Hey,
I know many irresponsible users try to upload copyrighted material in
Wikipedia. What do you do to find which material is copyrighted and how do
you handle the situation?
--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org
Hello all,
Spurred by some brief experiments with recording pronunciations on
Commons, I am interested (at least conceptually) in making free audio
recordings (licence GFDL, format .ogg) of various important historical
texts or literary works which are now free (public domain or
otherwise).
I suspect there is appetite among volunteers for such a project, and
so I'm wondering whether there is a place for such things in the
Wikimedia world. (I wouldn't be surprised if this had been discussed
…
[View More]before, though I can't find a reference to it.)
Some natural choices are:
Wikisource:
Pro: Focus is on free-content versions of important historical texts
or literary works.
Con: Mandate seems to be only for text, and there is apparently a 5 MB
limit per file.
Wikibooks:
Pro: No prohibition against sound files (that I can see).
Con: Seems to be intended for collaborative original creations, not
uploaded recordings of a fixed work. And there is apparently a 5 MB
limit per file.
Commons:
Pro: Many sound files, and file size limit is larger (20 MB).
Con: Unsure if it's appropriate for this. Commons is intended for
shared media resources across Wikimedia projects, and I can't see how
(for example) the Catalan Wiktionary would need an audio version of
Chapter 7 of Wuthering Heights. Existing sound files on the Commons
are all quite short.
Right now I'm leaning towards using the Commons. Any comments about
this, either about the Commons as a proposed place, or about the idea
in general?
Lastly, would anyone happen to know of any existing archives of free
(as in free-libre) audio recordings available online?
Regards,
Steve
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Hi all,
I thought you guys might be very interested to hear this.
The first Wikipedia to have a "meetup" nearly as soon as it was
founded was the Maltese Wikipedia.
The reason for this, as some of the more geographically-inclined may
guess, is that Malta is a nation of islands, and most people live on
the main island.
So, somebody suggested on the mainpage that they meet somewhere, and
everybody worked it into their schedules and met -- the _very next
day_.
We are talking about 12 people, …
[View More]all the current inhabitants of this Wikipedia.
The community dynamic is very different from any existing Wikipedia
because these people have all seen each other, and if nessecary can
meet face-to-face to discuss problems without much hassle.
I recognise that a similar type of thing exists on the Icelandic
Wikipedia, and perhaps on the Faroese Wikipedia when its community
grows larger, but the unique position of Malta was also responsible
for its sudden growth from 0 to 12 active editors - people just told
other people, and within the span of a week all these people were
already involved.
I imagine that this is the ideal environment for a Wikipedia, because
it is easier to solve problems, I think, when you know all the people
and can discuss issues in person over a latte.
It will be interesting to see how this community develops!
Mark
--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
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Thanks for the responses about the unicode issues with
en.wikipedia.org. Firefox has worked well so far, and I'm glad to hear
the other wiki(s) will move to utf-8.
As regards the Maltese Wikipedia mt: , I'd like to offer some
backstory. The Maltese wikipedia was 'founded' if you will around
September 2004, (i.e. the first entries in the language were made). I
had more or less forgotten about it - and a few other entries were
made later that year. Then sometime early in 2005, the
…
[View More]Maltese-language blogosphere started to pick up steam. I began looking
at the Wikipedia again, and started following the steps to set it up
properly. Fueled by blog links, the number of authors on the Maltese
wikipedia grew to staggering proportions - about five or six active
contributors.
In Malta, I've noticed that some things are easier done in person.
Plus, being such friendly people and a small island, meeting together
is a natural way to continue something. As I was going to be visiting,
I started putting notes up actually about a week before the meeting
date. We took votes (in WIki style) and were able to hash out a
meeting time eventually. Venue was to be an famous outdoor cafe in
the main square that has wifi access.. however, it was raining and so
it started indoors. The cafe staff complained, however - not about AC
power usage, but about computers interfering with the cash register
(!).. so it moved outdoors when the rain stopped. This was better, as
WiFi didn't work inside and I had not managed to grab copies of the
pages we wanted to discuss.
Five people came in total, two of which aren't yet active contributors
but should be soon. We talked about orthography issues (always a
popular and recurring topic in any language I think), tasks to do,
organizational issues, POV, categories. Several of the action items
have been completed already.
Yes, it will be interesting to see how things develop. Sometimes
being on a small island has its advantages, logistically. I think
there is some interest in meeting once in a while - at the very least I
will try to organize something myself when I next visit, probably in a
year.
I think some policies etc are still being hashed out, after which mt:
will be ready for a new phase in promotion.
One must also realize that a standard keyboard for this language was
only finalized in 2002, and has only seen adoption recently. Maltese
orthography as such has been around since 1921, but until very recently
a lot of data has been encoded using special fonts and not Unicode.
Saħħa lilkom (health to all)
Steven
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--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote:
> However, your case underscores my standing argument that Wikisource and
> Wikimedia Commons should be merged, since they both serve very similar
> purposes (repositories of free content), and transformations like yours
> would be natural in a single repository.
Exactly. Commons should be the resource for all shared media. Text is a major
form of media.
-- mav
__________________________________________________
Do You …
[View More]Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
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Given the latest fire-storm on questions of authority and peer review, this
might make some smile! :):)
*Fifth-Grade Science Paper Doesn't Stand Up to Peer Review*
A three-member panel of 10-year-old Michael Nogroski's fellow classmates
at Nathaniel Macon Elementary School unanimously agreed Tuesday that his
327-word essay "Otters" did not meet the requirements for peer approval.
Read the rest: http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4116&n=3
Something people might find interesting,
This week's (April 23) _Economist_ has a brief half paragraph on
Wikipedia, mentioning it in passing as part of a discussion of the rise
of non-traditional media online ("Yesterday's papers", pg. 59). It's
perhaps most notable in the way it takes "Wikipedia works" as plain
fact: a perhaps surprising but still well-established enough fact to be
just mentioned in passing as evidence for an argument.
"Blogs, moreover, are but one item on a growing …
[View More]list of new media tools
that the internet makes available. Wikis are collaborative web pages
that allow readers to edit and contribute. This, to digital immigrants,
may sound like a recipe for anarchic chaos, until they visit, for
instance, wikipedia.org, an online encyclopaedia that is growing
dramatically richer by the day through exactly this spontaneous (and
surprisingly orderly) collaboration among strangers."
-Mark
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Last Friday Zhengzhu said to me that community at sr: should decide
very fast (in one week) about implementation of his work on new
Serbian interface which implements all standards of Serbian language.
As it is too fast for voting on sr.wikipedia and as almost every
Saturday at 20h (8pm) CET people from sr: have online meetings at
#wikipedia-sr channel (Freenode network), I announced that we should
talk about implementation of Zhengzhu's work there. Also, I saw that
Angela is online and I …
[View More]called her to join us.
At 20h CET there were 8 sr: contributors, Zhengzhu and Angela at the
channel. (I'll list sr: contributor down.) Before 20h one more user
was online, but he had problems with Internet connection because of
rain in France, one more didn't come because he was running at
Belgrade Marathon. One more contributor came during the talk with
Zhengzhu. After talk with Zhengzhu two more contributors came and
participate in decision making. I asked other 3 more very active
contributors about their opinion after that talk and I can guess
(according to his writing at vilage pump) opinion for the last very
active contributor. All of that will be explained in the rest of the
message.
We were talking about one hour and half with Zhengzhu and some parts
of his work became more clear to us. Another hour was passed until we
articulated questions for voting and made decisions.
We had two questions: (a) To implement or not Cyrillic-Latin
conversion at sr: and how to implement; and (b) to implement or not
Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion at sr: and when.
a) According do possible solutions, we articulated for oppinions for
the first question:
1. Not to implement Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
2. To have mixed Cyrillic and Latin wiki source. This solution is
implemented on Chinese Wikipedia, but it is very strange for Serbian
speakers: only bibliography and foreign names can be mixed in one
text.
3. To have read-write Cyrillic and read-only Latin pages.
4. To have read-write for both Cyrillics and Latin. This oppinion had
one note: If it is not possible to implement, we should use oppinion 3
as temporary solution, until complete 4 is possible. This solution
also means that I can continue to talk with Zhengzhu about
implementation.
Voting result was (order is: IRC nickname, user account at sr:, oppinion):
bonzo, [[sr:User:Bonzo]], 4
djordjes, [[sr:User:Djordjes]], 4
domatrios, [[sr:User:Domatrios]], 3
dzivdzan, [[sr:User:Dzivdzan]], 4
Dzordzm, [[sr:User:Dzordzm]], 4
kaster, [[sr:User:Kaster]], 3
Milan^Tesovic, [[sr:User:Милант]], 2
millosh, [[sr:User:Милош]], 4
Pokrajac, [[sr:User:Покрајац]], 4
Sasa^Stefanovic, [[sr:User:Саша.Стефановић]], 4
VKokielov, [[sr:User:ВКокијелов]], 4
Other active contributors, which I asked after the voting, said:
[[sr:User:Ninam]], 3
[[sr:User:Горан Анђелковић]], 4 (he was disconnected before Zhengzhu came)
[[sr:User:Обрадовић Горан]], 4 (he was running on Belgrade Marathon)
Other active contributors for which I can just guess what do they think:
[[sr:User:Golija]], probably 4, maybe 3 (he was urged for introduction
of Latin alphabet on the vilage pump at sr:)
[[sr:User:Влада]], maybe 1, maybe 3 (he doesn't like Latin, as I think)
[[sr:User:Ivan]], I don't know
This is the list of all very active users. Actualy, I think that
contributors User:Domatrios, User:ВКокијелов and User:Ivan are not
"very active" according to March statistics, but they are active part
of community at sr:.
Results are:
A) According to voting on IRC:
- oppinion 1 - 0 votes
- oppinion 2 - 1 vote
- oppinion 3 - 2 votes
- oppinion 4 - 8 votes
B) According to all clear votes:
- oppinion 1 - 0 votes
- oppinion 2 - 1 vote
- oppinion 3 - 3 votes
- oppinion 4 - 10 votes
C) According to some possible votes:
- oppinion 1 - between 0 and 1 votes
- oppinion 2 - 1 vote
- oppinion 3 - between 3 and 5 votes
- oppinion 4 - between 10 and 11 votes
As oppinion 4 has clear majority, at least 10:6 against all other
oppinions, community decided to introduce read-write Cyrillic-Latin
conversion.
b) The second question was: to implement or not Ekavian-Iyekavian
conversion. Some people had some reserves not to implementation, but
to the time of implementation. So, they introduced two suboppinions
inside of oppinion for implementation. Oppinions was:
1.a - To implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion now.
1.b - To implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion after the
implementation of Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
2. - Not to implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion.
Voting result was (order is: IRC nickname, user account at sr:, oppinion):
bonzo, [[sr:User:Bonzo]], 1.a
djordjes, [[sr:User:Djordjes]], 1.a
domatrios, [[sr:User:Domatrios]], 2
Dzordzm, [[sr:User:Dzordzm]], 1.a
kaster, [[sr:User:Kaster]], 1.b
Milan^Tesovic, [[sr:User:Милант]], 2
millosh, [[sr:User:Милош]], 1.a
Pokrajac, [[sr:User:Покрајац]], 1.a
Sasa^Stefanovic, [[sr:User:Саша.Стефановић]], 1.a
VKokielov, [[sr:User:ВКокијелов]], 1.b
Before we articulated question, User:Dzivdzan left the room. As she
said that she is for implementation before she left, but, also, she
had some reserves to that implementation, her voice is assumed as 1.b
(dzivdzan, [[sr:User:Dzivdzan]], 1.b)
Other active contributors, which I asked after the voting, said:
[[sr:User:Ninam]], 1.a
[[sr:User:Горан Анђелковић]], 1.a (he was disconnected before Zhengzhu came)
[[sr:User:Обрадовић Горан]], 1.a (he was running on Belgrade Marathon)
Other active contributors for which I can just guess what do they think:
[[sr:User:Golija]], I don't know
[[sr:User:Влада]], I don't know
[[sr:User:Ivan]], I don't know
Results are:
A) According to voting on IRC:
- oppinion 1.a - 6 votes
- oppinion 1.b - 3 votes
- oppinion 2 - 2 votes
B) According to all clear votes:
- oppinion 1.a - 9 votes
- oppinion 1.b - 3 votes
- oppinion 2 - 2 votes
As oppinion 1.a has absolute majority, at least 6:5 against all other
oppinions, we will continue with implementation of Ekavian-Iyekavian
conversion together with implementation of Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
IRC logs can be found at:
The first three parts in Serbian: (1)
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%…
(2)
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%…
and (3) http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%…
The fourth part is in English, after we called Angela to see results:
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%…
Next steps
Today Zhengzhu and me were talking about implementation. He said that
it is not so easy to implement our solution (because it has some
differences with Chinese implementation) and that we should wait until
June. Also, Zhengzhu and me agreed that I (and probably
sr:User:Kaster) can continue with implementation of Serbian interface
in MediaWiki. At least for the first time, Zhengzhu will check our
code before it's implementation into CVS tree.
(And spell checker on Gmail doesn't work now :) )
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