Wikipedia-l November 2007

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

19 participants
15 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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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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Commons Database
by Michal Rosa 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Please excuse my ignorance if a proposal such as this one has already been discussed already (perhaps it's a wrong mailing list) but I could not find any information about it. Has it ever been discussed, considered to establish a central database (in a manner of Commons) to hold information such as for example basic statistical data about population, area, geographical data etc etc for towns, cities or even countries? If data like that was to be stored in one central location it would be possible to link to it from Wikipedias and it would make it easier to update such data and it would make it consistent across all projects. Just a quick example, according to en Wiki the population of Washington DC is 581,530, German Wiki says it's 548.360, according to French Wiki it's 553 523 and Polish Wiki states it's 582 049. If data like that was stored in a central location, one could just update it once and all projects would show the same information. Also it would make it easy for bots to create articles containing basic demographical data about towns and localities based on such information. Cheers, -- Michal "roo72" Rosa

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Fwd: [Wikiquote-l] set pagemoves to autoconfirmed - please read and comment
by Casey Brown 27 Nov '07

27 Nov '07

Sorry for cross-posting, but the original message wasn't sent to the above lists although it affects the users at those projects just as much. :-) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Elisabeth Anderl <n9502784(a)students.meduniwien.ac.at> Date: Nov 26, 2007 5:03 PM Subject: [Wikiquote-l] set pagemoves to autoconfirmed - please read and comment To: wiktionary-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, wikiquote-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, wikisource-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, wikispecies-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Dear Wikimedians, please read and comment the following plea, which is of common interest through WMF-projects: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metapub#set_pagemoves_to_autoconfirmed_-_ple… Many thanks in advance, best regards, Elisabeth Anderl (aka spacebirdy) _______________________________________________ Wikiquote-l mailing list Wikiquote-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiquote-l -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

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Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
by White Cat 26 Nov '07

26 Nov '07

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk%27s_personal_life#B… The birth date of the man on nearly all language edition of wikpedia is wrong. Atatürk's DOB (Date Of Birth) is recorded as Rumî calenders 1296 (per various official documents from Ottoman era). The birth day and month isn't recorded in any such official documents. Rumi 1296 is the equivalent of the Gregorian time frame starting from 13 March 1880 to 12 March 1881. Several historians have made conflicting claims of his DOB (discussed to length in the linked article) but none of these claims have any common acceptance behind them. Atatürk's identity card states his DOB as 1881 with no mention of a day or month. With his (Atatürk's) approval "19 May", the start of the Turkish independence war, was attributed as the DOB of Atatürk. Official bio of Atatürk states the DOB as '19 May 1881' and this is commonly accepted as the adopted DOB of Atatürk. This is particularly problematic because 19 May 1881 coincides with Rumî 1297 contradicting official documents from the Ottoman era. I have mentioned this problem to pl.wikipedia and fr.wikipedia so far. I corrected it on tr.wikipedia and en.wikipedia. So I am telling y'all now. Hope you fix it. - White Cat

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Please contribute to the fundraising blog
by Erik Moeller 22 Nov '07

22 Nov '07

All - we've set up a blog to accompany our annual fundraiser. The headlines from the blog will be featured in the sitenotice: http://whygive.wikimedia.org/ I'd like to invite you to submit posts to the blog. These posts can be provocative, and should give compelling reasons to support the Wikimedia Foundation. You can draft posts here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/Why_Give_blog Posts will be selected by a number of people: Cary Bass (our Volunteer Coordinator), Sandy Ordonez (our Communications Manager), Sue Gardner (Special Advisor to the Board), and myself. We'll probably try to have a new post every 2-3 days at least. Once again, the point of these posts is first and foremost to invite the general public to donate. :-) Please submit stories in this general spirit. If you are willing to act as a moderator for comments to vet out spam & trolling, please contact Cary Bass at <cbass AT wikimedia DOT org>. For now, this is an experiment and as such, only in English. We will set up blogs in other languages if this one has a measurable impact on our fundraising. Thanks for any and all help! Erik Möller Member of the Board

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OpenStreetMap's first edit war
by Erik Moeller 21 Nov '07

21 Nov '07

For fun: http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=244 -- Toward Peace, Love & Progress: Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

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New parser in the works - please help
by David Gerard 17 Nov '07

17 Nov '07

http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitext-l Wikitext-l was formed from a recent discussion on wikitech-l about the need to sanely reimplement the current parser, which is a Horrible Mess and pretty much impossible to reimplement in another language. The MediaWiki parser definition is literally "whatever the PHP parser does." Some of what it does is arguably very wrong, pathological, magical or just a Stupid Parser Trick. So the list has been formed to come up with a grammar that defines all the useful parts of the present parser, and so can be used by anyone to implement a MediaWiki wikitext parser. This will be useful for other software, for WYSIWYG editing extensions ... all manner of things. Some of what some people would think of as a "stupid parser trick" is in fact important - e.g. L'''uomo'' which renders as L<i>uomo</i> (necessary for French and Italian). So: we need to know what MediaWiki quirks are supporting important constructs in languages other than English (which is the language the list is in, and is the native language of most of the participants), and particularly in non-European languages. This list is unlikely to implement new features, e.g. (an example brought up by GerardM) the double-apostrophe in Neapolitan. But we really need to know about present important features that wouldn't be obvious to an English-speaker going through the present parser code. - d.

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Wikipedia-l November 2007