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
__________________________________
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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
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]]
(Short intro: I am User:Amire80, editor in Hebrew, Russian and English
Wikipedias, and sysop in the English one.)
The whole article about Amnon Yitzhak, a well-known and controversial
Jewish preacher, was deleted from the Hebrew Wikipedia.
It happened after Wikimedia Israel received a letter from an attorney
representing Yitzhak, which requested to remove allegedly defamatory
material from the article.
The article was deleted and recreated without older versions. For the
short time that these versions were available, it was possible to see
that the article was not any more defamatory against Amnon Yitzhak
than an average newspaper or television item about him. The editors
who worked on it were not vandals and the material was reasonably
sourced. Now it's impossible to see that, too (unless one is a sysop
there).
Nevertheless, the bureaucrats of the Hebrew Wikipedia chose to salt
the article with an explanation similar to WP:OFFICE.
The problem is that it is doesn't seem to be a case for WP:OFFICE.
Wikimedia Israel is not the main Wikimedia Office, but only a small
local association, which is just beginning its life. In any case, as
far as my understanding of jurisdictions goes, Wikimedia Israel cannot
be held responsible for the content of the article and neither the
article's editors.
I am sincerely sorry to be a "schtinker". That's a Yiddish word for
"informer". The bureaucrats of the Hebrew Wikipedia are excellent
contributors, thanks to whom the Hebrew Wikipedia is one of the very
best projects of the WMF. But i am quite sure that they made a mistake
in this case. Wikipedia must not censor out sourced material after one
feeble legal threat so easily.
Many respected editors of the Hebrew Wikipedia voiced their opposition
to this deletion, but the sysops do not agree to restore the deleted
versions, saying that they won't do it without proper legal advice.
This is understandable; so - can someone from the Foundation Office,
who has experience with BLP legal situations help the Hebrew Wikipedia
sysops to solve this problem?
Thanks in advance.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni
English - http://aharoni.wordpress.com
Hebrew - http://haharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
In a message dated 1/28/2008 2:13:34 AM Eastern Standard Time,
amir.aharoni(a)gmail.com writes:
On 28/01/2008, daniwo59(a)aol.com <daniwo59(a)aol.com> wrote:
> That said, having looked at the current Hebrew article, and being
familiar
> with the most of the incidents, the article is highly POV. That is to
say, it
> may be sourced, but it is still POV. For any Israelis reading this list,
Shach
> and Ovadiah Yoseph made no less outrageous comments in their time, but
their
> articles seem to be far more balanced.
The current article also suffers from all the brouhaha around it. It
has been edited by several new accounts, which are most probably
operated by experienced users whose reaction to the situation is part
encyclopedic, part tongue-in-cheek. Certainly not the right way to
handle it.
Yes, the article is POV and Yitzhak is known for 1) being litigious, and 2)
twisting facts. Rather than simply protecting it, the article should be
stubbed first--I doubt he would have a problem with the current English version
of the article at _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnon_Yitzhak_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnon_Yitzhak) . For people who want some sense of who this guy
is, see
_http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol6No2/Israel's%20Tele-rabbi.htm_
(http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol6No2/Israel's%20Tele-rabbi.htm) . Right now, the Hebrew version is essentially a two-line introduction,
followed by a list of all the controversial statements he made.
Danny
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
In a message dated 1/28/2008 1:01:02 PM Eastern Standard Time,
saintonge(a)telus.net writes:
If individual Israelis want to post libellous
material they need to accept personal responsibility for their own actions.
Ec
And we have to remember that NPOV is a guiding principle of all our projects.
Danny
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
In a message dated 1/28/2008 6:38:33 AM Eastern Standard Time,
amir.aharoni(a)gmail.com writes:
agree about the PR value - but do we still have to delete the
article and give up our integrity after just one feeble letter?
No, but the article should be fixed because as it is now, it is a hatchet
job, plain and simple. In other words, it is just a list of contentious
statements that he made, and how he pissed off a lot of people. In that sense he is
a lot like Pat Robertson. On the other hand, the article is full of weasel
words: some quoted; some inserted by the authors; and even some bad science for
the reader (Amnon argues for a young Earth by pointing to coal in Antarctica
as evidence that coal cannot come from ancient forests because there are no
forests in Antarctica. The article then argues that according to "plate
tectonics," Antarctica was once located on the Equator.).
Let me be clear. I think personally that Amnon Yitzhak is a very scary
fundamentalist. On the other hand, he is also a great example of the sense of
alienation among Yemenite and other Mizrahi Jews in Israel, who feel left out of
the official historical narrative. Perhaps the article might place him in the
context of "yaldei Teiman," Zohar Argov and the rise of alternative musics
(see
_http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8715(199922)112%3A445%3C450%3AIMMSDT…
(http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8715(199922)112:445<450:IMMSDT>2.0.CO;2-V) by my good friend Amy Horowitz), the rise of Shas (see
_http://books.google.com/books?id=Cw2MG5eYdxYC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=rise+o…
has+israel&source=web&ots=_O8SC4Qy8O&sig=ber1vqySz9X7vaqc-mF4a45vS_4_
(http://books.google.com/books?id=Cw2MG5eYdxYC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=rise+of…
el&source=web&ots=_O8SC4Qy8O&sig=ber1vqySz9X7vaqc-mF4a45vS_4) for instance)
and its rejection by mainstream society (take Deri and Katzav as examples).
Placed in that context, Yitzhak is just another extreme voice of a
disenfranchised group. Understanding him in that context would make for a fascinating
article. Right now, the article is more like a gossip rag.
Danny
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
Amnon Yitzchak is a controversial figure in Israel, to say the least. He has
certainly pissed off a lot of people, including myself (I still cringe at
the 1997 helicopter fiasco, which is mentioned in the bottom of the article).
That said, having looked at the current Hebrew article, and being familiar
with the most of the incidents, the article is highly POV. That is to say, it
may be sourced, but it is still POV. For any Israelis reading this list, Shach
and Ovadiah Yoseph made no less outrageous comments in their time, but their
articles seem to be far more balanced.
Just an observation from someone who can read the text ...
Danny
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
Hoi,
The "Stichting Open Progress <http://stichtingopenprogress.org>" is happy to
announce that it has received a grant from Hivos<http://www.hivos.nl/english>,
to improve the localisation of MediaWiki. Open Progress is going to offer a
bounty of up to 200 EURO for the full localisation for a language. Given the
activity of Hivos, a Dutch NGO, a bounty will only be available for
languages in Asia, Africa and Latin America that have a sizable number of
speakers.
With this project we hope to achieve that MediaWiki can indeed claim to be
one of the best Open Source projects that provides great localisation for
many many languages out of the box. It will improve the usability not only
for the WMF projects in that language but also for projects like Wikimedia
Commons, Wikieducator, Wikihow, OmegaWiki .. the list goes on ..
The budget we have is substantial but limited. We will be sadly happy when
we have to announce that we have ran out of money. Sad because we want to
localise more languages, happy because so many languages will have been
improved.
For the precise details of the project I refer to the details on
Betawiki<http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Language_project>.
NB The amounts are inclusive of the money transfer costs and as these can be
substantial, we offer some alternatives. In the past I have proposed a
scheme called "Donations, putting your money where your mouth
is<http://openprogress.org/Donations%2C_putting_your_money_where_your_mouth_is>".
In this scheme you choose to get paid or donate the money for one of the
projects that we advertise under this scheme. Another way of getting the
money paid is when people in a country agree to work together and have us
pay the money together as well. This could for instance work in the case of
Wikimedia India...
Thanks,
GerardM
Hoi,
When a second or subsequent project is requested for a langauge, there is a
requirement for a full localisation of the User Interface. This does benefit
all people who use their language in projects like Commons, Meta.. The full
localisation means all MediaWiki messages and all the messages of extensions
used in the Wikimedia Foundation.
In the request for the Japanese Wikiversity, there were complaints that it
is unreasonable for the people requesting a new project to have to do this
work. It is indeed not fair. It is for this reason that I ask all Wikimedia
editors to help out with the missing localisations. There are few moments
when we can make requirements and thereby ensure the quality of the
localisation. This helps our readers, our editors in doing what we all want
them to do; read and create good free content.
Thanks,
GerardM
* BetaWiki <http://translatewiki.net>
* Statistics of the localisation per
language<http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics>