Sanger has made his first post to the Citizendium list:
https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2006-September/000000.html
Select quotes and a bit of commentary:
"I have a suggestion from someone very high up in the Creative Commons
organization that we should dual-license (CC and GFDL), which I simply
hadn't thought of. I'm inclined to think it's a good idea."
I'd like to know how that would be compatible with working from
Wikipedia content.
"Speaking of naysayers, sure there have been a few on the blogosphere,
but what was especially striking to me is that Wikimedia's lawyer and
chief engineer both have said nothing but encouraging things to us.
How wonderfully refreshing of them! And huge numbers of people on
Slashdot and elsewhere have come out saying that this is a good idea,
and that we have every right to do it."
Well, of course! That's what the "free content" bit is for, and I'm
interested in seeing how well this one works. I'd actually like to see
more projects coming from people who want to differ on some
fundamental point; Wikinfo is perhaps the best go at this so far.
"Personally, "Citizendium" rolls right off my tongue."
OK, that part I find hard to believe. :-)
-Kat
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com
Tim Starling has been ill for the last nine days and went into surgery
today. He was originally misdiagnosed as having gastroenteritis but it
turned out to be a bowel obstruction, probably caused by adhesion from
an appendectomy nine years ago.
The surgery took about three and a half hours, but he's now well
enough to be on a main ward, so it seems it went well (it's impossible
to find a doctor to actually tell you about this in the middle of the
night though, so I may have more news tomorrow - let me know if you
want updates).
He's likely to be in the hospital ([[St Vincent's Hospital,
Melbourne]]) for another week and then taking up to six weeks before
he's 100% again.
If you'd like to send "get well soon" messages, please edit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tim_Starling/Get_Well_Soon - I'll be
getting it printed to take in to him in a few days.
Angela.
--
Angela Beesley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela
Hello all,
since the beginning of 2006 the German Wikisource is evolving in a very
positive way and I would like to share some news with you.
== Digitization of a precious 16th-century handwritten mathematical
schoolbook ==
In may 2006 Wikimedia Germany (the "Verein") financed the digitizing of
a handwritten mathematical schoolbook called "Drei Register
Arithmetischer ahnfeng zur Practic". The precious 16th-century
manuscript has been scanned at the Center for Retrospective Digitization
of the Lower Saxony State and University Library in Goettingen. Today
about a quarter of the 210 pages has been transcribed and annotated in
the German Wikisource. Actually a project in the German Wikiversity is
dealing with the analysis of the book.
*
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Pressemitteilungen/Rechenbuchproje…
(press report)
*
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Drei_Register_Arithmetischer_ahnfeng_zur_Prac…
(example page)
*
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Drei_Register_Arithmetischer_ahnfen…
(the new DjVu-extension on Commons)
*
http://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/A_und_B_haltten_einen_Stich_umb_Pley_und_Pap…
(example from the project in the german Wikiversity)
== Third volume of the "Zimmerische Chronik" transcribed ==
At the beginning of September 2006 the third volume of the so called
"Zimmerische Chronik" (a chronicle written by count Froben Christoph von
Zimmern in the 16th century and published 1881 by the german historian
Karl August Barack) had been transcribed. The transcription of the
4-volume work is one of the biggest projects in the German Wikisource.
The e-text-edition was initiated by a historian of the University of
Freiburg im Breisgau, who actually acts as a scientific advisor for the
project.
* http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Zimmerische_Chronik
== First publication of a handwritten letter of Fredrick Accum ==
Today German Wikisource announces the first publication of a handwritten
letter of the german chemist Fredrick Accum to his brother Philip (April
26th 1816). Accum emigrated to London in 1793 and became professor of
chemistry and mineralogy at the Surrey Institute around 1803. Fredrick
Accum, who is largely forgotten today, is one of the pioneers of the
commercial production of coal gas for gas lighting. In his letter he
gives a lively picture of the economic condition in London after the end
of the napoleonic wars.
*
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Brief_Friedrich_Accums_an_seinen_Bruder_vom_2…
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Accum
To faciliate the work of the german Wikisource community in the future,
the german "Verein" provided a budget of 1.500 EUR (about 1.900 USD) for
the digitizing of old books and manuscripts. The members of the
community themselves will decide conjointly how to spend this money on
new projects.
Greetings,
Frank Schulenburg
Board member of Wikimedia Germany
Phone +49 (0)551 2726447
Frank.Schulenburg [at] wikimedia.de
I hosted a meeting at my home all day Saturday with the Dine Linguists
and Tribal members on the Dine Machine Translation Project.
Similair to the Cherokee Language, Dine, while is has over 100,000
native speakers, his virtually little written materials as tribal
resources. The group was led by Ronnie Greymountain of the Dine Nation
and several linguists. The following items are in process
and being completed by myself and the Dine team:
1. Unicode templates for Dine Unicode characters:
TEXT
Łł Ńń
Áá Éé Íí Óó Ąą Ęę Įį Ǫǫ Ą́ą́ Ę́ę́ Į́į́ Ǫ́ǫ́ Ǫ́ǫ́
Aa Ee Ii Oo
Bb Cc Dd Gg Hh Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Ss Tt Ww Yy Zz
Unicode Hex Values for non-ASCII Navajo Letters
Precomposed Composed
glottal stop 02BC none
c unvoiced l 0141 none
s unvoiced l 0142 none
c high n 0143 004E+0301
s high n 0144 006E+0301
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
c high a 00C1 0041+0301
s high a 00E1 0061+0301
c high e 00C9 0045+0301
s high e 00E9 0065+0301
c high i 00CD 0049+0301
s high i 00ED 0069+0301
c high o 00D3 004F+0301
s high o 00F3 006F+0301
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
c nasal a 0104 0041+0328
s nasal a 0105 0061+0328
c nasal e 0118 0045+0328
s nasal e 0119 0065+0328
c nasal i 012E 0049+0328
s nasal i 012F 0069+0328
c nasal o 01EA 004F+0328
s nasal o 01EB 006F+0328
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
c high nasal a none 0104+0301 00C1+0328 0041+0301+0328
s high nasal a none 0105+0301 00E1+0328 0061+0301+0328
c high nasal e none 0118+0301 00C9+0328 0045+0301+0328
s high nasal e none 0119+0301 00E9+0328 0065+0301+0328
c high nasal i none 012E+0301 00CD+0328 0049+0301+0328
s high nasal i none 012F+0301 00ED+0328 0069+0301+0328
c high nasal o none 01EA+0301 00D3+0328 004F+0301+0328
s high nasal o none 01EB+0301 00F3+0328 006F+0301+0328
We are writing a <dine2text> and <text2dine> mediawiki extension to
allow simple text entry in order to render Navajo Unicode characters
(which are much simpler than Cherokee Syllabary). The specification
agreed to is:
[char] = high unicode
(char) = nasal unicode
{char} = high nasal
(L/l) = unvoiced L/l
' = glottal stop
The "A" with a circle on top of the chracter is not part of the formal
unicode for Dine and is not generally used with all dialects, so there
is debate and continued research on whether it will be adopted. The
Dine2Text MediaWiki extension will be completed next week and posted to
meta.
2. Wikipedia nv.wikiepdia.org
This site was reviewed and the tribal members all voiced they liked the
attempt. As with Cherokee, the Dine name for the site drew some chuckles
as it is not a real word in Dine. The machine translation site is being
setup at nv.wikigadugi.org and Ronnie will be meeting with the tribal
leaders after we get several good runs of the translator.
3. Lexicons and Grammar parser
The Dine team is working on the lexicons and grammar parser for
Wikitrans and have committed to first run on 30 days with completed
lexicons and
thesauraus. Dine has a similiar structure to Cherokee in word and
sentence structure, though it is less structured than Cherokee.
We should have first runs of a completed Dine Wikipedia Machine
translation mid to end of October. The Dine people will be publishing these
runs at Wikigadugi, then after they receive tribal acceptance, we will
start moving proofread content to the main Wikipedia site for the Dine
Language.
There are three main dialects of Dine, but the language drift is minimal
in comparison to Cherokee and several other native languages due to the
stability of large number of native speakers in NavajoLand.
Jeff
Austin Hair wrote:
> On 9/17/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Think about this fairy tale about this girly with a red riding hood..
>> She may have been eaten by the wolf but it was the wolf that ended up
>> down in the well with a belly full of stones.
>
> The Dutch must tell a different version of this story; the one I grew
> up with ends with a woodsman laying the wolf open with an ax. (The
> wolf in our version was also a communist.)
European versions of fairy tales do indeed often vary from their
American counterparts. There's a tendency toward more ambiguity and some
things get edited to leave out the more unsettling bits. Children's
books and Disney versions are particularly responsible for this; more
faithful interpretations can be found with a little effort.
--Michael Snow
Hi,
there is a discussion on verifiability in the German-speaking Wikipedia.
There are discussions how freely the German Wikipedia may design its
policy on verifiability.
* Are there any rules (minimum requirements) how verifiability should be
designed in different Wikipedias?
* Must there be a source for every included material (e.g. a basket is a
cylindric vessel)?
* Is it enough that only disputed material must be sourced?
* May a poll abolish the requirement of verifiability?
I hope, you can help
Hi List,
Délphine told me that the news about stable versions has led to
discussions in several projects. As the discussion on the
germanlanguage Wikipedia are, well, in german, here is some short
information in english about all this.
When Jimbo visited Germany in June, me and other members of the german
community approached him about stable versions. After some discussion,
he decided that it would be good to finally start with stable versions
and, as this is a very fundamental change, to use one project as a
testing ground before starting this everywhere. As you know, we are
the lucky ones ;-)
A few parameters were agreed upon, namely that it should be kept
simple, in particular that what version is marked and what is not,
should not be the result of some voting process and that we need to
seperate two issues of stable versions: fighting vandalism and
controlling the factual accuracy. Thus, a concept was then worked out,
based on the discussions on meta, en and de and Brion was assigned
with implementing it, which he is still busy with and it will still be
some months before this actually goes life.
A first decision was not to call this stable versions, as this is a
term where everybody understands something different. Therefore, the
following are the concepts:
i) Unvandalized versions
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Gesichtete Versionen). An
unvandalized version is a version of an article that has not been
vandalized. The right to flag a version like this is given to accounts
by an automatic process, based on the number of edits and the time
passed since account creation. We will start the test with 30 edits/30
days. Versions can be flagged similar to the small changes mark with
some features to make life easy, like automatic marking of articles
newly created by users with this right.
ii) Reviewed versions
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geprüfte_Versionen). The
meaning of this version is that the article contains no factual errors
and that there are no misleading omissions, while not requiring any
other form of completeness. The right to flag an article like this is
given by a bureaucrat. This flag can also be removed again and the
same version may be flagged by multiple users. We agree that the
reviewers should come from an active portal in the wikipedia. The
discussion on qualifications from within the wikipedia respectively
from outside the wikipedia is going on. The notion of outside experts
is also discussed.
iii) Who sees what? Nothing is changed for logged in users. IPs see
the latest reviewed or unvandalized versions, meaning that the
reviewed version has no priority over an unvandalized version. If the
version the IP sees is not the current one, a warning is shown with
links to the current version. If no version of the article was ever
flagged, a warning is shown. Note that this point is subject to
MediaWiki settings, meaning that if in your project/wiki, this sounds
like a contraproductive idea, you can turn it off, which is important
for example in young wikipedias.
Sincerely yours,
de:P. Birken
In this political season for Wikimedia some very odd conversations
are taking place in back channels. One of these threads has come back
to me from a couple of different directions. I intensely dislike
whisper campaigns <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_campaign>, so
I'd like to set the record straight in public once again.
I stopped my volunteering on the en.wp project in fall 2004 due to a
strong disagreement with an ArbCom decision. It was not in any way
related to Mr Danny Wool, about whom I was only peripherally aware at
the time. I work with Mr Wool on a daily basis, and we get along
extremely well professionally.
If you have any other information you'd like to have verified, Mr
Möller, you can reach me at this e-mail address, by phone (+1
778.386.1059), or I am often available on IRC. But please verify
things before sharing them; I don't have time for politics.
Amgine
Hello all,
This week, I was in Abuja (Nigeria) for the Digital World Africa 2006
Conference - ICTs for Education and Development. I presented our
projects, with a focus on "empoverment". Sj was also present at the
conference, along with the OLPC team and made a very insightful talk on
motivation.
The conference was attended by possibly 300-400 people, most of whom
where Nigerians. A big focus was given on OLPC (with a presentation by
Negroponte), with Nigeria being announced to be one of the first
countries to likely receive the laptops in the future.
The conference dealt with issues of
* Information and knowledge as human capital (this is where Sj and I
participated)
* Practical realities in Bridging the Digital Divide
* Role of capital, institution building, entrepreneurship in promoting
education and development
* Technical infrastructure (not surprisingly, the least nigerian panel)
* Local content
* Learning (I entirely missed this one)
I learned a lot from seeing how a conference was held over there and
more generally, about social relationships. I reported some of my
thoughts here
(http://blog.anthere.org/index.php/2006/09/17/76-laughing-not-to-show-happin…).
I believe some of those specific cultural characteristics will probably
be an issue in the participation of a project such as Wikipedia. The
pyramid of age/position seems to be very heavy weight in all their
activities (requirements of official agreement before doing anything.
High respect due to position and age etc...). It will be hard to
concilliate this with our flat-decision making system. However, I also
felt a huge desire to become active and to comment things.
Amazing moment though was the panel about local content. Most of what
has been discussed was of technical nature (the "content" was perceived
as being "hardware to build"). The only person who really talk about
"content" as text/image, simply explained that 1) creating content was a
terribly painful and tiring and boring activity. As such it 2) required
to be a for-benefit activity and 3) as is, needed serious protection in
terms of copyright.
As far as I can remember, he was the only person to ever mention
copyright issues. His presentation was quite depressing :-)
This said, later, a woman went to see me and blessed us for the projects
and what we are doing. I felt very moved from an emotional point of view.
Most of those people are currently struggling to simply have computer
and internet, issues such as "open source", "filtering internet for
kids", "cybercrime" (Nigeria being the highest in terms of cybercrime),
do not seem to be yet on their plates.
As usual, I asked in the room who knew about the project and I probably
do not need to say that the number of hands were amongst the lowest I
have ever seen. Maybe 1/5, probably less. And most being the
international visitors...
A government employee came to see me and said he had used Wikipedia, but
never realised he could edit it.
To make it short, this conference probably united the most technically
advanced people from the country. People amongst the few with nearly
unlimited computer and internet access. They are english speaking
people. They work on ICT issues. And YET, most had no idea of our
existence.
This suggests to me that one of the first thing we can do to increase
our audience over there is precisely being present at such conferences
to spread the word.
A couple of journalists attended the conference. I highjacked one of
them (who knew the project), working for specialised (technical) press
and "sold" him an article. We agreed to come in contact after the conf,
with developers input as well, and to have an article on Wikipedia in
his journal.
I also talked with many NGO, some being quite big. And potentially a
good way to increase awareness.
Another cool thing was to actually identify good and interesting
speakers or people we could invite to assist Wikimania next year.
Last, we talk about a project, which was presented at Wikimania, Wiki
voices. The idea is to list all languages spoken in Nigeria (over 250)
and to describe each of them. To define texts, to be recorded in top
quality in all those languages (the concept of merry christmas and happy
new year of Gerard and Sabine). It seems it could fit both in wiktionary
and to be a basis for a wikibooks. A clearer proposal should be written
in teh next few weeks, but would have to need to be approved by the
Nigerian gvt before any implementation.
This project would be both a cool way to bring content and one to get
more people to know about the project.
Overall, I was quite happy of the various outcome of my visit. It was
worth it and helped me understand what would be good to do to expand our
visibility over there, as well as participation rates... but also to see
what barriers we are likely to meet.
An old reference
*
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/features/technology/tec319072006.h…
---------
Some time ago, I also talked to you about a project I first heard about
2 weeks ago in Geneva
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/009707.html).
Since I was going through Geneva again to come back from Abuja, I took
one additional day to talk more in length about the RAFT project.
It is very likely to be started in january 2007. The concept is simply
to make a wikibook (in french) related to tropical diseases and various
ways to handle these deseases according to cultural and geographical
areas. The book would be in particular written by medical professional
staff (but it is perfectly understood it will be open to others as
well). During fall, one or more coordinators will outline the content of
the book and gather the information to be made available to future
participants. Then, just before a conference in Bamako, a training
session will occur, with participants from Mali and others countries
being presented the project and the wiki way.
I really look forward this project to happen (the organiser seems
reasonnably confident it will occur as of today), as it would both mean
a foot in several african countries and local content of quality.
----------
At the same time, I have discussed with the CEO of the HonCode (first
system of accreditation of medical information on the net). The
accreditation system is designed to label sites respecting a certain
code of deontology. Wikimedia projects can not currently get the HonCode
accreditation because of one unique element we can not respect
(identification of authors :-)), but the organisation would be
interested in crafting a Code for collaborative wiki systems. See
http://www.hon.ch/ for further reference.
best
Ant