Mark Williamson wrote:
A remerge has been suggested, but Enciclopedia Libre (Free Encyclopaedia) has been resistant and they are, after all, at an advantage because they have more articles than do we.
Where are you getting this information? From what I know, the Spanish Wikipedia passed Enciclopedia Libre in terms of article count a long time ago. The counts currently stated on their main pages are 50,508 (es.wikipedia.org) versus 28,165 (enciclopedia.us.es).
I do agree that being friendly and supportive is much more likely to bring them back in, on their own timetable, than trying to push the issue too much.
--Michael Snow
Oops.
I was thinking of another non-English semifork of Wikipedia which has way more articles than the Wikipedia version, and whose owner is deeply involved in Wikipedia but while bragging in private e-mails and on-list about how much work he/she does compared to others to put more free content online, does not consider allowing the corresponding language version of Wikipedia to share content.
*cough*
Mark
On 05/06/05, Michael Snow wikipedia@earthlink.net wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
A remerge has been suggested, but Enciclopedia Libre (Free Encyclopaedia) has been resistant and they are, after all, at an advantage because they have more articles than do we.
Where are you getting this information? From what I know, the Spanish Wikipedia passed Enciclopedia Libre in terms of article count a long time ago. The counts currently stated on their main pages are 50,508 (es.wikipedia.org) versus 28,165 (enciclopedia.us.es).
I do agree that being friendly and supportive is much more likely to bring them back in, on their own timetable, than trying to push the issue too much.
--Michael Snow _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
I was thinking of another non-English semifork of Wikipedia which has way more articles than the Wikipedia version, and whose owner is deeply involved in Wikipedia but while bragging in private e-mails and on-list about how much work he/she does compared to others to put more free content online, does not consider allowing the corresponding language version of Wikipedia to share content.
If they are GFDL, they cannot disallow that. If they are not GFDL, they are using material originally from Wikipedia illegally.
On June 5, Mark Williamson wrote:
I was thinking of another non-English semifork of Wikipedia which has way more articles than the Wikipedia version, and whose owner is deeply involved in Wikipedia but while bragging in private e-mails and on-list about how much work he/she does compared to others to put more free content online, does not consider allowing the corresponding language version of Wikipedia to share content.
*cough*
Now that you brought this up, why can't you spell the names out? Innocent people might feel accused and hurt by half-sung songs like this.
If they're so innocent, why would they be hurt by "half-sung songs"?
Mark
On 10/06/05, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
On June 5, Mark Williamson wrote:
I was thinking of another non-English semifork of Wikipedia which has way more articles than the Wikipedia version, and whose owner is deeply involved in Wikipedia but while bragging in private e-mails and on-list about how much work he/she does compared to others to put more free content online, does not consider allowing the corresponding language version of Wikipedia to share content.
*cough*
Now that you brought this up, why can't you spell the names out? Innocent people might feel accused and hurt by half-sung songs like this.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
If they're so innocent, why would they be hurt by "half-sung songs"?
Come on, Mark. Part of your description matches myself and my website susning.nu, a big non-English wiki. Some readers might believe that you are pointing at me, and conclude that the other information is some kind of truth about me. That hurts me. If you really believe what you wrote, then I'm here to clarify any misunderstandings and answer your questions. If you mean someone else, you will save me a lot of trouble by saying so.
Perhaps you mean Erik Möller and his infoAnarchy? Perhaps you mean Jimbo Wales and his Wikicities?
I'll assume the worst, and clarify your points as if they were relating to me. As far as I know, you don't speak Swedish and are not a contributor to the Swedish Wikipedia, and so it disturbs me to learn that you might have such strong and possibly damaging opinions about me. Who gave you these impressions? Should you be more careful with trusting your sources?
I was thinking of another non-English semifork of Wikipedia
Susning.nu has never been a fork (or "semifork", whatever that is) of Wikipedia. It is a big Swedish wiki that I started from scratch after Larry Sanger made it clear that what I wanted to do would fall outside of Wikipedia's strictly encyclopedic scope. Not a single text has been copied or translated from Wikipedia to Susning.nu. If that happened, it would be a copyright violation (unless the author dual licensed the text), since susning.nu does not enforce the GFDL license like Wikipedia does. In many cases, susning.nu contributors have later copied their own texts to the Swedish Wikipedia, which of course is perfectly OK.
which has way more articles than the Wikipedia version, and
This could be said a year ago, but today Susning.nu has 58,400 articles, while the Swedish Wikipedia has 80,600.
whose owner is deeply involved in Wikipedia but while
I'm not "deeply involved" in Wikipedia. I'm an occasional contributor (user:LA2), but I've never been and have never aspired to be an administrator, bureaucrat, board member or developer of Wikipedia. On the contrary, I've been extremely careful to point out the difference between the two projects, and kept myself at arm's length distance from anything Wikipedia. I've never participated in any vote or opinion poll on how to run the project.
bragging in private e-mails and on-list about how much work he/she does compared to others to put more free content online,
Back in 1992, I started Project Runeberg (runeberg.org), the Scandinavian e-text project, which possibly was the first "clone" of Project Gutenberg. In the more than 12 years since, quite a lot of out-of-copyright literature has been digitized there, including several old encyclopedias. Much of this has benefited the Swedish, Danish, and Finnish Wikipedia. No description of who I am would be complete without mentioning this. I've spent more hours on Project Runeberg than on any job or hobby I've ever had.
does not consider allowing the corresponding language version of Wikipedia to share content.
I'm contributing *some* of my texts and photos to Wikipedia, but that's not to say that everything I write or do is released for free. Especially, the texts that I wrote for susning.nu are under my copyright without open licensing. What others do with their texts on susning.nu is their decision, and the site does not force contributors to use any particular license. In practice, this makes mirroring of the entire site impossible, and that is a deliberate choice; I don't believe in website mirroring. I've also written texts and software for other purposes and customers. These texts belong to me or my customers and the copyright holders decide what or how to license them.
No, it wasn't directed at you and Susning.nu, it doesn't match because as you said Susning has fewer articles than the Swedish Wikipedia, and it doesn't share any articles.
But the part that does match is about you bragging (though to be fair, you don't do it often). Simply describing that you are involved with this project and that it has done so much, or whatever, is fine with me and is most certainly not bragging. HOWEVER,, some of the comments you have directed at me in other threads are definitely bragging. (if you don't know which comments I'm talking about, I'll be happy to point them out)
Mark
On 10/06/05, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
If they're so innocent, why would they be hurt by "half-sung songs"?
Come on, Mark. Part of your description matches myself and my website susning.nu, a big non-English wiki. Some readers might believe that you are pointing at me, and conclude that the other information is some kind of truth about me. That hurts me. If you really believe what you wrote, then I'm here to clarify any misunderstandings and answer your questions. If you mean someone else, you will save me a lot of trouble by saying so.
Perhaps you mean Erik Möller and his infoAnarchy? Perhaps you mean Jimbo Wales and his Wikicities?
I'll assume the worst, and clarify your points as if they were relating to me. As far as I know, you don't speak Swedish and are not a contributor to the Swedish Wikipedia, and so it disturbs me to learn that you might have such strong and possibly damaging opinions about me. Who gave you these impressions? Should you be more careful with trusting your sources?
I was thinking of another non-English semifork of Wikipedia
Susning.nu has never been a fork (or "semifork", whatever that is) of Wikipedia. It is a big Swedish wiki that I started from scratch after Larry Sanger made it clear that what I wanted to do would fall outside of Wikipedia's strictly encyclopedic scope. Not a single text has been copied or translated from Wikipedia to Susning.nu. If that happened, it would be a copyright violation (unless the author dual licensed the text), since susning.nu does not enforce the GFDL license like Wikipedia does. In many cases, susning.nu contributors have later copied their own texts to the Swedish Wikipedia, which of course is perfectly OK.
which has way more articles than the Wikipedia version, and
This could be said a year ago, but today Susning.nu has 58,400 articles, while the Swedish Wikipedia has 80,600.
whose owner is deeply involved in Wikipedia but while
I'm not "deeply involved" in Wikipedia. I'm an occasional contributor (user:LA2), but I've never been and have never aspired to be an administrator, bureaucrat, board member or developer of Wikipedia. On the contrary, I've been extremely careful to point out the difference between the two projects, and kept myself at arm's length distance from anything Wikipedia. I've never participated in any vote or opinion poll on how to run the project.
bragging in private e-mails and on-list about how much work he/she does compared to others to put more free content online,
Back in 1992, I started Project Runeberg (runeberg.org), the Scandinavian e-text project, which possibly was the first "clone" of Project Gutenberg. In the more than 12 years since, quite a lot of out-of-copyright literature has been digitized there, including several old encyclopedias. Much of this has benefited the Swedish, Danish, and Finnish Wikipedia. No description of who I am would be complete without mentioning this. I've spent more hours on Project Runeberg than on any job or hobby I've ever had.
does not consider allowing the corresponding language version of Wikipedia to share content.
I'm contributing *some* of my texts and photos to Wikipedia, but that's not to say that everything I write or do is released for free. Especially, the texts that I wrote for susning.nu are under my copyright without open licensing. What others do with their texts on susning.nu is their decision, and the site does not force contributors to use any particular license. In practice, this makes mirroring of the entire site impossible, and that is a deliberate choice; I don't believe in website mirroring. I've also written texts and software for other purposes and customers. These texts belong to me or my customers and the copyright holders decide what or how to license them.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Mark Williamson wrote:
No, it wasn't directed at you and Susning.nu, it doesn't match because as you said Susning has fewer articles than the Swedish Wikipedia, and it doesn't share any articles.
I would like to say that I share Lars distaste for you making criticisms that might be about any number of people in such a backhanded way. If you want to criticize someone please just say the name so we can know what you're talking about.
--Jimbo
Short answer: No.
Long answer:The point of not naming names is that you don't name names. Some people may feel they are the target even if they are not, but it saves face for the real target and for the original person as there is no specific accusation directed at a specific person.
If you were to ask an expert on Western social customs, you'd find that it's often -- if not usually -- considered more polite to accuse one single person in very general terms, so that they know you're talking about them but nobody else does, than to give your criticisms to a specific person in front of the whole crowd.
An example might be, speaking in front of a crowd, saying "Almost all of you did a terrific job. However, there are some people here in whom I am disappointed. You know who you are" is better than saying "Everybody did well except John Doe, Jane Smith, and Tom Buck, in all of whom I am extremely disappointed".
Mark
On 12/06/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
No, it wasn't directed at you and Susning.nu, it doesn't match because as you said Susning has fewer articles than the Swedish Wikipedia, and it doesn't share any articles.
I would like to say that I share Lars distaste for you making criticisms that might be about any number of people in such a backhanded way. If you want to criticize someone please just say the name so we can know what you're talking about.
--Jimbo
"Mark Williamson" node.ue@gmail.com wrote in message news:849f98ed0506130501469f774f@mail.gmail.com... [snip]
An example might be, speaking in front of a crowd, saying "Almost all of you did a terrific job. However, there are some people here in whom I am disappointed. You know who you are" is better than saying "Everybody did well except John Doe, Jane Smith, and Tom Buck, in all of whom I am extremely disappointed".
A couple of points. Firstly, the above smacks of a boss-worker relationship, which AFAIK does not hold within Wikipedia, except maybe with Jimbo :-)
Second, this is only actually worthwhile if you have already spoken to those with whom you are disappointed, so that they know (so that arrogant b*st*rd John Doe can't sit there smugly and think "well, he's not talking about me") and also if you make it quite clear that you are *not* disappointed with anyone with whom you have not already spoken (so that shy, timid Alice Mouseling doesn't sit there quaking in her chair thinking "he must mean me").
Whether or not you've spoken to the arrogant b*st*rds to whom your words are really directed, there are many shy timid types who will think you mean them and will take great hurt from your perceived criticism.
Phil Boswell wrote:
A couple of points. Firstly, the above smacks of a boss-worker relationship, which AFAIK does not hold within Wikipedia, except maybe with Jimbo :-)
Yes, I work for all of you, and expect to be publicly abused when I screw up and disappoint people. :-)
Mark Williamson wrote:
An example might be, speaking in front of a crowd, saying "Almost all of you did a terrific job. However, there are some people here in whom I am disappointed. You know who you are" is better than saying "Everybody did well except John Doe, Jane Smith, and Tom Buck, in all of whom I am extremely disappointed".
No, Mark, I don't agree. What you did was more like saying "someone in this room smells bad", which has the effect of several innocent people feeling hit, but the one guilty most likely doesn't at all understand that he is accused. Specifically, I had no way of knowing if I was accused by your criticism, so I felt forced to present a preemptive defense, to avoid false rumors from spreading. In the situation you describe above, the good leader would first have talked to the individuals in private, who would then "know who they are" without guessing.
On 10/06/05, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Now that you brought this up, why can't you spell the names out? Innocent people might feel accused and hurt by half-sung songs like this.
On 10/06/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
If they're so innocent, why would they be hurt by "half-sung songs"?
Because, as Lars' seemingly unnecessary rebuttal showed, it's impossible to distinguish between you being mistaken in your facts about someone and the facts being correct but about someone else. In a sense, it means no-one can deny your claims, because they don't know whether you're talking about them or not - they either have to silently suspect you mean them, or risk giving you ammunition to say "I wasn't thinking of you, but...".
http://nytimes.com/2005/06/13/business/media/13lat.html
"wikitorials"
For people who can't be bothered to go to bugmenot:
This week, the newspaper, will introduce an online feature called "wikitorials," as a way for readers to engage in an online dialogue with the paper. The model is based on "Wikipedia," the Web's free-content encyclopedia that is edited by online contributors.
"We'll have some editorials where you can go online and edit an editorial to your satisfaction," Mr. Martinez said. "We are going to do that with selected editorials initially. We don't know how this is going to turn out. It's all about finding new ways to allow readers to interact with us in the age of the Web."
Mr. Kinsley said that he was just trying something new with the wikitorials.
"It may be a complete mess but it's going to be interesting to try," he said. "Wikitorials may be one of those things that within six months will be standard. It's the ultimate in reader participation."
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org