Mr. Wales,
Thank you for your apology. Really. I am perhaps taking this whole
thing overboard way too much.
I really do have the best interests at heart with what is going on
for Wikibooks, and what I have enjoyed the most there is actually
sitting down and writing textbooks. While I've been involved with the
politics of Wikibooks as well, my heart is with trying to write content.
I believe in that mission, and while I may differ with you on the
philosophy that other content besides strictly textbooks should exist on
that project, I do support the concept of an "open source"
collaboratively written textbook, such as what is happening on
Wikibooks, and elsewhere to a lesser degree such as Benjamin Crowell's
Light and Matter on http://lightandmatter.com
One of the motiviations that I have had for this project is that I
am the father of six children, and I'm living in a state where the
rising costs of textbooks is being particularly felt locally. My
children are often using textbooks that are 10-15 years old and have
scribbles in them from almost a full generation of school children,
because the local schools can't afford to replace these books. There
was one local school that was built brand new, but because the school
district was really stretching it budget for the construction they
couldn't afford to buy any books, either for the library or for the
classrooms, including textbooks. The ones they finally got were
discarded from another school district that were updating their
textbooks, together with a community book drive for the grade school
library that finally got at least a few books in there.
One of my goals to be involved with Wikibooks was to try and make
textbooks for children where I am living to be much more affordable.
There is no reason why a science textbook for sixth grade should cost
60 or 70 dollars, yet they do. I'm not talking some obscure 3rd world
country, but right here in America where we both live.
I've also benefited in the past from cheap or free "textbooks" in a
professional capacity as well. By profession, I'm a software engineer,
and I've had what would best be called an unorthodox educational
experience to say the least to get to the point for where I'm at. I
picked up much of my knowledge by experimentation on a number of
computer systems that were made available to children while I was
growing up, including on-line technical manuals and early predecessors
to IRC chatrooms. I had an e-mail address 30 year ago and got my first
piece of spam about the same time. Using those early systems I was able
to learn techniques and concepts that often my professors in college had
no idea about until after I demonstrated the idea. I got an "F" from
one professor because he thought I was a smart-ass and because the
professor couldn't get the computer to do the things I made it do.
I feel I am getting old enough that I need to start passing on the
knowledge that I've gained over the years to the next generation, and
Wikibooks has provided me with a forum to be able to accomplish this
goal. In the process of learning more about Wikibooks and its
organization, I've also come to know more about the Wikimedia Foundation
and how Wikipedia was started.
I do want to thank you for starting Wikipedia, and having the vision
to see that perhaps the Wiki concept could be applied to other areas of
human knowledge as well. I know other people were also involved, but
you have been giving it the encouragement that it has needed as well.
The early financial backing is also something that I don't think
anybody is going to forget, and thanks for that as well.
I am going to take a break for now from what I've been doing on
Wikibooks, and scale back my activities. Still, with your apology and
some retrospect on my part, I'm going to continue to be involved in some
small part. I've often said that even ordinary users on Wikimedia
projects can do extraordinary things. I'll try to prove that point by
doing it.
I'm also sorry that I had to be such a pain in your side. And I
apologize for the facist comment. That was made in a moment of passion
and I should have measured my comments that way in a much better tone.
Dredging up painful memories of an awful world experience 60 years ago
and casting you as a participant of a truly evil group of people was
really over the top, and I promise that I will never do that again.
As far as the White Nationalism and associated group of Wikibooks is
concerned, I hope you understand that all I'm trying to suggest is that
there could be an interesting Wikibook about the topic, and I completely
agree with your assessment regarding a Neutral Point of View being
essential when presenting things of that nature. I was an outspoken
critic of that Wikibook when it appeared, and to be honest I don't even
understand the mentality of the people who actually believe that stuff.
The only point we differ on is how it should be dealt with when content
like that appears, and this is really a very minor point to be arguing
over. We both agree it should have been removed as it was written, and
I was not willing myself to make it into a NPOV book. Life is too
short, and I have other things I would rather do.
I also want to thank you on one point with Wikibooks as well: There
was a need to "clean house" and get the Wikibooks community to pay
attention to the out right silly books that have somehow been ingrained
within the Wikibooks project. This whole thing has caused the debate
over what the direction of Wikibooks should be, and I geuninely hope
that Wikibooks becomes a better place. Looking at things like Alexa
rankings and citations around the internet, Wikibooks is about to really
come out from behind the shadow of its bigger cousin of Wikipedia and
become something truly remarkable.
--
Robert Scott Horning
This is a reminder/formal notice that the voting period for the creation
of Wikiversity is now over, and that the proposal to create Wikiversity
as a new Wikimedia sister project is now being submitted to the
Wikimedia Foundation board for a formal review, as per guidelines
outlined on this page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy
and the time table I submitted previously on:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AWikiversity#Wikiversity "Relaunch"
---
The participation IMHO have been outstanding, with one of the largest
user interest surveys that I have been able to find with over 300
Wikimedia contributors weighing in to voice their opinions on the
subject, both for and against the proposal. There is quite a body of
opinion there for the Foundation board to work with to try and come up
with their own opinion on the subject. I hope this vote has been viewed
as a success at least in terms of getting people interested in a future
direction for Wikimedia projects and that the energy particularly of the
supporters of Wikiversity will translate into active participation with
the project in some form.
I could use some help from an admin on Meta to "freeze" the voting
pages, unless the board doesn't mind continued voting for the next few
days. It isn't that big of a deal, but essentially the voting is over
and there is no real reason to continue. There has been some "policing"
of the votes, and a few duplicates, but I think members of the board are
intelligent enough to figure out what is going on and can come to
reasonable conclusions about what direction to go regardless of the raw
numbers.
Preliminary raw count was approval of Wikiversity by a vote of 208 in
favor to 86 against (voting before November 1st... a few votes did come
in afterward) and that ratio has been roughly consistant throughout the
entire voting process, generally 2:1 in favor.
See this page for the current vote:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Vote/en
(also in other languages besides English)
--
Robert Scott Horning
As has become apparent recently there is considerable confusion
possible when reading the text of the Wikisource copyright page at
[[Wikisource: Copyright]]. It is not clear whether only GFDL works,
GFDL-compatible works and public domain works can be posted at the
site, or whether any licence that allows relatively free reproduction
can be used. We need this situation cleared up. I am therefore
proposing to re-write the offending bits of the Wikisource copyright
page to remove the ambiguity.
Since this is a serious step for the project I thought it sensible to
post here and see what the level of agreement is with what I am
proposing to do. I will also post an equivalent message to the
Scriptorium.
What I am proposing to do is to re-word the licensing page to make it
clear that the documents themselves are licensed separately from the
content of the site. That means that things on talk pages, the
Scriptorium, Community Portal and similar will be under the GFDL as
per Wikipedia. However, the documents themselves will be licensed
according to conditions appropriate to their source. That means that
works that are public domain in the United States should be noted as
such with a template at the top or bottom of the page, whichever is
felt most appropriate. It means that works that carry different
licensing conditions from the GFDL and that have licences that are
incompatible with the GFDL can be noted as such.
Such a step will open up Wikisource to a large number of possibilities
of hosting that are currently not open and it will also clear up a
considerable amount of confusion. What do you think?
David Newton
Joanot Martorell wrote:
>2005/11/22, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>:
>
>
>>2. To discourage the creation of new Wikipedia editions in dialects
>>which do not significantly differ from existing Wikipedias. We want to
>>keep from being hoaxed, and from falling into political traps.
>>
>>For dialects, then, we want to require a much higher threshold before
>>allowing the wikipedia -- we need a good reason to start it. A
>>"Bavarian" Wikipedia proposal would need a much much stronger rationale
>>before we start it than "German". Obviously.
>>
>>
>This point isn't enough to clarify when whe should or should not create a new
>dialect wikipedia, because it's using the unique criteria of interlegibility.
>By exemple, Catalan (my native lang) and Occitan are mutually interlegible in
>text written, or between Neapolitan and Italian. And for some persons
>Portuguese and Spanish are interlegible too, but they are considered as
>independent languages. I think that perhaps the point to consider the inclusion
>of a new dialect wikipedia would be better moving around the
>exclusionist-inclusionist poles.
>
>
I don't think we're talking about an interlegibility criterion here, at
least that's not how I understand Jimbo's proposal. Certainly nobody
objects to separate wikis for the Scandinavian languages. The issue is
not whether native speakers of one language can read material in another
language. It's whether there are native speakers who actually read and
write in this as a literary language at all, as opposed to reading and
writing in some "other" language of which theirs is merely a dialect.
Expanding on Jimbo's point, here's the problem with dialect Wikipedias
(leaving aside, for a moment, the thorny problem of deciding whether
something is a dialect or a language). Dialects tend to be in a similar
position to constructed languages, in that they have no pre-existing
literature and their orthography has to be invented to a significant
degree. When the standards these establish are missing, we really have
no factual basis from which to write in such a language. Inventing
spelling or grammar while you write the encyclopedia, just like
inventing facts while you write the encyclopedia, is perpetrating an
intellectual fraud and a hoax.
However, both dialects and constructed languages of long standing may
develop their own literature and a more or less standard orthography,
which would enable us to accept them as potential Wikipedia languages.
--Michael Snow
2005/11/22, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>:
> 2. To discourage the creation of new Wikipedia editions in dialects
> which do not significantly differ from existing Wikipedias. We want to
> keep from being hoaxed, and from falling into political traps.
>
> For dialects, then, we want to require a much higher threshold before
> allowing the wikipedia -- we need a good reason to start it. A
> "Bavarian" Wikipedia proposal would need a much much stronger rationale
> before we start it than "German". Obviously.
This point isn't enough to clarify when whe should or should not create a new
dialect wikipedia, because it's using the unique criteria of interlegibility.
By exemple, Catalan (my native lang) and Occitan are mutually interlegible in
text written, or between Neapolitan and Italian. And for some persons
Portuguese and Spanish are interlegible too, but they are considered as
independent languages. I think that perhaps the point to consider the inclusion
of a new dialect wikipedia would be better moving around the
exclusionist-inclusionist poles.
I mean when you want a new wiki in a dialect with important linguistic
particularities that today are being actually assumed as "proper" of another
language, so you wouldn't need a Wikipedia if there exists a Wikipedia in those
language. In this case, wikimedia should adopt an exclusionist attitude.
But when you want a new wiki in a dialect with particularities wich are being
rejected (or considered as "bizarre", etc.) or aren't assumed as "proper" by
the most nearest languages, perhaps you and your linguistic community would
need a Wikipedia. In this case, wikimedia should adopt an inclusionist
attitude.
Let's see a practical and real exemple. If we see the cases about a new
wikipedias proposals in Murcian and in Andalusian, most people who are opposing
these are Spanish-speakers, but the reasons are different. In the case of
Andalusian, Spanish-speakers opposers are saying that "Andalusian was always
considered as a developed form of Spanish" (that is, the most possible future
form of Spanish language). They are being "inclusionist" with Andalusian
dialect, accepting the andalusian particularities as proper. In opposition of
it, about Murcian, Spanish-speakers opposers are saying that writting "Murcian
is a bizarre/coloquially/speech/deformed Spanish used in Murcia region". It
would mean also that they perhaps have some interlegibility difficulties, and
aren't assuming as "proper" form. So they are being "exclusionist" with
Murcian.
And, according to exclusionist-inclusionist poles, Wikimedia would be able to
have a exclusionist attitude with Andalusian, but being inclusionist with
Murcian. Of course, it's only my own opinion.
Cheers!
Joanot Martorell,
(not real name, but real person)
--
Viquipèdia, l'enciclopèdia lliure.
http://ca.wikipedia.org
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> > So an organization cannot, without permission of government-sanctioned
> > bodies, send people to observe and report on events? We're not talking
> > about official government press passes here (the U.S. analog is
> > state-issued passes), simply a piece of paper that indicates the person
> > in question has the sanction of Wikinews to report on their behalf.
> > People are free to ignore that piece of paper of course, and demand
> > something government-issued, but are you saying that the mere act of
> > issuing that piece of paper is illegal,
>
> I am just saying that not only can it be illegal, but also that it will
> certainly engage the liability of the foundation.
>
> Unions accreditating journalists will certainly be mad at it (as in
> France), and it would picture the foundation as a liable editor rather
> as a not-liable publisher.
>
Would make thing easier if the the word journalist is never used?
What the matter if a person is just accredited as external
(unprofesional) collaborator?
Form Italian laws being unprofessional there is no need to be register
(actualle there is not the need to pay the fee to be register) as
journalist and being declared that is an external collaborator (and
not an employed by the newsagency) should limit very much any action
againt the comunity or the foundaton.
By the way wikinews editor act just exactly like an external
unprofessional collaborator. The only difference is that they made it
for free and that there is not a editor-board approvation (actually
this last point is not irrivelant)
About an eventual legal reponsability of the foundation a possible
(but unfortunately not free of charge) solution would be to required
accredited Wikinewsers to have an insurance to cover their civil
responsabilities and foundation civil responsabilities.
As for any other thng like this it would very interesting to know what
legislation is in acts (since every country could claim that their own
legislation should be consider valid).
AnyFile
According to the point 2 in
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages
the language proposed must have a standard writing
system.
If we approve the creation of Wikipedias such as
Andalusian Spanish, we would create a Wikipedia where
the users will have to create their own standard. This
would be a huge contradiction with the Wikipedia
principle against including original research, because
the Wikipedia itself would become a linguistic
research project in order to ellaborate a standard
written form of the Spanish speech from Andalusia.
Wikimedia community should decide which role new
Wikipedias play on new writing systems creation.
Another problem of creating such Wikipedia is that the
great majority of Andalusian speakers don't feel that
they talk a different language than the rest of the
Spanish speakers. Therefore, Wikimedia would become a
non neutral part on the sociolinguistic discussion
about language identity of Andalusian speakers. If we
create an Andalusian Wikipedia we would agree on the
claim that Andalusian is a separate language from
Spanish.
Another funny thing which should happen is that,
taking into account that latinoamerican Spanish has
significantly evolved from Andalusian Spanish, then,
all the latinoamerican Spanish speakers should learn
this special new writing system used in Wikipedia,
adopting it to their local Spanish variation.
Therefore they should actually be members of the
Andalusian Wikipedia. Then Andalucian will become one
of the largest languages of the world ;oD (half
kidding)
Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I really think
that Wikimedia Foundation should take much into
account two points:
Speakers identity and existence of a standard writing
on that language.
I think that Wikimedia should not be active part of
language creation, neither of language identity
discusion.
Thank you,
Javier Carro.
___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
Téléchargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com
Sorry if I'm in the wrong list in this matter, but I'm just too lazy
to subscribe to the Wikisource list just for the sake of one
message. Anyways, I want to add the Handbook of Mathematical
Functions (or a wikified version therein) by Abramowitz and Stegun in
Wikisource, but I am not too sure whether legal issues would preclude
its inclusion.
According to [[w:Abramowitz and Stegun]], it is not protected by
copyright, as it is a product of American government employees acting
in official capacity, but it has been commercially reproduced. Free
copies of the handbook are available online, according to its
external links version.
Advice on the matter is greatly appreciated.
Hi to all!
First of all, I apologize for any inconvenience because my English isn't quite
fine. In spite of my handicap on language skillness, I want to participate in
this debate from my own point of view. I've supported the creation of a
Wikipedia in Murcian, but I've opposed another one for Wikipedia in Andalusian,
because several reasons. I would like tell us my reasons which perhaps may be
contribute in the point of view about a revision of the policy on new
wikipedias in another language.
For people who doesn't know yet who I am, I'm presenting myself as a high
contributor on Wikipedia in Catalan. I like also naming it as Wikipedia in
Valencian, as I often do it sometimes in somewhere. But I wouldn't support the
creation of a separate version of any Wikipedia in Valencian. Why?. When you
have a Wikipedia in a language wich is being "inclusive", you don't need
another Wikipedia in your own language/modality/dialect. Actually, valencian
particularities are a lot (i.e. lexicon, morphology on verbs, etc.), and some
of them are little known for Catalan-speaker and non-Valencian people. But
today it isn't being any kind of problem on Wikipedia in Catalan, because not
only all of this Valencian varieties are welcome, but also there is a policy
language wich are encouraging to use (and demanding to respect the existing of)
particularities in articles about specific Valencian subject.
So, if someone was proposing a separate Valencian version, I would oppose it
because it's needed, and because the only one difference between
"Catalan/Valencian" and "Valencian separated" would be only a different
writting norms, but the same words, the same contents, etc... It would be a
duplicated content of the same cultural matter. These were the same reasons
that I've opposed a Wikipedia in Andalusian, but I've supported a Wikipedia in
Murcian.
In my own opinion, actually Andalusian varieties are being (and could be)
welcome in Wikipedia in Spanish (Castillian). By exemple, the word in
Castillian Spanish "charcutería" (chorcery) in Andalusian Spanish is "chacina",
and this word is admitted generally as a Spanish word. The only difference would
be the pronounciation, and because of it the proposers are remarking on a
different writting norms. It isn't needed a wiki in Andalusian because there is
already a wiki wich is being inclusive with Andalusian varieties.
In front of it, I've supported a Wikipedia in Murcian because these varieties
aren't (and could'nt be) welcome in Wikipedia in Spanish. In fact,
Spanish-speakers always are rejecting the Murcian varieties because it's
generally considered as a "bizarre" form of Spanish language. In any dictionary
of Spanish language you could find words in murcian such as "boria" (fog,
"niebla" in Spanish), "bezón" (twister, "gemelo"), etc... (neither in Wikipedia
in Spanish). In adding of Valencian language, I'm also a Spanish-speaker, and I
wouldn't accept those words as Spanish. And the proposers of a wiki in Murcian
aren't saying anything about a different writtin norms, actually the principal
promoter was saying that ***it would be written in Spanish writting norms***,
altough adapted a bit to their pronounciation. It is needed a wiki in Murcian
because there aren't any wiki wich would be able to be inclusive with Murcian
varieties. In fact, Wikipedia in Spanish are being exclusionist on it, as it
was exclusionist also with another dialects/languages such as Aragonese and
Asturian (have already their own wiki), wich are more closest to Spanish than
Murcian.
Concluding, I think that the wikimedia should be inclusionist to every
language/dialect/modality in the case these are being rejected in all projects
of Wikimedia, specially if these are rejected by the projects wich are in the
most nearest languages. And wikimedia should be exclusionist if a
language/dialect/modality are being included already on one of its projects.
Cheers!
Joanot Martorell
(not real name, but real person)
--
Viquipèdia, l'enciclopèdia lliure.
http://ca.wikipedia.org
Hi,
Her are some other people also trying to collect the knowledge of the
world. We should get more in contact with them (for instance a
presentation by LOC's activities at Wikimania 2006).
-----Original Message-----
From: Terry Kuny [mailto:terry@kuny.ca] Sent: Wednesday, November 23,
2005 4:04 AM
To: DIGLIB
Subject: [DIGLIB] Library of Congress plans world digital library
Library of Congress plans world digital library
22 Nov 2005 02:08 ET
By Eric Auchard
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Library of Congress is
kicking off a campaign on Tuesday to work with other nation's libraries
to build a World Digital Library, starting with a $3 million donation
from Google Inc.
Librarian of Congress James Billington said he is looking to attract
further private funding to develop bilingual projects, featuring
millions of unique objects, with libraries in China, India, the Muslim
world and other nations.
This builds on major existing digital documentary projects by the
Library of Congress -- one preserving an online record of Americana and
another documenting ties between the United States and Brazil, France,
the Netherlands, Russia and Spain.
"The World Digital Library is an attempt to go beyond Europe and the
Americas...into cultures where the majority of the world is,"
Billington told Reuters in a telephone interview.
As an example, Billington said the Library of Congress is in
discussions with the national library of Egypt to include a collection
of great Islamic scientific works from the 10th through the 16th
Century in the World Digital Library.
"We are trying to do a documentary record of other great cultures of
the world. How much we will be able to do will depend on how many
additional partners we attract," he said.
Over the past decade, the American Memory Project of the Library of
Congress has digitized more than ten million items to create a
documentary record of Americana. A link is located at:
http://www.loc.gov/memory/.
These include manuscripts, maps, audiovisual recordings, cartoons,
caricatures, posters, documentary photographs, music, and, to a lesser
extent, historic books. The World Digital Library would draw on a
similar variety of multimedia objects.
A second project, known as the Global Gateway and introduced in 2000,
involves collaborations with five national libraries in Europe and
Brazil that focus on documenting ties between each of those countries
and U.S. culture.
(http://international.loc.gov/intldl/find/digital_collaborations.html/)
GLOBAL CULTURES
By contrast, the World Digital Library will focus on creating records
of global cultures. The Library of Congress will contribute its own
body of works to a blended collection with other countries. More than
half of the printed volumes in the Library of Congress are in languages
other than English.
"It will deal with the culture of those people rather than with our
contacts as Americans with those cultures," Billington said.
Web search company Google has agreed to work with the Library of
Congress on developing standards for indexing the digital collections
and by providing computer equipment.
The Library of Congress push adds momentum to a variety of competing
projects by leading Internet companies and some of the world's greatest
libraries to make available online a range of historic literature,
audio recordings and film archives.
The plans unveiled over the past year mark the most sustained drive yet
to make good on the vision of Internet pioneers to open the world's
library collections to a global online audience. The dream suffered
from a lack of funding and the distractions of the dot-com era's
get-rick-quick schemes.
Among these are a major push by Google with five major academic
libraries to digitize their book collections.
Meanwhile, the Open Content Alliance, backed by Yahoo Inc. , Microsoft
Corp. , the non-profit Internet Archive and other major libraries, is
looking to create an online clearinghouse for historic books, audio and
films.
The Google Print project has been met with lawsuits by the New
York-based Authors Guild and five U.S. publishers who are seeking to
block Google's plan to create an online card catalog of copyright works
in the collections of its library partners.
(Editing by Anthony Barker. Tel: +1 415 677 3919;
eric.auchard(a)reuters.com)