We all know the problem. A anonymous user does something stupid and gets
blocked.
Users in some countrys and ISP's have all there own personal ip so there is no
problem. But many have a dynamic ipadress and some are even obligated to use
the proxy of the there ISP.
Some Wikipedias are blocking proxys because the could be used for abuse because
the are open proxys.
In all those situations you have many good users who do not have write access,
anonynous or not. If you dot have write access it is not easy to ask to be
unblocked. The dutch wikipedia has a webbased contact form but there is always
a waiting period befor a responds can be given.
Who knows how many users have give up and left the project because of this.
The problem is that the system of blocking is extremely crude. Blocking
thousands of ipadress is not the solution. Changing the software so the
blocking can be more precise is a solution or at least a big chunk of it.
To change the software you need to know what you are doing. Ofcourse the
present system developers have to much work to adress this now otherwise the
whould have done it.
At the end of februari there will be the FOSDEM event in Brussels where the
Wikimedia foundation will be present. That is a open source developers
conference. There is hope there will be found there new volontiers to work on
MediaWiki. Maybe then there will be time work on things like bug 550
Bug 550 is a BugZilla request for the creation of a system where registerd
users who share a blocked ipadress can still edit.
And also that you can specify of it is allowed to created a new account when
you use that blocked ipadress.
You can "vote" for a bug. The idea is that a bug that gets many votes is
important for the users and gets because of this a higher priority.
Of it is usefull or not, if you do not have the knowledge to write this
function it is all you can do. And it give you the feeling you have done
something.
How to vote;
- 1) go to http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org
- 2) A: log in
B: Create Account -> enter your emailadress and you name (not a
username!) - follow instrictions and log in
- 3) go to http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550 or enter in the
box "Go to bug" 550 and "go".
- 4) read this page
- 5) if like this idea click on "Vote for this bug"
- 6) You should see the listing of bug 550 under the heading "MediaWiki". You
have a box whit a 0 inside. You have 1000 points. Enter a number and click
on "change my votes"
- 7) you have done some good today or at least you have that feeling. Thank
you.
Greetings,
Walter
This page was sent to you by: rose.parks(a)att.net.
Hi, Is it possible that no one saw this yesterday in the Times? As Ever, Ruth Ifcher
TECHNOLOGY | February 11, 2005
Google may host encyclopedia project
Matt Hines, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
The group behind the Wikipedia online effort says the search giant offered to host some of its content on company servers.
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1038_3-5572744.html?ex=1108789200&en=…
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Hi
I decided to donate advertising space to various charities and open-source
projects, and I recently contacted www.adcouncil.org about running public
service advertisements on my website, http://www.wikinerds.org . So, I
thought whether you would be interested to donate advertising space for their
ads (or of any other similar agency - do you know any?) in Wikipedia.
AdCouncil's campaigns include ads about the tsunami, smoking, education,
discrimination, etc. Have you discussed about this possibility? I think it
would benefit many people.
Some campaigns you may be interested in:
http://www.adcouncil.org/campaignshttp://www.nosoftwarepatents.comhttp://www.eff.org/brhttp://thankpoland.info/
I know in the past you were negative towards software patent banners, or even
Firefox buttons, but I think you should reconsider. I am sure the majority of
Wikipedians would support these campaigns.
By running public service ads you can remain totally non-commercial and help
your readers get informed about various issues.
In addition, I am accepting banners and image buttons for linking to your own
project, if you have started anything interesting about science or
open-source software. So, if any Wikipedian wants to be linked from my site,
just send me your site address and 88x31 button and I will consider it. Of
course, Wikipedians who would like to promote science and the nerd community
can link back to my site if they want using images from
http://portal.wikinerds.org/banners
--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org/
To all of you :-)
Yes, this is the mail I promised yesterday.
So here it is again:
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_San_Valentino%21
This is the page how it looks like now.
(Oh, you have problems in using the Italian interface? Just change it
clicking on "preferenze" in the upper right part).
You all had so wonderful discussions on this theme - telling about
similar days to Valentine's Day, about where it is not a special day,
about usages etc. So I hope homework was done and the articles created -
this in order to allow to link to them from a special Valentine's Day
project page.
So would you please send me the links to these pages (or add them to the
discussion page of the link above)? I'd like to add them to create
inter-wiki links - I feel this is very important to make people know
more about such themes. Really it doesn't matter wich language your page
is in: maybe it will be a way to have it translated into another
languages as well - just one more possibility to spread culture.
And don't forget: if there are events of other places: create small
projects like these - it is important - one can only respect what he/she
knows, but it is hard to do this if one doesn't even know that something
particular exists.
And btw.:
Who wants to add his/her translation and send the whole list of wishes
to a special person is still in time :-)
Ciao!
Sabine
I decided to wait a few days before responding to any of the threads. I've
read all your comments, and would like to briefly respond.
1. I am not opposed to Quenya articles in Wikibooks, but how does one even
go about *that*?
2. The Tengwar do not need to be used: Tengwar and Quenya are independent of
one another-- Tengwar is simply the type of script, and is not part of the
language itself. So any objections to Quenya based on problems associated
with Tengwar are easily solved by using the Roman alphabet, as many Quenya
speakers already do.
3. There seem to be two (very opposite!) objections to Quenya: one that it
would "never grow large", and the other that it would "take up too much
valuable resource space". These two points of view seem quite contrary to
me. Either it would take up too much space, or it wouldn't ever take up
"enough" space. I don't see Quenya language on wikipedia growing huge.
However, I think there is always too much focus on Wikipedia for largesse
"We're currently working on 455,000 articles!". An encyclopedia doesn't have
to have a million articles to *be* an encyclopedia!
4. Klingon hasn't been a huge success, hmm? But can't that be said of many
Wikipedia language articles? Aren't there dozens of languages with, say,
just one article? And since I (and other Quenya contributors; there's
interest on the 'request for languages' page) don't speak these languages
anyway, it's not as if we're holding back these languages because we'd be
working on Quenya ones. What I mean is, I don't know Alsatian, so I'm not
ever going to be contributing Alsatian-language articles.
5. There is one really strange objection to Quenya language on Wikipedia
that I *must* address. All the rest of the objections at least made *sense*
to me, even if I don't hold that point of view. But my puzzlement comes from
this idea that a Quenya language wiki is somehow an "insult" to another
language. Without entangling myself in political debates concerning
Cantonese, if any language was "insulted" because a fictional language made
it into Wikipedia before a real-world language, I'd expect it was Klingon,
not Quenya, which caused such "insult". I think the whole idea is fairly
strange anyway... If Cantonese is sufficiently different than Mandarin,
perhaps there should be a wikipedia for it, but that has nothing to do with
my proposal for Quenya.
6. Someone asked about the abbreviation. My proposed ISO thingy would be qy
, but I wouldn't object to a change on that, and didn't include one with my
first post to the list because I think that's the simplest part of the whole
deal, and the only part that might *not* meet with objection.
7. There is a very large subset of Quenya-speakers amongst Tolkien fans. A
Quenya language project is not doomed to failure, and in the past two weeks
there has been seeming interest even on the somewhat obscure 'request for
languages' page. I can almost guarantee that a Quenya language project would
quickly eclipse any similar Klingon project.
Response (positive or negative) is appreciated.
And, please, someone, tell me more about the Wikibooks thing. I've been a
contributer for 2 years (mostly anon.), but I know nothing about Wikibooks.
Ron/firsfron on Wikipedia
And if we have a mikipedia (miniwikipedia, the name is just silly) or a
thekipedia (thematic wikipedia, also silly) about Quenya, Toki Pona,
Kinglon, etc? I mean a wikipedia that covers only quenya stuff in quenya.
No real-earth cities or subjects, but only middle-earth cities and
subjects. I could be hosted at an old or new wikibooks project or at a new
multi-language wikibooks or anywhere else. I do not know if it fits, but I
would like it, more than a (incomplete) wikipedia.
Anyway, I think Wikimedia should allow someone to write in these languages
somewhere.
Also I am not against a Wikipedia or a Wikibooks in these languages. A
wikibooks could host such thematic wikipedia and other books.
e2m.
Thanks for your thoughts, Mark. I'd like to respond to your post briefly.
>I agree on all points. I do not think it would ever grow very large,
but as I have noted in the past I don't think Wikipedia creation
should be limited by such factors.
That's certainly good to know, although I do not know how many of your
fellow W-listers share this point of view.
>The difference is that Klingon had a huge debate, and it had people
who committed to contributing who apparently gave up because it was
too difficult (!), while most of the languages that lie inactive were
requested by non-fluent speakers at some time in the distant past and
were created without any debate.
Well, I have no wish to create a huge debate to create a Quenya wikipedia
section. Either it will be allowed or it won't. However, if one is created,
or a wikibooks section is provided, I don't intend to give up on such a
project, and I might add that I believe Quenya-language scholars are quite a
dedicated lot. Pages such as http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/birth.htm (a
translation of big passages from the Bible into Quenya), etc can give you a
fair idea that Quenya is workable. RL publications such as Vinyar Tengwar
and Tyalie Tyelellieva, Quenya language periodical publications, have been
around for decades. Fans were compiling dictionaries on Quenya ever since
the series was published in the 1950's. So Quenya scholarship isn't some
fly-by-night operation. And predates Klingon by some years.
>Klingon and Gothic are the only two controversial Wikipedias that were
actually created that so far haven't attracted many users. At least
one person has committed to me to add to the Gothic Wikipedia but I'm
not sure I entirely believe that. The Klingon Wikipedia is currently
suffering from the problems resulting from the fact that some people
think they should use Conscript registry codepoints for piqad, while
others think they should use the Roman alphabet.
Well, that's all Greek to me. Actually, it's Klingon to me. ;)
>However, I strongly urge you to think over your request carefully. Is
knowledge of Quenya grammar and vocabulary extensive enough that you
could translate a good, long article on a real-world modern subject?
Yes. See examples above, or check out
http://www.forodrim.org/daeron/md_home.html (none of these are my sites,
I'll add, but you can see the translations can be quite extensive...
certainly as long as many encyclopedia articles).
>What would you do when you encoutered words or grammatical structures
that are not known from those writings of Tolkien which are currently
publicly available?
There is always a way around, Mark, and it's certainly not too 'difficult'.
I've been writing in Quenya for years (in such publications as Tyalie
Tyelellieva). The going can be slow, but articles in sciences such as
Botany, Astronomy, etc, aren't all that difficult, because Tolkien's
fictional elves had a love of these subjects, so there is absolutely plenty
to work with in terms of the language.
>As there is no Ethnologue code, I propose we use the Linguist List
code
(http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/forms/langs/Ge…),
QYA, thus art-qya as the language code.
I certainly don't object to your proposal.
>Of course, this is if and only if the Wikipedia is created.
Of course.
>As far as I know, there are more fluent speakers of Klingon than of Quenya.
Although the *media* reports the use of Klingon more frequently than Quenya,
I've seen no data to back this up. A quick google search pulls up 133,000
hits for Quenya, but only 14,000 hits for tlhIngan (the Klingon language).
That's a considerable difference.
Again, thanks for your opinions and ideas, Mark.
Ron :)
Please take a look at the meta-discussion of an upcoming UNESCO grant
which is relevant to Wikimedia:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants/IFAP
This particular grant targets proposals which
* Promote information literacy, particularly by training information
professionals
* Strengthen awareness about the importance of preservation of information
* Promote better understanding of the ethical, legal and societal
implications of ICTs
(ICTs : Information and Communication Technologies)
Since in addition to creating fantastic content, Wikipedia is a source
of practical evangelism about the advantages of open licenses and open
access -- particularly as open access relates to empowering people to
preserve information -- we have a good match for the first two of
these goals.
Thoughts on how we should approach this grant are welcome. Note,
unfortunately, the near deadline : February 20. On the upside, the
application they require is very short and general; filling out a
short web form (perhaps only the first stage of the approval process).
The components of the web form are also listed on the meta: page
above.
--
+sj+
Could a new namespace in Wikipedia be created for thematic portals
(e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiportal )? IMHO they
don't really belong in the Wikipedia namespace (like in en: and fr:)
nor to the main one (like in de: or pl:).
--
Ausir
mailto:fallout@lexx.eu.org
http://fallout.scifi.pl
ICQ 41090834 GG 2730728
Where is the proper place to ask for a language file to be updated? The page
on meta has numerous requests which do not seem to be acknowledged.
phma
--
1 m = 3*3*5*7*47*44351/73/293339 * Cs133