Wikimedia-l November 2008

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

121 participants
93 discussions

[Foundation-l] Fwd: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
by GerardM 09 Aug '22

09 Aug '22

Hoi, I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most excellent bit of news. The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics. What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should approve yet another language :) NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus... Thanks, GerardM ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org> Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875. Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org> Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org> Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project <reviews(a)linguistlist.org> Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/ The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, and donations from subscribers and publishers. Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org> ================================================================ To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html ===========================Directory============================== 1) Date: 18-Jun-2007 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers -------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers Dear subscribers, As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the "Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this at: http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm. The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity of our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit more leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on the Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely organizational one. We will: *Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or pages that need improvement; *Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified as "in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any references or sources," etc; *Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or articles; *Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia; *Keep track of our project Wikipedians; *Keep track of revisions and new entries; *Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's efforts. We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us all get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an area needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of Linguists page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and information added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort, please respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which linguistics entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our campaign on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we will share with you soon. This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The end result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth and depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate prospective students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on what we do. Please consider participating. Sincerely, Hannah Morales Editor, Wikipedia Update Project Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable ----------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831

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[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek reconstructed an analysis of a proposal for a new Wikipedia
by Gerard Meijssen 21 Sep '11

21 Sep '11

Hoi, There is a request for a Wikipedia in Ancient Greek. This request has so far been denied. A lot of words have been used about it. Many people maintain their positions and do not for whatever reason consider the arguments of others. In my opinion their are a few roadblocks. - Ancient Greek is an ancient language - the policy does not allow for it - Text in ancient Greek written today about contemporary subjects require the reconstruction of Ancient Greek. - it requires the use of existing words for concepts that did not exist at the time when the language was alive - neologisms will be needed to describe things that did not exist at the time when the language was alive - modern texts will not represent the language as it used to be - Constructed and by inference reconstructed languages are effectively not permitted We can change the policy if there are sufficient arguments, when we agree on a need. When a text is written in reconstructed ancient Greek, and when it is clearly stated that it is NOT the ancient Greek of bygone days, it can be obvious that it is a great tool to learn skills to read and write ancient Greek but that it is in itself not Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek as a language is ancient. I have had a word with people who are involved in the working group that deals with the ISO-639, I have had a word with someone from SIL and it is clear that a proposal for a code for "Ancient Greek reconstructed" will be considered for the ISO-639-3. For the ISO-639-6 a code is likely to be given because a clear use for this code can be given. We can apply for a code and as it has a use bigger then Wikipedia alone it clearly has merit. With modern texts clearly labelled as distinct from the original language, it will be obvious that innovations a writers needs for his writing are legitimate. This leaves the fact that constructed and reconstructed languages are not permitted because of the notion that mother tongue users are required. In my opinion, this has always been only a gesture to those people who are dead set against any and all constructed languages. In the policies there is something vague "*it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion (this requirement is being discussed by the language subcommittee <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee>)."* It is vague because even though the policy talks about a discussion, it is killed off immediately by stating "The proposal has a sufficient number of living native speakers to form a viable community and audience." In my opinion, this discussion for criteria for the acceptance of constructed or reconstructed languages has not happened. Proposals for objective criteria have been ignored. In essence, to be clear about it: - We can get a code for reconstructed languages. - We need to change the policy to allow for reconstructed and constructed languages We need to do both in order to move forward. The proposal for objective criteria for constructed and reconstructed languages is in a nutshell: - The language must have an ISO-639-3 code - We need full WMF localisation from the start - The language must be sufficiently expressive for writing a modern encyclopaedia - The Incubator project must have sufficiently large articles that demonstrate both the language and its ability to write about a wide range of topics - A sufficiently large group of editors must be part of the Incubator project Thanks, GerardM

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[Foundation-l] Hungarian Wikinews licence
by Bence Damokos 21 Jul '09

21 Jul '09

Dear All,Sorry for bringing up a possibly old and closed issue, but could someone explain to me that why was the GFDL with a possible migration to CC-BY-SA 3.0 or later[1[ chosen as the site license for the Hungarian (and I guess some others as well, created at the same time) Wikinews? Wasn't the CC-BY used by the older Wikinewses a deliberate decision to give Wikinews an extra opennes and connectivity with other news outlets (I personally see a bigger chance for some newsproducer agreeing to license their work under either CC-BY or less likely CC-BY-SA than GFDL or even GFDL with a possible migration)? Is the current license compatible with Wikipedia (I am thinking that the added migration clause makes the project incompatible with GFDL sites that are not also double licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 or later)? Thanks, Bence Damokos [1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Licensing_clause_for_new_wikis

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[Foundation-l] Survey wrap-up
by Erik Moeller 23 Jan '09

23 Jan '09

We're wrapping up the survey in most languages today. According to statistics which I have not validated, we have received more than 115,000 questionnaires. I'm very pleased by this high response rate, which bodes well for future surveys. We expect first results to be published within the next eight weeks. We've learned a lot through this process, and I am very grateful for all the help and feedback, and of course for everyone who took the time to go through the survey and forgave its imperfections. We'll try to take all feedback into account as we begin interpreting the results. The following languages will continue running for a week or two because they had a late launch or a low response rate: Chinese (Simplified /Traditional) Japanese Afrikaans Bahasa Indonesia Greek Esperanto Thanks again for all help, Erik -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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[Foundation-l] Language codes to rename
by Brion Vibber 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

For quick background, it's pretty painful to rename a database in our system, and we currently have a lot of bits in our configuration that make automatic relationships between the database name and the domain name, so this has delayed renaming of some language subdomains for a while. It's not impossible to have them be different, just fairly awkward. :) I'd like to get these done soon, but before we get started, I want to make sure the queue is complete and ready to go. I've currently got four language code renames that I see being requested... == Aromanian == roa-rup.wikipedia.org -> rup.wikipedia.org roa-rup.wiktionary.org -> rup.wiktionary.org https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15988 ISO-639-2 code 'rup' was added in September 2005, and can supersede the generic 'roa' code with 'rup' subtag. This seems pretty uncontroversial. Existing domains and interwikis would be redirected. == Low German == nds.wikipedia.org -> nds-de.wikipedia.org nds.wikibooks.org -> nds-de.wikibooks.org nds.wikiquote.org -> nds-de.wikiquote.org nds.wiktionary.org -> nds-de.wiktionary.org https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8540 Reasoning: Disambiguation of country variants to create a portal site (nds-nl.wikipedia.org exists as well). The original request is almost 2 years old and didn't seem to have any clear consensus; is this still desired? Creating a portal site could cause difficulties with URL compatibility, and I don't really recommend making this change without clear consensus from the community there. Note that nds.wikipedia.org includes a link on the front page to nds-nl.wikipedia.org. == Moldovan == mo.wikipedia.org -> mo-cyrl.wikipedia.org mo.wiktionary.org -> mo-cyrl.wiktionary.org The official Moldovan language is the same as Romanian, using Latin script and same orthography as on ro.wikipedia.org. Latin script was officially adopted in 1989, replacing Soviet-era Cyrillic script; use of Cyrillic script is still "official" in an unrecognized, lightly-populated breakaway region but if people there use it, they don't seem to edit Wikipedia... The 'mo' language code has been officially deprecated from ISO 639-1/2 as of November 3, 2008; "Moldovan" in general use is just Romanian, and is covered by ro.wikipedia.org. mo.wikipedia.org has not actually been edited since December 2006. mo.wiktionary.org seems to have.... 4 definition pages, which only contain translations (no definitions!) Being inactive, these projects could be closed in addition to / instead of the rename. Use of tag 'mo-cyrl' would follow existing IANA-registered language subtags such as 'bs-Cyrl' and 'bs-Latn' for Cyrillic and Latin script variants. Most likely, for compatibility we would redirect the existing 'mo' URLs to the new 'mo-cyrl' ones, but they would now be visibly marked by the subtag as being "yes we know, it's Cyrillic here". If we're going to lock the site as well, adding a sitenotice pointing to the Romanian wiki is probably wise. == Belorusian "old orthography" == be-x-old.wikipedia.org -> be-tarask.wikipedia.org https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9823 Some time ago we swapped around the Belorusian Wikipedia, moving the previous version which was primarily using a non-official orthography, from 'be' to 'be-x-old', and re-establishing be.wikipedia.org using the official state orthography. There was later a request to rename 'be-x-old' (using a non-standard code) to 'be-tarask', a IANA-registered subtag which is rather more descriptive. IMHO this change should not be terribly controversial -- if we're not closing it, we may as well give it its official RFC 4646-registered code. Old domain and interwikis would be redirected. -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)

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[Foundation-l] 2008 Annual Fundraiser - Going into Phase 2
by Erik Zachte 24 Dec '08

24 Dec '08

> For those who haven't seen it yet: > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics Very neat! Looking at tab 2 (Number of contributions): In 2007 from day 14 and onwards the number of gifts per day more than doubled. Is it known why that happened? Just curious. Erik Zachte

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[Foundation-l] GFDL 1.3 Release
by Erik Moeller 12 Dec '08

12 Dec '08

All - As has been pointed out, the Free Software Foundation has now released version 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License, which is the standard text license used by all Wikimedia Foundation projects with the exception of Wikinews. The updated license text can be found here: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html [If you are still seeing version 1.2 on that URL, you may need to clear your browser cache.] We are very grateful to the Free Software Foundation for working with us to develop this re-licensing language. The only change is the addition of section 11, "Relicensing". This section permits "massive multi-author collaboration websites" (i.e. wikis and wiki-like websites) to relicense GFDL content to the CC-BY-SA, under two key constraints: * Newly added externally originating GFDL content cannot be relicensed after November 1, 2008. (In other words, we should stop importing GFDL content from non-Wikimedia sources, unless they plan to switch as well. I believe Wikia is planning to switch, but will confirm that shortly. Please feel free to begin reaching out to other relevant GFDL sources.) * The relicensing clause will expire on August 1, 2009. Relicensing can only be done by the operator of such a website, not by any other party. So the Wikimedia Foundation can choose to re-license Wikipedia, Wikibooks, etc., but no other party can. We will be able to do so because most GFDL-licensed content implicitly or explicitly permits re-use under "any later version" of the GFDL. == Why wasn't this license available for review earlier? == The restriction on externally originating FDL content is intended to prevent bulk-import and bulk-relicensing of FDL content from external sources. This is intended to protect the autonomy of site operators in making a re-licensing decision, and to prevent FDL-licensed software documentation from being re-licensed without the permission of the authors. This was a key condition for the Free Software Foundation to agree to this change. While an earlier draft was published, the specifics of the migration process have been negotiated privately in order to not allow for such systematic bulk-relicensing by interested third parties. == What's next? == * Later this month, we will post a re-licensing proposal for all Wikimedia wikis which are currently licensed under the GFDL. It will be collaboratively developed on meta.wiki and I will announce it here. This re-licensing proposal will include a simplified dual-licensing proposition, under which content will continue to be indefinitely available under GFDL, except for articles which include CC-BY-SA-only additions from external sources. (The terms of service, under this proposal, will be modified to require dual-licensing permission for any new changes.) It will be the obligation of re-users to validate whether an article includes CC-BY-SA-only changes -- dual licensing should not be a burden on editors. This is also not intended to be bidirectional, i.e., merging in GFDL-only text will not be possible. We _will_ propose to continue to permit GFDL 1.2-only media uploads for the forseeable future, to address concerns regarding strong and weak copyleft, until such concerns are fully resolved to the satisfaction of community members. However, GFDL 1.2-or-later media are expected to be migrated to CC-BY-SA under this proposal. It is expected that we will launch a community-wide referendum on this proposal, where a majority will constitute sufficient support for re-licensing. * As a heads up, communities should be more careful with importing external FDL content, unless they know for sure that it will be migrated to CC-BY-SA in the near future. This will not affect Wikimedia-internal copying transactions, as either all or no GFDL-licensed Wikimedia wikis will be switched to CC-BY-SA. If some GFDL 1.2 content that cannot be migrated later is imported by accident, that should not present any great difficulty -- we will simply remove it as we would remove any other problematic copyrighted content. More information will follow later this month as we develop the re-licensing proposal. Let me know if you have any immediate questions. Thanks, Erik -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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[Foundation-l] Regional Conference of Wikimedia Serbia 2008
by Nikola Smolenski 07 Dec '08

07 Dec '08

Hello, Wikimedia Serbia is proud to announce the Regional Conference of Wikimedia Serbia 2008. The Regional Conference of Wikimedia Serbia will be held at 19th, 20th and 21st December in Belgrade, in the Belgrade Youth Home. Depending on the number and locations of participants, we are likely to be able to finance you travel (only from countries near Serbia) and/or accomodation expenses. If you are interested in visiting the conference, please answer to this message with exact information on when can you come and how long can you stay; as well as is there possibility to provide your own accomodations in Belgrade. If you would want to held a lecture, a workshop or similar during the conference, also report that to us so that we could include you in the program. Please forward this message to anyone you believe could come. Bye, Wikimedia Serbia

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[Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
by Gerard Meijssen 04 Dec '08

04 Dec '08

Hoi, Regularly I hear people say that Wikipedia is failing. When you then listen, there are all kinds of good reasons why Wikipedia is failing. Quality is low, issues with living persons, pov pushers a long litany of woes are all grounds to predict the imminent demise of Wikipedia. While all these issues may be grounds for concern, it is hardly indicative of failure. To me they are indicative of a wildly successful project coping with everything that is a consequence of success. I am of the opinion that most of our projects would love to have the same problems, the same issues, the same success as the few project that do well. For most of our projects a lack of content, a lack of community ensure that the project is irrelevant. No growth, no interest is more killing then all the woes that our big projects suffer from. At Wikimania 2008 a presentation was given by developers from UNICEF who had done proper usability studies. They found that 100% of their newbie testsubjects were not able to create a new article. This is serious. This explains why so many of our projects fail. We do not invite collaboration because people do not know how to. They do not know how to EVEN when they are explicitly invited to create a new article as they were in this research. At the Wikimedia Conference Nederland, Jan-Bart de Vreede indicated in his speech that Kennisnet is interested in implementing the UNICEF extensions. These extensions are now localisable in any language at Betawiki. At ExtensionTesting, all the extensions have been tested against stable releases. Bugs were identified and some bugs were fixed. As a consequence it is likely that some more MediaWiki installations will benefit from research. It seems obvious to people who deal with small projects that usability is one of the big issue when it comes to the moribunt status of our small projects. The question I put to you, what are we going to do to first agree that this is an issue and then to deal with this issue. Do we care that 80% of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM

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[Foundation-l] Site Notices Phase 2 - Annual Fundraiser 2008
by Rand Montoya 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

Hey All-- There has been a lot of good feedback on the first set of site notices and we've taken those ideas and, I think, done a pretty good job of implementing fixes across projects and languages. The tech team has done fabulous work. You can see a brief statistical summary of the Phase I notices here: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/11/25/wikimedias-fundraiser-which-banners-cl… Please feel free to comment in the blog. We're going to be doing some short term testing of some minor tweaks to the Phase I notices soon. Which brings us to Phase 2. We are trying to juggle two separate concepts in designing the site notices: 1) we want our viewers and visitors to see and understand that their donations are important to the mission of Wikimedia Foundation and 2) we want our visitors to be stimulated into giving without being too disruptive. As such, Phase 2 drafts can be found here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/design_drafts. We are attempting to re-define the space in a different manner to encourage those who have not yet donated. The Quotes site notice will have 6 different quotes (all translated, we hope) rotated in. We will continue the same wiki project specific coding and current collapse/expand features that we have now. These are just drafts. Please comment on the page or in the discussion section. I'm also happy to hear any suggestions that you might have. Post your designs or drafts as well. Phase 2 notices will go live the week of December 1st...pending the time needed by our volunteer translators and the tech team. Phase 3 (slate for mid December) will focus on an end-of-campaign push and might include video elements. On a side note, we updated our comparative statistical presentation: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics. These charts compare 2007 vs. 2008 including only gifts of less than or equal to $10,000. -Rand Montoya Head of Community Giving -- Rand Montoya Head of Community Giving Wikimedia Foundation www.wikimedia.org Email: rand(a)wikimedia.org Phone: 415.839.6885 x615 Fax: 415.882.0495

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Wikimedia-l November 2008