Hi, I've started a discussion at svwiki about registering the address
www.wikipedia.se (.se is the primary domain of Sweden), but it's
currently owned by someone, and it will probably cost money to buy it.
I have not contacted the person who owns it yet, but I'm checking if
there's any way this could be financed by Wikimedia? I also see that
for example www.wikipedia.de, www.wikipedia.no and www.wikipedia.pl
already exists.
I think registering the .se address would increase traffic to the
Swedish Wikipedia, since many today probably believe there is only an
English version of it, and I don't know, but I suspect that traffic to
svwiki is relatively low, at least we have pretty few editors.
Is there any possibility this could be done?
Thank you!
Andreas
Maru Dubshinki wrote:
>On 1/25/06, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 1/25/06, Maru Dubshinki <marudubshinki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>If the problem is really apparent, why can't you tag the page appropriately?
>>>I don't think adding a new layer of procedure will help anything;
>>>people who already have the time and such will already be working on
>>>the cleanup category.
>>>
>>>
>>Sure.
>>Let me just take a look...
>>[[Category:NPOV disputes]] 1800 articles tagged.
>>[[Category:Articles which may be biased]] 196 articles tagged
>>[[Category:Accuracy disputes]] 1000 articles tagged
>>[[Category:Pages needing attention]] 198 articles tagged
>>[[Category:Possible copyright violations]] 199 articles tagged
>>
>>Of course, my "urgent request" will be taken care of within the hour.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Delphine
>>--
>>~notafish
>>
>>
>Why is your urgent request more urgent than all those others?
>
>
Because, for example, it might deal with a matter that creates potential
legal liability for the Wikimedia Foundation. Which would make it just a
little more pressing than the question of what is really known about
[[Celtic Christianity]].
These are not problems for which "Just tag it and we'll fix it later" is
an appropriate response. Hence the sarcastic reaction when that response
is given.
--Michael Snow
Hi all,
My decision to found the admin IRC channel has meant that I've had to
take a lot of flak from some of my friends which has been quite
upsetting. I thought I would write this email to the list to explain
what I see its purpose as. This also serves to highlight the importance
of RC patrol.
I started the channel following Danny's suggestion that there should be
a private place for discussion of confidential issues which we don't
want the public (and by extension, the media) to know about. Such issues
include complaints to the Foundation about libel in articles. Everyone
should know this is one of Wikipedia's greatest problems, that anyone
can say nasty things about someone else and quite often this isn't
picked up on RC patrol.
Danny's suggestion for a private method of communication between
"trusted users" given the issues we face was an excellent one in my
opinion and I thought that an IRC channel is an ideal medium for this
type of discussion to occur. Admins form a pretty diverse group of
trustworthy users (all admins have the best interests of their project
at heart) so for simplicity I created the channel for admins only.
The suggestion of a "trusted user" group is an interesting idea but
unfortunately very selective. Who is responsible for choosing who is a
trusted user? Whoever it was, there would be a large number of people
who would be missed off even though they are perfectly trustworthy.
Also, think of the consequences if someone found out if they weren't
considered trustworthy as they weren't given channel access - it would
be quite demoralising for one. Rationally, there may be perfectly solid
reasons why they weren't given access but emotionally it is still
demoralising. That's why I went by the simple, easily-defined standard
of admins on the English-language Wikipedia.
Later Danny and I talked about the scope of the channel and raised the
point that people who work the OTRS lists should be given access, since
they get the bulk of the libel complaints and are best placed to notify
people of potential issues. This is an entirely sensible argument.
Some people have raised concerns about backroom decisions, cliques and
the lack of transparency this channel will create. These are fair
comments to raise but I believe they are unfounded. Firstly, the
channel's purpose is not a decision-making one. Unrelated chit-chatter
and non-confidential discussions are pointed out as inappropriate for
the channel and go on to take place in #wikipedia. Some admins have
refused to join because they think the channel is closed and hidden. I
think a better action for them to take would be to join, and
self-regulate what the channel discusses. If it's not appropriate, ask
the people discussing to talk in a different channel.
On a related note, the entire reason this channel exists is due to the
problem we face from libel. This is why we must be grateful for the
existing work people who work RC patrol do, and we should do everything
we can to help them out. Problems which are ending up in OTRS and the
admin channel are due to edits slipping through RC patrol. What we need
to do is make their job easier. Admins who help out on RC patrol know
the huge difference admin rollback makes, compared to having to do it
manually. This is why we should either make the majority of RC
patrollers admins, or give them access to rollback. Because of the
rising standards for becoming an admin on the English language
Wikipedia, the former is becoming more hard. Arguments of "adminship is
no big deal" have now become "adminship should be no big deal". We have
to recognise that this shift has taken place - and those who hold this
principle should take part in RFA more, supporting more candidates.
Another - and better - solution, however, is to grant the rollback
privilege to good contributors who are not admins. This would make the
jobs of RC patrollers much easier - and will have the knock-on effect of
lowering the amount of complaints the Foundation gets. The Foundation
agrees that this is a great solution to the big problem we face. There
is a poll to gauge community consensus on the issue:
-->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_rollback_privileges/Poll
Chris (Talrias)
--
Chris Jenkinson
chris(a)starglade.org
"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> Also the soap opera in which users were in a revert war over jimbo's
> vote as it is a vote against the rules. And people including some very
> langtime mods were arguing that Jimbo doesn't have any say in
> nl.wikipedia affairs at all and that he was trying to influence the
> vote. Which is an interesting debating point.
>
> I myself was also told by longterm mods after I gave my apologies that
> I shouldn't do that as I was influencing the vote.
Since when is it wrong to influence votes when you do so in a completely
transparent fashion? If you ban all influence from votes, nobody will
have any information or arguments on which to base a vote. Next thing
you know, using rational argument and persuasion to convince someone
that articles should be written from a neutral point of view will become
a violation of the "no-influence" policy.
--Michael Snow
Hi, I suppose this is a mail that Brian can answer (nooo ... don't kill
me ... I know you are overloaded with work).
On the Neapolitan wikipedia we have one particularity: it is a language
without stadardised writing (up to now) and it has local varieties that
sometimes vary really a lot. Besides that there are regions that are
attributed to the Neapolitan language group that really "far away" from
Neapolitan - this means that there are languages (that are not
considered as such) that are not understandable for us when we hear
those people talk.
Now as much as I understand the namespace manager could help us in that.
We could create namespaces for:
*standardised Neapolitan
*phonetic Neapolitan (at the moment, this would have the majority of
articles at the moment)
*language A (attributed to the NAP language group)
*language B (attributed to the NAP language group)
etc.
The mainpage would then become a page that leads to the several
namespaces where the NAMESPACE:Main_page would actually hold the main
page of that specific namespace and that could be different according to
contents etc.
So is the namespace manager made for such an approach? If yes, this
really helps us a lot since we do not need a single wikipedia for each
of these languages, we do not need to have more than one or two persons
to contribute to a language and this way these few people can start to
create contents and others will follow by time. It would not delude
people who join the projects just to be able to work in their language
and then see the possibility denied, since very often it is easier to
decide on a local level if something is to be considered "so different"
to be a separate language or just a local variety that should go into
the phonetic part (for example this would be the case for "Maiorese, the
Neapolitan spoken in Maiori - it is different from Neapolitan of Naples,
but it is easy to be understood by Neapolitans ... it is just a
different way to pronounce words, but not having a standardised way of
writing you can imagine that people from Maiori write a different
Neapolitan than people from Naples).
Another advantage of having groups of languages on one wiki is that
organising and administration becomes more effective and less time
consuming - this does not mean that we should merge big wikis (this
would be problematic- there are already too many edits to really be able
to really check everything) - but wikis of a certain "language group
region" or maybe languages with different writing standards (like nds
for example) there it would make sense.
Well I need to answer an e-mail of the Neapolitan discussion group and
therefore it would be helpful to know if this was possible or not.
Thanks!!!
Best, Sabine
___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice: chiama da PC a telefono a tariffe esclusive
http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
Regarding the Waerth on Dutch Wikipedia, Jimbo came in to say:
"Rather, I have voted because I would prefer to see a different
approach taken in cases like this, an approach which is less
confrontational and more about building up friendships and trust among
good users."
I wonder what kind of approach he would mean here. Could you please expound?
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
Hi, I just wrote a blog entry about learning languages for kids - and of
course adults could do it that way as well ... I wrote about kids since
I see that it works with mine (4 years old).
Well it is about using our materials on commons/wiktionary maybe also
wikipedia to learn (well I have really many more things in mind than
what is written in that blog, but it does not make sense to write really
"everything" that would be important - a step by step approach is best I
suppose).
http://www.wesolveitnet.com/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=31
I would very much like to know your opinions and maybe there is also
someone interested in helping out with certain things.
Thanks!
Best,
Sabine
___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice: chiama da PC a telefono a tariffe esclusive
http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
On the English language Wikipedia, there is a poll for voting on a
proposal which would grant the rollback privilege to good contributors,
who are not admins.
--> http://starglade.org/rfr
Other large projects might find the proposal worthy of consideration for
implementation!
Chris (Talrias on en.wikipedia.org)
--
Chris Jenkinson
chris(a)starglade.org
"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I had intended to reach some kind of 'top-level' discussion group which also
is read by people with acess to Jimmy Wales - assuming I cannot reach him
directly. After desciption of the case, this group was pointed out to me by
Wikipedia (through some kind of hotline, though, according to my
impression).
Is my impression wrong that Wikipedia should have a certain interest in
maintaining a similarly high standard at least throughout the western world,
i e refrain from succumbing to corrupt banana republic practices which may
be order of the day in some countries that so far have managed to keep up
appearances to the opposite?
I have made the experience that Google HQ intervenes with their german
affiliate when they have succumbed to pressure from local dignitaries (and
after having been informed accordingly), in the interest of maintaining
their service level throughout. I would advocate for a similar procedure in
the Wikipedia realm, because experience shows that it seems necessary.
So after knowing also the rest of the story, is your recommendation with
regard to the wikien-l(a)wikimedia.org still valid? Otherwise, what would you
recommend? You can use my personal address, if you prefer.
Thomas Koll's reply: probably a sample of german totalitarian fuzzy logic
He contends to have read half an hour in my website and now diagnoses me as
having 'paranoia' - whatever that may be.
'Logic': This procedure has got nothing to do with it. He is arguing around
my arguments. My arguments were, in a nutshell: Both the individuals named
(cf my original message) boast as human-rights specialists. Practise has
shown that they seem very choosy whom to attribute these rights, when they
have been violated. Human rights are, however, indivisible by nature. In
other words, they are probably high-ranking conmen, and the public has a
right to know about that. A link to a critical website would accomplish the
balance that now is lost, due to their partisan self-depiction.
Calling people 'psychiatric' names is the first step towards treating them
like that - think of the defunct Soviet Union, and remember who was right
and who was wrong. Remember also that our politicians then would protest
regularly against this kind of human-rights abuses. Today, acting like
former soviet apparatchiks has become our own politicians' daily fare.
I would prefer the anglo-saxon community dealing with this issue. I have
tried the german conflict-solving layer already and know that there is
nothing to be expected.
Over.