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Re: Re: [Wikipedia-l] 80,000

elian

26 Oct 2002 26 Oct '02

3:11 p.m.

Hello, Mmost arguments in favor or against different solutions seem to have been presented now, but I must say I lost track who wants what. Furthermore it's a useless waste of energy to work on different solutions without knowing which is wanted. So I invite people to give their vote.. www.wikipedia.org should: [] not be changed at all. [] redirect depending on the browser's language setting to the wikipedia in the prefered language. [] be a multilingual portal (1) [] other ______ (1) draft to be further improved at http://mitglied.lycos.de/manske/wiki/test.php with language of the welcome message derived from the browser settings and prefered language highlighted. this message is crossposted to intlwiki-l and wikipedia-l and to metawikipedia [[What to do with www.wikipedia.org]] greetings, elian

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The Cunctator

26 Oct 26 Oct

4:51 p.m.

On 10/26/02 9:11 AM, "elian" <elian(a)gmx.li> wrote:

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Mmost arguments in favor or against different solutions seem to have been presented now, but I must say I lost track who wants what. Furthermore it's a useless waste of energy to work on different solutions without knowing which is wanted.

It's never a total waste. But it certainly does make sense to expend effort in the best direction. Some important considerations that have been lacking in the proposals for new designs: 1) scalability --How does the design handle adding new languages? What if the number of languages is 30? 100? Is the design still fine? Or is the rule that only the top n languages are listed on the front, and the others are at "Other languages"? If that is the case, then isn't that essentially the same problem as the current situation (language minorities not getting identical representation as the majority)? 2) neutrality --The ordering of entries is not neutral. Should it be randomly rearranged every time someone comes to the front page? Should it be by size?

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So I invite people to give their vote..

Unfortunately, voting is not really a good way of running things. See Meatball:VotingIsEvil. http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?VotingIsEvil and http://www.shef.ac.uk/~puremath/theorems/gibbard.html

elian

5:10 p.m.

The Cunctator <cunctator(a)kband.com> writes:

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Unfortunately, voting is not really a good way of running things. See Meatball:VotingIsEvil.

I don't intend to put any more effort in a design when it's dubious that a multilingual international page will ever get realized - and for knowing this it is essentially to find out what a majority of people wants. And I think it is neither useful to engage in discussions how future detail problems can be solved (they can be solved - esperanto.net integrates 57 languages, a number that Wikipedia will reach maybe far in the future). So invite you to give your vote instead of endless discussions. greetings, elian -- Software is like sex - it's better when it's free.

The Cunctator

5:28 p.m.

On 10/26/02 11:10 AM, "elian" <elian(a)gmx.li> wrote:

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The Cunctator <cunctator(a)kband.com> writes:

Unfortunately, voting is not really a good way of running things. See Meatball:VotingIsEvil.

But it's not a way to find out what a majority of people wants. It's a way to find out how many people there are who subscribe to the list, agree with your way of defining the issues, and like putting X's in boxes. And what's the point in finding out what a majority of people want? You should want to do the right thing. In the United States, the majority of people want (according to polls) the death penalty, more spent on education and other social services, fewer taxes, more surveillance, bigger cars, cleaner air, war in Iraq, etc. So?

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And I think it is neither useful to engage in discussions how future detail problems can be solved (they can be solved - esperanto.net integrates 57 languages, a number that Wikipedia will reach maybe far in the future).

One thing to recognize that people seem to be losing sight of is that Wikipedia's primary purpose is not as a language portal. I say this because http://europa.eu.int/ and esperanto.net/ are being used as comparative examples. The European Union is prima facie an international coalition. Esperanto was explicitly designed to be a synthetic international language. Wikipedia's primary purpose is not to be an international coalition, or to solve the issues of multilingualism. That said, multilingualism is certainly crucial to the central purpose of Wikipedia, which is to build a complete encyclopedia. And that is the perspective from which this issue should be considered.

elian

5:40 p.m.

The Cunctator <cunctator(a)kband.com> writes:

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I don't propose it for decision making but just as a indicator which direction we should work on and which should we abandon. If you don't like this interpretation, see it as a survey.

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And what's the point in finding out what a majority of people want? You should want to do the right thing.

I admire your idealistic expectation to find out what is "right" in a social system - an enterprise in which almost all social scientists and politicians in history (except Marx, Plato, Rousseau, Mao, Ghaddafi etc) failed. Wikipedia's international community is a social system, after all.

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That said, multilingualism is certainly crucial to the central purpose of Wikipedia, which is to build a complete encyclopedia.

in as many languages as possible. Cut this goal and we can finish this discussion. greetings, elian -- turing, adj. Mindless, stupid. "I've seldom heard such a turing lecture." "You have to take a lot of turing tests to get into college." Hence turing machine, n. a machine.

Magnus Manske

5:54 p.m.

The Cunctator wrote:

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Unfortunately, voting is not really a good way of running things. See Meatball:VotingIsEvil.

Elian and I both think that the "dynamic" multilingual page is the /right thing/. We are pretty sure many other people on this list think that as well. Elian is trying to back that up with numbers. Of course, that might put an end to vague discussions. No wonder you're so scared of votes ;-)

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In the United States, the majority of people want (according to polls) the death penalty, more spent on education and other social services, fewer taxes, more surveillance, bigger cars, cleaner air, war in Iraq, etc. So?

The alternative is doing what the cabal (R) says. Funny thing you've become an elitist advocate.

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That said, multilingualism is certainly crucial to the central purpose of Wikipedia, which is to build a complete encyclopedia. And that is the perspective from which this issue should be considered.

It seems to boil down to one question: Is wikipedia a project of encyclopedias in many languages, or a big English encyclopedia with spin-offs in other languages? Magnus

The Cunctator

6:04 p.m.

On 10/26/02 11:54 AM, "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske(a)epost.de> wrote:

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The Cunctator wrote:

<snip>

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I'm not scared of votes, they're just a bad idea. It's not a healthy longterm policy.

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The alternative is doing what the cabal (R) says. Funny thing you've become an elitist advocate.

That's a false dichotomy. Rather, what we have now, if we're going to bring up the "cabal" (TINC) bugbear, is cabal decision-making. Voting makes it even more specific, by not even trying to make decisions that reflect the consensus will of the entire community (which includes readers, future editors, infrequent editors, future readers, etc.) but by making decisions based on the formal agreement of about 10-30 individuals, given a finite number of choices by a single individual.

...

That said, multilingualism is certainly crucial to the central purpose of Wikipedia, which is to build a complete encyclopedia. And that is the perspective from which this issue should be considered.

It seems to boil down to one question: Is wikipedia a project of encyclopedias in many languages, or a big English encyclopedia with spin-offs in other languages?

There are other options: a big encyclopedia with entries in many languages, a multinational coalition, etc. Also there are many many ways of implementing each of these ideas. In other words, coming to a consensus on the purpose of Wikipedia is distinct from agreeing with a design change for www.wikipedia.org. It would be a good first step, though. I'm sure we have different individual priorities for Wikipedia (what's important to us individually) but I suspect that we share a common vision of what Wikipedia at its core should be, whether or not we agree on particulars of implementation.

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elian
Magnus Manske
The Cunctator