[Foundation-l] A dangerous precedent

[Milos Rancic]

So, let's try analyze a couple of random pages from Volapuk Wikipedia
and its interwikis:

1) Bisigen, town in Germany [1]

Interwikis:
- German - it has a lot of text with two images. The best article about Bisigen.
- English - bot generated article.
- Esperanto - bot generated article.
- Italian - bot generated article.
- Dutch - bot generated article.
- Polish - bot generated article.
- Portuguese - bot generated article.
- Romanian - bot generated article.
- Russian - bot generated article which I prefer: It took even an
image (possible the only one in that time) from article in German [2].

2) Rossana, municipality in Piedmnot, Italy [3]

- German - bot generated article.
- English - a good bot generated article.
- Esperanto - bot generated article.
- French - bot generated article.
- Italian - a good bot generated article with addition in the history section.
- Japanese - bot generated article.
- Napolitan - bot generated article.
- Dutch - bot generated article.
- Polish - bot generated article.
- Piedmontese - bot generated article.
- Portuguese - bot generated article.

3) Santana do Livramento, city in Southern Brazil with 200.000 of
inhabitants [4]

- Bishnupriya - looks like a *very* good bot generated article; at the
first look I thought that it is not a bot generated article.
- German - ... ups, sorry, nothing about a city with 200.000 of
inhabitants in German.
- English - maybe it *was* a bot generated article, but today it looks
like a normal smaller article.
- Spanish - maybe it was a bot generated article, but today it looks
like a normal smaller article.
- Dutch - doesn't like a bot generated article.
- Norwegian (Bokmal) - bot generated article
- Portuguese - the best article about Santana de Livramento.
- Romanian - bot generated article.

4) Bayeux, a town in France [5]. It seems that this article should be
fixed on Volapuk.

- Czech - bot generated article with some extra informations.
- Danish - possibly bot generated article with a link to Commons.
- German - possibly bot generated article with a lot of extra
informations; also very important to me because I saw that it has IPA
transcription of French (which is necessary for adding articles about
French places on Serbian Wikipedia).
- English - similar to German, more photos, less text.
- Esperanto - bot generated article.
- Spanish - similar to German, but smaller.
- Finnish - maybe bot generated article with some extra informations.
- French - of course, the best article; some recent featured articles
from English Wikipedia are not so long.
- Italian - bot generated article with some extra informations.
- Japanese - possibly bot generated article with some extra informations.
- Latin - bot generated article; like in the most of similar examples,
it seems that someone added automatically an image from Commons.
- Dutch - bot generated article with some extra informations.
- Norwegian (Nynorsk) - bot generated article with some extra informations.
- Norwegian (Bokmal) - bot generated article with some extra informations.
- Polish - bot generated article with some extra informations.
- Portuguese - bot generated article (like Latin).
- Romanian - possibly bot generated article which expanded into a good article.
- Russian - doesn't look like a bot generated article, but a smaller one.
- Slovenian - bot generated article, but like in Romanian case,
expanded into a much better article (while not so good like Romanian).
- Serbian - (the first version of this article added my bot) - bot
generated article with some extra informations.
- Swedish - maybe a bot generated article with some extra informations.
- Vietnamese - bot generated article.
- Chinese - possibly a bot generated article.

5) Trappe, Maryland, USA [6]

This article is fully translated article (possibly Rambot's) from
English Wikipedia. Article is generated, but it looks more then valid.

- English - possibly fully Rambot's work.
- Dutch - not so narrative like English, but with an interesting add-on.
- Portuguese - the same as Dutch version.

* * *

This was 5 of the first 6 articles on which i clicked (fifth was one
more place in France, but by mistake I closed that window).

So, conclusions are:

- German Wikipedia also uses bots. Some of those articles on German
Wikipedia are at the same level of quality. Which implies that
contributors to German Wikipedia should think firstly about their
project.

- Some of the articles from German Wikipedia were bot generated
articles which evolved into much better articles. This implies that
contributors from Greman Wikipedia which denies the same right (of
evolving articles) to the contributors of other projects are doing
that only because of their extremely high vanity: it seems that they
don't want that other projects become at the same level of quality
like German Wikipedia is.

- There are a lot of other projects which was and are adding articles
by bots. The reason why the target is Volapuk Wikipedia instead of
English, Italian, Polish, Dutch, even Chinese, Serbian, Napolitan...
-- I may only guess. The most possible reason is that contributors of
Volapuk Wikipedia has some personal problems with particular
contributors of German Wikipedia.

[1] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisingen
[2] - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Бизинген
[3] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossana
[4] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santana_do_Livramento
[5] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_(Fransän)
[6] - http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappe_(Maryland)

On 12/28/07, Daniel Arnold <arnomane at gmx.de> wrote:
> Am Freitag, 28. Dezember 2007 19:12:51 schrieb Gerard Meijssen:
> > [...] and the notion that an article without a
> > sentence can be informative is impossible to you.
>
> An encyclopedia article without a full sentence is indeed not able to be
> informative. I really don't want to discuss this trivial fact. Otherwise we
> will never get far.
>
> >. You are of the opinion that the Interwiki system is undermined by what you
> > indicate as the Volapuk "articles" but you provide no arguments for this
> > opinion whatsoever; it is an article of faith, your faith.
>
> Hm. I honestly don't know what I should answer in order to make a concrete
> problem more concrete.
>
> Maybe a single example (I know this one can be fixed quick, but there are
> thousands of articles with the same defect):
> http://vo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Férin Looks like if the Smeirabot went a bit
> crazy and forgot to write any real sentence in there. But sure the interwikis
> from the other wikipedias to this "article" don't undermine the interwiki
> system at all. Sure...
>
> > What you should do is try to understand what the
> > Volapuk Wikipedia, and for that matter similar projects, aims to achieve.
>
> They (no *he*!) want to promote Volapük as a language and attrac new editors
> with this edit cheating. Thats it. Nothing more. Smeira admitted this.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects%2FClosure_of_Volap%C3%BCk_Wikipedia&diff=707639&oldid=706939
>
> This is also a typical comment of him. Full of cloudy lenghty sentences, wild
> questioning and other techniques just in order to make the debate diffuse.
>
> Arnomane
>
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