar to
"dai suki" (not taken in literal sense, as that would be [en]"I like
you" = [es]"me gustas") vs. "aishiteru" in Japanese, I guess. I don't
think there's any real equivalent in English.


body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> writes:
>
>
>
>>One of the key advantages of the wiki way is that it draws more people
>>into the ranks of the knowledgeable.  Binding ourselves to
>>state-of-the-art technology may only result in creating a new elite.  If
>>we set about destroying the ivory tower it should not be with the sole
>>purpose of using the debris as a foundation for a new one.
>>
>>
>
>The wiki syntax is not good enough for long-term storage of books and
>other sources.  Okay, that's my very personal opinion, but that's the
>reason why I don't want to spend a second on wikisource in its current
>incarnation.  Wait, more or less by accident I proposed a copyright
>protected poem for deletion - it is still accessible here at
>http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Der_Mond_...&oldid=37693
>
I followed your link and found nothing there to indicate that any kind
of deletion proposal had been made.  Apart from Zhaladshar and me nobody
else seems to pay any sort of attention to that potential problem.
Neither of us are German speaking, so without some kind of alert the
likelihood that we would have spotted the problem is small.  An
anonymous blanking of the article with a brief mention on the summary
line is not likely to be noticed.  Now that I know about it I can do
something.

This incident gives weight to my view that there should not be a
separate de:wikisource.

It's really too early to say that the Wiki syntax is not adequate for
books.  For sure the potential is there for vandals to make stupid
changes to an author's text, but that's not happening.  On the other
hand the potential for creating annotations and translations is also
very important, and I look forward to the day when this can be done more
easily.

Ec


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Valentine's day!

references:
<4209EBFC.3040607@yahoo.it>	<4209EBFC.3040607-whZMOeQn8C0@public.gmane.org>	<849f98ed05020914363e274be7@mail.gmail.com>
	<UxHp7Zt4K3CCFwTm@cartref.demon.co.uk>

body:
>> Not to spoil your fun, but unlike Christmas there is a much more
>> international greeting for the same holiday (Valentine's Day) that is
>> much less likely to alienate or offend others.
>>
so this would be worth a note, don't you think so?

>> There is no way to say "Happy valentine's day" in O'odham
>> (Pima/Papago) or Piipaash (Maricopa) or Xalychidoma (Halichidhoma)
>> without sounding extremely strange and perhaps overly religious - it
>> is definitely non-traditional and not all speakers of these languages
>> (well, at least O'odham) know what it is.
>
And also this should then be inserted - with a note (also in English is
ok) that there is no consideration for S. Valentine - this is part of
culture - and of course it should be part of one or more wikipedia
articles (and linked).

>
> Indeed. It's a cultural thing -- even in Europe, I'm not sure how we'd
> say it in Welsh as our equivalent is St Dwynwen's Day (25th January).
> We had plenty of our own saints and had no need to import Roman ones!

And here I would add the wish for St. Dwynwens's Day + a note that it is
on 25th January, has a similar sense, but an own meaning - linked to
wikipedia articles :-)

So maybe also many others now know what the sense of all those wishes
is: to say: here it is different :-)

Ciao, Sabine

.... still finishing a never ending job ... sigh ...


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

body:
Neil Harris said:
>
> Here's the nice, counter-intuitive consequence to this proposal: it
> provides an incentive to alternative-Chinese-language proponents to add
> content to the mainstream-Chinese Wikipedia, and recruit more people to
> do so, so that it will grow as rapidly as possible. When the 50,000
> target is reached, it is probable that many of these new editors will
> start to concentrate on their own local language versions; however,
> many of them will, I imagine, also continue to work on the main Chinese
> Wikipedia, and there will be a major incentive for content to flow in
> translation between the different Chinese Wikipedias. So it's a win-win
> proposal.

That one's worthy of Machiavelli himself.   The man's a genius!


body:
Hello Boris,

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 08:26:20 +0100, Boris Lohnzweiger
<BorisLohnzweiger at web.de> wrote:
> So after all, those fantasy language wikipedias would all end up being creative playgrounds for small circles of people. Which surely woundn't be a bad thing. But would that really fit into the concept of this great project? Or wouldn't it rather harm Wikipedia's reputation as a reliable, comprehensive source of information (i. e. not fiction)?
>
> Boris
For me, I'd rather think that there can be a little difference in
principles for fantasy languages. First of all, if the writers write
in these languages with serious attitude and effort, through aspects
and viewpoints which might reflect the cultures of the fantasy worlds,
then such information should be treated as comprehensive and
resourceful for those who understand them.

Or in English or other "real" language versions, people could still
create articles introducing everthing in these worlds, as long as we
are clear that "these facts are ficted (but still useful)", can't we?

Best regards,

[[zh:User:MilchFlasche]]

--
2005, make signs happen!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Valentine's day!

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>
>Hmmm, nice idea smashes into bedrock of cultural diversity.  I suggest
>that unless there is substantial willingness to set up a Wikipedia
>tradition of celebrating Diwali, Eid, Guru Nanak, Beltain, Chinese New
>Year, and whatever, in multiple languages, it's probably best to steer
>clear of this kind of thing altogether.
>
>
>
Why not do exactly that? Wikipedia is a cross-cultural project, and
notices about festivals bring readers (and hence, potential editors)
into the site.

Why not make Christmas the featured article each Christmas day, Diwali
on Diwali, whichever Eid on that Eid day, and so on. They are all major
cultural events that touch the lives of many millions of our readers.
(Many millions of our readers? I think I can say that -- scary, isn't
it?). Covering these festivals will bring in many more readers from
various cultures and religions, helping reduce the systemic bias towards
the current dominant editor demographic on en:

If we want to do some special branding for each festival (Chinese
dragons, Christmas trees, Diwali lights...) a la Google, we might as
well stick that up too, if someone wants to do it.

I draw the line at Christmas-pudding logos or other logo-abominations,
though.

-- Neil


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] Website to block

body:
On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 09:47:42PM +0000, Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 22:39:26 +0100 (MET), Alfio Puglisi
> <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
> > This another one, but it's also "processing" the text. Read this article:
> >
> > http://www.brightyoungthingsthemovie.com/splendidiser.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FWikipedia
> >
> > It's of course different every time you load it.
>
> That's a joke site. It does that for every URL and technically it
> *does* say that we're using the GNU FDL license.
>
> The other site you mentioned also mentioned the GNU FDL in yellow at
> the bottom of the page. Is this some kind of joke?

Blocking those (and brion usually does) makes very much sense.
Just think what will happen if five or ten of those are getting
hit by a few search engines. Wikipedia will get a lot of requests, in
worst cases also for the history pages which are normally disallowed
for spiders on Wikimedia but often allowed on those nasty mirrors.

banwidth thefsts are very unkind and maybe even illegal.

ciao, tom

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://verlag.tomk32.de/ - WikiReader Digest als Print-Ausgabe
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


references:
<20050130182141.GI1091@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<385E2DBE-72F2-11D9-825E-000A95A26E0A@xigenics.net>
	<742dfd06050209022152aca5a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.LNX.4.58.0502092041590.4094@sara.aronsson.se>
	<ec0ad950eaccfce75bf3b3a7a4de9205@xigenics.net>
	<420A92C3.5020904@telus.net>
	<b2434c87c229d998fd92597c190c368c@xigenics.net>
	<420B42DC.9040300@telus.net>
	<e8b00b281fca9a686f8d50d26981da46@xigenics.net>
	<shoeesdzt8.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<9a4b6b5b4ece1fc96dda422ff4636910@xigenics.net>
	<shekfodu7l.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
On Feb 10, 2005, at 3:40 PM, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:
>
>> Which works only in a world without copyright and with everyone having
>> a 7 second attention span.
>
> Do you think you are allowed to store a collection of "citations" of
> copyright protected works?
>
> --

The information content of a work is not merely the lexical content,
this is why lexical search engines have given way to google which
includes who cites who. Wikicite will provide a means for generating
scholarly apparatus to determine the linkages between works, their
content and the communities annotation on those works. Human knowledge
isn't an undifferentiated bucket of bits.


from_name: Geoffrey Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for a new policy

body:
After reading the various opinions expressed here about how to deal with
the small number of controversial articles which -- sadly -- are in
perpetual turmoil, I've distilled what appear to be some points of
agreement, & offer the following proposal based on them. If enough peole
agree it is a step in the right direction, & the ideas outweigh
tendency for being long-winded, I'll add it to the appropriate spot on
Wikiepdia for proper consideration. (Not sure where that is, but as I
said, if this is an intelligent idea, I'm sure someone who does know will
help.)

Geoff

==A new category [[Category:lack of wikilove]] ==
I've selected this title because the problem articles aren't as much over
the facts, but because the editors involved lack consideration for one
another. I've set forth several proposed rules of varying detail, with my
explanations set forth in the paragraphs after the rule.

1. The procedure to put an article in [[Category: lack of wikilove]] must
be simple and allow itself to quick application.

I have no clear idea of how to do this. The procedure for VfD -- setting a
period of 7 days to vote -- would take too long to successfully impliment.
So would delegating this task solely to the ArbCom (although I feel they
should have the power to place any article in this category if they
believe the situation requires it). Allowing anyone (or even only admins)
to slap this tag on articles lends itself to abuses & problems about as
bad as it hopes to solve. The only point I would insist on for tagging
articles is the next one:

2. An article may only be placed in this category if it has already been
marked as being fought over -- e.g. marked with {{NPOV}} or {{disputed}}.

Once an article is so marked, in addition to all existing rules of conduct
the following is observed:

3. To make any non-trivial edit (correct typos, spelling, minor points of
grammar), an editor must first make an appropriate comment explaining the
edit on the talk page.

This seems to be in harmony with some of the opinions expressed here: not
only does it force the editors of this article to talk to each other, it
forces all sides to slow down.

By the word "appropriate", I mean to include at least the following:
* It is not obvious gibberish -- i.e. adding things like "alksfgh" or "I
like apple pie"
* It contributes to the flow of the discussion -- e.g. keeps from making
entries like: "This is the correct view" or "I have to type something so
here it is".

4. All assertions of fact must be properly documented. If another editor
cannot confirm the citation is correct, that editor may correct or remove
the statement and the first cannot revert the deletion. However, if a
third editor can confirm that the original statement was correct, then the
first statement may be restored unchanged, and the second editor may not
revert it.

This one gets a bit tricky. In effect, the intent here is to push hostile
parties with opposing views to cite their sources, both correctly &
usefully -- and to avoid bickering of the "This is true" - "No it isn't"
sort. If an editor fabricates a citation, this allows another editor to
remove it; if the next editor has lied about the source being invented,
then it can be restored.

However, this admittedly moves the battle of wills into a new area:
instead of bickering over whether or not something is true, editors can
now bicker over whether or not an authority actually wrote something or
not. Hopefully, were this to happen, disinterested parties can
independently check citations, determine with a minimum of confusion which
side has resorted to lying, & act appropriately. And the requirement that
all edits be accompanied with comments on the Talk page will slow things
down. If not, then we turn to this:

5. Administrators are given full discretion in enforcing these points for
articles so marked -- only as long as they have not made any edits to the
article.

In short, if two vicious factions have made a battlefield out of an
article, they can expect to get clobbered. One possible amendment to this
point would be to make violation of these rules subject to immediate bans
for more than 24 hours.

6. The article can only be removed from the category after an extended
vote with a minimum number and share of yes votes.

No fair gaming the system to get an article out of this category when it
works to your advantage. The editors who made a mess of an article have to
convince a lot of people that they now can exchange Wikilove while working
on this subject.


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Neil Harris (usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk) [050211 02:48]:
>
>
>
>>Here's a compromise proposal: the Chinese Wikipedia should be regarded
>>as having succeeded beyond doubt when it has reached an article count of
>>N articles, where N might be, say, 50,000. At that point, the barrier to
>>creating other Chinese-language should be dropped. At the current rate
>>of growth, that will probably be sometime next year.
>>Here's the nice, counter-intuitive consequence to this proposal: it
>>provides an incentive to alternative-Chinese-language proponents to add
>>content to the mainstream-Chinese Wikipedia, and recruit more people to
>>do so, so that it will grow as rapidly as possible. When the 50,000
>>target is reached, it is probable that many of these new editors will
>>start to concentrate on their own local language versions; however, many
>>of them will, I imagine, also continue to work on the main Chinese
>>Wikipedia, and there will be a major incentive for content to flow in
>>translation between the different Chinese Wikipedias. So it's a win-win
>>proposal.
>>
>>
>
>
>It's a fairly easy proposal to argue against: zh: has already reached
>critical mass and will keep growing, barring the vicissitues of the Chinese
>government (which is a force orthogonal to this argument).
>
>Further argument against: it's a "compromise" with a position that is
>untenable to start with - trying to take volunteers who've come forward for
>a different idea to work on your own project rather than that one.
>
>Further argument against: there is no natural reason why someone whose
>interest is captured by a Cantonese wikipedia should be forced to work on a
>Mandarin one first.
>
>
>- d.
>
>
>
>
I'll put you down for a low value of N, then. N=1?

Note that there is nothing to _force_ Cantonese contributors to add
articles to the main zh: Wikipedia. At N=50,000, the whole thing will
unbung itself in a year without them taking any action. If they lobby
successfully for a lower N, perhaps even by bargaining with their
opponents, they get what they want sooner.

Just as with politics, there are many actual positions hidden behind
people's ostensible positions. At the moment, we have a position where
"yes, but only when we are happy", or even "yes, real soon now" actually
mean "never". The key here is _breaking the deadlock_ of _indefinite_
opposition to other Chinese language Wikipedias, by making supporters on
both sides commit in advance to a value of N, and automatically
triggering the change in policy when N is reached. Making people make
_objective_ choices always clarifies their positions.

-- Neil


body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:

> On Feb 10, 2005, at 5:46 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>>
>>> Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> Which works only in a world without copyright and with everyone
>>>> having a 7 second attention span.
>>>
>>> Do you think you are allowed to store a collection of "citations" of
>>> copyright protected works?
>>
>> Being copyright does not prevent a work from being cited.
>> Ec
>
> But it does prevent a complete copy from being stored where we can
> search it.

Would we want that anyway?  If amazon.com wants to fight that copyright
battle maybe they should.  There is still the possibility that a text
could be in private rather than public storage.  This would allow for
searching which would give only limited segments of texts as results,
but would block people from downloading anything larger.  That should
fall within fair use.

Ec


from_name: Mark Williamson

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

body:
What I think the problem here is is that you are asking the same few
individuals.

It is my feeling that the individuals you ask are Mandarin speakers,
just as somebody told me that the people you asked originally for an
initial opinion about separate vs unified script zh: were all from the
Mainland.

Perhaps you have unsubscribed from wikipedia-l, but recently there has
been a coming-out of support from native speakers of Cantonese,
including respected zh-wikipedians, for the proposal of a separate
Cantonese Wikipedia.

It angers me very much that you don't take this into consideration but
keep trying to use a stick as a wheel asking the same people over and
over when their opinion really doesn't matter much in this situation.

I have quoted experts, as has Stirling Newberry, in telling you that
what you're hearing is just plain wrong. You have not trusted me
because you have some problem with me, even though I have quoted
experts and provided solid examples, and you have not commented on
Stirling Newberry's fact-finding post, although this message suggests
strongly that for some reason you are discarding his citations as well
as a sign that you trust non-expert opinion from speakers of a related
language over quotes from expert works which in all cases were written
by fluent speakers of Cantonese or Wu.

What's even more infuriating is that you still continue to believe
these common Mandarin-speakers over not only the opinion of
Cantonese-speaking experts, but over the DIRECT TESTIMONIAL OF
MULTIPLE CANTONESE SPEAKERS.

I really used to respect you a lot, but this is like the straw that
broke the horse's back.

Mark

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 11:14:33 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > The thing is you're still presupposing that an existing wikipedia has a
> > right to block the existence of a new Wikipedia.
> >
> > I ask the Board: is this the case?
>
> Not speaking here for the board, but only offering my own tentative
> opinion, the answer to this is "no" in the general case, but that such
> factors can be a part of the overall decision.
>
> I am told repeatedly by many people that while Mandarian and Cantonese
> are mutually unintelligible in the spoken form, in written form they
> are the same.  This is pretty compelling for me.
>
> If there is a significant population of people who can not read/write
> standard written Chinese, but *can* read/write Cantonese in some
> writing system that is different, then I want to learn about that,
> because that would be a very compelling factor in the other direction.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for a new policy

body:
--- Geoffrey Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:

> After reading the various opinions expressed here about how to deal
> with
> the small number of controversial articles which -- sadly -- are in
<huge snip />

With all due respect, wikipedia already has too many rules. I suggest
a much better policy: You fuck up an article, you clean it up. If you
edit anywhere else before the article is nice and NPOV, you get a 3
month ban.

And I'm only half joking.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


body:
--- Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> It angers me very much that you don't take this into consideration

Mark, woah, come down, unplug the computer and take a walk around the
building or something.

I don't think Jimbo is siding one way or another. I suggest that you
contact a chinese linguistics professor at some fancy university and
get his expert advice. I know Jimbo listens to the voice of reason,
and getting all emotional is not the path.

I also think that there has not been a hard and fast rule made. Thigs
are still in discovery mode.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


body:
On Feb 10, 2005, at 4:17 PM, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> writes:
>
>> I'm skeptic to your proposition that this would indeed be a workable
>> solution for the problem at hand.  Is there any running prototype to
>> prove it?
>
> The Perseus Project uses something along these lines (IIRC, you can
> retrieve complete books, chapters, or sections) - but I guess the
> technology they use predates XPath/Xpointer.  Or look at our beloved
> "copyrighted" Adelung project
> http://mdz.bib-bvb.de/digbib/lexika/adelung/text/band1/
> @Generic__BookView;cs=default;ts=default
> - I'm quite sure they make use of an XML storage system (Dynaweb?).
>
> If you use idzebra you can send arbitrary XPath statements to the
> database back-end and thus you can extract "quotes".  Using XLink you
> can even embed them properly ;)
>
>

And perseus has extensive textual apparatus, proving that even if one
can find any bit of text, on still needs the means to create the
references between it. And perseus deals only with a relatively small
corpus.

Extraction of quotes is no substitute for the means of coordinating
sources.


body:
This policy, Felix, would also disallow prestigious languages, such as
Catalan and Frisian, which although they have many speakers are spoken
almost exclusively by bilinguals, and I would remind everybody to keep
in mind that Cantonese and Wu have far more speakers than either
Catalan or Frisian.

If you raise the similarity argument, this would be a blow against our
having separate Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu Wikipedias, against separate
Danish, Swedish, and Bokm?l Wikipedias, and against separate Bosnian,
Serbian, and Croatian Wikipedias.

The difference with Singlish and Ebonics -> English and Cantonese and
Wu -> Mandarin is that there is decidedly a continuum between Singlish
and Ebonics -> "Standard" English, but not between Cantonese and Wu ->
Mandarin, and that Singlish and Ebonics have no widely agreed-upon
written form and that nobody would want to write a Singlish Wikipedia
anyways (it is very low prestige and thanks to gov't campaigning it is
regarded by most Singaporeans as poor English although experts
disagree). [an exception is that Singlish is often used in instant
messages and internet postings, but even tabloids don't use it and it
has a relatively small number of native speakers when compared to
Cantonese and Wu].

This is not to say that if somebody proposes and Ebonics or a Singlish
Wikipedia I will be totally opposed, but I do not feel that the case
is as strong as with Cantonese and Wu.

I do not see why we need a restrictive language policy when in the
past our policy has been any and all - if the speakers of a speech
variety want a separate Wikipedia, they are granted it, no matter how
similar the two are, with the general exception of conlangs with few
speakers. Our policy so far has worked fine.

The perception that it hasn't worked derives from the fact that
critics of the current policy, who have little justification for their
criticism, are still very vocal.

I personally don't see what would be wrong with allowing speakers of
Ebonics or Singlish their own Wikipedia, as long as we could be
certain it wasn't simply desired because the parties involved wanted
to be able to insert their POV into articles.

I hope that people will take this e-mail at least somewhat seriously
instead of saying "We do not value anything Mark says even though
others have expressed similar concerns and nothing he is saying is
very outrageous".

Mark

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 12:32:40 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
<felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
> On Thu, February 10, 2005 11:14 am, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales said:
> > David Gerard wrote:
> >
> >> The thing is you're still presupposing that an existing wikipedia has
> >> a right to block the existence of a new Wikipedia.
> >>
> >> I ask the Board: is this the case?
> >
> > Not speaking here for the board, but only offering my own tentative
> > opinion, the answer to this is "no" in the general case, but that such
> > factors can be a part of the overall decision.
> >
> Nice to hear that.  I have never taken the resource argument seriously,
> and no one here should. But I do take the similarity argument very
> seriously.
>
> > I am told repeatedly by many people that while Mandarian and Cantonese
> > are mutually unintelligible in the spoken form, in written form they are
> > the same.  This is pretty compelling for me.
> >
> I don't know how to convince you, but even the written forms are not the
> same.  They are just similar, perhaps 80%-90% intelligible, depending on
> the subject matter.  The written form eliminates phonetic differences,
> leaving only differences in vocabulary and grammar.  Who told you that
> they are the same?
>
> > If there is a significant population of people who can not read/write
> > standard written Chinese, but *can* read/write Cantonese in some writing
> > system that is different, then I want to learn about that, because that
> > would be a very compelling factor in the other direction.
> >
> The fact is, every literate Cantonese speaker can read standard written
> Chinese, because that is what is taught in schools, not because written
> Cantonese and written Mandarin are the same.
>
> Do we want to set a language policy to disallow a Wikipedia if almost all
> the literate speakers of that regional speech can read the written form of
> another prestiged regional speech?  I am OK with that.  That may be good
> for Wikipedias to limit the number of versions.  We just need to make it
> clear and apply it consistently.
>
> That policy will disallow Ebonics (African American Vernacular English)
> and Singlish (Singaporean English) even though some linguists classify
> them as creoles, but will not disallow Tok Pisin (we do have tpi:), which
> is a creole with a distinct writing system.
>
> I am not familiar with the European languages.  I remember I heard about
> Catalan and three versions of Dutch, or something else.  Can other people
> fill me in on how the language policy is applied to other regional
> speeches?
>
> Perhaps this is a good time for us to set a fair and workable language
> policy.  We want our decision to set a good precedent, not a bad one.
>
> Felix Wan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Oh, and, Catalan isn't too similar to Spanish, but Galician is very
similar to Portuguese so letting Galician and Limburgish (very similar
to Dutch) but disallowing Cantonese and Wu seems to me a very
unenlightened policy.

I like your examples better because these Wikipedias already exist and
are thriving, rather than being hypotheticals which SOME people have
already said in the past would not be considered for whatever reason.

Mark

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 12:32:40 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
<felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
> On Thu, February 10, 2005 11:14 am, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales said:
> > David Gerard wrote:
> >
> >> The thing is you're still presupposing that an existing wikipedia has
> >> a right to block the existence of a new Wikipedia.
> >>
> >> I ask the Board: is this the case?
> >
> > Not speaking here for the board, but only offering my own tentative
> > opinion, the answer to this is "no" in the general case, but that such
> > factors can be a part of the overall decision.
> >
> Nice to hear that.  I have never taken the resource argument seriously,
> and no one here should. But I do take the similarity argument very
> seriously.
>
> > I am told repeatedly by many people that while Mandarian and Cantonese
> > are mutually unintelligible in the spoken form, in written form they are
> > the same.  This is pretty compelling for me.
> >
> I don't know how to convince you, but even the written forms are not the
> same.  They are just similar, perhaps 80%-90% intelligible, depending on
> the subject matter.  The written form eliminates phonetic differences,
> leaving only differences in vocabulary and grammar.  Who told you that
> they are the same?
>
> > If there is a significant population of people who can not read/write
> > standard written Chinese, but *can* read/write Cantonese in some writing
> > system that is different, then I want to learn about that, because that
> > would be a very compelling factor in the other direction.
> >
> The fact is, every literate Cantonese speaker can read standard written
> Chinese, because that is what is taught in schools, not because written
> Cantonese and written Mandarin are the same.
>
> Do we want to set a language policy to disallow a Wikipedia if almost all
> the literate speakers of that regional speech can read the written form of
> another prestiged regional speech?  I am OK with that.  That may be good
> for Wikipedias to limit the number of versions.  We just need to make it
> clear and apply it consistently.
>
> That policy will disallow Ebonics (African American Vernacular English)
> and Singlish (Singaporean English) even though some linguists classify
> them as creoles, but will not disallow Tok Pisin (we do have tpi:), which
> is a creole with a distinct writing system.
>
> I am not familiar with the European languages.  I remember I heard about
> Catalan and three versions of Dutch, or something else.  Can other people
> fill me in on how the language policy is applied to other regional
> speeches?
>
> Perhaps this is a good time for us to set a fair and workable language
> policy.  We want our decision to set a good precedent, not a bad one.
>
> Felix Wan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] public service ads in Wikipedia?

body:
Allowing such public service ads is a lapse of NPOV policy.

Showing ads for, for example, anti-patent groups, gives the idea that
Wikipedia supports these groups.

We have already discussed adding a site notice of "Thank you Poland!",
I can't see how this would be any different.

Mark

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 23:45:46 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I decided to donate advertising space to various charities and open-source
> projects, and I recently contacted www.adcouncil.org about running public
> service advertisements on my website, http://www.wikinerds.org . So, I
> thought whether you would be interested to donate advertising space for their
> ads (or of any other similar agency - do you know any?) in Wikipedia.
> AdCouncil's campaigns include ads about the tsunami, smoking, education,
> discrimination, etc. Have you discussed about this possibility? I think it
> would benefit many people.
>
> Some campaigns you may be interested in:
>
> http://www.adcouncil.org/campaigns
> http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com
> http://www.eff.org/br
> http://thankpoland.info/
>
> I know in the past you were negative towards software patent banners, or even
> Firefox buttons, but I think you should reconsider. I am sure the majority of
> Wikipedians would support these campaigns.
>
> By running public service ads you can remain totally non-commercial and help
> your readers get informed about various issues.
>
> In addition, I am accepting banners and image buttons for linking to your own
> project, if you have started anything interesting about science or
> open-source software. So, if any Wikipedian wants to be linked from my site,
> just send me your site address and 88x31 button and I will consider it. Of
> course, Wikipedians who would like to promote science and the nerd community
> can link back to my site if they want using images from
> http://portal.wikinerds.org/banners
>
> --
> NSK
> http://portal.wikinerds.org/
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


references:
<20050130182141.GI1091@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<385E2DBE-72F2-11D9-825E-000A95A26E0A@xigenics.net>
	<742dfd06050209022152aca5a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.LNX.4.58.0502092041590.4094@sara.aronsson.se>
	<ec0ad950eaccfce75bf3b3a7a4de9205@xigenics.net>
	<420A92C3.5020904@telus.net>
	<b2434c87c229d998fd92597c190c368c@xigenics.net>
	<420B42DC.9040300@telus.net>
	<e8b00b281fca9a686f8d50d26981da46@xigenics.net>
	<shoeesdzt8.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<9a4b6b5b4ece1fc96dda422ff4636910@xigenics.net>
	<shekfodu7l.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<97db6974d7ecbc6f26150a4bf66838c8@xigenics.net>
	<shwttgcd22.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
On Feb 10, 2005, at 4:36 PM, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:
>
>> The information content of a work is not merely the lexical content,
>> this is why lexical search engines have given way to google which
>> includes who cites who. Wikicite will provide a means for generating
>> scholarly apparatus to determine the linkages between works, their
>> content and the communities annotation on those works. Human knowledge
>> isn't an undifferentiated bucket of bits.
>
> Of course, it is allowed to store bibliographical data (even
> annotations
> etc.).  Try idzebra (indexdata.dk) , it even comes with a PHP
> interface.
>
> --

*rolls eyes*

What it doesn't come with is the actual data, nor are those annotations
wiki editable, nor do the coordinate references in a structured way.


from_name: Ngan Nguyen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] hi

body:
i want to find my language, it is vietnam but i don't know how to find this. could you show me, thank you.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, and if you are, it's funny.

But I just want to make sure... are you?

Mark

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:29:04 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Ron H (aceron99 at hotmail.com) [050210 13:09]:
>
> > I would like to request adding Quenya to the list of languages on
> > Wikimedia. Quenya is the language of the elves in the works of Tolkien.
> > Other fictional languages, such as Klingon, already exist on Wikipedia. I
> > speak passing Quenya. I have already prepared several articles, including
> > one on constellations, and would like to add them to a quenya-language
> > wiki.
>
> I think we can all agree that Quenya should be created before we even
> consider Cantonese.
>
> ... no?
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] hi

body:
Ngan Nguyen wrote:
> i want to find my language, it is vietnam but i don't know how to
> find this. could you show me, thank you.

The Vietnamese edition of Wikipedia is at: http://vi.wikipedia.org/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
> > David Gerard said:
>
> > > If we have a precedent that zh: can block the existence of a Cantonese
> > > Wikipedia, can en: block Quenya? Please?
>
> > I hope we have no such precedent.  Allowing the speakers of a rival
> > language to veto the production of a Wikipedia would not be right.
>
> Fuzheado's arguments appear to be along those lines - in particular the
> argument that zh: needs the resources instead (as if volunteers are
> employees who can be reassigned at will, even assuming the argument it
> needs the resources so desperately is valid).

But as of yet, Wikimedia policy in general seems to disagree sharply
with this idea. Although, perhaps to the surprise of some, while I am
FOR considering the creation of a Quenya Wikipedia, at the moment I am
decidedly AGAINST its creation among the set of existing Wikipedias
and given what has and has not been allowed so far.

Given tokipona:'s having been moved off-site (although apparently with
little or no notice to or involvement of Tokiponites), I think that
the Klingon Wikipedia should be moved to kli.org and the Lojban
Wikipedia should be considered - CONSIDERED - for being moved to
lojban.org.

> > Their
> > observations (and I've seen some potentially persuasive arguments on
> > either side in the Chinese Wikipedia discussion though I have not
> > investigated it closely) should not be dismissed as irrelevant, but they
> > shouldn't be allowed to block an otherwise viable Wikipedia.
>
> We have Wikipedias for things that are clearly dialects; Cantonese is
> mutually-unintelligible with Mandarin.
>
> But let's start a Quenya Wikipedia instead. Hell, that's not grossly
> insulting! At all!

Indeed. I'm sure Cantonese and Wu speakers would not take that as a
smack in the face of their linguistic selves.

Mark


body:
On Feb 10, 2005, at 5:46 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>
>> Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:
>>
>>> Which works only in a world without copyright and with everyone
>>> having a 7 second attention span.
>>>
>> Do you think you are allowed to store a collection of "citations" of
>> copyright protected works?
>>
> Being copyright does not prevent a work from being cited.
> Ec
>

But it does prevent a complete copy from being stored where we can
search it.


body:
--- Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > It angers me very much that you don't take this into
> consideration
> >
> > Mark, woah, come down, unplug the computer and take a walk around
> the
> > building or something.
> >
> > I don't think Jimbo is siding one way or another. I suggest that
> you
> > contact a chinese linguistics professor at some fancy university
> and
> > get his expert advice. I know Jimbo listens to the voice of
> reason,
> > and getting all emotional is not the path.
>
> As I noted in my previous e-mail, both myself and Stirling Newberry
> have quoted experts, and I have suggested reading materials.

Obviously not expert enough. Ask the Chinese embassy for an official
statement.

> > I also think that there has not been a hard and fast rule made.
> Thigs
> > are still in discovery mode.
>
> It's not the decision that irritates me, it's the reasoning and
> what
> appears, at least to me, to be ignorance.

Get off your high horse and pony up half a million dollars and 5000
man hours for wikipedia and then we'll talk about ignorance.

Chinese wikipedia will sort itself out. Like they say: "Under the
Manchus for 500 years, can wait 10 more."

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

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


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
Jan Henning wrote:

> Sorry, I guess I did not manage to correctly convey what I wanted to
> get across: Latin is not a 'dead' language, in the sense that it is
> still used today by actual people to communicate information (as

There actually is an entry [[en:dead language]] that redirects to
[[en:extinct language]], and the common definition does include Latin,
since practically no children are brought up speaking this as their
first and native language.  Now, there is nothing wrong in a language
being "dead".  But Latin is about as dead as it gets.  Hebrew was de
facto dead (according to the article), but has been revived.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Alison Russell

subject: [Wikitech-l] LocalSettings.php file not being created

body:
LocalSettings.php file not being created when I fill in the form and hit
Install button.

I got an empty page displayed due to bug #736 in MediaWiki v1.3.x where a
1.3 install sucess page is expected

Installing Wiki on a Stick using Uniform Server v3.2

Should I try a version of WikiMedia other than 1.3.7?

Thanks in advance...really want to get my own Wiki system up and running!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
I personally would not include sarcasm as a prominent linguistic
trait, but I accept your opinion and can sympathise with your
assertions of linguistic difficulties.

However, let it be noted that I try to follow World English stylistic
guidelines, but obviously this excludes sarcasm which varies more from
culture to culture than from language to language. (unlike most
Americans, I do at times sign e-mails with "cheers")

Mark

On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 11:59:43 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050211 11:41]:
> > On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:29:04 +1100, David Gerard
> > <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > > Ron H (aceron99 at hotmail.com) [050210 13:09]:
>
> > > > I would like to request adding Quenya to the list of languages on
> > > > Wikimedia. Quenya is the language of the elves in the works of Tolkien.
> > > > Other fictional languages, such as Klingon, already exist on Wikipedia. I
> > > > speak passing Quenya. I have already prepared several articles, including
> > > > one on constellations, and would like to add them to a quenya-language
> > > > wiki.
>
> > > I think we can all agree that Quenya should be created before we even
> > > consider Cantonese.
> > > ... no?
>
> > I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, and if you are, it's funny.
> > But I just want to make sure... are you?
>
> I cite the above as evidence of Commonwealth English being mutually
> unintelligible with American English. For further proof, I will show
> transcripts of British English users arguing politics with American
> libertarians on #wikipedia. No way either can understand anything the
> other is saying.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


references:
<20050130182141.GI1091@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<b2434c87c229d998fd92597c190c368c@xigenics.net>
	<420B42DC.9040300@telus.net>
	<e8b00b281fca9a686f8d50d26981da46@xigenics.net>
	<shoeesdzt8.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<9a4b6b5b4ece1fc96dda422ff4636910@xigenics.net>
	<shekfodu7l.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<97db6974d7ecbc6f26150a4bf66838c8@xigenics.net>
	<shwttgcd22.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<d8fe25523c8b0ee466a8ed4903dfc9c3@xigenics.net>

body:
I would like to refer you to [[m:How to deal with Poles]].

"*rolls eyes*" and "*sigh*" are obviously very helpful and further a
sense of mutual understanding.

Mark

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 17:37:36 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
> On Feb 10, 2005, at 4:36 PM, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>
> > Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:
> >
> >> The information content of a work is not merely the lexical content,
> >> this is why lexical search engines have given way to google which
> >> includes who cites who. Wikicite will provide a means for generating
> >> scholarly apparatus to determine the linkages between works, their
> >> content and the communities annotation on those works. Human knowledge
> >> isn't an undifferentiated bucket of bits.
> >
> > Of course, it is allowed to store bibliographical data (even
> > annotations
> > etc.).  Try idzebra (indexdata.dk) , it even comes with a PHP
> > interface.
> >
> > --
>
> *rolls eyes*
>
> What it doesn't come with is the actual data, nor are those annotations
> wiki editable, nor do the coordinate references in a structured way.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:29:04 +1100, David Gerard
><fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>
>>I think we can all agree that Quenya should be created before we even
>>consider Cantonese.
>>
>>... no?
>>
>>
>I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, and if you are, it's funny.
>
>But I just want to make sure... are you?
>
>
Sometimes irony and trolling are difficult to differentiate. From
knowing David's style, I thought it was pretty clear myself. However,
the dilemma is one that you might keep in mind yourself when writing
some of your more provocative posts.

--Michael Snow


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050211 11:41]:
>
>
>>On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:29:04 +1100, David Gerard
>><fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I think we can all agree that Quenya should be created before we even
>>>consider Cantonese.
>>>... no?
>>>
>>>
>>I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, and if you are, it's funny.
>>But I just want to make sure... are you?
>>
>>
>I cite the above as evidence of Commonwealth English being mutually
>unintelligible with American English. For further proof, I will show
>transcripts of British English users arguing politics with American
>libertarians on #wikipedia. No way either can understand anything the
>other is saying.
>
>
So, should we read that as a request to start a new Wikipedia in one of
those languages? (Note that I am not commenting on which of those would
get to keep the current en: site, but obviously the Nynorsk/Bokm?l
debate will seem positively mild compared to the flamewar to come.)

Anyway, as a preemptive strike I wish to object to this request. My
reason is that even though I use American English, I found the remark
perfectly intelligible. I firmly oppose any balkanisation of the English
Wikipedia.

--Michael Snow


body:
> > It angers me very much that you don't take this into consideration
>
> Mark, woah, come down, unplug the computer and take a walk around the
> building or something.
>
> I don't think Jimbo is siding one way or another. I suggest that you
> contact a chinese linguistics professor at some fancy university and
> get his expert advice. I know Jimbo listens to the voice of reason,
> and getting all emotional is not the path.

As I noted in my previous e-mail, both myself and Stirling Newberry
have quoted experts, and I have suggested reading materials.

> I also think that there has not been a hard and fast rule made. Thigs
> are still in discovery mode.

It's not the decision that irritates me, it's the reasoning and what
appears, at least to me, to be ignorance.

Mark


from_name: Felix Wan

body:
On Thu, February 10, 2005 4:30 pm, Mark Williamson said:
> This policy, Felix, would also disallow prestigious languages, such as
> Catalan and Frisian, which although they have many speakers are spoken
> almost exclusively by bilinguals, and I would remind everybody to keep
> in mind that Cantonese and Wu have far more speakers than either Catalan
> or Frisian.
>
> If you raise the similarity argument, this would be a blow against our
> having separate Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu Wikipedias, against separate
> Danish, Swedish, and Bokm?l Wikipedias, and against separate Bosnian,
> Serbian, and Croatian Wikipedias.
>
> The difference with Singlish and Ebonics -> English and Cantonese and
> Wu -> Mandarin is that there is decidedly a continuum between Singlish
> and Ebonics -> "Standard" English, but not between Cantonese and Wu ->
> Mandarin, and that Singlish and Ebonics have no widely agreed-upon
> written form and that nobody would want to write a Singlish Wikipedia
> anyways (it is very low prestige and thanks to gov't campaigning it is
> regarded by most Singaporeans as poor English although experts
> disagree). [an exception is that Singlish is often used in instant
> messages and internet postings, but even tabloids don't use it and it
> has a relatively small number of native speakers when compared to
> Cantonese and Wu].
>
> This is not to say that if somebody proposes and Ebonics or a Singlish
> Wikipedia I will be totally opposed, but I do not feel that the case
> is as strong as with Cantonese and Wu.
>
> I do not see why we need a restrictive language policy when in the
> past our policy has been any and all - if the speakers of a speech
> variety want a separate Wikipedia, they are granted it, no matter how
> similar the two are, with the general exception of conlangs with few
> speakers. Our policy so far has worked fine.
>
> The perception that it hasn't worked derives from the fact that
> critics of the current policy, who have little justification for their
> criticism, are still very vocal.
>
> I personally don't see what would be wrong with allowing speakers of
> Ebonics or Singlish their own Wikipedia, as long as we could be
> certain it wasn't simply desired because the parties involved wanted to
> be able to insert their POV into articles.
>
> I hope that people will take this e-mail at least somewhat seriously
> instead of saying "We do not value anything Mark says even though others
> have expressed similar concerns and nothing he is saying is very
> outrageous".
>
> Mark
>
Thank Mark for your information and your support.  I know it is an uphill
battle to fight for a Wikipedia in a Chinese regional speech.  I expect
opposition not only from Mandarin speakers who know no other regional
varieties, but also from speakers of those regional varieties.  Because
we are taught to believe that they are substandard.  That is why I use
examples of Ebonics and Singlish on purpose.

What I do not expect is that Jimbo believes that the two are the *same*
when written despite our effort to demonstrate their difference.  If that
is an issue of trust, then our effort is futile, not matter how many
examples and citations we quote.  I was a little disappointed when I wrote
my reply but not as angry as you are. ^_^

Now I know from your examples on European languages that the similarity
argument and the bilingual argument do not hold.  The only difference was
that there was no opposition, or that the decision makers know about those
languages, but have to trust their limited sources for Chinese regional
speeches.

Unfortunately the myth of Hanzi is so widespread.  Why would people believe
two writing systems to be the same just because they both use Hanzi?  Such
a claim is never found in Latin based systems.  Well, perhaps if the Paupa
New Guineans write "you me talk talk" instead of "yumi tok tok", that will
be English.

As long as the decision is not final, and the experiment on Cantonese
articles is not banned, I will continue to work on it.

Felix Wan


from_name: sulev Iva

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Võro Wikipedia

body:
The code for V?ro Wikipedia could be for the first time "fiu-vro".
See request for the V?ro Wikipedia:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#V.C3.B5ro_Wikipedia

Sulev (V?rok)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Village Voice Article on Wikipedia

body:
A nice little article in the online Village Voice:

http://villagevoice.com/screens/0506,dibbell,60773,28.html

Fred


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikicite project pages (english versions only so
	far)

in_reply_to:
<e8b00b281fca9a686f8d50d26981da46@xigenics.net> (Stirling
	Newberry's message of "Thu, 10 Feb 2005 09:38:36 -0500")

body:
Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:

> In fact, one of the seeds for wikicite should be the wikisource
> database.

wikicite is superflous.  Use technology that is state of the art, you
will be able to extract interesting snippets from a document or a
document system (XML with XPath resp. XPointer).  Zebra (idzebra) is
such an iplementation (cf. indexdata.dk).

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
At 09:51 PM 2/10/2005 +0000, Sam Korn wrote:

> > I encourage others to mount similar guerrilla template code moving
> campaigns on
> > other semi-permanent meta templates ({{stub}} and its variants is a
> lost cause
> > - *way* too many).
>
>I think {{stub}} needs to be on the main article space anyway.  If it
>is on the talk namespace, many people, not knowing the Wiki format,
>will pass straight over it, think "this site is rubbish - there's so
>little here", and we will lose contributors.  Having {{stub}} on the
>article namespace encourages people to edit who might otherwise not.

I wish there was some way to get the stub _categories_ out of the main
pages, though. Mixing meta-categories with regular ones is a pet peeve of
mine. :)

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.7 - Release Date: 2/10/2005


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LocalSettings.php file not being created

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

Alison Russell wrote:
> LocalSettings.php file not being created when I fill in the form and hit
> Install button.
>
> I got an empty page displayed due to bug #736 in MediaWiki v1.3.x where a
> 1.3 install sucess page is expected
>
> Installing Wiki on a Stick using Uniform Server v3.2
>
> Should I try a version of WikiMedia other than 1.3.7?
>
> Thanks in advance...really want to get my own Wiki system up and running!

Hello,

Firstly, get version 1.3.10 that fixes several security issues:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.3.10.tar.gz?download

Zigger posted a patch that probably resolve the issue (basicly adding a
flush(); statement somewhere). You might want to modify the file
accordingly.

cheers,

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFCC65FpmyHQ2O4INERAjtZAKDBUjPCu243El7zXiaABw3l9qS9YwCfa55/
l8+WydQiRZ1C9F7S6nULnOs=
=xTwM
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sin-chiaⁿ

body:
On Thu, February 10, 2005 7:10 pm, Mark Williamson said:
> Sin-chia???-kh??ai-lo??k!
> Kiong-h??-hoat-ch??i, b??n-hok-l??m-l??i.
> S??-s??-??i-p????? li??n-chia??t-seng b??n-koe-khui-b?? n??-n??-t??i-hoat.
>
> Chit-it-i??-li??n, s??ng-sim h??-g??an chiok ta??k-ke: i??ng-sin, i??-??
> ch??n-p???? i??-?? hoat-ti??n i?? s??ng-kong, sim-th??i-j??-kh??ai,
> b??n-s??-j??-??, tng-hoat-chh??i, ha??k-gia??p-b??ng-ch??n,
> th??i-p??ng-s??ng-t??i. M?? h??-g??an chiok Tiong-h??a-g??-cho??k
> in-g??-gi??n ??i-ki-pekh-kho.
>
Sorry that my email client scrambles your message when I press reply.
Let me use my limited knowledge to guess what you are saying.

Xin1cheng1 kuai4le4! (Happy Chinese New Year!)
(Xin1cheng1 is a cognate in Cantonese but not used in this expression.)

Gong1xi3 fa1cai2, (i.e. Kung Hei Fat Choy!)

wan4 fu2 lin2lai2 (All blessings come!)
(cognate but strange in Mandarin/Cantonese) ...

(Then something I do not recognize, mixed with some cognate in
strange grammar...)

The last word is a cognate:
Wei2ji1 Bai3ke1. (Wikipedia)

That is what I said: I know just enough cognates in peh-oe-ji to know
what is going on.  If your write the same message in Hanzi, I will know
more, but it is still different from Mandarin or Cantonese.

Thank you for your greetings.

Felix Wan


body:
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 18:06:23 -0800 (PST), Christopher Mahan
<chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > It angers me very much that you don't take this into
> > consideration
> > >
> > > Mark, woah, come down, unplug the computer and take a walk around
> > the
> > > building or something.
> > >
> > > I don't think Jimbo is siding one way or another. I suggest that
> > you
> > > contact a chinese linguistics professor at some fancy university
> > and
> > > get his expert advice. I know Jimbo listens to the voice of
> > reason,
> > > and getting all emotional is not the path.
> >
> > As I noted in my previous e-mail, both myself and Stirling Newberry
> > have quoted experts, and I have suggested reading materials.
>
> Obviously not expert enough. Ask the Chinese embassy for an official
> statement.

The Chinese embassy will tell you many things, including "There is
only one Chinese language" and "Taiwan is a province of China". They
may both be true in the mind of PRC and the UN, but they're certainly
not based on reality.

> > > I also think that there has not been a hard and fast rule made.
> > Thigs
> > > are still in discovery mode.
> >
> > It's not the decision that irritates me, it's the reasoning and
> > what
> > appears, at least to me, to be ignorance.
>
> Get off your high horse and pony up half a million dollars and 5000
> man hours for wikipedia and then we'll talk about ignorance.

I said ignorance, not lack of generosity. I would not hesitate to call
Mother Teresa ignorant if I found out that she had done something I
perceived to be ignorant.

> Chinese wikipedia will sort itself out. Like they say: "Under the
> Manchus for 500 years, can wait 10 more."

Yes, it will sort itself out because eventually under increasing
pressure from linguistic imperialists like Andrew, local Chinese
vernaculars will be gone completely.

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sin-chiaⁿ

body:
Sin-chia?-kh?ai-lo?k!
Kiong-h?-hoat-ch?i, b?n-hok-l?m-l?i.
S?-s?-?i-p?? li?n-chia?t-seng b?n-koe-khui-b? n?-n?-t?i-hoat.

Chit-it-i?-li?n, s?ng-sim h?-g?an chiok ta?k-ke: i?ng-sin, i?-?
ch?n-p?? i?-? hoat-ti?n i? s?ng-kong, sim-th?i-j?-kh?ai, b?n-s?-j?-?,
tng-hoat-chh?i, ha?k-gia?p-b?ng-ch?n, th?i-p?ng-s?ng-t?i. M? h?-g?an
chiok Tiong-h?a-g?-cho?k in-g?-gi?n ?i-ki-pekh-kho.

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sin-chiaⁿ

body:
On Thu, February 10, 2005 8:00 pm, Felix Wan said:
>
> Xin1cheng1 kuai4le4! (Happy Chinese New Year!)
> (Xin1cheng1 is a cognate in Cantonese but not used in this expression.)
>
I meant zheng1 as in zheng1yue4 (first lunar month).

Did I misread it?  ^_^

Felix


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
Ron H (aceron99 at hotmail.com) [050210 13:09]:

> I would like to request adding Quenya to the list of languages on
> Wikimedia. Quenya is the language of the elves in the works of Tolkien.
> Other fictional languages, such as Klingon, already exist on Wikipedia. I
> speak passing Quenya. I have already prepared several articles, including
> one on constellations, and would like to add them to a quenya-language
> wiki.

I think we can all agree that Quenya should be created before we even
consider Cantonese.

... no?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 19, Issue 29

body:
Michael Snow (wikipedia at earthlink.net) [050210 14:34]:

> Researching while being a Wikipedia editor is not a concern, as long as
> your edits are legitimately focused on Wikipedia goals, and not designed
> to conduct a test or prove a point. A typical problem is people
> vandalizing articles to see how quickly the vandalism gets removed.
> Research by observation should be fine.

Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:POINT is mandatory reading in this
matter. Every example listed there actually happened.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about researching Wikipedia

body:
Chip Berlet (c.berlet at publiceye.org) [050210 15:22]:

> Hi,
>
> I am assuming you are concerned with the ethics of disclosure of
> scholarly observation.  By posting your question to this list and adding
> a note to your user page you have probably done most of the task, but an
> additional notice to some more public place on Wikipedia would probably
> be a good idea for any defense of procedure to a committee.
> For others offering advice, the key here is that the Wikipedia community
> as a whole needs to have a reasonable ability to learn of the
> observation, which gives them the option of non-participation (in theory
> by not posting).  Just because Wikipedia is a public exercise may not
> meet the requirements that a university committee responsible for
> checking research ethics would find appropriate. There has to be a good
> faith effort at notice (which is just what Frank Lester is trying to
> establish!).
> :-)

Indeed. Creating an account and editing from that and noting on your user
page that you're doing the study would count.

The trick being, of course, how to notify without too much [[observer
effect]] ;-)

- d.


in_reply_to:
<9a4b6b5b4ece1fc96dda422ff4636910@xigenics.net> (Stirling
	Newberry's message of "Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:44:38 -0500")

body:
Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:

> Which works only in a world without copyright and with everyone having
> a 7 second attention span.

Do you think you are allowed to store a collection of "citations" of
copyright protected works?

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
> I encourage others to mount similar guerrilla template code moving campaigns on
> other semi-permanent meta templates ({{stub}} and its variants is a lost cause
> - *way* too many).

I think {{stub}} needs to be on the main article space anyway.  If it
is on the talk namespace, many people, not knowing the Wiki format,
will pass straight over it, think "this site is rubbish - there's so
little here", and we will lose contributors.  Having {{stub}} on the
article namespace encourages people to edit who might otherwise not.
{{wikify}} and {{cleanup}} are different - they do not encourage new
contributors.

Smoddy


body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> writes:

> One of the key advantages of the wiki way is that it draws more people
> into the ranks of the knowledgeable.  Binding ourselves to
> state-of-the-art technology may only result in creating a new elite.  If
> we set about destroying the ivory tower it should not be with the sole
> purpose of using the debris as a foundation for a new one.

The wiki syntax is not good enough for long-term storage of books and
other sources.  Okay, that's my very personal opinion, but that's the
reason why I don't want to spend a second on wikisource in its current
incarnation.  Wait, more or less by accident I proposed a copyright
protected poem for deletion - it is still accessible here at
http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Der_Mond_...&oldid=37693

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> wikicite is superflous.  Use technology that is state of the art, you
> will be able to extract interesting snippets from a document or a
> document system (XML with XPath resp. XPointer).  Zebra (idzebra) is
> such an iplementation (cf. indexdata.dk).

I'm skeptic to your proposition that this would indeed be a workable
solution for the problem at hand.  Is there any running prototype to
prove it?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> Allowing such public service ads is a lapse of NPOV policy.
>
> Showing ads for, for example, anti-patent groups, gives the idea that
> Wikipedia supports these groups.
>
> We have already discussed adding a site notice of "Thank you Poland!",
> I can't see how this would be any different.
>
> Mark
>

That was exactly my thought.  AdCouncil advertisements are very, very
biased in many cases, and even misrepresent facts to support an agenda
from time to time.  I'm not sure that's a good idea for Wikipedia.

--
Chad


body:
Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> writes:

> I'm skeptic to your proposition that this would indeed be a workable
> solution for the problem at hand.  Is there any running prototype to
> prove it?

The Perseus Project uses something along these lines (IIRC, you can
retrieve complete books, chapters, or sections) - but I guess the
technology they use predates XPath/Xpointer.  Or look at our beloved
"copyrighted" Adelung project
http://mdz.bib-bvb.de/digbib/lexika/adelung/text/band1/@Generic__BookView;cs=default;ts=default
- I'm quite sure they make use of an XML storage system (Dynaweb?).

If you use idzebra you can send arbitrary XPath statements to the
database back-end and thus you can extract "quotes".  Using XLink you
can even embed them properly ;)

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- Frank Pinter <francis.pinter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Some of the templates, for example {{NPOV}}, provide as a warning to
>>the reader that "this article has problems, we are working on it" so
>>they should be kept on the page. Others, for example {{wikify}} would
>>probably be better on the talk page for clutter reasons.
>
>
> FYI - I've started a guerrilla template code moving campaign [...]

It probably doesn't even need to be a guerilla campaign... if you read
the relevant template_talk pages, there has never been any consensus, or
even discussion, that the article space is the right place for
meta-information.... it's usually that each template was created by one
person who agrees that most templates should be on the talk page, but
obviously not _theirs_ as it is important :) ... thus without a broad
policy none of them get moved :)

Pete


in_reply_to:
<97db6974d7ecbc6f26150a4bf66838c8@xigenics.net> (Stirling
	Newberry's message of "Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:09:17 -0500")

references:
<20050130182141.GI1091@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<385E2DBE-72F2-11D9-825E-000A95A26E0A@xigenics.net>
	<742dfd06050209022152aca5a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.LNX.4.58.0502092041590.4094@sara.aronsson.se>
	<ec0ad950eaccfce75bf3b3a7a4de9205@xigenics.net>
	<420A92C3.5020904@telus.net>
	<b2434c87c229d998fd92597c190c368c@xigenics.net>
	<420B42DC.9040300@telus.net>
	<e8b00b281fca9a686f8d50d26981da46@xigenics.net>
	<shoeesdzt8.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<9a4b6b5b4ece1fc96dda422ff4636910@xigenics.net>
	<shekfodu7l.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<97db6974d7ecbc6f26150a4bf66838c8@xigenics.net>

body:
Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> writes:

> The information content of a work is not merely the lexical content,
> this is why lexical search engines have given way to google which
> includes who cites who. Wikicite will provide a means for generating
> scholarly apparatus to determine the linkages between works, their
> content and the communities annotation on those works. Human knowledge
> isn't an undifferentiated bucket of bits.

Of course, it is allowed to store bibliographical data (even annotations
etc.).  Try idzebra (indexdata.dk) , it even comes with a PHP interface.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
Frank Pinter wrote:
>
> Some of the templates, for example {{NPOV}}, provide as a warning to
> the reader that "this article has problems, we are working on it" so
> they should be kept on the page.

I disagree with this anti-wiki approach, because only a tiny proportion
of the articles with NPOV problems get a tag. We could try to tag every
article with template that could conceivably be applied to it in a
systemic... but this is a beyond garguantan task. Better just to deal
with articles as we come across it using the talk pages as they were
originally intended.

Pete


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Michael Snow (wikipedia at earthlink.net) [050210 14:34]:
>
>
>>Researching while being a Wikipedia editor is not a concern, as long as
>>your edits are legitimately focused on Wikipedia goals, and not designed
>>to conduct a test or prove a point. A typical problem is people
>>vandalizing articles to see how quickly the vandalism gets removed.
>>Research by observation should be fine.
>
>
>
> Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:POINT is mandatory reading in this
> matter. Every example listed there actually happened.

A fine and noble policy, obviously. My only query - why is it classified
under this peculiar "semi-policy" name. As a piece of common sense, it
has been policy since the start of the project, by calling it
"semi-policy" (which seems a bit likely something is "slightly unique")
we asking for some troll to come and muck us around and then say "but
its not official policy".

Pete


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
I still think we need an apology template of some kind pointing to the
talk page.

--
geni


from_name: Robert Jones

subject: [Wikitech-l] Templates question

body:
Is there a way to prevent templates from being surrounded by

 tags. I
begin and end a page with a template, and don't want them to appear before
or after the templates.

Many thanks.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sin-chiaⁿ

body:
> Sorry that my email client scrambles your message when I press reply.
> Let me use my limited knowledge to guess what you are saying.

Th?-t?ng ? Unicode:
http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Node_ue/Sin-chia%E2%81%BF

> Xin1cheng1 kuai4le4! (Happy Chinese New Year!)
> (Xin1cheng1 is a cognate in Cantonese but not used in this expression.)
>
>I meant zheng1 as in zheng1yue4 (first lunar month).
>
>Did I misread it?  ^_^

L? b? tho?k-chh?. :)
Nei5 m4 duk6cou3. / ?????(?)

Mark


body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050210 23:32]:
> Tony Sidaway a ?crit:

> I don't have any objection in principle to groups producing
> >their own encyclopedias in any language, but when it comes to spending
> >Wikipedia Foundation money I hope it will be used to cover the languages
> >of living humans in preference to languages of interest only to fans,
> >hobbyists and linguists.

> Quite true... but note that these projects usually do not grow much, and
> do not have much visitors, so they do not cost much ;-)

If we have a precedent that zh: can block the existence of a Cantonese
Wikipedia, can en: block Quenya? Please?

("No, we refused to set up a Wikipedia for a language spoken by millions.
But we have lovely Klingon and Quenya wWikipedias for you!")

- d.


from_name: NSK

body:
Hi

I decided to donate advertising space to various charities and open-source
projects, and I recently contacted www.adcouncil.org about running public
service advertisements on my website, http://www.wikinerds.org . So, I
thought whether you would be interested to donate advertising space for their
ads (or of any other similar agency - do you know any?) in Wikipedia.
AdCouncil's campaigns include ads about the tsunami, smoking, education,
discrimination, etc. Have you discussed about this possibility? I think it
would benefit many people.

Some campaigns you may be interested in:

http://www.adcouncil.org/campaigns
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com
http://www.eff.org/br
http://thankpoland.info/

I know in the past you were negative towards software patent banners, or even
Firefox buttons, but I think you should reconsider. I am sure the majority of
Wikipedians would support these campaigns.

By running public service ads you can remain totally non-commercial and help
your readers get informed about various issues.

In addition, I am accepting banners and image buttons for linking to your own
project, if you have started anything interesting about science or
open-source software. So, if any Wikipedian wants to be linked from my site,
just send me your site address and 88x31 button and I will consider it. Of
course, Wikipedians who would like to promote science and the nerd community
can link back to my site if they want using images from
http://portal.wikinerds.org/banners

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org/