On 1/22/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally, I'm intrigued. Virgil, could you elaborate on the purpose
> of this project? In what ways can it help us (and who exactly is the
> 'us' in this case :))?
As explained already, an EBNF of Wikitext will allow for expansion of
Wikitext easily as it's conforming to a standard, and a more efficient
parser, etc. I'm not the expert in WHY it's good though, I just know it is.
And I know how to write EBNFs, and I can't work out how to code Wikitext's
bullet points in EBNF - if EBNF can't handle Wikitext, then the efficient
parsing and expansion won't be possible (as easily).
Would very much appreciate help from anyone clued up as to how to proceed if
Wikitext can't be EBNFed, or who can show me that it, in fact, can.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_Metasyntax
2007/1/21, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>:
> What can we do for countries where people routinely use the English
> wikipedia and ignore their own language Wikipedia? I try to push local
> Wikipedias when talking to the press (and far too many seem to be
> unaware of their own language Wikipedia) and mention the international
> character talking to the English-language press. That hopefully does a
> little, but not enough.
Besides enwiki actually being the longer and "better story",
journalists learn about their subject from other journalists.
Journalists will read the articles on English Wikipedia that they can
find on the net. In them, English Wikipedia is routinely referred to
as Wikipedia. Of course the journalists will focus on Wikipedia =
English Wikipedia, not on the "we also have Wikipedias in n number of
languages". If Jimmy Wales, people on the board and others giving
interviews would make sure to say English Wikipedia a bit more often
when they are talking about English Wikipedia, that would probably
make some kind of difference.
Of course, the major part of that effort would be wasted since the
journalist will shorten English Wikipedia to Wikipedia. They are short
of space, and as we all know Wikipedia most of the time _is_ used as
an abbreviation for English Wikipedia.
/habj
On 21/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> There is also the fact that Wikipedia is not well known in many
> countries. When our articles are found positively in search engines, it
> will slowly but surely help us get to the tipping point where Wikipedia
> is a household name. It is not even well known in countries like Italy.
> We need good relations to get us where we will be a well established
> movement outside of the English language as well. It helps when we have
> friends like Google.
On a slight variation on this topic:
What can we do for countries where people routinely use the English
wikipedia and ignore their own language Wikipedia? I try to push local
Wikipedias when talking to the press (and far too many seem to be
unaware of their own language Wikipedia) and mention the international
character talking to the English-language press. That hopefully does a
little, but not enough.
One factor appears to be that en:wp has achieved usefulness. (If
Wikipedias weren't actually useful, wikipedia.org wouldn't be a top 10
site on Alexa.) I think this is two things:
1. Incredible breadth of coverage - journalists LOVE en:wp because
it's the universal backgrounding resource on any subject, if
approached with due caution.
2.Very up-to-date.
Britannica may have more consistent writing quality and more
consistent fact-checking, but it's not there on people's desks and
it's not kept obsessively up-to-date.
So what can small Wikipedias (say, under 100,000 articles) do to
achieve these effects - breadth and being up-to-date - as well? Are
there other tacks they should try taking to achieve greater public
awareness?
[cc: to wikien-l for further ideas]
- d.
The Foundation is pleased to announce the addition of Sandra Ordonez as
Communications Manager. Sandy is a public relations specialist living in
Tampa, Florida, with prior experience in for-profit and non-profit
organizations. Her role will include press relations, written and oral
communications, and various other assignments. We are fortunate to have
had Sandy approach us about a position, and we are excited to have her
start working in the office. Please say hello if you run into her online
(her wiki and irc name is "wiki blue") and welcome her to the community.
Florence Devouard
Chair of Wikimedia Foundation
Wikigadugi is listed here at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GFDL_Compliance
as
" ...Either more research is needed, or it is disputed Fail in a very
significant way such as claiming their own copyright without including a
GFDL <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFDL> notice ..."
Pardon me folks, but if someone feels we are not in compliance with the
GFDL, can please someone point out where this is the case? All of our
content
is GFDL compliant and we do not offer any license other than the GFDL
and post the GFDL to our site.
I am happy to address and correct any issues with use of the Foundations
content if anyone feels it is not adequately spelled out as GFDL.
Jeff
The introduction of ParserFunctions was reluctant, but look how it's taken
off. Reluctance against programming-language-style extensions is many-fold,
but primarily is this concern: Wikitext is not a programming language. It's
a markup to simplify formatting in articles. So complicating it with
parameters and arguments and functions is just wrong wrong wrong. I agree.
The problem is, users of Wikitext *want* to program. But not in articles, in
templates.
It's simply true that the way templates are used is not entirely as they
were originally intended. Originally they were very simple transclusion
devices. Now they are complex ways of organising and structuring data in an
easy and efficient way - the point being that users (without technical
know-how) can include templates in their articles with simple code (e.g.
{{template|a|b|c}} ) and receive a specially generated result tailored to
the applicable article by the template code. This is obviously a massively
useful way of allowing articles to have better information better presented,
and allowing non-tech-savvy users (or even the tech-savvy ones) to very
quickly and easily and intuitively insert complex formatting like
a (dynamic) infobox into their articles.
So the way I see this, it's only really in *templates* that the advanced,
programming-like features are required, and the reason is that, simply due
to evolution, templates are being used like subroutines or functions. And
for good reason. That's a very very *very* useful thing for them to be able
to do. Which is why they are all doing it. That kind of functionality makes
MediaWiki an extremely powerful wiki engine - it's extendible from within.
But if these "functions" are being written in Wikitext, that makes Wikitext
more than just markup, which is confusing - so scrap them. And yet, software
support for such "functions" is incredibly useful - so keep them!
There's a solution here. How about we introduce another language ****that is
only available in the Template namespace****, specifically for this
function? Call it Wikisyntax. Wikisyntax is a pure (and simple) programming
language, with no markup. Wikitext is a pure and simple markup language,
with no code.
Normal users (who can use Wikitext fairly easily) rarely ever look at the
template namespace anyway. It's a simple fact that your average user of
MediaWiki has no idea what a template is, and will never create or edit one
until he or she is quite advanced and has got a strong understanding of the
system. Thus it is not objectionable on usability grounds alone to expand
the code for the template namespace. In fact, usability is a *reason* to
support the idea of Wikisyntax: templates *are* being used like this because
it's an extremely fruitful feature, so it would make things easier, but it
would keep the complexity seperate and hidden away from normal markup and
articles. Of course, users can still write templates with just Wikitext, but
the Wikisyntax option is there.
Crucial is the point that the Wikisyntax code is only parsed when written in
the template namespace. This allows Wikitext to remain a pure markup for use
in articles by normal users, without confusion. But the Template +
Wikisyntax idea is, essentially, a way of allowing a wiki to have *custom
subroutines* that **aid** those normal users in normal articles. No other
Wiki engine has that kind of power.
Would this idea be difficult to implement? I don't think so at all.
Wikisyntax can be a seperate file, say, SyntaxParser.php, called only when
necessary. Its contents can simply be (mildly altered, although not much) a
copy-and-paste of the ParserFunctions extension that is already written, and
any others we'd like to include, e.g. StringFunctions and VariablesExtension
(discuss later). We *already have the code* (pretty much) for this new
template language!
I have made a page on Meta for this suggestion:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisyntax , please leave your comments
either here or there. Thanks.
>
> The Foundation is pleased to announce the addition of Sandra Ordonez as
> Communications Manager. Sandy is a public relations specialist living in
> Tampa, Florida, with prior experience in for-profit and non-profit
> organizations. Her role will include press relations, written and oral
> communications, and various other assignments. We are fortunate to have
> had Sandy approach us about a position, and we are excited to have her
> start working in the office. Please say hello if you run into her online
> (her wiki and irc name is "wiki blue") and welcome her to the community.
>
> Florence Devouard
> Chair of Wikimedia Foundation
>
I've updated [[Current staff]] page on wmf website. Should we also create a
new page [[Communications Manager]] like [[Grants coordinator]] ? with the
following text ? :)
"The Wikimedia Communications Manager is Sandra Ordonez. The role of the
Communications Manageris to manage press relations, written and oral
communications, and various other assignments.
Sandra joined Wikimedia Foundation in January, 2007."
--
~Pyb
Datum: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:10:08 -0800
Von: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
> >If you introduce the world's best, brand new search engine open source
> >tech project tomorrow, that's more useful and open than Google, you're
> >going to have a hard time managing the growth, by any standards,...
> >
> >To amplfy Gerard's comment, the "vision" has to include a business
> >plan and some operational clue.
> >
> Absolutely! We can't be everything for everybody. But a more
> sophisticated internal search function would still be nice.
>
Hi
as I understand the mails till now right, we need not necessarily a businessplan for the so called "peerpedia"-plan, wikiasari need this busninessplan maybe, but a projectplan with costs for the foundation would do for peerdedia, the p2p open source search with yacy.net
The discussion is hot, you see google advertising its toolbar, see yacysearch.com interest, and wikiseek appearing just in time and a lot of mediahype aboot wikia´s search plans, though there are none published.
The Peerpedia domian is pre-registered form the other side and the yacy forum was hacked. I guess there are a lot of people against this project to be develop by the foundation. But this leads to a just do it now though principle.
Anyway, the need for a p2p open source engine is here and it fits the wikipedia / wikimedia foundation´s mission perfectly.
What do we need to support the p2p yacy network "peerpedia" from the foundation side?
1. leader of foundation and leader of agree in a round table meeting to join a project or not, as suggestred by Tom.
2. Wikia then can choose to use yacy code or not, if yes, then it will contribute peerpedia, if the wikifoundation supports this in an own project as well.
3. Peerpedia project starts.
4. A project team is built. I guess the Thread-reply-persons on this list are interested to joint and coach the project.
5. Wikimedia needs at least some simple desktop PC with high RAM-Memory to index the wikipedia sites.
6. We need a project page, best would be a wiki, to announce and drwa the plot.
7. The wikimedia foundation servers index with yacy the wikipedia content.
9. We need more servers to index the web and ask lokal communities and foundation members to run as well servers.
10. If the servers run, the wikipedia is indexed and as webcontent-indexing starts, we make a search portal of the local yacy on each wikipedia site, which means a search box under the existing searchbox.
11. We ask users for feedback about the searchbox.internal (lucene) and the searchbox for external webcontent (yacy)
12. There is a roll-out then, that each wikipedia language server has a local database of the webcrwaler yacy.
13. We develop with the yacy developers a firefox-toolbar, which already exists, for human rating of urls: ++ / + / - / -.- .
14. Users can search and run a yacy node with this peerpedia search toolbar in the firefox. as well a wikipedia search could be done. (here as well an option for wikiasari exists, to be integrated in the toolbar).
Cooperation with firefox... etc..etc.
Then you just have to see, how the project grows.
But what is needed is a letter of intent of both, Jim from wikia and
Florence Nibart-Devouard (chair)
Jan-Bart de Vreede (vize)
Brad Patrick (interim Executive Director)
Brion Vibber (techniocal director)
maybe those 4 could reply here on the list about their interest or competence to negotiate a peerpedia search box for the wikipedia servers.
Michael Davis (treasurer) then could to a plan, how many money we could spent on servers for 50 yacy servers indexing the wikipedia and web.
/Till
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I'm working on writing out an EBNF description of Wikitext at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wikiWikitext_Metasyntax , which I hear is much
needed, but have encountered a snag. I don't think EBNF has the power to
describe Wikitext. If anyone here can work out how EBNF can describe
Wikitext's system for bullet points, I'd like to see it. The problem is that
bullet points can build on each other, except each new level has to retain
the markup from the old level, plus a new symbol. e.g. **#* then **#* * then
**#** * then **#*** # etc.
On the topic of "things that need to be done" if writing an EBNF of Wikitext
isn't going to be beneficial for MediaWiki's longstanding success, I'll not
bother, but is there anything that needs to be done like this to create a
standard?
Please forward to any other mailing lists in which this might be
appropriate. Thanks!
Anthony, I don´t think it is posible to merge both projects, wikiasari and peerpedia. Though the central person is Jim Wales, but he already decided to built a project without the foundation and one for profit. As well the proposal concept for wikiasari is still missing, if it is central or decentral. So I recommend to have the wikifoundation to run as well a search propject the p2p way.
Just my to cents. If there are persons, which decide to act, it then really a question of freedom in organizations. Open source is one thing, but freedom from the hierachy is one other.
/Till
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
An: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] in defence of Google
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>
> > I'd love to see Google torn down and replaced with an open source
> > collaborative search engine run democratically by the world. I'd love
> > to have access to a search engine as good as Google, with a truly open
> > API (i.e. sans http://code.google.com/apis/soapsearch/api_terms.html),
> > and with all the results being released under an open content license.
> > Is Wikimedia the one to do that? It's arguable whether it'd be
> > within the scope of the Foundation's mission. And in any case, I
> > haven't seen a reasonable proposal of how to do it. So I guess when
> > it comes to that point, we're both in agreement. And yeah. Google
> > did good. Google does good. But Google did bad, too. Google does
> > bad, too. And Microsoft also did/does good/bad.
> >
> > Anthony
> >
>
> Who is in defence of Google? Wikifoundation?
> "wikifoundation in defence of Google"
>
> The problem is, Jimmy is one of the founders of wikipedia, has nothing to
> do with wikiseek; and wikiasari is a concept supported by a lot of people.
> But: If wikifoundation makes a peerpedia-search, this means that there are
> several conflicts. Is wikiasari more in solidarity to wikiseek, because
> they both are for-profit ads-projects? or more in solidarity to peerpedia, to
> support the core competencies of the foundation?
> Wikifoundation need the courage, to steal Jimmies Idea to make it (a
> search project) really open with p2p and without ads.
> Ok, this is not about one person and I do not want to annoy anyone, so
> let´s talk about the peerpedia project of the foundation here on this list.
> Wikiasari is a different project on a different list.
>
> This simple sentence, said by Jim originally, means foe the rest of the
> foundation members, to have the courage, to first develop a similar project
> and split the development. This must be the rest of the foundation board
> members aware of. Acting like wikiseek and play a card against the
> wikisariproject. And this card here was suggested as a peerpedia-search, which means
> (as the url was announced with a concept) to set up several yacy.net servers
> to index the web p2p.
>
> (Or: Jim has to be asked, if he is agreeing to make wikiasari a kind of a
> peerpedia project and if we are pulling the same goals. He still has not
> announced, if nutch or yacy is on the three servers and/or if there is a
> cooperation with the foundation, last I guess not, but if this is clear, this
> means we need couraged people to do the same from the foundation side but
> only p2p with the community).
>
> I wonder, why the members here on the list doubt the core cometencies or
> Mission of the foundation, if the peerpedia-search project is in accordance.
>
> Here is the mission again:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
>
> you see, several stars fit the project and social software is nutch not at
> all, it is yacy, this is why I recomment to ask Jim to join the peerpedia
> idea with his large knowledge and history experience.
>
> We could wook out a proposal (which jim announced the day before his
> disney journey on anotehr list, but still has not published) together, here is
> the peerpedia "blanket" for this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_P2-search_peerpedia
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
>
> The general purpose and objectives of the Foundation shall be the
> following:
>
> Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance of
> online *free*, *open content* encyclopedias, collections of quotations,
> textbooks *and other collections of documents*, *information*, and other
> informational *databases* in *all* the languages of the world that will be
> distributed free of charge to the public under a free documentation license such
> as the Free Documentation License written by the Free Software Foundation
> Inc. at http://www.fsf.org or similar licensing scheme, see
> http://www.wikimedia.org.
>
> The goals of the foundation are to *encourage* the further growth and
> development of *open content*, *****social software**** WikiWiki-based projects
> (see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) and to provide the full contents
> of those projects to the public free of charge. In addition to managing the
> already developed multilingual general encyclopedia and almanac named
> Wikipedia, (http://www.wikipedia.org) there is a multi-language dictionary and
> thesaurus named Wiktionary, an encyclopedia of quotations named Wikiquote,
> a collection of e-book resources aimed specifically toward students (such
> as textbooks and annotated public domain books) named Wikibooks and a
> collection of source works called Wikisource; other projects are envisioned like
> **peerpedia** - the open source search-engine yacy.net community in a p2p
> style. The Foundation also manages the operations of the largely dormant
> Nupedia project (which is not a wiki but is open content).
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/date.html
>
> BTW: we discuss here only in a free brainstorming, and indeed the leader
> of foundation and the leader of wikia should meet at a round tabel and
> discuss, if a collaboration is possible, and if the foundation is behind the p2p
> idea, which several times was stated as the only way to have 1 Mio google
> servers in defence. If both leaders or the board does not agree, the
> question is open, if the foundation is willing to start and found a
> yacy-wikipedia-indexing serverfarm project with several servers.
>
> Ok, let´s say each year we add 2 servers. Is this too much?
> Yacysearch.com has done this in one weel with 7 servers.
>
> Kind regards.
>
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