So, it seems (if I interpret Jimbo's mail on wikitech and the discussion
here correctly) that most of us would like *some kind* of category
scheme in wikipedia. I do, too! But, we seem to differ on the details
(shocked silence!).
So far, I saw three concepts:
1. Simple categories like "Person", "Event", etc.; about a dozen total.
2. Categories and subcategories, like
"Science/Biology/Biochemistry/Proteomics", which can be "scaled down" to
#1 as well ("Humankind/Person" or something)
3. Complex object structures with machine-readable meta-knowledge
encoded into the articles, which would allow for quite complex
queries/summaries, like "biologists born after 1860".
Pros:
1. Easy to edit (the wiki way!)
2. Still easy to edit, but making wikipedia browseable by category,
fine-tune Recent Changes, etc.
3. Strong improvement in search functions, meta-knowledge available for
data-mining.
Cons:
1. Not much of a help...
2. We'd need to agree on a category scheme, and maintenance might get a
*little* complicated.
3. Quite complex to edit (e.g., "<category type='person'
occupation='biologist' birth_month='5' birth_day='24' birth_year='1874'
birth_place='London' death_month=.....>")
For a wikipedia I'd have to write myself, I'd choose #3, but with
respect to the wiki way, #2 seems more likely to achieve consensus (if
there is such a thing;-)
Magnus
I have been amazed at the passions that were stirred up when I proposed that we distribute free fonts.
There have been two types of reaction: Point to a source that has a partial solution, sometimes for money and bickering about the level of handholding that a user may need.
As there is not one golden solution, it is not simple to say spend $$ and you are ready.
It can also become part of the installation of software that goes with a DVD for of-line use. When having enough fonts is needed for the best wikipedia experience, why wouldn't we give a helping hand to our current users and help them in this way ??
Thanks,
Gerard
When at Wikisources [[Pi to 1,000,000 places]] an anonymous user changes
the first 10 digits of line 14320 from "0628419546" to "1516171819" how
is anyone possible able to know which is correct? :-) :'(
Ec
Hi fellow Wikipedians,
I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia for
the McAuliffe Conference and the NHAWLT
Teachers' Conference in the coming weeks
and was wondering if anyone else has done
a presentation to a large group... what features
would be good to highlight... and what seems
to work well with a group that has not heard
much about the project yet.
If you have some ideas as to what might
be good points to bring out please let me
know. I appreciate any insights you may
offer on this subject.
with sincere regards,
Jay B.
[[w:en:User:ILVI]]
Hi
I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
It has an ISO 639-2 code, although I don't recall what it is (perhaps fur?)
Friulian is spoken in Italy, and calls itself "Furlan".
As to whether I have any actual support from speakers of this language:
"Sorry for the delay in my answer. I would be very interested in
Friulian language; can you help? So far I found just another user who
wants to work on it. The main problem is that I don't have a pc
currently so I'm seldom online --Klenje 19:18, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)"
(from my talk page)
This would be my third request for an Italian minority language
Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite
strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1.
Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
--node
Two years ago, the french wikipedia celebrated its
upgrading on phase III software.
We spent the day hunting bugs, fixing user accounts
and generally making everything work again.
Two years later, we celebrate a rather happy time.
Little vandalism, no conflict, nearly 60 000 articles,
new local associations, as well as pumpkins and
cooking art on
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recettes_du_mois#Octobre_2004
(for all those complaining, we also celebrate
Christmas, end of Ramadan, Carnaval and any other nice
special days you can think of)
Happy Halloween to Kira as well ;-)
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
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Mark Williamson wrote:
>The difference is is that there is to my knowledge no such thing as a
>flying polar bear, yet there are real Friulian people with internet
>access.
>
>
>On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 20:06:11 +0800, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gawab.com> wrote:
>
>
>> It's highly unlikely you'll be able to get even half of the educated
>>Friulian-speaking population editing Wikipedia. Are they potential? Yes, in
>>much the same way that I could potentially be killed by a falling polar bear
>>from the sky as I type this.
>>
>>
Actually, when polar bears encroach on human settlements it is a common
practice to airlift them back to more appropriate habitat. It seems
quite possible that in the history of the world, the number of flying
polar bears is larger than the number of websites written in (rather
than about) the Friulian language.
--Michael Snow
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004, Mark Williamson wrote:
>Sardinian is admittedly a dud. Sicilian is still growing steadily, and
>I'm sure they'd not appreciate the not-so-nice things you seem to
>think of them.
>
>[..]
I checked Sicilian's recent changes: in the last 7 days there are
contributions from 1 registered user and two IP addresses. The first is
someone from Australia, the other two are from USA providers. It seems
that no one from Sicily is editing those pages, and I'm betting that it
will continue that way.
PS my name is typically sicilian, since my family comes from there. This
doesn't mean that I know even how to write a word of Sicilian... read
aloud maybe, but not write.
Alfio
I know that this idea, as is, will probably be rejected on the grounds
of it being applicable to only a small minority of articles on en (or
any other pedia) and of little use in any other Wikimedia project, but
if I throw it out here, perhaps some generalization of this idea could
be created.
Here goes:
In the world of sports, teams are often abbreviated in some manner.
For example, in the [[National Hockey League]], LA refers to the [[Los
Angeles Kings]] while in [[Major League Baseball]], LA refers to the
[[Los Angeles Dodgers]]. Because of the recent proliferation of stuff
that requires an abbreviation be linked to a team (eg. such as an
article about a sporting event), you'd like abbreviations be linked to
a team's article (ie. in an article about baseball, you'd want [[Los
Angeles Dodgers|LA]]). However, this can be cumbersome and
time-consuming, especially for large amounts of articles or teams (eg.
the ongoing project where one article is given for each World Series).
What I propose is some form of "key-value pairing" to the way templates
work. Granted, all this can be done without the use of this "switch
statement" by the use of multiple template pages, so this is in the
interest of "keeping it all in the same page" or "keeping things
relatively compact".
The way it would work is if you have a template such as {{MLB|LA}}, for
example, the template would expand to [[Los Angeles Dodgers|LA]]. In
each template page, you'd have a set of keys and a set of values that
these keys would refer to. For example:
Template:MLB
{{{
ANA -> [[Anaheim Angels|ANA]],
BOS -> [[Boston Red Sox|BOS]],
...
TEX -> [[Texas Rangers|TEX]],
TOR -> [[Toronto Blue Jays|TOR]]
}}}
Then, when a template is called, a key is specified, and the wiki
software would print the value associated with the key. Should no key
be specified, or an invalid key is specified, some kind of fallback
behaviour would kick in.
You can, of course, have additional template parameters in the normal
sense. For example,
Template:a
{{{b -> [[B|{{{c}}}]]}}}
You could have something like {{a|b|c=foo}}} and it would print out
[[B|foo]].
As I have stated above, this is completely optional and can be
implemented in other ways, but this idea is just for the sake of
convienience. What are your thoughts on this idea?