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
To avoid further disrupting discussion of interlanguage links and
usability, I'll address the cultural problems separately now. I must
admit, though, that in a discussion where we seemed to have agreed
(rightfully so) that a 1% click rate was significant enough to warrant
serious consideration, I was disappointed that someone could then be so
callous about the need for cultural sensitivity because it most directly
impacts "only 0.55% of the world population" in this case. There is no
meaningful difference in order of magnitude there.
We have significant distortions in the makeup of our community that
affect our culture. There are quite a few groups that are seriously
underrepresented, in part because our culture comes across as unfriendly
to them at best. I talked about African-Americans because it's what was
applicable in that particular situation and I happen to have some
familiarity with the issues. It could just as well have been Australian
Aborigines or another cultural group that has issues with our community.
I'm not as prepared to explain those concerns, but I would welcome
people who can educate us about such problems. It's legitimate to be
wary of things that promote American cultural hegemony, which is another
distortion, but that's not really warranted when the concern relates to
a minority culture in the US.
Some people seem to have gotten hung up on the issue of intent. I didn't
say there was any intent, by the community or individuals, to exclude
certain groups or to create a hostile environment for them. I actually
tried to be as careful as possible not to say that. The point is that
even in the absence of intent, it's possible for our culture to appear
hostile to such groups. We didn't have any intent to be hostile toward
living people, either, yet we've had a long struggle to cope with the
consequences of that impression created by our culture.
Consider the principle of not "biting" newcomers, which relates to a
similar problem. It's not about the intent of the person doing the
"biting", it's about the impact on those who encounter it. We need to be
more welcoming to people, and striving for more cultural awareness is
part of that.
--Michael Snow
As many of you know, the Wikimedia Foundation has an Audit Committee which represents the Board in oversight of financial and accounting issues, including planning, reporting, audits, and internal controls (see http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Audit_committee for details). The Committee typically serves for one year, roughly from July through the late Spring when the Foundation files its annual tax return in the U.S. This past year the committee included members from the broad community, from chapters, and from the Foundation's Board (including me as Committee Chair).
We’ve recently started forming the 2010-2011 Audit Committee and as we did last year would like to call for volunteers from the community. The time commitment is modest, as far as Wikimedia goes: review the Foundation’s financial practices and financial statements/filings, and then participate in three or four conference calls during the year with the staff and our independent auditors at KPMG (see http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Audit_charter for full duties). The primary requirement for membership is “financial literacy”, some kind of professional experience with finance, accounting or audit. As it is a governance and oversight role, Committee members cannot serve under a pseudonym, undergo the same basic background check as others in WMF financial oversight roles, and must make the same conflict of interest disclosures required of the Foundation's Board.
If you’re interested in serving on the Committee, please email me at stu <at> wikimedia.org with your resume/CV and your thoughts on how you think you could contribute. Thanks.
-s
===========================
Stu West
stu <at> wikimedia.org
[User:Stu]
Translation between wikis currently exists as a largely pulling
paradigm: Someone on the target wiki finds an article in another
language (English for example) and then pulls it to their language
wiki.
These days Google and other translate tools are good enough to use as
the starting basis for an translated article, and we can consider how
we make use of them in an active way. What is largely a "pull"
paradigm can also be a "push" paradigm - we can use translation tools
to "push" articles to other wikis.
If there are issues, they can be overcome. The fact of the matter is
that the vast majority of articles in English can be "pushed" over to
other languages, and fill a need for those topics in those languages.
-SC
I am thinking about making Wikimania 2011 as awesome as possible and
here's a little something that bothered me.
Wikimania 2010 was my first. It was a lot of fun to meet Wikimedians
from around the world. I also think that a lot of new ideas were born
thanks to the personal meetings in Gdansk, at least some of which may
grow to successful projects. Maybe it will be smarter use of machine
translation, maybe outreach to underprivileged languages, maybe
accessibility improvements. Maybe other things.
But all of the above are nice dreams about the future. Is there any
proven experience from the past that demonstrates why personal
meetings between Wikimedians are not just fun for them, but actually
beneficial to the Wikimedia community, the Internet, the Humanity? Can
anyone here give me solid examples of successful projects that were
born thanks to past Wikimanias?
I am sure that they exist and that i use their fruits every day
without realizing it.
--
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
This is a follow-up to the discussions about Google Translate and
Translator Toolkit.
One of the problems that quickly arises in discussions about it is
that this software is not Free-as-in-Freedom. The Translator Toolkit
website is not too complicated, so it's not very important whether
it's Free or not, but the stored translations belong to Google and are
used by Google to improve their non-Free services. I don't mind Google
making money out of my translation efforts, but i am less happy about
the fact that, unless i am missing something, the stored translated
strings can only be read by Google. Sometimes i will actually want to
give up on my privacy and publish the sentence pairs and make them
useful to researchers. (And if it is possible to enforce them to use
it only in Free software, all the better.)
Is there a Free competitor to the Google Translator Toolkit in terms
of online storage and sharing? I heard about OmegaT, but if i
understand correctly, it is a local application that doesn't offer
online storage and sharing - but correct me if i'm wrong. Are there
any other Free-minded translation memory services?
--
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
Job adverts? Really?. Site notice is for critical stuff (fund raising,
servers about to explode) even if you play with the notice to only
appear ~%10 of the time. Central notice even more so. For less
important stuff where you want to contact the community there is
[[MediaWiki:Watchlist-details]] which would have the additional
advantage of not putting English ads on the Italian (substitute almost
every non english wikipedia of your choice) wikipedia. The size is
also problematical. On my screen it takes up about twice the space of
the average image thumbnail something people who come to wikipedia
actualy want to see.
Incidentally:
"In one or two sentences, describe the process in which users are
approved to become administrators on English Wikipedia. "
Is this some kind of test to see if people know how to use semi colons?
--
geni
Stewards had meeting during the Wikimania. One of the conclusions is
that we need Global arbitration committee as there are more and more
cases which just stewards are able to solve somehow. And we are not
elected to make decisions.
Please, add your ideas [1] and join the discussion [2]. Below is the
initial page.
[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Global_Arbitration_Comm…
[2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_comment/Global_Arbitration…
* * *
During Wikimania 2010 in Gdansk [[stewards]] had meeting. They've
concluded that there are more and more issues all around Wikimedia
projects in which they have to make urgent decisions, which is
according to the [[Steward policy]], but the number of needed
decisions is above the comfortable limits. At the other side, as
stewards are not able to make any non-urgent decision, conflicts
remain unsolved.
Thus, the conclusion is that we need the body which would have mandate
to make decisions in conflict resolution, mostly related to the
projects which don't have their own arbitration committees or if it is
about a dispute which involves at least one whole community (or
majority of it). This body will be called "Dispute-resolution
committee" or "DRC" below.
The other idea is that it would be good to have one global body which
would deal with complains on decisions of other arbitration
committees, including with complains on DRC's decisions. This body
will be called "Global arbitration committee" or "GAC" below.
Feel free to [[Talk:Requests for comment/Global Arbitration
Committee|discuss]] about it, as well as to edit this page by adding
your proposals.
== Committees ==
=== Dispute-resolution committee ===
==== Scope ====
This body would have next responsibilities:
* First level of dispute-resolution for the communities without
arbitration committees.
* First level of dispute-resolution which involves one or more
communities as whole (or as majority).
==== Choosing members ====
Possible methods for choosing members:
* Wikimedia-wide elections.
* A group of stewards who are willing to volunteer for this purpose.
(This is the suggestion of one of the Board members.)
* Appointing the group by some other body.
* Wikimedia-wide election for most of the members, and two or three
stewards elected from and by the stewards (for fact-finding, etc.)
* ...
=== Global arbitration committee ===
==== Scope ====
This body would have next responsibilities:
* Defining requirements for having an arbitration committee inside of
one project.
* Accepting and solving complains on decisions of project-specific
arbitration committees.
* Accepting and solving complains on decisions of DPR.
* Abuse and misuse of high-level access ([[checkuser]], [[oversight]],
[[steward]]-rights, taking over the job of the [[Ombudsman
commission]])
==== Choosing members ====
Possible methods for choosing members:
* Wikimedia-wide elections.
* Giving the authority to the [[Ombudsman commission]].
* Appointing the group by the community members of the [[Board]].
* ...
== Other ideas ==
[[Category:Requests for comments]]
Hello All,
Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the
translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias. The
foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not sure
whether any one is interested to consult the respective language community
to know their views.
As far as I know only Tamil, Bengali, and Swahili Wikipedians have raised
their concerns about Google's project. But, does this means that other
communities are happy about Google efforts? If there is no active community
in a wikipedia how can we expect response from communities? If there is no
response from a community, does that mean that Google can hire some native
speakers and use machine translation to create articles for that wikipedia?
Now let us go back to a basic question. Does WMF require a wiki community to
create wikipedia in any language? Or can they utilize the services of
companies like Google to create wikipedias in N number of languages?
One of the main point raised by the supporters of Google translation is
that, Google's project is good *for the online version of the language*.That
might be true. But no body is cared to verify whether it is good for
Wikipedia.
As pointed out by Ravi in his presentation in Wikimania, (
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs), the Google
translation of wikipedia articles:
- will affect the biological growth of a Wikipedia article
- will create copy of English wikipedia article in local wikis
- it is against some of the basic philosophies of wikipedia
The people outside wiki will definitely benefit from this tool, if Google
translation tool is developed for each language. I saw the working example
of this in Poland during Wikimania, when some people who are not good in
English used google translator to communicate with us. :)
Apart from the points raised by Ravi in his presentation, this will affect
the community growth.If there is no active wiki community, how can we expect
them to look after all these junk articles uploaded to wiki every day. When
all the important article links are already turned blue, how we can expect
any future potential editors. So according to me, Google's project is
killing the growth of an active wiki community.
Of course, Tamil Wikipedia is trying to use Google project effectively. But
only Tamil is doing that since they have an active wiki community*. Many
Wiki communities are not even aware that such a project is happening in
their wiki*.
I do not want to point out specific language wikipedas to prove my point.
But visit the wikipedias (especially wikipedias* that use non-latin scripts*)
to view the status of google translation project. Loads of junk articles
are uploaded to wiki every day. Most of the time the only edit in these
articles is the edit by its creator and the inter language wiki bots.
This effort will definitely affect community growth. Kindly see the points
raised by a Swahali
Wikipedian<http://muddybtz.blog.com/2010/07/16/what-happened-on-the-google-challenge-t…>.
Many Swahali users (and other language users) now expect a laptop or some
other monitory benefits to write in their wikipedia. That affects the
community growth.
So what is the solution for this? Can we take lessons from
Tamil/Bengali/Swahili wikipedias and find methods to use this service
effectively or continue with the current article creation process.
One last question. Is this tool that is developing by Google is an open
source tool? If not, we need to answer so many questions that may follow.
Regards
Shiju Alex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shijualex
For those who don't want to read the whole email, we need:
* A person who is well introduced in Wikinews.
* A person who is well introduced in Wikiversity.
* A person who knows to program in Python and willing to spend 2
hours/week in archiving our mailing list on Meta [1].
* Your advices in defining what "substantial activity" (at Incubator,
Multilingual Wikisource or Beta Wikiversity) means for the approval of
new projects, especially in the cases of new Wikinews and Wikiversity
editions.
Please, send your applications and comments to me at
millosh(a)gmail.com. If you are applying for Wikinews or Wikiversity
"position", please write your thoughts on what "substantial activity"
means for the project type for which "position" you are applying.
It is not hard to define implicitly or explicitly "substantial
activity" for new editions of Wikipedia and for new editions of other
projects which have dynamics similar to Wikipedia (Wiktionary,
Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource). You can write an
article, word definition, quote, book chapter or you can add a source
once and you don't need to see that project for months. In the case of
Wikinews, daily activity matters. In the case of Wikiversity, you need
real people around.
Thus, we need both: your input on question what "substantial activity"
for new Wikinews and Wikiversity editions means; as well as two
persons who would be willing to take care about new requests for
Wikinews and Wikiversity editions. If you have some important note
related to the same question, but about other projects (which have
Wikipedia-like dynamics), please send your comments, too. If you have
any other comment related to the Language proposal policy [2] (except
that it would be good to have Wikinews edition in Sumerian or so),
please send them, too.
Our archives [1] are outdated because of Jesse's lack of time. It is 2
hours/week task. For that position we need a confidential person who
knows to program in Python, but not necessarily (then, it is 4
hours/week task).
All of the new members will be full members of the Language committee,
which means that they will participate in other parts of the new
language editions approval.
[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Archives
[2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy