Wikipedia-l May 2005

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

95 participants
104 discussions

Expanding CheckUser permissions
by Angela 06 May '05

06 May '05

Requests have recently been made to the Board asking for verification that a user is sockpuppeting on one of the larger Wikipedias. At least two of the developers felt this was a matter for the Board or for an arbitration committee (although that Wikipedia doesn't have an arbcom), and were therefore not happy to give out details about the IP address of this user. Checking IPs is no longer a developer-only task since a new feature allows sockpuppet checks. [[Special:CheckUser]] allows a user with "checkuser" permissions to find all the IP addresses used by a particular logged in user, and to show all the contributions from a given IP address, including those made by logged in users. Currently the only people with the necessary permissions to use CheckUser are Tim Starling (who wrote the code for this) and David Gerard (who uses it on behalf of the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee). This data is only stored for one week, so edits made prior to that will not be shown via CheckUser. A log is kept of who has made which queries with the tool. This log is available to those with the checkuser permissions. I would personally like to see this feature be made available to more communities than just the English Wikipedia, but I am concerned about potential misuse of it, and the violation of privacy for users who have not been disruptive. I would appreciate any comments about this feature, and answers to the questions below, either here or on on Meta <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser>. Do you think this feature should be made more widely available? If so, who should be given access to it? Should it be limited to stewards, or to wikis with arbitration committees? Does the privacy policy <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy> need be adjusted to allow the use of this feature? Angela. -- Angela Beesley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

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Two cute press clippings
by Sj 06 May '05

06 May '05

A nice LA Times editorial, focusing on the "demonstration in practical anarchy" of the "brilliant conception" of "one Jimmy Wales." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-0e-sartwell4may04,0,46914… And a lovely thesis from NYU's Limor Garcia, as if she were responding to recent discussions of Wikipedia requests and contributions via cell phones http://www.cellphedia.com/ http://www.cellphedia.com/about.php ( recent discussion on Wikipedia and the Digital Divide: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikipedia_founder_speaks_at_US_law_school ) Garcia's project is being demonstrated tomorrow, Saturday May 7, at 1pm EST. You can watch the demonstration as it is streamed live from NYU's servers (warning: this page may not work well over slow connections) -- +sj+

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Conference report from South Africa
by Angela 05 May '05

05 May '05

This is a brief report from the FLOSS Conference in South Africa that Erik and I attended this week. A more detailed version is on Meta at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conference_reports/FLOSS%2C_South_Africa_2005>; so please read that one instead if you have time. I was invited to give a presentation about the Wikimedia projects at the international "Free/Libre and Open Source Software" (FLOSS) and Free Knowledge workshop in Pretoria, South Africa. Erik was given the opportunity to hold a workshop there about wiki technology. The byline for the conference was "Knowledge for all, Education for all", so the Wikimedia projects fitted in perfectly. The first day was made up of formal presentations. A list of these is on Meta. My talk was part of a "Digital Commons" panel. Much of the second day was divided into two workshops, including Erik's. The theme of Free Knowledge Communities was discussed on day 3, and there were many areas in which Wikimedia projects could collaborate with existing initiatives, and new ideas for using Wikimedia content: * Spoken Wikipedia by cell phone. Many areas of Africa have high cell phone coverage with access to SMS. Teemu Leinonen of the University of Art and Design Helsinki is working on a project to allow a user to send an SMS with the article title to a phone number. A few seconds later, they get a call on their cell phone with a (usually machine-generated) spoken version of the article they requested. * Wikipedia in schools. Static HTML dumps on DVD, offline applications that allow editing, and update feeds like rsync to maintain offline copies, were all requested by people working on getting Wikipedia into schools. Where people were interested in print projects, they wanted to focus on printing out particular topics, rather than having a copy of the entire encyclopedia. * Wiktionary. There is a need for a repository of legal terminology in the 11 official languages of South Africa since courts often rely on untrained interpreters who need a reference guide for dealing with unfamiliar terminology from any of the languages they were not native speakers of. * Wikibooks/Wikiversity/E-learning. With the price of textbooks much higher in South Africa than in developed countriesfree textbooks are of extreme importance, and Wikibooks could provide the content needed for initiatives to deliver this. We discussed our existing and potential future projects at length and talked to proponents of various e-learning initiatives. Again, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conference_reports/FLOSS%2C_South_Africa_2005 for details on any of these issues. ==Meetup== On the evening of the third day, the first African meetup as held in "Cafe 41". Four Wikipedians from South Africa participated: Laurens, Alias, Renier Maritz and Andy Rabagliati. Renier's wife also joined us, along with some people from the conference. We discussed ways to promote the Afrikaans Wikipedia, methods to distribute Wikipedia to Africa, localization of the interface, and possibilities for e-learning. ==Future conferences== Several upcoming conferences were mentioned as being of possible interest to Wikimedia. Most notable of these are WSIS (<http://www.itu.int/wsis/>;), which I believe Jimmy and Yann may be attending, and the World Conference on Computers in Education (<http://www.sbs.co.za/wcce2005/>;), for which no Wikimedia attendance is currently planned. Unfortunately, we did not see much of South Africa beyond the conference centre. Nevertheless, the visit was very productive and led to many new contacts and insights. We aim to follow up on the discussions, and turn some of the ideas above into reality soon. Angela. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

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Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds
by Erik Zachte 05 May '05

05 May '05

http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#wikipedians > Is that minus bots? > Mark No, Wikistats does not know about bots at all (yet). Someday I will add a filter for registered bots. Erik Zachte

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Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds
by Erik Zachte 05 May '05

05 May '05

Jimbo: > My research (conducted in December) showed that half the edits by logged > in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in users. I was in the audience in Berlin when you talked about this. It inspired me to add a table to wikistats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#wikipedians Erik Zachte

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list for wikisource
by Sabine Cretella 04 May '05

04 May '05

Hi, does someone of you know where I can find a discussion list for wikisource? I just searched for it, but did not find it. Please help! There's quite an interesting thing going on in Europe and it could be a great thing for wikisource to "grow" with this project. Sorry, don't have the time to describe now - if you want to know more, let me know and I'll send a copy of the mail I'll write this evening to this list. Ciao, Sabine ***** Sabine Cretella Translations s.cretella(a)wordsandmore.it skype:sabinecretella

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry
by Mark Williamson 04 May '05

04 May '05

Other than the things already mentioned, I only noticed one major thing. That is: constant confusion of terms, ie saying "Wikipedia" when you mean "English Wikipedia". And using statistics for all language Wikipedias combined when in practice the article is about the English Wikipedia (though wikipedia.com will get you to an international portal) seems a bit misleading. There are not nearly 1 million articles in the English version: there are around 500k in the English version, and the rest of the 1.3 million or whatever are made up by other Wikipedias. The largest non-English Wikipedias are (in no particular order): German Japanese Polish Spanish French ... there are quite a few more large ones as well, such as Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Ukrainian, and then there are plenty more in decreasing orders of magnitude down to Wikipedias with 1 or 2 articles. Examples: 1 or 2-article Wikipedias... not really worth visiting, though if you want to you can try http://zu.wikipedia.org/ (Zulu Wikipedia). Most of them are in African or Native American languages. It used to include most of the languages of India, but there was a sudden surge and most of them have grown to over 100 articles now, some over 1000. 60~70 article Wikipedias... the Maltese Wikipedia is a good example. http://mt.wikipedia.org/ 100~200 article Wikipedias... the Breton http://br.wikipedia.org/ and Urdu http://ur.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedias are good examples here. Still not really usable as an encyclopaedia, but getting there slowly (some nice recent additions to the Breton Wikipedia include plenty of long, detailed articles on linguistics topics) 200~500 article Wikipedias... the Anglo-Saxon http://ang.wikipedia.org/ and Aragonese http://an.wikipedia.org/ are good examples. 500~700 articles... the Irish http://ga.wikipedia.org/ , Limburgish http://li.wikipedia.org/ and Georgian (the country, not the state) http://ka.wikipedia.org/ are good examples here. 700~1k articles... the Tagalog http://tl.wikipedia.org/ , Albanian http://sq.wikipedia.org/ , and Sicilian http://scn.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedias are nice examples. 1k~2k articles... Belarusian http://be.wikipedia.org/ , W.Frisian http://fy.wikipedia.org/ , Kurdish http://ku.wikipedia.org/ , Thai http://th.wikipedia.org/ and Vietnamese http://vi.wikipedia.org/ 2k~5k articles... Farsi http://fa.wikipedia.org/ , Turkish http://tr.wikipedia.org/ , Greek http://el.wikipedia.org/ , Welsh http://cy.wikipedia.org/ , Arabic http://ar.wikipedia.org/ , Bosnian http://bs.wikipedia.org/ , Latin http://la.wikipedia.org/ , Icelandic http://is.wikipedia.org/ , Malay http://ms.wikipedia.org/ 5k~10k articles....Hungarian http://hu.wikipedia.org/ , Czech http://cz.wikipedia.org/ , Korean http://ko.wikipedia.org/ , Slovak http://sk.wikipedia.org/ , Croatian http://hr.wikipedia.org/ 10k~20k articles... Romanian http://ro.wikipedia.org/ , Ukrainian http://uk.wikipedia.org/ , Serbian http://sr.wikipedia.org/ , Slovene http://sl.wikipedia.org/ , Catalan http://ca.wikipedia.org/ , Russian http://ru.wikipedia.org/ , Finnish http://fi.wikipedia.org/ , Hebrew http://he.wikipedia.org/ 20k~30k... Bulgarian http://bg.wikipedia.org/ , Danish http://da.wikipedia.org/ , Norwegian http://no.wikipedia.org/ , Chinese http://zh.wikipedia.org/ 30k~50k... Portuguese http://pt.wikipedia.org/ , Spanish http://es.wikipedia.org/ , Italian http://it.wikipedia.org/ 50k~100k... Polish http://pl.wikipedia.org/ , Dutch http://nl.wikipedia.org/ , Swedish http://sv.wikipedia.org/ 100k~200k... Japanese http://ja.wikipedia.org/ , French http://fr.wikipedia.org/ 200k~500k.... German http://de.wikipedia.org/ 500k~600k.... English http://en.wikipedia.org/ Thus, at present, the English Wikipedia makes up for... a little less than 1/3rd of all article count, I believe? Mark On 03/05/05, Lawrence Nyveen <nyveen(a)videotron.ca> wrote: > Hey, all - > > Reader's Digest (Canada) plans to reprint a version of this article: > http://legadoassociates.com/wikipedi.htm > > My job is to fact-check the article before it goes into the magazine, > and to do that, I would like to talk with some Wikipedia > contributors. Anyone interested in helping me fact-check the article > should contact me through e-mail. A lot of the article is not base > so much on strict facts but is rather the author's opinion on > WIkipedia's place in the encyclopedia ecosystem, yet I still have to > check that. I need to report to my editors whether the author has > defensible ideas. > > To do his, I wouldn't mind speaking to both avid contributors and > those with criticisms. Thanks in advance, all. > > (Jimmy - I would like to get in touch with you about this, since > you're mentioned by name. I left voicemail for Terry Foote on > Friday, but I haven't heard back.) > > -- > > Laurie Nyveen nyveen(a)videotron.ca > __________________________________________________________________ > Editor, Netsurfer Digest - http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/index.html > "All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys." > - Grandma Woody (Northern Exposure) > _______________________________________________ > Wikipedia-l mailing list > Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l > -- 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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Inquiry
by Lawrence Nyveen 04 May '05

04 May '05

Hey, all - Reader's Digest (Canada) plans to reprint a version of this article: http://legadoassociates.com/wikipedi.htm My job is to fact-check the article before it goes into the magazine, and to do that, I would like to talk with some Wikipedia contributors. Anyone interested in helping me fact-check the article should contact me through e-mail. A lot of the article is not base so much on strict facts but is rather the author's opinion on WIkipedia's place in the encyclopedia ecosystem, yet I still have to check that. I need to report to my editors whether the author has defensible ideas. To do his, I wouldn't mind speaking to both avid contributors and those with criticisms. Thanks in advance, all. (Jimmy - I would like to get in touch with you about this, since you're mentioned by name. I left voicemail for Terry Foote on Friday, but I haven't heard back.) -- Laurie Nyveen nyveen(a)videotron.ca __________________________________________________________________ Editor, Netsurfer Digest - http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/index.html "All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys." - Grandma Woody (Northern Exposure)

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[Fwd: [bjc] World Summit Awards USA competition]
by Jimmy Wales 04 May '05

04 May '05

Hmm, I wonder if we can think of any websites to nominate in the e-culture, e-learning categories? ;-) I haven't checked the website, but these awards are given in 150 countries, so we have plenty of opportunities to win a few dozen of them. ;-) Maybe there is a global category. --Jimbo -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [bjc] World Summit Awards USA competition Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 09:15:44 -0400 From: Andy Carvin <acarvin(a)edc.org> Reply-To: bjc(a)eon.law.harvard.edu Organization: Center for Media & Community To: bjc(a)eon.law.harvard.edu Hi everyone, I'd like to announce the official opening of the World Summit Awards USA competition. The official digital content competition of the UN's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which will take place in Tunis this November, the World Summit Awards will hold competitions in more than 150 countries around the globe. I'm serving as coordinator of the USA competition. We're seeking nominations for the best websites (including blogs) and CD-ROMs from the USA in the following categories: e-business e-culture e-entertainment e-government e-health e-inclusion e-learning e-science I've assembled a team of more than a dozen volunteers representing a range of expertise in digital content. We will review the nominations and select a winner in each category; the winner will then represent the USA in the international competition. To nominate a website or CD-ROM, please visit here: http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?id=93093 CD-ROMs should be mailed to: Andy Carvin EDC Center for Media & Community 55 Chapel Street Newton, MA 02458 Nominations must be received by May 30, 2005; winners will be announced by July 1, 2005. Please feel free to share the URL and extend an invitation to colleagues to submit nominations for the competition. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at acarvin @ edc .org. For more information about the competition and WSIS, please visit here: http://www.wsis-award.org http://www.wsis.org thanks, ac -- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.tsunami-info.org Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com -----------------------------------

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry
by Angela 03 May '05

03 May '05

I agree with the points Fred, Mathias, and Neil already made. In addition: "Not only that but Wikipedia is setting a blistering pace with a thousand new articles being added each day." It's 3758 new per day over all (although it is 1048 per day for the English version) as of the end of April. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm> "He added a few canny rules-of-order: Whenever someone edits an article, a new version of the article is created and saved." Revision histories are fairly standard in wiki software, so I wouldn't say Jimmy added that. It was present, in a less useful form, in the UseMod software which predates Wikipedia. "Despite meteoric growth, Wikipedia has remained an all-volunteer outfit, financed by donations." This isn't strictly true anymore. We do have two paid staff now - Brion Vibber on development and server work, and Chad Perrin on hardware work in the Florida colocation facility. Part of the funding comes from grants, sponsorship, and paid-for services such as an OAI feed. The majority of financing is still from donations though. Angela. -- Angela Beesley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

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Wikipedia-l May 2005