Hi Ausir,
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, I seee to be
getting an error message (Numer błędu - 404,
Ten dokument nie istnieje) when accessing it. I would
like to run the bot myself, but since I know next to
nothing about coding, would I be able to use the
source code they used at it.wiki?
Ronline
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
Hi all,
I would like to draw your attention to the Lingala Wikipedia
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/
As you can see, the interface is not just in Lingala, but rather there
is a slash after the Lingala rendering of each message, followed by a
translation into French.
Now, while I don't think it's a good thing, I would grudgingly accept
the fact if it were real Lingala-speaking people who were responsible,
however:
Most of it is the work of http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Moyogo and
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bombo .
Moyogo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-1" -- a basic command of
Lingala, while Bombo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-0" --
cannot understand Lingala.
Now that in itself seems like an issue to me, but there is more:
There are quite a few very long pages on ln.wiki, HOWEVER nearly all
of them are written ENTIRELY in French, or with only a sentence
translated.
Some of the longest:
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swisi -- actually entirely in English, not French
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molongo_ya_nkot%C3%A1_ya_leta_mokili --
only page title translated, entire article is in French
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217 -- again, entirely in English
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisakoli_ya_molongo_ya_makoki_ya_moto --
in Lingala, but is a verbatim copy of the UDHR
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ing%C9%9Bl%C9%9B%CC%81t%C9%9Bl%C9%9B --
entirely in French
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politiki_bya_K%C9%94%CC%81ng%C9%94-Kinshasa
-- entirely in English
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litaue -- actually in Dutch (!)
Now, even if the interface in French is really a nessecity, it can be
accessed from "preferences" where one may choose a non-default
interface language.
The French and English articles I listed above are only the beginning.
I excluded the few which were partly translated, and obviously those
few which were 100% Lingala.
I think the question we should be asking ourselves is : what will
somebody in Kinshasa think coming across this website? It claims to be
the Lingala version of Wikipedia, but the interface is bilingual, and
most of the articles are in French. It will be of little to no help to
a monolingual Lingala speaker.
I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that
something should be done.
The main reasons that this is different from mi.wiki (uses lots of
English) and na.wiki (uses lots of English as well) are that:
1) interface messages are bilingual or not translated, unlike the
other two where they are either fully translated, or not;
2) most pages are in English or French, unlike the other two where
most pages are in the right language, even if that means they're
substubs;
2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the
administrators stated that it's important that French is in the
interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in
mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to
speak pretty good Lingala.
Mark
Scríobh Neil Harris:
> ASL is most certainly a first-class language, but it _must be written_
> to be usable in a text-based system like Wikipedia.
I think this is the key here. Do deaf persons in the United States actually
write ASL in their everyday lives. A quick bit of Googling and research
seems to indicate that there isn't even a settled orthography for ASL, so
producing material in a written form seems counterproductive. Half a
million people might "speak" the language on a daily basis, but if only 5%
of people understand the particular form of notation that is used, it's
going to be close to useless for most deaf persons. We might then run into
a situation similar to the båkmal/nynorsk, or the cantonese/mandarin
fiascos, in which each variant of sign language demands a seperate wiki for
itself. If we allow an ASL wiki, then how can we say no to an Auslan wiki,
a Gestuno wiki, an ISL wiki, etc.
Sadly, I think that sign languages can, at the present time, be only
classified as being spoken and not written. If you can show me a commonly
accepted written notation for ASL (that has, for example, 50%+ understanding
from those who use ASL as a spoken language), that can be conceivably used
on the internet, then I'll be the first to call for the wiki's creation.
Unfortunately, I think this is a technical challenge that might not be
possible at the present time (since SignWriting, which seems to be the most
popular of the written notations, doesn't seem to have any Unicode support).
- Craig [[en:Lankiveil]]
-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.
Hi,
I am a sysop on the Romanian Wikipedia and I am
interested in running a bot on the Romanian Wikipedia
to add articles for French cities. I am totally new to
bots and have no idea what steps to take next. Would
it possible to use the same bot (by Gac) as the one
creating French commune stubs on the Italian
Wikipedia? The only thing that would be different is
the actual interface (which would be in Romanian), but
it can use the same data. What are the next steps from
here? How would I be able to gain access to the
database?
Thanks very much,
Ronline
PS: How many French communes are there in total that
the bot must add?
______________________________________________________
Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate3/
There appears to be an issue with test-wikipedias again.
Elian has deleted 3 without first gaining a consensus that they may be
deleted, and also added the message:
"Important note: The existing test wikipedias listed here may continue
to use Meta-Wiki as temporary workspace but no new ones should be
added here. Remember that this space serves as a proof of concept and
that the number of pages is limited to 100. Please don't create any
redirects or pages in the main name space. Images should be uploaded
to Commons, not Meta so that they can be later used in the newly
created wiki as well."
Why can't anybody create new Test Wikipedias?? Whose decision was
that? The consensus at RfD before was to keep all Test Wikipedias,
with overwhelming support.
I can understand limiting pages to 100, and requesting people not to
make pages in the main namespace, but why can't people create new Test
Wikipedias???
And why did you delete 3? Scots I can understand, it has its own Wikipedia now.
But North Frisian and Kokborok??? What is your reasoning for this??
Yes, they're only one or two pages, but it's still wrong to delete
them without a successful RfD because there's already a previous vote
which by a wide margin chose to keep them.
Mark
....always refers to you guys as "Wicked Pee ?...Dja!"...
I don't get it.
jack barry
--
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.
JackBarry99(a)gmail.com
415-564-0225/415-235-7897cell
Quote: --"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters
compared to what
lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
http://jackbarry99.buzznet.comhttp://UncleRealtor.blogspot.com
Hi all. My first email was copied to the person who originally
enquired, and they've now replied directly to me; I get the impression
from this that they may not be subscribed to the list.
As such, I've let them know how to read the archives on the web and
subscribe themselves, and I'm taking the liberty of forwarding their
followup message to the list so that people can see it.
If you reply, might be helpful to copy comments to the address below.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: HHamilto(a)doe.k12.ga.us <HHamilto(a)doe.k12.ga.us>
Date: 09-Sep-2005 16:50
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] new request for ASL/English wikipedia
To: andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
There are approximately 500,000 users of American Sign Language(ASL) in
the United States and many more in Canada. We will not merely be adding
sign language to articles but providing a Wikipedia in a separate
language(ASL) just as separate Wikpedias are available for German, French,
etc.... The English text article will be available as deaf users of ASL are
bilingual with varying levels of reading English. The average deaf adult
reads at about the 4th grade level
http://gri.gallaudet.edu/Literacy/#reading . Thus much of the internet and
encyclopedias in general are inaccessible to these users due to the level
of reading required. A survey of the readability of internet sites showed
popular sites such a the NY Times and Nickelodeon were above 4th grade
level (www.readability.info). The article on cats from Wikipedia receives
the following scores
Readability report for The cat in wikipedia.doc
readability grades:
Kincaid: 11.0
ARI: 12.2
Coleman-Liau: 13.4
Flesch Index: 52.5
Fog Index: 14.4
Lix: 49.1 = school year 9
SMOG-Grading: 12.8
As you can see these are all well above the 4th grade level.
Although simple.wikipedia.org strives to provide a version of English that
is easier to read it does not totally meet the needs of deaf users. The
readability of the "cat" article in simple wikipedia hovers at or slightly
above the 4th grade level on 2 measures of readability and is above 7th
grade on 3 measures of readability.
Readability report for A cat in simple wikipedia.doc
readability grades:
Kincaid: 4.6
ARI: 3.9
Coleman-Liau: 7.7
Flesch Index: 85.4
Fog Index: 7.4
Lix: 27.0 = below school year 5
SMOG-Grading: 7.7
To make information accessible to deaf users ASL video is necessary that
accompanies the English text. An ASL-English bilingual Wikipedia would
provide deaf users with a tool for not only acquiring general world
knowledge via an accessible medium (American Sign Langauge) but also a
powerful educational tool for enhancing literacy by being able to compare
the ASL video and English text. Also, articles could be written tailored to
the reading level of deaf readers, rather than muddling through the text of
another wikipedia. A tool is also available for users to access the signs
for each word of the English text. It is MySignLink and is available for
free at www.aasdweb.com.MySignLink .
An ASL-English Wikipedia will also provide deaf students with a national
project that all students can contribute to while producing their everyday
reports for their classes in Social Studies, Science, etc… It will be a
great motivator for students to produce a product that is actually of use
to others and a great lesson for them to learn that their labor can help
others. The deaf community can also produce articles. A deaf fly fisherman
in Montana may want to add an article on fly fishing or trout via ASL. It
will be a source of pride in the deaf community. I hope you will agree that
American Sign Language needs a home of its own.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
(in reply to http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-September/041425.html
)
Thanks all,
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
Are there any books written in Sign Language? Do deaf people ever write letters or e-mails in Sign Language? Do deaf people jot down their shopping lists in ASL or do they rather use English? Maybe somebody can tell me. I must admit I know to little about deaf culture.
Boris
XXL-Speicher, PC-Virenschutz, Spartarife & mehr: Nur im WEB.DE Club!
Jetzt gratis testen! http://freemail.web.de/home/landingpad/?mc=021130
I don't know if this is still an open issue, but as someone who might ask
for such data, here's my two cents.
I attend a design program at a research institution, which gives me an
interesting perspective of having to undergo the rigors of Human Subjects
Committee approval for research that ultimately informs the design and may
never result in a formal paper. What would be interesting to me is to be
able to analyze both the statistical frequency of edits and the type of edit
being performed. Since my interest is ultimately about what participants do
when involved in online communities, it would be important to be able to go
beyond the aggregate and be able to analyze the content with an eye on
producing personas. I would like to be able to say that User Type B
typically responds with Action Z when encountering User Type C, etc. That
isn't possible unless there is some way to view individual threads of
activity and qualitatively analyze the specific content.
I have a MediaWiki-based experiment going on right now, which was approved
by my school's review board in July. I'm not going to get anywhere close to
Wikipedia size for members, so content analysis is going to be difficult but
significantly easier than a massive wiki project. I have a SQL script that I
run weekly to get some aggregate statistics and both user- and page-centric
data sets. I created the entire site with HSC approval and full disclosure
of how I plan to use the data (referring to users, if at all, by their
chosen usernames only). And if someone asks me for the data, I would be
required to follow HIPPA kinds of rules and allow all of the participants to
prevent having their information included.
What would be very useful would be to have some pre-programmed export of
data that would provide this same information. The aggregate data shouldn't
be a big obstacle, but I would think there would have to be some way of
stripping out identification. Data-wise, that would be easy; assign a unique
ID in place of MW userID or username. Content-wise, it's not so easy; can
posted identity references and translated signature tags be masked? There
may also need to be some means of allowing members to opt out whenever
identity is involved.
If the Powers the Be MediaWiki could resolve this by November, that would
be wonderful.I'll get my HSC forms in order and get in line for that data.
:)
Kevin Makice