Hello,
Today I read on a WMDE driven website:
"»Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der das gesamte Wissen der Menschheit jedem frei zugänglich ist. Das ist unser Ziel.« Jimmy Wales"
(Imagine a world in which the entire knowledge of mankind is freely accessible to everyone. That is our goal.)
I never read that in English. Jimmy Wales actually said: "... the sum of all human knowledge".
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
And I think that there is a huge difference between "the sum of all..." and "all...". By the way, the traditional encyclopedias described themselves by "the sum of all..."
But a number of Wikimedia national organizations seem to have difficulties with Jimmy's phrase. They 'translate' it to "all..." I did not succeed, for example, in explaining to my own national organization why it is wrong what we have on our business cards.
Am I the only one seeing a problem here?
Kind regards Ziko
I'm afraid it sounds a bit OT, but I'm serious, really.
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 11:25 PM, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com wrote:
Hello,
Today I read on a WMDE driven website:
"»Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der das gesamte Wissen der Menschheit jedem frei zugänglich ist. Das ist unser Ziel.« Jimmy Wales"
(Imagine a world in which the entire knowledge of mankind is freely accessible to everyone. That is our goal.)
I never read that in English. Jimmy Wales actually said: "... the sum of all human knowledge".
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
And I think that there is a huge difference between "the sum of all..." and "all...". By the way, the traditional encyclopedias described themselves by "the sum of all..."
But a number of Wikimedia national organizations seem to have difficulties with Jimmy's phrase. They 'translate' it to "all..." I did not succeed, for example, in explaining to my own national organization why it is wrong what we have on our business cards.
Gibt uns hier Problem? Welche Art?
Fast zwanzig Jahren war es mir Raetzel, ob Verschendung gibt zwischen "das gesammte Werk" (oder die gesaemmte Werken) und "die Sammelung Werkes" und "die saemmtliches Werken". Keine Woerterbueche haben mich geholfen. Auf Japanisch liegt hier nur ein Wort so dass wir es benutzen, aber wenn Du so nett waere, bitte mal mir Erklaerungen, koenntest Du wirklich floh machen.
MhG,
Am I the only one seeing a problem here?
Kind regards Ziko
-- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/
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And I think that there is a huge difference between "the sum of all..." and "all...". By the way, the traditional encyclopedias described themselves by "the sum of all..."
Can you explain this perceived difference? Is the whole more than the sum of its parts, so that the German claim is too ambitious for you, or is it less than the sum of its parts, making the German claim too modest?
I think that the phrase meaning refered to Wikipedia is "the sum of all human knowledge which is notable and encyclopedic".
Not ALL, ALL, ALL human knowledge. MySpace discarded.
2011/9/16 Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com
Hello,
Today I read on a WMDE driven website:
"»Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der das gesamte Wissen der Menschheit jedem frei zugänglich ist. Das ist unser Ziel.« Jimmy Wales"
(Imagine a world in which the entire knowledge of mankind is freely accessible to everyone. That is our goal.)
I never read that in English. Jimmy Wales actually said: "... the sum of all human knowledge".
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
And I think that there is a huge difference between "the sum of all..." and "all...". By the way, the traditional encyclopedias described themselves by "the sum of all..."
But a number of Wikimedia national organizations seem to have difficulties with Jimmy's phrase. They 'translate' it to "all..." I did not succeed, for example, in explaining to my own national organization why it is wrong what we have on our business cards.
Am I the only one seeing a problem here?
Kind regards Ziko
-- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Don't worry emijrp, I guess no German may hit your idea - MySpace things may be unproblematic omitted in convention: For knowing mere facts, they don't use this word - it's Kennen or Kenntnis. Not Wissen.
I'd like to add, while German is not my mother tongue, in the German language "Wissen" is not totally equal to English "knowledge". In German terminology this word has more systematic, scientific and metaphysical nuances. Much nearer to science in English - in German science is Wissenschaft, a derivation of "Wissen".
Wissen has been historically a very rigid notion in German so that once it was argued soulless object (i.e. human) or a sum of certain facts could be included into "Wissen". For another example, Hegel even argued anatomy didn't worth to be called science (Wissenschaft) since it was a mere sum of empirical fact in Vorrede of Phaenomenologie des Geistes. MySpace things may be rejected by all German speakers with their version, I expect.
On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 4:01 AM, emijrp emijrp@gmail.com wrote:
I think that the phrase meaning refered to Wikipedia is "the sum of all human knowledge which is notable and encyclopedic".
Not ALL, ALL, ALL human knowledge. MySpace discarded.
2011/9/16 Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com
Hello,
Today I read on a WMDE driven website:
"»Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der das gesamte Wissen der Menschheit jedem frei zugänglich ist. Das ist unser Ziel.« Jimmy Wales"
(Imagine a world in which the entire knowledge of mankind is freely accessible to everyone. That is our goal.)
I never read that in English. Jimmy Wales actually said: "... the sum of all human knowledge".
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
And I think that there is a huge difference between "the sum of all..." and "all...". By the way, the traditional encyclopedias described themselves by "the sum of all..."
But a number of Wikimedia national organizations seem to have difficulties with Jimmy's phrase. They 'translate' it to "all..." I did not succeed, for example, in explaining to my own national organization why it is wrong what we have on our business cards.
Am I the only one seeing a problem here?
Kind regards Ziko
-- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:01 PM, emijrp emijrp@gmail.com wrote:
I think that the phrase meaning refered to Wikipedia is "the sum of all human knowledge which is notable and encyclopedic".
Not ALL, ALL, ALL human knowledge. MySpace discarded.
When you look back to when that quote was issued (at least 2004), I think I tend to see it as broader and more aspirational. Wikipedia was already the biggest project, but we still imagined ourselves making a statement with Wikinews and Wiktionary and everything else. Back in the day, I can certainly imagine Wikimedia wanting to encompass all forms of human knowledge, including projects going far beyond the confines of what we now see as notable and encyclopedic. We have retreated from that quite a lot. Even within Wikipedia our notions of what was acceptable and what was not were far more fluid.
The projects have accomplished an incredible amount, and we should all be very proud and amazed at what we have done. However, I do think we have lost some of that early dream. Back in the day, it was easy to imagine that we would eventually encompass all human knowledge, and now we tend to draw our goals more narrowly. In part, I think our perceptions of that famous quote have been evolving alongside our perceptions of what Wikimedia and Wikipedia have become.
-Robert Rohde
Hi;
Perhaps, you may want to help me compiling information about this topic and improving the estimate.[1]
There is a false sensation about Wikipedia being almost complete. In the other hand, projects like WikiSource are in their infance, for example, Internet Archive hosts about 3 million public domain books,[2] how many of them are available at WikiSource?
This project compile images for every square kilometre in Britain.[3] We can use this idea for Commons, and take thousands of millions of photos of all the world. : )
Regards, emijrp
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Emijrp/All_human_knowledge [2] http://www.archive.org/details/texts [3] http://www.geograph.org.uk/
2011/9/16 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:01 PM, emijrp emijrp@gmail.com wrote:
I think that the phrase meaning refered to Wikipedia is "the sum of all human knowledge which is notable and encyclopedic".
Not ALL, ALL, ALL human knowledge. MySpace discarded.
When you look back to when that quote was issued (at least 2004), I think I tend to see it as broader and more aspirational. Wikipedia was already the biggest project, but we still imagined ourselves making a statement with Wikinews and Wiktionary and everything else. Back in the day, I can certainly imagine Wikimedia wanting to encompass all forms of human knowledge, including projects going far beyond the confines of what we now see as notable and encyclopedic. We have retreated from that quite a lot. Even within Wikipedia our notions of what was acceptable and what was not were far more fluid.
The projects have accomplished an incredible amount, and we should all be very proud and amazed at what we have done. However, I do think we have lost some of that early dream. Back in the day, it was easy to imagine that we would eventually encompass all human knowledge, and now we tend to draw our goals more narrowly. In part, I think our perceptions of that famous quote have been evolving alongside our perceptions of what Wikimedia and Wikipedia have become.
-Robert Rohde
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 09/16/11 12:38 PM, Robert Rohde wrote:
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:01 PM, emijrpemijrp@gmail.com wrote:
I think that the phrase meaning refered to Wikipedia is "the sum of all human knowledge which is notable and encyclopedic".
Not ALL, ALL, ALL human knowledge. MySpace discarded.
When you look back to when that quote was issued (at least 2004), I think I tend to see it as broader and more aspirational. Wikipedia was already the biggest project, but we still imagined ourselves making a statement with Wikinews and Wiktionary and everything else. Back in the day, I can certainly imagine Wikimedia wanting to encompass all forms of human knowledge, including projects going far beyond the confines of what we now see as notable and encyclopedic. We have retreated from that quite a lot. Even within Wikipedia our notions of what was acceptable and what was not were far more fluid.
The projects have accomplished an incredible amount, and we should all be very proud and amazed at what we have done. However, I do think we have lost some of that early dream. Back in the day, it was easy to imagine that we would eventually encompass all human knowledge, and now we tend to draw our goals more narrowly. In part, I think our perceptions of that famous quote have been evolving alongside our perceptions of what Wikimedia and Wikipedia have become.
Strictly speaking, "the sum of" is a redundancy, but its English idiomatic use tends to emphasize comprehensiveness. For those of us who saw the dream earlier on being "notable and encyclopedic" was never part of the dream, and still isn't. A literal interpretation of "the sum of all human knowledge" is still impossible; it's simply too big and constantly growing. It still warns us to avoid restrictive preconceptions about what is notable and encyclopedic.
Ray
On 17 Sep 2011, at 09:41, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
On 09/16/11 12:38 PM, Robert Rohde wrote:
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:01 PM, emijrpemijrp@gmail.com wrote:
I think that the phrase meaning refered to Wikipedia is "the sum of all human knowledge which is notable and encyclopedic".
Not ALL, ALL, ALL human knowledge. MySpace discarded.
When you look back to when that quote was issued (at least 2004), I think I tend to see it as broader and more aspirational. Wikipedia was already the biggest project, but we still imagined ourselves making a statement with Wikinews and Wiktionary and everything else. Back in the day, I can certainly imagine Wikimedia wanting to encompass all forms of human knowledge, including projects going far beyond the confines of what we now see as notable and encyclopedic. We have retreated from that quite a lot. Even within Wikipedia our notions of what was acceptable and what was not were far more fluid.
The projects have accomplished an incredible amount, and we should all be very proud and amazed at what we have done. However, I do think we have lost some of that early dream. Back in the day, it was easy to imagine that we would eventually encompass all human knowledge, and now we tend to draw our goals more narrowly. In part, I think our perceptions of that famous quote have been evolving alongside our perceptions of what Wikimedia and Wikipedia have become.
Strictly speaking, "the sum of" is a redundancy, but its English idiomatic use tends to emphasize comprehensiveness. For those of us who saw the dream earlier on being "notable and encyclopedic" was never part of the dream, and still isn't. A literal interpretation of "the sum of all human knowledge" is still impossible; it's simply too big and constantly growing. It still warns us to avoid restrictive preconceptions about what is notable and encyclopedic.
Ray
"sum" is a representation of the total value of a sequence.
Similarly the sum of all knowledge is the representation of our sequence of knowledge.
So we take a large body of disorganised information and collate it into something of greater value.
Statements like that are not so much about size or scope; but about value.
Tom
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org