Speaking of communication between languages, contributors from the
German Wikipedia put together a nice report for The Wikipedia Signpost
in this week's issue
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-24/German…).
Although the Signpost focuses on the English Wikipedia because that's
where it's located, I agree with Walter that more news from other
languages is welcome.
We have some interest in making this report a regular feature - if
that's going to happen, people need to write it. Perhaps, so that we
don't hear only from the German-speakers, we could rotate reports coming
from several of the larger Wikipedias. So I invite anyone interested to
write a similar report about their project. First to submit gets to be
first in line for publication!
--Michael Snow
Hi,
About some 9 months ago I started with an attempt to bring news with a
newsletter "Wikizine". I try to bring different types of news like
"Foundation", "Community", "Media" , "Technical news" and so.
So I, and the people who help me, try to bring the news for the
Wikimedia family.
I am writing this fist of all to ask for your cooperation with this
newsletter. To be able to report news first the news must be known.
Currently Wikizine is frequently English-centric. The reason is that
I have as a direct source for information only the English language
projects information and the Dutch. For information from the other
projects I depends on reports by users from those projects. And those
reports are few in numbers.
So I would like to request that if there is news about your Wikipedia,
especially for
the non-English editions, that you would report the news to Wikizine.
A way to make it more likely that someone will think about Wikizine is
to put a banner on your userpage or even better on a public page like
the local "Village pump", the community portal, announcement page or so.
Here you can find some banners;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/banners
This would increase the exposure to Wikizine by your local community.
And this can result in more users reading it and knowing what is going
on outside there project. And maybe even get the idea to report
something interesting about what is going on on there wiki.
A problem is that Wikzine is written only in English. To get the news
downhill to as most of the projects and especially languages as
possible Wikizine can only be in English. But it would be fantastic if
people would be willing to translate the news and share it with there
community. The Italian Wikipedia is doing this infrequently now
already for some time. And also providing partial translations
sometimes.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar/Wikizine
A total translation of Wikizine is great but also a lot of work. Maybe
only translating the most relevant news can be enough for starting.
You could work together across the different projects in the same
languages. By cross-project cooperation the work of translation can be
shared.
Just only subscribing to Wikizine only is also useful of course. Then
you at least are informed.
Reading Wikizine can by email. Just click here below and follow the
instructions;
mailto:request at wikizine.org?subject=subscribe
Or you can also read Wikizine from the website;
http://www.wikizine.org
Thank you for reading this and I hope to receive some more news from
the non-English Wikipedias!
Greetings,
Walter
walter AT wikizine DOT org
http://www.wikizine.org
FYI,
The latest piece about Wikipedia from The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact
Generally great expository that aptly captures Wikipedia's most interesting
corners. But this deserves a big whaaa?
"Wales—who resembles a young Billy Crystal with the neuroses neatly tucked
in—recalls the enchantment of pasting in update stickers that
cross-referenced older entries to the annual supplements."
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
The observation itself I find interesting. Would you agree or
disagree that the number of leading women in Wikipedia is
disproportionaly larger in comparison to the overall Wikipedia
contributor population?
> >
> http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/2006/wikisym-2006-interview…
> > ) I only got women's names. Must have to do with the inborn shyness
> > of males to promote themselves.
>
>Er, what? As opposed to women's innate abillity to brag? Since when
>are men typically shy?
>
>Sample size of 3 doesn't tell you much except about those three people.
Well, I may or may not have learned something about those who I asked
to make a recommendation, and I may or may not have learned something
about those they recommended. But I did learn something about humor
on mailing lists (and this after 15 years in the business).
Dirk
Hi there,
I want to create a new Wikipedia in Wallisian (faka'uvea) which is not
listed in your list.
Please let me know how to proceed.
Thanks
Filihau
Hello,
I'm doing some work at the moment, informally using the English
Wikipedia to help me identify and disambiguate toponyms (placenames).
Unsurprisingly, it's bloody brilliant. Much better coverage than the
"actual" gazetteer I'm using ( [[Getty Thesaurus of Geographic
Names]]). (Although Getty has canals aplenty, it doesn't seem to have
too many streets.) Unfortunately the use of geographic co-ordinates is
too spotty to only rely on Wikipedia. I wonder if we could find a
suitable gazetteer, whether it might not be worth getting a bot to
import those co-ordinates, if that's even possible...
Working with co-ordinates has made me wonder about their use. It seems
a bit bizarre to represent a huge country (or ocean, river, etc) with
one random dot. Is there any neat, standardised way to refer to
geographic areas? I can't think of one...any ideas?
cheers
Brianna
en.wp:User:pfctdayelise
I wonder, is there a policy on using of the places (specifically,
cities) names, which have been (often) changed, historically? Does one
have to use only the "actual" name? Or should it depend on context,
possibly?
---
I've decided to ask this question here because I am interested in a more international perspective. My query relates to the use of disambiguation. Recently a survey was conducted to determine whether Syracuse should be a disambiguation page or whether it should link directly to the original Syracuse in Italy (creating a separate Syracuse disambiguation page for the others, as often happens). Those who were in favour of it becoming a disambiguation page were overwhelmingly American, and had in mind the fact that Syracuse, New York is today a significant city. Indeed, many were putting forward the argument that it should own the name outright because more google hits were looking for that particular city.
I think there is an issue here that goes beyond the original question. Being an English language encyclopedia (and at the moment, the most international of all the wikipedias), it has to be asked how much such issues should end up being determined by the sway held by the largest group of native speakers (who, as it turns out, have both economic and technical clout).
As it happens, the survey ended up 15 to 8 in favour of Syracuse linking directly to the orginal and more historically significant Syracuse (after which the modern New York city was named), but a particular ruling clique managed to maintain it as a disambiguation page.
If you ask a purely American audience, they will clearly vote in favour of the link being to the New York city. If an international audience is asked, my guess is that it would be to the original and historical one. Making it a disambiguation page might seem the obvious and fairest solution - but for a serious encyclopedia, is that really the correct answer?
I finish by noting that Troy currently goes directly to the historical Troy, despite the fact that there are about a dozen place names in the US called Troy (which are dealth with in a separate Troy disambiguation page). At a minimum, I see a problem of consistency, and I simply wonder whether there is something else at play here. I hope I have managed to explain this clearly.
pippu d'a
Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
Thank you, Andre.
The message I posted was purposely written with the intention of saying nothing either positive or negative. And, the main reason for that is that I am not familiar with the site and have formed no opinions about it.
As Ever,
Ruth Ifcher
--
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Andre Engels" <andreengels(a)gmail.com>
> 2006/7/10, Paweł Dembowski <fallout(a)lexx.eu.org>:
> > > If you have not visited the site yet, be prepared for Google Ads,
> > > POV entries, and - oh yes - an occassional Wikipedian.
> > > Apologies if this is old news...
> > > As Ever,
> > > Ruth Ifcher
> >
> > So? It's not a Wikimedia project, but a private wiki. Not every wiki
> > has to be NPOV and without ads (and wikia is a commercial wiki
> > provider, so they're bound to have ads).
>
> So? So nothing. Ruth is just warning people who expect to get to some
> kind of Wikipedia as to what to actually expect.
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi!
can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the
source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local
newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these
newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the
paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better
media exposure.
Bèrto