Wikipedia-l August 2008

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

19 participants
26 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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What am I doin wrong??
by John W Foster 25 Aug '08

25 Aug '08

Please take a look at this wikicode snippet. It produces the correct format but shows the plain text <center> in the browser view of the page. It should not be visible. === Help departments === ==== Static help ==== <center> {| width="100%" style="padding-left:2em; padding-right:2em; background:transparent" |align=left|[[Help:Contents|Help menu]] |align=right|[[PW:HELP]] |- |align=left|[[Physicswiki:FAQ|Frequently asked questions]] |align=right|[[PW:FAQ]] |- |align=left|[[PW:WP|Shortcuts]] |align=right|[[PW:CUTS]] • [[PW:WP]] |- |align=left|[[Physicswiki:Tip of the day|Tip of the day]] |align=right|[[PW:TIP]] |- |align=left|[[Physicswiki:User Page Design Center|User Page Design Center]] |align=right|[[PW:UPD]] • [[PW:UPDC]] |} </center> Thanks! John Foster

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i WaS HeRe
by リウネ閣下 17 Aug '08

17 Aug '08

ahaha lol YO! i WaS HeRe!!! confirmer 936949393623a20674a614dc077b00b8b78f9c84 PUSSY MAN

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Innovations in disambiguations and lists
by Lars Aronsson 17 Aug '08

17 Aug '08

A typical year article is [[1973]]. But there is also [[1345]] which looks quite different, having running text and illustrations, rather than just bullet lists. This format is an innovation from December 2007. The revision history is for some reason found under [[1345 (summary)]]. Is any similar innovation going on in disambiguation pages and list articles? Do you know any exceptional examples that are more beautiful or explain the topic better, than the standard format? I know some list articles can be much improved by introducing a table that is column sortable (class="wikitable sortable"). This removes the need for separate "alphabetical list of ..." and "list of ... by size". One example is the Russian list of "cities in Sweden", which also uses a map to illustrate the list article, [[ru:Города Швеции]], http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0_%D0%A8%D0… The columns are Russian name, Swedish name, population, foundation year, cathedral, county, and latitude. By clicking the box in the column headings, you can sort the list by name in either language, by population, by age, and north-to-south. In one Swedish disambiguation page, I inserted two illustrations to explain why the word "foxtail" is also the name of a plant, [[sv:Rävrumpa]], http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A4vrumpa (In English, equisetum arvense is known as [[Horsetail]], but that is a redirect and not a disambiguation page.) -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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Scour invite from Vaibhav Simlote
by Vaibhav Simlote 12 Aug '08

12 Aug '08

Did you hear about Scour? It is the next gen search engine with Google/Yahoo/MSN results and user comments all on one page. Best of all we get rewarded for using it by collecting points with every search, comment and vote. The points are redeemable for Visa gift cards It's like earning credit card or airline points just for searching. Hit the link below to join and we will both get points! http://scour.com/invite/vaibhavsimlote/ I know you'll like it! - Vaibhav Simlote If you would prefer not to receive invitations from ANY Scour members please click here - http://www.scour.com/unsub/e/d2lraXBlZGlhLWxAbGlzdHMud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZw== Scour, Inc., 15303 Ventura Blvd. Suite 860, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403, USA.

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Scour invite from Vaibhav Simlote
by Vaibhav Simlote 12 Aug '08

12 Aug '08

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] can Wikipedia apply "CC-BY-SA-compatible FDL" retroactively?
by Thomas Dalton 11 Aug '08

11 Aug '08

> I would assume that if user A grants everyone in the world a license > to do X, Y, and Z, then you're allowed to submit your work to company > Q which requires you to agree to terms that say "YOU give us > permission to do X, Y, and Z". Even though the permission is > technically not yours to give. > > Because, logically, if you did interpret it this way, what could > possibly happen that anyone could sue for? If you grant company Q > the right to do X, Y, and Z and company Q actually does one of those > things, user A can't claim they were wronged, because they granted > the whole world the right to do X, Y and Z anyway. I think technically, you would be in violation of their terms of service, but it wouldn't cause any problems so no-one is likely to care. It only takes one person to have more money than sense for you to end up in court, though.

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] can Wikipedia apply "CC-BY-SA-compatible FDL" retroactively?
by Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 11 Aug '08

11 Aug '08

On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Bennett Haselton <bennett(a)peacefire.org> wrote: > Is there any reason why they couldn't just say: "Version 1.3 of the > GFDL is identical to CC-BY-SA"? > > That would presumably meet the murky requirement that future versions > of the GFDL have to be "in the same spirit" as the present one. Although the vast majority of GFDL content would be best served by being under the CC-SA there are projects that appreciate the software manual/book specific things about the GFDL and it would be morally wrong to convert them to the CC-SA at this point in the game. Which is why a clause is being developed that more or less will apply specifically to Wikimedia projects.

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Wikipedia-l August 2008