Axel wrote:
I think we should junk our Spanish Wikipedia, provide a link to their site on our main page (they probably don't like to be called Wikipedia, so we could simply say "non-English sister projects") and have our interwiki links point to them rather then to the Spanish Wikipedia.
And if we ask nicely, we may even get a link back to wikipedia.com.
Axel
We can try to cooperate, but I got the distinct feeling from reading their about page at : http://enciclopedia.us.es/wiki.phtml?title=Enciclopedia+Libre+Universal+en+E... that they /really/ don't like us.
This especially seems true for the English Wikipedia where there is/are (and I roughly quote); article censorship and fear of censorship, where administrators harass contributors and delete pages (stated in a way that suggests this is a form of excessive censorship), and where those same administrators block pages from being edited (again suggesting that this is some kind of unfair censorship).
They also seem to not like the fact that a "American for-profit .com company that wants to establish a presence in the educational market* controls Wikipedia (the .com part may be a directed toward wikipedia's URL and not Bomis - my Spanish is rusty and the fish ain't much help).
All I can say is that they sure have a twisted sense of how things really are.
giskart wrote:
A great thing of Wikipedia is the global aspect. Please do not blow it.
giskart, Dutch Wikipedia
I agree. It is certainly possible to have amicable forks where an entire language wiki moves to a different server and its software is maintained by different developers. However, I think that in the long term the two wikiware code-bases will eventually become incompatible and cross-linking and any other future inter-lingua stuff will soon stop working. Hopefully this type of interfunctionality will convince more and more Spanish speakers to contribute to es.wikipedia.com than to enciclopedia.us.es.
Jimbo wrote:
I'm very much opposed to closing any of our language wikipedias.
--Jimbo
I now agree completely. I vote for keeping es.wikipedia.com, load the new software and then run the two projects side-by-side for at least a few months. If activity doesn't improve much /then/ and only then should we even consider closing the Spanish Wikipedia.
We above all else must respect those that still contribute to our Spanish wiki. Besides as someone already said, we can port the EL stuff to our wiki since they use the same license (<hint> I will help with this myself as soon as Lee's excellent new software gets installed </hint> --- but please don't ask me to help with the translations; its been so long since I've used it that my written Spanish is down-right embarrassing).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Daniel Mayer wrote:
I now agree completely. I vote for keeping es.wikipedia.com, load the new software and then run the two projects side-by-side for at least a few months. If activity doesn't improve much /then/ and only then should we even consider closing the Spanish Wikipedia.
We above all else must respect those that still contribute to our Spanish wiki. Besides as someone already said, we can port the EL stuff to our wiki since they use the same license (<hint> I will help with this myself as soon as Lee's excellent new software gets installed </hint> --- but please don't ask me to help with the translations; its been so long since I've used it that my written Spanish is down-right embarrassing).
It is my opinion that the fork was due to a misunderstanding, which still seems to prevail. It might in part be explained by the fact that the Sevilla people aren't quite fluent in English. Given their current misconceptions about Bomis and Wikipedia, any attempt to copy their articles to the Spanish Wikipedia without first talking to them, would probably only strengthen their opinion about these arrogant American imperialists. Is that what you're proposing?
I'm no part of this. But I suggest Jimmy get on speaking terms with Juan "Junanan" Antonio Ruiz Rivas, who runs the Sevilla server. Hire an interpreter if necessary.
Again, perhaps prolific contributor on Spanish topics, Perique des Palottes, could help.
|From: Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se |Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 20:44:36 +0200 (CEST) | |Daniel Mayer wrote: |> I now agree completely. I vote for keeping es.wikipedia.com, load the new |> software and then run the two projects side-by-side for at least a few |> months. If activity doesn't improve much /then/ and only then should we even |> consider closing the Spanish Wikipedia. |> |> We above all else must respect those that still contribute to our Spanish |> wiki. Besides as someone already said, we can port the EL stuff to our wiki |> since they use the same license (<hint> I will help with this myself as soon |> as Lee's excellent new software gets installed </hint> --- but please don't |> ask me to help with the translations; its been so long since I've used it |> that my written Spanish is down-right embarrassing). | |It is my opinion that the fork was due to a misunderstanding, which |still seems to prevail. It might in part be explained by the fact |that the Sevilla people aren't quite fluent in English. Given their |current misconceptions about Bomis and Wikipedia, any attempt to copy |their articles to the Spanish Wikipedia without first talking to them, |would probably only strengthen their opinion about these arrogant |American imperialists. Is that what you're proposing? | |I'm no part of this. But I suggest Jimmy get on speaking terms with |Juan "Junanan" Antonio Ruiz Rivas, who runs the Sevilla server. Hire |an interpreter if necessary. | | |-- | Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) | tel +46-70-7891609 | http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/ |
Daniel Mayer wrote:
This especially seems true for the English Wikipedia where there is/are (and I roughly quote); article censorship and fear of censorship, where administrators harass contributors and delete pages (stated in a way that suggests this is a form of excessive censorship), and where those same administrators block pages from being edited (again suggesting that this is some kind of unfair censorship).
Is there any indication of how they handle editing content to avoid this impression with new contributors?
They also seem to not like the fact that a "American for-profit .com company that wants to establish a presence in the educational market* controls Wikipedia (the .com part may be a directed toward wikipedia's URL and not Bomis - my Spanish is rusty and the fish ain't much help).
Perhaps the impending trickle influx of Marxist.org content will improve their opinion of our project?
All I can say is that they sure have a twisted sense of how things really are.
This seems to occur occasionally/frequently with newcomers. I wonder if we can improve the initial impression received somehow without compromising our long term goal.
regards, mirwin
They also seem to not like the fact that a "American for-profit .com company that wants to establish a presence in the educational market* controls Wikipedia (the .com part may be a directed toward wikipedia's URL and not Bomis - my Spanish is rusty and the fish ain't much help).
Perhaps the impending trickle influx of Marxist.org content will improve their opinion of our project?
I don't think that the philosophical inclinations of marxist.org will have as much bearing here as their experience in trying to maintain multi-language operations. I haven't looked at their Spanish version, but that may be worth investigating. Their internal debate over a Chinese language version may have a parallel with what's happening here.
Eclecticology
--- Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
This especially seems true for the English Wikipedia where there is/are (and I roughly quote); article censorship and fear of censorship, where administrators harass contributors and delete pages (stated in a way that suggests this is a form of excessive censorship), and where those same administrators block pages from being edited (again suggesting that this is some kind of unfair censorship).
It looks like the accusations of censorship are based on a page thrown up by Simon J Kissane (http://www.geocities.com/sj_kissane/). There was a messy incident a while ago which prompted him to create this page. They seem to be taking it as an example of an ongoing policy of censorship, unfortunately.
I want to see the two Spanish projects merge once again. I think working to set up the non-profit organization would be a big step in the right direction.
Stephen G.
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Stephen Gilbert wrote:
--- Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
This especially seems true for the English Wikipedia where there is/are (and I roughly quote); article censorship and fear of censorship, where administrators harass contributors and delete pages (stated in a way that suggests this is a form of excessive censorship), and where those same administrators block pages from being edited (again suggesting that this is some kind of unfair censorship).
It looks like the accusations of censorship are based on a page thrown up by Simon J Kissane (http://www.geocities.com/sj_kissane/). There was a messy incident a while ago which prompted him to create this page. They seem to be taking it as an example of an ongoing policy of censorship, unfortunately.
I looked over this site and traced all the links. It is very unfortunate that all of acknowledgment of Simon's contributions appear to have been wiped out by script transfer of content between software phases. For someone not familar with the GPL issues Wikipedia has been grappling with and the loss of accreditation information across the board this could easily look like selective censorship.
I want to see the two Spanish projects merge once again. I think working to set up the non-profit organization would be a big step in the right direction.
Stephen G.
It might also help to document in detail the effort necessary and sufficient to successfully install and setup a mirror server or fork. That way they would know that if the merge did not work out well they could easily reestablish the separate project with an enhanced database.
I have a spare system that I could use to attempt this and document the process in detail. This would be viable for me only if the software developers deem it worthy of some serious coaching. My familarity with Linux is sketchy and with CVS/SQL close to nil.
regards, Mike Irwin
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