Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
This is sort of unrelated, but may be of interest to the people discussing language issues with search: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/12/cross-language-enterprise-search.html Google is announcing some cross language searching for enterprise now anyway, where you might search in one language, and have your query translated, and search against multiple other languages. Something to keep an eye on anyway. Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
2008/12/16 Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net: It is still a very useful feature, though. It's a pity that you can't have two watchlists on en.wp, such that you can use one to keep an eye on articles you're particularly attached to, with the other handling all the rest. I find that a useful method is to have a subpage of your userspace, link to every article you care about, and keep an eye on Special:Recentchangeslinked. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
On 13 Dec 2008, at 14:02, Platonides wrote: teun spaans wrote: Many times it works well. But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss. I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on. 7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email instead of a bot message on a talk page. But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists. You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an email whenever your talk page is modified. Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones. From personal experience, this feature doesn't work reliably. I have a fairly large number of items on my watchlist at Commons and on Meta, such that there are edits made on average once a day, but I only receive the emails about those edits sporadically, and often in bursts. It is still a very useful feature, though. It's a pity that you can't have two watchlists on en.wp, such that you can use one to keep an eye on articles you're particularly attached to, with the other handling all the rest. Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
teun spaans wrote: Many times it works well. But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss. I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on. 7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email instead of a bot message on a talk page. But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists. You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an email whenever your talk page is modified. Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
Pharos wrote: On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote: On Tuesday 09 December 2008 08:23:07 Gerard Meijssen wrote: When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find paard and you will not be served in the same way as with horse the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try ίππος and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse. It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English, Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic, Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse... I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the category tree translated. Me too - perhaps not as perfect solution, but hopefully adequate: http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php Examples: http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=nlsearch=paard http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=elsearch=%CE%AF%CF%80%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%82 Something like this looks pretty good for starters. Why don't we just flip a switch? Thanks, Pharos +1 We should help using this tool from the search interface. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: teun spaans wrote: Many times it works well. But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss. I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on. 7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email instead of a bot message on a talk page. But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists. You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an email whenever your talk page is modified. Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones. Thank you, I now have this enabled on commons. ___ 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: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
The commons issue is not just a language issua. If it was it was solvable. It is a hositility issue. Where people who upload the second picture of the same object (like a TukTuk) get told it is not necassary because the project already has one picture of a TukTuk . The problem is that the commoners do not understand that the project was started to make things easier for all the other wikimedia projects. Instead they have now become a hindrance to the wikimedia projects. And when you try to upload something locally it is removed and moved to commons where it will be removed again ... so a lot of work for nothing. Which is exactly why I do not upload any of the 100's of pictures of Thai artists that I have taken while performing with them. I can do without the hassle. And I am an experiences wikimedian. Can you imagine how strangers perceive the aggressive behaviour at commons? Waerth Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find paard and you will not be served in the same way as with horse the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try ίππος and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse. It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English, Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic, Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse... I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the category tree translated. So the bad news is that Commons is unusable for everyone who does not read English and the good news is, that it is a solvable problem. Thanks, GerardM 2008/12/9 Brion Vibber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Gerard Meijssen wrote: Hoi, Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and consequently for them Commons is useless. That's simply ridiculous. Many files, categories, and galleries are labeled in multiple languages... or even not in English at all. :) Certainly it'll be *more useful* as we're able to add more widespread tag/category translations to help automate cross-language search, but the notion that people cannot possibly find pictures or that the site is useless is ridiculous and undermines the legitimate portion of your position (that it would be good to add more multilingual features to Commons). - -- brion -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkk9y5AACgkQwRnhpk1wk45ATACgmK2BtPl5YFs2ht1QcspC1zvE TygAoMcWp+0sQtAGo5ky28hl1usgLpTF =twDY -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find paard and you will not be served in the same way as with horse the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try ίππος and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse. They might not be able to find ίππος. However, they might be able to use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate ίππος into English horse and search for that. Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim. Magnus ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:18 AM, Magnus Manske [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find paard and you will not be served in the same way as with horse the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try ίππος and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse. They might not be able to find ίππος. However, they might be able to use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate ίππος into English horse and search for that. Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim. I guess one of the points is (and I admit that I'm just jumping in here, without having read the entire thread due to time constraints, so please mercifully ignore this if I'm completely off the mark), that the English speakers do not need to take this extra step of looking for a dictionary (online or hard copy) first. Of course this is one of the inherent problems of international collaboration but still, if you put it this way, it does leave this spirit of Why the drama about all these non-English speakers, if they want to partake in the glories of Wikimedia Commons, they'll have to get their act together and find a dictionary (or else learn English) and while I'm sure you do not mean it in this way, I do understand people who object to this...after all, the internationalization of a project is hardly promoted if you just focus on one language and distribute dictionaries to the rest. So much for the nice, idealistic theory. I'm not even going to start venturing into the shallow waters of how to put this into practice...and I do realize that this limitation makes this post less-than-useful :-) Michael -- Michael Bimmler [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
Hoi, An answer like that justifies and inforces the notion that Commons is only for those that can read / write English. To me this is not acceptable because it degrades Commons to less then what it should be, what it could be. Thanks, GerardM 2008/12/9 Magnus Manske [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find paard and you will not be served in the same way as with horse the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try ίππος and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse. They might not be able to find ίππος. However, they might be able to use this big list of word pairs called a dictionary to translate ίππος into English horse and search for that. Not very comfortable, but hardly impossible as you claim. Magnus ___ 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: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
On Tuesday 09 December 2008 08:23:07 Gerard Meijssen wrote: When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find paard and you will not be served in the same way as with horse the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try ίππος and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse. It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English, Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic, Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse... I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the category tree translated. Me too - perhaps not as perfect solution, but hopefully adequate: http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php Examples: http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=nlsearch=paard http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=elsearch=%CE%AF%CF%80%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%82 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 1:00 PM, David Gerard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I speak as a big fan of and participant in Wikimedia Commons. But: Is it time to deprecate Commons as a WMF service project? It's clearly failing and the local community is actively hostile to contributors from other wikis. Commons appears to have forgotten it was created as a service project for other WMF wikis. It's not doing the job any more. Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.) I don't participate in Commons (photography's not really my thing). But I *do* actively promote it as an awesome place to find free media. I was under the impression that the project had some time ago moved beyond simply being a technically convenient service project, and everyone was pretty well agreed on that. Am I wrong? Is this about the idea of Commons per se, or about issues with the individual people involved? -- phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
Hoi, When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find paard and you will not be served in the same way as with horse the search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try ίππος and you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse. It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English, Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic, Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse... I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does include the category tree translated. So the bad news is that Commons is unusable for everyone who does not read English and the good news is, that it is a solvable problem. Thanks, GerardM 2008/12/9 Brion Vibber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Gerard Meijssen wrote: Hoi, Commons provides no benefit except for sharing the same picture to people who do not read / write English. They cannot possibly find pictures and consequently for them Commons is useless. That's simply ridiculous. Many files, categories, and galleries are labeled in multiple languages... or even not in English at all. :) Certainly it'll be *more useful* as we're able to add more widespread tag/category translations to help automate cross-language search, but the notion that people cannot possibly find pictures or that the site is useless is ridiculous and undermines the legitimate portion of your position (that it would be good to add more multilingual features to Commons). - -- brion -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkk9y5AACgkQwRnhpk1wk45ATACgmK2BtPl5YFs2ht1QcspC1zvE TygAoMcWp+0sQtAGo5ky28hl1usgLpTF =twDY -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.) If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
2008/12/6 Thomas Dalton [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.) If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way. Are you speaking hypothetically, or don't you think this is a problem? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
2008/12/6 David Gerard [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 2008/12/6 Thomas Dalton [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.) If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way. Are you speaking hypothetically, or don't you think this is a problem? I'm speaking hypothetically, I know very little about the subject in question. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
That might be a hell of a incentive to change. Before we talk about getting out the torches, I think we should see if we can make Commons functional. The incentive of being shuttered makes it more relevant to those who are in denial. I have made two suggestions on improvements. One is a training program with specific handling, i.e. no more we delete in 7 days, a different template that is more collegial. The second is to cross appoint administrators from underrepresented projects who agree to undergo a boot camp program. Thoughts? From: David Gerard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, December 6, 2008 1:00:29 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening I speak as a big fan of and participant in Wikimedia Commons. But: Is it time to deprecate Commons as a WMF service project? It's clearly failing and the local community is actively hostile to contributors from other wikis. Commons appears to have forgotten it was created as a service project for other WMF wikis. It's not doing the job any more. Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.) - d. -- Forwarded message -- From: Lars Aronsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2008/12/6 Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Patricia Rodrigues wrote: That's a wonderful idea! But many times our main problem is the lack of manpower in different languages to actually address different users. The more I think about this human side of the problem, the more I think we should go back to local uploading. The forwarding to Commons could be implemented by adding a category:Suitable for Commons and a bot that scans this category. Then if the image is deleted from Commons, the local copy would still exist. If we want Wikipedia to scale from the narrow nerd community to a wider society, including elderly, we need to greet them with respect and in their own language. I don't see how we could manage this on Commons, even if uploaded images were marked with the uploader's interface language. We will always have the narrow nerd community too, which can act as admins and an interface towards the international community. -- Lars Aronsson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se ___ Commons-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-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] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
on 12/6/08 4:04 PM, Thomas Dalton at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.) If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way. Excellent point, Thomas! Marc ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening
on 12/6/08 4:10 PM, David Gerard at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/12/6 Thomas Dalton [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Discussions please. (Not denial that this problem is a problem, thanks.) If you want to encourage discussion, don't start by restricting the discussion to only people that agree with you. You won't get any useful results that way. Are you speaking hypothetically, or don't you think this is a problem? What I hear in what he is saying is that your pathological need to control is surfacing again. Marc Riddell ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
