Wikipedia-l April 2010

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

6 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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Office hours this Friday, October 9
by Cary Bass 21 Jul '10

21 Jul '10

Hi everyone, This Friday's office hours will feature Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal Counsel. If you don't know Mike Godwin, you can read about him at <http://enwp.org/Mike_Godwin>. Office hours this Friday are from 2230 to 2330 UTC (3:30PM to 4:30PM PDT). Mike will also be taking the following Thursday from 1600 to 1700 UTC (9:00AM to 10:00AM PDT). The IRC channel that will be hosting Mike's conversation will be #wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC client, you can always access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning. Go ahead. -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Wikimania 2010: Call for Participation is there!
by Marcin Cieslak 29 Apr '10

29 Apr '10

Wikimania is an annual global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki). The conference is a community gathering, giving the editors, users and developers of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet each other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open to the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers, programmers and free culture activists who are interested in the Wikimedia projects to learn more and share ideas about the Wikimedia projects. This year's conference will be held JULY 9-11, 2010 in Gdansk, Poland at Polish Baltic Philharmonic. For more information, please visit the official Wikimania 2010 site: http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/ Wikimania 2010 will be a mix of submitted talks, open space meetings, birds of a feather groups, and lightning talks. Submissions will be discussed and selected in an informal process on the wiki. If your submission is not added to the schedule, you will still have many opportunities to bring topics forward on-site. IMPORTANT DATES * Deadline for submitting workshop, tutorial, panel and presentation proposals: May 20 * Notification of acceptance: May 25 (workshops), May 31 (panels, tutorials, presentations) * All proposals and presentations will be welcome in the Open Space track of the conference, whether or not they are accepted in this initial process. PROGRAM COMMITTEE Submissions will be reviewed informally by a team of volunteers. TRACKS This year Wikimania will offer three tracks for submissions for members of wiki communities and interested observers to share their own experiences and thoughts and to present new ideas: People and Community The People and Community track provides a unique forum for discussing topics related to people using/building wikis. Relevant topics include, but are not restricted to, the following: * Wiki Community: Conflict resolution and community dynamics; reputation and identity; * Wiki Outreach: Promotion of wikis and Wikimedia projects among the general public; * North meets south, east meets west: How can people of a different cultural background create an encyclopedia according to common rules? Same subject in the eye of different cultures. * Special: Wikipedia in Central/Eastern Europe: this theme will provide a forum to present and discuss the latest progress of Wikis in the central/eastern European community. Knowledge and Collaboration The Knowledge and Collaboration track aims to promote research and find exciting ideas related to knowledge... * Wiki Content: New ways to improve content quality, credibility; legal issues and copyrights (is free knowledge free?); use of the content in education, journalism, research; * Semantic Wikis: The use of semantic web technologies, linked data; semantic annotation and metadata (in particular manual vs. automated approaches). Infrastructure Track The Infrastructure track at Wikimania will provide a forum where both researchers and practitioners can share new approaches, applications, and explore how to make Wiki access ever more ubiquitous: * MediaWiki development: issues related to MediaWiki development and extensions; * Moving beyond MediaWiki: what other Wiki-like platforms exist; what tools and features do we need for collaboration on different types of knowledge? * Mobile Wikis: The Web is moving off the desktop and into mobile phones, how we use wikis on mobile devices?; wiki-based Augmented Reality (AR) applications, location based services * User Interface Design: Usability and user experience; accessibility, adaptive interfaces and personalization; novel UI designs. WIKISYM 2010 Please note that Wikimania 2010 is co-located with WikiSym, The International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. More information about WikiSym can be found on the conference website: http://www.wikisym.org/ SUBMIT A PROPOSAL To submit a proposal for a presentation, workshop, panel or tutorial, please visit: http://bit.ly/Submit2010 Thank you for helping make Wikimania 2010 a successful event. :-) See you in Gdansk, July 9-11! -- Marcin Cieslak Wikimania 2010 Gdansk

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infobox growth
by Julia Kasmire 26 Apr '10

26 Apr '10

Dear Wikipedia Mailing list, I am doing some research on the increasing structure in information transmission and I am very interested to know some information on the history and growth of infoboxes, or other machine searchable extracted information, in wikipedia. Could you tell me, or tell me how to find, the following: the date of the first infobox on wikipedia? the rate of increase in infoboxes, or at least the number of infoboxes at several points in time and the date that number was measured? The discussion page "How many Wikipedia articles covered by DBpedia?" gives two such infobox data points and one approximate date, but I want to flesh out the history a bit. Thank you very much in advance, and please feel free to ask me if there is any more information I can provide you with! Kind regards, Julia Kasmire PhD Researcher TU Delft

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Resolving conflicts and reaching consensus
by Peter Tesler 07 Apr '10

07 Apr '10

Hi everyone - This is a project presented at Wikipedia Day 2010 at NYU in New York last January..http://ideagra.ph We presented this as a way to discuss a few of the most complicated/controversial Wikimedia-related issues that haven't yet garnered a consensus. It was specifically designed to fix the current problems with Wikipedia's discuss pages (arguments get very long, complex, and messy). What makes a debate here different from one on a standard discuss page? Statements have a color (green/red) which represents their current state of consensus (something that's been refuted, for instance, is red). You can also re-use facts concluded in other debates by other people - thus allowing the work of debating/reasoning to be distributed among (potentially) billions of people. We've created a Wikipedia category for issues surrounding Wikipedia: http://ideagra.ph/1870 We need your feedback... -Peter

1 0

(no subject)
by David Mestel 06 Apr '10

06 Apr '10

http://ggyat.refutyeir.com -- David

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Wikipedia-l April 2010