Mark Williamson wrote:
>Languages and cultures are two very separate entities.
>
Distinct, perhaps, in the sense that they have different definitions
that should not be confused with each other. But suggesting that
languages and cultures can be cleanly separated from each other as
entities is absurd.
--Michael Snow
Hello,
i tinkered a small Tool named Gollum, with which one can browse fast and
eyefriendly by Wikipedia.
Gollum is currently in the beta phase, therefore i look at this way for
Users to test Gollum and send me your experiences, error messages and also
suggestions communicate.
http://gollum.easycp.de/
Have much fun with Gollum and thank you.
Greetings from Germany
Harald
Mark Williamson wrote:
>It wasn't a real problem until Milos and the other
>anti-Zlatiborians decided to make a big fuss to try
to >prevent the glorious people of Zlatibor from
getting the >Wikipedia they so richly deserve in their
beautiful >native language, and for petty political
reasons.
Hi Mark!
The other day I wrote that Milos ought to be a little
bit more tolerant of various opinions (including
yours) here.
On the other hand, I don't think using words like
"nationalists", "oppressors" or "anti-Zlatiborians"
will help establishing a good atmosphere of discussion
here when the issues themselves are difficult enough.
Best,
Arbeo
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*Zordsdavini iz Litvy said:
*
>
> hello
>
> I'm onw of these who can't get wp for 4-5 monthes (since the middle of June) :(
> Couse we are small community (about 0.5 mln) my plan is:
> when wp will be created I will give report about it to Samogitian
> Cultural Society. I think I will have some conversations with young
> people and government of Samogitian Cultural Society and here I hope I
> will find big help (about 80%).
> in the begining this wp would be for samogitian subjects (culture
> and like that)
> That's it.
> The domain is "bat-smg" or if You like only local domains - 'qsm".
> Interface could be Lithuanian at thirst. There is only one little
> problem about one letter which isn't in other languages (but it
> doesn't change the facts - Samogitian wp have to be created).
>
> Hi,
Are there any other Samogitian speakers at the Lithuanian Wikipedia?
Maybe they could help contribute as well.
I think maybe it would be better to contact the Samogitian Cultural Society
now, when the Wikipedia is still pending, so that they could help you with
the Test-Wikipedia. At Vlax Romany, we're proposing to have at least ten
articles in the test-wp, as well as the interface file translated.
As to the subdomain - I think it would be better to have the native name as
the subdomain - perhaps bat-zmt.
I'm looking forward to the Samogitian Wikipedia - I'd like to help if you
want, by doing some template articles like countries, similar to what I did
at Voro. I think it's really important that we promote Baltic-area
languages!
(PS: Is it possible to get feeds of individual messages on this mailing list
- I only get digests and for that reason I can't reply to individual
messages in a thread)
Hi,
I'm glad to see there's this discussion on the issue of minority languages,
since I think it's very important to formulate a policy that encourages the
growth of these Wikipedias
> On 10/11/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m(a)yahoo.de> wrote:
> > > Sadly, it's a fact that roughly half of all Wikipedias
> > > are clinically dead at present. Being enthusiastically
Yes, I think it's a trend that people simply apply for Wikipedias and then
abandon them, but is there anything particularly wrong with that? The point
I'm trying to make here is - are 4 articles in a minority language worse
than none at all? I don't think so. That's why *any* contribution should be
seen as beneficial.
> Node said:
> >
> > Some ideas:
> >
> > - Find language activists, or people who have a website about the
> language
> > - Find people on ICQ who claim to speak the language, and let them
> > know about that WP
> > - Let governmental or other official or authoritative organisations
> > know about that WP
> > - Get grant money to initially pay people to write good articles /
> > translate articles, especially in countries with a low per-capita
> > income (sub-saharan Africa, for example), and when a sizable article
> > base has been established, it will be much easier to attract new
> > editors. This includes having people write articles offline, and then
> > typing it up yourself.
> > - Depending on the size of the WP and the narrowness of its reader
> > base, you can put a sitenotice up at one WP that another WP exists --
> > the Romanian WP did something similar for a proposal for a Vlax Romany
> > WP, and it was relatively successful.
> >
> > These are all things that have worked in the past. There are obviously
> > many more possibilities.
> >
> > Mark
I think contacting NGOs and governments is fairly unproductive - I've
actually worked with many NGOs here in Romania and they do some great things
but when it comes to supporting Wikipedia, they never reply back :) I've
contacted three of them in relation to the Vlax Romany Wikipedia - only one,
RomaniCRISS, replied, but then they didn't reply the second time.
I think the idea that we implemented at the Romanian WP for the Vlax Romany
WP was actually very successful. We realised that there were many Roma
people in our readership, and we actually got three native speakers out of
that notice. It would be a good idea for projects like Samogitian, the
Italian languages, etc.
Thanks,
Ronline
One more - I really don't know why I'm finding my own
opinion so interesting today ;-)
Ronline wrote:
>In fact, I think the isolation of Toki Pona and
>Klingon from the Wikipedia community are both
negative
>precedents that shouldn't be repeated again. It is
>exactly this attitude that I am worried about, which
>consists of two points:
>1. That languages which aren't used predominantly be
a
>certain population aren't important and can be
treated
>as "second-class", just because they don't help in
the
>narrow goal of making an encyclopedia accessible to
>all. [...]
I can't really agree with you this time. Toki Pona and
Klingon simply _are_ part of a very different class of
languages than English or Romany. Thus, treating them
equally would be the same as if you treated a cat like
a dog or vice versa.
In my opinion, every natural language is at least
worth being considered for the purposes of
transferring knowledge here. But why should one want
to use a fictional language like Klingon for the
purpose of writing a non-fictional (online) book? Most
probably for entertainment reason only. A nice pastime
for those who like it, sure. But is a project
dedicated to information/knowledge really the right
place for that?
Arbeo
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[ Mark writes ]
> You think that you can claim that just because I am not
> a Serbian, I know nothing about this issue. Well, I have seen images
> of Zlatibor on television, and I read all about the Serbian
> occupation. I have a bumper sticker that says "Free Zlatibor Now!
> Boycott Serbia!", and I own some books on Zlatiborian language. My
> deepest hope is that after the Serbian tyranny ends, I may travel to
> Zlatibor and witness the beauty firsthand.
Boy, I would give an eyetooth for one of those bumper stickers. Trade
you for a pair of "Zapatistas of the world, untie!" shoe decals...
As long as rants about language acceptance are benig exchanged, here's
something that has been bothering me lately:
It has been suggested more than once that we should get professional
linguists / a small group of Wiki[m]edians to determine what new
languages are 'proper' or acceptable, before asking the community to
discuss and reach consensus. But should Wikimedia be making decisions
about the officialness of languages at all? It seems to me we can
neutrally defer this to a higher authority*.
The ISO handles ISO 639-1 and -2 reasonably well; these are standards
designed to identify written documents, and to include those languages
'most frequently represented in the total body of the world's
literature' -- which seems appropriate. I put some specific
information on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ISO_criteria_for_defining_new_languages
If you think we can do better than the ISO, please comment on that
talk page**...
SJ
* "Wikipedia includes 74 major and 7 minor[1] languages with over
1000 articles. ...
[1] 'Major' languages are defined as those with two-letter ISO
639-1 codes, a set of languages considered to be most frequently
represented in world literature."
** Perhaps we can have a standard procedure that assumes an ISO-2
code language, and provide for exceptions. Some current non-ISO
wikipedia languages, illustrating various reasons different users
might have not to stick blindly to such a standard :
- zh_min_nan (1,200 articles; listed in places as "taiwanese") ,
- tpi (tok pisin, recent conlang, 160 articles),
- fiu_vro (Võro, 105 articles & activity),
- roa_rup (Aromanian; 29 articles & little activity, but just got ISO
639-2 approval for "rup" in September).
+ Current well-received /proposals/ for non-ISO languages include pdc
(Pennsylvania dutch), which already has a 500-article site independent
of Wikimedia).
Ronline wrote:
> I think that saying that people can make their own
> wiki somewhere else is not a good thing. Wikipedia
is
> already established, and the more regional languages
> we offer, the richer the encyclopedia becomes.
The fact that Wikipedia is now a well-known "brand"
might raise a new issue in the future: for some
languages (especially idioms where the attribute
"separate language" is disputed) it could look like
some kind of recognition or proof of their
distinctness if they are granted a subdomain here. In
those cases, new Wikipedias could be requested not for
the primary aim of collecting and distributing
knowledge (i. e. writing an encyclopedia) but rather
more or less solely for the aim of promoting a
language (or even the political, religious ect. idea
behind it).
Arbeo
P. S. Sorry for posting so much today!
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Hi,
my friend in Iran confirmed that at least two ISP in Teheran block the
Kurdish Wikipedia (http://ku.wikipedia.org). The identical message on
both is:
Access Denied!
This page will not be accessible for the reason that in our database it
has been assinged to the category of blocked contents .
In the event the URL does not contain materials that are forbidden by
laws, please fill this form out then hit send.
However, one user from another part of Iran was able to reach it. The
mentioned form has meanwhile been filled and sent, but there is no
reaction yet.
I think that even a partial censoship against Wikipedia is of interest
for the community. The Kurdish Wikipedia is frequently attacked by
political vandalizm of Turkish writing users, who want to see all Kurds
"wiped out", but this is relatively easy to handle. There have been
reports before that Internet Cafe owners in Turkey are forced to install
software that blocks Kurdish content, including Wikipedia. This is the
first time we hear about such an incident from Iran.
Regards,
Erdal