Wikimedia-l July 2004

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

40 participants
84 discussions

[Foundation-l] Re: Many thanks to Walter, developers, Tomos...
by Anthere 19 Jul '04

19 Jul '04

Walter Vermeir wrote: > Anthere wrote: > >> I'd like to thank Walter, who manage to fix that very annoying bug on >> foundation-l. He contacted gmane to report the problem, and the >> newsgroup for the legal list is now closed. Gmane is fully working >> again :-) >> >> ant > > > I only send a email Anthere :) But *that* mail fixed a nearly 2 months old issue :-) > But why not make this a thank you thread? > > I like to thank the developers for that fantastic system for setting up > a new WikiQuote wiki. Enter the url of the wikiquote of your disere and > you get the message that it does not exist. But you get a button for > "create new wiki" and it even works! I have now a brand new wiki to play > whit. I'd like to thank Tomos for his thoughtful and quiet comments :-) > I hope there will come more of those automatic functions like activating > the function for updating the logo of a wiki by use of uploading Wiki.png Ohhhh, a wish list... may I ? (restraining myself...)

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[Foundation-l] Many thanks to Walter
by Anthere 19 Jul '04

19 Jul '04

I'd like to thank Walter, who manage to fix that very annoying bug on foundation-l. He contacted gmane to report the problem, and the newsgroup for the legal list is now closed. Gmane is fully working again :-) ant

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[Foundation-l] Re: Rethinking Meta (was- Wikiquote now has subdomains)
by erik_moeller＠gmx.de 19 Jul '04

19 Jul '04

Anthere- > Meta is the only place where we can really meet, and find information > that someone else left. Can you give me a single example where splitting Meta by subdomain would do any harm in bringing people together? I would like to move this discussion from the general, emotional "Don't split us up!" to the specific, rational "This is where it would cause problems" level. What recent policy discussion or vote would have been harmed by this approach? Let's take the "Stewards" discussion and vote as an example. The whole discussion was mostly English as was the voting page. If we used subdomains, we could have made it a requirement that the page be translated into the main languages before we vote. We could have aggregated the votes from the different language Wikimedias so that each community could express their preferences in their language. We could have translated important arguments from the discussion in realtime (in the form of localized "pro" and "cons" lists, for example). This is a lot better than having a single page with the occasional piece of untranslated French or Japanese between a couple of participants. In that case, the main part of the page is English - excluding those who don't speak it - and some parts of the discussion are not - excluding those who don't speak that language. It's a lose-lose situation. > In my experience, it does bring people together, provided that you > welcome the interaction. I can't interact with someone whose language I do not speak, unless someone translates it for me. A Wikipedia-style setup facilitates that. > Plus, there are japanese and chinese people currently over there. We > have Tomos, Suisui, Britty etc... Exactly - the people on Meta are mostly the ones who speak some amount of English. Someone who doesn't speak any English won't even understand the user interface. > This is what is happening on the multinlingual mailing lists, because > each time someone DARE putting a word in a language different than > english, he is severely told that "of course, he could write in english, > because really, no one can understand him". First, I must remind you that my main objection in the last debate on this matter was using a different language in order to exclude others from a certain comment. This is a completely separate issue, and I would have the same objection on Meta. Second, if you want to reach the *largest number* of people, you should either use English or make sure that what you say gets translated into English. That should be very obvious, no? It would be helpful if you could acknowledge this simple point. Translations become far easier with a consistent approach, and people feel more welcome if the main site they navigate is in their mother tongue. This seems to work very well for Wikipedia, I don't see why it shouldn't work on Meta. This is about giving non-English projects a larger voice instead of relying on multilingual people like you to act as mouthpieces for those who don't speak English. Just like there is a Wikipedia community for every language, there should be a Wikimedia community for each. Once you have something like ja.wikimedia.org, the creation of a Japanese Wikimedia chapter becomes more likely as well because people will find it far easier to interact when there is no constant interference by what is *effectively indistinguishable from random noise* to them. The problem of creating project-wide policies is addressed through board review and voting standards. It may be a good idea to put this issue to a Wikimedia-wide vote if we fail to reach consensus. Regards, Erik

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[Foundation-l] How could information flow ?
by Tomos at Wikipedia 19 Jul '04

19 Jul '04

Just some observations and remarks on this issue. I think it was not a mistake that every project got the fundraising notice. I was on an IRC channel when there was a discussion of some project being upset, and therefore blanking the message or not translating it. One person asked if the messages could be turned off for some projects. A few developers expressed that those projects should come up with alternative fundraising plans that cover their portion of expected funding need. Nothing was turned off. There followed a discussion of putting different traffic priorities to different projects. (But I am not sure if they were really serious about this.) I have to say I was quite disappointed about the lack of mutual trust. I think the developers thought those projects do not care about our financial needs and only be annoyed by the message. I think those projects reacted negatively because the project members thought the placing of the notice was top-down, English-centric practice. I have to say that both sides might be right, which is even more disappointing than the mutual distrust I saw Sj talking with the developers, suggesting some sensible solutions, visiting many Wikipedias and talk to others, and after all, things changed rather easily. Developers did understand how things could work out better, and came up with a better technical solution very quick. Some projects did respond to Sjs call and translate the message into their languages. So, after all, we are not so disappointing, I found. Tomos _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

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[Foundation-l] Re: Rethinking Meta (was- Wikiquote now has subdomains)
by erik_moeller＠gmx.de 19 Jul '04

19 Jul '04

Daniel- >> How about a setup like this: >> de.wikimedia.org >> en.wikimedia.org >> fr.wikimedia.org > Absolutely not! We need ONE place where we can all come together. That place > is currently meta. I'm therefore very strongly opposed to balkanizing the > only common place we all can edit. The interface issues need to be fixed and > Meta should be made into a truly multilingual wiki. Having multiple languages in one wiki doesn't help people to come together. In fact, in my experience, it does the exact opposite. Parcipation on Meta by people from languages like Chinese or Japanese is minimal. I'm afraid Meta is perceived as an extension of the English language Wikipedia. You can't eliminate the language barrier by throwing all languages into one big pot. That only means that the most popular common one - English - will dominate and small pockets of non-English discussions will form. This is what has happened on the multilingual mailing lists and it is what will continue to happen on Meta if we stay on the current path. The reality is that because of the language barrier, there *are* different communities. Because of national barriers, there *are* different Wikimedia interests. And there's no reason why an interesting global policy discussion shouldn't be started by people who speak no English whatsoever, and then be translated into the main languages if there is a vote. While I would prefer it if all languages of a project were handled with a single database and codebase, this requires quite substantial changes to the current code, and is unlikely to happen anytime soon. And if it happens, we can port all the existing wikis over to that new system. But I think we should strive for a consistent approach. Regards, Erik

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[Foundation-l] Re: Rethinking Meta (was- Wikiquote now has subdomains)
by erik_moeller＠gmx.de 19 Jul '04

19 Jul '04

Anthere- > The reason of wikimediafoundation site is to present a unified front to > outside. It should be clean, with no dispute, and it should be > consistent with the Foundation frame of mind. It should also contain a > whole bunch of data, which should not be modified too easily by anyone > (like financial issues). This can be done using rights management and page approval. Having a combined wiki helps in collaborating as a community on matters such as press releases and general news. > Now, I remember very well your CPOV proposition, which aimed at strongly > limiting access to meta, by requesting that people identify themselves > by real names to have the right for their edits to be claimed > trustworthy, when the edits of non real people were labelled "untrusted > or non representative of a so-called community point of view" by default. Wow. This is a gross misrepresentation of what I said. I am frankly flabbergasted. See: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_point_of_view In the *discussion* I suggested that *personal essays which deviate from the CPOV* (such as our favorite troll pages) should be signed, and that unsigned pages could be refactored or removed. This was a compromise proposal towards you to not have to completely exclude such pages. Next time you "remember something very well", you may want to look it up first. > This CPOV proposition will have to happen over my dead body :-) Fortunately, Wikimedia is democratically governed. Regards, Erik

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[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Rethinking Meta (was- Wikiquote now has subdomains)
by Angela_ 18 Jul '04

18 Jul '04

(copied to foundation-l - please reply there) On 19 Jul 2004 04:46:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: > Tim- > > Wikiquote now has specific-language subdomains. Instead of creating > > wikis for all 150 languages, I made a system where wikis are only > > created when they're wanted. To save time during maintenance operations, > > it should now be possible to delete unused Wiktionaries and even > > Wikipedias until they are required. > > This may be a good time to rethink our approach to Meta. Currently there > is just one big, messy Meta-Wiki, with neither particularly clear policies > (although my CPOV draft attempts to remedy this to some extent) nor > interlanguage links. Help texts are spread across the "MediaWiki User's > Guide" and the Help: namespace, with non-English texts in the English > language Help: space. On the other hand, as Mav keeps pointing out, we > have no real community editable Wikimedia presence. What sort of "Wikimedia presence" did you want there? Do the pages in the Wikimedia Foundation category not meet this? (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Foundation) > How about a setup like this: > de.wikimedia.org > en.wikimedia.org > fr.wikimedia.org > ... One point I raised yesterday on wikitech-l (yes, I was on the wrong list as well) is whether certain Foundation pages (such as the budget or the bylaws) will need to be marked as official in some way, and whether or not translations of those ought to be clearly marked as non-official. If we split into sub-domains, it makes this easier to do, but if the translations are to be official, having 50+ recent changes for the board to check and approve makes this impractical. > This is more logical (Meta is not just about Wikipedia but about all > Wikimedia projects), it allows us to use interlanguage links, to see RC > only for the languages you are interested in, and to maintain the > documentation separately for each language in the respective localized > Help: namespace. It would encourage internationalization for things like > project-wide votes. Allowing the use of interlanguage isn't necessarily better than the current system on meta. By using templates, the links only need be updated in one place when a new language is added. Normal interlanguage links would need to be updated on every sub-domain. > The major downside: In the present system, you would have to create an > account for each edition of Meta. So it might make sense to postpone this > until Single Sign-On is implemented. > > In any case, I think there should be no separate Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia > Foundation wiki - they should be the same thing. > > Thoughts? If the Foundation wiki and Meta are not separated, we have less control over it, as any sysop will be able to edit it, rather than only those people who can be trusted with pages that allow HTML, such as the fundraising page. Moving it to a separate wiki would allow for different permissions to be set up, and for the use of full HTML; something which mav is particularly keen to have. Angela. > Regards, > > Erik

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[Foundation-l] Domain names
by Anthere 18 Jul '04

18 Jul '04

Please, could people from all languages and all projects update the page : http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_names Thank you. ant

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[Foundation-l] Wikicommons take 5
by Andre Engels 17 Jul '04

17 Jul '04

I'm sending this message to once again ask for Wikicommons (or Wikimagery or whatever) to be created. Just so everyone knows that there are still people who want this. Andre Engels

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[Foundation-l] Re: Wikipedia growth since February 2004 greatly slowed - uh, no
by Anthere 16 Jul '04

16 Jul '04

ceci est le test 5

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Wikimedia-l July 2004