---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Marcin Cieslak <program(a)wikimania2010.pl>
Date: Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 7:13 AM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2010: Call for Participation is there!
To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimania is an annual global event devoted to Wikimedia projects
around the globe (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews,
Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki). The
conference is a community gathering, giving the editors, users
and developers of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet each
other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and
collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open
to the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers,
programmers and free culture activists who are interested in the
Wikimedia projects to learn more and share ideas about the
Wikimedia projects.
This year's conference will be held JULY 9-11, 2010 in Gdansk,
Poland at Polish Baltic Philharmonic. For more information, please
visit the official Wikimania 2010 site:
http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/
Wikimania 2010 will be a mix of submitted talks, open space
meetings, birds of a feather groups, and lightning talks.
Submissions will be discussed and selected in an informal process
on the wiki. If your submission is not added to the schedule, you
will still have many opportunities to bring topics forward
on-site.
IMPORTANT DATES
* Deadline for submitting workshop, tutorial, panel and
presentation proposals: May 20
* Notification of acceptance: May 25 (workshops), May 31
(panels, tutorials, presentations)
* All proposals and presentations will be welcome in the
Open Space track of the conference, whether or not they
are accepted in this initial process.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Submissions will be reviewed informally by a team of volunteers.
TRACKS
This year Wikimania will offer three tracks for submissions for
members of wiki communities and interested observers to share
their own experiences and thoughts and to present new ideas:
People and Community
The People and Community track provides a unique forum for
discussing topics related to people using/building wikis.
Relevant topics include, but are not restricted to, the
following:
* Wiki Community: Conflict resolution and community dynamics;
reputation and identity;
* Wiki Outreach: Promotion of wikis and Wikimedia projects among
the general public;
* North meets south, east meets west: How can people of a
different cultural background create an encyclopedia according
to common rules? Same subject in the eye of different cultures.
* Special: Wikipedia in Central/Eastern Europe: this theme will
provide a forum to present and discuss the latest progress of
Wikis in the central/eastern European community.
Knowledge and Collaboration
The Knowledge and Collaboration track aims to promote research
and find exciting ideas related to knowledge...
* Wiki Content: New ways to improve content quality, credibility;
legal issues and copyrights (is free knowledge free?); use of
the content in education, journalism, research;
* Semantic Wikis: The use of semantic web technologies, linked
data; semantic annotation and metadata (in particular manual
vs. automated approaches).
Infrastructure Track
The Infrastructure track at Wikimania will provide a forum where
both researchers and practitioners can share new approaches,
applications, and explore how to make Wiki access ever more
ubiquitous:
* MediaWiki development: issues related to MediaWiki development
and extensions;
* Moving beyond MediaWiki: what other Wiki-like platforms exist;
what tools and features do we need for collaboration on
different types of knowledge?
* Mobile Wikis: The Web is moving off the desktop and into mobile
phones, how we use wikis on mobile devices?; wiki-based
Augmented Reality (AR) applications, location based services
* User Interface Design: Usability and user experience;
accessibility, adaptive interfaces and personalization; novel
UI designs.
WIKISYM 2010
Please note that Wikimania 2010 is co-located with WikiSym, The
International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. More
information about WikiSym can be found on the conference website:
http://www.wikisym.org/
SUBMIT A PROPOSAL
To submit a proposal for a presentation, workshop, panel or
tutorial, please visit:
http://bit.ly/Submit2010
Thank you for helping make Wikimania 2010 a successful event. :-)
See you in Gdansk, July 9-11!
--
Marcin Cieslak
Wikimania 2010 Gdansk
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It definitely deserves attention. Please write to the Signpost editor and add a note at the outreach wiki too.
Sundar
Sent from my iPod
On 18-Apr-2010, at 23:45, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi,
I have blogged about the Malayalam CD project. I like it. I noticed that it did not appear on any of the blog aggregators. This is the kind of project that deserves more attention. Certainly when you blog in English, there is no reason why it should not be read by more of the Wikimedia community.
Thanks,
GerardM
PS my blog is on two aggregators
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/04/best-of-malayalam-wikipedia.html
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Forwarded this to the board list, and got two more personal opinions
from members. Was waiting to get permission from them to post on this
list before doing so.
Also, please keep in mind that these are personal opinions, no more or less.
Best
Bishakha
>> On 21-04-2010 21:44, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>> On 4/21/10 12:45 PM, Ting Chen wrote:
>>>
>>>> Generally I would prefer such questions solved inside of the community
>>>> and not by the foundation. The foundation cannot and should not solve
>>>> every problem in every project. Meta or foundation-l are also places to
>>>> search for advices and ask for experiences.
>>>>
>>> This is my view as well. And I don't think the Foundation should be
>>> seen as encouraging such projects using machine language against the
>>> interests of the community. If they find some good way to work with
>>> google on this, that's great, but if not, that's also great.
Subject: Re: [Board-l] Fwd: Fwd: [Wikimediaindia-l] Philosophical view on
Google translated articles Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:20:53 +0200 From: Jimmy
Wales <jwales(a)wikia-inc.com> <jwales(a)wikia-inc.com> Reply-To:
board-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To: board-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
I am quite concerned about the kinds of issues that Ravi raises, and
believe that machine translation is, on net, more likely to be harmful than
helpful to most communities. Bishakha, you may want to wait before posting
back to the Listserv, to get a broader view from other board members. --
Jimmy Wales Please follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/jimmy_wales
_______________________________________________
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listBoard-l@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/board-l
-------- Original Message --------
On 4/20/10 8:02 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote: > Hi all, > > This just popped up
on the Wikimedia India listserve - with a question > in caps for the
Foundation. Sue, or anyone on the board, any thoughts on > this? (specially
the question in caps). > > I just checked out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid_editing. > > Best > Bishakha > >
---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: *Ravishankar* <
ravidreams(a)gmail.com <mailto:ravidreams@gmail.com> <ravidreams(a)gmail.com>> >
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:19 PM > Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l]
Philosophical view on Google translated articles > To:
wikimediaindia-l <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
<mailto:wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org><wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>>
> > > Hi all, > > An update on the Google translated articles issue in Tamil
Wiki.
Hello,
My first post on this list, and a long one :-) The topic of better
supporting small language Wikipedias is one that is close to my heart.
The foundation doesn't have any particular policy on third-party
translations or article-writing projects. As Achal says, every
community is welcome to use translation tools or not as they see fit;
and to work with outside translation groups or not as they see fit.
Ravi's concerns are valid -- people interested in translation as a
whole may want to discuss some of these issues on the foundation and
translation mailing lists -- you will find that there are many
multilingual editors who are interested in the good (and bad) uses of
GTT and other translation tools.
== on the use of automatic translations ==
Automatic translations can be useful as one arrow in the quiver of a
community of editors. For instance, I find it helpful for translated
pages to have an automatic category, and a large cleanup template at
top, something like:
"this page was automatically translated by [TOOL]
from [permalink to revision of article in another language].
It may need cleanup to meet [[STYLE GUIDE|community standards]]."
In the case of Google and their Translation Toolkit, I think it would
be good for Wikipedians to give them strong feedback about how they
need to improve the tool for it to be more useful to Wikipedians.
(and, if it is more of a nuisance than a help, the community should be
clear that it is not helping.)
== On Google's toolkit and translation work ==
Google has been fairly transparent about what they are doing, and has
been in touch with the Foundation on a few occasions to ask for advice
on how to make their tools more useful. I encourage them to ask the
local communities directly for that advice... (however, they have had
few direct responses from those language-communities. I observed this
directly on swahili wikipedia - there were a few general commnts about
the difficulties raised by GTT overwriting existing articles, but few
specific feature requests / recommendations / requirements from the
active swahili editors.)
You can start a page for feature requests (and feature requirements)
for this sort of translation -- and tell the Google translators (in
particular) that all translations /must/ adhere to a certain style or
format, or must be less invasive when an article already exists on the
topic. (noone will continue a project if they know that its work is
going to be reverted or removed.)
> From: Srikanth Ramakrishnan <rsrikanth05(a)gmail.com>
>
> I agree with Shiju and Ramesh. I tried it out for Hindi. And the phrase 'A
> fully charged battery' got translated to what would mean a battery that got
> charged [the court charged]. It isn't all that accurate right now, but it
> may improve. While to a certain extent, it may seem like Google is
> catalising Localised content, you can clearly see that Google might be
> trying to gain Monopoly over Wikipedia as well.
I don't think they have any interest in gaining monopoly over
Wikipedia. They are not storing the translated articles, only
publishing them to Wikipedia. While they are storing the "translation
memory" produced as a result, they make that available under a free
license, for other translators or tools to use.
Google has carried out similar projects in Arabic and Swahili among
other languges; I helped with the recent Swahili Wikipedia Challenge,
which was supported by GTT (for participants who wanted to use the
toolkit to translate an article rather than writing one from scratch)
-- but the resulting articles were rated based on their usefulness, so
that poorly-translated articles did not rank highly.
That was a largely community-driven translation effort, with a contest
run and maintained by Swahili admins.
http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:KWC
Cheers,
SJ
--
Samuel Klein http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/user:sj
On translations and google in particular, my understanding is that it is
up to each Wikipedia community to decide how/if to use translations as a
whole, and whether google's translation tool is useful or not. I'm not
aware of anything that either binds us or restricts us from using
translation technologies, and my guess would be that you should decide
on the basis of your experience. If you'd like to get a broader or
comparative view, my suggestion would be to check in with the Board, ask
Foundation staff members you know, or perhaps post to foundation-l and
see if others have useful experience to share.
I think he deleted it because the title was in English. We should try pretty url on the real article on Malayalam.
- Sundar from mobile
On Wed Apr 21st, 2010 8:56 AM IST CherianTinu Abraham wrote:
> Natkeeran deleted it. Notifying him regarding this thread
>- Tinu Cherian
>
>On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:43 AM, Jyothis Edathoot <je(a)jyothis.net> wrote:
>
>> looks like that got deleted.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Jyothis.
>>
>> http://www.Jyothis.net
>>
>> http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jyothis
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Shiju Alex <shijualexonline(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Added the template in Tamil Wiki and created one pretty url for the
>>> article malayalam. For example see,
>>> http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam
>>>
>>> Minor tweaking of template is required. We will help to fix it.
>>>
>>> Shiju
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:33 PM, Ravishankar <ravidreams(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks Shiju. Should see if we can make sense from the malayalam page.
>>>> Else, an english tutorial will be appreciated :)
>>>>
>>>> Interestingly, the contributor profile for Ta Wiki is quite similar to ml
>>>> wiki
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://toolserver.org/~junaid/tools/editcount.php?wproject=wiki&wlan=ml&sho…
>>>>
>>>> Ravi
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 8:56 PM, Shiju Alex <shijualexonline(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Pretty URL is cool. Is the script available?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Prettyurl
>>>>>
>>>>> Please see the source code of that template.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 8:50 PM, Ravishankar <ravidreams(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Shiju,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Good to know. I agree that until each wiki should become self-reliant
>>>>>> without the need to refer en wiki for everything.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Pretty URL is cool. Is the script available?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ravi
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 6:35 PM, Shiju Alex <shijualexonline(a)gmail.com
>>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Could the count be explained? May be because of good participation
>>>>>>>> in talk pages, collaborative articles, regular copy edits
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Let me try to answer your query, eventhough we stopped projecting the
>>>>>>> depth parameter. Now we are concentrating more on parameters like *
>>>>>>> edits/article*, *bytes per article*, *number of active users*, and so
>>>>>>> on.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> - As you have mentioned above, depth shows the overall
>>>>>>> collaboration. Edits in articles, talkpages, portal pages, templates,
>>>>>>> images, and so on helped in increasing the article count.
>>>>>>> - We are away from increasing the article count by creating
>>>>>>> one-liners. Remove all junk one-liners and big articles with english only
>>>>>>> content from your wiki. Depth will surely increase.
>>>>>>> - Also the number edits are directly proportional to the number of
>>>>>>> active and dedicated users. We have at least *40 users* with
>>>>>>> number of edita more than 1000.
>>>>>>> http://toolserver.org/~junaid/tools/editcount.php?wproject=wiki&wlan=ml&sho… 10 of them have number of edits more than 10,000.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> All these have contributed depth of the wiki.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We are not allowing anyone to create one-liners just for the sake of
>>>>>>> increasing the article count. At least fundmental information is required in
>>>>>>> each and every article that is created in Malayalam Wikipedia. Because of
>>>>>>> that *our readers will not run to English wikipedia* to get the
>>>>>>> fundamental information about a topic.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We are trying to attract readers to wiki. The CD project/book
>>>>>>> project/wikiacademies/wiki meetups are all part of the public outreach
>>>>>>> programs. We have many users *who only reads ml wikipedia*. *After
>>>>>>> all if no one reads what we write, all our efforts are in vain.*
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We give top priority to the usability part of the wiki. Because of
>>>>>>> that, you can see many things in Malayalam Wikipedia *that are not
>>>>>>> available in any other language wikipedia*. An example is *pretty url
>>>>>>> *itself.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We are trying to reach the other language wikipedians to get to know
>>>>>>> about their best practices. We feel no shy in copying their best practices.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There are more things. I will write about that some time later.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> As in Tamil Wikipedia, *we also have problem in getting local
>>>>>>> Wikipedians to edit the wiki*. I will write about that later.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Shiju
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Ravishankar <ravidreams(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Ramesh,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> That's quite a good number. The arrangements for the meetup were also
>>>>>>>> quite elaborate. well done.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I am also curious about the depth of Malayalam Wiki. Could the count
>>>>>>>> be explained? May be because of good participation in talk pages,
>>>>>>>> collaborative articles, regular copy edits??
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Ravi
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 10:18 PM, Ramesh N G <rameshng(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Ravi
>>>>>>>>> An apprx figures
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> # The total attendance was nearly 80 in the ml wiki meetup which
>>>>>>>>> includes newcomers around 60%
>>>>>>>>> # Morning Session was scheduled for regular wikipedians, where the
>>>>>>>>> attendance was around 20 to 30 regular ml wikians
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> regards
>>>>>>>>> Rameshng
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 7:13 PM, Ravishankar <ravidreams(a)gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> > Hi all,
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>> > The number of registrants found at http://bit.ly/c9voKu is
>>>>>>>>> interesting.
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>> > Would like to know what percentage of them are regular
>>>>>>>>> contributors in
>>>>>>>>> > ml.wiki projects.
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>> > One challenge we face in Tamil Wiki is that not many active
>>>>>>>>> contributors are
>>>>>>>>> > present locally (within Tamilnadu) to conduct offline activities.
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>> > How is the situation for other Indic Wikis?
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>> > It will be interesting to see a case study from ml.wiki like
>>>>>>>>> > http://bit.ly/a3AaCl . Especially, any lesson to learn on
>>>>>>>>> outreach and
>>>>>>>>> > increasing contributor activity.
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>> > Regards,
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>> > Ravi
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> > Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>>>>>>>>> > Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>>>>>>>>> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> http://milkhost.com/
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>
Hi all,
The number of registrants found at http://bit.ly/c9voKu is interesting.
Would like to know what percentage of them are regular contributors in
ml.wiki projects.
One challenge we face in Tamil Wiki is that not many active contributors are
present locally (within Tamilnadu) to conduct offline activities.
How is the situation for other Indic Wikis?
It will be interesting to see a case study from ml.wiki like
http://bit.ly/a3AaCl . Especially, any lesson to learn on outreach and
increasing contributor activity.
Regards,
Ravi
Hi all,
An update on the Google translated articles issue in Tamil Wiki.
We exchanged few emails with the Google team and had a conference call once
and the progress so far has been:
* Google gets our approval on article topics before translating.
* Some of the software issues have been promised to be addressed (too many
red links etc.,)
* One or two co-coordinators from the translation team are checking the talk
page discussions and making needed changes. But if there are no talk page
suggestions the articles are virtually unattended.
However, a majority of the Tamil Wiki community is showing stiff resistance
for this operation. Besides the quality of translation we are concerned
about this on a philosophical note.
We would like to seek the opinion of the larger Indian Wiki community on a
philosophical angle in this issue. It will be definitely helpful before we
decide the next step:
1. Is Paid editing against Wikipedia principles or spirit?
2. Besides the article count etc., Wiki is first of all a vibrant and
healthy community of like minded individuals interacting on a friendly note.
This is very important in a small community especially. But this operation
creates a divide like regular Wikipedians Vs Google Translators. User - >
User interaction has changed to User - > Google - > Translation team
coordinator interaction. From friendly reminders we have reached a
complaining stage.
Is this good for the community in the long run?
3. Who benefits more from this operation? Google or Wiki? Even if it is
assumed that it will serve the language ultimately, who has the control in
this operation? Of course, the Wiki communities have the control but they
haven't exercised yet.
This can hardly be considered partnership or collaboration. Google has not
been transparent on this so far.
4. Wikipedia is a volunteer project and Wikipedians contribute out of free
will. Is this free will ensured for the Google Translators? (choice of
articles, translation style, work load, tool for translation etc.,)
5. Use of Google translation kit is not wrong per se. But the Kit is partly
responsible for many of the issues. Is it right to continue using this
without cleaning up existing articles?
6. Not all en wiki articles are the best. Some have factual errors and some
have bias. Especially, articles on culture, politics etc., Is it good to
translate them as it is? A paid translator can hardly be expected or allowed
to correct them.
7. Style of English and Style of Indian languages are quite different. Since
the translation is done through the kit, we can see literal translations
resulting in a dry or artificial style in the local language. This can harm
the nature of the local language in long run. Translation is OK but not
everywhere and as it is.
8. IS THE WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION AWARE OF THIS OPERATION ? WHAT IS ITS VIEW?
Its view need not be binding on the local community. Nevertheless it will be
interesting to know.
9. WHY HASN'T GOOGLE ANNOUNCED ABOUT THIS PROJECT OPENLY YET? Google has
emphasized many times that it doesn't create information but only organizes
it. Whenever it showed hints of creating information, it was highly noted
with concern. This operation is a clear move towards information creation.
On the outset, this looks like a good gesture from Google to Indian language
Wikis. But it should also be noted in the context Google and Wikmedia are
both powerful entities in the Internet and one's effect on another should be
watched.
Regards,
Ravi