Do u have kids?
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Today's Topics:
- Re: Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" (Milos Rancic)
- Re: Wikisource and reCAPTCHA (Samuel Klein)
- Re: Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" (Samuel Klein)
- Re: Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" (Birgitte SB)
- Re: Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" (Mark Williamson)
- Re: Wikisource and reCAPTCHA (Andre Engels)
- Re: [Wikimedia Announcements] Board resolution commissioning study and recommendations (Ray Saintonge)
Message: 1 Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 01:06:25 +0200 From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: AANLkTinUDX4CYVX6DBVIGOtH8mjl2u5WudJKHiGAKw9V@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an expert) from many people the idea that you will get what you give, meaning that if you treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they will often become a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children as dumber versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to be just that. (again, I'm not an expert)
A kind of virtuous circle and vicious circle. Dumb adults are creating dumb articles because they think that their children are dumb, which in turn transforms children into dumb adults ;)
Message: 2 Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:43:00 -0400 From: Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikisource and reCAPTCHA To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: AANLkTim8gNMpYMODDj5WL6pMSBuRIJw38CCn1Fvc9zee@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 11:16 AM, James Forrester james@jdforrester.org wrote:
On 24 June 2010 15:37, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
I love those proofreading features, and the new default layout for a book's pages and TOC. ?Wikisource is becoming AWESOME.
Ahem. Even more awesome, you mean. :-)
It used to be just lowercase awesome... THINGS HAVE CHANGED. >:-)
Disclaimer - my PGDP account dates from 2004, but I only get involved in fits every couple of years.
Could you ask some of the wiki-savvy continuously active proofreaders to join this discussion for a little while? I like the work PGDP does, and bet we can find a way to support and amplify it.
SJ
Message: 3 Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:51:33 -0400 From: Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: AANLkTimeH7bAor5Lpmf75WLRuUKzMkz1rToKAyGZthW7@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 3:19 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
The fact that 10 years old child probably doesn't know what density means, doesn't mean that she or he can't read about that on encyclopedia.
Of course. Children who specialize in a topic often make excellent teachers, and sometimes featured-article writers. I like Greg's notion of defining the project in terms of "expected level of education" of the reader, not age. Almost everyone may want to refer to a simplified reference for topics that confuse them -- and there is a niche of popularizers of {science, mathematics, economics} who do just that, for readers of all ages. Some of them win the highest literary awards for their work.
One data point on language complexity:
In Peru, I work with families and teachers in rural areas with little access to books or references, whose children have a snapshot of Spanish Wikipedia (offline, on their OLPC laptop). For perhaps 100,000 families and teachers, this is their primary general reference.
The teachers like this and use it; it is part of a national project-based curriculum for grades 3-5. http://www.perueduca.edu.pe/olpc/OLPC_fichasfasc.html
But the teachers there also asked for a simpler-language project in Spanish, and a simple project in English to help students with language learning.
My personal responsibility for creating a Wikijunior project would be much higher than for creating a Wikinews project.
Yes. We should definitely lay the groundwork well, as Ziko says. But there are good projects underway today and doing this, in spanish, french, and dutch. Some of the organizers of those projects have contributed to the Wikikids proposal on meta. We can start by directing energies there, finding out what Vikidia has learned running projects in French and Spanish, what their standards for project-creation are, and how we can help them.
SJ
Message: 4 Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:25:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 606274.71969.qm@web113706.mail.gq1.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
--- On Thu, 6/24/10, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 6:06 PM On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an
expert) from many
people the idea that you will get what you give,
meaning that if you
treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they
will often become
a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children
as dumber
versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to
be just that.
(again, I'm not an expert)
A kind of virtuous circle and vicious circle. Dumb adults are creating dumb articles because they think that their children are dumb, which in turn transforms children into dumb adults ;)
I think you all are getting rather sidetracked over the details of content of some proposed project that I do not believe you are actually interested in joining. Surely any detailed decisions as exactly how to approach writing medical articles for children would be an internal conclusion. The real issue here is what merits the creation of a new wiki versus some specific project being setup as subset of an existing wiki.
I have come the conclusion the biggest factor leading to success of a new wiki is a large enough community with a strong sense of a separate mission. If all you have is a small group of hard core content editors you will be more successful as subset of an existing wiki, if one is so kind enough to make room for you. One thing that happens in a small wiki is all the happy energy which was geared towards the content must be siphoned off into seemingly endless administration tasks. It takes a while for the community to grow enough to overcome that deficit. I would not recommend anyone to be in a hurry to make their own new space. The longer you can use an existing wiki to experiment with the your project the stronger you can grow your community, and maybe you can find a way to permanently fit within the existing scope while meeting the needs of your specific mission. If you can it do that it will greatly improve your ability to work on content. I would advise this group that as exciting as having their own Wikipedia must sound, they might be more successful as a project within de.WP or de.WB And even if they are dead-set on an independent wiki, they will benefit from starting within an existing structure to grow a good sized proof of concept.
Birgitte SB
Message: 5 Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:09:13 -0700 From: Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: AANLkTikpefpnslNgtGYGtlSI4_VnWnEOIymp9p4Wlutu@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Birgitte, what I am discussing is whether or no t I see any merit in this idea at all. Thanks.
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 5:25 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- On Thu, 6/24/10, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 6:06 PM On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an
expert) from many
people the idea that you will get what you give,
meaning that if you
treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they
will often become
a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children
as dumber
versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to
be just that.
(again, I'm not an expert)
A kind of virtuous circle and vicious circle. Dumb adults are creating dumb articles because they think that their children are dumb, which in turn transforms children into dumb adults ;)
I think you all are getting rather sidetracked over the details of content of some proposed project that I do not believe you are actually interested in joining. ?Surely any detailed decisions as exactly how to approach writing medical articles for children would be an internal conclusion. The real issue here is what merits the creation of a new wiki versus some specific project being setup as subset of an existing wiki.
I have come the conclusion the biggest factor leading to success of a new wiki is a large enough community with a strong sense of a separate mission. ?If all you have is a small group of hard core content editors you will be more successful as subset of an existing wiki, if one is so kind enough to make room for you. ?One thing that happens in a small wiki is all the happy energy which was geared towards the content must be siphoned off into seemingly endless administration tasks. It takes a while for the community to grow enough to overcome that deficit. ?I would not recommend anyone to be in a hurry to make their own new space. ?The longer you can use an existing wiki to experiment with the your project the stronger you can grow your community, and maybe you can find a way to permanently fit within the existing scope while meeting the needs of your specific mission. ?If you can it do that it will greatly improve your ability to work on content. I would ?advise this group that as exciting as having their own Wikipedia must sound, they might be more successful as a project within de.WP or de.WB And even if they are dead-set on an independent wiki, they will benefit from starting within an existing structure to grow a good sized proof of concept.
Birgitte SB
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Message: 6 Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 05:13:57 +0200 From: Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikisource and reCAPTCHA To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: AANLkTik1Phpcg-hKyGYqfSHngEX-I-aAg5nhaKbi0IwB@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:37 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
I love those proofreading features, and the new default layout for a book's pages and TOC. ?Wikisource is becoming AWESOME.
Do we have PGDP contributors who can weigh on on how similar the processes are? ?Is there a way for us to actually merge workflows with them?
I am quite active on PGDP, but not on Wikisource, so I can tell about how things work there, but not on how similar it is to Wikisource.
Typical about the PGDP workflow are an emphasis on quality above quantity (exemplified in running not 1 or 2 but 3 rounds of human checking of the OCR result - correctness in copying is well above 99.99% for most books) and work being done in page-size chunks rather than whole books, chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words or whatever else one could think of.
There's a number of people involved, although people can and often do fill several roles for one book.
First, there is the Content Provider (CP).
He or she first contacts Project Gutenberg to get a clearance. This is basically a statement from PG that they believe the work is out of copyright. In general, US copyright is what is taken into account for this, although there are also servers in other countries (Canada and Australia as far as I know), which publish some material that is out of copyright in those countries even if it is not in the US. Such works do not go through PGDP, but may go through its sister projects DPCanada or DPEurope.
Next, the CP will scan the book, or harvest the scans from the web, and run OCR on them. They will usually also write a description of the book for the proofreaders, so those can see whether they are interested. The scans and the OCR are uploaded to the PGDP servers, and the project is handed over to the Project Manager (PM) (although in most cases CP and PM are the same person).
The Project Manager is responsible for the project in the next stages. This means:
- specifying the rules and guidelines that are to be followed when
proofreading the book, at least there where those differ from the standard guidelines
- answer questions by proofreaders
- keep the good and bad words lists up to date. These are used in
wordcheck (a kind of spellchecker) so that words are considered correct or incorrect by it
The project then goes through a number of rounds. The standard number is 5 rounds, of which 3 are proofreading and 2 are formatting, but it is possible for the PM to make a request to skip one or more rounds or go through a round twice.
In the first three, proofreading, rounds, a proofreader requests one page at a time, compares the OCR output (or the previous proofreader's output) with the scan, and changes the text to correspond to the scan. In the first round (P1) everyone can do this, the second round (P2) is only accessible to those who have been at the site some time and done a certain amount of pages (21 days and 300 pages, if I recall correctly), for the third round (P3) one has to qualify. For qualification one's P2 pages are checked (using the subsequent edits of P3). The norm is that one should not leave more than one error per five pages.
After the three (or two or four) rounds of proofing, the foofing (formatting) rounds are gone through. In these, again a proofreader (now called formatter) requests and edits one page at the time, but where the proofreaders dealt with copying the text as precisely as possible, the formatter will deal with all other aspects of the work. They denote when text is italic, bold or otherwise in a special format, which texts are chapter headers, how tables are laid out, etcetera. Here there are two rounds, although the second one can be skipped or a round duplicated, like before. The first formatting round (F1) has the same entrance restrictions as P2, F2 has a qualification system comparable to P3.
After this, the PM gives the book on to the Post-Processor (PP). Again, this is often the same person, but not always. In some other cases, the PP has already been appointed, in others it will sit in a pool until picked up by a willing PP. The PP does all that is needed to get from the F2 output to something that can be put on Project Gutenberg: they recombine the pages into one work, move stuff around where needed, change the formatters' mark-up in something that's more appropriate for reading, in most cases generate an HTML version, etcetera.
A PP that has already post-processed several books in a good way can then send it to PG. In other cases, the book will then go to the PPV (Post-Processing Verifier), an experienced PP, who checks the PP's work, and gives them hints on what should be improved or makes those improvements themselves.
Finally, if the PP or PPV sends the book to PG, there is a whitewasher who checks the book once again; however, that is outside the scope of this (already too long) description, because it belongs to PG's process rather than PGDP's.
To stop the rounds from overcrowding with books, there are queues for each round, containing books that are ready to enter the round, but have not yet done so. To keep some variety, there are different queues by language and/or subject type. A problem with this has been that the later rounds, having less manpower because of the higher standards required, could not keep up with P1 and F1. There has been work to do something about it, and the P2 queues have been brought down to decent size, but in P3 and F2 books can literally sit in the queues for years, and PP still is a bottleneck as well.
-- Andr? Engels, andreengels@gmail.com
Message: 7 Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:42:26 -0700 From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Board resolution commissioning study and recommendations To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 4C2433B2.80404@telus.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
David Gerard wrote:
On 24 June 2010 19:28, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
That's the meaning, definitely, same as it was in the previous board statement. I would observe, too, that for material on user pages, if you're even going to ask whether it's educational, what is it going to educate people about? That particular user, presumably. And in that context, it's pretty hard to rule out any kind of self-expression that person has chosen as not being educational about them. It may be inappropriate for other reasons, such as community policy or social concerns, but this wouldn't really be a basis for enforcing that.
Nevertheless - if you're going to make official statements like this, you can't assume that hundreds of thousands of people are all going to interpret them the same way, as you seem to have here.
Precisely. We already have too many people ready and willing to take a common sense idea and turn it into rigid policy.
Ec
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