On 07/01/2010 12:22 PM, ThomasV wrote:
I apologize for the length of my answer. I wish to thank those who have had the patience to read this entire post.
The problem is not a long post or two, but the fact that you seem to have locked yourself to this single issue. I'd like to discuss some far more visionary changes in how Wikisource works, but all you can talk about are these two stages of proofreading.
Let me start from another angle: Does anybody have experience from teaching beginners how to contribute to Wikisource? What are the hardest concepts to explain? I think we should compile and rank the current obstacles to the growth of Wikisource.
Just as one example, I would put the multiple namespaces (Index: and Page:) pretty high on that list, and I think that a redesign could do away with them. There was indeed a bug report filed for something similar, from the Polish community, that wanted to disconnect the naming of Index pages from the naming of PDF/Djvu files:
"<pagelist> should have file parameter", https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21398
ThomasV replied with "WONTFIX", which is understandable since this is not a simple bug fix, but a more complicated change of architecture. The problem is that this architecture was never documented, so we don't know which the design decisions are. Or was it?
This is just one example of how Wikisource is really overly complicated, putting extra burden on newcomers, and where Wikisource would benefit from a redesign. But my suggestion is that we start to compile a catalog of such problems, rather than submitting bug reports. Where is a good place to start?
2010/7/3 Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se:
Let me start from another angle: Does anybody have experience from teaching beginners how to contribute to Wikisource? What are the hardest concepts to explain? I think we should compile and rank the current obstacles to the growth of Wikisource.
There's a serious and overlooked problem that makes both contributing and reading hard for many people: a considerable number of texts use special characters which aren't supported in regular fonts. This is not a matter of pure aesthetics like Arial-vs.-Helvetica, but complete omission of characters or even scripts.
For example, there are several grammar books in the English Wikisource (see http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Category:Grammar ). Among them are Hebrew, Burmese and Sanskrit. Without manually installing proper fonts it's impossible to view any of them properly on Windows XP; the situation with GNU/Linux and Windows 7 is somewhat better, but still not perfect.
Bug 2361 ( https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2361 ) could possibly solve it, at least partly, but there hasn't been any activity in it for a long time/
Hello!
This seems somewhat related to the problems we have at Wikibooks. There is plenty of bugs which describe these problems, and I think some of them are also problems at Wikisource: * Wikibooks custom database schema ( https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15071) * Create a set of special pages for handling meta-organization of books ( https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15073) * Separate reference page for glossaries, bibliographies, etc ( https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10092) * Protect, watchlist or delete a whole book at once ( https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15072) * List, count and search all books ( https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15074) * Per-book stylesheets (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15075 ) * Allow <ref>s from multiple pages to be collected into one <references/> on another page (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15070)
Helder
On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 09:31, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
On 07/01/2010 12:22 PM, ThomasV wrote:
I apologize for the length of my answer. I wish to thank those who have had the patience to read this entire post.
The problem is not a long post or two, but the fact that you seem to have locked yourself to this single issue. I'd like to discuss some far more visionary changes in how Wikisource works, but all you can talk about are these two stages of proofreading.
Let me start from another angle: Does anybody have experience from teaching beginners how to contribute to Wikisource? What are the hardest concepts to explain? I think we should compile and rank the current obstacles to the growth of Wikisource.
Just as one example, I would put the multiple namespaces (Index: and Page:) pretty high on that list, and I think that a redesign could do away with them. There was indeed a bug report filed for something similar, from the Polish community, that wanted to disconnect the naming of Index pages from the naming of PDF/Djvu files:
"<pagelist> should have file parameter", https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21398
ThomasV replied with "WONTFIX", which is understandable since this is not a simple bug fix, but a more complicated change of architecture. The problem is that this architecture was never documented, so we don't know which the design decisions are. Or was it?
This is just one example of how Wikisource is really overly complicated, putting extra burden on newcomers, and where Wikisource would benefit from a redesign. But my suggestion is that we start to compile a catalog of such problems, rather than submitting bug reports. Where is a good place to start?
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 07/04/2010 07:54 PM, Helder Geovane wrote:
This seems somewhat related to the problems we have at Wikibooks. There is plenty of bugs which describe these problems, and I think some of them are also problems at Wikisource:
Indeed! Have you in Wikibooks tried to coordinate software development in this area? E.g. getting WMF or the national chapters to fund a development project to address these issues? Or did you just submit individual bug reports?
Far from the idea of splitting down wikisource family into fighting groups, the post of Helder underlines how much would be important to keep in contact different projects and to find common troubles and strategies.
Another example is the use of *DynamicPageList extension*: it is used into wikinews only, but it would be great into wikibooks and wikisource too to produce good, updated lists by "virtual categories intersection".
Alex
Not replying to list.
On 7/3/10 5:31 AM, Lars Aronsson wrote:
The problem is not a long post or two, but the fact that you seem to have locked yourself to this single issue. I'd like to discuss some far more visionary changes in how Wikisource works, but all you can talk about are these two stages of proofreading.
Hi there. This wasn't a thread to which I had anything to contribute, but I have to say I found your post rather depressing to read.
Are you aware that you insult ThomasV twice in this first paragraph?
1 - You have locked yourself into this single issue 2 - All you can talk about
Twice you assert that ThomasV has some sort of congenital defect that prevents him from seeing the bigger picture. There's a difference between saying "you aren't seeing the bigger picture" and "you are *incapable* of seeing the bigger picture".
If he really is incapable of seeing the bigger picture, why are you requesting that he do something? It's one thing to insult someone, but to insult someone and then demand that they do your bidding is worse. To insult someone, then to imply that you are a superior individual, and then expect them to do your bidding is a bit... extreme.
Can I suggest that next time, you focus on what you have to contribute, rather than who is smarter?
And maybe consider that other people just have a different perspective or priorities than you do?
And if you really have to criticize someone's behaviour, then do so. But consider that there's little point in labelling someone as deficient, especially if you are trying to get them to do something.
On 7/4/10 2:58 PM, Neil Kandalgaonkar wrote:
Not replying to list.
Oops - it seems I didn't check that carefully enough.
I don't feel that calling someone out like that ought to happen in public. I apologize to Lars & the list.
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