As announced and in accordance with the existing language policy, three
new Wikinews editions have been set up:
http://pl.wikinews.org/ - Polish
http://pt.wikinews.org/ - Portuguese
http://ro.wikinews.org/ - Romanian
I left messages for the users who have pledged to participate (and who
could be located), and on the respective Wikipedia Village Pumps.
Good luck to the new editions!
Peace,
Erik
As per the procedure on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition
I'd like to launch three new editions later today or tomorrow:
Portuguese, Polish, and Romanian. For Portuguese, I count Carlosar as a
valid vote, because he has made 3000+ edits on the English Wikinews, and
he is a native speaker.
For future editions, I'd also like to suggest changing the language
procedure in the following way:
The "activity on existing Wikimedia projects" requirement can be
dropped if a few support pages (FAQ, Mission Statement, etc.) are
created on Meta for the project to be launched. These can be
translations or original creations.
Such an effort indicates a genuine interest in working on a Wikinews
edition in a language. It also reduces the dependency of new projects on
existing ones -- we already know that many key people working on
Wikinews have not done substantial work on Wikipedia or other Wikimedia
projects. There would still be a requirement of at least 5 signatures,
so it's not just one person playing an overarching role.
If this works out, perhaps we can substitute one procedure for another;
I prefer the translation procedure, because it also makes sure that
certain pages are in place before the wiki is set up (a problem on some
new editions which were essentially blank for several days).
I'd like to credit the Memory Alpha wiki for this procedure, which has
successfully used it for setting up new languages.
Regards,
Erik
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/China
This vote is now closed. It was meant to help decide whether we need to
hold a poll before launching the Chinese Wikinews, or whether it can be
treated like all other Wikinews editions, considering the censorship risk.
The vote is inconclusive. The two sides are almost evenly split, with
strong opinions expressed by people on both sides. If you count all
votes, the "hold a vote among Chinese language speakers" option wins by
one vote. If you count only votes of users with user pages on Meta, as
the rules require, the "Treat it like al other Wikinews editions" option
wins by one vote. Given the sharp split of opinion, I think the decision
should be deferred to the Board at this point.
So, to the Board: Please put this issue on your agenda at your nearest
convenience and inform us about the outcome. Until then, I will not do
anything about the Chinese Wikinews.
Peace,
Erik
Hoi,
I have posted http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IFAP it is an outline for a
proposal for a $45.000,- grant. We need to apply before the 20th of this
month. Please, do understand that if we apply for this grant, we have to
spend money the way we describe. It does not help if you think we should
not spend the money. We either do or we do not apply and, that way we do
not benefit and neither do the people who benefit most who are
incidentally not the people who get paid.
This proposal aims to achieve three things:
* cooperation with the Open Office org by creating a dictionary
integrated into wiktionary for languages they work on. This is a win win
situation
*a dictionary and translations dictionary that helps translators and
students of languages; wiktionary is a many to many dictionary
*better functionality for wiktionary that will prevent a lot of double
work and removes the need for running bots to share our work.
I hope we agree that this is a feasible project and that we can move
forward with this proposal.
Thanks.
GerardM
I regret that you use fallacies so much Erik.
Trying to remove the requirement that 2 over 5 people are regulars so as to start a project,
by arguing that these 2 might be trolls or want to destroy wikipedia, strike me as deeply dishonnest.
I was deeply deeply unhappy of the creation of the french wikinews,
because this creation was not done according to the support of the french community.
The result is a broken project, which I deeply regret.
I find disquieting that you tried to cool down people like notafish and I by agreeing to add a new requirement
for the creation, only to try to cancel it two weeks later.
You can not at the same time FORCE all communities, without asking their opinion, of not using
images uploads, due to the fear of copyright violations (which is what you did a week ago)
, and at the same time object to using very simple indicators to assert whether editors are aware of our policies (in particular the copyright ones).
This is just illogical. Or rather... the only logic is to open more and more wikinews as quickly as possible.
You just can't expect I support this Erik.
=Nicolas Weeger-> And how can you check the> translation is correct unless you speak the language? :)How do I know the "regular" is not actually a troll without speaking the language? How do I know that the only reason he wants to start a Wikinews isn't that he hates Wikipedia after having spent several months there? How do I know his intentions are good? You could require one of the people to be a sysop, but that seems like an onerous requirement. An algorithmic contribution check is *not* a quality check.Let's be realistic here. What kind of person would intentionally manipulate policies and get away with it under the auspices of other users: a random person who's never been involved in our projects, or someone who is intimately familiar with them? Furthermore, remember that there would still be a requirement of *multiple users* participating. How likely is it that a malicious person would get away with deliberately falsely translating something like NPOV when working with 4
others?And let's not forget about http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?AssumeGoodFaith - the very idea of a wiki is to be open and welcoming to newcomers, rather than requiring people to be members of an existing "clique". If the risk of malicious people ruining the project was so big, then Wikipedia itself could never have been started. Yes, Wikinews is different -- but a Wikinews edition which is likely to attract attention from the outside is also likely to attract attention from the inside, allowing us to deal with malicious users. Yes, Wikinews is different -- and that's why we should be welcoming to *people* who are different and not yet part of our community.Regards,Erik
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Our first quarter 2005 fund drive officially started at midnight UTC Friday
morning.
On Day 0 (Thursday eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not available in
UTC) we made $1,023.19 (USD) through PayPal (other sources unkown). As of right
now we have generated a total of $7,043.80 in the fund drive (PayPal only;
other sources unkown), so Day 1 looks like it will be big.
Some choice comments from Day 0:
See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_0
"Amazing. I've spent many many hours here over the last couple months learning
about our world. Please keep it up!" by Sean Vaughan
"I wanted to be the first" by Daniel Wool (hi Danny!)
"I have learned so much from this site. I used to be frustrated because I
couldn't read about things on sites like Encarta, but now I can and it's all
here." by Anonymous
"I absolutely love Wikipedia, I have never donated to anything before but I
gladly do to this!" by Anonymous
"WikiPeida rocks!" by David Ouziel
And my personal favorite:
"May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the underpants of your enemies"
by Christopher J Hutten Czaps
Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO
PS - there still is much translating work to do at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WMF/Fundraising_pages
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>The news we can integrate via a single platform. So any one from any
>location can submit a news. But that wil go only through the
>moderators. So once two people submit one news automatically the
>second will go down.
>Here we can create users, trusted journalists, moderators and admins.
>So What we going to do
>Answering the rest....
>First of all the editors have to think about that. Thats what i mean by top
I think it is high time I go back to the english wikinews to look at what is going on...
I was not aware there was (or planning to be ?) different status such as admin and moderators.
Hmmm, oh well.
>I dint mean english and german is top
>There is nothing elctric in my statement!!
Electric ? :-))))
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>>>Let us think from the top ......
>> What do you mean here George ?
>hi, am not well versed in arabic, really am Indian, so dont expect any
>arabic version from me.
Oh well...
>First of all we have to make the english edition running well,
>meantime think about the languiage versions. So if people will
>translate the english to german and vice versa thats more good and
>regional news will become global.
>As a global village make all the news for the global community. So i
>prefer english first and i will think other languages...
I agree we should focus on having german and english run well before focusing on other languages.
I disagree with considering these two languages the "top" while others are the "bottom".
>My Specialisation is Media, Health and Business.....And Global Cinema
>(Parallel Cinema)
quite eclectic... :-)
>Regards
>George
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>Anthere,
>I am doing a news wire for the last 3 years.
I am glad to know we have journalists among us, they will help avoid the worse directions.
>I know the real pain
>behind that. We need a full desk to do news. Not like encyclopedia.
Agreed
I can perfectly well see the absolutely amazing force which could be behind a wikinews.
With a full desk, a united team, the impact of a wikinews will be huge.
But this could happen right now in english, possibly german. Possibly another language.
But it just do not make sense that we have a wikinews site with only 2 editors.
Even though they really try their best, they just can't manage.
And as Britty mentionned, it is important that each wikinews has a couple of people interested in building the committee, not taking care of news, just drafting policies, strengthening the project. Unfortunately, not every one likes doing this.
In the end, building a wikinews on 5 people... just makes little sense to me.
>If one person who is not taking the responsibility will destroy the
>aunthenticity of wikinews. If the people is ready then i am ready to
>contribute well with my desk.
I would be glad that you do so in arab.
But this community is probably not ready at all.
>Let us think from the top ......
What do you mean here George ?
>george
Ant
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>As news considered let it be 24X7 always. So need more than 5 people
>in the team i think
>And if you all prefer mark one specific domains, as they have
>expertise, like politics, business, technology etc etc..
>So more than a number the team needs good journalists rather than just
>information providers..
>--
>Regards
>Ginu George
>Journalist and Media Researcher
>Dubai, United Arab Emirates
I strongly agree with you Ginu.
There is a huge difference with the encyclopedia.
With wikipedia, we do not need all expertises at the same time, one area can be greatly improved for a couple of months, while another goes unnoticed for months.
Wikinews on the other hand, requires much more that people makes team, if only to try to cover a couple of areas.
Even if there are few editors and cannot cover all news, a team of 4-5 in scientific covering could make it very successful in a small areas.
This is doubly interesting in Wikinews as news are interesting only for a couple of days, not weeks, months or years as in the encyclopedia.
As long as a wikinews will be unable to cover all news topics, I think it should focus on providing good news in *one* area and get famous thanks to it.
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