Wikipedia-l October 2004

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70 participants
75 discussions

Syriac vs Aramaic
by Mark Williamson 09 Oct '04

09 Oct '04

Hi all. Just a short question: Why is it that we have a Wikipedia for the ancient, dead language Aramaic http://arc.wikipedia.org/ - no content currently, but none for its modern descendent Syriac (or "Neo-Aramaic"), spoken by millions, which according to the ISO code would be at http://syr.wikipedia.org/ ? Presumably, the number of people who could actually read and fully understand an Aramaic Wikipedia would be very low, while the number of people who could read and understand a Syriac Wikipedia would be in the range of millions of people, almost exclusively native speakers. Also there is the issue of what script to write it in: it would seem that some people would write Aramaic in the Syriac script, and others in the Hebrew script; on the other hand, Syriac is written exclusively in the Syriac script. I think that ultimately, the existance of arc: is not a Good Thing, but that the existance of syr: would indeed be a Good Thing, especially as there are people fex the people at the Beth Marduto institute who would probably contribute to syr:. --node

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morguefile.com image use
by Magnus Manske 08 Oct '04

08 Oct '04

<Farnsworth>Good news, everyone!</Farnsworth> I contacted Michael Connors from www.morguefile.com, a free image repository, about use of the images on wikipedia. Short answer: Go ahead! Long answer: below... Happy image-hunting! Magnus -------- Original Message -------- Hey mangus, first off for a site like Wikipedia, you can certainly use any image photographed by mconnors free and clear of all terms or by-lines and you have my written permission. The problem is that I don't own these images, I only have permission to redistribute them. Or at least all of the images that I haven't photographed. And I wrote the disclaimer myself, which is why it's so shoddy. (even more so then the coding) You are correct, what I plan to do is have a lawyer provide us with proper terms. My only real concern was preventing someone from downloading the entire collection and finding a morgeufile CD for sale at wal-mart. And I have gotten request from people who want to just rip off as many prints as they can and sell them at every street vendor in NYC, in which case I tell them they should at least stick a calendar on it. If your using the images on a webpage, that's really not the same- they would be really bad prints. The intent of the site was definitely to serve sites not unlike wikipedia, so I think you should run with using the images, I honestly believe the contributors would be tickled to know there work is being used by your site. Give me another 6 months to hire the lawyers and we'll have a solid license. For now you can contact the contributor of a specific photo- I'm sure you won't have any problems getting permission. Thanks a lot for the advice, it is greatly appreciated. mconnors On 8/25/04 3:43 AM, "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske(a)web.de> wrote: > Hi, > > I am writing you on behalf of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia > (http://www.wikipedia.org ). > > I recently found your great site at http://www.morguefile.com and > thought it would be a wonderful source for images on Wikipedia. However, > we are a little uncertain about the copyright policy. > > You *do* state that the images on your site are free to use, even for > commercial projects. The Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free > Documentation License, the equivalent of the GPL (think Linux) for > written text. The GFDL allows for commercial use as well, no problem so far. > > But, you also state on your About page "Although selling prints, selling > the images directly or claiming the photo is yours is prohibited." Of > course we will appropriately credit the image source, but by "just" > using an image of yours on our site, someone might produce single prints > and sell them, which is good with the GFDL, but violates your terms of use. > > A solution would be for you to co-license all your images under GFDL, > which would ensure that the information stays free (as in "free speech", > not "free beer":-) but this is of course entirely your decision. IMHO, > it would seem to fit the spirit of your site, though. > > Anyhow, if you allow us to use some of your images on Wikipedia, please > supply us with a short note we can put on the image description below > the source citing, similar to > "This image is *not* under GFDL. You are free to use it in any way > except for selling high-quality versions of it digitally or in print, > and as long as you cite the source." > > Thank you in advance for your time, and for a great image resource. > > Magnus Manske >

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Project proposal: Cooperation with Free Dictionaries Project
by Erdal Ronahi 07 Oct '04

07 Oct '04

Hello everybody, I am proposing a joint venture of Wikipedia with fdicts.com, a Free Dictionaries Project (not run by me, BTW) The aim of fdicts.com is to provide free (GPL or GFDL) dictionaries in multiple languages. What makes fdicts.com unique is an algorithm for the automatized creation of new dictionaries out of existing. This process is similar to creating interlinks (to NONEXISTING pages) with a bot and is more effective, the more free dictionaries already exist. An example for de, en, fr and tr (turkish): if there are these entries [house - Haus] (en-de) [house - maison] (en-fr) [maison -Haus] (fr-de) [house - ev] (en-tr) [Haus - ev] (de-tr) then you can be almost sure that the automatically generated [maison - ev ](fr-tr) will be correct, even if you know neither French nor Turkish. And that is true for thousands of other words. Nevertheless the results must then be improved with by-hand-validating. This is a quite Wiki-like process, and the Wikipedia-community is perfect for that. This may not be very exciting for English and German. But think of the language XY for which NO free dictionaries or JUST an English-XY dictionary exist, but no German-XY, French-XY, Chinese-XY and so on. This approach will produce a lot of fine free dictionaries easily. What does that have to do with Wikipedia/Wiktionary? Wiktionary is also a free dictionary, but with a different approach. The translations in Wiktionary can be extracted to create free dictionaries for the "smaller" languages, fdicts.com can use its algorithm to multiply the entries and the result can be given back to Wiktionary for adding more details if necessary. The final result would be a really global Free Dictionary. (sigh) Maybe then hosted by Wikimedia? If you like, have a look at the project page. (http://www.fdicts.com) Maybe someone on this list has also ideas how to cooperate with that project. Erdal

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technical measures for English variations...
by Robert Graham Merkel 06 Oct '04

06 Oct '04

> If you were reading about the primary exports of a small region of an > obscure country and in the list was "rocket", is it possible you could > have come away from the article believing that the obscure country is a > mjor exporter of rockets? Under ideal conditions, yes, these kinds of > dialectical differences can be illuminating, but under equally likely > non-ideal conditions, the differences can be confusing and misleading. > You can't provide technical measures against poorly-written articles. An article that listed "rocket" as an export without further definition needs editing, not some fancy technical solution. > While I admire the pluck of characterizing inconsistency as richness, I > think that "down in the trenches" the reality of the differences in > dialect (mostly between en-us and en-gb, but also, for example between > pt-pt and pt-br) is a continuous stream of conflict, debate, confusion, > and frustration that policy has failed to allieviate. > And you think that there wouldn't be massive bunfights as to which word was most appropriate for each of the dozens of English locales - given that many people within a locale will use different words for the same object or concept? > There exists a technical solution that would alleviate the problem and > not significantly burden editors. Should we reject this solution on the > wishful notion that our differences can unite rather than divide us? No, only a tiny fraction of the many subtle and usually inconsequential differences between British and American English (not to mention the many other variations of English, some that don't fit neatly on national boundaries) are amenable to technical solutions. Is any technological measure going to make the following (fictional) passage accessible to the average American? Brian Lara scored a double ton at the WACA in the 1997-98 season in a tour match against the PM's 11. This was a Bradmanesque effort, the feat even more impressive considering Jo Angel's reverse swing and Michael Bevan's Chinamen, both aided by the Fremantle Doctor. On the *specific* issue of number names, it might be feasible to provide a fix there. Beyond that, however, technical fixes are more trouble than they're worth. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Merkel robert.merkel(a)benambra.org http://benambra.org Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. -- Albert Einstein They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- Carl Sagan --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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I'll see your milliard, and raise you a thousand million...
by Craig Franklin 06 Oct '04

06 Oct '04

Scríobh David Friedland: >would appear to an en-gb reader as > >a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks > >and to an en-us reader as > >a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 billion gold marks This is clumsy, but manageable, when there's only en-us and en-gb to worry about. Unfortunately, there are more than two dialects of English. For instance, in Australian English, the word "milliard" is unknown (I had to go and look it up to see what you were on about). The sentence in en-au would be "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 thousand million gold marks." (a thousand million being a 1 followed by nine zeroes). I've no idea what sort of dialectical differences exist in other English dialects, but I assume that they're there also. I mean, it probably could be done, but coming up with alternatives for en-us, en-gb, en-au, en-ie, en-za, etc etc, would just be a massive pain, and lets be honest, who has time for that sort of work. The system works fine as it is now (although putting the number in decimal form afterwards would probably help, and is my policy when there might be confusion caused). - Craig Franklin ------------------- Craig Franklin PO Box 764 Ashgrove, Q, 4060 Australia http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art, and Culture.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention
by Evan Prodromou 05 Oct '04

05 Oct '04

On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 09:35 +0530, shantanu oak wrote: > Hi, > What are the implied rules of creating hyperlinks? > > Let's assume I am reading the page.... > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MandrakeSoft > > I have understood 2 things about links... > 1) Red links don't contain any text. > 2) External links are marked (a convention, I wish all websites should follow) > > But I completely fail to understand why certain words are hyperlinked. > For e.g. in the following para why does the date January 27 is linked? > I clicked on that date and could not find anything related to the > current page i.e. MandrakeSoft. > > MandrakeSoft operated under bankruptcy protection from [[January 27]], > [[2003]] to [[March 30]], [[2004]]. Despite its efforts to cut losses > and improve profits, MandrakeSoft was forced to file for protection > due to a series of quarterly losses. > > Too much (and mostly unnecessary) hyperlinks makes me shy away from using wiki. Hmm. We're kind of in a double bind, here. If we don't fix up everything in the encyclopedia to be completely perfect, you're not going to participate. But if we fix everything to be completely perfect, we don't really need your participation after that. B-) On a more serious note: you should probably look over the manual of style for English Wikipedia. If I'm not mistaken, linking dates and years just because is not recommended. You can help Wikipedia by taking out the links in the page you found. You will probably find about 100,000,000 thing in Wikipedia as you go along that will disgust and horrify you. Some you will grow to love; others you should try to change. There's no Big Boss who's going to do it for you; if you've got ideas as to how to make the encyclopedia better, start implementing them (but stop if someone complains!). ~ESP P.S. I redirected this to wikipedia-l as it's not really a technical question.

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Who founded Wikipedia?
by Michael Snow 05 Oct '04

05 Oct '04

Time for a little quiz. Q. Who started Wikipedia? a. Howard Rheingold b. Jimmy Wales c. Lyndon LaRouche d. Larry Sanger If you answered c, you too could work on the student newspaper at Ohio State University! I guess the true nature of the Wikipedia cabal has been revealed. Seriously, you just can't make this stuff up: http://www.thelantern.com/news/2004/10/04/Campus/Larouche.Pac.Group.Sings.S… Now the Howard Rheingold mistake, made recently by the International Herald Tribune, I can vaguely understand. But this is so bizarre I can't even fathom how they came up with it. Not even the most diehard LaRouche activist has the imagination for this. I even spent some time googling to see if this claim was being made anywhere that they might have picked it up, and found nothing. Considering that Larry Sanger now teaches at Ohio State, the situation is even more surreal. Save your breath when it comes to flaming these poor souls, though, I've already politely informed them of their mistake. --Michael Snow

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How to refresh the special pages
by Vina Wang 05 Oct '04

05 Oct '04

On the Chinese wiki, some of the special pages, such as Special:Deadendpages, Special:Uncategorizedpages, are all very old. These pages are from a backup (which looks to be at least a few months old). How can these be refreshed? Also, would it be possible to show which backup the page is from? Is this something only a developer can do, or something that a sysop can do as well? -Vina

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Anarchopedia
by Milos Rancic 04 Oct '04

04 Oct '04

I started new Wikipedia, Anarchopedia (www.anarchopedia.org). In this moment it is blank MediaWiki, but I hope it would become real free anarchist encyclopedia. The main difference between Wikipedia and Anarchopedia is that Anarchopedia _is_ test for anarchy. Also, we would have more anarchistic articles then Wikipedia. Anarchopedia has sister AnarchApedia (www.anarchapedia.org). Where to announce new Wikipedian project? I would like to hear your suggestions as well as I would like to see Wikipedians anarchists to work on Anarchopedia and Anarchapedia.

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Re: clusty
by Michael Snow 04 Oct '04

04 Oct '04

Andrew Lih wrote: >The original article from SJ Mercury News about Clusty/WP isn't very good: >"Clusty is also one of the first search sites to index and display >results from the sometimes controversial Wikipedia, the online >encyclopedia being compiled from contributions by Internet users. Some >researchers do not view Wikipedia as an authoritative source of >information because it is created by Web users." > >They should have said Clusty features Wikipedia in its own tab very >prominently, and it even returns pictures from WP in the search >results. Example: >http://clusty.com/search?query=octopus+card&v%3Aproject=clusty-encyclopedia > > I was wondering how they reached that rather bizarre piece of misinformation. Considering that Dan Gillmor works for the Mercury News and has written about Wikipedia frequently (always positively) and knows it well, it's quite surprising to see them botch facts like that, even if they choose a less glowing tone. However, Gillmor didn't write this particular story, and I suppose the original reporter may have been the victim of an editor who doesn't actually know anything about search engines, but decided the explanation was too complex for the audience. Anyway, it has to be gratifying when the latest innovations in the search wars try to use Wikipedia in their press releases as an example of how great they are. --Michael Snow

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Wikipedia-l October 2004