Re: [Foundation-l] It Is not Us
On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 16:03, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: The web itself is passé http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-facebook-vs-the-rest-of-the-web-2011-6 Actually, we missed the boat, but that ship sailed long ago. That is funny, I like statistics. Like, how can you compare a virtually contentless and worthless (in the sense of future-proofness) social network to a content carrying service network? Obviously they can. I mean, Facebook grows slower than bacteria in the Amasonas rain forests, I'm sure they're very worried about that. And the amount of snowflakes in the Arctic, it's much more than the number of FB profile pictures. Worrying. (I cannot just come up anything on facebook providing any value after a few hours it's been posted. Even likes for a business are of questionnable value, to put it in the mildest tone.) But I understand your long standing, almost traditional worry about Wikipedia's future. ;-) Peter ps: my 2 'cents. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia dumps downloader
Hi all; Can you imagine a day when Wikipedia is added to this list?[1] WikiTeam have developed a script[2] to download all the Wikipedia dumps (and her sister projects) from dumps.wikimedia.org. It sorts in folders and checks md5sum. It only works on Linux (it uses wget). You will need about 100GB to download all the 7z files. Save our memory. Regards, emijrp [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_libraries [2] http://code.google.com/p/wikiteam/source/browse/trunk/wikipediadownloader.py ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] It Is not Us
What lovely abuse of statistics! By showing them indexed to the same scale, it makes it impossible to draw the conclusion they try and draw. You need to know the *absolute* increase in facebook usage and the *absolute* increase or decline in total internet usage. If their numbers are correct, then facebook is growing at the expense of the rest of the internet, but without the absolute numbers you can't tell if it's doing so to a significant extent. You really need to look at the growth in total internet usage pre- and post-facebook as well. I expect the existence of facebook has caused a noticeable increase in total internet usage (compared to pre-existing trend). It is creating new internet minutes, not stealing them from other sites. You should probably also look at Facebook's direct competitors. For example, usage of MySpace has declined enormously - a lot of Facebook's growth may have come from that decline. The article suggests Facebook is hurting the rest of the internet, but if it's really only hurting other social networking sites, then there is nothing to worry about. The most important data for us to look at is here: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyAllProjects.htm. While that does show a year-on-year decline, that actually because of a spike a year ago (I don't know why). If you smooth things out a bit, we are seeing growth (albeit fairly low growth). What the rest of the internet is doing isn't really important. On 25 June 2011 15:03, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: The web itself is passé http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-facebook-vs-the-rest-of-the-web-2011-6 Actually, we missed the boat, but that ship sailed long ago. Fred ___ 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] Closing projects policy now official
I had put a notice on [[meta:Wikimedia Forum]] and a notice on the [[Proposals for closing projects]] page. Several users supported the policy proposal, and some gave feedback so we could improve the text. Apart from the meeting report, I think we didn't send a separate e-mail to foundation-l about this, which we perhaps should have done. My proposal included the language committee as decision body because I find it logical that who is in charge of opening projects should be in charge of closing them as well. When the community proposes a policy themselves, it can replace this policy. The situation until now, without any policy, was ridiculous. (I'd like to make clear that no-one is really bothered with inactive projects (it's just inactive, there's almost no spam or anything), except those who volunteer to import the content of closed projects to the Incubator, which I and several others do. It's easy to just close a project and say that the content needs to be transferred.) 2011/6/25 Aaron Adrignola aaron.adrign...@gmail.com I also agree that a resolution is needed. Two individuals don't speak for the whole board and I'm not willing to take your word on it. Up until now the community has had the say over which projects were closed through the proposals for closing projects and you throw out the statement that there's a new policy that's official with nothing to back it up. Further it's supposedly the language committee which should have the say when most of the proposals for closure are due to inactivity and have nothing to do with the language itself. I never saw any requests for comment from the community either before you decided to pull the rug out from under us. The situation is ridiculous. From: Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:04:50 +0200 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Closing projects policy now official On 06/25/2011 12:54 PM, Béria Lima wrote: So we should wait for a resolution no? Until there is only your word. PS: I'm not saying you are lying or anything, but that the final decision about that requires a Resolution. I don't think that it is needed because Board has the final word anyway, as well as Language proposal policy has never officially approved as-is, but through the general recognition of Language committee. ___ 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] It Is not Us
Facebook, and Twitter, big with Black folk, gives people something they can relate to. Wikipedia is as dry as reading, or writing, an encyclopedia. In a sense they ate our lunch, but millions of Facebook-like user pages can hardly be justified as a basis for charitable donations. Are you saying Wikipedia should be less like an encyclopedia and more like a social network? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] It Is not Us
On 26 June 2011 17:46, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Facebook, and Twitter, big with Black folk, gives people something they can relate to. Wikipedia is as dry as reading, or writing, an encyclopedia. In a sense they ate our lunch, but millions of Facebook-like user pages can hardly be justified as a basis for charitable donations. It's important to keep in mind that Facebook and Wikipedia have very different user structures. Facebook has one group: individual users chatting to their friends. There are some commercial entities doing stuff too, but the vast majority of users are just people chatting. Wikipedia, on the other hand, has too groups: readers and editors. There isn't a clear line between the two, but there is definitely a difference between readers and editors. That makes a very big difference when looking at these kind of statistics. Facebook just needs to look at how much people are using the site. We need to look at both how much people are editing and how much people are reading. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Black market science
http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Publisher-Steps-Up/128031/ People are exchanging and selling access to the databases to get the damn science. This is why we need to keep pushing the free content and open access message. You cannot do science in a system with these effects. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Black market science
On 26 June 2011 21:12, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Publisher-Steps-Up/128031/ People are exchanging and selling access to the databases to get the damn science. This is why we need to keep pushing the free content and open access message. While back channel paper exchange is pretty common I doubt that the people stealing passwords are actually doing much in the way of science. Things are so specialised these days that people doing much in the way of serious science probably know the dozen or so other people in their field well enough for them be to emailed their papers directly. While there are many many things wrong with the current scientific publishing model (start with it's a parasite with lower ethical standards than Microsoft and then work your way up) I don't think a trade in passwords in indicative of much. I don't know much about the situation in the humanities though. You cannot do science in a system with these effects. In fairness you demonstrably can. Of course it's an open question how many people really are. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Languages and numbers
Some of these actually already have Wikipedias: Meadow Mari Yakut (aka Sakha) Lak Balkar (aka Karachay-Balkar) Yiddish, Eastern (= standard Yiddish, Western Yiddish is the one we are missing but it has much fewer speakers; according to Ethnologue there are only 5,400 around the world) In addition, in another message you stated that we probably had Wikipedias in every Sinitic language that was distinct enough from Mandarin to receive an own Wikipedia; Min Bei has 10.3 million speakers and does not have a Wikipedia and is definitely far removed from Mandarin; Xiang is also probably deserving of its own Wikipedia and has 30 million+ speakers. 2011/6/24 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com While preparing Missing Wikipedias [1], I've got numbers of speakers and languages by area and country with chapter not covered by Wikipedias. Numbers are preliminary, some of them should be corrected. I didn't exclude Han languages, which mostly shouldn't be counted, and similar. Note, also, that every language should be analyzed separately. Many languages are spoken not just inside of one country. Please, fix errors and comment. * * * Areas. They approximate the usual definitions of areas, but they are different because of linguistic corrections. * Afro-Asiatic Area: Area where Afro-Asiatic languages are dominant. North Africa + Middle East + Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia - Iran. * Europe: Europe (including Caucasus) includes Turkey. * South Asia: South Asia + Iran. Dominantly Indo-European and Dravidian languages. * Sub-Saharan Africa: The rest of Africa. * Polynesia, Australia and Oceania: Includes Malaysia and Taiwan (Taiwanese languages not covered in Wikipedias are dominantly Austronesian.) * East Asia: Han China China (Central), Korea and Japan. * South-East Asia: Includes non-Han south China China (South). * Latin America: Parts of America where Spanish and Portuguese are official languages. * Anglo-French America: Parts of America where English, French and Dutch are official languages. * North Asia: Asian part of former USSR, Mongolia and non-Han northern and western China China (North). The first column is number of speakers, the second number of languages, the third is area. 399259294 592 South Asia 353676706 1805 Sub-Saharan Africa 221855457 253 Afro-Asiatic Area 138979263 2198 Polynesia, Australia and Oceania 107363760 37 East Asia 99260271 447 South-East Asia 47901185 143 Europe 30361602 724 Latin America 8481452 227 Anglo-French America 3724384 45 North Asia * * * Countries with chapters. (Numbers are not fully correct, as they include some languages removed in the list below this one.) If any chapter (or interested group) is interested in full list of missing languages, I'll provide it by request before completing the work. I suppose that some chapters are interested in languages with less than 100K of speakers, as well. 296,097,274 349 India 71,356,176 681 Indonesia 46,676,395 157 Philippines 7,819,010 9 Germany 7,994,871 76 Russian Federation 5,386,580 5 Serbia 4,785,299 6 South Africa 2,841,300 17 Israel 1,139,750 4 Ukraine 1,085,931 125 United States 832,000 3 Netherlands 705,967 70 Canada 472,470 1 Czech Republic 375,704 17 Taiwan 313,642 6 Chile 246,900 3 United Kingdom 200,500 4 Spain 191,430 5 Poland 151,240 7 Sweden 132,809 12 Argentina 86,390 155 Australia 50,000 1 France 30,000 1 Hungary 29,980 4 Switzerland 17,460 5 Finland 15,000 1 Portugal 10,500 2 Norway 5,000 1 Denmark 4,500 1 Estonia Languages with more than million or more than 100,000 of speakers without Wikipedia and with chapter in the country: India (more than million) 38261000 Awadhi 3470 Maithili 1750 Chhattisgarhi 1300 Magahi 1300 Haryanvi 1280 Deccan 1040 Malvi 950 Kanauji 900 Dhundari 776 Bagheli 697 Varhadi-Nagpuri 6170900 Santali 600 Lambadi 5622600 Marwari 500 Mewati 473 Hadothi 4004490 Konkani 390 Merwari 380 Mina 3633900 Konkani, Goan 300 Shekhawati 300 Godwari 292 Garhwali 268 Indian Sign Language 236 Kumaoni 211 Dogri 210 Bagri 2094200 Kurux 200 Mewari 197 Sadri 195 Tulu 195 Gondi, Northern 193 Waddar 171 Wagdi 170 Kangri 158 Khandesi 1560280 Mundari 1543300 Bodo 150 Ho 143 Nimadi 1391000 Meitei 130 Bhili 120 Vasavi 115 Bhilali 1045000 Panjabi, Mirpur 100 Pahari, Mahasu Indonesia (more than million) 13600900 Madura 553 Minangkabau 393 Musi 3502300 Banjar 333 Bali 270 Betawi 235 Malay, Central 210 Sasak 200 Batak Toba 188 Malay, Makassar 160 Makasar 120 Batak Simalungun 120 Batak Dairi 110 Batak Mandailing 100 Malay, Jambi Philippines (more than 100k) 577 Hiligaynon 250 Bicolano, Central 190 Bicolano, Albay 1062000 Tausug 100 Maguindanao 776000 Maranao
Re: [Foundation-l] Black market science
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 22:03, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: I don't know much about the situation in the humanities though. There's a nice little undercurrent of paper exchange - some legitimate (asking the author for copies, getting PDFs from author websites, getting stuff from university pre-print draft repositories), some not so legitimate (*cough*BitTorrent*cough*) - much as there is in science, dampened only by the fact that less work in the humanities is done in journal papers and more in books. Sadly, compared to science, the embrace of the alternative (open access, Creative Commons etc.) is very slow. Although the argument for public access and against oligopoly publishers that is used for open access science also applies in the humanities, in science it is strengthened by the desire for open access data that the published study draw on be also be made available online, while in, say, philosophy, Plato and Kant are already meet the 'open access' standard. ;-) A lot of the slightly older stuff is in JSTOR, which isn't open access, but the access requirements demanded of subscribing institutions go in the 'fairly expensive' category rather than the 'brutally fisted with stinging nettles by Satan himself' category. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. Nor will I waste your ink/toner with 300+ lines of completely pointless and legally unenforceable cargo cult blather about corporate confidentiality. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Closing projects policy now official
Also, I do not understand why the *language* committee has a role in this in the first place. Is closing projects often about whether or not it actually is a language (the expertise field of langcom)? Most close requests are for projects that would not have been created under the current strictr langcom guidelines. Sometimes I think Langcom might better be called a New Project Editions committee, since they review not only whether a new project would be lingiustically distinct or has its orthography sorted out, but also whether there is a sufficient body of editors to make a new language-edition successful.Both opening and closing arguments about specific language-editions of a Project hinge at times on language, and on the activity level of those advocating for keeping/creating it. On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 5:20 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: could someone perhaps explain why the board delegated closing policy to *individual language committee members*? Because as I read it, this advice to the board is given by one individual, even if the rest of the committee disagrees I don't understand this part myself. But every committee has a certain leeway to decide how they will reach decisions. *Sj and Ting informed us that Board has agreed with the policy after the discussion. * If i understand right that was in Berlin. So the Board had 2 months to put that in a resolution, and didn't. That doesn't sound as a approval to me. The proposed LangCom policy update was shared within the past few weeks. The Board didn't hold a vote or pass a resolution; as with other langcom recommendations, we discussed the proposed changes and had the option to veto them but did not. I think this is a fine way for LangCom to present proposed closures of language-editions to the Board, where there is no community consensus. [For comparison: any group is welcome to present recommendations, or suggest resolution language, to the Board at any time; however this goes smoother when there is a process laid out ahead of time.] I don't think this new langcom policy should override the existing option of using community consensus to close a project -- that simply happens very rarely. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Black market science
The system of charging readers for distribution of scientific information is fundamentally flawed. Wikipedia demonstrates that it is cheap to host data. Reviewers don't get paid. Companies pay plenty to advertise in journals. Why do I have to pay $50 to read someone's research? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
