Soundlessly, some folks are missing what are exactly Wikimedia versus local communities issue: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Radical_cleanu...
Luiz Augusto wrote:
Soundlessly, some folks are missing what are exactly Wikimedia versus local communities issue: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Radical_cleanu...
That appears to be a proposal to delete bot-generated articles from the Volapuk Wikipedia. How is that a "Wikimedia versus local communities" issue"?
Those articles -- virtually the entire project, which is not surprising for a language with about 20 speakers, none of them native -- were all generated by one contributor's translation bot.
It seems to me more like Meta contributors versus the guy who wrote the Volapuk translation bot. That project doesn't even *have* a local community.
-Gurch
On Dec 26, 2007 8:16 PM, Matthew Britton matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
(...) It seems to me more like Meta contributors versus the guy who wrote the Volapuk translation bot. That project doesn't even *have* a local community.
No, it is:
* Some Meta contributors versus the who *translated* the bot used on various Wikipedia projects, including the English one; * Some Meta contributors versus the 19{{citation}} speakers that aren't yet joined to the project * Some Meta contributors agains't User:Smeira *and* User:Malafaya efforts to make a project
Maybe Smeira was selected the wrong bot: instead of cities from USA, all species of life or all asteroids...
This is an interesting discussion, but one that should take place on the appropriate meta page, not on foundation-l.
Austin
It is interesting, although more on the larger issues of: * What constitutes a viable wikipedia language project? Do some languages not deserve to have a Wikipedia? Or, conversely, do we create a new wikipedia for every single conlang in existence? * When, if ever, can the foundation step in to "fix" a language project that may have gone astray? Is there a way to evaluate the progress and status of a language project to determine if it is generally "good" or "bad"? * What are the criteria for closing a project, moving a project to/from the incubator, etc? * What are people's general feelings about using an automatic translator bot to populate large numbers of pages?
These are all well worth discussion here and on meta.
--Andrew Whitworth.
On Dec 26, 2007 6:41 PM, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:
This is an interesting discussion, but one that should take place on the appropriate meta page, not on foundation-l.
Austin
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At least one good criteria for deciding whether a particular Wikipedia is justified would be the existence of a community of native speakers (community interpreted expansively). Dead language 'pedias don't seem to serve the purpose of preservation of knowledge and access to it. Is there a Latin or Aramaic Wikipedia? We should treat tiny languages with no native speakers in the same manner.
There is an aramaic WP: http://arc.wikipedia.org
There is also a Latin WP: http://la.wikipedia.org. Technically, Latin isn't really a dead language.
Not all Conlangs should be discounted, and at the same time not all natural languages should be approved immediately. What's needed is a common-sense approach that takes into account the value of the language, the size of the userbase, the value to the speaking community, the value to the language, and the value to the world at large.
--Andrew Whitworth
On Dec 26, 2007 6:53 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
At least one good criteria for deciding whether a particular Wikipedia is justified would be the existence of a community of native speakers (community interpreted expansively). Dead language 'pedias don't seem to serve the purpose of preservation of knowledge and access to it. Is there a Latin or Aramaic Wikipedia? We should treat tiny languages with no native speakers in the same manner.
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On Dec 27, 2007 10:53 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
At least one good criteria for deciding whether a particular Wikipedia is justified would be the existence of a community of native speakers (community interpreted expansively). Dead language 'pedias don't seem to serve the purpose of preservation of knowledge and access to it. Is there a Latin or Aramaic Wikipedia? We should treat tiny languages with no native speakers in the same manner.
The number of native speakers is a useful criterion. I would think that things like historical prevalence, longevity, and the amount of primary material available in that language might also be relevant (with due account for languages without a significant written tradition).
Aramaic and Latin both have present speaking populations, the former more so than the latter. Both have been widely spoken historically, and have been in existence for substantial lengths of time (multiple millenia each). There are mountains of writings available in each language.
On small languages, it should be remembered that the Wikimedia projects have the potential to save some small languages. There are hundreds of languages under threat right around the globe (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endangered_languages) many of which will soon be lost as the last remaining native speakers die out. I think the seriousness of this situation drives a good slice of the prejudice against wikis for conlangs with a dozen or two speakers that are stuffed full of bot translations.
On small languages, it should be remembered that the Wikimedia projects have the potential to save some small languages. There are hundreds of languages under threat right around the globe (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endangered_languages) many of which will soon be lost as the last remaining native speakers die out. I think the seriousness of this situation drives a good slice of the prejudice against wikis for conlangs with a dozen or two speakers that are stuffed full of bot translations.
This, i think, is one of the most important points to be made: Wikipedia could really serve not just as an encyclopedia, but as a record of a language. for small and endangered languages, the Wikipedia for that language may be one of the only written records of that language.
Preservation of small conlangs is not nearly so important as the preservation of small natural languages. Of course, this all ignores the question of whether the WMF should be in the business of language preservation. Although, I think that if it were a goal that we set out to perform, we could probably get some funding for that purpose specifically.
--Andrew Whitworth
I think that preserving a language is a good goal, but it is one that Wikipedia is not well suited for and is not intended to fulfill. Creating an automatically translated article on every city and town in the US is not a way to 'preserve' a constructed or dead language. If the point is to aggregate knowledge in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible, how does a Wikipedia in a constructed language (a code, really) serve that point? Additionally, someone mentioned that there are present native speakers of Latin. I'd be interested to find out who these folks are.
On Dec 26, 2007 10:17 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
On small languages, it should be remembered that the Wikimedia projects have the potential to save some small languages. There are hundreds of languages under threat right around the globe (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endangered_languages) many of which will soon be lost as the last remaining native speakers die out. I think the seriousness of this situation drives a good slice of the prejudice against wikis for conlangs with a dozen or two speakers that are stuffed full of bot translations.
This, i think, is one of the most important points to be made: Wikipedia could really serve not just as an encyclopedia, but as a record of a language. for small and endangered languages, the Wikipedia for that language may be one of the only written records of that language.
Preservation of small conlangs is not nearly so important as the preservation of small natural languages. Of course, this all ignores the question of whether the WMF should be in the business of language preservation. Although, I think that if it were a goal that we set out to perform, we could probably get some funding for that purpose specifically.
--Andrew Whitworth
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We've been over this a million times in the past year or so on this list. While preserving small languages is a positive externality of the Wikimedia projects, it is NOT the stated goal of the project. It is simply a useful side effect. It is not, and cannot be, our main focus.
-Dan On Dec 26, 2007, at 10:26 PM, Nathan wrote:
I think that preserving a language is a good goal, but it is one that Wikipedia is not well suited for and is not intended to fulfill. Creating an automatically translated article on every city and town in the US is not a way to 'preserve' a constructed or dead language. If the point is to aggregate knowledge in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible, how does a Wikipedia in a constructed language (a code, really) serve that point? Additionally, someone mentioned that there are present native speakers of Latin. I'd be interested to find out who these folks are.
On Dec 26, 2007 10:17 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
On small languages, it should be remembered that the Wikimedia projects have the potential to save some small languages. There are hundreds of languages under threat right around the globe (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endangered_languages) many of which will soon be lost as the last remaining native speakers die out. I think the seriousness of this situation drives a good slice of the prejudice against wikis for conlangs with a dozen or two speakers that are stuffed full of bot translations.
This, i think, is one of the most important points to be made: Wikipedia could really serve not just as an encyclopedia, but as a record of a language. for small and endangered languages, the Wikipedia for that language may be one of the only written records of that language.
Preservation of small conlangs is not nearly so important as the preservation of small natural languages. Of course, this all ignores the question of whether the WMF should be in the business of language preservation. Although, I think that if it were a goal that we set out to perform, we could probably get some funding for that purpose specifically.
--Andrew Whitworth
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Dan Rosenthal wrote:
We've been over this a million times in the past year or so on this list. While preserving small languages is a positive externality of the Wikimedia projects, it is NOT the stated goal of the project. It is simply a useful side effect. It is not, and cannot be, our main focus.
Who is suggesting that it be a main focus? These tasks have a role, so let's find the best projects for them. It may not be a "stated" goal, but it is a valuable incidental goal.
Ec
On Dec 26, 2007 10:26 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I think that preserving a language is a good goal, but it is one that Wikipedia is not well suited for and is not intended to fulfill. Creating an automatically translated article on every city and town in the US is not a way to 'preserve' a constructed or dead language. If the point is to aggregate knowledge in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible, how does a Wikipedia in a constructed language (a code, really) serve that point? Additionally, someone mentioned that there are present native speakers of Latin. I'd be interested to find out who these folks are.
You're right about that point, a conlang isn't really a method of enhancing communication so much as obscuring it. "live" conlangs, that is conlangs with an active speaking community may be worthwhile because they can help to facilitate communications between various peoples. However, dead conlangs are little more then a cypher to obscure information. Once a conlang dies, not only is it's wikipedia not a benefit, but it's actually a hurdle to the information found there.
As for latin, the Catholic church still performs sermons in latin, and Latin is one of the languages spoken in the Vatican. Some universities hold graduation ceremonies in Latin. I'm sure there are other examples as well. While there are likely no "native" speakers of Latin, it is still spoken
--Andrew Whitworth
2007/12/27, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
I think that preserving a language is a good goal, but it is one that Wikipedia is not well suited for and is not intended to fulfill.
I agree. If preservation of a language is the main goal, within the foundation Wikisource or Wiktionary would seem more valid candidates. For Wikipedia it would at best be a by-product, and even as such it would seem doubtful - if the language really is dying, whether there should be a Wikipedia at all is a valid question in my opinion. Where Wikipedia COULD be useful is for languages that are not threatened where number of speakers is concerned, but is in general not used in writing.
If the point is to aggregate knowledge in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible, how does a Wikipedia in a constructed language (a code, really) serve that point?
It depends. If the constructed language has a large number of speakers, like Esperanto, there is definitely a use for it: There will be probably people who speak Esperanto, but are less fluent in any of the larger Wikipedia languages. Having the information in Esperanto is then a plus compared to having it only in the 'large' languages, and less work than making it available in all the various vernaculars.
Nathan wrote:
I think that preserving a language is a good goal, but it is one that Wikipedia is not well suited for and is not intended to fulfill. Creating an automatically translated article on every city and town in the US is not a way to 'preserve' a constructed or dead language. If the point is to aggregate knowledge in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible, how does a Wikipedia in a constructed language (a code, really) serve that point?
While Wikipedia, where we have original writing, is not best suited to these small languages, the same is not the case for some sister projects, notabnly Wiktionary, Wikibooks and Wikisource. Constructed languages need to be viewed differently from dead or endangered languages, because most of them need to have a culture constructed as well as a language.
Additionally, someone mentioned that there are present native speakers of Latin. I'd be interested to find out who these folks are.
I don't know if their are actual native speakers. Having a top-level domain of ".va" indicates a country that frowns upon procreation. Latin does remain as an language that is used there. Also if you look at what is available facing the title page of the Harry Potter books, somebody is intent on translating them into Latin.
Ec
On 12/27/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Nathan wrote:
I think that preserving a language is a good goal, but it is one that Wikipedia is not well suited for and is not intended to fulfill. Creating an automatically translated article on every city and town in the US is not a way to 'preserve' a constructed or dead language. If the point is to aggregate knowledge in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible, how does a Wikipedia in a constructed language (a code, really) serve that point?
While Wikipedia, where we have original writing, is not best suited to these small languages, the same is not the case for some sister projects, notabnly Wiktionary, Wikibooks and Wikisource. Constructed languages need to be viewed differently from dead or endangered languages, because most of them need to have a culture constructed as well as a language.
Sources in other languages are valid sources. This means that a small language Wikipedia may be completely based on sources written in other language.
And bot-generated articles are the best example of doing so because they *are* based on valid sources.
On 27/12/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Also if you look at what is available facing the title page of the Harry Potter books, somebody is intent on translating them into Latin.
They're quite good translations, I am assured! Winnie the Pooh, too...
Latin is a unique case.
If we were talking a hundred or more years ago, we would also have to consider a sizable ediucated population which was in effect bilingual in a dialect of Latin; consistently a second language by the strict definition, but not uncommonly used as a first in some situations. Nowadays, whilst it clearly has no "born" speakers, or only a statistically irrelevant amount, it does get taught to a sizable population in secondary and tertiary education, as well as its widespread use as a liturgical language, and there is heavy lobbying to ensure it keeps being taught.
In effect, it perfectly fits the definition of a dying minority lanugage :-)
On Dec 27, 2007 6:56 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
In effect, it perfectly fits the definition of a dying minority lanugage :-)
Which should, like constructed languages IMHO, not have a Wikipedia. Wiki-other might be fine, but the original subject here is the constructed language .vo Wikipedia. You can't help the dissemination of information if the information is written in a language no one speaks, and what is the point of writing it in a language some people speak but no one natively (i.e. they all speak other languages better)?
In my opinion, the .vo Wikipedia should be nixed. If someone wants to create a x-pedia in Volapuk, they can use MediaWiki software and host it themselves. That nicely makes the issue of bot-created content irrelevant. On the other hand, if the consensus of the community is that the .vo 'pedia should remain that makes the issue of its content creation also irrelevant (notwithstanding accusations of 'cheating' whatever that means in this context). The content is the point, not the manner of its creation, and content rules outside of the main principles of the Foundation should be decided by the local community.
On Friday 28 December 2007 01:26, Nathan wrote:
speaks, and what is the point of writing it in a language some people speak but no one natively (i.e. they all speak other languages better)?
The point is that these people can find and produce information that they otherwise couldn't.
For example, an article about http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombofosto exists in Esperanto, French and Serbian Wikipedia. Someone who knows Chinese and Esperanto, Spanish and Esperanto or Arabian and Esperanto is able to read it, despite the fact that the article does not exists in Chinese, Spanish or Arabian.
On Dec 26, 2007 5:47 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
It is interesting, although more on the larger issues of:
- What constitutes a viable wikipedia language project? Do some
languages not deserve to have a Wikipedia? Or, conversely, do we create a new wikipedia for every single conlang in existence?
- When, if ever, can the foundation step in to "fix" a language
project that may have gone astray? Is there a way to evaluate the progress and status of a language project to determine if it is generally "good" or "bad"?
- What are the criteria for closing a project, moving a project
to/from the incubator, etc?
- What are people's general feelings about using an automatic
translator bot to populate large numbers of pages?
These are all well worth discussion here and on meta.
Indeed, and all worthy of their own dedicated threads. (In fact, all of them have been covered several times here in the past.) The continued discussion of the fate of the Volapük Wikipedia, however, is best left to the forum in which it's being decided, rather than cross-posted flamewars.
Austin
2007/12/27, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com:
It is interesting, although more on the larger issues of:
- What constitutes a viable wikipedia language project? Do some
languages not deserve to have a Wikipedia? Or, conversely, do we create a new wikipedia for every single conlang in existence?
I would say that the criterium here would be the issue of readership: For whom are we making this wiki? Wikipedia is, first and foremost, a medium to find information. Is there a reasonable likelihood that people will go to this wiki rather than another for the purpose of getting information? For a natural language with a reasonable number of speakers, this will be answered with yes - if there is a decent sized Wikipedia in that language, people having it as their first language will probably prefer it to other languages. But for dead languages, extremely small languages and conlangs, this is not automatic. Only when there is a considerable amount of people who would prefer that language to any language that would have Wikipedias of similar or larger size, I think that such a project would be useful.
- When, if ever, can the foundation step in to "fix" a language
project that may have gone astray? Is there a way to evaluate the progress and status of a language project to determine if it is generally "good" or "bad"?
I think there are cases where the foundation can, and perhaps should step in. A language project has its own community, but it is also part of a larger Wikipedia and Wikimedia community. These communities do have the right to admonish a language project that has gone astray, and the foundation could, and perhaps should, act as a proxy for this wider community in these cases.
For the when I think that there are some principles that are project wide, and they are what on en: Wikipedia are called the five pillars. Blatant disregard of these would be a ground for intervention. So I would say that the following are definitely reasons to censure a project: * Material with strong POV not being changed/removed or even being encouraged * Material that is clearly not encyclopedic (like poems and stories) taking a significant part of the main namespace * Requiring approval by the existing community before someone is allowed to edit the wiki * Allowing of large amounts of copyrighted material that is neither under the GFDL nor under any other free license
Luiz Augusto wrote:
- Some Meta contributors versus the 19{{citation}} speakers that aren't yet
joined to the project
I think the use of the word "yet" here says a lot about this project.
To be honest, Volapuk is lucky to even have a Wikimedia wiki; the other wikis in constructed languages with no native speakers (e.g. Klingon and Toki Pona) have all been closed, and it seems to be an established rule that no new ones will be accepted. There must be dozens if not hundreds of constructed languages with 20 or more speakers, none of which would be deemed suitable for a wiki if one was proposed today.
I personally have nothing against the project's continued existence. However, we work by consensus here. If people want to give their opinions, air their concerns, or propose measures to remedy this situation, they should be encouraged to do so, and not met with complaints that Wikimedia is somehow being unfair to small projects.
-Gurch
multi-replying,
On Dec 26, 2007 9:47 PM, Matthew Britton matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
Luiz Augusto wrote:
- Some Meta contributors versus the 19{{citation}} speakers that aren't
yet
joined to the project
I think the use of the word "yet" here says a lot about this project.
To be honest, Volapuk is lucky to even have a Wikimedia wiki; the other wikis in constructed languages with no native speakers (e.g. Klingon and Toki Pona) have all been closed, and it seems to be an established rule that no new ones will be accepted. There must be dozens if not hundreds of constructed languages with 20 or more speakers, none of which would be deemed suitable for a wiki if one was proposed today.
Klingon and Toki Pona are constructed languages with copyright issues around then. Esperanto (eo) is a constructed language and is a active project with 92k articles on their Wikipedia. There are also hundreds of natural languages with less of 50 survivors speakers with no wikis (and no bots to upload texts to then ;-) ), so I think that the issue is more related to the smallest languages in general.
I personally have nothing against the project's continued existence.
However, we work by consensus here. If people want to give their opinions, air their concerns, or propose measures to remedy this situation, they should be encouraged to do so, and not met with complaints that Wikimedia is somehow being unfair to small projects.
-Gurch
I fully agree to your mention to consensus. But I don't see a consensus on the previous closure request that the problem is the bot-generated articles, so, I don't see a reason to a groups of users starting that kind of discussion on Meta-Wiki.
On Dec 26, 2007 9:53 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
At least one good criteria for deciding whether a particular Wikipedia is justified would be the existence of a community of native speakers (community interpreted expansively). Dead language 'pedias don't seem to serve the purpose of preservation of knowledge and access to it. Is there a Latin or Aramaic Wikipedia? We should treat tiny languages with no native speakers in the same manner.
Well, you are preserving the existence of a language, in others words, you are preserving knowledge with knowledge written in that language. A few digression: imagine I getting fun learning a language with less than 10 speakers and getting fun writing a translation bot that perfectly translates texts on that language. Imagine my bot spamming the [[:oldwikisource:]] ( wikisource.org/wiki/ incubator + coordination wiki for Wikisources) with translations of the entire Project Gutenberg on that language. If I find out more speakers of that smallest language, should I:
* Request a new wikisource wiki to move all of these texts and start working with those people
or
* Keep all on [[:oldwikisource:]]
or
* Delete all pages and ban myself for uploading materials with no function
?
Am Mittwoch, 26. Dezember 2007 22:21:10 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Soundlessly, some folks are missing what are exactly Wikimedia versus local communities issue: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Radical_clean up_of_Volapük_Wikipedia
Once more: * This is not about deleting vo.wikipedia * This is not about denying the right of a Volapük Wikipedia
This is *only* about the way choosen to create the Volapük Wikipedia. This is about changing this unhealthy way that severely harms all other Wikipedias (not only wih Interwiki spam to useless bot articles). This is about a bad habbit of edit cheating others have done prior. Volapük Wikipedia simply went to far down this road to perdition. No other Wikipedia contains nearly 100% bot generated content.
Anybody who confuses my request with supression of minorities is hereby awarded with the "abuse of supressed minorities award".
Arnomane
--- Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Mittwoch, 26. Dezember 2007 22:21:10 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Soundlessly, some folks are missing what are
exactly Wikimedia versus local
communities issue:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Radical_clean
up_of_Volapük_Wikipedia
Once more:
- This is not about deleting vo.wikipedia
- This is not about denying the right of a Volapük
Wikipedia
This is *only* about the way choosen to create the Volapük Wikipedia. This is about changing this unhealthy way that severely harms all other Wikipedias (not only wih Interwiki spam to useless bot articles). This is about a bad habbit of edit cheating others have done prior. Volapük Wikipedia simply went to far down this road to perdition. No other Wikipedia contains nearly 100% bot generated content.
The protest here is that you should have no say in the way chosen to create the Volapük Wikipedia. If Volapük Wikipedia is valid community, then they are free to create their project by any method that works for them. If it is not a valid community, then the WMF should close the project. This is a bright line. There is no basis for outsiders to dictate how a local community goes about it's work excepting for violations of the foundation principles ("free as in freedom", Neutral Point of View, "anyone can edit"). This new kind of micromanagment you have proposed has nothing to do with a foundation principle as far as I can tell. I personally find your proposal out of line and if it succeeds, I agree that it will be "A dangerous precedent".
Birgitte SB
____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
Birgitte SB schrieb:
The protest here is that you should have no say in the way chosen to create the Volapük Wikipedia. If Volapük Wikipedia is valid community, then they are free to create their project by any method that works for them. If it is not a valid community, then the WMF should close the project. This is a bright line. There is no basis for outsiders to dictate how a local community goes about it's work excepting for violations of the foundation principles ("free as in freedom", Neutral Point of View, "anyone can edit"). This new kind of micromanagment you have proposed has nothing to do with a foundation principle as far as I can tell. I personally find your proposal out of line and if it succeeds, I agree that it will be "A dangerous precedent".
Birgitte SB
Ok, then must have every project the right to ban interwiki-links to volapük wikipedia, to prevent the spam with this links to sites without further informations.
Liesel
On 27/12/2007, Liesel koehler-liesel73@gmx.de wrote:
Ok, then must have every project the right to ban interwiki-links to volapük wikipedia, to prevent the spam with this links to sites without further informations.
There *is* precedent for that, as a matter of fact :-)
(We used to suppress interwiki links to Klingon, and possibly to another conlang which I forget just now, back in the days before that project was quietly disposed of)
On 27/12/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/12/2007, Liesel koehler-liesel73@gmx.de wrote:
Ok, then must have every project the right to ban interwiki-links to volapük wikipedia, to prevent the spam with this links to sites without further informations.
There *is* precedent for that, as a matter of fact :-) (We used to suppress interwiki links to Klingon, and possibly to another conlang which I forget just now, back in the days before that project was quietly disposed of)
Toki Pona.
- d.
Birgitte SB wrote:
If Volapük Wikipedia is valid community, then they are free to create their project by any method that works for them. If it is not a valid community, then the WMF should close the project. This is a bright line.
Well it's not that bright a line, unless someone comes up with a precise mathematical definition of what constitutes a "valid community".
Anyway, while I personally don't think there is a valid community, I don't see that in itself as a good reason to close a project.
There are numerous other very small wikis, with only a handful of pages, that also don't have a community. But the language that they are written in does actually have native speakers -- often hundreds of thousands or more, just not in developed countries where Internet access is commonplace. This means that the wiki has a potential to be useful to people who would not benefit from the other wikis, and for that reason alone I think it is worth having them; one day, perhaps when Internet access is more widespread, they may be able to grow. That there is not a community now does not seem to me to be enough to counter that argument.
-Gurch
On 27/12/2007, Matthew Britton matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
Well it's not that bright a line, unless someone comes up with a precise mathematical definition of what constitutes a "valid community".
One guy running a bot to get what is effectively his vanity project high in the rankings would count as "not", I'd suggest.
Anyway, while I personally don't think there is a valid community, I don't see that in itself as a good reason to close a project.
Indeed. There's nothing about the Volapuk case that should reflect on other small projects. The problem here is problematic behaviour by one person using it as a vanity wiki.
- d.
I am not quite getting all emails through so this is reconstructed from the archive:
**** *Liesel said:
*Ok, then must have every project the right to ban *interwiki-links to *volapük wikipedia, to prevent the spam with this *links to sites without *further informations.
****
That I do not have an issue with. Certainly any community can decide to accect or reject certain interwiki links.
****
Birgitte SB wrote:
If Volapük Wikipedia is valid community, then they
are
free to create their project by any method that
works
for them. If it is not a valid community, then the WMF should close the project. This is a bright
line.
*Gurch said:
*Well it's not that bright a line, unless someone *comes up with a precise *mathematical definition of what constitutes a "valid *community".
*Anyway, while I personally don't think there is a *valid community, I *don't see that in itself as a good reason to close a *project.
You snipped too much. I meant it is a bright line that we, as outsiders, either close (or reboot if you like) a community or we let them work it out themselves. We can certainly encourage them to adopt a particular policy as local consensus. I have personally done this before. However we do not impose outsiders as admins to do things that are against the local consensus.
Birgitte SB
____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ
--- Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
I am not quite getting all emails through so this is reconstructed from the archive:
Arnomane said:
On independence of Wikipedia communities:
- A Wikipedia that generates interwikis to such
contentless articles en masse destroys one of our common strengths: Our cool interwiki system.
Certainly there must be another option for protecting the interwiki system than becoming an admin in a wiki you have no inherent interest in developing to delete articles against the local consensus. I cannot agree that interwiki bloat is such priority that it demands a solution so radical as that.
- Furthermore they challenge the reputation of the >
whole international
Wikipedia community to outsiders.
This is hardly the first time for such a challenge. I suggest you follow the successful example of what was done when en.WP was blocking non-latin usernames which was certainly a challenge to international reputation. [1] [2] I can't see the vo.WP issue as beeing a larger challenge to general reputation than the any of the top 10 issues that have come from en.WP. So I cannot support a more radical handling of vo.WP than en.WP has recieved for "internationally" unpopular practices.
- And above all. There are some unchangeable rules >
in every Wikipedia imposed
by the Wikimedia Foundation. One of them is NPOV and vo.wikipedia in its current stage simply has no chance to get somewhere near NPOV because of their methods choosen.
With NPOV concerns we also have precedents. Look into how the NPOV concerns for ar.WP were handled.[3] Certainly a reasonable person cannot think vo.WP is in a worse state of bias than those complaints and therefore deserves a more radical reaction than they were given.
I think I am correct to say that many people opposing you are not arguing that vo.WP is 100% correct in what they have done and how they have responded to concerns. Rather many people are opposing you because your proposal is *extremely radical* and the issue you wish to address comparatively less important than issues that have needed intervention from outside a community in the past. The issue at hand does not in any way merit such new precedent of intervention. Please find a less radical means of addressing your concerns.
Birgitte SB
[1]http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/025769.html [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Username/Archive_3#Non-latin_cha... [3]http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/foundation-l/2006-November/025064.h...
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Birgitte SB wrote:
--- Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Mittwoch, 26. Dezember 2007 22:21:10 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Soundlessly, some folks are missing what are exactly Wikimedia versus local communities issue
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Radical_clean
up_of_Volapük_Wikipedia
Once more:
- This is not about deleting vo.wikipedia
- This is not about denying the right of a Volapük
Wikipedia
This is *only* about the way choosen to create the Volapük Wikipedia. This is about changing this unhealthy way that severely harms all other Wikipedias (not only wih Interwiki spam to useless bot articles). This is about a bad habbit of edit cheating others have done prior. Volapük Wikipedia simply went to far down this road to perdition. No other Wikipedia contains nearly 100% bot generated content.
The protest here is that you should have no say in the way chosen to create the Volapük Wikipedia. If Volapük Wikipedia is valid community, then they are free to create their project by any method that works for them. If it is not a valid community, then the WMF should close the project. This is a bright line. There is no basis for outsiders to dictate how a local community goes about it's work excepting for violations of the foundation principles ("free as in freedom", Neutral Point of View, "anyone can edit"). This new kind of micromanagment you have proposed has nothing to do with a foundation principle as far as I can tell. I personally find your proposal out of line and if it succeeds, I agree that it will be "A dangerous precedent".
If the issue is about bot generated articles the principle is still that any "person" can edit, not that any "thing" can edit. Persons can apply human judgement; bots can't. In a small community, when someone introduces a bot to massively generate articles it can completely overwhelm that community. If a member of the community objects that the bot is slanting those articles with a particular point of view, there is nobody with whom the articles can be discussed. The bot's manager may not even be familiar with the detailed contents, so he is in no position to defend it. Even with a sound and uncontroversial deletion policy the human editors can't keep up. It's a bit like a casino insisting that any $10,000 jackpot on the nickel slots must be paid out in nickels.
Ec
On 12/27/07, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
This is *only* about the way choosen to create the Volapük Wikipedia.
Besides my comment on Meta: Generated articles are more then valid (please, add sources in all articles!). I may see that one or combination of the next may be the reasons for demanding such nonsense action: (1) someone is afraid with so much articles, (2) someone doesn't like to see that a small community is able to make the same number of articles as big ones, (3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions. In all cases, please go firstly to the English, French, Italian and Polish Wikipedias.
... I may say that such proposals are extremely rude. Removing valid articles because of someone's vanity is really irritating.
--- Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/27/07, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
This is *only* about the way choosen to create the
Volapük Wikipedia.
Besides my comment on Meta: Generated articles are more then valid (please, add sources in all articles!). I may see that one or combination of the next may be the reasons for demanding such nonsense action: (1) someone is afraid with so much articles, (2) someone doesn't like to see that a small community is able to make the same number of articles as big ones, (3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions. In all cases, please go firstly to the English, French, Italian and Polish Wikipedias.
"(3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions" appears to be accurate.[1]
Birgitte SB
[1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects/R...
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BTW, doesn Lang SubCom has anything to say about this? I saw Gerard's vote, but I would like to see a statement, at least informal, of Lang SubCom members. I didn't see how articles were looking on Lombard Wikipedia, but if they were like articles on Volapuk Wikipedia, I have to say that tendencies in our community are extremely worrying.
Up to those two cases, I was thinking that it would be good to have one community at the global level which would be able to make some decisions. After those two cases, I am really in doubt. It seems that language borders are not giving only nationalisms, but a free space of imposing crazy decisions of wounded vanities, too.
On 12/27/07, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/27/07, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
This is *only* about the way choosen to create the
Volapük Wikipedia.
Besides my comment on Meta: Generated articles are more then valid (please, add sources in all articles!). I may see that one or combination of the next may be the reasons for demanding such nonsense action: (1) someone is afraid with so much articles, (2) someone doesn't like to see that a small community is able to make the same number of articles as big ones, (3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions. In all cases, please go firstly to the English, French, Italian and Polish Wikipedias.
"(3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions" appears to be accurate.[1]
Birgitte SB
[1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects/R...
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Hoi, Milos asks what the language committee has to say about the issues that are raised. As always I speak on a personal title.
The language committee generally grants a conditional approval for languages that have an ISO-639-3 code. When the language is not a dead language, ie when the language is actively used and can be used to communicate the concepts of the modern world, a project like Wikipedia makes sense. For the not dead languages we require a user interface in that language. Currently the most important messages of MediaWiki have been identified. For a first project these have to be all localized, for a second project we require a comprehensive localization of MediaWiki.
Consequently, we are happy to grant conditional approval to both constructed languages and minority languages. This allows for the start of a test in the Incubator. When the project shows a lively community with a small corpus of well written articles, we typically check if the language is properly written and is indeed that language. There are no exact numbers and articles that are only stubs are ignored. When there are too many stubs a next phase just does not happen. Typically a project is granted a next phase by consensus in the language committee.
The reason why I think the current situation is appalling is because there has been a vote for closure for the Volapuk Wikipedia only a month ago. The method chosen for "change" is one where people impose their will on another project. This is done without consulting the existing Volapuk community. People have created profiles on the vo.wikipedia and vigilante style start marking articles for deletion without even knowing the first thing of the language. This kind of behavior will have you blocked on any project and rightfully so.
All kinds of preconceptions are aired in this discussion many of them are of no relevance. When people are of the opinion that Latin, Esperanto, Volapuk are not relevant, they should just ignore these languages and do the things for the languages that are relevant to them. When people are of the opinion that bot created articles are no good, they have to realize that the English language Wikipedia, most of the Wiktionaries all contain many articles that are bot generated. Bots are used on all projects, this is a well established practice in the Wikimedia Foundation.
The opinion that many bot generated articles are plain stupid is one that I share. However, when you want to improve the practice and the quality of bot created articles, you start by engaging the people concerned in a discussion. What you do not do is ask for Admin rights for a project without even bothering to create a profile on a project. This is destructive behavior and unbecoming of any Wikimedian.
In the past I have argued for a global arbitration committee. However, in this case a more reasonable, consensus seeking behavior would have negated even the need for an escalation towards such a body and also much of the contention.
Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 27, 2007 10:23 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
BTW, doesn Lang SubCom has anything to say about this? I saw Gerard's vote, but I would like to see a statement, at least informal, of Lang SubCom members. I didn't see how articles were looking on Lombard Wikipedia, but if they were like articles on Volapuk Wikipedia, I have to say that tendencies in our community are extremely worrying.
Up to those two cases, I was thinking that it would be good to have one community at the global level which would be able to make some decisions. After those two cases, I am really in doubt. It seems that language borders are not giving only nationalisms, but a free space of imposing crazy decisions of wounded vanities, too.
On 12/27/07, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/27/07, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
This is *only* about the way choosen to create the
Volapük Wikipedia.
Besides my comment on Meta: Generated articles are more then valid (please, add sources in all articles!). I may see that one or combination of the next may be the reasons for demanding such nonsense action: (1) someone is afraid with so much articles, (2) someone doesn't like to see that a small community is able to make the same number of articles as big ones, (3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions. In all cases, please go firstly to the English, French, Italian and Polish Wikipedias.
"(3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions" appears to be accurate.[1]
Birgitte SB
[1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects/R...
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On Dec 28, 2007 7:04 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote: (...)
What you do not do is ask for Admin rights for a project without even bothering to create a profile on a project. This is destructive behavior and unbecoming of any Wikimedian.(...)
Sorry for quoting your message to say it and sorry to say it. The following fact does not helps with this discussion, but I need to share this thing that I've discovered last night (UTC-2):
# (cur) (last) 22:38, 25 December 2007 Arnomane (Talk | contribs) (2,694 bytes) (a more balanced request....) [1]
[Wikide-l] Die Qualität von Interwikis oder was tun mit Volapük? Mi Dez 26 00:49:59 UTC 2007 [2]
Look the timestamp... I really love the worry that de.wikipedia (and de.projects in general) have to quality. It is great to have. But on de projects. Please avoid [[Cultural dissonance]]. Your community thinks something, others communities not necessarily share it.
[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects/R...
[2] - http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikide-l/2007-December/020148.html
On 12/28/07, Luiz Augusto lugusto@gmail.com wrote:
Look the timestamp... I really love the worry that de.wikipedia (and de.projects in general) have to quality. It is great to have. But on de projects. Please avoid [[Cultural dissonance]]. Your community thinks something, others communities not necessarily share it.
Just to mention that in Serbian encyclopedistics dictionary-like definitions are quite good as encyclopedic articles. 10M of speakers are not able to make high volume traditional encyclopedias.
Because of that, average article about anything on Serbian Wikipedia is usually much more informative then equivalent in other encyclopedias written in Serbian.
However, information in native language that some place is there or that something is a mineral composed of that and that... or whatever -- is very useful for users who spoke a language with not so big number of speakers.
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 16:42:20 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
[...] Look the timestamp... I really love the worry that de.wikipedia (and de.projects in general) have to quality. It is great to have. But on de projects. Please avoid [[Cultural dissonance]]. Your community thinks something, others communities not necessarily share it.
Well I can "reveal" even more. I noticed this whole matter in a personal meeting of Wikipedians from Nuremberg in Ansbach on 21. December (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:N%C3%BCrnberg/Berichte#21._Dezember_2...).
Among other topics we which interwikis are an advantage to our multilingual readers (look at the article [[Sun]] it is a challenge to find the interwikis in the languages you are interested in).
Thus we naturally discussed about Volapük Wikipedias "articles" and their resulting interwikis and our past efforts to solve he issue *together* with vo.wikipedians. One of our finding was that vo.wikipedians even consider masses of articles *without a single sentence* as articles and properly proposing some of those articles for deletion as vandalism (just today Smeira said in one case a little sorry combined with a further demand to follow some strange rules).
On independence of Wikipedia communities: * A Wikipedia that generates interwikis to such contentless articles en masse destroys one of our common strengths: Our cool interwiki system. * Furthermore they challenge the reputation of the whole international Wikipedia community to outsiders. * And above all. There are some unchangeable rules in every Wikipedia imposed by the Wikimedia Foundation. One of them is NPOV and vo.wikipedia in its current stage simply has no chance to get somewhere near NPOV because of their methods choosen.
So we all Wikipedias have mutal responsibility. If a Wikipedia is denies any responsibility for others and ignores (even temporarily) some unchangeable rules this community has to face the fact that they loose their independence until they are on common ground again.
I would never impose de.wikipedia's "rules" on others (heck even I do not agree with some of these "rules", see http://arnomane.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/relevanz-ist-irrelevant/), just the common ground with a differentiated request (keeping all non-minor articles of Volapük and moving it to the Incubator).
Arnomane
Please, first read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_dissonance .
On http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patikos:Shortpages :
(jenotem) Menotey [jöläts 0] > blanked by 87.97.23.48.pool.invitel.hu , wich has undid by my dinamic IP adrss
(jenotem) Mirnav [jöläts 16] > striked and deleted
(jenotem) Nünots Volapükaklub Linz-Urfahr [jöläts 101] (jenotem) Timabled Volapükik [jöläts 102] (jenotem) Yelabuk Volapükakluba valemik Nedänik [jöläts 102] (jenotem) Volapükakongred di Friedrichshafen [jöläts 104] (jenotem) Yelanunod Volapükaklub in Leitmeritz [jöläts 104]
^ all with one phase and one category. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_dissonance again.
On Dec 28, 2007 3:15 PM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 16:42:20 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
[...] Look the timestamp... I really love the worry that de.wikipedia (and de.projects in general) have to quality. It is great to have. But on de projects. Please avoid [[Cultural dissonance]]. Your community thinks something, others communities not necessarily share it.
Well I can "reveal" even more. I noticed this whole matter in a personal meeting of Wikipedians from Nuremberg in Ansbach on 21. December (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:N ürnberg/Berichte#21._Dezember_2007).
Among other topics we which interwikis are an advantage to our multilingual readers (look at the article [[Sun]] it is a challenge to find the interwikis in the languages you are interested in).
Thus we naturally discussed about Volapük Wikipedias "articles" and their resulting interwikis and our past efforts to solve he issue *together* with vo.wikipedians. One of our finding was that vo.wikipedians even consider masses of articles *without a single sentence* as articles and properly proposing some of those articles for deletion as vandalism (just today Smeira said in one case a little sorry combined with a further demand to follow some strange rules).
On independence of Wikipedia communities:
- A Wikipedia that generates interwikis to such contentless articles en
masse destroys one of our common strengths: Our cool interwiki system.
- Furthermore they challenge the reputation of the whole international
Wikipedia community to outsiders.
- And above all. There are some unchangeable rules in every Wikipedia
imposed by the Wikimedia Foundation. One of them is NPOV and vo.wikipedia in its current stage simply has no chance to get somewhere near NPOV because of their methods choosen.
So we all Wikipedias have mutal responsibility. If a Wikipedia is denies any responsibility for others and ignores (even temporarily) some unchangeable rules this community has to face the fact that they loose their independence until they are on common ground again.
I would never impose de.wikipedia's "rules" on others (heck even I do not agree with some of these "rules", see http://arnomane.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/relevanz-ist-irrelevant/), just the common ground with a differentiated request (keeping all non-minor articles of Volapük and moving it to the Incubator).
Arnomane
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Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 18:58:25 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Please, first read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_dissonance .
Schade, dass es dir nur daran liegt über die kulturelle Schiene ein ernsthaftes Problem zu relativieren oder seine Existenz gar zu negieren.
Vielleicht ist es typisch Deutsch gemeinsame Verantwortung und Werte unterschiedlicher Kulturen und Gesellschaften zu betonen, auch wenn ich es mir nicht ernsthaft vorstellen kann, dass das typisch Deutsch sein soll (ich dachte immer, dass das Amerikaner auch gerne machen).
Typisch Deutsch ist nur meine Muttersprache und die erzeugt vielleicht jetzt in diesem Moment "Cultural dissonance", weil ich auf dieser Liste statt auf Englisch auf Deutsch schreibe.
Arnomane
Макар колико волео да видим различите језике на овој листи, прелазак на свој језик у тренутку кад се озбиљно расправља о културним различитостима сматрам тешким испољавањем национализма.
У том смислу, можемо слободно овако и наставити, не читајући оно што су други написали.
On 12/28/07, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 18:58:25 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Please, first read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_dissonance .
Schade, dass es dir nur daran liegt über die kulturelle Schiene ein ernsthaftes Problem zu relativieren oder seine Existenz gar zu negieren.
Vielleicht ist es typisch Deutsch gemeinsame Verantwortung und Werte unterschiedlicher Kulturen und Gesellschaften zu betonen, auch wenn ich es mir nicht ernsthaft vorstellen kann, dass das typisch Deutsch sein soll (ich dachte immer, dass das Amerikaner auch gerne machen).
Typisch Deutsch ist nur meine Muttersprache und die erzeugt vielleicht jetzt in diesem Moment "Cultural dissonance", weil ich auf dieser Liste statt auf Englisch auf Deutsch schreibe.
Arnomane
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Infelizmente fui incapaz de entender o que você escreveu, mesmo recorrendo ao tradutor do Google de Alemão para Inglês. No entanto, parece que compreendo o que diz no final da mensagem.
Eu *não* estou falando sobre as diferenças culturais que as pessoas tem na sociedade. Veja, eu também estou escrevendo em um idioma que me é estrangeiro. Eu estou me referindo, e espero que você compreenda agora, a você aparentemente querer aplicar os níveis de exigência de conteúdo de artigos existentes na Wikipedia em alemão (que não permite artigos de uma linha ou menos) para a Wikipedia em Volapuk, que os aceita.
On Dec 28, 2007 4:26 PM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 18:58:25 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Please, first read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_dissonance .
Schade, dass es dir nur daran liegt über die kulturelle Schiene ein ernsthaftes Problem zu relativieren oder seine Existenz gar zu negieren.
Vielleicht ist es typisch Deutsch gemeinsame Verantwortung und Werte unterschiedlicher Kulturen und Gesellschaften zu betonen, auch wenn ich es mir nicht ernsthaft vorstellen kann, dass das typisch Deutsch sein soll (ich dachte immer, dass das Amerikaner auch gerne machen).
Typisch Deutsch ist nur meine Muttersprache und die erzeugt vielleicht jetzt in diesem Moment "Cultural dissonance", weil ich auf dieser Liste statt auf Englisch auf Deutsch schreibe.
Arnomane
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Are the folks writing in various non-English languages speaking to eachother, or past? I know I don't understand Serbian, German and Portuguese (if thats what they are).
On Dec 28, 2007 1:35 PM, Luiz Augusto lugusto@gmail.com wrote:
Infelizmente fui incapaz de entender o que você escreveu, mesmo recorrendo ao tradutor do Google de Alemão para Inglês. No entanto, parece que compreendo o que diz no final da mensagem.
Eu *não* estou falando sobre as diferenças culturais que as pessoas tem na sociedade. Veja, eu também estou escrevendo em um idioma que me é estrangeiro. Eu estou me referindo, e espero que você compreenda agora, a você aparentemente querer aplicar os níveis de exigência de conteúdo de artigos existentes na Wikipedia em alemão (que não permite artigos de uma linha ou menos) para a Wikipedia em Volapuk, que os aceita.
On Dec 28, 2007 4:26 PM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 18:58:25 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Please, first read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_dissonance .
Schade, dass es dir nur daran liegt über die kulturelle Schiene ein ernsthaftes Problem zu relativieren oder seine Existenz gar zu negieren.
Vielleicht ist es typisch Deutsch gemeinsame Verantwortung und Werte unterschiedlicher Kulturen und Gesellschaften zu betonen, auch wenn ich es mir nicht ernsthaft vorstellen kann, dass das typisch Deutsch sein soll (ich dachte immer, dass das Amerikaner auch gerne machen).
Typisch Deutsch ist nur meine Muttersprache und die erzeugt vielleicht jetzt in diesem Moment "Cultural dissonance", weil ich auf dieser Liste statt auf Englisch auf Deutsch schreibe.
Arnomane
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Actually, Portugese-English Google translator is very good :) German-English is not very useful.
And about Serbian -- I just expressed my resignation for switching to native language in the sensitive moment (knowing that de-en translators are very bad).
On 12/28/07, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Are the folks writing in various non-English languages speaking to eachother, or past? I know I don't understand Serbian, German and Portuguese (if thats what they are).
On Dec 28, 2007 1:35 PM, Luiz Augusto lugusto@gmail.com wrote:
Infelizmente fui incapaz de entender o que você escreveu, mesmo recorrendo ao tradutor do Google de Alemão para Inglês. No entanto, parece que compreendo o que diz no final da mensagem.
Eu *não* estou falando sobre as diferenças culturais que as pessoas tem na sociedade. Veja, eu também estou escrevendo em um idioma que me é estrangeiro. Eu estou me referindo, e espero que você compreenda agora, a você aparentemente querer aplicar os níveis de exigência de conteúdo de artigos existentes na Wikipedia em alemão (que não permite artigos de uma linha ou menos) para a Wikipedia em Volapuk, que os aceita.
On Dec 28, 2007 4:26 PM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 18:58:25 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Please, first read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_dissonance .
Schade, dass es dir nur daran liegt über die kulturelle Schiene ein ernsthaftes Problem zu relativieren oder seine Existenz gar zu negieren.
Vielleicht ist es typisch Deutsch gemeinsame Verantwortung und Werte unterschiedlicher Kulturen und Gesellschaften zu betonen, auch wenn ich es mir nicht ernsthaft vorstellen kann, dass das typisch Deutsch sein soll (ich dachte immer, dass das Amerikaner auch gerne machen).
Typisch Deutsch ist nur meine Muttersprache und die erzeugt vielleicht jetzt in diesem Moment "Cultural dissonance", weil ich auf dieser Liste statt auf Englisch auf Deutsch schreibe.
Arnomane
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On Dec 29, 2007 3:48 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Are the folks writing in various non-English languages speaking to eachother, or past? I know I don't understand Serbian, German and Portuguese (if thats what they are).
Esatto. Ma non ho capito perche quelli genti fanno un scerzo cosi ...
Wikimedia idmem suborksi?
-Gurch
Luiz Augusto wrote:
Infelizmente fui incapaz de entender o que você escreveu, mesmo recorrendo ao tradutor do Google de Alemão para Inglês. No entanto, parece que compreendo o que diz no final da mensagem.
Eu *não* estou falando sobre as diferenças culturais que as pessoas tem na sociedade. Veja, eu também estou escrevendo em um idioma que me é estrangeiro. Eu estou me referindo, e espero que você compreenda agora, a você aparentemente querer aplicar os níveis de exigência de conteúdo de artigos existentes na Wikipedia em alemão (que não permite artigos de uma linha ou menos) para a Wikipedia em Volapuk, que os aceita.
On Dec 28, 2007 4:26 PM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 18:58:25 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Please, first read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_dissonance .
Schade, dass es dir nur daran liegt über die kulturelle Schiene ein ernsthaftes Problem zu relativieren oder seine Existenz gar zu negieren.
Vielleicht ist es typisch Deutsch gemeinsame Verantwortung und Werte unterschiedlicher Kulturen und Gesellschaften zu betonen, auch wenn ich es mir nicht ernsthaft vorstellen kann, dass das typisch Deutsch sein soll (ich dachte immer, dass das Amerikaner auch gerne machen).
Typisch Deutsch ist nur meine Muttersprache und die erzeugt vielleicht jetzt in diesem Moment "Cultural dissonance", weil ich auf dieser Liste statt auf Englisch auf Deutsch schreibe.
Arnomane
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 19:35:41 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
[some portuguese text]
I knew this kind of answer will come. I hope you *now* know when using the term "Cultural dissonance" and when not. E.g. when people are not willing to use a common ground such as communicating in English on this list.
Denying a common ground disrupts every honest discussion (sorry that I needed to demonstrate it).
Thus denying a common ground of rules of all Wikipedias is exactly the same: Disrupting Wikipedia as a whole.
My German answer basically contained exactly these words.
Arnomane
P.S.: Brigitte: See above. Your assumption on "some pity for non-english people" wasn't my point ( I knew that someone will say this, too ;-).
--- Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
P.S.: Brigitte: See above. Your assumption on "some pity for non-english people" wasn't my point ( I knew that someone will say this, too ;-).
I would very much appreciate if you do not incorrectly quote me again. I have no wish to make this a personal issue between you and I, so if you have no intention of responding to my pertinent contributions on the issue please do not respond to me at all.
Birgitte SB
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multi-replying:
On Dec 28, 2007 5:02 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, Portugese-English Google translator is very good :) German-English is not very useful.
(...)
Not exactly, I've wrote in Simple Portuguese to make it machine-translatable :P
On Dec 28, 2007 6:16 PM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 19:35:41 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
[some portuguese text]
I knew this kind of answer will come. I hope you *now* know when using the term "Cultural dissonance" and when not. E.g. when people are not willing to use a common ground such as communicating in English on this list.
Denying a common ground disrupts every honest discussion (sorry that I needed to demonstrate it).
Oh god, de.wiki don't have the [[Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point]] {{essay}}?
Thus denying a common ground of rules of all Wikipedias is exactly the same:
Disrupting Wikipedia as a whole.
My German answer basically contained exactly these words.
Arnomane
P.S.: Brigitte: See above. Your assumption on "some pity for non-english people" wasn't my point ( I knew that someone will say this, too ;-).
Please go back on topic and answer this message:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-December/036664.html
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 21:43:26 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Oh god, de.wiki don't have the [[Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point]] {{essay}}?
Yo. I even had the idea quoting this but I thought this would be to fresh...
Arnomane
Of those that have been opposing you on this list I believe I am the only American. So appealling to shared American/German values and the hardship of writing in a non-native language will not earn much symphathy from the others. For my part I can only encourage you to work to educate vo.WP that they have a common responsibilty with the other Wikipedias. If you show some flexability on your part I imagine you can get the existing admins to delete to worst of the pages you are concerned about and set-up a plan for improving the rest. As someone that has acted in a similar role before, I do know this is possible.
Birgitte SB
--- Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 18:58:25 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
Please, first read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_dissonance .
Schade, dass es dir nur daran liegt über die kulturelle Schiene ein ernsthaftes Problem zu relativieren oder seine Existenz gar zu negieren.
Vielleicht ist es typisch Deutsch gemeinsame Verantwortung und Werte unterschiedlicher Kulturen und Gesellschaften zu betonen, auch wenn ich es mir nicht ernsthaft vorstellen kann, dass das typisch Deutsch sein soll (ich dachte immer, dass das Amerikaner auch gerne machen).
Typisch Deutsch ist nur meine Muttersprache und die erzeugt vielleicht jetzt in diesem Moment "Cultural dissonance", weil ich auf dieser Liste statt auf Englisch auf Deutsch schreibe.
Arnomane
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Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 19:57:46 schrieb Birgitte SB:
For my part I can only encourage you to work to educate vo.WP that they have a common responsibilty with the other Wikipedias.
Well I tried to do this. Maybe not long enough...
If you show some flexability on your part I imagine you can get the existing admins to delete to worst of the pages you are concerned about and set-up a plan for improving the rest.
I hoped people do actually read my invitation in the very top of my request:
"I therefore ask for adminship rights in Volapük Wikipedia ____or any other appropriate measure___ in order to remove the articles from Volapük Wikipedia, which were not written or substantially expanded by humans."
I even reiterated this in a discussion thread on this proposal in meta.
I cannot do more than asking people to brainstorm about efficient ways how to solve this whole mess if they even disagree that there is a huge mess.
How can I proceed with discussing point 2 if people even don't agree at point 1?
Arnomane
--- Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 19:57:46 schrieb Birgitte SB:
For my part I can only encourage you to work to
educate vo.WP that they have
a common responsibilty with the other Wikipedias.
Well I tried to do this. Maybe not long enough...
I don't know how long you have been working on this but here is yardstick from my experiences. I began seriously working on the en.WP policy of blocking non-latin usernames in Oct 2006 [1]. The issue was not completely settled by that community in favor of allowing editors to have non-latin usernames till January 2007 [2]. These things do take time.
If you show some flexability on your part I
imagine you can get the existing
admins to delete to worst of the pages you are
concerned about and set-up a
plan for improving the rest.
I hoped people do actually read my invitation in the very top of my request:
"I therefore ask for adminship rights in Volapük Wikipedia ____or any other appropriate measure___ in order to remove the articles from Volapük Wikipedia, which were not written or substantially expanded by humans."
I even reiterated this in a discussion thread on this proposal in meta.
I cannot do more than asking people to brainstorm about efficient ways how to solve this whole mess if they even disagree that there is a huge mess.
How can I proceed with discussing point 2 if people even don't agree at point 1?
It is generally hard to sucessfully brainstorm once voting is setup. All the same there does seem to be some brainstorming of alternate solutions going on within your proposal page. [3] [4] So I do not think it is so hopeless.
Birgitte SB
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Username/Archive_2#Protest [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bureaucrats%27_noticeboard/Archive_4#... [3]http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects%2... [4]http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects/R...
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Hoi, You are so full of your own righteousness and you only find fault in others; you do not acknowledge that you are going about it completely in the wrong way. Your opinion is what counts and the notion that an article without a sentence can be informative is impossible to you. You are of the opinion that the Interwiki system is undermined by what you indicate as the Volapuk "articles" but you provide no arguments for this opinion whatsoever; it is an article of faith, your faith.
When you state that there are unchangeable rules, you do not indicate what these rules might be. I know about NPOV, I know about freely licensed content and software but it escapes me what your "unchangeable" rule might be. In your mail you refer to an exchange with Smeira; it is completely unclear what is said, you do not provide an argument.
Daniel, you are going about it the wrong way. You assume and it makes an ass out of u and me. Your idea of what Wikipedia is is not shared, this is something that you recognise, but you then create a confrontation the only result are victims. What you should do is try to understand what the Volapuk Wikipedia, and for that matter similar projects, aims to achieve. Their strategy can easily be enhanced, become part of the solution and at the same time many of the more outrageous automatically created articles are likely to end up deleted. Get rid of this ridiculous notion of superiority we behave like wikimedians should by engaging each other in a positive way and fix the issues that exist.
Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 28, 2007 6:15 PM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 16:42:20 schrieb Luiz Augusto:
[...] Look the timestamp... I really love the worry that de.wikipedia (and de.projects in general) have to quality. It is great to have. But on de projects. Please avoid [[Cultural dissonance]]. Your community thinks something, others communities not necessarily share it.
Well I can "reveal" even more. I noticed this whole matter in a personal meeting of Wikipedians from Nuremberg in Ansbach on 21. December (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:N ürnberg/Berichte#21._Dezember_2007).
Among other topics we which interwikis are an advantage to our multilingual readers (look at the article [[Sun]] it is a challenge to find the interwikis in the languages you are interested in).
Thus we naturally discussed about Volapük Wikipedias "articles" and their resulting interwikis and our past efforts to solve he issue *together* with vo.wikipedians. One of our finding was that vo.wikipedians even consider masses of articles *without a single sentence* as articles and properly proposing some of those articles for deletion as vandalism (just today Smeira said in one case a little sorry combined with a further demand to follow some strange rules).
On independence of Wikipedia communities:
- A Wikipedia that generates interwikis to such contentless articles en
masse destroys one of our common strengths: Our cool interwiki system.
- Furthermore they challenge the reputation of the whole international
Wikipedia community to outsiders.
- And above all. There are some unchangeable rules in every Wikipedia
imposed by the Wikimedia Foundation. One of them is NPOV and vo.wikipedia in its current stage simply has no chance to get somewhere near NPOV because of their methods choosen.
So we all Wikipedias have mutal responsibility. If a Wikipedia is denies any responsibility for others and ignores (even temporarily) some unchangeable rules this community has to face the fact that they loose their independence until they are on common ground again.
I would never impose de.wikipedia's "rules" on others (heck even I do not agree with some of these "rules", see http://arnomane.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/relevanz-ist-irrelevant/), just the common ground with a differentiated request (keeping all non-minor articles of Volapük and moving it to the Incubator).
Arnomane
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Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 19:12:51 schrieb Gerard Meijssen:
[...] and the notion that an article without a sentence can be informative is impossible to you.
An encyclopedia article without a full sentence is indeed not able to be informative. I really don't want to discuss this trivial fact. Otherwise we will never get far.
. You are of the opinion that the Interwiki system is undermined by what you indicate as the Volapuk "articles" but you provide no arguments for this opinion whatsoever; it is an article of faith, your faith.
Hm. I honestly don't know what I should answer in order to make a concrete problem more concrete.
Maybe a single example (I know this one can be fixed quick, but there are thousands of articles with the same defect): http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9rin Looks like if the Smeirabot went a bit crazy and forgot to write any real sentence in there. But sure the interwikis from the other wikipedias to this "article" don't undermine the interwiki system at all. Sure...
What you should do is try to understand what the Volapuk Wikipedia, and for that matter similar projects, aims to achieve.
They (no *he*!) want to promote Volapük as a language and attrac new editors with this edit cheating. Thats it. Nothing more. Smeira admitted this. http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects%2...
This is also a typical comment of him. Full of cloudy lenghty sentences, wild questioning and other techniques just in order to make the debate diffuse.
Arnomane
So, let's try analyze a couple of random pages from Volapuk Wikipedia and its interwikis:
1) Bisigen, town in Germany [1]
Interwikis: - German - it has a lot of text with two images. The best article about Bisigen. - English - bot generated article. - Esperanto - bot generated article. - Italian - bot generated article. - Dutch - bot generated article. - Polish - bot generated article. - Portuguese - bot generated article. - Romanian - bot generated article. - Russian - bot generated article which I prefer: It took even an image (possible the only one in that time) from article in German [2].
2) Rossana, municipality in Piedmnot, Italy [3]
- German - bot generated article. - English - a good bot generated article. - Esperanto - bot generated article. - French - bot generated article. - Italian - a good bot generated article with addition in the history section. - Japanese - bot generated article. - Napolitan - bot generated article. - Dutch - bot generated article. - Polish - bot generated article. - Piedmontese - bot generated article. - Portuguese - bot generated article.
3) Santana do Livramento, city in Southern Brazil with 200.000 of inhabitants [4]
- Bishnupriya - looks like a *very* good bot generated article; at the first look I thought that it is not a bot generated article. - German - ... ups, sorry, nothing about a city with 200.000 of inhabitants in German. - English - maybe it *was* a bot generated article, but today it looks like a normal smaller article. - Spanish - maybe it was a bot generated article, but today it looks like a normal smaller article. - Dutch - doesn't like a bot generated article. - Norwegian (Bokmal) - bot generated article - Portuguese - the best article about Santana de Livramento. - Romanian - bot generated article.
4) Bayeux, a town in France [5]. It seems that this article should be fixed on Volapuk.
- Czech - bot generated article with some extra informations. - Danish - possibly bot generated article with a link to Commons. - German - possibly bot generated article with a lot of extra informations; also very important to me because I saw that it has IPA transcription of French (which is necessary for adding articles about French places on Serbian Wikipedia). - English - similar to German, more photos, less text. - Esperanto - bot generated article. - Spanish - similar to German, but smaller. - Finnish - maybe bot generated article with some extra informations. - French - of course, the best article; some recent featured articles from English Wikipedia are not so long. - Italian - bot generated article with some extra informations. - Japanese - possibly bot generated article with some extra informations. - Latin - bot generated article; like in the most of similar examples, it seems that someone added automatically an image from Commons. - Dutch - bot generated article with some extra informations. - Norwegian (Nynorsk) - bot generated article with some extra informations. - Norwegian (Bokmal) - bot generated article with some extra informations. - Polish - bot generated article with some extra informations. - Portuguese - bot generated article (like Latin). - Romanian - possibly bot generated article which expanded into a good article. - Russian - doesn't look like a bot generated article, but a smaller one. - Slovenian - bot generated article, but like in Romanian case, expanded into a much better article (while not so good like Romanian). - Serbian - (the first version of this article added my bot) - bot generated article with some extra informations. - Swedish - maybe a bot generated article with some extra informations. - Vietnamese - bot generated article. - Chinese - possibly a bot generated article.
5) Trappe, Maryland, USA [6]
This article is fully translated article (possibly Rambot's) from English Wikipedia. Article is generated, but it looks more then valid.
- English - possibly fully Rambot's work. - Dutch - not so narrative like English, but with an interesting add-on. - Portuguese - the same as Dutch version.
* * *
This was 5 of the first 6 articles on which i clicked (fifth was one more place in France, but by mistake I closed that window).
So, conclusions are:
- German Wikipedia also uses bots. Some of those articles on German Wikipedia are at the same level of quality. Which implies that contributors to German Wikipedia should think firstly about their project.
- Some of the articles from German Wikipedia were bot generated articles which evolved into much better articles. This implies that contributors from Greman Wikipedia which denies the same right (of evolving articles) to the contributors of other projects are doing that only because of their extremely high vanity: it seems that they don't want that other projects become at the same level of quality like German Wikipedia is.
- There are a lot of other projects which was and are adding articles by bots. The reason why the target is Volapuk Wikipedia instead of English, Italian, Polish, Dutch, even Chinese, Serbian, Napolitan... -- I may only guess. The most possible reason is that contributors of Volapuk Wikipedia has some personal problems with particular contributors of German Wikipedia.
[1] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisingen [2] - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B... [3] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossana [4] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santana_do_Livramento [5] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_(Frans%C3%A4n) [6] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappe_(Maryland)
On 12/28/07, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 19:12:51 schrieb Gerard Meijssen:
[...] and the notion that an article without a sentence can be informative is impossible to you.
An encyclopedia article without a full sentence is indeed not able to be informative. I really don't want to discuss this trivial fact. Otherwise we will never get far.
. You are of the opinion that the Interwiki system is undermined by what you indicate as the Volapuk "articles" but you provide no arguments for this opinion whatsoever; it is an article of faith, your faith.
Hm. I honestly don't know what I should answer in order to make a concrete problem more concrete.
Maybe a single example (I know this one can be fixed quick, but there are thousands of articles with the same defect): http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9rin Looks like if the Smeirabot went a bit crazy and forgot to write any real sentence in there. But sure the interwikis from the other wikipedias to this "article" don't undermine the interwiki system at all. Sure...
What you should do is try to understand what the Volapuk Wikipedia, and for that matter similar projects, aims to achieve.
They (no *he*!) want to promote Volapük as a language and attrac new editors with this edit cheating. Thats it. Nothing more. Smeira admitted this. http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects%2...
This is also a typical comment of him. Full of cloudy lenghty sentences, wild questioning and other techniques just in order to make the debate diffuse.
Arnomane
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Milos Rancic wrote:
- There are a lot of other projects which was and are adding articles
by bots. The reason why the target is Volapuk Wikipedia instead of English, Italian, Polish, Dutch, even Chinese, Serbian, Napolitan... -- I may only guess. The most possible reason is that contributors of Volapuk Wikipedia has some personal problems with particular contributors of German Wikipedia.
First, you seem to be assuming that all short stubs of the form "foo is a bar in baz" are "bot-generated". This is not true; I have written several such articles myself. There are contributors who have written thousands of such articles.
Second, stop throwing around nonsense about "personal problems". The difference is clear: Volapuk is a language with no native speakers and the wiki is 99.99% bot-generated *by a single person*, the other languages you list have millions of native speakers and the overwhelming majority of the content was added by hand, by thousands if not millions of contributors. Can you really not see the difference, and that it is not the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation to host people's personal projects for them?
-Gurch
Hoi, When one man makes a difference for something that is squarely within the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation, we should celebrate the man. When you want to improve methodologies, you want to improve methodologies never mind what project or what person(s).
There are bot generated articles that are stupid, there are bot generated that provide relevant information. This is what we should discuss. Attacking people for creating Free / Open Content is in my opinion one of the most counter productive things we can do.
Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 29, 2007 1:22 PM, Matthew Britton matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
- There are a lot of other projects which was and are adding articles
by bots. The reason why the target is Volapuk Wikipedia instead of English, Italian, Polish, Dutch, even Chinese, Serbian, Napolitan... -- I may only guess. The most possible reason is that contributors of Volapuk Wikipedia has some personal problems with particular contributors of German Wikipedia.
First, you seem to be assuming that all short stubs of the form "foo is a bar in baz" are "bot-generated". This is not true; I have written several such articles myself. There are contributors who have written thousands of such articles.
Second, stop throwing around nonsense about "personal problems". The difference is clear: Volapuk is a language with no native speakers and the wiki is 99.99% bot-generated *by a single person*, the other languages you list have millions of native speakers and the overwhelming majority of the content was added by hand, by thousands if not millions of contributors. Can you really not see the difference, and that it is not the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation to host people's personal projects for them?
-Gurch
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On 12/29/07, Matthew Britton matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
First, you seem to be assuming that all short stubs of the form "foo is a bar in baz" are "bot-generated". This is not true; I have written several such articles myself. There are contributors who have written thousands of such articles.
As well as Henning Schlottmann wrote:
- Rossana, municipality in Piedmnot, Italy [3]
- German - bot generated article.
wrong. This article is written (and started) by humans, we don't have bot generated content on de-WP.
I know that Germans are hard workers, but, if this [1] was *really* done by a human, don't assume that the rest of us are the same fanatics. Being awake for 29 hours and all of that time working on Wikipedia is too much for people who want to sleep a couple of hours per day.
BTW, Henning, I would like to think that you just didn't know for that.
Second, stop throwing around nonsense about "personal problems". The difference is clear: Volapuk is a language with no native speakers and the wiki is 99.99% bot-generated *by a single person*, the other languages you list have millions of native speakers and the overwhelming majority of the content was added by hand, by thousands if not millions of contributors. Can you really not see the difference, and that it is not the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation to host people's personal projects for them?
Please, stop with poetic hyperbolas. This is not a place for poetry. You may use your blog or some Wikia for that.
- 0.01% of 100.000 is 10. Please, read some statistics [2] before expressing such bold "facts". - "if not millions" is also a poetic nonsense. Please, read some statistics [2] before expressing such bold "facts".
Also, you are telling me that only cultures with "millions of speakers" deserves to have good source of informations? Because of respect toward hard times in the not so distant history of your country, I wouldn't say here the right word for your position. I am just really happy to see that no one from WM DE is involved in this.
(During writing this email, Henning's email came and even I wanted to move discussion out of this vicious circle, but after reading such ignorant content I am simply not able to do that now. Maybe I'll write some mail which is related to bot usage and seeking consensus all over the Wikimedian communities in the next couple of days.)
[1] - http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Beitr%C3%A4ge&offset=2... [2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Statistics
Milos Rancic wrote:
- "if not millions" is also a poetic nonsense. Please, read some
statistics [2] before expressing such bold "facts".
The English Wikipedia has more than six million registered user accounts. About 50 editions of Wikipedia have more than 1000 registered user accounts. Content has thus been added by thousands of users in about 50 cases, and millions in at least one case. In what way does this constitute "poetic nonsense"?
Also, you are telling me that only cultures with "millions of speakers" deserves to have good source of informations?
Not at all. One native speaker who has no knowledge of any other language would be enough reason to start a project in that language.
-Gurch
Hoi, It is and has always been accepted practice that a constructed language can apply for a Wikimedia Foundation project. In order to be given a conditional approval the language requires an ISO-639-3 code. With this approval it may demonstrate the linguistic validity by writing in the Incubator. With the localisation done and with a sufficient corpus final approval will be given by the Language committee. This corpus needs to be sufficient for us to ask someone to analyse the text and identify it for the language it is.
At the moment people supporting the Kotava language are working on the localisation for their language. They are awaiting the moment when they receive their ISO-639-3 code. This is likely to happen end of January 2008. The localisation will help them in any MediaWiki installation inside or outside the WMF.
The point of this all; it does not take a native speaker to start a project for a constructed language. What I have pointed out in the Language Committee for a long time now, is that it will take *more *effort to convince us that a constructed language deserves a WMF project. In this I often find that Incubator articles often do not provide the linguistic information that allows us to assess it properly (this is just to indicate that we do need convincing before we approve new languages).
Thanks. GerardM
On Dec 29, 2007 7:56 PM, Matthew Britton matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
- "if not millions" is also a poetic nonsense. Please, read some
statistics [2] before expressing such bold "facts".
The English Wikipedia has more than six million registered user accounts. About 50 editions of Wikipedia have more than 1000 registered user accounts. Content has thus been added by thousands of users in about 50 cases, and millions in at least one case. In what way does this constitute "poetic nonsense"?
Also, you are telling me that only cultures with "millions of speakers" deserves to have good source of informations?
Not at all. One native speaker who has no knowledge of any other language would be enough reason to start a project in that language.
-Gurch
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On 12/29/07, Matthew Britton matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
- "if not millions" is also a poetic nonsense. Please, read some
statistics [2] before expressing such bold "facts".
The English Wikipedia has more than six million registered user accounts. About 50 editions of Wikipedia have more than 1000 registered user accounts. Content has thus been added by thousands of users in about 50 cases, and millions in at least one case. In what way does this constitute "poetic nonsense"?
You said "if not millions of contributors". To be a contributor you have to make at least one contribution. English Wikipedia had 151934 such contributors at the end of October 2006. To have 2 millions (which is the smallest number of the meaning of plural form of the number millions) number of en.wp contributors had to be increased for around 1300%, while the biggest relative increase of new contributors between past Octobers was 400% (October 2001 - October 2002 and smaller in the next years).
I would really like to see millions of contributors on all projects or at least on English Wikipedia. But, we don't have them and the last thing which we need in serious discussions are poetic hyperbolas and mystifications.
Milos Rancic wrote:
On 12/29/07, Matthew Britton matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
- "if not millions" is also a poetic nonsense. Please, read some
statistics [2] before expressing such bold "facts".
The English Wikipedia has more than six million registered user accounts. About 50 editions of Wikipedia have more than 1000 registered user accounts. Content has thus been added by thousands of users in about 50 cases, and millions in at least one case. In what way does this constitute "poetic nonsense"?
You said "if not millions of contributors". To be a contributor you have to make at least one contribution. English Wikipedia had 151934 such contributors at the end of October 2006.
That figure is the number of registered user accounts which had made 10 or more contributions. So apart from being 14 months out of date, it ignores registered user accounts with fewer contributions, and, more importantly, completely ignores anonymous contributions. Dynamic and shared IP addresses make these very difficult to count, but what we do know is that it is they who account for most of the project's content.
-Gurch
Folks, I have a question:
What is Wikipedia?
Best, H.
on 12/29/07 1:57 PM, hillgentleman at hillgentleman.wikiversity@gmail.com wrote:
Folks, I have a question:
What is Wikipedia?
A Community of persons building and refining an Encyclopedia of knowledge - and trying to learn how to get along while doing it.
Marc Riddell
Milos Rancic wrote:
- Rossana, municipality in Piedmnot, Italy [3]
- German - bot generated article.
wrong. This article is written (and started) by humans, we don't have bot generated content on de-WP.
I know that Germans are hard workers, but, if this [1] was *really* done by a human, don't assume that the rest of us are the same fanatics. Being awake for 29 hours and all of that time working on Wikipedia is too much for people who want to sleep a couple of hours per day.
I stand corrected, it seems that on de-WP around 1000 articles on municipalities in Piemont, Italy were generated by a bot or at least bot-supported in early October 2005. Some of them were deleted, some even speedy as sub stubs, but most survived. I happened to register my account around that time and contributed occasionally as anon before. And I did not follow internals back then.
Ciao Henning
On it.wp we did not use the bots for creating the articles about the 8,000+ municipalities of Italy. Nevertheless, we created some templates and schemes to be applied for creating a consistent series of articles, that have been created "manually" by merging the data from the national statistical agency of Italy. Bots weren't yet running on it:wp in that time.
We thought the creating stubs for the whole bunch of the Italian municipalities would have turned out (and it did) into a big incentive for people to get acquainted with Wikipedia. The artcile about their municipality would have been a pleasant bait and a nice way to "break the ice" with Wikipedia. If those stubs had been bot-generated-stubs their effect would have been the same.
Once ended with the Italian municipalities, some users learnt how to use bots, so we relied on bots for creating the articles about the municipalities of Spain (8,000+) and France (32,000+). And with my huge satisfaction, few days later a non-Italian speaking user edited [[Afa (Corsica del sud)]]. AFAIK, no other countries have been handled that way on it:wp. The articles about the municipalities of Switzerland, Portugal, Slovenia, Estonia, Germany (yet partial), etc... are "hand-written".
As said before, bot-generated content is not evil "per se". A well-done and well-conceived bot-generated stub is like a seed or a bait. Of course, bot-generated content should remain the very minor part of a project's global content.
G.
A bit off topic,
On Jan 3, 2008 4:11 AM, Gianluigi Gamba gigamb@tin.it wrote:
On it.wp we did not use the bots for creating the articles about the 8,000+ municipalities of Italy. Nevertheless, we created some templates and schemes to be applied for creating a consistent series of articles, that have been created "manually" by merging the data from the national statistical agency of Italy. Bots weren't yet running on it:wp in that time.
People who participated in this thread, specially who submitted their opinions about bot-generation articles and its good and bad, may be interested in an on-going vote on a bot-generated article related proposal.
Meta:Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Proposal_for_Policy_on_overuse_of_bots_i...
Cheers,
Dear all,
I am quite concerned, if such a proposal (I did not read it all due to the longuish and imho too emotional discussions) gets 2/3 support will there then come people, probably without even knowing that particular language, into the wikis with bot articles and delete them overruling the community?
The link to this proposal is not published anywhere (only the meta-rc readers are aware of it), I have not seen it in any other ml or village pump. Imho this should be decided by communities only and the latter are just the ones who are not informed. Therefore I personally regard this proposal invalid.
Best regards, Elisabeth Anderl
Þann 2008/1/10, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com skrifaði:
A bit off topic,
On Jan 3, 2008 4:11 AM, Gianluigi Gamba gigamb@tin.it wrote:
On it.wp we did not use the bots for creating the articles about the 8,000+ municipalities of Italy. Nevertheless, we created some templates and schemes to be applied for creating a consistent series of articles, that have been created "manually" by merging the data from the national statistical agency of Italy. Bots weren't yet running on it:wp in that time.
People who participated in this thread, specially who submitted their opinions about bot-generation articles and its good and bad, may be interested in an on-going vote on a bot-generated article related proposal.
Meta:Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Proposal_for_Policy_on_overuse_of_bots_i...
Cheers,
KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
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Hoi, I have been so bold as to publish an alternative proposal. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Providing_information_when_there_is_little_or... Thanks, GerardM
On Jan 10, 2008 5:14 PM, Elisabeth Anderl spacebirdy@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
I am quite concerned, if such a proposal (I did not read it all due to the longuish and imho too emotional discussions) gets 2/3 support will there then come people, probably without even knowing that particular language, into the wikis with bot articles and delete them overruling the community?
The link to this proposal is not published anywhere (only the meta-rc readers are aware of it), I have not seen it in any other ml or village pump. Imho this should be decided by communities only and the latter are just the ones who are not informed. Therefore I personally regard this proposal invalid.
Best regards, Elisabeth Anderl
Þann 2008/1/10, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com skrifaði:
A bit off topic,
On Jan 3, 2008 4:11 AM, Gianluigi Gamba gigamb@tin.it wrote:
On it.wp we did not use the bots for creating the articles about the 8,000+ municipalities of Italy. Nevertheless, we created some templates and schemes to be applied for creating a consistent series of articles, that have been created "manually" by merging the data from the national statistical agency of Italy. Bots weren't yet running on it:wp in that time.
People who participated in this thread, specially who submitted their opinions about bot-generation articles and its good and bad, may be interested in an on-going vote on a bot-generated article related proposal.
Meta:Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Proposal_for_Policy_on_overuse_of_bots_i...
Cheers,
KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
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I have to say, Gerard, that's a pretty good summary of the situation.
-Dan On Jan 12, 2008, at 8:42 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, I have been so bold as to publish an alternative proposal. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Providing_information_when_there_is_little_or... Thanks, GerardM
On Jan 10, 2008 5:14 PM, Elisabeth Anderl spacebirdy@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
I am quite concerned, if such a proposal (I did not read it all due to the longuish and imho too emotional discussions) gets 2/3 support will there then come people, probably without even knowing that particular language, into the wikis with bot articles and delete them overruling the community?
The link to this proposal is not published anywhere (only the meta-rc readers are aware of it), I have not seen it in any other ml or village pump. Imho this should be decided by communities only and the latter are just the ones who are not informed. Therefore I personally regard this proposal invalid.
Best regards, Elisabeth Anderl
Þann 2008/1/10, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com skrifaði:
A bit off topic,
On Jan 3, 2008 4:11 AM, Gianluigi Gamba gigamb@tin.it wrote:
On it.wp we did not use the bots for creating the articles about the 8,000+ municipalities of Italy. Nevertheless, we created some templates and schemes to be applied for creating a consistent series of articles, that have been created "manually" by merging the data from the national statistical agency of Italy. Bots weren't yet running on it:wp in that time.
People who participated in this thread, specially who submitted their opinions about bot-generation articles and its good and bad, may be interested in an on-going vote on a bot-generated article related proposal.
Meta:Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Proposal_for_Policy_on_overuse_of_bots_i...
Cheers,
KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
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Milos Rancic wrote:
So, let's try analyze a couple of random pages from Volapuk Wikipedia and its interwikis:
- Rossana, municipality in Piedmnot, Italy [3]
- German - bot generated article.
wrong. This article is written (and started) by humans, we don't have bot generated content on de-WP.
- Bayeux, a town in France [5]. It seems that this article should be
fixed on Volapuk.
- Czech - bot generated article with some extra informations.
- Danish - possibly bot generated article with a link to Commons.
- German - possibly bot generated article with a lot of extra
informations; also very important to me because I saw that it has IPA transcription of French (which is necessary for adding articles about French places on Serbian Wikipedia).
written by many humans over the time, no bot here.
So, conclusions are:
- German Wikipedia also uses bots. Some of those articles on German
Wikipedia are at the same level of quality. Which implies that contributors to German Wikipedia should think firstly about their project.
flat wrong. No bots on de-WP.
- Some of the articles from German Wikipedia were bot generated
articles which evolved into much better articles. This implies that contributors from Greman Wikipedia which denies the same right (of evolving articles) to the contributors of other projects are doing that only because of their extremely high vanity: it seems that they don't want that other projects become at the same level of quality like German Wikipedia is.
flat wrong - no bot-generated articles on de-WP. All started by human authors, and expanded from there.
Ciao Henning
Hoi, When you take for instance an information box and all the labels are translated in a language, much systematic information can be provided without writing down one sentence. For languages with little or no information on the Internet it is great information that can be without peer.
When you cannot make things clear, when you cannot make it understood WHY the interwiki links system is under thread, you make it clear why it is an article of faith to you. The interwiki system has one purpose and one purpose only. It allows people to find information on the same subject in another language. The benefit of this system is that it allows our readers to find more or other information. It allows writers to find sources to information in another Wikipedia; it enables more information without a need for a lot of research for the projects that are poor in information.
Now YOU tell me how the interwiki is endangered.
The way you describe the activities of the vo.wikipedia, "cheating" is a clear indication of not assuming good faith. You also deny that it is legitimate to do whatever to grow the language. In many ways it is legitimate. When it is as you suggest a crime, to build a language, it is a victimless crime.
The opportunity for all of us is to ensure that genuine information is provided. This may mean that the QUALITY of the information can be improved but for me it does not mean at all that a single sentence is needed to provide genuine information. In order to move forward you have to accept this premise and subscribe to the notion that we are there to provide information and then you may help the execution of a strategy.
Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 28, 2007 10:23 PM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 19:12:51 schrieb Gerard Meijssen:
[...] and the notion that an article without a sentence can be informative is impossible to you.
An encyclopedia article without a full sentence is indeed not able to be informative. I really don't want to discuss this trivial fact. Otherwise we will never get far.
. You are of the opinion that the Interwiki system is undermined by what
you
indicate as the Volapuk "articles" but you provide no arguments for this opinion whatsoever; it is an article of faith, your faith.
Hm. I honestly don't know what I should answer in order to make a concrete problem more concrete.
Maybe a single example (I know this one can be fixed quick, but there are thousands of articles with the same defect): http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9rin Looks like if the Smeirabot went a bit crazy and forgot to write any real sentence in there. But sure the interwikis from the other wikipedias to this "article" don't undermine the interwiki system at all. Sure...
What you should do is try to understand what the Volapuk Wikipedia, and for that matter similar projects, aims to
achieve.
They (no *he*!) want to promote Volapük as a language and attrac new editors with this edit cheating. Thats it. Nothing more. Smeira admitted this.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects%2...
This is also a typical comment of him. Full of cloudy lenghty sentences, wild questioning and other techniques just in order to make the debate diffuse.
Arnomane
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On Thursday 27 December 2007 21:42, Milos Rancic wrote:
On 12/27/07, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
This is *only* about the way choosen to create the Volapük Wikipedia.
Besides my comment on Meta: Generated articles are more then valid (please, add sources in all articles!). I may see that one or combination of the next may be the reasons for demanding such nonsense action: (1) someone is afraid with so much articles, (2) someone doesn't like to see that a small community is able to make the same number of articles as big ones, (3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions. In all cases, please go firstly to the English, French, Italian and Polish Wikipedias.
I am not sure if this is the right place and time, but I am using the opportunity to advertise what I believe is the solution for problems of this kind. It's called Data Extension and could be seen at http://www.rastko.net/~nikola/ .
With it, it is possible to effectively have articles about various topics similar to bot-generated articles without them actually being in the database. It is possible to kickstart a small Wikipedia by translating a handful of templates. And, it is possible to further expand the articles, as it is with bot generated articles.
Is someone interested to work with me in order to improve it further? I'd add that Serbian Wikipedian community might be willing to test it.
(And, if my opinion is needed: I don't think that Volapuk Wikipedia should be closed. Yes, only a few speakers, but a historically important conlang.)
Am Samstag, 29. Dezember 2007 09:40:46 schrieb Nikola Smolenski:
I am not sure if this is the right place and time, but I am using the opportunity to advertise what I believe is the solution for problems of this kind. It's called Data Extension and could be seen at http://www.rastko.net/~nikola/ .
With it, it is possible to effectively have articles about various topics similar to bot-generated articles without them actually being in the database. It is possible to kickstart a small Wikipedia by translating a handful of templates. And, it is possible to further expand the articles, as it is with bot generated articles.
I like people "just do things" but please do not "kickstart" small Wikipedias with template translation. It is that: A painfull kick in the ... of the people.
I simply don't want to sit in the same boat with people that think a bot generated article is useful. I don't want to sit in the same boat with projects that don't have the patience to grow sustainable.
If further small Wikipedias are starting to cheat like vo.wp I can guarantee you that there will be a split of Wikipedias.
Arnomane
Hoi, You are making your problem the problem of others.You have to recognize that your ideas are not universally shared. You also do not find anywhere substantiation of your point of view. The aim of our projects is to provide information, as long as this is what they do, we can agree that we want to have a high standard everywhere and we can all work on improving this standard.
PS Thank you for nominating the thread of Wikipedia for this week. Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 29, 2007 11:51 AM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Samstag, 29. Dezember 2007 09:40:46 schrieb Nikola Smolenski:
I am not sure if this is the right place and time, but I am using the opportunity to advertise what I believe is the solution for problems of this kind. It's called Data Extension and could be seen at http://www.rastko.net/~nikola/ http://www.rastko.net/%7Enikola/ .
With it, it is possible to effectively have articles about various
topics
similar to bot-generated articles without them actually being in the database. It is possible to kickstart a small Wikipedia by translating a handful of templates. And, it is possible to further expand the
articles,
as it is with bot generated articles.
I like people "just do things" but please do not "kickstart" small Wikipedias with template translation. It is that: A painfull kick in the ... of the people.
I simply don't want to sit in the same boat with people that think a bot generated article is useful. I don't want to sit in the same boat with projects that don't have the patience to grow sustainable.
If further small Wikipedias are starting to cheat like vo.wp I can guarantee you that there will be a split of Wikipedias.
Arnomane
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Daniel Arnold wrote:
Am Samstag, 29. Dezember 2007 09:40:46 schrieb Nikola Smolenski:
With it, it is possible to effectively have articles about various topics similar to bot-generated articles without them actually being in the database. It is possible to kickstart a small Wikipedia by translating a handful of templates. And, it is possible to further expand the articles, as it is with bot generated articles.
I like people "just do things" but please do not "kickstart" small Wikipedias with template translation. It is that: A painfull kick in the ... of the people.
I simply don't want to sit in the same boat with people that think a bot generated article is useful. I don't want to sit in the same boat with projects that don't have the patience to grow sustainable.
If further small Wikipedias are starting to cheat like vo.wp I can guarantee you that there will be a split of Wikipedias.
I would disagree with rejecting all bot generated articles, within pre-defined circumstances they can be very useful. There were a lot of complaints when RamBot was putting up his small town articles, but they all managed to survive because there is a big enough community to review the material.
With a small community, a single tech savvy person using a bot can too easily overwhelm the operational capacity of that community
Ec
On Saturday 29 December 2007 11:51, Daniel Arnold wrote:
I simply don't want to sit in the same boat with people that think a bot generated article is useful. I don't want to sit in the same boat with
How about people who know that a bot generated article is useful?
One of Serbian Wikipedians works in Telecom Serbia ( http://www.telekom.yu ). Occasionally, they have to work with a phone central in some unknown village. So, they search for the placename on Wikipedia so that they could see where that place is exactly and other basic info.
Yes, they could find the same information by querying the database on the website of the Institute of Statistics of Serbia, but using Wikipedia is more convenient for them.
There are many articles whose apperance are bot generated but actually written with human hands.
I think I sometimes to have translated those articles - mainly on geographic locations - so even if the original were bot-generated, my translations ought not to be called so.
As for those articles ... in the beginning I was very skeptical. But as Nikola said people sometimes seek desperately for information which is rarely available. It is unlikely happening on major topics but rather minor topics. For example very small US towns or so.
Japanese Wikipedia provides articles on every - literally every - train stations. They even have some bus stop articles ('''XXX Bus Stop''' is a bus stop on XX High Way. yadda yadda). And they look like bot-generated. Personally I haven't seen them useful but - for fairness I have heard compliments about those articles exactly. A friend of mine said to me "Wikipedia is really useful. It tells me which station has how many platforms and how they each are connected. I check it whenever I need to make a business trip. It's nice to know where and how I should make a transit."
Bot generated contents per se are not evil. The recent problem is, as Ec said, if it overwhelms the existing community primarily and if such a project make any bad impact to the project as a whole, not this particular project but Wikimedia project as a whole.
On Dec 30, 2007 6:48 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Saturday 29 December 2007 11:51, Daniel Arnold wrote:
I simply don't want to sit in the same boat with people that think a bot generated article is useful. I don't want to sit in the same boat with
How about people who know that a bot generated article is useful?
One of Serbian Wikipedians works in Telecom Serbia ( http://www.telekom.yu ). Occasionally, they have to work with a phone central in some unknown village. So, they search for the placename on Wikipedia so that they could see where that place is exactly and other basic info.
Yes, they could find the same information by querying the database on the website of the Institute of Statistics of Serbia, but using Wikipedia is more convenient for them.
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The problem is not bot-generated articles. The problem is that one user on the Volapuk Wikipedia, by his own admission, deliberately created tens of thousands of articles by bot purely to raise Volapuk's listing on the front page of www.wikipedia.org. He was not doing this to write a useful Wikipedia in any way, but (again by his own admission) to publicise the Volapuk constructed language.
He acted in bad faith; the question is then how to deal with this act of bad faith and not allow it to be rewarded.
- d.
Hoi, When Wikipedia is measured by its numbers and the only numbers are the number of articles it is a poor project indeed. This is a fact that all Wikipedians know. It is equally well known that the projects with the highest numbers of editors tend to have the highest standards of quality. Volapük has some bright people that want to put their language on the map. And in this battle of "mine is bigger then yours" they have offended some by being bigger. Offend, because the sensibilities of perceived quality and numbers do not go together in the traditional way. Offend because they are a Wikipedia as well.
When you state "bad faith", whose faith is it you are talking about? You believe that Wikipedia is in a certain way and to some extend it is. Now that you find that it can be different, you have to accept that we do not have a "global arbitration committee". This is not the first time that there has been a need for such a body. So far we have been happy to state that each community is a rule to themselves within certain core values. So far we have been happy to ignore what happens in the fringes. But this time the audacity of a constructed language and the technology of the Internet is found offensive.
When people state that the German, the English Wikipedia are not constructed by bots, I have only to point to the many bots that are active and the great work that they do. They do make a difference and, that is good. When we want to restrict how bots are used, when we want to restrict the autonomy of communities we have to stop being insular. It is of no less bad faith when people, projects are vilified when there is nothing that binds the projects in the different languages together. When there is little or no consideration of how to do Wiktionaries, Wikipedias in a way that makes sense for all the Wiktionaries, Wikipedias there is no basis that you can object.
When you consider what makes sense for a Wikipedia, you will agree that three groups of subjects get you the most traffic; sex, sport and news. All the cities of Italy, France or the United States are just dead information. It is there for those who want it on the vo.wikipedia but it will not get them traffic. This whole stupid affair gets them traffic. It is just sad that it has to be stuff like http://vo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Auguste_Kerckhoffs&diff=next&a... prevents the vo.wikipedia from doing anything useful.
I do say that all the vandals on the vo.wikipedia need to be blocked on all Wikimedia Foundation projects for a week at least because they show bad faith and they should know better. In the mean time, lets get something positive out of this and stop thinking in terms of "mine is bigger then yours" and look for better metrics like traffic, quality of the localisation for a language. Let us come up with ways in which we can do better for the underresourced languages.
Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 30, 2007 6:01 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is not bot-generated articles. The problem is that one user on the Volapuk Wikipedia, by his own admission, deliberately created tens of thousands of articles by bot purely to raise Volapuk's listing on the front page of www.wikipedia.org. He was not doing this to write a useful Wikipedia in any way, but (again by his own admission) to publicise the Volapuk constructed language.
He acted in bad faith; the question is then how to deal with this act of bad faith and not allow it to be rewarded.
- d.
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On Dec 31, 2007 2:01 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is not bot-generated articles. The problem is that one user on the Volapuk Wikipedia, by his own admission, deliberately created tens of thousands of articles by bot purely to raise Volapuk's listing on the front page of www.wikipedia.org. He was not doing this to write a useful Wikipedia in any way, but (again by his own admission) to publicise the Volapuk constructed language.
He acted in bad faith; the question is then how to deal with this act of bad faith and not allow it to be rewarded.
I think it was already raised on this thread - what is the demerit if we deal with it like Klingon or Toki Pona? Or sep11 wiki? Are Wikia or other websites willing to host it instead of Wikimedia? Through this discussion I tend to fail the significance why Wikimedia Foundation take care of this dying conlang, specially its purpose doesn't look like giving knowledge itself but promoting the existence of the language. I don't think it a good idea to delete it entirely - but moving it to another place is a different matter and not elimination.
On 12/30/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is not bot-generated articles. The problem is that one user on the Volapuk Wikipedia, by his own admission, deliberately created tens of thousands of articles by bot purely to raise Volapuk's listing on the front page of www.wikipedia.org. He was not doing this to write a useful Wikipedia in any way, but (again by his own admission) to publicise the Volapuk constructed language.
He acted in bad faith; the question is then how to deal with this act of bad faith and not allow it to be rewarded.
David, participating in any competition is a matter of vanity. And www.wikipedia.org supports that vanity. And while expressing of vanity is constructive, I don't have anything against it -- knowing that it is a socially supported behavior.
I simply don't want to sit in the same boat with people that think a bot generated article is useful. I don't want to sit in the same boat with projects that don't have the patience to grow sustainable.
It's this kind of arrogance among members of the larger wikipedias that the members of the smaller projects are most angry with. en.wp and de.wp are using bot translated articles. Many projects are adopting features of other projects: from templates, to translations, to formatting, etc. en.wikibooks "stole" template designs from en.wikipedia. en.wikiversity "stole" some formatting ideas from it.wikipedia. The ability for one project to reuse the results of another project is not any kind of bad thing, but is instead a way that we should be working together on a regular basis. Using material from one project, be it text content or templates, or infrastructure, or whatever, is a good thing and should be encouraged. en.wikipedia got most of it's early content by scavenging from Nupedia.
None of this is "cheating" because the method is not what's important. The real important part is the collection and distribution of free information. Stomping around and threatening some kind of fork or whatever because you don't like the methods of another community to achieve our goals is counterproductive.
--Andrew Whitworth
On 30/12/2007, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
None of this is "cheating" because the method is not what's important. The real important part is the collection and distribution of free information. Stomping around and threatening some kind of fork or whatever because you don't like the methods of another community to achieve our goals is counterproductive.
Indeed. The problem with the Volapuk Wikipedia as it stands is that this was *not* done to achieve our goals, but as a sort of spam. What was the reason for tolerating this again?
- d.
None of this is "cheating" because the method is not what's important. The real important part is the collection and distribution of free information. Stomping around and threatening some kind of fork or whatever because you don't like the methods of another community to achieve our goals is counterproductive.
Indeed. The problem with the Volapuk Wikipedia as it stands is that this was *not* done to achieve our goals, but as a sort of spam. What was the reason for tolerating this again?
I guess I'm not understanding the difference you are using here. The bot is translating text from one wikipedia for use in another wikipedia, so are you saying that wikipedia content itself is "spam"? Or are you asserting (as I assume you are) that this user was trying to artificially increase the vo.wikipedia article count to try and lend undue credence to the Volapuk language?
A simple assumption of good faith here should prevent us from assuming that any of these actions are nefarious, especially if they are producing acceptable articles. Assuming good faith would also breed tolerance, because we would assume that the articles were being created in furtherance of our goals, not as some sort of underhanded marketing scheme for a dead conlang.
--Andrew Whitworth
On 30/12/2007, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
I guess I'm not understanding the difference you are using here. The bot is translating text from one wikipedia for use in another wikipedia, so are you saying that wikipedia content itself is "spam"? Or are you asserting (as I assume you are) that this user was trying to artificially increase the vo.wikipedia article count to try and lend undue credence to the Volapuk language?
That is precisely what he said he was doing.
A simple assumption of good faith here should prevent us from assuming that any of these actions are nefarious, especially if they are producing acceptable articles. Assuming good faith would also breed tolerance, because we would assume that the articles were being created in furtherance of our goals, not as some sort of underhanded marketing scheme for a dead conlang.
Except that he said that was what he was doing. I'm not going to "assume good faith" in the face of a direct statement from the person about what they're doing.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Vol...
- d.
You should have warned people to get a *big* bag of popcorn before looking at that anguished discussion. Every single vote to close the wiki is either questioned, the poster told their criticism equally applies to some other language like Esperanto, or that fact that a few percent of another Wiki's articles being bot generated is used to try and dismiss the vote.
It must be pretty bad when people are suggesting vo:* be added to the spam blacklist on other projects. Consensus? Meet Window... We're on the 27th floor.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard Sent: 30 December 2007 23:26 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] A dangerous precedent
On 30/12/2007, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
I guess I'm not understanding the difference you are using here. The bot is translating text from one wikipedia for use in another wikipedia, so are you saying that wikipedia content itself is "spam"? Or are you asserting (as I assume you are) that this user was trying to artificially increase the vo.wikipedia article count to try and lend undue credence to the Volapuk language?
That is precisely what he said he was doing.
A simple assumption of good faith here should prevent us from assuming that any of these actions are nefarious, especially if they are producing acceptable articles. Assuming good faith would also breed tolerance, because we would assume that the articles were being created in furtherance of our goals, not as some sort of underhanded marketing scheme for a dead conlang.
Except that he said that was what he was doing. I'm not going to "assume good faith" in the face of a direct statement from the person about what they're doing.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Vol ap%C3%BCk_Wikipedia
- d.
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
What difference does it make, out of true curiosity, how the articles were added? I mean, if I ran 100,000 articles through a translator and posted them all at once - or translated them myself, and posted them all at once - does it really matter if the content is remotely useful? I really think the focus here should be - do we need a Volapuk wikipedia at all? Article content is the point of a Wikipedia, and if the .vo Wikipedia is going to exist then article content (even marginal content in need of improvement) is better than none. I keep reading that he 'cheated' - what does that even mean in this context, cheated against who? Are the projects competing with eachother, or working together to the same goal?
On 12/31/07, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
cheated against who? Are the projects competing with eachother, or working together to the same goal?
This is extremely important question. It is obvious that between a very significant minority and majority of WM contributors are thinking about their project in the light of national pride.
Until this incident, I was always used German WM community as a rare positive example. However, it is very sad to see that things are changing there, too. Of course, I may give a number of negative examples, but it is not constructive.
WM community is not (yet?) able to remove those problems as they are a part of much wider relations between humans. But, we may find a way how to deal with them. (Any idea?)
But, we shouldn't lie ourselves that such things are not exist. Actually, in a lot of examples, they are a very important why some Wikipedia exists or why some Wikipedia is good.
Define spam.
Best, H.
On 30/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/12/2007, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
None of this is "cheating" because the method is not what's important. The real important part is the collection and distribution of free information. Stomping around and threatening some kind of fork or whatever because you don't like the methods of another community to achieve our goals is counterproductive.
Indeed. The problem with the Volapuk Wikipedia as it stands is that this was *not* done to achieve our goals, but as a sort of spam. What was the reason for tolerating this again?
- d.
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Am Sonntag, 30. Dezember 2007 22:44:14 schrieb Andrew Whitworth:
that the members of the smaller projects are most angry with. en.wp and de.wp are using bot translated articles.
WRONG PLAIN WRONG!
Repeat: de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles.
So and now spread some other lies. Thank you.
Arnomane
Daniel Arnold wrote:
Am Sonntag, 30. Dezember 2007 22:44:14 schrieb Andrew Whitworth:
that the members of the smaller projects are most angry with. en.wp and de.wp are using bot translated articles.
WRONG PLAIN WRONG!
Repeat: de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles.
So and now spread some other lies. Thank you.
Arnomane
Wow, you've sure got a lot of bent up angry going on, don't you? I'm sure it was simple mistake, there is no need to call somebody a liar.
ILovePlankton
Iloveplankton wrote:
Wow, you've sure got a lot of bent up angry going on, don't you? I'm sure it was simple mistake, there is no need to call somebody a liar.
Be careful what you say... or Ze German VikiPedia Panzer Division will roll into your country.
I'm in Belgium... We surrender!
Anyone else care to share stereotypical jokes at this time of year? A shot of Laphroaig for every one that makes me laugh.
Brian McNeil
Am Montag, 31. Dezember 2007 22:25:26 schrieb iloveplankton:
Wow, you've sure got a lot of bent up angry going on, don't you? I'm sure it was simple mistake, there is no need to call somebody a liar.
I wouldn't have been so angry if this were the first time. Actually several people pointed out this fact on this very list even in this thread.
So if someone still just says that de.wikipedia has bot generated articles cause he can't imagine that nearly 690'000 articles can be created otherwise he acted in bad faith or at least should read first and then write but not the other way round.
Arnomane
Daniel Arnold wrote:
Am Montag, 31. Dezember 2007 22:25:26 schrieb iloveplankton:
Wow, you've sure got a lot of bent up angry going on, don't you? I'm sure it was simple mistake, there is no need to call somebody a liar.
I wouldn't have been so angry if this were the first time. Actually several people pointed out this fact on this very list even in this thread.
So if someone still just says that de.wikipedia has bot generated articles cause he can't imagine that nearly 690'000 articles can be created otherwise he acted in bad faith or at least should read first and then write but not the other way round.
Arnomane
Ok, so maybe it wasn't a simple mistake. Ignore my ignorance.
ILovePlankton
How is it that you can be so certain that out of 690,000 articles, that none of them have been bot-generated? Are you positive? Have you seen all 690,000?
The declaration that de.wikipedia has absolutely 0 bot-generated articles, or 0 articles that were originally bot-generated and have since been human-edited seems overly pretentious to me. A better display of good faith would be for you to assume that possibility that at some point a bot has created an article on de.wp. It's certainly not an unreasonable assumption by any stretch.
--Andrew Whitworth
On Jan 1, 2008 11:54 AM, Daniel Arnold arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Am Montag, 31. Dezember 2007 22:25:26 schrieb iloveplankton:
Wow, you've sure got a lot of bent up angry going on, don't you? I'm sure it was simple mistake, there is no need to call somebody a liar.
I wouldn't have been so angry if this were the first time. Actually several people pointed out this fact on this very list even in this thread.
So if someone still just says that de.wikipedia has bot generated articles cause he can't imagine that nearly 690'000 articles can be created otherwise he acted in bad faith or at least should read first and then write but not the other way round.
Arnomane
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
IF that is true then so be it. But do not go around and force your ideals upon others.
Waerth
Am Sonntag, 30. Dezember 2007 22:44:14 schrieb Andrew Whitworth:
that the members of the smaller projects are most angry with. en.wp and de.wp are using bot translated articles.
WRONG PLAIN WRONG!
Repeat: de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles.
So and now spread some other lies. Thank you.
Arnomane
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Can we all be nice for a bit?
-Dan
On 1/1/08, Waerth waerth@asianet.co.th wrote:
IF that is true then so be it. But do not go around and force your ideals upon others.
Waerth
Am Sonntag, 30. Dezember 2007 22:44:14 schrieb Andrew Whitworth:
that the members of the smaller projects are most angry with. en.wp and de.wp are using bot translated articles.
WRONG PLAIN WRONG!
Repeat: de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles. de.wikipedia does not have bot generated articles.
So and now spread some other lies. Thank you.
Arnomane
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hi guys,
The question of whether or not the Volap̈uk Wikipedia should be cleaned up, moved, deleted, or whatnot is obviously one a lot of people seem to care about. As I've stated before, however—and perhaps I was being too subtle, though I can't really imagine how—this is absolutely not something that should be decided on Foundation-l. (I really don't think it's appropriate for any mailing list, but that's for other list administrators to decide.)
There is currently a proposal on meta for a specific action regarding vowiki, which is what precipitated this thread. If you feel strongly about this issue, please vote now. If you have any insightful comments to make, please make them on the appropriate wiki page.
If you want to discuss, in general, the criteria for creating a wiki for Wikipedia in another language, or whether bot-generated articles are fine for Wikipedia in a particular language, or anything else which can be broadly interpreted as relevant to the operation of the Wikimedia Foundation, please create a separate thread for civil discussion on that point alone. Many good points have been made in this thread, but in this context little good will come of them, if for no other reason than that most sensible people have stopped reading it by now.
tl;dr /thread
Austin
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