Wikipedia-l August 2006

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62 participants
40 discussions

OmegaT, WiktionaryZ, Betawiki (/me adding: Wikipedia) ... some questions that need an answer ...
by Sabine Cretella 13 Aug '06

13 Aug '06

Well I am crossposting this blog text as well as copying it to some people in blind copy since it involves various projects - as for Wikipedia: it is about contents creation for small wikipedias (that's why I changed the original title above). The original post is at: http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2006/08/omegat-wiktionaryz-betawiki-some… Your comments and thoughts are very much appreciated. Best, Sabine ***** OmegaT, WiktionaryZ, Betawiki ... some questions that need an answer ... In the Wiktionary IRC the following questions were made by Connel: "... considers omegat.org. Is the intent for it to just auto-upload stuff to WZ? to/from ZW? Or betawiki, or both betawiki and WZ? Or is betawiki just for WikiMedia total localization?" That is a lot ... so let me go step by step. The intent of OmegaT <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OmegaT> is not to auto-upload stuff to WiktionaryZ <http://wiktionaryz.org> or download it from there. Nor is it only there for Betawiki <http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Etusivu> and WiktionaryZ, even if it will probably be used for both sooner or later. OmegaT is a CAT <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_translation>-Tool that helps translators to do their work. What does this mean: imagine you use for all of your translations a tool that creates a Translation Memory, a file containing the translations you did segmented into sentences, combining source and target sentence. Then you do further translations and let the CAT-Tool access these already translated files. Now if your translation is of a subject you already translated chances are high that most terminology needed is already in there and you can even see in which context it was used. So with OmegaT you do a search on your project and the available translation memories to see if and how a term was already translated. This can help a lot. Now consider a manual - of a machine, a computer, whatever. These manuals need updates once a new version of that machine or computer is produced. Normally companies than also just update the description and parts of it remain the same as before (simply because the functionality of these parts is still the same). When you then translate you will find these parts that are unchanged in your translation memory and depending on how you set your options OmegaT proposes the 100% match or overwrites the translation part of your project with the already existing translations. In this way you can save loads of time. Having the right parser also the MediaWiki <http://mediawiki.org> UI could be translated in such a way. Now we always will have people that translate things manually online and who will not use a CAT. This means that OmegaT should be able to access the single pages containing the messages on Betawiki, you translate them on your computer and store them to the page in the correct language version. This is feasible. Another use will be: creation of contents for small wikipedias. Once we get our wiki read/wiki write option within OmegaT it is possible to start a translation of an article, let's say from the English wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org>, and translate it to any language, let's say the Neapolitan wikipedia <http://nap.wikipedia.org>. This means you tell OmegaT which page to get on en.wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org> and which page to write on nap.wikipedia <http://nap.wikipedia.org>. The same is valid for any African language. The advantage of this is: if there is no online-connection people can work offline on translations. The translation memories out of these translations should be stored (WiktionaryZ is already enabled to upload translation memories) somewhere in order to allow others to access and use them to be faster and of higher quality during their own translations. Another aspect of doing things this way is: the proof reading of a translation is easier since you see the source text above the translation for each sentence. This easens the job a lot and the quality of the translated article raises. Now to WiktionaryZ and OmegaT: OmegaT for now has quite a simple glossary function - you create a tab separated text file and put it into your glossary directory. While you translate OmegaT shows you the translation proposals for the words that are present in that sentence and in the glossary. Now imagine what that means if you connect the glossary function to WiktionaryZ: the whole repository of data at your fingertips - of course: considering the mass of data that is online in WiktionaryZ it becomes very important to attribute domains to terminology. Often a word can be translated in 20 ways or even more into another language ... well, it does not make sense if you are doing a translation about medical equipment that you get proposals from another domain, let's say machinery - the possibilities from other domains should only be proposed (showing that other domain) when there is no entry for medical equipment. At this stage we don't have this domain structure for terminology on WiktionaryZ and therefore the data, once we have loads of it online, cannot be used - it would just create a huge mess and would be very time consuming. So one of the things we really nees asap is a domain structure where we can connect the single terms to - the sooner we have it the better .... otherwise we will have loads of double and triple work or WiktionaryZ could become completely useless for the use within OmegaT and as such it would not be of any advantage for translators. Not even for scientist really ... imagine a biologist search for terminology and get whatever result ... also those of machinery or whatever other domain. Back to the use within OmegaT: The next step is then: what if the searched term is not in WiktionaryZ ... I already noted that during my last translation - for now it is too time consuming to add terms to WiktionaryZ and also Wiktionary when you wish to do that while you are translating - but: it would make so much sense. So what is planned in the reference implementation for a translation glossary <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reference_implementation_for_a_translation_g…> is that when working with OmegaT you get the possibility to add such a term directly from there. You simply tell OmegaT to add it to WiktionaryZ with your user ID and you can attribute all the necessary domains etc. without problems as well as tag the term as "definition needs to be added". What happens in that way is that WiktionaryZ will get quite a bunch of very specific terminology over time. Another use is OmegaT for language lessons - Connel, from en.wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org> thought about it and he is right: OmegaT could be used for language learning as well ... what if we have a huge sentence repository and people start to translate texts to study that language - they do not need a paper dictionary - OmegaT would help them to see the use of a word in various sentences and they would get the terminology proposals like the translators. When being back at school or university (or maybe also online with a language teacher) they can understand their errors, update WiktionaryZ and the online sentence repository. For exams teachers would have a mass of proposals and they could determine which glossary group shall be included in the exams ... that is to be thought about ... it was not considered up to now even if there are already thoughts on how to use WiktionaryZ for language learning. Did I miss something? Hmmm ... not sure. Well if you have questions: just ask :-)

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Comprehensive template expansion size limit
by Tim Starling 10 Aug '06

10 Aug '06

I have in my working copy a set of changes introducing a comprehensive template expansion size limit. The limit is configurable (by $wgMaxArticleSize), and will probably be set to 1 MB on Wikimedia. This prevents a number of DoS vulnerabilities, such as the exponential argument substitution attack that we've known about for some time. The output size of template expansion has long been limited to 1MB, limiting several attacks. But it was possible to evade this limit by forcing the parser to parse a large chunk of text, and then throwing away the result, say by putting it into an unused template parameter. The new behaviour is to limit both the pre-expansion size and the post-expansion size. This may break some articles, that's why I'm posting this to wikipedia-l. In particular, it will break articles which use {{#switch}} or similar constructs to extract many small fragments of text from large pseudo-databases. This practice is extremely inefficient, and I'd very much like to see it discontinued on the editorial level. This feature will probably only break the most flagrant cases, where article parse times were in the tens of seconds. I'm sure the other developers would agree -- we would be very grateful if the remaining cases could be dealt with by policy, as much as possible. I've been having a discussion with some Wikipedians along these lines at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:TransLink_(South_East_Queensland)_services When the limit is hit, there will be HTML comments in the parser output indicating the problem. For all articles which use more than 1KB of templates, there will be an HTML comment at the bottom of the parser output showing how close the article is to the size limit. This allows technically capable users to monitor and optimise the expansion size of their templates. At this stage I would like to invite comments. The we can move forward to a trial, perhaps in a few days, if there are no objections. -- Tim Starling

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GFW upgrade block level for Wikipedia
by mingli yuan 08 Aug '06

08 Aug '06

After a report from Xinjingbao(The Beijing News, http://www.thebeijingnews.com/ ) on Wikipedia, yesterday afternoon the Great firewall of Chinese government upgrades its block level for Wikipedia. Today many Wikipedia users in China report that they can not access Wikipedia via the official proxy provides by MediaWiki Fundation. This is a another bad news for Mainland Chinese Wikipedians again. Seems hopeless for them.

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Save Draft button?
by Virgil Ierubino 08 Aug '06

08 Aug '06

Before I say anything else, is there a specific place where people can submit proposals/suggestions? If not, one should be set up. And if so, the navigational structure should be improved because it's hard to find! Upgrade to MediaWiki: "Save Draft" button beneath the edit box that saves the box's contents to a logged-in user's subpage: "User:Example/Article title". Far too many times I'm halfway through a massive edit and I have to go - there needs to be an easier and/or integrated way to save half-done work between sessions. This automation of "in-progress" subpages will neatly streamline copyediting and extended work too.

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New language
by Gordhan Das Valasai 07 Aug '06

07 Aug '06

New language is Meghwarki. It is written in Urdu format. It is spoken by almost 0.5 million Meghwars living in Tharparkar and Rajistan. -- Gordhan Das Valasai, Ph D Scholar, MUET, Jamshoro, Sindh. 03332743180

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Artikel ohne Koordinate
by Stefan Kühn 05 Aug '06

05 Aug '06

Hallo zusammen! Zahlreiche Artikel in der Wikipedia haben einen Raumbezug aber noch keine Koordinate. Andererseits kennen sich viele Benutzer in bestimmten Landstrichen besonders gut aus und wissen aber nicht, dass dort ein Artikel existiert oder die Koordinate fehlt. Deshalb hab ich mal eine Liste für jedes Land erstellt, die alle derzeit noch nicht georeferenzierten Artikel (z.B. Berge, Museen, Orte) enthält. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Georeferenzierung/Artike… Vielen Dank für eure Mithilfe beim Abarbeiten der Liste. Stefan

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Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation
by Dariusz Siedlecki 03 Aug '06

03 Aug '06

Dear all, Due to Angela Beeslay's resignation from the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the Board issued a new election to fill at least one position for the following year. >From today, we're accepting candidates to the Board of Trustees. If you're interested, you must make a candidate statement and list yourself on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/En We also need the help or translators for the elections, so if you're fluent in any language apart from English, please list yourself here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_translations_2006 If you have any questions, please leave them in the FAQ: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Election_FAQ_2006 The official announcement is available on Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Elections_for_the_Board_of_Trustees_of_the_W… We hope the elections will go underway without any problems and wish any potential candidates the best of luck. Regards, Datrio, Essjay, & Aphaia Election Officials, Wikimedia Election Committee 2006

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The Atlantic & Colbert - two great tastes that taste great together
by Brad Patrick 02 Aug '06

02 Aug '06

So not one but two must-read/sees in the same news cycle... http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia by Marshall Poe and "Wikiality" on "The Word" on the Colbert Report. http://www.powerpage.org/archives/2006/08/stephen_colbert_v_wikipedia.html Did you know the number of elephants in Africa has tripled in the past 10 years? 8-D Enjoy! -- Brad Patrick General Counsel & Interim Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. bradp.wmf(a)gmail.com 727-231-0101

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Who's next?
by Michael Snow 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

The Wikipedia Signpost has a report this week from the Polish Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-31/Interw…), following last week's report from the German Wikipedia. Thanks to Kpjas for putting it together. It's nice to get more cross-project news. To keep this feature going, we would welcome anyone from another language who wants to step up. Italian next, or French? Maybe Chinese or Arabic? You get to decide, all you have to do is write it. --Michael Snow

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The Onion on Wikipedia
by Dirk Riehle 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

Just saw this: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902 Enjoy! Dirk PS: In case you wonder what kind of magazine The Onion is, try our favorite reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion

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Wikipedia-l August 2006