Re: [Foundation-l] Facebook Group re pornography on Wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Yes, and some people don't like the fact that we tell the truth about, say,
the Taiwan situation (or at least we try our very best to), or the
Tienanmen Square protests of 1989.

I think it's very stupid to equate "people don't like this" to "this is a
problem".

So yes, the situation is still unchanged, but in my opinion it is a GOOD
thing that it's still unchanged. The advertising situation on Wikipedia is
"still unchanged", but unchanged situations don't have to be bad, and in
this case I am a firm believer that the status quo is far better than what
this woman (and many image filter proposals) is proposing.


2012/2/2 Andreas K. 

> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:42 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  >wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 2 Feb 2012 07:35:10 +, "Andreas K." 
> > wrote:
> > > A Wikimedian has just started a Facebook page "Stop pornography on
> > > Wikipedia"
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-pornography-on-Wikipedia/307245972661745
> > >
> >
> > If I read it correct, she opened a Facebook group since, as she states,
> > she could not find anybody on Wikipedia who would share her opinion. I do
> > not see why we should worry about this. There are many people with their
> > own agenda who could not find anybody on Wikipedia to share their agenda
> > and go to promote it elsewhere.
> >
> >
>
> Well, it's relevant to the extent that she came across a masturbation video
> while looking for something completely different. (I think she said she was
> looking up "roll over".) Some people don't like that. It's a problem we've
> discussed before:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems
>
> The situation is still unchanged.
>
> A.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Facebook Group re pornography on Wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Perhaps a better example is the article on Santa Claus. If you look at the
talkpage, you'll find a couple of people protesting that it isn't a
"child-friendly" article, by which they really mean that we don't "play
along" with the Santa charade like NORAD, Google and countless other
prominent examples. Of course, not playing along is the CORRECT course of
action, that is what our principles tell us to do - we shouldn't be
knowingly providing false information to anybody, whatever our intention.
(In my opinion, the Santa Claus article doesn't state clearly enough that
Santa Claus is not a real person, due to the persistent efforts of two or
three editors who want the article to be more "child friendly")

So yes, lots of people think what we're doing is wrong, but so what? You
can never please anybody. That is why you need to choose a set of
principles and stick with them. At least that way, when people don't like
what you're doing, you can point to your principles and say "Hey, we've
always been this way" and you get credibility from having had the same
policy or position all along.

2012/2/6 M. Williamson 

> Yes, and some people don't like the fact that we tell the truth about,
> say, the Taiwan situation (or at least we try our very best to), or the
> Tienanmen Square protests of 1989.
>
> I think it's very stupid to equate "people don't like this" to "this is a
> problem".
>
> So yes, the situation is still unchanged, but in my opinion it is a GOOD
> thing that it's still unchanged. The advertising situation on Wikipedia is
> "still unchanged", but unchanged situations don't have to be bad, and in
> this case I am a firm believer that the status quo is far better than what
> this woman (and many image filter proposals) is proposing.
>
>
> 2012/2/2 Andreas K. 
>
> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:42 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter > >wrote:
>>
>> > On Thu, 2 Feb 2012 07:35:10 +, "Andreas K." 
>> > wrote:
>> > > A Wikimedian has just started a Facebook page "Stop pornography on
>> > > Wikipedia"
>> > >
>> > >
>> >
>> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-pornography-on-Wikipedia/307245972661745
>> > >
>> >
>> > If I read it correct, she opened a Facebook group since, as she states,
>> > she could not find anybody on Wikipedia who would share her opinion. I
>> do
>> > not see why we should worry about this. There are many people with their
>> > own agenda who could not find anybody on Wikipedia to share their agenda
>> > and go to promote it elsewhere.
>> >
>> >
>>
>> Well, it's relevant to the extent that she came across a masturbation
>> video
>> while looking for something completely different. (I think she said she
>> was
>> looking up "roll over".) Some people don't like that. It's a problem we've
>> discussed before:
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems
>>
>> The situation is still unchanged.
>>
>> A.
>> ___
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>>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Facebook Group re pornography on Wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Finding nudity offensive is not a cultural universal. Members of some
cultures may be offended by looking at certain animals full-on or in
photographs; what if those animals popped up in search? Where does it end?
Where do we draw the line?

What do we hide (or erase) and what do we keep unhidden? If you look at it
from a monocultural perspective, the answer seems not so hard - perhaps we
just hide everything showing sexual organs (but then does this include
female breasts?) and violence. Some people may advocate hiding images that
contain words like "fuck".

Of course, in other cultures other things are offensive, and there are
literally thousands of different cultures on this planet with differing
sensibilities and different ideas of what is right and what is wrong. The
only strategy I support is one in which we allow the unrestricted display
of everything that is legal and include disclaimers that we are not
intended as a children's site and that adults should make careful use of
their own judgement about letting their children read Wikipedia. It is not
our responsibility.

2012/2/9 Andreas K. 

> On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 3:52 AM, M. Williamson  wrote:
>
> > Yes, and some people don't like the fact that we tell the truth about,
> say,
> > the Taiwan situation (or at least we try our very best to), or the
> > Tienanmen Square protests of 1989.
> >
>
>
> So if members of the public looking for a sound file of tolling bells in
> Commons get
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Masturbation_Techniques_-_tolling_of_the_bells_(animated).gif
> as
> their first search hit in Commons, this somehow strikes a blow for freedom
> in the way our coverage of the Tiananmen Square protests does?
>
>
>
>
> > I think it's very stupid to equate "people don't like this" to "this is a
> > problem".
> >
> > So yes, the situation is still unchanged, but in my opinion it is a GOOD
> > thing that it's still unchanged. The advertising situation on Wikipedia
> is
> > "still unchanged", but unchanged situations don't have to be bad, and in
> > this case I am a firm believer that the status quo is far better than
> what
> > this woman (and many image filter proposals) is proposing.
> >
> >
> > 2012/2/2 Andreas K. 
> >
> > > On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:42 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  > > >wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Thu, 2 Feb 2012 07:35:10 +, "Andreas K." 
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > A Wikimedian has just started a Facebook page "Stop pornography on
> > > > > Wikipedia"
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-pornography-on-Wikipedia/307245972661745
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > If I read it correct, she opened a Facebook group since, as she
> states,
> > > > she could not find anybody on Wikipedia who would share her opinion.
> I
> > do
> > > > not see why we should worry about this. There are many people with
> > their
> > > > own agenda who could not find anybody on Wikipedia to share their
> > agenda
> > > > and go to promote it elsewhere.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > Well, it's relevant to the extent that she came across a masturbation
> > video
> > > while looking for something completely different. (I think she said she
> > was
> > > looking up "roll over".) Some people don't like that. It's a problem
> > we've
> > > discussed before:
> > >
> > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems
> > >
> > > The situation is still unchanged.
> > >
> > > A.
> > > ___
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> > >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing

[M. Williamson]

Ziko, you raise the subject of "illiterates"... I feel that it is blatant
discrimination to assert that the only way illiterates can create sources
worthy of citation on Wikipedia is either by becoming literate, or by being
interviewed by a literate person. This to me indicates a value judgement,
that literate people are inherently "worth more" than illiterate people.


2012/2/25 Ziko van Dijk 

> Yes Ting, and for these cases there is the method of [[oral history]].
> This is a means to create what the Anglosaxons call "primary sources".
> It is recorded and can later be used by a scholar (historian,
> ethnologist etc.) for his research, for his "secondary sources".
> These, with their scholar reflections, can be used by an encyclopedia.
>
> There are good reasons for this way. One is, that it is not very
> practical to cite from audiotapes/audiofiles. Another, that what this
> individual is describing may be true for his personal environment but
> cannot be generalized to others. For that, one needs the scholar.
> Remember: witnesses are the most unreliable source ever. People tell
> you plain nonsense - not because they want to ly or are stupid but
> because the human brain is simply not created to be a historian. It
> has the greatest difficulties to store information truthfully. So you
> need to record, and compare the different assertions from different
> people.
>
> It is a possibility to record oral and visual expressions from
> illiterates, and only later to do something with it scholarly. But all
> this has nothing to do with Wikipedia.
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
>
> 2012/2/25 Ting Chen :
> > Mountain, the first ever editor on zh-wp, and still active until today,
> told
> > me the following story one day (it was before the Oral Citation project
> but
> > I remembered the story very well):
> >
> > He came from the coast of Shandong, and his father told him that earlier
> > there was a local tradition where people went early morning to the coast
> to
> > catch crabs or mollusks (one of them). They used to use a special
> technique
> > to catch the animals. But meanwhile no one is using this technique
> anymore,
> > not only because there are now plenty of crabs or mollusks on the market
> > from the hydroculture, but also because the coast which was wild earlier
> are
> > now all urbanized, with oil terminals and harbors and those. When
> Mountain
> > told me that story he felt he would like to write down those stories
> because
> > in maybe 10 or 20 years, latest in 50 years, no one would ever know that
> > there was such a thing on the world. And that tradition would be lost for
> > ever. But he also felt he could not write them on Wikipedia because he
> had
> > no resources, because until now no of the ethmologists ever had
> interested
> > on such traditions and no academic resources ever mentioned it. With the
> > Oral Citations Sourcing it would be possible to interview the old people
> or
> > even let them show how the techniques worked.
> >
> > Greetings
> > Ting
> >
> > On 25.02.2012 09:02, wrote Lodewijk:
> >
> >> Hi Castelo,
> >>
> >> just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10
> >> examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable?
> Then
> >> I
> >> hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those
> >> examples without using them.
> >>
> >> Best regards,
> >> Lodewijk
> >>
> >
> >
> > ___
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>
>
> --
>
> ---
> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
> http://wmnederland.nl/
> ---
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Languages and numbers

[M. Williamson]

Some of these actually already have Wikipedias:

Meadow Mari
Yakut (aka Sakha)
Lak
Balkar (aka Karachay-Balkar)
Yiddish, Eastern (= "standard" Yiddish, "Western Yiddish" is the one we are
missing but it has much fewer speakers; according to Ethnologue there are
only 5,400 around the world)

In addition, in another message you stated that we probably had Wikipedias
in every Sinitic language that was distinct enough from Mandarin to receive
an own Wikipedia; Min Bei has 10.3 million speakers and does not have a
Wikipedia and is definitely far removed from Mandarin; Xiang is also
probably deserving of its own Wikipedia and has 30 million+ speakers.


2011/6/24 Milos Rancic 

> While preparing Missing Wikipedias [1], I've got numbers of speakers and
> languages by area and country with chapter not covered by Wikipedias.
>
> Numbers are preliminary, some of them should be corrected. I didn't
> exclude Han languages, which mostly shouldn't be counted, and similar.
> Note, also, that every language should be analyzed separately. Many
> languages are spoken not just inside of one country.
>
> Please, fix errors and comment.
>
> * * *
>
> Areas. They approximate the usual definitions of areas, but they are
> different because of linguistic corrections.
>
> * Afro-Asiatic Area: Area where Afro-Asiatic languages are dominant.
> North Africa + Middle East + Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia - Iran.
> * Europe: Europe (including Caucasus) includes Turkey.
> * South Asia: South Asia + Iran. Dominantly Indo-European and Dravidian
> languages.
> * Sub-Saharan Africa: The rest of Africa.
> * Polynesia, Australia and Oceania: Includes Malaysia and Taiwan
> (Taiwanese languages not covered in Wikipedias are dominantly
> Austronesian.)
> * East Asia: Han China "China (Central)", Korea and Japan.
> * South-East Asia: Includes non-Han south China "China (South)".
> * Latin America: Parts of America where Spanish and Portuguese are
> official languages.
> * Anglo-French America: Parts of America where English, French and Dutch
> are official languages.
> * North Asia: Asian part of former USSR, Mongolia and non-Han northern
> and western China "China (North)".
>
> The first column is number of speakers, the second number of languages,
> the third is area.
>
> 399259294 592 South Asia
> 353676706 1805 Sub-Saharan Africa
> 221855457 253 Afro-Asiatic Area
> 138979263 2198 Polynesia, Australia and Oceania
> 107363760 37 East Asia
> 99260271 447 South-East Asia
> 47901185 143 Europe
> 30361602 724 Latin America
> 8481452 227 Anglo-French America
> 3724384 45 North Asia
>
> * * *
>
> Countries with chapters. (Numbers are not fully correct, as they include
> some languages removed in the list below this one.)
>
> If any chapter (or interested group) is interested in full list of
> missing languages, I'll provide it by request before completing the
> work. I suppose that some chapters are interested in languages with less
> than 100K of speakers, as well.
>
> 296,097,274 349 India
> 71,356,176 681 Indonesia
> 46,676,395 157 Philippines
> 7,819,010 9 Germany
> 7,994,871 76 Russian Federation
> 5,386,580 5 Serbia
> 4,785,299 6 South Africa
> 2,841,300 17 Israel
> 1,139,750 4 Ukraine
> 1,085,931 125 United States
> 832,000 3 Netherlands
> 705,967 70 Canada
> 472,470 1 Czech Republic
> 375,704 17 Taiwan
> 313,642 6 Chile
> 246,900 3 United Kingdom
> 200,500 4 Spain
> 191,430 5 Poland
> 151,240 7 Sweden
> 132,809 12 Argentina
> 86,390 155 Australia
> 50,000 1 France
> 30,000 1 Hungary
> 29,980 4 Switzerland
> 17,460 5 Finland
> 15,000 1 Portugal
> 10,500 2 Norway
> 5,000 1 Denmark
> 4,500 1 Estonia
>
> Languages with more than million or more than 100,000 of speakers
> without Wikipedia and with chapter in the country:
>
> India (more than million)
> 38261000 Awadhi
> 3470 Maithili
> 1750 Chhattisgarhi
> 1300 Magahi
> 1300 Haryanvi
> 1280 Deccan
> 1040 Malvi
> 950 Kanauji
> 900 Dhundari
> 776 Bagheli
> 697 Varhadi-Nagpuri
> 6170900 Santali
> 600 Lambadi
> 5622600 Marwari
> 500 Mewati
> 473 Hadothi
> 4004490 Konkani
> 390 Merwari
> 380 Mina
> 3633900 Konkani, Goan
> 300 Shekhawati
> 300 Godwari
> 292 Garhwali
> 268 Indian Sign Language
> 236 Kumaoni
> 211 Dogri
> 210 Bagri
> 2094200 Kurux
> 200 Mewari
> 197 Sadri
> 195 Tulu
> 195 Gondi, Northern
> 193 Waddar
> 171 Wagdi
> 170 Kangri
> 158 Khandesi
> 1560280 Mundari
> 1543300 Bodo
> 150 Ho
> 143 Nimadi
> 1391000 Meitei
> 130 Bhili
> 120 Vasavi
> 115 Bhilali
> 1045000 Panjabi, Mirpur
> 100 Pahari, Mahasu
>
> Indonesia (more than million)
> 13600900 Madura
> 553 Minangkabau
> 393 Musi
> 3502300 Banjar
> 333 Bali
> 270 Betawi
> 235 Malay, Central
> 210 Sasak
> 200 Batak Toba
> 188 Malay, Makassar
> 160 Makasar
> 120 Batak Simalungun
> 120 Batak Dairi
> 110 Batak Mandailing
> 100 Malay, Jambi
>
> Phili

Re: [Foundation-l] largest free content website

[M. Williamson]

Yes, and I'm sure Wikipedia also has lots of copyrighted and dubious
content, as hard as we try...


2011/7/8 Peter Gervai 

> On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 08:26, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> > 2. Million Books Project http://www.ulib.org/
>
> LOTS of copyrighted and dubious content, by random checking.
>
> g
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] largest free content website

[M. Williamson]

Well, I just think any repository that lets some non-free works slip through
the cracks by accident, can't suddenly be disqualified unless we're ready to
disqualify Wikipedia too. So what category do we fit into that they do not?

2011/7/8 David Gerard 

> On 8 July 2011 09:20, M. Williamson  wrote:
>
> > Yes, and I'm sure Wikipedia also has lots of copyrighted and dubious
> > content, as hard as we try...
>
>
> We're reaching the stage of arguing category membership. This suggests
> stepping back:
>
> John, what do you anticipate as the useful purpose for the answer to
> the original question of "largest free content site"?
>
> (There may be no non-fuzzy answer.)
>
>
> - d.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[M. Williamson]

By hopefully having a Wikipedia in all 700 languages that will be around
then.

Language death makes me really sad, and there are lots of things that are
being done about it, and more should be done, but I'm not sure it's the
Foundation's job, just like it's not our job to save endangered species
(there are lots of great organizations working on both problems already).

2011/7/11 emijrp 

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_language
>
> "It is believed that 90% of the circa 7,000 languages currently spoken in
> the world will have become extinct by 2050, as the world's language system
> has reached a crisis and is dramatically restructuring."
>
> How is Wikipedia going to affect this language disaster? WMF 2050 goals
> ideas : ) ?
>
> 2011/7/11 Milos Rancic 
>
> > On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 21:28, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> > > * 270 Wikimedia languages (however, you would see below that the term
> > > "language" is not quite precise)
> >
> > One note: there are 270 languages counting Simple English as a
> > constructed/controlled language. If it isn't counted, there are 269
> > languages.
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[M. Williamson]

To be honest, I don't think 10k is a fair threshold. Many languages with
hundreds of thousands of speakers will likely go extinct by 2050, due to
high levels of bilingualism and low levels of children learning the
language. This language shift is particularly acute on the American
continent, where some languages that have been able to survive and remain
relatively stable since conquest are now looking increasingly troubled and
threatened by Spanish. Even languages that can still be regarded as "safe",
like Quechua, can be said to be "melting at the edges" - though there is no
doubt Quechua will be alive and have millions of speakers in 2050, there is
a good chance that a good percentage of the grandchildren of living Quechua
speakers will only have a passing knowledge of the language.

With the rapid urbanization that is currently occuring in many parts of the
developing world, language death seems likely to accelerate. When you come
from a group of 100,000 speakers, and all of them move to a city where the
majority language is Nigerian Pidgin English, how many generations will your
original language survive? Chances are, not more than 3. Linguistic
diversity in Africa was still actually rising (!) until the early 1990s, but
since then it has begun a sharp decline, much like what had already
been seen in Europe, America, and Australia, with the difference that the
sharp declines in Australia and America can be attributed exclusively or
nearly exclusively to pressures from European colonial languages, while in
Africa there is also pressure from larger African languages like Swahili or
Lingala or Yoruba on smaller African languages.

When bilingualism reaches over 50% in a community, the only chance for
intergenerational language maintenance is if there is a higher prestige for
the native language than for the outside one. If the "prestige" of a
language is perceived to be less than that of a LWC (language of wider
communication), like Spanish or English or Swahili, and people are already
bilingual, the native language will very quickly fall into disuse, which is
followed by extinction.

Some people think that a large number of speakers is a good guard against
extinction, but unfortunately there are several cases of hundreds of
thousands or even millions of speakers of a language undergoing
intergenerational shift, and such "large" languages can go extinct very
quickly as well when there is very low prestige and very high bilingualism.
2011/7/11 Milos Rancic 

> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 14:57, emijrp  wrote:
> > 2011/7/11 Milos Rancic 
> >> Note that estimates from the past (and likely from the present) count
> >> that no language with less than 1M of speakers would survive 2050.
> >
> > If Wikimedia projects and WMF leave to die 90% (or 80%, or 70%, or 60%)
> of
> > current languages in the next 40 years (we will be alive to see it,
> > probably), then both are failures.
>
> I think (but I am not sure) that I posted this link [1] here a couple
> of weeks ago.
>
> Speaking just about languages, the situation is approximately the next:
>
> speakers   total speakers  number of languages
> 100M+   2,514,548,848   9
> 10M-100M2,376,900,757   78
> 1M-10M  950,166,458 303
> 100k-1M 284,119,716 900
> 10k-100k61,223,297  1837
> 1k-10k  7,823,891   2025
> 100-999 460,911 1039
> 10-999  12,664  343
> 1-9 528 134
> sum 6,195,257,070   6,668
>
> So, number of languages with less than 10k is approximately 45%, but
> it is around 8M of people in total or 0,0015 of world population. It
> is highly likely that that number of languages won't exist in ~100
> years. (Some of those below 10k will survive, but some of those above
> 10k won't.)
>
> To make those languages viable enough to survive -- much more work
> than just our is needed. I am sure that 10% of military budgets of the
> world countries for one year would preserve all languages, but that's
> the other issue. Basically, that's not our failure as Wikimedians, but
> failure of our civilization.
>
> [1]
> https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=tCwO11tFPLPB-SJafDesypg&authkey=CPCE5pMB#gid=1
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[M. Williamson]

No, Milos, my "reasoning" is not "of the industrial age". It is backed up by
first-hand experience and by research. People who live in cities are by
nature a part of a larger urban community, with few exceptions (if there is
some kind of enforced segregation, like ghettoization of Jews which often
preserved Yiddish in urban environments pre-holocaust), which means it is
very, very, very highly likely that their children will learn the LWC of the
city in addition to the language of their parents. There is also a much
higher chance that children who grow up in the city will marry someone
outside of their own linguistic group, which often means their children will
be raised primarily in the main language of that city. Now, like I said in
my original e-mail, a 100% bilingual minority group does not usually stay
bilingual for more than a couple of generations, especially in an urban
environment where they must interact on a daily basis with people who do not
speak their language, and often, might only use their own language at home.

Also, keep in mind that the idea of "generations" varies from country to
country. In some countries, people typically don't give birth until mid-late
30s; in others, it is in the teenage years, so things like language death
happen a bit more rapidly as the new generations come more quickly.

2011/7/11 Milos Rancic 

>  On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 22:42, M. Williamson  wrote:
> > To be honest, I don't think 10k is a fair threshold. Many languages with
> > hundreds of thousands of speakers will likely go extinct by 2050, due to
> > high levels of bilingualism and low levels of children learning the
> > language. This language shift is particularly acute on the American
> > continent, where some languages that have been able to survive and remain
> > relatively stable since conquest are now looking increasingly troubled
> and
> > threatened by Spanish. Even languages that can still be regarded as
> "safe",
> > like Quechua, can be said to be "melting at the edges" - though there is
> no
> > doubt Quechua will be alive and have millions of speakers in 2050, there
> is
> > a good chance that a good percentage of the grandchildren of living
> Quechua
> > speakers will only have a passing knowledge of the language.
> >
> > With the rapid urbanization that is currently occuring in many parts of
> the
> > developing world, language death seems likely to accelerate. When you
> come
> > from a group of 100,000 speakers, and all of them move to a city where
> the
> > majority language is Nigerian Pidgin English, how many generations will
> your
> > original language survive? Chances are, not more than 3. Linguistic
> > diversity in Africa was still actually rising (!) until the early 1990s,
> but
> > since then it has begun a sharp decline, much like what had already
> > been seen in Europe, America, and Australia, with the difference that the
> > sharp declines in Australia and America can be attributed exclusively or
> > nearly exclusively to pressures from European colonial languages, while
> in
> > Africa there is also pressure from larger African languages like Swahili
> or
> > Lingala or Yoruba on smaller African languages.
> >
> > When bilingualism reaches over 50% in a community, the only chance for
> > intergenerational language maintenance is if there is a higher prestige
> for
> > the native language than for the outside one. If the "prestige" of a
> > language is perceived to be less than that of a LWC (language of wider
> > communication), like Spanish or English or Swahili, and people are
> already
> > bilingual, the native language will very quickly fall into disuse, which
> is
> > followed by extinction.
> >
> > Some people think that a large number of speakers is a good guard against
> > extinction, but unfortunately there are several cases of hundreds of
> > thousands or even millions of speakers of a language undergoing
> > intergenerational shift, and such "large" languages can go extinct very
> > quickly as well when there is very low prestige and very high
> bilingualism.
>
> Your reasoning is of Industrial Age: People come to the city, the only
> way to be informed is through the local newspapers and, logically, the
> grandchildren barely know language of their grandparents.
>
> However, that's not the case anymore. People are using internet as
> primary source of information more and more. And it is always easier
> to read in native language, than in local lingua franca. Of course,
> *if* information exist in native language and that *is* our job.
>
> Three 

Re: [Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[M. Williamson]

Milos, it is a fantasy of many that is not supported by research, that just
because people are rich or have technology, their language will magically
not die. I have never been to New York or London and am not talking about
such cities; I am talking about medium-sized cities around the world
(although large ones like Lagos and Sao Paolo are probably at the forefront
of language cemeteries in these days).

Where I live, there are approximately 20 languages spoken by indigenous
people within a several hours drive; this includes languages like Navajo
with hundreds of thousands of speakers, as well as languages like Mojave
with now not so many. We have the whole range of situations here for
language survival/death, including languages dying in rural isolated
communities, languages dying in or near urban areas (Phoenix is a medium
city, with about 4 million people, but it is also fast-growing, when I was
born here a little over 20 years ago there were 2 million), and languages
whose survival appears to be ensured for at least a few generations, based
on current statistics of intergenerational maintenance, bilingualism, and
other predictors of language death or survival (only two, unfortunately). We
also have on top of that the case of Spanish, which is also not being
maintained intergenerationally, and several smaller immigrant and refugee
communities with not-abnormal intergenerational linguistic tendencies.

All of these languages are now written; some are taught to children in
schools, and some are blessed with very fierce defenders who do everything
they can to promote their language among their people. However, in the fight
against the encroachment of the LWC, the best weapon is simply to not speak
the LWC, which people are not likely to do because of all the benefits that
come with being able to speak a LWC. Eventually (usually 1 generation when
they go to a school taught in LWC, perhaps 2 when they don't go to school at
all), most members of the ethnic group find it is easier for them to express
themselves in the LWC, their skills in the native language begin to erode,
and they prefer to speak the LWC even with people from their own linguistic
group of the same age. This is especially true when they share all living
environments, going to school and work together and even marrying one
another. Generally, the people in the 3rd generation are only passive
bilinguals, understanding but not speaking the language. Sometimes this
stage is delayed until the 4th or 5th generation, but I can't think of a
case in history where it didn't end up happening with full social
integration. If you can't speak a language, you can't pass it on to your
children, and then it dies.

This process is repeating itself around the world, not just with poor and
illiterate people, but also with rich and well-read people who find more
economic and social benefits in using a LWC. This is unfortunate, but so far
nobody has been able to find a remedy, and just writing encyclopedias in
minority languages doesn't seem like a viable solution to the problem of
language attrition and death, although perhaps it helps to raise the
prestige a bit.

There are data which I can show you which demonstrate that the linguistic
diversity of the world is decreasing at an alarming rate. Although some
speakers of dying languages love their languages very much and spend a great
deal of time working hard to keep them alive, this is not the case for
people with neither the time or the resources to give much thought to saving
their language. Even people who fight tend to lose this battle,
unfortunately, with only a handful of exceptions.

Intermarriage, when it becomes widespread, inevitably leads to language
death even more than migration to cities. Perhaps someone who is half-Roma
will speak Romani, but what if the half-Roma marries a non-Roma? Their
children will be only one quarter Roma. As people mix more and more, the
likelihood that the minority language will survive decreases to be almost
negligible.

Sadly, even people who live in a physical/social environment otherwise
totally cut off from the LWC may switch to the LWC over several generations
if it is the language of school and school attendance through the end of
secondary school is high or universal, and also the language of government
and perhaps radio or television. Wars, or mandatory conscription (practiced
in quite a few countries) tend to increase language death as well, since
armies need to share a common language, and soldiers often return home and
teach their children the language they learned in the army (this struck a
blow to many languages in the US, as well as Breton in France and many
countless other languages around the world).



2011/7/11 Milos Rancic 

> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 00:34, M. Williamson  wrote:
> > No, Milos, my "reasoning" is not "of the industrial age". It is backed up
> by
> > first-hand exper

Re: [Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[M. Williamson]

Also, I should note that your story about Romani seems to prove the exact
opposite of what your point seemed to be:

"I know a number or the third generation of integrated Roma who don't know a
word of any Roma language."

Yes, this is an interesting statement. Do you know any ethnic Serbians
living in Serbia who don't speak the Serbian language? What about ethnic
Swedes living in Sweden who don't speak Swedish? In the case of endangered
languages, the number is growing every generation. Even if there are "good
signs", the point is that the percentage and number are shrinking, and
speakers that are "lost" are extremely unlikely to "return" in future
generations (meaning, if you don't speak the language, it's really unlikely
your grandchildren will).

Lower-prestige minority languages do not survive in cities without complete
ghettoization. Ever. Period. For a couple generations, perhaps, but when
your great-grandmother was bilingual in the minority language and the LWC,
it can be almost guaranteed, in an urban setting, that you are monolingual
in the LWC.

2011/7/12 M. Williamson 

> Milos, it is a fantasy of many that is not supported by research, that just
> because people are rich or have technology, their language will magically
> not die. I have never been to New York or London and am not talking about
> such cities; I am talking about medium-sized cities around the world
> (although large ones like Lagos and Sao Paolo are probably at the forefront
> of language cemeteries in these days).
>
> Where I live, there are approximately 20 languages spoken by indigenous
> people within a several hours drive; this includes languages like Navajo
> with hundreds of thousands of speakers, as well as languages like Mojave
> with now not so many. We have the whole range of situations here for
> language survival/death, including languages dying in rural isolated
> communities, languages dying in or near urban areas (Phoenix is a medium
> city, with about 4 million people, but it is also fast-growing, when I was
> born here a little over 20 years ago there were 2 million), and languages
> whose survival appears to be ensured for at least a few generations, based
> on current statistics of intergenerational maintenance, bilingualism, and
> other predictors of language death or survival (only two, unfortunately). We
> also have on top of that the case of Spanish, which is also not being
> maintained intergenerationally, and several smaller immigrant and refugee
> communities with not-abnormal intergenerational linguistic tendencies.
>
> All of these languages are now written; some are taught to children in
> schools, and some are blessed with very fierce defenders who do everything
> they can to promote their language among their people. However, in the fight
> against the encroachment of the LWC, the best weapon is simply to not speak
> the LWC, which people are not likely to do because of all the benefits that
> come with being able to speak a LWC. Eventually (usually 1 generation when
> they go to a school taught in LWC, perhaps 2 when they don't go to school at
> all), most members of the ethnic group find it is easier for them to express
> themselves in the LWC, their skills in the native language begin to erode,
> and they prefer to speak the LWC even with people from their own linguistic
> group of the same age. This is especially true when they share all living
> environments, going to school and work together and even marrying one
> another. Generally, the people in the 3rd generation are only passive
> bilinguals, understanding but not speaking the language. Sometimes this
> stage is delayed until the 4th or 5th generation, but I can't think of a
> case in history where it didn't end up happening with full social
> integration. If you can't speak a language, you can't pass it on to your
> children, and then it dies.
>
> This process is repeating itself around the world, not just with poor and
> illiterate people, but also with rich and well-read people who find more
> economic and social benefits in using a LWC. This is unfortunate, but so far
> nobody has been able to find a remedy, and just writing encyclopedias in
> minority languages doesn't seem like a viable solution to the problem of
> language attrition and death, although perhaps it helps to raise the
> prestige a bit.
>
> There are data which I can show you which demonstrate that the linguistic
> diversity of the world is decreasing at an alarming rate. Although some
> speakers of dying languages love their languages very much and spend a great
> deal of time working hard to keep them alive, this is not the case for
> people with neither the time or the resources to give much thought to saving

Re: [Foundation-l] Welcome to new wikis

[M. Williamson]

Rather perhaps you mean: Argentinians got chapter and Arabic got
Wikiversity? Since the Wikiversity site seems to be in Arabic, which would
be a bit odd if it was for Argentines.

2011/7/12 Milos Rancic 

> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 12:26, Lodewijk 
> wrote:
> > I assume you mean Argentinian chapter, and not arabic?
>
> Ah, yes: Argentinians got chapter wiki and Wikiversity.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[M. Williamson]

2011/7/12 Milos Rancic 

> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 11:47, M. Williamson  wrote:
> > Milos, it is a fantasy of many that is not supported by research, that
> just
> > because people are rich or have technology, their language will magically
> > not die.
>
> I wouldn't say that it is a fantasy, but bold speculation :D
>
> I am not saying that wealth is the most important factor, not even
> technology in general, but enormously increased level of communication
> during the last 10-15 years, which is not counted inside of the
> present researches.
>
Present research actually indicates the decline of linguistic diversity has
accelerated in the last 10-15 years, possibly due to the exact factor you
seem to think is doing the opposite. Wider connectivity is an
additional strong motivator to adopt a LWC for most. Communications
technology and rural connectivity are killing languages that were once
thought to be safe due to geographic isolation. This is to say nothing of
urban settings, which have been killing languages for thousands of years.


> From what I see during the last dozen of years, many languages are in
> the process of revival: Celtic languages, some Uralic languages etc.
> Cases of Manx and Livonian are impressive, for example. When I heard
> for the first time about revival of Welsh, I was thinking that it is a
> noble, but fruitless attempt. However, it is not anymore an exception,
> but such revivals are occurring at more and more places.
>
One thing that unites all the cases you've noted except for Welsh are
hobbyists. When the only thing keeping a language alive is the fact that the
entire speaker population is dedicating all of their energy and most of
their free time to keep it from dying, it's an exceptional case. So you've
given me examples of a few languages in Europe that aren't dying, this is a
classical logical fallacy. Basically, in spite of research and piles of
anecdotal evidence, you seem convinced that because there are a handful of
cases that appear to go against the trend, the trend itself must not exist.
That's simply not the way statistics work. A trend is still perfectly valid
if it's followed by hundreds of languages, just because a few languages seem
exceptional cases (although I would argue none of them _actually_ are
exceptional, besides perhaps Welsh), does not mean anything for the rest of
the world's languages. That's like if I said "Two thousand years ago, there
were around 15,000 languages on this planet. Over half of those are
permanently extinct." and you retorted with the case of Hebrew, alleging
that similar cases were likely to occur with Akkadian, Sumerian, and every
other dead language.

Now when you say "Celtic languages", which ones do you mean? Irish and Scots
Gaelic are receding daily, despite the claims of their defenders. Breton is
in serious trouble, and Manx and Cornish, although undergoing hobbyist
revivals, seem unlikely to ever reach more than a few hundred native
speakers. Welsh is doing alright for now, thanks in large part to the fact
that it is supported by an autonomous regional government, which very,
very few endangered languages enjoy, and the fact that people decided to
"save" it when it still had plenty of speakers. But again, Welsh is the
exception rather than the rule, one drop of language survival in a sea of
languages speeding towards extinction.


> living native language through many generations. Sorbian languages are
> the example. No, it won't be used very actively, but it will survive
> as a language of specific culture and because of identity purposes.
> Manx, Livonian and many indigenous languages have chances to survive
> like that. Welsh has chances to survive as fully recovered language.
>

I wonder how long Sorbian will actually survive as a full language. I think
it's unlikely that Sorbians will never marry non-speakers. According to
Ethnologue, Sorbian languages are both spoken by "mostly older adults". So
your shining example that you repeat of language survival is actually not
that. I wonder how many Sorbian native speakers there are of my generation.
Now I wonder how many of them will speak Sorbian to _their_ children. Now
what about the grandchildren?

Livonian, I'm wondering where you're getting this information from. By most
accounts, it's got between 10 and 0 native speakers and is now used by some
hobbyists only.


> > This process is repeating itself around the world, not just with poor and
> > illiterate people, but also with rich and well-read people who find more
> > economic and social benefits in using a LWC. This is unfortunate, but so
> far
> > nobody has been able to find a remedy, and just writing encyclopedias in
> > minority languages doesn't seem like a viable solution to 

Re: [Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[M. Williamson]

2011/7/14 Milos Rancic 

> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 01:56, M. Williamson  wrote:
> > Present research actually indicates the decline of linguistic diversity
> has
> > accelerated in the last 10-15 years, possibly due to the exact factor you
>
> May you point to some statistics or relevant researches for the period
> 2000-2010?
>
http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/4474/harmonloh.pdf

Of course this is just one example; it covers the period up to 2005,
including between 200 and 2005, where a sharp and consistent decline has
continued in world indigenous languages.


> > Now when you say "Celtic languages", which ones do you mean? Irish and
> Scots
> > Gaelic are receding daily, despite the claims of their defenders. Breton
> is
> > in serious trouble, and Manx and Cornish, although undergoing hobbyist
> > revivals, seem unlikely to ever reach more than a few hundred native
> > speakers. Welsh is doing alright for now, thanks in large part to the
> fact
> > that it is supported by an autonomous regional government, which very,
> > very few endangered languages enjoy, and the fact that people decided to
> > "save" it when it still had plenty of speakers. But again, Welsh is the
> > exception rather than the rule, one drop of language survival in a sea of
> > languages speeding towards extinction.
>
> A number of languages of former Soviet Union, including Russia, whose
> speakers mostly know better Russian, are in the process of revival, as
> well. Many Romance languages highly endangered by the official
> languages of their countries are getting more attention, too. Non-Han
> languages of China have a lot of chances to survive, thanks to the
> support of the government. Many native languages of US are in much
> better position now thanks to the economic consequences of tribal
> sovereignty. There are a number of other cases. Without such efforts,
> many languages (I would say hundreds) wouldn't survive 20th century.
>
And tell me what exactly does a "process of revival" entail? Which Romance
languages and what programs and what are the results? Many minority
languages in China are spoken in relatively remote regions with low access
to resources, and a key difference between China and most of the rest of the
world is that rural status is enforced and rapid urbanization is technically
disallowed ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system ). If all
monolingual speakers of minority languages around the world were forced to
stay in their own home regions and speakers of other languages did not move
in or were not allowed to move into their territory, language shift would
not be happening anywhere.

As far as native languages of the US, this I have given you my personal
testimony about and I have actually done research myself. Out of the many
many indigenous languages of the United States, many of those that remain
have only a handful of native speakers. Approximately 60 are still spoken by
a slightly greater number of people.

Based on my preliminary statistical research, only the following languages
in the US have speaker populations that have an equal or younger age
distribution to English: Navajo, Havasupai, Crow, Zuni, Hawai'ian,
Vietnamese, and Spanish.

Of course, this is only one element of language survival, and this includes
languages with drastically different circumstances and numbers of speakers.
Navajo has somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 speakers, Havasupai has
530, Crow has 4280, Zuni has 9650, Hawaiian is difficult to determine
(perhaps between 10,000 and 30,000), Vietnamese is 1 million and Spanish is
around 30 million.

But of course we must also consider how widespread these are in their
communities, whether they are declining or growing, etc. Whereas only 30% of
Navajo children are considered to speak Navajo as their native language in
1998, this number was as high as 90% in 1968, indicating a rapid and
alarming language attrition and shift. The Navajo Nation is a mostly rural
tribe and has low access to resources, with many members living in poverty.

Havasupai, on the other hand, is spoken by nearly 100% of the tribal
population, thanks to extreme isolation, small cohesive community and
several other factors not found among most other tribes.

So when we look at the future outcomes of these two languages, it's not as
simple as "One has over 100,000 speakers and the other has under 1000", but
rather "Which one is healthy and which one needs help", "Which one is
decreasing and at what speed", etc.

The next step was to look at intergenerational maintenance, i.e., do
children of speakers of language X also speak that language?

The only languages that are being maintained intergenerationally at a viable
level are Havasupai, Crow, Zuni and Hawaiian. This means th

Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[M. Williamson]

What is your intention here, Elizabeth, besides trolling?

2011/7/26 whothis 

> Looks like an excellent waste of effort.
>
> Maybe the problem of publishing non-publishable oral sources occurred to
> someone on the team. Anyway the english wikipedia seems to be the
> appropriate place for your original research. I can't wait to read all
> about
> it.
>
> I still think a research project in emesis in the global south or something
> would have suited english wikipedia better but that's just me.
>
> Your fan
>
> Elizabeth
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 2:38 PM, Achal Prabhala 
> wrote:
>
> > Dear friends,
> >
> > At the beginning of 2011, a group of us began working on a project to
> > explore alternative methods of citation on Wikipedia. We were motivated
> > by the lack of published resources in much of the non-Anglo-European
> > world, and the very real difficulty of citing everyday aspects of lived
> > reality in India and South Africa.
> >
> > We are now at a stage where the project is almost complete, and we'd
> > like to share our work with the broader movement, especially within
> > India and South Africa.
> >
> > There are three languages we worked within: Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi.
> >
> > The project page documents the process and logistics employed, as well
> > as the findings and results:
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations
> >
> > A film made on the project is available here:
> >
> >
> >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv?withJS=MediaWiki:MwEmbed.js
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv
> > or
> > http://vimeo.com/26469276
> >
> > There have been discussions on oral citations for some time now within
> > the language communities we worked with for the duration of the project.
> > At this stage, we are really interested in *your* feedback, either on
> > this list, or on the Discussion section of the project page.
> >
> > There are still some things to come, namely:
> >
> > - Updates on events, meetings and discussions held around the project
> > (as they happen)
> > - Updates on articles created in Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi as a result
> > of the project (as they happen)
> > - English transcripts of the interviews and a full English subtitle track
> > for further translation (we could use some help here).
> >
> > We would be very grateful to hear your feedback, and begin a broader
> > discussion.
> >
> > Best wishes,
> > Achal
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Oops, my karma ran over your dogma.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[M. Williamson]

Nathan, I think that Raul Gutierrez, Maria Alameda and "Elizabeth" are all
the same person, somebody trolling the list. While we occasionally get
single-issue new posters starting topics, it's rare to see them pop up in
the middle of a topic just to attack one user. Something fishy is definitely
going on here.

2011/7/27 Nathan 

> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 10:25 AM, Maria Alameda 
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hello all
> > I usually don't comment on mailing lists but a colleague of mine referred
> me here. I wanted to comment on the issues related to Native-american
> research raised earlier by Ms. Stierch. I found her outlook completely
> isolated from the realities.
> > I would rather attribute her naivety to her limited view of the world as
> a fresh graduate. Personally, it reminds me of a somewhat racist outlook
> common among predominantly white-american graduates and students. While I
> agree there is a need for more research related to Native american culture,
> I really can't agree with the implication that Native american culture is as
> overlooked as some unknown tribe in New Guinea.
> > I should be thankful for her enthusiasm but this is ridiculous. I'm happy
> for her residency at National museum of American Indian(s) and her thesis or
> even efforts to change certain policies on Wikipedia, but none of that is
> connected with the much-larger cultural and race issues she's referring to.
> While I wish her the best, I would hope she not use her thesis as an excuse
> to comment on the realities of those cultural issues. Oral citation is just
> one small aspect of a much larger culture she learnt in school.
> > I might be too sensitive here, but if her comments were to be applied to
> african-american culture in the United States coming from a female
> white-undergraduate student pursuing her masters, her comments on the plight
> and the issues of an entire race would seem rather patronizing. Perhaps, its
> just me.
> > Maria AlamedaM.A, Ph.d (Native American studies)
> >
>
> This seems like an over-reaction to me. It doesn't seem horribly
> unlikely that Sarah is, if not alone, then among a very small group of
> academics studying the intersection of Native Americans and Wikimedia
> projects.
>
> Were her descriptions of the challenges facing Native American
> communities inaccurate?
>
> Are you aware of outreach efforts by the WMF aimed at Native
> Americans? (There are certainly many aimed at many other groups around
> the world; the seeming absence of focus on Native Americans would
> support Sarah's statement that they are "overlooked" in this regard).
>
> Could you explain the specific errors she made that led you to call
> her e-mail racist, patronizing and naive? I think if you are going to
> use such strong words, then more substantial criticism is required
> than simply stating that she is female, young and white.
>
> Nathan
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[M. Williamson]

Well then, Ray, en.wp would not be able to use non-English sources since all
translation is interpretation and would therefore be considered OR which is
not allowed at Wikipedia.

2011/7/27 Ray Saintonge 

> On 07/27/11 12:42 PM, Wjhonson wrote:
> > David how is an exact quote a summary or interpretation?
> > An exact quote, backed up by the actual audio track is... exact.
> > You are not summarizing it, and you are not interpreting it either.
> > You are presenting it.
>
> If that is to be the case the exact quote MUST be in its original
> language.  All translations require interpretation.
>
> Ray
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[M. Williamson]

Yes, Elizabeth is clearly not a troll, her suggestion: "I still think a
research project in emesis in the global south or something would have
suited english wikipedia better but that's just me." was clearly entirely
serious and meant to be taken seriously. On that note, I think I will go do
a "research project" on emesis in the nearest restroom.

2011/7/27 Ray Saintonge 

> On 07/27/11 2:34 PM, M. Williamson wrote:
> > Nathan, I think that Raul Gutierrez, Maria Alameda and "Elizabeth" are
> all
> > the same person, somebody trolling the list. While we occasionally get
> > single-issue new posters starting topics, it's rare to see them pop up in
> > the middle of a topic just to attack one user. Something fishy is
> definitely
> > going on here.
>
> Your failure to assume good faith is excruciatingly apparent.
>
> Ray
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[M. Williamson]

Ryan, perhaps you missed the intention of my e-mail. The sentence about
"emesis" was also clearly not serious. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/emesis

2011/7/27 Ryan Kaldari 

> So if I post nothing but emails about "the cabal" and random insults to
> people trying to have legitimate discussions, it's cool as long as I end
> my emails with a serious sentence???
>
> Ryan Kaldari
>
> On 7/27/11 4:53 PM, M. Williamson wrote:
> > Yes, Elizabeth is clearly not a troll, her suggestion: "I still think a
> > research project in emesis in the global south or something would have
> > suited english wikipedia better but that's just me." was clearly entirely
> > serious and meant to be taken seriously. On that note, I think I will go
> do
> > a "research project" on emesis in the nearest restroom.
> >
> > 2011/7/27 Ray Saintonge
> >
> >> On 07/27/11 2:34 PM, M. Williamson wrote:
> >>> Nathan, I think that Raul Gutierrez, Maria Alameda and "Elizabeth" are
> >> all
> >>> the same person, somebody trolling the list. While we occasionally get
> >>> single-issue new posters starting topics, it's rare to see them pop up
> in
> >>> the middle of a topic just to attack one user. Something fishy is
> >> definitely
> >>> going on here.
> >> Your failure to assume good faith is excruciatingly apparent.
> >>
> >> Ray
> >>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[M. Williamson]

And what if readers don't understand Spanish? As a translator, I have to say
I am strongly against the idea that a translation counts as original
research. Translating quotes has been practiced in academia for a very long
time, and just in the last month I must've read several papers with quotes
in languages I didn't understand well enough to read without the translation
by the author (German, Latin, etc). If I want to quote an academic paper in
Spanish for an article where there are few or no English-language sources
available, I should be able to quote directly from the paper but provide a
translation so that English speakers who do not speak Spanish can benefit
from the quote. The great thing about the wiki process is that if someone
disagrees with my translation, it can be fixed (I have fixed a few
translations on en.wp myself).
2011/7/29 Wjhonson 

>
> No that's not what it would mean.
> It would mean that if a Spanish language source is used on an English
> language page, we should quote that source in Spanish, and not quote it
> using our OWN translation.  As editors we should not be creating
> publications, only quoting publications.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: David Gerard 
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
> Sent: Fri, Jul 29, 2011 10:37 am
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
>
>
> On 29 July 2011 17:39, Wjhonson  wrote:
> > I would agree with Ray that we should quote Latin texts in Latin, Spanish
> exts in Spanish no matter what language-page we are using.  IF the text is
> that
> mportant to English speakers then there should be or probably will soon be,
> a
> erifiable English language translation *not* created in-project, but rather
> by
>  reputable author publishing just such a translation.
>
> his would mean that only English-language references are acceptable
> n en:wp, which is of course false. Your statement takes a useful idea
> no original research), extrapolates it until it really obviously
> reaks, and then puts forward the broken version as a good thing.
> You appear to be mixing up policy, guidelines, practice and how you
> ersonally think things should be, without distinguishing which you
> re describing at any given time; this leads only to confusion.
>
>  d.
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[Foundation-l] The problem with Incubator: An interactive journey

[M. Williamson]

To anyone who's interested... on a request to close a Wiki on meta, we were
just debating the problems that exist with Incubator, when one of the
bureaucrats from Incubator asked something along the lines of "wait, there's
a problem with Incubator?" So I went on a little quest to prove how
difficult it is for users, particularly those inexperienced with Wikimedia
projects (or even with computers and the internet, as the case may be), to
even *find* the test-Wiki in their language.

So if you'll indulge me briefly, and follow along at the site if you'd like,
I'd like to go on a brief journey through just how many clicks it takes to
find a particular test Wiki (in this case I chose Central Morocco Tamazight
Wikipedia because it has quite a few speakers). Also I'd like to note that
this is just my commentary and perspective, maybe you'll actually find it
quite easy and disagree with me. So let's begin step by step:

1. You go to http://incubator.wikimedia.org/ (what are the chances a person
would even know to go to the incubator site in the first place? we don't
exactly advertise it; it's not linked to from any high-visibility page)

2. You scroll down. You look for awhile. Unless you're looking for Kichwa,
Ingush, Yucatec Maya or Tashelhit Wikipedias, you get confused and you look
some more. Then you _finally_ notice that there is a link to "incubating
Wikis" (what does that even mean? yuck. poorest choice of link label ever!)

3. You scroll through walls of text looking for your language. We're on at
least the 3rd click by now. You must look through a long list of languages
you probably don't even know are languages... how do you know you're even in
the right place? Also, rather than sorting by project popularity, or putting
the projects on separate pages, Wikibooks is first. THEN Wikinews. Then
finally, our most popular project (by FAR), Wikipedia.

4. It's probably been about 5 minutes already (if you're a novice user, that
is), you're getting bored of this searching. OK, whatever. Then you
''finally'' find your language. Let's pick the Central Morocco Tamazight
test-WP, which has lots of speakers but is near the bottom of a VERY long
list of test-Wikipedias.

5. What's this? There are 5 different links to click. Chances are, you
either didn't notice or you no longer remember what the column labels said,
so you have no idea why there are 5, or what the difference is. So at this
point, your chance of clicking the right link rather than just giving up is
1/5. Also, the most intuitive link to click, the language name + Wikipedia
("Central Morocco Tamazight Wikipedia"), leads to the PROPOSAL on meta,
*NOT* the test wiki!

6. Let's say somehow, you figure out which link is the right one to click.
Even for the tech-savvy, this takes 6 clicks already and is somewhat of a
usability nightmare. Then, once you click it, where do you land? Is it the
main page of the test wiki? Please? NOPE! It is a stupid, pointless, totally
useless "splash page" that serves no purpose to users, only to incubator
admins and nobody else.

7: If you made it to this point as a casual user without this guide, you've
probably used Incubator before when it was _slightly_ more user friendly
(they recently redesigned it to be even LESS usable, I didn't think that was
possible but they surprised me!), or you're just very determined. Anyhow,
thanks to certain editors (like one that creates nonsense or poor-quality
pages in many Mexican indigenous languages he doesn't speak at all), there's
a good chance that the page you do end up at if you find your language will
be totally useless and worthless, possibly filled with fake writing that
isn't actually in your language, or is supposedly in your language but makes
no sense at all. So even if you made it to this point, there's still a good
chance you'll get discouraged and leave!

Now add to this the confusing process for starting a new test-wiki, the
confusing and non-transparent process of adding new pages successfully,
etc., and it becomes clear the system is broken. Not that this means much,
but I'd like to note that I was the one who originally suggested the idea of
"test Wikis" way back in Febuary 2005, and have closely watched developments
since then with great disappointment.

-m.
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Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Incubator: An interactive journey

[M. Williamson]

This is of course essentially what we did in the Good Old Days, but somebody
(or somebodies?) decided we needed More Rules, so now we have them, and as
is often the case with too many rules, they've constricted what was once a
free-flowing process and limited almost all new wikis to a very small
geographical area: Europe, Russian Federation and Indonesia with only a
couple of outliers, and for little observable benefit, as far as I can tell.

2011/8/8 Thomas Goldammer 

> Maybe a new system of "incubation" would be helpful. For example, one
> could start the requested wikis on their future domain
> (xxx.wikipedia.org / xxx.wiktionary.org etc.pp.) right from the
> request, with at least two voluntary experienced supervisors on each
> (one can supervise more than one of these of course) who get sysop and
> crat rights and stay there as long as it takes to get the approval of
> LangCom for an independent wiki (that is, after translating the most
> important parts of the MW software and that stuff). With email
> notification, the community of the test project can easily reach the
> supervisors and they of course should be in the wiki on a daily basis
> to look that everything is ok there. In the best case, they could try
> to attract more native speakers of the language to work there. Then a
> closing request for a wiki that became inactive would just be a
> request for supervision of that wiki. That means, the wiki stays where
> it is, but gets two supervisors who take on the administrative tasks
> and start some promotion maybe. Well, it's just an idea.
>
> BR
> Th.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Incubator: An interactive journey

[M. Williamson]

This is an improvement in many ways, but how does it help the average user?
How are people supposed to know that XYZ code points to XYZ language? Right
now we don't have any high-traffic pages pointing to incubator; it seems
less likely that say, en.wp main page will link to every single test wiki.


2011/8/8 Huib Laurens 

> SPQRobin is already working on a extension that will point
> xxx.wikipedia.org to the right place on Incubator. The first version
> is already deployed and he showed me the new version on WikiMania.
>
>
> I'm not sure how long it will take, when wmf staff will help him out
> it will take less time. But a beter version is being worked on.
>
>
> 2011/8/8, Thomas Goldammer :
> > Maybe a new system of "incubation" would be helpful. For example, one
> > could start the requested wikis on their future domain
> > (xxx.wikipedia.org / xxx.wiktionary.org etc.pp.) right from the
> > request, with at least two voluntary experienced supervisors on each
> > (one can supervise more than one of these of course) who get sysop and
> > crat rights and stay there as long as it takes to get the approval of
> > LangCom for an independent wiki (that is, after translating the most
> > important parts of the MW software and that stuff). With email
> > notification, the community of the test project can easily reach the
> > supervisors and they of course should be in the wiki on a daily basis
> > to look that everything is ok there. In the best case, they could try
> > to attract more native speakers of the language to work there. Then a
> > closing request for a wiki that became inactive would just be a
> > request for supervision of that wiki. That means, the wiki stays where
> > it is, but gets two supervisors who take on the administrative tasks
> > and start some promotion maybe. Well, it's just an idea.
> >
> > BR
> > Th.
> >
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>
> Kind regards,
>
> Huib Laurens
> WickedWay.nl
>
> Webhosting the wicked way.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Incubator: An interactive journey

[M. Williamson]

I have a feeling very, very, very few French speakers find the French
Wikipedia through that route. Most people probably find a Wikipedia in their
language at http://www.wikipedia.org/ if they don't already know the URL. I
doubt many speakers will google "Central Atlas Tamazight Wikipedia" in
English like that. I think there are probably also some who find it on a
main page of a larger wiki, or notice it in the interwiki links of an
article they're reading (however, as the number of interwiki links at each
article grows, this option becomes less likely).

So of course none of these mechanisms allows for someone to find Incubator.
http://www.wikipedia.org/ should have a prominently-placed link for people
whose language is not listed (not sure how to do that language-neutrally
though), allowing them to look for it at incubator, and if it's not there,
direct them to a USER FRIENDLY request system (our current one is not) so
they can request a new wiki in their language and start working on a
testwiki.

Main pages of projects should also link to incubator just like they link to
Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, etc., if not placing the link even more
prominently than that.

2011/8/8 Casey Brown 

> On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Thomas Goldammer 
> wrote:
> > That'd be great, indeed. But if there is an article in enwiki about
> > that language, there is always also a link to the project(s), even if
> > it is in the incubator, example:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afar_language (it's near the bottom and
> > on the right edge, though, so one might not see it easily). Maybe one
> > could convince the communities to have such a link in other
> > wikipediae, too...
>
> I was just going to bring that up too. :-)
>
> It's obviously not a perfect solution, but it's likely that if someone
> were looking for a Wikipedia in their language, they'd probably type
> it into Google. So if we type in "Central Morocco Tamazight
> wikipedia", we get a link to
>  in the first
> result. They read more about what the article has to say, and then
> they see the link at the bottom and click on it. Much fewer steps, and
> at least a bit clearer/more logical.
>
> (This is actually what we do with many of the languages, at least on
> enwiki. See French for example:
> .)
>
> --
> Casey Brown
> Cbrown1023
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Incubator: An interactive journey

[M. Williamson]

Yes but again as I said, most people will be looking for their languages on
http://www.wikipedia.org/ or in places where interwiki links are usually
found. How many out of the 5 million speakers of Central Atlas Tamazight do
you think are aware that the ISO code for their language is TZM? Probably
only 3 or 4 people, less than one one-millionth of the total population. So
maybe it makes it easier for people who already know the test wiki exists,
but what about people who doesn't? This doesn't help them.

2011/8/8 Milos Rancic 

> On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 20:08, Casey Brown  wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Thomas Goldammer 
> wrote:
> >> That'd be great, indeed. But if there is an article in enwiki about
> >> that language, there is always also a link to the project(s), even if
> >> it is in the incubator, example:
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afar_language (it's near the bottom and
> >> on the right edge, though, so one might not see it easily). Maybe one
> >> could convince the communities to have such a link in other
> >> wikipediae, too...
> >
> > I was just going to bring that up too. :-)
> >
> > It's obviously not a perfect solution, but it's likely that if someone
> > were looking for a Wikipedia in their language, they'd probably type
> > it into Google. So if we type in "Central Morocco Tamazight
> > wikipedia", we get a link to
> >  in the first
> > result. They read more about what the article has to say, and then
> > they see the link at the bottom and click on it. Much fewer steps, and
> > at least a bit clearer/more logical.
> >
> > (This is actually what we do with many of the languages, at least on
> > enwiki. See French for example:
> > .)
>
> Yep. All those ideas are inside of the project on which Robins works:
> * xyz.wikipedia.org will be redirect for incubator.../wiki/wp/xyz
> * All existing ISO 639-3 codes will get their pages "If you know this
> language, please start to write Wikipedia." Although there would be
> some limitations. For example, just if we are sure that the content is
> written in particular language, it will get *full* redirects
> (http://xyz.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Page =>
> http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/wp/xyz/Some_Page). Without that,
> there will be just redirect to the main page.
> * I was thinking to ask en.wp (and other Wikipedian) communities to
> add a template similar to Incubator with note "If you know this
> language you can start Wikipedia by following this link."
>
> There are some problems with that; Robin told me that during
> Wikimania. But, AFAIK, that's going to be changed during the next
> months; likely up to the end of the year or so.
>
> BTW, I repeated the first two points a couple of times on this list
> since LangCom meeting in Berlin. And I am a bit surprised that we are
> passing it again. (It wouldn't be an issue if there are newcomers who
> wonders about it :P )
>
> During the next week or so I'll present here what's happened on
> Wikimania in relation to the languages.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Like button

[M. Williamson]

Or, Rui, perhaps you have plenty of original thoughts and are a very
intelligent person and you post all of your original thoughts, but it seems
a bit stupid and like a waste of space to say "thank you for saying that" or
"i agree with you" every time you agree with someone and have no
disagreement nor a more nuanced position to add to the discussion.


2011/8/10 Rui Correia 

> Hi Milos
>
> I am not quite sure I follow.
> "Those who like would have to go to diffs" ?
> "which would leave the button to more engaged editors"?
>
> I personally find the "like button" on Facebook the dumbest idea ever - it
> means you are too stupid or too lazy to think up anything and just go
> around
> clicking "like" all over the place. It impoverishes the process, as where
> there is a "like" there could have been a enriching comment. For a
> beautiful
> photo, yes, for an intelligent quotation, yes, but for everything else,
> leave a comment or leave it alone. What does the like refer to? If I add
> "police beat up protesters", and someone comes along and "likes" it, does
> the "like" refer to:
> 1. the police beating up the protesters? ("I support them!")
> 2. me contributing the information - regardless of its quality? ("this is
> news to me")
> 3. the fact that the information was good and well constructed? ("this is
> well written")
> See the point?
>
> Rui
>
>
> 2011/8/10 Milos Rancic 
>
> > Thinking loudly: I think that something like like button for edits
> > would give more reasons to continue with editing. Those who like would
> > have to go to diffs, which would leave the button to more engaged
> > editors and thus almost strictly internal community issue. Could be
> > discussed more about options and technical implementation.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
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>
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> _
> Mobile Number in Namibia +264 81 445 1308
> Número de Telemóvel na Namíbia +264 81 445 1308
>
> I am away from Johannesburg - you cannot contact me on my South African
> numbers
> Estou fora de Joanesburgo - não poderá entrar em contacto comigo através
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Re: [Foundation-l] Like button

[M. Williamson]

Rui, I meant the "impersonal you", not the direct you.

2011/8/10 Rui Correia 

> M. Williamson
>
> Obviousy I post my thoughts where these make a contribution. It says so
> below "leave a comment or leave it alone".
>
> Rui
>
> 2011/8/10 M. Williamson 
>
> > Or, Rui, perhaps you have plenty of original thoughts and are a very
> > intelligent person and you post all of your original thoughts, but it
> seems
> > a bit stupid and like a waste of space to say "thank you for saying that"
> > or
> > "i agree with you" every time you agree with someone and have no
> > disagreement nor a more nuanced position to add to the discussion.
> >
> >
> > 2011/8/10 Rui Correia 
> >
> > > Hi Milos
> > >
> > > I am not quite sure I follow.
> > > "Those who like would have to go to diffs" ?
> > > "which would leave the button to more engaged editors"?
> > >
> > > I personally find the "like button" on Facebook the dumbest idea ever -
> > it
> > > means you are too stupid or too lazy to think up anything and just go
> > > around
> > > clicking "like" all over the place. It impoverishes the process, as
> where
> > > there is a "like" there could have been a enriching comment. For a
> > > beautiful
> > > photo, yes, for an intelligent quotation, yes, but for everything else,
> > > leave a comment or leave it alone. What does the like refer to? If I
> add
> > > "police beat up protesters", and someone comes along and "likes" it,
> does
> > > the "like" refer to:
> > > 1. the police beating up the protesters? ("I support them!")
> > > 2. me contributing the information - regardless of its quality? ("this
> is
> > > news to me")
> > > 3. the fact that the information was good and well constructed? ("this
> is
> > > well written")
> > > See the point?
> > >
> > > Rui
> > >
> > >
> > > 2011/8/10 Milos Rancic 
> > >
> > > > Thinking loudly: I think that something like like button for edits
> > > > would give more reasons to continue with editing. Those who like
> would
> > > > have to go to diffs, which would leave the button to more engaged
> > > > editors and thus almost strictly internal community issue. Could be
> > > > discussed more about options and technical implementation.
> > > >
> > > > Thoughts?
> > > >
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> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > _
> > > Mobile Number in Namibia +264 81 445 1308
> > > Número de Telemóvel na Namíbia +264 81 445 1308
> > >
> > > I am away from Johannesburg - you cannot contact me on my South African
> > > numbers
> > > Estou fora de Joanesburgo - não poderá entrar em contacto comigo
> através
> > > dos
> > > meus números sul-africanos
> > >
> > > Rui Correia
> > > Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Consultant
> > > Angola Liaison Consultant
> > >
> > > ___
> > > ___
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
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>
>
>
> --
> _
> Mobile Number in Namibia +264 81 445 1308
> Número de Telemóvel na Namíbia +264 81 445 1308
>
> I am away from Johannesburg - you cannot contact me on my South African
> numbers
> Estou fora de Joanesburgo - não poderá entrar em contacto comigo através
> dos
> meus números sul-africanos
>
> Rui Correia
> Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Consultant
> Angola Liaison Consultant
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Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Incubator: An interactive journey

[M. Williamson]

Well the problem is that http://www.wikipedia.org/ should remain "language
neutral" IMHO. Otherwise, I would propose a link that says "Is your language
not listed here?".

Unless anyone has any better ideas, perhaps we could work around this by
having such a message (which is relatively short), but written in the
browser accept language of the reader? Alternatively, we could translate it
into languages that are most commonly used as Languages of Wider
Communication by speakers of minority languages worldwide: English, Spanish,
Portuguese, French, Chinese, Swahili, Hindi, Indonesian.
In the case of places like http://en.wikipedia.org/ main page, it should not
be an issue to have the notice in English (or the appropriate other
language, eg Spanish for es.wp) only, although perhaps it would be better to
be less wordy and go with something like "Other" after a list of languages.

Mark

2011/8/10 Samuel Klein 

> On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 9:13 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
> > Yes but again as I said, most people will be looking for their languages
> on
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/ or in places where interwiki links are usually
> > found.
>
> Mark,
>
> Could you please propose a specific solution that would make incubated
> languages more findable om www.wikipedia.org and other places where it
> seems appropriate to you?
>
> SJ
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Incubator: An interactive journey

[M. Williamson]

"2. Do you have a suggestion as an alternative for the term "incubating
wikis"? Is the more often used "test wiki" better?"

"Test wikis" is much better. It has been used since before incubator even
existed, it is easy to understand, and I don't see a downside.
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Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Incubator: An interactive journey

[M. Williamson]

Gerard, the term "incubating wikis" is confusing for reasons I already
explained. Users with little experience are very unlikely to know about
http://test.wikipedia.org/ so I see little potential for actual confusion.
We have been calling Wikis on incubator "test wikis" for ages (since BEFORE
incubator existed), I see no reason to ditch that straightforward, useful
term just to replace it with the confusing "incubating Wikis".

2011/8/13 Gerard Meijssen 

> Hoi,
> There is nothing wrong with the term incubating; it indicates forcefully
> that we want full projects in those languages. A test wiki is even more
> ambiguous because we have things like test.wikis for new software.
>
> Having a landing page with texts in languages that are likely to be
> understood is a good thing. I will support that. When these pages are
> supported in a similar way as is done for new translators on
> translatewiki.net, I would be really happy; the point is that you make
> things easy and, the time spend by our community is our most valuable
> asset.
>
> Having projects go to the incubator is a good thing when there is an
> incubating project. When there are technical issues like we have them for
> languages like sign languages we can have specific information. We can have
> specific information when projects have been denied in the past as well.
> Particularly when they have been denied by the board; these exceptions are
> the exceptions to the policy and deserve better information.
>
> Let one thing be clear; having a project in the incubator for a longer time
> is not a desired state. Making improvements to the visibility only serves
> to
> speed up the process towards a full project.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On 12 August 2011 02:08, Robin Pepermans  wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > @Mark: although I do not like your tone in your original post, you
> > provide some good feedback (and started a thread with more feedback),
> > which is more than welcome.
> > 2. Do you have a suggestion as an alternative for the term "incubating
> > wikis"? Is the more often used "test wiki" better?
> > 5. I improved the Incubator:Wikis list so it is more intuitive, I
> > hope. As for the order, it is alphabetically.
> >
> > @Fajro "The link from the test-wiki should direct to the proper recent
> > changes."
> > The links on Wx/xyz pages do, or are you referring to links somewhere
> else?
> >
> > @Thomas: Info pages like
> > http://robinpepermans.be/mw-dev/index.php?title=Wn/shi will be coming
> > soon, and the redirects will hopefully be implemented this year or
> > early next year. As far as I can see, this will allow interwiki links
> > from any project to an incubator test wiki, which is a very good thing
> > (will not work for languages unknown to Wikimedia, with current setup)
> >
> > @Nathan: A kind of "language searcher" to more easily find test wikis,
> > is on my to-do list.
> >
> > And I added one more thing to the to-do list: improving
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/ and similar portals. Thanks for that idea.
> >
> > In general, we are moving from the "request a new wiki (and oh, we
> > need to make some pages at Incubator)" way to "start your own wiki at
> > Incubator, and if it is big, we can request to move to an own
> > subdomain".
> > This way, we can put starting wikis back in the hands of volunteers
> > without needing to create separate (inactive) wikis for each of them.
> >
> > I should communicate better about my work. Anyway, I plan to propose a
> > presentation at Wikimania next year about these things.
> >
> > Regards,
> > SPQRobin
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Tragedy: videos and slides from presentations Wikimanias (lately 2011 in Haifa)

[M. Williamson]

A bit disappointed to see posts like this. Most of us don't have the luxury
of attending international conferences every year, but that doesn't mean
we're not interested to know what happened there. Videos should be uploaded
and most popular presentations should be subtitled into the most popular
languages (I recognize that subtitling long videos is a huge time suck for
volunteers- but in an *ideal* world this would happen)


2011/9/3 Béria Lima 

> You know how many videos are there to be uploaded? How big those videos
> are?
> And you know what the organizers are doing since Wikimania ends?
>
> No one of the videos can go to Wikimedia Commons without a bugzilla
> request.
>
>
> And btw, all presentations can be uploaded in commons by the speakers.
> _
> *Béria Lima*
>
> *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre
> acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a
> fazer .*
>
>
> 2011/9/3 Jan Kucera (Kozuch) 
>
> > I knew about these links. What I say is its a tragedy that people have to
> > upload files by themselves and there is no streamlined process of:
> > 1) creating the media centrally (in case of video)
> > 2) getting it online all at once
> >
> > That is all.
> >
> > >  Původní zpráva 
> > > Od: Béria Lima 
> > > Předmět: Re: [Foundation-l] Tragedy: videos and slides from
> presentations
> > > Wikimanias (lately 2011 in Haifa)
> > > Datum: 03.9.2011 11:07:40
> > > 
> > > not that difficult to find.
> > >
> > > Slides:
> > >
> >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimania_2011_presentation_slides
> > >
> > > Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/WikimediaIL
> > > _
> > > *Béria Lima*
> > >
> > > *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> > livre
> > > acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos
> a
> > > fazer .*
> > >
> > >
> > > On 3 September 2011 10:02, Jan Kucera (Kozuch) 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi there,
> > > >
> > > > I think WMF should set up some "quality measures" to make sure there
> > > > actually is some reasonable online output from every Wikimedia
> > conference.
> > > > There might be thousands of editors not being able to attend but
> > wanting to
> > > > watch what was going on. Now you have to dig and beg for any slides
> or
> > video
> > > > on Commons. I do not know the decision process for a location but so
> > far
> > > > almost every host failed miserably to deliver some reasonable online
> > content
> > > > like videos and slides from the presentations.
> > > >
> > > > Kozuch
> > > >
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Re: [Foundation-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

[M. Williamson]

Note that Google News, a popular news aggregator, often includes a link to
the Wikipedia article about breaking news and recent events, but never links
to Wikinews. Wikipedia is already largely accomplishing in many high-profile
cases what Wikinews aims to do. Also note that Chile is considered by many
to be a Western country; within a handful of years it will probably be in
the list of countries with "Very High" HDIs (barring any unforseen event),
joining the Western European countries, US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Hong
Kong and a couple of gulf states. It seems the criteria for "the west" are
that you are a developed country in Europe or the Americas, and Chile is
both a developed country and it is located in the Americas. Despite the
often monolithic characterization of Latin America, it's not the case that
all Latin American countries are the same; some are struggling with grinding
poverty, such as Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Bolivia, while others are
high-income countries with developed economies, such as Chile, Argentina,
and Uruguay. I would definitely consider Chile, Argentina and Uruguay to be
part of "the west".

2011/9/6 Theo10011 

> English Wikinews has been broken for a while. The entire system is
> predicated on the judgement of reviewers, and a handful of rather rude
> admins. I saw some rather aggressive posture and a pretty threatening
> demeanor employed towards others when I tried contributing early last year.
>
> I once tried to submit an article on Wiknews a couple of years ago. It was
> something about a Blue moon on New year's eve at the end of 2009, the story
> at the time had a thousand legitimate sources on google news which
> apparently wasn't deemed notable enough by a reviewer, several hours later
> when the event itself had passed.
>
> Now, compared to contributing on English Wikipedia which has a much higher
> visibility rate, activity, and a giant repository of related articles,
> Wikinews seemed less and less relevant. The entire policy of editorial
> content on Wikinews is counter-productive when anyone can go and contribute
> to the larger sister project much easily.
>
> It's pitiful when you realize what it can be in the age of micro-blogging
> with a diverse contributor base like ours. We already have more reporter
> and
> contributors in every country than any news/wire service. We just can't
> figure out how to use it.
>
> Theo
>
> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Tom Morris  wrote:
>
> > On Tuesday, September 6, 2011, Fajro wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 2:21 AM, Tom Morris  > >
> > > wrote:
> > > > non-Western topics: see http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Category:Chile
> > >
> > > Chile non-western?
> > > Fixed!
> > >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chile&diff=prev&oldid=448703219
> > >
> > >
> > Oh, I took it to mean Western as in (Europe + USA). Cultural imperialist,
> I
> > know.
> >
> > --
> > Tom Morris
> > 
> >
> >
> > --
> > Tom Morris
> > 
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Re: [Foundation-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

[M. Williamson]

Wow, you pat yourself on the back more times in that e-mail than I ever
thought possible in a single message. So you think Wikinews is the greatest
thing, and that us outsiders know not what we are talking about and don't
have a right to an opinion since we're not full-time Wikinewsies? Great,
that doesn't solve any problems or get anybody anywhere, though.


2011/9/7 pi zero 

> Having only a few hours ago been alerted to the existence of this thread,
> I'm afraid I'm rather overwhelmed by it.  Way too long to read.  I've
> glimpsed a number of false/misleading statements about en.wn in passing,
> but
> would probably spent all night properly locating them all, let alone
> attempting to answer them.  (Hm, there was something about Wikinews being a
> bureaucracy, and of course the post that started this thread...)  I'm also
> rather puzzled by the nature of this thread, which seems to be largely
> non-Wikinewsies discussing what they think about how the inner workings
> ought to be changed of a sister project whose *current* inner workings are
> probably more unfamiliar to ---for a non-random example--- Wikipedians than
> those of any other sister.  (I've spent three years studying it and am
> hopefully just about up to speed now.)
>
> However, in a general collegial spirit toward Wikimedians having a
> discussion (whyever they're doing that), I'll offer a few general remarks
> about en.wn.
>
> en.wn is a wiki at, roughly, the extreme opposite end of several spectra
> from en.wp.  To oversimplify (the only way I'll get anywhere in this),
> en.wn
> is just about as different a wiki from en.wp as it is possible for a wiki
> to
> be.  Note, there is nothing un-wiki about en.wn.  It's very wiki.  What it
> *isn't* is Wikipedian.  Some Wikipedians, I think, are actually kind of
> afraid of en.wn, because all wmf wikis are drive by idealism, and part of
> the idealism of Wikipedia is a belief in various rules of wiki dynamics
> that
> aren't the way en.wn works.  Volunteers driven by idealism naturally have a
> massive emotional investment in those ideals ---that's what makes idealism
> great for sister projects!--- and in this case it means these Wikipedians
> have a massive emotional investment in disbelieving in the way en.wn works.
>
> The thing is, Wikinews confronts boldly, every day for several years now,
> challenges of quality control that Wikipedia is glacially slowly being
> forced to sidle up to if it is to thrive on into the future.  These are
> *really difficult challenges*, and I'm kind of amazed by how well we're
> dealing with this stuff that Wikipedia isn't ready for yet.  Obviously
> Wikipedia will never be Wikinews, but... Wikinews is the vanguard, and
> Wikipedia will eventually benefit from things we're figuring out (very,
> very
> slowly, but that's hardly surprising).
>
> A note on a slightly different tack.  A comment I made in a private
> discussion a few days ago (among experienced Wikinewsies, about the inner
> workings of the project) ran something like this:
> > I'm proud of Wikinews.  We're so damn good at teaching how to write, a
> university journalism professor is assigning us to his students as
> homework.
> Besides the somewhat incidental fact I'm proud of the project, there are
> two
> points of interest here.
>
> First, we do have a class of, I think, about thirty university journalism
> students currently submitting articles for review.  Yes, that can produce a
> glut on the review queue, which we're learning how to keep up with and not
> allow it to keep us from reviewing the best articles in reasonable time.
>  Of
> course we *also* want to spend a significant amount of time reviewing the
> *worse* articles, because how can those authors improve without feedback?
> Tricky.  This also means an especially high number of failing article
> reviews.  Some of these students honestly don't get at first the concept of
> neutrality, or perhaps how to not plagiarize, or some other basic
> principle.  Last semester we were surprised by how many final-year
> journalism students had trouble with this stuff, and we didn't let up our
> standards for them, and from what we hear, the professor was *delighted*.
> That's apparently just what he wanted, and he's sent another class this
> semester to get some hard knocks from us.
>
> The second thing about this, I only figured out myself when I realized
> reviewing these student's work reminded me forcefully of my time as a
> teaching assistant.  That, plus the recent nomination of the Old English
> Wikipedia for closure.  Wmf is about education, and an argument in that
> nomination was that the purpose of a Wikipedia is to educate readers by
> providing them with information in their native language.  Well, I saw two
> fails in that: first, reading it is surely educational *about Old English*,
> and second, *contributing* to it is surely massively educational about Old
> English.  The idea that contributing is educational applies in spades t

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wiki-research-l] Summary of findings from WMF Summer of Research program now available

[M. Williamson]

I would be interested to know what the most wanted pages would be if all
links from templates were excluded. If I introduce a redlink into a template
that's transcluded on 2000 pages, it immediately becomes a most wanted
article. I'd also be very interested in seeing this data for other
Wikipedias, particularly Spanish (es) and Serbo-Croatian (sh).

2011/9/6 R.Stuart Geiger 

> Thanks for the interest, John!  I put the list of the top 250 up at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_wanted_articles -- but I
> didn't exactly publicize it.  I guess this is my chance to do so now!
> Also, a list of the top 1000 redlinked articles is up on a separate
> page at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_wanted_articles/July_2011
> and the entire dataset is up at
> http://toolserver.org/~swalker/redlink_list.csv -- note that it is
> 42.8mb!
>
> If you have any other questions about the redlinks/bluelinks dataset,
> feel free to ask me.  And you can check out the meta page for more fun
> links data, such as how many more links we added between 2009 and
> 2011, or incoming links to articles about countries / each country's
> population:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:One_Link,_Two_Links,_Red_Links,_Blue_Links
>
> Stuart
>
> 
> Stuart Geiger
> User:Staeiou / @staeiou
> Ph.D student, UC-Berkeley School of Information
>
> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 10:19 AM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> > Thanks Steven, and the Community Department.
> >
> > I am instantly drawn to the analysis of redlinks.
> > Can we please have this data!!
> > Article writers are on stand by ready to kill red links ;-)
> >
> > The special page for this is dead.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WantedPages
> >
> > --
> > John Vandenberg
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[M. Williamson]

I do believe it means exactly that.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:ActiveUsers includes all users with at
least 1 edit in the last 30 days; that seems like a really low threshold
though. I took the liberty of collecting some data based on that page:

- 23 users with at least 30 edits in the last 30 days (= average 1 edit/day)
- 8 users with at least 100 edits in the last 30 days
- 2 users with at least 300 edits in the last 30 days ("super active"):
Brian McNeil and Pi zero

I was a bit shocked to see these numbers myself. Seems rather low,
especially considering Wikinews is not like Wikipedia, where you only need a
handful of active users at one time to work on articles, but rather requires
high activity all the time to be a successful news outlet. English Wikinews
is, in my opinion, a failed project, at least currently. I have tried on
several occasions to switch to Wikinews as my primary news source, each time
I end up asking myself why on earth I did such a thing because it's almost
useless for people who want to stay informed about current events.

2011/9/12 Kirill Lokshin 

> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Tempodivalse  >wrote:
>
> > At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several others
> > (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are
> active
> > remaining Wikinews contributors.
>
>
> Wait, does this mean that Wikinews had fewer than twenty active
> contributors
> prior to the fork?  Or am I horribly misinterpreting the statement here?
>
> Kirill
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[M. Williamson]

It's worth noting that several of the other English language projects suffer
similar levels of inactivity.

English Wikiquote, which I've always considered to be one of our most
pointless and least useful projects, has a total of 5 users who make more
than 100 edits a month. This is a project in English, our highest-traffic
language, that has been open since 2003. That's ridiculous. English
Wikibooks has only 10, which is more than can be said for most language
editions of Wikibooks, which are all but dead.

There are two problems here, I think. The first one is lack of support from
WMF, which everyone likes to talk about a lot. The other one is the
assumption that these projects are worthwhile and that WMF or anyone else
*should* care about them.

Let's say a GeoCities ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities ) site about
your grandmother's pet cat somehow ended up being one of our sister
projects. Since it's not very useful to most people, it remains a very
low-traffic site, and WMF doesn't put a lot of energy into it. Then a lot of
people come along and bellyache that WMF is not giving Grandma's GeoCities
cat site any support and that it's undervalued, with the assumption that
just because it is a sister project, it should be treated exactly equally to
Wikipedia, with the unproven assumption that it offers just as much
potential and just as much educational value as our "flagship" site. Of
course that's nonsense, who cares about your grandmother's cats besides her?

I do think some of the sister projects are extremely valuable (Commons in
particular; Wiktionary can be useful in some ways, same with Wikisource;
Wikibooks and Wikinews were at least nice ideas that don't seem to have been
well-suited to the Wiki process in the end), but I'm tired of the assumption
that people *should* support and care about sister projects just because
they're sister projects, without proving their usefulness or worthiness of
our support.

2011/9/12 M. Williamson 

> I do believe it means exactly that.
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:ActiveUsers includes all users with at
> least 1 edit in the last 30 days; that seems like a really low threshold
> though. I took the liberty of collecting some data based on that page:
>
> - 23 users with at least 30 edits in the last 30 days (= average 1
> edit/day)
> - 8 users with at least 100 edits in the last 30 days
> - 2 users with at least 300 edits in the last 30 days ("super active"):
> Brian McNeil and Pi zero
>
> I was a bit shocked to see these numbers myself. Seems rather low,
> especially considering Wikinews is not like Wikipedia, where you only need a
> handful of active users at one time to work on articles, but rather requires
> high activity all the time to be a successful news outlet. English Wikinews
> is, in my opinion, a failed project, at least currently. I have tried on
> several occasions to switch to Wikinews as my primary news source, each time
> I end up asking myself why on earth I did such a thing because it's almost
> useless for people who want to stay informed about current events.
>
>
> 2011/9/12 Kirill Lokshin 
>
>> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Tempodivalse > >wrote:
>>
>> > At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several
>> others
>> > (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are
>> active
>> > remaining Wikinews contributors.
>>
>>
>> Wait, does this mean that Wikinews had fewer than twenty active
>> contributors
>> prior to the fork?  Or am I horribly misinterpreting the statement here?
>>
>> Kirill
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Re: [Foundation-l] (IRC questions with tempodivalse) Re: A Wikimedia project has forked

[M. Williamson]

Kim, before you mentioned this was just a personality problem, but it seems
to go beyond that. It seems to be a structural problem augmented by
personality problems (I can think of a couple people in particular, not
naming names). The structural problems are clear to everybody but certain
prolific en. Wikinews contributors refuse to recognize that change needs to
be made or the project will just stagnate indefinitely, as it has been for a
long time now.


2011/9/12 Kim Bruning 

> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 11:58:33PM +0200, Kim Bruning wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 03:50:55PM -0500, Tempodivalse wrote:
> > > Greetings everyone,
> >
> > Heya Tempodivalse,
> >
> > I understand that a lot of this fork is due to personality
> > conflicts, rather than with WMF itself? That's be a bit of a
> >  to know WMF weren't the folks causing the trouble.
> >
>
>
>  OK, well, the primary reasons for us forking were that we
> did not like the attitudes that en.wikinews regulars had.
>  and that we felt instruction creep had taken over the
> project, bringing excess bureaucracy
>  was there no way to break off without forking?
>  No. I don't want to bash anyone in particular, but the
> remaining admins/crats are generally very wary to any proposed changes
>  and tend to regard non-Wikinewsies as people whose opinions
> are to be discounted as uninformed
>  A few days ago I pointed out the project had reached
> record-low activity levels and held them for six months - and was shouted
> down
>  nobody seemed to realise there was a problem, much less
> address it.
>
> (posted with permission)
>
> sincerely,
>Kim Bruning
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] PG rating

[M. Williamson]

Are you kidding? Pictures of mummies, a cup with a depiction of two guys
doing it that can only be noticed if you look really closely, and what is
supposed to be a depiction of intercourse but actually looks more like a
piece of stale bread? Wow.


2011/9/13 Fae 

> > Are there are pages on English Wikipedia that should be classified as PG?
>
> Good candidates that I have had a hand in improving are:
> # [[Gebelein predynastic mummies]] - surely gruesome close-ups of
> naked dead bodies are PG?
> # [[Warren Cup]] - explicit depiction of under-age homosexual anal sex
> in the lead.
> # [[Ain Sakhri lovers]] - depiction of penetrative heterosexual
> intercourse in the lead.
>
> The discussion of how to make Wikipedia "child-friendly" has a long
> history with no firm conclusion. Some would like to effectively censor
> massive areas of history and culture, whilst others will take any
> potential restriction as a direct challenge to the open movement.
>
> Cheers,
> Fae
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?

[M. Williamson]

Wiktionary is useful; perhaps you're referring to my comments, which were
not about Wiktionary at all. Wikiquote definitely does not belong as a
sister project. Maybe it is a "shining beacon" in the cesspool of internet
quote sites; well, there are lots of things the rest of the Internet does
poorly, that doesn't mean it's automatically the WMF's job to create a
project to do it better.


2011/9/13 David Richfield 

> In the discussion of the Wikinews fork (may they thrive), I picked up
> some comments predicting the death of Wiktionary and Wikiquote,
> referring to the low numbers of regular contributors.
>
> I don't think that means the projects are dying: I'm an infrequent
> contributor to both of those projects, and every time I go there,
> they're better.  Wikiquote is continually improving in coverage and
> accuracy, and Wiktionary has recently gotten new features (e.g. a
> separate citations tab) and is also going forward.  People are
> checking recent changes: last time I edited Wiktionary, I was adding
> citations to an article where the current list was in reverse
> chronological order, and I was too lazy to change it, thinking
> "someone else can fix this".  Before I got to the third citation,
> someone had fixed the sequence.
>
> The fact that progress is slowing isn't a sign of impending death.  As
> long as the wikis don't stagnate to the extent that they start to get
> taken over by spammers and trolls, I'm not going to hold a wake.
>
> As for Wikiquote being one of our less useful projects, that's
> possibly true, but only because the other projects are so awesome!
> The web is awash with crap quotation websites of with the same
> misattributed quotes being incestuously copied around - Wikiquote is
> one beacon of sanity in that whole mess.
>
> --
> David Richfield
> e^(πi)+1=0
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] PG rating

[M. Williamson]

 2011/9/13 John Vandenberg 

> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 3:40 AM, Fae  wrote:
> > On 13 September 2011 18:23, M. Williamson  wrote:
> >> Are you kidding? Pictures of mummies, a cup with a depiction of two guys
> >> doing it that can only be noticed if you look really closely, and what
> is
> >> supposed to be a depiction of intercourse but actually looks more like a
> >> piece of stale bread? Wow.
> >
> > That's rather the point of putting up these examples for illustration
> > and as a test for any proposal. Where do you draw the line?
>
> Thanks Fae.  So far there are very few documented instances of
> external regulators rating/censoring Wikipedia content.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia
>
> I think it is useful to put other what-ifs on the table to discuss.
> Most of the time we'll have good reasons to disagree with an external
> regulators desire to hide an image.  However there may be instances
> where we can fix the problem by removing gratuitous images from
> articles, and leave them in a Commons category.


Which images are "gratuitous"? Doesn't this vary based on your POV (and
degree of prudishness)? I wouldn't consider any of the images in any of the
articles Fae mentioned to be gratuitous, but some people certainly might. I
would hope that we would never resort to removing such images, which
certainly serve an educational purpose and definitely belong in those
articles, just because someone feels that they're "inappropriate". An
article about "Penis" should include an image of its subject, just like the
article "Banana" includes pictures of bananas; what I consider gratuitous is
if somebody tries to include pictures of penises in the article "Photograph"
as examples of photographs "because WP:NOTCENSORED" (for example). As long
as it illustrates the article, we shouldn't remove it just because some
person somewhere (or even a lot of people in a lot of places) finds it
objectionable. So [[pregnancy]] should keep the image of the pregnant woman;
(if someone tries to add an image of a penis saying "Penises tend to be
involved in causing pregnancy", that would be "gratuitous" I think) nudity
can be educational and illustrative without being pornographic. All of the
articles Fae mentioned should keep their images intact, given that the
subjects of those articles are directly depicted in the images.
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Re: [Foundation-l] On Wikinews

[M. Williamson]

Only the English Wikipedia, and while en.wp is our most successful project
so far, there are other successful Wikipedias that were formed only through
community efforts with no paid editors.


2011/9/14 Kim Bruning 

> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 07:17:49PM +0100, Thomas Morton wrote:
> > The elephant in the room in all this is that Wikinews lacks the critical
> > mass of editors to overcome these issues.
> >
> > So...
> >
> > Producing a functional daily news outlet (website) requires a substantial
> > full time staff... of course so does an encyclopaedia, but an
> encyclopaedia
> > doesn't have a weekly time limit on story completion... so we can adopt a
> > more leisurely model.
>
>
> Actually, wikipedia did have a paid full-time editor at bootup. Perhaps
> wikinews needs something similar, and never really booted properly, due
> to lack of it?
>
> sincerely,
>Kim Bruning
>
> --
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

It's not irrelevant because if approved, it could be added to list of
pending name changes.

As far as codes representing macrolanguages, ku: is clearly a different
situation than ar.wp. Arabic is a group of languages with a single unifying
"macro" standard, which speakers of all Arabic languages learn in school.
Every speaker of any Arabic language - Iraqi, Egyptian, Lebanese, Moroccan,
etc. - will readily agree that Modern Standard Arabic is part of their
cultural and linguistic tradition. For this reason, the situation makes
sense.

This is decidedly not the case with ku. Unlike with ar.wp, there are 5
different languages with more or less equal status. There is no "Modern
Standard Kurdish". Imagine if Modern Standard Arabic didn't exist, and
Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia was housed at http://ar.wikipedia.org/ domain.
This would be unfair to other Arabic languages, would it not? Well, this is
the situation with Kurdish languages at the moment.

http://ku.wikipedia.org/ : interface and mainpage and almost all content in
Kurmanji language
http://ckb.wikipedia.org/ : interface and mainpage and all content in Sorani
language
http://diq.wikipedia.org/ : interface and mainpage and all content in Zazaki
language (which may or may not be a Kurdish language)
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/sdh : Southern Kurdish
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kiu : Kirmanjki

Now, as White Cat already mentioned, it is simply not neutral for us to
imply, by housing the Kurmanji Wikipedia at the language code for "Kurdish",
that Kurmanji is the 'default' Kurdish, when this is not the case. In fact,
Sorani is the only variety of Kurdish that has official status in any
country, being the co-official language of Iraq. Also, in comparison with
your case (re:Arabic), Modern Standard Arabic (used at ar.wp) *is* the
'default' Arabic. So this is not a parallel situation and should not be
treated as such, and a technical backlog is no reason to ignore it.



2011/9/16 Gerard Meijssen 

> Hoi,
> The argument for or against using ku.wikipedia.org are interesting but at
> this time rather irrelevant.There is a long list of pending name changes
> waiting to happen. Also we are quite happy to keep codes that are in fact
> representing macro languages  like ar or Arabic.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> 2011/9/16 とある白い猫 
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > It is proposed that Kurdish (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_language
> > )
> > wikipedia (ku.wikipedia) be renamed to Kurmanji wikipedia (kmr.wikipedia)
> > as
> > currently ku.wikipedia predominantly hosts a single dialect which is
> > Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. Local community oppose the proposal so far.
> >
> > I'd like to explain some background behind the proposal. Kurdish
> wikipedia
> > had been hosting multiple dialects since its creation. The three main
> > dialects (in terms of article count) have been Zazaki (1.5-2.5 million
> > speakers), Sorani (5 million speakers) and Kurmanji (9 million speakers).
> > Zazaki is only mentioned here because it was hosted by Kurdish wikipedia
> at
> > some point. Zazaki's language family is controversial as some sources put
> > it
> > as a dialect of Kurdish while others disagree with this. While details
> > surrounding the linguistic properties are irrelevant for this proposal,
> > the controversy itself is relevant.
> >
> > Kurdish as a language has no standard from and the ISO considers ku (kur)
> > to
> > be a language code for a macro-language for multiple dialects.
> Furthermore
> > said dialects are mutually unintelligible (per first Google hit:
> >
> http://www.thefellowship.info/Missions/Global-Missions/People-Groups/Kurds
> > )
> > with multiple different types of scripts such as Sorani using rtl Arabic
> > script and Kurmanji using ltr latin script and are different in both
> > grammar
> > and vocabulary. In addition Sorani is the only dialect used officially in
> > north of Iraq by the Kurdistan Regional Government and is not the most
> > common dialect of Kurdish (according to Wikipedia anyways).
> >
> >   - Zazaki dialect separated from Kurdish Wikipedia on 5 January 2007
> with
> >
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Zazaki
> > and
> >   had been steadily having an increase in article count and will
> seemingly
> >   overtake ku.wikipedia soon enough.
> >   - Sorani dialect has seperated from Kurdish wikipedia on 14 November
> >   2010 with
> >
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kurdish_(Sorani)
> > and
> >   has steady contribution despite being a very recently created wiki.
> >   - Minor dialects (in terms of article count) hosted by Kurdish
> wikipedia
> >   already have their relevant incubator pages with Southern Kurdish
> created
> >   on 29 October 2009 (http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/sdh)
> >   and Kirmanjki created on 30 July 2008 (
> >   http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kiu).
> >
> > Currently ku.wikipedia has very few tagged artic

Re: [Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

I think there is a misunderstanding with regards to the scope of the
request. Both Kurmanji and Sorani Wikipedias actually currently are labelled
in interwiki links and bills itself sometimes as "Kurdish Wikipedia". These
are both local issues and this request is not asking them to stop that. The
only thing this request is for, is to change the language code of ku.wp. It
is improper to use a macrolanguage code for a Wikipedia that is not written
in a "unifying variety" (= fa.wp is written in official Farsi, ar.wp is
written in Modern Standard Arabic, zh.wp is written in standard written
Chinese, but there is no "Standard Kurdish" and ku.wp is just written in a
regular Kurdish variety which should be treated as equal to all other
Kurdish varieties). I am not talking about how the Wikipedia presents
itself, I am talking about how we present it, by housing it at the URI
http://ku.wikipedia.org/

In this case, I do not think anything local changed by langcom, the
foundation, or anybody else unless it creates legal problems. The only thing
this request covers is the code itself, which is currently wrong since "ku"
is a macrolanguage code but ku.wp is not truly a macrolanguage wiki.


2011/9/16 Milos Rancic 

> 2011/9/16 M. Williamson :
> > It's not irrelevant because if approved, it could be added to list of
> > pending name changes.
>
> The problem with the request is that it's not in the scope of Language
> committee. Renaming "zh-min-nan" into "nan" is in the scope, as it
> deals with simple code change. Renaming "als" into "" is
> also inside of the LangCom scope, as "als" is not proper code. At the
> other side, stability requires that "fa" stays as "fa", as "fa" is
> implicitly Farsi (besides being "macrolanguage" Persian).
>
> However, requiring that one project doesn't include texts written in
> other language and/or requiring that one project doesn't promote
> itself as the home project for other languages which have their
> Wikimedia projects -- that's the task for community and/or WMF; likely
> for GRC. If we want to solve the problem properly. LangCom should be
> consulted in this case, but it's not LangCom's which should deal with
> dispute resolution among couple of communities.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[M. Williamson]

Yes, and as was mentioned previously this should be a very easy query to
run. People are wondering why the data isn't already available.


2011/9/16 phoebe ayers 

> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 3:15 AM, Tobias Oelgarte
>  wrote:
> > 86% of the German contributers opposed the feature. Does the same
> > pattern apply to the global poll, or was it just the difference in
> > question? We don't know as long per project data isn't released. I
> > repeatedly asked for this data for more then 2 weeks. So far, no
> > additional data was released. It somehow starts to piss me off.
> >
> > Tobias
>
> Tobias -- we all want to see the by-language correlations. It hasn't
> been done yet, as far as I know (I haven't seen anything further
> myself, nor has the rest of the board). This information isn't being
> kept from you or hidden, the analysis just doesn't exist yet.
> Patience!
>
> -- phoebe
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Any proof of this? I don't seem to see anywhere that it says that
White_Cat's nationality is Turkish. Also, that holds little relevance. I
agree with him and I am certainly not Turkish.


2011/9/16 Nathan 

> I don't think White_Cat's nomination is purely without ulterior motive,
> unfortunately. As some editors from ku.wp have alluded to, the issue of the
> name and designation of the "Kurdish Wikipedia" has ethnic and nationalist
> ramifications on both sides of the debate. Several of the ku.wp editors are
> on one side of that debate, and White_Cat (who is Turkish) is traditionally
> on the other.
>
> ~Nathan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Let me add to this that some of the same people compared my actions, in
supporting a technical move to change the ISO code of a Wikipedia, to those
of a group of Turkish soldiers who attempted to murder Kurdish women and
children. This game of nationalism and accusations is nothing new on
Wikipedia. I have been called a Russian, a Soviet, a Jew, a Kurdish
nationalist and many other things.

I was even told once that I was an official enemy of the Romanian people and
that my name and face had been stored in a secret Romanian government
database of enemies of the Romanian nation and that I would be targeted for
elimination. So please, let's keep nationality out of this. I am not Turkish
but I am a linguist and a geek and this move makes linguistic and technical
sense. I am more a supporter of the aspirations of peoples to be
independent, but I'd rather not take sides in every single geopolitical
conflict because this does not need to be tied to that. It is a simple
technical and linguistic issue with two options for a solution that should
be chosen based on common sense, not nationalist sentiments or loyalties,
and I have chosen my side without those unnecessary influences.


2011/9/16 Nathan 

> I don't think White_Cat's nomination is purely without ulterior motive,
> unfortunately. As some editors from ku.wp have alluded to, the issue of the
> name and designation of the "Kurdish Wikipedia" has ethnic and nationalist
> ramifications on both sides of the debate. Several of the ku.wp editors are
> on one side of that debate, and White_Cat (who is Turkish) is traditionally
> on the other.
>
> ~Nathan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

And if I were to ask the community to make it? I would be perfectly willing
to do the same thing. This should not be relevant in Wikimedia. If a
pedophile says "We should put a picture of a naked child on every page of
Wikipedia!", we should refute his idea on its merits, not based on the fact
that he's a pedophile. I have been thinking for a long time now that ku.wp
should be moved to kmr.wp, I am just not a big fan of all of the bureaucracy
and so avoided doing it myself. Now someone else has done it, and I support
it.

So it really bothers me that you're judging a proposal based on the
(supposed) ethnicity of the person who suggested it, especially since the
proposal has always had merit and I could've easily been the proposer
myself. If an argument has no merit, then say so based on the argument. Ad
hominem is never right, and that's actually exactly what you've done here.


2011/9/16 Nathan 

> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 7:45 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
> >
> > Let me add to this that some of the same people compared my actions, in
> > supporting a technical move to change the ISO code of a Wikipedia, to
> those
> > of a group of Turkish soldiers who attempted to murder Kurdish women and
> > children. This game of nationalism and accusations is nothing new on
> > Wikipedia. I have been called a Russian, a Soviet, a Jew, a Kurdish
> > nationalist and many other things.
> >
> > I was even told once that I was an official enemy of the Romanian people
> and
> > that my name and face had been stored in a secret Romanian government
> > database of enemies of the Romanian nation and that I would be targeted
> for
> > elimination. So please, let's keep nationality out of this. I am not
> Turkish
> > but I am a linguist and a geek and this move makes linguistic and
> technical
> > sense. I am more a supporter of the aspirations of peoples to be
> > independent, but I'd rather not take sides in every single geopolitical
> > conflict because this does not need to be tied to that. It is a simple
> > technical and linguistic issue with two options for a solution that
> should
> > be chosen based on common sense, not nationalist sentiments or loyalties,
> > and I have chosen my side without those unnecessary influences.
> >
> >
>
> Mark, your objections would make sense if I had only said "Oh by the
> way, he's Turkish." I didn't. As a matter of fact, White Cat has an
> extensive history of being subject to dispute resolution, editing
> restrictions, blocks etc. for disruptive editing with a Turkish
> nationalist point of view. While I do understand that you may
> disagree, I personally think that strongly held biases in the matter
> at hand are relevant to the decision he asks the community to make.
>
> Nathan
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Nathan, what about the fact that all the "Kurdish editors" are speakers of
Kurmanji? White Cat solicited opinions from the Sorani and Zazaki Wikipedias
but nobody from there has commented yet. It should be noted that ku.wp users
have a history of reacting angrily to the creation of Wikipedias for Kurdish
languages like Sorani, and languages that they believe to be Kurdish like
Zazaki. Gomada was seen around Meta complaining recently about the fact that
Zazaki has lots of new stub articles... why, if Gomada has never edited the
Zazaki Wikipedia before? Well, it's obvious: he doesn't want any "dialect"
Wikipedia to overtake the Kurmanji Wikipedia in number of articles.

If all Kurdish editors had been in favor of having a "Kurdish Wikipedia" as
an "emblem of their unified ethnic identity", as you claim, then there would
never have been a separate Sorani Wikipedia.


2011/9/17 Nathan 

> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 11:49 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
> > And if I were to ask the community to make it? I would be perfectly
> willing
> > to do the same thing. This should not be relevant in Wikimedia. If a
> > pedophile says "We should put a picture of a naked child on every page of
> > Wikipedia!", we should refute his idea on its merits, not based on the
> fact
> > that he's a pedophile. I have been thinking for a long time now that
> ku.wp
> > should be moved to kmr.wp, I am just not a big fan of all of the
> bureaucracy
> > and so avoided doing it myself. Now someone else has done it, and I
> support
> > it.
> >
> > So it really bothers me that you're judging a proposal based on the
> > (supposed) ethnicity of the person who suggested it, especially since the
> > proposal has always had merit and I could've easily been the proposer
> > myself. If an argument has no merit, then say so based on the argument.
> Ad
> > hominem is never right, and that's actually exactly what you've done
> here.
> >
>
> You are, again, jumping to conclusions unsupported by what I actually
> wrote. I didn't "judge the proposal" based on his ethnicity. If you
> can't be bothered to read what I've posted, then please refrain from
> further replies.
>
> ---
> Millosh wrote:
>
> If White Cat has pro-Turkish bias, he wouldn't support Sorani
> speakers, as they are "on PKK's side" and PKK is the archenemy of
> Turkey. However, much more relevant factor in inter-Kurdish disputes
> are personal and political feuds, not ethnic tension.
> ---
>
> Here's a situation where there may be unknown ramifications to the
> action requested. In a period of ethnic and political conflict between
> two groups, even minor and seemingly apolitical maneuvers may have
> larger significance not apparent to outsiders. Since we don't have all
> the details, it can be helpful to understand the background of the
> people involved in a dispute - in this case, virtually all of the
> Kurdish editors are against the proposed rename, while White Cat (who
> has an amply documented history of pro-Turkish editing which should
> not be doubted) is in favor. If, as you say, it's a purely logical and
> reasonable argument, then the nature of the two sides is an
> interesting coincidence. Perhaps the Kurdish editors prefer having a
> "Kurdish Wikipedia" as an emblem of their unified ethnic identity, or
> perhaps there are other factors at play.
>
> Nathan
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Azeri/Azerbaijani Wikipedia is a good example of a Wikipedia that is truly
available to users in both varieties, 10% of pages on the Wiki are in a
different variety and it is also featured prominently on the main page.
ku.wp users have been trying to make the case that they are the same, but
the comparison falls flat: 99% of content on ku.wp is in Kurmanji; all
content in Sorani except for 6 pages was deleted/transwikied when Sorani
Wikipedia was created, and mainpage is only available in Kurmanji, as is the
interface itself. It is clearly not a useful site to people who do not speak
Kurmanji, so there is no reason it should be located at anywhere except the
code for Kurmanji, which is kmr.


2011/9/17 Milos Rancic 

> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 18:35, M. Williamson  wrote:
> > If all Kurdish editors had been in favor of having a "Kurdish Wikipedia"
> as
> > an "emblem of their unified ethnic identity", as you claim, then there
> would
> > never have been a separate Sorani Wikipedia.
>
> That's true. For example, we have just one Azerbaijani Wikipedia with
> significant admin pool from Iran and South Azerbaijani Wikipedia
> proposal doesn't have any support. (South Azerbaijani, spoken in Iran,
> is written in Arabic script.)
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[M. Williamson]

A "dead human bodies" category that excludes mummies "because we're not
idiots" is, by definition, not neutral.


2011/9/19 Stephen Bain 

> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 12:47 AM, Tobias Oelgarte
>  wrote:
> >
> > We discussed this already and came to the conclusion, that you would
> > need hundreds of these categories to filter out most of the
> > "objectionable content".
>
> And once again, the labelling doesn't need to be perfect (nothing on a
> wiki is) if an option to hide all images by default is implemented
> (which at present there seems to be broad support for, from most
> quarters).
>
> The accuracy of filtering can then be disclaimed, with a
> recommendation that people can hide all images if they want a
> guarantee. Coarse-grained labelling is then good enough, and we can
> even adopt the position that where there is no consensus, the image
> will not be filtered.
>
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 1:17 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> >
> > I'd estimate the chances as pretty high that we're going to get a
> > thorough exploration of every possible axis that's measured for a
> > filter.
> >
> > So you're thinking to apply this only to photos, then?
>
> No. And of course artworks are being used as examples because they're
> going to present the corner cases. But all of these discussions seem
> to be proceeding on the basis that there are nothing but corner cases,
> when really (I would imagine) pretty much everything that will be
> filtered will be either:
> * actual images of human genitals [1],
> * actual images of dead human bodies, or
> * imagery subject to religious restriction.
> Almost all will be in the first two categories, and most of those in
> the first one, and will primarily be photographs.
>
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 1:29 AM, Fae  wrote:
> >
> > Er, Egyptian mummies are real bodies that would need real photographs.
> >
> > For a wealth of horrific examples that need to be censored, please
> > enjoy viewing http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mummies
>
> On the basis that the community, by and large, is not comprised wholly
> of idiots, I'm sure it will be capable of holding a sensible
> discussion as to whether images of mummies (not to forget bog bodies
> and Pompeii castings, as further examples) would be in or out of such
> a category.
>
> And again, perfection is not necessary. If someone has "dead bodies"
> filtered and sees the filtered image placeholder with the caption
> "this is an Egyptian mummy", they can elect to show that particular
> image, or decide that they would like to turn off the filter. Or if
> such a "dead bodies" filter is described as not including Egyptian
> mummies, someone could decide to hide all images by default. This
> doesn't have to be difficult.
>
> --
> [1] Which, naturally, includes actual images of people undertaking all
> sorts of activities involving human genitals.
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.b...@gmail.com
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Langcom-l] Ancient Greek reconstructed an analysis of a proposal for a new Wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Holy ancient thread revival, Batman!

This seems like a good idea... but in the case of Wikisource, wouldn't that
already be covered by multilingual Wikisource?


2011/9/20 とある白い猫 

> I think we may want a "historic texts" wikisource/wikibooks particularly
> for
> texts in now extinct languages. Something sort of like commons for historic
> texts for all extinct languages. I do not know something like this was
> proposed before.
>
>  -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 12:10, Mark Williamson  wrote:
>
> > Well, we're not discussing Latin, are we? They already have every
> > project besides Wikiversity, as far as I know, so there is no need to
> > discuss approval of Latin projects.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 18/04/2008, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
> > > Hoi,
> > >  If that is all you want to discuss, the status quo is that Ancient
> > Greek has
> > >  been denied. I do not want to discuss Ancient Greek only. If that is
> > all we
> > >  are discussing, I am done talking.
> > >  Thanks,
> > >   GerardM
> > >
> > >
> > >  On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Mark Williamson 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > >  > Stop saying Latin, we already have a Wikipedia in Latin. We are
> > >  > discussing the denial of a Wikipedia for Ancient Greek.
> > >  >
> > >  > Mark
> > >  >
> > >  > On 17/04/2008, Pharos  wrote:
> > >  > > On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 5:51 PM, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
> > >  > >   wrote:
> > >  > >  >  Further, I've painstakingly followed every thread in this
> > >  > discussion,
> > >  > >  >  and I have not seen any strong argument for allowing languages
> > >  > nobody
> > >  > >  >  uses natively. Wikimedia wikis exist to make the sum of human
> > >  > >  >  knowledge available to everyone, not to practice or preserve
> > >  > >  >  languages.
> > >  > >  >
> > >  > >  >  I think the argument that they act as a common language for
> > scholars
> > >  > >  >  of the ancient language is not valid; we are not a forum for
> > >  > academic
> > >  > >  >  exchange.
> > >  > >
> > >  > >
> > >  > > You have to remember that "everyone" includes people who consider
> > >  > >  written-only languages a part of their intellectual sphere.  If
> > >  > >  Wikimedia was around 500 years ago, would we deny Latin for
> purely
> > >  > >  ideological reasons, even though it was very widely used in
> > >  > >  literature?  And though that use has declined greatly for Latin
> > and
> > >  > >  similar classical languages, I do not think we can say that such
> a
> > use
> > >  > >  is dead, nor can we at all predict the future course for such
> > >  > >  languages.
> > >  > >
> > >  > >  And is it not true that certain topics are best researched in
> > certain
> > >  > >  languages?  If one were to collect writers from around the world
> > to
> > >  > >  write an encyclopedia article on medieval ecclesiastical history,
> > >  > >  based on the most relevant and important sources, would not the
> > >  > >  optimal language for collaboration be Latin?  And if one were to
> > write
> > >  > >  an encyclopedia article on early 20th century artificial
> > languages,
> > >  > >  would not the optimal language for collaboration be Esperanto?
> > >  > >
> > >  > >  Surely such articles, written in one context but translated into
> > many
> > >  > >  other languages, would be very valuable to all of our Wikipedia
> > >  > >  editions.
> > >  > >
> > >  > >  Not that I agree with Gerard's specific proposal, but the case
> for
> > >  > >  Wikipedias in written-only languages is quite clear to me.
> > >  > >
> > >  > >  Thanks,
> > >  > >
> > >  > > Pharos
> > >  > >
> > >  > >
> > >  > >  ___
> > >  > >  foundation-l mailing list
> > >  > >  foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > >  > >  Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >  > >
> > >  >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Meta main page

[M. Williamson]

Translatewiki.net doesn't seem to be much more usable to people who don't
speak English, coming at it from the front page. Imagine you don't speak
English, how do you suppose you go from http://translatewiki.net/ to a page
with instructions or content in your language? One needs at least
rudimentary English skills to be able to figure it out, which is an
unsatisfactory solution for what is supposed to be an international project.


2011/9/28 Gerard Meijssen 

> Hoi,
> The main page at translatewiki.net is not less complicated imho. However,
> it
> has been localised and we know quite precisely what the state of the
> translations is. We can pinpoint precisely what needs doing.
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
> 2011/9/27 とある白い猫 
>
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/de
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/en
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/es
> >
> > Few examples of the new meta main page in its templated form which allows
> > easier translation. Most translations are greatly outdated unfortunately
> > making them essentially useless. A divide and conquer strategy was
> applied.
> >
> >  -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
> >
> >
> > 2011/9/27 とある白い猫 
> >
> > > Oh, I was proposing something simpler than what I had on my commons
> > > userpage. Consider something like
> > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:White_Cat/Gen v
> > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:White_Cat/de
> > > Translators only /care/ about the text rather than the style issues and
> > > etc. It is difficult enough finding people who can translate but
> > expecting
> > > them to understand complex use of html, templates and etc is just too
> > much.
> > >
> > > The feature you mentioned would indeed be a positive thing to keep
> these
> > > pages up to date. We could also have generic translations. For example
> we
> > > expect steward elections frequently, likewise we expect a  wikimania
> each
> > > year. It would only make sense if these "current events" are templated
> on
> > > their own.
> > >
> > >   -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
> > >
> > >
> > > 2011/9/27 Mono mium 
> > >
> > >> Might make sense.
> > >>
> > >> 2011/9/26 とある白い猫 
> > >>
> > >> > Meta main page seems to be not very multi-lingual because it appears
> > to
> > >> be
> > >> > difficult to update. Each translation is more or less outdated and
> > often
> > >> > with an outdated/older style. I propose a template structure where
> > style
> > >> > info is "removed" into a template and translations only deal with
> > words.
> > >> >
> > >> > Feel free to comment at:
> > >> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Templates
> > >> >
> > >> >  -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
> > >> > ___
> > >> > foundation-l mailing list
> > >> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > >> > Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >> >
> > >> ___
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> > >>
> > >
> > >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Meta main page

[M. Williamson]

No reason not to allow users to select their own language easily, especially
given that browser language preferences and location are anything but a
surefire predictor of language preference.


2011/9/28 Gerard Meijssen 

> Hoi,
> Easy.. we recognise where someone is coming from ... check the browser
> language and dependend on all this we serve what is likely a good match.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> 2011/9/28 M. Williamson 
>
> > Translatewiki.net doesn't seem to be much more usable to people who don't
> > speak English, coming at it from the front page. Imagine you don't speak
> > English, how do you suppose you go from http://translatewiki.net/ to a
> > page
> > with instructions or content in your language? One needs at least
> > rudimentary English skills to be able to figure it out, which is an
> > unsatisfactory solution for what is supposed to be an international
> > project.
> >
> >
> > 2011/9/28 Gerard Meijssen 
> >
> > > Hoi,
> > > The main page at translatewiki.net is not less complicated imho.
> > However,
> > > it
> > > has been localised and we know quite precisely what the state of the
> > > translations is. We can pinpoint precisely what needs doing.
> > > Thanks,
> > >  GerardM
> > >
> > > 2011/9/27 とある白い猫 
> > >
> > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/de
> > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/en
> > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/es
> > > >
> > > > Few examples of the new meta main page in its templated form which
> > allows
> > > > easier translation. Most translations are greatly outdated
> > unfortunately
> > > > making them essentially useless. A divide and conquer strategy was
> > > applied.
> > > >
> > > >  -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > 2011/9/27 とある白い猫 
> > > >
> > > > > Oh, I was proposing something simpler than what I had on my commons
> > > > > userpage. Consider something like
> > > > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:White_Cat/Gen v
> > > > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:White_Cat/de
> > > > > Translators only /care/ about the text rather than the style issues
> > and
> > > > > etc. It is difficult enough finding people who can translate but
> > > > expecting
> > > > > them to understand complex use of html, templates and etc is just
> too
> > > > much.
> > > > >
> > > > > The feature you mentioned would indeed be a positive thing to keep
> > > these
> > > > > pages up to date. We could also have generic translations. For
> > example
> > > we
> > > > > expect steward elections frequently, likewise we expect a
>  wikimania
> > > each
> > > > > year. It would only make sense if these "current events" are
> > templated
> > > on
> > > > > their own.
> > > > >
> > > > >   -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > 2011/9/27 Mono mium 
> > > > >
> > > > >> Might make sense.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> 2011/9/26 とある白い猫 
> > > > >>
> > > > >> > Meta main page seems to be not very multi-lingual because it
> > appears
> > > > to
> > > > >> be
> > > > >> > difficult to update. Each translation is more or less outdated
> and
> > > > often
> > > > >> > with an outdated/older style. I propose a template structure
> where
> > > > style
> > > > >> > info is "removed" into a template and translations only deal
> with
> > > > words.
> > > > >> >
> > > > >> > Feel free to comment at:
> > > > >> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Templates
> > > > >> >
> > > > >> >  -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
> > > > >> > ___
> > > > >> > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > >> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > >> > Unsubscribe:
> > > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > > >> >
> 

Re: [Foundation-l] Meta main page

[M. Williamson]

Yes, my browser language is Spanish and I got the page in English. Also, in
response to Gerard's comment: "Obviously, you can select any language you
like." - well, where? Where is the language selector? I don't see it
anywhere. There doesn't appear to be a language list, a selector, a button
or anything like that...


2011/9/29 Béria Lima 

> >
> > *Easy.. we recognise where someone is coming from ... check the browser
> > language and dependend on all this we serve what is likely a good match.
> > *
>
>
> No it doesn't. I live in Portugal and my Firefox and my Opera are in
> Portuguese and - If I don't log in - they only show me the English version
> of Main Page. If I do log in, I see the Portuguese one because my language
> -
> In Special:Preferences - is Portuguese.
> _
> *Béria Lima*
> <http://wikimedia.pt/>(351) 925 171 484
>
> *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre
> acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a
> fazer <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos>.*
>
>
> On 29 September 2011 05:23, Gerard Meijssen  >wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Easy.. we recognise where someone is coming from ... check the browser
> > language and dependend on all this we serve what is likely a good match.
> > Thanks,
> >   GerardM
> >
> > 2011/9/28 M. Williamson 
> >
> > > Translatewiki.net doesn't seem to be much more usable to people who
> don't
> > > speak English, coming at it from the front page. Imagine you don't
> speak
> > > English, how do you suppose you go from http://translatewiki.net/ to a
> > > page
> > > with instructions or content in your language? One needs at least
> > > rudimentary English skills to be able to figure it out, which is an
> > > unsatisfactory solution for what is supposed to be an international
> > > project.
> > >
> > >
> > > 2011/9/28 Gerard Meijssen 
> > >
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > The main page at translatewiki.net is not less complicated imho.
> > > However,
> > > > it
> > > > has been localised and we know quite precisely what the state of the
> > > > translations is. We can pinpoint precisely what needs doing.
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >  GerardM
> > > >
> > > > 2011/9/27 とある白い猫 
> > > >
> > > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/de
> > > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/en
> > > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/es
> > > > >
> > > > > Few examples of the new meta main page in its templated form which
> > > allows
> > > > > easier translation. Most translations are greatly outdated
> > > unfortunately
> > > > > making them essentially useless. A divide and conquer strategy was
> > > > applied.
> > > > >
> > > > >  -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > 2011/9/27 とある白い猫 
> > > > >
> > > > > > Oh, I was proposing something simpler than what I had on my
> commons
> > > > > > userpage. Consider something like
> > > > > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:White_Cat/Gen v
> > > > > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:White_Cat/de
> > > > > > Translators only /care/ about the text rather than the style
> issues
> > > and
> > > > > > etc. It is difficult enough finding people who can translate but
> > > > > expecting
> > > > > > them to understand complex use of html, templates and etc is just
> > too
> > > > > much.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The feature you mentioned would indeed be a positive thing to
> keep
> > > > these
> > > > > > pages up to date. We could also have generic translations. For
> > > example
> > > > we
> > > > > > expect steward elections frequently, likewise we expect a
> >  wikimania
> > > > each
> > > > > > year. It would only make sense if these "current events" are
> > > templated
> > > > on
> > > > > > their own.
> > > > > >
> > > > > >   -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> 

Re: [Foundation-l] Meta main page

[M. Williamson]

And of course this is a huge usability problem. Imagine I'm travelling in
the Netherlands and use a public computer in an Internet cafe. I don't have
an account on TranslateWiki, the auto language select is actually working
(it doesn't appear to be working right now), and I don't speak a word of
Dutch. There is no reason to not have a language selector like on Commons,
or some kind of list or bar somewhere on the mainpage to let users switch.


2011/9/29 Béria Lima 

> M. Williamson, the only way to see the Main Page in other language is log
> in, going to http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Preferences and change
> it
> to Spanish (which I'm guessing is your native language).
>
> As a IP is impossible (at least for me) and before someone complain: Yes,
> I'm sure my IP is identified as been Portuguese.
> _
> *Béria Lima*
> <http://wikimedia.pt/>(351) 925 171 484
>
> *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre
> acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a
> fazer <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos>.*
>
>
> On 29 September 2011 10:28, M. Williamson  wrote:
>
> > Yes, my browser language is Spanish and I got the page in English. Also,
> in
> > response to Gerard's comment: "Obviously, you can select any language you
> > like." - well, where? Where is the language selector? I don't see it
> > anywhere. There doesn't appear to be a language list, a selector, a
> button
> > or anything like that...
> >
> >
> > 2011/9/29 Béria Lima 
> >
> > > >
> > > > *Easy.. we recognise where someone is coming from ... check the
> browser
> > > > language and dependend on all this we serve what is likely a good
> > match.
> > > > *
> > >
> > >
> > > No it doesn't. I live in Portugal and my Firefox and my Opera are in
> > > Portuguese and - If I don't log in - they only show me the English
> > version
> > > of Main Page. If I do log in, I see the Portuguese one because my
> > language
> > > -
> > > In Special:Preferences - is Portuguese.
> > > _
> > > *Béria Lima*
> > > <http://wikimedia.pt/>(351) 925 171 484
> > >
> > > *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> > > livre
> > > acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos
> a
> > > fazer <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos>.*
> > >
> > >
> > > On 29 September 2011 05:23, Gerard Meijssen  > > >wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > Easy.. we recognise where someone is coming from ... check the
> browser
> > > > language and dependend on all this we serve what is likely a good
> > match.
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >   GerardM
> > > >
> > > > 2011/9/28 M. Williamson 
> > > >
> > > > > Translatewiki.net doesn't seem to be much more usable to people who
> > > don't
> > > > > speak English, coming at it from the front page. Imagine you don't
> > > speak
> > > > > English, how do you suppose you go from http://translatewiki.net/to
> > a
> > > > > page
> > > > > with instructions or content in your language? One needs at least
> > > > > rudimentary English skills to be able to figure it out, which is an
> > > > > unsatisfactory solution for what is supposed to be an international
> > > > > project.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > 2011/9/28 Gerard Meijssen 
> > > > >
> > > > > > Hoi,
> > > > > > The main page at translatewiki.net is not less complicated imho.
> > > > > However,
> > > > > > it
> > > > > > has been localised and we know quite precisely what the state of
> > the
> > > > > > translations is. We can pinpoint precisely what needs doing.
> > > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > >  GerardM
> > > > > >
> > > > > > 2011/9/27 とある白い猫 
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/de
> > > > > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/en
> > > > > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Template/es
> > > > > > >
> > > > > &

Re: [Foundation-l] Meta main page

[M. Williamson]

Yes, when I went to commons I was pleased to get a notice that said
"Wikimedia Commons está disponible en español" at the top of the page.
Doesn't obligate the user to change, and the language chooser bar offers the
user a plethora of other choices in case the language guess was wrong. Would
be nice to see the same thing on Meta. And while we're at it, why isn't
Wikispecies more multilingual?

2011/9/29 Strainu 

> 2011/9/29 Béria Lima :
> > As a IP is impossible (at least for me) and before someone complain: Yes,
> > I'm sure my IP is identified as been Portuguese.
>
> Wikimedia Commons offers anonymous users the possibility to see the
> site in their  (guessed) language AFAIK. I'm sure it's not rocket
> science to port that to meta if necessary.
>
> Perhaps you should log a bug on that?
>
> Strainu
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Meta main page

[M. Williamson]

...and Nikerabbit removed it giving only the explanation: "not here, per
Nikerabbit (would have already fixed the real issues if only somebody had
told me)"

It seems like he's saying that someone should've let him know about the
autoselection issue, but he doesn't seem to agree that _even with_ auto
language selection, the user should still be able to choose a different
language manually on the mainpage.

2011/9/29 Robin Pepermans 

> You can go to http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Main_Page?setlang=es but
> that's obviously not something everyone knows. I once added a language
> selector but it was removed at some point. I added it back now.
>
> 2011/9/29 M. Williamson :
> > Yes, when I went to commons I was pleased to get a notice that said
> > "Wikimedia Commons está disponible en español" at the top of the page.
> > Doesn't obligate the user to change, and the language chooser bar offers
> the
> > user a plethora of other choices in case the language guess was wrong.
> Would
> > be nice to see the same thing on Meta. And while we're at it, why isn't
> > Wikispecies more multilingual?
> >
> > 2011/9/29 Strainu 
> >
> >> 2011/9/29 Béria Lima :
> >> > As a IP is impossible (at least for me) and before someone complain:
> Yes,
> >> > I'm sure my IP is identified as been Portuguese.
> >>
> >> Wikimedia Commons offers anonymous users the possibility to see the
> >> site in their  (guessed) language AFAIK. I'm sure it's not rocket
> >> science to port that to meta if necessary.
> >>
> >> Perhaps you should log a bug on that?
> >>
> >> Strainu
> >>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Possible solution for image filter

[M. Williamson]

+1

2011/9/21 Béria Lima 

> +1
> _
> *Béria Lima*
>
> *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre
> acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a
> fazer .*
>
>
> On 21 September 2011 08:11, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen  >wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 4:53 AM, Fajro  wrote:
> > > On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 10:47 PM, Milos Rancic 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > >> Thoughts?
> > >>
> > >
> > > I am against anything that validates the image filter.
> > >
> > > I still believe that the filter is against the mission of the
> foundation.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Fajro
> > >
> >
> > +1
> >
> >
> > --
> > --
> > Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
> >
> > ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] Blanking a Wikipedia, a very bad idea

[M. Williamson]

Another important point here is that Wikipedia is an international project;
there are speakers of Italian in Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and
in smaller numbers in lots of other countries who may not care so much what
happens in Italian politics. If the UK proposed a new law to shut down
Wikipedia, what would US, Australian, Canadian and other non-UK users say if
sysops tried to shut down en.wikipedia for everybody? Granted, the Italian
language doesn't have the same level of multinational character as en.wp,
but Wikipedias are for languages, not countries, and we can't forget this.

2011/10/4 Mathias Schindler 

> On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 22:32, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>
> > No, it is a very good idea. The public needs to know what is at stake. It
> > would be nice if it were otherwise, but most people only learn by
> > experience.
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_English_is_an_official_language
> makes me wonder if we are going to have fun at en.wikipedia.org any
> time soon.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Blanking a Wikipedia, a very bad idea

[M. Williamson]

Editors aren't the only people who use Wikipedia.

2011/10/4 Jalo 

> >
> > Is the Kiribati based community (or a part of it) of Wikipedians allowed
> > to block en.wikipedia.org for x hours because a new Kiribatian (sp?)
> > media law might come?
> >
> > Mathias
> >
>
> You're right, 2-3% of it.wikip users live outside of Italy, but this new
> law
> will affect every page in which a user that live in Italy save a single
> page
> version (that is 100% of articles).
>
> Kiribatian users edits all en.wikip articles?
>
> 100% of articles may be written by the person to which the article refers,
> and all these articles will be blocked infinite. Maybe this scenario, this
> italian law, is a little bit worst than a Kiribati law?
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Re: [Foundation-l] WMF blog post on Italian Wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

If you don't even think that is a comparable situation, then you clearly
don't understand at all what some people think the image filter is all
about.

2011/10/5 Lodewijk 

> If you even think that is a comparable situation, then you clearly don't
> understand at all what this law is all about.
>
> Lodewijk
>
> No dia 5 de Outubro de 2011 09:39, emijrp  escreveu:
>
> > "The Wikimedia Foundation supports the rights of all people to access our
> > free knowledge content everywhere in the world"
> >
> > The Wikimedia Foundation supports a damn.
> >
> > Now, all Wikipedias know that it is allowed to blank the entire site when
> > community doesn't like things. For example, the image filter.
> >
> > 2011/10/5 Jay Walsh 
> >
> > > Hi folks - apologies for starting a new thread on this topic...
> > >
> > > We've just posted a short blog post on the topic of the unfolding
> issues
> > > around Italian Wikipedia
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/04/regarding-recent-events-on-italian-wikipedia/
> > >
> > > We've had a few calls to WMF - not many, and we've responded with the
> > basic
> > > messages in this post.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > jay
> > >
> > > --
> > > Jay Walsh
> > > Head of Communications
> > > WikimediaFoundation.org
> > > blog.wikimedia.org
> > > +1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw
> > > ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] WMF blog post on Italian Wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

Jalo, it's all about perception: perceived effects and perceived
consequences. People's reactions are based on their perceptions and
judgements, since we're not robots. So if a group of people perceives it to
be equally bad, they may take an equal action, regardless of whether or not
you agree with their action. Acehnese Wikipedians decided to leave Wikimedia
altogether over an issue they clearly felt to be comparable, regardless of
what you or I may think of it.


2011/10/5 Jalo 

> >
> > If you don't even think that is a comparable situation, then you clearly
> > don't understand at all what some people think the image filter is all
> > about.
> >
>
> You're comparing a wiki without images with a world (the italian world)
> without wiki.  To me, it seems to be "slightly" different
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Re: [Foundation-l] Show community consensus for Wikilove

[M. Williamson]

So... Wikilove is enabled on all Wikis only by consensus... except en.wp,
where it was pushed out with no consensus and as far as I can tell, no
research yet proving it had any results?


2011/10/29 Gerard Meijssen 

> Hoi,
> Given that the English Wikipedia has a problem, its page views is going
> down for instance, there is a well documented division between the oldies
> and the newbies. There is a natural attrition as well as open conflict
> resulting in their being not as many editors as there used to be.
>
> Wikilove, the dashboard are all mechanisms to show appreciation and learn
> from newbies. This functionality is developed with the English Wikipedia in
> mind.
>
> My question what is the point in stagnating in old functionality when the
> established community is to approve new features especially new features
> not addressing the needs of the established community and seeking consensus
> only once these features have been developed?
>
> With respect, these features are introduced, experience is gained and
> consequently these features will be adapted. Does constant community
> consensus make sense and if so what is it that you hope to achieve? How is
> a no going to help given the need for a more healthy English community ?
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
> On 29 October 2011 14:49, WereSpielChequers  >wrote:
>
> > > Message: 1
> > > Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:31:07 -0700
> > > From: Brandon Harris 
> > > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] On certain shallow, American-centered,
> > >foolish software initiatives backed by WMF
> > > To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Message-ID: <4eab2d2b.3020...@wikimedia.org>
> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On 10/28/11 3:27 PM, Etienne Beaule wrote:
> > > > It's disabled on certain wikis because of technical problems.
> > > >
> > >
> > >Oh? I wasn't aware that it had been disabled anywhere as yet.
> > >
> > >WikiLove was not rolled out "en mass"; the policy for deployment
> > of
> > > the
> > > tool is that it is by request only, and the requesting wiki must:
> > >
> > >a) Make sure the tool is localized (via TranslateWiki);
> > >b) Make sure they have a local configuration; and
> > >c) Show community consensus.
> > >
> > >So if it was enabled and then *disabled*, I have not heard of
> > this.
> > >  Is
> > > there a bug report I can look to?  Or if you know of a wiki where this
> > > is the case, I can do a search.
> > >
> > >Thanks!
> > >
> > >-b.
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
> > >
> > > Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
> > >
> > >
> > Good to hear that wikilove is only going in on wikis where there is
> > consensus for it. Can anyone give me a link to the discussion that
> > established consensus on EN wikipedia? The nearest I could find was
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29/Archive_33#Thoughts_on_WikiLove.3F
> >
> > Ta
> >
> > WerepielChequers
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Re: [Foundation-l] Occupy events: Are you OK?

[M. Williamson]

I have not participated much in the Occupy protest in my city, but I can
report that Pancho Ramos Stierle, who I spent time in jail with here in
Phoenix because of our protests over the discriminatory immigration law
that went into effect last year, was arrested in Oakland as part of the
Occupy Oakland movement. You can read more here:

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_19357440

To make a long story short, there is now a possibility that he will be
deported to Mexico, although he is well known for his good work with the
community and has helped countless people.

My significant other's best friend was arrested in OWS in New York City
several weeks ago as well but she has been released since then.

2011/11/17 Milos Rancic 

> I came from pub and before going to bed, I checked emails and news.
> And I saw that the conflict with police is escalating. As many
> Wikimedians participate in OWS and other Occupy protests in US, it
> would be good that you report here what's going on with you.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Finnish MP FAIL!!!

[M. Williamson]

Which article was it?


2011/11/19 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 

> Not sure if this is appropriate for this list, but just for lulz. A
> finnish member of
> parliament just got caught for his speech being a word for word piece of
> snippets from a Finnish Wikipedia article. No intervening binding lines,
> just
> the Wikipedia text. Way to go!!!
>
> --
> --
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

[M. Williamson]

How about,

"What we are doing now: In response to community outcry, we have decided
not to repost such banners, rather than talking down to the community and
telling them they have misunderstood people's intentions".

I'm tired of the Foundation making unpopular decisions and then talking
down to the community, implying that the community merely doesn't
understand, and if we did, we'd accept it.


2011/12/9 Dario Taraborelli 

> I’d like to give everybody on this list some information on the
> Berkman/Sciences Po research project that many of you have been discussing
> here.
>
> On Thursday the Wikimedia Foundation announced the launch of a banner to
> support a study led by a team at the Berkman Center/Sciences Po and
> recruiting participants from the English Wikipedia editor community [1].
> The banner was taken down within hours of its launch after concerns raised
> in various community forums (the Admin Noticeboard [2], the Village Pump
> Tech [3], various IRC channels and mailing lists such as foundation-l [4]
> and internal-l [5]) that the design was confusing, that it was perceived as
> a commercial ad and that the community approval process and privacy terms
> were unclear and hardly visible.
>
> Here’s what happened until the launch, what went wrong after the launch
> and what we are planning to do next.
>
> ==The prequel==
> This proposal went through a long review process, involving community
> forums, the Research Committee and various WMF departments since early 2010.
>
> The Berkman research team first approached WMF to discuss this study in
> January 2010. They suggested a protocol to recruit English Wikipedia
> contributors to participate in an early version of this study by March 2010
> and posted a proposal to the Administrators’ noticeboard to get community
> feedback [6]. The community response at that time opposed the proposed
> recruitment protocol (posting individual invitation messages on user talk
> pages). It was suggested instead that the recruitment should be handled
> through a CentralNotice banner to be displayed to registered editors, but
> concerns were raised on how to minimize the disruption.
>
> To address these concerns, the proposal went through a full review with
> the Wikimedia Research Committee, that was completed in July 2011. The RCom
> evaluated the methods, the recruitment strategy, the language used in the
> survey and approved the proposal pending a final solution for the
> recruitment taking into account the concerns expressed by the community [7].
>
> Based on suggestions made by community members (e.g. [8]) the research
> team started to work on a technical solution to selectively display a
> banner to a subset of registered editors of the English Wikipedia meeting
> certain eligibility conditions. WMF agreed to invest engineering effort
> into a system that would allow CentralNotice to serve contents to a
> specific set of editors –  functionality that would benefit future
> campaigns run by the community, chapters or the Foundation [9] [10].
>
> A new CentralNotice backend was then designed to look up various editor
> metrics (i.e. number of contributions, account registration date and editor
> privileges) – all public information available from our database – and to
> perform a participant eligibility check against these metrics. A banner
> would then be displayed to eligible participants, posting the above data
> (user ID + editor metrics) along with a unique token to the server hosting
> the survey upon clicking. On the landing page of the survey, participants
> would have the possibility to read the privacy terms of the survey and
> decide whether to take it or not.
>
> Throughout the review process of this recruitment protocol, the research
> team received constant feedback from the Foundation’s legal team, the
> community department, the tech department and the communication team before
> the campaign went live.
>
> The campaign was announced in the CentralNotice calendar one month before
> its launch [11] and the launch was with a post on the Foundation’s blog.
> The banner was enabled on December 8 at 11:00pm UTC. 800+ participants
> completed the study within a few hours since its launch. The banner was
> then taken down by a meta-admin a few hours after the launch due to the
> concerns described above.
>
> So what went wrong?
>
> ==A few explanations we owe you==
>
> • Is the Foundation running ads?
> No, this banner is a recruitment campaign for a research project that has
> been thoroughly reviewed by the Research Committee. We have a long
> tradition of supporting recruitment for research about our communities via
> various sitenotices. The methodology of this project is sound and the
> recruitment method less invasive than thousands of individual messages
> posted on user talk pages. We believe this research will help advance our
> understanding of the dynamics of participation in our projects. Receiving
> support by the Research Committee

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

[M. Williamson]

Zachary, contrary to characterizations made by others on this thread,
that is exactly what happened. The Wiki was active, there were users
creating articles, but unfortunately political considerations took top
priority in a community vote that was held, which essentially pitted
Russians against Romanians, with minimal Moldovan input and 0 input
from Transnistria, the main territory where Cyrillic Moldovan is used.
The Romanians were able to get more votes by posting a sitenotice on
ro.wp, and the mo.wp Wiki was suddenly locked.

Now Marcus has proposed a solution where there is 0 content in
Cyrillic Moldovan until a converter is up and running, which I have a
feeling will probably never come to fruition, which is why I have
proposed that as a precondition for any final deletion of the mo.wp.
Then, in Marcus' proposal, the Cyrillic converter would be read-only,
so users of Cyrillic Moldovan would be unable to contribute in their
own language and script on their Wikipedia, which violates the Wiki
principle of "anybody can contribute".

My proposal: Move mo.wp to mo-cyrl.wp or ro-cyrl.wp as an interim
measure. Create converter, once converter is created AND enabled,
delete mo-cyrl.wp.

-m.

2010/10/3 Zachary Harden :
>
> Greetings,
>
>> We don't do this if the project is valid, just inactive and can restart
>> at a later date. But we usually remove projects entirely if they are
>> closed forever. See tokipona.wikipedia.org or tlh.wikipedia.org.
>>
>> Marcus Buck
>> User:Slomox
>
>
> The project was active, but judging by the comments made before and after the 
> closure, it was closed due to a political spat (like a lot of projects coming 
> from the Eastern Bloc).
>
> Regards,
>
> Zachary Harden
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Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

2010/10/4 Samuel Klein :
> Is there any opposition to naming such a temporary project ro-cyrl?
> In your proposal, the converter would eventually be available (as a
> user pref) on ro.wp?

I agree that it should be called ro-cyrl as mo is no longer considered
a valid ISO code, but thinking of that raises an additional problem:
Romanian, like Catalan, is in the relatively uncommon situation of
having two groups of speakers who call it two different things, in
spite of being able to understand each other. Calling Moldovan Latin
text "Romanian" is common and understood, but in Transnistria,
"Romanian" generally means "Latin-script" and "Moldovan" means
"Cyrillic text", though I suppose this could be solved by simply
having a different landing page for Cyrillic users to avoid a
confusing situation.

I do think the converter should be available as a user pref on ro.wp,
but not hidden away somewhere, it should be a tab like on sr.wp or
kk.wp. However, at the present state of national political sentiment,
this seems unlikely to be accepted by ro.wikipedians, many of whom
were offended by the mere idea of the language being written in
Cyrillic. Perhaps a better idea, if this is technically feasible,
would be to have a separate subdomain that was linked to the same
content, so that http://ro-cyrl.wikipedia.org/ or
http://mo-cyrl.wikipedia.org/ (or even http://ro.wikipedia.org/cyrl/
or http://mo.wikipedia.org/cyrl/ ) would automatically access the
transliterated versions of articles. Just some ideas.

Also, since mo: is considered to be a deprecated code for ro, ideally
mo: and ro: should both work for ro: content the way nb: and no: both
work for no: content.

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

That is a questionable assumption. Mo.wp's sitenotice explains that if
you'd prefer to view Moldovan content in Latin, the official alphabet
of the Republic of Moldova, you may find it at ro.wp.

I am willing to bet that most of the people who have signed these
petitions will be upset if any Cyrillic Moldovan content exists in any
form on our website, which to me is not solvable without compromising
someone's linguistic rights.

-m.

2010/10/4 Nathan :
> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 9:53 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> On 4 October 2010 14:36, Nathan  wrote:
>>
>>> Since this regularly comes up on this list, and the request is
>>> outstanding since 2006, maybe at the bottom of the to-do pile isn't
>>> the right place. Wouldn't the smartest temporary solution be to
>>> redirect mo.wp to ro.wp and move mo.wp to ro-cyrl.wp? That doesn't
>>> seem like a terribly difficult change to implement. We don't need a
>>> perfect final solution in order to make a reasonable interim change
>>> that will likely satisfy most if not all parties.
>>
>>
>> What would satisfy the one regular spammer who shows any care is its
>> complete removal in every regard, and nothing less. It is unclear how
>> your proposal addresses this.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
>
> Because it eliminates the suggestion that the Wikimedia Foundation
> equates Moldovan with Romanian in Cyrillic? That seems to be the crux
> of the issue...
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

2010/10/4 Nathan :
> alternate script of Romanian (i.e. mo.wp vs. ro-cyrl.wp). As for
> linguistic rights... Not really relevant, is it? But I guess the

How is it not relevant? To me, that is at the very heart of this case:
the right of a language community to exist and for us to provide
reasonable accommodations for them (or not), regardless of the
opinions of others. We don't generally and should not allow one
community to vote to exclude a language or language variety,
regardless of geopolitical issues.

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

Also, note that it is not "the Moldovans" who are being ignored. There
is one persistent spammer. Yes, it is clear people support him judging
by the petitions he's shown us, but I gave them a glance and found
many of the signatures are not from Moldovans. Here is one example of
a signature on that petition:

"The usa,the russians and so on must stop supporting the dictatorship
in Moldova and let the people free with in a country that they
own,Romania ! The communist dictator in the Moldova Republic must be
stopped,and get him out of there. That dictator Vladimir Voronin is
not only supported by usa government ,Russia government but also by
the Russia red army to destroy the Rmanian people-Romanian
culture-Romanian language on Romania soil ! R- Moldovke never
existed,this is a creation of a criminal regim inposed on people that
are under the ocupation ,the people in the province of Romania
BASARABIA speak mainly Romanian,not Arabic,Chinese,Lebanese the
russian was inposed on them by force ."

So then, much like the original vote for closing mo.wp, this turns out
to be another proxy war between Romanians and Russians.

-m.

2010/10/4 Nathan :
> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 5:03 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
>> That is a questionable assumption. Mo.wp's sitenotice explains that if
>> you'd prefer to view Moldovan content in Latin, the official alphabet
>> of the Republic of Moldova, you may find it at ro.wp.
>>
>> I am willing to bet that most of the people who have signed these
>> petitions will be upset if any Cyrillic Moldovan content exists in any
>> form on our website, which to me is not solvable without compromising
>> someone's linguistic rights.
>>
>> -m.
>
> It seems to me that identifying *the* Moldovan Wikipedia as a Cyrillic
> project is substantially different than hosting a project for an
> alternate script of Romanian (i.e. mo.wp vs. ro-cyrl.wp). As for
> linguistic rights... Not really relevant, is it? But I guess the
> problem remains getting a developer to actually do the work. The
> Foundation has been hiring a huge number of people lately, but I
> haven't seen too many tech hiring announcements - in fact, they even
> brought Brion back part-time (without announcing it here, as far as I
> could tell). I can see why the Moldovans would be frustrated by having
> been ignored for years, even as dozens of staff announcements are
> made, offices are opened in India, the projects are reskinned, etc.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

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

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

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

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

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

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

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

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

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

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

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

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

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

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

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

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

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

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

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

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

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

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

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

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

Peter, I've never heard of Wikipedia sentencing anybody to prison. I
can't support such a comparison between blocking and real-life prison.
Have you ever been jailed yourself? It is not fun. I would much rather
be blocked from all Wikimedia projects forever than spend a week in
prison, especially in China. If I'm blocked from all WM projects, I
can still go for a stroll, visit the library, go to work, choose which
food I want to eat, travel freely, spend virtually unlimited time with
loved ones, work in the community... prison does not allow for such
luxuries. By making such a comparison, you are making light of the
experiences of those of us who have ever been deprived of our liberty,
including those unlucky enough to find themselves locked in the cold,
dark confines of some remote prison with unspeakably inhumane
conditions for the majority of their lives, wrongly accused of
committing a crime they know nothing about.

-m.

2010/10/8 Peter Damian :
> I don't know why such fuss has been made in the media about this.  Under
>  Chinese law, Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese
> judicial
>  departments for violating Chinese law
> http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/461876  His own community has delivered a
>  verdict upon him: he is a criminal.  He deserves 'fair treatment' no more
>  than the trolls who have disrupted the Wikipedia deserve so-called 'fair
>  treatment'.  Those who violate community norms, such as Xiaobo (in the case
>  of China) or many of the disruptive elements who create havoc on the
> project
>  by their offensive comments and offsite attacks.  The Chinese government
>> imposed a blackout on news of the award: quite right.  This is exactly
>> what
>  would happen on Wikipedia, by means of blocks in article space, talk pages
>  and email access.  More power to the community!
>
>  Peter
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

2010/10/10 Zugravu Gheorghe :
>
>
> On 06.10.2010 02:22, M. Williamson wrote:
>> Marcus Buck wrote:
>>> Read <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_schools_in_Transnistria>.
>>> They want to switch to Latin since long but the government does
>>> everything to stop them.
>>>
>>
>> Marcus, that is a tiny minority of Moldovans in Transnistria, and that
>> article has many POV problems as well (I gave up long ago trying to
>> fix it or reach any kind of compromise - it seems it's on the
>> watchlist of every Romanian nationalist on WP).
>>
>
> Romanian schools in transnistria are not a small minority, since there
> are few transnistrian schools teaching in romanian with latin script,
> that makes, in a highly urbanizes area, few thousands pupils - they
> receive support from Moldova's ministry of education, and they study
> according to Moldovans school program. And I can assure you that they
> don't study any "moldovan language" there. The rest of the schools in
> transnistria are russian or ukrainean language schools, where they study
> "moldovan language" as a kind of foreign language. I have no statistic
> of exact how many schools are studying solely in "moldovan language" or
> how many students do actually study in this language.


I see no statistics, and in fact you are wrong; there are many
students in Cyrillic Moldovan schools, according to OSCE reports there
are 33 Moldovan (Romanian)-language schools that use Cyrillic script,
in my experience OSCE seems biased against Transnistrian position, but
even they are willing to admit there are 33 schools. We can't forget
to add bilingual schools, which appear in PMR official statistics.

> The revival of a mo.wikipedia for me is quite questionable - since,
> starting, as an imperialistic and colonial politics implemented by
> Stalin's Soviet Union "nation building" politic it is gaining thus a
> kind of legitimacy by bringing it up.

Languages and politics are often impossible to totally separate. As
long as a language variety is used by actual human beings as a
habitual code, nothing else should matter in scientific
considerations. There are two sides to every issue, Soviet language
policies cannot all be declared as evil and invalid just because you
or anybody else dislikes the regime that implemented them. The current
situation is what must be considered.

> I would like to remind that for short period of time in the 30's the
> "moldovan language" did used the latin script, but after returning back
> to kirilic few years later. Also I would like to bring up that during
> the communist era Moldova/moldovan people/romanian moldovans (underline
> what ever you find suitable for you) have undergone through a total of
> five different linguistic reforms - during the time when the grammar
> rules and vocabulary was radically changing.

Yes, and I would like to remind you that until relatively recently,
all varieties of Romanian/Moldovan were always written in Cyrillic.
Anti-Cyrillic position is to state that Moldovan Cyrillic is an
artificial, Russian-based orthography, but some Soviet linguists
stated that it was a reform of Romanian Cyrillic, which to me does not
seem entirely incredible. In fact, the old Romanian Cyrillic alphabet
was used exclusively until about the 1860s, and still used by some
until the 1920s. Moldovan Cyrillic was first used in 1926, thus an
argument can be made...

> I dont underestimate the importance of having a discussion on "moldovan
> language" from linguistic or anthropological point of view. But any
> administrative actions regarding wikipedia/wikimedia I found it very
> questionable and adequate.

I am glad that you found it adequate. As far as "questionable", it is
useful perhaps to remember that in most contentious situations, it is
impossible for everybody to walk away completely happy. I ask you, how
does the existence of text in Moldovan (Romanian) Cyrillic harm you on
a personal level? I understand the problems posed to some segments of
Moldovan society by having Cyrillic text almost exclusively at
mo.wikipedia.org, but I'm not sure I understand the issue with having
it at a less ambiguous domain such as ro-cyrl.wikipedia.org. Being
offended that someone tries to "usurp" your language name or code is
one thing, being offended that a language/script combination *exists*
is quite another, I think. Nobody compels anybody to look at such
content; if it is not housed at a domain that is claimed as your own
(such as mo.wp may be for self-declared Moldovan speakers who use the
Latin alphabet), I don't see the real problem.

-m.

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

[M. Williamson]

Gutza, the problem with such a solution is inequality of numbers.
Every time this has been discussed previously, such forums have been
dominated by Romanians from Romania with very little input from
Moldovans and 0 input from Transnistrians. This is unfair and steps
should be taken to remedy any systemic bias of this type. Although the
solution of Milos of individuals or groups negotiating privately is
not ideal, it seems to me better than rule-by-mob in which it will end
up, as on the vote for closure of mo.wp, a battle of numbers between
Russians and Romanians rather than a discussion of any substance
between informed or involved parties with different views.

-m.

2010/10/12 Gutza :
>  I've been watching the conversation on this topic from the bench.
> Milos, this is a highly sensitive issue, you can't tell "private
> parties" to settle this privately and come back with a solution -- this
> has to be settled in a public medium (if only for the consensus to be
> visible). I suggest a page on Meta, e.g.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Decision_on_Moldovan_Wikipedia
>
> Regards,
> Gutza
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

2010/10/12 Gutza :
>  Mark,
>
> You are a veteran in Wikipedia matters -- you have been involved in this
> project for several years under nickname "Node ue". You have fought in
> the Moldovan language article on en.wp for years, and you have
> single-handedly created and defended the entire mo.wiki project, from
> interface to content. As such, I am amazed by the number of
> inconsistencies in your reply:

This is a mischaracterization. I am a "veteran in Wikipedia matters",
I suppose, having been around since about 2001, but I have not edited
that article in 4 years or so, and I have barely touched
Moldova-related topics on-wiki (perhaps a total of 5 edits over the
course of the last few years). After having read your message, I can't
help but feel maligned for things I may have said a long time ago and
which I have mostly since forgotten. As a human being, my views have
changed and developed since then. I hope we can continue to respect
each other as thinking individuals.

>   1. Your wording is inflammatory ("rule-by-mob"), and your point
>      gratuitously infers an ulterior motive on my part; as far as I can
>      tell, there is no reason for such implications.

"Rule-by-mob" has been used by many people, including great thinkers
far wiser than I could ever hope to be, to refer to one of the great
flaws in the democratic process. An absolute democracy is never ideal
because the rights of minorities can easily be voted away by the
majority. That is why, in most politically-stable democracies with any
measure of ethnic diversity, there are multiple safeguards to ensure
that the rights of minorities or people who for whatever reason do not
have as loud of a political voice are not trampled. In this case, the
population of Romania is much larger than that of Moldova, and smaller
still is that of Transnistria. In addition, Moldova (excluding
Transnistria) does not enjoy the same level of internet connectivity
as does Romania, and Transnistria does not enjoy anywhere near the
same level of internet connectivity as either.

>   2. Wikipedia is governed by consensus, wherein the quality of your
>      argument weighs much more than the number of people who hold the
>      same point of view; as such, the rule-by-mob and any similar
>      arguments are moot.

This is not a local Wikipedia, this is a foundation matter. What you
are proposing is to make a decision that will affect a community
without ensuring their equal representation in such a discussion. If,
theoretically, the Romanian Wikipedia's continued existence were up
for discussion, would you feel safe going into a room of all people
who are already biased against your cause and asking them to vote on
it, knowing you were outnumbered? Our community is supposed to
function by consensus and compromise, not simple majority-rules votes,
but things are often reduced to that.

>   3. Several "interested parties" (such as myself) have been watching
>      this discussion on foundation-l for some time; as long as they had
>      nothing to comment, they kept to themselves -- this is in line
>      with Wikipedia policies regarding tacit consensus. Moving this
>      entire conversation to a private medium equals hiding the
>      decision-making process from the very interested parties it was
>      intended for. You might have not been aware of such silent parties
>      before my message here, but you were replying to the very message
>      which revealed their existence.

The idea was proposed by Milos, not myself; my own comment is that it
seems better than a free-for-all on Meta, not that it is the best
possible idea and that we should use that. I, for one, am always in
favor of greater transparency and accountability. So we are faced with
two proposals: one that allows trampling of a numerical minority by a
much larger group, and another that creates an environment of no
transparency or accountability. Neither is a really good solution in
my view, I'd like to find something better.

>   4. All of this is public, so far. As such, any "private" medium this
>      conversation could be moved to will be "invaded" by Romanian and
>      Russian "mobs". But there's a significant difference: where silent
>      parties were silent, now they would now have to voice their
>      presence in the new, "private" medium.
>
> Having said the above, please tell me how exactly you see this private
> decision-making process, from a technical point of view: which medium do
> you propose? Who would centralize all messages? When would we know we
> reached consensus, and who would decide that? How would that be proven
> to the outside world?

Again, this was not my proposal. You can refer these questions to
Milos. I don't like the idea of a free-for-all
vote/discussion/whatever on Meta that will surely be little more than
a repeat of what happened 4 years ago, but I also don't like the idea
of a secret cabal with unknown members making secret decisions in a
secret foru

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

[M. Williamson]

On the matter of the disposition of mo.wp - I have stated it several
times clearly in the other thread, that there should be some sort of
accommodation available for users of the Cyrillic alphabet that
enables both reading from and contributing to a Wikipedia, be it ro.wp
or a separate Wikipedia.

On the matter of how a decision should be reached in this matter, my
opinion is that we should learn lessons from the past and that endless
votes and debates which involve the whole community in a single page
do not seem an ideal solution; I also believe in transparency. I also
believe in protecting the rights of those who are not present or who
are underrepresented, that is my main reason for continued involvement
in this discussion.

-m.


2010/10/12 Gutza :
>  Mark,
>
> There seems to be some communication problem here. Do you actually have
> an opinion on this matter or not? If you do have an opinion, what is it?
>
> Thank you,
> Gutza
>
> On 13-Oct-10 03:36, M. Williamson wrote:
>> 2010/10/12 Gutza :
>>>  Mark,
>>>
>>> You are a veteran in Wikipedia matters -- you have been involved in this
>>> project for several years under nickname "Node ue". You have fought in
>>> the Moldovan language article on en.wp for years, and you have
>>> single-handedly created and defended the entire mo.wiki project, from
>>> interface to content. As such, I am amazed by the number of
>>> inconsistencies in your reply:
>> This is a mischaracterization. I am a "veteran in Wikipedia matters",
>> I suppose, having been around since about 2001, but I have not edited
>> that article in 4 years or so, and I have barely touched
>> Moldova-related topics on-wiki (perhaps a total of 5 edits over the
>> course of the last few years). After having read your message, I can't
>> help but feel maligned for things I may have said a long time ago and
>> which I have mostly since forgotten. As a human being, my views have
>> changed and developed since then. I hope we can continue to respect
>> each other as thinking individuals.
>>
>>>   1. Your wording is inflammatory ("rule-by-mob"), and your point
>>>      gratuitously infers an ulterior motive on my part; as far as I can
>>>      tell, there is no reason for such implications.
>> "Rule-by-mob" has been used by many people, including great thinkers
>> far wiser than I could ever hope to be, to refer to one of the great
>> flaws in the democratic process. An absolute democracy is never ideal
>> because the rights of minorities can easily be voted away by the
>> majority. That is why, in most politically-stable democracies with any
>> measure of ethnic diversity, there are multiple safeguards to ensure
>> that the rights of minorities or people who for whatever reason do not
>> have as loud of a political voice are not trampled. In this case, the
>> population of Romania is much larger than that of Moldova, and smaller
>> still is that of Transnistria. In addition, Moldova (excluding
>> Transnistria) does not enjoy the same level of internet connectivity
>> as does Romania, and Transnistria does not enjoy anywhere near the
>> same level of internet connectivity as either.
>>
>>>   2. Wikipedia is governed by consensus, wherein the quality of your
>>>      argument weighs much more than the number of people who hold the
>>>      same point of view; as such, the rule-by-mob and any similar
>>>      arguments are moot.
>> This is not a local Wikipedia, this is a foundation matter. What you
>> are proposing is to make a decision that will affect a community
>> without ensuring their equal representation in such a discussion. If,
>> theoretically, the Romanian Wikipedia's continued existence were up
>> for discussion, would you feel safe going into a room of all people
>> who are already biased against your cause and asking them to vote on
>> it, knowing you were outnumbered? Our community is supposed to
>> function by consensus and compromise, not simple majority-rules votes,
>> but things are often reduced to that.
>>
>>>   3. Several "interested parties" (such as myself) have been watching
>>>      this discussion on foundation-l for some time; as long as they had
>>>      nothing to comment, they kept to themselves -- this is in line
>>>      with Wikipedia policies regarding tacit consensus. Moving this
>>>      entire conversation to a private medium equals hiding the
>>>      decision-making process from the very interested parties it was
>>>      intended for. You might have not been aware of such sil

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

[M. Williamson]

Gutza, your #2 statement does not follow, Cyrillic has been and is
currently used, including in schools, for the Eastern
Romance/Daco-Romanian/Romanian/Moldovan/whatever variety spoken in all
or some parts of Moldova (and/or, depending on your chosen political
reality, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic).

The Thai script has never been used for English on a wide scale (read:
beyond one person, as a novelty), and certainly not by native or
heritage speakers of the English language. There is no comparison.

-m.

2010/10/12 Gutza :
>  But then we have the following contradicting statements (and both are
> yours):
>
>   1. a Wikipedia is granted to a language not a country
>   2. the Moldovan language is in fact the Romanian language (the fact
>      that it's written in Cyrillic is as relevant as proposing a
>      project for English written in Thai)
>
> So then, which *language* is this about?
>
> Gutza
>
>
> On 13-Oct-10 04:37, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> The solution of a dissolution of the mo.wikipedia is in the recognition that
>> it is Romanian language written in Cyrillic. This is the central argument
>> and, consequently the Romanian language is part of an acceptable solution.
>> Thanks,
>>       GerardM
>>
>> On 13 October 2010 03:34, Gutza  wrote:
>>
>>>  On 13-Oct-10 04:29, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
 Remember, a Wikipedia is granted to a language not a
 country.
>>> True. But which language is this about, specifically?
>>>
>>> Gutza
>>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Attack pages at Encyc. Dramatica

[M. Williamson]

Whatever happened to freedom of speech? Encyclopedia Dramatica is a
parody site. Plenty of people have tried to shut them down before,
it's unlikely to ever happen (and in my opinion, should never happen).
If they have an offensive article about you, trying to get rid of it
will probably make it worse.

2010/10/22 James Heilman :
> Encyc. Dramatica seems too take pride in creating attack pages regarding
> Wikipedians. Of course they are exposing themselves to libel suits but
> looking at some of the rest of their site this seems to be the least of
> their worries with a great deal of racist content as well as underage
> pornography.
>
> Wondering if we have any measures available to deal with these attacks
> against Wikipedia? Or have others who have considered this issue feel that
> attempting anything would 1) be futile 2) just promote the creation /
> promotion of more such content.
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Evil Book

[M. Williamson]

The issue is that this book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6131076278/

is a direct copy of the English Wikipedia article.

There are many more books like this made by the same company.


2010/11/1 KIZU Naoko :
> Well while Ryan and Fred look having a valid concern, on this particular issue
> I have no idea what you guys discuss.
>
> The article seems to be a full translation of Japanese Wikipedia
> article which seem to be based on three Japanese books (see
> "references" in the jawiki article) all in paper, not robo-books.
>
> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 5:09 AM, Ryan Kaldari  wrote:
>> It is actually becoming somewhat difficult to search for books on
>> obscure subjects on Amazon or Alibris without being completely spammed
>> with matches for "robo-books" automatically generated from Wikipedia
>> articles. Recently, I was doing research for a Wikipedia article on a
>> rather obscure type of spider, and I came very close to buying a book on
>> it before I realized that it was actually just a reprint of the content
>> I had already written for the article. So I almost paid someone for my
>> own writing! Perhaps we should put together a project to keep track of
>> these robo-book publishers so that we can start asking for some
>> royalties (or else sue them for not giving us proper credit).
>>
>> Ryan Kaldari
>>
>> On 10/31/10 9:41 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
>>> There is a book review of a 98 page book supposedly about Ukita
>>> Kōkichi (who apparently prematurely invented the hang glider)
>>>
>>> http://blog.seattlepi.com/travelforaircraft/archives/226709.asp
>>>
>>> Which consists of this Wikipedia article:
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukita_K%C5%8Dkichi
>>>
>>> and a few others
>>>
>>> Listed on Amazon for 50 bucks:
>>>
>>> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6131076278/
>>>
>>> together with a bevy of other sellers:
>>>
>>> http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/6131076278/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new
>>>
>>> Fred
>>>
>>>
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>
>
>
> --
> KIZU Naoko / 木津尚子
> member of Wikimedians in Kansai  / 関西ウィキメディアユーザ会 http://kansai.wikimedia.jp
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] naming of things in kosovo

[M. Williamson]

Yes, sure, but a lot of smaller villages and towns in many countries
do not have well-established English names. Besides, what constitutes
the "English name" is a matter of debate - according to law, the
official name of Kolkata in English is "Kolkata"... but then, couldn't
Germany pass a law saying that their name in English was
"Bundesrepublik Deustchland", and would we have to consider that just
as English as "Kolkata" or "Thiruvananthapuram" (formerly Calcutta and
Trivandrum)?

Anyhow, referring to things by their conventional English name is the
reason we call it Kosovo and not Kosovë or Kosova, the Albanian names;
however in cases such as village and town names, names of mountains
and bridges, etc. which may have been referred to both ways in English
literature or barely mentioned or not mentioned at all in English
sources, it's less clear-cut.



2010/11/11 geni :
> On 11 November 2010 14:26, Mike  Dupont  
> wrote:
>>  Ideally we would use the albanian
>> names and encourage the locals to edit.
>
> No ideally we would use the English names. As we have established with
> say "Germany" and "Norway" what the locals happen to call something is
> of secondary significance.
>
>
>
> --
> geni
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Pieter Kuiper

[M. Williamson]

No, br.wikipedia.org is the Breton Wikipedia. I think Virgilio is
referring to pt.wp as the Brazilian Wikipedia because it is or he
perceives it to be dominated by Brazilians.

-m.

2010/12/6 Pedro Sanchez :
> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 5:41 PM, Virgilio A. P. Machado  
> wrote:
>> Adam,
>>
>> What a timely post. What an opportunity to test the Santa Claus
>> hierarchical structure.
>> (...)
>> If you do succeed in bringing any change to Commons through this
>> request of yours, I will follow with a similar one of my own
>> concerning the Brazilian Wikipedia, whose de facto "president"
>> (...)
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Virgilio A. P. Machado (Vapmachado)
>>
>>
>
> is that  br.wikipedia.org or.. is there a new wiki I don't know of?
> (I'm sorry to be so ignorant)
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Pieter Kuiper

[M. Williamson]

Also from your talk page:

A partir de 1 de janeiro de 2009, as normas do Acordo Ortográfico de
1990 passaram a ser usadas de forma preferencial na Wikipédia de
língua portuguesa, passando a ser redigidas em conformidade todas as
"páginas oficiais" da Wikipédia (menus, políticas, recomendações,
resolução de problemas, guias de ajuda, FAQ e glossário), bem como a
página principal e os títulos de todos os artigos. No entanto, é
mantida a liberdade de cada utilizador usar qualquer uma das três
normas ortográficas e ficam interditas quaisquer edições que visem
alterar a grafia das palavras de uma norma para outra (exceto nas
"páginas oficiais", página principal e títulos de artigos, onde as
regras de 1990 prevalecem).

Translation: From 1 January 2009, the norms of the Orthographic
Agreement of 1990 will become used preferentially in the Portuguese
language Wikipedia, with all of the "official pages" of Wikipedia
being redrafted to conform to it (menus, policies, recommendations,
problem resolution, help guides, FAQ and glossary), as well as on the
Main Page and the titles of all articles. However, the freedom of each
user to use whichever of the three orthographic norms is maintained
and any edits that seek to change the spelling of words from one norm
to the other remain prohibited (except on the "official pages", the
main page and article titles, where the 1990 rules shall prevail).

As far as I can tell, this decision was reached by consensus, and the
Acordo Ortográfico of 1990 is technically official in Portugal,
although it may not yet be used in schools.

-m.

2010/12/6 Virgilio A. P. Machado :
> Pedro,
>
> Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you or anybody. I thought people
> knew. It's the Brazilian Portuguese Wikipedia. Unfortunately, despite
> all most pious statements to the contrary, the uncontroversial truth
> is that a small group of 16 editors decided that all titles of
> articles and titles and content of Wikipedia pages would be
> "translated" into Brazilian Portuguese starting January 1, 2009.
> Since that time there is no longer a Wikipedia that a Portuguese can
> read without being full of gramatical mistakes. Think about what good
> that is for the children, the elderly, and the low educated
> Portuguese speaking population. Hey! I got my first block
> (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio_Discuss%C3%A3o:Vapmachado#Bloqueado)
> for trying to write these Wikipedia pages
> (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio:Vapmachado/Artigos_e_Coment%C3%A1rios_04#P.C3.A1ginas_do_espa.C3.A7o_Wikipedia)
> the same way as ALL my students. Kind of hard to deny based on that
> evidence, isn't it. There's more to that block than this, but this is
> already a long answer (always my problem) to a very short question.
> At least I expect to have been thorough. Any other question, please
> don't hesitate. You can always contact me in private so that we will
> reach a consensus out of the limelight.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Virgilio A. P. Machado (Vapamchado)
>
>
> At 23:59 06-12-2010, you wrote:
>>On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 5:41 PM, Virgilio A. P. Machado  
>>wrote:
>> > Adam,
>> >
>> > What a timely post. What an opportunity to test the Santa Claus
>> > hierarchical structure.
>> > (...)
>> > If you do succeed in bringing any change to Commons through this
>> > request of yours, I will follow with a similar one of my own
>> > concerning the Brazilian Wikipedia, whose de facto "president"
>> > (...)
>> > Sincerely,
>> >
>> > Virgilio A. P. Machado (Vapmachado)
>> >
>> >
>>
>>is that  br.wikipedia.org or.. is there a new wiki I don't know of?
>>(I'm sorry to be so ignorant)
>>
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>
> Prof. Virgilio A. P. Machado            ...@fct.unl.pt
> Engenharia
> Industrial
> http://web.archive.org/web/20070824105539/www.ipei.pt/GDEI/
> DEMI/FCT/UNL                    Fax:   351-21-294-8546 or 21-294-8531
> Universidade de Portugal                or 351-21-295-4461
> 2829-516 Caparica                       Tel.:  351-21-294-8542 or 21-294-8567
> PORTUGAL                                or 351-21-294-8300 or 21 294-8500
>                                         Ext.112-32
> 96-577-3726
> Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia/UNL (FCT/UNL)
>
> (Dr. Machado is Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at the
> School of Sciences and Engineering/UNL of the University of Portugal)
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Re: [Foundation-l] Brazilian Portuguese Wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

> Before signing off, and before I forget, let me
> ask another trivial question. It has been a long,
> long time since you have opened a grammar of any
> language, hasn't it? That's an easy guess,

Watch the personal attacks. I read grammars every day, it's part of my
work. Just last week I had a book in Italian and another in English,
grammars of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunama_language ; I'm
currently trying to make my way through a didactic grammar of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luise%C3%B1o_language in my spare time
and I currently have a book in front of me, which I will cite in the
work I am currently doing, called "Lenguas criollas de base lexical
espanola y portuguesa", containing articles in 3 languages (Spanish,
Portuguese and English). My bookshelves are filled with grammars of
various languages. So I'll thank you to cease your personal attacks.

-m.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for assistance

[M. Williamson]

Virgilio:

Many thanks for the information. I have, after reviewing the evidence
you presented, casted my vote in support of Peter Symonds' adminship
on Meta.

Muito obrigado pela informação. Depois de avaliar a evidência
apresentada, votei a favor da proposta da concessão de poderes
administrativos a Peter Symonds em Meta.

-m.

2011/1/5 Virgilio A. P. Machado :
> To all women and men of good faith who are members of this mailing list,
> please check the following pages:
>
> 1) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_adminship/PeterSymonds
>
> 2)
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta_talk:Requests_for_adminship/PeterSymonds
>
> 3)
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#Vapmachado_.28talk_.E2.80.A2_contribs.29_-_ban_request
>
> 4) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Vapmachado#Block
>
> 5)
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User%3AVapmachado&type=block
>
> 6) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Vapmachado
>
> and any further information on the user page:
>
> 7) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Vapmachado
>
> Please let me know:
>
> a) why my request for unblock was never answered,
>
> b) where on page (2) are the occurrences of "harassment,"
>
> c) if after Dec. 23, "he's just returned to do the same thing that lead
> him to be blocked in the first instance.",
>
> d) where are the occurrences of "continued hostile behavior,"
>
> e) towards what or whom is that "continued hostile behavior,"
>
> f) why my "interesting history" of "cross-wiki" pioneering achievements is
> never mentioned, a clear violation of a NPOV in decision making.
>
> The accusations of "meatpuppetry and privacy violations" based on highly
> controverted and irregular cases, may still turn out to be defamatory, and
> it is not very wise to use them to attack the reputation, honor and good
> name of this user.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Virgilio A. P. Machado
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for assistance

[M. Williamson]

Muito obrigado Sr. Lima, peço desculpas pelo meu "portunhol".

Hope this new year is a good one for you and everybody else.

-m

2011/1/5 Béria Lima :
> Correction in your portuguese phrase:
>
> "Depois de avaliar a*s* evidência*s* apresentada*s*, votei a favor da
> proposta d*e* concessão de poderes administrativos a Peter Symonds *no*Meta."
> 
> *Béria Lima (Beh)
> *
>
>
> 2011/1/5 M. Williamson 
>
>> Virgilio:
>>
>> Many thanks for the information. I have, after reviewing the evidence
>> you presented, casted my vote in support of Peter Symonds' adminship
>> on Meta.
>>
>> Muito obrigado pela informação. Depois de avaliar a evidência
>> apresentada, votei a favor da proposta da concessão de poderes
>> administrativos a Peter Symonds em Meta.
>>
>> -m.
>>
>> 2011/1/5 Virgilio A. P. Machado :
>> > To all women and men of good faith who are members of this mailing list,
>> > please check the following pages:
>> >
>> > 1)
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_adminship/PeterSymonds
>> >
>> > 2)
>> >
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta_talk:Requests_for_adminship/PeterSymonds
>> >
>> > 3)
>> >
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#Vapmachado_.28talk_.E2.80.A2_contribs.29_-_ban_request
>> >
>> > 4) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Vapmachado#Block
>> >
>> > 5)
>> >
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User%3AVapmachado&type=block
>> >
>> > 6) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Vapmachado
>> >
>> > and any further information on the user page:
>> >
>> > 7) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Vapmachado
>> >
>> > Please let me know:
>> >
>> > a) why my request for unblock was never answered,
>> >
>> > b) where on page (2) are the occurrences of "harassment,"
>> >
>> > c) if after Dec. 23, "he's just returned to do the same thing that lead
>> > him to be blocked in the first instance.",
>> >
>> > d) where are the occurrences of "continued hostile behavior,"
>> >
>> > e) towards what or whom is that "continued hostile behavior,"
>> >
>> > f) why my "interesting history" of "cross-wiki" pioneering achievements
>> is
>> > never mentioned, a clear violation of a NPOV in decision making.
>> >
>> > The accusations of "meatpuppetry and privacy violations" based on highly
>> > controverted and irregular cases, may still turn out to be defamatory,
>> and
>> > it is not very wise to use them to attack the reputation, honor and good
>> > name of this user.
>> >
>> > Sincerely,
>> >
>> > Virgilio A. P. Machado
>> >
>> >
>> > ___
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>> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>> >
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] January 15 retro?

[M. Williamson]

Wikipedia was started on that date, wasn't it? True, other Wikipedias
didn't exist yet, but I don't think that makes it any less
significant. If you speak a non-English language as your native tongue
and wish therefore to not make any fuss about the date, feel free, but
I'm certain it won't just be en.wp users celebrating.

-m.

2011/1/5 MZMcBride :
> Steven Walling wrote:
>> "The other Wikipedias weren't started on that date, so they have nothing to
>> celebrate or commemorate."
>>
>> The anniversary is not just about English Wikipedia. If this was just
>> English Wikipedia's celebration, there certainly wouldn't be more than 100
>> events organized in dozens of countries and on every continent except
>> Antarctica.
>
> That's incredibly poor logic. Only the English Wikipedia is going to be ten
> years old on January 15, 2011. If people around the world want to throw
> parties for the English Wikipedia's tenth anniversary, they're of course
> free to. But that doesn't change the facts, even if people will be partying
> in six of seven continents. Don't be silly.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] An agenda for the meeting of the language committee

[M. Williamson]

How about this:

Over the past several years, new projects have been approved and
created improving our coverage of world languages. However, the vast
majority of this growth since the formation of Langcom has been in
European languages - a quick sampling reveals new Wikipedias in Rusyn
(Eastern Europe), Gagauz (Moldova and Ukraine), North Frisian (Germany
and Denmark) as well as Wikisource in Breton (France) and Venetian
(Italy), Wikiversity in Swedish and Wikibooks in Limburgish
(Netherlands, Belgium and Germany), although none of those are new
languages for WM projects. At first, there was an encouraging trend -
the first 4 Wikipedias created after the new language policy was in
place were in Kabyle (North Africa), Hakka (China and Chinese
diaspora), Bikol (Philippines) and normative Belarusian. However, this
trend seems to have changed so that now, since December of 2009, 9 new
Wikipedias have been created, but all but 1 were in European minority
languages (the exception was Banjar, of Indonesia and Malaysia).

So my question for discussion is, what, if anything, can be done to
encourage growth and improved linguistic coverage in other areas of
the world?


2011/2/19 Gerard Meijssen :
> Hoi,
> In Berlin, in parallel to the MediaWiki  hackathon,
> members of the language
> committeeof the
> Wikimedia
> Foundation  will meet for a first time in
> real life.
>
> As I read the roster of the people who may attend, I am amazed at their
> qualifications. All people are involved in their
> Wikipediasin the
> Incubator , they are
> linguists, standard people, a script expert, Wikimedians.
>
> The first line of our business will be to evaluate what we do. We will get
> to know each other better and we will talk endlessly about language,
> Wikipedia and what not.
>
> You can help us be more focused by suggesting topics to our agenda. Anything
> goes and when we understand the issue raised, we will attempt to formulate
> an opinion. When such an opinion is actionable, we will raise it with the
> people that can make a difference.
>
> The topics may be all over the map and they do not need to be confined to
> the language 
> policyor
> even the Wikimedia Foundation. When there are issues in MediaWiki, we
> may
> pop over to the people at the Hackathon and ask their opinion.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
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Re: [Foundation-l] An agenda for the meeting of the language committee

[M. Williamson]

To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never made any
decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then
perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if
you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit
only from European countries, you will find a very different group of
opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is
certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and
linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our
benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of
the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population
lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the
world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a
member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite
people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from
Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in
many languages, who can bring us different perspectives.

2011/2/23, Casey Brown :
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta 
>> wrote:
>>> One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian languages
>>> in
>>> the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the
>>> committee
>>> want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is
>>> fluent
>>> in one or more Asian languages?
>>
>> In principle yes, but... [1]
>>
>> Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so
>> simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many
>> professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their
>> knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise,
>> their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one
>> Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but
>> many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish
>> languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an
>> expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically
>> useless.
>
> Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in
> different languages when they need to?  I seem to recall you guys
> having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the
> language before they are created.
>
> So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages
> aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the
> "administrative committee" at this time.  At least that's how I
> remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
>
> --
> Casey Brown
> Cbrown1023
>
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-- 
skype: node.ue

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Re: [Foundation-l] An agenda for the meeting of the language committee

[M. Williamson]

There are currently 13 members of the committee, all of them live in
Europe, the US or Canada with the sole exception of Amir Aharoni, who
currently lives in Jerusalem but lived in Russia until 1991 and whose
native language is Russian. I find it hard to believe that the
language committee has been actively recruiting Wikimedians or others
in Asia, Latin America or Africa but faced constant rejection and lack
of interest from all people in those places, which is the impression I
got from what you said. I think the appropriate reaction to such a
strong imbalance (and it is a very strong one) is not to say "Well, we
will be happy to have them if they ever want to join" but to say "We
recognize that this is an issue and we will actively recruit people to
try to rectify it."

2011/2/24, Lodewijk :
> As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language
> committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the
> world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented regions
> to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know a
> good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them in
> touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least
> incorporate the knowledge.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lodewijk
>
> 2011/2/24 M. Williamson 
>
>> To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never made any
>> decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then
>> perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if
>> you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit
>> only from European countries, you will find a very different group of
>> opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is
>> certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and
>> linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our
>> benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of
>> the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population
>> lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the
>> world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a
>> member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite
>> people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from
>> Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in
>> many languages, who can bring us different perspectives.
>>
>> 2011/2/23, Casey Brown :
>> > On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>> >> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta 
>> >> wrote:
>> >>> One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian
>> languages
>> >>> in
>> >>> the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the
>> >>> committee
>> >>> want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is
>> >>> fluent
>> >>> in one or more Asian languages?
>> >>
>> >> In principle yes, but... [1]
>> >>
>> >> Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so
>> >> simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many
>> >> professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their
>> >> knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise,
>> >> their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one
>> >> Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but
>> >> many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish
>> >> languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an
>> >> expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically
>> >> useless.
>> >
>> > Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in
>> > different languages when they need to?  I seem to recall you guys
>> > having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the
>> > language before they are created.
>> >
>> > So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages
>> > aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the
>> > "administrative committee" at this time.  At least that's how I
>> > remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
>> >
>> > --
>> > Casey Brown
>> > Cbrown1023
>> >
>> > ___
>

Re: [Foundation-l] WMF 2015 strategic plan and multilingualism

[M. Williamson]

2011/3/5 Amir E. Aharoni :
> will enable more people to read them. This, however, also poses the
> danger of perpetuating current linguistic conflicts. For example,
> translating the WMF blog into Chinese will allow a lot of people who
> know Chinese, but not English, read it, but it will yet again put
> Chinese above the regional languages of China; the same can be said
> about Russian, Spanish, French, Indonesian and other major languages.

Of course the same could be said of any option that does not translate
everything into every language of the world which has monolingual
speakers. This doesn't mean we should translate all WMF documents into
Hopi, Kunama, Irish and Pirahã; that would be practically impossible,
in fact even the most determined of organizations, missionary groups,
have not achieved translation of anything into all languages with
monolingual speakers. Yes, translating documents only into (for
example) English, Spanish and French would leave out monolingual
Quechua speakers, monolingual Basque speakers and monolingual Yoruba
speakers, but it's simply not possible to reach every language, so
decisions have to be made about which ones we are going to include. It
is my hope that these decisions are data-driven -
http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size and the
size of Wikimedia communities speaking a language as well as the
(in)frequency of bilingualism in those communities are a good place to
start.

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Re: [Foundation-l] WMF 2015 strategic plan and multilingualism

[M. Williamson]

> priority list that they think we should use. :-)  The metrics that
> Mark suggests are a great idea.  Number of speakers, number of
> monolingual (or native) speakers, and size of the editing community
> would be great things to consider.
>
This may seem like nitpicking but I think it's an important
consideration. Number of native speakers is not a good metric if we
are trying to be practical, since the vast majority of Yoruba speakers
on the Internet are fluent in English. English bilingualism is much
more frequent in, say, the Indian internet community than it is in the
Chinese internet community. I think we should take the following
approach towards "crucial" languages:

1) Start with one language that all official documents must be in; due
to current structure of WMF, this would be English.
2) To choose the subsequent language, search for the language with the
greatest number of non-English speakers; for the sake of argument
let's say it's Spanish (although it may be Chinese in reality).
3) For the third language, search for the language with the greatest
number of people who do not speak English or language 2 (in this case,
Spanish).
4) And so on and so forth.

This cuts down on potential redundancy; of course if somebody wants to
translate all documents into Irish or Basque, we will be happy to
receive such translations. I do agree with the suggestion that we
require documents be translated into a certain (small) group of
languages. We do rely on volunteer translators, but we are not saying
"you must translate this" but rather "we will not release this to the
public until it has been translated to this language".

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Re: [Foundation-l] WMF 2015 strategic plan and multilingualism

[M. Williamson]

Gerard, that seems like quite a bit of money, I'd be curious to know
what exactly that would be spent on, in detail.

2011/3/5 Gerard Meijssen :
> Hoi,
> The Wikimedia Foundation is a five hundred pound gorilla in the field of
> building language resources in the languages that have a smaller footprint
> on the Internet. I am convinced that for a million Euros we can make sure
> that all languages have technically a level playing field.
>
> I have proposed to spend 100,000,- Euro and this will make major
> improvements for the scripts, the fonts and the standards for the languages
> we have a Wikipedia for. This is given the current budget chicken feed.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> On 5 March 2011 22:58, David Gerard  wrote:
>
>> On 5 March 2011 21:48, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
>>
>> > The notion that everyone working on Wikipedia and MediaWiki is a
>> volunteer
>> > is a fallacy.
>> > The one thing I have been advocating is that the different languages and
>> > scripts are performing technically on a level playing field. This is not
>> the
>> > case and there is a lot that can be achieved with modest investments. At
>> > this stage we do not want to invest in specific languages to create
>> content.
>> > If a language is viable and can operate on a level playing field the
>> > communities will do their thing in the way that fits for them.
>>
>>
>> Yes. The advocates of a minimal Foundation are missing the point that
>> "in their own language" is an extremely good reason to spend money on
>> the necessary translations and so forth.
>>
>> The Chapter structure is a brilliant way to get this sort of thing
>> locally self-organising and not be run from San Francisco. But as Amir
>> points out, this results in very patchy coverage.
>>
>> Really. Take the sentence:
>>
>> "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
>> the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."
>>
>> - and think of how to fund everything that implies, or to fund its
>> encouragement, or to fund encouraging the funding of its
>> encouragement. The WMF as it stands is *tiny* for such a goal.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
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