Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
Peter, resorting to ad hominem does nothing to prove your point. It only makes people less likely to listen to what you have to say. -m. On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Peter Damian peter.dam...@btinternet.com wrote: - Original Message - I can read a book on the History of the Fourth Crusade, and adds quotes to our articles on the persons and events, just as well as an expert in that specific field. If this http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Margaret_of_Hungaryoldid=383882577 is anything to go by, the answer is, no you can't. Sorry :( With every kind wish. Peter ___ 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] Umberto Eco on small languages/dialects Wikipedias (Aristotle article)
We have heard this type of criticism before, that lower-prestige varieties or languages that are not official or national languages are somehow intrinsically incapable or unsuited to encyclopedic writing. Article quality on a Wiki is not high or low due to some intrinsic characteristic or trait of the language variety used, it is a result of the content not being well-developed. Also, many languages in a relatively small territory does not mean living in a ghetto; on the contrary, count how many national languages there are in Europe, then count how many across all of Latin America, then take a look at economic indicators and you'll see that there is no necessary correlation between linguistic diversity and poverty. -m. On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 1:49 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: I suppose you may be interested: http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/el-me-aristotil/2134379/18 But, don't expect it to be an actual usable judgement about those projects, because it's more like a pretext to comment some recent Italian events. A Google translation to English contains only 2-3 completely wrong sentences. Nemo ___ 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] Umberto Eco on small languages/dialects Wikipedias (Aristotle article)
In the science of linguistics, standard languages are considered to be dialects which, simply through historical and political factors, rather than any intrinsic expressive capabilities, are given added prestige and wider realms of use than other dialects. I am not from Italy, but speaking generally about languages and language varieties around the world, I will say that it is true that for the most part, any concept that can be expressed in one language can be expressed in another. In some cases, this may require the use of loanwords or other lexical adaptations, but there is no such thing as a language variety that is unsuited to discuss politics, science or philosophy. Just because the variety has not been used for that kind of thing in the past does not mean it is incapable of expressing those concepts. When you say that the dialect, by which I assume you mean the nonstandard dialect, is only for daily and familiar use, this implies to me that just because this is the usual realm of these language varieties, that it is impossible or not feasible or desirable to use them outside of these domains. None of these are true, although of course desirable is an own decision of the speaker. -m. On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 4:42 AM, Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com wrote: On 19.09.2010 13:01, Marcus Buck wrote: An'n 19.09.2010 11:32, hett Mark Williamson schreven: We have heard this type of criticism before, that lower-prestige varieties or languages that are not official or national languages are somehow intrinsically incapable or unsuited to encyclopedic writing. Article quality on a Wiki is not high or low due to some intrinsic characteristic or trait of the language variety used, it is a result of the content not being well-developed. Also, many languages in a relatively small territory does not mean living in a ghetto; on the contrary, count how many national languages there are in Europe, then count how many across all of Latin America, then take a look at economic indicators and you'll see that there is no necessary correlation between linguistic diversity and poverty. -m. Estonian is a nice example. There are only 1.25 million speakers of Estonian. That's a rather low number. Less than the speaker numbers of most of the Italian tongues Eco is talking about (Piedmontese has 2 million, Sicilian even 8 million). But the Estonian-speaking society is in no way inferior to other societies. If Siclian or Piedmontese were not suppressed by the Italian standard language and were allowed to establish their own education systems there would be no problem. There would be no ghettoization. Marcus Buck User:Slomox The example of Eco is a little bit complex. In few words: an article about philosophy written in a dialect has not the same value of another written in a standard language. It is normal because any standard language has different registers, the dialect has limited registers and in general only for daily and familiar use. The synthesis is in one sentence Infatti il dialetto, ottimo per il comico, il familiare, il concreto quotidiano, il nostalgico-sentimentale, e spesso il poetico, alle nostre orecchie deprime i contenuti concettuali nati e sviluppatisi in altra lingua which can be translated The dialect, excellent for the funny, the homely things, the daily use, the nostalgic memories, and frequently for poetry, lowers in our understanding the conceptual contents born and developed in other language. It seems to me normal. The standard Italian has had eight centuries to become the current standard language, and the Latin has been used in Italy for a lot of time to write scientific and philosophical books (and it is still used for ecclesiastic matters). I understand the position of Eco because for eight centuries no language has been ghettoized in Italy, if the Italian standard is used as super-language probably there is a reason. The process for a dialect to be a language is long and complex. In the opposite side the Italian standard is not suitable for familiar language: it's a standard and aseptic language without nuances. If a dialect would be a language, probably it should accept to lose the wealth of words and expressions for daily communication. It is what happened for Rumantsch Grischun and Limba Sarda who are artificial super-languages not used in the families or in the group of friends, but at the same time so weak to clash the expansion of more common standard languages. Ilario ___ 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] Umberto Eco on small languages/dialects Wikipedias (Aristotle article)
Standard Australian English is very easy to understand for me as a North American speaker of English, especially when written because that eliminates the potential problem of different accents. Standard Jamaican English is easy to understand, perhaps you are thinking of Jamaican Creole, which is often impossible or nearly impossible to understand for me personally and is usually considered an independent language by linguists and actually has a test WP: http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/jam/Mien_Piej -m. On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, The most common different orthographies are those for the American and British spelling.. When it comes to differences between British and American English, the standard version of either can be well understood in either country. Australian English or Jamaican English are less easily understood. I do not know to what extend Indian English is homogeneous.. As long as people write in either the UK or US orthography, the words are easily enough understood. The problems comes with implied expected knowledge. This is where things break down. Thanks, GerardM On 19 September 2010 14:08, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 19 September 2010 12:42, Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com wrote: It is normal because any standard language has different registers, the dialect has limited registers and in general only for daily and familiar use. This, by the way, is why we don't have multiple English Wikipedias - in the higher registers, all the dialects (which are frequently all but mutually incomprehensible in the lower registers) converge and educational English is quite consistent. The only major dialectic variant is American versus British spelling, and anyone who reads one can read and often write in the other. - d. ___ 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] [Language committee] Transparency
Thank you to everybody who had a part in bringing about this increased transparency. It is a breath of fresh air for me and hopefully for everybody else who follows language-related developments on Wikimedia. -m. On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 9:08 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: As Karen fixed her anonymity issue, archives of the Language committee will be public by default starting from September 12th, 2010. We will continue to use the same method for the list archives, as it allows us to talk about confidential (mostly personal) issues. Previous emails will stay as they are, according to the old rules. ___ 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] Sakha Wikipedia passed 7000 articles
Two of the biggest remaining problems (of which there are, naturally, many many many others): 1) Transparency. Maybe some experts fear retaliation - okay, use pseudonyms or contribute anonymously. Just have someone summarize your opinion for public archives. Does Gerard fear retaliation? From whom? Why else does he keep his non-expert opinions hidden? 2) Eurocentrism. Not an accusation to be made lightly, but look at the geographic composition of the langcom. 9/13 members currently reside in Europe, another is originally from Europe, 2 from Canada and 1 from California. Hmm... so the population of Europe is 10% of the Earth's population, but (nearly) 100% of the population of the LangCom? This is a huge bias and should not be tolerated within an organization such as ours which pretends to have an international scope. -m. On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, Let us have a sense of history here. When the language committee started, there were no linguists or other experts members on the committee. We were really happy when we got someone who is part of the standard bodies that are relevant to what we do. It meant that we had a way to assess what the likelihood was for requests to the standard bodies. The only problem was that for professional reasons it is not possible to publish the point of views expressed publicly. As this may affect the employability, this is not a trivial matter and confidentiality is the only way got relevant and significant contributions. As a consequence, the mailing list for the language committee became confidential. At a later date, some members were not happy with a confidential list and wanted to make *their* contributions public. I opposed this because it is not that hard to deduce what someone said by the answers from others. As a consequence I keep my contributions private to the members of the committee. At a later date we started to seek expert opinion about the contributions in the incubator to ensure that contributions were in the language that goes with the ISO-639-3 code. The comments of these experts are in some cases best kept private. We seek assurances for ourselves so that we can honestly inform the WMF board that in our opinion a project in a new language can start. The policy allows for only one Wikipedia per language and, requests by people that seek to force one orthography or one script do not find acceptance in the policy and by the committee. At that we deliberately keep such deliberations outside of the WMF LC and leave it to the standard bodies to define what makes a specific language. If this gives you the impression that there is not that much to discuss, you are completely correct. Thanks, GerardM ___ 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] Sakha Wikipedia passed 7000 articles
I hope nobody gets the impression that I'm just an American sniping at Europeans. I wouldn't be much happier if it was half Americans and half Europeans, or even all Americans. The majority of the world's non-endangered languages are spoken in Asia and Africa, so on a committee that deals with languages it strikes me as absurd that there would be 0 representation from these places. As far as applauding the fact that there is a single person on the committee who spent most of his life in Israel, I hope you'll excuse me if I'm not clapping. Having a single member out of 13 that lives outside Europe/US is not especially encouraging to me, it seems more like tokenism. Yaroslav, Europe does have dozens of languages, but it lags behind literally other continent: Continent - # of languages - % of world's languages Africa - 2110 - 30.5% Americas - 993 - 14.4% Asia - 2,322 - 33.6% Europe - 234 - 3.4% Pacific - 1,250 - 18.1% Let's keep that in mind here. -m. On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 8:11 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: 2) Eurocentrism. Not an accusation to be made lightly, but look at the geographic composition of the langcom. 9/13 members currently reside in Europe, another is originally from Europe, 2 from Canada and 1 from California. Hmm... so the population of Europe is 10% of the Earth's population, but (nearly) 100% of the population of the LangCom? This is a huge bias and should not be tolerated within an organization such as ours which pretends to have an international scope. -m. I guess if 75% of the members were from the US nobody would ever complain. Hardly. It's not as if there have been no complaints ever about a majority of the board being from the US. It would be better if both the Americans and the Europeans would cut back on sniping at each other, acknowledge that it's unhealthy for either of them to be so disproportionately represented, and focus their energies on recruiting more people who add real cognitive diversity. That's part of what the board and the foundation are trying to do in the context of the strategic plan. --Michael Snow ___ 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] Sakha Wikipedia passed 7000 articles
I think it has been proven many times over now that the Language Committee works in mysterious ways with little or no community oversight or input, essentially a self-appointed committee of experts, mostly from similar linguistic backgrounds, handing down judgements about the rest of the world's languages from their overwhelmingly European ivory tower. It seems we as a community of people who care deeply about the future of potential new languages and the success of existing language versions within our Wikimedia community have no choice but to watch from the sidelines as they do what they please. -m. On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 12:18 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote: On Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:29:01 +0300, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Some good news: The Sakha Wiki community keeps being surprisingly active. I don't know this language, but i read the mailing list of that community, which is mostly written in Russian, and often contribute to it (i also asked to migrate that list to Wikimedia servers and it will probably happen soon [1]). Now it may sound like a joke, but the opening of Sakha Wikipedia had been delayed some two years ago because the Language Committee did not believe that the Incubator pages have actually been written in Sakha. Now this is one of the most dynamic Turkic language projects, and I am proud to be a regular editor of this Wiki. Cheers Yaroslav ___ 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] Farsi wikipedia has reached 100 K article
Take a look at some of the new football-related articles on the Ewe Wikipedia. I don't think this is cause for celebration at all: http://ee.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Beckham http://ee.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naohiro_Takahara http://ee.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruud_van_Nistelrooy I don't see a single word of Ewe... on any of those pages. I don't think that user even speaks that language. All those pages should be deleted. -m. On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 6:13 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Congratulations to Farsi and Slovene! For those who don't know, there's a milestones page here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News Which I've always found fascinating to watch (for instance, this month Ewe Wikipedia doubled in size, due entirely to football related articles by user:footballer; and user:JinJian on Waray-Waray created 10,000 articles, bringing it over 100K.) Amazing. best, Phoebe On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Mariano Cecowski marianocecow...@yahoo.com.ar wrote: Congratulations! So did the Slovene Wikipedia just one week ago. We're right behind you! Though we have half the edits. :| Cheers, MarianoC.- --- El mié 25-ago-10, Mardetanha mardetanha.w...@gmail.com escribió: De: Mardetanha mardetanha.w...@gmail.com Asunto: [Foundation-l] Farsi wikipedia has reached 100 K article Para: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Fecha: miércoles, 25 de agosto de 2010, 4:31 Farsi wikipedia has reached 100 K articles . Mardetanha ___ 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 -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at 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] [Language committee] New member
Interesting to note the geographic distribution of members of the committee... hmm... -m. On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 4:20 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: Our new member is Huib Laurens (meta:User:Huib). His main role is to help us in keeping up to date archives of our mailing list [1] and other technical things. However, LangCom doesn't have strictly divided roles, which means that Huib is a also a full member of LangCom, which includes decision making, too. [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Archives ___ 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] Parallel text alignment (was: Push translation)
You won't find many professional translators using GTTK for their work. [citation needed] -m. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation
On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: 2) Implement spelling and punctuation check automatically within GTTK before posting of the articles. There is spell check in Translator Toolkit, although it's not available for all languages. We don't have any punctuation checks today and I doubt that we can release this anytime soon. (If it's not available in Google Docs or Gmail, then it's unlikely that we'll have it for Translator Toolkit, as well, since we use the same infrastructure.) What's the proposal, though - would you like for us to prevent publishing of articles if they have too many spelling errors, or simply warn the user that there are X spelling errors? Any input you can provide on preferred behavior would be great. I would say to force spellcheck before publication, which does not seem to be the case currently. I think this would be enough - perhaps a warning as well. I don't know about preventing publication, although that might work too. How about this: we pop up a window that says, Your translation has misspelled words: X. Publish anyway? Does that work? That sounds great to me. Also, as far as Indic languages go, I would ask if there's any chance you have any Oriya speakers - with 637 articles, the Oriya Wikipedia is by far the most anemic of Indic-language Wikipedias, in spite of a speaker population of 31 million. Oriya is one of the languages we'd love to work on. We don't have any activity on this today but if you have some Wikipedians who'd like to help us get this off the ground, we'd love to get their contact info and we can follow up from there. Unfortunately, there is currently not even an Oriya Wikipedia community. I think such a project would need to be managed a bit differently - seeking to either create a community (no reason participants can't start a community), or to be relatively limited in scope, or else to have more stringent controls on content quality. I would love to help with that myself in any way possible. Another option with a bit more community but still very underdeveloped is the Punjabi Wikipedia, with 1919 pages. I would recommend contacting Gman124 or Sukh at that project on their user talk pages or through the e-mail user function. -m. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation
2) Implement spelling and punctuation check automatically within GTTK before posting of the articles. There is spell check in Translator Toolkit, although it's not available for all languages. We don't have any punctuation checks today and I doubt that we can release this anytime soon. (If it's not available in Google Docs or Gmail, then it's unlikely that we'll have it for Translator Toolkit, as well, since we use the same infrastructure.) What's the proposal, though - would you like for us to prevent publishing of articles if they have too many spelling errors, or simply warn the user that there are X spelling errors? Any input you can provide on preferred behavior would be great. I would say to force spellcheck before publication, which does not seem to be the case currently. I think this would be enough - perhaps a warning as well. I don't know about preventing publication, although that might work too. 3) Have GTTK automatically remove broken templates and images, or require users to translate any templates before a page may be posted. Templates are a bit tricky. Sometimes, a template in one Wikipedia does not exist in another Wikipedia. Other times, a template in one langauge maps to a template in another language but the parameters are different. Removing broken templates automatically may not work because some templates come between words. If we remove them, the sentences or paragraph may become invalid. We've also considered creating a custom interface for localizing templates, but this requires a lot of work. In the interim, the approach we've taken is to have translators fix the templates in Wikipedia when they post the article from Translator Toolkit. When a user clicks on Share Publish to source page in Translator Toolkit, the Wikipedia article is in preview mode --- it's not live. The idea is that if there are any errors, the translator can fix them before saving the article. Well, many translators do fix such problems, but I was just thinking of some of the problems that I've heard so far with people who do drive-by translations, dropping it on a project and then disappearing. If translators are careful and do all the work themselves, templates are an annoyance rather than a real problem. 4) Include a list of most needed articles for people to create, rather than random articles that will be of little use to local readers. Some articles, such as those on local topics, have the added benefit of encouraging more edits and community participation since they tend to generate more interest from speakers of a language in my experience. The articles we selected actually weren't really random. Here's how we selected them: 1. we looked at the top Google searches in the region (e.g., for Tamil, we looked at searches in India and I believe Sri Lanka, as well) 2. from the top Google searches in the region, we looked at the top, clicked Wikipedia articles --- regardless of the language (so we wound up with Wikipedia source articles in English, Hindi, and other languages) 3. from the top, clicked Wikipedia articles, we looked for articles that were either stubs or unavailable in the local language - these are the articles that we sent for translation This selection isn't perfect. For example, it assumes that the top, clicked Wikipedia articles by all users in India/Sri Lanka --- who may be searching in English, Hindi, Tamil, or some other language --- are relevant to the Tamil community. To improve this, last month, we met with members of the Tamil and Telugu Wikipedias to improve this article selection. The main changes that we agreed on were: I'm not sure if this project was separate from the Swahili Wikipedia Challenge, but I'm assuming it was after seeing articles such as http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maduka_ya_United_Cigar_Stores (about a defunct chain of cigar stores in the US) which I doubt were popular searches in East Africa. One more idea: Automatically add existing Interwikis links to the new article. Also, as far as Indic languages go, I would ask if there's any chance you have any Oriya speakers - with 637 articles, the Oriya Wikipedia is by far the most anemic of Indic-language Wikipedias, in spite of a speaker population of 31 million. -m. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
That's absolutely a problem that should not be overlooked. Despite what I said in the other thread about content equivalency across languages, I think this is quite a different issue. A competent translator must take into account context and fluency, and often direct translations do not fit, even when they're grammatically correct. Language is a living organism consisting of more than just words and grammatical rules, we use lots of idioms and turns of phrase that are unique to our languages (or even our local dialects). Ignoring these things in a translation can generally give us output that is understandable, but not necessarily good - it can come out sounding stilted, awkward and contrived, at best. The latest version of GTTK allows the merger of segments, i.e. two sentences in the original can be merged into one and translated accordingly. However, I think it's important to not lose sight of the fact that GTTK is just that: a toolkit. It is not the end-all solution for article creation on any Wiki, nor is it an evil entity that goes around dumping poor-quality text on our projects. It is what we make it - I can use GTTK to produce a translation that is a good, prosaic article if I am willing to put in the time and effort to adapt text from one language to another, which is really the job of the translator anyhow. This doesn't take away from the problem raised by M. Yahia about community, but I do wonder about that. Informational cannibalism has been common in our community between languages for a long time, ranging from borrowed parts of articles to translations of full articles. This hasn't seemed to be a problem in the past, before GTTK. What struck me were the phrases very bad sentence structures and bad jargon translations. Aren't we talking about professional translators here, people who do this for a living? An excellent translator should not only know their source language well, they must also be intimately familiar with the ins and outs of their target language, beyond just the fact of being a native speaker. If a translation doesn't sound natural in the target language, that's not because it's a translation, it's because either 1) it's a poor translation or 2) it wasn't natural sounding in the source language, either! In most cases, I'd guess 1) since as a translator I'd rather compensate for people's grammatical mistakes than attempt to re-render them in another language. The key to a great finished translation, in my opinion, is good proofreading. Before proofreading, your translation is like a block of unfinished wood. Rough, but still suitable for some uses. After proofreading, it should be polished. A good translation should leave the reader unable to tell whether the text was translated or if it was originally written in the target language, with only very rare exceptions. -m. On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 12:37 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: Has anybody more information about what Google exactly told the people? A link? To whom was this call for participation directed? This issue Translation memory is another problem, another divergency of interests. We Wikipedians want to write good articles in our languages, that often means that we do not translate 1:1 but shorten and customize. But Google wants 1:1 translations for its Translation memory. And, of course, its the big numbers Google is interested in to achieve better automatic translations in the end. Ziko 2010/7/29 Muhammad Yahia shipmas...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 6:56 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: I heard that for the Swahili Wikipedia contest at least, they gave away prizes... but perhaps they should've included a requirement that the articles they created be rated as good by the community, not full of errors and nonsense sentences, and that all project participants who want any chance at winning must respond to all talkpage messages within 72 hours (or something like that). I have been involved with 2 big pushes by Google in the Arabic Wikipedia, one of them was by professional paid translators, the other was done completely by a volunteer organization in collaboration with Google. I supported both efforts heavily. In the latter, they recruited university students mostly to do the work and there was very little to earn beyond recognition. All the problems mentioned above plagued both efforts, and while the second one had slightly better results than the first, the vast amount of translated articles lay ignored in the user space (that's what the consensus on ar.wp was, confine them to their user space until deemed good), the efforts to contact and teach either the volunteers or the paid translators were futile, and the articles had some very awkward sentence structures, some very bad jargon translation, etc. I have reached the opinion that the gradual nature of collaboration in Wikipedia is what makes our good and excellent articles what they are. I
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Ziko, again, we are not talking about machine translations; Google doesn't have machine translation for Bangla, Malayalam, Tamil etc. yet. This is about translation memory. One of the things about MAT, whose use in the professional translator community is still debated but most popular for translations of time-dependent things like news, is that the original is often a very rough translation that requires a _lot_ of editing. The biggest problem is not the toolkit itself (with some exceptions - punctuation and templates, for example) but the translators who do not bother to use it properly, creating poor translations with lots of spelling mistakes and leaving behind a wasteland of poor quality articles. GTTK can be used as a force of good if someone puts in the appropriate time and effort; when used _properly_ by a careful, knowledgeable translator who gives ample time for proofreading, articles created with it should be virtually indistinguishable from any other article. It is my thought that the huge problem here is lack of engagement with communities. Essentially, Google swooped down and started dropping large amounts of poor quality content on our projects without engaging the people from those communities. The people in Google's contest also didn't engage the communities, nor did they respond to requests to improve their content. -m. On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 7:18 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: 2010/7/28 Nathan nawr...@gmail.com: Just to be sure I understand... It's good that you ask, indeed. :-) No, it's not about free software, and the Wikimedians are not too snobby or lazy to correct poor language. That is what I frequently do in de.WP and eo.WP, and I suppose Ragib and many others as well. The point is: The machine translated articles are often so bad that I simply don't understand them. I *cannot* correct them, because I don't know what they are saying. Kind regards Ziko What's happening here is that human beings, using a software tool, are translating articles from the English Wikipedia into a variety of other languages and posting them on the comparatively small Wikipedia projects in these languages. The articles, of unknown intrinsic quality, are usually mid to low quality translations. In the projects with an active community, some have rejected these articles because they are not high quality and because the community refuses to be responsible for fixing punctuation and other errors made by editors who are not members of the community. In the projects without an active community, Wikimedians (who may not speak any of the languages affected by the Google initiative) are objecting for a variety of other reasons - because the software used to assist translation isn't free, because the effort is managed by a commercial organization or because the endeavor wasn't cleared with the Wikimedia community first. Some are also concerned that these new articles will somehow deter new editors from becoming involved, despite clear evidence that a larger base of content attracts more readers, and more readers plus imperfect content leads to more editors. What I find interesting is that few seem to be interested in keeping or improving the translated articles; Google's attempt to provide content in under-served languages is actually offending Wikimedians, despite our ostensible commitment to the same goal. Concerns like bureaucratic pre-approval, using free software, etc. are somehow more important than reaching more people with more content. It all seems strange and un-Wikimedian like to me. Obviously there are things Google should have done differently. Maybe working with them to improve their process should be the focus here? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ 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] Push translation
Yes, of course if it's not actually reviewed and corrected by a human it's going to be bad. What I said was that if it's used as it was meant to be used, the results should be indistinguishable from a normal human translation, regardless of the language involved because all mistakes would be fixed by a person. People often neglect to do that, but that doesn't make the tool inherently evil. -m. On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Aphaia aph...@gmail.com wrote: Ah, I omitted T, and I meant Toolkit. A toolkit with garbage could be called toolkit, but it doesn't change it is useless; it cannot deal with syntax properly, i.e. conjugation etc. at this moment. Intended to be reviewed and corrected by a human doesn't assure it was really reviewed and corrected by a human to a sufficient extent. It could be enough for your target language, but not for mine. Thanks. On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 5:15 AM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 3:44 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: Aphaia, Shiju Alex and I are referring to Google Translator Toolkit, not Google Translate. If the person using the Toolkit uses it as it was _meant_ to be used, the results should be as good as a human translation because they've been reviewed and corrected by a human. But if the program were being used by a human who speaks the language, wouldn't it be *pull* translation and not *push* translation? -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD ___ 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] Push translation
Google is, in my experience, very difficult for regular people to get in touch with. Sometimes, when a product is in beta, they give you a way to contact them. They used to have an e-mail to contact them at if you had information about bilingual corpora (I found one online from the Nunavut parliament for English and Inuktitut, but now it looks like they've removed the address) so they could use it to improve Google Translate. I think they intentionally have a relatively small support staff. I read somewhere that that had turned out to be a huge problem for the mobile phone they produced - people might not expect great support for a huge website like Google, but when they buy electronics, they certainly do expect to have someone they can call and talk to within 24 hours. I don't think that's completely unwise, though. I'm sure they get tons of crackpot e-mails all the time. I was reading an official blog about Google Translate, and in the post about their Wikipedia contests, someone wrote an angry comment that google must hate Spain because the Spanish language wasn't mentioned in that particular post. Now multiply that by millions, and that is part of the reason (or so I imagine) that Google makes it difficult to contact them. -m. On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Is anyone from Google reading this thread? Because of this thread i tried to play with the Google Translator Toolkit a little and found some technical problems. When i tried to send bug reports about them through the Contact us form, i received after a few minutes a bounce message from the translation-editor-supp...@google.com address. I love reporting bugs, and developers are supposed to love reading them, but it looks like i'm stuck here... 2010/7/27 Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com Aphaia, Shiju Alex and I are referring to Google Translator Toolkit, not Google Translate. If the person using the Toolkit uses it as it was _meant_ to be used, the results should be as good as a human translation because they've been reviewed and corrected by a human. -- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ 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] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Well, my impression, and I'm by no means an expert in this (I'm not associated with Google), is that they emphasized quantity over quality and forgot to mention the importance of community to our projects. I heard that for the Swahili Wikipedia contest at least, they gave away prizes... but perhaps they should've included a requirement that the articles they created be rated as good by the community, not full of errors and nonsense sentences, and that all project participants who want any chance at winning must respond to all talkpage messages within 72 hours (or something like that). I think telling a group of newbies that they'll get a big prize if they translate the most articles is a recipe for disaster. What incentive do they have to make sure their translation is of good quality? What incentive do they have to stick around afterwards? -m. On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 9:10 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: Mark Williamson: GTTK can be used as a force of good if someone puts in the appropriate time and effort; when used _properly_ by a careful, knowledgeable It is my thought that the huge problem here is lack of engagement with communities. Essentially, Google swooped down and started dropping Agreed. Again, in my experience it is quicker and delivers more quality to translate by your own. If others have different experiences (it may depend on the language), okay. It seems that something went very wrong when telling people who to contribute to a Wikipedia language version. Could you report more about that, Mark? Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ 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] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
I'm not sure that's exactly the question. Rather, by using GTTK, people are contributing to building [[Translation memory]] for Google, which they can in turn use to build their statistical models. It's not that we're using non-free software, but rather that we're contributing to it. -m. On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Fajro wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:38 PM, Ragib Hasan ragibha...@gmail.com wrote: (The tool used was Google Translation Toolkit. (not Google Translate). There is a distinction between these two tools. Google Translation Toolkit (GTT) is a translation-memory based semi-manual translation tool. That is, it learns translation skills as you gradually translate articles by hand. Later, this can be used to automate translation.) Another issue: The resulting translation memory is not free This is a red herring. Some real and important issues have been raised about machine translations, but this is not one of them. The fact that the source codes for the translation processes are not free does not make the results of such machine translations unfree. Key to anything being copyright is that material must be original and not the result of a mechanical process. Machine translations are mechanical processes. Another person using the same software with the same text should have the same results. It is also important that the allegedly infringing text must have been fixed in some medium. A person issuing a take down order must show, as an necessary element of that order, where the material in question was previously published. Two identical texts by different authors need not be copies of each other. With human efforts two such identical texts are highly improbable, but this need not be the case with machine translation. Indeed if the same software keeps producing different results I would question its reliability. Ray ___ 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] Push translation
Shiju Alex, Stevertigo is just one en.wikipedian. As far as using exact copies goes, I don't know about the policy at your home wiki, but in many Wikipedias this sort of back-and-forth translation and trading and sharing of articles has been going on since day one, not just with English but with other languages as well. If I see a good article on any Wikipedia in a language I understand that is lacking in another, I'll happily translate it. I have never seen this cause problems provided I use proper spelling and grammar and do not use templates or images that leave red links. I started out at en.wp in 2001, so I don't think it's unreasonable to call myself an English Wikipedian (although I'd prefer to think of myself as an international Wikipedian, with lots of edits at wikis such as Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Navajo, Haitian and Moldovan). I am not at all in favor of pushing any sort of articles on anybody, if a community discusses and reaches consensus to disallow translations (even ones made by humans, including professionals), that is absolutely their right, although I don't think it's wise to disallow people from using material from other Wikipedias. Google Translator Toolkit is particularly problematic because it messes up the existing article formatting (one example, it messes up internal links by putting punctuation marks before double brackets when they should be after) and it includes incompatible formatting such as redlinked templates. It also doesn't help that many editors don't stick around to fix their articles afterwards. -m. On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: really? It's a) not particularly well-written, mostly and b) referenced overwhelmingly to English-language sources, most of which are, you guessed it.. Western in nature. Very much true. Now English Wikipedians want some one to translate and use the exact copy of en:wp in all other language wikipedias. And they have the support of Google for that. On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 5:52 AM, Oliver Keyes scire.fac...@gmail.comwrote: The idea is that most of en.wp's articles are well-enough written, and written in accord with NPOV to a sufficient degree to overcome any such criticism of 'imperial encyclopedism.' - really? It's a) not particularly well-written, mostly and b) referenced overwhelmingly to English-language sources, most of which are, you guessed it.. Western in nature. On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 3:43 AM, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: I would like to add to this that I think the worst part of this idea is the assumption that other languages should take articles from en.wp. The idea is that most of en.wp's articles are well-enough written, and written in accord with NPOV to a sufficient degree to overcome any such criticism of 'imperial encyclopedism.' Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: Nobody's arguing here that language and culture have no relationship. What I'm saying is that language does not equal culture. Many people speak French who are not part of the culture of France, for example the cities of Libreville and Abidjan in Africa. Africa is an unusual case given that it was so linguistically diverse to begin with, and that its even moreso in the post-colonial era, when Arabic, French, English, and Dutch remain prominent marks of imperialistic influence. Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: This is well suited for the dustbin of terrible ideas. It ranks right up there with the notion that the European colonization of Africa was for the sole purpose of civilizing the savages. This is the 'encyclopedic imperialism' counterargument. I thought I'd throw it out there. As Bendt noted above, Google has already been working on it for two years and has had both success and failure. It bears mentioning that their tools have been improving quite steadily. A simple test such as /English - Arabic - English/ will show that. Note that colonialism isnt the issue. It still remains for example a high priority to teach English in Africa, for the simple reason that language is almost entirely a tool for communication, and English is quite good for that purpose. Its notable that the smaller colonial powers such as the French were never going to be successful at linguistic imperialism in Africa, for the simple reason that French has not actually been the lingua franca for a long time now. Key to the growth of Wikipedias in minority languages is respect for the cultures that they encompass, not flooding them with the First-World Point of View. What might be a Neutral Point of View on the English Wikipedia is limited by the contributions of English writers. Those who do not understand English may arrive at a different neutrality. We have not yet arrived at a Metapedia that would synthesize a single neutrality from
Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 1:36 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: 1. Ban the project of Google as done by the Bengali wiki community (Bad solution, and I am personally against this solution) 2. Ask Google to engage wiki community (As happened in the case of Tamil) to find out a working solution. But if there is no active wiki community what Google can do. But does this mean that Google can continue with the project as they want? (Very difficult solution if there is no active wiki community) 3. Find some other solution. For example, Is it possible to upload the translated articles in a separate name space, for example, Google: Let the community decides what needs to be taken to the main/article namespace. 4. . If some solution is not found soon, Google's effort is going to create problem in many language wikipedias. The worst result of this effort would be the rift between the wiki community and the Google translators (speakers of the same language) :( Shiju Shiju, I think you have made some great suggestions here. I'd like to add a couple of my own: 1) Fix some of the formatting errors with GTTK. Would this really be so difficult? It seems to me that the breaking of links is a bug that needs fixing by Google. 2) Implement spelling and punctuation check automatically within GTTK before posting of the articles. 3) Have GTTK automatically remove broken templates and images, or require users to translate any templates before a page may be posted. 4) Include a list of most needed articles for people to create, rather than random articles that will be of little use to local readers. Some articles, such as those on local topics, have the added benefit of encouraging more edits and community participation since they tend to generate more interest from speakers of a language in my experience. 3 of these are things for Google to work on, one is something for us to work on. I think this is a potentially valuable resource, the problem is channeling the efforts and energies of these well-meaning people in the right direction so that local Wikipedias don't end up full of low-quality, unreadable articles with little hope for improvement. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. -m. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation
Aphaia, Shiju Alex and I are referring to Google Translator Toolkit, not Google Translate. If the person using the Toolkit uses it as it was _meant_ to be used, the results should be as good as a human translation because they've been reviewed and corrected by a human. -m. On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 12:42 PM, Aphaia aph...@gmail.com wrote: GT fails. At least for Japanese, it sucks. And that is why I don't support it. GT may fit to SVO languages, but for SOV languages, it is nothing but a crap. Imagine to fix a 4000 words of documents whose all lines are sort of all your base is belong to us. It's not a simple thing as you imagine - spelling and punctuation. I admit it has been improved (now Free Tibet from English to Japanese is Furi Tibetto, not former muryo tibetto (Tibet for gratis) in two years ago - but craps are still craps and I don't want to spend my hours for the for-profit giant. On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 1:36 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: 1. Ban the project of Google as done by the Bengali wiki community (Bad solution, and I am personally against this solution) 2. Ask Google to engage wiki community (As happened in the case of Tamil) to find out a working solution. But if there is no active wiki community what Google can do. But does this mean that Google can continue with the project as they want? (Very difficult solution if there is no active wiki community) 3. Find some other solution. For example, Is it possible to upload the translated articles in a separate name space, for example, Google: Let the community decides what needs to be taken to the main/article namespace. 4. . If some solution is not found soon, Google's effort is going to create problem in many language wikipedias. The worst result of this effort would be the rift between the wiki community and the Google translators (speakers of the same language) :( Shiju Shiju, I think you have made some great suggestions here. I'd like to add a couple of my own: 1) Fix some of the formatting errors with GTTK. Would this really be so difficult? It seems to me that the breaking of links is a bug that needs fixing by Google. 2) Implement spelling and punctuation check automatically within GTTK before posting of the articles. 3) Have GTTK automatically remove broken templates and images, or require users to translate any templates before a page may be posted. 4) Include a list of most needed articles for people to create, rather than random articles that will be of little use to local readers. Some articles, such as those on local topics, have the added benefit of encouraging more edits and community participation since they tend to generate more interest from speakers of a language in my experience. 3 of these are things for Google to work on, one is something for us to work on. I think this is a potentially valuable resource, the problem is channeling the efforts and energies of these well-meaning people in the right direction so that local Wikipedias don't end up full of low-quality, unreadable articles with little hope for improvement. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. -m. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD ___ 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] Push translation
On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 11:03 PM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 1:39 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedias are not for _cultures_, they are for languages. If I and I'm surprised to hear that coming from someone who I thought to be a student of languages. I think you might want to read an article from today's Wall Street Journal, about how language influences culture (and, one would extrapolate, Wikipedia articles). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383131592767868.html Casey, that's nothing new, nor is it anything I was unaware of. The debate about whether language influences thought (or vice versa) has long been a debate within the scholarly community. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity for a more detailed treatment of the subject - there's still no consensus. Nobody's arguing here that language and culture have no relationship. What I'm saying is that language does not equal culture. Many people speak French who are not part of the culture of France, for example the cities of Libreville and Abidjan in Africa. Many (many!) people who speak English are not part of the culture of England (or even the rest of the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia or New Zealand), including hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of native speakers. Languages are certainly cultural artifacts, but that does not mean that they are equivalent. Imagine tomorrow morning everybody in Japan spoke French and only French and that all Japanese literature and text suddenly was printed only in French. Would Japanese culture cease to exist? Not at all. The customs, attitudes, rituals, beliefs and even the food would not be changed (attitudes is debatable perhaps, but I'm not a believer of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis). Yes, something great would be lost, an irreplaceable _part_ of the Japanese culture, but cultures have sometimes persisted in spite language death. Ritual prayers are sometimes translated to the new language, other times fossilized in a language now rendered incomprehensible by time, same goes for geographic and personal names... I think it's pretty clear at this point that, for example, all 4 of the regular users of ace.wp are offended by certain images on en.wp. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that many - probably the vast majority - of Acehnese speakers would find those images similarly offensive. Now let's say I've got a toddler and he has an Acehnese caretaker. This caretaker is monolingual in Acehnese, but they've been expressly forbidden from mentioning religion. When this toddler grows up, he'll probably be good enough at Acehnese and have spoken it early enough in life to be considered a native speaker... but will he automatically have any inclinations one way or another about the pictures? Of course not. So, just because the vast majority of speakers of a language share a cultural background does NOT mean that the language could only ever be spoken by people who belong to that culture. Wikipedia versions are very clearly for languages. the Estonian Wikipedia is the Wikipedia in the Estonian language, not the Wikipedia for Estonian Culture. As an example of this, I have a good friend who grew up speaking Akan, having had a nanny from West Africa. Is my friend a member of the Akan culture? Not really... does that mean she couldn't be a productive member of the Akan Wikipedia (if she wanted to be :-( )? No. If Wikipedias were for cultures, the edits of Macedonians, Chinese, Italians or Congolese people to en.wp would be somehow less valid that those of native speakers of English in predominantly Anglophone societies. Of course, this is not the case. That's one of the things I like about en.wp - the fact that people who do not speak English as their primary language form a large portion of our editors means that things are likely to come out a bit more balanced. Argentine editors can edit [[Falkland Islands]], for example. In my humble opinion, this is the way it should be. Language is a troublesome barrier. Who is to ensure that Turkish or Greek articles about Cyprus are neutral? I'm not an advocate of a one-world language, but if we had perfect MT tech, I would be in favor of everybody collaborating on one massive international WP. 1,000 other Americans suddenly learnt French (to the point of native-level fluency) and decided to read and edit the French Wikipedia, it would belong to us just as much as to anybody else. This came up recently in the debate about the Acehnese Wikipedia. Some people said that all Acehnese were Muslim (not true - there is a small community of Acehnese Christians). They said that if anyone is Christian, they'd be ejected from Acehnese society and therefore no longer Acehnese. However, they'd not stop speaking the Acehnese language. Nobody claims the English WP is for US/Commonwealth cultures only... this is reasonable when a Wiki is tiny
Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation
I would like to add to this that I think the worst part of this idea is the assumption that other languages should take articles from en.wp. I would be in favor of an international, language-free Wikipedia if/when perfect (or 99.99% accurate) MT software exists, but that is not currently the case. My point here is that rather than forcing English articles on other languages, everybody everywhere speaking any language should be able to modify the same article and view it in their native language. -m. On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:59 AM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: stevertigo wrote: Translation between wikis currently exists as a largely pulling paradigm: Someone on the target wiki finds an article in another language (English for example) and then pulls it to their language wiki. These days Google and other translate tools are good enough to use as the starting basis for an translated article, and we can consider how we make use of them in an active way. What is largely a pull paradigm can also be a push paradigm - we can use translation tools to push articles to other wikis. If there are issues, they can be overcome. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of articles in English can be pushed over to other languages, and fill a need for those topics in those languages. This is well suited for the dustbin of terrible ideas. It ranks right up there with the notion that the European colonization of Africa was for the sole purpose of civilizing the savages. Key to the growth of Wikipedias in minority languages is respect for the cultures that they encompass, not flooding them with the First-World Point of View. What might be a Neutral Point of View on the English Wikipedia is limited by the contributions of English writers. Those who do not understand English may arrive at a different neutrality. We have not yet arrived at a Metapedia that would synthesize a single neutrality from all projects. In addition to bludgeoning these cultures with an imposed neutrality, there is also the risk of overwhelming them with sheer volume. I remember only too well the uproar when the large quantity of articles on every small community in the United States were botted into en-wp. Neutrality was not an issue in that case, but the quantity of unchecked material was even if it came from a reliable source. It's important for the minority language projects to choose what is important to them, and what is relevant to their culture. As useful and uncontroversial as many English articles may be in our eyes they may still not yet be notable for minority languages. Ray ___ 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] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Two things: 1) Please define junk articles. Do you mean articles that you think nobody in your community wants to read (like, say, an article about an American singer or actor, for example [[Lady Gaga]]), or do you mean articles that are written in such a way as to be incomprehensible, or are filled with linkspam, etc? Or do you mean something else entirely? Please explain. 2) Community is certainly important, but aren't we here to write an encyclopedia? I don't think having all links turned blue is a bad thing at all. In fact, it seems to me that over time, a larger article base will result in more users joining. Note that I said over time; in the short term, it may not have much effect. -m. On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 11:12 PM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: Hello All, Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias. The foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not sure whether any one is interested to consult the respective language community to know their views. As far as I know only Tamil, Bengali, and Swahili Wikipedians have raised their concerns about Google's project. But, does this means that other communities are happy about Google efforts? If there is no active community in a wikipedia how can we expect response from communities? If there is no response from a community, does that mean that Google can hire some native speakers and use machine translation to create articles for that wikipedia? Now let us go back to a basic question. Does WMF require a wiki community to create wikipedia in any language? Or can they utilize the services of companies like Google to create wikipedias in N number of languages? One of the main point raised by the supporters of Google translation is that, Google's project is good *for the online version of the language*.That might be true. But no body is cared to verify whether it is good for Wikipedia. As pointed out by Ravi in his presentation in Wikimania, ( http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs), the Google translation of wikipedia articles: - will affect the biological growth of a Wikipedia article - will create copy of English wikipedia article in local wikis - it is against some of the basic philosophies of wikipedia The people outside wiki will definitely benefit from this tool, if Google translation tool is developed for each language. I saw the working example of this in Poland during Wikimania, when some people who are not good in English used google translator to communicate with us. :) Apart from the points raised by Ravi in his presentation, this will affect the community growth.If there is no active wiki community, how can we expect them to look after all these junk articles uploaded to wiki every day. When all the important article links are already turned blue, how we can expect any future potential editors. So according to me, Google's project is killing the growth of an active wiki community. Of course, Tamil Wikipedia is trying to use Google project effectively. But only Tamil is doing that since they have an active wiki community*. Many Wiki communities are not even aware that such a project is happening in their wiki*. I do not want to point out specific language wikipedas to prove my point. But visit the wikipedias (especially wikipedias* that use non-latin scripts*) to view the status of google translation project. Loads of junk articles are uploaded to wiki every day. Most of the time the only edit in these articles is the edit by its creator and the inter language wiki bots. This effort will definitely affect community growth. Kindly see the points raised by a Swahali Wikipedianhttp://muddybtz.blog.com/2010/07/16/what-happened-on-the-google-challenge-the-swahili-wikipedia/. Many Swahali users (and other language users) now expect a laptop or some other monitory benefits to write in their wikipedia. That affects the community growth. So what is the solution for this? Can we take lessons from Tamil/Bengali/Swahili wikipedias and find methods to use this service effectively or continue with the current article creation process. One last question. Is this tool that is developing by Google is an open source tool? If not, we need to answer so many questions that may follow. Regards Shiju Alex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shijualex ___ 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] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Aphaia, a great deal of confusion has been created with regards to this project. I hope you'll allow me to attempt to clear it up. These are NOT articles that were translated directly by Google Translate. Rather, they were created using Google Translator Toolkit, which requires human intervention by a speaker of the language - someone to check and correct every single sentence translated, in the case of languages where Google already has machine translation, or to write entirely new _human_ translations, in the cases where no Google Translate module exists (for example, Tamil), with the aid of Translation Memory software. I currently work as a translator and have found that Google Translator Toolkit is great for speeding up and improving the consistency of translations, and at least the results of my work are usually better with it than they would be without (I'm glad for the consistency - if I'm translating a large document, I'd like to make sure to translate the same phrases the same way every time they occur rather than using slightly different wording the second time around). Since they're revised and corrected by a human, they _should_ have the same level of grammatical correctness, comprehensibility and translation quality as a pure human translation. If they don't, this is the fault of the person using the toolkit, not the software itself. -m. On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Aphaia aph...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:52 PM, Jon Davis w...@konsoletek.com wrote: I think the answer is Yes and No. As with any new project/concept/idea/trial there are pro's and there are con's. The real question is: Do the pro's outweigh the con's? From just reading what you linked (And not in any way being involved with these language projects) and my own personal experiences of how I work on Wikipedia. Yes, I think it is a good thing overall. From what I've seen, it is much easier to convince someone who has never edited, to fix grammatical, spelling or other simple mistakes. Generally people don't dive in and write/translate entire articles - it is simply too high of a barrier to entry. These pre-translated articles give people an in, they are already there, and have obvious errors that are easy to fix. In my experience at Transcom and my own as translator, people appreciate pre-translated articles only in a good quality, there are pre-translations in too bad quality which contains too many obvious errors not easy to fix in time frame. I've seen several requests, both on meta and on language projects, to delete this kind of bad quality translation which people think better to scratch a new version. And in my observation Google translation is still in this level in many languages. And even if you handle Western languages, unless one of them in English, results may be in poor quality (e.g. they cannot keep the distinction between tu/vous, du/Sie etc.) Cheers, More ok content is better than no content, at least if I have my druthers. -Jon On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 23:12, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: Hello All, Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias. The foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not sure whether any one is interested to consult the respective language community to know their views. As far as I know only Tamil, Bengali, and Swahili Wikipedians have raised their concerns about Google's project. But, does this means that other communities are happy about Google efforts? If there is no active community in a wikipedia how can we expect response from communities? If there is no response from a community, does that mean that Google can hire some native speakers and use machine translation to create articles for that wikipedia? Now let us go back to a basic question. Does WMF require a wiki community to create wikipedia in any language? Or can they utilize the services of companies like Google to create wikipedias in N number of languages? One of the main point raised by the supporters of Google translation is that, Google's project is good *for the online version of the language*.That might be true. But no body is cared to verify whether it is good for Wikipedia. As pointed out by Ravi in his presentation in Wikimania, ( http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs), the Google translation of wikipedia articles: - will affect the biological growth of a Wikipedia article - will create copy of English wikipedia article in local wikis - it is against some of the basic philosophies of wikipedia The people outside wiki will definitely benefit from this tool, if Google translation tool is developed for each language. I saw the working example of this in Poland during Wikimania, when some people who are not good in English used google translator to
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Aphaia, any machine translation system that produces even remotely comprehensible results should be able to be used in machine-aided translation. It is reduced to low utility if the output is complete gibberish, however this doesn't seem to be the case; regardless, it's possible to turn off automatic translation and the system can be used merely as a translation memory system, which would be useful in case the automatic translation actually did produce gibberish. Still useful, I think, because it automatically breaks text into segments and is at least *intended* to preserve formatting (this seems to be an issue for WP articles) without requiring users to re-type every single wikilink. -m. On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:47 AM, Aphaia aph...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for your clarification, Node.ue, I know it because I attended their presentation on Wikimania. It is an ambitious project I'd like to see it growing, but at this moment they seem to have a serious problem in its system. They seem to use English as a stem language, and assumes all translations are first done into English and then to another language. On the other hand, at least on major non-English Western language Wikipedia some amount of translations (1/3 IIRC) are not related to English. If you think it works for you, it's fine, but please be aware it might not work for non-English speakers as well as for you. Cheers, On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 7:18 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: Aphaia, a great deal of confusion has been created with regards to this project. I hope you'll allow me to attempt to clear it up. These are NOT articles that were translated directly by Google Translate. Rather, they were created using Google Translator Toolkit, which requires human intervention by a speaker of the language - someone to check and correct every single sentence translated, in the case of languages where Google already has machine translation, or to write entirely new _human_ translations, in the cases where no Google Translate module exists (for example, Tamil), with the aid of Translation Memory software. I currently work as a translator and have found that Google Translator Toolkit is great for speeding up and improving the consistency of translations, and at least the results of my work are usually better with it than they would be without (I'm glad for the consistency - if I'm translating a large document, I'd like to make sure to translate the same phrases the same way every time they occur rather than using slightly different wording the second time around). Since they're revised and corrected by a human, they _should_ have the same level of grammatical correctness, comprehensibility and translation quality as a pure human translation. If they don't, this is the fault of the person using the toolkit, not the software itself. -m. On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Aphaia aph...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:52 PM, Jon Davis w...@konsoletek.com wrote: I think the answer is Yes and No. As with any new project/concept/idea/trial there are pro's and there are con's. The real question is: Do the pro's outweigh the con's? From just reading what you linked (And not in any way being involved with these language projects) and my own personal experiences of how I work on Wikipedia. Yes, I think it is a good thing overall. From what I've seen, it is much easier to convince someone who has never edited, to fix grammatical, spelling or other simple mistakes. Generally people don't dive in and write/translate entire articles - it is simply too high of a barrier to entry. These pre-translated articles give people an in, they are already there, and have obvious errors that are easy to fix. In my experience at Transcom and my own as translator, people appreciate pre-translated articles only in a good quality, there are pre-translations in too bad quality which contains too many obvious errors not easy to fix in time frame. I've seen several requests, both on meta and on language projects, to delete this kind of bad quality translation which people think better to scratch a new version. And in my observation Google translation is still in this level in many languages. And even if you handle Western languages, unless one of them in English, results may be in poor quality (e.g. they cannot keep the distinction between tu/vous, du/Sie etc.) Cheers, More ok content is better than no content, at least if I have my druthers. -Jon On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 23:12, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: Hello All, Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias. The foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not sure whether any one is interested to consult the respective language community to know their views. As far as I know
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Can we clarify here, are we talking about Google Translate or Google Translator Toolkit? -m. On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:49 AM, Przykuta przyk...@o2.pl wrote: I've seen several requests, both on meta and on language projects, to delete this kind of bad quality translation which people think better to scratch a new version. Uhm. In pl wiki google translate is evil. Translations by google translate are deleted (not speedy). Users who use google translate for mass production of articles are blocked. So, it's generaly problem with copy (articles, ideas etc.) from en wiki (most popular): http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Enwikizm Not all things in en wiki are good. Just don't copy thoughtlessly. przykuta ___ 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] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Well - this seems a bit confusing. I think Shiju Alex was talking about the toolkit, but I got the impression you're referring to Google Translate, which I agree is always unsuitable to produce usable articles. -m. On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 4:26 AM, Przykuta przyk...@o2.pl wrote: about google translation, I think. przykuta Can we clarify here, are we talking about Google Translate or Google Translator Toolkit? -m. On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:49 AM, Przykuta przyk...@o2.pl wrote: I've seen several requests, both on meta and on language projects, to delete this kind of bad quality translation which people think better to scratch a new version. Uhm. In pl wiki google translate is evil. Translations by google translate are deleted (not speedy). Users who use google translate for mass production of articles are blocked. So, it's generaly problem with copy (articles, ideas etc.) from en wiki (most popular): http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Enwikizm Not all things in en wiki are good. Just don't copy thoughtlessly. przykuta ___ 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation
Wikipedias are not for _cultures_, they are for languages. If I and 1,000 other Americans suddenly learnt French (to the point of native-level fluency) and decided to read and edit the French Wikipedia, it would belong to us just as much as to anybody else. This came up recently in the debate about the Acehnese Wikipedia. Some people said that all Acehnese were Muslim (not true - there is a small community of Acehnese Christians). They said that if anyone is Christian, they'd be ejected from Acehnese society and therefore no longer Acehnese. However, they'd not stop speaking the Acehnese language. Nobody claims the English WP is for US/Commonwealth cultures only... this is reasonable when a Wiki is tiny, but as it grows large it's important that NPOV mean neutral point of view for EVERYBODY, not just a point of view that everybody in OUR country can agree upon, etc. -m. On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/7/24 Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org: On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Pavlo Shevelo pavlo.shev...@gmail.com wrote: These days Google and other translate tools are good enough to use as the starting basis for an translated article No, it's far not true - at least for such target language as Ukrainian etc. So any attempt of push translation will be almost the disaster... ...and we need to remember that most articles are *not* translations of the English article, but are home-grown on the wiki and use their own sources in their own language. Also don't forget that the same subject can be treated very differently among different cultures (even if they are not distant, think to French and English). An article in the English Wikipedia can be a very good basis to start a new article, but I don't think that an automated flooding of the other Wikipedias is a good thing in *any* way. Cristian ___ 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] Push translation
Bence, that's a different topic - MAT (Machine Aided Translation), and in the case of Bengali, I believe simply the use of a translation memory system. Some of the comments on that page seem to be quite misinformed, ranging from people who thought Google was inserting unrevised machine translations into Wikipedia articles (that would be a disaster), to people suggesting (begging?) Google allow the user community to localize their UI (they already do - Facebook took the idea from Google!). Oh, also, somebody protesting the fact that the Spanish language was not mentioned in the post and suggesting that such an omission must mean Google hates Spain. I only saw one comment on that page that didn't make me want to bang my head on the keyboard (but such is the Internet, right?) -m. On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 1:31 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote: As far as push translation goes, there are languages where it could almost work and where it couldn't. (Consider the experience of the Google team with the Bengali Wikipedia - http://googletranslate.blogspot.com/2010/07/translating-wikipedia.html ) Bence ___ 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] Boycott in a...@wiki
+1. While I think there are many good arguments against inclusion of images of Muhammad in Wikipedia, the false or unreliable does not seem to be such an argument. We have plenty of images of Jesus and lots of other famous people of whom we have no photographic or _primary_ artistic sources... Also, what's with the venom in some of the posts here? -m. On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 10:18 PM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: ... That's the issue. Displaying offensive religious images is a big problem, not a tiny little problem that can be brushed under the rug. You're doing something that outrages millions of people and saying, Hey, tough. And you don't possess, and will never possess, an authentic image of Muhammad. Are our images of Muhammad any less authentic than our images of St. Paul, Jesus or Krishna? -- John Vandenberg ___ 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] Boycott in a...@wiki
I was raised areligious and I see a clear difference there. On the one hand, you're talking about portraying a religious figure on a sex toy; on the other hand you're just talking about portraying a religious figure. Just on the grounds of being offensive, I don't think either should be excluded from WP (we have a page about and an image of Piss Christ and I'd not be against things far more offensive than that, so long as they serve an illustrative purpose and their inclusion can be justified). However, while I think it's perfectly reasonable to include later depictions (many, though not all, of them from _within_ that particular religious tradition itself in the case of Muhammad) in the main article on the religious figure, I don't think it's reasonable to include the buttplugs. I'd have no problem with them going in the article [[Baby Jesus Buttplugs]], but I can't see how they can be considered to be more notable than the hundreds of far more famous depictions of that particular individual. Similarly, I wouldn't support the inclusion of many of the more recent images of Muhammad - such as some of the more controversial ones from Jyllands-Posten - because rather than simply depicting the individual, they go far beyond that. Many people around the world are offended (including for religious reasons) by sexual immodesty, yet we have lots of images of nude people and images demonstrating sexual acts. Images of certain animals are offensive to certain cultures. Wikipedia is not censored; to me, that means we use any non-illegal images that serve to illustrate an article. Despite my lack of reverence for Jesus, however, I don't think those two cases are analogous. -m skype: node.ue On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 4:15 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Excirial wrote: *First: There are no authentic images of Mohammad extant.* As already mentioned in a previous response: are there any authentic images which display any god or prophet? Do they not have traditional images that go back millennia? If you depicted images of Shiva as Yoda you'd get a whole load of grief from Hindus, and the Christians were none too pleased about the image of christ being fucked by a Roman Centurian (see Whitehouse v Lemon). Oh and I'll just mention in passing that wikimedia doesn't have nearly enough photos of 'Baby Jesus Butt Plugs', nor are there anywhere near enough drawings of Western politicians engaging in bestiality. I'm sure that there are oodles of those out there, I know an artist friend of mine draw a number of Ronald Reagun sucking a horses dick and shitting nuclear missiles. Perhaps I'll take some scans and add them to: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan Yes, indeed. What is wrong with using photographs of Baby Jesus Butt Plugs to illustrate the article on Jesus? Answer that question and you'll know why offensive images of Muhammad are not a good idea. The thing is, we're saying, Hey, come off of it, no real harm is done is there are images of Muhammad Why doesn't the same reasoning apply to the butt plugs? No real harm would be done. Or would there? Fred Bauder ___ 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] Boycott in a...@wiki
Have you seen [[Piss Christ]]? How is that different? On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 4:40 AM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: John Vandenberg wrote: in the article about Jesus. If you haven't noticed, the images of Muhammad on the core articles relating to Islam are not created by someone who had a bit too much free time on their hands. The images of Muhammad that we use are images of an object which is held in a university library or museum, _because_they_are_important_. Those don't appear to be the ones that are being complained about. Its the Baby Jesus Butt Plug style ones that they have issue with. ___ 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] Boycott in a...@wiki
Wiki-list, the huge glaring difference is that the goatse.cx image is a pornographic image and we were unable to identify the subject of it, which raises potential privacy concerns. Please don't accuse me of hypocrisy as I am personally in favor of including that image in that article. On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 11:01 AM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: Excirial wrote: *There is no general Christian prohibition on depicting Christ. In fact it is a generally accepted practice. Generally Muslims don't, and consider it a mark of disrespect to do so. Why offend?* 1) It is a historically important subject which should be covered in an encyclopedia. By all means do so. But there is no reason to include the image. Others managed to convey the controversy without doing so. In addition being a web page you have the option to provide a link to the image rather than embedding it. Its not as if the wikipage actually needs the image at all. 2) We do not cater to the wishes and desires of any group, no exception. If we cater one, we have to cater a second, then a third and so on and on. 3) Anyone who does not wish to see the images can block them - its a personal choice on whether you do or don't want to see. If there is a problem with their mere existence there is nothing we can do - we can't erase them from history. Do you have some special browser button that enables blocking of selected images before visiting a page? Or are you advocating the global blocking of all images? 4) The images may offend millions, but that still leaves billions who aren't offended by them. I would argue that the knowledge needs of the larger group outweigh the issues of the smaller group - especially since we are not forcing anything on the small group. As said in point 3: Images are on specific pages, and even those are accessible since images can be blocked. So why isn't goatse.cx embedded on the shock site page. Gerrard says that its because there might be copyright issues but that hasn't been a problem in cases of the Mohammed images that the ace group are complaining about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jyllands-Posten-pg3-article-in-Sept-30-2005-edition-of-KulturWeekend-entitled-Muhammeds-ansigt.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Everybody_Draw_Mohammed_Day.jpg using those images has been declared fair-use. Even The Piss Christ images is similarly 'fair-used' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Piss_Christ_by_Serrano_Andres_%281987%29.jpg So I think I'm going to call you on being totally hypocritical on the issue of the knowledge needs of the larger group outweigh the issues of the smaller group, because it is quite simply untrue. ___ 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] Boycott in a...@wiki
Don't censor except when you do? That's one of the problems with this thread, it seems everything's been made personal. I don't censor anything. I was not involved in the debate about deleting the goatse image, nor have I been much involved in the Muhammad debate, but I am a firm believer in non-censorship on WP. It's not as if I saw the goatse image and said I need to find a reason for this to be deleted; I'd rather it be there than not. -m On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 4:36 PM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: Excirial wrote: *Do you have some special browser button that enables blocking of selected images before visiting a page? Or are you advocating the global blocking of all images?* See the FAQ section on Talk:Muhammadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Muhammad, which contains an easy method to hide the images trough CSS, which is a permanent setting that works for all browsers. Since we are discussing that exact page, i thought you would have seen it on the talk page as it is quite prominent. Apologies for not mentioning it earlier. That only works for people with accounts that have already been offended, that speak English, that have managed to find the FAQ, and that are computer literate. IOW out of the billion or so target audience for offense, about zero. *So why isn't goatse.cx embedded on the shock site page. Gerrard says that its because there might be copyright issues but that hasn't been a problem in cases of the Mohammed images that the ace group are complaining about:* I already linked the relevant discussion above, and i have equally commented on it. To quote myself: See this discussionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2010_March_29#File:Goatse.fr_homepage.png, though it may be easier to read the summary that is available on the article talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Goatse.cx. In essence the image was removed under WP:NFCC, with a sidenote that we could not reliably determine who the person being displayed on the photo was, which caused privacy concerns (As in displaying pornographic content of someone who hasn't given clear endorsement for doing so). In other words, the image more or less suffers from a BLP issue - and you might also note that it wasn't removed because it was deemed offensive. What a complete load of twaddle. NFCC has not stopped the use of Piss Christ, nor has it stopped the use of any of the controversial Mohammed images. In all those cases a textural description of the image would suffice. The person in the goatse image is unidentifiable, and the image has been on the web for 10 years. Where are the privacy concerns? So I'm still calling bullshit, as it looks that thin justification was simply found to remove that image. *So I think I'm going to call you on being totally hypocritical on the issue of the knowledge needs of the larger group outweigh the issues of the smaller group, because it is quite simply untrue.* If you believe that such statements will strengthen the argument you make, please do go ahead think of me like that. Personally i would argue that such comments aren't helpful at all because they only serve to create enmity between other parties, and because they scream AGF And how do we assume good faith when images known to cause offense are being defended, especially when its not as if they can't be found on any one of a 1000 websites. Reposting them serves no value other than give the poster and its defenders a warm fuzzy we're don't censored feeling. Except that you do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2010_March_29#File:Goatse.fr_homepage.png Besides this you might actually want to read the deletion discussion on the Goatse.sx images, so you can see the reason of the verdict for yourself - and you might actually see a reason why i am not exactly being hypocritical. The goatse images was removed for stated reasons that could equally be applied to almost any of the controversial images. That those reasons aren't applied to the other images smacks of hypocrisy. Regardless of whether or not this convinces you, i would ask that you keep it friendly. Comments such as the one you just made, along with the previous one further up (*Unless there is evidence to the contrary I'm inclined to believe that *you* have taken a knee jerk islamaphobic stance climbed up a flag p[ole and are currently waving your knickers in the air. I'm interested to see just how you are going to get yourself back down with a modicum of dignity.*) simply aren't productive. Besides, if we start labeling each other it will simply result in less sensible discussion, and more Digging one's heels in the soil. And the defenders of these images aren't doing just that? Scrap the muslim connection just explain to this Atheist why it is imperative to display the Piss Christ image, when photograph of plastic christ on cross in jar of urine
Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki
You - again, this is not (or at least it should not) be about ME and YOU. I did not upload any of those images, I did not vote for (or against - I didn't know the vote was taking place) the deletion of the Goatse image, I'm merely stating the reason it was deleted. We have rules, some of our pages may break those rules, but all that means is they should be fixed so the rules are applied more consistently. -m On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 5:14 PM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: Mark Williamson wrote: Wiki-list, the huge glaring difference is that the goatse.cx image is a pornographic image and we were unable to identify the subject of it, which raises potential privacy concerns. Please don't accuse me of hypocrisy as I am personally in favor of including that image in that article. And you have identified all the subjects here? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vulva http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pubic_hair_%28male%29 I think not. ___ 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] Boycott in a...@wiki
Andre, I personally don't have a problem with the mere existence of the template. I have a huge problem with it appearing at the top of the mainpage of a Wikipedia. -m skype: node.ue On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 11:17 AM, Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 8:14 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: That there is ambiguity at the edges does not disprove NPOV. Day fades into night, but they're different things. This template is blatant advocacy to violate NPOV, and indeed to do so across all Wikimedia sites. They had it up on the main page, too. So? Apparently the fact that there exists some template that is not NPOV means that we should be forcing our morals on others and not give them any leniency? It's reasonably clear that there is a deep and serious discussion very much needed regarding neutral point of view on ace:wp. And because there is a problem with neutral point of view somewhere we should forbid everyone to make a choice for their own? -- André Engels, andreeng...@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] [free A113 poon][click hear!][SPAM!]
I agree... or your think to ideas. skype: node.ue 2010/7/5 MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com: 基建吉 wrote: ΣXD＜Nice idea for disscuss saved.And user block framing Jadge. '''[NEW!!]The rule of seven elevens.'''(or eleven seven) Discuttion to seven article writed one disscuss. One day to max 11 disscuss.(one disscuss to communication or write) (USER block and framed block) And UDER BLOCK vote user blocked to 22hour One suggestion,Apear to 22hour. Do it later.Or your think to Ideas. MOTOI Kenkichi I think this is the most insightful post to foundation-l in about three years. MZMcBride ___ 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] three-letter language codes
Amir, I think this is a good idea. For the sake of consistency, we should choose a single standard to follow rather than a hodge-podge of newer standards, older (although still valid) standards, and ad hoc codes we made up on the spot (als, nrm) and custom codes (bat-smg, roa-tara, roa-rup, fiu-vro, map-bms, be-x-old). It also seems potentially confusing to me that we have codes that overlap, for example na.wp and nap.wp, ro.wp and roa-rup.wp, etc. -m. On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:30 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Did anyone ever consider completely migrating WMF projects to three-letter language codes? Currently two-letter ISO 639-1 code are used whenever possible and three-letter ISO 639-2 or ISO 639-3 codes are used when a two-letter code is not available. Among the three-letter codes currently having Wikipedias are Sicilian (scn), Kashubian (csb), Nahuatl (nah), Udmurt (udm) and Mari (mhr). Using three-letter codes for all languages seems to me like a more egalitarian approach. Two-letter URL's must, of course, be kept as redirects. Can anyone think about any problems with this? -- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ 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] Self-determination of language versions in questions of skin?
Gerard, I'm not sure such a condescending tone helps anybody. Also, I'm not sure you've understood the intent of Martin's post. I'm under the impression he'd only like to put off implementation of Vector in his community until some problems get worked out, not permanently. Besides, I think the question here is more fundamental than that. -m. On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 12:55 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, Please read what Tim wrote; he suggested for you to take time and not decide in a hurry to move away from vector. Effort will be concentrated on further development of vector and support for other skins will consequently be an afterthought. Expensive at that. When you choose to stick to monobook you will have more bugs and issues in the long run. As Roan indicated, some new features will just work some won't. Thanks, GerardM On 30 June 2010 09:42, Martin Maurer martinmaure...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 12:36 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: Editor communities do not have any fundamental rights to choose how MediaWiki is configured. However, the Foundation's goals are closely aligned with those of the communities, and the Foundation respects the central role communities play in the success of the projects, and so the Foundation has usually honoured such configuration requests. In this case, I would recommend a process of negotiation. Detail your concerns in Bugzilla, and give the developers time to respond to them. A premature vote on the issue would make compromise difficult. The Foundation has spent a lot of time and money on the Vector skin, and it would be a pity to see it thrown away. -- Tim Starling Thanks for your reply, Tim. No worries, in no case would Vector be 'thrown away'. We are happy that Wikipedia offers not just one skin, the default, but multiple skins, and Vector is certainly appreciated as a new option in the list. Variety and choice in the look and feel of the user interface is one of our great assets. I trust the Foundation sees that the same way. We allow individual users to select and customize their skin, and it might be in the same spirit to allow individual wikis to choose and customize their default skin. Everyone is aware that a lot of time and money has gone into the development of Vector. But none of that would be lost because a) there are many Wikimedia projects in many language versions and Vector seems to enjoy good support elsewhere (correct me if I'm wrong), b) Vector remains a selectable skin in the preferences and many users use it even when it's not the default skin. And surely we will get enough feedback from all over the world to fix reported issues with Vector even when single wiki communities reverted to (or decided to continue to use) Monobook as the default skin for unregistered and newly registered users. And at any time (say in a few months) it would be easy to poll the community again to see which skin they prefer as default now. In no scenario would it mean an end to Vector. It might even help Vector being improved more quickly and extensively than it otherwise would. And it would make a good impression if the Foundation granted communities that choice, I think. Martin ___ 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] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
Phoebe, in my humble opinion, this project is a bit different. I think when we are talking about child development and creating a project for children, there's no room to screw around or create some amateurish product. This is something that, if done wrong, could potentially have a bigger negative impact than if, say, we'd screwed up on Wikinews. -m. On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 10:11 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 3:37 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Yes. We should definitely lay the groundwork well, as Ziko says. But there are good projects underway today and doing this, in spanish, french, and dutch. Some of the organizers of those projects have contributed to the Wikikids proposal on meta. We can start by directing energies there, finding out what Vikidia has learned running projects in French and Spanish, what their standards for project-creation are, and how we can help them. If we want to go this way, our task will be complex. I don't think that we should be afraid of it, but I think that the most of participants are underestimating its complexity. There are a number of important questions to be answered before start of such project: * Do we have a consistent pedagogical platform for creating such project? * How can we be sure that we will have enough relevant pedagogues per project? Would we pay them? Or would we create projects with other organizations to have them payed? * Who will be the main editors of the project? Children of any age? Or parents? If parents, I am deeply concerned which social and ideological groups we would attract. * Is it possible to have such Wikipedia-like project, where communities are doing self-regulation? My assumption, based on 6.5 years of Wikimedian work, is that it is not possible. (To be more precise: Project per se could be successful in gathering editors, but it will end as Simple English Wikipedia or as Conservapedia.) * Would it be better to find volunteers or hire someone to create a project similar to the printed edition of German Wikipedia? First to create illustrated Wikipedia for children, then to create Wikipedias for every age of cognitive development. * Do we have any clue how crowd sourcing will work with ages between 8 and 15? Even though it would be regulated by pedagogues. * How group dynamics would look like inside of the project with 8 years old and 15 years old? * How many pedagogues are able to drive this kind of project? In our civilization, pedagogues are product of Industrial Age education and they are doing Industrial Age teaching, which is in collision with open culture. I think that the right time for relatively open, mass collaboration project will be when those born in 1995, generation grown up on Wikipedia and open culture, become pedagogues. Around 2020. (I am not saying that there are no pedagogues able to do this. However, we don't need a couple of pedagogues, we need strong pedagogical basis to have possibility to create such kind of project.) * etc. We are all amateurs in cognitive development. My two exams in this field makes me an expert on this list. And we don't need just professionals, but extraordinary professionals. And those professionals have to be introduced well in Wikimedia culture. But the teachers there also asked for a simpler-language project in Spanish, and a simple project in English to help students with language learning. In Serbian we say you are mixing grandmothers and frogs :) I would add one more important implementation of simple-like project: Controlled language [1] project. It would allow much easier translation between languages. But, those are three different implementations. We would need Wikimedia for children, Wikimedia for learning languages and Wikimedia for machine translation. Milos, I think these are all good and valuable questions to ask; any new project should be put through such rigorous analysis, especially if it is to succeed. As Birgette says, it's hard to build a wiki and harder still to build a successful one. But, to be fair, do we ask such questions of our other projects? I do not recall being asked if I was a trained encyclopedia writer or a trained journalist when I joined Wikimedia :) Perhaps we should ask these kinds of hard questions of a new project, but also realize that we may not be able to predict all of the answers ahead of time. All of our projects have taken as their primary model some standard type of work: the encyclopedia, the book of quotations, the dictionary -- and then we have gone above and beyond any previous example of the genre with each of our projects, through our technological and social abilities. There is, similarly, lots of precedent in the world for children's encyclopedias and reference works for children -- the need and the model are both clearly
Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
The difference was that Wikipedia was not made for young people. If I run a social group for adults and there are issues with children who visit, I can blame it on their parents and say they should control them better. If I run a social group for children, I'm now a childcare provider and have a greater degree of responsibility. My point is that it should either be done very carefully, by experts (or at least with their help) and with careful research, or not at all. I'm not for doing this only halfway. -m. On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 4:40 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: Phoebe, in my humble opinion, this project is a bit different. I think when we are talking about child development and creating a project for children, there's no room to screw around or create some amateurish product. This is something that, if done wrong, could potentially have a bigger negative impact than if, say, we'd screwed up on Wikinews. -m. Wait, weren't you the one arguing just upthread that wikipedia was just fine and dandy for you as an adolescent? Not just wikipedia, but wikipedia of 7 years ago, which was far less complete and stable -- far more amateurish -- than it is today. I see your argument, but I don't buy it -- lots of kids are autodidacts just the same as many adults, and lots of stuff designed for kids is crap (including professional teaching materials). I don't necessarily know that we could do better, but I don't see why it's not worth a shot. Are you concerned about controversial material? Does your concern go away if the project isn't framed for kids, but rather as a simple language version (simple english, german, etc)? -- phoebe ___ 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] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
Miloš, I am inclined to agree with you. As someone who is not so far removed from his own adolescence, I can attest that I've always found Children's writing to be incredibly condescending and even demeaning. Perhaps I was not a typical child, but ever since about 7 years of age I really hated those books that talked down to children as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an expert) from many people the idea that you will get what you give, meaning that if you treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they will often become a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children as dumber versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to be just that. (again, I'm not an expert) -m. On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: Hello, Recently there has been a controversy on Wikipedia in German about extra articles in simple language. Authors of its medical group wanted to create sub pages suitable for children, believing in an urgent need. [1] In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple German came up. As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia. The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it had been created before that policy of 2006. There are a number of ideas and initiatives to create online encyclopedias in simple language, in and outside the Wikimedia world. Wouldn't it be suitable to reconsider and try to give those initiatives a place? Who else is more capable to create and support such encyclopedias than we are? Wait! Writing dumb articles because of thinking that children are dumb is dumb. And not just dumb, but deeply ageist and discriminatory. Considering, for example, Piaget's [1] theory, timeline of cognitive development is: * The earliest usual learning of writing is around 5. * At around 8 children are able to read without problems. * At around 10 children cognitive system is almost the same as adult. * Between 13 and 15, depending on climate, life conditions and culture, and not counting extremes, cognitively there are no children anymore, there are young adults. Cognitively, the only difference between them and 10-20 years older humans is in experience and knowledge. That means that the target for writing simple Wikipedia is for children between 8 and 10. So, I would like to see scientific background *before* mentioning simple or junior or whatever project: For which age should be, let's say, Junior Wikipedia? For all minors? For primary school minors? One article for those old 7 and 15 years? Considering Simple English Wikipedia, this is purely pseudoscientific attempt. Wishful thinking of creating family friendly project with dumb language. But, I am not trying to say that WikiMedia Junior won't be useful. Yes, it will be very useful if it would be driven well. However, I am deeply skeptical about crowd sourcing of such thing. It will finish as Simple Wikipedia, which main purpose is having fun by reading random articles on parties -- at the best. At the worst, it will finish like Conservapedia with dumb language. Actually, with many dumb languages. If we really want to go this way, the only relevant approach is by finding relevant pedagogues who would lead child contributors. Such project has to be very well structured, with year or two of relevant work before going online. However, I see this as very unrealistic at this moment. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget ___ 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] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
I would like to add: The internal links used on our projects help avoid many of the problems of not understanding something. As a 13 year old reader of Wikipedia some seven years ago, if I did not understand something, I could always click on the link to a page that would explain it to me. If I were reading the article on [[Earth]] that Ting's quoted and did not understand what terrestrial planet meant... well, there's a link right there to help me out. Again, young != stupid. -m. On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: Miloš, I am inclined to agree with you. As someone who is not so far removed from his own adolescence, I can attest that I've always found Children's writing to be incredibly condescending and even demeaning. Perhaps I was not a typical child, but ever since about 7 years of age I really hated those books that talked down to children as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an expert) from many people the idea that you will get what you give, meaning that if you treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they will often become a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children as dumber versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to be just that. (again, I'm not an expert) -m. On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: Hello, Recently there has been a controversy on Wikipedia in German about extra articles in simple language. Authors of its medical group wanted to create sub pages suitable for children, believing in an urgent need. [1] In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple German came up. As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia. The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it had been created before that policy of 2006. There are a number of ideas and initiatives to create online encyclopedias in simple language, in and outside the Wikimedia world. Wouldn't it be suitable to reconsider and try to give those initiatives a place? Who else is more capable to create and support such encyclopedias than we are? Wait! Writing dumb articles because of thinking that children are dumb is dumb. And not just dumb, but deeply ageist and discriminatory. Considering, for example, Piaget's [1] theory, timeline of cognitive development is: * The earliest usual learning of writing is around 5. * At around 8 children are able to read without problems. * At around 10 children cognitive system is almost the same as adult. * Between 13 and 15, depending on climate, life conditions and culture, and not counting extremes, cognitively there are no children anymore, there are young adults. Cognitively, the only difference between them and 10-20 years older humans is in experience and knowledge. That means that the target for writing simple Wikipedia is for children between 8 and 10. So, I would like to see scientific background *before* mentioning simple or junior or whatever project: For which age should be, let's say, Junior Wikipedia? For all minors? For primary school minors? One article for those old 7 and 15 years? Considering Simple English Wikipedia, this is purely pseudoscientific attempt. Wishful thinking of creating family friendly project with dumb language. But, I am not trying to say that WikiMedia Junior won't be useful. Yes, it will be very useful if it would be driven well. However, I am deeply skeptical about crowd sourcing of such thing. It will finish as Simple Wikipedia, which main purpose is having fun by reading random articles on parties -- at the best. At the worst, it will finish like Conservapedia with dumb language. Actually, with many dumb languages. If we really want to go this way, the only relevant approach is by finding relevant pedagogues who would lead child contributors. Such project has to be very well structured, with year or two of relevant work before going online. However, I see this as very unrealistic at this moment. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget ___ 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] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
Birgitte, what I am discussing is whether or no t I see any merit in this idea at all. Thanks. On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 5:25 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Thu, 6/24/10, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: From: Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 6:06 PM On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an expert) from many people the idea that you will get what you give, meaning that if you treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they will often become a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children as dumber versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to be just that. (again, I'm not an expert) A kind of virtuous circle and vicious circle. Dumb adults are creating dumb articles because they think that their children are dumb, which in turn transforms children into dumb adults ;) I think you all are getting rather sidetracked over the details of content of some proposed project that I do not believe you are actually interested in joining. Surely any detailed decisions as exactly how to approach writing medical articles for children would be an internal conclusion. The real issue here is what merits the creation of a new wiki versus some specific project being setup as subset of an existing wiki. I have come the conclusion the biggest factor leading to success of a new wiki is a large enough community with a strong sense of a separate mission. If all you have is a small group of hard core content editors you will be more successful as subset of an existing wiki, if one is so kind enough to make room for you. One thing that happens in a small wiki is all the happy energy which was geared towards the content must be siphoned off into seemingly endless administration tasks. It takes a while for the community to grow enough to overcome that deficit. I would not recommend anyone to be in a hurry to make their own new space. The longer you can use an existing wiki to experiment with the your project the stronger you can grow your community, and maybe you can find a way to permanently fit within the existing scope while meeting the needs of your specific mission. If you can it do that it will greatly improve your ability to work on content. I would advise this group that as exciting as having their own Wikipedia must sound, they might be more successful as a project within de.WP or de.WB And even if they are dead-set on an independent wiki, they will benefit from starting within an existing structure to grow a good sized proof of concept. Birgitte SB ___ 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] English language dominationism is striking again
In addition, I have a feeling that article overstates the English abilities of the average non-native internet user. Yes, lots of people have a very (very!) basic command of English, but that is not the same as functional bilingualism. A user may happen to know the name for a horse, but what are the chances a casual user from Peru knows the name for an anteater, a giraffe or a jellyfish? On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Aphaia aph...@gmail.com wrote: I know a horse, but yesterday it took for me five minutes to remember sparrows were the bird's name I would have liked to mention. . It helps to make this discussion helpful to some extent that native English speakers remind it is sometimes not so easy as you the native expect foreign learners. It's no sarcasm at all. Really. On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 6:32 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 9:21 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote: When you think that Commons is bad in supporting other languages, try to find pictures of a horse on the internet in other languages like Estonian, Nepalese ... It is not the same at all as when you are looking for images in English. Don't most Internet users know enough English to be able to search for pictures of a horse in English? (According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage), yes... Most Internet users speak the English language as a native or secondary language.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD ___ 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] English language dominationism is striking again
If we consider that current English native speakers mostly already have internet and those without internet are likelier than not to be non-English speakers I would be careful to advocate the unilateral use of English. As would I, though I don't think you mean what you said. Why not? To me, it means that we're widening the digital divide by making it so that people who don't have the internet would have little use for it anyways if it's all written in a language they don't understand. m. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Top posting
I'm very disappointed that this discussion has continued at the expense of one that I find to be much more important to our projects. Can all of us go back over there and stop talking about this? Kthx. m. On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.com wrote: kthx On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 12:44 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, An important thread has been derailed by an off topic comment. For your information, and for the somanyth time, top posting comes easy when you use a modern tool like GMAIL. It automatically hides whatever came before. This whole notion has no relevance to me as a consequence. I get hundreds of mails and the notion that one should be answered differently then others is not easy to consider. I answer to the content to a mail and that is not related to who will receive it. Given that for people who use software that is not as helpful as mine, the experience rates as a nuisance as I appreciate it. It is similar to the use of words or acronyms that are likely not to be understood. For me KTHX is one such, the top rated result makes it a radio station and it took me some time to find that it is likely to mean Ok, thanks. The point is not that such words or acronyms should not be used, it is just to indicate that nuisances come in many forms and are a fact of life. Thanks, GerardM ___ 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] Creating articles in small wikipedias based on user requirement
Shiju, just FYI, tool kit can be used by anyone for translation. In fact, it's good to use because (if you choose the option) it will go toward improving future machine translation capability for your language, thus expanding possibilities for monolingual speakers of your language. In addition, machine aided translation, in which an article is translated by machine and then corrections are made, can be a much speedier yet still accurate way to create articles. -m. On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: This topic came up while we were discussing about Google's translation effort. Google/Google employees are using Google tool kit to translate English Wikipedia articles to many of the Indic language Wikipedias. We are definitely more interested if Google translates these user required articles than translating the English wiki articles about all the american pop stars (For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga). Now the issue is, we don't have such list to give to Google/Google employees. On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 5:56 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: +1. This would be a SUPER useful tool for all Wikis. -m. On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 3:54 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: Recently I had a discussion with one of my fellow Malayalam wikipedian ( http://ml.wikipedia.org) about the creation of new articles in small wikipedias like ours. He is one the few users who is keen on creating new articles *based on the requirement of our readers*. (Of course we have many people who only reads our wiki) During discussion he raised this interesting point: Some feature is required in the MediaWiki software that enable us to see a list of keywords used most frequently by the users to search for non-exist articles. If we get such a list then some users like him can concentrate on creating articles using that key words. Of course, I know that this feature may not be helpful for big wikis like English. But for small wikis (especially small non-Latin language wikis), this will be of great help. It is almost like* creating wiki articles based on user requirement*. I would like to know your opinion regarding the same. Shiju ___ 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Creating articles in small wikipedias based on user requirement
+1. This would be a SUPER useful tool for all Wikis. -m. On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 3:54 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: Recently I had a discussion with one of my fellow Malayalam wikipedian ( http://ml.wikipedia.org) about the creation of new articles in small wikipedias like ours. He is one the few users who is keen on creating new articles *based on the requirement of our readers*. (Of course we have many people who only reads our wiki) During discussion he raised this interesting point: Some feature is required in the MediaWiki software that enable us to see a list of keywords used most frequently by the users to search for non-exist articles. If we get such a list then some users like him can concentrate on creating articles using that key words. Of course, I know that this feature may not be helpful for big wikis like English. But for small wikis (especially small non-Latin language wikis), this will be of great help. It is almost like* creating wiki articles based on user requirement*. I would like to know your opinion regarding the same. Shiju ___ 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] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
+1. I must admit I have been a bit surprised/shocked/irritated by the tone of the comments from some of those involved with the usability initiative. I always thought that Wikimedia valued community decision-making, but now I'm being told that my feedback is greatly appreciated and will be taken into consideration. That kind of attitude is what I was referring to earlier in this thread when I wondered to myself if Wikipedia had jumped the shark[1]. I am convinced that the unique organizational structure of our organization, in which the community has historically been given a very high level of authority in the decision-making process, is one of the key elements of our success. Are we going to let that go over the issue of UI usability? Have we entered a new chapter in our history as a community in which we, the people who have helped build this project, no longer get to help make the important decisions by contributing our ideas and venting our frustrations? Let me be the first to say that I am extraordinarily saddened at this thought. -m. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:37 PM, David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com wrote: Sue Gardner wrote: Feedback is great, but it irritates me when people start using words like stupid -- that's what I was responding to. Perhaps you misread the context. Austin wrote the word stupid as a hypothetical example of nonconstructive commentary that should be avoided. No one has hurled an insult. Moreover feedback can itself be perceived as an insult. Imagine that someone cleaning your office took your important paperwork and dumped it in a bin. You complain— Hey we need that stuff to be accessible! and they retort Thank you for your _feedback_. We'll consider it during our future cleaning plans. We're not just providing feedback here. We're collectively making a decision, as we've always done, thank you very much. ___ 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] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Aryeh, imagine someone links you to an article on physics at ka.wikipedia. If there were a link that said English, you'd know what that meant, but if there's just a button that says ენები (Georgian for Languages), how are you going to know to click that rather than any of the other words on the page that to you probably appear little more than gibberish? (assuming you don't read Georgian - if I'm wrong, substitute it for any language that you don't know) Mark On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:30 PM, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 5:51 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: You can attempt a weighted cost comparison: Num_interwiki_users * Cost_of_hiding vs Everyone_else * Cost_of_clutter. But even that will inevitably lead to bad conclusions for some issues because the costs are usually not linear things: A tiny benefit to a hundred million people wouldn't justify making wikipedia very hard to use for a hundred thousand, ... because a zillion tiny benefits can often never really offset a smaller number of big costs. They can't? Why not? . . . well, I can expand on this a bit. Wikipedia's goals can be summarized as Give people access to free knowledge. This can be measured lots of different ways, of course. But I see no reason why they shouldn't all scale more or less linearly in the number of people affected. If we can get an extra piece of useful information to a billion people over the course of a year, why isn't that a billion times better on average than getting an extra piece of useful information to one person, for any definition of useful? If it isn't exactly a billion times, why should we believe that it's less than a billion (as you seem to suggest) rather than more? Cost-benefit analyses involving death are the same. People would like to claim that lives and money are incommensurable, say, but that's patently false. No one would advocate spending a trillion dollars to save one person's life -- if nothing else, you could save many people's lives for the same amount. Even if your only goal is to save lives in the short term, a life is worth *at most* X dollars, because you can straightforwardly exchange dollars for lives saved. In practice, X is probably less than 1,000 if you spend it right. When you deal with everyday situations, then saying lives and money are incommensurable is a good enough approximation. It doesn't work if you have lots of lives, or lots of money, or ways to exchange lives and money that don't come up in everyday situations. On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Noein prono...@gmail.com wrote: When you enter your car and drive to your destination, you make hundreds of gestures but use only once the key, at the beginning. And it would be a mistake to omit the keyhole altogether, or to make it hard to find if you look. But there's no need to make it as obtrusive and easy to reach as the steering wheel or the pedals. Indeed, you shouldn't, because that would take away attention and space from things that are more often used. A probable scenario: people reaching wikipedia on a foreign language click just once on the correct language, then may browse hundreds of articles without changing the language again. Is this probable? What are people's reasons for using interlanguage links? How many people miss them now that they're collapsed -- among the readership as a whole, not the extremely vocal and committed editors who read foundation-l and will find them easily anyway? ___ 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] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
That's not good enough. First of all, people who don't speak a language won't recognize the text see other languages, or even languages. Could you pick the word ენები out of a page full of text in a foreign language and understand that clicking it would lead you to a link to the English version of an article? The reason your proposal to use geolocation or browser language is not good enough is that would still result in reducing the visibility of many, many Wikipedias. I think there are many users who would prefer to read articles in Catalan whose default browser language is set to ES, and geolocation will probably not solve that problem either. I think it is a mistake to hide ANY interwikis. clutter is not a huge sacrifice for people to make to vastly increase INTERNATIONAL usability. M. On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 5:59 PM, Howie Fung hf...@wikimedia.org wrote: Per Erik M.'s previous post, we're working on a compromise solution whereby we show a list based on user's most likely language(s), probably based on browser, and then a see other languages link which would expand to give all the other langauages. We're also looking at changing the word Languages into something that's more descriptive of what the links actually do. I've created the following page for more discussion/proposals on the topic: http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Opinion:_Language_Links Howie On 6/3/10 4:41 PM, David Goodman wrote: It would be nice to actually have a place at the usability wiki to discuss this. My own view is that the actual list of languages was the ideal interface object in fulfilling many purposes (as discussed in the posts above) and implying multiple levels of understanding without the need for explanation or discussion. For example, that it varied authomatically from article to article showed the overall level of progress on the multiple projects. In showing Wikipedia to new users this list was always noticed and proved a very expressive statement. The attitude shown by Trevor's reply speaks for itself in terms of the relationship between the internal experts and the community. I think that it was his wording that induced me to finally post on the issue. I fixed it (it's a one-line change), but Trevor reverted it: This goes against an intentional design decision. To discuss that decision further and submit proposals to change this design please contact Howie Funghfung at wikimedia.org or visit http://usability.wikimedia.org ___ 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] deployment of Vector to other languages -
Speaking of which, I'd like to use this opportunity to re-express my EXTREME dissatisfaction with the hidden-by-default interwiki links. This almost defeats the entire purpose of interwikis - that is, to let people know that the article exists in their language as well. If my native language is Afrikaans, for example, it's not reasonable for me to assume that every article I view in en.wp is also available in that language, so it will always be a pleasant surprise to see a link there. However, if it's not shown by default, I'll probably just miss it every time. This new feature is potentially extremely harmful to many non-English Wikipedias. Mark On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:45 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: I have a few questions about the deployment of Vector in Wikipedias in other languages. 1. When does the Foundation plan to perform the switch? 2. At least two major features which were not included in the Beta, were enabled in the English Wikipedia: the new search box with Go and Search buttons and the collapsible sidebar which hides interlanguage links by default. A significant number of users in en.wikipedia expressed their dissatisfaction with them and with the fact that they were introduced by surprise. They are still not a part of the Beta in other languages. Will they be enabled in other languages when they are switched to Vector? 3. Did anyone consider appointing Vector migration czars in Wikipedias in other languages? Because despite what some people might think, quite a lot of speakers of other languages don't bother looking at en.wikipedia and WMF blogs and mailing lists. I wrote a little about the good (IMHO) and the bad (IMHO) features about Vector in the Village Pumps of Wikipedias in languages that i know - Hebrew, Russian and Catalan. I can report that there are a couple of JavaScript gurus in he.wikipedia who have a positive attitude towards Vector and who gradually adapt the gadgets to it, and there are a few other JS gurus who hate Vector and who don't want to bother about it and recommend everyone to stay with Monobook. (Although my attitude may seem negative, i actually belong to the first camp.) The situation is similar in the Russian Wikipedia. 4. Finally, does the Foundation plan to gather any other feedback from other language Wikipedias except the Beta retention rate? Thanks in advance. -- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ 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] Fwd: Pt-Portuguese Wikipedia
I think there are two options: Meta and pt.wp itself. My personal opinion is that it does not need to be bilingual, but that is of course up to you. On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Virgilio A. P. Machado v...@fct.unl.ptwrote: Thanks Chad. I know that, but what kind of page (what title)? Where? Would it be alright to be bilingual? Sincerely, Virgilio A. P. Machado At 23:25 23-03-2010, you wrote: It requires you to take initiative to start the page and try to draw others into a discussion. You don't need anyone's permission to do that. Also, I think it was (briefly) glossed over before, but there /is/ the Language Converter code in MediaWiki that could be leveraged to help some here. I don't think it's necessarily a magic bullet, but it's worth exploring. I know nothing in Portuguese, so I don't really grasp how widespread the discrepancies are, but I assume there's rules to describe them. Social solutions are also helpful, like the aforementioned American/British and Cyrillic/Latin issues mentioned earlier in the thread. A combination of social and technical solutions might just help bring some closure to this issue. -Chad ___ 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
[Foundation-l] Fwd: Pt-Portuguese Wikipedia
skype: node.ue -- Forwarded message -- From: Manuel Coutinho i...@maccoutinho.com Date: Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 9:28 AM Subject: Pt-Portuguese Wikipedia To: node...@gmail.com Dear Node, It has come to my attention quite some time ago that the Portuguese version of wikipedia is being overrun with articles written in Brazilian Portuguese, some of which I have corrected myself but the problem has, long since grown out of control. I'm writting to suggest the creation of a new version of wikipedia in Portuguese from Portugal, in an attempt to provide Portuguese users with articles written in their correct version of the dialect. I don't know why this hasn't been already implemented since the language options on the control panel when you create a new wikipedia user create that distinction already. I hope that you take this under consideration and provide me with the guidelines to start this project. I'm sure that i will be able to find supporters that are willing to start the process of translating already existing articles as well as creating new ones. Thank you very much. Yours trully, Manuel A. C. Coutinho Designer de Comunicação - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - InstantDesign* Comunicação e Equipamento www.instdesign.com T +351 93 479 90 66 i...@instdesign.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from? QA
Sociolinguistic situations around the world are very complex I think. In especially former European colonies, of which Kenya is but one example, the language of the former colonial power often has a unique position in society. It is not surprising to me that the English Wikipedia is so popular compared to any other in Kenya, but it is quite a bit more surprising that Korean, Romanian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Iranian, etc. users prefer the English Wikipedia. Mark On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 2:25 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.comwrote: Dear Erik, Maybe there is a dirty Polish word looked up by many Polish pupils, and when they Google it they come to eu.WP because a Basque word accidentally is alike? :-) I am looking now for the interest in the native / the English Wikipedia in specific countries. It might be important how localized the software in general is. If you live in, say, Kenya, and your computer has Windows in English, the Internet Explorer and everything is oriented to English, and you google your home town in an English language Google, it is probable that you will get the Wikipedia article in English and not in Swahili. Kind regards Ziko 2010/1/16 Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com: I notice in that list both Belarusian Wikipedias are listed just as Belarusian Wikipedia. It would be very informative to know which is which and to have visitor statistics on both :-) skype: node.ue On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Erik Zachte erikzac...@infodisiac.com wrote: Here is a QA on all issues raised: Q=question/R=Remark, A=answer I put the more general questions on top. Cheers, Erik Zachte -- Q: Nikola Smolenski Is it first time these reports are published? A: Yes, expect trend report to grow by accretion over time. Other reports will be built from data for recent (6) months only -- R: Andrew Gray Andrew explains why distribution of page requests over countries favors Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries: 'Some Wikipedias - the ones which insist on only-free-images - do not use local uploads at all.' A: Thanks for explaining this unexpected distribution of page views on Commons, I had no idea. Spain 30.0% USA 29.2% Brazil 8.5% Argentina 4.8% Mexico 3.9% Germany 3.3% France 2.1% Venezuela 1.9% Chile 1.4% Costa Rica 1.4% Italy 1.4% Uruguay 1.2% Colombia1.2% Portugal1.1% -- R: Mark Williamson Two main factors influencing choice of Wikipedia language: # Fluency of the Internet-using population of a country in English. # Quality of the native Wikipedia. A: Like you say. Many Scandinavians (and Dutch people I might add) probably switch between English and local content all the time. Personally I tend to look at English Wp first I many instances, because of obviously richer content and larger depth. -- Q: Ziko van Dijk Why are 40 % of the visitors of ksh.WP (the dialect of Cologne) from Japan. Why are 25 % of the visitors of eu.WP (Basque) from Poland? Q: Andre Engels I think bots are a likely explanation in the eu case (unless Erik is using an algorithm that filters out bots) A: KSH used to be code for Kashmir. Still not Japan, but much closer than Cologne. Maybe Japanese mountaineers caused this spike ? (only half kidding) As for eu.wp: Would Polish presume there also is a European Wikipedia? Just a guess. I do filter bots -- R: Teun Spaans For trends, I would expect a bar indicating upward or downward trend, not a percentage bar. A: We can have both, a notion of importance and of change: I might color code cells as I do already in e.g. [1] This way large fluctuations really stand out. Let's first collect more history. [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm -- Q: Nikola Smolenski Could we get this for other projects? A: This question is of course not unexpected. One consideration is we need a certain sample size to make numbers significant. For other projects, with far less traffic, few country/language pairs would be backed by sufficient data. See also below on extending the current reports with more table rows. -- Q: Nikola Smolenski: Please include at Wikipedia Page Views Per Country - Overview [1] number of Internet users from [2], and number of views per Internet user? [1] http://tinyurl.com/yk43aq6 [2] http://tinyurl.com/yfv5bwn A: Done -- R: Nikola Smolenski It is obvious why Slovene Wikipedia
Re: [Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from? QA
I notice in that list both Belarusian Wikipedias are listed just as Belarusian Wikipedia. It would be very informative to know which is which and to have visitor statistics on both :-) skype: node.ue On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Erik Zachte erikzac...@infodisiac.comwrote: Here is a QA on all issues raised: Q=question/R=Remark, A=answer I put the more general questions on top. Cheers, Erik Zachte -- Q: Nikola Smolenski Is it first time these reports are published? A: Yes, expect trend report to grow by accretion over time. Other reports will be built from data for recent (6) months only -- R: Andrew Gray Andrew explains why distribution of page requests over countries favors Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries: 'Some Wikipedias - the ones which insist on only-free-images - do not use local uploads at all.' A: Thanks for explaining this unexpected distribution of page views on Commons, I had no idea. Spain 30.0% USA 29.2% Brazil 8.5% Argentina 4.8% Mexico 3.9% Germany 3.3% France 2.1% Venezuela 1.9% Chile 1.4% Costa Rica 1.4% Italy 1.4% Uruguay 1.2% Colombia1.2% Portugal1.1% -- R: Mark Williamson Two main factors influencing choice of Wikipedia language: # Fluency of the Internet-using population of a country in English. # Quality of the native Wikipedia. A: Like you say. Many Scandinavians (and Dutch people I might add) probably switch between English and local content all the time. Personally I tend to look at English Wp first I many instances, because of obviously richer content and larger depth. -- Q: Ziko van Dijk Why are 40 % of the visitors of ksh.WP (the dialect of Cologne) from Japan. Why are 25 % of the visitors of eu.WP (Basque) from Poland? Q: Andre Engels I think bots are a likely explanation in the eu case (unless Erik is using an algorithm that filters out bots) A: KSH used to be code for Kashmir. Still not Japan, but much closer than Cologne. Maybe Japanese mountaineers caused this spike ? (only half kidding) As for eu.wp: Would Polish presume there also is a European Wikipedia? Just a guess. I do filter bots -- R: Teun Spaans For trends, I would expect a bar indicating upward or downward trend, not a percentage bar. A: We can have both, a notion of importance and of change: I might color code cells as I do already in e.g. [1] This way large fluctuations really stand out. Let's first collect more history. [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm -- Q: Nikola Smolenski Could we get this for other projects? A: This question is of course not unexpected. One consideration is we need a certain sample size to make numbers significant. For other projects, with far less traffic, few country/language pairs would be backed by sufficient data. See also below on extending the current reports with more table rows. -- Q: Nikola Smolenski: Please include at Wikipedia Page Views Per Country - Overview [1] number of Internet users from [2], and number of views per Internet user? [1] http://tinyurl.com/yk43aq6 [2] http://tinyurl.com/yfv5bwn A: Done -- R: Nikola Smolenski It is obvious why Slovene Wikipedia is highly visited in Sierra Leone, and Serbian in Suriname; URLs do matter :) Although, I don't understand why so much. I would expect this distribution by visitors, perhaps, but not by visits. A: Very interesting observation! So people from Sierra Leone try 'sl.wikipedia.org'. Why people from Surinam go to 'sr.wikimedia.org' is only slightly less obvious to me, but apparently is happens For countries with just a few hits in the sampled log the distinction between visitors and visits gets blurred. -- R: Andre Engels Ukrainian is not a small language by any means, yet Wikipedia visitors tend to be drawn to the Russian Wikipedia instead. A: Yes but article growth in Ukrainian Wikipedia has been speeding up in recent months. [1] [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaUK.htm -- R: Andre Engels The Q3-Q4 comparison for most countries shows a shift from English to the 'vernacular'. A: Interesting analysis. Let's see if this is a consistent trend. However the monthly page views per Wikipedia language for which we have 2 year history do not show very significant shift from large to smaller wikipedia's. See table 'Distribution of page views' at bottom of page of [1]: smaller languages gain in share of page views, but very slowly. [1] http
Re: [Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from?
Ethnologue has numbers for all languages although their information is often outdated or not 100% accurate, it is sufficient if you're doing a list with many languages. On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.rs wrote: Erik Zachte wrote: Today I released 4 new reports, which all focus on: Where do our readers come from? http://tinyurl.com/yhdej3j http://tinyurl.com/yhdej3j Excellent and extremely useful! A big thank you! :) A few questions: Could we get this for other projects? At Wikipedia Page Views Per Country - Overview, could you in future include number of Internet users (f.e. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users ) and number of views per Internet user? IMO, this is more useful than population and could identify countries where Wikipedia should be advertised. At pages Wikipedia Page Views By Country - Breakdown and Wikipedia Page Views By Country - Trends, could you include more languages (ideally all languages)? Perhaps by making a separate page for every country? For example, I'd like to know data for all minority languages of Serbia. It would also be interesting to somehow show this data together with size of the Wikipedia and number of language speakers per country but I don't see how exactly (and I don't know how to find the number of language speakers). Perhaps I will do some of this manually, but just this time! :) ___ 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] Where do our readers come from?
I think there are two main factors influencing this: # Fluency of the Internet-using population of a country in English. In a country like Japan, basic English is widespread but real reading comprehension on the level necessary for reading WP articles is not (as far as I know at least). Scandinavians, on the other hand, fall at the other end of the spectrum - according to Wikipedia, 89% of Swedes have a working knowledge of English. # Quality of the native Wikipedia - if I can speak some English, would it be worth it to me to look for articles in English instead of my native language due to greater quality or completeness of the English Wikipedia? If I'm German, I have much less motivation to read articles in English than if my native language is Burmese. Of course, this is in purely relative terms - people in Arab countries preferring English to Arabic for Wikipedia does not mean that the Arabic Wikipedia is of poor quality, it just means that users feel that the English Wikipedia is a more reliable or complete resource in some way. Mark On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 2:40 AM, Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Erik Zachte erikzac...@infodisiac.com wrote: Today I released 4 new reports, which all focus on: Where do our readers come from? http://tinyurl.com/yhdej3j http://tinyurl.com/yhdej3j Going through the countries, another remarkable result in my opinion is the Ukraine - Ukrainian is not a small language by any means, yet Wikipedia visitors tend to be drawn to the Russian Wikipedia instead. Also, the Q3-Q4 comparison for most countries shows a shift from English to the 'vernacular'. Do you have data on this from a longer period of time? That is, is this part of an ongoing shift, or is it a seasonal effect (perhaps having to do with Q3 containing the school holidays in most countries? To quantify this, I have taken the 50 largest countries, excluding languages where English is the main language (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, Philippines, Singapore, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa). For all countries I have compared the percentage going to the main language Wikipedia and those going to the English Wikipedia (in the Ukrainian case: the Russian Wikipedia), and also the 'swing' (in the way the term is used in UK politics, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_%28United_Kingdom%29) from English to the local language (or in the reverse direction, if it is negative). For countries such as Spain and Belgium which have more than one local language, the similar data with all local languages are also given. Japan: Japanese 92.2% over English (swing -0.4%) Germany: German 72.2% over English (swing 1.5%) France: French 67.5% over English (swing 4.1%) Poland: Polish 71.5% over English (swing 4.0%) Italy: Italian 71.5% over English (swing 4.7%) Mexico: Spanish 71.5% over English (swing 3.4%) Brazil: Portuguese 67.7% over English (swing 1.1%) Spain: Spanish 60.3% over English (swing 7.0%) - vernaculars 64.4% over English (swing 8.6%) Netherlands: Dutch 10.4% over English (swing 6.6%) Russia: Russian 70.2% over English (swing 4.9%) Sweden: Swedish 13.8% over English (swing 8.1%) Switzerland: German 36.6% over English (swing 2.1%) - vernaculars 55.0% over English (swing 2.7%) Austria: German 65.1% over English (swing -1.1%) Finland: Finnish 24.7% over English (swing 2.2%) - vernaculars 26.8% over English (swing 2.8%) China: Chinese 4.8% over English (swing -7.3%) Turkey: Turkish 48.7% over English (swing 11.7%) Belgium: Dutch 9.5% over English (swing 9.2%) - vernaculars 40.1% over English (swing 9.6%) Argentina: Spanish 66.2% over English (swing 1.2%) Norway: Norwegian (Bokmal) 0.9% UNDER English (swing 14.4%) - vernaculars 0.1% over English (swing 14.5%) Colombia: Spanish 56.3% over English (swing -3.8%) Czech Republic: Czech 44.3% over English (swing 10.2%) Hong Kong: Chinese equal to English (swing 1.0%) - vernaculars 1.4% over English (swing 1.2%) Taiwan: Chinese 45.5% over English (swing 3.7%) - vernaculars 45.7% over English (swing 3.7%) Chile: Spanish 60.6% over English (swing -2.0%) Israel: Hebrew 10.9% over English (swing 3.9%) - vernaculars 12.8% over English (swing 3.9%) Indonesia: Indonesian 10.2% over English (swing 8.5%) - vernaculars 11.3% over English (swing 8.4%) Portugal: Portuguese 11.9% over English (swing 2.2%) South Korea: Korean 2.7% over English (swing 12.8%) Malaysia: Malay 74.5% UNDER English (swing -1.0%) Peru: Spanish 74.5% over English (swing 2.1%) Venezuela: Spanish 77.5% over English (swing 11.1%) Ukraine: Ukrainian 56.6% UNDER RUSSIAN (swing 4.4%) Romania: Romanian 21.7% UNDER English (swing 12.6%) - vernaculars 18.5% UNDER English (swing 13.4%) Thailand: Thai 18.9% over English (swing -3.5%) Denmark: Danish 12.3% UNDER English (swing 10.7%) Hungary: Hungarian 23.8% over English (swing 6.1%) Uruguay: Spanish 72.4% over English (swing
Re: [Foundation-l] advertising craigslist
Overly simplifying, indeed. How did you arrive at the $40 estimate? Are you trying to convert the 15K pageviews in 1 day into a dollar value? Do you think that when people see advertisements on TV, they all immediately flock to websites to look up the product? No, of course not, only a minority of them will, but the web traffic isn't what the advertisers are paying for. It is the message, they are paying to get their name out there in a certain context. This is great publicity for Craigslist and it would be silly to measure the impact by the number of pageviews for our own page on Craigslist. I think the point Geni was trying to make is that it has indeed raised some interest in Craigslist, rather than just helping WMF. Mark On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 11:58 AM, William Pietri will...@scissor.comwrote: Interesting! If I read that right, the Craigslist page on Wikipedia got an extra 15k pageviews or so. As a comparison, my rough guess is that Craigslist gets 100m pageviews/day. I base that on these numbers: http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOrigins.htm http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/craigslist.org+wikipedia.org Assuming the estimate of circa $100m in annual revenues, and making a number of other overly simplifying assumptions, the ballpark financial advantage to Craigslist for Craig Newmark's appearance here is about $40, or 13 seconds worth of revenues. William ___ 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] advertising craigslist
Key phrase for me in this e-mail was CraigsList itself is a for-profit, despite the fact that it was hidden in a parenthetical remark after lots of glowing praise... The Craigslist Foundation is not Craigslist. According to the Wikipedia article on Craigslist: The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information. Analysts and commentators have reported varying figures for its annual revenue, ranging from $10 million in 2004, $20 million in 2005, and $25 million in 2006 to possibly $150 million in 2007 It is believed to be owned principally by Newmark, Buckmaster, and eBay (the three board members). eBay owns approximately 25%, and Newmark is believed to own the largest stake. We put the name of a for-profit organization flashing across the top of the site... What you said: In spite of huge web traffic, Craigslist is run with a staff of 32 and carries no ads, and Craig founded a non-profit organization, the Craigslist Foundation, to support other non-profits. seems like it is intended to distract the reader from the truth, which is that Craigslist is for profit and owned partly by corporations like eBay. Mark skype: node.ue On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 1:21 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Just as a bit of general background for this thread: The Craig Newmark banner is currently running at 20% on the English Wikipedia. It's a pilot to see how our audience responds to endorsements and testimonials by third parties. (So far, it is doing reasonably well, but not fantastically so; we will likely move on to different messages soon.) We're not running a large endorsement campaign this year, but we wanted to at least get some data on a banner of this type to help us determine whether we want to run more such messages in the future. We approached Craig and asked him whether he would help us with this, and he generously agreed. We chose Craig because he represents, to many people, a philosophy of the web that is comparable to ours. In spite of huge web traffic, Craigslist is run with a staff of 32 and carries no ads, and Craig founded a non-profit organization, the Craigslist Foundation, to support other non-profits. (CraigsList itself is a for-profit.) We're pleased that Craig has joined our Advisory Board, and we're happy he agreed to this endorsement. That said, any kind of personal endorsement can certainly polarize. If, in future, we decide to run more such endorsements, we'll likely want to come up with a rich mix of different kinds of people with very different backgrounds, both to appeal to different segments of our audience, and to get a better understanding of the overall trends. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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] advertising craigslist
Is it really anti-capitalist to be against giving Craigslist free publicity? Mark On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 7:30 AM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Personally, I'm glad the Foundation doesn't have the reflexively absolutist anti-capitalist stance that some on this list would like them to have. Happy to see an endorsement from Craig Newmark. Now, if it were Tiger Woods... 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] advertising craigslist
It's certainly free publicity for Craigslist, one way or the other. Anybody who does not know what Craigslist is now will see it every time they see the banner, may google it or look it up on WP to find out what it is, and start using it. Any time we put the name of any kind of person or organization there, that is free publicity so I think it is imperative that we think about what effect that publicity will have in the end. If we put a quote from Nelson Mandela there, for example, it isn't very likely that he will get any money or website traffic or any quantifiable benefit from our banner. If we put an impassioned plea from The CEO of Webbooks.com, it is very possible that will result in additional traffic and exposure for that website. Although the banner is not intended as an ad, I must admit that when I saw it I instantly disliked it. If it were up to me, it would not be there. I can certainly understand the reasons for keeping it up and I also don't think this is a terrible situation or anything so I won't argue about this but I wanted to make it known that Geni isn't the only one of the opinion that it's not a good thing. Mark skype: node.ue On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 9:13 PM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Dec 14, 2009, at 9:50 PM, geni wrote: I see we have taken to advertising craigslist. Would anyone care to explain why? I fail to understand how acknowledging the existence of a company founded by an advisory board member who kindly consents to begging for money on our behalf constitutes advertising for it? Would the banner have been as effective if it had said Craig asks you to support...? Geez. Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategy Project Wikimedia Foundation phili...@wikimedia.org mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454) Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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] Everything okay?
Half a day? Is that really so bad? I would be worried if there were no posts for a week. Obviously there isn't as much traffic as before but I would personally wait longer before sending out e-mails asking why there are no messages. Mark On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 8:18 PM, MZMcBride pub...@mzmcbride.com wrote: No posts in over half a day. Is everyone simply scared? MZMcBride pub...@mzmcbride.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] the use of foundation-l
There is already a statistics page, http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Index.html skype: node.ue On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 1:13 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 11/7/2009 11:28:13 PM Pacific Standard Time, gerard.meijs...@gmail.com writes: Please read it as an appeal to reply to foundation-l in moderation. Please read it as an appeal to post liberally to this list as we do not have an alternative. --- Speaking of self-moderation., a google search on Foundation-l gerard meijssen shows http://www.google.com/search?hl=ensafe=offclient=firefox-a; rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficialhs=7zNnum=50q=foundation-l+%22gerard+Meijssen%22lr= aq=foq=aqi=http://www.google.com/search?hl=ensafe=offclient=firefox-a%0Arls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficialhs=7zNnum=50q=foundation-l+%22gerard+Meijssen%22lr=%0Aaq=foq=aqi= 33,000 pages Is there a way to create a chart showing how many messages each poster has posted to the list? Also Gerard I think if you're going to use an argument about the value of those people who *aren't* posting, we need to know who they are. Perhaps we don't want them to post either. Until we get some hard facts on the issue, how is any decision supposed to be able to be reached? W.J. ___ 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] the use of foundation-l
Gerard may post quite a bit, but in general his posts serve a purpose. Many people on this list seem to write just to see their words, that is to say, they seem repeat information and attempt to reply to every e-mail. This is not constructive and it is not conducive to the expansion of knowledge. To be on the Power Poster list is a bad thing for some, but it is not a shameful thing by itself certainly. If you have a lot of useful things to say, that's not so bad. Mark skype: node.ue On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 1:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote: Hoi, If you want statistics, you do not have to google ... there are our own statistics ... http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/_PowerPosters.html I am a power poster and that often does not feel good. However, it is beside the point. I am on a conference and it is from people who are essential to this conference that I have this information. Now if you think that you need to pass judgement on this, you have a self centred world. That is very much part of the issue. The issue is that the context of the issue IS clear from my original post. I will not damage these people by naming them. Thanks, GerardM 2009/11/8 wjhon...@aol.com In a message dated 11/7/2009 11:28:13 PM Pacific Standard Time, gerard.meijs...@gmail.com writes: Please read it as an appeal to reply to foundation-l in moderation. Please read it as an appeal to post liberally to this list as we do not have an alternative. --- Speaking of self-moderation., a google search on Foundation-l gerard meijssen shows http://www.google.com/search?hl=ensafe=offclient=firefox-a; rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficialhs=7zNnum=50q=foundation-l+%22gerard+Meijssen%22lr= aq=foq=aqi= http://www.google.com/search?hl=ensafe=offclient=firefox-a%0Arls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficialhs=7zNnum=50q=foundation-l+%22gerard+Meijssen%22lr=%0Aaq=foq=aqi= 33,000 pages Is there a way to create a chart showing how many messages each poster has posted to the list? Also Gerard I think if you're going to use an argument about the value of those people who *aren't* posting, we need to know who they are. Perhaps we don't want them to post either. Until we get some hard facts on the issue, how is any decision supposed to be able to be reached? W.J. ___ 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] Improving foundation-l
How do others feel? This is not the first time we've had this discussion. Some people agree with you, many don't. Also, I don't think anyone is surprised that you agree. Mark On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 5:05 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: The entire page is founded on unsubstantiated and generic complaints which all lists share. I agree. But that page was created by one of this list's moderators, so it's not quite so simple as just ignoring it. So how do others feel? Do the current list moderators agree with the conclusion reached by you and me? Or is there further discussion that needs to occur first? ___ 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's not article count, it's editors
Might also be interesting to see views/hour/million speakers. skype: node.ue On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 2:31 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: From Erik Zachte: http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/09/partipication-level-a-new-metric/ Hmm. Anyone want to change the front page of www.wikipedia.orgaccordingly? ;-) - d. ___ 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] Moderate this list
But please, not on this list. This list is fine as it is. Says who? Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Moderate this list
Fine for whom? Fine for you? It comes as no surprise to me and probably to anybody else that you are fine with the lack of formal structured posting rules. You made 77 posts to this list last month, surpassed only by Thomas Dalton at 98. Compare 3rd and 4th place: 57 for GerardM and 40 for Greg Maxwell. That 20 post difference between you and GerardM is what is making people notice you and I think also one of the reasons people want change on this list. Mark On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 7:11 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 3:41 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: But please, not on this list. This list is fine as it is. Says who? Presumably whoever wrote that statement. But I'd like to clarify it. I think we could use more active administrators, who actively participate in the discussions to helps form them into more useful ones. The part that I'm saying is fine is the lack of formal structured posting rules. It'd be nice if an admin would step into this thread and clarify how much discussion s/he'd like on the topic, what the goals are that we're trying to reach with this thread, etc, rather than come in 5 days later and lock the thread or throw down the ban hammer. Ideally we need people people actively facilitating discussion, and these people need to have the power to enforce things in the rare case that need be (mainly because otherwise we get discussions like this one where some people say one thing and some people say the opposite, and it's impossible to please everyone). Setting rules on how many words/times/whatever you can post isn't going to take the place of an active facilitator. ___ 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] Use of moderation
People are complaining to whoever is in charge of the venue. skype: node.ue On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 7:31 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com wrote: A mailing list, however, is different. A mailing list is a conversation. Everyone's been in a conversation where a single person dominated, and no matter how smart or charismatic or entertaining he may be, dominating a conversation minimizes the chance for other people to contribute and makes it less useful. I think it's great when one smart or entertaining person dominates a conversation. I'm much more interested in hearing from that one person than equally from the 50 participants. If that person is not smart (if my purpose for participating is to learn) or entertaining (if my purpose for participating is to have fun), I complain to whoever is in charge of the venue, or I leave (assuming it's not a conversation I'm required to attend, anyway). ___ 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] Use of moderation
How am I heckling you? I'm just stating the facts. There's no need for this to turn into a fight. On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: People are complaining to whoever is in charge of the venue. And if the person in charge of the venue considers me to be a net detriment, I hope and expect that I will be asked, privately, to leave, at which point I will comply. There's no need to heckle me on-list. Take your complaints to the people in charge. CC me if you're willing to. I'll abide by the decision of the people in charge. Not by whoever heckles me the loudest. ___ 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] Moderate this list
-Document wanted behavior rules on meta in the same way as on wikipedia (wp:et, wp:not, no chat, do not overload etc) What wikipedia? I have no idea what the en.wp rules are for discussions, and I do not wnat to be blocked on this list for not having this idea. On ru.wp, my home project, we may very well use different rules. I believe what was meant by this is that we should codify policies the same way that all large Wikipedias have codified policies, NOT that we should adopt the same policies as en.wp or any other for that matter. Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Moderate this list
On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Pavlo Shevelo pavlo.shev...@gmail.com wrote: Or you mean 'codification' as 'put all rules systematically/structured and in written'? If so it's exactly the basic proposal of Anders Wennersten: That's usually what codification means :-) Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space?
On 9/4/09, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: I think so too, but I'd rather hear it from Erik than hear your guess or guess at it myself. I'd rather go through a thread without seeing a one-word message indicating bewilderment at what was quite obviouisly a joke... but then, the world revolves around me about as much as it revolves around you (=not at all). Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday Our romanian language in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !
No, they most certainly would not. However it's a bit of a moot point as if I recall correctly there were only 1 or 2 admins and they've both left since. Mark On 9/1/09, Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 08:29, Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: It certainly should, ideally, be the same Wikipedia - in my opinion the ideal situation would have a converter on ro.wp. However, I don't think most Romanian Wikipedians would approve of this (as I mentioned earlier in the thread). A worrying sidenote: cheking the page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Moldovan_Wikipedia#Motion_to_end_discussion seem to reveal that most of the people go for deletion of the mowp are Romanians. Would they support to have old mowp admins as rowp admins, wouldn't they? g ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday Our romanian language in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !
When you say that _is_ the _moldovan_ language... how does Cyrillic writing make it not Moldovan anymore? Also, there is a very clear notice at the top directing people to Latin-alphabet content - it's not as if anybody is actually deprived of being able to read in their preferred script or is difficult to find. Mark On 8/31/09, Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 04:10, Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: I think it is fair to say that no language belongs to a country, it belongs to all speakers... what about the hundreds of thousands of people who write Moldovan in Cyrillic? According to Wikipedia (the enciclopaedia libre of the internet, did you know that? ;)) article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language: The standard alphabet is Latin (currently official in the Republic of Moldova). Before 1989, also two versions of Cyrillic had been used: the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet in 1940-89, and the historical Romanian Cyrillic alphabet until 1857. As of 2008[update], the former remains in use only in Transnistria. This suggests that 1) language identification 'mo' is written in latin, 2) it _is_ the _moldovan_ language, 3) it is used by 90% of the population (4 million+). This hints to me as well that there is a language, which is the same, but written in cyrillic script and used in Transnistria (400 000+ people), but: 1) I do not know its ISO code (definitely not mo), 2) I do not remember the policy to host the same language in different scripts, but if we support that, we should follow the already applied naming convention (I tend to remember something similar about serbian wp?) Also I'm curious what Geni feels about them - using mo to refer to Cyrillic Moldovan is not, in my view, inaccurate, although it is not as specific as perhaps it sh/could be. It discriminates 90% of the speakers against 10% of the speakers, so I would call it inaccurate as well. I can understand the frustration of the original poster, based on these facts. Especially since I'm well aware that that region is full of national pride, even if it ends in violence. Hot headed people. :-) -- byte-byte, grin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday Our romanian language in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !
2 things as well: If your language is called Romanian, as you contend in the topic line, why do you care about the Moldovan WP? You can't have your cake and eat it too. Also, the name of the holiday is not Our romanian language, it's just Our Language, there is very specifically no mention of the name because this is controversial. Same with the national anthem - not once does it mention Moldova, Moldovan, Romania, or Romanian, although it does talk a lot about the beauty of the language. Also it does not mention alphabets. Mark On 8/31/09, Cetateanu Moldovanu cetatean...@gmail.com wrote: Hello everyone, 20 years ago on 27 august 1989, 700 000 of moldovans (of a 4 millions popoulation) went to the center of Chișinău (the capital of Moldova) to the *Piața Marii Adunări Naționale*, the biggest square in the city, and shout limbă alfabet (language and the alphabet) and for country independence, that event is called Great National Assembly (Marea Adunare Națională) which declared it's language Moldavian and it's script LATIN. (here are a documental movie about this event http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BSfmhLOxO0, in the 4th part you can find that declaration) Please respect that wish and delete the cyrllic mo.wikipedia.org that claims to be our language, and remove/change the name of our language written in cyrllic Молдовеняскэ on your first page wikipedia.org. Thank you wikipedia. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday Our romanian language in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !
2) I do not remember the policy to host the same language in different scripts, but if we support that, we should follow the already applied naming convention (I tend to remember something similar about serbian wp?) In general the policy is that if we can create a converter we should. In this case it is possible to create a pretty good conversion system - there are relatively basic rules although there are exceptions which could be easily programmed - but I don't anticipate the ro.wp community would be too thrilled about having an tab to view their Wikipedia in Cyrillic. If we did so though I imagine that would mostly resolve this issue once and for all. Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday Our romanian language in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !
You seem to believe that Cyrillic for the language is a purely historical artefact when in fact it is still used in textbooks for schoolchildren and learning to read in Transnistria. If Cyrillic script were no longer in use for Moldovan or used only as a historical curiosity this would be a dead issue and I doubt anybody would put up any debate. As it is stated in the article, it is still the official script according to the PMR. Whether you recognize them as a country or an occupying force, it's undeniable that they do have _de facto_ control over the vast majority of the land between the Nistru river and the Ukrainian border and that in the Moldovan-medium schools in that area, the Cyrillic script is mostly used (I believe there are 4 schools using Latin script?) As far as declarations and it being declared the Latin is the only script used to write Moldovan, that's pretty meaningless in my book. Governments over the centuries have tried to impose various linguistic changes. Laws regarding language are not so relevant in our context. For example, the Russian government has made a law requiring the use of Cyrillic script for all languages in the territory of the Federation... however, in our context, such a declaration is absolutely meaningless. The situation on the ground, not in law books, is what really matters. As far as your second e-mail about people trying to erase Russian influence, it's not so simple as you've made it seem. In Transnistria, Russia is nearly universally seen as a force for good and there is little desire among the ethnic Moldovan population there to de-Russify anything. They fought a war over that essentially. In (the rest of) Moldova, it's also not quite so simple. There are some who believe that Moldovans are Romanians and that Moldova and Romania should be united; there are others who believe Moldovans are an independent peopel and the country should have a Russia-oriented foreign policy; there are others still who believe Moldova should separate itself from both sides. As far as the Latin script goes that is considered a resolved issue outside of Transnistria however. I don't think a decision of language should be made based on our personal feelings about the former Soviet Union or Russia or empires or colonism or socialism or Stalin, rather on the simple facts of the situation... which unfortunately nobody can seem to agree on either. Mark On 9/1/09, Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 08:59, Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: When you say that _is_ the _moldovan_ language... how does Cyrillic writing make it not Moldovan anymore? On the contarary: latin script make it not Moldovan language anymore. It's like saying old english (non latin script) should be used on enwp instead of latin, and people may possibly be sent to latin script, because how does old english scripting make it not english anymore? (Yeah sure I know, it's probably not the very same language anymore, but you may possibly see my point about what's defined as official language with any given name, and its history. If it has been declared that THE Moldavian is written in latin then cyrillic script isn't today's Moldavian language anymore. It is a historical language, like many converted from national to latin scripts in the recent decades.) Also, there is a very clear notice at the top directing people to Latin-alphabet content - it's not as if anybody is actually deprived of being able to read in their preferred script or is difficult to find. I ain't no Moldavian but I'd guess here the priorities are exchanged. Default should be latin script and it may direct anyone to historical spelling by cyrillic. And if there's one-to-one relation betwen cyrillic and latin script then we should make it automagic. Peter ps: I'm not against preserving cyrillic writing, but as it's been mentioned: it doesn't match the language code. should be at least renamed. as far as I see, which is maybe not much. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday Our romanian language in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !
I thought the previous consensus was that this project was to be moved to a different domain - although outright deletion has been suggested by quite a few people I can't see where that was ever agreed to. Mark On 9/1/09, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, It is equally abundantly clear that the emotions run high whenever this issue is raised. There is one difference between this closure and all the others. When this project will be closed, it will not go to the incubator but will be deleted. This is in marked contrast with all the others. If I were a developer, I would not choose to do this job. I had to be TOLD to do the job. There is nothing positive about closing projects. Thanks, GerardM 2009/9/1 Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com I think it has been stated before on this list, that mo.wikipedia.orgshould be moved, alongside some other projects waiting to be removed and the staff developers seemed agreable to this apart from the fact that they didn't devote time for the necessary background work (moving and recreating databases, copying files, testing that nothing is broken, etc.) Previously it has also been stated that the Meta page for closing down projects is useless (there is no power behind it, nor is there any people or committe tasked with monitoring and implementing any community consensus that would come out from this page). Best regards, Bence Damokos ___ 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 -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday Our romanian language in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !
It's more complex than that I think. mo was deleted from the list of ISO codes relatively recently; when the Wiki was created it was a valid ISO code. Now, ro applies to Romanian, for which Moldovan is supposed to be an alternative name, however it seems inappropriate (although it may be technically correct at this point, the abrupt deletion of the code has mixed up my mind a lot) to call it a Romanian Wikipedia. As far as Peter's e-mail goes: there are no exact statistics, I don't think, for such political ideas however as of the last census, the majority reported speaking Moldovan (rather than Romanian); in the cities this was reversed however (as I recall). Electoral politics can also be a rough indicator of opinion and in that regard those who are Romanophiles and those who are Russophiles or independentists seem to be about equal in number. Whether or not Moldovans and Romanians are the same people and whether the language should be called Romanian or Moldovan is a hot topic in the country and a source of much contention. Also, the majority of Moldovans seems to be against union with Romania despite the fact that this would very likely be in their interests economically. I am certainly no expert on Hungary by any means but obviously the end of the Soviet era has left very differing results. I believe the opinion towards Russia and Russification in Poland is almost the opposite as that in Belarus, it's unreasonable to fit every country to the same mold. Some in Moldova still yearn for the old days of the USSR, and I can understand why they would in their case - they are currently the poorest country in Europe (besides Kosovo, if you consider it a country) and are really struggling. There are certainly those who, while they may not have been big fans of all Soviet policies, are nostalgic for many aspects of the era. Like I said, it is a complex issue. Also, from what I have heard (and this may be incorrect), the US Library of Congress deleted the MO code without consulting with any Moldovan authority which seems inappropriate. Imagine the outcry if those experts were to delete SR, HR, and BS codes in favor of SH without consulting any local authority? Mark On 9/1/09, Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Andrew Turveyandrewrtur...@googlemail.com wrote: - The iso code for Romanian/Moldavian is ro. mo, which was the ISO code for Moldavian in the Cyrillic script is now deprecated. There is no ISO code for Cyrillic script Moldavian. ISO 639 codes are about languages, not scripts. The code ro would apply to both scripts. - Where ISO 639-1 codes exist we use them to name the Wikipedia. However, we do have other encyclopedias for languages which don't have ISO codes. Examples are http://ang.wikipedia.org - the Anglo Saxon encyclopedia which uses some non-latin characters (e.g. Ƿ for th) In those cases, when available, we use an ISO 639-3 code. All our 3-letter language names are ISO 639-3 codes with the exception of als:, which should probably be moved to gsw:. If there is also no ISO 639-3 code, a code is used of the form xxx-yyy, where xxx is the code for the language, or if no clear language applies, the language group to which the 'language' belongs, and yyy is some sort of denotation. existing examples are be-x-old with a language, zh-minnan with a metalanguage and roa-rup and fiu-vro with a language group. - mo.wp should be moved to something other than mo - perhaps mocy? I don't know the rules for this, but I would expect it to be either ro-cyr or ro-x-cyr - Finally, I don't see any reason why the community can't address with this issue by discussion and consensus. There's no need for the foundation to get involved, at least at this stage. The foundation holds technical control over the wikipedia domains; nothing can be done but by the foundation to for example rename a wiki. -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
In general, though, I think if we all put you on our personal block lists, I think that would probably reduce the amount you posted. I don't like that as an option though because like I said before, you do contribute good ideas to this list. Mark skype: node.ue On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Anthonywikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 6:05 PM, quiddity pandiculat...@gmail.com wrote: I'd also be interested in how Birgitte's suggestion would work out, if adopted by everyone here: I wonder if no one responds to [...] for a month how much he will continue to post. It'd work fine - if no one is interested in discussing something with me I'm not going to discuss it. But that's not the case with the recent burst of messages. ___ 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] moderate this list
If you're going to tell us what we need to do, may we tell you what you need to do as well? I have a few ideas. Mark On 8/31/09, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: What I think I might do is come up with a list of individuals who I am going to limit my replies to or reply to privately, because either I rarely reach a consensus with them or we rarely discuss things that are interesting to anyone else. It's a fine line, though. Personally I don't see what's wrong with treating mailing lists a lot like IRC (or, to use a newfangled and even more maligned reference, twitter). I really think people need to get over the fact that they don't need to process every single e-mail which appears in their inbox when they come back from a week vacation. They need to pick certain high traffic mailing lists, and purge (or archive, if they're fortunate enough to have gmail-size storage). If there were a separate announcement list it might be easier for people to accept this fact of reality. Anyway, if anyone wants to *privately* send me a list of names of people they think I should limit my replies to, please do. You don't have to put Thomas on the list. I know how y'all feel about him already, which doesn't mean I agree with it (I haven't decided if he goes on the list or not). On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 3:11 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: In general, though, I think if we all put you on our personal block lists, I think that would probably reduce the amount you posted. I don't like that as an option though because like I said before, you do contribute good ideas to this list. Mark skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday Our romanian language in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !
I think it is fair to say that no language belongs to a country, it belongs to all speakers... what about the hundreds of thousands of people who write Moldovan in Cyrillic? Also I'm curious what Geni feels about them - using mo to refer to Cyrillic Moldovan is not, in my view, inaccurate, although it is not as specific as perhaps it sh/could be. Mark On 8/31/09, Cetateanu Moldovanu cetatean...@gmail.com wrote: the world the language that you claim to be your own is written in I said OUR, OUR country, OUR language, OUR latin script and alphabet. Please respect us. The Moldovan language has often been successfully identified as and called Romanian. That's very true, that's why I'm asking, that's why I'm (and others too) iritated to see Молдовеняскэ on your front page, just like in the soviet occupation times. On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 3:03 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote: Hoi, French, English, German, Tamil and many other languages are not only spoken in the country of origin. The Moldovan language has often been successfully identified as and called Romanian. When in this other area of the world the language that you claim to be your own is written in Cyrillic then it must be tough on you. Given that for all kinds of reasons the wikipedia you refer to may be removed makes the argument that the language is not yours anyway any less potent. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/31 Cetateanu Moldovanu cetatean...@gmail.com Hello everyone, 20 years ago on 27 august 1989, 700 000 of moldovans (of a 4 millions popoulation) went to the center of Chișinău (the capital of Moldova) to the *Piața Marii Adunări Naționale*, the biggest square in the city, and shout limbă alfabet (language and the alphabet) and for country independence, that event is called Great National Assembly (Marea Adunare Națională) which declared it's language Moldavian and it's script LATIN. (here are a documental movie about this event http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BSfmhLOxO0, in the 4th part you can find that declaration) Please respect that wish and delete the cyrllic mo.wikipedia.org that claims to be our language, and remove/change the name of our language written in cyrllic Молдовеняскэ on your first page wikipedia.org. Thank you wikipedia. ___ 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 -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
I've been telling you what I would like you to do. That's quite different. On 8/31/09, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 10:06 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: If you're going to tell us what we need to do, may we tell you what you need to do as well? I have a few ideas. Mark Isn't that what you've been doing this entire thread? In any case, sure, feel free. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
I'm sure all of you can figure out a way of setting up your email client so it can work for you. If not, the archives are available online. There's no reason you have to have this mailing list emailed to you in the first place. That's an interesting attitude you have there. You're going to just do whatever you like and if anybody requests that you modify your behavior, even if many people ask you to, well, it's their problem and not yours? I use Gmail, inbox-flooding isn't such an issue for me here. However, when I open a thread and begin to read and find there are 30 messages from you and Thomas Dalton, I tend to skip over them. It's not because you guys don't have anything valuable to say but rather because your wisdom is buried in so much text that I don't quite care to fish it out most of the time unless it's a topic I'm passionate about and want to be sure I got everything. You and Thomas are obviously very intelligent and often have good insights and definitely a lot to bring to conversations but when the signal-to-noise ratio reaches a certain point it is no longer valuable to me to wade through the swamp of e-mails. Of course, you're certainly not obliged to change your habits just so that I'll read what you write, but I suspect many people feel similarly. Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
Exactly. If you write too many messages, you run the risk that the majority will start to habitually skip over (most of) your messages. Think of it this way (this is a very simplistic model I think, I'm not an economist): when the central bank of a country prints too much currency, this can cause the value of the currency to go down. Similarly, if there is a famous painter who only made 5 paintings, they will probably fetch a higher price than if s/he had made 500. It's fine if you always have something to say but I think we have all (the more prolific posters here) been guilty of posting two or three (or more) replies to the same thread at once without waiting for others when we could have consolidated into a single e-mail. Also, in my opinion (and yours may be different), although I do have an opinion on nearly every thread on this list, it is not always necessary for everybody to know what I think; this is after all a platform for discussion, not for people to come and find out how I feel about things. Mark skype: node.ue On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanencimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/8/28 Anders Wennersten anders.wenners...@bonetmail.com: I have only been on this list for a month, but I am confused over what I read. There are over 700 subscribers, but two, Anthony and Thoams Dalton is allowed, to generate more then a third of all entries and often just these two are driving a whole thread discussion. On Wikipedia we all work hard to work for consensus (all voices are welcome) and stop people dominating a subject. Why is it allowed for two persons to take over a list like it is done here? We haven't taken anything over. There is nothing stopping anyone else from contributing to the discussion as well. Other than good sense. (Contributing endless reams of text, that is.) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] moderate this list
This isn't just a recent thing: http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Anthony.html http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Thomas_Dalton.html Posting a lot isn't necessarily a bad thing though, although in my own experience, the less I talk the more people listen: http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Mark_Williamson.html I went from a high of 154 posts in February 2005, last month I made just 14. I'm still here, I still read most posts. In fact, I have made at least one post to this list in every month since September 2004 with only one exception (July 2007) but I expect that people who have been reading my posts from then until now would agree that I'm doing more with less. Mark On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Anthonywikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/8/28 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com: Personally, I use an email filter called my brain. I look at subject lines and I don't read emails that don't interest me. It has worked for years with great success. Hmm... you must be interested in lots of things then You may want to go through the threads for the last month, say, and see what proportion of them I have contributed to. I have never actually counted, but I suspect it is a minority. I'm absolutely sure mine is a minority. There are a lot of important things going on right now. That's why Thomas and I have been so talkative lately. ___ 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] moderate this list
A quick correction (at the risk of adding to my post count for this month (-;) I have not posted to this list every month since September 2004, I was including posts at Wikipedia-l. However, I think that's pretty reasonable considering that list is largely dormant and Foundation-l has widened in scope to absorb it. skype: node.ue On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: This isn't just a recent thing: http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Anthony.html http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Thomas_Dalton.html Posting a lot isn't necessarily a bad thing though, although in my own experience, the less I talk the more people listen: http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Mark_Williamson.html I went from a high of 154 posts in February 2005, last month I made just 14. I'm still here, I still read most posts. In fact, I have made at least one post to this list in every month since September 2004 with only one exception (July 2007) but I expect that people who have been reading my posts from then until now would agree that I'm doing more with less. Mark On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Anthonywikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/8/28 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com: Personally, I use an email filter called my brain. I look at subject lines and I don't read emails that don't interest me. It has worked for years with great success. Hmm... you must be interested in lots of things then You may want to go through the threads for the last month, say, and see what proportion of them I have contributed to. I have never actually counted, but I suspect it is a minority. I'm absolutely sure mine is a minority. There are a lot of important things going on right now. That's why Thomas and I have been so talkative lately. ___ 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] New projects opened
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 3:36 AM, 오현성chamda...@gmail.com wrote: The only language that has become a world lingua franca to date is English, and although British colonialism was clearly the original reason for this, the dominant form of English over much of the world now is American English. The U.S. has never had a vast colonial empire, so surely the supremacy of U.S. English owes more to the economic and cultural dominance of the U.S. than any other factor. If, in the future, China becomes the dominant economic power in the world, then I don't think there's any doubt that Chinese will supplant English as the most widely used language in business and many other domains. Much of the world is not very specific. In India and Pakistan, home to a very large population, the dominant form of English is closely related to British English. It was the combination of many factors - the earlier political and continuing economic power of Britain and the later political and economic power of the US - that brought about the current situation. American foreign policy since World War II has also played a major part in cementing the status of English as the first foreign language in most of the world. Anyhow as I said before, language shift is very much related to attitudes and perceived language prestige. When doing business abroad, English is often the language of communication between Chinese companies and local employees and businesses. The day the Chinese begin to insist on doing business with only Chinese speakers is the day the world decides to learn Chinese. It is essentially a (bad) attitude of We are better than you and so we do not need to learn your language, you should learn ours that has resulted, I think, in the dominance of English. Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New projects opened
I disagree. All languages that have had a chance of becoming world lingua francas - English, French, perhaps Spanish, are some recent examples - were not only the languages of economic or political powers, they were also the languages of vast colonial empires. Is it likely that English would be the second working language of India without India's colonial past? Would French be the official language of dozens of African countries if they had never been ruled over by France? Chinese has a very large speaker population but the number of speakers outside of the Han ethnic group and/or the PRC is negligible. Almost all non-Han speakers of Chinese are ethnic minorities in the PRC, virtually all Chinese speaking people outside of the PRC are ethnic Chinese. Is this because Chinese is difficult to type (which it isn't, by the way, on modern computers)? Highly unlikely. People don't choose to learn or not learn languages because of the perceived ease of typing or even the perceived difficulty of learning that particular language, they do it because of the perceived level of prestige and economic and political power it will bring them. What could the motivations be for an aspiring professional in for example Congo be to learn Chinese? There are few and almost all of them are related to business dealings with China. Hindi is in a similar position - it has quite a large number of diaspora speakers, but outside of a single country and/or national origin, it has virtually no reach. Mark On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Bod Notbodbodnot...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 11:59 PM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: (What's the next lingua franca going to be? When?) It would have been Chinese if you could get a workable keyboard. ___ 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] New projects opened
Okay, now that's in the realm of pure speculation. How do you think another country - or the world - would react to China's invasion of neighboring countries? Why would they even do that? Mark On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 10:20 PM, Bod Notbodbodnot...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:54 PM, Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: I disagree. All languages that have had a chance of becoming world lingua francas - English, French, perhaps Spanish, are some recent examples - were not only the languages of economic or political powers, they were also the languages of vast colonial empires. You're working on the assumption that China won't colonise anywhere. I have the feeling they're going to burst and spray their populace across the greater part of the continent at some point. ___ 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] Block update
I'll begin to take this thread and your proposals seriously once they get some support from somebody besides yourself and Thomas Dalton. Nothing personal, it just doesn't seem like anybody else has been paying much attention to this thread so far. Mark On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 6:45 PM, stevertigoo...@spaz.org wrote: Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: Remind me, please, why we are still talking about this. Well, Thomas' idea about a lists-l list for discussing mailing lists and mailing list issues is new, so there is no issue of still talking about this when the this you refer to isn't one of the issues that I raised. Thomas - instead of just complaining about having meta discussions here - is actually doing something productive, and proposes an interesting solution to everybody's problems: 1) nobody likes me taking issue with non-Foundation issues here on foundation-l, 2) but still my issues are legitimate and need to be addressed openly. 3) A lists-l list would be the perfect place to discuss a) blocks, b) issues with list admins, c) new list proposals, d) proposals to integrate or deprecate existing lists, etc. Cary of course would run lists-l, and keeping list discussion there means there would be no issues related to discussing meta (off topic) issues here. All that would show on here or on wikien-l is a pointer to the top post in the thread on the lists-l archive, and everyone is happy. -Stevertigo ___ 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] [WikiEN-l] The end of donations
+1. skype: node.ue On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:08 PM, The Cunctatorcuncta...@gmail.com wrote: Cmon, keep your whining prudishness for another thread. Sheesh. On 7/31/09, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Walter Vermeirwal...@wikipedia.be wrote: An other way would be that Wikimedia is funded by some international body, like UNESCO. The WMF budget for 2009-2010 is 9,4 million US dollar. That is not a lot on a global scale. I find it very normal that institutions are government funded. Probably because from where I am from, Belgium, that is the way it is. But I know that is not so everywhere. In some places the musea, schools, Churches, hospitals and so need to receive donations to function. So that approach would also not be acceptable for some because the have some problem with using public funds for public services. Interesting points. And yes, accepting government or institutional money would probably come with conditions like improving overall article quality, and maybe even getting rid of our fetish and other destructive-sexuality / pro-depravity articles and images - something our great many pro-freedom dogmatists just don't want to do. -Stevertigo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Sent from my mobile device ___ 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] Block update
Remind me, please, why we are still talking about this. skype: node.ue On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 4:13 PM, stevertigoo...@spaz.org wrote: 2009/8/8 Stevertjgo o...@spaz.org: I think those high level discussion can take place either on-wiki or on existing mailing lists without a problem. I generally agree. But existing mailing lists generally means wikien-l - once highly purposed toward resolving on-wiki disputes - is now notoriously dismissive of dispute resolution issues and geared more toward discussing Wikipedia's media image. Discussing specific disputes tends to annoy people on the existing mailing lists and it doesn't make sense to discuss mailing list disputes on-wiki, so the obvious answer seems to be a separate mailing list (or several, divided up by language I don't know if the non-English lists have a problem needing this solution or not). OK, I agree, but would want to generalize it into either the dispute resolution or mailing list dimensions. A 'mailing list for discussing mailing lists and related issues? Hm. I think it being a low traffic list would be a good thing - the moderators would all have to be there and a few mailing list regulars would sign up to keep an eye on things and disputes could hopefully be resolved with a minimum of drama. Alright. I am not easily persuaded, but you make an interesting case. A lists-l list then. We can there discuss a new possible disputes-l list, as well as any ending any defunct lists, etc. -Steven ___ 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] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT
I'm talking about more general policy, not ja.wp in particular. On 8/7/09, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: There are always extreme situations that merit exceptional treatment. ja.WP, however, has a great deal more than 3 active users. Birgitte SB --- On Thu, 8/6/09, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: From: Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 7:45 PM Alright, but what about the case of a Wiki where there are perhaps 3 active users, and the administrator is imposing their will? It is the Foundation that gave the admins the power in the first place. I do believe that _most_ issues people want the Foundation to get involved in are best dealt with locally, but I feel there are some that should be dealt with at a higher level. Simply letting a megalomaniac run a Wiki as if it were their own personal fiefdom seems unacceptable to me. Mark On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Birgitte SBbirgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Thu, 8/6/09, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: From: Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 12:38 PM This problem of one or two strong-willed admins enforcing their will over others is not an uncommon problem at smaller Wikis. In many cases, uncommon or strange orthographies, nonstandard dialects, or strange editing rules have been enforced; people who complain are often ignored and referred back to the Wiki by foundation people because it's a local matter. The problem of a user dissatisfied with the actions of local administrators is not uncommon on any wiki. When people dissatisfied with local enforcement of non-foundation issues complain here they are often properly informed that it is a local matter and that the each wiki is self-governing. Frankly the autonomy of the wikis is hardly a choice, if you honestly consider the logistics of it. Birgitte SB ___ 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 -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The end of donations
Dark concepts? Really? As encyclopedists, it is rarely our job to judge, rather we are here to document from a neutral point of view. Please remember that darkness is subjective, I'm sure there are practices you consider dark that I do not and probably vice-versa. Anyhow, David Goodman said those who support censorship are obviously not going to be our sources of funding, NOT we will gladly accept funds from anybody who is opposed to censorship. Mark On 8/3/09, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:24 PM, David Goodmandgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: I'm pleased to accept the epithet. Pro-freedom dogmatist describes me nicely with respect to many areas of life, including both sexuality and access to information. I think it comes close to describing most of the people at Wikipedia in matters of personal life and of information. I agree with access to information - and further concede that shining light on dark concepts helps to destroy them. I agree also with pro-freedom concepts, though I must ask that you concede my point that being dogmatic is not as good as being intelligent. And that's not to mention that dogmatists will often do more damage to their cause than help. Those who support censorship are obviously not going to be our sources of funding. Well we did turn down that NAMBLA funding for *some reason - was it because they were not pro-freedom? - Stevertigo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
