Relevant for wikis on MediaWiki 1.5 only:
I have coded and made operational an extension that can be used to add a
search box, or a "create an article" box, to any page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inputbox_extension
The search functionality is primarily of interest to Wikipedia, where
those Wikipedias that would like to now have the option to put a
prominent, Google-like search box on their Main Pages.
The create an article functionality is currently trialed on the English
Wikinews to make it easier for newcomers to start writing stories. It
supports preloading the newly created page with the source from another
page, and also adding a custom tag at the top. These two features are
independently available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=FJADOVAFD&preload=Stub&action=…
loads the text of [[stub]] into the new page with the bogus title.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=FJADOVAFD&editintro=Stub&actio…
gives you a modified introduction, which is useful when creating custom
edit pages. The two parameters only work when the page does not exist yet.
Best,
Erik
Dear all, ( translators, please forward to your local projects )
Wikimania 2005 is coming up, during the first week of August. It is
being held in Frankfurt, in a beautiful hostel-and-conference-center
downtown. If you are planning on coming, register this week, before
the conference and hostel rates go up!
http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/registration/http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/registration/hackingdays.php
Send email to wikimania-registration(a)wikimedia.org if you have any
diffulcties. See who else is already registered:
http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/registration/attendees.php
We have some excellent speakers coming, including Jimmy Wales himself,
Ward Cunningham, Richard Stallman, Sunir Shah of MeatballWiki, and
Ross Mayfield of Socialtext; also Gabriele Beger on law, Achal
Prabhala on rural information development in Southern Africa, and
Stefan Magdalinski on building magical wiki applets.
http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Speakers
There will also be presentations by core developers of many wiki
platforms, including Twiki, Xwiki, and Socialtext; by Wikipedians,
about their projects; and by academics researching Wikipedia.
The whole conference has been made as inexpensive as possible, so that
all can attend. The last three days will be a larger conference, when
we take over the entire hostel; it should be a great deal of fun.
Registration for all three days is 50 Euros. The first half of the
week will be devoted to our Hacking Days, a small-group discussion and
brainstorming among developers; these days are free (but you must
register for them as well, to reserve space in the hostel).
SJ
ps -- If you are interested in helping out with the event, even if you
can't be there yourself, we could use help setting up our Trivia
Contest and judging the initial entries for the summer writing & media
competition. More about these later.
http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Competitions
pps -- If you really want to come, but can't quite afford it; please
register and fill out the field at the end of the form to request a
discount.
ppps -- If you can't come, but still want to participate, there will
be audio streaming, IRC backchannels, and regular podcasts available
of conference events. You can sign up or ask for details on the
remote-particpation page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania:Remote_participation
David's analysis of the state of the SE Wikipedia is quite an accurate one and I would agree with almost all of his arguments. And - like Mark - I do believe that a "rethink" should eventually result in the phasing out of the Simple English Wikipedia.
Simple: doesn't work well. Of course, that is a fact it shares with many existing but more or less dormant Wikipedias. More severe however is the "lack of focus and ... lack of direction", like David put. I would even dare to say it lacks a purpose altogether, at least one conforming with Wikipedia's general aims.
At http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_English_Wikipedia one reads that it "has been started as a response to the need for English learners". Fine, but Wikipedia was never meant as a language course. WP is an encyclopedia, i. e. a place where knowledge is gathered and can be accessed. Furthermore, Wikipedia is committed to providing knowledge in people's _native_languages_. Hence, there is no need for a Wikipedia for those with a limited command of English (or German, French, Spanish ...).
I just don't see why we should continue the Simple English Wikipedia.
Boris
wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org schrieb am 29.06.05 01:16:39:
The subject of Simple English Wikipedia has came to the mailing list before,
but after reading talk pages there and seeing the dormancy of Recent Changes
(bar a few persistent users, and the odd anon editor) I feel it is time to
suggest a rethink, or at least look into the direction of Simple English
Wikipedia.
Simple English Wikipedia currently has 4,157 articles, the vast majority of
which fail to extend further than three sentences in length. There are a few
administrators, Netoholic being the most active of them. There is a small
user base, but unlike some language Wikipedias where this results in a small
and persistent community, the small user base at Simple English often have
their priorities understandably set on the main English Wikipedia.
The SE Wikipedia currently has a lack of focus, and a lack of direction.
Indeed, it claims to cater for multiple groups of people, which simply isn't
working:
"It is focused on readers who tend to be quite different people with
different needs: students, children, and translators."
The description there, taken from
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_English_Wikipedia, is too
ambiguous to encourage any regular contributors to the Wikipedia. Whereas
with the main Wikipedias there is a ultimate cause of creator 'the sum of
all human knowledge', Simple English doesn't have a goal, as its not aiming
for anything specifically.
The aims of students, children and translators, to me, is wrong on all
counts. I've read a few articles on Simple English, and the variation and
way of writing is at times so belittiling that I wonder why such a project
exists. This quote from the talk page sums it up perfectly:
"One thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that people act like
this is supposed to writted towards children, talking down to them and such,
when in fact Wikipedia Jr. is there to handle that - this should be aimed at
just reposting English articles in a simplified and standardized version of
English, as opposed to the "baby talk" many of the articles are crammed
with.
Simple: A problem I have with this website is that there is a website like
it that is already here - Wikipedia Junior. I think that this website should
be for people from another country who are learning English, not small
children. This website talks to its people badly."
Simple English Wikipedia is, in reality, never going to be used by babies or
small children - Infact, unleashing such persons onto Wikipedia is dangerous
(as proven by our Recent Changes list :p ). Wikijunior, which is in
development, caters for the young market and has a focus to not talk down to
people. When I read Simple English trying to explain racism, I felt like it
was dumbing me down. Anyone capable of using Wikipedia normally can use
normal Wikipedia, whilst Simple English is not going to be used by 4 or 5
year olds. Children is a bad thing to aim at. Aiming at translators is
similiarly odd, because a translator wouldn't be a translator if their
English wasn't fluent.
Simple English Wikipedia needs to, in my opinion, have a huge rethink. It
should be aimed at persons wanting to practice their English by reading it,
and should be an aid for those learning it as a foreign language. Simple
English should read simply, but not so simply that it puts down the reader.
People contribute to Wikipedias for a reason, and for a goal - Simple
English has no goal, so theres no clear reason for editors to contribute to
it. A look at recent changes shows that.
Without a rethink and a real discussion into the direction, policies and
descriptions of Simple English Wikipedia, it had mayswell be deleted. Simple
English was the second Wikipedia I visited, after main English, and I
believe it will be the same for many others. It doesn't reflect well on
Wikimedia Foundation to have a Wikipedia in such a bad state, and in the
English language - Quality over quantity isn't necessarily always true, but
in the case of having Wikimedia Foundation projects and Wikipedias, it is.
Simple is way too out there to stay as it is; a rethink is needed.
Yours,
David Hedley
_______________________________________________
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Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
__________________________________________________________
Mit WEB.DE FreePhone mit hoechster Qualitaet ab 0 Ct./Min.
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Wikipedia won a pair of online awards in Germany this week in the
annual Grimme Prize competition: one of three jury-awarded Knowledge
and Education prizes, as "an excellent example of collaboration on the
Internet," and the overall Audience Award, barely beating out the
tele-novela "Verliebt in Berlin" (http://www.sat1.de/vib/serie/)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/61312
Meanwhile, Peter "Shaggy" Shanks whips out a 'slimmed down XHTML
version' of Wikipedia -- "the Wikipedia writ small" -- for people
whose phones' egos outstrip their screen-size:
http://wapipedia.org/wikipedia/mobilerandom.aspx
..."The London Line" notes the English Wikicoobook as a place to look
for world recipes:
http://www.thelondonline.co.uk/theline/article.php?articleID=484
...and eHow, the victorious dot-com "how-to" site, has started up a
wiki section, "The How-To Site that anyone can Write or Edit",
"powered and Inspired by MediaWiki" :
http://wiki.ehow.com/Main-Page
The eHow interface has a few interesting aspects:
* It is very clean, with no left-hand sidebar, no logo at the top, and
almost no user nav-links at all. It compresses most of those links
into a drop-down menu in the middle of the top of each screen,
labelled "Toolbox".
* It has a separate "create a page" interface, which makes creating a
page a pleasure
http://wiki.ehow.com/index.php?action=easy
* Empty pages, rather than simply saying "There is currently no text
in this page", say
"This discussion page has not yet been started, click '''here''' to
leave the first comment."
Happily, they are CC-licensed. However, they are CC-NC, and so
incompatible with current Wikimedia projects.
(finally, for kicks, don't miss http://wickerpedia.org and its fine
search interface)
--
++SJ
In behalf of the 26 million speakers of Cebuano (60%
of which have access to online resources by
conservative estimates), I would like to request for a
Wikipedia in the Cebuano language.
We already have the minimum number of interested
persons who will work on the encyclopedia.
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Cebuano>
Thank you for your time.
bentong
Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
Sorry it's suppose to be
http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
----- Original Message -----
From: "Servien Ilaino"
To: wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 10:11:47 -0500
>
> Hi,
>
> I requested Dutch-Low Saxon a few weeks ago and I kind of made my
own
> mainpage for Wikipedia (if it ever gets created that is...) but
anyway...
> for people who like to check it out here is the link:
> http://nds.wikipedia.org/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
>
> Please post any suggestions and stuff, like to read some comments.
>
> Question: On Wikipedia-L posts are mostly grouped together, but how
do
> you do that? (messages below each other like on wikipedia ": and ::
and
> :::" to show those are the replies. I hope you kind of understand
it
> because I don't really know how to explain it myself haha.)
>
> Servien Ilaino!
>
> --
> ___________________________________________________________
> Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--
___________________________________________________________
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The subject of Simple English Wikipedia has came to the mailing list before,
but after reading talk pages there and seeing the dormancy of Recent Changes
(bar a few persistent users, and the odd anon editor) I feel it is time to
suggest a rethink, or at least look into the direction of Simple English
Wikipedia.
Simple English Wikipedia currently has 4,157 articles, the vast majority of
which fail to extend further than three sentences in length. There are a few
administrators, Netoholic being the most active of them. There is a small
user base, but unlike some language Wikipedias where this results in a small
and persistent community, the small user base at Simple English often have
their priorities understandably set on the main English Wikipedia.
The SE Wikipedia currently has a lack of focus, and a lack of direction.
Indeed, it claims to cater for multiple groups of people, which simply isn't
working:
"It is focused on readers who tend to be quite different people with
different needs: students, children, and translators."
The description there, taken from
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_English_Wikipedia, is too
ambiguous to encourage any regular contributors to the Wikipedia. Whereas
with the main Wikipedias there is a ultimate cause of creator 'the sum of
all human knowledge', Simple English doesn't have a goal, as its not aiming
for anything specifically.
The aims of students, children and translators, to me, is wrong on all
counts. I've read a few articles on Simple English, and the variation and
way of writing is at times so belittiling that I wonder why such a project
exists. This quote from the talk page sums it up perfectly:
"One thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that people act like
this is supposed to writted towards children, talking down to them and such,
when in fact Wikipedia Jr. is there to handle that - this should be aimed at
just reposting English articles in a simplified and standardized version of
English, as opposed to the "baby talk" many of the articles are crammed
with.
Simple: A problem I have with this website is that there is a website like
it that is already here - Wikipedia Junior. I think that this website should
be for people from another country who are learning English, not small
children. This website talks to its people badly."
Simple English Wikipedia is, in reality, never going to be used by babies or
small children - Infact, unleashing such persons onto Wikipedia is dangerous
(as proven by our Recent Changes list :p ). Wikijunior, which is in
development, caters for the young market and has a focus to not talk down to
people. When I read Simple English trying to explain racism, I felt like it
was dumbing me down. Anyone capable of using Wikipedia normally can use
normal Wikipedia, whilst Simple English is not going to be used by 4 or 5
year olds. Children is a bad thing to aim at. Aiming at translators is
similiarly odd, because a translator wouldn't be a translator if their
English wasn't fluent.
Simple English Wikipedia needs to, in my opinion, have a huge rethink. It
should be aimed at persons wanting to practice their English by reading it,
and should be an aid for those learning it as a foreign language. Simple
English should read simply, but not so simply that it puts down the reader.
People contribute to Wikipedias for a reason, and for a goal - Simple
English has no goal, so theres no clear reason for editors to contribute to
it. A look at recent changes shows that.
Without a rethink and a real discussion into the direction, policies and
descriptions of Simple English Wikipedia, it had mayswell be deleted. Simple
English was the second Wikipedia I visited, after main English, and I
believe it will be the same for many others. It doesn't reflect well on
Wikimedia Foundation to have a Wikipedia in such a bad state, and in the
English language - Quality over quantity isn't necessarily always true, but
in the case of having Wikimedia Foundation projects and Wikipedias, it is.
Simple is way too out there to stay as it is; a rethink is needed.
Yours,
David Hedley
Ahhh!
Please, no!
Wikijunior's been struggling as it is in getting writers, and we've concentrated only on three subjects. Any sort of specialty encyclopedia isn't going to work, and even if it is, it's going to distract from Wikijunior, my pet, which we *need* to get done before December, or loose US$10000.
My personal preference is just keeping Simple English Wikipedia as is, for learners of the language. There's millions and millions of potential readers, I'll even investigate promoting the site to immigration organizations if we keep it as is.
Nick Moreau
"Zanimum"
I'd prefer the project be changed entirely to reflect something more
like what was suggested at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids>
(in all languages). People wanting to write simple versions of
existing English Wikipedia articles can focus on simplifying the lead
sections of those. Having that on a separate wiki has not proved
useful, whereas having something that is written by and for children
may be different enough from the main Wikipedia to warrant its own
project.
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PCcalling worldwide with voicemail
Hi,
I requested Dutch-Low Saxon a few weeks ago and I kind of made my own
mainpage for Wikipedia (if it ever gets created that is...) but anyway...
for people who like to check it out here is the link:
http://nds.wikipedia.org/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
Please post any suggestions and stuff, like to read some comments.
Question: On Wikipedia-L posts are mostly grouped together, but how do
you do that? (messages below each other like on wikipedia ": and :: and
:::" to show those are the replies. I hope you kind of understand it
because I don't really know how to explain it myself haha.)
Servien Ilaino!
--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.comhttp://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
Hi all,
I made a bunch of logos recently...
They're all located at http://xx.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiki.png
Wikipedias: am:, ba:, bo:, cv:, gv:, kk:, kl:, kw:, ky:, ps:, tg:,
ug:... I think that's all.
Mark
