----- Original Message -----
From: Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard(a)arcsy.co.jp>
Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 8:55 pm
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo putsch on the FrenchWikipedia !
> > Green-
> > > I like the logo too. I saw it on FR and thought, "wow, too
> bad en isn't
> > > this liberal."
> >
> > We're liberal. We just don't like kitsch.
> >
> > Regards,
Apologies to Aoienko for stealing his post, but...
Kitsch is good.
Santa is kitsch, but Santa is GOOD.:-)
>>>>> "JP" == Jonathan Phillips <jon(a)protofunk.org> writes:
JP> Maybe a novel idea would be to make separate project on
JP> sourceforge that is svg clipart. Like svg-clipart.sf.net would
JP> be great.
JP> The benefits would be open source designing of symbols, maps,
JP> etc for the SVG-compliant community.
JP> It might also be nice to push the artwork developed via
JP> different SVG apps to a standard, well defined place that
JP> might promote interoperability and compliance of all,or many
JP> :) ofthe different SVG drawing programs.
JP> It would be totally cool to use CVS to design with and allow
JP> ppl. from all over the world to work on designs.
JP> Thoughts? (I hope I haven't just gotten a little too utopian)
I think you're totally utopian, which is great!
What I wonder is whether a Wiki format might not work better for
collaboration than CVS. CVS requires setting up user permissions for
lots of people, and it can be a hassle. Wikis lower the bar for
participation considerably.
The Wikimedia Foundation has a number of Wiki-related projects going
on. There's a big demand for images from Wikipedia and the other
related projects. I've started a proposal on the Meta-Wikipedia Wiki
about doing a Wikiclip clip-art Wiki site:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiclip
It'd be interesting to see how this could develop.
~ESP
--
Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide
Hello Wikipedia community. My username is greenmountainboy and I am very
happy with Wikipedia. I would like to thank everyone who has been so
hospitable to me.
Yours truly,
Greenmountainboy
>>>>> "BV" == Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com> writes:
BV> Also hypothetically a plugin- or java-based editor app could
BV> be launched directly from the page, but that's outside the
BV> scope of this stuff...
Right now, MediaWiki has a way to do version-controlled image file
upload, and layout (through Wiki markup) for navigation to those
files. I think that's probably enough to start a clip-art collection.
Yes, it's not quite as easy to edit a file in MediaWiki as it is to
edit a page. That could definitely be improved. But it's still pretty
darn easy to collaborate on images.
~ESP
--
Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide
OK. What I have learnt about an editor-type responsibility model was that
dmoz and WP both stand on war feet. Fine. I can understand the reasons. But
then, why do not create a kind of "Wikirectory". The advantage: We get rid
of dmoz, and, we can link WP entries to directory (sub)categories which will
complete the contemporary understanding of the world how it is represented
in the WWW. (This is what I originally had in mind). Pls. think about it.
Mark
(Note: intlwiki-l is supposed to be about issues relating specifically
to internationalization, but I know that some people on intlwiki-l may
not read wikipedia-l. I've set the reply-to on this message to
wikipedia-l, because this is really a global policy issue that should
be discussed there, but I've included intlwiki-l, because I want to
reach those people as well.)
To the present day, we have been operating under a 'benevolent
dictator' model as regards governance issues generally, and in
particular issues relating to suspension of editing privileges for
those who can't seem to co-operate with others.
This has worked reasonably well (depending on who you ask, I guess) on
the English wikipedia, because I have spent a lot of time doing
investigations into controversial people, and have been willing to
"take the heat" for the few bans that we've had to implement.
But that model doesn't work nearly so well for other languages,
primarily because I'm not able to read the direct controversies, and
so I have to rely on testimony from people who are arguing, and what
actually ends up happening is that whoever is most fluent in English
ends up carrying the day by presenting their side of the dispute.
We have just begun a process on en of formalizing the decision
procedures for banning people, through the use of two committees of
volunteers. The first "line of defense" is a mediation committee,
which attempts to work with parties to find a mutually agreeable
solution to a problem. This committee has no power to ban or to do
anything other than act as an outside recommendation for a solution.
The second "line of defense" is the arbitration committee, which will
be tasked with the difficult and painful and regrettable task of
banning someone from editing.
This is mainly an experiment, and we shall see over time how it works
out. I hope it works well.
I would like to encourage a similar setup on the larger non-English
wikipedias, perhaps customized to some extent to fit localized needs.
But the overall concept is to have in place clear methods for group
decision making that are respectful of our overall ideals.
On the English wikipedia, this was not necessary until now, but on the
other wikipedias I think that it is necessary sooner because there is
no real way for me to be an effective benevolent dictator.
So, let's discuss this.
--Jimbo
> From: Magnus Manske
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >Please, please do not turn on this feature. Human-inserted metadata
is
> >basically unwiki. There are better approaches to dealing with the
> >problem of categorization/computer comprehension of data. The right
> >approaches act like magic.
> >
> Would be great to have one of those. But, AFAIK, there's no way to
> implement a category scheme purely by code. That mean, there *has* to
be
> some interface for humans changing categories around.
I didn't say we should implement a category scheme purely by code. I can
think of several better methods to providing the utility of categories
than inserting hidden metadata tags.
I should have more time in the coming weeks to make some explicit
suggestions--that is, mock up examples, etc.
I think that having a categorization project (a la dmoz for Wikipedia)
would be a fine idea, as long as the work, and the data, are separate
from the root Wikipedia.
In fact, the best thing would be to work on developing ways for outside
projects to hook easily into the Wikipedia content without having to be
a Bomis-hosted project, prolly by having an XML hook.
If we did so, I could imagine a group at the MIT Media Lab or the Cyc
project figuring out some bad-ass way of navigating Wikipedia content,
etc.
> And since when is editing an article unwiki? :-)
Adding hidden content is unwiki.
What I'd like to see is an explicit wiki-statement of what is the
desired functionality--that is, what is the utility missing--that a
category scheme would provide.
Then we can discuss particular implementations separately--for example,
is it better to use a system which has a single ontology or a system
which allows for dynamic ontologies?
Fred wrote:
>The arbitrators cannot decide any dispute that is
>not submitted to us, but I think our jurisdiction
>should include disputes over content in appropriate
>instances, for example, where repeated struggles to
>produce a NPOV article have failed.
I agree. However, IMO, the main task of arbitrators in
this regard would be to determine if more discussion
would be useful and whether discussion seems to be
going in circles or has stopped in some significant
way. Then the arbitrators could ask on the relevant
talk page whether or not a vote should be held. If a
majority (say 60%) of the user's (to be defined)
responding to that question respond 'yes' then a vote
should be set-up. The arbitrators' job at that point
would be to help the litigants decide which questions
should be asked and what the terms of the vote should
be. The resulting outcome of the vote would be binding
and should not give the impression that the
arbitrators are making content decisions (all
arbitrators should recuse themselves from voting on
at least any issue they are arbitrating). We could
also set-up [[Wikipedia:Official votes]] as a
jumping-off place to the various official vote pages
on Wikipedia.
The current "vote" pages that are set-up willy-nilly
should be regarded as strawpoll opinion surveys not
subject to listing on the 'Official votes' page and
should not be considered binding in anything other
than the current wiki sense (meaning that people will
not get in trouble for working against the outcome of
the poll unless they very consistently break a policy
such as Wikiquette).
Just some ideas.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Evan Prodromou wrote:
>>>>>>"TC" == The Cunctator <cunctator(a)kband.com> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
> TC> Moreover, this isn't really (only) a discussion for
> TC> wikitech-l.
>
>How to put metadata into articles is a tech question.
>
>What metadata fields to define -- like "category" -- and how to use
>them is an implementation question. It would vary from installation to
>installation.
>
>~ESP
>
>
>
How about just allowing links with equals signs in, like this:
[[predicate=object]] in RDF terminology, where the article is the subject.
Note that this has the advantage of currently being an illegal format
for links, so we won't break anything.
So, we could in principle have things like
[[category=biology]]
[[author=J. R. Hartley]]
[[author=W. Mandella]]
[[latlong=21.2N 33.4E]]
[[OSGB=SN 045 055]]
There should be no restriction on either the predicate or object values
other than that is that neither can contain "]" or "=": hopefully, data
formats that are useful will be invented and standardised by the normal
Wikipedia process.
In this way, we don't overload the current use of colons for namespaces,
but make the insertion of name-value pairs fairly intuitive.
This way, both the chosen predicates, and the choices of values for
those predicates, can be chosen by the community.
Again: the knotty issue is how to display these values in normal article
rendering to users who are not editing, as these values will only
accumulate cruft if they are not visible for peer review.
Suggestion: a line near the top of the article showing
Author: J. R. Hartley, W. Mandella; Category: biology; Latlong: 21.2N
33.4E; OSGB: SN 045 055
We can then have special links to [[Category:]] articles for the
_predicate_ names (where their definitions, formats etc. can be defined
and discussed), and to Wikipedia articles for the values.
-- Neil