Hoi, For quite some time, we have had people arguing for the closure of projects. I have seen many arguments pro and against closures. What has been missing in all these projects are objective criteria why it makes sense to find fault with a project.
I have come up with three objective arguments.
- A project is not what it is advertised to be. For instance when a language is always written in a particular script, a project in any other script is problematic. - A project does not have at least 90% of the most relevant messages localised. For your information there are only 498 messages in this category at the moment. - A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing to see what is the point ?
The first argument is an absolute, never mind the size.
For the second and third I would argue for closure when both conditions are not met. When there is activity in either it may be reason for giving an ultimatum. The ultimatum would be that both conditions need to be met within three months.
The most important reason why we need viable projects is because it is sad to see so much time wasted by good people on projects that have little or no objective value. No value because nobody actively cares. Yes, people may come along and get an interest and eventually they will, but time of valuable people is wasted now and that provides in my opinion a really strong extra argument. Thanks, GerardM
Generally, I agree with you about this issue, however, in some particular points I do not:
- While your first point is a valid one, I don't think that a problem with a script should lead to the closure of the project. I would prefer an ultimatum here, too: If your script problem may not be solved by computational methods, then you have 2h04m to allow writing on your project in another script.
- I don't agree that not active projects should be closed if they represents a valid language. AFAIK, even Swahili Wikipedia is not quite active and this is a lingua franca of Sub-Saharan Africa. Maybe such projects should be locked (because of not wasting stewards' time with dealing with vandalism) with a clear notice (preferably in native language) which states that "If you are a speaker of that language and you are willing to contribute there, you should ask for unlocking there."
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, For quite some time, we have had people arguing for the closure of projects. I have seen many arguments pro and against closures. What has been missing in all these projects are objective criteria why it makes sense to find fault with a project.
I have come up with three objective arguments.
- A project is not what it is advertised to be. For instance when a
language is always written in a particular script, a project in any other script is problematic.
- A project does not have at least 90% of the most relevant messages
localised. For your information there are only 498 messages in this category at the moment.
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing
to see what is the point ?
The first argument is an absolute, never mind the size.
For the second and third I would argue for closure when both conditions are not met. When there is activity in either it may be reason for giving an ultimatum. The ultimatum would be that both conditions need to be met within three months.
The most important reason why we need viable projects is because it is sad to see so much time wasted by good people on projects that have little or no objective value. No value because nobody actively cares. Yes, people may come along and get an interest and eventually they will, but time of valuable people is wasted now and that provides in my opinion a really strong extra argument. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 2:51 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Generally, I agree with you about this issue, however, in some particular points I do not:
- While your first point is a valid one, I don't think that a problem
with a script should lead to the closure of the project. I would prefer an ultimatum here, too: If your script problem may not be solved by computational methods, then you have 2h04m to allow writing on your project in another script.
Forget this one, it seems that I misread your email.
Hoi, Swahili would not be closed. Its localisation is 100.00% for the most used messages and would not qualify under these terms. When a project is to be closed, when objective arguments are applied, we can give a stay of execution if there are arguments to do so. The point is that with objective criteria there is less room for noise.
The notion of closing projects is problematic because it just does not happen in the first place. What I attempt to do is rationalise the debate and get some objective criteria. This may reestablish some trust and this may get "resolutions" implemented.
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 2:51 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Generally, I agree with you about this issue, however, in some particular points I do not:
- While your first point is a valid one, I don't think that a problem
with a script should lead to the closure of the project. I would prefer an ultimatum here, too: If your script problem may not be solved by computational methods, then you have 2h04m to allow writing on your project in another script.
- I don't agree that not active projects should be closed if they
represents a valid language. AFAIK, even Swahili Wikipedia is not quite active and this is a lingua franca of Sub-Saharan Africa. Maybe such projects should be locked (because of not wasting stewards' time with dealing with vandalism) with a clear notice (preferably in native language) which states that "If you are a speaker of that language and you are willing to contribute there, you should ask for unlocking there."
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, For quite some time, we have had people arguing for the closure of
projects.
I have seen many arguments pro and against closures. What has been
missing
in all these projects are objective criteria why it makes sense to find fault with a project.
I have come up with three objective arguments.
- A project is not what it is advertised to be. For instance when a
language is always written in a particular script, a project in any
other
script is problematic.
- A project does not have at least 90% of the most relevant messages
localised. For your information there are only 498 messages in this
category
at the moment.
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing
to see what is the point ?
The first argument is an absolute, never mind the size.
For the second and third I would argue for closure when both conditions
are
not met. When there is activity in either it may be reason for giving
an
ultimatum. The ultimatum would be that both conditions need to be met
within
three months.
The most important reason why we need viable projects is because it is
sad
to see so much time wasted by good people on projects that have little
or no
objective value. No value because nobody actively cares. Yes, people
may
come along and get an interest and eventually they will, but time of valuable people is wasted now and that provides in my opinion a really strong extra argument. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ 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 Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 8:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
- A project is not what it is advertised to be. For instance when a
language is always written in a particular script, a project in any other script is problematic.
I agree with this condition. If en.wikipedia were written in a non-latin alphabet, that would be pretty unacceptable to most readers of it. This would also go for conlangs which do not have representable character sets (klingon comes to mind, although that project is already closed).
I worry that this requirement, without further qualification, would restrict projects like an ASL project which uses glyphs instead of actual handsigns.
- A project does not have at least 90% of the most relevant messages
localised. For your information there are only 498 messages in this category at the moment.
I would probably prefer a gradient scale, especially for languages which have only one project. 75% might be a good barrier to entry for the first project in a language, 90-100% for additional projects. This could be similar to the requirements set for the creation of new projects, but extended to include projects created before the language subcommittee made those rules.
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially (at least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase every year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we need to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing at a constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can help to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article growth but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project has 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active editors (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even these modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Doing something like this would enable us to automate the entire process. At the end of the year we calculate the growth rates of all the projects, and send warning notices to projects which have not met their required growth rates. two years of poor performance causes the project to get closed and moved back to the incubator. Plus, we don't set hard limits, which can be problematic for newly-created projects.
--Andrew Whitworth
Andrew Whitworth wrote:
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 8:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
- A project is not what it is advertised to be. For instance when a
language is always written in a particular script, a project in any other script is problematic.
I agree with this condition. If en.wikipedia were written in a non-latin alphabet, that would be pretty unacceptable to most readers of it. This would also go for conlangs which do not have representable character sets (klingon comes to mind, although that project is already closed).
I worry that this requirement, without further qualification, would restrict projects like an ASL project which uses glyphs instead of actual handsigns.
- A project does not have at least 90% of the most relevant messages
localised. For your information there are only 498 messages in this category at the moment.
I would probably prefer a gradient scale, especially for languages which have only one project. 75% might be a good barrier to entry for the first project in a language, 90-100% for additional projects. This could be similar to the requirements set for the creation of new projects, but extended to include projects created before the language subcommittee made those rules.
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially (at least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase every year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we need to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing at a constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can help to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article growth but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project has 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active editors (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even these modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Doing something like this would enable us to automate the entire process. At the end of the year we calculate the growth rates of all the projects, and send warning notices to projects which have not met their required growth rates. two years of poor performance causes the project to get closed and moved back to the incubator. Plus, we don't set hard limits, which can be problematic for newly-created projects.
--Andrew Whitworth
Andrew's suggestions seem fair to me. I would also point out (again) the importance of tagging the main page with the "If you are a speaker of that language and you are willing to contribute there, you should ask for unlocking there." I am not convinced the system can be entirely automated, as growth in active editor could be circonvented by sockpuppetry.
Ant
Hoi, When a language, ANY language is not written in its standard script(s) however difficult people may find them, we should not allow for it. When Klingon is written per standard in its own script, then the Latin script is a travesty.
What I proposed is really minimalistic. Requiring an annual growth of 10% is dangerous. It may mean that at some stage the English Wikipedia is to close because it does not grow by 10% any more... not good.
So please, consider the three criteria I proposed and leave it at that for this thread.
Thanks, GerardM
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 2:55 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 8:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
- A project is not what it is advertised to be. For instance when a
language is always written in a particular script, a project in any
other
script is problematic.
I agree with this condition. If en.wikipedia were written in a non-latin alphabet, that would be pretty unacceptable to most readers of it. This would also go for conlangs which do not have representable character sets (klingon comes to mind, although that project is already closed).
I worry that this requirement, without further qualification, would restrict projects like an ASL project which uses glyphs instead of actual handsigns.
- A project does not have at least 90% of the most relevant messages
localised. For your information there are only 498 messages in this
category
at the moment.
I would probably prefer a gradient scale, especially for languages which have only one project. 75% might be a good barrier to entry for the first project in a language, 90-100% for additional projects. This could be similar to the requirements set for the creation of new projects, but extended to include projects created before the language subcommittee made those rules.
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially (at least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase every year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we need to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing at a constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can help to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article growth but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project has 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active editors (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even these modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Doing something like this would enable us to automate the entire process. At the end of the year we calculate the growth rates of all the projects, and send warning notices to projects which have not met their required growth rates. two years of poor performance causes the project to get closed and moved back to the incubator. Plus, we don't set hard limits, which can be problematic for newly-created projects.
--Andrew Whitworth
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On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:12 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
What I proposed is really minimalistic. Requiring an annual growth of 10% is dangerous. It may mean that at some stage the English Wikipedia is to close because it does not grow by 10% any more... not good.
You missed the second part of what I said. I suggested we request a growth rate AND we set a cut-off for when a project has reached a stable size and no longer needs to demonstrate continued growth. en.wp would satisfy the second condition, as would any large and self-sustaining project. We obviously do not close large projects like en.wp.
Having 1000 articles which are generated in a day by a single bot, and no additional growth in membership or article count is hardly sufficient to keep a project open. Projects which do not attract editors, and which do not grow in size, are not operational projects.
So please, consider the three criteria I proposed and leave it at that for this thread.
the criteria that you posted were a good start but had a number of shortcomings. I'm trying to suggest ways to address those.
--Andrew Whitworth
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially (at least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase every year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we need to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing at a constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can help to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article growth but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project has 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active editors (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even these modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such a requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years, or something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off point should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential curve from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the actual statistics if anyone has collated them.
Hoi, I do not require all project to have 1000 articles. I would consider a project for closure when they do not have a 90% localisation AND not 1000 articles. Also a new project does not start with zero articles. It starts on average with a sizable number of articles *AND *a full localisation of the most used messages.
Statistics are plentiful just check out the statistics for the 100 or so Wikipedias that do not have 1000 articles. Remember, for me it would be a combination of factors. Also the 500 or so messages are quite stable. Thanks, GerardM
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is
nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially (at least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase every year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we need to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing at a constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can help to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article growth but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project has 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active editors (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even these modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such a requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years, or something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off point should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential curve from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the actual statistics if anyone has collated them.
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On 10/04/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
I do not require all project to have 1000 articles. I would consider a project for closure when they do not have a 90% localisation AND not 1000 articles. Also a new project does not start with zero articles. It starts on average with a sizable number of articles *AND *a full localisation of the most used messages.
This is why the incubator is a nice idea. How big is a typical project when it emerges from the incubator?
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
This is why the incubator is a nice idea. How big is a typical project when it emerges from the incubator?
The typical size varies between 200-1000 articles, depending on which project it is and how many editors are involved. For example, Wikipedias tend to be more prolific than Wikinews.
I do not require all project to have 1000 articles. I would consider a project for closure when they do not have a 90% localisation AND not 1000 articles. Also a new project does not start with zero articles. It starts on average with a sizable number of articles *AND *a full localisation of the most used messages.
That is how they start... now. You are proposing, from what I can tell, criteria to be imposed on existing projects. If these two are to be used together, then I wonder which projects will be closed? I'm most curious about Wikipedia; although I know it has annoyed you in the past, that is the project I care most about and I will admit it freely, I have a tie to it and a bias towards it. I don't feel bad when Wiktionaries and Wikibookses are proposed for closure on Meta, but I lose sleep when Wikipedias are. I am human, I have feelings, and that is how I feel.
From the very start, I have been a strong believer in eventualism and
gentle prodding. I discussed this with Francis Tyers, and from what I recall, he didn't buy it when we were doing preliminary work on adding a couple of skeletal articles to the Tajik Wikipedia... and then all of a sudden, new users came along. This, after 3 or 4 years of existance and total lack of meaningful articles.
Most existing Wikis have their growth start either like the Big Bang, or in fits and spurts. I am disappointed that we are now closing empty Wikis, although I always knew it was only a matter of time before this would happen. That the Chamorro Wikipedia is now saved, I consider a great thing, and I hope it will remain open enough longer to attract real users.
Many people have said "If nobody has come by now, they never will come", but the rash of Wikis that were all created around the same time have become active at different times across the years, right up until the present. If we wait long enough, almost all of them can be expected to become active. Wikis like Cheyenne, with 1700 mostly elderly speakers, could possibly fail, but the vast majority of currently empty Wikis are likely to flourish at some point.
We have had this discussion in the past, and that is why I started SWMT. To my disappointment, the people who joined SWMT and made it their own after I became less active in monitoring small Wikis have all become strong proponents of the deletion of inactive Wikis. That goes directly against my original reason for starting it - if these Wikis are vandalized, having someone to monitor them removes that as a possible problem. It appears that the people who have taken it upon themselves to monitor these Wikis have decided that it is too much work and that they'd rather just close 'em all up instead... I guess for them, it is not a labor of love as it was for me, but rather a dull maintenance task. I was always excited to see that someone had added real content to a previously empty Wiki... I wonder about them? Since I stopped watching, the Tigrigna Wikipedia has sprung alive... did they smile? Did they add any helpful messages to guide the new Tigrigna Wikipedians along? I wonder.
Deletionism is not the answer here. It has never been, and it never will be. Now that we have tightened restrictions on new Wikis, I don't see why we need to excommunicate any of the existing members of our family, except the problem children (like ru-sib).
Mark
As an addendum: the Ewe Wikipedia appears to have only become active around July of last year. I haven't done an exhaustive check, but I am sure there are at least a handful that have become active even more recently.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I do not require all project to have 1000 articles. I would consider a project for closure when they do not have a 90% localisation AND not 1000 articles. Also a new project does not start with zero articles. It starts on average with a sizable number of articles *AND *a full localisation of the most used messages.
That is how they start... now. You are proposing, from what I can tell, criteria to be imposed on existing projects. If these two are to be used together, then I wonder which projects will be closed? I'm most curious about Wikipedia; although I know it has annoyed you in the past, that is the project I care most about and I will admit it freely, I have a tie to it and a bias towards it. I don't feel bad when Wiktionaries and Wikibookses are proposed for closure on Meta, but I lose sleep when Wikipedias are. I am human, I have feelings, and that is how I feel.
From the very start, I have been a strong believer in eventualism and gentle prodding. I discussed this with Francis Tyers, and from what I recall, he didn't buy it when we were doing preliminary work on adding a couple of skeletal articles to the Tajik Wikipedia... and then all of a sudden, new users came along. This, after 3 or 4 years of existance and total lack of meaningful articles.
Most existing Wikis have their growth start either like the Big Bang, or in fits and spurts. I am disappointed that we are now closing empty Wikis, although I always knew it was only a matter of time before this would happen. That the Chamorro Wikipedia is now saved, I consider a great thing, and I hope it will remain open enough longer to attract real users.
Many people have said "If nobody has come by now, they never will come", but the rash of Wikis that were all created around the same time have become active at different times across the years, right up until the present. If we wait long enough, almost all of them can be expected to become active. Wikis like Cheyenne, with 1700 mostly elderly speakers, could possibly fail, but the vast majority of currently empty Wikis are likely to flourish at some point.
We have had this discussion in the past, and that is why I started SWMT. To my disappointment, the people who joined SWMT and made it their own after I became less active in monitoring small Wikis have all become strong proponents of the deletion of inactive Wikis. That goes directly against my original reason for starting it - if these Wikis are vandalized, having someone to monitor them removes that as a possible problem. It appears that the people who have taken it upon themselves to monitor these Wikis have decided that it is too much work and that they'd rather just close 'em all up instead... I guess for them, it is not a labor of love as it was for me, but rather a dull maintenance task. I was always excited to see that someone had added real content to a previously empty Wiki... I wonder about them? Since I stopped watching, the Tigrigna Wikipedia has sprung alive... did they smile? Did they add any helpful messages to guide the new Tigrigna Wikipedians along? I wonder.
Deletionism is not the answer here. It has never been, and it never will be. Now that we have tightened restrictions on new Wikis, I don't see why we need to excommunicate any of the existing members of our family, except the problem children (like ru-sib).
Mark
Hoi, Like you I want to see a thousand flowers bloom. However, I am not a stamp collector. I want living projects representing living languages (here I mean languages that are actually used by people). I want to make sure that a project is understandable to its readers and this is why localisation is essential. I want to make sure that a new project has a good start and this is why new projects have a kernel of a community and a kernel of content. I insist that there must be something to read; it cannot only be a picture with a caption.
In the Incubator new languages have all the time to develop. On Meta, a project proposal is accepted as eligible when the language is recognised. In Betawiki, we accept almost all linguistic entities within reason. There seems to be a policy to commit a new language to MediaWiki when a first substantial stab has been made to the localisation of such a linguistic entity.
Most of the Wikipedias with less then 1000 articles are only a dream. When this dream is started by a person who knows this languages well, it has a chance. When there is nobody who cares for a project, such a project is much better off in the Incubator and closed.
I do not believe in eventualism I believe in sending a new project off with a minimal start in life. Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:02 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I do not require all project to have 1000 articles. I would consider a project for closure when they do not have a 90% localisation AND not
1000
articles. Also a new project does not start with zero articles. It
starts on
average with a sizable number of articles *AND *a full localisation of
the
most used messages.
That is how they start... now. You are proposing, from what I can tell, criteria to be imposed on existing projects. If these two are to be used together, then I wonder which projects will be closed? I'm most curious about Wikipedia; although I know it has annoyed you in the past, that is the project I care most about and I will admit it freely, I have a tie to it and a bias towards it. I don't feel bad when Wiktionaries and Wikibookses are proposed for closure on Meta, but I lose sleep when Wikipedias are. I am human, I have feelings, and that is how I feel.
From the very start, I have been a strong believer in eventualism and gentle prodding. I discussed this with Francis Tyers, and from what I recall, he didn't buy it when we were doing preliminary work on adding a couple of skeletal articles to the Tajik Wikipedia... and then all of a sudden, new users came along. This, after 3 or 4 years of existance and total lack of meaningful articles.
Most existing Wikis have their growth start either like the Big Bang, or in fits and spurts. I am disappointed that we are now closing empty Wikis, although I always knew it was only a matter of time before this would happen. That the Chamorro Wikipedia is now saved, I consider a great thing, and I hope it will remain open enough longer to attract real users.
Many people have said "If nobody has come by now, they never will come", but the rash of Wikis that were all created around the same time have become active at different times across the years, right up until the present. If we wait long enough, almost all of them can be expected to become active. Wikis like Cheyenne, with 1700 mostly elderly speakers, could possibly fail, but the vast majority of currently empty Wikis are likely to flourish at some point.
We have had this discussion in the past, and that is why I started SWMT. To my disappointment, the people who joined SWMT and made it their own after I became less active in monitoring small Wikis have all become strong proponents of the deletion of inactive Wikis. That goes directly against my original reason for starting it - if these Wikis are vandalized, having someone to monitor them removes that as a possible problem. It appears that the people who have taken it upon themselves to monitor these Wikis have decided that it is too much work and that they'd rather just close 'em all up instead... I guess for them, it is not a labor of love as it was for me, but rather a dull maintenance task. I was always excited to see that someone had added real content to a previously empty Wiki... I wonder about them? Since I stopped watching, the Tigrigna Wikipedia has sprung alive... did they smile? Did they add any helpful messages to guide the new Tigrigna Wikipedians along? I wonder.
Deletionism is not the answer here. It has never been, and it never will be. Now that we have tightened restrictions on new Wikis, I don't see why we need to excommunicate any of the existing members of our family, except the problem children (like ru-sib).
Mark
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I agree.
To have a Wikipedia project you need to have a "writing people" (not speaking people).
If they are not probably *new* articles cannot be produced.
IMHO for extinct languages probably are better other types of project like Wikisource.
IMHO Wikipedia has got a popular purpose and this project must widespread content, if there are not a live community this purpose is not reached. Different is the purpose of Wikisource which must collect and archive documents.
Ilario
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:28 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Like you I want to see a thousand flowers bloom. However, I am not a stamp collector. I want living projects representing living languages (here I mean languages that are actually used by people). I want to make sure that a project is understandable to its readers and this is why localisation is essential. I want to make sure that a new project has a good start and this is why new projects have a kernel of a community and a kernel of content. I insist that there must be something to read; it cannot only be a picture with a caption.
Again, this is not about extinct languages. We aren't really talking about closing the Gothic or Anglo-Saxon Wikipedias, at least not in this thread (although GerardM has claimed that the Gothic Wikipedia is written in the Latin alphabet, this is incorrect; the majority of material is written in Wulfilas' alphabet).
Under Gerard's criteria, the only languages (as far as I know) that are likely to qualify are living, written languages, as even the Pali Wikipedia has over 2000 articles. If I am incorrect, I am sure there are only a couple of exceptions maximum, and would be happy to discuss them.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Ilario Valdelli valdelli@gmail.com wrote:
I agree.
To have a Wikipedia project you need to have a "writing people" (not speaking people).
If they are not probably *new* articles cannot be produced.
IMHO for extinct languages probably are better other types of project like Wikisource.
IMHO Wikipedia has got a popular purpose and this project must widespread content, if there are not a live community this purpose is not reached. Different is the purpose of Wikisource which must collect and archive documents.
Ilario
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:28 AM, Gerard Meijssen
gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Like you I want to see a thousand flowers bloom. However, I am not a stamp collector. I want living projects representing living languages (here I mean languages that are actually used by people). I want to make sure that a project is understandable to its readers and this is why localisation is essential. I want to make sure that a new project has a good start and this is why new projects have a kernel of a community and a kernel of content. I insist that there must be something to read; it cannot only be a picture with a caption.
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Hoi, I object strongly against Gothic being written in the Latin script. I think it is a disgrace. If it were to me I would have all the Latin stuff be deleted on penalty of having this whole project closed.
Again, you confuse things. I am opposed to the creation of any new dead language projects. However, there are existing projects in dead languages and I do not propose to have them closed. The fact that the Pali wikipedia has 2000 articles is of none of my business. When you mean to say that it is OK to have projects in dead languages, well we disagree on this. Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Again, this is not about extinct languages. We aren't really talking about closing the Gothic or Anglo-Saxon Wikipedias, at least not in this thread (although GerardM has claimed that the Gothic Wikipedia is written in the Latin alphabet, this is incorrect; the majority of material is written in Wulfilas' alphabet).
Under Gerard's criteria, the only languages (as far as I know) that are likely to qualify are living, written languages, as even the Pali Wikipedia has over 2000 articles. If I am incorrect, I am sure there are only a couple of exceptions maximum, and would be happy to discuss them.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Ilario Valdelli valdelli@gmail.com wrote:
I agree.
To have a Wikipedia project you need to have a "writing people" (not speaking people).
If they are not probably *new* articles cannot be produced.
IMHO for extinct languages probably are better other types of project like Wikisource.
IMHO Wikipedia has got a popular purpose and this project must widespread content, if there are not a live community this purpose is not reached. Different is the purpose of Wikisource which must collect and archive documents.
Ilario
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:28 AM, Gerard Meijssen
gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Like you I want to see a thousand flowers bloom. However, I am not a
stamp
collector. I want living projects representing living languages
(here I mean
languages that are actually used by people). I want to make sure
that a
project is understandable to its readers and this is why
localisation is
essential. I want to make sure that a new project has a good start
and this
is why new projects have a kernel of a community and a kernel of
content. I
insist that there must be something to read; it cannot only be a
picture
with a caption.
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Hoi, Like you I want to see a thousand flowers bloom. However, I am not a stamp collector. I want living projects representing living languages (here I mean languages that are actually used by people). I want to make sure that a
We're not discussing dead languages.
project is understandable to its readers and this is why localisation is essential. I want to make sure that a new project has a good start and this
Your localization arguments have all been hashed and rehashed. I would say they have been debunked, but that is my POV, as I am sure you would disagree with that statement.
is why new projects have a kernel of a community and a kernel of content. I insist that there must be something to read; it cannot only be a picture with a caption.
Exactly - new projects. You're trying to extend new project rules to existing projects. My answer is, and will always be, no.
In the Incubator new languages have all the time to develop. On Meta, a project proposal is accepted as eligible when the language is recognised. In Betawiki, we accept almost all linguistic entities within reason. There seems to be a policy to commit a new language to MediaWiki when a first substantial stab has been made to the localisation of such a linguistic entity.
Most of the Wikipedias with less then 1000 articles are only a dream. When this dream is started by a person who knows this languages well, it has a chance. When there is nobody who cares for a project, such a project is much better off in the Incubator and closed.
Who are you to play God, to say what is best for a project? I have made my own suggestions, said what I think is best, but I am not so presumptuous as to say what is best for a Wiki... only to say what methods I have used that have been successful. I have e-mailed many people to encourage them to contribute with varying degrees of success (that is how scn.wp was started basically, for example). I have replaced blank main pages with "directory" pages indicating basic articles to start with, and this has seemed to pique peoples' interest, although I will not take credit for that as the driving force behind any project (although I did see a correlation in many cases between me adding that and people beginning to contribute). With this gentle poking and prodding, Wikis have become active over time. What about the Wikis that are still inactive? Well, I never e-mailed anybody about Chamorro or Yi. I never posted on a message board about Marshallese or Tumbuka (remember that one?). I never joined a Yahoo! Group to promote the Kanuri Wikipedia.
Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation have many contacts in many countries. I am sure that someone somewhere in their network have a friend of a friend who speaks some of these languages. If not now, I am sure African languages will have them after Wikimania in Alexandria.
As far as people who speak a language WELL... that has not been a criterium so far, it seems. I feel like I have been the only one who appreciates this. We have so many Wikipedias, some of them with thousands of articles, where most of the content is written by people who consider themselves xx-1 or xx-2. This is, to me, unacceptable... but I don't think that means they must be sent back to the incubator... however, nobody else has paid much attention to this issue. And you... it was on your watch that Jose77 was allowed to add near-complete localizations for dozens of languages he doesn't speak a single word of. I admit that I have added some localizations for languages that are completely foreign to me, such as Venda or Tigrigna, but that was when I was 100% sure of the translation, for example a month name or a word that I found in the localization of another program or website ("search"). I have not added thousands of localized messages in languages like Hawai'ian, Uyghur, and whatever else he has done, with the not-so-hidden ulterior motive of promoting his religion.
I do not believe in eventualism I believe in sending a new project off with a minimal start in life.
Sending off implies, again, a new project. These are hardly new projects. I think we need to give them time... at least the Wikipedias. I realize it is a double standard, but I really don't care if we close all of the inactive Wikibooks, Wiktionaries, and Wikiquotes. Not that it would be more right for them to be closed - on the contrary, it is every bit as much against my ideals, but I just honestly don't care as much about those projects.
Mark
Hoi, I checked http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jose77 I do not find his localisations. Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:16 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
.... And you... it was on your watch that Jose77 was allowed to add near-complete localizations for dozens of languages he doesn't speak a single word of.
Hoi, Marc, we agree on what we want to achieve, we disagree on the road that will lead there. I readily admit that I bang the drum for localisation. And given that only from this month 100 language have only the most relevant messages localised at 98% we cannot say that I am done talking about this. I blog about it, I write to lists, I do what it takes. You on the other hand prods people to work on Wikipedias and try to get them going. It is great when it works and I salute you for it.
At the same time there is an increasing group of people that object to all the projects that are for intends and purposes dead. The creation of the Incubator, the policies of the language committee and now the proposed criteria for the closure of projects are all intended to make sure that there are some minimal criteria that intend to ensure that as many projects as possible will do well.
I am not God, and you are not a boy putting his finger in the dyke. We both cannot prevent people to object to moribund projects. What we can do is stem the flow and provide objective criteria that will streamline the flow and in that way we can prevent damage.
Jimmy has his contacts, the WMF has its contacts, I have mine and so do you. When we want to have more languages supported with a Wikipedia we can tell them about it, we can be enthusiastic about it but in the final analysis it is the people that have to do the work. You can lead a horse to water, you cannot make it drink. Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:16 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Like you I want to see a thousand flowers bloom. However, I am not a
stamp
collector. I want living projects representing living languages (here I
mean
languages that are actually used by people). I want to make sure that a
We're not discussing dead languages.
project is understandable to its readers and this is why localisation
is
essential. I want to make sure that a new project has a good start and
this
Your localization arguments have all been hashed and rehashed. I would say they have been debunked, but that is my POV, as I am sure you would disagree with that statement.
is why new projects have a kernel of a community and a kernel of
content. I
insist that there must be something to read; it cannot only be a
picture
with a caption.
Exactly - new projects. You're trying to extend new project rules to existing projects. My answer is, and will always be, no.
In the Incubator new languages have all the time to develop. On Meta, a project proposal is accepted as eligible when the language is
recognised. In
Betawiki, we accept almost all linguistic entities within reason. There seems to be a policy to commit a new language to MediaWiki when a first substantial stab has been made to the localisation of such a linguistic entity.
Most of the Wikipedias with less then 1000 articles are only a dream.
When
this dream is started by a person who knows this languages well, it has
a
chance. When there is nobody who cares for a project, such a project is
much
better off in the Incubator and closed.
Who are you to play God, to say what is best for a project? I have made my own suggestions, said what I think is best, but I am not so presumptuous as to say what is best for a Wiki... only to say what methods I have used that have been successful. I have e-mailed many people to encourage them to contribute with varying degrees of success (that is how scn.wp was started basically, for example). I have replaced blank main pages with "directory" pages indicating basic articles to start with, and this has seemed to pique peoples' interest, although I will not take credit for that as the driving force behind any project (although I did see a correlation in many cases between me adding that and people beginning to contribute). With this gentle poking and prodding, Wikis have become active over time. What about the Wikis that are still inactive? Well, I never e-mailed anybody about Chamorro or Yi. I never posted on a message board about Marshallese or Tumbuka (remember that one?). I never joined a Yahoo! Group to promote the Kanuri Wikipedia.
Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation have many contacts in many countries. I am sure that someone somewhere in their network have a friend of a friend who speaks some of these languages. If not now, I am sure African languages will have them after Wikimania in Alexandria.
As far as people who speak a language WELL... that has not been a criterium so far, it seems. I feel like I have been the only one who appreciates this. We have so many Wikipedias, some of them with thousands of articles, where most of the content is written by people who consider themselves xx-1 or xx-2. This is, to me, unacceptable... but I don't think that means they must be sent back to the incubator... however, nobody else has paid much attention to this issue. And you... it was on your watch that Jose77 was allowed to add near-complete localizations for dozens of languages he doesn't speak a single word of. I admit that I have added some localizations for languages that are completely foreign to me, such as Venda or Tigrigna, but that was when I was 100% sure of the translation, for example a month name or a word that I found in the localization of another program or website ("search"). I have not added thousands of localized messages in languages like Hawai'ian, Uyghur, and whatever else he has done, with the not-so-hidden ulterior motive of promoting his religion.
I do not believe in eventualism I believe in sending a new project off
with
a minimal start in life.
Sending off implies, again, a new project. These are hardly new projects. I think we need to give them time... at least the Wikipedias. I realize it is a double standard, but I really don't care if we close all of the inactive Wikibooks, Wiktionaries, and Wikiquotes. Not that it would be more right for them to be closed - on the contrary, it is every bit as much against my ideals, but I just honestly don't care as much about those projects.
Mark
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At the same time there is an increasing group of people that object to all the projects that are for intends and purposes dead. The creation of the Incubator, the policies of the language committee and now the proposed criteria for the closure of projects are all intended to make sure that there are some minimal criteria that intend to ensure that as many projects as possible will do well.
Let them object. Their criteria seem to be far less stringent than yours -- the vote to close the Chamorro Wikipedia ended at a standstill with no clear consensus either way. If people want to vote to close the Kanuri Wikipedia, as they already did, then why can't we let them?
I am not God, and you are not a boy putting his finger in the dyke. We both cannot prevent people to object to moribund projects. What we can do is stem the flow and provide objective criteria that will streamline the flow and in that way we can prevent damage.
Damage, of what type? Any time somebody has made a seemingly frivolous proposal (although both proposals had good reasons: Lombard and Yiddish), it was soundly defeated in a poll. And if anyone ever voted to close a Wikipedia that should obviously remain open by any sane criteria (say, Catalan or Venetian), I am confident that someone would intervene.
Jimmy has his contacts, the WMF has its contacts, I have mine and so do you. When we want to have more languages supported with a Wikipedia we can tell them about it, we can be enthusiastic about it but in the final analysis it is the people that have to do the work. You can lead a horse to water, you cannot make it drink.
The problem is that we are not leading enough "horses" right now. When is the last time you have e-mailed a Guamanian guy to let him know that the Chamorro Wikipedia exists? Or asked for help from some organization that aims to promote the culture of the Marshall Islands? These people and organizations do exist, and I (and others) have solicited similar help before for other projects, with some success. It's been a while since I sent such an e-mail, but I have found they helped with: Malagasy, Maltese, Sicilian, Friulian, and several others.
Mark
Hoi, My time is better spend supporting OmegaWiki and Betawiki. The way I try to accomplish things is different from you. My time is better spend doing the things that I do. The things that I understand. I said it before, we want by and large the same thing but we go about it in a different way. You way of doing things does not work for me. And yes, I do support particular languages .. to do that I exchanged for instance e-mails with a professor today. Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
At the same time there is an increasing group of people that object to
all
the projects that are for intends and purposes dead. The creation of
the
Incubator, the policies of the language committee and now the proposed criteria for the closure of projects are all intended to make sure that there are some minimal criteria that intend to ensure that as many
projects
as possible will do well.
Let them object. Their criteria seem to be far less stringent than yours -- the vote to close the Chamorro Wikipedia ended at a standstill with no clear consensus either way. If people want to vote to close the Kanuri Wikipedia, as they already did, then why can't we let them?
I am not God, and you are not a boy putting his finger in the dyke. We
both
cannot prevent people to object to moribund projects. What we can do is
stem
the flow and provide objective criteria that will streamline the flow
and in
that way we can prevent damage.
Damage, of what type? Any time somebody has made a seemingly frivolous proposal (although both proposals had good reasons: Lombard and Yiddish), it was soundly defeated in a poll. And if anyone ever voted to close a Wikipedia that should obviously remain open by any sane criteria (say, Catalan or Venetian), I am confident that someone would intervene.
Jimmy has his contacts, the WMF has its contacts, I have mine and so do
you.
When we want to have more languages supported with a Wikipedia we can
tell
them about it, we can be enthusiastic about it but in the final
analysis it
is the people that have to do the work. You can lead a horse to water,
you
cannot make it drink.
The problem is that we are not leading enough "horses" right now. When is the last time you have e-mailed a Guamanian guy to let him know that the Chamorro Wikipedia exists? Or asked for help from some organization that aims to promote the culture of the Marshall Islands? These people and organizations do exist, and I (and others) have solicited similar help before for other projects, with some success. It's been a while since I sent such an e-mail, but I have found they helped with: Malagasy, Maltese, Sicilian, Friulian, and several others.
Mark
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Alright, then... why the proposal to close projects? If, after all, people are already proposing to close them on their own. What is wrong with the existing system?
I think we should just say that as long as a Wiki has over 1000 non-bot generated articles, it may *not* be closed by a simple vote; a Wiki may not be re-proposed after it has failed to be closed; and beyond that let the existing system work its magic.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, My time is better spend supporting OmegaWiki and Betawiki. The way I try to accomplish things is different from you. My time is better spend doing the things that I do. The things that I understand. I said it before, we want by and large the same thing but we go about it in a different way. You way of doing things does not work for me. And yes, I do support particular languages .. to do that I exchanged for instance e-mails with a professor today. Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
At the same time there is an increasing group of people that object to
all
the projects that are for intends and purposes dead. The creation of
the
Incubator, the policies of the language committee and now the proposed criteria for the closure of projects are all intended to make sure that there are some minimal criteria that intend to ensure that as many
projects
as possible will do well.
Let them object. Their criteria seem to be far less stringent than yours -- the vote to close the Chamorro Wikipedia ended at a standstill with no clear consensus either way. If people want to vote to close the Kanuri Wikipedia, as they already did, then why can't we let them?
I am not God, and you are not a boy putting his finger in the dyke. We
both
cannot prevent people to object to moribund projects. What we can do is
stem
the flow and provide objective criteria that will streamline the flow
and in
that way we can prevent damage.
Damage, of what type? Any time somebody has made a seemingly frivolous proposal (although both proposals had good reasons: Lombard and Yiddish), it was soundly defeated in a poll. And if anyone ever voted to close a Wikipedia that should obviously remain open by any sane criteria (say, Catalan or Venetian), I am confident that someone would intervene.
Jimmy has his contacts, the WMF has its contacts, I have mine and so do
you.
When we want to have more languages supported with a Wikipedia we can
tell
them about it, we can be enthusiastic about it but in the final
analysis it
is the people that have to do the work. You can lead a horse to water,
you
cannot make it drink.
The problem is that we are not leading enough "horses" right now. When is the last time you have e-mailed a Guamanian guy to let him know that the Chamorro Wikipedia exists? Or asked for help from some organization that aims to promote the culture of the Marshall Islands? These people and organizations do exist, and I (and others) have solicited similar help before for other projects, with some success. It's been a while since I sent such an e-mail, but I have found they helped with: Malagasy, Maltese, Sicilian, Friulian, and several others.
Mark
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
Hoi, I do not propose the closure of projects. What I propose are objective criteria for the closure of projects. What is wrong with the current system is that because of this lack of objective criteria anything goes and the way it currently works is ridiculous. Voting to keep a project open when it is manifestly dead is stupid. Objective criteria work in two directions.
When a project is closed, it can go into the incubator. This means that there are criteria that allow for a restart ie the same criteria that exist for a new project.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Alright, then... why the proposal to close projects? If, after all, people are already proposing to close them on their own. What is wrong with the existing system?
I think we should just say that as long as a Wiki has over 1000 non-bot generated articles, it may *not* be closed by a simple vote; a Wiki may not be re-proposed after it has failed to be closed; and beyond that let the existing system work its magic.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, My time is better spend supporting OmegaWiki and Betawiki. The way I
try to
accomplish things is different from you. My time is better spend doing
the
things that I do. The things that I understand. I said it before, we
want by
and large the same thing but we go about it in a different way. You way
of
doing things does not work for me. And yes, I do support particular languages .. to do that I exchanged for instance e-mails with a
professor
today. Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
wrote:
At the same time there is an increasing group of people that
object to
all
the projects that are for intends and purposes dead. The creation
of
the
Incubator, the policies of the language committee and now the
proposed
criteria for the closure of projects are all intended to make sure
that
there are some minimal criteria that intend to ensure that as many
projects
as possible will do well.
Let them object. Their criteria seem to be far less stringent than yours -- the vote to close the Chamorro Wikipedia ended at a standstill with no clear consensus either way. If people want to vote to close the Kanuri Wikipedia, as they already did, then why can't we let them?
I am not God, and you are not a boy putting his finger in the
dyke. We
both
cannot prevent people to object to moribund projects. What we can
do is
stem
the flow and provide objective criteria that will streamline the
flow
and in
that way we can prevent damage.
Damage, of what type? Any time somebody has made a seemingly
frivolous
proposal (although both proposals had good reasons: Lombard and Yiddish), it was soundly defeated in a poll. And if anyone ever voted to close a Wikipedia that should obviously remain open by any sane criteria (say, Catalan or Venetian), I am confident that someone
would
intervene.
Jimmy has his contacts, the WMF has its contacts, I have mine and
so do
you.
When we want to have more languages supported with a Wikipedia we
can
tell
them about it, we can be enthusiastic about it but in the final
analysis it
is the people that have to do the work. You can lead a horse to
water,
you
cannot make it drink.
The problem is that we are not leading enough "horses" right now.
When
is the last time you have e-mailed a Guamanian guy to let him know that the Chamorro Wikipedia exists? Or asked for help from some organization that aims to promote the culture of the Marshall
Islands?
These people and organizations do exist, and I (and others) have solicited similar help before for other projects, with some success. It's been a while since I sent such an e-mail, but I have found they helped with: Malagasy, Maltese, Sicilian, Friulian, and several others.
Mark
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Yes, but what is "manifestly dead"?
According to you, that is anything under 1000 articles with a lack of near-complete basic interface translation.
I remember when the Thai Wikipedia had less than 1000 articles.
I would say, instead, anything under 50 articles that exhibits no growth, at all, ever. And yet I would still not personally vote to close this Wiki, for reasons I already outlined, but I do not think it would be unreasonable to vote that way.
I notice the existing voting patterns tend to lean in that direction. In fact, I don't think any wiki with over 50 articles (and certainly none over 100) has been voted to be closed, besides the exceptional cases of Siberian and Moldovan. Clearly, then, the community's standards are much stricter than are yours.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, I do not propose the closure of projects. What I propose are objective criteria for the closure of projects. What is wrong with the current system is that because of this lack of objective criteria anything goes and the way it currently works is ridiculous. Voting to keep a project open when it is manifestly dead is stupid. Objective criteria work in two directions.
When a project is closed, it can go into the incubator. This means that there are criteria that allow for a restart ie the same criteria that exist for a new project.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Alright, then... why the proposal to close projects? If, after all, people are already proposing to close them on their own. What is wrong with the existing system?
I think we should just say that as long as a Wiki has over 1000 non-bot generated articles, it may *not* be closed by a simple vote; a Wiki may not be re-proposed after it has failed to be closed; and beyond that let the existing system work its magic.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, My time is better spend supporting OmegaWiki and Betawiki. The way I
try to
accomplish things is different from you. My time is better spend doing
the
things that I do. The things that I understand. I said it before, we
want by
and large the same thing but we go about it in a different way. You way
of
doing things does not work for me. And yes, I do support particular languages .. to do that I exchanged for instance e-mails with a
professor
today. Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
wrote:
At the same time there is an increasing group of people that
object to
all
the projects that are for intends and purposes dead. The creation
of
the
Incubator, the policies of the language committee and now the
proposed
criteria for the closure of projects are all intended to make sure
that
there are some minimal criteria that intend to ensure that as many
projects
as possible will do well.
Let them object. Their criteria seem to be far less stringent than yours -- the vote to close the Chamorro Wikipedia ended at a standstill with no clear consensus either way. If people want to vote to close the Kanuri Wikipedia, as they already did, then why can't we let them?
I am not God, and you are not a boy putting his finger in the
dyke. We
both
cannot prevent people to object to moribund projects. What we can
do is
stem
the flow and provide objective criteria that will streamline the
flow
and in
that way we can prevent damage.
Damage, of what type? Any time somebody has made a seemingly
frivolous
proposal (although both proposals had good reasons: Lombard and Yiddish), it was soundly defeated in a poll. And if anyone ever voted to close a Wikipedia that should obviously remain open by any sane criteria (say, Catalan or Venetian), I am confident that someone
would
intervene.
Jimmy has his contacts, the WMF has its contacts, I have mine and
so do
you.
When we want to have more languages supported with a Wikipedia we
can
tell
them about it, we can be enthusiastic about it but in the final
analysis it
is the people that have to do the work. You can lead a horse to
water,
you
cannot make it drink.
The problem is that we are not leading enough "horses" right now.
When
is the last time you have e-mailed a Guamanian guy to let him know that the Chamorro Wikipedia exists? Or asked for help from some organization that aims to promote the culture of the Marshall
Islands?
These people and organizations do exist, and I (and others) have solicited similar help before for other projects, with some success. It's been a while since I sent such an e-mail, but I have found they helped with: Malagasy, Maltese, Sicilian, Friulian, and several others.
Mark
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Mark Williamson wrote:
Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation have many contacts in many countries. I am sure that someone somewhere in their network have a friend of a friend who speaks some of these languages. If not now, I am sure African languages will have them after Wikimania in Alexandria.
If I understand correctly, there are more African languages than there will be people attending Wikimania. Even if everyone who came to Alexandria spoke a different language, the coverage would still be woefully inadequate. (For our next Wikimania, we'll rebuild the Tower of Babel.)
--Michael Snow
Yes, but I am talking about African languages that already have languages in their Wikis that happen to be dead.
Mark
On 12/04/2008, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation have many contacts in many countries. I am sure that someone somewhere in their network have a friend of a friend who speaks some of these languages. If not now, I am sure African languages will have them after Wikimania in Alexandria.
If I understand correctly, there are more African languages than there will be people attending Wikimania. Even if everyone who came to Alexandria spoke a different language, the coverage would still be woefully inadequate. (For our next Wikimania, we'll rebuild the Tower of Babel.)
--Michael Snow
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Michael Snow wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation have many contacts in many countries. I am sure that someone somewhere in their network have a friend of a friend who speaks some of these languages. If not now, I am sure African languages will have them after Wikimania in Alexandria.
If I understand correctly, there are more African languages than there will be people attending Wikimania. Even if everyone who came to Alexandria spoke a different language, the coverage would still be woefully inadequate. (For our next Wikimania, we'll rebuild the Tower of Babel.)
The friend of a friend argument has the productivity of the six degrees of separation argument: not very productive. An argument might run as follows: 1. I have met Florence and she is thus my friend.(first degree of separation) 2. Florence attended the Davos conference, and everyone that she met there is her friend, thus a friend of my friend. (second degree of separation) 3. Those who attended at Davos are friends with everybody that's anybody, who are thus my friends in the third degree of separation.
I don't think this gets us very far. :-)
Ec
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I can only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which are active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month, will be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them leaving WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used to be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are regular contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never localize 100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are only interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach 1000 articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is very typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork - welcome, go on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is
nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially (at least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase every year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we need to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing at a constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can help to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article growth but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project has 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active editors (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even these modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such a requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years, or something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off point should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential curve from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the actual statistics if anyone has collated them.
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2008/4/11, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I can only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which are active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month, will be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them leaving WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used to be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are regular contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never localize 100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are only interested in editing pages.
Well, we all know that people who are only interested in editing pages, and not in localizing the interface are not welcome for Gerard, and since he happens to be the one (or at least one of the few) who makes the decisions, that means bad luck to them.
It seems to me that the language committee formed itself and chose its own members. Why isn't someone like Andre Engels a member? He has been a part of the Wikimedia community for a very long time, and obviously has a good knowledge of language-related matters and a definite interest in the topic.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
2008/4/11, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I can only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which are active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month, will be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them leaving WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used to be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are regular contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never localize 100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are only interested in editing pages.
Well, we all know that people who are only interested in editing pages, and not in localizing the interface are not welcome for Gerard, and since he happens to be the one (or at least one of the few) who makes the decisions, that means bad luck to them.
--
Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
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Mark Williamson wrote:
It seems to me that the language committee formed itself and chose its own members. Why isn't someone like Andre Engels a member?
That's probably because he never asked and nobody nominated him. He looks like an good candidate to me.
2008/4/11, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) pathoschild@gmail.com:
Mark Williamson wrote:
It seems to me that the language committee formed itself and chose its own members. Why isn't someone like Andre Engels a member?
That's probably because he never asked and nobody nominated him. He looks like an good candidate to me.
Won't work. The committee works with consensus. The amount of disagreement I have with some of those outcomes makes me believe that no consensus could have been reached had I been a member. Thus, making me a member will most probably lead to no decision for a while because there's too many things Gerard and I cannot agree on, then me leaving the committee angrily and things getting back to as they were before.
So what you are saying is that the language committee is ruled by which people can or cannot agree with Gerard, and members must all agree with him or it will not function properly? That's a bit extreme, I think. Isn't it?
Mark
On 14/04/2008, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
2008/4/11, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) pathoschild@gmail.com:
Mark Williamson wrote:
It seems to me that the language committee formed itself and chose its own members. Why isn't someone like Andre Engels a member?
That's probably because he never asked and nobody nominated him. He looks like an good candidate to me.
Won't work. The committee works with consensus. The amount of disagreement I have with some of those outcomes makes me believe that no consensus could have been reached had I been a member. Thus, making me a member will most probably lead to no decision for a while because there's too many things Gerard and I cannot agree on, then me leaving the committee angrily and things getting back to as they were before.
--
Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
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Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
So what you are saying is that the language committee is ruled by which people can or cannot agree with Gerard, and members must all agree with him or it will not function properly?
That is far from the truth; Gerard and I disagree regularly. Consensus requires debate and reasonable compromise.
There you go, Andre :-)
On 14/04/2008, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) pathoschild@gmail.com wrote:
Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
So what you are saying is that the language committee is ruled by which people can or cannot agree with Gerard, and members must all agree with him or it will not function properly?
That is far from the truth; Gerard and I disagree regularly. Consensus requires debate and reasonable compromise.
-- Yours cordially, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
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Agreed. We are trying to fit old projects into the terms of new ones. This is completely unreasonable, and nobody would've ever dreamed of requiring new projects even to have that many articles (do we now?) if it hadn't been for some amazingly quick work on the part of a couple of projects (including Siberian...)
Not that I am against this limit, as the incubator is a RELATIVELY safe place for Wikis to grow (for some reason, people want to delete test wikis that are small and/or inactive... that strikes me as BAD and WRONG as long as it is in a real language with an ISO code; if it is not a real language with an ISO code, move it to incubator plus), and it is much more comforting to know that a Wiki already has 1000 articles when it is created than to know it is starting from 0, like Tumbuka, or even 250, like some of the more recent ones have done.
But again, it strikes me as unreasonable to impose these restrictions on existing Wikis. If there is any sort of restriction, the number of articles should be much, much lower... 10, 50, or at the most, 100. Of course, these are articles written in the language, not linkspam or "...translate to xx language"-type texts (which are often effectively spam, as the [[India]], [[True Jesus Church]], and now various small villages in Europe's pages have scattered across various odd Wikis without or with very poor translation).
I don't personally think the Lak Wikipedia is the best example of a healthy Wiki... perhaps instead we should look at the Ewe Wikipedia. It would be safe under Gerard's limits because it has, I believe, a completely translated basic interface... but what if it did not? Many times, the user who jumpstarts a project is technologically not ready to make a leap between editing Wikipedia and translating system messages on TranslateWiki, at least not for a while. They are content to just write articles... and what is wrong with that?
Gerard is convinced that a Wiki with less than 1000 articles that is not fully translated cannot survive, but this is simply not true. Many Wikis have remained largely untranslated until well after they reach a critical mass of articles. Threats of closure are not the way to get people to do those translations.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I can only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which are active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month, will be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them leaving WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used to be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are regular contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never localize 100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are only interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach 1000 articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is very typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork - welcome, go on.
Cheers,
Yaroslav
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is
nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially (at least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase every year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we need to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing at a constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can help to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article growth but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project has 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active editors (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even these modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such a requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years, or something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off point should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential curve from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the actual statistics if anyone has collated them.
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Hoi. I DO NOT PROPOSE TO CLOSE ANY PROJECT
What I propose is to have at least some objective criteria.
Thanks, Gerard
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I can only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which are active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month, will be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them leaving WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used to be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are regular contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never localize 100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are only interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach 1000 articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is very typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork - welcome, go on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is
nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially (at least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase every year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we need to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing at a constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can help to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article growth but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project has 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active editors (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even these modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such a requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years, or something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off point should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential curve from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the actual statistics if anyone has collated them.
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Please turn off Caps when posting. This has been internet standard since 1995[1]
-Chad
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855#page-4
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi. I DO NOT PROPOSE TO CLOSE ANY PROJECT
What I propose is to have at least some objective criteria.
Thanks, Gerard
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I can only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which are active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month, will be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them leaving WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used to be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are regular contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never localize 100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are only interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach 1000 articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is very typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork - welcome, go on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is
nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially (at least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase every year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we need to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing at a constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can help to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article growth but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project has 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active editors (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even these modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such a requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years, or something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off point should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential curve from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the actual statistics if anyone has collated them.
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I can't remember the last time I saw 1855 used to prevail in an argument. However, it never fails to raise a smile when someone cites an RFC. Reminds me of the decades I spent on Usenet. :)
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chad Sent: 11 April 2008 14:38 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Please turn off Caps when posting. This has been internet standard since 1995[1]
-Chad
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855#page-4
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi. I DO NOT PROPOSE TO CLOSE ANY PROJECT
What I propose is to have at least some objective criteria.
Thanks, Gerard
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I
can
only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which are active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month,
will
be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them
leaving
WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used
to
be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are regular contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never
localize
100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are
only
interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach 1000 articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is very typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork - welcome, go
on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is
nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If we assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially
(at
least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles can take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles, ad infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual growth. Active editing membership and number of articles should increase
every
year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we
need
to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing
at a
constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can
help
to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article
growth
but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your project
has
- is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active
editors
(1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even
these
modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to continue growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such a requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years, or something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off
point
should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential
curve
from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the actual statistics if anyone has collated them.
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Hoi, It is no way to prevail if you ask me, it is only silly. To me it means that the thread is not know because otherwise it would be known that this same argument has been rehashed several times. Writing in upper case is understood as shouting and that is exactly what you do when you are frustrated. So it is completely appropriate in this situation as it expresses profoundly and effectively my sentiments.
Again, this proposal is about introducing some objective criteria in stead of the current situation where anything goes. Again, this proposal is NOT to close any projects down. I would personally only consider the closure of projects when no activity exist for quite some time.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I can't remember the last time I saw 1855 used to prevail in an argument. However, it never fails to raise a smile when someone cites an RFC. Reminds me of the decades I spent on Usenet. :)
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chad Sent: 11 April 2008 14:38 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Please turn off Caps when posting. This has been internet standard since 1995[1]
-Chad
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855#page-4
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi. I DO NOT PROPOSE TO CLOSE ANY PROJECT
What I propose is to have at least some objective criteria.
Thanks, Gerard
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I
can
only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which
are
active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month,
will
be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them
leaving
WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used
to
be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are
regular
contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never
localize
100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are
only
interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach 1000 articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is very typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork - welcome, go
on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there
is
nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If
we
assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially
(at
least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles
can
take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles,
ad
infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual
growth.
Active editing membership and number of articles should increase
every
year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we
need
to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing
at a
constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can
help
to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article
growth
but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your
project has
- is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active
editors
(1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even
these
modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to
continue
growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such
a
requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years,
or
something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off
point
should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential
curve
from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the
actual
statistics if anyone has collated them.
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Gerard,
What you say in the below message is reasonable. Yet, is it not also reasonable to infer that your earlier messages have been poorly formulated? First and foremost, they have been construed by several list contributors as an intent to see projects shut down. Secondly, you've failed to dispel this belief to the extent that you felt resorting to "shouting" was appropriate.
My comment added nothing to the discussion at hand, nor was it meant to. Thus, I was surprised to get any response to me expressing amusement. Apart from being an expression of amusement, it was a gut reaction to seeing what I consider one of the cornerstones of constructive Internet discussion thrown up. I've shouted in the past month or so, I'll own up to that. I felt I was justified when about six hours away from my computer saw well over a hundred messages hit this mailing list. However, anyone who doesn't have at least a passing familiarity with RFC 1855 should read it stat. Were it up to me people would not be allowed on the Internet without passing an "Information superhighway driving test" and that would be a part of it, but here I digress.
You need to address the concern that has been raised. You may call the guidelines you would like to see "objective", you may have no intention of seeing any project closed as a result of their introduction, but you will not be alone in interpreting and applying them. Could you be introducing something that could be "misused" according to how you intend to see things progressed? Could someone else come along after you and shut something down by interpreting your objective guidelines in a way you had not foreseen? If so, then the guidelines still need work.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: 11 April 2008 15:04 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Hoi, It is no way to prevail if you ask me, it is only silly. To me it means that the thread is not know because otherwise it would be known that this same argument has been rehashed several times. Writing in upper case is understood as shouting and that is exactly what you do when you are frustrated. So it is completely appropriate in this situation as it expresses profoundly and effectively my sentiments.
Again, this proposal is about introducing some objective criteria in stead of the current situation where anything goes. Again, this proposal is NOT to close any projects down. I would personally only consider the closure of projects when no activity exist for quite some time.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I can't remember the last time I saw 1855 used to prevail in an argument. However, it never fails to raise a smile when someone cites an RFC. Reminds me of the decades I spent on Usenet. :)
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chad Sent: 11 April 2008 14:38 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Please turn off Caps when posting. This has been internet standard since 1995[1]
-Chad
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855#page-4
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi. I DO NOT PROPOSE TO CLOSE ANY PROJECT
What I propose is to have at least some objective criteria.
Thanks, Gerard
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I
can
only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which
are
active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month,
will
be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them
leaving
WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used
to
be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are
regular
contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never
localize
100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are
only
interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach 1000 articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is very typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork - welcome, go
on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there
is
nothing
to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If
we
assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially
(at
least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles
can
take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles,
ad
infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual
growth.
Active editing membership and number of articles should increase
every
year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we
need
to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing
at a
constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can
help
to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article
growth
but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your
project has
- is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active
editors
(1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even
these
modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to
continue
growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such
a
requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years,
or
something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off
point
should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential
curve
from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the
actual
statistics if anyone has collated them.
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Indeed - when the only limits are on numbers of things a project has NOW, regardless of your intentions, under those limits, someone could propose and delete a Wiki with 900 pages that had 50% of the basic messages translated.
Certainly, that was not your intention - but that would be the rule.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Gerard,
What you say in the below message is reasonable. Yet, is it not also reasonable to infer that your earlier messages have been poorly formulated? First and foremost, they have been construed by several list contributors as an intent to see projects shut down. Secondly, you've failed to dispel this belief to the extent that you felt resorting to "shouting" was appropriate.
My comment added nothing to the discussion at hand, nor was it meant to. Thus, I was surprised to get any response to me expressing amusement. Apart from being an expression of amusement, it was a gut reaction to seeing what I consider one of the cornerstones of constructive Internet discussion thrown up. I've shouted in the past month or so, I'll own up to that. I felt I was justified when about six hours away from my computer saw well over a hundred messages hit this mailing list. However, anyone who doesn't have at least a passing familiarity with RFC 1855 should read it stat. Were it up to me people would not be allowed on the Internet without passing an "Information superhighway driving test" and that would be a part of it, but here I digress.
You need to address the concern that has been raised. You may call the guidelines you would like to see "objective", you may have no intention of seeing any project closed as a result of their introduction, but you will not be alone in interpreting and applying them. Could you be introducing something that could be "misused" according to how you intend to see things progressed? Could someone else come along after you and shut something down by interpreting your objective guidelines in a way you had not foreseen? If so, then the guidelines still need work.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: 11 April 2008 15:04 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Hoi, It is no way to prevail if you ask me, it is only silly. To me it means that the thread is not know because otherwise it would be known that this same argument has been rehashed several times. Writing in upper case is understood as shouting and that is exactly what you do when you are frustrated. So it is completely appropriate in this situation as it expresses profoundly and effectively my sentiments.
Again, this proposal is about introducing some objective criteria in stead of the current situation where anything goes. Again, this proposal is NOT to close any projects down. I would personally only consider the closure of projects when no activity exist for quite some time.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I can't remember the last time I saw 1855 used to prevail in an argument. However, it never fails to raise a smile when someone cites an RFC. Reminds me of the decades I spent on Usenet. :)
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chad Sent: 11 April 2008 14:38 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Please turn off Caps when posting. This has been internet standard since 1995[1]
-Chad
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855#page-4
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi. I DO NOT PROPOSE TO CLOSE ANY PROJECT
What I propose is to have at least some objective criteria.
Thanks, Gerard
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this proposal. I
can
only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias which
are
active on a level of several native speaker contributions per month,
will
be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage them
leaving
WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I used
to
be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and 40 articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are
regular
contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never
localize
100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and people are
only
interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach 1000 articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is very typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork - welcome, go
on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
> - A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there
is
nothing > to see what is the point ?
It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal. If
we
assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow exponentially
(at
least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand articles
can
take a long time. After this point, however, more articles will attract more editors, which in turn will produce more articles,
ad
infinitum.
I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual
growth.
Active editing membership and number of articles should increase
every
year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a certain stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia, it's unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate, so we
need
to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be growing
at a
constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership can
help
to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has article
growth
but no new members.
10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your
project has
- is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in active
editors
(1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not be an unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet even
these
modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to
continue
growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally flawed proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so all projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have such
a
requirement, it would have to only come into force after X years,
or
something, but then you have issues with when and how to reopen it, and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the cut-off
point
should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a good rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It the growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since you probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months (for a Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles on the area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as the novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an exponential
curve
from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the
actual
statistics if anyone has collated them.
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Hoi, When a project with no activity for a long time has 900 articles and 50% of the basic messages localised, it can be considered for closure. The only moment when you consider criteria is based on the present moment. What do you expect ?
It is in my opinion within the bounds of what is reasonable. If as a consequence of a proposal for closure people are found to reinvigorate that project, I would count it a successful conclusion. If nobody cares and the project is closed, it is sadly a successful conclusion.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 3:41 PM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed - when the only limits are on numbers of things a project has NOW, regardless of your intentions, under those limits, someone could propose and delete a Wiki with 900 pages that had 50% of the basic messages translated.
Certainly, that was not your intention - but that would be the rule.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Gerard,
What you say in the below message is reasonable. Yet, is it not also reasonable to infer that your earlier messages have been poorly
formulated?
First and foremost, they have been construed by several list
contributors as
an intent to see projects shut down. Secondly, you've failed to dispel
this
belief to the extent that you felt resorting to "shouting" was
appropriate.
My comment added nothing to the discussion at hand, nor was it meant
to.
Thus, I was surprised to get any response to me expressing amusement.
Apart
from being an expression of amusement, it was a gut reaction to seeing
what
I consider one of the cornerstones of constructive Internet discussion thrown up. I've shouted in the past month or so, I'll own up to that. I
felt
I was justified when about six hours away from my computer saw well
over a
hundred messages hit this mailing list. However, anyone who doesn't
have at
least a passing familiarity with RFC 1855 should read it stat. Were it
up to
me people would not be allowed on the Internet without passing an "Information superhighway driving test" and that would be a part of it,
but
here I digress.
You need to address the concern that has been raised. You may call the guidelines you would like to see "objective", you may have no intention
of
seeing any project closed as a result of their introduction, but you
will
not be alone in interpreting and applying them. Could you be
introducing
something that could be "misused" according to how you intend to see
things
progressed? Could someone else come along after you and shut something
down
by interpreting your objective guidelines in a way you had not
foreseen? If
so, then the guidelines still need work.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: 11 April 2008 15:04 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Hoi, It is no way to prevail if you ask me, it is only silly. To me it means
that
the thread is not know because otherwise it would be known that this
same
argument has been rehashed several times. Writing in upper case is understood as shouting and that is exactly what you do when you are frustrated. So it is completely appropriate in this situation as it expresses profoundly and effectively my sentiments.
Again, this proposal is about introducing some objective criteria in
stead
of the current situation where anything goes. Again, this proposal is
NOT to
close any projects down. I would personally only consider the closure
of
projects when no activity exist for quite some time.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Brian McNeil <
brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org>
wrote:
I can't remember the last time I saw 1855 used to prevail in an
argument.
However, it never fails to raise a smile when someone cites an RFC. Reminds me of the decades I spent on Usenet. :)
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chad Sent: 11 April 2008 14:38 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Please turn off Caps when posting. This has been internet standard since 1995[1]
-Chad
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855#page-4
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi. I DO NOT PROPOSE TO CLOSE ANY PROJECT
What I propose is to have at least some objective criteria.
Thanks, Gerard
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <
putevod@mccme.ru>
wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this
proposal. I
can
only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias
which
are
active on a level of several native speaker contributions per
month,
will
be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage
them
leaving
WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I
used
to
be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and
40
articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are
regular
contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never
localize
100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and
people are
only
interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach
1000
articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is
very
typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork -
welcome, go
on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
> > - A project should have at least 1000 articles. When
there
is
> nothing > > to see what is the point ? > > > It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal.
If
we
> assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow
exponentially
(at
> least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand
articles
can
> take a long time. After this point, however, more articles
will
> attract more editors, which in turn will produce more
articles,
ad
> infinitum. > > I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual
growth.
> Active editing membership and number of articles should
increase
every
> year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a
certain
> stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia,
it's
> unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate,
so we
need
> to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be
growing
at a
> constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership
can
help
> to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has
article
growth
> but no new members. > > 10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your
project has
> 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in
active
editors
> (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not
be an
> unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet
even
these
> modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to
continue
> growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally
flawed
proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so
all
projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have
such
a
requirement, it would have to only come into force after X
years,
or
something, but then you have issues with when and how to
reopen it,
and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the
cut-off
point
should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a
good
rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It
the
growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since
you
probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months
(for a
Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles
on the
area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as
the
novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an
exponential
curve
from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the
actual
statistics if anyone has collated them.
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You don't burn a book because you don't like the number of pages it has.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: 11 April 2008 15:51 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Hoi, When a project with no activity for a long time has 900 articles and 50% of the basic messages localised, it can be considered for closure. The only moment when you consider criteria is based on the present moment. What do you expect ?
It is in my opinion within the bounds of what is reasonable. If as a consequence of a proposal for closure people are found to reinvigorate that project, I would count it a successful conclusion. If nobody cares and the project is closed, it is sadly a successful conclusion.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 3:41 PM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed - when the only limits are on numbers of things a project has NOW, regardless of your intentions, under those limits, someone could propose and delete a Wiki with 900 pages that had 50% of the basic messages translated.
Certainly, that was not your intention - but that would be the rule.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Gerard,
What you say in the below message is reasonable. Yet, is it not also reasonable to infer that your earlier messages have been poorly
formulated?
First and foremost, they have been construed by several list
contributors as
an intent to see projects shut down. Secondly, you've failed to dispel
this
belief to the extent that you felt resorting to "shouting" was
appropriate.
My comment added nothing to the discussion at hand, nor was it meant
to.
Thus, I was surprised to get any response to me expressing amusement.
Apart
from being an expression of amusement, it was a gut reaction to seeing
what
I consider one of the cornerstones of constructive Internet discussion thrown up. I've shouted in the past month or so, I'll own up to that. I
felt
I was justified when about six hours away from my computer saw well
over a
hundred messages hit this mailing list. However, anyone who doesn't
have at
least a passing familiarity with RFC 1855 should read it stat. Were it
up to
me people would not be allowed on the Internet without passing an "Information superhighway driving test" and that would be a part of it,
but
here I digress.
You need to address the concern that has been raised. You may call the guidelines you would like to see "objective", you may have no intention
of
seeing any project closed as a result of their introduction, but you
will
not be alone in interpreting and applying them. Could you be
introducing
something that could be "misused" according to how you intend to see
things
progressed? Could someone else come along after you and shut something
down
by interpreting your objective guidelines in a way you had not
foreseen? If
so, then the guidelines still need work.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: 11 April 2008 15:04 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Hoi, It is no way to prevail if you ask me, it is only silly. To me it means
that
the thread is not know because otherwise it would be known that this
same
argument has been rehashed several times. Writing in upper case is understood as shouting and that is exactly what you do when you are frustrated. So it is completely appropriate in this situation as it expresses profoundly and effectively my sentiments.
Again, this proposal is about introducing some objective criteria in
stead
of the current situation where anything goes. Again, this proposal is
NOT to
close any projects down. I would personally only consider the closure
of
projects when no activity exist for quite some time.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Brian McNeil <
brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org>
wrote:
I can't remember the last time I saw 1855 used to prevail in an
argument.
However, it never fails to raise a smile when someone cites an RFC. Reminds me of the decades I spent on Usenet. :)
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chad Sent: 11 April 2008 14:38 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Please turn off Caps when posting. This has been internet standard since 1995[1]
-Chad
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855#page-4
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi. I DO NOT PROPOSE TO CLOSE ANY PROJECT
What I propose is to have at least some objective criteria.
Thanks, Gerard
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <
putevod@mccme.ru>
wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this
proposal. I
can
only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias
which
are
active on a level of several native speaker contributions per
month,
will
be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage
them
leaving
WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I
used
to
be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and
40
articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are
regular
contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never
localize
100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and
people are
only
interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach
1000
articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is
very
typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork -
welcome, go
on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
> > - A project should have at least 1000 articles. When
there
is
> nothing > > to see what is the point ? > > > It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal.
If
we
> assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow
exponentially
(at
> least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand
articles
can
> take a long time. After this point, however, more articles
will
> attract more editors, which in turn will produce more
articles,
ad
> infinitum. > > I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual
growth.
> Active editing membership and number of articles should
increase
every
> year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a
certain
> stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia,
it's
> unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate,
so we
need
> to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be
growing
at a
> constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership
can
help
> to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has
article
growth
> but no new members. > > 10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your
project has
> 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in
active
editors
> (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not
be an
> unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet
even
these
> modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to
continue
> growth and development.
Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally
flawed
proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so
all
projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have
such
a
requirement, it would have to only come into force after X
years,
or
something, but then you have issues with when and how to
reopen it,
and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work.
Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the
cut-off
point
should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a
good
rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It
the
growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since
you
probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months
(for a
Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles
on the
area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as
the
novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an
exponential
curve
from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the
actual
statistics if anyone has collated them.
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On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
You don't burn a book because you don't like the number of pages it has.
Right here is the fundamental misconception: "closing" a project is a bit of a misnomer because the content itself isn't "closed": the content is moved to the incubator and work can continue on it as normal. We're not talking about deleting or "burning" projects, we're talking about moving them to a structured development area where they will have a better chance at success, and better support from the WMF community at large. If, at the incubator, a critical mass of supporters emerges, the project can be reopened. Upon reopening, the project will have much better success then it would have had otherwise.
--Andrew Whitworth
Thank you for clarifying this. What you state was not immediately apparent and, as should be obvious, my comment was partly meant for shock value. It is regrettable to have to say this, but Gerard does not seem to be cognizant of why his proposal is meeting opposition. It takes common sense out of the equation altogether. It may be mightily convenient to say, "we have rules, we don't need debate", but this is the very reason why [[w:Wikipedia:Ignore All Rules]] was instituted. There is a very real need for so many aspects of WMF work to rely on the commonsense of contributors and committee members.
What disgusted me the most was Gerard had resorted to shouting to state he did not want to see *any* project closed, but when an example is thrown up his response is "close per proposed rules". This is being about as consistent as quicksand and not conducive to what should be the objective. I.e. providing better guidance to those put in the unenviable position of making a decision, yes, *guidance*, not a set of rules to be blindly applied. People are put in positions on committees to exercise good judgement, not blindly apply a set of rules. If we have an unambiguous set of rules we don't need a committee, a computer can do the job.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Whitworth Sent: 11 April 2008 17:15 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
You don't burn a book because you don't like the number of pages it has.
Right here is the fundamental misconception: "closing" a project is a bit of a misnomer because the content itself isn't "closed": the content is moved to the incubator and work can continue on it as normal. We're not talking about deleting or "burning" projects, we're talking about moving them to a structured development area where they will have a better chance at success, and better support from the WMF community at large. If, at the incubator, a critical mass of supporters emerges, the project can be reopened. Upon reopening, the project will have much better success then it would have had otherwise.
--Andrew Whitworth
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Hoi, When you establish objective criteria, the point of them is that they are measurable. So when it is put to me if a project that conforms to the criteria may be closed, then yes the project may be closed. There are criteria why you would consider it. The problem is that at this moment there is a faction that is disgusted with projects that are only wasting time and effort and there is another faction that is disgusted because people have the audacity to propose the closure for projects.
With criteria you have identified the projects that may be closed. This is when the discussion starts. So the rule is projects with both less then 1000 articles and no localisation for 90% of the most relevant messages may be closed. This means that the people who oppose closure have to provide good arguments why a project should not be closed. Arguments that are not nebulous but are measurable. When the argument is people are working on the localisation, you can observe this effort. When the argument is people are writing articles, we can establish that it is not the effort of a bot and indeed there are readable articles.
When after some discussion there is nothing to show why a project should stay, when a reasonable time has passed in which it could show that it merits a project after all, it can be closed. It can be closed to, like a phoenix rise again first in the Incubator and then back as a project.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 5:33 PM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Thank you for clarifying this. What you state was not immediately apparent and, as should be obvious, my comment was partly meant for shock value. It is regrettable to have to say this, but Gerard does not seem to be cognizant of why his proposal is meeting opposition. It takes common sense out of the equation altogether. It may be mightily convenient to say, "we have rules, we don't need debate", but this is the very reason why [[w:Wikipedia:Ignore All Rules]] was instituted. There is a very real need for so many aspects of WMF work to rely on the commonsense of contributors and committee members.
What disgusted me the most was Gerard had resorted to shouting to state he did not want to see *any* project closed, but when an example is thrown up his response is "close per proposed rules". This is being about as consistent as quicksand and not conducive to what should be the objective. I.e. providing better guidance to those put in the unenviable position of making a decision, yes, *guidance*, not a set of rules to be blindly applied. People are put in positions on committees to exercise good judgement, not blindly apply a set of rules. If we have an unambiguous set of rules we don't need a committee, a computer can do the job.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Whitworth Sent: 11 April 2008 17:15 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
You don't burn a book because you don't like the number of pages it has.
Right here is the fundamental misconception: "closing" a project is a bit of a misnomer because the content itself isn't "closed": the content is moved to the incubator and work can continue on it as normal. We're not talking about deleting or "burning" projects, we're talking about moving them to a structured development area where they will have a better chance at success, and better support from the WMF community at large. If, at the incubator, a critical mass of supporters emerges, the project can be reopened. Upon reopening, the project will have much better success then it would have had otherwise.
--Andrew Whitworth
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
When you establish objective criteria, the point of them is that they are measurable. So when it is put to me if a project that conforms to the criteria may be closed, then yes the project may be closed. There are criteria why you would consider it. The problem is that at this moment there is a faction that is disgusted with projects that are only wasting time and effort and there is another faction that is disgusted because people have the audacity to propose the closure for projects.
Your idea to establish objective criteria relies on the assumptions that (a) our consideration of suitable criteria will remain the same over time, and (b) that we can establish objective criteria without looking at actual real-life examples of good or bad projects. I think both of these assumptions fail. I think objective criteria is the wrong path for this kind of decision. You're trying to draw a map of an unknown country, before you enter it.
In 2001 we had this new wiki toy and set it up in new languages. Klingon seemed to be as good an idea as German, Esperanto or French. Today we think differently. Early on in every project, we thought lots of little stubs was fun and great and better than nothing. Today we're cleaning up these stubs, merging them into larger units or completely removing them.
What remains constant over time, though, is that we should always ask ourselves: Do we have something here that we can be proud of, or would we do better without this part or that part? That's something we can ask and answer at every given time, rather than trying to establish objective criteria beforehand.
Lions don't hunt gazelles that run slower than any fixed speed X. They hunt the slowest running of the gazelles that are available.
So, I don't want admit that you're like a lion or that slow projects should be hunted down. But we should take an inventory and see how the poorly managed projects measure in comparison with others. I think inventory and measurement are more viable methods than trying to establish objective criteria in the blind.
Andrew Whitworth hett schreven:
Right here is the fundamental misconception: "closing" a project is a bit of a misnomer because the content itself isn't "closed": the content is moved to the incubator and work can continue on it as normal.
Well, "closure" is handled very differently.
The "proposal for closure" for Klingon led to its complete removal. The "proposal for closure" for Low Saxon Wikiquote I once started (my intention was removal of the project) ended with locking of the database only. Going back to the Incubator is yet another example of a possible outcome of a "proposal for closure". There should be some clarity what exactly is meant by "closure", and which form of closure will be chosen under which circumstances.
Marcus Buck
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:54 AM, Marcus Buck me@marcusbuck.org wrote:
The "proposal for closure" for Klingon led to its complete removal. The "proposal for closure" for Low Saxon Wikiquote I once started (my intention was removal of the project) ended with locking of the database only.
If I recall correctly (and my internal timeline could be off), the incubator was not created until after the closure of the Klingon project. The language subcommittee has played a pretty large part in helping to standardize the process of opening new projects, and a similar standardization should occur concerning the closure of projects. I think there is a general assumption that currently the word "closure" implies "moving to the incubator", even if this assumption was not true in the past. I know, even if he hasn't articulated it yet, that "moving to the incubator" is what GerardM has been meaning by "closing a project".
If this isn't the standard, i propose that from here forward that it should be.
--Andrew Wthi
Andrew Whitworth hett schreven:
I know, even if he hasn't articulated it yet, that "moving to the incubator" is what GerardM has been meaning by "closing a project".
If this isn't the standard, i propose that from here forward that it should be.
--Andrew Wthi
By the way, while Klingon is removed completely, Toki Pona still is around: http://tokipona.wikipedia.org/. It is locked and empty, but the wiki itself still exists. Perhaps this should be changed and removed completely.
Marcus Buck
Well, your specifications made no mention of activity. Thus, a project in exactly that condition that got 50 amazing new articles just the previous month could be proposed for closure under those criteria.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When a project with no activity for a long time has 900 articles and 50% of the basic messages localised, it can be considered for closure. The only moment when you consider criteria is based on the present moment. What do you expect ?
It is in my opinion within the bounds of what is reasonable. If as a consequence of a proposal for closure people are found to reinvigorate that project, I would count it a successful conclusion. If nobody cares and the project is closed, it is sadly a successful conclusion.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 3:41 PM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed - when the only limits are on numbers of things a project has NOW, regardless of your intentions, under those limits, someone could propose and delete a Wiki with 900 pages that had 50% of the basic messages translated.
Certainly, that was not your intention - but that would be the rule.
Mark
On 11/04/2008, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Gerard,
What you say in the below message is reasonable. Yet, is it not also reasonable to infer that your earlier messages have been poorly
formulated?
First and foremost, they have been construed by several list
contributors as
an intent to see projects shut down. Secondly, you've failed to dispel
this
belief to the extent that you felt resorting to "shouting" was
appropriate.
My comment added nothing to the discussion at hand, nor was it meant
to.
Thus, I was surprised to get any response to me expressing amusement.
Apart
from being an expression of amusement, it was a gut reaction to seeing
what
I consider one of the cornerstones of constructive Internet discussion thrown up. I've shouted in the past month or so, I'll own up to that. I
felt
I was justified when about six hours away from my computer saw well
over a
hundred messages hit this mailing list. However, anyone who doesn't
have at
least a passing familiarity with RFC 1855 should read it stat. Were it
up to
me people would not be allowed on the Internet without passing an "Information superhighway driving test" and that would be a part of it,
but
here I digress.
You need to address the concern that has been raised. You may call the guidelines you would like to see "objective", you may have no intention
of
seeing any project closed as a result of their introduction, but you
will
not be alone in interpreting and applying them. Could you be
introducing
something that could be "misused" according to how you intend to see
things
progressed? Could someone else come along after you and shut something
down
by interpreting your objective guidelines in a way you had not
foreseen? If
so, then the guidelines still need work.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: 11 April 2008 15:04 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Hoi, It is no way to prevail if you ask me, it is only silly. To me it means
that
the thread is not know because otherwise it would be known that this
same
argument has been rehashed several times. Writing in upper case is understood as shouting and that is exactly what you do when you are frustrated. So it is completely appropriate in this situation as it expresses profoundly and effectively my sentiments.
Again, this proposal is about introducing some objective criteria in
stead
of the current situation where anything goes. Again, this proposal is
NOT to
close any projects down. I would personally only consider the closure
of
projects when no activity exist for quite some time.
Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Brian McNeil <
brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org>
wrote:
I can't remember the last time I saw 1855 used to prevail in an
argument.
However, it never fails to raise a smile when someone cites an RFC. Reminds me of the decades I spent on Usenet. :)
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chad Sent: 11 April 2008 14:38 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.
Please turn off Caps when posting. This has been internet standard since 1995[1]
-Chad
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855#page-4
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi. I DO NOT PROPOSE TO CLOSE ANY PROJECT
What I propose is to have at least some objective criteria.
Thanks, Gerard
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <
putevod@mccme.ru>
wrote:
I am not exactly sure why everybody really supports this
proposal. I
can
only say that if it is accepted most of the minor wikipedias
which
are
active on a level of several native speaker contributions per
month,
will
be closed. In this case, I will be the first one to encourage
them
leaving
WMF and migrating to some more friendly server. As an example, I
used
to
be a temporary admin in Lak Wikipedia, which has between 30 and
40
articles, and I am continuing to monitor the project. There are
regular
contributions from native speakers, but they will probably never
localize
100% messages since nobody has ever heard of betawiki, and
people are
only
interested in editing pages. There is no chance it will reach
1000
articles in two years, as it has been suggested. I think it is
very
typical of a project open BEFORE the new rules of the language subcommittee were established. If you guys want a fork -
welcome, go
on.
Cheers, Yaroslav
>> > - A project should have at least 1000 articles. When
there
is
>> nothing >> > to see what is the point ? >> >> >> It can take a long time for a new project to reach this goal.
If
we
>> assume that a self-sustaining wiki project can grow
exponentially
(at
>> least at first), the first couple hundred or thousand
articles
can
>> take a long time. After this point, however, more articles
will
>> attract more editors, which in turn will produce more
articles,
ad
>> infinitum. >> >> I would prefer to see a condition which is based on annual
growth.
>> Active editing membership and number of articles should
increase
every
>> year by a certain percentage until the project reaches a
certain
>> stable size. For very large projects, such as en.wikipedia,
it's
>> unreasonable to expect continued growth at a constant rate,
so we
need
>> to include cut-offs where we don't expect a project to be
growing
at a
>> constant rate anymore. Requiring growth in active membership
can
help
>> to reduce bot-generated projects like Volapuk which has
article
growth
>> but no new members. >> >> 10% article growth per year (which is 100 articles if your
project has
>> 1000) is not an unreasonable requirement. 5% growth in
active
editors
>> (1 new editor for a project that already has 20) would not
be an
>> unreasonable lower-limit either. Projects which can't meet
even
these
>> modest requirements probably don't have a critical mass to
continue
>> growth and development. > > Requiring projects to have 1000 articles in a fundamentally
flawed
> proposal, since all projects start out with no articles, so
all
> projects would be immeadiately closed. If you're going to have
such
a
> requirement, it would have to only come into force after X
years,
or
> something, but then you have issues with when and how to
reopen it,
> and when to reclose it if it still doesn't work. > > Requiring a certain growth rate sounds good. I think the
cut-off
point
> should be quite low (1000 articles, say). I'm not sure what a
good
> rate would be for that first 1000 articles. Does anyone have > statistics for how existing projects grew at the beginning? It
the
> growth exponential at the beginning? I would expect not, since
you
> probably get rapid growth during the first couple of months
(for a
> Wikipedia: articles on general topics, geographical articles
on the
> area that speaks that language, etc) which then tapers off as
the
> novelty begins to wear off and then things follow an
exponential
curve
> from then on. That's just a guess though, I'd love to see the
actual
> statistics if anyone has collated them. > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe:
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2008/4/10, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, For quite some time, we have had people arguing for the closure of projects. I have seen many arguments pro and against closures. What has been missing in all these projects are objective criteria why it makes sense to find fault with a project.
I have come up with three objective arguments.
- A project is not what it is advertised to be. For instance when a
language is always written in a particular script, a project in any other script is problematic.
With this I agree. Other examples are: * A Wikipedia with only or mostly 'articles' of length 1 line or less * A Wikisource with only or mostly source material in another language than the project's own
- A project does not have at least 90% of the most relevant messages
localised. For your information there are only 498 messages in this category at the moment.
I disagree. I still don't agree that message localisation is an important factor in allowing or disallowing a language; also, this would put the limit high on the first project in a language, very low for subsequent ones. A well-developing Wikipedia in a new language might be excluded by this criterium, whereas a dead Wikisource or Wikinews might easily reach the goal simply by copying from its partner Wikipedia.
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing
to see what is the point ?
Development. As said by others, ongoing development is more important than actual article number. I would measure this by active users - at least 3 (or 5?) active users (measured by number of edits in a month.
Measurement in number of articles is also problematic because the various types of projects are quite different in that. A Wiktionary with 1000 words is still a small startup, a Wikinews with 1000 articles is quite serious already.
Hoi, Message localisation is only required for the 500 or so messages that are the most relevant ones. For subsequent messages a full localisation is required. This means that the requirements have been reduced for initial projects in a language. It is assumed that the need for localisation is felt as a project matures and we hope and expect and even have some proof that as a consequence a subsequent project does not have to do it all.
I also agree with you that continuous development is a good thing. with two editors writing one article a week there and a start from the Incubator with some 300 articles they would be out of any conceived danger zone within a year.
I agree with you that 1000 articles for Wikipedia could be seen as some 10.000 articles in Wiktionary. For a Wikinews I would expect at least one article per day for a period of three months.
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 4:05 PM, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
2008/4/10, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, For quite some time, we have had people arguing for the closure of
projects.
I have seen many arguments pro and against closures. What has been
missing
in all these projects are objective criteria why it makes sense to find fault with a project.
I have come up with three objective arguments.
- A project is not what it is advertised to be. For instance when a
language is always written in a particular script, a project in any
other
script is problematic.
With this I agree. Other examples are:
- A Wikipedia with only or mostly 'articles' of length 1 line or less
- A Wikisource with only or mostly source material in another language
than the project's own
- A project does not have at least 90% of the most relevant messages
localised. For your information there are only 498 messages in this
category
at the moment.
I disagree. I still don't agree that message localisation is an important factor in allowing or disallowing a language; also, this would put the limit high on the first project in a language, very low for subsequent ones. A well-developing Wikipedia in a new language might be excluded by this criterium, whereas a dead Wikisource or Wikinews might easily reach the goal simply by copying from its partner Wikipedia.
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing
to see what is the point ?
Development. As said by others, ongoing development is more important than actual article number. I would measure this by active users - at least 3 (or 5?) active users (measured by number of edits in a month.
Measurement in number of articles is also problematic because the various types of projects are quite different in that. A Wiktionary with 1000 words is still a small startup, a Wikinews with 1000 articles is quite serious already.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
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I have to disagree strongly with the latter two. 1000 articles is too high a limit, all of the messages is perhaps not too unreasonable to expect, but it should not ever be a criterium for closing a project.
Mark
On 10/04/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, For quite some time, we have had people arguing for the closure of projects. I have seen many arguments pro and against closures. What has been missing in all these projects are objective criteria why it makes sense to find fault with a project.
I have come up with three objective arguments.
- A project is not what it is advertised to be. For instance when a
language is always written in a particular script, a project in any other script is problematic.
- A project does not have at least 90% of the most relevant messages
localised. For your information there are only 498 messages in this category at the moment.
- A project should have at least 1000 articles. When there is nothing
to see what is the point ?
The first argument is an absolute, never mind the size.
For the second and third I would argue for closure when both conditions are not met. When there is activity in either it may be reason for giving an ultimatum. The ultimatum would be that both conditions need to be met within three months.
The most important reason why we need viable projects is because it is sad to see so much time wasted by good people on projects that have little or no objective value. No value because nobody actively cares. Yes, people may come along and get an interest and eventually they will, but time of valuable people is wasted now and that provides in my opinion a really strong extra argument. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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