Wikipedia-l August 2009

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

16 participants
10 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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Swedish encyclopedia in new compact print edition
by Lars Aronsson 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

I know many of you are interested in how Wikipedia's traditional competitors are doing, especially the unusual event that new print editions appear. The Swedish encyclopedia, Nationalencyklopedin, was produced in 20 volumes in 1989-1996 and has since made many transformations as CDROM, DVD, and online. The original 20 volumes contained 172,000 articles, which have expanded to 460,000 in the current online edition, which is only open to paying subscribers. One year ago, a new printed edition appeared, a compact 3 volumes with only 64,000 short articles. These volumes have the same 3 columns per page, 25 cm tall, as the original 20 set. At the same time, the website was revised so that 64,000 short articles (I assume they are the same ones) were made available for free. Yesterday, we learned of yet another printed edition, this time in 20 volumes, to be sold in collaboration with two newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Expressen. It appears that these volumes are rather thin, maybe 200 pages and set in only 2 columns. Although I don't have any numbers, it seems that this could be the same 64,000 short articles. The old print set of 20 big volumes + 3 supplements sells for 700 euro in plain binding or 1100 euro for leather spines (half-calf, Halblederband). The 3 volumes sell for 190 euro. The new 20 volume compact edition sells for 8 euro/volume (including shipping) with the first one free, for a total of 150 euro. The two newspapers belong to the same publisher. Dagens Nyheter is Sweden's largest morning subscription newspaper, delivering the volumes with 14 day intervals directly to your home. Expressen is Sweden's second largest evening newspaper, only sold in stores, and you get the volume for an extra 8 euro when you buy your newspaper. Expressen has earlier done this with DVD films and some minor books, and so has its competitor Aftonbladet. Some stores might offer a reduced price for the newspaper supplement to customers who buy other products for more than a certain amount. My interpretation is that printed encyclopedias and newspapers are two industries in crisis that are trying to find each other. Using a highly respected brand for a much smaller new product is a strategy that has been tried before (e.g. Mercedes-Benz A-Class), but I'm not convinced it makes any sense in the long run. People might set their expectations too high and get disappointed. Old arguments that the Swedish Wikipedia needs to become as good as Nationalencyklopedin, suddenly got a lot more confused. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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Are we running out of sources
by Lars Aronsson 24 Aug '09

24 Aug '09

Many articles lack sources. I just happened to look at a biography of a Swedish journalist, born in 1968. He received some fine awards, and there is no doubt he is notable enough. But the article has no sources. Ten years ago, in 1999, for a journalist born in 1958, I would just look him up in the Swedish "Who's who", which was published every two years. But that title seems to be discontinued. Or if another issue is ever published, it comes with much longer intervals. Such reference works go the same way as printed encyclopedias and dictionaries. For a young, ambitious journalist today, being in Facebook and Linkedin (and Wikipedia) counts just as much as being in Who's who did ten years ago. Should I use the journalist's Linkedin profile as a source? I don't think that is acceptable. All sorts of lies could hide there. And users could remove themselves from Linkedin or edit their profile at any time. Old issues of Who's who don't change, they are a stable reference. But the fact is, Who's who is/was also based on user-submitted autobiographies. The editors made a list of people who "should" be in there, and sent invitations with a form where the person could fill in details about family, education, career, publications, awards, and hobbies. I'm not sure how the editors fact checked the entries. Perhaps the risk of public shame was enough to keep people from lying. Printed editions have another advantage for the historian. If a Swedish person "forgot" to mention in the 1945 edition that they received a German medal of honor in 1938, perhaps that information can be found in the 1939 edition. In this era of Linkedin and Facebook profiles, how can we ever dig up information from the past, that a person wants to hide? -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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Notifications on top of Wikipedia pages
by Oleg Alexandrov 22 Aug '09

22 Aug '09

It has been a very long time (a year?) since I visited Wikipedia without seeing any distracting notification on top of all pages. It is either Wikimania, or a license poll, or steward elections, and now about where Wikipedia will be in five years. I do not doubt the need to inform Wikipedia users. I know that the notification can be turned off (although it comes back if you go to a different machine, your cookies expire, or the notification changes). I would still request, however, that more restraint be used in which notifications are posted and the amount of time they are allowed to be on. Ideally, there would be no such distractions a half to three quarters of the time. Thanks.

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Fwd: Talis Incubator for Open Education funding available
by Samuel Klein 20 Aug '09

20 Aug '09

This seems like an amazing chance for WikiProjects in almost any area. Describe how your work supports open education, set a project with milestones and metrics for success, and submit a grant request: http://blogs.talis.com/education/incubator/guidelines/ SJ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 10:08 PM Subject: [Internal-l] Talis Incubator for Open Education funding available To: "Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed subscription)" <internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, chapters(a)wikimedia.ch Via the Creative Commons blog - http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17005 Talis Incubator for Open Education For the latest news follow us on twitter: @talisincubator Talis understands the growing importance of the Open Education movement and its potential impact on how education is accessed, assessed and certified. Aimed at individuals or small groups, the Talis Incubator for Open Education provides angel funding and other forms of assistance for ideas and projects that have the potential to further the cause of Open Education through the use of technology. All we ask in return is that you donate or ‘open source’ the intellectual property generated back to the communities that could benefit most from your work. The brief 1. Write a proposal outlining your Open Education related project or idea, making a bid for funding of between £1,000 and £15,000. 2. After reviewing and making sure your proposal meets the guidelines, submit it to incubator(a)talis.com. 3. A proposal review board made up of independent thought leaders and Talis representatives decide which projects get funding. 4. For successful bids, Talis awards you the funds and organises any other help you have asked for. 5. Complete the project according to the schedule outlined in your proposal. 6. Talis helps you to make sure your work is disseminated amongst the community. from http://blogs.talis.com/education/incubator/ they also note "We also welcome applications from outside the UK, however we regret that we can only consider and award amounts in GBP (£), so if you are from outside the UK please account for exchange rate fluctuation, and make sure you can receive funds paid in GBP." Looks a bit interesting! cheers Brianna -- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/ _______________________________________________ Internal-l mailing list Internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/internal-l

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Are we running out of sources
by Kenc38＠aol.com 11 Aug '09

11 Aug '09

Are we still squabbling over semantics? Let's get back to the main thread here. There is no doubt that the pages will be filled by all types of people from our Wikipediacs to those who want to provide an honest bio. Thousand upon thousands of articles will be written and unfortunately there is absolutely no way to determine any veracity. I say that each Article be prefaced with a modified Caveat Emptor and a strong disclaimer urging readers to further seek the degree of truth wanted, elsewhere. Ken

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Fwd: Translatewiki newsletter - A new translation rally has begun
by Gerard Meijssen 09 Aug '09

09 Aug '09

Hoi, Siebrand send this e-mail to the contributors to translatewiki.net. As localisation is an integral part to our success, I forward this to you. Those who already contribute to our localisation I thank and those who are capable of supporting MediaWiki by helping in the localisation effort I urge to lend a hand. In the end this is a rally intended to help us provide a better service to our readers and editors. Thanks, GerardM ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Translatewiki.net staff <translatewiki(a)xs4all.nl> Date: 2009/8/9 Subject: Translatewiki newsletter - A new translation rally has begun To: gerard.meijssen Hello, dear translatewiki.net user. This is our e-mail newsletter for August 2009. It intends to keep you updated on translatewiki.net's developments, and is also aimed at reminding you to visit http://translatewiki.net at least once every month to update the language(s) you have been contributing to in the past, so that the localisations will stay up to date. Because our shortage of staff time, it has been 6 months since we have sent out our last newsletter. We hope to make it worth your while :) Translation Rally: Contribute 500 MediaWiki translations and share in 1,000 Euro! In the last week of 2008 we had our first translation rally<http://wiki/Translating:Language_project/500claim>. All translators that would contribute more than 500 translations to MediaWiki would share the 1,000 Euro bounty. To our astonishment 35 users managed to reach this milestone. Sponsored by Stichting Open Progress <http://openprogress.org>, with a grant from Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland <http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mainpage>'s "International Projects" fund, we are able to have another translation rally<http://wiki/Project:Rally-2009-08>with about the same conditions. The Translation Rally has already started and will run until 18 August 2009 24:00 UTC. See the project page for details. Other News Niklas Laxström <http://wiki/User:Nike> (aka Nikerabbit), founder of translatewiki.net, has entered into the Google Summer of Code 2009<http://code.google.com/soc/>program and has already been making many improvements <http://wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/2009/schedule> to the MediaWiki Translate extension. We are very much looking forward to no longer having to open new tabs to edit messages, for example. Translatewiki.net staff remains being most committed to the site's translators. We welcome feedback about this newsletter. Please let us know by sending a reply to this mail. We will try to accommodate your wishes. Siebrand Mazeland Translatewiki.net staff ------------------------------ You are one of over 1,500 people receiving this e-mail because you have registered with http://translatewiki.net, the wiki localisation platform for translation communities, language communities, and open source projects. This newsletter will be sent at most once every month. You can opt-out by visiting translatewiki.net, logging in, and checking the box 'Do not send me e-mail newsletters' at the bottom of the tab 'User Profile' in your preferences - although we hope you will not. If you have multiple accounts with the same e-mail address, you have to opt-out for all of them.

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In development--BLP task force
by Cary Bass 06 Aug '09

06 Aug '09

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi all! Given the recent Board Resolution on BLPs, I'm in the process of structuring a Biographies of Living Persons task force, to work together to come up with some firm recommendations and guidelines for dealing with the issue, to be made to the Wikipedia community, Foundation board and staff. In that respect, I'd like to solicit members of the community to take part in this project. If you are interested, please send me a brief email summarizing what your involvement in BLPs in the past has been and your own opinion as to why BLPs are such a problematic area. You can email me direct at cary(a)wikimedia.org. Initially, this task force should focus on the English Wikipedia, but its recommendations may also be applicable for other projects; so anyone with an interest may be appropriate. I'm putting this out there now, because my availability over the coming weeks before Wikimania will be somewhat limited, so forgive me if you respond with interest immediately and I don't get back to you right away. I expect development of this task force to go into high gear in September. Thank you for your interest. Very truly yours, Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkp5w1AACgkQyQg4JSymDYnJ6QCgmR4fDzBDLJIe5dXNS1s9Salr MxsAoOB+YewbKawBdMtFtzqnkWKvrfJJ =82hc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Wikipedia-l August 2009