Wikipedia-l October 2007

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

43 participants
34 discussions

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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Wikimedia Open Access Chat
by Erik Moeller 04 Jan '08

04 Jan '08

I would like to invite you to join a chat about the relationship between the Wikimedia community and the Open Access movement in scientific publishing. This will explore issues of licensing, content sharing, technology, and hopefully result in mutual commitments to collaborate. In a nutshell: December 17, 2006; irc.freenode.net; 21:00 UTC; #openaccess Please see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Open_Access_chat for more (including a link to a web interface for accessing the IRC channel). I would appreciate it if you would add yourself to the "I want to attend!" list on the page, so we have an idea how many people are coming. -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

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Anti-vandalism proposal
by Pingveno 01 Nov '07

01 Nov '07

I am working on a new anti-vandalism application for Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. Before I get really deep into coding, I need to make sure that it will actually be used. The basic problem that the application addresses is vandalism getting through Wikipedia's vandalism catching systems. The Wikipedia community does an excellent job overall, but every once in a while vandalism (subtle or obvious) gets through. I personally have come across a few pieces of vandalism that were months old. The way the problem is addressed is to gather all edits together on a central server. Approved users would connect to the server and examine the edits for vandalism. If a certain number of users approve the edit it is removed from the pool. Edits marked as vandalism ("condemned") would be removed after the vandalism has been entirely dealt with: revert, warn, speedy delete, etc. There are various tricks I can put on the central server to reduce the number of edits that need to be reviewed. The most obvious is a whitelist, but there are many other techniques such as combining edits made in close succession by a single editor to a single article. Now to my questions. - Does this sound like a good idea in general? - Is there already a project similar to mine that I would be unnecessarily duplicating? - A significant number of users are needed to make the system work. Will the system probably be popular enough to get this minimum number of editors? Cheers! Aaron DeVore

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[Fwd: Sardininan - Sassarese languages or language and dialect?]
by Sabine Cretella 31 Oct '07

31 Oct '07

Forwarding the post on my blog. Cheers, Sabine -------- Original-Nachricht -------- Well, there is a nice website that can help us with that question ... and that is from the institution that cares about this officially - the Region of Sardinia. When it comes to the Limba Sarda Comuna used on the actual Sardinian wikipedia <http://sc.wikipedia.org> there is no doubt that the language exists, but we must appreciate that it is an artificial language that was created out of the living languages of Sardinia. The website of the Region of Sardinia <http://www.sardegnacultura.it/linguasarda/limbasardacomuna/> states: Limba sarda comuna: una lingua realmente esistente: Sa Limba sarda comuna è naturale per il 92,8 per cento, è in posizione mediana rispetto a tutti i dialetti del sardo e può ancora essere migliorata per farla diventare la lingua ufficiale dei sardi. Limba sarda comuna: a language that in fact exists: Sa Limba sarda comuna is natural be 92,8 per cent, it is in an intermediate position compared to all Sardinian dialects and can still be improved to have it become the official language of the Sardinian people So they still want to improve the language ... nice ... 92,8 per cent of it is natural that means 7,2 percent is not natural. If I consider these percentages to what translators work with every day, that is the "matches" we get in our CAT tools, then 92,8 percent is a low percentage of being "natural". It seems to be high, but in fact it is not ... Let's say I translate any kind of text (a sentence for example) and my analysis software tells me that the text is up to 93% percent equal to another sentence I translated before, this means that I cannot leave the sentence as is, because I will need to change at least one word in the sentence to make it a proper translation of what is there. Just to give you an example: The house on the hill is green - that is what was translated before. Now I get such a 92,8 per cent match with a sentence like: the tree on the hill is green. If I left it as is: it would state something completely different. You can also look at it like this: The house on the hill is nice and green. - that is 100% English The house on the hill is nice and vert. - that is approx. 89 % English + 11% French (it is just a matter of playing with the amount of words to get the 92,8%) So what these 92,8% tell us: even if a huge part of it is considered to be built out of the "natural language part" it is still an artificial language. But what is a language and what is a dialect? Well: that very much depends from which POV you look at things. But ISO determined some rules to understand what a language is and what not. That is, before you can get an ISO 639 code for a language you need to prove that this languabe complies to the standard. Of course there are living languages that don't have an ISO code, because up to now nobody cared for them - I am just thinking about Griko Salentino, a language spoken and written in Italy - but if people care about that language, they will ask for it. What is a dialect ... a) a language without an army b) a way of expressing orally that developed out of a language and that has some differences , for example in pronunciation, some expressions etc, even having the same basics when it comes to grammar (just to mention one example) So could Campidanese (ISO 639-3: sro) Gallurese (ISO 639-3: sdn) Logudorese (ISO 639-3: src) Sassarese (ISO 639-3: sdc) be dialects of the Common Sardinian Language? Well ... only from a logical POV this is not possible, because they were there long before the Common Sardinian Language was created ... By having their ISO 639 code, when they requested that code, they complied to the requests of the International Standardisation Organisation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO> and therefore, on an international level they are considered to be languages even with an ISO code. Please let me repeat: there are languages that don't have one, but these can request a code ... When it comes to the language committee we had to draw a line somewhere and this line should not come from us, that is: it is NOT up to the members of the language committee to decide what a language is or not. We needed some kind of standard to apply and the clearest one was and still is the ISO standard. So if somebody wants to complain and say that the four languages above are in fact dialects of Sardinian and not languages, we should kindly invite them to create their papers and contact ISO directly to have the ISO 639-3 language code taken away ... it is NOT up to the language committee to take such decisions. Another thing people should then also consider to do: also UNESCO states that these four languages are languages and they are in the red book of endangered languages - so if whoever states that they are not languages and he/she is so sure about it: they should also contact UNESCO. It is NOT up to the language committee to take such decisions as to delete four languages out of the endangered languages list ... Sorry for me being so ironical, but: when such discussions about what is and what is not a language come up ... well: before you come to us, please go to the INTERNATIONAL bodies that deal with the question. We are only normal people that base their decisions on standards and can tell people where to go to request their code, but we can nor create that code, nor influence what is recognised on an international level. (Nor do we want to do that). Now to the question of sc.wikipedia ... I remember that, at the beginning, sc.wikipedia tried to host all of the Sardinian languages, then someone came up and decided to make sc.wikipedia a Limba Sarda Comune wikipedia only. Well: the Limba Sarda Comune is being used by Sardinian Authorities to facilitate their work. In any case the code "sc" stands for the macro language Sardinian and not for the Limba Sarda Comune, so there is no reason why it should have the right to claim that code for the language. That is the Limba Sarda Comune, like any other language in the world that wants recognition by ISO must request an own ISO 639 code. It is not an option to simply say: now let's take that one since it is there ... well the one that is there stands for something else. The question of the actual sc.wikipedia came up because of people telling us that Sassarese is not a language, but a dialect of Sardinian and that the Limba Sarda Comune (Common Sardinian Language) is the only "right language" of Sardinia. Well again: it is not us who is going to decide on Sassarese and the other three being or not being a language - we rely on ISO 639-3 codes since we had to draw a line and avoid to simply assert things. It is not us who is going to decide if the Limba Sarda Comune is going to get an ISO 639 code. If you, who read this, are interested in this matter, it is up to you to get things on their way. See: the decision to base whatever we do on ISO 639-3 was one of the wisest decisions ever taken within the language committee ... imagine which fights (almost all political based) we would have if we did not do this. Just to make things clear - I repeat it again: a) we do NOT decide if something is a language or not b) we base our decisions on ISO 639-3 c) we actually need a solution for various scripts used for one language d) we would love to see Multilingual Mediawiki there since it could be used to create easily sustainable communities e) we are not going to go ahead on discussing if Sassarese is a language or not (it has a code) f) we will need to find a solution for Limba Sarda Comune which does NOT have an ISO 639 code and is using the sc code in an improper way. Thank you for your patience and understanding. -- Posted By Sabine Cretella to words & more <http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2007/09/sardininan-sassarese-languages-o…> at 9/11/2007 08:53:00 AM

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botbit
by Andre Engels 29 Oct '07

29 Oct '07

Every now and again my bot gets blocked because it doesn't have a bot bit. Please stop that! If you want my bot to have a bot bit, then GIVE IT ONE!!!! If you need information first, you can ask me and I'd be happy to help you. But a bot bit is there FOR YOU, not for me. If you want it, you ask for it. Why force me to ask you for something that you want? If you want it, then ask for it. It's as simple as that. -- Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

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Getting out of hand
by Kurt Jansson 24 Oct '07

24 Oct '07

http://xkcd.com/333/ Tooltip: "Wikipedia's role as brain-extension, while a little troubling, is also really cool." I would say: Wikipedia might become to factual knowledge what the pocket calculator was to mental arithmetic ;-) Kurt

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Volapük Wikipedia is the 15th largest?
by Brianna Laugher 21 Oct '07

21 Oct '07

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikipedias#1_000_000.2B_articles With only 5 admins and **250 users**? What on earth are they doing?! cheers, Brianna -- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/

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Behold the FIST
by Magnus Manske 20 Oct '07

20 Oct '07

My "missing images" tool, a toolserver script to find free images to use in WIkipedia articles by looking at what other langues have about the topic, has been running for almost a year now, and was used ~42000 times. Recently, I published "WatchFlickr", which does a very similar thing, but searches free Flickr images. Enter the FIST (Free Image Search Tool), a "unified" version of both tools, and then some: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/fist.php It has the known, now "merged" features: * Follow language links and look if they have free images * Look on Flickr for free images I have added: * Direct Wikimedia Commons search (results from the internal Commons search) * GIMP-SAVVY (lots of PD images from the US Gov.) Together with a truckload of options (scan title lists, categories to depth X, replace placeholder images) and fine-tunings for the individual searches, it is already likely to be one of the most comprehensive free image (meta-)search tools on the web. Please try it out, report bugs and feature requests (link in the header bar), and throw lots'o'images at wikipedia articles :-) Both Missing Images and WatchFlickr will eventually be "phased out" and redirect to FIST. If you know any other sources of free media, I'll be happy to add them, provided * they have at least a few thousand images * they have an API, to are easy to screen-scrape;-) Cheers, Magnus P.S.: Sorry to spam wikipedia-l with this, but it seemed significant to me, and the easiest way to reach wikipedians in all languages.

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[FR 07] Translation English-Chinese for Fundraiser 2007 (2)
by Sabine Cretella 15 Oct '07

15 Oct '07

As I said, I am sending out the single requests for single languages that still need translating for the Fundraiser 2007. The above combination is valid for this text: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/Testimonials/The_Wikipedia_… Please just copy and paste the sourcetext to the page that opens by clicking on the red language link and overwrite it in your language. Thanks for helping out. Cheers, Sabine -- p.s. The fundraiser of the Wikimedia Foundation will start soon ... stay tuned :-) Knowledge is a human right. Help to protect it. Donate for Wikipedia. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising

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Wikipedia-l October 2007