Hi
I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
It has an ISO 639-2 code, although I don't recall what it is (perhaps fur?)
Friulian is spoken in Italy, and calls itself "Furlan".
As to whether I have any actual support from speakers of this language:
"Sorry for the delay in my answer. I would be very interested in Friulian language; can you help? So far I found just another user who wants to work on it. The main problem is that I don't have a pc currently so I'm seldom online --Klenje 19:18, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)"
(from my talk page)
This would be my third request for an Italian minority language Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1. Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
--node
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
This would be my third request for an Italian minority language Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1. Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding whether another minority language should be started without a more significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
Angela.
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 07:37:19AM +0100, Angela wrote:
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
In contrast to the Italian government we should strongly support those minority languages. But five contributors is quite much for the beginning, maybe one very active (for the mediawiki strings and as press contact) and two other contributers? It would be nice to have a few pages on how to advertise a new wikipedia.
ciao, tom
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 09:03:54 +0200, Thomas R. Koll tomk32@gmx.de wrote:
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 07:37:19AM +0100, Angela wrote:
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
In contrast to the Italian government we should strongly support those minority languages. But five contributors is quite much for the beginning, maybe one very active (for the mediawiki strings and as press contact) and two other contributers? It would be nice to have a few pages on how to advertise a new wikipedia.
ciao, tom
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I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing Wikipedians.
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 01:15:51AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing Wikipedians.
Did you try local newspapers which are published in these langauges? Best would be to have an article (public domain is best for press releases) and visit the editorial staff. Make the press release a bit visionary, like "only (modern) encyclopedia in language XXX)" or "wikipedia XXX can be used by anyone to print it on paper".
ciao, tom
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 01:15:51AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing Wikipedians.
Did you try local newspapers which are published in these langauges?
There aren't, at least for sicilian, friulan and sardinian. They are mostly spoken, not written. If I am mistaken and they exist, I would be interested in getting a copy of thos newspapers.
Alfio
I know that Sardinian has a couple of newspapers, although I don't think they have good distribution.
I thought Friulian had a couple of newspapers, though I'm not sure.
Don't ask me, though, it'd probably be better to ask Mr Corraine at the Ufitziu Limba Sarda about Sardinian media.
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:49:31 +0200 (MEST), Alfio Puglisi puglisi@arcetri.astro.it wrote:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 01:15:51AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing Wikipedians.
Did you try local newspapers which are published in these langauges?
There aren't, at least for sicilian, friulan and sardinian. They are mostly spoken, not written. If I am mistaken and they exist, I would be interested in getting a copy of thos newspapers.
Alfio _______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
The problem is that to do that, I need to be able to write a press release in the target language.
I cannot, for example, write an article on Wikipedia in Manx.
I did however get a positive response from Brian Stowell (prominent Mec Vannin activist) that gave me the impression he and/or other Manx ultranationalists will soon turn gv: from dead to not-dead.
--node
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:24:49 +0200, Thomas R. Koll tomk32@gmx.de wrote:
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 01:15:51AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
I've not had much luck with trying to advertise Wikipedias. I have generated almost 0 response. My only real successes in this realm are scn:, fo:, and lb:, fo: and lb: having been pitched to existing Wikipedians.
Did you try local newspapers which are published in these langauges? Best would be to have an article (public domain is best for press releases) and visit the editorial staff. Make the press release a bit visionary, like "only (modern) encyclopedia in language XXX)" or "wikipedia XXX can be used by anyone to print it on paper".
ciao, tom
-- == Weblinks ==
- http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
- http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
- http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 02:02:27 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is that to do that, I need to be able to write a press release in the target language.
Which is, of course, another reason we need at least one dedicated, fluent, user to support and nurture any new Wikipedia.
As for what is wrong with an abandoned Wikipedia, they become a haven for vandalism, spam, and generally undesirable content. I seem to remember hearing about a language where the entire content of the wiki appeared to be essentially gibberish, and not the language of that WP at all.
The problem is therefore that as soon as you create a new wiki, it is instantly and permanently editable by all, so if you're community dries up, there is a risk that it will just be abused, with no-one to look after it. That doesn't really equate to loss of resources, but it does dilute the Wikimedia "brand" - can you imagine what a field day our detractors would have if it was revealed that there are a dozen "translations" of Wikipedia that contained nothing but garbage and spam? [I'm not saying this is the case, I'm just saying that this is the risk we are weighing up here.]
As has been pointed out, just the number of initial contributors is a bad indicator; but we do need some indication that a solid community is likely to emerge; and personally, I don't think number of fluent speakers (or even fluent speakers with net connections) provides this indication. Perhaps, instead, we need some kind of "enthusiasm test", to show that the user(s) starting it is/are going to dedicate time to getting it off the ground, not just in terms of seeding the content, but also recruiting the community. I'm not saying we should make language creation some hideously complex process and put off anyone who's a little bit nervous, but perhaps some clear guidelines of what creating an effective new wiki involves, and a confirmation that there is somebody willing to undertake that process.
On Mon, 2004-01-11 at 13:34 +0000, Rowan Collins wrote:
As has been pointed out, just the number of initial contributors is a bad indicator; but we do need some indication that a solid community is likely to emerge; and personally, I don't think number of fluent speakers (or even fluent speakers with net connections) provides this indication.
On Wikitravel, this is the deal:
1. There needs to be at least 5 users pledged to start up the wiki. 2. There needs to be one contact person for the new wiki. 3. The contact person has to make a monthly report about the state of the wiki: what's been happening, advances, debates, changes in policy or guidelines, etc. 4. If there's no or very little editing on the wiki for a month, or if the reports stop coming in, or if generally the thing just starts winding down, the wiki goes inactive. We turn off the wiki software, and make the content available in case someone else wants to use it.
~ESP
--- Evan Prodromou evan@wikitravel.org wrote:
On Mon, 2004-01-11 at 13:34 +0000, Rowan Collins wrote:
As has been pointed out, just the number of initial contributors is a bad indicator; but we do need some indication that a solid community is likely to emerge; and personally, I don't think number of fluent speakers (or even fluent speakers with net connections) provides this indication.
On Wikitravel, this is the deal:
1. There needs to be at least 5 users pledged to start up the wiki. 2. There needs to be one contact person for the new wiki. 3. The contact person has to make a monthly report about the state of the wiki: what's been happening, advances, debates, changes in policy or guidelines, etc. 4. If there's no or very little editing on the wiki for a month, or if the reports stop coming in, or if generally the thing just starts winding down, the wiki goes inactive. We turn off the wiki software, and make the content available in case someone else wants to use it.
Requiring a translated interface up-front might also be a good idea. It would show that at least one person is very commited.
-- mav
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Evan Prodromou evan@wikitravel.org wrote:
On Wikitravel, this is the deal: 1. There needs to be at least 5 users pledged to start up the wiki. 2. There needs to be one contact person for the new wiki. 3. The contact person has to make a monthly report about the state of the wiki: what's been happening, advances, debates, changes in policy or guidelines, etc. 4. If there's no or very little editing on the wiki for a month, or if the reports stop coming in, or if generally the thing just starts winding down, the wiki goes inactive. We turn off the wiki software, and make the content available in case someone else wants to use it.
Requiring a translated interface up-front might also be a good idea. It would show that at least one person is very commited.
Not necessarily. It could be done during the founding period. It's definitely more fun to work on the interface when already the first contributions happen than to do all the work alone beforehand.
Evan's four points sound very sensible to me, especially the point with the contact person and the reports. From some of our wikis we know exactly nothing or hear only from them when serious problems appear. A short monthly report would be very helpful there.
I put this stuff on the agenda for the next public board meeting: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda
greetings, elian
Wait, let me get this straight.
You think it makes sense to require 5 users pledged to start a Wiki when our 3rd biggest Wiki, the Japanese Wikipedia, wouldn'tve met this requirement itself, and the German Wikipedia would not have until its second month of existance?
Requiring such reports will dangerously inhibit the growth of new Wikipedias and will cause the rate of abandonment of new Wikis to skyrocket. Plenty of people may be committed to translating articles to their language, but you are adding heaps of new work that is just going to make people less and less willing.
And regarding the fourth point, ARE YOU CRAZY!?!!!!?!!?!?! Turn off the Wiki software do to "no or very little editing" in the past month? These four criteria alone could put all of our existing, thriving Wikipedias except for most of those with over 1000 articles and a minority of those with under 1000 out of commission for a long time to come! The Kannada Wikipedia for example is in an Indic language which represents an area of much-needed growth for us, and is growing steadily. However, the number of edits outside the MediaWiki namespace per day is steadily decreasing, not due to people losing interest but due to people having decided to make a couple of extreme contributions per month instead of a hundred tiny ones.
If any of these measures get passed, the fork which I previously mentioned and was serious about pursuing but not too enthusiastic about will really become a priority and I will put lots of time and effort into it, and it may well attract other Wikipedians shocked at new linguistically-opressive policies.
These suggestions are dangerous to the very nature of Wikipedia as a whole!!!
node'
On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 22:11:27 +0100, Elisabeth Bauer elian@djini.de wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Evan Prodromou evan@wikitravel.org wrote:
On Wikitravel, this is the deal: 1. There needs to be at least 5 users pledged to start up the wiki. 2. There needs to be one contact person for the new wiki. 3. The contact person has to make a monthly report about the state of the wiki: what's been happening, advances, debates, changes in policy or guidelines, etc. 4. If there's no or very little editing on the wiki for a month, or if the reports stop coming in, or if generally the thing just starts winding down, the wiki goes inactive. We turn off the wiki software, and make the content available in case someone else wants to use it.
Requiring a translated interface up-front might also be a good idea. It would show that at least one person is very commited.
Not necessarily. It could be done during the founding period. It's definitely more fun to work on the interface when already the first contributions happen than to do all the work alone beforehand.
Evan's four points sound very sensible to me, especially the point with the contact person and the reports. From some of our wikis we know exactly nothing or hear only from them when serious problems appear. A short monthly report would be very helpful there.
I put this stuff on the agenda for the next public board meeting: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda
greetings, elian
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
If any of these measures get passed, the fork which I previously mentioned and was serious about pursuing but not too enthusiastic about will really become a priority and I will put lots of time and effort into it, and it may well attract other Wikipedians shocked at new linguistically-opressive policies.
Probably the right thing for you to do anyway, so that you're putting in some real effort of your own, instead of telling everybody else how they should be spending their time. Speaking as someone who's dealt with forks and the threat of forks in the past, I think you'll find that it's a lot of trouble; if you can't find five people to work on language WPs, you're not going to find the resources to keep a fork going either. But some people need to learn by doing, and the creation of the fork will be a valuable learning experience for you.
Stan
How exactly am I telling others how they should be spending their time?
Chances are I would spend more time getting people situated at the Friulian Wikipedia than anybody on this list would.
Oh, wait, I just found this quote: "You guys should all do hard labour for the benifit of Wikipedia, while I sit home and veg out on the couch!"
Oh wait, that's not a real quote.
I have worked hard to get small and new Wikipedias up and running.
I have sent e-mails, helped people every step of the way in some cases, made logos, watched for vandalism, and have requested new Wikipedias for people, scn: having been (so far) a success.
If you think I go around selecting random languages to request new Wikipedias for, then you are very very very wrong. Before I do anything like that, I make sure there is at least one potential contributor, and preferrably more or some community involvement.
Regarding forks: you may have dealt with forks and the threat of forks before, but have you ever dealt with the threat of new policy which completely goes against what you think Wikipedia stands for? Whatever it is you like about Wikipedia, if all of a sudden that was taken and totally reversed, I think there's a very good chance you would start a fork or defect to an already-existing one.
Even if I can find no people to help with a fork, I can do it myself. It may not be as easy that way, but when drastic changes to policy are threatened, sometimes drastic measures have to be taken to ensure a continued healthy multilingual environment.
mark
On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 21:47:02 -0800, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
If any of these measures get passed, the fork which I previously mentioned and was serious about pursuing but not too enthusiastic about will really become a priority and I will put lots of time and effort into it, and it may well attract other Wikipedians shocked at new linguistically-opressive policies.
Probably the right thing for you to do anyway, so that you're putting in some real effort of your own, instead of telling everybody else how they should be spending their time. Speaking as someone who's dealt with forks and the threat of forks in the past, I think you'll find that it's a lot of trouble; if you can't find five people to work on language WPs, you're not going to find the resources to keep a fork going either. But some people need to learn by doing, and the creation of the fork will be a valuable learning experience for you.
Stan
Hi Mark,
Please stop threatening with a possible every now and then. You have already been told that this is NOT the proper way to get things done.
Yann
Le Tuesday 2 November 2004 18:00, Mark Williamson a écrit :
How exactly am I telling others how they should be spending their time?
Chances are I would spend more time getting people situated at the Friulian Wikipedia than anybody on this list would.
Oh, wait, I just found this quote: "You guys should all do hard labour for the benifit of Wikipedia, while I sit home and veg out on the couch!"
Oh wait, that's not a real quote.
I have worked hard to get small and new Wikipedias up and running.
I have sent e-mails, helped people every step of the way in some cases, made logos, watched for vandalism, and have requested new Wikipedias for people, scn: having been (so far) a success.
If you think I go around selecting random languages to request new Wikipedias for, then you are very very very wrong. Before I do anything like that, I make sure there is at least one potential contributor, and preferrably more or some community involvement.
Regarding forks: you may have dealt with forks and the threat of forks before, but have you ever dealt with the threat of new policy which completely goes against what you think Wikipedia stands for? Whatever it is you like about Wikipedia, if all of a sudden that was taken and totally reversed, I think there's a very good chance you would start a fork or defect to an already-existing one.
Even if I can find no people to help with a fork, I can do it myself. It may not be as easy that way, but when drastic changes to policy are threatened, sometimes drastic measures have to be taken to ensure a continued healthy multilingual environment.
mark
Mark Williamson wrote:
If you think I go around selecting random languages to request new Wikipedias for, then you are very very very wrong. Before I do anything like that, I make sure there is at least one potential contributor, and preferrably more or some community involvement.
There does seem to be an odd mismatch in that you have no personally ability to speak these languages. I'd wager that were these requests coming from people who *actually speak the languages*, they would be taken more seriously. When that has happened, as with Welsh, there were no arguments over creating the Wikipedia for that language.
-Mark
What people aren't realising is that there are people already supporting them.
sc: I just requested because I thought it should exist, and I learned from that.
scn: however had an entire community that pledged to help work on it, and that's why I requested it.
Friulian had the support of two Wikipedians, and that's why I requested it.
I wouldn't request a Welsh Wikipedia just because I "like welsh" or something. I'd only request it if some people or a community had expressed interest and pledged some level of support if it were to be created.
-Mark
On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 16:09:25 -0500, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
If you think I go around selecting random languages to request new Wikipedias for, then you are very very very wrong. Before I do anything like that, I make sure there is at least one potential contributor, and preferrably more or some community involvement.
There does seem to be an odd mismatch in that you have no personally ability to speak these languages. I'd wager that were these requests coming from people who *actually speak the languages*, they would be taken more seriously. When that has happened, as with Welsh, there were no arguments over creating the Wikipedia for that language.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
In message 4187F785.4090905@hackish.org, Delirium delirium@hackish.org writes
Mark Williamson wrote:
If you think I go around selecting random languages to request new Wikipedias for, then you are very very very wrong. Before I do anything like that, I make sure there is at least one potential contributor, and preferrably more or some community involvement.
There does seem to be an odd mismatch in that you have no personally ability to speak these languages. I'd wager that were these requests coming from people who *actually speak the languages*, they would be taken more seriously. When that has happened, as with Welsh, there were no arguments over creating the Wikipedia for that language.
Actually, I don't know the history of the Welsh Wikipedia -- it appears to have been set up with the phase 2 software, a few not very good articles which mostly resembled a sandbox were created, and then abandoned. It was converted to Phase 3 fairly early on, at which point I discovered it. As no-one seemed to be using it, I asked for admin status and set about creating some articles and creating LanguageCy.php (no small task when the language is somewhat lacking in computing terms and you're checking most of the words against two dictionaries!). Pretty soon [[cy:Defnyddwr:Deb]] arrived and things took off, to the point where we now have a nice little encyclopaedia with around half a dozen regular contributors and about 2700 articles.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
Wait, let me get this straight.
You think it makes sense to require 5 users pledged to start a Wiki when our 3rd biggest Wiki, the Japanese Wikipedia, wouldn'tve met this requirement itself, and the German Wikipedia would not have until its second month of existance?
Maybe they would have had if they had to? Maybe a rule like the proposed would lead to an extended "supporters search" phase, starting the wikipedia proper only afterwards? __ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Hirschstraße 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . .
Either way, their development would have been impeded.
mark
On 03 Nov 2004 23:17:00 +0100, Till Westermayer till@tillwe.de wrote:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
Wait, let me get this straight.
You think it makes sense to require 5 users pledged to start a Wiki when our 3rd biggest Wiki, the Japanese Wikipedia, wouldn'tve met this requirement itself, and the German Wikipedia would not have until its second month of existance?
Maybe they would have had if they had to? Maybe a rule like the proposed would lead to an extended "supporters search" phase, starting the wikipedia proper only afterwards? __ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Hirschstraße 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . . _______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
In addition, from what I've found the enthusiasm grows gradually, at first people being excited but after they work on it a bit more, they're really into it and are more committed by then.
Thus most Wikis don't get off the ground with a commitment, or if they do, it's often a commitment from one or two people.
So far I cannot think of any Wikipedia that is empty and has fallen to vandalism that was started with a commitment from at least one fluent speaker to work on it, except na: which shouldn't count because it wasn't in the language it claimed to be (and even so, it hasn't fallen to petty vandalism yet)
Speaking of the Nauruan Wikipedia, are we ever going to do something about it, or is it just going to sit there? If any *real* Nauruan speakers come and want to write, it will be very discouraging to have that content there the way we do now.
mark
On 03 Nov 2004 23:17:00 +0100, Till Westermayer till@tillwe.de wrote:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
Wait, let me get this straight.
You think it makes sense to require 5 users pledged to start a Wiki when our 3rd biggest Wiki, the Japanese Wikipedia, wouldn'tve met this requirement itself, and the German Wikipedia would not have until its second month of existance?
Maybe they would have had if they had to? Maybe a rule like the proposed would lead to an extended "supporters search" phase, starting the wikipedia proper only afterwards? __ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Hirschstraße 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . . _______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
One last message for this thread from me unless it turns into a hot topic again:
I really am sorry for getting so irritated. This is just something I really deeply care about, and people on IRC have in a couple of cases failed to understand that even when I tried to explain.
I hope it doesn't rule out the possibility of a future Friulian Wikipedia created under different circumstances, and I hope even more that the rule changes discussed in this thread are not made.
Apologetically yours, Mark
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:51:34 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
In addition, from what I've found the enthusiasm grows gradually, at first people being excited but after they work on it a bit more, they're really into it and are more committed by then.
Thus most Wikis don't get off the ground with a commitment, or if they do, it's often a commitment from one or two people.
So far I cannot think of any Wikipedia that is empty and has fallen to vandalism that was started with a commitment from at least one fluent speaker to work on it, except na: which shouldn't count because it wasn't in the language it claimed to be (and even so, it hasn't fallen to petty vandalism yet)
Speaking of the Nauruan Wikipedia, are we ever going to do something about it, or is it just going to sit there? If any *real* Nauruan speakers come and want to write, it will be very discouraging to have that content there the way we do now.
mark
On 03 Nov 2004 23:17:00 +0100, Till Westermayer till@tillwe.de wrote:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
Wait, let me get this straight.
You think it makes sense to require 5 users pledged to start a Wiki when our 3rd biggest Wiki, the Japanese Wikipedia, wouldn'tve met this requirement itself, and the German Wikipedia would not have until its second month of existance?
Maybe they would have had if they had to? Maybe a rule like the proposed would lead to an extended "supporters search" phase, starting the wikipedia proper only afterwards? __ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Hirschstraße 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . . _______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
You think it makes sense to require 5 users pledged to start a Wiki when our 3rd biggest Wiki, the Japanese Wikipedia, wouldn'tve met this requirement itself, and the German Wikipedia would not have until its second month of existance?
It is not sensible to apply a rule which is designed to help deal with borderline cases and very small language groups to cases of major languages with tens of millions of speakers.
It was perfectly safe to start de.wikipedia.org and ja.wikipedia.org secure in the confidence that people would get involved quickly enough. This is much less true for very small language groups.
And regarding the fourth point, ARE YOU CRAZY!?!!!!?!!?!?!
If you wonder why people find you annoying, you might think about how your yelling at people makes them feel.
If any of these measures get passed, the fork which I previously mentioned and was serious about pursuing but not too enthusiastic about will really become a priority and I will put lots of time and effort into it, and it may well attract other Wikipedians shocked at new linguistically-opressive policies.
Good luck with that. "Not yelling at people" is a critical trait of leadership in an all volunteer project.
--Jimbo
Daniel Mayer ti 2004/11/1 EP 01:52 sia-kong:
Requiring a translated interface up-front might also be a good idea. It would show that at least one person is very commited.
Not necessarily. It would probably only show that a language is lucky enough to have a Wikipedian who is somewhat familiar with the interface, or else someone with the know-how to install MediaWiki locally and play with it until she or he is sufficiently familiar with it to do the translation.
Conceivably, however, a new language WP might be founded by _newly minted_ Wikipedians. I was one such Wikipedian; I learned as I went and eventually translated most of zh-min-nan.
Agreed. If there was easy access to statistics about how many articles or users every Wiki had before they had a translated interface the way there is to the statistics that Andre gave, I'd show them here and I'm pretty sure they'd say something similar: that it is not a reasonable expectation or requirement for a new Wikipedia.
--mark
On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 18:21:32 -0500, Henry H. Tan-Tenn share2002nov@lomaji.com wrote:
Daniel Mayer ti 2004/11/1 EP 01:52 sia-kong:
Requiring a translated interface up-front might also be a good idea. It would show that at least one person is very commited.
Not necessarily. It would probably only show that a language is lucky enough to have a Wikipedian who is somewhat familiar with the interface, or else someone with the know-how to install MediaWiki locally and play with it until she or he is sufficiently familiar with it to do the translation.
Conceivably, however, a new language WP might be founded by _newly minted_ Wikipedians. I was one such Wikipedian; I learned as I went and eventually translated most of zh-min-nan.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Mon, 2004-01-11 at 10:52 -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Evan Prodromou evan@wikitravel.org wrote:
On Wikitravel, this is the deal: [...]
Requiring a translated interface up-front might also be a good idea. It would show that at least one person is very commited.
Heh... that is in fact one of the requirements. It's not as hard for Wikitravel as for Wikimedia projects, though, since so many languages already have working interface files in MediaWiki. It's mostly making changes for our license/site-name/etc.
~ESP
Evan Prodromou a écrit:
On Mon, 2004-01-11 at 13:34 +0000, Rowan Collins wrote:
As has been pointed out, just the number of initial contributors is a bad indicator; but we do need some indication that a solid community is likely to emerge; and personally, I don't think number of fluent speakers (or even fluent speakers with net connections) provides this indication.
On Wikitravel, this is the deal:
1. There needs to be at least 5 users pledged to start up the wiki. 2. There needs to be one contact person for the new wiki. 3. The contact person has to make a monthly report about the state of the wiki: what's been happening, advances, debates, changes in policy or guidelines, etc. 4. If there's no or very little editing on the wiki for a month, or if the reports stop coming in, or if generally the thing just starts winding down, the wiki goes inactive. We turn off the wiki software, and make the content available in case someone else wants to use it.~ESP
I agree with these 4 points. In particular, the last point seems relevant to me.
Ant
WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!?
As noted before, if these rules had always existed, most of our largest Wikipedias would not exist today!!!
Again I will quote Andre's statistics:
Looking at the statistics (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansContributors.htm), I find only 6 Wikipedia languages with 5 contributors in the first month of their 'real' existence: en, he, fa, ast, be and tokipona. In the second month this was reached by de, pl, fi, bg, ro, uk, ur. For all other Wikipedias there was more difference between the time of their first and their fifth user, although in reality there may be some more because there might be non-registered users as well.
My own opinion is that a non-dead natural language with an ISO 639 code would in principle be okay for Wikipedia. There can of course be exceptions, but to me at that moment the burden of proof lies with those who disagree.
And gain, in case you missed it:
Looking at the statistics (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansContributors.htm), I find only 6 Wikipedia languages with 5 contributors in the first month of their 'real' existence: en, he, fa, ast, be and tokipona. In the second month this was reached by de, pl, fi, bg, ro, uk, ur. For all other Wikipedias there was more difference between the time of their first and their fifth user, although in reality there may be some more because there might be non-registered users as well.
My own opinion is that a non-dead natural language with an ISO 639 code would in principle be okay for Wikipedia. There can of course be exceptions, but to me at that moment the burden of proof lies with those who disagree.
And again:
Looking at the statistics (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansContributors.htm), I find only 6 Wikipedia languages with 5 contributors in the first month of their 'real' existence: en, he, fa, ast, be and tokipona. In the second month this was reached by de, pl, fi, bg, ro, uk, ur. For all other Wikipedias there was more difference between the time of their first and their fifth user, although in reality there may be some more because there might be non-registered users as well.
My own opinion is that a non-dead natural language with an ISO 639 code would in principle be okay for Wikipedia. There can of course be exceptions, but to me at that moment the burden of proof lies with those who disagree.
...
That leaves out for example the Spanish Wikipedia, the Chinese WIkipedia, the Portuguese Wikipedia, and most notably THE JAPANESE WIKIPEDIA!!!
Doesn't anybody notice that there are ONLY 5 LANGUAGES IN WIKITRAVEL BECAUSE OF THIS VERY POLICY???
Such a policy is very dangerous, and will extremely limit the creation of new Wikipedias, and with this there would be precedent to delete existing Wikipedias with no content, which would make things much worse!
mark
Over the last few months, there have been several requests for the creation of wikipedias. There are good arguments on both sides why you want more projects and why you do not want new projects. Several "solutions" to this problem have been proposed.
Arguments for: *It stimulates a language when a project is active in the language. *People can develop their talent to write in this language that is often not native to them.
Arguments against: *Many dormant project have been used to enter content that had nothing to do with the purpose of that project; the it:wiktionary and the Nauruan wikipedia come to mind (the word Nauruose is still used because of this faulty content :( ) *It requires time to set up a project, time from a developper, and as they are volunteers too, nobody can make them create projects they think has little merit.
In the past several "solutions" have been proposed: *If it has a ISO 639 code, it can have a project .. This does not solve the problem of squatters when there is little intrest. It still takes developper time to set up *A certain number of contributors have to be found up front .. History proves that many of our greatest projects would not have existed it they had to suffer under this same rule. *If a certain amount of words have been created for that language in a Wiktionary, it shows that there is an interest for that language. *No activity for an extended period means that a project is saved/locked to prevent squatters and vandals.
*Having a project for each language that has a ISO 639 code is NPOV, there are many "dead" languages in there like Ancient Greek and many languages that are so fractured that there is not even a standard spelling for that language like li Limburgian for instance. *Having all these contributors up front would be a big block, history has proven that many thriving projects started from small beginnings. We are, and should be really happy with all active projects that grow and maintain their integrity. *If a list is compiled of words and phrases that are needed for a localised interface in that language, there would be an objective criterium; when these words are created in a wiktionary, it would be usefull for the setup of a project in that language. Even if the list is not finished, it has merit as it adds content to the wiktionaries. *Locking a project to prevent vandalism when there is no activity for a set period of time is really helpfull. When a project attrackts new contributors and it has been extensively vandalised or abused, it drives them away as the new contributors do not have the necessary admin rights to remedy things. No activity means to me that one admin/moderator is not checking the project for a week. A script CAN be created to check for this. The project can be reactivated when an admin signs on to the project, this can be done with a script as well.
My proposal: Stop having these discussions about what language is worthwhile create a defendable procedure and have it on META. A language is a language is a language. When someone wants to de "Elfish" or Klingon, no skin of our nose. As long as there is continued development. Having a hurdle before a project can be started is fine; but having a hurdle that is positive and has an objective merit makes it less debatable. I am partial to Wiktionary, but I do not mind helping with the creation of a list of required words in a language before a new project is started. I am also willing to help the new contributor(s) filling this content. The benefit of hosting it on the nl: fr: it: wiktionary is that it is possible to share content among multiple wiktionaries without too much trouble.
Thanks, GerardM
On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 08:25:30 +0100, Gerard Meijssen gerardm@myrealbox.com wrote:
Over the last few months, there have been several requests for the creation of wikipedias. There are good arguments on both sides why you want more projects and why you do not want new projects. Several "solutions" to this problem have been proposed.
Arguments for: *It stimulates a language when a project is active in the language. *People can develop their talent to write in this language that is often not native to them.
Arguments against: *Many dormant project have been used to enter content that had nothing to do with the purpose of that project; the it:wiktionary and the Nauruan wikipedia come to mind (the word Nauruose is still used because of this faulty content :( ) *It requires time to set up a project, time from a developper, and as they are volunteers too, nobody can make them create projects they think has little merit.
In the past several "solutions" have been proposed: *If it has a ISO 639 code, it can have a project .. This does not solve the problem of squatters when there is little intrest. It still takes developper time to set up *A certain number of contributors have to be found up front .. History proves that many of our greatest projects would not have existed it they had to suffer under this same rule. *If a certain amount of words have been created for that language in a Wiktionary, it shows that there is an interest for that language. *No activity for an extended period means that a project is saved/locked to prevent squatters and vandals.
*Having a project for each language that has a ISO 639 code is NPOV, there are many "dead" languages in there like Ancient Greek and many languages that are so fractured that there is not even a standard spelling for that language like li Limburgian for instance. *Having all these contributors up front would be a big block, history has proven that many thriving projects started from small beginnings. We are, and should be really happy with all active projects that grow and maintain their integrity. *If a list is compiled of words and phrases that are needed for a localised interface in that language, there would be an objective criterium; when these words are created in a wiktionary, it would be usefull for the setup of a project in that language. Even if the list is not finished, it has merit as it adds content to the wiktionaries. *Locking a project to prevent vandalism when there is no activity for a set period of time is really helpfull. When a project attrackts new contributors and it has been extensively vandalised or abused, it drives them away as the new contributors do not have the necessary admin rights to remedy things. No activity means to me that one admin/moderator is not checking the project for a week. A script CAN be created to check for this. The project can be reactivated when an admin signs on to the project, this can be done with a script as well.
My proposal: Stop having these discussions about what language is worthwhile create a defendable procedure and have it on META. A language is a language is a language. When someone wants to de "Elfish" or Klingon, no skin of our nose. As long as there is continued development. Having a hurdle before a project can be started is fine; but having a hurdle that is positive and has an objective merit makes it less debatable. I am partial to Wiktionary, but I do not mind helping with the creation of a list of required words in a language before a new project is started. I am also willing to help the new contributor(s) filling this content. The benefit of hosting it on the nl: fr: it: wiktionary is that it is possible to share content among multiple wiktionaries without too much trouble.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean. The Meta part I understand. This is supposed to be the procedure as it is, but it's not very effective and everything happens very sllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly.
Let it be known that I don't mind hurdles as long as they are extremely minor. Requiring one interested person who speaks the language is what I am thinking. This means that I can't go say "OK, I'm requesting a Wikipedia for Konkani" but have no people who are interested/willing to contribute.
In addition, I'd like to request the replacement of arc: with syr:, or at least the creation of syr:. There may not be anybody interested in syr:, but arc: is the ancient version of syr: and has much much fewer speakers, which would be akin to us having ang: but not en:. Of course another possible solution would be to delete arc: entirely, but...
node
On Nov 2, 2004, at 10:57 AM, Mark Williamson wrote: [etc]
Mark, what I think people are not saying explicitly is that there's a "boy who cried wolf" syndrome in effect here. Because the constant flow of requests _comes from you_, those individual requests are not being treated with the interest or respect they might be if they came from other people.
Guilt by association is not cool, but the effect is real and it is there. It's an ugly cycle, and we need to break out of it.
Instead of everybody flooding the mailing lists with a lot of petty back-and-forth over many separate things, node could you please put together a single list of the languages you'd like to see added? I'll be happy to add those with individual ISO 639-1 or ISO 639-2 codes, as is our traditional policy. Anything else needs to be looked at on a case by case basis.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Right, since I've requested SO MANY new Wikipedias.
Oh wait, no, that's not true!
A few months ago I requested sc:
Since then, I have requested two Wikipedias explicity: scn: and fur: (not sure about the Friulian iso code, but I know it exists because I looked it up in the past)
This is because I learned from the creation of sc:. I have invited people, but all I got was one response in French from a guy who's head of the Office for the Sardinian Language in the province of Nugoro, basically outlining how the orthography of the existing contributions was not that which he favored and why that made him pissed. I sent him a polite e-mail in the best French I can write telling him that I favor his orthography too, since it's the standard, and that I don't know Sardinian so I can't fix it, but that he's welcome to change it.
Had I had a more successful experience, perhaps I would've requested many many many different new Wikipedias, but I have not.
I have not requested Wikipedias for any languages without ISO 639 codes. All the languages I have requested have ISO 639 codes.
The thing is that right now, all I want to see created is the Friulian Wikipedia and the Syriac Wikipedia. This is liable to change.
mark
On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 12:23:51 -0800, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
On Nov 2, 2004, at 10:57 AM, Mark Williamson wrote: [etc]
Mark, what I think people are not saying explicitly is that there's a "boy who cried wolf" syndrome in effect here. Because the constant flow of requests _comes from you_, those individual requests are not being treated with the interest or respect they might be if they came from other people.
Guilt by association is not cool, but the effect is real and it is there. It's an ugly cycle, and we need to break out of it.
Instead of everybody flooding the mailing lists with a lot of petty back-and-forth over many separate things, node could you please put together a single list of the languages you'd like to see added? I'll be happy to add those with individual ISO 639-1 or ISO 639-2 codes, as is our traditional policy. Anything else needs to be looked at on a case by case basis.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Mark Williamson wrote:
WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!? As noted before, if these rules had always existed, most of our largest Wikipedias would not exist today!!!
If most people behaved like you, this mailing list would have been dead long ago. Will you please try and moderate yourself?
If somebody proposed to trash NPOV policy, or to have popup ads on the mainpage, issues which many people feel strongly about, and there were many messages from people who supported the idea, I think there would be a lot of e-mails like that.
mark
On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 21:38:48 +0100 (CET), Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!? As noted before, if these rules had always existed, most of our largest Wikipedias would not exist today!!!
If most people behaved like you, this mailing list would have been dead long ago. Will you please try and moderate yourself?
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Yes, and that is why Wikipedia has something like 50 or 75 Wikipedias with over 1000 articles, but you folks at Wikitravel only have 5 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES TOTAL!
If you guys are truly concerned about internationalism, it might be a good idea to rethink policy a bit. If you''re not willing to change things completely, you could at least change the numbers from 5 contributors to 4 or 3 or 2, and require less detail in reports, and not closing down any Wiki if it has upwards of a cewrtai number of articles.
Of course, if you guys enjoy having only a couple languages all from rich Western European nations, I won't try to change your preferences.
mark
On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 13:34:37 -0500, Evan Prodromou evan@wikitravel.org wrote:
On Mon, 2004-01-11 at 13:34 +0000, Rowan Collins wrote:
As has been pointed out, just the number of initial contributors is a bad indicator; but we do need some indication that a solid community is likely to emerge; and personally, I don't think number of fluent speakers (or even fluent speakers with net connections) provides this indication.
On Wikitravel, this is the deal:
1. There needs to be at least 5 users pledged to start up the wiki. 2. There needs to be one contact person for the new wiki. 3. The contact person has to make a monthly report about the state of the wiki: what's been happening, advances, debates, changes in policy or guidelines, etc. 4. If there's no or very little editing on the wiki for a month, or if the reports stop coming in, or if generally the thing just starts winding down, the wiki goes inactive. We turn off the wiki software, and make the content available in case someone else wants to use it.~ESP
-- Evan Prodromou evan@wikitravel.org
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Mon, 2004-01-11 at 18:06 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
Yes, and that is why Wikipedia has something like 50 or 75 Wikipedias with over 1000 articles, but you folks at Wikitravel only have 5 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES TOTAL!
Yeah, and we're fine with it. Administering dozens of empty, unused wiki instances isn't really a big goal for me. Making the wikis that we do have running into healthy communities creating great content is much more important.
But if you're interested in making some points about it, it's probably better to discuss it on the Wikitravel site itself:
http://wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
~ESP
Notice I said " 50 to 75 Wikipedias with over 1000 articles ", not " 50 to 75 Wikipedias total ".
On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 23:24:17 -0500, Evan Prodromou evan@bad.dynu.ca wrote:
On Mon, 2004-01-11 at 18:06 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
Yes, and that is why Wikipedia has something like 50 or 75 Wikipedias with over 1000 articles, but you folks at Wikitravel only have 5 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES TOTAL!
Yeah, and we're fine with it. Administering dozens of empty, unused wiki instances isn't really a big goal for me. Making the wikis that we do have running into healthy communities creating great content is much more important.
But if you're interested in making some points about it, it's probably better to discuss it on the Wikitravel site itself:
http://wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy~ESP
-- Evan Prodromou .O. http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/ ..O evan@bad.dynu.ca OOO _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
The problem is that to do that, I need to be able to write a press release in the target language.
Which is, of course, another reason we need at least one dedicated, fluent, user to support and nurture any new Wikipedia.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Even plenty of thriving Wikipedias have no mention of them in the press and a couple are actually trying to keep things quiet until they gradually grow a bit bigger to avoid sudden influxes of vandalism and inexperienced users.
Many of those that *do* have mentions in the press do not have them because of press releases or contacts between journalists and Wikipedians, but rather because the journalist simply happened upon the site and mentioned it.
As for what is wrong with an abandoned Wikipedia, they become a haven for vandalism, spam, and generally undesirable content. I seem to remember hearing about a language where the entire content of the wiki appeared to be essentially gibberish, and not the language of that WP at all.
As regards vandalism, spam, and generally undesirable content: that is why I and others in a small group of users dedicated to a good multilingual international reputation for Wikipedia and to quality patrol such Wikipedias at least once a month to check for vandalism, and sometimes vandalism and spam is actually caught much sooner, sometimes within minutes of its posting. (for example, iu: or arc: get visited less frequently than yi:)
As regards the Nauruan Wikipedia, that actually took place UNDER THE WATCH OF TWO DEDICATED USERS - IN FACT, THEY WERE THE ONES PERPETRATING THE FRAUD. They requested technical favours in public places from devs, and the community knew about the new Wikipedia and I for one was happy until I discovered loads of months later it was in the wrong language.
I'm not sure but I think dz:, so far edited by 3 or 4 registered users and a few other anons, has the same problem (for one, ttbomk Dzongkha is written exclusively in U Can)
The problem is therefore that as soon as you create a new wiki, it is instantly and permanently editable by all, so if you're community dries up, there is a risk that it will just be abused, with no-one to look after it. That doesn't really equate to loss of resources, but it does dilute the Wikimedia "brand" - can you imagine what a field day our detractors would have if it was revealed that there are a dozen "translations" of Wikipedia that contained nothing but garbage and spam? [I'm not saying this is the case, I'm just saying that this is the risk we are weighing up here.]
If we create 102020202020202 new Wikipedias, this may be a problem, but for just the creation of two or three Wikipedias, it isn't. Currently, the rate of "taking off" for previously barren Wikipedias is higher than the rate of creation of new subdomains, and thus the number of barren spaces to monitor is staying the same or even decreasing.
As has been pointed out, just the number of initial contributors is a bad indicator; but we do need some indication that a solid community is likely to emerge; and personally, I don't think number of fluent speakers (or even fluent speakers with net connections) provides this indication. Perhaps, instead, we need some kind of "enthusiasm test", to show that the user(s) starting it is/are going to dedicate time to getting it off the ground, not just in terms of seeding the content, but also recruiting the community. I'm not saying we should make language creation some hideously complex process and put off anyone who's a little bit nervous, but perhaps some clear guidelines of what creating an effective new wiki involves, and a confirmation that there is somebody willing to undertake that process.
We already have guidelines for creating effective new Wikis, but they're IMHO pretty sucky and according to my experience are wrong, wrong, all wrong.
mark
Mark Williamson wrote:
The problem is that to do that, I need to be able to write a press release in the target language.
Which is, of course, another reason we need at least one dedicated, fluent, user to support and nurture any new Wikipedia.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Even plenty of thriving Wikipedias have no mention of them in the press and a couple are actually trying to keep things quiet until they gradually grow a bit bigger to avoid sudden influxes of vandalism and inexperienced users.
One point that you appear to miss is that speakers of other languages, including native American languages, don't like it when Anglos talk down to them from their pedestal. It's an offence to their pride. When they are ready to move they will do so, and not any earlier. In the meantime all we can validly do is to keep them casually informed of the available resources.
Ec
While I realise this is a potential problem, I have not run into it so far.
On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 09:16:43 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
The problem is that to do that, I need to be able to write a press release in the target language.
Which is, of course, another reason we need at least one dedicated, fluent, user to support and nurture any new Wikipedia.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Even plenty of thriving Wikipedias have no mention of them in the press and a couple are actually trying to keep things quiet until they gradually grow a bit bigger to avoid sudden influxes of vandalism and inexperienced users.
One point that you appear to miss is that speakers of other languages, including native American languages, don't like it when Anglos talk down to them from their pedestal. It's an offence to their pride. When they are ready to move they will do so, and not any earlier. In the meantime all we can validly do is to keep them casually informed of the available resources.
Ec
Mark Williamson wrote:
I did however get a positive response from Brian Stowell (prominent Mec Vannin activist) that gave me the impression he and/or other Manx ultranationalists will soon turn gv: from dead to not-dead.
I don't know anything about Brian Stowell, I'm sure he's a wonderful person. But it makes me nervous to think about "ultranationalists" eager to create a wikipedia as part of a wider project which involves both language and cultural preservation (both good things) and possibly as well some nationalist political agenda (maybe good, maybe bad, but certainly not neutral).
--Jimbo
Angela wrote:
I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
Obviously I agree.
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
I think this is an excellent suggestion.
--Jimbo
On Saturday 30 October 2004 10:06, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Obviously I agree.
I propose to have a general Wikipedia where all minor languages can be put in separate namespaces.
For example: http://otherlang.wikipedia.org where articles could be put this way:
[[Sardinian:Main Page]]
[[Friulian:Main Page]]
[[Corsican:Main Page]]
[[Klinglon:Mai Page]]
et cetera.
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 07:37:19 +0100, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
If you read it, you'll see that this person claims to have another Friulian person interested in working on it.
This would be my third request for an Italian minority language Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1. Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding whether another minority language should be started without a more significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
Sardinian is admittedly a dud. Sicilian is still growing steadily, and I'm sure they'd not appreciate the not-so-nice things you seem to think of them.
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000 articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.
Also, my definition of "potential contributors" means all the people who speak the language and have Internet access, which in the case of Friulian is well over 5.
And take a look, you'll notice Wikitravel only has 5 languages. Gee, I wonder if this might have anything remotely to do with their policy?
If we require 5 people to commit to working on a new Wikipedia... why not restrict individual article creation on en: by the same criterium? That way, the number of mistakes in Wikipedia will be cut very drastically. But, oh wait, what's that? Yes, inevitability?
At the beginning of this year, according to the sentiments of many, the Kannada Wikipedia should have been deleted.
It is now growing steadily and much of the user interface is in Kannada. And still, although there are more than 5 users, only around 3 of them are actually active.
And how many people speak Kannada? Is it a language with only a couple hundred thousand speakers, like some of our active Wikipedias with over 100 (or even 1000) articles? No... not really... Well, what about under 1 million? No, not really. Under 10 million? Not really.
You see, Kannada is the mother tongue of heaps and heaps of people in the Indian state of Karnataka (kannadaka). It is a Dravidian language.
How many of the Wikipedias we have today would exist now in their present state had they not already existed when content was first added?
Just as if we required people on en: to request a new article we would have much fewer articles, it takes more time and effort and may be confusing to some to figure out how to request a new language.
And how are they to know if there are already two people who would be interested in the creation of such a Wikipedia?
If you are interested in multilingualism, internationalism, and ultimately the building of an NPOV encyclopaedic resource in *any* language, it makes no sense to advocate such restrictions.
For languages that are nobody's first language, such sentiment is understandable to me.
But if we pursue such a policy, I do believe a fork with more liberal policies regarding multilingualism is in order, not in the interest of dividing Wikipedia but rather for the simple reason that by doing this, we would be denying these people something that I do not personally believe we should deny them. If we deny such an opportunity to them, then I can no longer in good faith claim to support this organisation fully and will consider creating a new site and a new foundation with similar principles but with a stronger interest in having policies more greatly favouring multilingualism than what you have proposed.
-- mw
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 00:11:02 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000 articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.
Looking at the statistics (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansContributors.htm), I find only 6 Wikipedia languages with 5 contributors in the first month of their 'real' existence: en, he, fa, ast, be and tokipona. In the second month this was reached by de, pl, fi, bg, ro, uk, ur. For all other Wikipedias there was more difference between the time of their first and their fifth user, although in reality there may be some more because there might be non-registered users as well.
My own opinion is that a non-dead natural language with an ISO 639 code would in principle be okay for Wikipedia. There can of course be exceptions, but to me at that moment the burden of proof lies with those who disagree.
Andre Engels
Mark Williamson wrote:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 07:37:19 +0100, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
If you read it, you'll see that this person claims to have another Friulian person interested in working on it.
The big problem here is that it's neither of these two people who are carrying the advocacy. Both supports appear passive. These people are likely to write a few very good articles, but they are not the people who are likely to carry on to make the wiki operational for other Friulian speakers. I would feel much warmer to the idea if this request were being made by a Friulian speaker. Often if you ask someone whether they would be willing to help with a project you will get a very polite yes, but that does not easily translate into real work.
This would be my third request for an Italian minority language Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1. Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding whether another minority language should be started without a more significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
Sardinian is admittedly a dud. Sicilian is still growing steadily, and I'm sure they'd not appreciate the not-so-nice things you seem to think of them.
Mark, how many articles have you contributed to either of these?
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000 articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.
I don't particularly think that the 5 contributor proposal is the best. If they are all passive it will still get nowhere. Having even just one person who is both willing and able to do the work goes a lot further, especially if that person has a proven track record in one of the other wikis, perhaps even sysop experience. And even so that should be the person making the request, not Mark.
Also, my definition of "potential contributors" means all the people who speak the language and have Internet access, which in the case of Friulian is well over 5.
What fraction of the world's English speaking population is currently involved in the en:Wikipedia or any other English language sister project?
And how many people speak Kannada? Is it a language with only a couple hundred thousand speakers, like some of our active Wikipedias with over 100 (or even 1000) articles? No... not really... Well, what about under 1 million? No, not really. Under 10 million? Not really.
Far more than speak Friulian.
Just as if we required people on en: to request a new article we would have much fewer articles, it takes more time and effort and may be confusing to some to figure out how to request a new language.
Educated Friulians also speak Italian. Educated Karnatakans also speak English.
And how are they to know if there are already two people who would be interested in the creation of such a Wikipedia?
By discussing it with the people they know.
If you are interested in multilingualism, internationalism, and ultimately the building of an NPOV encyclopaedic resource in *any* language, it makes no sense to advocate such restrictions.
These "restrictions" are designed to promote the idea that a new wiki should have a chance to succeed.
But if we pursue such a policy, I do believe a fork with more liberal policies regarding multilingualism is in order
What makes you think that the operators of this hypothetical fork will not face the same problems?
If we deny such an opportunity to them, then I can no longer in good faith claim to support this organisation fully and will consider creating a new site and a new foundation with similar principles but with a stronger interest in having policies more greatly favouring multilingualism than what you have proposed.
You absolutely have that right, but I doubt that it will go beyond "consider". :-)
Ec
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 11:57:42 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 07:37:19 +0100, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
If you read it, you'll see that this person claims to have another Friulian person interested in working on it.
The big problem here is that it's neither of these two people who are carrying the advocacy. Both supports appear passive. These people are likely to write a few very good articles, but they are not the people who are likely to carry on to make the wiki operational for other Friulian speakers. I would feel much warmer to the idea if this request were being made by a Friulian speaker. Often if you ask someone whether they would be willing to help with a project you will get a very polite yes, but that does not easily translate into real work.
That brings up another thing. What's the big problem if we have a nearly empty Wikipedia for a while? How much space does that take up? As long as we aren't having heaps of requests to such a degree that we need a screening process so that we don't end up with 300 new Wikipedias by the end of the year, what's the huge problem?
As Andre noted, Friulian is a natural language with thousands of native speakers. There is no practical reason to not create a Friulian Wikipedia, at least not that I can think of.
This would be my third request for an Italian minority language Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1. Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding whether another minority language should be started without a more significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
Sardinian is admittedly a dud. Sicilian is still growing steadily, and I'm sure they'd not appreciate the not-so-nice things you seem to think of them.
Mark, how many articles have you contributed to either of these?
Why do you ask? To the Sardinian Wikipedia, I did the mainpage and fixed some minor things in the few articles that were created by others. If I spoke Sardinian myself, there would no doubt be at least 30 articles by now and probably more.
To the Sicilian Wikipedia, I've not actually created content although I have provided constant support to Giuseppe d'Angelo.
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000 articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.
I don't particularly think that the 5 contributor proposal is the best. If they are all passive it will still get nowhere. Having even just one person who is both willing and able to do the work goes a lot further, especially if that person has a proven track record in one of the other wikis, perhaps even sysop experience. And even so that should be the person making the request, not Mark.
Note Andre's statistics:;
"Looking at the statistics (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansContributors.htm), I find only 6 Wikipedia languages with 5 contributors in the first month of their 'real' existence: en, he, fa, ast, be and tokipona. In the second month this was reached by de, pl, fi, bg, ro, uk, ur. For all other Wikipedias there was more difference between the time of their first and their fifth user, although in reality there may be some more because there might be non-registered users as well."
If we were to adopt a policy as severe as WikiTravel's, or even more severe as you are advocating, we might be without some of our largest Wikipedias.
Also, my definition of "potential contributors" means all the people who speak the language and have Internet access, which in the case of Friulian is well over 5.
What fraction of the world's English speaking population is currently involved in the en:Wikipedia or any other English language sister project?
How is that relevant? We are talking about "potential contributors".
And how many people speak Kannada? Is it a language with only a couple hundred thousand speakers, like some of our active Wikipedias with over 100 (or even 1000) articles? No... not really... Well, what about under 1 million? No, not really. Under 10 million? Not really.
Far more than speak Friulian.
How is that relevant? What I'm saying is that kn.wikipedia was preexisting, and that it only had one or two people when it got off the ground.
Just as if we required people on en: to request a new article we would have much fewer articles, it takes more time and effort and may be confusing to some to figure out how to request a new language.
Educated Friulians also speak Italian. Educated Karnatakans also speak English.
And educated French people often speak English. Do you advocate that we get rid of the French Wikipedia? I certainly don't.
And how are they to know if there are already two people who would be interested in the creation of such a Wikipedia?
By discussing it with the people they know.
I meant, two people who have already supported it.
If you are interested in multilingualism, internationalism, and ultimately the building of an NPOV encyclopaedic resource in *any* language, it makes no sense to advocate such restrictions.
These "restrictions" are designed to promote the idea that a new wiki should have a chance to succeed.
Regardless of what they're designed to do, they do exactly the opposite. See again Andre's statistics.
But if we pursue such a policy, I do believe a fork with more liberal policies regarding multilingualism is in order
What makes you think that the operators of this hypothetical fork will not face the same problems?
What problems? What problems are preventing us from adding languages like Friulian just because somebody requests them, especially when we have (sometimes inactive) Wikipedias for Klingon, Latin, Sanskrit (it has native speakers now though), Toki Pona, Lojban, Occidental?
Do you mean the problem of people objecting to the creations of new Wikipedias? That would easily be solved by a pre-existing policy that allowed for more liberal multilinguistic activity.
If we deny such an opportunity to them, then I can no longer in good faith claim to support this organisation fully and will consider creating a new site and a new foundation with similar principles but with a stronger interest in having policies more greatly favouring multilingualism than what you have proposed.
You absolutely have that right, but I doubt that it will go beyond "consider". :-)
And I'm sure it _will_ go beyond "consider". In fact, I am currently searching for a host for the project, and if I can't find somebody who can host it for free, then I will spend my own money on good hosting for it because this is something that matters to me.
mw
On Sat, 2004-30-10 at 16:09 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
That brings up another thing. What's the big problem if we have a nearly empty Wikipedia for a while? How much space does that take up? As long as we aren't having heaps of requests to such a degree that we need a screening process so that we don't end up with 300 new Wikipedias by the end of the year, what's the huge problem?
The security of the computer running a wiki depends on having a healthy and attentive community actively involved in the wiki. If there is no community, the wiki software is a security risk. At the very least, it is an eyesore -- and a poor advertisement for this project.
If you're interested in running a wiki apart from Wikimedia, you can find lots of free Web hosting services that you can run it at. Here's a list of PHP-enabled free Web hosting services:
http://www.0php.com/free_PHP_hosting.php
Here's Yahoo!'s directory of free Web hosting services, some of which might also be able to run wiki software:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Communication...
If you decide to run a wiki on your own, you can either run MediaWiki, the great software that makes all the Wikimedia sites run:
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
...or you can try and use another Wiki engine. The canonical list is here:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines
There are a bunch that don't need MySQL behind them, which can make things easier if you're looking for free hosting.
Good luck!
~ESP
On Sunday 31 October 2004 03:36, Evan Prodromou wrote:
find lots of free Web hosting services that you can run it at. Here's a
My website www.wikinerds.org can also accept to host some small wikis for free depending on their content and how many server resources they use. You can send proposals at info@wikinerds.org
It's highly unlikely you'll be able to get even half of the educated Friulian-speaking population editing Wikipedia. Are they potential? Yes, in much the same way that I could potentially be killed by a falling polar bear from the sky as I type this.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Williamson wrote:
Also, my definition of "potential contributors" means all the people who speak the language and have Internet access, which in the case of Friulian is well over 5.
What fraction of the world's English speaking population is currently involved in the en:Wikipedia or any other English language sister project?
How is that relevant? We are talking about "potential contributors".
The difference is is that there is to my knowledge no such thing as a flying polar bear, yet there are real Friulian people with internet access.
On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 20:06:11 +0800, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
It's highly unlikely you'll be able to get even half of the educated Friulian-speaking population editing Wikipedia. Are they potential? Yes, in much the same way that I could potentially be killed by a falling polar bear from the sky as I type this.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Williamson wrote:
Also, my definition of "potential contributors" means all the people who speak the language and have Internet access, which in the case of Friulian is well over 5. What fraction of the world's English speaking population is currently involved in the en:Wikipedia or any other English language sister project? How is that relevant? We are talking about "potential contributors".
On Sunday 31 October 2004 21:15, Mark Williamson wrote:
there are real Friulian people with internet access. On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 20:06:11 +0800, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
It's highly unlikely you'll be able to get even half of the educated Friulian-speaking population editing Wikipedia.
I think a Friulian Wikipedia should exist and I am sure you will find enough Friulians to edit it. There are surely many people who know the language and want it to survive and if they learn about Friulian Wikipedia they will contribute.
Mark Williamson ti 2004/10/30 ChS 03:11 sia-kong:
Angela wrote: I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000 articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.
Hi,
If I may give a quote on the Cymru/Welsh WP, Arwel noted that "cy.wikipedia has about 5 active users now, after nearly a year, but it worked quite successfully in the early months with only 2 regular users." [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Artificial_languages_equal_rights]
Minnan/Southern Min started out with only 3. Now there are 6 registered users who have contributed articles, and a couple more with token edits. (Anon edits not counted.) Interestingly the editors did not all know each other beforehand, so it seems that a wikipedia may well serve as a channel for bringing together potential editors.
It's also worth noting that Wikipedia Gymru has over 1000 articles.
On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 11:42:07 -0500, Henry H. Tan-Tenn share2002nov@lomaji.com wrote:
Mark Williamson ti 2004/10/30 ChS 03:11 sia-kong:
Angela wrote: I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000 articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.
Hi,
If I may give a quote on the Cymru/Welsh WP, Arwel noted that "cy.wikipedia has about 5 active users now, after nearly a year, but it worked quite successfully in the early months with only 2 regular users." [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Artificial_languages_equal_rights]
Minnan/Southern Min started out with only 3. Now there are 6 registered users who have contributed articles, and a couple more with token edits. (Anon edits not counted.) Interestingly the editors did not all know each other beforehand, so it seems that a wikipedia may well serve as a channel for bringing together potential editors.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi,
Le Saturday 30 October 2004 08:37, Angela a écrit :
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
wrote:
I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
This would be my third request for an Italian minority language Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1. Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding whether another minority language should be started without a more significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
Yes, I think also that's a good policy.
Angela.
Best wishes, Yann
Keep in mind that with that policy, gu.wikipedia would not currently exist.
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 12:12:59 +0200, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Hi,
Le Saturday 30 October 2004 08:37, Angela a écrit :
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
wrote:
I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
This would be my third request for an Italian minority language Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1. Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding whether another minority language should be started without a more significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five potential contributors before starting a new language. See http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
Yes, I think also that's a good policy.
Angela.
Best wishes, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux _______________________________________________
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