Wikipedia-l September 2008

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

10 participants
8 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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interwiki conflicts discussion
by Amir E. Aharoni 22 Sep '08

22 Sep '08

Hello everyone, Interwiki conflicts are a pain. Bot operators receive warnings about them, but often do not fix them, probably because they are reluctant to tamper manually with projects in languages that they don't know. The result is that groups of interwiki-linked articles remain unmaintained. One technical solution that may ease this pain is Nikola Smolenski's "Interlanguage" extension. The central hub for its discussion is this page in meta: * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/A_newer_look_at_the_interlanguage_link Being very eager about interlanguage linking, i decided to Be Bold and opened a MediaZilla request to enable this extension in Wikimedia projects. It is supposed to be discussed on wikitech-l. However, this is only a partial solution. Enabling this extension will make resolving conflicts technically easier, but it still must be done by a human editor. I am studying linguistics and i have a pretty good intuition for guessing the content of Wikipedia articles in languages that i don't know, so i often make thorough fixes in interwiki conflicts across different Wikipedias. Automatic translation sometimes helps, too. However, i cannot really know all languages and i cannot be familiar with all the different policies and cultures of different projects. Finally, it's way too much work for me to complete all by myself. Therefor, a culture of discussing this between Wikipedias needs to develop somehow. (Other Wikimedia projects can participate in this, too; i am familiar mostly with Wikipedia.) In another Being-Bold initiative, i started this page in meta: * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_synchronization It's a very preliminary and experimental page. I have many more ideas about it, but it's a start. You are already welcome to comment on the case that i opened there, "Black box"; comments from French speakers are particularly needed. You are also welcome to add cases of your own. You are welcome to write a bot that will automate the implementation of the discussion outcomes. Etc. I hope that a new era of interwiki links is beginning. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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the press release of NTT Resonant Company in Japan
by mizusumashi（みずすまし） 20 Sep '08

20 Sep '08

Hi. I'm mizusumashi, and my home wiki is Japanese Wikipedia. In the press release of NTT Resonant Company in Japan on April 18, 2006, they announced that they cooperated with Wikipedia to provide web　service: http://help.goo.ne.jp/info/detail/619/ (Japanese web site) Are there any information about this by WMF? Can I read it? Sorry for my poor English. Thank you. ---- mizusumashi

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Oops
by Cary Bass 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I just released a bunch of old postings held in moderation, looking at the senders (but not the dates). I'm sure all these threads are gone. Sorry to everyone. - -- Cary -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkjRguUACgkQyQg4JSymDYmJTwCgkGcBsQeicmZbPNAS1dWNhzuq q4QAoJmMNzDT9t8STeB2bU00hZesU/cY =2LZr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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can I have two printing style sheets?
by Richard Davis 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

I'd like to have two style sheets for printing for my academic wiki. One would be double spaced print, the other would be single spaced and perhaps with some other differences. Can I have two separate style sheets and then select the one I need at point of printing? Any ideas, anyone? Richard Davis

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WikiProject Check Wikipedia
by Stefan Kühn 06 Sep '08

06 Sep '08

Hello, I have create a new WikiProject. "Check Wikipedia" will help to clean the syntax of Wikipedia and to find some other errors. And this in many languages (at the moment de, en, fr, nds, nl, ru). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Check_Wikipedia I wrote a script in perl. The script scan every new dump and create a list of articles with errors. Daily the script scan all articles from this list again and create some different lists for the users. At the moment the script is in version 0.1 alpha. This mean there are some bugs. :-) I have also the script limited by 2000 errors. The project was inspired by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax. And the system is not new. I have use the basic script for the controlling of the persondata in the German Wikipedia. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Personendaten/Wartung/Fehlerliste So we have eliminated over 20000 errors in the last months. Thank you for your attention Stefan Kühn (sk)

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Wikipedia-l September 2008