Hi All,

I have no answer to Anthere's questions concerning what to do about Quarto/3. I am simply writing to clarify two statements I made in my email.

First, I let both Anthere and Sj, the Editor-in-Chief of Quarto, know that I had to stop copyediting Quarto/3, a while ago (probably around May 26,) due to medical problems. I have no desire to share the nature of these problems.

Second, the examples, which I cited from Quarto/3 were exactly that...examples. If it were simply a question of correcting a few sentences, of course, I would have done it. Unfortunately, these examples were a few of many, many, errors that remain in Quarto/3.

I hope this corrects the impression, which I seem to have given, that there were 2 or 3 remaining errors left in Quarto/3. And, that I chose ot point them out, rather than correcting them.

As Ever,

Ruth Ifcher

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-------------- Original message ---------------------- From: Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com

Hi

I think it would have been more efficient Rose, if you had directly copyedited the few points you mention here, rather than take the time to explain them here and we wait for someone to fix them.

I frankly do not know what to do. We rely on volunteer work entirely. If people do not do something, there are only three options

• We close our eyes and keep what is poorly done this

way. We just sigh and move on. The consequences being mostly we appear like jerks, leaving typos, inconsistencies ...

• We decide to stop the whole stuff, wait for no one

to come and do the job and end up not publishing anything. The main consequence would here typically to hear again that the board communicate nothing of what it does, and act in a non transparent way. This is essentially what has been happening for the whole month. Editing has been finished for several weeks and we have been waiting in hope people help. No proofreading was done. At some point, that means either no one is ready to do the job, so what is the point waiting ? or that means the whole content is perfect.

• We do the job ourselves, even if non english, even

if proofreading is a job we know nothing about. Sorry, I will not do that. I do not have the time.

I am perplex about what to do. I had *hoped* that this quarto could be published last month. It was delayed. I had hoped it could be published during board candidacies. It was delayed. I had hoped it could be published during elections. It was delayed. It makes little sense to publish things 6 months after they occured.

Currently, the proofreading process is the one working the least. All steps are difficult, but this one is the most difficult one, because we wait for things to improve and nothing happens.

I frankly do not know what to do. I just know I am all for the board giving more information to the community and making it available widely. But this requires help from many people. If information is never given before 6 months each time, I think we should give up hoping to give information this way entirely.

I really hope someone can give me some insight on this matter.

Ant

--- rose.parks@att.net wrote:

...

Hi Members,

 I know that I have been unable to copyedit much

of the current version of Quarto. I am truly sorry about this. Unfortunately, I have been dealing with some rather serious medical problems. I did read both Sj's and Anthere's remarks on the state of WQ/3 and their plans to announce publication this Monday. I, immediately, went to the site, in hopes that someone had done some of the copyediting/proofreading, which I have been unable to get to. Unfortunately, other than the removal of some material, I see neither copyediting nor proofreading done on the English version. Therefore, there remain numerous proofreading errors and some copyediting errors. Further there are numerous references to events, etc. after March 31.

 I really think you should reconsider whether

publication at this time is appropriate. The Quarto, in a way, represents Wikimedia. To publish it full of errors does nothing to improve our image. Further, I feel that no task should depend on the availability of one member. I did contact everyone, who signed up as a copyeditor. As far as I can tell, there are no other active English copyeditors. This is a bad situation. I am including just a few errors, to give you an idea of the sort of problems that still exist in this edition.

Page 3 - Overview With the collected money, we already purchased some technical equipment (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware) in 2005. Last orders were done in january

(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_ordered_January_2005)

...

and may

(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_ordered_May_2005).

...

Less purchases were done than expected early 2005 due to the numerous hosting proposals we received.

The donator of the first french squids donated three additional ones, soon to be hosted by Lost Oasis for free. In early april, the Wikimedia Foundation signed an agreement with Yahoo ! (see special report below).

Page 3 - Caches Installed near Paris

The caches work as follows: if they hold the requested page in their local memory, they serve it directly; otherwise, they forward the request to the main Florida servers, and memorizes the answer while passing it to the browser of the Wikipedia user.

The Paris servers, on the other hand, have much smaller rountrip times from the countries they serve.

 I, sincerely, hope you will reconsider your

decision. I think all contributing members, who speak English, should read the English version and express their opinions.

                     As Ever,

                         Ruth Ifcher

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