Hoi,
I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most
excellent bit of news.
The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the
field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding
drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in
a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to
learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics.
What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are
asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more
linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be
interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more
relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get
more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that
we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with
all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the
Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should
approve yet another language :)
NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in
this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus...
Thanks,
GerardM
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org>
Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org>
Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org>
Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project
<reviews(a)linguistlist.org>
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/
The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University,
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Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org>
================================================================
To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html
===========================Directory==============================
1)
Date: 18-Jun-2007
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
Dear subscribers,
As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the
"Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their
donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the
English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this
at:
http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm.
The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity
of
our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic
about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit
more
leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on
the
Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely
organizational one. We will:
*Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or
pages that need improvement;
*Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified
as
"in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any
references or sources," etc;
*Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or
articles;
*Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia;
*Keep track of our project Wikipedians;
*Keep track of revisions and new entries;
*Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's
efforts.
We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us
all
get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an
area
needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of
Linguists
page at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M
Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and
information
added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort,
please
respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at
hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which
linguistics
entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our
campaign
on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we
will
share with you soon.
This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The
end
result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth
and
depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate
prospective
students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on
what
we do. Please consider participating.
Sincerely,
Hannah Morales
Editor, Wikipedia Update Project
Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable
-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831
Hoi,
There is a request for a Wikipedia in Ancient Greek. This request has so far
been denied. A lot of words have been used about it. Many people maintain
their positions and do not for whatever reason consider the arguments of
others.
In my opinion their are a few roadblocks.
- Ancient Greek is an ancient language - the policy does not allow for
it
- Text in ancient Greek written today about contemporary subjects
require the reconstruction of Ancient Greek.
- it requires the use of existing words for concepts that did
not exist at the time when the language was alive
- neologisms will be needed to describe things that did not
exist at the time when the language was alive
- modern texts will not represent the language as it used to be
- Constructed and by inference reconstructed languages are effectively
not permitted
We can change the policy if there are sufficient arguments, when we agree on
a need.
When a text is written in reconstructed ancient Greek, and when it is
clearly stated that it is NOT the ancient Greek of bygone days, it can be
obvious that it is a great tool to learn skills to read and write ancient
Greek but that it is in itself not Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek as a
language is ancient. I have had a word with people who are involved in the
working group that deals with the ISO-639, I have had a word with someone
from SIL and it is clear that a proposal for a code for "Ancient Greek
reconstructed" will be considered for the ISO-639-3. For the ISO-639-6 a
code is likely to be given because a clear use for this code can be given.
We can apply for a code and as it has a use bigger then Wikipedia alone it
clearly has merit.
With modern texts clearly labelled as distinct from the original language,
it will be obvious that innovations a writers needs for his writing are
legitimate.
This leaves the fact that constructed and reconstructed languages are not
permitted because of the notion that mother tongue users are required. In my
opinion, this has always been only a gesture to those people who are dead
set against any and all constructed languages. In the policies there is
something vague "*it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as
determined by discussion (this requirement is being discussed by the language
subcommittee <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee>)."* It
is vague because even though the policy talks about a discussion, it is
killed off immediately by stating "The proposal has a sufficient number of
living native speakers to form a viable community and audience." In my
opinion, this discussion for criteria for the acceptance of constructed or
reconstructed languages has not happened. Proposals for objective criteria
have been ignored.
In essence, to be clear about it:
- We can get a code for reconstructed languages.
- We need to change the policy to allow for reconstructed and
constructed languages
We need to do both in order to move forward.
The proposal for objective criteria for constructed and reconstructed
languages is in a nutshell:
- The language must have an ISO-639-3 code
- We need full WMF localisation from the start
- The language must be sufficiently expressive for writing a modern
encyclopaedia
- The Incubator project must have sufficiently large articles that
demonstrate both the language and its ability to write about a wide range of
topics
- A sufficiently large group of editors must be part of the Incubator
project
Thanks,
GerardM
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> 2009/9/28 Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia-inc.com>:
>>
>>> If the Foundation is bottlenecked at the moment (understandable) then
>>> how can I help, how can we the community help, to take some of the
>>> burden off of them to get done what we need to get done for the sake of
>>> our mission? :-)
>>>
>>
>> The process going forward is pretty clear -
>>
>> a) make sure prototype setup reflects desired behavior as per the
>> en.wp proposal and invite broader testing;
>>
Perfectly reasonable.
>> b) make revisions to extension based on public and internal review
>> with a particular eye to usability;
>>
Absolutely commendable.
>> c) ensure that the extension is fully scalable to en.wp traffic volume;
>>
Why on earth would we like to ensure that, particularly
*before* point d) ?
I can fully understand that there is a contingent
who devoutly hopes that after the current strictly limited
use of FR is tried out and people gain more familiarity
with the interface and the practical way the extension
works, much of the mystique of it will vanish in a puff
of smoke and people will be more amenable to extending
its use.
Nevertheless in reality the current compromise proposal
owes much to people who were able to only accept it with
the proviso that quite the opposite of wanting to see it be
possible to scale up, they required a reasonable assurance
that its use would *not* be escalated without an overwhelming
community consensus.
>> d) deploy on en.wp as per proposal (potentially, per c, initially in
>> some scale-limited fashion).
>>
Not doing d) before being sure of c) seems very much like
putting the cart before the horse to me. Whether c) will be
relevant at all would necessarily be contingent on the
success of d), and the logical order thus should be to just
do d) and see later if there is any relevance to c) at all.
Or to put it more plainly; it is a very remote possibility
indeed that extending the Flagged Revision experiment
in a form that ordinary articles would only display an
approved revision (without very strict restrictions on
which articles to apply this requirement to) for many
people will be something they will accept. So making
it a prerequisite that such an application has to be
functionally available in the extension for uses as large
as the English wikipedia before *any* use of the extension,
is rather silly as a concept.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome
years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm
going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on
the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
I've been contributing to StatusNet (formerly Laconica) as a user, bug
reporter, and patch submitter since 2008, and I'm really excited at the
opportunity to get more involved in the project at this key time as we
gear up for a 1.0 release, hosted services, and support offerings.
StatusNet was born in the same free-culture and free-software community
that brought me to Wikipedia; many of you probably already know founder
Evan Prodromou from his longtime work in the wiki community, launching
the awesome Wikitravel and helping out with MediaWiki development on
various fronts. The "big idea" driving StatusNet is rebalancing power in
the modern social web -- pushing data portability and open protocols to
protect your autonomy from siloed proprietary services... People need
the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping
Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want.
This does unfortunately mean that I'll have less time for MediaWiki as
I'll be leaving my position as Wikimedia CTO sooner than originally
anticipated, but that doesn't mean I'm leaving the Wikimedia community
or MediaWiki development!
Just as I was in the MediaWiki development community before Wikimedia
hired me, you'll all see me in the same IRC channels and on the same
mailing lists... I know this is also a busy time with our fundraiser
coming up and lots of cool ongoing developments, so to help ease the
transition I've worked out a commitment to come into the WMF office one
day a week through the end of December to make sure all our tech staff
has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes
and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are. ;)
We've got a great tech team here at Wikimedia, and we've done so much
with so little over the last few years. A lot of really good work is
going on now, modernizing both our infrastructure and our user
interface... I have every confidence that Wikipedia and friends will
continue to thrive!
I'll start full-time at StatusNet on October 12. My key priorities until
then are getting some of our key software rollouts going, supporting the
Usability Initiative's next scheduled update and getting a useful but
minimally-disruptive Flagged Revisions configuration going on English
Wikipedia. I'm also hoping to make further improvements to our code
review process, based on my experience with our recent big updates as
well as the git-based workflow we're using at StatusNet -- I've got a
lot of great ideas for improving the CodeReview extension...
Erik Moeller will be the primary point of contact for WMF tech
management issues starting October 12, until the new CTO is hired. I'll
support the hiring process as much as I can, and we're hoping to have a
candidate in the door by the end of the year.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
CTO, Wikimedia Foundation
San Francisco
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It seems that I've gotten complaints that both sets of office hours
times are difficult for Europeans. However, in the interest of having
the broadest participation possible, I'm interested to know how people
feel about one of the following:
1) Have the Friday office hours one hour earlier (from 21:30-22:30 UTC)
2) Have the Thursday office hours one hour later (from 17:00-18:00 UTC)
3) Keep two sets of office hours the same, we cannot please everyone
possible!
- --
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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In a message dated 9/27/2009 1:29:03 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
wiki-lists(a)phizz.demon.co.uk writes:
> I have a reproduction of Rembrandt's "Toby and Anna" whilst that
> doesn't give the producer of the reproduction the right to stop me
> making copies from it, it also doesn't give me or you some bizarre right
> to demand digital files from the producer.>>
Are we demanding? Or are we just taking without permission?
Hi all, this is a reminder that office hours will be tomorrow, Thursday,
October 1, at 1600 UTC (9:00 AM PDT) and feature Rand Montoya.
The IRC channel that will be hosting Rand's conversation will be
#wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC
client, you can always access Freenode by going to
http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and
choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click
through a security warning. Go ahead.
The channel is also available through the Wikizine site at http://chat.wikizine.org/
and picking one of the two gateways, while choosing "wikimedia-office" from the dropdown on the next page.
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Make the following experience:
Go to Gmail and create a new account on Gmail. Does Google tell you
after you have created your new account : We are ready to have a
conflict relationship with YOU ? We have an Abuse Log ready for YOU ?
Now go to meta.wikimedia.org (1), create a new account there and click
on your "My contributions" link. And see what you see on the top line
of Special:Contributions : "Abuse Log". My preference on meta is
French, and it reads ("Journal des abus"). In French "Journal" means
both "Log" and "Newspaper". It sort of says "you are already making
headlines in newspapers for abuse".
It means Wikimedia users are considered as suspects from the first
time they set foot into the wiki. It means that the climate there is a
climate where everyone suspects everybody else, where you are guilty
until proven innocent, and where bad faith is assumed (3).
Jimmy Wales and Michael Snow want to attract new volunteers (2) in
these conditions ?
Can anybody show me the page on meta.wikimedia.org, which shows that a
consensus was reached prior to implementing this Special:AbuseLog
software ?
It is almost the same problem on Commons (my user preference there is
English) where the AbuseLog has been pudically renamed "filter log"
(but the wording with Abuse is still used in the URL).
The French Language Wikipédia is still unaffected by this Abuse thing.
I hope the virus of suspicion will not infect her.
(1) http://meta.wikimedia.org
(2) http://volunteer.wikimedia.org
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith
2009/9/16 Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>:
> Putting aside the unnecessary bad faith and challenges to the
> foundation's integrity: I find this all exciting - planning for
> significant tech budget support, possible major sponsorships (I've
> always hoped we would one day find multiple sources for long-term
> in-kind support of servers and bandwidth), &c. I would simply like to
> see more open discussion of what our perfect-world tech dreams are,
> and how to pursue what sorts of sponsorships.
Thanks, Sam. I find the discussion of the last few days symptomatic of
the problems we've begun to brainstorm about with regard to the
signal/noise ratio, healthiness and openness of this particular forum.
(And by openness I mean that a forum that is dominated by highly
abrasive, high volume, low signal discussions is actually not very
open.) I do want to revisit the post limit question as a possible
answer, but let's do that separately.
The thread did surface some topics which are worth talking about, both
in general and specific terms, and I'm taking the liberty to start a
new thread to isolate some of those topics. For one thing, I think
it's always good to revisit and iterate processes for defining
priorities, and for achieving the highest impact in those identified
areas.
Developing more sophisticated processes both for short-term and
long-term planning has been precisely one of the key focus areas of
the last year. Internally, we've begun experimenting with assessment
spreadsheets and standardized project briefs, drawing from the
expertise of project management experts as well as Sue's specific work
in developing a very well thought-out prioritization system at the
CBC. Publicly, we're engaged in the strategy planning process -- the
associated Call for Proposals is a first attempt to conduct a
large-scale assessment of potential priorities. (I hope that with
future improvements to the ReaderFeedback extension we'll be able to
generate more helpful reports based on that particular assessment.)
Ideally, the internal and public processes will converge sooner rather
than later. For example, I posted a project brief that I developed
internally through the strategy CfP:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Volunteer_Toolkit
I believe this one was submitted by Jennifer:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Volunteer_Management_practices_…
And this one by Tim:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Directed_community_fundraising
The next phase of the strategy planning process, the deep-dive task
forces, will be an interesting experiment in serious community-driven
planning work, complemented by the research conducted with the help of
our partners at The Bridgespan Group. All of this will become part of
the institutional memory of the Wikimedia movement, and hopefully
we'll continue to raise the bar in our thinking, planning, and
collaboration.
- - -
Of course separately from setting priorities, there's the critical
need to improve our ability to execute upon those priorities. This
includes the further development of project pipelines, more systematic
volunteer engagement, additional internal HR support, additional
hiring of staff to address key capacity gaps, etc. I'm thrilled by how
far we've come, and to be able to have supported, and continue to
support, an unprecedented large-scale initiative like the usability
project. I'm well-aware that there continue to be key priorities that
we aren't executing as effectively as we could.
The first thing many partners, donors and friends say when they visit
Wikimedia Foundation is how astonishing it is that an operation of
this scale can function with so little funding and staff. The truth is
that by any reasonable measure of efficiency and money-to-impact
ratio, we're achieving wonderful things together, and that's easy to
forget when looking at issues in isolation. (Yes, it would be
wonderful to have the full-history dumps running ASAP. Hm, it would be
nice to have the full-history dumps for some other top 50 content
websites. Oh, right, they don't provide any.)
But I don't measure our success compared to other organizations. The
most important question to me is whether we are continually raising
the bar in what we're doing and how we do it. The most recent
Wikimania was the most thoughtful and self-aware one I've ever
attended, with deep, constructive conversations and very serious
efforts of everyone involved to re-ignite and strengthen our movement.
There are elements of groupthink, but also very systematic attempts to
break out of it.
There are great opportunities today for anyone to become engaged in
helping to shape the future of what we do, and to accomplish real
change in the world as a result. Ultimately we all have to make a
choice how we spend our time -- how we spend our lives -- but I hope
we're creating a legacy that will fill us with pride and joy, and
inspire others to do the same.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate