On 11/7/05, Alphax <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: In general, yes. But a little bit different: (1) I think that there are around 100.000 of inhabitants of Zlatibor area, not 10-20 millions. (2) Also, the difference is also the same as the difference between standard American English and Bosnonian.

Milos Rancic wrote: On 1 september I sent the following email to the board: [...] | In the last open board meeting there was a discussion about having a | seed wiki and a committee deciding policies for it. | So, here a proposal how to deal with new language requests (not new | projects) | * community elects a committee of seven people on meta-wiki (one-year term) | * requests for new languages will be submitted to the committee on meta-wiki | * committee will create a catalogue of criterias over time | * they examine the case (check if language or dialect, spread of | language, number of the people willing to work on it, consult | experts) | * they decide, three sorts of decisions are possible: accept, reject in general (because no real language etc.), reject in | this case (not enough support) but can be later again proposed if | conditions have changed | * have a developer create the wiki if approved | | This way, we can maybe get rid of these pending requests: | http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages [...] | If the committee does its job well, it could later also get the | competence to filter new project proposals. | Add your suggestions and criticisms and say yes or no. | | I'd be willing to help with the election but I don't have the time | for an extensive community debate and slow process on the | mailinglists and wikis with no decision at all after months. In the three answers I got, I was refered back to the community and told that the problem will eventuall sort out by creation of the seed wiki. Now I see that the situation hasn't become better but even worse. As officer of the Wikimedia Foundation I can't welcome your decision and would question your competence to speak for the whole of the not yet existing serbian Wikimedia chapter. As wikipedian who dedicated myself to the creation of a high quality free encyclopedia in as many languages as are _needed_ to make human knowledge accessible to everybody, I can very well understand your feelings. What shall I tell a journalist who asks the press officer about the zlatiborian language wikipedia? "Eh yes, it's ridiculous, but you see, a few people who don't even speak this city dialect pressured the community into it. Cantonese? Oh yes, the same thing happened. Wikiversity? Ah well, sorry, we're still looking for a concept. There's rubbish on wikibooks like the "How to get a girl manual"? See, people are working on the encyclopedia, there are not enough people to look into the other projects and control them for quality. You found a copyvio on suaheli wikiquote? Sorry, I don't speak suaheli - and the three suaheli speakers in Wikimedia are busy with the encyclopedia. Why are there so many corn field related news on german Wikinews while XY isn't treated? Oh well, now this is a funny story... Wikimedia has accomplished great things: An encyclopedia, written by common people and volunteers, slowly getting better and better, to the point of being a serious alternative to classical encyclopedias. There are its established sister projects, slowly evolving and becoming useful (btw, the category:philosophy on commons is a mess). But to maintain and improve this standard of quality requires constant work and attention. New contributors have to be welcomed and taught the "way of the wiki", policy proposals which would result in deteriorating the quality have to be turned down, conflicts between good authors have to be mediated and last but not least over 3 million articles in over 150 languages need to be checked for vandalism and are waiting to be improved and still a lot more are waiting to be written. I came here in August 2002 to help creating a free encyclopedia. Later I became involved in "meta" affairs - organizing wikipedia booths at conferences, designing promotion material, joining global policy discussions, coordinating cooperations with organisations and companies, dealing with press requests, organizing Wikimania. If someone wondered lately why there's almost no elian anymore around in Wikimedia affairs, that's why. I went back to the real thing, the encyclopedia in my language - which is nor Bavarian, neither Münchnerisch although I am from this region and city but german, a language almost everybody in Germany speaks and is able to understand (except he's maybe turkish or serbian or arabic). There's still a lot of work to do even if some newspapers rate us already as better than brockhaus. Tell me when you've stopped discussing and voting on genial new projects and obscure dialects, when you've kicked the language fanatics from the mailing lists, when you've closed the unwatched spam traps, when you've settled on a checkuser and logo policy, when someone has had the guts to introduce single login instead of just talking about it and when you are serious about this human knowledge thing. good bye, elian

On 07/11/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: I respect your opinion, but to me it seemed more like whinging (for lack of a better word) than something very powerful and important. On that point I will agree with both of you. It may seem this way from where you are. But let's look over a few things: 1) Dialects. So far, nearly all proposals have been classified by the Ethnologue as separate languages. Among those that haven't are: Zlatiborian, Samogitian, Banyumasan, Voro. However, all of these (except Zlatiborian) are listed by numerous other sources as separate languages. So, while you may label them "dialects", experts do not. Based solely on the standard of mutual intelligibility, it almost makes more sense to merge the Spanish and Portuguese WPs than to say that Riparian is nothing more than a dialect of German and should be shoved into the same Wikipedia. Besides this, there is already a huge test wiki in Riparian. Other so-called "dialects" like Bavarian or Zeelandic are considered by many of their own speakers, as well as a significant number of experts, as independent languages, and they are certainly not easily mutually intelligible (in written form) with the parent language. 2) Language policy. This is already being worked on [[m:Proposed policy for wikis in new languages]] 3) "unwatched spam traps". Would you be kind enough to point me to even one unwatched spam trap? I'm quite offended that the work of myself, Angela, Chamdarae, Mxn, Mustafaa, and others has gone largely unnoticed by you. Thanks to us, the majority of spam and vandalism on so-called "unwatched spam traps" _is_ watched, and is reverted quickly. I think things are working just fine the way they are. Well, not entirely, I agree that some things are dysfunctional, but I think they're only very minor problems and people are already working on them. So, while you see a big fissure across the face of Wikimedia, I see a tiny crack which is already being patched. Mark -- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin

No! I meant to say that... umm... they exist, but you won't find them at your library because there are no printing presses in Zlatibor so they have to write out copies manually! Mark On 07/11/05, Alphax <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin

Alphax wrote: Someone will read printed articles out of that wikipedia I suppose - just like I do for Neapolitan here in the town - I print some pages and pass them to people that know Neapolitan, that love their language and that sooner or later will contribute also passing me hand written stuff to be integrated into wikipedia from which I then give back the printed articles that can be copied etc. Well: for Neapolitan we have a bunch of online contributors, but for many languages this is not possibile, so why not choose this very particular way of distributing knowledge? Imagine how it was 35 years ago - I then was 5 years old - and every week I went with my grandpa to the public library to get some new books to read. Well in many countries (today) they don't even have these public libraries, but just a place where someone has material at disposal other people can read (and learn to read with). Imagine even a handmade booklet of wikipedia articles that pass from one person to the other to be read and that there are people out there that are really keen on having information on learning on wanting this. Who are we to say: well if they don't have a computer and internet access "they may not have" their material. Sooner or later they will have internet access - so why not help them to get things earlier? Why not have even only one person as "mediator" to put things online? I know, these wikipedias will grow slowly, but that does not matter at all - it is a start and where there is a start sooner or later there will be people who do work on that and o really great work since it is easy to have an encyclopedia in a language millions speak, but veeeery hard to have one in a language only a few thousand speak - it requires much more work and much more being constantly involved of those few who "can do". Hmmm .... Ciao, Sabine ___________________________________ Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB http://mail.yahoo.it

Unforunately I'm still learning the glorious language of the beautiful enchanted lands of Zlatibor, so I'd probably not be able to read it. The Zlatiborians who have moved to cities, such as SellackAlex or Djordje, however, will surely read it. ;p Mark On 08/11/05, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: -- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin

Alphax wrote: No, but they can magically spring a new, as-yet-unheard-of language into existence (a glorious one, no less), so the lands must be enchanted. (or they're playing too much Magic: The Gathering) Timwi

It's quite daft of you to assume that I'm the only person who would subscribe to such a mailing list. Mind you, such a mailinglist used to exist -- intlwiki-l -- but it was merged into this list. Thus, this list is the proper venue for discussion of internationalisation, localisation, languages, and Wikipedia. If you don't like discussion of languages here, you're welcome to attempt to get intlwiki-l re-opened. I suggested it a while back, but dropped the effort when Anthere asked me to. Mark -- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin

I'm afraid that just because you don't like the topic, is very far from a reason to remove it from this mailing list (whether by radically disallowing it or by creating a new list). You should ideally use a software that allows you to ignore threads you don't like (I do that by simply pressing K - you gotta love Thunderbird). That said, I agree with you that the "we want a new language Wikipedia" discussions can get tiresome, but I'm quite enjoying the current (Zlatiborian) one because it's a nice source of amusement. I never knew that Mark Williamson had such a sense of humour :) Timwi

Actually, it's very difficult nowadays. Yes, some of the recently-created WPs look as if they might be dead for a while, but most look healthy. Mark -- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin

I would really support such a move. It will create clarity and will let people move on. Currently it is a big swamp out there. Walter/Waerth

Mark Williamson schrieb: Just this point: I think what Elian wanted to say is that we should have a real clear policy for the creation of new language WPs - NOW. But this policy would not collide with language/dialect WPs already existing: those editions of WP will not be closed down. The idea is to prevent WP becoming a project to keep endangered languages "alive". We are (or better we want to be) a project trying to set up an encyclopedia everyone can access and understand and nothing else. We have to stop stupid creating of new Wikipedias which will surely never be filled enough to be accepted as encyclopedias. Acting like this only comsumes power of many people which would better be concentrated on more important things in our all day Wikipedia life... This is how I understood Elian's message and - as well - my own opinion. rdb

Raphael Wiegand wrote: That's right. One trap we don't need to fall into is the assumption that because we've made mistakes in the past, we have to either keep making mistakes in the future *or* delete our past mistakes, all in the name of consistency. We don't actually have to be consistent to the last decimal place, although a certain degree of consistency is of course desirable. Yes, and there's more than that. My concern is that we are getting to the point where it isn't just about keeping endangered languages alive (I don't have a particular problem with that) but where we are risking dividing up perfectly sensible communities with bogus distinctions between "languages" that actually do not differ more than American and British English. I want to use a hypothetical example so as to avoid the risk of speaking ignorantly on any particular case. There is no need for a Wikipedia to save the "Bostonian" language, because there is no such language. There is, most likely, a Bostonian _accent_, or perhaps (if we are generous) a Bostonian _dialect_, but there is no Bostonian _language_. This is particularly true if we are speaking of formal written Bostonian, the written language of the people of Boston. It might be hard for me to understand the slang of some cabdrivers and bartenders in Boston, but I can read their newspapers just fine. The nice thing about this example, of course, is that no one is clamoring for political reasons that Bostonian is a separate language. But in some parts of the world, there are deep political divisions which, for reasons that are very hard for the rest of the world to fully comprehend, lead people to champion what are absolutely not separate spoken or written languages as being separate languages. That's bad. --Jimbo

Elisabeth Bauer wrote: What's wrong with it? Do you mean that the book is not mature yet or is there something (?) inheritently wrong with having a book on the subject? The only thing I can see is 'no original research', but then I wonder if this would be called research at all. It survived a deletion vote. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A_survival_guide_for_people_on_the_autistic_sp… is similar but just not yet started. What's the problem? Gerrit. -- Temperature in Luleå, Norrbotten, Sweden: | Current temperature 05-11-08 10:29:46 1.0 degrees Celsius ( 33.7F) | -- Det finns inte dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder.

Jimmy Wales wrote: Who decides that charter? Would you delete it even if the majority of the Wikibooks community disagreed with you? I don't understand the point in limiting the scope of Wikibooks this artificially. As if anything that is a book but not a textbook is somehow less useful. Timwi

Ilya N. wrote: I don't agree that the original planned purpose of Wikibooks must necessarily limit its scope forever. Besides, the very name "Wikibooks" is far too suggestive to stop people in the long-run from using it for the creation of books-that-aren't-textbooks (non-text books?). Besides, what is a textbook, anyway? If the "guidelines for people on the autistic spectrum" book is not allowed, why is the "Lucid Dreaming" book allowed? What does 'allowed' mean, anyway, given that it survived a community discussion on deletion? There are plenty of potential citations available for books on autism. As for the "how to get a girl", there's always psychological studies you can cite -- but then again, do you even need cites for such a book? Timwi

--- Gerrit Holl <gerrit(a)nl.linux.org> wrote: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bicycles/Maintenance_and_Repair/Wheels_and_Tir… While not commenting on the merit of the "how to get a girl" Wikibook, I'd just like to say, as a co-founder of Wikibooks, that I never intended Wikibooks to only have what would classically be seen as textbooks (although that was the focus). Manuals, self-help guides, and even longer format reference books that are so popular in bookstores (such as a 200+ page biography about Napoleon) should, IMO, also be welcome. I also don't see how having those type of works on Wikibooks is in any way inconsistent with the foundation's goals. -- mav __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com

On 11/12/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Are those truly the criteria? Then I suggest the whip should be cracked soon on Wikibooks and these criteria enforced, for a quick glance at the site (which I haven't paid much attention to before) suggests that there are many, many projects there now which do not fit them. I did a quick scan through "Random module" and "Recent changes", and could find only a few projects which fit the cited criteria. == Clearly acceptable == [[A Neutral Look at Operating Systems]] [[Consciousness studies]] [[Radiation Oncology]] [[Set Theory]] [[Turkish]] == Somewhat dubious == [[Bartending]] [[Cookbook]] [[Guide to X11]] [[Linux for Newbies]] [[Mac OS X Tiger]] [[Serial Programming:Modems and AT Commands]] [[Programming XML]] I don't deny that these are useful, but I don't think you're going to find high-school or university courses in bartending, cooking, or in very specific technologies. A university computer science curriculum will have courses in operating systems, sure, but no one I've ever heard of has courses in MacOS or Linux specifically. I think these pages are useful, but I don't agree that they fit the criteria of "textbook for a course at the early childhood, kindergarten, elementary, junior high, high school, or university level". However, I'd guess that community colleges would offer courses in all of this stuff. Should "community college" be included in the list as well? == Should be on Wikisource == [[SA NCS]] [[The Tragedy of Macbeth]] == Almost certainly unacceptable == [[Conplanet]] [[Conworld]] As far as I can see, everything in [[Category:Games]] Everything in [[Category:Humor]] [[Self-harm]] There seem to be an absolutely huge number of game manuals of various kinds (computer games, role-playing games, collectible card games), which go into incredible detail: [[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]] even includes a guide on dating strategies for the game's romantic subplot. Steve

On 11/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: I don't know how firmly this policy is followed; there have been ongoing debates on this point for a while, and the policy could be clearer. There are arguments to be made for having scholarly or practical texts which are not in standard 'textbook' format, including instruction-manuals for software and tools, biographies, other book-length treatments of specific subjects (there is no place for "Macropedia" style articles in WP at the moment), &c. There are also arguments against these inclusions, and we should have these arguments, and perhaps discuss projects that could supplement a textbook-only wikibooks. The case you mention, however, is not a random idea for a book; the subject is repesented by courses in many continuing/community education programs, in courses on dating - sometimes specifically for a narrow audience (specific gender or age). There are a handful of such courses going on around Boston at any given moment. Some random googlable examples : The whole "Skills with Dating" course set at (Fondation Course, Intro workshop, 'for Teens and their Parents') at Strathfield CC in Oz, semanticist Steve Stockdale's "lucid dating" classes at SMU, ... in Boston: http://www.bcae.org/SearchECat?Open&Query=dating http://www.ccae.org/catalog/courses/course_details.php?id=524452 Not to mention all of the self-help and life-improvement courses one can take outside of universities, complete with dozens of sessions and texts and audiotapes. Is this a naming issue? Would you feel better if the "How to get a date" wikibooks were renamed to "Dating skills", or became a section of longer books with titles such as "Developing healthy relationships"? I can't say what kinds of texts these courses should use if any; most courses use the teacher's class notes because they're cheaper. Of course having access to a good free textbook might change that... SJ