Re: [Foundation-l] It's not article count, it's editors
2009/10/1 Erik Zachte : > Another complication is that e.g. in China and large parts of Africa (and > India?) most web activities happen in internet cafes and on other shared > computers. In those countries the number of accounts, and the number of web > connected people can differ dramatically (even in western countries there is > no simple relation, many people have access to several computers, at home > and at work). Also should we factor in broadband vs modem I often wonder, when I see those stats about how many people "have" internet access in a country, what does that actually mean. It is often not said whether they have a business access at work or a flatrate at home. Without that, the information loses a lot of its worth. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Comparison of Chinese Wikipedia, Hudong and Baidu Baike
Hello, Having read http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/14/wiki.china/ I would like to collect more information about the situation of online encyclopedias in China Mainland. I am now browsing a litte bit around with Google Translator, but it remains difficult to get an impression concerning the following questions: * how the collaboration process differs * how good is the content * how liberal is the content (not contamined directly or indirectly by the government) Does someone of you knows more? Kind regards -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Comparison of Chinese Wikipedia, Hudong and Baidu Baike
Hello Philippe, I am looking forward to meet you tonight on the office hour chat. In fact, I forgot about the China Task Force, good that you mention it. Should anyone prefer to mail me personally for some (peticular) reasons, that is possible, too. Kind regards Ziko 2009/10/20 Philippe Beaudette : > Hi Ziko - > > These are interesting questions... perhaps some of the folks on the > strategic planning China Task Force could help with that? I'd be > interested in the answers as well. > > Members are listed at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/China_Task_Force > and some questions of this nature are on the talk page. > > Philippe > > > > Philippe Beaudette > Facilitator, Strategic Planning > Wikimedia Foundation > > phili...@wikimedia.org > > > Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in > the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! > > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate > > > On Oct 20, 2009, at 8:20 AM, Ziko van Dijk wrote: > >> Hello, >> >> Having read >> http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/14/wiki.china/ >> I would like to collect more information about the situation of online >> encyclopedias in China Mainland. I am now browsing a litte bit around >> with Google Translator, but it remains difficult to get an impression >> concerning the following questions: >> * how the collaboration process differs >> * how good is the content >> * how liberal is the content (not contamined directly or indirectly by >> the government) >> Does someone of you knows more? >> >> Kind regards >> >> >> -- >> Ziko van Dijk >> NL-Silvolde >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RFC: A Wikipedia/etc.-like Web Directory (e.g: dmoz.org, the old dir.yahoo.com , etc)
I have just seen a list of the Wikimedia projects and noticed that the last one was created in 2006, is that right? In spite of all sympathy for a Wiki-directory I am afraid that partially Wikipedia already has taken over that part. When I am looking for the web site of a museum I tend to go to the Wikipedia article about that museum and look there under "Weblinks". Kind regards Ziko 2009/10/27 Bod Notbod : >> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Shlomi Fish wrote: > >>> This was motivated after I was referred to the "Wikipedia is not a web >>> directory" section of: >>> >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not > > One workaround I've found is to add a "resources" section to the > /talk/ page and list sites there. I've been responsible for a few > rather long 'external links' sections and have been disappointed to > see them trimmed because I felt all of the links I provided were valid > (in that they provided substantial information not easily included in > the article [for example, on an article about an author including > links to articles written by them] or hosted images that we couldn't > use [particularly useful for modern artists]). > > With the section on the talk page I added my recommendation that the > section should not be archived when the talk page grew large as I felt > the section would remain of value to editors and ought to remain > relatively prominent. > > It's not an ideal solution because there's not much you can do with > the section other than edit/add to it. But I felt it was a good > compromise for those times when I was in disagreement with another > editor over the external links section. > > I tend towards the "argh, no, not another project" view on things. I > think because, and perhaps this is unfair, I dislike that they may > drain talent and resources away from the encyclopedias. > > _______ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Comparison of Chinese Wikipedia, Hudong and Baidu Baike
Thank you for the information! I am curious what the ESP group about China will have to report. Kind regards Ziko 2009/10/20 Jimmy Xu : > Hello, > > First of all, apologize for any inconvenience made by my poor grammar. > > As a Chinese, I should say, most people here knows (or uses) the Baidu > Baike, because Baidu is commonly known in China Mainland so its > service is well-known too. As for Hudong, although it's known as the > largest Chinese encyclopedia (per it's main page), I should say that > it's not so well-known as Baidu's. At least for me, I didn't heard > about it unless someone mentioned it in the Village Pump. And for > Zhwiki, the amount of users is increasing now because before the > Olympics last year, the Chinese government unblocked the Wikipedia. > As for the collaboration process, both Baidu and Hudong use a > manual-checking process. That is if you submit a "sensitive" edit, it > won't be displayed and possibly you'll be blocked without further > notice. (But, if you just "vandalize" these two sites, like add some > jokes, most of the time this would be passed and displayed...) > And as I know, the Wikipedia is the only which requires a reliable > source when adding something doubtful. So although "WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO > GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY", it's sure to be more reliable than the other > two. > After all, the last question: "how liberal is the content". The answer > to this question will also solve the problem why the Chinese Wikipedia > has fewer users from China Mainland. Because the server of the > Wikipedia is placed in the USA, the Chinese government cannot > "control" these (as it controls Baidu or Hudong or etc). So it use > something called the "GFW" to block the Wikipedia from being accessed > by China citizens since the Wikipedia is "neutral" and do not filter > information as the government wants. For example, if you attempted to > access [[:zh:六四事件]] (which is *very* "sensitive") you will see > "Connection was reset" and you'll be unable to use the Wikipedia in 90 > seconds. That also produced a bad impression like oh, the site is > down. Clearly, you are not able to see any information about that on > the "intranet" of China. > > That's something I can say about these three. Regards. > > Jimmy Xu > > > On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 11:20 PM, Ziko van Dijk > wrote: >> Hello, >> >> Having read >> http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/14/wiki.china/ >> I would like to collect more information about the situation of online >> encyclopedias in China Mainland. I am now browsing a litte bit around >> with Google Translator, but it remains difficult to get an impression >> concerning the following questions: >> * how the collaboration process differs >> * how good is the content >> * how liberal is the content (not contamined directly or indirectly by >> the government) >> Does someone of you knows more? >> >> Kind regards >> >> >> -- >> Ziko van Dijk >> NL-Silvolde >> >> _______ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > > > -- > http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimmy_xu_wrk > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Strategic Planning Office Hours
Sorry folks, I could not make it yesterday. Is there a protocol in the net or elsewhere? Kind regards Ziko 2009/11/3 Philippe Beaudette : > Strategic Planning office hours are tomorrow, Tuesday, November 3, > from 20:00-21:00 UTC. > > We meet in #wikimedia-strategy on the freenode network. You can > access the chat by going to https://webchat.freenode.net/ and filling > in a username and the channel name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be > prompted to click through a security warning. It's fine. Another > option is http://chat.wikizine.org. > > For more information about IRC clients, go to the Wikipedia entry on > IRC or the Meta page on Wikimedia IRC. > > Hope to see you there! > > Philippe Beaudette > Facilitator, Strategy Project > Wikimedia Foundation > > phili...@wikimedia.org > > mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454) > > Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in > the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! > > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Whither, video tutorials?
Thank you for the links. I wonder if these are the only two videos? In general, I am afraid that the videos reflect an older concept of Wikipedia training that underlines the "easyness" of editing. The risk is that people indeed come and edit in the faith that they should feel free to try out editing ; if something goes wrong "another editor fixes it", if someone tries to "rewrite history", "another editor sets it right". Instead, there should be much more warnings about what is accepted or not, that wrong editing can get you harsh comments, that you eventually can be banned. Our problem is not getting new people but keeping them. Kind regards Ziko 2009/12/4 Bod Notbod : > On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Bod Notbod wrote: > >> They're very good. But the sound, for me, is *very* out of synch... by >> quite a number of minutes. Anyone else find that? > > Sorry, I meant *seconds*. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] LiquidThreads almost ready for deployment
Hello, The appraisal of LT is not quite universal; I have my problems with this feature and actually it prevents me from contributing to the strategy wiki. I would have preferred a discussion before forcing people to use that kind of tools/toys. Kind regards Ziko 2009/12/16 Andrew Garrett : > Hi all, > > LiquidThreads has been in alpha testing on Wikimedia Labs [2] for > several months, and, more recently, it's been used in a production > context on the strategy wiki, where it has been quite well-received. -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] LiquidThreads almost ready for deployment
Indeed. I am aware of the usability problems, but the talk pages are hardly the biggest problem. How much more complicated is LiquidThreads. There is the concept of a thread as such, I see a "first page" and so on, a roll down menu that hides a lot of mysterious functions... I find it especially annoying that the columns of a thread are so extremely large: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_messages_-_Strategic_Planning.png I must say that it is a very bad idea to confront people with such a change without asking them, and even with a beta version that is obviously not working yet. Is there a decent turorial, anyway? Sorry, but I am not a software specialist. Kind regards Ziko 2009/12/19 David Goodman : > mysterious codes? All that is needed is knowing how to indent and sign. > > David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] strategic planning office hours tomorrow
Hello, I cannot see any messages, has anyone a clue why? I use firefox and also tried iron. Kind regards Ziko 2009/12/28 Eugene Eric Kim : > Hi everyone, > > The next strategic planning office hours are: > > Tuesday from 20:00-21:00 UTC, which is: > Tuesday, 12-1pm PST > Tuesday, 3pm-4pm EST > > There has been a lot of tremendous work on the strategy wiki the past > few months, and Task Forces are starting to finish up their work. > Office hours will be a great opportunity to discuss the work that's > happened as well as the work to come. > > As always, you can access the chat by going to > https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel > name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a > security warning. It's fine. More details at: > > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours > > Thanks! Hope to see many of you there. > > =Eugene > > -- > == > Eugene Eric Kim http://xri.net/=eekim > Blue Oxen Associates http://www.blueoxen.com/ > == > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] strategic planning office hours tomorrow
Ups - sorry and thank you! Ziko 2009/12/30 lyzzy : > Hi Ziko, > > Am 30.12.2009 um 21:12 schrieb Ziko van Dijk: > >> Hello, >> I cannot see any messages, has anyone a clue why? I use firefox and >> also tried iron. >> Kind regards >> Ziko >> >> 2009/12/28 Eugene Eric Kim : >>> Hi everyone, >>> >>> The next strategic planning office hours are: >>> >>> Tuesday from 20:00-21:00 UTC, which is: >>> Tuesday, 12-1pm PST >>> Tuesday, 3pm-4pm EST > > > Today is Wednesday. You can find the log of the yesterday's meeting at > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/2009-12-29 > > Alice. > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Boing Boing applauds stats.grok.se!
Once I have checked out by stats about a certain German TV programme (Zimmer frei, weekly). Indeed all guests had a WP article and all "wikibumped" during the week before their show. (After a show, the next guest is presented to the audience, and then again and again during the week.) It was difficult for me to say exactly why some guests had bigger bumps than others. Usually, a greater star had bigger total numbers, and the bump was smaller (in comparison to the previous numbers). There is the theory that well known persons do not bump so much because everybody knows them already (Erik Zachte once had the example with Palin and Biden). Now I learn from this Boing Boing contribution that the circumstances of the death matter. The death of Ted Kennedy was not so unexpected, while readers of the Michael Jackson article might have wanted to check out what happened in the last years of Jackson, after the trial. By the way, the international interest for Ted Kennedy was much lower than for the pop singer. Kind regards Ziko 2010/1/8 Bod Notbod > On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 5:57 PM, David Gerard wrote: > > > But then, who isn't a contributor since 2004 these days? > > Is there something special about 2004? That's when I became a volunteer. > > Is that recognised as the year things reached critical mass? > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from?
.2%) > > Taiwan: Chinese 45.5% over English (swing 3.7%) - vernaculars 45.7% > > over English (swing 3.7%) > > Chile: Spanish 60.6% over English (swing -2.0%) > > Israel: Hebrew 10.9% over English (swing 3.9%) - vernaculars 12.8% > > over English (swing 3.9%) > > Indonesia: Indonesian 10.2% over English (swing 8.5%) - vernaculars > > 11.3% over English (swing 8.4%) > > Portugal: Portuguese 11.9% over English (swing 2.2%) > > South Korea: Korean 2.7% over English (swing 12.8%) > > Malaysia: Malay 74.5% UNDER English (swing -1.0%) > > Peru: Spanish 74.5% over English (swing 2.1%) > > Venezuela: Spanish 77.5% over English (swing 11.1%) > > Ukraine: Ukrainian 56.6% UNDER RUSSIAN (swing 4.4%) > > Romania: Romanian 21.7% UNDER English (swing 12.6%) - vernaculars > > 18.5% UNDER English (swing 13.4%) > > Thailand: Thai 18.9% over English (swing -3.5%) > > Denmark: Danish 12.3% UNDER English (swing 10.7%) > > Hungary: Hungarian 23.8% over English (swing 6.1%) > > Uruguay: Spanish 72.4% over English (swing 1.1%) > > Vietnam: Vietnamese 31.0% over English (swing 8.8%) > > Greece: Greek 42.1% UNDER English (swing 9.0%) > > Bulgaria: Bulgarian 1.4% over English (swing 8.9%) > > United Arab Emirates: Arabic 66.8% UNDER English (swing 5.4%) > > Egypt: Arabic 18.5% UNDER English (swing 11.3%) > > Lithuania: Lithuanian 9.3% UNDER English (swing -6.4%) - vernaculars > > 9.3% under English (swing -6.6%) > > Iran: Persian 0.6% UNDER English (swing 0.5%) > > > > -- > > André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com > > > > ___ > > foundation-l mailing list > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Dear Erik, Maybe there is a dirty Polish word looked up by many Polish pupils, and when they Google it they come to eu.WP because a Basque word accidentally is alike? :-) I am looking now for the interest in the native / the English Wikipedia in specific countries. It might be important how localized the software in general is. If you live in, say, Kenya, and your computer has Windows in English, the Internet Explorer and everything is oriented to English, and you google your home town in an English language Google, it is probable that you will get the Wikipedia article in English and not in Swahili. Kind regards Ziko 2010/1/16 Mark Williamson : > I notice in that list both Belarusian Wikipedias are listed just as > "Belarusian Wikipedia". It would be very informative to know which is which > and to have visitor statistics on both :-) > > skype: node.ue > > > On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Erik Zachte wrote: > >> Here is a Q&A on all issues raised: >> Q=question/R=Remark, A=answer >> >> I put the more general questions on top. >> >> Cheers, Erik Zachte >> >> -- >> >> Q: Nikola Smolenski >> Is it first time these reports are published? >> >> A: >> Yes, expect trend report to grow by accretion over time. >> Other reports will be built from data for recent (6) months only >> >> -- >> >> R: Andrew Gray >> Andrew explains why distribution of page requests over countries favors >> Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries: >> 'Some Wikipedias - the ones which insist on only-free-images - do not use >> local uploads at all.' >> >> A: >> Thanks for explaining this unexpected distribution of page views on >> Commons, >> I had no idea. >> >> Spain 30.0% >> USA 29.2% >> Brazil 8.5% >> Argentina 4.8% >> Mexico 3.9% >> Germany 3.3% >> France 2.1% >> Venezuela 1.9% >> Chile 1.4% >> Costa Rica 1.4% >> Italy 1.4% >> Uruguay 1.2% >> Colombia 1.2% >> Portugal 1.1% >> >> -- >> >> R: Mark Williamson >> >> Two main factors influencing choice of Wikipedia language: >> # Fluency of the Internet-using population of a country in English. >> # Quality of the native Wikipedia. >> >> A: >> Like you say. Many Scandinavians (and Dutch people I might add) probably >> switch between English and local content all the time. >> Personally I tend to look at English Wp first I many instances, because of >> obviously richer content and larger depth. >> >> -- >> >> Q: Ziko van Dijk >> Why are 40 % of the visitors of ksh.WP (the dialect of Cologne) from Japan. >> Why are 25 % of the visitors of eu.WP (Basque) from Poland? >> >> Q: Andre Engels >> I think bots are a likely explanation in the eu case >> (unless Erik is using an algorithm that filters out bots) >> >> A: >> KSH used to be code for Kashmir. Still not Japan, but much closer than >> Cologne. >> Maybe Japanese mountaineers caused this spike ? (only half kidding) >> >> As for eu.wp: Would Polish presume there also is a European Wikipedia? Just >> a guess. >> >> I do filter bots >> >> -- >> >> R: Teun Spaans >> For trends, I would expect a bar indicating upward or downward trend, not a >> percentage bar. >> >> A: >> We can have both, a notion of importance and of change: I might color code >> cells as I do already in e.g. [1] >> This way large fluctuations really stand out. Let's first collect more >> history. >> >> [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm >> >> >> -- >> >> Q: Nikola Smolenski >> Could we get this for other projects? >> >> A: >> This question is of course not unexpected. >> One consideration is we need a certain sample size to make numbers >> significant. >> For other projects, with far less traffic, few country/language pairs would >> be backed by sufficient data. >> See also below on extending the current reports with more table rows. >> >> -- >> >> Q: Nikola Smolenski: >> Please include at Wikipedia Page Views Per Country - Overview [1] number of >> Internet users from [2],
Re: [Foundation-l] 10th birthday edit drive?
Amazing idea, Philippe! Additionally to some big things (Hagia Sophia? the Red Square?): small Wikipedia logo stickers to put on a number of buildings etc. in your town. (On the other hand, some people could consider that a kind of environment unfriendly spamming.) The 10th anniversay will be a kind of looking back, also remembering those who have left us on the way. Some of them we are happy to be rid of, but others - maybe the anniversay is a good occasion to direct us to people who once tried to edit but were beaten away. Couldn't we ask them to give Wikipedia a second chance? Ziko 2010/2/8 Philippe Beaudette : > Can you imagine, finding places that have WP articles and projecting > the logo globe on them? > > That would be an amazing public visibility thing. In SF alone, for > instance, Grace Cathedral, Coit Tower, the Transamerica Pyramid.... -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] At school
Hi Tyler, The problem of vandalism is indeed one and it will remain so. Most people don't realize actually that not "everybody" can edit, or if he does, it is very likely that his edit will be reverted. That is our real problem - it is difficult to join the team, which may become smaller and no longer capable to fight vandalism and check information. I wonder, by the way, which works teachers will recommend in the future. "Don't use Wikipedia", all right, but what else? The printed encyclopedias die away in these times. Once I read what pupils in Germany are allowed to use for their final essay (when they are 18 and are going to leave grammar school). Practically everything: local newspapers, brochures from organisations... To me as a historian, that is horrific, at least if you use that as Sekundärliteratur (what you Anglo people call "secondary sources"). So - if the pupils are allowed to use that, why not even Wikipedia? :-) In general: "Never before people knew so little about something they use so often", as a German journalist said about Wikipedia. I am looking forward to the results of the bookshelf projects and the possible effects... Kind regards Ziko PS: "the bureaucrat of the Hebrew wikipedia, came on stage and said "How can you trust an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit? How can you trust an encyclopaedia that no one can edit!!"" Shlomi, that*s a good one from your bureaucrat! 2010/2/16 Tom Maaswinkel : > I can understand why 'outside' people would think that wikipedia is > unreliable. But don't all the articles have sources? So why don't they > just learn their students to verify the sources themselves (help us out > while they're at it) and then they'll see quick enough that wikipedia is > reliable. > > I showed to one school once by vanadalizing a page myself and they were > amazed how soon that was put straight again. Ok, I cheated a little by > notifying someone else up front, but they didn't know that :-) > > Tom "TheDevilOnLine" Maaswinkel > > Op 16-2-2010 9:03, Dorozynski Janusz schreef: >> | -Original Message- >> | From: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l- >> | boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jon Davis >> | Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 5:53 AM >> / >> | In the end, vandals get bored. It is thrilling to defile Wikipedia >> | once or twice, but when your changes are swiftly dealt with... it >> | loses its appeal. >> | There isn't much fun in writing graffiti that no one will see. >> >> Right. Particularly when given Wikipedia, as Polish, has included Flagged >> versions. Vandals practically left my observed sides alone. >> >> Janusz "Ency" Dorozynski >> >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] list o' image donations?
Hello, Thanks for the question, Phoebe. Indeed, maybe it is better to begin a new page like "Commons:Donations" and have there a list in chronological order. Kind regards Ziko 2010/3/16 phoebe ayers : > On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Casey Brown wrote: >> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 4:04 PM, phoebe ayers wrote: >>> Is there an list somewhere of major image donations/collections that >>> have been uploaded to Commons in the last few years? E.g., the >>> Bundesarchiv donation, Antweb, etc. >> >> It looks there's a list, but it's not updated. >> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Commons_partnerships> >> (That's the category, also see the first page in it.) > > Thanks Casey. I wonder if "partnerships" is really the right > all-encompassing term for that kind of large donation to Commons? > Anyway, that's the kind of page I was looking for -- it just needs to > be updated! Thanks. > > -- Phoebe > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Ideas from Limburg
Hello, Recently a friend noticed a sudden improvement at Translate.wiki, concerning Wikipedia in Limburgish (li.WP). All remaining untranslated items (28,18%) have been translated in one time. This is quite unusual. When he told me about, I looked up again what I had written about (small) Wikipedia language editions in my handbook (in German): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Ziko/Handbuch-Titel . I then, in 2008, found li.WP relatively good, but there were also some difficulties, for example the lack of a technical vocabulary. When I now checked Wikimedia Statistics again, I was stunned by very impressive figures. For example, during 2009 the number of editors with 100< edits a month increased from 13 to 37. I believe that li.WP is nowadays the best among those of small Germanic languages. Nearly all articles have encyclopedic quality and show a lot of pictures, maybe sometimes a little too many. When I examined the background I found out that most of the li.Wikipedians indicate their real names and many are women. With permission, here what Gebroeker:JennySteen wrote to me: 'I started editing in November 2008. Because I knew nobody I asked friends to join. Most of us study at the university of Mestreech. […] We meet nearly every week in a local café and talk in Limburgish to keep our language skils fresh.' Jenny explains about the unusual appearance of the site: 'We did not like the original colours because they where cold and ugly. User pages now have nice orange tones, and talk pages a green background that helps to keep aggressiveness down.' Jenny: 'When there is a conflict I talk to the person in the café. It may happen that we ask a guy to stop visiting and editing for a week or two, and after he has cooled down he is welcomed again to sit with us.' On the other hand, if someone did well: 'We copy and paste lovely icons on the user page, like flowers and kittys. Unfortunately there was a case that someone misbehaved to a new user, and we had to take those icons away.' But there is still a problem: maintaining a Wikipedia language edition means also doing a lot of technical stuff. The gals from Limburg would love to see users from other language editions supporting them with MediaWiki extensions, geolocalisation and the not so easy aspects of categorization. http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebroeker:JennySteen Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas from Limburg
Dear Phoebe, You make my day! Actually, it should have been yesterday, but I am afraid most people did not notice my Aprils fool item. Once I thought translating my Handbook into English, but other things gained priority. Especially my textbook I am due to have finished on July 1st, and about which I was still going to ask you questions - you are more experienced still. Kind regards Ziko 2010/4/2 phoebe ayers : > Ziko, > > On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Ziko van Dijk > wrote: >> When he told me about, I looked up again what I had written about >> (small) Wikipedia language editions in my handbook (in German): >> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Ziko/Handbuch-Titel . I then, in >> 2008, found li.WP relatively good, but there were also some >> difficulties, for example the lack of a technical vocabulary. > > Thanks for reminding us of your book on multilingual Wikipedias! It's > amazing. It would be lovely to expand this to all languages, to have a > comprehensive Wikipedia handbook! > > >> When I examined the background I found out that most of the >> li.Wikipedians indicate their real names and many are women. With >> permission, here what Gebroeker:JennySteen wrote to me: > > wow! This is really unusual and interesting. Do you think it is just > because of the effect of having a small community centered around this > group of editors? > > btw I am not seeing the color changes for user pages.. and maybe > http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebroeker:JennySteen edits under a > different account? > > -- phoebe > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Adam,
As long as you do comments like this [1] ("Fuck you") I would like you
to abstain from discussing until your mood has changed.
Ziko
[1]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons_talk:Sexual_content&diff=next&oldid=38893870
2010/5/8 Adam Cuerden :
> The foundation appears to be of the impression that Jimbo is merely
> attempting to encourage scrutiny, and removing clear cases.
>
> This is not true. Jimbo has speedy deleted, without discussion, historical
> artworks and diagrams, often edit warring with admins to keep them deleted,
> and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until
> after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the
> problem.
>
> Examples:
>
> Artworks from the 19th century, by notable artists:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=File%3AF%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png<-
> Wheelwarred with three different admins to try and keep it deleted.
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=File%3AFranz_von_Bayros_016.jpg<-
> Wheelwarred with two admins this time.
>
>
>
> Diagrams intended to illustrate articles on sexual subjects, in wide use on
> Wikipedia projects for that purpose:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=File%3AWiki-fisting.png<-
> Edit warred with three admins
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=File%3AWiki-facial.svg
>
>
>
> Further, when challeged on these, he said that he refused to engage in any
> discussion on the deletion of artwork *until he was done deleting all of
> them*
>
> From
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales&action=historysubmit&diff=38891861&oldid=38891748
>
> "I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will
> have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography
> and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time
> to start.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo
> Wales#top|talk]]) 17:31, 7 May 2010
> (UTC)"
>
>
> How are such images to be found, after's he's gone and deleted them all? Are
> we really to sift through every single deletion several months later, to
> find the things that shouldn't have been deleted in the first place, and
> which, thanks to the Commons Delinker bot, have been automatically removed
> from the articles they were used in?
>
> Out of Jimbo's deletions, at the very least a third of the deletions related
> to diagrams and historical artwork in wide use on Wikipedia projects. This
> despite his initial claim (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales&action=historysubmit&diff=38820363&oldid=38819608)
> that he'd only be dealing with things that violated the law that
> started
> the controversy.
>
> If the board are not aware, there was, about a year ago, a controversy
> related to images of Muhammed, in which Muslim readers - for whom such are
> horribly offensive, due to rules against depiction of the prophet - were
> politely informed that we could not delete material simply because it
> offended someone, as Wikipedia sought to show all of the world's knowledge.
> Jimbo's actions make that consensus deeply problematic.
>
> There is a petition for Wales' founder flag to be removed, which has gained
> widespread support since his actions. (
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag )
>
>
> -A. C.
> ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] Appropriate surprise (Commons stuff)
Thank you for retaking the thread, Jussi-Ville. Please allow me to share some thoughts about attitudes on nudity, unneccessary provocation and Jimmy Wales' action. I remember something I heard on "Wikipedia Weekly", a year ago or so, I believe it was even before the Virginkiller issue (the Scorpions' cover). Andrew Lih said that many Wikipedians laugh about pornography/nudity issues and have a laissez-faire-I-don't-care attitude. Like let the world think what it wants, we Wikipedians go simply on with what we doing. Andrew Lih disqualified that attitude as immature and ignorant (sorry, I do not recall the precise words). People who have difficulties with nudity etc. are a legitimate part of our community and our readership and we should at least listen to them and try to find a compromise that does not hurt someone's feelings unnecessarily, even if in many points they would have to give in. This came up in me again on March 21st, this year. A group arround Achim Raschka improved the article "Vulva" in German Wikipedia and promoted it through the procedure to make it "Article of the day". So on that Sunday, the Main page of German Wikipedia presented the article with an illustration. On a Wikipeda meeting on Cologne, then, I heard people grinning about "the dream of all puberal vandals came true: a pussy on Main page". I was not sure what to think about that, but I come more and more the conclusion that it was an unneccessary provocation, at least the illustration. I know about some people who are honestly shocked by graphic nudity (some are religious, others not); so when they go to an article such as "vulva" or "fellatio" it is at their own risk, but they should not be confronted with a vulva picture at the Main page where they don't expect it. This should apply, I think, also to other pictures people may find disturbing, for example about people deformed by deaseses or injuries. There are simply subjects and illustrations that are not like all others. So when illustrating the article "Holocaust" you can and should use pictures of dead bodies [1], but for a link from the Main page it is preferred to use someting like the Entrance to Auschwitz [2]. Some Wikipedia commuties might want to have rules of their own, depending on the Wikipedians and the expected readership. I noticed that while German Wikipedia's article "Penis" has photographs, Arabic Wikipedia's is illustrated only by a medical drawing. About the deletions on Commons in the last days: I cannot imagine that there were significant losses of valuable illustrations. But in general I wonder that a board member is deleting these pictures in person. In my humble opinion, if a community is late with important policy making, the board has all right to take action (as the board, or the Foundation, is finally responsable for the projects). But there should be a board decision, and the implementation should be left to a collaborator of Wikimedia Foundation. You would also find it strange seeing the Queen of England sweeping the streets of London in person, or handing you out a parking fine. Maybe it is useful to install an extra community assistant for Commons, given the importance of Commons for all projects, with at the same time an inherent weakness of Commons because many Wikipedians use it but do not engage in it specifically. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_175-04413,_KZ_Auschwitz,_Einfahrt.jpg [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mass_Grave_Bergen_Belsen_May_1945.jpg 2010/5/13 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen : > Gregory Maxwell wrote: >> There are also people who are honestly offended that some people are >> offended by human sexuality content— and some of them view efforts to >> curtail this content to be a threat to their own cultural values. If >> this isn't your culture, please take a moment to ponder it. If your >> personal culture believes in the open expression of sexuality an >> effort to remove "redundant / low quality" sexuality images while we >> not removing low quality pictures of clay pots, for example, is >> effectively an attack on your beliefs. These people would tell you: If >> you don't like it, don't look. _Understanding_ differences in opinion >> is part of the commons way, so even if you do not embrace this view >> you should at least stop to understand that it is not without merit. >> In any case, while sometimes vocal, people from this end of the >> spectrum don't appear to be all that much of the community. >> >> >> > > I apologize for the late reply, but since this issue is of > a long term nature, hopefully not much harm will come > from only commenting on it now. > > I fully admit I experienced a &qu
Re: [Foundation-l] deployment of Vector to other languages -
Hello Naoko Thank you for the explanations, by the way I find it interesting to read the feedback, the users' comments. Sometimes it is difficult for me to follow things because Vector has changed or is displayed in various projects differently. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"
It is EXTREMELY important to use proper expressions. Otherwise you will create confusion and even scare people away. When I helped preparing the introduction of "flagged revisions" on Dutch Wikipedia I came up with "marked versions". Above all, it's versions we are talking about, not "revisions" which get a "flag". A flag is for me something you put on something that is notable, but it is our goal that the marked versions are the normal thing. So the procedure is: A sighter is sighting a new version of an article, and after sighting he is putting a mark saying "this version is sighted". Only versions marked as "sighted" are shown to our readers. Kind regards Ziko 2010/5/22 MZMcBride : > David Levy wrote: >> The feature's name is a legitimate concern, and I see no attempt to >> erect any hurdles. (On the contrary, Rob unambiguously noted that >> time is of the essence.) > > No, it really isn't a legitimate concern. It wasn't a legitimate concern > when the "AbuseFilter" was enabled and every user had a public "abuse log". > And with that feature came the ability to tag edits. We now mark edits with > generally inflammatory remarks that are impossible to have removed. Naming > wasn't a concern when file description pages were all prefixed with > "Image:". It wasn't a concern when RevDelete was enabled (first for > oversighters, then for everyone else). RevDelete doesn't apply to just > revisions, and the user rights associated with it could not have been more > confusingly named if someone had tried deliberately. > > To hear that feature naming has suddenly become an issue sounds like > bullshit to me. The worst that happens? A few power-users confuse their > terminology. And Jay Walsh gets a headache trying to explain this mess in a > press release. God forbid. If anything, using consistent terminology that > has been used previously in blog posts and press releases would be better > than inventing an entirely new and foreign term. > > Please, don't be fooled by the "it'll just be another X days when Y happens > and then we'll be good to go!" Time and again, Wikimedia has used this > tactic with this exact project. If I were a betting man, I'd say the next > "deadline" will be "before Wikimania!" When that passes, everyone can get > distracted spending six months focusing on the annual fundraiser and we'll > see you in 2011. Think I'm wrong? Prove it. > > MZMcBride > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"
Indeed "revision" and "review" makes the impression that much more is done than actually is. (Revision = not only a check, but also alterations, it sounds to me.) I am afraid that is the problem with pretty much of all the expressions that have been put in forum. In German Wikipedia, our word "gesichtet" is a little bit strange. "Sichten" is like spotting a rare animal in the wilderness. Actually, the subject we should talk about is not an article or a "revision", but the version that has been changed by an edit. Kind regards Ziko 2010/5/24 Michael Peel : > > On 24 May 2010, at 07:57, Erik Zachte wrote: > >> Revision Review is my favorite. It seems more neutral, also less 'heavy' in >> connotations than Double Check. > >> Also Review is clearly a term for a process, unlike Revisions. > > The downside is that 'Review' could be linked to an editorial review, and > hence people might expect to get feedback on their revision rather than a > simple 'yes/no'. I'd also personally link the name more to paid reviewing > than volunteer checking. > > Combining the two, and removing the potential bad bits (i.e. "double" and > "review") how about "Checked Revisions"? > > Mike Peel > ___________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"
Well, what James Alexander says - maybe we can make up something of
"edit". "Checked edit".
Ziko
2010/5/24 William Pietri :
> On 05/24/2010 01:41 AM, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
>> In German Wikipedia, our word "gesichtet" is a little bit strange.
>> "Sichten" is like spotting a rare animal in the wilderness.
>>
>
> That's funny. Internally, especially in technical discussions, "sighted"
> gets used a fair bit. All this time I'd been assuming that, however
> weird "sighted" sounded in English, it must be perfectly good German.
>
> For non-native speakers, "sighted" is rarely used in English. The main
> uses I can think of are to describe a person who isn't blind ("For the
> hike we paired a sighted person with each blind one"), for spotting rare
> animals, or for an archaic nautical flavor ("Cap'n! The bosun's mate has
> sighted the pirate ship from the fo'csle!").
>
> As they say, there's sometimes a quality in a good translation that you
> just can't get in the original.
>
> William
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Strategic Planning Office Hours
Dear Philippe, it is June 1st, isn't it? Ziko 2010/6/1 Philippe Beaudette : > > Hi Everyone - > > Our next strategic planning office hours will be: 20:00-21:00 UTC, > Tuesday, 1 May. Local timezones can be checked > athttp://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2010&month=6&day=1&hour=20&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 > > As always, you can access the chat by going to > https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel > name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a > security warning. It's fine. More details at: > > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours > > Thanks! Hope to see many of you there. > > > > Philippe Beaudette > Facilitator, Strategy Project > Wikimedia Foundation > > phili...@wikimedia.org > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Creating articles in small wikipedias based on user requirement
It would be indeed an useful or at least interesting tool for all Wikipedias. Though, many readers go to Wikipedia by a Google search, I don't know what that eventually would mean for the search results as we will see them. Kind regards Ziko 2010/6/12 Mark Williamson : > Shiju, just FYI, tool kit can be used by anyone for translation. In > fact, it's good to use because (if you choose the option) it will go > toward improving future machine translation capability for your > language, thus expanding possibilities for monolingual speakers of > your language. In addition, "machine aided translation", in which an > article is translated by machine and then corrections are made, can be > a much speedier yet still accurate way to create articles. > > -m. > > > On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Shiju Alex wrote: >> This topic came up while we were discussing about Google's translation >> effort. Google/Google employees are using Google tool kit to translate >> English Wikipedia articles to many of the Indic language Wikipedias. >> >> >> We are definitely more interested if Google translates these user required >> articles than translating the English wiki articles about all the american >> pop stars (For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga). Now the >> issue is, we don't have such list to give to Google/Google employees. >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 5:56 AM, Mark Williamson wrote: >> >>> +1. This would be a SUPER useful tool for all Wikis. >>> -m. >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 3:54 AM, Shiju Alex >>> wrote: >>> > Recently I had a discussion with one of my fellow Malayalam wikipedian ( >>> > http://ml.wikipedia.org) about the creation of new articles in small >>> > wikipedias like ours. He is one the few users who is keen on creating new >>> > articles *based on the requirement of our readers*. (Of course we have >>> many >>> > people who only reads our wiki) >>> > >>> > During discussion he raised this interesting point: >>> > >>> > Some feature is required in the MediaWiki software that enable us to see >>> a >>> > list of keywords used most frequently by the users to search for >>> non-exist >>> > articles. If we get such a list then some users like him can concentrate >>> on >>> > creating articles using that key words. >>> > >>> > Of course, I know that this feature may not be helpful for big wikis like >>> > English. But for small wikis (especially small non-Latin language wikis), >>> > this will be of great help. It is almost like* creating wiki articles >>> based >>> > on user requirement*. >>> > >>> > >>> > I would like to know your opinion regarding the same. >>> > >>> > >>> > Shiju >>> > ___ >>> > foundation-l mailing list >>> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >>> > >>> >>> ___ >>> foundation-l mailing list >>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >>> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..."
Hello, I could imagine that such a statement, in a different form, comes originally from socialist or anti-socialist circles. By the way, I am not such a big fan of this seemingly witty remark. If there is a conflict between theory and practice, that means that your theory is bad and has to be adjusted to practice. (In Soviet Union it was the other way round, reality had to be shaped conforming to the theory, that's why I believe the idea comes from somewhere there.) If your theory is that Wikipedia is anarchy and creative chaos and swarm intelligence etc., then, of course, Wikipedia does not work in theory. :-) Kind regards Ziko 2010/6/17 geni : > On 17 June 2010 21:37, phoebe ayers wrote: >> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard wrote: >>> Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper: >>> >>> http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19 >>> >>> I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt >>> we got it from that. >>> >>> Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through? >>> >>> >>> - d. >> >> going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph >> Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can >> help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: "The problem with >> Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could >> never work in practice." > > Well I can search wikipedia-en-l as far back as 13.09.04 and I'm not > coming up with anything. Running google searches for mentions pre 2006 > doesn't turn up anything however use explodes in 2006 which is rather > fast if than jan 2006 use is the first. > > > > -- > geni > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
>> tend to end up with a male biased group. (There are small also >> differences in measured averages between men and women in many >> areas...) >> >> And many of the 'skills' that are reasonable predictions of someone's >> likelihood of being a Wikipedian, if we're even to call them 'skills' >> as many aren't all that flattering, are obviously male super-abundant >> in the greater world. How many female obsessive stamp collectors do >> you know? Male? The kind of obsessive collecting trait is almost so >> exclusively male that it's a cliché, and it's pretty obvious why that >> kind of person would find a calling in Wikipedia. >> >> One piece of insight that comes out of is that general approaches >> which make Wikipedia more palatable to "average people", as opposed to >> uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines, may have a greater >> impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements. >> (and may also reduce other non-gender related imbalances, such as our >> age imbalance). So this gives you an extra reason why "more people to >> edit regardless" is an especially useful approach. >> >> >> >> Though are limits to the amount of main-streaming you can do of an >> academic activity such as encyclopaedia writing. :-) >> >> In any case, I don't mean to suggest that your work isn't important or >> can't be worthwhile. Only that I think you're fighting an uphill >> battle against a number of _natural_ (not human originated) biases, >> and I wish you luck! >> >> >> >> [*] A while back I wrote up a longer and highly technical version of >> this explanation as part of an argument on gender imbalances in >> computer science with a mathematician. Anyone into math-wankery may >> find it interesting: >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/mf_compsci >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"
Hello, Recently there has been a controversy on Wikipedia in German about extra articles in simple language. Authors of its medical group wanted to create sub pages suitable for children, believing in an urgent need. [1] In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple German came up. As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia. The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it had been created before that policy of 2006. There are a number of ideas and initiatives to create online encyclopedias in "simple language", in and outside the Wikimedia world. Wouldn't it be suitable to reconsider and try to give those initiatives a place? Who else is more capable to create and support such encyclopedias than we are? Kind regards Ziko van Dijk [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/wiki/Wikipedia:Redaktion_Medizin/Projekt_Kinderleicht -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"
Thanks for your very useful thoughts, Samuel. They lead us to these
two key questions:
- Create new Wikipedias, or a new project: What would make sense? If
they were new Wikipedias, we would potentially double the list with
interwiki links ("in other languages"). I prefer a new project.
- Scope and name: Maybe it would practically make no big difference
whether the project is called "simple" or "for kids". Poor readers and
adult beginning readers (natives or not) tend to read texts that are
meant for children anyway. It could make a difference in promoting,
though. A scope question can also be whether certain kinds of explicit
images are allowed.
Before beginning such a project, it may be good to have a more
elaborate concept than there has been when the Wikipedias started. But
even before that, the Foundation should tell whether such a project
has any chance to be accepted, or will be banned for being essentially
Wikipedia in already existing languages.
Hey, I just googled and found that there is already a proposal at Meta. :-)
Kind regards
Ziko
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Wikikids
2010/6/24 Samuel J Klein :
> Hi Ziko,
>
> On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Ziko van Dijk
> wrote:
>
>> In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple
>> German came up.
>
> This would be useful.
>
>> As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a
>> new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia.
>
> To be more precise: the language committee was tasked with determining
> when to start new language projects. It was never asked to consider
> other sorts of new projects. So either "simple German" is a new
> language, or it's out of the current scope of the committee.
>
> Overall, we've never decided whether a "simple" or "children's
> encyclopedia" should be a separate project with its own root domain,
> or another set of 'languages' that show up as an interlanguage link or
> as FOO.wikipedia.org .
>
>
>> The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it
>> had been created before that policy of 2006.
>
> Simple English is quite useful, and used for groups developing their
> literacy skills at all ages, including many communities learning
> English as a Second Language. Presumably the same could be true of
> any other language.
>
>
>> There are a number of ideas and initiatives to create online
>> encyclopedias in "simple language", in and outside the Wikimedia
>> world. Wouldn't it be suitable to reconsider and try to give those
>> initiatives a place? Who else is more capable to create and support
>> such encyclopedias than we are?
>
> +1
>
> My thoughts:
> * I would love to see similar projects in at least German, French,
> Spanish, and Dutch -- languages in which there are already communities
> working on encyclopedic knowledge in simplified language.
> * We should have a new process for requesting a simple-language
> version of a project.
> * We should resolve standard practice for naming them, and decide if
> this should be a new top-level Project (like wikikids) or a variation
> on the normal language code.
>
> Considering the historical role of the children's encyclopedia, we
> might consider rescoping "simple" as "for children" -- this could help
> to increase participation and use, and clarify the role of these
> projects.
>
> SJ
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"
2010/6/25 Milos Rancic : > My first answer is that Wikipedia is good enough for children and that > we do not need a Wikipedia fork with dumb language. I wonder where such an attitude comes from. "Dumb"? Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"
Hello,
It seems to me doubtless that there is a substantial number of active
Wikimedians who see the need in a simple or children-encyclopedia and
would like to invest some of their own sweat, blood and tears. Others,
who disagree, may stand on the side line and comment if they like.
There are a lot of single questions when defining the exact scope
etc., but the main question remains: Would WMF accept such a project,
or would it reject it for being just another Wikipedia in already
existing languages. So, how different the new project must be from
Wikipedia. The original fear is that a linguistic group is split into
two communities whereas the forces usually should be concentrated in
one Wikipedia. A Wikipedia in "simple English", we were told, is
essentially a Wikipedia in English.
But if a project, for example, directs itself to a relativeley limited
group of readers (children), with consequences for the content
(limited length of articles, no explicit images), usage of language
(no hard words), wouldn't it be different enough from a "usual"
Wikipedia?
Kind regards
Ziko
2010/6/27 Ting Chen :
> Hello Milos,
>
> reading your mail below I am wondering why your reaction on my first
> mail was so aggressive. It looks to me as if your consideration is not
> that far away from mine. Especially I wrote in my suggestion that first
> of all the project must have a very clearly defined scope and audiance,
> second that it should have a more rigid editorial and anti-vandal
> mechanism and third that we need more research.
>
> Greetings
> Ting
>
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 2:09 AM, Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>> The difference was that Wikipedia was not made for young people.
>>>
>>> If I run a social group for adults and there are issues with children
>>> who visit, I can blame it on their parents and say they should control
>>> them better. If I run a social group for children, I'm now a childcare
>>> provider and have a greater degree of responsibility.
>>>
>>
>> It is not [just] about blaming each other. It is about underestimating
>> child capacities and playing with their trust.
>>
>> Child is perfectly able to recognize what is "for adults" and what is
>> "for children": everything not marked ("marked" in various ways) as
>> "for children" is for adults. And they are able to treat differently
>> those two types of phenomena. "For adults" is not safe, while "for
>> children" is safe. Depending on circumstances, "for children"
>> phenomena could be also boring to them, but safe.
>>
>> And if we want to make a project in which children will trust as safe,
>> we have much higher responsibility than we have for creating any other
>> project not marked as a "project for children".
>>
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>
>
> --
> Ting
>
> Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to Foundation Website
It struck me that the Foundation has decided to concentrate on the large public, the small donators, and not seek much further to approach big spenders or make money by business partnerships. This is a statement not only about our history and our future, and also about our character as movement. Is it too much to call this an event of historical importance? Kind regards Ziko 2010/6/30 Gerard Meijssen : > Hoi, > When we raise money, we have a choice; either we spend the money and we > communicate what we plan to do or we build reserves for a rainy day. In the > Netherlands there are several charities that find it much harder to raise > funds for any purpose now that they are known to build huge reserves. This > was made worse when they wanted to raise funds after many of their > investments went sour. > > As I understand our finances, we forecast a great need and at the same time > are frugal spending realising the communicated goals. Consequently there is > an operational reserve. The Wikimedia Foundation is not a university and > consequently it does not operate along those lines. Mind you, an American > university is a completely different beast then for instance a Dutch > university and our universities have as respectable reputation while their > funding is not reliant on huge endowments. > > In my opinion we are on a mission and we should share this mission as widely > as possible. This is why it is not acceptable that so much of the our > finances rely on USA donations. We need chapters that take part in > everything that makes the WMF possible. This includes fund raising and > operating programs that benefit our projects and free knowledge in general. > > When people, organisations want to contribute to an endowment, they should > do so separately from our fund raisers. These are to enable us to do what we > aim to do. This will gain us more contributions then building large > reserves. > Thanks, > GerardM > > PS you is "the reader" > > On 30 June 2010 17:38, phoebe ayers wrote: > >> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Gerard Meijssen >> wrote: >> > Hoi, >> > When you consider the source of much of the donations, you will find that >> > they have been coming mainly from the United States. Chapters are >> becoming >> > more and more active in fundraising. The Dutch chapter for instance plans >> on >> > professionalising its operations and fundraising staff has the highest >> > priority. It performed much better, one of the reasons is that IDEAL, a >> > payment method for the Internet in the Netherlands, was implemented. I am >> > sure that with increased support from the WMF not only but also the Dutch >> > will raise substantially more money this time around. >> > >> > When you ask for an endowment, you indicate an opinion that the current >> > levels of support for our projects suffice. I do not share that opinion >> and, >> > I am happy to find indications in the planning that this opinion is >> > supported in the plans for 2010/11. Milos and myself will talk in Gdansk >> > about the need to improve technical support for our smallest projects >> (think >> > Hindi, Malayalam... hundreds of million people will benefit..). Some of >> it >> > is hard core language support and some are changes to operating projects >> in >> > order to raise traffic and usability for readers. >> >> Hi Gerard, >> A small point -- I don't know who the "you" refers to here -- me? -- >> but when *I* ask for an endowment, it is not because I think the >> current levels of support suffice; that's a different question. It's >> because I don't want the long-term support for Wikimedia to be >> dependent on our ability to fundraise increasingly large amounts from >> year to year. Fundraising above and beyond such an endowment is fine >> and good and necessary as well. I have heard that raising an endowment >> was rejected by the strategy process because it was hard; I don't know >> what that means, exactly, but raising an extra $20M in a recession is >> hard, too. >> >> Someone was talking to me the other day about the differences between >> Wikimedia and large universities, such as the one where I work. "You >> don't mind criticizing the university governance", he said; "in part >> because you can't imagine it ever going away, no matter what." >> >> It's true, and I want Wikimedia to be that stable. In fact, I want it >> to be *more* stable than most American universities are at the moment >> -- certainly more tha
Re: [Foundation-l] small Wikipedia projects - follow-up to Jimmy Wales' talk
Hello Amir, hello Casey, Actually I am currently interested in policies of different language versions (article deletion, sources etc.), and thought about reviving the "Tell us" project for that. Most Wikipedians are busy only in one or two Wikipedias thoroughly, and hardly anyone knows how much the language versions have drifted apart (or not). Kind regards Ziko 2010/7/19 Amir E. Aharoni : > 2010/7/18 Casey Brown : >> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 4:43 AM, Amir E. Aharoni >> wrote: >>> Hello, >>> >>> I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote >>> about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias >>> in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word "small" >>> anywhere near Bengali, for example.) >>> >>> Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts >>> to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is >>> the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in "The Truth According To Wikipedia". >>> They are very inspiring, but very small. >> >> Something that's standing out in my mind, but might not be exactly >> what you're looking for, is Ziko's "Tell us about your Wikipedia" >> project, where Ziko and others tried to get different Wikipedias to >> share details about themselves and some tough things that they >> experienced. <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia> >> >> That was a first step to a lot of the stuff you're talking about. > > Actually i started reviving this project a few weeks ago: I translated > its main page into Russian so that people from Wikipedias in the > minority languages of Russia who don't know English will be able to > contribute to it. Thanks for reminding me to advertise it in those > Wikipedias' Village Pumps. > > Versions in French and Spanish may be useful for Africa and Latin America. > > -- > אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי > Amir Elisha Aharoni > > http://aharoni.wordpress.com > > "We're living in pieces, > I want to live in peace." - T. Moore > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Dear colleagues, My experiences with the Translate Kit are negative, too. It happened just too often that a sentence was so twisted that I did not understand it. Checking it with the original took me a lot of time, so I decided that doing the translation by myself is much quicker and reliable. It is good for nobody to read Wikipedia articles in gibberish. The idea that the translation tool is doing the work and that a human being has to make just some little corrections, has simply failed. Especially negative was, to me, that the Translator kit encourages you to translate sentence by sentence. I don't want to do injustice to anyone, but in my view there are two groups of Wikipedians: - those who want to see huge article numbers and believe that any article with any content is good, in any quality, and that the Wikipedians are sufficient to do the rest. - those who believe that (at least a minimum) quality is important and that articles below a certain niveau do damage to a Wikipedia. The small numbers of Wikipedians cannot cope with the work. They welcome not any content, but content that meets the possible interests of their readers. It seems to me that the first group is mainly populated by computer specialists and natives of English. The second group consists of language specialists and non natives of English. But of course there are many exceptions. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk 2010/7/28 Shiju Alex : >> >> We welcome automation in translation, but not at the expense of >> introducing incorrect and messy content on wikipedia. We'd rather stay >> small and hand-craft than allow an experimental tool and unskilled >> paid translators creating a big mess. >> > > > Yes. This is the answer that you will get from most of the active wiki > ((small wikis) communities where this project is going on. Many of the small > wiki communities are not worried about the numbers as some big wikipedias > do. Quality is more important for small wikis when number of contributors > are less. *Many of us will use this quality matrix* itself to bring in more > people. > > My real concern is about the rift that is happening in a language community > due to this project. Issues of a language wiki is taken outside wiki to > prove some points against its contributors. Two types are communities are > evolving out of this project. *Google's Wiki community* and *Wiki's wiki > community*. :) This is really annoying as far as small wikis are concerned. > > So, some sort of intervention is required to make sure this project run > smootly on different wiikipedias. > > > ~Shiju > > > On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 1:38 AM, Ragib Hasan wrote: > >> As an admin in Bengali wikipedia, I had to deal with this issue a lot >> (some of which were discussed with the Telegraph (India) newspaper >> article). But I'd like to elaborate our stance here: >> >> (The tool used was Google Translation Toolkit. (not Google Translate). >> There is a distinction between these two tools. Google Translation >> Toolkit (GTT) is a translation-memory based semi-manual translation >> tool. That is, it learns translation skills as you gradually translate >> articles by hand. Later, this can be used to automate translation.) >> >> Issues: >> 1. Community involvement: First of all, the local community was not at >> all involved or informed about this project. All on a sudden, we found >> new users signing up, dropping a large article on a random topic, and >> move away. These users never responded to any talk page messages, so >> we first assumed these were just random users experimenting with >> wikipedia. >> >> Even now, no one from Google has contacted us in Bengali wikipedia and >> inform us about Google's intentions. This is not a problem by itself, >> but see the following points. >> >> 2. Translation quality: The quality of the translations was awful. The >> translations added to Bengali wikipedia were artificial, dry, and used >> obscure words and phrases. It looked as if a non-native speaker sat >> down with a dictionary in hand, and mechanically translated each >> sentence word by word. That led to sentences which are hard to >> understand, or downright nonsensical. >> >> The articles were half-done. Numerals were not translated at all. The >> punctuation symbol for Bengali language (the "danda" symbol: । ) was >> not used. (apparently, GTT and/or the google transliteration tool does >> not support that). >> >> The articles were also full of spelling mistakes. The paid translator >> misspelled many simple words, or even used different spellings for the >> same word in different parts of the article.
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
2010/7/28 Nathan : > Just to be sure I understand... It's good that you ask, indeed. :-) No, it's not about free software, and the Wikimedians are not too snobby or lazy to correct poor language. That is what I frequently do in de.WP and eo.WP, and I suppose Ragib and many others as well. The point is: The machine translated articles are often so bad that I simply don't understand them. I *cannot* correct them, because I don't know what they are saying. Kind regards Ziko What's happening here is that human > beings, using a software tool, are translating articles from the > English Wikipedia into a variety of other languages and posting them > on the comparatively small Wikipedia projects in these languages. The > articles, of unknown intrinsic quality, are usually mid to low quality > translations. > > In the projects with an active community, some have rejected these > articles because they are not high quality and because the community > refuses to be responsible for fixing punctuation and other errors made > by editors who are not members of the community. In the projects > without an active community, Wikimedians (who may not speak any of the > languages affected by the Google initiative) are objecting for a > variety of other reasons - because the software used to assist > translation isn't free, because the effort is managed by a commercial > organization or because the endeavor wasn't cleared with the Wikimedia > community first. Some are also concerned that these new articles will > somehow deter new editors from becoming involved, despite clear > evidence that a larger base of content attracts more readers, and more > readers plus imperfect content leads to more editors. > > What I find interesting is that few seem to be interested in keeping > or improving the translated articles; Google's attempt to provide > content in under-served languages is actually offending Wikimedians, > despite our ostensible commitment to the same goal. Concerns like > bureaucratic pre-approval, using free software, etc. are somehow more > important than reaching more people with more content. It all seems > strange and un-Wikimedian like to me. Obviously there are things > Google should have done differently. Maybe working with them to > improve their process should be the focus here? > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Mark Williamson: > GTTK can be used as a force of good if someone puts in the appropriate > time and effort; when used _properly_ by a careful, knowledgeable > It is my thought that the huge problem here is lack of engagement with > communities. Essentially, Google swooped down and started dropping Agreed. Again, in my experience it is quicker and delivers more quality to translate by your own. If others have different experiences (it may depend on the language), okay. It seems that something went very wrong when telling people who to contribute to a Wikipedia language version. Could you report more about that, Mark? Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Has anybody more information about what Google exactly told the people? A link? To whom was this call for participation directed? This issue "Translation memory" is another problem, another divergency of interests. We Wikipedians want to write good articles in our languages, that often means that we do not translate 1:1 but shorten and customize. But Google wants 1:1 translations for its Translation memory. And, of course, its the big numbers Google is interested in to achieve better automatic translations in the end. Ziko 2010/7/29 Muhammad Yahia : > On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 6:56 PM, Mark Williamson wrote: > >> >> I heard that for the Swahili Wikipedia contest at least, they gave >> away prizes... but perhaps they should've included a requirement that >> the articles they created be rated as "good" by the community, not >> full of errors and nonsense sentences, and that all project >> participants who want any chance at winning must respond to all >> talkpage messages within 72 hours (or something like that). >> >> >> > I have been involved with 2 big pushes by Google in the Arabic Wikipedia, > one of them was by professional paid translators, the other was done > completely by a volunteer organization in collaboration with Google. I > supported both efforts heavily. In the latter, they recruited university > students mostly to do the work and there was very little to earn beyond > recognition. All the problems mentioned above plagued both efforts, and > while the second one had slightly better results than the first, the vast > amount of translated articles lay ignored in the user space (that's what > the consensus on ar.wp was, confine them to their user space until deemed > good), the efforts to contact and teach either the volunteers or the paid > translators were futile, and the articles had some very awkward sentence > structures, some very bad jargon translation, etc. > > I have reached the opinion that the gradual nature of collaboration in > Wikipedia is what makes our good and excellent articles what they are. I > think a very little percent of wikipedians started by writing a full length > article, instead most of us started by a small edit in another article, and > a bigger edit after it and so on. By the time we began writing whole > articles, we had enough knowledge of the community and the wiki syntax to > produce good results. Whenever someone has a question about terminology, it > gets discussed on the VP, whenever someone is unsure, he recruits other > people to review or help. This was all missing from the effort and I think > what caused most of the problems. > > -- > Best Regards, > Muhammad Yahia > _______ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Umberto Eco's interview
Congratulations also from me, and thank you also for the translation to English! It's a lot of work. The interview provides a lot of useful thoughts and phrases. Kind regards Ziko 2010/8/4 Pharos > This is just wonderful. > > Bravo, Italian Wikinews! > > Thanks, > Pharos > > On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:15 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) > wrote: > > Ilario Valdelli, 04/08/2010 10:37: > >> A translation can be found here: > >> http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco/Traduzione > > > > Yes, could someone publish it on en.news? > > > > Przykuta, 04/08/2010 11:04: > > > Eco is known in science world as semiologist. Next time ask him about > > "disambig system" ;) > > > > There were 10 kB of suggested questions. :-p > > > http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinotizie:Storie_in_preparazione/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco > > But actually there's a related answer: «In those cases where elements > > are more disperse, instead, the total and collective categorization is > > impossible.» > > http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco/Traduzione#_11 > > > > Nemo > > > > ___ > > foundation-l mailing list > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Congratulations to Wikimedia Kenya!
Hello, With great pleasure I allow me to join the congratulations to the newest member of our family. I didn't know that it was so far when I saw Abbas Mahmood in Amsterdam. It'll be great to hear more from Wikimedia Kenya in future. Certainly it is a lot of work to get a chapter established. But only after a couple of years, you'll already have your first notable anniversary (we had 5 years of WMNL in 2011), look back and cannot imagine that there was once a time without a chapter. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk Wikimedia Nederland 2012/2/8 phoebe ayers : > The Wikimedia Foundation Board is very pleased to welcome and approve > our 39th chapter, Wikimedia Kenya: > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_Kenya > > Congratulations to all for your hard work! > -- Phoebe Ayers > WMF Board of Trustees Secretary > > -- > * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers > gmail.com * > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- ------- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
Hello, I am afraid that the letter takes over the "results" of the MR group that where presented at Wikimania 2011. There nobody, as far as I remember, who was enthousiast about those results. My board colleague Marco, for example, was stunned that the MR group thought that the International Olympic Committee were a great model for us because of its transparency (!). The wordings were unsatisfying, and we couldn't make up much of the proposed "charter" text. On the talk page I later commented that the WMF should call for a new group. I would like to interpret this new letter as an invitation to think about entities and its names again. It would be nice if the expressions could be more self-explanitory, and if we had more information about what these new entities will be for. What problems will be solved by establishing them, what problems could emerge etc. Kind regards Ziko --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
Lodewijk, I remember the session in Haifa very well. The audience found it extremely difficult to understand the texts and do anything with them - think of the awkward silence when the group asked for feedback. It must be possible to criticize the texts in spite of their alleged "roughness". And indeed, after Haifa we never neard from the group again, its members also did not take part in the discussion on the concerning meta talk page. Now, suddenly, the content of what you call "very rough and a first phase" is put on the table again. So I take it seriously and say what according to me must be said. Kind regards Ziko 2012/2/14 Lodewijk : > Hi Ziko, > > what was presented at Wikimania, was only supposed to be very rough and a > first phase. The idea was to then continue the process further - somehow > that never really happened. I agree there were and are quite some flaws in > the design (for which I don't necessarily see an immediate solution). When > wordings are the problem, we can probably fix that together - it is more > important that we agree on the actual content - and that seems hard enough > as it is. I'm afraid that a new group at this point would bump into the > same problems as the old one did, and has to go through that whole learning > process all over again. > > So yes, lets be critical, and constructive as much as possible. > > best, > Lodewijk > > No dia 14 de Fevereiro de 2012 00:57, Ziko van Dijk > escreveu: > >> Hello, >> >> I am afraid that the letter takes over the "results" of the MR group >> that where presented at Wikimania 2011. There nobody, as far as I >> remember, who was enthousiast about those results. My board colleague >> Marco, for example, was stunned that the MR group thought that the >> International Olympic Committee were a great model for us because of >> its transparency (!). >> >> The wordings were unsatisfying, and we couldn't make up much of the >> proposed "charter" text. On the talk page I later commented that the >> WMF should call for a new group. I would like to interpret this new >> letter as an invitation to think about entities and its names again. >> >> It would be nice if the expressions could be more self-explanitory, >> and if we had more information about what these new entities will be >> for. What problems will be solved by establishing them, what problems >> could emerge etc. >> >> Kind regards >> Ziko >> >> >> --- >> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland >> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter >> http://wmnederland.nl/ >> --- >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
That's exactly what I did. Ziko 2012/2/14 Lodewijk : > agree. Just review the proposals on their own merits, and consider its > impact rather than its source. >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- ------- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
2012/2/14 Jan-Bart de Vreede : > It is clear to me that there is a close link between the > fundraising/dissemination discussion and the increased options of > "organising" ourselves. I am also convinced that we Indeed, and it may not be a coincidence that these two letters came out more or less at the same time. :-) I find it good that the WMF board is taking up these discussions and opens them again. How about asking the *official* opinion of the chapters, within a certain time frame (e.g. 1 or 2 months)? Then we would have a more substantial and reliable feedback, compared to the mails on a mailinglist or talk page comments, all done by people as individuals. Kind regards Ziko -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communicating effectively: Wikimedia needs clear language now
; > There seem to be two possible solutions to this problem: one involves > hiring a dominatrix with a linguistics degree to wander the San > Francisco office with handcuffs, a bullwhip, a number of live gerbils > and plentiful supplies of superglue, and given free reign to enforce > the rules in whatever way she deems fit. The other, which involves far > fewer embarrassing carpet stains, is to empower the community to fix > these problems. Have a nice little leaderboard on Meta, and encourage > community members to be bold, fix up bad writing, bad grammar and > buzzwords. Reward their efforts with barnstars and the occasional > thank you messages on talk pages. > > Commit to clear writing by adopting a policy of "copyediting almost > always welcome" for chapter wikis, Foundation documents and as close > to everything as possible. There are volunteers in the movement who > happily spend hour after hour copyediting on Wikipedia and Wikinews > and Wikibooks and so on. Give them the opportunity to fix up the > language used by the Foundation and the chapters. > > Remember: how can community members support and become more deeply > involved with the work of the chapters and the Foundation if they > can't understand what you are saying? > > -- > Tom Morris > <http://tommorris.org/> > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
gt;> It *is* important to get secondary coverage of a topic, because we are
>>> tertiary source. This is the core idea of our primary source policy;
>>> if we
>>> utilise primary material and research something to the extent that we are
>>> the main authoritative source that becomes *hugely* problematic!
>>>
>>> And further, how these policies might apply to the idea of social
>>> media, as
>>>>
>>>> well as more private archives, say, corporate archives, being used as
>>>> citations? (And on that point, is there a difference between the the
>>>> Native
>>>> American folk archive at the Smithsonian and the corporate archives
>>>> of the
>>>> Michelin corporation in France, for our purposes?)
>>>>
>>> Corporate archives I would deal with in the same way as any primary
>>> source;
>>> use it to cite facts, bear in mind the author/publisher. WP:SPS talks
>>> about
>>> being wary of unduly self-serving material, and I think that is an
>>> excellent way of putting the approach to corporate archives.
>>
>>
>>
>> I had an interesting discussion on this with Florence and Christophe, so
>> I'll share this with them if they miss it here. My own first instinct is
>> to trust a self-avowedly 'neutral' source (like the Smithsonian) more
>> than a corporation (like Michelin) but for our purposes, it doesn't seem
>> to make much sense to treat them any differently.
>
>
> Bear with me, I'd love it if the Michelin Corp was opening its archives :)
> But having worked for them and living in the city of their headquarters,
> their discretion and love of confidentiality is such that I doubt it will
> happen :(
>
> The situation is complex. Should corp archives be somehow trusted or not
> much or not at all. I would say "it depends".
> It depends on the company (reputation).
> It depends largely of which department produced the archives. Docs produced
> by marketing departments should be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt. The
> language is non neutral, they conveniently drop the embarassing facts, and
> they tend to forget to put basic stuff such as dates ("ok, it is written you
> produce 10 millions yoghurt, but when was that ?") or references to
> countries ("ok, you write that you sell 10 millions of yoghurt in Global
> South, but can you better define which Global South you are talking about
> ?") (yeah, true stories even if figures are invented).
>
> Docs produced by departments of research or finances, I would put a lot of
> trust in them. There is always the bad luck to stumble on a cheating company
> just as it also happens that Museum Staff host a black sheep from time to
> time. But generally, I consider information out of these departments quite
> safe.
>
> But the most difficult ennoying point is simply that most corp archives
> appear to be a mess. Because companies are bought and sold, information is
> lost on the way. Because of poor communication between departments. Because
> staff come and go. And because the acceleration of business processes
> unfortunately make it so that in the past dozen of years, less and less time
> and money has been spent (invested) on a proper archive system, on good
> procedures and efficient implementation. So when you ask "can you retrieve
> the past 20 years of sales regarding this yoghurt", you'll get a blank
> stare. Truth is, no one knows the date and no one knows where to find the
> info.
>
> Some companies sometimes hire external services (private historians) to
> "clean up" their archives and some good stuff can get out of this, such as a
> book or a museum (Michelin did that. Do visit the museum
> http://www.aventure-michelin.com/ if you happen to come. It is very nicely
> done).
>
> Usually, I recommand good sense. If the information does not appear "weird"
> or "controversial" at all, I use the corp information as "trusted source".
> If it is clearly misleading or potentially illegal info, I trash it. But in
> between there is room to accept the data as long as there is another source,
> that may not be so great but that appears independant. For large companies,
> there are usually independant sources. But for most medium size companies,
> not. I give the situation a certain degree of tolerance.
>
> Difficult to put that into any sort of policy except for "good sense".
>
> Florence
>
>>>
>>> In terms of social media, this is tricky. Because social media is vastly
>>> more accessible than other mediums - particularly to hacks. Wordpress
>>> blogs
>>> are trivial to make, for example, and you can sound authoritative or
>>> convincing on a subject to a layman with only medium effort. I'd treat
>>> these with more caution.
>>>
>>> Phew, that was dumped out in a stream of conciousness way - so it
>>> might be
>>> a bit "buggy". But that's what I figure :)
>>>
>>> Tom
>>>
>>> (Just as a note; I consider "publisher" quite broadly - i.e. the
>>> person who
>>> hosts or maintains the material)
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>>>
>>
>> ___
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>
>
>
> ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
Those people who would like to write on Wikipedia about any subject can write a book or pdf about it. It does not have to be a scholarly work in every aspect. And then, the Wikipedia in language X can decide that it accepts this kind of literature as reliable. (Those various standards are not uncommon in the different Wikipedias.) Not everything has to happen *in* Wikipedia. Kind regards Ziko 2012/2/25 Castelo : > On 24-02-2012 07:48, Ziko van Dijk wrote: >> >> Leave the use of historical sources to historians, and then cite from >> their books. That's what historians are for. >> Kind regards >> Ziko > > Ziko, > > there's a lack of historians writing books outside Europe/US, specially on > some traditional oral history. They love to write about what other > historians like, and the unpublished content remains unpublished. > > If i understood correctly, Oral Citations Project doesn't intend to replace > books. Its focus is on what is not covered by books. > > Amike, > > Castelo > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
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 >> > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
As said, all the great things Oral history can be done - outside of
Wikipedia. And what local Wikipedians like to do with it, will be
decided in the community.
Kind regards
Ziko
2012/2/25 Castelo :
> On 25-02-2012 15:58, Michael Peel wrote:
>>
>> Actually, Wikipedia sort of is the place for original content - when it
>> comes to illustrations in articles.
>
> Those illustrations are mainly in Commons, with exception of the images in
> fair use, but linked in the articles. That kind of original content also
> plays a minor role, only "illustrating" the article, but we cannot reference
> a sentence as "vide image", for instance.
>
>> It's possible to envisage audio recordings being used in appropriate
>> Wikipedia articles along the lines of 'listen to a fisherman from the coast
>> of Shandong talk about his work', more in the current role of
>> pictures/photographs rather than as references.
>
> In this case, the audio files will be in Commons, too, and as you pointed,
> won't be used for referencing a specific assertation in the text. It will
> be, just like images, illustrating the written content, as we do now with
> music samples in musicians biography[1]. I suggest transcribe the interview
> for Wikinews and use it in inline citations, as in {{cite news}}, for i)
> easier checking than by {{cite video}} and ii) facilitate translating.
>
> Castelo
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson#Singing_style
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
Dear Castelo, We are in danger to repeat ourselves. :-) Short and simply, my statement: * WP is an encyclopedia, with all what that means; * the difference between primary sources and secondary sources is of vital importance (at least in the perspective of most historians). Kind regards Ziko 2012/2/26 Castelo : > On 25-02-2012 23:02, Ziko van Dijk wrote: >> >> As said, all the great things Oral history can be done - outside of >> Wikipedia. > > Yes, it "can be done" but it's not "been made". The information is there for > decades or centuries, and it was never registered outside of Wikipedia, and > now we have interested people, available time and enough resources to make > it happen. > > We already did a lot of things that could be made (less efficiently, indeed) > outside Wikipedia. Let's begin with Wikipedia itself. And what about > Wikimedia Commons? > > This is knowledge, and our commitment is to freely share the knowledge with > every human being, so change the question from "Why?" to "Why not?". > > Castelo > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Nederland reports for January and February 2012
This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for January 2012. == Cultural heritage == Together with Teylers Museum in Haarlem there is a "challenge" in which people are asked to write Wikipedia articles about subjects related to that museum. Conferences etc. On Saturday January, 21st WMNL was the guest of Teylers Museum in Haarlem. Our new years reception (nieuwjaarsborrel) was visited by ca. 120-150 people. == Press and outreach == The anti SOPA strike was a news subject in the Netherlands on and around January 18th. Many newspapers reported, and our president was on national TV for the issue. == Upcoming == February: strategy weekend board March: general assembly This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for February 2012. == Cultural heritage == User:Husky gave a short one-day course on editing in Wikipedia to volunteers in Gouda, co-organized by Goudanet and The Gouda platform for History. People made their first edits and wrote their first article on Gouda history. Around 10 people participated including people from the local library. The volunteers will continue to edit Wikipedia in the next few months. Conferences etc. == Other == The board of WMNL met in Zutphen on the 4th and 5th for a strategy weekend. The results should be presented to the members before the general assembly on March 24th, so they will have time to give feedback on the results. On the 25th the WMNL board had an afternoon scheduled on the day of a Wiki-Saturday to receive people who are interested in a board position. == Upcoming == March: general assembly http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederland#Wikimedia_Nederland -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses:, Britannica to stop printing books
Dear Robin, There are several reasons for making a text not too long. Pity with the reader is one of them. I personally try to be reluctant with generalizations about Wikipeda language versions. They usually are not true. It's often like the thing that the grass in the neighbour's yard is greener. Kind regards Ziko Robin: I find it bizarre that inclusion of information of local importance is encouraged in the internationalized local language wikipediae but discouraged in the U.S. English wikipedia. So events of local interest in a town in Romania are desirable but the same cannot be said of a similar event in San Jose, California. 2012/3/14 Robin McCain : > Why did the articles in Brittania keep getting shorter? Because printing on > paper costs money. Storage on the Internet is free by comparison. - So why > do our editors insist on reducing what might be an interesting article down > to something so brief it might as well be on paper in a book that will be > recycled in a few years - or deleting content completely? > > This whole idea of editing for brevity and notability came from the > TRADITIONAL encyclopedia business... Wikipedia was supposed to be the > opposite - big enough to include anything of importance to people. > > It is socially and historically interesting to compare very old edition of > Brittanica to a newer edition. For example: an entry on battleships would > evolve from a discussion of wooden ships powered by sail that enforced > seapower of an empire to sidewheelers, to iron ships fired by coal to the > current thinking that battleships are too expensive. In an online > encyclopedia it is possible to include all these articles side by side into > a section on the evolution of battleships. > > I find it bizarre that inclusion of information of local importance is > encouraged in the internationalized local language wikipediae but > discouraged in the U.S. English wikipedia. So events of local interest in a > town in Romania are desirable but the same cannot be said of a similar event > in San Jose, California. > > On 3/14/2012 1:15 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: >> >> But I started getting frustrated with them when I was about 12 or 13, >> because the shorter articles rarely answered the questions I had, and I >> never happened t be looking up something with one of the longer >> articles... > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Draft charter of the Wikimedia Chapters Association
Dear friends, After weeks of full work, this is the draft charter that has been worked on. I copy for you here the introduction and the link to meta. If you have questions about it, you may put them on the talk page or send them to me. Kind regards Ziko In February 2012, in Paris, Chapter representants agreed on creating a new organization. As there was no person or group assigned to write a draft charter, finally, after having talked to some people on general questions, I took the task on me. Subsequently I presented this page (March 7th) which was very much altered in the meanwhile. I have tried to integrate Paris texts, parts from the models B and KISS, and I have contacted a lot of the people who are going to Berlin (end of March; alas I did not find all e-mails but I believed I contacted every participating chapter). There were some phone calls and chats e.g. with Sebastian Moleski. There is also another draft, by Tango, which I (and others) have read carefully. Now we nearly arrived March 18th, on which, according to the timeline, a draft charter is supposed to be ready. Whatever that means, I would like to call the draft provisorily ready (there will be certainly changes, especially for the final incorporation) and invite people again to read. ... The idea is to have an organization with a kind of parliament (Council) and a kind of government (Secretariat). A Judicial Board has the task to arbitrate in severe cases of conflict; this could have been a simple Council committee, but for general reasons a seperate organ is better: the Council or Council members could be part of a conflict. We hope that the Judicial Board will have nothing to do. Normally, the members of the organs are elected for a certain term. This is important to give them a certain independence. There must be a relationship between work, responsibility and the right to make decisions. But if there is a severe problem, then the Council can dismiss people (by a 2/3 majority). There was a lenghy discussion on several levels about the position of the Council members, the Representatives. Now, according to the general principle, the Representative has a fixed term and can be dismissed in certain cases. But the Representative can have a position in a chapter (in contrary to a former model). Maybe the most important question to be answered: If a chapter joins, what are the consequences and obligations? First of all: A chapter joins only if it wants to, it does not become a member automatically. A chapter agrees to elect a Representative and pay an annual contribution. Later in the year 2012, there will be a budget. Possibly, the chapters will have to pay some % of their annual chapter budget. Of course the Wikimedia Chapters Association will consider the financial possibilities of the chapters. Why is it good for a chapter to join? The Association will support the chapters and represent their interests. A lot of international coordination work, that now has to be done by chapter boards, will be done (or supported by) the organs of the Association. Even if a chapter is already big and mature - it is good for every chapter to belong to a big family of well organized chapters. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Council/Draft_charter_of_the_Wikimedia_Chapters_Association -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] What 'movement role' for Esperanto?
Dear all, Here a little contribution to the discussion about new organizations for the Wikimedia movement. As far as I know, at this point there are not many groups who consider seriously about becoming such a new organization. Sometimes people mention the Esperanto Wikipedians because they cannot form a territorial chapter. I have thought through how the new organizations of the Wikimedia movement could translate to the Esperanto movement. The Esperanto Wikipedia is not one of the smallest. For about 50-100 speakers of Esperanto contribute to Esperanto Wikipedia on a fairly regular basis. == Esperanto associations == For speakers of Esperanto, also called Esperantists, it is not unusual to be a member of an Esperanto association. The [[World Esperanto Association]] has individual members but is also a federation of the national Esperanto organizations. Besides that, there are specialist organizations; eight of them are politically and religiously neutral and well organized, they are affiliated to the Word Esperanto Association in more or less the same way as the national organizations. Other specialist organizations are not affiliated because they are not neutral or find it too much work to join. They have signed a contract of collaboration with the World Esperanto Association. == Esperanto associations and Wikipedia == There is a („other“) specialist organization of Esperantists occupied with the internet and education, called [[E@I]] (pronunciation: Eh – cheh – Ee). When an Esperantist-Wikipedian wants to do something about Wikipedia it is natural to approach E@I. But also the national associations and the World Esperanto Association are sympathetic to Wikipedia and like to have Wikipedia lessons at an convention, for example. In 2008 the Esperanto Wikipedians wanted to have a flyer for the promotion of Wikipedia among Esperantists. I then approached the Wikimedia Foundation directly for the use of the logos, and collected some money from the World Esperanto Association and the European Esperanto Association. At the World Congress of Esperanto in that year, all of the 2000 participants had that flyer in their goodie bag, and we were given a room for a lecture on Wikipedia. In 2011, the Czech Esperanto Association hosted a Wikipedia convention in the Czech Republic, with an international character as usual in the Esperanto movement. It would have been better visited, possibly, if travel expenses could have been reimbursed. This is actually less usual in the Esperanto movement but would be very welcome. Esperanto speakers are often multiplicators (like teachers, artists, socially active people). So supporting them is well invested energy. == What movement role for Esperanto? == So what can the new kinds of Wikimedia organizations, discussed about under the expression „movement roles“, mean for Esperanto? Actually the Esperantists could become an affiliated in all of the three new kinds: * A thematic organization: E@I, or a newly founded organization, could become a thematic organization of Wikimedia with similar rights and duties as the territorial chapters. * A Wikimedia group: E@I or even just a number of Esperantists listed on Esperanto Wikipedia could form a Wikimedia group. It could get the right to use the logo without especially asking WMF for permission, and ask some money from WMF for a flyer or similar expenses. * An Official Partner of Wikimedia: E@I or the World Esperanto Association could become a partner. I have talked to some Esperanto Wikipedians, some are enthusiast about a thematic organization, others not. One important question is how much (extra) work being a Wikimedia affiliate would cost. Kind regards Ziko ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process
ssuading new users from >> participation. > > It is certainly one of the factors. > > > Sam. > > > -- > Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj +1 617 529 > 4266 > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Travel Guide
Dear James, In general the idea sounds interesting, and Wikitravel is certainly one of the notable wiki community projects. But I am not sure whether Wikitravel (or the content it provides) fit into the scope of Wikimedia. Is it really 'educational' content? Kind regards Ziko 2012/4/9 James Heilman : > The core group of editors at Wikitravel are interested in joining a WMF run > "Wiki Travel Guide". A proposal for creating such a project has been > outlined here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Travel_Guide and would > develop from the content currently at wikitravel.org > > *Wikitravel is currently in 20 languages and in English contains more than > 25,000 articles. The content is licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. Site > readership statistics are not released by Internet Brands, but for travel > information the site is consistently highly ranked. It is the largest and > most popular freely-licensed, user-contributed travel guide collection. > Alexa.com ranks it as the 2637 most popular site on the web with a global > reach of 0.0602%. The interwiki links between Wikipedia and Wikitravel > highlight the close historic cooperation between the editors of both sites, > where users adding travelogue style content to Wikipedia have often been > directed to add the content to Wikitravel. > > Benefits for the WMF: > 1) Increase the scope of content offered by the WMF > 2) Increase the number of Wikimedians > 3) Increase the volume of content for fundraising > 4) Provide a separate repository for important travel and tourism > information, some of which currently is contained within Wikipedia articles. > > Benefits for travel content: > 1) Reputation of the WMF would increase the editor base. > 2) Remove the conflicts between the commercial decisions of the current > hosting provider and the community. > 3) Would increase the reliability of the site, which is currently running > old MediaWiki versions, on poorly performing infrastructure. > > Benefits for both: > 1) Would make it easier for the two sites to direct editors to the better > site for the content in question, leading to better focus within articles. > 2) Combining the image repositories at Wikimedia Commons would result in > greater and easier image availability for both Wikipedia and the travel > site, and an increase in both contributors and images.* > > -- > James Heilman > MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Travel Guide
Hello, Possibly, what is educational in Wikitravel (-voyage) can go into Wikipedia, and what not, is not educational. One might get problems with policies such as NOR and NPOV. I suppose that they should be applied on Wiki Travel Guide, as on Wikipedia, Wikibooks and other Wikimedia sites. Kind regards Ziko 2012/4/9 Juergen Fenn : > Am 9. April 2012 06:50 schrieb James Heilman : >> The core group of editors at Wikitravel are interested in joining a WMF run >> "Wiki Travel Guide". A proposal for creating such a project has been >> outlined here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Travel_Guide and would >> develop from the content currently at wikitravel.org > > As I've just written on the talk page there: Frankly speaking, I don't > think we need another wiki on travelling as there already is > Wikivoyage. Wikivoyage is a fork of Wikitravel that was created when > Wikitravel went commercial. It is run under a free CC-by-sa licence, > and it is ready to add new language projects. German editors of > Wikivoyage most probably will not change to a WMF project. So the > question is why the editors of English Wikitravel won't rather come > over and join Wikivoyage? It would be a rather bad idea to split > communities instead of joining them together. To my mind Wikivoyage is > the place where to gather travel information. > > Regards, > Jürgen (contributing to both Wikipedia and Wikivoyage). > > PS. I'll tell the German Wikvoyage community about this discussion. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikis and the direction hardware is taking
Hello Birgitte, Those same worries came up in me when I saw a video about the "Discover" app: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DSBEmkeUzQ In a contribution to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Kurier/Ausgabe_7_2010 I compared those new apps with the clones around 2005, with the difference, that the apps are a more serious threat because they look much better than the original Wikipedia site. In those apps you don't see the edit button, the donate button nor the site notice. Even in Safari, the Apple browser, on an iPhone or iPad you usually don't see the left side bar with the donate button. I wonder whether in future we must take more, say, intrusive action to make people see the donate features... Kind regards Ziko 2011/6/10 Steven Walling : > On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 6:16 PM, wrote: > >> I am getting ready do to a little traveling. It works out that traveling >> light is going to be my best bet for various reasons. As I don't want to >> carry around the weight of a laptop; I have purchased a little closer to the >> cutting edge than I generally do. In setting up my iPad this is what shocked >> me. It is near impossible to edit a wiki. Well that wasn't to worrisome. I >> figured "there's an app for that". I searched "Wikipedia" and was presented >> with a large selection of apps that basically hide the fact that the >> websites are even editable. They offer helpful things to using the wiki on >> small screen wrt to TOC and general navigation, but they also strip out all >> the edit links. After specifically searching for edit, I found one app that >> made it possible to edit from iPad without pulling my hair out. [1]. >> >> The whole trend is a bit worrisome. Ever since I got the device I really >> don't want to use my laptop. I thought I would hate typing anything on it. >> But it not bad at all (and I am the sort to make sure and buy laptops with >> full-size keyboards). People are going use the free apps so long as WM >> wikis are hard to navigate natively. We will never convert readers to >> editors if they reading with the editing interface stripped away. Do these >> apps for read-only Wikipedia even support the central-notice? I am not sure. >> Some seem to completely convert the website to a magazine appearance; some >> seem more like sleek web-browser. >> >> I can't help but think that WMF does't jump in soon with an inexpensive app >> which solves the difficulties of navigation while preserving the facets of >> the site that are important to WMF, it will be harder to recover the losses >> if this trend of hardware takes hold. I imagine an official WMF app would >> get some sort of preference when searching "wikipedia" in the App Store, >> which is why I really think the foundation might want to attend to this. >> >> BirgitteSB >> > > Birgitte, > > You are absolutely correct. > > Just as an additional option for Wikipedians who use the iPad, I'd point out > this little trick that makes it easier to edit from the browser: > http://blog.tommorris.org/post/5662997343/custom-css-for-wikipedia-on-ipad > > There are a whole host of opportunities and risks on mobile for Wikimedia. > You've clearly been thinking about this, so I think it would be helpful if > you could add your ideas to the relevant Talk pages on strategy wiki.[1] [2] > If you could write in detail about your experiences with the iPad that would > be helpful to the mobile team I'm sure, as a case study in user experience. > > I completely share your fears about Wikipedia in an app-centric world. In > general I'm glad to say that I hear all the time at the Foundation about > what the mobile team is doing. > > This isn't iPad-relevant per se, but they're in the middle of rewriting the > mobile site and making sure that all mobile browsers actually redirect > there. Another thing that will make things better is that Kul is hiring a > person to develop partnerships with mobile businesses. That means that, with > both app makers and big companies like carriers, we will have more of a > fighting chance to make our feelings about edit buttons, donations, proper > licensing attribution, and other issues heard. There are lots more, but if > you have ideas please share. > > Steven > > 1. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Product_Whitepaper > 2. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] NPG still violating copyright
Hm, I'm afraid that is not sufficient. :-) It's CC-BY-SA. Kind regards Ziko > > Thanks. I mean all they need to add is "text taken from Wikipedia" - it > shouldn't be too hard. > > Scott > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Projects in simple languages
Hello Milos, Thank you for the elaboration. Indeed I am afraid that the concept is a little too narrow. A language like Dutch is not really a "world language", but it as a lot of speakers with Dutch as a foreign or second language. Also, as far as I know Simple English Wikipedia mentions Basic English but does not base itself explicitly and willingly on it. The step of the committee looks to me as if only the concept of (elligible) artificial languages has been extended to the group of basic languages. You could add "Weltdeutsch" to your list of examples. Maybe the case needs more consideration. I ackknowledge that it is a difficult thing and that we don't want every language version to exist in a second version. Kind regards Ziko 2011/6/20 Milos Rancic : > After a month of on-list talk -- sometimes very heated, sometimes very > quiet -- Language committee has agreed about the next wording of the > part of the new policy [1] related to the simple languages: > > * Can there be wikis in "simple" languages? > *: Yes, in principle. But two special criteria would need to be met: the > language should be a "world language" with many L2 users, and there must > be a reliable, published specification of the controlled language to be > used. Examples are [[w:en:Basic English|Basic English]] and > [[w:fr:Français fondamental|Français fondamental]]. (In reality it does > not appear that there ''are'' many controlled languages other then > English and French.) > > In practice, it means that: > * It is likely that just Wikipedia in simple French would be approved. > If there are reliable and published specifications of other world > languages (Russian, Spanish, Arabic etc.), group interested in creating > project in simple language has to present it to the LangCom. > * It is likely that border cases would be discussed in Language > committee on case-by-case basis. For example, German is not a world > language, but at least discussion would be opened if strong arguments > would be given, including widely accepted definition of simple language. > * It is not a matter of LangCom would any Wikipedia (or any other > Wikimedia project) host project in corresponding simple language inside > of a separate namespace -- with or without specification. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Re: Projects in simple languages
Hello, The case with Simple English WP is a little more complicated: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_English_Wikipedia Basic English is only one standard they are looking at. There should be also more consideration about the target group. If a simple wikipedia meant to be a tool to learn the language? Kind regards Ziko 2011/6/20 Milos Rancic : > This was intended to be reply to the list. > > Original Message > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Projects in simple languages > Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:12:16 +0100 > From: Michael Everson > To: Milos Rancic > > On 06/20/2011 08:55 PM, David Gerard wrote: >> I have been around the Wikimedia projects since 2004. This is the very first >> time I have ever heard any official subset of English mentioned in any >> connection with the Simple English Wikipedia. Did I just miss past >> documentation to this effect? Was this part of its founding? When was Basic >> English first linked with Simple? > > Evidently from the beginning. > > http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English_Wikipedia > > Simple English Wikipedia is a Wikipedia encyclopedia, written in basic > English.[1] > > http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English > > Even in the earliest revision of the main page > http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=461 it > refers to controlled vocabulary of 1000-2000 words. > > Ogden's Basic English was published in 1940. It's unlikely that those > who asked for simple.wikipedia.org were unaware of it. > > Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/ > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
Dear colleague, What you say makes absolute sence. I have the suspicion that there was a time, around 2009, that new activities in WMF were eager to have a wiki of its own: Strategy, Outreach and so on. Alas, after a while of retention, there came Ten wiki. The intention was to have a website for the public, but I don't believe in creating again and again more and more communication channels. I see the same tendency in WMNL, by the way. About the sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikisource: there is ALS.WP doing that already, maybe knowing that it would be hard to create thoses sister projects in ALS (Alemannic). In general I would like to see more bounds between the sisters, including Wikipedia. We had that discussion with regard to a rebranding, going under the name of Wikipedia only and have a Wikipedia Foundation, a Wikipedia dictionary (Wiktionary), a Wikipedia Text Books (Wikibooks) and so on. But in those sister projects communities, I have met fierce resistance to any new branding or technical rearrangement. They even tend to avoid to associate themselves with Wikipedia. They want to grow on their own appeal and strengh. (They also are annoyed when Wikipedians come to a sister project and don't learn immediately that the rules differ.) Kind regards Ziko van Dijk 2011/7/1 WereSpielChequers : > One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the > proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that > we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are > mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English it seems > sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with > spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference. > > But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias > each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta. > > On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for > wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each > of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki? > > This would make it much easier when people create an article on > wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could > just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages, > watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per > language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation > between editors across what are currently different projects if you > had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now > work across what are currently quite separate news, quote and pedia > projects. > > WereSpielChequers > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
Hi Nemo, you are not very specific - the discussion on Strategory you are linking to contains a lot of good reasons provided by Dedalus. Indeed, if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know "Wikipedia" but not "Wikimedia". The most simple and reasonable way is to use the famous brand, not to invest in "Wikimedia". With regard to the sister projects, I feel a lot of vigorous emotions but no arguments. Ziko 2011/7/2 Federico Leva (Nemo) : > There are much more "meta-wikis" that could be merged: > <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_wikis#Organizational_and_planning_projects> > > Ziko van Dijk, 02/07/2011 00:14: >> But in those sister projects communities, I have met fierce resistance >> to any new branding or technical rearrangement. They even tend to >> avoid to associate themselves with Wikipedia. They want to grow on >> their own appeal and strengh. (They also are annoyed when Wikipedians >> come to a sister project and don't learn immediately that the rules >> differ.) > > And with good reason. > See also > <http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:Brand_name_consolidation> > (this is a perennial proposal). > > Nemo > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation
Hello, If I understand Alec right he wants a model wherein a project like WikiSomething can declare itself affiliated with Wikimedia: "We need a name for self-identified project affiliation. External projects needs to be able to claim, on their own initiative, that they are "part of" something." Of course, WikiSomething can say on its website "We like Wikimedia and share its goals", but the wording must not give the impression that there is an official link between both. The problem is that we don't want that anybody can decorate himself with the Wikimedia trademark and maybe abuse it. There must be an official recognition anyway from Wikimedia Foundation. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk 2011/7/13 Lodewijk : > I am not sure if this is about the same thing. I read Alec's questions as > being about content projects that want to affiliate themselves with > Wikimedia - want to become the new Wikimedia project. I know that in the > past this question has lived for example with OmegaWiki/WiktionaryZ . SJ, > would you consider this to be similar to Wikimedian groups who want to have > a slightly more formal relationship with the Movement? > > Lodewijk > > 2011/7/13 Samuel Klein > >> We're discussing setting up an "Affiliation committee" to oversee >> simple, low-overhead wikimedia affiliates and associations. These >> could be organizations 'under the umbrella' of free knowledge -- >> requiring just basic review of their work and standards to confirm >> they are in line with our basic principles. [1] >> >> Wikimedia Associations could be individual wikiprojects, clubs, or >> meetups run by one or more people that want to establish a lasting >> identity as part of the movement. >> >> Third-party wikis and larger groups could be Wikimedia Affiliates. >> >> Both could use web-badges and icons to identify them with the movement >> (derived from the WM community logo?). >> >> SJ >> >> [1] >> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_roles_project/New_group_models >> >> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Alec Conroy >> wrote: >> > Prompted by discussions in another thread, I ask a related question-- >> > >> > ;1-- A roadmap towards affiliation >> > >> > How should a currently-unaffiliated project go about becoming 'part >> > of' Wikimedia? >> > >> > One easy step they could take would be to simply say, on their >> > website, "This site considers itself to be part of the Wikimedia >> > Movement". (alternate text welcome ) >> > >> > Later, a self-identified affiliate could be formally designated as >> > "part of the Wikimedia Movement" by the global community or the >> > foundation or both. >> > >> > Such recognition would have lots of benefits for the new projects that >> > share our values-- other WM projects would know to visibly link to >> > them whenever they have relevant content (as we currently do across >> > WMF projects). We could permit access to the unified login, we could >> > allow template-sharing or image-sharing. We could set up >> > interwiki-linking, and other interoperability functions. >> > >> > Such recognition would have even bigger benefits for us. We could >> > get an affiliation with an established, successful project that shares >> > our values. The kinds of project that we would build ourselves if >> > someone else hadn't already built it. Their userbases and readership >> > would see get to Wikimedia as something larger than just WP, and it >> > would help cement public understanding that Wikimedia is a Movement, >> > very big, very diverse, and very special. >> > >> > ; 2-- We need a name for self-identified project affiliation. >> > >> > External projects needs to be able to claim, on their own initiative, >> > that they are "part of" something. That something should be a >> > something that is connected to us. >> > >> > But self-identified affiliation has no gatekeeper, so whatever it is >> > new projects can be "part of", there could be lots that we don't >> > approve of. >> > >> > I'm the founder of a project and I want signal my ideological >> > affiliation to WM. I think my own project's values match the >> > Wikimedia's values, in my opinion anyway. >> > >> > Recognizing that I may or may not be right-- what should I say I am a >> > "part of"?
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
Hello, Today I found the time to read the messages about the "Oral Citations" project and watch the film "People are Knowledge". I hope that we can go on in this discussion without accusations about racism etc. In science, it is the quality of the findings that should matter, not the colour of the researcher's skin (may it be black, white, or green). == Concerned == I must say that I am deeply concerned about the "Oral Citations". If someone wants to set up a new Wikimedia project for oral traditions or "oral history", I could live with that although I don't think that it fits into the scope of Wikimedia. It certainly does not fit into the scope of Wikipedia. The film says that recorded "oral history" should be considered to be a reliable souce "when there are some accessible printed sources on a subjet, but the sources are incomplete or misleading by way of being outdated or biased". So, when someone believes that those "accessible printed sources" are "biased", he comes up with the video of his grand uncle telling the truth? == Problems of orality (of the human brain) == The film presents some carefully selected scholars supporting the film makers' opinion, but if you ask the huge majority of historians they will explain to you why they are so reluctant about "oral history". Take an example described by Johannes Fried, Memorik, p. 215: The Gonja in Northern Ghana told to British colonial officials that there once was the founder of their empire, Ndewura Japka. He had seven sons, each of them mentioned by name, and each of them administered one of the seven provinces of the Gonja empire. Then the British reformed the administration, and only five provinces remained. Decennias later, when the British rule ended, scholars asked the people again about the history of Ndewura Japka. Now, the founder had only five sons. Those two sons, whose provinces were abolished by the British, were totally erased from memory, if British colonial records had not preseved their names. I myself have interviewed people who claimed that they did not write a peticular letter (which I found in the archives), that they met a person at a peticular convention (although the person did not participate at all) and so on. These people may not be liars, but memory is flexible and unstable. By nature, man is not created to be a historian, to preserve carefully information in his brain, but to deal with the actual world he lives in. == The way of historiography == * Historians collect primary sources and try to create a sound and coherent narrative based on them. Those primary sources are written records in archives, or already in printed or online editions, or interviews recorded. * Then the historians publish their findings in secondary sources. * Later, text-book and handbook authors read those secondary sources and create their tertiary sources. Wikipedia is such a tertiary source. It is not the task of Wikipedians or even readers to be confronted with the mass of primary sources and figure out a good synthesis. That is a work that must be let to scholars (in the largest sence) who have a good overview on the subject. Printed books may not be the answer in poor countries, but maybe e-publishing is, and there are certainly at least some places on the internet that are suitable for new primary and also secondary sources. Wikipedia cannot solve all problems in the world, and even Wikimedia cannot. Kind regards Ziko -- Dr. Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
Dear Achal, I don't have a form fetishism :-) although I highly prefer written to oral sources for many practical reasons. You know that in oral history projects the transcription is an essential part of the work, by the way. What I am pointing to is the difference between primary sources and secondary sources. It is the utmost important distinction in history science. I am sure that any introduction to historiography will agree with me on that. Kind regards Ziko 2011/7/27 Achal Prabhala : > Dear Ziko, > > On Wednesday 27 July 2011 09:38 PM, Ziko van Dijk wrote: >> Hello, >> >> Today I found the time to read the messages about the "Oral Citations" >> project and watch the film "People are Knowledge". I hope that we can >> go on in this discussion without accusations about racism etc. In >> science, it is the quality of the findings that should matter, not the >> colour of the researcher's skin (may it be black, white, or green). >> >> == Concerned == >> I must say that I am deeply concerned about the "Oral Citations". If >> someone wants to set up a new Wikimedia project for oral traditions or >> "oral history", I could live with that although I don't think that it >> fits into the scope of Wikimedia. It certainly does not fit into the >> scope of Wikipedia. > May I say, firstly, that this is an experiment - an experiment which > those of us working on it, and others around us, thought might lead to > interesting results. Secondly, may I also say that the project is not on > "oral history" - it's on using oral sources as citations. >> The film says that recorded "oral history" should be considered to be >> a reliable souce "when there are some accessible printed sources on a >> subjet, but the sources are incomplete or misleading by way of being >> outdated or biased". So, when someone believes that those "accessible >> printed sources" are "biased", he comes up with the video of his grand >> uncle telling the truth? >> == Problems of orality (of the human brain) == >> The film presents some carefully selected scholars supporting the film >> makers' opinion, but if you ask the huge majority of historians they >> will explain to you why they are so reluctant about "oral history". > Obviously, the scholars and intellectuals we talked to were selected. We > don't pretend otherwise. I am personally not privy to what the "majority > of historians" think. But on that note - this project was about using > oral citations as sources, not about re-writing history. If you will > please take a look at the subjects we covered through the course of this > experiment, you will see that they are: recipes, religious ceremonies, > traditional liquor and folk games. All of these things relate to > everyday events that are practised by a large number of people and can > be observed by anyone >> Take an example described by Johannes Fried, Memorik, p. 215: The >> Gonja in Northern Ghana told to British colonial officials that there >> once was the founder of their empire, Ndewura Japka. He had seven >> sons, each of them mentioned by name, and each of them administered >> one of the seven provinces of the Gonja empire. >> >> Then the British reformed the administration, and only five provinces >> remained. Decennias later, when the British rule ended, scholars asked >> the people again about the history of Ndewura Japka. Now, the founder >> had only five sons. Those two sons, whose provinces were abolished by >> the British, were totally erased from memory, if British colonial >> records had not preseved their names. > and none of the articles thus created are about rewriting the > history of the last few centuries or undoing the work of the academy. We > are simply interested in these subjects because they are part of the > everyday life of millions of people like us, and because they haven't > been recorded in print in a form that is useful to Wikipedia. >> I myself have interviewed people who claimed that they did not write a >> peticular letter (which I found in the archives), that they met a >> person at a peticular convention (although the person did not >> participate at all) and so on. These people may not be liars, but >> memory is flexible and unstable. By nature, man is not created to be a >> historian, to preserve carefully information in his brain, but to deal >> with the actual world he lives in. >> >> == The way of historiography == >> * Historians collect primary sources and try to create a sound and >> coherent n
[Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"
for all of the Spanish speaking countries. == Experimental phase == My suggestion is that the Foundation asks the Wikipedia language versions to elect LCPs (and their deputies). After a year, the Foundation evaluates the experiences with the LCPs, whether they really make communication more efficient or not. Then, * the LCP system can remain the same as it is, * or has to be abolished because it caused more work than it helped, * or the system will be given a more formal basis, with the LCP getting a higher status or more tasks, or even becoming the nucleus of language based formal Wikimedia organizations. Maybe the LCP experiences can be of value with regard to Wikimedia projects such as Wikisource, Wikibooks etc. Please let me know what you think about the possibility and potential usefulness of Language Contact Persons. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Global Wikipedian of the year 2011
Hello, Is there anywhere more information about the Global Wikipedian, introduced at Haifa? By chance, I got the business card of Rauan at the chapters meeting. Kind regards Ziko http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2011-08_Wikimania_ZVD_10.jpg -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"
Hello, The name is not so important, of course, but I think that the old "Ambassador" is a little bit a big word. Why do the "ambassadors" not work? Because they don't feel responsible, if they can simply put themselves on a list and then forget about. It is important that they feel an obligation to fulfill some well defined tasks. Yes, one can go to the village pumps and ask people to do something. And that is a lot of work, and that's why we need those Language Contact Persons. It is always better when they can post in their own language. Reports about the language version (monthly, yearly) are only written when there is a person who knows that that his exactly *his task*. Kind regards Ziko 2011/8/16 Yaroslav M. Blanter : >> Let's do it! What's the best way to encourage embassies, especially on >> small >> projects that may have never had them before? >> > > Obviously, to let a message in a relevant language (which is expected to > be understood by many of the users) on the village pump of the > corresponding project. The message should clearly explain what and why is > expected from these users. > > Langcom is another good starting point. > > For big projects, I believe, this approcah is hopeless, but I do not think > the embassies as designed are needed for the big projects. > > Cheers > Yaroslav > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"
2011/8/16 Milos Rancic : > > realized that we have to elect our ambassadors to Meta [1]. So, the > first three persons on the list were actually elected. Unfortunately, > the idea of Embassy was never really alive. > Interesting! Actually, from the 5 persons on that list for Esperanto, at least 2-3 are no longer active. But there was noone who felt responsible (or authorized?) to remove those names. Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] The Yodeling diploma
Dear friends, >From time to time we talked in de.wp about a 'Wikipedia diploma', useful e.g. for those who want to present or teach Wikipedia in tertiary education and have to prove their skills. The usual reaction is: "Ridiculous, that sound's like the Yodeling diploma!" Every German speaking person who saw the 1970s or grew up afterwards knows what the Yodeling diploma is: a sketch by Loriot (Vicco von Bülow). Loriot died today. Let's commemorate him and his Yodeling diploma, luckily someone put it on Youtube with an English translation.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lliHC7QSiG8 Kind regards Ziko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicco_von_B%C3%BClow -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Tragedy: videos and slides from presentations Wikimanias (lately 2011 in Haifa)
Actually, in Haifa I did not visit a lot of presentations, intentionally, because I thought they were recorded and going to be uploaded. I used the time in Haifa to talk to people and make new friends... Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Improving links between chapters and the Foundation
2011/9/3 Ilario Valdelli : > On 03.09.2011 18:55, Jon Huggett wrote: > The members selected in the WMF's board by chapters are not > "representatives" of the chapters. > Indeed. And it is actually a good thing that the WMF board can invite new board members also from without the Wikimedia movement. One can argue about the numbers, but the principle by itself is good. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia Brasil + WMF
Hello, I would like to know: Is the introduction of WMF people on national boards a serious idea, or is it just a whim, a piece of loud thinking, and does not need to be discussed further? Kind regards Ziko 2011/9/4 Federico Leva (Nemo) : > Florence Devouard, 02/09/2011 21:11: > > You seek to remove "perceived" conflicts of interest, even if that means > > creating "real" conflicts of interest ? > > > > Because there would be conflict of interest and rather BIG ONES. > > > > We are facing rather severe challenges right now. Let's say it straight, > > Wikimedia Foundation is simply trying to absorb/control the chapters as > > is they were simple bureaux of the WMF locally and chapters kind of > > disagree with WMF idea that centralization is a good move for the > > mouvement... > > Actually it can be considered quite a coherent plan: if the chapters are > completely controlled by the WMF, like local branches of a corporation > but with more subtle means, then there's no conflict of interest, > perceived (by whom?) or real. > I don't understand, by the way, why the perceived "conflict of interest" > should be perceived as high right now, and in need of being reduced; the > topic seems a bit surreal, Florence gave better examples and context of > real COI issues. > > Michael Snow, 02/09/2011 22:02: >> If the point is to improve communication, then a more practical approach >> might be to designate "observers" who are not given authority but merely >> sit in with a chapter board. > > I don't consider this practical, rather ideal: it's impossible to > appoint voting (and working) board members, as explained by Ilario, > Florence and others; at least observers are ideally possible. Assuming > that they are not spies of another organization (!) but they're there > because they know the language, the chapter and its problems, and they > are willing to help with suggestions, who wouldn't be happy to have > them? But even considering only the language problem mentioned by BYria, > this is going to be quite difficult and the WMF is most likely not able > to find suitable observers; the ChapCom /could/ be able to. I bet that > WMIT board would be super-happy to have e.g. Delphine as observer, if > she wanted to follow yet another mailing list and bunch of meetings; but > despite her preternatural ability to find discussions (among thousands > on our members mailing list) where she can give useful feedback, this > doesn't seem a safe assumption even in this lucky context. > But we're going more and more offtopic. > > Theo10011, 02/09/2011 21:25: > > I > > would argue that the onus is on WMF to aid in communication, there is > still > > not a single dedicated person on staff for chapter coordination/outreach, > > instead most Chapter relation/oversight comes from an unusual overlap of > > Global Development, Communications department and rarely Community > > department. Let me put this in perspective, there are 3 Storytellers, a > > Strategy department, dedicated researchers, full-time on staff but not a > > single person to deal with chapters who have been around for several > years. > > > > If a board of chapters composed of volunteers who have to solely rely > on the > > foundation for activities have to do a better job in communications, the > > Foundation has to do its part first. > > Perhaps this can take us a bit more on topic. > There's indeed a big confusion about WMF staff responsibilities and it > would be interesting to know how the "Outreach" and the "Global South" > departments will work together, why they're separated despite the > overlaps etc. Brasil could be a good example to see whether the local > office will just be yet another layer of complexity or rather a useful > single point of contact and catalyst for the local chapter and community. > > I've been following the WMF Brasil office activities on Meta for several > months now (almost a year) and I don't understand completely how local > activities have been organized and what impact they had so far, so I > don't know what's the best approach, but the letter by Wikimedia Brasil > is very good in its approach if not in the details. To actually involve > the local community and chapter in the activities, besides generic > transparency which often doesn't actually give room to useful feedback, > we could imagine something like an advisory board or scientific > committee (not executive), appointed by the local chapter (and which &g
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
Hello, Frankly, I am quite unhappy about the referendum and share the concerns expressed by Thomas. I think that the Foundation did not take those Wikimedians serious who are opposed to the filter. The Foundation avoided the direct question whether someone is for or against the filter at all, this most important question was denied to the community. >From this perspective, the first question can be seen as manipulative. On German language Wikipedia, there is a poll of its own. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Einf%C3%BChrung_pers%C3%B6nlicher_Bildfilter It will go until September 15th, but by now the results are as follows: Against the filter 231, for the filter 44. Undecided 14. Kind regards Ziko 2011/9/4 Thomas Dalton : > I said from the beginning that this poll was too badly designed for anyone > to be able to draw useful conclusions from whatever the results are. I think > that has been proven correct. > > A very large proportion of voters said they don't consider the feature > important. If they simply mean "not important" then the result could be > considered a mandate to proceed. If they actually mean they are opposed to > the feature, which seems likely given the number of negative comments, then > there is not even a clear majority in favour. > > While I personally am in favour of this feature, I urge the Foundation not > to proceed with it without further consultation. To ask the community for > their views and then not actually take those views into account (which you > can't do since you can't tell what they are) would be a an insult to the > community and would significantly harm relations between the Foundation and > those it exists to serve. > > The Foundation needs to be mature enough to admit that they've screwed up > this survey, apologise and try again. Next time, start by figuring out what > you want to achieve by asking the questions and then choose the questions > accordingly. -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
Hello, I also detest the use of the word "censorship", which is obviously out of range here. It's simply about what individuals want to see or not. Some Wikimedians are rather short sighted or ignorant towards the fact that other people may think and feel differently. Still, I had preferred to let the Wikimedians vote on the introduction in general. Or, better, prepare the tool and then let the single communities decide. German language Wikipedia has indeed a rather homogenous community, compared to more global linguistic communities. Kind regards Ziko 2011/9/4 Sarah Stierch : >> Yes (maybe). It's not at all clear that this use case should not be >> ignored to avoid the possibility of compromising the encyclopedia. >> >> I have to ask: if there's such a demand for a censored Wikipedia, >> where are the third-party providers? Anyone? This is a serious >> question. Even workplace filtermakers don't censor Wikipedia, as far >> as I know. >> >> > Some workplace filters don't allow for certain subjects to be searched. I > work at a major museum institution, I cannot view subject matter about > certain sex topics (and I'm the Wikipedian in Residence, so I'm on WP most > of my day). (i.e. "sexual differences"). > > I don't know why people are wigging out so badly about the image filter. If > people want to use it, great, and if you don't, DON'T. But perhaps I'm > misunderstanding something about the idea. I voted for it, and it seems the > people who dislike the idea are the only one's speaking out on the list. > > The idea that there is a choice is very empowering. Just like people filter > television cable programming for their children, and internet access. > Sometimes this appear when you least expect them, and to allow our users the > choice, is great. I will probably never use it (even though I just found out > there are plenty of things that gross me out that end up on Wikipedia by way > of Commons images), but, I support the option. > > And to say that a 4 year old being restricted from seeing nudity on > Wikipedia is "not educating them" just makes me laugh out loud. Just like I > wouldn't want my 4 year old (and no, I don't have kids, but I have nieces, > nephews, etc) watching porn, playing violent video games or watching John > Waters movies. :P (And I love John Waters!). > > It's really fascinating how freely Wikipedians and Wikimedians love to throw > around the word censorship. Someone should do a study on that. > > Sarah > > > -- > GLAMWIKI Partnership Ambassador for the Wikimedia > Foundation<http://www.glamwiki.org> > Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American > Art<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch> > and > Sarah Stierch Consulting > *Historical, cultural & artistic research & advising.* > -- > http://www.sarahstierch.com/ > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sue Gardener, Wikipedia's leading editor - wikileaks
Funny, These lines remind us that a lot of the "intelligence" work is nothing more than reading the newspaper. No much real "leaking", one might say. Obviously, those writers love the word "leading" to make their readers understand the importance of the news. :-) Isn't it a problem in the English language that "editor" usually means a person who is publishing, like the editor (publisher?) of a newspaper? Kind regards Ziko 2011/9/6 Marcin Cieslak : >>> Jimmy Wales wrote: >> I was mentioned in a leaked US diplomatic cable - with my name spelled >> wrong! >> >> http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/11/08SANTIAGO1015.html > > What about this: > > Reference id: 09TELAVIV982 > Origin: Embassy Tel Aviv > Time: Mon, 4 May 2009 10:30 UTC > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED > > (...) > > Ha'aretz reported that Sue Gardner, Wikipedia's leading editor, who > attended the Wikipedia Academy 2009 Conference in Israel this week, > refuted claims by leading Israeli Internet researchers that > WikipediaQs coverage of Israel-related issues is 'problematic. > Gardener said that the Web site merely reflected public discourse. > 'I know that more or less the same mistakes [on Wikipedia] can be > found in The New York Times,' she was quoted as saying. > > http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09TELAVIV982 > > //Marcin > > > _______ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia Brasil + WMF
Sorry, I did not mean you, I should have deleted the previous text. Ziko 2011/9/4 Federico Leva (Nemo) : > Ziko van Dijk, 04/09/2011 14:26: >> I would like to know: Is the introduction of WMF people on national >> boards a serious idea, or is it just a whim, a piece of loud thinking, >> and does not need to be discussed further? > > If you're quoting me on purpose, I'd say it belongs to the realms of > scholastic hypothesis (worth rejecting) and surrealism; if you agree you > can safely ignore the first two paragraphs of my message. ;-) > > Nemo > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Hypothetical project rebranding Wikimedia
> > "The site offers a brilliantly simple user experience, has clear strategic > goals and is driven by the objectives laid out in its Five Pillars. However, Forget about the "Five Pillars". Originally they were "three essential characteristics of the Wikipedia project". They grew to six later. In German, they were four, later five. In Dutch, at some times 3, but also 5. In Afrikaans, no real list. In Frisian, originally 3, later 4, the "four F's". Frisian, Facts, Free, ObjektyF. "But don't be too worried about rules. Contributing must remain fun." Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Hypothetical project rebranding Wikimedia
2011/9/8 Fajro : > Wikimedia is a Great Brand, the problem is that it was never promoted > properly. > In fact, the brand / logo is hidden at the bottom of the footer in every page! > Hello, you can make Wikimedia as famous as Wikipedia, but it will cost you many millions of dollars. And why should you? Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] "All human knowledge", by Jimmy Wales (?)
Hello, Today I read on a WMDE driven website: "»Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der das gesamte Wissen der Menschheit jedem frei zugänglich ist. Das ist unser Ziel.« Jimmy Wales" (Imagine a world in which the entire knowledge of mankind is freely accessible to everyone. That is our goal.) I never read that in English. Jimmy Wales actually said: "... the sum of all human knowledge". http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales And I think that there is a huge difference between "the sum of all..." and "all...". By the way, the traditional encyclopedias described themselves by "the sum of all..." But a number of Wikimedia national organizations seem to have difficulties with Jimmy's phrase. They 'translate' it to "all..." I did not succeed, for example, in explaining to my own national organization why it is wrong what we have on our business cards. Am I the only one seeing a problem here? Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A fundraiser for editors
Hello, In principle it is a nice idea. But it is extremely diffcult to "edit" (to make substantial contributions) so such an initiative should be accompanied by more than a simple appeal... Kind regards Ziko 2012/1/2 Amir E. Aharoni : > I tend to agree. At times of Fundraising, public interest grows > noticeably. People have been asking me aobut the banners almost every > day for the last few weeks. (A few times they even asked me whether > they are going to see a personal appeal from Amir Aharoni soon.) > > I don't think that i ever saw a focused "personal appeal + photo" > banner that asks people to edit instead of asking them for money. I > did sometime see graphical banners in Wikipedias in various languages > that invite people to edit or participate in writing contests. > Something like this is happening in the Tamil Wikipedia now ( > http://ta.wikipedia.org/ ). I don't know how effective it is - it's > worth checking. > > 2012/1/2 James Heilman >> >> The fundraiser for money has been working exceedingly well with our >> number of donors increasing 10 fold since 2008. What we need now is a >> fundraiser for editors. I meet well educated professionals who use >> Wikipedia but have no ideas that they can edit it. We need to run a >> banner with the same energy we use to raise money to raise editor >> numbers. This idea has been trialed to a limited extent here >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Invitation_to_edit but the >> effort did not have sufficient data crunching behind it to determine >> if it works. >> >> -- >> James Heilman >> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A fundraiser for editors
Actually, the initiative of "Article Feedback Tool" is going pretty much into this direction, asking people (readers) to participate in a way they like and ultimately also making a path to make them contributors. Kind regards Ziko http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Version_5 2012/1/7 Yaroslav M. Blanter : > Actually, do we have somewhere a concise page with a list of say ten most > urgent needs we need money for? Smth a banner can link to? > > Cheers > Yaroslav > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Nederland reports
Hello, Wikimedia Nederland is reporting monthly on its activities. We just completed December, and for convenience I send you here the link to the whole list of reports. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk president -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Nederland reports
Ah - things happen. Thanks for the note. Ziko http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederland This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for December 2011. == Cultural heritage == The Tropical Museum has put out a call for volunteers and will also be interested in appointing a Wikipedian in Residence. This will be the first such position in the Netherlands. == Conferences etc. == A barcamp is selforganizing at the day GLAMcamp Amsterdam (GLAmsterdam for short) was held December 2-4 and hosted several presentations on Friday to a mixed public of Wikipedians and representatives from various cultural institutions. Europeana presented the GLAM statistics project which should make it easier for outside parties to track usage of Wikimedia Commons donations. The Amsterdam Stedelijk museum presented their efforst to keep a dialog alive with the public even though the museum has been under renovation for several years. One of the most interesting challenges for a modern art collection is the copyright status of photographic images of works of art. Even though the Museum is the owner of the works, they cannot publish photographs of the works without the permission of the artists. They have done pioneering work in engaging artists and their heirs to grant such permissions. The Tropical Museum gave a repeat performance of the presentation that Frank Meijer gave at the WCN in November. One of the presentations given was on the results of the Wiki Loves Monuments contest, and included an announcement to go ahead with a world-wide WLM photo contest in September 2012. The WLM organizers had held a small evaluation on December 1st, the day before the GLAMcamp began. Though not all of the conclusions have been drawn up, there are two main areas of concern; for a larger number of countries there will need to be a better task management system in place and better documentation such as clearer instructions (in more languages) for uploaders, organizers, and "Wiki Takes" volunteers. Not to mention coordinating partnerships with cultural heritage organizations. == Press and outreach == Annual report 2010 printed. Discussions on a new Wikipedia flyer began. == Upcoming == January: Nieuwjaarsborrel February: Strategy weekend April: General Assembly --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee
The problem seems to be not the lack of a linguist's knowledge. We
Wikimedians are not sure or unanimous about what to expect from a Wikipedia
language edition, and what languages (language communities) we trust to
conform to our expectations.
My thoughts about the questions discussed here:
- The language comittee could be organised differently, with more rules
about communication and decision making and also majority rule instead of a
veto for every member.
- I don't think that Gerard deserves the aggression I have noticed here.
- Wikipedia can not be a solution for all problems of the world. Language
planning is difficult and includes also the implementation of a language
(acquisition planning, status planning). I do not believe that creating an
encyclopaedia should be at the beginning of this long way.
- Our present day rules for new proposals would outlaw language editions
already existing and doing well, like Esperanto ("constructed"), Latin
("ancient") or Luxembourgish (dialect). It would be a pity if a Wikipedia
language edition does not exist for the only reason that a rule prohibits
it.
- Labeling languages and forbidding them is not a good point to start. It
should not be said "this is a dialect, we don't want ist", but looked
whether there is an actual linguistic community that already uses the
language for purposes similar to Wikipedia (scientific, popularizing texts).
- And, as already said, the decisive point is what we expect from a
Wikipedia. For some the Wikia of "Lingua Franca Nova" would have been a
great Wikipedia, for others it shows that a Wikipedia in it would have been
disappointing.
Ziko
P.S. Maybe I should go on with translating my handbook about multilingual
Wikipedia to English.
2009/1/11 Milos Rancic
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 9:34 PM, Milos Rancic wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Tomasz Ganicz
> wrote:
> >> Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
> >> Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
> >> knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
> >> groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
> >> experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
> >> historical and cultural background related to language problems which
> >> is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.
> >
> > Actually, it is a misunderstanding of Michael's knowledge. His
> > expertise is, for example, making an orthography for a random language
> > [without orthography]. In fact, we need exactly his kind of linguists.
> > As I mentioned, we are working on raising expertise quality inside of
> > LangCom.
>
> And just to be more precise. After a couple of years of interacting
> with people in relation to Wikimedia projects, I realized that it is
> not so possible to get a random academician and put them into some
> Wikimedian working body. Usually, those persons are not so interested.
>
> I see that we have two more options for finding persons with relevant
> level of expertise:
> * to find Wikimedians with this kind of expertise; or
> * that some interested academician contacts us.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
First, I do not want to diminish the happiness of the New Yorkers having a chapter making their activities easier. But I do think very negative about this step of the Board, both for emotional and practical reasons. Emotional: Having a NYC chapter next to the French, German etc. makes France, Germany etc. look the equals to New York. It makes the Wikimedia Foundation look an American organization that has regional chapters in the 50 states, and also has some afiliates in the "colonies" (France, Germany etc.). As Gerard has said, some countries are more equal than others. Practical: When I once talked with Arne Klempert about the possibility of an Esperanto or Latin or Alemannic chapter, he explained to me that Wikimedia accepts only chapters within international boundaries, one chapter per country. There is a German, Austrian, and a Swiss chapter, not a German language or a French language chapter. If this would not be so, if we would have chapters based on something else, we would get into a lot of trouble. And he easily convinced me, because I know similar problems from other organizations. Allowing sub national chapters (or super national chapters) is giving wrong ideas to a lot of people. If we did not deny a chapter to the New Yorkers, how can we deny it to other regions, minorities etc.? (Or prevent that personal conflicts are realized on the level of regions?) Some more questions: * NYC chapter does not clearly define its borders, talks about a region where it wants to be active. What if other Wikimedians wants to create a chapter in a city that is now in the New York chapter region? When a North Eastern US Chapter knocks on the door of WMF, will the NYC chapter be happy about and volontarily dissolve? * Ethnically divided countries: Belgium, for example: What if one group of Belgian Wikimedians wants to create a Belgian chapter, but others want three regional chapters (Brussels, Flanders, Wallonia)? * Minorities without region: What if there is an Estonian chapter, but Russian speaking people there demand a chapter of their own? * When the chapters are going to work together more than now, and are going to elect WMF board members: Will one chapter have one vote? Will there be 50 US chapters with 50 votes, and one French chapter with one vote? * Isn't it much easier for WMF to relate to a limited number of national chapters than with a potentially unlimited number of national, sub national, or super national chapters? It might have been better to consider the NYC chapter indeed as a "sub chapter", a stand-in until there will be an US chapter. Kind regards Ziko 2009/1/19 Michael Snow > I've been assembling my notes from last week's board meeting to pass > along. The first set of items I have to report is business from the > chapters committee. All of these resolutions have been posted on the > foundation website. > > We approved two new chapters, and there's something special about each > of the two. Wikimedia New York City is special because it's the first > one recognized under the new sub-national chapter guidelines. And > Wikimedia UK is special because it's the second version of that chapter. > For the sake of formality - and nobody does formality better than the > British, which has been part of the difficulty - we revoked the > recognition of the first one, which is dissolved or in the process of > dissolving. Anyway, welcome to both of the new chapters! > > Also, two resolutions relating to the chapters committee's membership > and procedures were approved. One recognizes the current members and the > other allows the committee to determine its own membership in the > future. This allows them to keep their work going without waiting for > the board to pass a resolution (the board reserves the ability to > appoint and remove members and will still be informed of changes). > > --Michael Snow > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
Thank you folks for the explanations, some things are getting clearer to me.
So "NCY chapter" is a bad naming, I see. I believed that it was not defined
geographically well, because I saw the map saying "
Approximate region of operations of Wikimedia New York
City<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City>,
centered on the New York metropolitan
area<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area>
.
But all Wikimedians across the Northeast US who find it convenient to
participate in meetings in New York City are most welcome!"
URL:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_New_York_City_region.PNG?uselang=de
I learned now that chapters should not overlap. But in case of dispute, what
principle will be used? "First comes first" or "The majority of Wikimedians
concerned decide" or "We prefer large regions to small regions"? Or "the
Foundation decides from time to time, based on several principles, figuring
out what might be suitable in this specific case?" I foresee a lot of
trouble because of this acceptance of a sub national chapter.
By the way, this word "chapter" is unfamiliar for me, a German. I did not
hear it before I became a Wikimedian. What does this English word mean? Any
sub division of an organisation, or is it rather associated to a city than
to a country?
The word "local" in German ("lokal") means: related to a city. What does it
mean when English speaking Wikimedians talk about "local chapters"?
Shouldn't it be "national chapters"? I consider Germany as a national, not a
local entity...
Ziko
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[Foundation-l] The Entities in an International Movement. Was: Re: Board resolutions (chapters)
ictly in national > chapters if they start today, and not more than hundred years ago? > > Ting > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
Thanks again for your explanations (I don't want to open a new mail for every bit). Some points: * Of the organizations Lars mentioned, only ISOC has "chapters". I still find it not clear about whether the national organizations are independent or merely national agencies of the center (as it is the case with Greenpeace). * In this discussion, it is irrelevant how many people live in a sub national area, or how large the country is (there are chapters in small and in large countries already). * It is also irrelevant whether individuals choose to be member in a chapter that does not belong to the nation state they live in, like nationals of France living abroad (as Florence has explained well), or Belgians who go to the Dutch chapter as long as they don't have own of their own. * It is irrelevant whether the New Yorkers do a good job (I never doubted that). The Wikimedians of Cologne do a good job aswell, but they are no chapter. * If the Wikimedians in the USA did not manage to create a national chapter, it is not my fault. Why can't there be a Wikimedia US? I don't know the reason: Large and ethnically diverse countries have WM chapters, other movements have US chapters... * Hongkong and Taiwan are special cases; not "nations" or "countries" different to PR China, but different "states" or "systems". * "Sub national chapters" in the US states make WMF the default Wikimedia US, dealing with American institutions and personalities in a way usually a chapter would. American Wikimedians have no reason to take effort for a WMUS if they see this and that they can have US states chapters. * The world is divided into countries, like it or not, and this has consequences for us. Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
2009/1/23 Gerard Meijssen > > > The natural state of these discussions is that there are always people > pissing in the wind. That spoils things somewhat. > Hear hear, true words in a typical Dutch wording. :-) I am amazed about the transparency and openess the staff members are giving here, and I am looking forward to the results of these splendid work conditions. Kind regards Ziko "Wer durch des Argwohns Brille schaut, sieht Raupen selbst im Sauerkraut." Wilhelm Busch -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Elections in the pontic wikipedia
Sorry, I only later saw that the pontic Wikipedia is still not created. It would be not good to have non created Wikipedias in the list of Tell Us. Kind regards Ziko 2009/1/27 Zaharias Diakonikolaou > Hello, > > The previous week, we the pontic wikipedia community arranged a meeting in > our channel in IRC chat. There we thought that we should make elections in > order to be prepared for the creation of the wiki and so we decided who > would be the candidates for administrators and that we should also have a > buro because we wanted to handle our issues on our own so we decided our > candidate for bureacracy as well. > > P.S. As I saw that there has been a misunderstanding in what I said before > we will ask for nomination AFTER the wiki will be created. > > Best wishes, > ZaDiak > > 2009/1/27 Zaharias Diakonikolaou > > > The pontic wikipedia (which has been approved but it hasn't been created > > yet) is running elections to vote its admins and bureaucrats. This is > done > > as a preparation for our creation, in order to be ready for the moment > when > > we can finally start for real. > > > > Everyone who would like to vote is welcome to do so. > > > > The vote page is > > > http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/pnt/%CE%92%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%B9%CF%80%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%B4%CE%B5%CE%B9%CE%B1:%CE%91%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%BA%CE%AC_%CF%88%CE%B7%CF%86%CE%AF%CE%B6%CE%BF%CE%BC%CE%B5%CE%BD_%CE%B3%CE%B9%CE%B1_%CE%BD%CE%BF%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%AC%CE%BD%CF%84%CF%82 > > > > Best wishes, > > ZaDiak > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Steward elections: summary, week one
If I understand it right, Wikimedia or other stewards can trace what a single steward is doing. Even if a dictatorship forces a local steward to do something, there is the danger that this becomes public. Ziko 2009/2/9 Ting Chen > Robert Rohde wrote: > > Looking at the summary and comments, I am struck by the fact that > > Mardetanha [1] is getting a significant number of oppose votes from > > people who believe it is fundamentally unsafe for a Steward to live in > > Iran. Including comments that the Iranian government might arrest and > > torture him for his access, or that he might otherwise feel compelled > > to co-operate with them. > > > > Similar concerns were also voiced about a Chinese candidate, but that > > candidate already has significant opposition for other reasons, and so > > the political comments do not seem to be a major factor. > > > > [1] > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2009/statements/Mardetanha > > > > -Robert Rohde > > > > > I dislike this argument very much. People cannot choose that they are > born in Iran or in China, or in the USA or Europe. Use such a trait that > cannot be influence by a person against him is a kind of discrimination. > So long as the person doesn't handle against the rule there is no reason > to assume that he would do that. Keep a good faith is one of the > principles of how Wikimedians should meet each other. > > Ting > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Steward elections: summary, week one
> > > 2009/2/9 Ziko van Dijk : > > > >> If I understand it right, Wikimedia or other stewards can trace what a > >> single steward is doing. Even if a dictatorship forces a local steward > to do > >> something, there is the danger that this becomes public. > >> Ziko > > If there's any sign that a steward had misused his previlege, for what > ever reason, he would instantly lost that previlege. > > Ting > I see now that my statement can be misunderstood. Yes, Ting, that's what I mean, it would not be a good idea of a dictatorship to try to have influence on Wikipedia this way. Therefore I don't see a problem to have a steward from such a country, unless they are all from the same. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] A kind of organisation for transnational Wikipedias
Hello, There are some language versions of Wikipedia who have no relation to a chapter or cannot create a chapter, or where a chapter would not be suitable. Examples: - nation-less languages such as Latin, Esperanto - diaspora languages or Wikipedia communities, such as Kurdish, Swahili Sometimes it would be useful to have a kind of organisation for these language editions, not chapters, but something else, for PR purposes, contacts with language institutions etc. Kind regard Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Flagged Revisions, Report on german WP
Listening to Wikipedia Weekly (71) and reading the discussions on en.WP and nl.WP about implementation, it strucks me how inaccurate the discussions are. I do not know what is the reason for it, a poor presentation in the first place, a confusing terminology, hidden ideological motives... It is difficult to discuss something when people claim that it would take "ages" until an article is sighted, that people are prevented from creating articles, talk about the sighting of "autoconfirmed people" (has nothing to do with that). With my mentees in de.WP I never experienced that someone complained about the sighting process, the newbies took it as something normal and asked me friendly to do the sighting (often it was already done by someone else). Of course, if someone creates an article about a less interesting subject, it can take some days or even one, two weeks until sighting, but I don't see the tragic of that. Kind regards Ziko 2009/2/19 P. Birken > Creation of new articles by IPs was never disabled on de-WP. However, > the number of articles coming is has been steady for years now with > about 1.500, of which around 1.000 are speedy deleted, so an overall > net growth of slightly less than 500 per day. > > Otherwise, we are were indeed able to come down to a maximal waiting > time of 5 days and will try to keep it there or even lower. > > Best, > > Philipp > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people
The whole issue might be approached in these steps: 1) Determine the role of the Foundation We claim that WMF does not interfere with the content. How true is this, and how true we want to make it? It is pretty easy to say that "our national Wikimedia organisation" is not the owner, but WMF in a country far far away and difficult to suit. And WMF claims that it is not responsible for content, but the author in question. But if WMF establishes a policy about BLP, there might rise doubt this. 2) Determine what the issue exactly is If someone complaints about "his" article, his criticism can be reasonable or not. So this is the policy itself. Maybe WMF could support (together with other organizations) a group of experts that makes a policy proposal for internet platforms in general. 3) Help the readers, "victims" and Wikipedians Not only for the persons concerned, but also for the Wikipedians it is important to know how to deal with the issue. I would welcome a brochure for people who believe that their personality rights are inflicted, and training lessons for Wikipedians. Those lessons could be organized by Wikimedia organisations with a more general title, also interesting for a curriculum vitae (resumé) of the participating Wikipedians. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Difficult words. was: Re: Request for your input: biographies of living people
David, please consider that English is not the native language of everybody. I took a lot of effort to learn your language, it would be appropriate if you would try from your side to make it more easy for non natives to understand you. Instead of mocking about GerardM's English, please do the following: - use a common word instead of a difficult one, if it exists - make no jokes or ironic references that require a specific national background to understand - be as short as possible to express your message Nothing that cannot be asked from a good Wikipedian, isn't it? :-) Ziko 2009/3/5 David Gerard > 2009/3/5 Gerard Meijssen : > > > It is not that I am not able to look up words in a dictionary.. When an > > excess of dificult word is used, the message is lost. > > > None of these were excessively difficult, and now you know more English > words. > > > - d. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Simple English Wikipedia on xkcd
For principal reasons, the establishing of "simple" Wikipedias is no longer allowed. But maybe they could become a Wikimedia project tyipe of their own, merged with the idea of a Wikipedia for juniors (Wikijunior). It is common that big publishers provide also an encyclopedia for children and young people, popular also with beginners in that peticular language. Kind regards Ziko 2009/3/8 Aphaia > I would like to encourage Simple English Wikipedia fans to blog about > it ... particularly if you are non-English native speakers. The wiki > is just not known. They might know their mother tongue Wikipedia and > English one but not Simplewiki. > > Last year I just mentioned to the Simple English Wikipedia just as one > of easy-reading materials for Second Language Acquisition. In a social > bookmark service popular in Japan, perhaps related to my blog entry, > Simplewiki yielded over 50 bookmarks just one day. And if I recall > correctly, one of Simple English Wikipedia virtue is for non-natives > education and convenience? Could we work more aggressively for our > potential readership? > > On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 2:52 AM, Al Tally > wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 4:09 PM, David Gerard wrote: > > > >> http://xkcd.com/547/ > >> > >> > >> - d. > >> > > > > Eh I'm sure this was discussed somewhere already... anyway, it brought a > ton > > of new editors in, which was both good and bad (we desperately need more > > good editors, but not vandals!) > > > > -- > > Alex > > (User:Majorly) > > ___ > > foundation-l mailing list > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > > > > > -- > KIZU Naoko > http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) > Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
