[Wikisource-l] Changing the Wikisource main page

[Syagrius]

> De: "John Vandenberg" <jayvdb at gmail.com>
> A: "discussion list for Wikisource,  the free library" <wikisource-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Objet: Re: [Wikisource-l] Changing the Wikisource main page
> Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:40:56 +1000

> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 4:04 AM, Syagrius <<a href=mailto:"syagrius at caramail.com">syagrius at caramail.com</a>> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> >
> > As Wikipedia decided to change its main page presentation, I think that
> > Wikisource maybe should do the same. The "War" between the spanish and
> the
> > chinese wikisources demonstrates that the article count does not reflect
> the
> > true depht of a Wikisource, as someone can create thousands of very small
> > articles. What should the main page present ? I don't think that, as
> > Wikipedia did, chosing the number of visitors would be a good idea, since
> > Wikisource is very less known than Wikipedia, and the figures may be not
> > reliable. If these stats from Erik Zachte can be trusted (and renewed), I
> > would suggest that the number of words
> > <a target="_blank"
> href='http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/TablesDatabaseWords.htm'>http
> ://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/TablesDatabaseWords.htm</a> may be the
> > fairest figure to present. The only problem would be : is the number of
> > words given for the Chinese (and Japanese, also) wikisource correct ?
> 
> It is an interesting statistic, and I havent investigated the
> algorithm being used.  Is there a mathematical description of the
> algorithm used?
> 
> My first guess is that we would need to weight it according to the
> entropy of each language.  For example, Chinese and Japanese have a
> much higher entropy, so they need to be weighted higher.
> 
> > What do you think of this proposition ?
> 
> If we are going to change the front page of the portal, it is these
> stats that I would like to see used and improved:
> 
> <a target="_blank"
> href='http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:ProofreadPage_Statistics'>http:/
> /wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:ProofreadPage_Statistics</a>
> 
> We need to present ourselves as a _serious_ project, doing top quality
> work.
> 
> I suggest that we also feature two texts on the main portal each month:
> - one work that is hosted on wikisource.org - i.e. from a language
> which is _not_ on a subdomain
> - one work from a subdomain, from a different sub-domain each month,
> _after_ it has been selected as a featured text on the subdomain.
> 
> --
> John Vandenberg
> 
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For more informations about the statistics, I think that you may contact Erik Zachte himself. I still think that the number of words is the best solution, because a Wikisource could easily create a lot of "pages" with no correction at all. I don't really understand what you mean by "entropy of each langage", but it seems that the number of words of the Chinese Wikisource is ok : 29M and 42M for the Spanish Wikisource...

Xavier
(Enmerkar on French wikisource)