Wikipedia-l December 2005

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

95 participants
102 discussions

Why do we not make it clear that Wikipedia is a work in progress?
by Brion Vibber 06 Dec '05

06 Dec '05

Why is there not a big, fat, clear warning at the top of every article that this is a work in progess, has not been formally reviewed, may contain factual inaccuracies or vandalism, and *should not* be used for reference without a very large grain of salt? I've gotten tired of having to remind people (even Wikipedians) that Wikipedia is still a draft, and that we have *ZERO* reviewed-and-vetted-for-the-public pages yet. We don't even have a review system in place yet. The "Disclaimer" on en.wikipedia.org, such as it is, isn't even *visible*. You have to scroll down to the *very bottom* to see a tiny "Disclaimers" link, and then follow *that*. The other languages, do they even all *have* disclaimer pages? Every time somebody discovers some bit of inaccurate or embarrassing something in an article and trumps it up in their blog/magazine/international TV news network, the hoo-hah is because we're seen as pretending to be a reliable or respectable information source. *WE ARE NOT SUCH YET* and we need to make sure that we're not seen to be claiming that. We're not just a bunch of geeks hacking together articles anymore; we get umpteen bajillion page views from random folks who probably don't have a clue what we're about, and we get waaaayy too much attention that's based on the impression that we're serving the public directly already. The recent affair is just one in a long series of small and large fusses because we're not being clear about what we are. Wikipedia is a draft, and drafts that are circulated in public need to be explicitly marked as such. </rant> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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Deletion debate on the Icelandic & English Wikipedia
by Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 05 Dec '05

05 Dec '05

There's a deletion debate on the Icelandic & English Wikipedia that I'd like to bring your attention to, it concerns an article on an Icelandic individual which has been getting front page coverage in Icelandic newspapers recently and is for those reasons as well as others, in my opinion, clearly notable enough to have an encyclopedia article about. The articles in question are http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stef%C3%A1n_H._%C3%93feigsson and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stef%C3%A1n_H._%C3%93feigsson and the deltion listing (both by the same user) are at http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spjall:Stef%C3%A1n_H._%C3%93feigsson#Atkv.C3.A… and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Stef%C3%A1n_H.…

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Openness is a means to an end. Nothing more
by Daniel Mayer 05 Dec '05

05 Dec '05

> > The entire goal of this project is freedom and openness. That is incorrect. The entire goal of this project is to create the largest, most widely-used, and best encyclopedia in the world and to give that to everybody on the planet. Everything else, and I mean *everything* (including our openness and the community itself), is a means to *that* end. Nothing more. True, Wikipedia is effectively an experiment in openness and radical democracy. But that has never been the goal or point of it. We have just found that experimenting in those areas have brought us great success (at least in terms of growth). But the experiment continues and we will need to adjust as events change. So we must change the way we do things if and/when any aspect of our experimental methods show a systematic problem that adversely impacts quality. Is the Seigenthaler incident a symptom of such a systematic problem? One can't use a single example to prove such a thing, but it still should serve as a wake up call. That call is this: We are big and popular now. Like it or not a great many people who never edit articles and never will, trust (or at least use) us as a source. So I think we have an obligation to question our methods when quality has slipped. Saying SoGoFixIt when reads outnumber writes by more than 200 to 1 is no longer a valid retort. However, I agree that killing the goose called Openness that laid the golden egg called Wikipedia would be a huge mistake. But I think we can and should continue to improve the ways we try to tame and monitor that beast (better RC patrol features, trust networks to filter RC and watchlists, article validation, etc). Openness has been a profitable gravy train for us. Let's not forget that the train is supposed to be going toward a certain direction. -- mav __________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan, are written in cyrillic ?
by Field Nothing 05 Dec '05

05 Dec '05

>You probably don't know the history of the language well. In fact both >Romanian and Moldovans has been Orthodox Christians and used Cyrillic >script for several ages. Alexandru Niculescu: "Romanian is the only Romance language which has developed in the Eastern part of Latin Europe" Niculescu, Alexandru. Outline History of the Romanian Language. Bucharest: 1981 The first known text appeared in writing in 16th century (1521) which was written in a _variant_ of old cyrillic alphabet and it was used in Walachia and Moldova until the Re-Latinization in 1850s. Note that in the rest of Romania starting from the late 16th century, _LATIN_ alphabet was used with Hungarian spelling conventions (and switched to Italian spelling in 18th). So let me count it...Uhm...It seems just in Walachia and Moldova until 1850 what you said is true, as for the rest of Romania - false, it has used latin script since the 16th century. So even for Moldova region of Romania it has been over 150 years since a variant of cyrillic alphabet has been used. >The modern Latin script is relatively a news in both lands. Oy vey, 150 years is new for sure. So I guess that makes my mobile phone as modern as one could possibly imagine. >So one can's speak in such a self-confindent way about >Moldovan Cyrillics as "decreed in the unfree days". By the way, do you >know much about the unfree days? They were not totally that "unfree". >:) Be more neutral. ;) I know about those days, we've studied about them in school, I've talked to older people about them as well as discussed the matter with some professors from university, they were forced to know russian, the only books they had access to were russian, go figure how free and open is that. >Maybe it would be a good choice just to move the whole thing to >__mo-cyr.wikipedia.org__, leaving at [[:mo:]] the two links -- to the >Romanian and to the old-fashioned Cyrillic-written Moldovan. No, people from Moldova should have control over mo.wikipedia.org, having a link on the main page to cyrillic is not acceptable, it's not our language, why should we put links to another language on the main page ? Let them have their weirdlanguage.wikipedia.org , but we shouldn't have any obligations to put a link to it. >Esperu cxiam! Saluton. _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan, are written in cyrillic ?
by Arbeo M 04 Dec '05

04 Dec '05

Adrenalin wrote: > And who the hell on the main wikipedia page(http://www.wikipedia.org/) > have written OUR name language using cyrillic ? You are right. This is tactless towards the people of Moldova. It should be changed as soon as possible. Arbeo --------------------------------- Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB kostenlosem Speicher

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan, is written in cyrillic ?
by Field Nothing 03 Dec '05

03 Dec '05

>But what about Transdnistria? >As I know, they use Moldovan language (also Russian and Ukrainian) but >use Cyrillic script. Transdnistria is not an independent state, it is a part of Moldova and it is not recognized in the world.If my neighbor suddenly decides to have the official language written using chinese symbols that doesn't mean it has to be on the official page of a country's official language. Whatever language is used there it is not officially recognized and the ISO code mo stands for the language based on latin alphabet and not cyrillic. And let's get serious most of the people from the Transdn. region either know Romanian and write it properly or don't know it at all. And what you say sounds to me like that: There is a country A that has the official language as english. Then there's a country/region B that adopts english also as their language but written in morse code, so they modify the en.wikipedia.org's main page to have a pleasant interface combined of both and a warm welcome "If you want it in latin script click here" and ".. ..-. / -.-- --- ..- / .-- .- -. - / .. - / .. -. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . / -.-. .-.. .. -.-. -.- / .... . .-. . .-.-.-". Wonderful idea, no ? This is exactly the current situation with mo.wiki If you still want to have some weird language, no problem, invent your own name for it (not derived from mo) and put it on wiki, just don't use our official "mo". _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan, are written in cyrillic ?
by Field Nothing 03 Dec '05

03 Dec '05

To Mark Williamson aka Node_ue, >>Wikipedia is not about what is official and what is not. It's about >>what is really happening. I'm sorry but what IS happening in Moldova? I've moved to Moldova in 1991 and I have NEVER seen romanian/moldovan written in cyrillic. And this is not the same as the usual "don't like it, don't watch it" TV kind of thing. MO is the ISO code for the official language in Moldova which is written using latin alphabet, therefore mo.wikipedia.org officially represents Moldova on wikipedia. Imagine someone visits mo.wiki, what does he see - the HORROR! a huge pile of mistakes (both in syntax and grammar), cyrillic alphabet, ugly unfinished interface again in cyrillic, so what impression does one make of Moldova ? Basically I see this as one man (yes, Node_ue - you are the only admin) running the show and not allowing anyone to edit (the main page is blocked, also no way to edit the interface). If you want to do it properly remove the cyrillic pages, write everything in latin. Why don't you understand that you do is offending us. You don't know the language, you've never been to Moldova, you don't know the situation here, why are you running mo.wiki then, just to offend us ? At this point I see the site as making fun of Moldova and the people of Moldova, creating the false impression that people use cyrillic and are generally illiterate. Give us the control of mo.wikipage and please stop vandalizing our language! >>But it is undenyable that some people rather write in Cyrillic. I see romanian is not the only language you are having problems with, it's "undeniable" last time I checked my dictionary. That aside, what do you have to back up your affirmation, I live here, I see the situation, I haven't seen anyone writing anything in cyrillic romanian/moldovan. And an important note is that we don't have something like "Moldovan language" in schools, the course is called "Romanian language/Limba Romana", we don't even have a "History of Moldova" it's "History of Romania". _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/

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language inheritance
by Ashar Voultoiz 03 Dec '05

03 Dec '05

Hello, Mark asked to change some language inheritances. So instead of defaulting to english we have: ab: av: ba: ce: & kv: inherit ru ii: & za: inherit from Zn_cn Note, avar already did: qu: gn: and ay inherit from es ty from fr For details: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3844 cheers, -- Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/ IM: hashar(a)jabber.org ICQ: 15325080

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Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan, are written in cyrillic ?
by Adrenalin 03 Dec '05

03 Dec '05

>From ISO-639 to MO code are assigned the Moldovan language. In constitution of Republic of Moldova are written what the official alphabet are latin. http://xiv.parlament.md/en/legalfoundation/constitution/t1/ "Article 13 The National Language, Use of Other Languages (1) The national language of the Republic of Moldova is Moldovan, and its writing is based on the Latin alphabet." How is that possible what the moldovian language what are officially based on the Latin alphabet, is writted ussing cyrillic alphabet ?

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Re: Enforcing WP:CITE the Soi case
by SJ 02 Dec '05

02 Dec '05

On Sat, 3 Dec 2005, Walter van Kalken wrote: >> section. There are other options we can consider, or new ways of citing >> content online, that are different from the methods used in printed books. > > Like instead of having the references in and under the article have a > seperate page like a talk page? And we just make "notes" which link to the > references on that "references"page? Precisely. An entire "references" page for each article, and an entire article for/about each reference. This will revolutionize collaborative research and analysis. SJ

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Wikipedia-l December 2005