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
--
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Anthere <anthere9(a)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(a)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
>
> --