I'm moving this from the English Wikipedia to wikipedia-l. It never
really should have been on wikien in the first place.
On 5/14/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Now, if we do all this, there's one additional little step we could
> take. As noted above, the fact that Wikipedia is free content itself
> helps to guarantee the availability of the text. So, while China's
> Wikipedia block is bad, I think in the long run it primarily hurts
> editors, not readers, who will hopefully find mirrors of the content.
> Now imagine most mirror copies of Wikipedia content carried a notice
> like this (in the applicable language):
I was thinking about this. Now I know there are tons of mirrors of
the English Wikipedia, but what about the Chinese one? I guess I
could just do my own study, but if someone happens to know already
that'd be easier :).
Also, I'm not sure how advanced China's text filters are. According
to Wikipedia they only apply it to certain pages they've designated
ahead of time. But as that technology improves even many of the
mirrored articles would still be blocked if they weren't served by
https.
So that brought me to my current working idea, which is just a vmware
player virtual machine [*] which hosts a Chinese Wikipedia mirror on
https. So essentially all you'd have to do is download a file and
click install and you'll be helping spread Wikipedia in China. The
actual content could be downloaded in the background using bittorrent,
so there wouldn't be any additional load on Wikipedias servers. Hey,
if some people want to help me (it shouldn't be too hard), and we can
finish by May 26th, we can even enter it into the contest at
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/challenge/, maybe get some extra
publicity (I doubt it'd win, but might get some sort of special
mention).
> [*] Anthony, you don't need to tell me about the literal requirements
> of the GFDL. :-)
LOL, OK, but shouldn't the [*] have gone after the part about "we are
legally allowed to incorporate their improvements into the Chinese
Wikipedia"?
[*] Erik, yes, vmware player is proprietary freeware. You can port
the software to QEMU or some free virtualization program if you'd like
:).
Hi folks,
Let me clarify things a bit. Please be patient, this is going to be
somewhat longish text. And I'll keep words like "nationalists" and
"radicals" in quotes to avoid negative connotation.
I've joined the discussion in Meta which Marc mentioned and tried to
introduce bit of constructive approach. I didn't succeed to elicit
any definite response from Be: admin participating there (on lines of
yes/no and will be/won't be amended).
Then I went to Be: community discussion and proposed several
corrections of Be: rules which would amend existing state of affairs
and allow to keep one Belarusian community. Living where we,
Belarusians, live, we've had pretty turbulent history and several
cultural splits in it, and each was a disaster. Culturally we are
extremely unwell now, indeed, and the last thing I'd want to see would
be split of Be: into two separate communities.
However, there's a problem here. Since the end of 1980-s, we have a
"radical" trend in our cultural revival movement, promoting not only
revival of Belarusian language, but also restoration of some
orthography rules cancelled by 1933 reform on reasons of their.
The post-1933 (1959, actually) standard orthography is what is taught
in schools and what only "radicals" call "narkamauka" (BTW, this is
pejorative term). What "radicals" (part of "nationalist" community)
since the end of 1980-s have been voluntarily using and what they call
affectionately "tarashkievitsa" or, since ca.1994, "classical", is
different combinations of *standard* rules and *some* of the reverted
rules, to the taste of each editor. In 2005, 4-person workgroup
supervised by V.Viachorka published the book "normalising" those
combinations (and diverting even further from standard orthography,
e.g., introducing addditional letter into alphabet). "Latsinka" is a
non-issue, as under this name "sits" one of the "ad hoc" methods of
Latin rendering of Belarusian text, adopted by publishers of
Belarusian texts in particular periods, and under certain political
circumstances.
/* Follows the paragraph where some statements may or may not be verifiable */
Now, this alternative orthography (you actually CAN speak it -- it
changes pronounciation rules for some words) has very strong "flavour"
of "Polish-ness" and "obsoleteness" to most of people. Folks speaking
altenative frequently tend to use more words and concepts freshly
borrowed from Polish language. The community supporting alternative
orthography isn't numerous. They like to point to their alleged
numeral superiority in internet but I could contend that after seeing
those "internet community", you've pretty much seen all of supporters
of alternative orthography.
/* Follows the paragraph where some statements may or may not be
verifiable */Folks promoting those alternative orthographies are, on
average, rather aggressive and outspoken against alleged "communism"
and "rusification" which in their opinion standard orthography somehow
imposes on mind of its users. They tend to regard promotion of
alternative ("clasic") orthography as kind of a mission, and
frequently try to "substitute" alternative for standard and/or to put
alter.o. in role of the only "really used", especially when
"foreigners are watching" (as those may have no real insight). They
tend to present existence of common mandatory minimum knowledge of
standard Belarusian in school as "insubstantial" and existence of
subculture preferring alter.o. as "decisive" argument.
/* Follows the paragraph where some statements may or may not be verifiable */
So, person which doesn't buy into "radical" way, finds him-/her-self
under ideological fire from two directions, one from exponents of
Russian-language culture claiming their superiority ("Belarusian is
weak and uninteresting and has no future"), another from "radicals"
who *also* claim superiority ("Belarusian written in standard
orthography is weak and uninteresting and has no future").
Now where does that the average person wanting to contribute? Coming
to Be: WP one is immediately confronted with rules written only in
alter.o., categories presented only and exclusively in alter.o.,
clauses containing politically biased names for orthographies
("classical" and "narkamauka", that is, recognised only by one side)
and stating prederrability of alter.o. over standard, lots of articles
in alter.o. (which is NOT a problem per se) with clauses requiring ot
obtain permission from author (! FDL?) if one wants to enter info in
"different" orthography (which IS a problem).
So, in Be: talk I've proposed following amendments:
1. Remove politically biased names for orthographies, put standard on
"preferred" position. I believe I've proposed the driest of possible
defintions, in form of "standard ("school")" and "proposed by
V.Viachorka (with reference to 2005 book of his workgroup)". I've even
tried to appease "alternatives" with slightly diminutive "school"
explanation.
Admin refuses and insists on "official" (which, in post-Soviet
culture, bears strong connotation of "not-common", "non-mandatory")
and "classical".
2. Remove clause requiring obtaining permission if one wants to enter
info in "different" orthography, allow free editing like in FDL, with
safety catch *asking* for keeping *corrections* in same orthography.
Admin refuses, supposedly because of some hypothetical vandals waiting
only for removal of that clause. I believe the clause breaches the FDL
rules.
3. Everything in framework (categories) must exist also in standard
orthography. And if not technically possible, only in standard.
Admin refuses, points to technical impossibility of having redirect of
categories (bug 3311?). Categories remain exclusively in alter.o.,
admin rewrites all standard o. entries (example: A.Gouk). I understand
this breaches the general WP rules.
4. Names of articles and contents of rules must exist also in standard
orthography. This seems to be accepted with no noticeable objections
on technical or other grounds.
Now, I'd like to keep ONE Be: community, and I believe aforementioned
amendments would make participation acceptable for all interested
(except of political hard-liners, possibly). I do NOT propose or
encourage rewriting articles for the sake of "changing the
orthography". Now, folks, as your attention was already drawn to the
issue, I guess we could benefit from some third party mediation.
Thanks!
-regards
Hello,
I produce a new KMZ-File for Google Earth with 43347 coordinates
from the English Wikipedia.
http://www.webkuehn.de/hobbys/wikipedia/geokoordinaten/index.htm
The biggest problem to use the geodata from our databank is the big
number of different templates (68 !!!). In the German Wikipedia we have
only three templates (and two other) but we working on a
One-Template-System. Then we have only one template but different
outputs. This is easier to understand and I hope better to use.
Some templates we don’t use very often in the English Wikipedia.
"Templates:Coor dm NE" only in 19 articles. So we can change this and
delete.
Another big problem is the missing of the attributes "region" and
"type". With this simple attributes we can make really better
geoinformation. Only 15% of the coordinates had the attribute "type" and
9% the attribute "region". If you want see how useful this attribute
are, then try the German KMZ-File. There we have 31456 coordinates and
98% with "type" and 94% with "region".
I hope you all help to fill attributes in the existing coordinates.
More infos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates
Thank you for your attention.
Stefan Kühn
Germany
P.S. For my Ph.D. thesis I have an On-line questionnaire to orientation
and navigation aids. Please help me and fill the form (duration: max. 5
minutes)!
http://www.kartographie.uni-trier.de/befragung.htm
--
Stefan Kühn
http://www.webkuehn.de
(cross-posted to several other lists, was sent out in 2 separate mails)
Hello,
This (May 14th) afternoon, Wikimedia CH has been officially
established at a meeting with 12 people present at Olten. The legally
binding record of the Founding Assembly will follow but I'll already
enclose some information:
The board of Wikimedia CH:
As president:
Ilario Valdelli (president, representative of Ticino)
As members:
Frédéric Schutz (representative of Romandie)
Robin Schwab
Christian Seidl
Rupert Thurner
Jürg Wolf
Michael Bimmler (secretary/members affairs)
The board will formally distribute the ressorts at it's first meeting.
As auditors (not part of the board):
Jürg Studer
Patrick Kenel
Ad hoc elected Press speaker
For german-speaking part of Switzerland: Nando Stöcklin
For french-speaking part of Switzerland (Romandie): Frédéric Schütz
For italian-speaking part of Switzerland: Ilario Valdelli
Official contact adress:
Wikimedia CH
8008 Zürich
info at wikimedia dot ch
www.wikimedia.ch
A press release will be distributed tomorrow.
Wikimedia CH's first event will be Swiss Wikipedia Day 2006 in Zürich
(ETH Zürich), more information is to follow.
--
Regards
Michael Bimmler
Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge
www.wikimedia.ch
--
Regards
Michael Bimmler
Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge
www.wikimedia.ch
The Belarusan language is spoken by 9,081,102 people worldwide
according to the Ethnologue; in Belarus it is spoken by 6,715,000, or
65% of the population (most of the rest are native speakers of
Russian, Trasianka, Yiddish, Polish, or Ukrainian).
In Belarusan schools, the Belarusan language is a cumpulsory subject
for all students who wish to graduate, totalling on average between
75,000 and 100,000 per year (graduates).
The Belarusan language used in schools and by the government and by
the vast majority of the Belarusan people is called Narkamauka,
codified in the 1960s.
However, some Belarusan nationalists favour a return to the older
Belarusan codified in the 1920s, called Tarashkievitsa. Some of the
more radical nationalists also favour a switch to the Latin alphabet,
called Latsinka.
Currently there is a fight on Meta between proponents of the official
Belarusan and proponents of the alternative Belarusan.
By sheer chance, the proponents of the alternative style were the
first to arrive at be.wikipedia, and all of the administrators there
write in the alternative style, and the entire interface is written in
it too.
New articles are supposedly allowed to be written in either variety,
however the vast majority of existing articles are written in the
alternative style. According to proponents of the official
orthography, this makes it intimidating to newcomers, and they give
that as the reason why the Belarusan Wikipedia is so small still.
You can see the entire debate here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Present_Belarusia…
Now, obviously the answer to such questions is generally "resolve
within the community". However, in this case some people are claiming
that the community leaders are acting improperly by deleting new
articles in Narkamauka and then a few minutes later posting the same
articles written in Tarashkievitsa. People also allege that policy on
be.wp favours the alternative spelling over official spelling, and
that it is not possible to change it without outside help because the
admins at be.wp are a dictatorship.
In this case I think it is appropriate for the international Wikimedia
community to get involved. Clearly a neutral third party is needed to
evaluate the claims of both sides and make things right.
Mark
--
Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
Hoi,
When there is a vote for "yet another" wikipedia, it is necessary to
have a code that identifies the new database. As Wikipedias are
written in a language, we use a code that identifies that language.
Typically people say we use the ISO-639 codes for that. This would
imply that a code used has a relation to the language that is being
used and, it should also imply that a wikipedia is indeed in a
particular language as recognised by the code.
The way the Wikipedia are is a matter of history and the continued
abuse of codes makes for often heated political discussions about
languages, it only make things more complicated.When you are
interested in reading more details on this subject, you can read what
I wrote on my blog.
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2006/05/languagecodes-on-wikimedia-foun…
In many projects we use "Babel" templates to indicate the language
proficiency of people. Particularly in Wiktionary and in WiktionaryZ,
we have to be precise when we indicate a language. It means that when
we are to indicate that a word is in a specific language, it has to be
THAT language and not another language.
I propose for WiktionaryZ and for the Babel proficiency to exclusively
use the ISO-639-3 codes. When there are not enough codes in ISO-639-3
we will have to use codes that are clearly not ISO-639-3. These codes
may indicate orthographies, dialects and different scripts and even
languages that have not yet been considered to be a language.
The use of well defined codes will allow us to have our data used
reliably and to define our content better. This will enable people to
use our data and make WiktionaryZ a success
Where possible we will try to connect the codes used by Wikipedia to
ISO-639-3 codes. This will not be possible for several languages like
Albanian; the als code has been squatted by what ISO-639 considers a
language family.
Thanks,
GerardM
Hoi,
I read on the list of "approved" project a proposal for a
bua.wikipedia.org The code bua is NOT an ISO-639 code. The article about
this language on the en.wikipedia is almost a stub. I find the quality
of the requests for many new projects really low. Have a few people,
find yourself a code .. or make one up who cares .. :(
This is not the first time we have projects started where it is assumed
that the facts given are solid. This is definitively another one of them.
I object to the start of this project under this code. As it is for the
special projects committee to accept new language versions or projects,
I urge them to be diligent in the checking of the basic facts.
Thanks,
GerardM
Hello,
I'd like to notify you of the fact that on May 14th the Founding
Assembly of "Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens"
(official translation: Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement
of free knowledge) will take place at Olten in Switzerland. More infos
as well as the agenda can be found at
http://ch.wikimedia.org/wiki/Events/Founding_Assembly
Of course everybody is invited to join us as guest or as future
member, everybody is eligible for membership (Swiss nationality is not
a requirement).
Our (proposed) bylaws can be found at
http://ch.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws (De, En, Fr, It), however they are
*theoretically* subject to change during the Founding Assembly)
A statement towards the press and towards WMF and the
Wikimedia-projects-participants including the names of the board
members etc. will be released soon after the successful foundation.
Please direct any questions, that you for some reason do not want to
publish on any mailinglist, to info-ch at wikimedia dot org
Regards
Michael Bimmler
(Preliminary Board of Wikimedia CH)
Sorry if this has gone out before... I got it from a librarians
mailing list. Interesting! What do you all think? It's like what
Nature did, only ad-hoc. There's no contact information for the
original survey developer, which is a little odd...
-- phoebe/brassratgirl
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carla Wilson Buss" <cbuss(a)UGA.EDU>
To: <UGAREF-L(a)LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 5:26 AM
Subject: Fw: Wikipedia quality survey
> Hello LIBREFers!
> A Comp Sci colleague of mine has developed a survey to measure the quality
> of Wikipedia. Would you please take a moment to fill it out? It's short -
> 4
> minutes at most. Thanks for participating!
> Survey URL:
> http://express.perseus.com/perseus/surveys/1734848031/1e78143f.htm
>
> -- Caroline<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
> "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
> <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
> "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />
> Caroline Bordinaro, MLIS
> Library Instruction and Information Literacy Coordinator
> University Library
> CSU Dominguez Hills
> cbordinaro(a)csudh.edu
> 310-243-2084
>
> Caroline Bordinaro
> tenorclef(a)netzero.net
>