There has now been a vote, organized by Formulax, among Chinese language Wikimedians on whether there should be a Chinese Wikinews.
The results are at: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8/%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA...
In an amusing demonstration of the problems of voting, there were 13 votes opposed to the project, 13 votes in support, and 1 vote with support only if compromises could be made about NPOV.
There was a larger vote earlier on whether this should be up to the global community to decide, or to the Chinese community. That vote was inconclusive, too, with opinions evenly split (50% want it to be a global decision, 50% want it to be a local decision) and very strong expressions of emotions on both sides.
We can continue voting until we get a nice result, but I think it would be best now for the board to make a decision about this.
My recommendation is a compromise: the project should go ahead under somewhat more rigid conditions (at least 10 support votes with at least 6 of them from Wikimedia regulars PLUS the process at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch ). We can deal with problems of censorship as they arise.
Erik
Given the struggles that some Wikinews projects have had already, I feel that we should be very conservative about creating new versions. As Erik says, this is a board decision, and by convention on such matters, I vote with Angela and Anthere anyway if they disagree with me.
So, unless Angela and Anthere tell me to vote otherwise, I would vote to not create Chinese Wikinews at this time, and not until we have greater consensus in that community to do it.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller wrote:
There has now been a vote, organized by Formulax, among Chinese language Wikimedians on whether there should be a Chinese Wikinews.
The results are at: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8/%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA...
In an amusing demonstration of the problems of voting, there were 13 votes opposed to the project, 13 votes in support, and 1 vote with support only if compromises could be made about NPOV.
There was a larger vote earlier on whether this should be up to the global community to decide, or to the Chinese community. That vote was inconclusive, too, with opinions evenly split (50% want it to be a global decision, 50% want it to be a local decision) and very strong expressions of emotions on both sides.
We can continue voting until we get a nice result, but I think it would be best now for the board to make a decision about this.
My recommendation is a compromise: the project should go ahead under somewhat more rigid conditions (at least 10 support votes with at least 6 of them from Wikimedia regulars PLUS the process at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch ). We can deal with problems of censorship as they arise.
Erik _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Perhaps it's apparent to all parties, but could somone elaborate on "Given the struggles that some Wikinews projects have had already"?
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 4/14/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Given the struggles that some Wikinews projects have had already, I feel that we should be very conservative about creating new versions. As Erik says, this is a board decision, and by convention on such matters, I vote with Angela and Anthere anyway if they disagree with me.
So, unless Angela and Anthere tell me to vote otherwise, I would vote to not create Chinese Wikinews at this time, and not until we have greater consensus in that community to do it.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller wrote:
There has now been a vote, organized by Formulax, among Chinese language Wikimedians on whether there should be a Chinese Wikinews.
The results are at: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8/%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA...
In an amusing demonstration of the problems of voting, there were 13 votes opposed to the project, 13 votes in support, and 1 vote with support only if compromises could be made about NPOV.
There was a larger vote earlier on whether this should be up to the global community to decide, or to the Chinese community. That vote was inconclusive, too, with opinions evenly split (50% want it to be a global decision, 50% want it to be a local decision) and very strong expressions of emotions on both sides.
We can continue voting until we get a nice result, but I think it would be best now for the board to make a decision about this.
My recommendation is a compromise: the project should go ahead under somewhat more rigid conditions (at least 10 support votes with at least 6 of them from Wikimedia regulars PLUS the process at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch ). We can deal with problems of censorship as they arise.
Erik _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hi,
Le Friday 15 April 2005 05:33, Andrew Lih a écrit :
Perhaps it's apparent to all parties, but could somone elaborate on "Given the struggles that some Wikinews projects have had already"?
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
I think that Jimbo refers to the French Wikinews which is still in beta with no real participant. There is still no consensus on what to do with this project within the French community. Some people proposed to close it untill there is a wider consensus.
Regards,
Yann
Yann Forget wrote:
Hi,
Le Friday 15 April 2005 05:33, Andrew Lih a écrit :
Perhaps it's apparent to all parties, but could somone elaborate on "Given the struggles that some Wikinews projects have had already"?
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
I think that Jimbo refers to the French Wikinews which is still in beta with no real participant. There is still no consensus on what to do with this project within the French community. Some people proposed to close it untill there is a wider consensus.
Yes, this is what I had in mind. The French Wikinews was started according to existing policy, but clearly that policy is inadequate to ensure a proper launch with solid community support. When we were in Brussels a while back Delphine/notafish was making a valiant effort to get it going/get it organized/make it work, but to my knowledge this hasn't been successful.
I don't support closing it; I don't support keeping it open. I just think we should observe and learn from the process.
It's probably worth noting that a polarized community (as zh is) is of course different from a community which simply doesn't have people interested (fr, and I think some other existing wikinews). Zh might be successful just because it is controversial.
There are many many factors to consider in making these decisions.
--Jimbo
Jimmy-
Yes, this is what I had in mind. The French Wikinews was started according to existing policy, but clearly that policy is inadequate to ensure a proper launch with solid community support. When we were in Brussels a while back Delphine/notafish was making a valiant effort to get it going/get it organized/make it work, but to my knowledge this hasn't been successful.
it is important to note that Wikinews is currently the *only* project that follows a strict language creation policy. There are: * 12 Wikinews editions * 87 Wikiquote editions * 121 Wikibooks editions * 173 Wiktionary editions * ~200 Wikipedia editions
Suffice it to say that a very large number of these Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikipedia editions are dead or, worse, spam magnets. :-(
The elaborate processes for Wikinews as well as the nature of the project have certainly put it in the spotlight of community attention. But the situation with Wikinews is much better. Of all the editions, only one (Bulgarian) is completely dead. It was launched according to the old, minimal policy. If nothing happens within the next couple of months, or if it starts attracting spam, I'd recommend locking it down.
The French Wikinews is now in a somewhat strange state; it is being updated regularly, but not in the way Wikinews should be. Instead of writing full-length stories, contributors are writing in "Current events" summary style right on the Main Page:
http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Accueil
This is unfortunate, as it duplicates the page "Actualités" on the French Wikipedia:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actualit%C3%A9s
I hope that over time, the French Wikinews will evolve like the other editions into a source of genuine stories. But, at least it is not a spam magnet, and there is a small community there.
The Swedish edition has seen no new stories since April 2, but was very active until then; I have heard rumors that this is related to a conflict on the Swedish Wikipedia.
All in all, I think we are doing quite well. Thanks to a volunteer from the Romanian edition, Romihaitza, we now even have daily updates on the number of new articles in each language per day:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Statistics
The new "Wikimedia regulars + start writing key pages on Meta" policy for new languages seems to work, and I see no reason for any substantial changes at the present time. Maybe the number of required regulars could be increased slightly.
Given the success of the English one, I hope to start an international writing contest soon, which will also help us to track the progress of the different languages.
All best,
Erik
Hi,
Le Saturday 16 April 2005 21:19, Erik Moeller a écrit :
Jimmy-
Yes, this is what I had in mind. The French Wikinews was started according to existing policy, but clearly that policy is inadequate to ensure a proper launch with solid community support. When we were in Brussels a while back Delphine/notafish was making a valiant effort to get it going/get it organized/make it work, but to my knowledge this hasn't been successful.
it is important to note that Wikinews is currently the *only* project that follows a strict language creation policy. There are:
- 12 Wikinews editions
- 87 Wikiquote editions
- 121 Wikibooks editions
- 173 Wiktionary editions
- ~200 Wikipedia editions
Suffice it to say that a very large number of these Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikipedia editions are dead or, worse, spam magnets. :-(
I advocate blocking projects when there is no real activity until one or several volunteer(s) come(s) It would prevent them being squatted by spammers like the Slovak Wiktionary recently (21 articles).
This was already proposed some time ago and a page was made on Meta in order to have a general overview of the situation. However AFAIK no action was taken.
The elaborate processes for Wikinews as well as the nature of the project have certainly put it in the spotlight of community attention.
I think such a process should be used for any new project now.
But the situation with Wikinews is much better. Of all the editions, only one (Bulgarian) is completely dead. It was launched according to the old, minimal policy. If nothing happens within the next couple of months, or if it starts attracting spam, I'd recommend locking it down.
The French Wikinews is now in a somewhat strange state; it is being updated regularly, but not in the way Wikinews should be. Instead of writing full-length stories, contributors are writing in "Current events" summary style right on the Main Page:
http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Accueil
This is unfortunate, as it duplicates the page "Actualités" on the French Wikipedia:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actualit%C3%A9s
I hope that over time, the French Wikinews will evolve like the other editions into a source of genuine stories. But, at least it is not a spam magnet, and there is a small community there.
I hope that a new promotion campaign will attract new contributors for this project. This should be started soon as the French Wikipedia is approaching the 100,000 articles.
The Swedish edition has seen no new stories since April 2, but was very active until then; I have heard rumors that this is related to a conflict on the Swedish Wikipedia.
All in all, I think we are doing quite well. Thanks to a volunteer from the Romanian edition, Romihaitza, we now even have daily updates on the number of new articles in each language per day:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Statistics
The new "Wikimedia regulars + start writing key pages on Meta" policy for new languages seems to work, and I see no reason for any substantial changes at the present time. Maybe the number of required regulars could be increased slightly.
Given the success of the English one, I hope to start an international writing contest soon, which will also help us to track the progress of the different languages.
All best,
Erik
Yann
On 4/16/05, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
I advocate blocking projects when there is no real activity until one or several volunteer(s) come(s) It would prevent them being squatted by spammers like the Slovak Wiktionary recently (21 articles).
This was already proposed some time ago and a page was made on Meta in order to have a general overview of the situation. However AFAIKno action was taken.
I created the Inactive wikis page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inactive_wikis) for this, but I'm not sure now whether I agree with what I proposed there. It was never clear whether one person requesting a wiki to be locked or unlocked was enough, or whether there ought to be more of a procedure for this. Very few wikis were ever locked as a result of this proposal, though I don't know how much of this was related to the objections to the procedure and how much was just due to a lack of motivation by the stewards to lock these wikis.
Spam and vandalism at inactive wikis can be reported at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vandalism_reports.
Angela.
If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
Walter/Waerth
On 4/16/05, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
This won't work when you have to deal with bots. In two to three days they could have created hundreds of thousands of pages. The worst is when there are existing pages which could have been edited and moved a hundred times where the only efficient way would be to restore the database.
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Dori wrote:
On 4/16/05, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
This won't work when you have to deal with bots. In two to three days they could have created hundreds of thousands of pages. The worst is when there are existing pages which could have been edited and moved a hundred times where the only efficient way would be to restore the database.
Dori has a point of course, but do we really have this problem?
If so, then "soft closing" might be a good solution to explore. A "soft closed" wiki requires a captcha for posting, disallows external links, implements the 'nofollow' tag, etc.
- --Jimbo
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
well, what about setting it up so you have to enter one of those randomly generated image sequences that supposedly can't be read by bots yet to keep them from spamming.
I think another item that could help clean up some spam is to set up a limit of how small a post can become in one edit. What I mean is, if there is over 1,000 words, and all of a sudden it sinks to less then 50, it should be allowed, to stay in the (can't think of the word) of a wiki, but be flagged on a "spam check" page for other wikipedians to check and see if it is really spam, and then revert it. obviously it won't stop the problem, but it can help clean it up faster.
Kyle - - check out wikimania.wikipedia.org, hope to see everybody there!
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Dori wrote:
On 4/16/05, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
This won't work when you have to deal with bots. In two to three days they could have created hundreds of thousands of pages. The worst is when there are existing pages which could have been edited and moved a hundred times where the only efficient way would be to restore the database.
Dori has a point of course, but do we really have this problem?
If so, then "soft closing" might be a good solution to explore. A "soft closed" wiki requires a captcha for posting, disallows external links, implements the 'nofollow' tag, etc.
--Jimbo
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Dori has a point of course, but do we really have this problem?
If so, then "soft closing" might be a good solution to explore. A "soft closed" wiki requires a captcha for posting, disallows external links, implements the 'nofollow' tag, etc.
Forgive my ignorance as a non geek-english speaking cloggy ........ what is captcha?
Waerth/Walter
ps) I am willing to take 2 or 3 more wikipedia's under my eye toprevent it from clutter/vandalisme so it can stay open.
Walter van Kalken (walter@vankalken.net) [050417 12:40]:
If so, then "soft closing" might be a good solution to explore. A "soft closed" wiki requires a captcha for posting, disallows external links, implements the 'nofollow' tag, etc.
Forgive my ignorance as a non geek-english speaking cloggy ........ what is captcha?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha
A captcha (an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart") is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human. The term was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, and Nicholas J. Hopper of Carnegie Mellon University, and John Langford of IBM. A common type of captcha requires that the user type the letters of a distorted and/or obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen. Because the test is administered by a computer, in contrast to the standard Turing test that is administered by a human, a captcha is sometimes described as a reverse Turing test.
Captchas are used to prevent bots from using various types of computing services. Applications include preventing bots from taking part in online polls, registering for free email accounts (which may then be used to send spam), and, more recently, preventing bot-generated spam by requiring that the (unrecognized) sender successfully pass a captcha test before the email message is delivered.
By definition, captchas have the following characteristics:
* They are completely automated. This avoids the necessity for human maintenance or intervention in the test, with obvious benefits in cost and reliability. * The algorithm used is made public, though it may be encumbered by a patent. This is stipulated so as to require that breaking a captcha requires the solution of a hard problem in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) rather than just the discovery of the (secret) algorithm, which could be obtained through reverse engineering or other means.
- d.
Walter van Kalken schreef:
If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
Walter/Waerth
Yes, I have done this for the Frisian Wikipedia. Now it is small but active. There can be made a list of Wikipedias to put up for adoption. This is the best way to get a dead wiki active.
Walter /Walter
In regards to adopting a wiki, I'll adopt the Gothic wiki.
James
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Walter Vermeir Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 7:23 PM To: foundation-l@wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: guarding a wiki
Walter van Kalken schreef:
If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
Walter/Waerth
Yes, I have done this for the Frisian Wikipedia. Now it is small but active. There can be made a list of Wikipedias to put up for adoption. This is the best way to get a dead wiki active.
Walter /Walter
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Yann Forget wrote:
I hope that a new promotion campaign will attract new contributors for this project. This should be started soon as the French Wikipedia is approaching the 100,000 articles.
Since we're all discussing the problems of French wikinews, it is worth pointing out that French Wikipedia is prospering. I don't like for people to compete on article counts, because after all an article count is a poor proxy for quality work in the final analysis. But, we all do it anyway because it is fun. :-)
It seems likely that at recent rates of growth, French wikipedia will surpass Japanese wikipedia in the next few months. According to (En) Wikipedia, French has 128 million total speakers (first and second language) while Japanese has 127 million total speakers. So we should expect that most likely they will grow in parallel passing each other several times in the coming years.
--Jimbo
Yes, this is what I had in mind. The French Wikinews was started according to existing policy, but clearly that policy is inadequate to ensure a proper launch with solid community support. When we were in Brussels a while back Delphine/notafish was making a valiant effort to get it going/get it organized/make it work, but to my knowledge this hasn't been successful.
Well..let us say that I have *tried* to translate a few policies, so as to make it a bit more "regulated" and ensure that I could delete/tag articles with some background for doing so. this said, it is too much work for one person, and having no-one to discuss those policies is not very motivating anyway. But thank you Jimbo for mentionning it.
[snip]
The French Wikinews is now in a somewhat strange state; it is being updated regularly, but not in the way Wikinews should be. Instead of writing full-length stories, contributors are writing in "Current events" summary style right on the Main Page:
I believe when you write contributorS, you really mean contributor (as in one contributor). i invite you to take a look at the recent changes or Main Page history to see that there is mainly one person actually working on this wiki, who, as Anthere pointed out earlier, is not familiar with the projects and not exactly acquired to the cause of "NOPOV". See his intervention on the Village pump to see his standpoint about NPOV. This said, he is a good contributor in the sense that although he may not agree with all our views, he has so far kept his personal opinions away from the content as much as possible.
I hope that over time, the French Wikinews will evolve like the other editions into a source of genuine stories. But, at least it is not a spam magnet, and there is a small community there.
Yes, small is the word. Apart from this one contibutor, Weather Bot,a few IP edits, another contributor who is (as I am) only working on the form and shape rather than the content, there is virtually no-one. Again, this will prove my point: http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges. Let us face it, with 35 articles and one contributor since the begining of the project, and this although it has ben advertized on the Village pump, put for a while on the Community Portal, and re-advertized not so long ago by yourself on the French Bistro (which, i must say generated a good 20 or 30 edits). and absolutely no reaction on your second intervention (a must for a French Bistro i must say). So I say it again, I strongly believe the French community is definitely not *ready* to undertake the Wikinews project at this stage. As long as it continues surviving as it does, with somone copy/pasting current events on to the main page, I guess I don't have an opinion about it. Close it, or don't. I might chage my mind with time if the situation does not improve. Wikinews.fr is , in my very humble opinion, a disgrace both to the Wikinews project as a whole and Wikimedia. But then again, it is MY opinion.
[snip]
Given the success of the English one, I hope to start an international writing contest soon, which will also help us to track the progress of the different languages.
I can only wish you good luck with it. And unlike Yann, I doubt that the 100 000 articles on fr will bring more contributors, but on the contrary I believe they will bring this dormant (not to say dead) project into the spotlights and enhance its failure as such. Too bad.
Best,
Delphine
Erik Moeller a écrit:
Jimmy-
Yes, this is what I had in mind. The French Wikinews was started according to existing policy, but clearly that policy is inadequate to ensure a proper launch with solid community support. When we were in Brussels a while back Delphine/notafish was making a valiant effort to get it going/get it organized/make it work, but to my knowledge this hasn't been successful.
it is important to note that Wikinews is currently the *only* project that follows a strict language creation policy. There are:
- 12 Wikinews editions
- 87 Wikiquote editions
- 121 Wikibooks editions
- 173 Wiktionary editions
- ~200 Wikipedia editions
Suffice it to say that a very large number of these Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikipedia editions are dead or, worse, spam magnets. :-(
The elaborate processes for Wikinews as well as the nature of the project have certainly put it in the spotlight of community attention. But the situation with Wikinews is much better. Of all the editions, only one (Bulgarian) is completely dead. It was launched according to the old, minimal policy. If nothing happens within the next couple of months, or if it starts attracting spam, I'd recommend locking it down.
The French Wikinews is now in a somewhat strange state; it is being updated regularly, but not in the way Wikinews should be. Instead of writing full-length stories, contributors are writing in "Current events" summary style right on the Main Page:
(cut)
You are correct in everything you say here...
Just one point. I could not help think that the "it is being
updated regularly, but not in the way Wikinews should be" is possibly
something to avoid saying.
I do not like how the french wikipedia is developing. However, I do not think we should necessarily force it to develop in a certain way. And I certainly do not think we should claim the current english way of doing wikinews is "what it should be" while others are not doing the proper way.
Only point. I otherwise agree with you.
ant
I am undecided as well about closing or not closing fr. There is one contributor to it. What worries me is that he is not a wikipedian, and seems to have strange ideas about npov. I tried to discuss it a bit with him... but basically, npov is not so much about "explanation", but rather more about "habit and precedent". Most learn and understand it by working with others. As he is alone.... I am dubious. But for now, content seems fine. It is essentially working along the same line that the french wikipedia current events.
So, the main drawback of its existence is for now a bad image propagated to french journalists; But well....
Ant
Jimmy Wales a écrit:
Yann Forget wrote:
Hi,
Le Friday 15 April 2005 05:33, Andrew Lih a écrit :
Perhaps it's apparent to all parties, but could somone elaborate on "Given the struggles that some Wikinews projects have had already"?
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
I think that Jimbo refers to the French Wikinews which is still in beta with no real participant. There is still no consensus on what to do with this project within the French community. Some people proposed to close it untill there is a wider consensus.
Yes, this is what I had in mind. The French Wikinews was started according to existing policy, but clearly that policy is inadequate to ensure a proper launch with solid community support. When we were in Brussels a while back Delphine/notafish was making a valiant effort to get it going/get it organized/make it work, but to my knowledge this hasn't been successful.
I don't support closing it; I don't support keeping it open. I just think we should observe and learn from the process.
It's probably worth noting that a polarized community (as zh is) is of course different from a community which simply doesn't have people interested (fr, and I think some other existing wikinews). Zh might be successful just because it is controversial.
There are many many factors to consider in making these decisions.
--Jimb o
Anthere:
I am undecided as well about closing or not closing fr. There is one contributor to it. What worries me is that he is not a wikipedian, and seems to have strange ideas about npov. I tried to discuss it a bit with him... but basically, npov is not so much about "explanation", but rather more about "habit and precedent". Most learn and understand it by working with others. As he is alone.... I am dubious. But for now, content seems fine. It is essentially working along the same line that the french wikipedia current events.
As a brief update, real articles are now being written by a handful of contributors:
http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Excuses_de_Koizumi_pour_le_pass%C3%A9_japonais http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Fin_de_gr%C3%A8ve_%C3%A0_Radio_France http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Allaoui%2C_premier_ministre_irakien%2C_survit_%C... http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Le_pr%C3%A9sident_%C3%A9quatorien_Lucio_Gutti%C3... http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Formation_du_gouvernement_de_Najib_Mikati http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Crise_politique_en_Italie http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/La_Wikip%C3%A9dia_francophone_fait_sauter_les_co... http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Joseph_Ratzinger_%C3%A9lu_pape http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/La_Cour_supr%C3%AAme_de_l%27Oregon_annule_3_000_...
I can't judge the quality of these, but they seem to follow the stylistic conventions of the other editions. I'm happy to see that the project is making progress.
All best,
Erik
I even wrote part of one of those. Sigh :-(
I was put under pressure by highly motivated Amgine :-)
ant
Erik Moeller a écrit:
Anthere:
I am undecided as well about closing or not closing fr. There is one contributor to it. What worries me is that he is not a wikipedian, and seems to have strange ideas about npov. I tried to discuss it a bit with him... but basically, npov is not so much about "explanation", but rather more about "habit and precedent". Most learn and understand it by working with others. As he is alone.... I am dubious. But for now, content seems fine. It is essentially working along the same line that the french wikipedia current events.
As a brief update, real articles are now being written by a handful of contributors:
http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Excuses_de_Koizumi_pour_le_pass%C3%A9_japonais http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Fin_de_gr%C3%A8ve_%C3%A0_Radio_France http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Allaoui%2C_premier_ministre_irakien%2C_survit_%C... http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Le_pr%C3%A9sident_%C3%A9quatorien_Lucio_Gutti%C3... http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Formation_du_gouvernement_de_Najib_Mikati http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Crise_politique_en_Italie http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/La_Wikip%C3%A9dia_francophone_fait_sauter_les_co... http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Joseph_Ratzinger_%C3%A9lu_pape http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/La_Cour_supr%C3%AAme_de_l%27Oregon_annule_3_000_...
I can't judge the quality of these, but they seem to follow the stylistic conventions of the other editions. I'm happy to see that the project is making progress.
All best,
Erik
There's no consensus within the board either. In a discussion last month, Anthere said the Chinese community should decide, I said the whole community should decide, Tim Shell said it should be started, Jimbo said it shouldn't, and Michael Davis didn't respond to my email about it.
Considering the complete split of opinions, both in the original vote, the recent Chinese vote, and within the board, I think we need to consider alternative options to the simple question of whether we start it or not. One solution could be for Wikimedia to support the project being hosted elsewhere without it being an official Wikimedia project, if any of the supporters of the project wanted to find alternative hosting for it. It wouldn't be able to use the Wikinews trademarks, but would mean that those who want to work on it could do so, and if there is ever a consensus for the project within Wikimedia, we could move it back here then.
Angela
"Angela" beesley@gmail.com wrote in message news:8b722b80050414211939302ff4@mail.gmail.com... [snip]
One solution could be for Wikimedia to support the project being hosted elsewhere without it being an official Wikimedia project, if any of the supporters of the project wanted to find alternative hosting for it. It wouldn't be able to use the Wikinews trademarks, but would mean that those who want to work on it could do so, and if there is ever a consensus for the project within Wikimedia, we could move it back here then.
Maybe it could be a new Wikicities entry?
On 4/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe it could be a new Wikicities entry?
If the main objection to starting Chinese Wikinews is that it could lead to Wikipedia being blocked, then I'm not too sure it would be welcome at Wikicities either, since there are already four Chinese language wikis there which would be subjected to this risk of blocking.
Angela.
On 4/15/05, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe it could be a new Wikicities entry?
If the main objection to starting Chinese Wikinews is that it could lead to Wikipedia being blocked, then I'm not too sure it would be welcome at Wikicities either, since there are already four Chinese language wikis there which would be subjected to this risk of blocking.
For what it's worth-- a recent Associated Press article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7501488/) mentions that China seems to filter on keyword and not domain, these days.
-ilya
They have many tools in their drawer, some are URL-based, some domain based.
URL-filtering is a "standing" filter on everything being passed around, but they still do hone in on specific domains to filter as well.
-Andrew
On 4/16/05, Ilya Haykinson haykinson@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/15/05, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe it could be a new Wikicities entry?
If the main objection to starting Chinese Wikinews is that it could lead to Wikipedia being blocked, then I'm not too sure it would be welcome at Wikicities either, since there are already four Chinese language wikis there which would be subjected to this risk of blocking.
For what it's worth-- a recent Associated Press article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7501488/) mentions that China seems to filter on keyword and not domain, these days.
-ilya _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 4/15/05, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe it could be a new Wikicities entry?
If the main objection to starting Chinese Wikinews is that it could lead to Wikipedia being blocked, then I'm not too sure it would be welcome at Wikicities either, since there are already four Chinese language wikis there which would be subjected to this risk of blocking.
That's gotta be the worst reason for not starting a project IMO
Angela a écrit:
There's no consensus within the board either. In a discussion last month, Anthere said the Chinese community should decide, I said the whole community should decide, Tim Shell said it should be started, Jimbo said it shouldn't, and Michael Davis didn't respond to my email about it.
I hope everyone appreciate that even among 5 people, we were not able to have one common position ;-)
Considering the complete split of opinions, both in the original vote, the recent Chinese vote, and within the board, I think we need to consider alternative options to the simple question of whether we start it or not. One solution could be for Wikimedia to support the project being hosted elsewhere without it being an official Wikimedia project, if any of the supporters of the project wanted to find alternative hosting for it. It wouldn't be able to use the Wikinews trademarks, but would mean that those who want to work on it could do so, and if there is ever a consensus for the project within Wikimedia, we could move it back here then.
Angela
Hmmmm. Yeah. But I am not sure it would be credible.
Erik, folks,
I've taken some time this weekend to read over the ZH Wikinews vote comments, and the concerns of the 13 opposed are quite interesting.
If you haven't been following it, the Chinese Internet is in a bad slump right now. There are occasional reports of Internet crackdowns in China, but the recent one should be a real concern. College campus Internet BBS systems have had severe restrictions imposed, and some have closed down. One of the best known Internet entrepreneurs had his personal site shut down by government order because of content posted on April Fools day.
So many of the comments in the vote were in the spirit of, "It's not a good time to do something that will most definitely get roped into this mess." OTOH, some said this is exactly why it should be created, in that it will be a canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Just thought you'd be interested in the sentiment that they've expressed in the vote.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 4/14/05, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
There has now been a vote, organized by Formulax, among Chinese language Wikimedians on whether there should be a Chinese Wikinews.
The results are at:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8/%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA...
In an amusing demonstration of the problems of voting, there were 13 votes opposed to the project, 13 votes in support, and 1 vote with support only if compromises could be made about NPOV.
There was a larger vote earlier on whether this should be up to the global community to decide, or to the Chinese community. That vote was inconclusive, too, with opinions evenly split (50% want it to be a global decision, 50% want it to be a local decision) and very strong expressions of emotions on both sides.
We can continue voting until we get a nice result, but I think it would be best now for the board to make a decision about this.
My recommendation is a compromise: the project should go ahead under somewhat more rigid conditions (at least 10 support votes with at least 6 of them from Wikimedia regulars PLUS the process at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch ). We can deal with problems of censorship as they arise.
Erik _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
Andrew Lih wrote:
If you haven't been following it, the Chinese Internet is in a bad slump right now. There are occasional reports of Internet crackdowns in China, but the recent one should be a real concern. College campus Internet BBS systems have had severe restrictions imposed, and some have closed down. One of the best known Internet entrepreneurs had his personal site shut down by government order because of content posted on April Fools day.
So many of the comments in the vote were in the spirit of, "It's not a good time to do something that will most definitely get roped into this mess." OTOH, some said this is exactly why it should be created, in that it will be a canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Just thought you'd be interested in the sentiment that they've expressed in the vote.
The uses for a dead canary are very limited. Having the miners dress up in yellow suits to do this job strikes me as a little suicidal.
Ec
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