Wikipedia-l September 2006

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

88 participants
66 discussions

comment on wikipedia
by Optim 15 Aug '24

15 Aug '24

I was describing to someone how Wikipedia works: "anyone can edit" etc. He answered with this argument: "Wikipedia is the triumph of the average person! of the man in the street!)" (average meaning: not good, not bad, just OK) I asked "why?" His explanation: "Great brilliant works are built by individuals. Groups of people can only create average works. If someone writes something good in the wiki, other average persons will intervene with his/her work and turn it into an average work. If someone writes something bad in the wiki, the others will again turn it into something of average value. with your system (meaning: Wikipedia's system) you can be sure that you will never create something too bad but also never something too good. You can create only average articles." The idea behind his argument was that Wikipedia will be a good resource as long as it attracts good cotnributors. but it will soon become an average site/encyclopaedia because it allows anyone to join the project and edit, and most people are just average persons and not brilliant writers. Do you think it's true? and how can we answer this argument? --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] multi-headed VANDALS
by Daniel Mayer 18 Jan '23

18 Jan '23

On Sunday 28 July 2002 03:00 am, The Cunctator wrote: > What are the articles this person has been changing? For 66.108.155.126: 20:08 Jul 27, 2002 Computer 20:07 Jul 27, 2002 Exploit 20:07 Jul 27, 2002 AOL 20:05 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker 20:05 Jul 27, 2002 Leet 20:03 Jul 27, 2002 Root 20:02 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker 19:59 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker 19:58 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker 19:54 Jul 27, 2002 Principle of least astonishment 19:54 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker 19:52 Jul 27, 2002 Trance music 19:51 Jul 27, 2002 Trance music For 208.24.115.6: 20:20 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker For 141.157.232.26: 20:19 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker Most of these were complete replacements with discoherent statements. Such as "TAP IS THE ABSOLUTE DEFINITION OF THE NOUN HACKER" for Hacker. For the specifics follow http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist and look at the contribs. --mav

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Language policy agreement in the Norwegian Wikipedia community
by Bjarte Sørensen 01 Apr '12

01 Apr '12

Dear all, Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have occurred around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following voting. This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest development and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia, so as to prevent misunderstandings in the future. Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a small number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who want to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the contents of the two current Norwegian versions. == A short language history of Norway == Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a fairly unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in that it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål. Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union with Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing parts of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål, resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90% of Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people. Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by Ivar Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern Nynorsk differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is to Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German and Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have Nynorsk as their first written language. More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the Norwegian Language Council: http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653 == A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian == The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the subdomain no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article count started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created. The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia. Many felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and claimed that there was no need to change and that it should continue its language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of "Norsk". Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper case in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles and >50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival. == Votes == The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy to adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to include new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2% for Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants Bokmål/Nynorsk only). Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current language policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either "Norsk (bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)". Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the subdomain should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct representation of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested is a server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb" today is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no". == Summary of the problem == Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål) are ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an unofficial initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list at [[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures against this activity was immediately created at [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a third Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of the two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community. We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the existing wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co- operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias (including Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of featured articles from neighbour wikipedias. == Conclusion == Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community, so as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this list in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian Wikipedia. >From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org, Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on nn:) Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:) Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:) Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:) Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:) Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:) Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:) Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:) Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:) Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and no:) Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]] Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]] Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]] Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]] Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]] Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]] Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]]

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"Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ
by David Gerard 14 Oct '06

14 Oct '06

This is in response to the somewhat silly English-language press we've had lately. I'll be sending copies of this out to the sources of recent articles on the subject that got it precisely backwards. The following is, I understand, technically accurate, based on text from Amgine, Phillipp Birkin (de:wp), Jimbo and Mathias Schindler (I think), and comcom discussions (press relations being part of that job). Corrections welcomed - you have about five minutes. (and geni, I expect you to ask how this makes the new patrollers' jobs easier - by having what's effectively a feed of new-editor and anonymous edits, is what I was thinking of.) - d. "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ * What is changing? We want to open up editing without damaging the reader's experience. We want to be more wiki and let editors edit freely, which is where all the good things come from. At present a small percentage of articles (a few hundred out of 1.5 million on the English language Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/) are locked or partially locked from editing. We want to open these up. But Wikipedia is a top 20 website (Alexa ratings, no. 17 on 3 month average; no. 15 on 30 August 2006 - http://www.alexa.com/), so we must keep it good for the readers. The new feature will mean that edits from new or anonymous editors will be delayed before being shown to readers - they will see a 'flagged OK' version by default, with a link to the live version. The idea is to enhance the *reading* experience, and free us to enhance the *editing* experience. If vandalism can't be seen by the general public, there will be less motivation to vandalise. Anonymous or new-editor edits will need to be approved by a logged-in editor. Of the thousands of editors on the large Wikipedias, many concentrate on checking revisions and dealing with odd changes and vandalism - this will assist their work and we do not expect new delays. We are also considering a related feature to flag particular versions of articles as being of high quality. This is to a different end: a high-quality finished product. This will likely be tested first on the German language Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/), which has already had three stable editions released on CD and DVD, which have sold quite well. If the feature works there, it may be used on other language Wikipedias. These features are not finished, so we don't have a lot of fine detail as to how it will all work as yet. But we hope this change will allow us to do things such as open up the George W. Bush article or even the front page itself to full unrestricted editing. * When was this proposed? Jimmy Wales asked for a time-delay feature for casual readers in late 2004; after very fast editing on the Indian Ocean tsunami produced a very high-quality article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake) very quickly, but with some highly visible vandalism; we've hotly discussed how to achieve stable high-quality editions of Wikipedia since almost the start of the project, in 2001.

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whom I have to ask for approval of Gileki wikipedia?how find a developer?
by M R 05 Oct '06

05 Oct '06

hi Gileki wikipedia have many supporters that want topromote it. We need a provider to develop it. Also does any committe or something like that have to approve it first? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Gileki I appreciate your help.It is over a month that I am sending these kind of emails around. Rastgaar --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail.

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the process that isn't written
by David Gerard 04 Oct '06

04 Oct '06

Can anyone think how to rephrase this better? Would it actually get through to anyone who needs to hear it? (I eagerly await all the people saying I should read what I wrote.) ==== Cultural expectations These are the things we do that aren't actually codified. The feel of the project. The social structure. This stuff is process too, but if you contradict it you'll really upset people. Breaking a rule is just breaking a rule; but breaking a cultural expectation is breaking people's basic assumptions about the fabric of this small world of ours. And upset volunteers fade away. If you think you're keeping to the fundamental rules and the sensible processes but repeatedly upset people in the same way, your approach is ineffective. If you are in fact right, and cultural expectations are getting in the way of writing the encyclopedia, you've got a hard job ahead of you changing them. But that's the trouble with vision. ==== - d.

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(no subject)
by Emmanuel HABUMUREMYI 30 Sep '06

30 Sep '06

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Korean servers to be shuffled: ja, ko, ms, th Wikipedias moving
by Brion Vibber 30 Sep '06

30 Sep '06

Just a heads-up; we're planning to move the backend hosting for Japanese, Korean, Malay, and Thai Wikipedias from our Korean server cluster (yaseo) back to the main servers in Florida (pmtpa) later this week. They were hosted on the Korean servers for about a year as an experiment in multi-cluster hosting, but in the end we're going to move them back. There are several reasons for this: * More reliable management. Experience has shown that software updates and other issues are more likely to have problems on the second cluster, which receives less attention from sysadmins. These wikis will no longer be second-class citizens where math or timelines sit broken for weeks after a change. * More efficient use of resources. As traffic increases, the limited number of servers we have in the yaseo cluster are less able to handle the load. They now frequently overload during peak access hours in Asia, and we can't add new servers as easily as we can in Florida. Sharing the larger pool of application servers in Florida, and reusing the remaining Korean machines for additional proxy caches, should provide better performance during peak hours in Asia. * Single-login preparation. Hosting all the wikis together will let our unified login system work for these wikis along with the others when we finally start it up. Expected changes and disruptions: There will be some read-only time for the wikis being moved later this week during the actual transition, but other wikis should not be affected. We will try to do this during off-peak hours in Asia. URLs for uploaded images will change to use upload.wikimedia.org as on other wikis; old URLs will redirect for compatibility so this should not disrupt anything. Performance for the moved wikis should be better overall, though off-peak access for logged-in users may be slightly slower due to lightspeed delays between Korea and Florida. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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Gileki wikipedia is waiting for a provider to get started
by Mohammad Rastgaar 29 Sep '06

29 Sep '06

Hello, Gileki language has been supported by many, and there are some organizations which want to promote the Gileki wiki once it get started. I have contacted few providers but did not get any response. Does any body know how I can find a provider to work on this case? thanks, Rastgaar --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail.

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Enforcing collaborative copyright: an essay
by SJ 29 Sep '06

29 Sep '06

Lovenworth and Dyas, two members of corporate law firm Dewey Ballantine, tackle unresolved issues in an essay on enforcing collaborative copyright (and suggest the need for a new class of copyright. (Are they waiting for a GNU-blessed Wiki license to emerge?) Someone should ask for a freely licensed version of the essay... "As ownership of collaborative works becomes increasingly diluted, a common point of enforcement becomes more necessary. One solution is to treat collaborative works in a similar manner as a joint work so that certain contributors to the collaborative work can enforce its copyright. Such a solution would do nothing, however, to ensure that those contributors act with the interests of the collaboration in mind. Consequently, until copyright law catches up with the developments of the modern world, the ability to enforce copyright in collaborative works will remain limited at best." http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2006/09/27/1937133.htm http://www.deweyballantine.com/home1024.cfm --SJ

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Wikipedia-l September 2006