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
--
-------------- Original message ---------------------- From: Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com
A constellation of counterpoints.
First, Sj reported that we now really have a design team, taking care of the images, cover and pdf version. I saw a couple of days ago an example of a pdf version and I was really impressed; I can't wait :-) When do you perceive the pdf will be available ? One week ? More ?
My plan is to finish the English version by tomorrow (yes, so it can be announced on Monday!), and to have draft pdf pages for an octavo (a 16-pg layout) sometime next week. I have to talk to zanimum and schneelocke to make sure this is possible.
I'll dig up the last announcement made for Quarto2 and will put it in meta pages for improvement. It would be great to announce at the same time the mail system is now up and a PDF version will be available.
Good. I think we can safely announce that we will release a pdf version of WQ3; that should be translated also. There are currently 66 people signed up to receive this mail.
I think this version was definitly easier than issue 1 and 2, so the way the
pages are
cut/displayed might be the good solution.
There seems to be general agreement here :-) And I also hope that people will feel more free to just add their content directly; or at least to create meta pages directly with complete articles. We have been encouraging that of all contributors to this past edition; I will more actively moderate the draft pages so that new contributors feel welcome.
Fifth, Sj, could it be possible that you put the working frame of version number 4 as soon as possible.
Yes, perhaps as soon as Monday. The draft page for WQ 4, for anyone who has lost it among the growing number of Quarto pages, is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/Draft/future
It will be moved to [[m:WQ/Draft]] once the current English edition is finalized. -- +sj+ _______________________________________________ Quarto-l mailing list Quarto-l@mail.wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/quarto-l
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 muchof 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 whetherpublication 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 yourdecision. I think all contributing members, who speak English, should read the English version and express their opinions.
As Ever, Ruth Ifcher--
-------------- Original message
From: Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com
A constellation of counterpoints.
First, Sj reported that we now really have a
design team, taking care of the
images, cover and pdf version. I saw a couple of
days ago an example of a
pdf version and I was really impressed; I can't
wait :-) When do you
perceive the pdf will be available ? One week ?
More ?
My plan is to finish the English version by
tomorrow (yes, so it can
be announced on Monday!), and to have draft pdf
pages for an octavo (a
16-pg layout) sometime next week. I have to talk to zanimum and schneelocke to make
sure this is possible.
I'll dig up the last announcement made for
Quarto2 and will put it in meta
pages for improvement. It would be great to
announce at the same time the
mail system is now up and a PDF version will be
available.
Good. I think we can safely announce that we will
release a pdf
version of WQ3; that should be translated also.
There are currently
66 people signed up to receive this mail.
I think this version was definitly easier than
issue 1 and 2, so the way the
pages are
cut/displayed might be the good solution.
There seems to be general agreement here :-) And
I also hope that
people will feel more free to just add their
content directly; or at
least to create meta pages directly with complete
articles. We have
been encouraging that of all contributors to this
past edition;
I will more actively moderate the draft pages so
that new contributors
feel welcome.
Fifth, Sj, could it be possible that you put the
working frame of version
number 4 as soon as possible.
Yes, perhaps as soon as Monday. The draft page
for WQ 4, for anyone
who has lost it among the growing number of Quarto
pages, is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/Draft/future
It will be moved to [[m:WQ/Draft]] once the
current English edition is
finalized.
+sj+ _______________________________________________ Quarto-l mailing list Quarto-l@mail.wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/quarto-l
Quarto-l mailing list Quarto-l@mail.wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/quarto-l
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After Ruth suggested Quarto be held from publication until it was proofread, Anthere wrote:
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.
Perhaps this needs to be done in a less time-intensive way. Couldn't a large glossy Quarto be published every 6 months instead of every 3, with simple text based reports from the Board given monthly in addition to the reports I already make at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings ? When I say simple, I mean the report would be on one page, not split across various wikis and various templates. These reports could be limited to what actually happened, rather than opinions on that, meaning it could be much shorter than it would be in Quarto, and therefore much quicker and easier to translate.
If the aim of the newsletter is to get Board information out to people in a timely way, then I don't think Quarto is meeting that goal, and I don't think it should try to. I see Quarto as something less time-urgent, and something which ought to be developed by the community, not the Board.
I'm copying this to Foundation-l since the the distribution of information from the Board needs to be discussed by more people than the very small group on the Quarto list.
Angela.
Hello Quartans, Ruth (It is good to hear from you again)
We are on schedule for publication in English today (Monday). I went through and copyedited the Quarto on my own today; it took me around 6 hours to copyedit all 15 pages**, separate out second-quarter events for WQ-4, and add detailed statistics on our nine glorious Wikimedia projects. This is not a negligible amount of time, but it is no enormous investment compared with the intense translation and design work others are doing. The entire Quarto (save the retrospective) is now ready for translation.
Another few hours of proofreading are still needed: for consistency and proper use of links, names, and accessibility (image captions, etc).
** "Fifteen?" I hear you cry. "Isn't the Quarto eight pages long?" Well, we have been working on a PDF version of this quarto, and it will just fit neatly into a 16-page format including the cover.
== Copyediting ==
Further, I feel that no task should depend on the availability of one member. I didcontact 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.
Quite right. In the end I was the only active English copyeditor for this edition ;-) I know how much more pleasant it is to work with other people. Ruth's prolonged illness was unexpected, but I take full responsibility for the inactivity of our copyeditors; I will make sure we have a reasonable staff to edit the next edition.... starting this week (how time flies!) 2d-Quarter draft reports should start coming in over the next few days.
== WQ 4 == Speaking of which: * WQ 4 has many small pieces of content floating about; and will have a skeleton up at [[m:WQ/4]] tomorrow. If you have been considering writing a report about your favored project for this quarter, please do so! * So many events and meetings and conferences have taken place in the past two months, that many haven't even gotten mentioned on meta or on a major mailing list... if you know of or have been involved with such a meeting, make a note of it on the draft page for the next Quarto.
==Specific help== This coming week, I need : * Someone to help plan out design ideas for the next few editions, and * Someone interested in collecting existing reports from many sources (meta, en:, local news outlets like the wikibooks newsletter, the de: Kurier, the en: Signpost).
To push your own design idea (lovely ideas have been suggested in the past by Sansculotte and others) : Schneelocke, Zanimum, and Mats Halldin have been doing a wonderful job dividing up the latest work on covers and internal design; and Villy has always been most helpful. Feel free to contact any of them directly with ideas or suggestions.
Anthere wrote:
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.
There is that...
Hi
Thanks a lot Sj
Note that the sign post publication in on monday. So, we now have nearly a full another week to do the Quarto publication.
Ant
--- Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Quartans, Ruth (It is good to hear from you again)
We are on schedule for publication in English today (Monday). I went through and copyedited the Quarto on my own today; it took me around 6 hours to copyedit all 15 pages**, separate out second-quarter events for WQ-4, and add detailed statistics on our nine glorious Wikimedia projects. This is not a negligible amount of time, but it is no enormous investment compared with the intense translation and design work others are doing. The entire Quarto (save the retrospective) is now ready for translation.
Another few hours of proofreading are still needed: for consistency and proper use of links, names, and accessibility (image captions, etc).
** "Fifteen?" I hear you cry. "Isn't the Quarto eight pages long?" Well, we have been working on a PDF version of this quarto, and it will just fit neatly into a 16-page format including the cover.
== Copyediting ==
Further, I feel that no task should depend onthe 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.
Quite right. In the end I was the only active English copyeditor for this edition ;-) I know how much more pleasant it is to work with other people. Ruth's prolonged illness was unexpected, but I take full responsibility for the inactivity of our copyeditors; I will make sure we have a reasonable staff to edit the next edition.... starting this week (how time flies!) 2d-Quarter draft reports should start coming in over the next few days.
== WQ 4 == Speaking of which:
- WQ 4 has many small pieces of content floating
about; and will have a skeleton up at [[m:WQ/4]] tomorrow. If you have been considering writing a report about your favored project for this quarter, please do so!
- So many events and meetings and conferences have
taken place in the past two months, that many haven't even gotten mentioned on meta or on a major mailing list... if you know of or have been involved with such a meeting, make a note of it on the draft page for the next Quarto.
==Specific help== This coming week, I need :
- Someone to help plan out design ideas for the
next few editions, and
- Someone interested in collecting existing reports
from many sources (meta, en:, local news outlets like the wikibooks newsletter, the de: Kurier, the en: Signpost).
To push your own design idea (lovely ideas have been suggested in the past by Sansculotte and others) : Schneelocke, Zanimum, and Mats Halldin have been doing a wonderful job dividing up the latest work on covers and internal design; and Villy has always been most helpful. Feel free to contact any of them directly with ideas or suggestions.
Anthere wrote:
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.
There is that... _______________________________________________ Quarto-l mailing list Quarto-l@mail.wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/quarto-l
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If we want, it can be published in this week's edition. I think that would be preferable, no? We still need blurbs about the release of WQ3 and recruiting contributors for WQ4 for translation and distribution.
SJ
On 6/27/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Hi
Thanks a lot Sj
Note that the sign post publication in on monday. So, we now have nearly a full another week to do the Quarto publication.
Ant