In this article (
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1374741,00.html )
Collins compares its new Living Dictionary - which takes submissions
from users - to Wikipedia.
Maybe this would be a good place to direct the authors of attempted
neologisms that end up getting deleted?
--Michael Snow
I believe there has to be some principles in minor language Wikipedias.
Setting up an encyclopedia is not just about self expression, it has to
serve public good. Moreover, proposals and actual performances have to
stand some very basic prima facie scrutiny.
If a language has 1000 speakers. Only 100 can read (most of them use
another mainstream language). And only 10 of them can write (the writing
system could be difficult, e.g. Egyptian hieroglyph). And only 5 of them
sre active contributors. The five of them would become the de facto
knowledge controllers.
If each user of that language uses a mainstream language Wikipedia, it
will be good. However, to those who consult that minor Wikipedia, he or
she could be mislead by inaccurate information (e.g. bias, mistake,
outdated materials ...). Because that minor Wikipedia is written most by
a handful of people (possibly friends of similar backgrounds), it
becomes much more unlikely that a mistake could be corrected.
Even if that user knows there's a mistake, he or she may not be able to
correct it. Many minor languages users are not fluent speakers. Some may
not know how to type that particular script.
And the limited active contributors also may have a very restricted
knowledge base. The five of them may not know much about astronomy for
example. They may translate. They could make mistakes. They could also
selectively translate less important parts of an article because they
may not know much about the mathematics, physics, chemistry, history ...
about that subject. Unless they can ask others to join, their works may
not be trusted.
In case the user knows how to double check, it may not be a problem.
However, if a user still has to consult a mainstream language source, it
makes that minor Wikipedia less relevant. And if the user cannot read
another language and failed to find another minor language source, the
bug-ridden Wikipedia could do more harm than good. An encyclopedia has
to serve a public good to justify its existence.
It is a bad idea to setup encyclopedias in so many languages. I don't
mind if anyone wants to start a Wiki in Pig Latin or Nadsat. You can
easily auto translate English into these two artificial languages. But
for many minor languages, it may be not feasible. The few articles could
be untrustworthy. Wikipedia is not a language conservation project. The
reason why people trust English Wikipedia is because of the number of
contributors and fact checkers. We don't want this site to become the
largest source of rumor.
I think it will be good if they contribute to the Wiktionary.
Besides the number of active regular contributors, they may need sources
of reference materials and public domain sources. In English, you have
the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, Project Gutenberg, CIA Fact Book and
many other online materials. It is easy to build many pages without much
efforts and mistakes in most major languages. They have so many printed
reference materials. To many minor languages, they have very few books
other than a language textbook, the Bible or an out-of-print dictionary.
It is really not a very good idea that they start an encyclopedia
project at this moment.
Jiaqing Bao
Wikipedia is singled out for praise for its super-timely coverage of
the Indian Ocean quake, leaving Wikinews eating dust and "dramatic"
headlines. Will there be a journalist-encyclopedist showdown? Will
Wikiaddicts start cancelling other appointments when they learn of
crucial updates to important articles? (Do they already?)
Meanwhile 'wiki' continues to infect mainstream vocabulary, in
preparation for the upcoming Year of the Wiki. And better editing
tools are coming out every week, thanks to both MediaWiki updates (did
you know that 'what links here' now works for categories?) and
third-party plugins.
Happy new year!
+sj+
==Wikipedia, Disasters and Wikinews==
eSchool News, ed-tech Insider Will Richardson, 12-28.
'The Future of News Right Now'
Of all the ways that the Read/Write Web is changing our lives,
one of the most profound is in the ways we access and consume
the news... when I [want] a more complete picture of the story,
I still don't go to the Times. Instead, I go to Wikipedia... I
know there is some debate about the veracity of the information
there. But take a minute to check out the Wikipedia entry on
the tsunami event and tell me you aren't amazed. [It's
getting] 75 edits an hour. In fact I found out there that the
toll had reached some 55,000 before it even came through my
[news] aggregator.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2004/12/000426.php
Guardian Unlimited, Neil McIntosh, 12-30.
'Wikipedia on the Indian Ocean earthquake'
[T]he ever-impressive Wikipedia is compiling a mammoth entry
on the unfolding disaster. He points out the first draft was
written within 24 hours of the waves hitting shore; it's
certainly an impressive effort.
Meanwhile, Wikinews - the recently-launched sister site to
Wikipedia - is running the dramatic headline "New tsunamis to
hit India today...'
http://tinyurl.com/4jz26
== Other tidbits about wikis and wikipedia ==
The NYT listed 'wiki' among 14 "would-be words that rose to
prominence" this year, along with 'spim', 'bangalored', and
'podcasting'. That's ridonkulous. But then none could accuse
compiler Grant Barrett of knowing where his towel is.
http://tinyurl.com/68ngs
And Val Souza continues to promote wikis in his column in India's
Express Computer 'zine. He throws in a good word for Wikipedia but
leaves MediaWiki out of his list of wikis to install at home.
Wikipedia has detractors too, as I discovered when I
received anonymous mail condemning me for "pushing"
Wikipedia in my previous column...
http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20041227/edit02.shtml
Finally, Daily Yomiuri online says WP offers "nothing less than a
glimpse into a potential future model of publishing."
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20041228wo61.htm
== New Tools ==
(as seen on wikitech-l !) Axel Kramer released a beta of the Eclipse
Wikipedia Editor Plugin in time for Christmas.
http://tinyurl.com/5qaog
General tools information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools
--
Hi all,
I remember earlier somebody brought up the issue of bringing back intlwiki-l.
Currently, language discussions seem to dominate here, and I think
that frankly there are some people here who don't want to get those
discussions in their inbox.
This is just an idea I'm floating to see how people feel, I have no
strong feelings either way.
Mark
Hello all,
I’m trying to update the copyright warning on [[ang]] to include the ability to insert special characters, and using simply the letters inserts gibberish, and using the html code simply inserts the html code. I’d like to use:
Sundortácnu <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Special_characters> : Á <javascript:insertTags('Á','','')> á <javascript:insertTags('á','','')> Ǽ <javascript:insertTags('%C7%BC','','')> ǽ <javascript:insertTags('%C7%BD','','')> É <javascript:insertTags('É','','')> é <javascript:insertTags('%C3%A9','','')> Í <javascript:insertTags('Í','','')> í <javascript:insertTags('%C3%AD','','')> Ó <javascript:insertTags('Ó','','')> ó <javascript:insertTags('%C3%B3','','')> Ú <javascript:insertTags('Ú','','')> ú <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BA','','')> Ý <javascript:insertTags('%C3%9D','','')> ý <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BD','','')> · Ð <javascript:insertTags('%C3%90','','')> ð <javascript:insertTags('%C3%B0','','')> Þ <javascript:insertTags('%C3%9E','','')> þ <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE','','')> · Æ <javascript:insertTags('Æ','','')> æ <javascript:insertTags('%C3%A6','','')> Œ <javascript:insertTags('%C5%92','','')> œ <javascript:insertTags('%C5%93','','')> · ² <javascript:insertTags('%C2%B2','','')> ³ <javascript:insertTags('%C2%B3','','')> ½ <javascript:insertTags('%C2%BD','','')> † <javascript:insertTags('%E2%80%A0','','')> ¢ <javascript:insertTags('¢','','')> – <javascript:insertTags('–','','')> — <javascript:insertTags('—','','')> · [] <javascript:insertTags('%5b','%5d','')> [[]] <javascript:insertTags('%5b%5b','%5d%5d','')> {{}} <javascript:insertTags('%7b%7b','%7d%7d','')> · ~ <javascript:insertTags('~','','')> | <javascript:insertTags('|','','')> ° <javascript:insertTags('%C2%B0','','')>
And
Sundortácnu <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Special_characters> : sé <javascript:insertTags('s%C3%A9','','')> séo <javascript:insertTags('s%C3%A9o','','')> þæt <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C3%A6t','','')> þæs <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C3%A6s','','')> þǽm <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C7%BDm','','')> þǽre <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C7%BDre','','')> þone <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BEone','','')> þá <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C3%A1','','')> þǽra <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C7%BDra','','')> þý <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C3%BD','','')> þon <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BEon','','')> · þes <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BEes','','')> þéos <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C3%A9os','','')> þis <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BEis','','')> þisses <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BEisses','','')> þissum <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BEissum','','')> þisne <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BEisne','','')> þisse <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BEisse','','')> þás <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C3%A1s','','')> þissa <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BEissa','','')> þýs <javascript:insertTags('%C3%BE%C3%BDs','','')> ·
Can someone help me out?
Thanks,
James
> In general Wikipedias are being divided by language, not by country.
> Sure, Swiss users will have different interests than German, French or
> Italian ones, but those are I think better served by adding Swiss
> content to the existing Wikipedias than by creating a new,
> multi-lingual Wikipedia.
>
> Andre Engels
>
Hello Andre
Yes it's ok to difided by language, but there is already a "Portal"
for switzerland at http://wikimedia.org/ch-portal and my idea was to
improve the efficiency of this "portal".
My first mind was to update this site. And so i make the suggestion to
start a new wikipedia.
Are there other proposals to make this site more attractive???
Michael
> > As first, sorry my bad english... my preferred languages are German and French.
> >
> > I'm interested to start
> > - http://ch.wikipedia.org and
> > - http://ch.wikinews.org
> >
> > details on ch.wikipedia.org:
> > Switzerland is especially: The national languages are German, French,
> > Italian, and Romansh and this by only 7 millions habitants.
> > There's already a Page for swiss users:
> > http://wikimedia.org/ch-portal/ but i think that's a bad seller. I
> > have further plans with respectable and multilingual content for
> > Switzerland.
> >
> > details on ch.wikinews.org:
> > same motivation like ch.wikipedia.org and
> > Switzerland has a strong economy with a lot's of interesting news.
> > Switzerland is not a member of the European Union. And so, we have
> > other interestes than germany.
> > and so on.
> >
> > Are there also Plans like this?
> > Can i help?
> > If there no plans i will to start first with wikipedia.ch and secondly
> > wikinews.ch.
> > Are someone interesstet to help?
> >
> > best regards
> > Michael Rueetschli
> > business data processing specialist
> > Switzerland
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
Recently, the tokipona Wikipedia has been loced and moved, as has been
the Klingon one. There has also been done something about automatic
conversion between zh-tw and zh-cn.
Being active with interwiki-bots, including programming, I would like
to have opinions on the following:
* Should interwiki links to tokipona: be removed?
* Should interwiki links to zh-cn and zh-tw be changed into single links to zh?
Andre Engels
Hello all,
I think there is a difference between wishing "a happy Yule/Yuletide" --
which could be argued to be equally Pagan and Christian, and also somewhat
inclusive even of other festivals of light (like Hanukka) as long as the
timing of this greeting is considerate of the events outside Christianity.
"Merry *Christmas*", whilst covering much of the same contents as Yule in
practice, is much more exclusivist in that it explicitly denotes the
"Christ Mass" (compare also Anglo-Saxon "Crístesmæsse"...).
That being said I have no problem with Wikipedia using the "Merry
Christmas" greeting on front page level -- IF (!!!!!!!) it one also takes
care to include the other festivals excluded by this wording through
parallel greetings at relevant times. I agree that the "happy holidays"
greeting is a bit "lobotomised". Since we are building a base of knowledge
here -- wouldn't the best strategy be to emphasise inclusiveness and
spreading of cultural knowledge through greetings for ALL holidays of some
widespread significance? That would include major holidays in Christianity,
Judaism, Islam, Bahá'í, Buddhism and Hinduism, to mention a few...
Happy New Year! (And a Happy Yuletide for those who celebrate Yule in its
8, 12 or 20-day duration variants; as well as a well completed Hanukka,
Dipavali, etc...)
-Olve
___________________
Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org
Hoi,
I came across this and I think you will appreciate it.
http://www.it-director.com/article.php?articleid=12477&PHPSESSID=1376c34e79…
For those who hope to enjoy a Happy New Year, here (
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Felice_Anno_Nuovo%21 ) is a place to add
the appropriate words for your own language, you may pronounce these and
record your pronunciation in the .ogg format. When saved in Commons you
can use it in any and it here and on all of our glorious projects.
For those for whom the year does not start on the first of January, we
hope that you appreciate this project in the manner it is intended.
If you are interested in the customs around the celebrations and the
origin of customs relating to the New Year celebrations or have an
intrest about dates and dating, please add your observations to wikipedia.
:)
Thanks,
Gerard