I just wanted to say that with Brion's help, we set up
the Romanian (8 pages) and Welsh (12 pages) wikipedias
and I also added some of the special characters to the
Romanian version with the help of a Romanian coworker.
:)
Unfortunately, we can't convert the larger Wikipedias
because it would be too much manual work, unless some
Wikipedians from those languages would be willing to
manually copy over all the pages. I think this would
still be possible for the Volapuk (112 pages), Frisian
(51 pages), and Basque (48 pages) Wikipedias, but I'm
not willing to convert *that many* pages manually for
languages I don't know and I'm not learning... if you
want vo.wikipedia.org, fr.wikipedia.org, or
eu.wikipedia.org so you can copy the pages manually,
just send a message to Brion(brion(a)pobox.com) as soon
as possible since he takes off for Sweden on
Wednesday. Otherwise you'll just have to wait until
the conversion script is finished.
Best wishes,
Chuck
=====
Learn Esperanto - http://www.lernu.net/
My homepage - http://www.amuzulo.net/
TEJO-Vikio - http://www.tejo.org/vikio/
Enciklopedio - http://eo.wikipedia.org/
__________________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de
Logos und Klingeltöne fürs Handy bei http://sms.yahoo.de
I've got a suggestion to make. Now that Wikimedia is in place and has a bank account, I think the issue is ripe for discussion.
The Wikipedia special page 'Booksources' serves as a passthrough link to various bookstores. When a book reference in Wikipedia includes an ISBN, any reader clicking on that number gets to the Booksources page. A further click on "Find this book" links to the external vendor's web site, pasing on the ISBN when practical.
Many of book sellers have programs that permit an affiliate or referring site the potential to earn revenue. In general, we could sign up then include our organization ID in a link along with the ISBN. Amazon dot com is an example of this usage. Based on the experience of other sites, there shouldn't be any great income expected, but there's not much effort either. The use of this option is totally transparent to the reader or user (unless they can interpret the data passed in the URI).
I wanted to discuss possibility for two reasons: to see if there are objections, and to look at presentation alternatives.
OBJECTION ARGUMENT:
I do not view this as a commercialization of Wikipedia. I have a guest card at a local university library. They charge a small annual fee for this service, but that doesn't make their library a business. Nor can I see this as any danger to non-profit status, unless the revenue would exceed Wiki's expenses, which seems incredibly remote. So, why shouldn't we take advantage of this?
PRESENTATION:
We do need to consider how of if we inform the reader of this 'feature'. There are three broad choices available:
1. Just do it.
2. Implement the idea but inform the user.
3. Don't do it.
My own choice is 2, but I'd actually propose 2(A), along the following lines.
Explain to the reader (or user or editor) that Wiki may get a commission at no added cost to them if they buy the book. Also explain that they if they want us to get revenue, they need to buy it in one session, or come back through Wikipedia if they decide on a later purchase. We could even offer two options for passthrough, one with and one without a refer back to Wikipedia.
Any comments?
Regards, LouI on Wikipedia
_______________________________________________
Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
The most personalized portal on the Web!
> Oliver Pereira wrote:
> > I think it is very likely that more people will buy from Amazon if they
> > think they will be helping Wikipedia by doing so. And so Amazon will
> > quite likely make more profits.
>
> Well, I think all the booksellers offer some kind of commissions
> program. Nearly all do, anyway, I guess we'd have to check each one
> of them to be sure about the exact details.
>
> --Jimbo
True. However, since all of these programs require a minimum
amount earned in your account before they send you a cheque, it
doesn't make much sense to have a page full of commissions
links. People generally make very little money on these programs;
in our case we would have to spread our tiny commission over a
half a dozen or more booksellers, thus ensuring that we never meet
the minimum payment amount for any one of them.
It looks to me that we really only have two choices:
1. Join a single program, or
2. Don't join any at all (which would have the same finacial effect as
joining all of them, while avoiding the problems).
Option one is unacceptable to me (and many others, I think)
because it takes away our neutrality, at least in appearance.
- Stephen G.
-------
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org
> limholt(a)excite.com wrote:
> >
> >Explain to the reader (or user or editor) that Wiki may get a
> >commission at no added cost to them if they buy the book.
I think Wikipedia should keep the commission, instead of donating
it to Wiki.
Ok, it's official. "Wiki" is to me as "Linux" is to Richard Stallman...
:)
- Stephen G.
-------
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org
This message from Brion Vibber on Intlwiki-L would
probably also be of interest to this list.
Chuck
> Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 23:16:39 -0700
> From: Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com>
> To: intlwiki-l(a)wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Intlwiki-l] Multilingual promotional
> materials?
>
> Assuming my tickets aren't lost in the mail and
> airport security doesn't
> arrest me for being a bearded young man flying
> alone, I'll be off to
> Sweden later this month for a couple Esperanto
> conventions, which should
> be a great place to promote Wikipedia to an
> international audience.
>
> It might be nice to have some promotional materials
> available in various
> languages that people can take to show the folks
> back home.
>
> If you've got anything nice to show off, or make
> anything new, please
> drop a link at
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_promotion_material
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
=====
Learn Esperanto - http://www.lernu.net/
My homepage - http://www.amuzulo.net/
TEJO-Vikio - http://www.tejo.org/vikio/
Enciklopedio - http://eo.wikipedia.org/
__________________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de
Logos und Klingeltöne fürs Handy bei http://sms.yahoo.de
[This is crossposted from <intlwiki-L> to <wikipedia-L>.
Replies should go to <wikipedia-L>.]
Peter Gervai wrote at last:
>Btw people, how can I get the _source_ of the protected pages? Like copying
>GFDL or Main_Page for later translation, etc.
We can hardly call ourselves "open source" when people can't get at this!
A simple solution requires 2 changes
when a page is protected and a user's no admin:
* Change the current '''Protected page''' non-link to
a '''View page source''' link to the usual "...&action=edit" URI.
* Rather than redirect this URI to back the page itself,
let it be the usual big box with the source in it,
only with nothing below (or above) said box for editing
(no warnings, no buttons, no permission statements, etc).
There you are -- open source!
-- Toby
I need advice, or concrete help, concerning a technical matter. I have
been abroad for the past four days, and have been accessing Wikipedia
from internet cafes. When I log on, I of course have avoided checking
the box that asks if I want the computer to remember by password across
sessions. Nevertheless, I have just discovered that the computers I
have been using now long me on automatically. I do not really care
that someone might end up using my own user name in the future, we can
sort it out then. But since I am a sysop I am very concerned about the
potential security breach. Anyone going to Wikipedia from this
terminal, it seems, will automatically log on as me, and have the
ability to delete pages and ban users.
I regret the potential problems this can cause Wikipedia; all I can say
is I do not know what went wrong.
Is there a way to make sure that the terminals I have used in the last
four days will not log on automatically to my username? What can I do
the next time I weant to log on, to make sure that the next user of the
terminal will not be able to log on automatically? As I said, I did
not check the box, and I didnt see anything under my user preferences
or settings that would ensure that I would NOT log on automatically.
I know this is my responsibility, but I am leaving for my field-site
tomorrow and will probably not have access to the internet. If someone
understands what happened and can fix it, I would appreciate it if they
would. In any event, I will have internet access again in a couple of
weeks and want to make sure I dont create the same problem...
Steve Rubenstein
I User:Stevertigo formally request
sysop/admin/developer level access to the Arabic
Wikipedia. Among the first issues would be to deal
with the encoding there. UTF-8 or 1256 are
canditates, but it would require some proper testing.
My Arabic is very limited, though, and hopefully some
changes ought give some life and perhaps credibility
to the Ar.Wikipedia.
I User:Stevertigo formally request sysop/admin
developer level access to the Simple Enlgish Wikpedia.
Among the first issues would be to deal with finding
a use for the simple. Wikipedia -- among my proposals
(
http://simple.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?SEnpl_For_Translation
)
is the possiblitly of using simple English as a base
for translating the vast catalog of English articles
to other languages. By allowing the Simple Wikipedia
to act as a kind of firewall, sandbox, embassy... any
problems arising from the perception that non-English
speakers and English
speakers have of each other, will be mitigated.
If interested, please see the recent changes made to
the Simple.wikipedia -- http://simple.wikipedia.com
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com