Re: [Foundation-l] cross posted emails

[K. Peachey]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 3:35 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
> Casey Brown, 06/10/2010 04:13:
>> It changes for me with like every e-mail, Philippe's most recent
>> e-mail got "Wikiversity-l" for me. :-)
>
> It's always Wikiquote-l for me.
That would be the one you receive first then.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] cross posted emails

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Casey Brown, 06/10/2010 04:13:
> It changes for me with like every e-mail, Philippe's most recent
> e-mail got "Wikiversity-l" for me. :-)

It's always Wikiquote-l for me.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] New list moderator

[Ryan Lomonaco]

I'd like to welcome a new list moderator, AlexandrDmitri, to join myself and
Austin Hair.  Alexandr is an administrator on the English Wikipedia and
English Wikinews, and serves as an arbitration clerk on the English
Wikipedia.  Please welcome him to the list.

Thanks,
Ryan Lomonaco (Ral315)
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] cross posted emails

[John Vandenberg]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Casey Brown  wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 10:08 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>> cross-posted emails
>
> [..]
>
>> Subject: [Wikiquote-l] ...
>
> It changes for me with like every e-mail, Philippe's most recent
> e-mail got "Wikiversity-l" for me. :-)
>
>> I'm guessing this is controlled by the mailing list software.
>
> It's not; actually, it's controlled by your mail provider -- gmail.
> AFAIK, you actually get like 9 copies of the mail from the mailing
> list software (one from each list), and gmail just hides all of the
> duplicates from you.  I think the one message that you do end up
> seeing is the one you received first, or maybe gmail just randomly
> picks one.

Oh.  Could it be overriden if the sender explicitly sets a Reply-To?

Well I'm sure that this will fix itself now, as Google knows what I want.

I'm surprised Google hasn't read my mind yet ;-(

maybe they really are evil...

I wonder if a filter to delete emails sent to both wikiquote-l &
foundation-l will fire before or after Google has deleted the
duplicates.

--
John Vandenberg

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] cross posted emails

[Casey Brown]

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 10:08 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> cross-posted emails

[..]

> Subject: [Wikiquote-l] ...

It changes for me with like every e-mail, Philippe's most recent
e-mail got "Wikiversity-l" for me. :-)

> I'm guessing this is controlled by the mailing list software.

It's not; actually, it's controlled by your mail provider -- gmail.
AFAIK, you actually get like 9 copies of the mail from the mailing
list software (one from each list), and gmail just hides all of the
duplicates from you.  I think the one message that you do end up
seeing is the one you received first, or maybe gmail just randomly
picks one.

-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] cross posted emails

[John Vandenberg]

in re many emails like Fwd: [Wikiquote-l] Help Beat Jimmy! (The
appeal, that is)

cross-posted emails, include the notices about IRC office hours, end
up coming to me with

Subject: [Wikiquote-l] ...
...
Reply-To: Mailing list for the Wikiquote projects


I'm guessing this is controlled by the mailing list software.

Is there any way we can have the Subject start with [foundation-l] and
Reply-To: set to foundation-l ?

Just asking; it isn't a big deal for me.  I could unsubscribe from
wikiquote-l...

--
John Vandenberg

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] Help Beat Jimmy! (The appeal, that is....)

[Philippe Beaudette]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to bring you up to date on the planning of  
the 2010-2011 fundraiser, and ask once again for your participation in  
the process.  Our updated meta pages 
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010 
  ) will give you an overview as well.  There's a lot of information  
here, because we've made huge progress: I hope you'll take the time to  
read it and join in the planning for the fundraiser.

There's no doubt about it: the appeal from Jimmy Wales is a strong  
message.  We've tested it head-to-head against other banners, and the  
results [1] are unequivocal - especially when you also compare its  
performance last year and the year before.

But nobody wants to just put Jimmy up on the sites and leave him up  
for two months!

So we're issuing a challenge:  Find the banner that will beat Jimmy.

Data informed conclusions
Here's the trick:
We have to make our decisions based on the facts, not our instinct.   
Please read the summaries below for really important details from our  
focus group and survey of past donors.

Focus Group
Wikimedia conducted a focus group of past donors in the New York City  
area in September 2010.  It's important to note that this was a single  
focus group, and in a single city.  We'll need to do more to make sure  
that results correlate universally.  But we came out of it with a few  
important take-away points.  It's important to realize that these  
points reflect ONLY donors - they should not be read as a wider  
feeling about mission or strategic direction - they're messaging  
points to help us refine and deliver the best messages possible.

** The most powerful image is of Wikipedia as a global community of  
people who freely share their knowledge and self-police the product.
For everyone who participated, the idea of a global community of  
people sharing knowledge that is accessible to anyone who wants it  
free of charge is incredibly powerful. Respondents in this group were  
highly unlikely to be editors themselves; most consider themselves  
users. They love the idea of the community and want to support it, but  
they are reluctant to put themselves out there by being more than a  
user and a donor.

** Keeping the projects ad-free is a powerful motivator.
Respondents were unanimous that keeping Wiki[m\p]edia ad free should  
be a priority, even if it meant that Wiki[m\p]edia would be  
approaching them for money more often.  Accepting paid ads could  
corrupt the values and discourage the free flow of information.

** Independence is critically important.
These respondents consume a lot of media, and they place a high  
premium on the free flow of information.  They have little patience  
for “sponsored” news or information that excludes other perspectives.  
The Wikimedia model of openness and community engagement facilitates  
that.

** It’s a cause because it’s a tool.
This may sound a bit like a chicken/egg argument, but it’s actually an  
important nuance.  These folks use Wikimedia every day for things from  
simple curiosities to serious research. So it’s a tool that lets them  
get what they need. But it has grown to 17 million articles in 270  
languages. Because it has that kind of depth and it reaches so many  
people around the world, it’s worth protecting what the community so  
successfully built. And that makes it a cause too.

** Growing isn’t always a good thing, when positioning for donors.
Like many tech savvy folks, our respondents are a suspicious lot. The  
idea of Wikimedia growing brings up concerns about what Wikimedia  
would become, and fears about the path of companies like Facebook.  
It’s not just a privacy concern; it’s a concern about what would  
happen to the democratic model of Wikimedia inside a growth strategy.  
Supporting the organic growth of the community doesn’t raise the same  
concerns.

** Supporters strongly reject any agenda being attached to Wikimedia,  
even when that agenda would extend the current offerings.
An agenda implies ownership, and respondents feel pretty strongly that  
the community owns Wikipedia. They think of Wikipedia as an organic  
thing, not like a typical nonprofit, and any attempt to steer it would  
disrupt that.  Community support is one of the key values, and not  
everyone in the community would support new initiatives.

** There is room to fundraise more aggressively.
Across the board, respondents were surprised that they didn’t have the  
opportunity to give to Wikimedia more often. Obviously, there is a  
balance and a PBS-style solicitation schedule wouldn’t make sense both  
for Wikimedia’s personality and for this audience, but there is much  
more space available than we are taking.

** Wikimedia donors are highly suspicious of marketing gimmicks.
Simple, direct messages are likely to work best. Jimmy’s message  
worked not so much because he was the founder, but because it was a  
simple plea for support delivered authentically.

As w

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

In that case, I think you and I have misunderstood each other. I don't
think a transliteration engine should be a precondition to mo.wp being
*moved*, just to it being *deleted*. I don't have any problem or
disagreement with it being moved immediately.

-m.

2010/10/5 Nathan :
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 7:56 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
>> I don't think it's right to delete content just because someone
>> doesn't like it without creating any sort of alternative. In addition,
>> I don't see how ro.wp community support would be needed if a separate
>> subdomain were used to set up such a gateway - it would really be
>> little more than a mirror hosted by the foundation.
>>
>> All other cases where wikis with content were *deleted* rather than
>> just locked fell into two scenarios: content was replaced (zh-tw was
>> replaced by a conversion system on zh), or was in a conlang and was
>> migrated, sometimes by a 3rd party (toki pona, klingon, ru-sib).
>> Cyrillic Moldovan is a legitimate system that is currently used by
>> over 100,000 native speakers as a habitual language variety/script
>> pairing, there are a handful of websites written in it and it is used
>> in an official capacity by a de-facto independent political entity.
>>
>> It scares me to think that we could delete content, with no
>> replacement in sight, for a legitimate modern language variety used
>> habitually by that many people in a defined territory (and potentially
>> in a diaspora, but that's open to debate and there's no solid
>> documentation that I'm aware of), simply due to the expressed dislike
>> or anger of a particular group of people.
>>
>> -m.
>>
>
>
> I don't think anyone has proposed actually deleting all the content.
> Even the OP is primarily concerned about the domain, not the content
> itself. My earlier proposal was to move mo.wp to ro-cyrl.wp and
> redirect mo.wp to ro.wp. If the community of the Romanian Wikipedia
> want to enable fluid transliteration that would be up to them, and it
> shouldn't be a condition for the WMF doing the right thing.
>
> Nathan
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Nathan]

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 7:56 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
> I don't think it's right to delete content just because someone
> doesn't like it without creating any sort of alternative. In addition,
> I don't see how ro.wp community support would be needed if a separate
> subdomain were used to set up such a gateway - it would really be
> little more than a mirror hosted by the foundation.
>
> All other cases where wikis with content were *deleted* rather than
> just locked fell into two scenarios: content was replaced (zh-tw was
> replaced by a conversion system on zh), or was in a conlang and was
> migrated, sometimes by a 3rd party (toki pona, klingon, ru-sib).
> Cyrillic Moldovan is a legitimate system that is currently used by
> over 100,000 native speakers as a habitual language variety/script
> pairing, there are a handful of websites written in it and it is used
> in an official capacity by a de-facto independent political entity.
>
> It scares me to think that we could delete content, with no
> replacement in sight, for a legitimate modern language variety used
> habitually by that many people in a defined territory (and potentially
> in a diaspora, but that's open to debate and there's no solid
> documentation that I'm aware of), simply due to the expressed dislike
> or anger of a particular group of people.
>
> -m.
>


I don't think anyone has proposed actually deleting all the content.
Even the OP is primarily concerned about the domain, not the content
itself. My earlier proposal was to move mo.wp to ro-cyrl.wp and
redirect mo.wp to ro.wp. If the community of the Romanian Wikipedia
want to enable fluid transliteration that would be up to them, and it
shouldn't be a condition for the WMF doing the right thing.

Nathan

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

I don't think it's right to delete content just because someone
doesn't like it without creating any sort of alternative. In addition,
I don't see how ro.wp community support would be needed if a separate
subdomain were used to set up such a gateway - it would really be
little more than a mirror hosted by the foundation.

All other cases where wikis with content were *deleted* rather than
just locked fell into two scenarios: content was replaced (zh-tw was
replaced by a conversion system on zh), or was in a conlang and was
migrated, sometimes by a 3rd party (toki pona, klingon, ru-sib).
Cyrillic Moldovan is a legitimate system that is currently used by
over 100,000 native speakers as a habitual language variety/script
pairing, there are a handful of websites written in it and it is used
in an official capacity by a de-facto independent political entity.

It scares me to think that we could delete content, with no
replacement in sight, for a legitimate modern language variety used
habitually by that many people in a defined territory (and potentially
in a diaspora, but that's open to debate and there's no solid
documentation that I'm aware of), simply due to the expressed dislike
or anger of a particular group of people.

-m.

2010/10/5 Nathan :
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 7:26 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
>> Nathan, perhaps there is a communication error here. GerardM and I are
>> arguing for the same thing, which is a transliteration engine, but
>> ONLY so long as it allows people to read AND contribute, rather than
>> just being read-only as proposed by Marcus. My other contention is
>> that if this is not possible due to community opposition at ro.wp,
>> then mo.wp should be kept; GerardM seems to disagree there and says
>> that such a solution should be done whether ro.wp community approves
>> or not. I'm still not sure how any of that is unreasonable.
>>
>> -m.
>>
>
> Perhaps there is - you and Gerard appear to be arguing that a
> round-robin transliteration option (on ro.wp, presumably) should be a
> precondition for dealing with the existence of mo.wp. It seems
> plausible that would be an unpopular proposal on the Romanian
> Wikipedia, and there don't appear to be any volunteers for doing the
> work to set it up. Almost as importantly... Since a permanent solution
> for mo.wp hasn't been forthcoming in the past 4-5 years, I'm not sure
> it's a great idea to be adding barriers -- especially when a simple,
> common sense solution is available and there appear to be few if any
> actual Transnistrians interested in a project in their script. Does
> that clear things up?
>
>
> Nathan
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[John Vandenberg]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Nathan  wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 7:26 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
> > Nathan, perhaps there is a communication error here. GerardM and I are
> > arguing for the same thing, which is a transliteration engine, but
> > ONLY so long as it allows people to read AND contribute, rather than
> > just being read-only as proposed by Marcus. My other contention is
> > that if this is not possible due to community opposition at ro.wp,
> > then mo.wp should be kept; GerardM seems to disagree there and says
> > that such a solution should be done whether ro.wp community approves
> > or not. I'm still not sure how any of that is unreasonable.
> >
> > -m.
> >
>
> Perhaps there is - you and Gerard appear to be arguing that a
> round-robin transliteration option (on ro.wp, presumably) should be a
> precondition for dealing with the existence of mo.wp. It seems
> plausible that would be an unpopular proposal on the Romanian
> Wikipedia, and there don't appear to be any volunteers for doing the
> work to set it up. Almost as importantly... Since a permanent solution
> for mo.wp hasn't been forthcoming in the past 4-5 years, I'm not sure
> it's a great idea to be adding barriers -- especially when a simple,
> common sense solution is available and there appear to be few if any
> actual Transnistrians interested in a project in their script. Does
> that clear things up?

If the content is displayed in both Latin and Cyrillic script, by way
of transliteration, it is simple to have Latin and Cyrillic editing as
well.  Each contributor would choose via a user pref which script they
want to see, and it would be used for both reading and in the edit
box.

Then the only question is which script should be used by the database,
and the answer will likely be that the script currently used in the
database should continue to be used so that existing tools, scripts
and stats wont be effected.

--
John Vandenberg

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Nathan]

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 7:26 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
> Nathan, perhaps there is a communication error here. GerardM and I are
> arguing for the same thing, which is a transliteration engine, but
> ONLY so long as it allows people to read AND contribute, rather than
> just being read-only as proposed by Marcus. My other contention is
> that if this is not possible due to community opposition at ro.wp,
> then mo.wp should be kept; GerardM seems to disagree there and says
> that such a solution should be done whether ro.wp community approves
> or not. I'm still not sure how any of that is unreasonable.
>
> -m.
>

Perhaps there is - you and Gerard appear to be arguing that a
round-robin transliteration option (on ro.wp, presumably) should be a
precondition for dealing with the existence of mo.wp. It seems
plausible that would be an unpopular proposal on the Romanian
Wikipedia, and there don't appear to be any volunteers for doing the
work to set it up. Almost as importantly... Since a permanent solution
for mo.wp hasn't been forthcoming in the past 4-5 years, I'm not sure
it's a great idea to be adding barriers -- especially when a simple,
common sense solution is available and there appear to be few if any
actual Transnistrians interested in a project in their script. Does
that clear things up?


Nathan

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Nathan, perhaps there is a communication error here. GerardM and I are
arguing for the same thing, which is a transliteration engine, but
ONLY so long as it allows people to read AND contribute, rather than
just being read-only as proposed by Marcus. My other contention is
that if this is not possible due to community opposition at ro.wp,
then mo.wp should be kept; GerardM seems to disagree there and says
that such a solution should be done whether ro.wp community approves
or not. I'm still not sure how any of that is unreasonable.

-m.

2010/10/5 Nathan :
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 6:00 PM, Muhammad Yahia  wrote:
>
>> So a Romanian language would not be eligible unless it allowed support
>> for Cyrillic, even if there is no community that is interested in writing in
>> it?
>>
>> My point is simply that there seems to be a lot of discussion, but I am yet
>> to see participation from people who actually want to read and write in
>> Cyrillic. I've seen the requests for closure repeated over the years after
>> it was frozen, but I have not seen anyone speaking for the community that
>> supposedly finds mo.wp useful who is actually part of that community.
>>
>
> As far as I've seen, the only person arguing for a usable mo-cyrl wiki
> is Mark Williamson. I sort of doubt that he is actually from
> Transnistria or a Romanian speaker, but his philosophical point seems
> to be that having a wiki in your native language and script is a basic
> human right. I'm not sure when that became the dominant criteria for
> opening or maintaining a wiki in a particular language.
>
> Nathan
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Marcus Buck wrote:
> Read .
> They want to switch to Latin since long but the government does
> everything to stop them.
>

Marcus, that is a tiny minority of Moldovans in Transnistria, and that
article has many POV problems as well (I gave up long ago trying to
fix it or reach any kind of compromise - it seems it's on the
watchlist of every Romanian nationalist on WP).

-m.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Nathan]

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 6:34 PM, Marcus Buck  wrote:

>> Nathan
> Mark's self-assessment is mo-2 and he was one of the main contributors
> before the wiki got closed down:
> .
>
> Marcus Buck
> User:Slomox
>


My mistake. I knew he was a linguist, but I'm still surprised. I see
his Cyrillic Romanian is criticized on that talk page, but I'm sure
it's better than mine.

Nathan

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Marcus Buck]

  An'n 06.10.2010 00:16, hett Nathan schreven:
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 6:00 PM, Muhammad Yahia  wrote:
>
>> So a Romanian language would not be eligible unless it allowed support
>> for Cyrillic, even if there is no community that is interested in writing in
>> it?
>>
>> My point is simply that there seems to be a lot of discussion, but I am yet
>> to see participation from people who actually want to read and write in
>> Cyrillic. I've seen the requests for closure repeated over the years after
>> it was frozen, but I have not seen anyone speaking for the community that
>> supposedly finds mo.wp useful who is actually part of that community.
>>
> As far as I've seen, the only person arguing for a usable mo-cyrl wiki
> is Mark Williamson. I sort of doubt that he is actually from
> Transnistria or a Romanian speaker, but his philosophical point seems
> to be that having a wiki in your native language and script is a basic
> human right. I'm not sure when that became the dominant criteria for
> opening or maintaining a wiki in a particular language.
>
> Nathan
Mark's self-assessment is mo-2 and he was one of the main contributors 
before the wiki got closed down: 
.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Marcus Buck]

  An'n 06.10.2010 00:13, hett Gerard Meijssen schreven:
> Hoi,
> The only thing expected is that they allow for a round robin
> transliteration. The default will be the Latin script, there will only be an
> option associated with the Romanian language that allows for the text to be
> shown in Cyrillic.
>
> The language policy allows for one project per project. It does explicitly
> not allow for the exclusion of people who use another script.
I demand that you give the exact quote from the policy that defines this.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Marcus Buck]

  An'n 06.10.2010 00:00, hett Muhammad Yahia schreven:
>>   The Romanian Wikipedia would be eligible when support
>> is provided / allowed for the Cyrillic script.
>>
>> I do not involve myself in the closures of projects. Typically they are not
>> closed and often people have agendas asking for closures.
>>
>
> So a Romanian language would not be eligible unless it allowed support
> for Cyrillic, even if there is no community that is interested in writing in
> it?
There's nothing in the language proposal policy that says anything like 
that and many Wikipedia versions have been created without support for 
all common scripts. So that's not true.
> My point is simply that there seems to be a lot of discussion, but I am yet
> to see participation from people who actually want to read and write in
> Cyrillic. I've seen the requests for closure repeated over the years after
> it was frozen, but I have not seen anyone speaking for the community that
> supposedly finds mo.wp useful who is actually part of that community.
Well, as I said more than 99% of Romanian speakers live in Romania and 
Moldova and use Latin script. There are only 177,000 speakers of 
Romanian in Transnistria. There are some schools that teach Latin script 
even in Transnistria (the government prohibits it in public schools, but 
some public schools were turned into private schools to make it legal). 
So the number is definitely lower than 177,000. Then there are some 
people who haven't learned Latin in school, but who have learned later. 
Where Russification policies were successful many use ru.wp. Internet 
penetration in Transnistria in general is low. All this adds up. From a 
purely statistical point of view it's unlikely that there's a big number 
of possible contributors in a population small like that (the language 
proposal policy speaks of 5 users as a the minimum to approve a new 
Wikipedia edition).

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Michael Peel]

On 5 Oct 2010, at 18:48, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:

> What is the main point of wikipedia to edit it, or to read it? Because 
> the readability of something like the Bulger article is very low. Making 
> it easier to edit with peppered refs will probably mean that more refs 
> get added making it less readable.
> 
> NOTE: when reading an article or a book one rarely looks at the 
> references. They are, in the main, a distraction.

I disagree completely; if I'm reading a non-fiction book, I find the references 
very useful, and wish that they were easier to track down. I find the ease of 
access of Wikipedia's references absolutely vital in its role as a starting 
point for research, as well as a double-check of where the information comes 
from. This is possibly due to my more academic background (I'm used to reading 
papers with lots of references, although I much prefer Harvard-style to the 
numbered style that Wikipedia uses), so I'm not saying that this is a widely 
held viewpoint, but bear in mind that there is a wide spectrum here. The 
references are there in articles or books for a reason. ;-)

BTW, if anyone's not tried using navigation popups to read references while 
reading an article, then you're really missing out - it's fantastic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups

Mike Peel


___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Nathan]

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 6:00 PM, Muhammad Yahia  wrote:

> So a Romanian language would not be eligible unless it allowed support
> for Cyrillic, even if there is no community that is interested in writing in
> it?
>
> My point is simply that there seems to be a lot of discussion, but I am yet
> to see participation from people who actually want to read and write in
> Cyrillic. I've seen the requests for closure repeated over the years after
> it was frozen, but I have not seen anyone speaking for the community that
> supposedly finds mo.wp useful who is actually part of that community.
>

As far as I've seen, the only person arguing for a usable mo-cyrl wiki
is Mark Williamson. I sort of doubt that he is actually from
Transnistria or a Romanian speaker, but his philosophical point seems
to be that having a wiki in your native language and script is a basic
human right. I'm not sure when that became the dominant criteria for
opening or maintaining a wiki in a particular language.

Nathan

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The only thing expected is that they allow for a round robin
transliteration. The default will be the Latin script, there will only be an
option associated with the Romanian language that allows for the text to be
shown in Cyrillic.

The language policy allows for one project per project. It does explicitly
not allow for the exclusion of people who use another script.

For the record, I am in favour of the deletion of the Maldovan Wikipedia and
I am in favour of a transliteration engine.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 6 October 2010 05:00, Muhammad Yahia  wrote:

> >  The Romanian Wikipedia would be eligible when support
> > is provided / allowed for the Cyrillic script.
> >
> > I do not involve myself in the closures of projects. Typically they are
> not
> > closed and often people have agendas asking for closures.
> >
>
>
> So a Romanian language would not be eligible unless it allowed support
> for Cyrillic, even if there is no community that is interested in writing
> in
> it?
>
> My point is simply that there seems to be a lot of discussion, but I am yet
> to see participation from people who actually want to read and write in
> Cyrillic. I've seen the requests for closure repeated over the years after
> it was frozen, but I have not seen anyone speaking for the community that
> supposedly finds mo.wp useful who is actually part of that community.
>
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> Muhammad Yahia
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Muhammad Yahia]

>  The Romanian Wikipedia would be eligible when support
> is provided / allowed for the Cyrillic script.
>
> I do not involve myself in the closures of projects. Typically they are not
> closed and often people have agendas asking for closures.
>


So a Romanian language would not be eligible unless it allowed support
for Cyrillic, even if there is no community that is interested in writing in
it?

My point is simply that there seems to be a lot of discussion, but I am yet
to see participation from people who actually want to read and write in
Cyrillic. I've seen the requests for closure repeated over the years after
it was frozen, but I have not seen anyone speaking for the community that
supposedly finds mo.wp useful who is actually part of that community.


-- 
Best Regards,
Muhammad Yahia
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Marcus Buck]

  An'n 05.10.2010 22:56, hett Gerard Meijssen schreven:
> Hoi,
> Your approach is the wrong one. Our aim is to bring information to all
> people of this world. When people leave for political reasons, they are
> welcome to leave. Their point of view is clearly not the Neutral Point Of
> View that is also expected of them in their contributions.
> Thanks,
> GerardM

So you would be willing to blow up the active ro.wp project just to be 
"indiscriminatory"?

Read . 
They want to switch to Latin since long but the government does 
everything to stop them.

Wikipedia - although free to be edited by everyone - is usually edited 
by educated people. It's very likely that most educated Transnistrians 
know how to write Romanian in Latin anyway. It'll still be 
"discrimination" to those who are not educated enough to know Romanian 
in Latin.

But to me actual content is much more important than the ideology of 
"can be edited by everyone". I don't want to sacrifice dozens of actual 
working Wikipedians just for the ideological and theoretical chance of a 
1% minority to edit.

Gerard and Mark, the most likely outcome of making this a discussion of 
ideology is, that the status quo will stay. The status quo is the worst 
possible outcome. The current content of mo.wp is useless. So at the 
moment there is no useful Wikipedia content at all for users of 
Cyrillic. My solution is not ideologically pure, but it at least 
provides access to the full content of ro.wp to the Cyrillic users. Your 
solution is ideologically pure, but will be devastating to ro.wp and 
damage that wiki severely. Therefore I ask everyone to prevent that the 
status quo is kept and to implement a realistic solution.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
If a request for a Romanian language and a Moldovan language Wikipedia would
be made, the Moldovan Wikipedia would be denied because it is no longer
considered a language. The Romanian Wikipedia would be eligible when support
is provided / allowed for the Cyrillic script.

I do not involve myself in the closures of projects. Typically they are not
closed and often people have agendas asking for closures.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 6 October 2010 04:33, Muhammad Yahia  wrote:

> I just went through the long closure proposal, and I have a question: Do we
> know of any active current supporters of mo.wp? The proposal for closure
> seemed to show one active contributor (who created the bulk of the
> articles). If a proposal to create a similar wp would go to langcom right
> now, wouldn't it fail because of lack of community support?
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> Muhammad Yahia
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[George Herbert]

Yes, I am not proposing that we have to have a new Moldovan-Romanian
language Wiki (we don't have a United States-english Wiki, a
Canadian-english Wiki, a Great Britain-english Wiki, an
Australian-english Wiki, etc...). (oh, ouch, there's a contingent from
New Zealand chasing me now!)

I am saying, "mo.wikipedia" in Cyrillic?  Insults all sides, and is Wrong.


-george

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> We will never have a Romanian or a Moldovan Wikipedia. What we have is a
> Romanian language Wikipedia.
> Thanks,
>       GerardM
>
> On 6 October 2010 04:11, George Herbert  wrote:
>
>> NPOV is good as far as it goes, but the issues of wiki naming and
>> language are necessarily one where positions need to be taken on some
>> very touchy real-world issues.
>>
>> The naming of mo.wikipedia and its use of Cyrillic were particularly
>> unfortunate, as the Moldovan standard alphabet is Roman, the
>> Transnistrian is Cyrillic, the Moldovan TLD / name code is "MD" not
>> "MO", and we have no Transnistrian wiki that I am aware of.
>>
>> Essentially - we landed in a configuration that simultaneously is as
>> wrong as possible, on every account, offending nearly all people on
>> both sides of the defacto border.  This is highly inappropriate, even
>> from a "We're NPOV and not here to make political statements"
>> standpoint.
>>
>> The particular campaign of emails is ... at best unfortunate.  But we
>> really should do something about this eventually.
>>
>> Whether that's deleting mo.wikipedia, renaming it to tr.wikipedia (or
>> deleting and creating a new one there), or what, I don't know.  But
>> we're Very Wrong right now.  We can neutrally get to Somewhat Right.
>>
>> I understand (at a high level) the technical issues and staff priority
>> issues, etc.  But there's a difference between "low on the priority
>> order" and "We shouldn't fix this".
>>
>>
>> -george
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen
>>  wrote:
>> > Hoi,
>> > Your approach is the wrong one. Our aim is to bring information to all
>> > people of this world. When people leave for political reasons, they are
>> > welcome to leave. Their point of view is clearly not the Neutral Point Of
>> > View that is also expected of them in their contributions.
>> > Thanks,
>> >       GerardM
>> >
>> > On 6 October 2010 03:50, Marcus Buck  wrote:
>> >
>> >>  An'n 05.10.2010 22:24, hett M. Williamson schreven:
>> >> > 2010/10/5 Gerard Meijssen:
>> >> >> Hoi,
>> >> >> Technically it is easier to transliterate from Cyrillic. So when
>> >> >> transliteration works in a round robin fashion, it does not really
>> >> matter in
>> >> >> what script people edit. It will only be stored in one script. The
>> >> choice
>> >> >> for a script can be based on a user setting or on the method access
>> to
>> >> the
>> >> >> information was sought.
>> >> >> Thanks,
>> >> > Gerard, I am aware of all this, however in the proposals of Marcus
>> >> > there is constant mention of a "read-only" Cyrillic portal rather than
>> >> > a "round robin" transliteration program which enables editors to
>> >> > create content in Cyrillic which is saved to the database in Latin.
>> >> >
>> >> > -m.
>> >> I'm trying to promote a solution that _works_. If you want a solution
>> >> where Cyrillic users can participate on par with Latin users you need
>> >> the support of the Latin users. I'm sure you won't get that support. You
>> >> can critizise ro.wp for being unwilling to give that support but that
>> >> won't change anything about it. If you try to impose something on them
>> >> that can break the ro.wp community. If just 2% of all active ro.wp
>> >> Wikipedians leave the project in disagreement about the issue that's
>> >> twice as worse as if the 1% Romanian speakers of Transnistria are unable
>> >> to participate.
>> >>
>> >> Marcus Buck
>> >> User:Slomox
>> >>
>> >> ___
>> >> foundation-l mailing list
>> >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>> >>
>> > ___
>> > foundation-l mailing list
>> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herb...@gmail.com
>>
>> ___
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Muhammad Yahia]

I just went through the long closure proposal, and I have a question: Do we
know of any active current supporters of mo.wp? The proposal for closure
seemed to show one active contributor (who created the bulk of the
articles). If a proposal to create a similar wp would go to langcom right
now, wouldn't it fail because of lack of community support?

-- 
Best Regards,
Muhammad Yahia
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
We will never have a Romanian or a Moldovan Wikipedia. What we have is a
Romanian language Wikipedia.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 6 October 2010 04:11, George Herbert  wrote:

> NPOV is good as far as it goes, but the issues of wiki naming and
> language are necessarily one where positions need to be taken on some
> very touchy real-world issues.
>
> The naming of mo.wikipedia and its use of Cyrillic were particularly
> unfortunate, as the Moldovan standard alphabet is Roman, the
> Transnistrian is Cyrillic, the Moldovan TLD / name code is "MD" not
> "MO", and we have no Transnistrian wiki that I am aware of.
>
> Essentially - we landed in a configuration that simultaneously is as
> wrong as possible, on every account, offending nearly all people on
> both sides of the defacto border.  This is highly inappropriate, even
> from a "We're NPOV and not here to make political statements"
> standpoint.
>
> The particular campaign of emails is ... at best unfortunate.  But we
> really should do something about this eventually.
>
> Whether that's deleting mo.wikipedia, renaming it to tr.wikipedia (or
> deleting and creating a new one there), or what, I don't know.  But
> we're Very Wrong right now.  We can neutrally get to Somewhat Right.
>
> I understand (at a high level) the technical issues and staff priority
> issues, etc.  But there's a difference between "low on the priority
> order" and "We shouldn't fix this".
>
>
> -george
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen
>  wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > Your approach is the wrong one. Our aim is to bring information to all
> > people of this world. When people leave for political reasons, they are
> > welcome to leave. Their point of view is clearly not the Neutral Point Of
> > View that is also expected of them in their contributions.
> > Thanks,
> >   GerardM
> >
> > On 6 October 2010 03:50, Marcus Buck  wrote:
> >
> >>  An'n 05.10.2010 22:24, hett M. Williamson schreven:
> >> > 2010/10/5 Gerard Meijssen:
> >> >> Hoi,
> >> >> Technically it is easier to transliterate from Cyrillic. So when
> >> >> transliteration works in a round robin fashion, it does not really
> >> matter in
> >> >> what script people edit. It will only be stored in one script. The
> >> choice
> >> >> for a script can be based on a user setting or on the method access
> to
> >> the
> >> >> information was sought.
> >> >> Thanks,
> >> > Gerard, I am aware of all this, however in the proposals of Marcus
> >> > there is constant mention of a "read-only" Cyrillic portal rather than
> >> > a "round robin" transliteration program which enables editors to
> >> > create content in Cyrillic which is saved to the database in Latin.
> >> >
> >> > -m.
> >> I'm trying to promote a solution that _works_. If you want a solution
> >> where Cyrillic users can participate on par with Latin users you need
> >> the support of the Latin users. I'm sure you won't get that support. You
> >> can critizise ro.wp for being unwilling to give that support but that
> >> won't change anything about it. If you try to impose something on them
> >> that can break the ro.wp community. If just 2% of all active ro.wp
> >> Wikipedians leave the project in disagreement about the issue that's
> >> twice as worse as if the 1% Romanian speakers of Transnistria are unable
> >> to participate.
> >>
> >> Marcus Buck
> >> User:Slomox
> >>
> >> ___
> >> foundation-l mailing list
> >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herb...@gmail.com
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[George Herbert]

NPOV is good as far as it goes, but the issues of wiki naming and
language are necessarily one where positions need to be taken on some
very touchy real-world issues.

The naming of mo.wikipedia and its use of Cyrillic were particularly
unfortunate, as the Moldovan standard alphabet is Roman, the
Transnistrian is Cyrillic, the Moldovan TLD / name code is "MD" not
"MO", and we have no Transnistrian wiki that I am aware of.

Essentially - we landed in a configuration that simultaneously is as
wrong as possible, on every account, offending nearly all people on
both sides of the defacto border.  This is highly inappropriate, even
from a "We're NPOV and not here to make political statements"
standpoint.

The particular campaign of emails is ... at best unfortunate.  But we
really should do something about this eventually.

Whether that's deleting mo.wikipedia, renaming it to tr.wikipedia (or
deleting and creating a new one there), or what, I don't know.  But
we're Very Wrong right now.  We can neutrally get to Somewhat Right.

I understand (at a high level) the technical issues and staff priority
issues, etc.  But there's a difference between "low on the priority
order" and "We shouldn't fix this".


-george


On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> Your approach is the wrong one. Our aim is to bring information to all
> people of this world. When people leave for political reasons, they are
> welcome to leave. Their point of view is clearly not the Neutral Point Of
> View that is also expected of them in their contributions.
> Thanks,
>       GerardM
>
> On 6 October 2010 03:50, Marcus Buck  wrote:
>
>>  An'n 05.10.2010 22:24, hett M. Williamson schreven:
>> > 2010/10/5 Gerard Meijssen:
>> >> Hoi,
>> >> Technically it is easier to transliterate from Cyrillic. So when
>> >> transliteration works in a round robin fashion, it does not really
>> matter in
>> >> what script people edit. It will only be stored in one script. The
>> choice
>> >> for a script can be based on a user setting or on the method access to
>> the
>> >> information was sought.
>> >> Thanks,
>> > Gerard, I am aware of all this, however in the proposals of Marcus
>> > there is constant mention of a "read-only" Cyrillic portal rather than
>> > a "round robin" transliteration program which enables editors to
>> > create content in Cyrillic which is saved to the database in Latin.
>> >
>> > -m.
>> I'm trying to promote a solution that _works_. If you want a solution
>> where Cyrillic users can participate on par with Latin users you need
>> the support of the Latin users. I'm sure you won't get that support. You
>> can critizise ro.wp for being unwilling to give that support but that
>> won't change anything about it. If you try to impose something on them
>> that can break the ro.wp community. If just 2% of all active ro.wp
>> Wikipedians leave the project in disagreement about the issue that's
>> twice as worse as if the 1% Romanian speakers of Transnistria are unable
>> to participate.
>>
>> Marcus Buck
>> User:Slomox
>>
>> ___
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Your approach is the wrong one. Our aim is to bring information to all
people of this world. When people leave for political reasons, they are
welcome to leave. Their point of view is clearly not the Neutral Point Of
View that is also expected of them in their contributions.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 6 October 2010 03:50, Marcus Buck  wrote:

>  An'n 05.10.2010 22:24, hett M. Williamson schreven:
> > 2010/10/5 Gerard Meijssen:
> >> Hoi,
> >> Technically it is easier to transliterate from Cyrillic. So when
> >> transliteration works in a round robin fashion, it does not really
> matter in
> >> what script people edit. It will only be stored in one script. The
> choice
> >> for a script can be based on a user setting or on the method access to
> the
> >> information was sought.
> >> Thanks,
> > Gerard, I am aware of all this, however in the proposals of Marcus
> > there is constant mention of a "read-only" Cyrillic portal rather than
> > a "round robin" transliteration program which enables editors to
> > create content in Cyrillic which is saved to the database in Latin.
> >
> > -m.
> I'm trying to promote a solution that _works_. If you want a solution
> where Cyrillic users can participate on par with Latin users you need
> the support of the Latin users. I'm sure you won't get that support. You
> can critizise ro.wp for being unwilling to give that support but that
> won't change anything about it. If you try to impose something on them
> that can break the ro.wp community. If just 2% of all active ro.wp
> Wikipedians leave the project in disagreement about the issue that's
> twice as worse as if the 1% Romanian speakers of Transnistria are unable
> to participate.
>
> Marcus Buck
> User:Slomox
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Marcus Buck]

  An'n 05.10.2010 22:24, hett M. Williamson schreven:
> 2010/10/5 Gerard Meijssen:
>> Hoi,
>> Technically it is easier to transliterate from Cyrillic. So when
>> transliteration works in a round robin fashion, it does not really matter in
>> what script people edit. It will only be stored in one script. The choice
>> for a script can be based on a user setting or on the method access to the
>> information was sought.
>> Thanks,
> Gerard, I am aware of all this, however in the proposals of Marcus
> there is constant mention of a "read-only" Cyrillic portal rather than
> a "round robin" transliteration program which enables editors to
> create content in Cyrillic which is saved to the database in Latin.
>
> -m.
I'm trying to promote a solution that _works_. If you want a solution 
where Cyrillic users can participate on par with Latin users you need 
the support of the Latin users. I'm sure you won't get that support. You 
can critizise ro.wp for being unwilling to give that support but that 
won't change anything about it. If you try to impose something on them 
that can break the ro.wp community. If just 2% of all active ro.wp 
Wikipedians leave the project in disagreement about the issue that's 
twice as worse as if the 1% Romanian speakers of Transnistria are unable 
to participate.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Marcus, have you conducted a poll of those people? Please don't make
pronouncements of that sort without any research. We are not here to
decide what people should or should not do, we are here to reflect
things as they are on the ground, what is used by people currently,
what is their "native variety" and what they consider their mother
language.

You still have not given a good reason why there should be no ability
for Cyrillic users to create content, using their own alphabet.
Because other speakers of the language don't want it is not good
enough, we are talking here about fencing an entire group out of the
Wiki process simply because of their preferred script.

So, as I see it, there are three choices that abide by the Wiki
process and respect everybody's rights:

1) Re-open mo.wp, possibly at a different domain
2) Enable an automatic converter, but which also allows posting of
content in Cyrillic, possibly to be stored in the database in Latin
3) Enable an automatic converter, which allows posting of content in
Cyrillic, to be stored in the database in Cyrillic

#3 is clearly undesirable for many reasons, and #1 doesn't seem like
such a good idea.

However, your proposal, in which people are locked out of content
creation in Cyrillic, strikes me as discriminatory and I would always
choose a non-ideal solution like #1 over your proposal where people
are unable to create or modify content just for political reasons.

-m.

2010/10/5 Marcus Buck :
>  An'n 05.10.2010 21:03, hett M. Williamson schreven:
>> Marcus, thank you for the test. I don't think anybody doubts or
>> doubted that this is possible - of course a few more rules need to be
>> added, for example ea is almost always converted to cyrillic Ya, with
>> special exceptions, and several other minor mistakes, but that isn't
>> anything to do with the actual technical feasibility.
>>
>> The only problem I have with this is: why should it be read-only? I
>> have mentioned it before and I will say again, it is not fair. It
>> violates the Wiki principle of "anyone can edit". Having a Wiki that
>> is read-only and that Cyrillic editors cannot edit in Cyrillic is, in
>> my opinion, never ok.
>>
>> -m.
> Because users of Romanian in Latin script don't want it. And they are
> more than 99% of all Romanian speakers. Users writing Romanian in
> Cyrillic are a very small minority. And they don't use Cyrillic because
> they think it's the better method but because their regime wants them
> to. When Moldova became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991 one of
> the first things they did was switching from Cyrillic back to Latin. I'm
> quite sure if the Transnistrian speakers of Romanian had the chance to
> decide freely they'd see some benefit in using the same script as 99% of
> all other Romanian speakers.
>
> Imagine there was some ideologically isolated de facto regime somewhere
> in the world where English must be written in Cyrillic by presidential
> decree. Would you agree that English Wikipedia should have a script
> converter and should allow articles written in Cyrillic? 99% of all
> English speakers would be barred from editing the Cyrillic script
> articles on en.wp.
>
> (By the way, my test was not to prove that it's technically possible to
> convert. It was meant to prove that it's _easy_ to implement. Since four
> years the developers are telling that they cannot rename the project
> because it's too much work and other things are more important. So if
> renaming is much work, well, I can testify that implementing a full wiki
> with converted content is not much work. Much more work was spent in
> writing mailing list posts insulting Cetateanu Moldovanu calling him a
> "nationalist" than would have been necessary to create a solution to the
> problem.)
>
> Marcus Buck
> User:Slomox
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

2010/10/5 Gerard Meijssen :
> Hoi,
> Technically it is easier to transliterate from Cyrillic. So when
> transliteration works in a round robin fashion, it does not really matter in
> what script people edit. It will only be stored in one script. The choice
> for a script can be based on a user setting or on the method access to the
> information was sought.
> Thanks,

Gerard, I am aware of all this, however in the proposals of Marcus
there is constant mention of a "read-only" Cyrillic portal rather than
a "round robin" transliteration program which enables editors to
create content in Cyrillic which is saved to the database in Latin.

-m.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Marcus Buck]

  An'n 05.10.2010 21:03, hett M. Williamson schreven:
> Marcus, thank you for the test. I don't think anybody doubts or
> doubted that this is possible - of course a few more rules need to be
> added, for example ea is almost always converted to cyrillic Ya, with
> special exceptions, and several other minor mistakes, but that isn't
> anything to do with the actual technical feasibility.
>
> The only problem I have with this is: why should it be read-only? I
> have mentioned it before and I will say again, it is not fair. It
> violates the Wiki principle of "anyone can edit". Having a Wiki that
> is read-only and that Cyrillic editors cannot edit in Cyrillic is, in
> my opinion, never ok.
>
> -m.
Because users of Romanian in Latin script don't want it. And they are 
more than 99% of all Romanian speakers. Users writing Romanian in 
Cyrillic are a very small minority. And they don't use Cyrillic because 
they think it's the better method but because their regime wants them 
to. When Moldova became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991 one of 
the first things they did was switching from Cyrillic back to Latin. I'm 
quite sure if the Transnistrian speakers of Romanian had the chance to 
decide freely they'd see some benefit in using the same script as 99% of 
all other Romanian speakers.

Imagine there was some ideologically isolated de facto regime somewhere 
in the world where English must be written in Cyrillic by presidential 
decree. Would you agree that English Wikipedia should have a script 
converter and should allow articles written in Cyrillic? 99% of all 
English speakers would be barred from editing the Cyrillic script 
articles on en.wp.

(By the way, my test was not to prove that it's technically possible to 
convert. It was meant to prove that it's _easy_ to implement. Since four 
years the developers are telling that they cannot rename the project 
because it's too much work and other things are more important. So if 
renaming is much work, well, I can testify that implementing a full wiki 
with converted content is not much work. Much more work was spent in 
writing mailing list posts insulting Cetateanu Moldovanu calling him a 
"nationalist" than would have been necessary to create a solution to the 
problem.)

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] Reminder: IRC office hours with Zack Exley

[Steven Walling]

  Greetings everyone,

Just a reminder that Zack Exley, Chief Community Officer at the 
Wikimedia Foundation, will be holding IRC office hours today (October 5) 
at 21:00 UTC (14:00 PT, 17:00 ET, 23:00 CEST) in #wikimedia-office on 
irc.freenode.net.

Instructions for accessing the discussion for those without an IRC 
client can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours. 
Please feel free to forward and translate this message to any relevant 
list, and we look forward to chatting with you!


--
Steven Walling
Community Fellow
Wikimedia Foundation (wikimediafoundation.org)
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Who is our audience ? I am sure that a certain training is needed to feel
comfortable with references and sources. When you are comfortable with it,
you probably use a particular terminology and consider illustrations
distractions...

Remember Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. It is not a scholarly work. It is
not intended to be one.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 6 October 2010 01:17, Noein  wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 05/10/2010 19:48, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
> > What is the main point of wikipedia to edit it, or to read it?
> Could it be both or do we get to choose only one?
>
> > NOTE: when reading an article or a book one rarely looks at the
> > references. They are, in the main, a distraction.
> This is not my case nor my perception about it. Besides, they are not
> just notes, but references. References are important to build traceable
> knowledge layer after layer.
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
>
> iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMq2u3AAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LfEYIAJG1keR2ovZOWCBW64I5O1qg
> Fwej27v/yAIx8QTgobAP3TjMlQInP2Hn4T6bilIu2FHRQvLYUz1DiyvsPNBYxj+n
> ftaR+vrKk/gRgAJ1y3qN/Bw5UnUDd4YTjsnl1CcETdEg6UcUuC4/v8L33NMLeXL7
> 8pXrkafhEaRqWn8RNI+RuabAoaR1HgTXh+iy7NQJLZkjAvpv2Jyw/WENKIUq7tDM
> qAt5i1Q9VnipmnCaLbIJWDB2Ui4Hxpj2gwV4uOSzVJvmmFnJcR7ANgn2TbvjR1j6
> A9CTg6DSl2csw90RNNIQzembP/5Zt4oMTB+/Tg1E6iKDh5Av8iadHCh7HOiN97E=
> =VFM3
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Technically it is easier to transliterate from Cyrillic. So when
transliteration works in a round robin fashion, it does not really matter in
what script people edit. It will only be stored in one script. The choice
for a script can be based on a user setting or on the method access to the
information was sought.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 6 October 2010 02:03, M. Williamson  wrote:

> Marcus, thank you for the test. I don't think anybody doubts or
> doubted that this is possible - of course a few more rules need to be
> added, for example ea is almost always converted to cyrillic Ya, with
> special exceptions, and several other minor mistakes, but that isn't
> anything to do with the actual technical feasibility.
>
> The only problem I have with this is: why should it be read-only? I
> have mentioned it before and I will say again, it is not fair. It
> violates the Wiki principle of "anyone can edit". Having a Wiki that
> is read-only and that Cyrillic editors cannot edit in Cyrillic is, in
> my opinion, never ok.
>
> -m.
>
> 2010/10/5 Marcus Buck :
> >  Have a look at . It's a quick demo of
> > ro.wp content converted to Cyrillic. It's just a tiny extract of about
> > 50 ro.wp articles (I wanted to import the full dump, but I have a
> > limited bandwidth connection and the dump upload failed at 90% of the
> > 1GB file). The conversion isn't perfect yet, some special cases are
> > missing, but nothing that cannot be fixed relatively easily. It took me
> > about 30 min to get this result.
> >
> > The demo doesn't support Commons images, interwiki links, templates etc.
> > but all this would work on a real Wikimedia wiki.
> >
> > Things that won't work without syntactical support in the ro.wp source
> > (and ro.wp won't agree to put -{...}- syntactical markers into their
> > articles):
> > - foreign names will be converted even when inappropiate
> > - Roman numbers will be converted (a conversion exception could be added
> > for Roman numbers, but that can also affect strings that just look like
> > Roman numbers)
> >
> > Apart from the mentioned issues most of the converted articles look okay
> > to me. I wish to emphasize the word "look". I don't speak a word
> > Romanian and even less so when it's written in Cyrillic.
> >
> > So if Wikimedia wanted to support a read-only Romanian in Cyrillic wiki
> > at ro-cyrl.wikipedia.org it could easily go live in one day. From a
> > technical point of view it's not hard.
> >
> > Marcus Buck
> > User:Slomox
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Marcus, thank you for the test. I don't think anybody doubts or
doubted that this is possible - of course a few more rules need to be
added, for example ea is almost always converted to cyrillic Ya, with
special exceptions, and several other minor mistakes, but that isn't
anything to do with the actual technical feasibility.

The only problem I have with this is: why should it be read-only? I
have mentioned it before and I will say again, it is not fair. It
violates the Wiki principle of "anyone can edit". Having a Wiki that
is read-only and that Cyrillic editors cannot edit in Cyrillic is, in
my opinion, never ok.

-m.

2010/10/5 Marcus Buck :
>  Have a look at . It's a quick demo of
> ro.wp content converted to Cyrillic. It's just a tiny extract of about
> 50 ro.wp articles (I wanted to import the full dump, but I have a
> limited bandwidth connection and the dump upload failed at 90% of the
> 1GB file). The conversion isn't perfect yet, some special cases are
> missing, but nothing that cannot be fixed relatively easily. It took me
> about 30 min to get this result.
>
> The demo doesn't support Commons images, interwiki links, templates etc.
> but all this would work on a real Wikimedia wiki.
>
> Things that won't work without syntactical support in the ro.wp source
> (and ro.wp won't agree to put -{...}- syntactical markers into their
> articles):
> - foreign names will be converted even when inappropiate
> - Roman numbers will be converted (a conversion exception could be added
> for Roman numbers, but that can also affect strings that just look like
> Roman numbers)
>
> Apart from the mentioned issues most of the converted articles look okay
> to me. I wish to emphasize the word "look". I don't speak a word
> Romanian and even less so when it's written in Cyrillic.
>
> So if Wikimedia wanted to support a read-only Romanian in Cyrillic wiki
> at ro-cyrl.wikipedia.org it could easily go live in one day. From a
> technical point of view it's not hard.
>
> Marcus Buck
> User:Slomox
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Noein]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 05/10/2010 19:48, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
> What is the main point of wikipedia to edit it, or to read it?
Could it be both or do we get to choose only one?

> NOTE: when reading an article or a book one rarely looks at the 
> references. They are, in the main, a distraction.
This is not my case nor my perception about it. Besides, they are not
just notes, but references. References are important to build traceable
knowledge layer after layer.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMq2u3AAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LfEYIAJG1keR2ovZOWCBW64I5O1qg
Fwej27v/yAIx8QTgobAP3TjMlQInP2Hn4T6bilIu2FHRQvLYUz1DiyvsPNBYxj+n
ftaR+vrKk/gRgAJ1y3qN/Bw5UnUDd4YTjsnl1CcETdEg6UcUuC4/v8L33NMLeXL7
8pXrkafhEaRqWn8RNI+RuabAoaR1HgTXh+iy7NQJLZkjAvpv2Jyw/WENKIUq7tDM
qAt5i1Q9VnipmnCaLbIJWDB2Ui4Hxpj2gwV4uOSzVJvmmFnJcR7ANgn2TbvjR1j6
A9CTg6DSl2csw90RNNIQzembP/5Zt4oMTB+/Tg1E6iKDh5Av8iadHCh7HOiN97E=
=VFM3
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[wiki-list]

On 05/10/2010 15:23, Liam Wyatt wrote:
> On 5 October 2010 13:39,  wrote:
>
>> In a message dated 10/5/2010 6:01:14 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
>> jayen...@yahoo.com writes:
>>
>>
>>> You're right there. It's a bloody headache finding the words of the
>>> article in amongst all the citation templates when you're trying to edit.

>>
>>
>>
>> That however really isn't a fault that can be laid at the feet of the
>> citation method (inline), but rather perhaps at the feet of the editor
>> program.
>>
>> It has been discussed before, that it might be helpful should we have a way
>> to splice apart the content from the format.  Vanilla HTML does not do that
>> at all, but other competing editors can and do.  Some steps in that
>> direction have been taken already with the newer upgrade, but not all, in
>> particular the templates.  Perhaps this is an opportunity.
>>
>> W.
>>
>
> One of the things that the Usability team is working on is the idea of
> "template folding" - as discussed here:
> http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/template-folding/ Indeed, I suspect
> that one of the main reasons for moving to the iFrame editing window system
> with the Vector skin was to enable this kind of thing. (unfortunately the
> test environment for this feature that is referred to in the blogpost is
> currently broken).
>

What is the main point of wikipedia to edit it, or to read it? Because 
the readability of something like the Bulger article is very low. Making 
it easier to edit with peppered refs will probably mean that more refs 
get added making it less readable.

NOTE: when reading an article or a book one rarely looks at the 
references. They are, in the main, a distraction.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] Correction to IRC Office Hours with Zak Greant

[Zak Greant (Foo Associates)]

Greetings All,

As Roan kindly noted, the times for my office hours session were wrong
for Canberra.

In Canberra time, the first session will happen at 03:00 and the
second session will happen at 15:00.

To see the full (and corrected) chart of times, please see:

  http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Zakgreant#Office_Hours

Cheers!
--zak

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Foundation-l word cloud

[Peter Gehres]

>
> Thank you! It's indeed much more readable. :-) I moved it to
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foundation-l_word_cloud_without_headers_and_quotes.png
> because it's completely different (resolution, author, description etc.).
> What about adding your script to the description so that others can
> easily create their version (also for other lists)?
>
> I am happy to release the source code to mine, but it is much more than a
script.  I used python's Email parser to parse each file and create Email
objects and stored them in a sqlite database. It leaves the door open for
much more flexibility and it is not much more than a bunch of hacking at the
moment, but I am happy to fill requests and try and clean up the code over
time.

Peter
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Andreas Kolbe]

Looks good. Keep at it. :)

A.

> One of the things that the Usability team is working on is
> the idea of
> "template folding" - as discussed here:
> http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/template-folding/
> Indeed, I suspect
> that one of the main reasons for moving to the iFrame
> editing window system
> with the Vector skin was to enable this kind of thing.
> (unfortunately the
> test environment for this feature that is referred to in
> the blogpost is
> currently broken).
> 
> I for one am really looking forward to this usability
> enhancement rolling
> out as it a brilliant way of hiding away all the code
> elements from people
> when they first click "edit" but not breaking any of the
> actual
> functionality that makes wikipedia templates so powerful.
> This "folding"
> idea is also intended to be combined with "form based
> editing" which will
> enable people to not only open up the template in the
> normal way but also in
> a way that shows the template parameters in a
> human-readable popup box which
> you can then edit.
> 
> -Liam
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> 


  

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Liam Wyatt]

On 5 October 2010 13:39,  wrote:

> In a message dated 10/5/2010 6:01:14 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> jayen...@yahoo.com writes:
>
>
> > You're right there. It's a bloody headache finding the words of the
> > article in amongst all the citation templates when you're trying to edit.
> >>
>
>
>
> That however really isn't a fault that can be laid at the feet of the
> citation method (inline), but rather perhaps at the feet of the editor
> program.
>
> It has been discussed before, that it might be helpful should we have a way
> to splice apart the content from the format.  Vanilla HTML does not do that
> at all, but other competing editors can and do.  Some steps in that
> direction have been taken already with the newer upgrade, but not all, in
> particular the templates.  Perhaps this is an opportunity.
>
> W.
>

One of the things that the Usability team is working on is the idea of
"template folding" - as discussed here:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/template-folding/ Indeed, I suspect
that one of the main reasons for moving to the iFrame editing window system
with the Vector skin was to enable this kind of thing. (unfortunately the
test environment for this feature that is referred to in the blogpost is
currently broken).

I for one am really looking forward to this usability enhancement rolling
out as it a brilliant way of hiding away all the code elements from people
when they first click "edit" but not breaking any of the actual
functionality that makes wikipedia templates so powerful. This "folding"
idea is also intended to be combined with "form based editing" which will
enable people to not only open up the template in the normal way but also in
a way that shows the template parameters in a human-readable popup box which
you can then edit.

-Liam
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[WJhonson]

In a message dated 10/5/2010 6:01:14 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
jayen...@yahoo.com writes:


> You're right there. It's a bloody headache finding the words of the 
> article in amongst all the citation templates when you're trying to edit. >>



That however really isn't a fault that can be laid at the feet of the 
citation method (inline), but rather perhaps at the feet of the editor program.

It has been discussed before, that it might be helpful should we have a way 
to splice apart the content from the format.  Vanilla HTML does not do that 
at all, but other competing editors can and do.  Some steps in that 
direction have been taken already with the newer upgrade, but not all, in 
particular the templates.  Perhaps this is an opportunity.

W.
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Andreas Kolbe]

> As an editor, it makes it very difficult to edit, when you
> have three
> words then a {{cite}} template.

You're right there. It's a bloody headache finding the words of the article in 
amongst all the citation templates when you're trying to edit.

A.


  

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Marcus Buck]

  Have a look at . It's a quick demo of 
ro.wp content converted to Cyrillic. It's just a tiny extract of about 
50 ro.wp articles (I wanted to import the full dump, but I have a 
limited bandwidth connection and the dump upload failed at 90% of the 
1GB file). The conversion isn't perfect yet, some special cases are 
missing, but nothing that cannot be fixed relatively easily. It took me 
about 30 min to get this result.

The demo doesn't support Commons images, interwiki links, templates etc. 
but all this would work on a real Wikimedia wiki.

Things that won't work without syntactical support in the ro.wp source 
(and ro.wp won't agree to put -{...}- syntactical markers into their 
articles):
- foreign names will be converted even when inappropiate
- Roman numbers will be converted (a conversion exception could be added 
for Roman numbers, but that can also affect strings that just look like 
Roman numbers)

Apart from the mentioned issues most of the converted articles look okay 
to me. I wish to emphasize the word "look". I don't speak a word 
Romanian and even less so when it's written in Cyrillic.

So if Wikimedia wanted to support a read-only Romanian in Cyrillic wiki 
at ro-cyrl.wikipedia.org it could easily go live in one day. From a 
technical point of view it's not hard.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[SlimVirgin]

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 02:04, Nikola Smolenski  wrote:
> On 10/05/2010 08:28 AM, SlimVirgin wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 18:17,  wrote:
>>> Have you looked at the current version of that page? Every sentence has
>>> at least one ref, it looks like a spider has fallen into an ink well and
>>> then run backwards and forwards across the page.
>>
>> It's very distracting, and completely unnecessary. There are ways of
>> bundling citations into one footnote at the end of each paragraph,
>> while still making clear which citation supports which words. But it's
>
> It doesn't distract me at all, and I am not aware of any effective ways
> of bundling citations at paragraphs' ends.

I do it by writing:

For the date of birth, see Smith, 2010, p. 1
*For the unhappiness of the marriage, see Jones, 2010, p. 2.
*For the jail term, see Brown, 2010, p. 3.

Then full citations in the References section. Or you can add the full
citations in the footnote. If it's at the end of the paragraph, it
doesn't add to edit-mode clutter, so you can afford to give more
details in the footnote itself.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[David Gerard]

On 5 October 2010 12:01, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

>> > It's very distracting, and completely unnecessary.
>> There are ways of
>> > bundling citations into one footnote at the end of
>> each paragraph,
>> > while still making clear which citation supports which
>> words. But it's

>> It doesn't distract me at all,

> Me neither. As a reader, I find it confidence-inspiring; as an editor, I find 
> it helpful.


As an editor, it makes it very difficult to edit, when you have three
words then a {{cite}} template.

Putting citations in the references section, rather than the body,
helps, but editors still tend not to do that.


- d.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Andreas Kolbe]

> > It's very distracting, and completely unnecessary.
> There are ways of
> > bundling citations into one footnote at the end of
> each paragraph,
> > while still making clear which citation supports which
> words. But it's
> 
> It doesn't distract me at all, 

Me neither. As a reader, I find it confidence-inspiring; as an editor, I find 
it helpful.

> and I am not aware of any effective ways 
> of bundling citations at paragraphs' ends.

Me neither. Bundled end-of-paragraph references have several distinct 
drawbacks: 

1. Wikipedia is a collaborative project. If another editor subsequently inserts 
an unsourced sentence in the middle of the paragraph, it becomes hard to 
recognise this sentence as unsourced, and remove it. An editor would need to 
have access to all the sources bundled at the end of the paragraph to be sure 
that the sentence is, in fact, unsourced.

2. If another editor inserts a sentence cited to a different source in the 
middle of the paragraph, and adds an in-line citation to it, the beginning of 
the paragraph becomes separated from the bundled end-of-paragraph reference 
that verifies it. So the beginning of the paragraph will appear either 
unsourced, or people will think it too belongs to the new in-paragraph 
reference. As that is not the reference it comes from, it will fail 
verification and may end up being removed.

3. If another editor splits a paragraph in two because of its length, this 
results in an apparently unsourced paragraph.

4. If an editor cuts a passage and pastes it to a different place in the 
article, it will end up looking unsourced, and will be unverifiable.

If the original author edits daily, and keeps a close watch on the article, 
those drawbacks can be minimised, but generally speaking, it is a big "if".

Andreas


  

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Foundation-l word cloud

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Peter Gehres, 05/10/2010 06:07:
 > I uploaded my version of the "cloud" [1] to the same location.  I removed
 > all duplicate emails from the archives and omitted all subjects and 
quoted
 > text.

Thank you! It's indeed much more readable. :-) I moved it to 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foundation-l_word_cloud_without_headers_and_quotes.png
 
because it's completely different (resolution, author, description etc.).
What about adding your script to the description so that others can 
easily create their version (also for other lists)?

John Vandenberg, 05/10/2010 06:48:
> Wikipedia - huge
> Commons - medium (blue, beneath 'foundation-l')
> Wikinews - small (brown, near 'see')
> Wiktionary - tiny (blue, in the t of 'foundation-l')
> 
> Can anyone see wikisource? (weep)

Perhaps we need a bigger resolution. :-p
I found "mediawiki" (blue, under "see") and "wikiversity" (green, under 
"policy").

Nemo

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Nikola Smolenski]

On 10/05/2010 08:28 AM, SlimVirgin wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 18:17,  wrote:
>> Have you looked at the current version of that page? Every sentence has
>> at least one ref, it looks like a spider has fallen into an ink well and
>> then run backwards and forwards across the page.
>
> It's very distracting, and completely unnecessary. There are ways of
> bundling citations into one footnote at the end of each paragraph,
> while still making clear which citation supports which words. But it's

It doesn't distract me at all, and I am not aware of any effective ways 
of bundling citations at paragraphs' ends.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l