> almisrah.com is down. I can't confirm anything.
Whoops! I meant
http://www.almisbar.com/salam_trans.html
> I hear ajeeb.com does good in translation.
Ajeeb requires a paid membership -- its out of
consideration for public use...
> Machine translation is far from a solution for
> Arabic. Especially when it
> comes to a publicly written encyclopedia.
I disagree with this -- if its making a blanket -case
statement. Machine tools are merely for assistance.
They cannot hope to replace the keen eye -- in any
language, regardless of proficiency. There are known
and published people on the WP -- ask any of them if
they have ever written anything worth reading that
didnt need at least a proofread or two. Same
principle -- in fact, our usernames register our
authorship for Wiki articles (If they are substantive
enough -- if they dont get pruned, chopped, etc..) So
we treat each article like a series of copyedits --
why not apply this to translation?
> RNA, for example, was translated literally into its
> Arabic meaning, which
> then read: "rana".
> Arabic, BTW, doesn't use voels (sp?). My name is
> Ahmad. In Arabic the
> letters used are: ahmd. It is up to the reader to
> spell the word correctly.
> This is one reason why it is hard to do machine
> Arabic translation even
> theoretically.
Ahmad = AeLF, kHAe, MIM, DAeL ?
So your saying that machine translation doesnt take
into account the alphabet-abjad gap?
Thats amazing. With almisbar theres an option for
using Haraka -- though these might seem like training
wheels for the native speaker. Would a rule to use
Haraka , when machine translated from the english work
-- wouldnt that add too many oddities into the text
that would have to be sorted out later?
I can see how it could try to over-phoneticize words
it doesnt understand.. but anyway.. It bears some
further investigation. Not all are equal -- and it may
just be necessary to buy something -- though it would
be a limited kind of thing...
There should be a reasonable thresh-hold -- I dont
like to hear the typical criticism by native speakers
of non-native speakers and their poor language skills
-- as long as theres something on the page -- A title
and seven words -- this can be enough to seed the
interest of someone willing to expand on that. What
I want to know is how much is too much -- is there
such a thing when anyone can edit/mach-translate a
page?
-S-
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Tim Starling wrote:
>...
>I have a feeling we're losing the war on
>pseudoscience, mainly due to an insufficient
>number of motivated skeptical contributors.
>I've been giving serious thought to advertising
>our cause on the major skeptical community
>forums.
>...
Yes please do! It is hard enough to expand and improve articles on valid
scientific theories without feeling compelled to defend things so basic like
the existence of matter.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Ive been daydreaming lately... Imagining a place where
all translations were maching-processed, boiled down
to a trans-language file that upon every varied edit,
was translated back into all other languages....
The interface language would merely be a veneer--
a window into which whatever software used makes its
best guess at figuring out what it is you have to say,
and converts this to a nexus form -- a tongue which
uses as may components of as many languages as
necessary to describe and prescribe an idea -- a
language of nothing but vast quantities of metadata
and dried muffin remnants...
It would be ugly, disastrous, competitive, heated..
wily, gnarly, vicious, capricious, seedy, dastardly,
voluminous, voluptuous, harried, shitty, mungled,
bungled, wacked in the head, screwy, cheezy, and just
plain fucked up... But it still ought work. Instead
of a wiki it could be called a "sickie"
Heck, who here can remember what they thought of a
wiki when they first heard the idea?
-S-
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Two down :)
--
Michael Becker
-----Original Message-----
From: Jaret Wilson [mailto:jaret@msn.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2003 3.45
To: wikipedia(a)jumpingjackweb.com
Subject: Re: 4reference.net
Michael,
I'll be glad to include a GFDL notice. The site is new and still a work
in
progress, so it doesn't surprise me that I've missed something. Thank
you
for pointing this out. I'll make the change within the next couple
days.
Thanks,
Jaret Wilson
>From: Michael Becker <wikipedia(a)jumpingjackweb.com>
>To: webmaster(a)4reference.net, jaret(a)msn.com
>Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 03:37:36 -0400
>
>Dear Jaret Wilson,
>
>We're delighted to see that your website, http://www.4reference.net/,
>uses content from Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.org/ ), the free
>encyclopedia. This is just the sort of application that we at Wikipedia
>wish to promote. We're also glad to see that you have included a link
>back to the source Wikipedia article, as we've suggested on our
>copyrights page.
>
>However, we'd like to point out that to use content from Wikipedia you
>should also include a GFDL notice. One way of doing this would be to
>add the text "This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation
>License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the
>entire work (including additions) remains under this license", and
>provide a link to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.
>
>Thanks for your assistance,
>Michael Becker
>
>----
>This message is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License
>(GFDL), which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the
>entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
>
>GFDL: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
>URL of source:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter
>
_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
1 down :).
--
Michael Becker
-----Original Message-----
From: Mary Bellis [mailto:inventors.guide@about.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2003 7.26
To: Michael Becker
Subject: Re: GFDL violation
Okay
At 03:54 AM 7/13/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear Website Mary Bellis,
>
>We're delighted to see that your website,
>http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blscrewdriver.htm?terms=sc
>r
>ews, uses content from Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/), the free
>encyclopedia. This is just the sort of application that we at Wikipedia
>wish to promote.
>
>However, we'd like to point out that to use content from Wikipedia you
>should include a link back to the source Wikipedia article, as we've
>suggested on our copyrights page. Additionally, you should also include
>a GFDL notice. One way of doing this would be to add the text "This
>article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, which
>means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work
>(including additions) remains under this license", and provide a link
>to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.
>
>Thanks for your assistance,
>Michael Becker
>
>----
>This message is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License
>(GFDL), which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the
>entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
>
>GFDL: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
>URL of source:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter
Could Wikipedia just decide to change all of its content
from one license to another ? Is it legally or otherwise
bound to continue with the GNU license ? Is there a danger
of later legal challenges of this ? From whom ? What if we
give anyone the option to go back thru and rescind any work
that they contributed if we changed to a Creative Commons
license ?
I ask this, because, just maybe, we could smoothly switch
into the Creative Commons share alike license or something
like it with less problems than we anticipate. Maybe its
against "the rules" but who makes them ? Couldn't we just
decide ourselves ?
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Note: this entire message is tangential and can safely be ignored by
those in a hurry.
At 10:08 AM 7/12/03 +0100, Oliver Pereira wrote:
>On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > The license is silent on the matter, therefore, under general
> > principles of freedom (in the sense of speech, not beer), which is the
> > foundational principle of GNU, then anonymous authorship is just fine.
> >
> > I can ask RMS if you really want me too, but I think it's highly
> > HIGHLY unlikely that he would say "Oh, no, I didn't intend for people
> > to write things anonyous under the FDL. The talk about authorship is
> > supposed to imply that people are required to give their full name,
> > address, and social security number before they can use the license!"
>
>My message was about pseudonyms, so full names, addresses, and social
>security numbers don't come into it.
><snip>
>
>But I should point out that just because the ideas of freedom of speech,
>and privacy and anonymity, are closely linked in American history, it
>doesn't mean that they are in truth. Privacy and anonymity are just
>personal barriers, and barriers are restrictions on freedom.
It is no more a "barrier" for me to say "just call me Redbird" than it
is for me to say "just call me Vicki Rosenzweig" or "just call me
Rachel Rebecca Kanner". The only "barriers" come in when someone
demands proof that any or all of those are really my name, and then
insists on defining "really". My skin is a barrier, and so are the walls
of my home. They do not restrict freedom, unless freedom is defined
as the right of bacteria to infect me, or the right of wind and rain to
interfere with my sleep and destroy my books.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr(a)redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org
Oliver Pereira wrote:
>....
>Perhaps the edit page should have a notice
>saying, "This edit will be attributed to you under
>the pseudonym [some unique identifier here]. If
>you do not wish to use that pseudonym, you may wish
>to register a user name or, if you already have one,
>log in."
>....
I think that is a very good idea. Otherwise, as you
have noted, allowing Anon edits isn't really in the
spirit of the GNU FDL. The only other real alternative
is to stop allowing Anon edits and, IMO, that is last
thing we should do at this point (maybe when Wikipedia
is a household word we can think about that but until
then allowing anybody to edit without even having to
log in has been a major source of snagging new
contributors - cut that off and I fear that our
attrition numbers will begin to exceed our recruiting
numbers).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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The Cunctator wrote:
>> I strongly think we're better off formalizing a
>> policy in which particular author attribution is
>> not required. That is, by contributing to
>> Wikipedia, you agree to be attributed as one of
>> the "Wikipedia Contributors" or somesuch.
Jimmy responds:
> Well that certainly much more closely matches our
> social custom, in which articles aren't "owned"
> by anyone, and we value all sorts of contributions
> to the project without specifically privileging
> 'authorship'.
>
> But, how can we reconcile your suggestion with the
> FDL?
Not to be a wag, but how can we reconcile anonymous
contributions of any stripe--including ones that
aren't logged in--with the FDL? Pick an AOL IP
address and try to assign it to one author, without
AOL's help. Impossible. It doesn't even trace to one
*computer* without AOL jumping through hoops, much
less to one author at that one computer. (If this
weren't the case, we wouldn't have the problem of
recurring vandals).
Now, if the {irony} brilliant, uninvasive {/irony}
idea of prepending IPs with phone numbers ever comes
to fruition, maybe we would be closer to compliance
with what the FDL seems to require. As it is, I think
we're probably not, but also unable to do much about
it without severely changing what wikipedia is.
kq
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