Wikimedia-l August 2006

115 participants
129 discussions

[Foundation-l] How I should consider GFDL in shared content?
by valdelli＠bluemail.ch 29 Aug '06

29 Aug '06

I have a doubt. GFDL used by Wikipedia said that the content is free but "providing that its authors are attributed". In this case the history is strictly connected to the content. I could use content but I should have the related history. If I transfer an article from a project to another (i.e. from Wikipedia to Wikitionary) how I could respect this rule? The history is in the old article, I don't know a way to transfer also the history. The presence of a link in the new article linked to the old could be a good choice? If I transfer the content and I delete the article in the old position, what I could do in this case? Regards Ilario

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[Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures
by Garion96 29 Aug '06

29 Aug '06

Regarding Jimmy Wales's comment here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3APublicity_photos… concerning fair use. To quote "In general, ordinary publicity photos of celebrities should not be used in Wikipedia unless they are released under a free license. We are powerful enough now that we can insist on this, and get it, from just about any celebrity, or we can get a free photo in a number of different ways. Using fair use in such cases discourages us from creatively looking for a way to enlarge the commons." Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater chance of success if it is coming from the foundation. Garion96

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[Foundation-l] Swahili Machine Translation First Run Completed for enwiki-20060817
by Jeffrey V. Merkey 29 Aug '06

29 Aug '06

The first pass machine translation run of the English Wikipedia into the Swahili Language has completed and is posted. The translated XML dumps are posting to : http://sw.wikigadugi.org they will post throughout the night. Lexicons can be downloaded from: ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/africa/lexicon/swlexicon.public.bz2 - public swahili lexicon ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/africa/lexicon/swlexicon.kamusi.bz2 - kamusi project lexicon ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/africa/lexicon/sw.thesaurus.bz2 - rogets thesaurus in swahili MediaWiki Messages Files: ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/africa/MediWiki/MessagesSW.php.bz2 Machine Translated XML Dumps against the ewiki-20060817 XMl Dumps from the English Wikipedia: ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/africa/xml/swphwiki-20060816-pages-articles.xml.bz2 This first run does NOT employe the verb stem decomposer and conjugator, does NOT employ the grammar parser or sentence composer, does NOT employ the AI Inference engine, and does not perform verb or noun disambiguation as do the other machine translations as I have not constructed a decomposition rule set or grammar rules set for the translator. This first run uses simple word by word translation and phrase matching with hierarchical thesaurus lookups and substitution. This first pass is provided as an illustration of just how rapidly Wikipedia can be translated into a target language. A swahili grammar manual has been overnighted to me and later this week I will perform another run with grammar and sentence parsing rules. Since I am not a native speaker of swahili, I request a native speaker to select 20 or more very long articles and correc them. When I completed the disambiguator and grammar rules set for sentence construction, I will use the corrected articles to teach the AI engine how to reorder and retense the translations. This should get the translations over 90% accurracy. Unlike Cherokee, swahili appears to be a much simpler language for this task. The Machine translation of swahili is a VERY early first run and is a work in progress. Jeffrey V. Merkey

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: Hadraj Said
by Guillaume Paumier 29 Aug '06

29 Aug '06

Hello, As Hadraj can't speak English, I am sending this email for him. Hadraj has decided to withdraw his candidacy to the Board for health reasons. g. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: said hadraj <hadraj_said(a)yahoo.fr> Date: Aug 28, 2006 11:04 PM Subject: Hadraj Said To: guillom.pom(a)gmail.com Bonsoir Je vous remercie fort bien pour vore collaboration,je vous informe que je retire ma candidature pour des raisons de santé . Mrci cordialement Hadraj Said ------------------------------ Découvrez un nouveau moyen de poser toutes vos questions quelque soit le sujet ! Yahoo! Questions/Réponses pour partager vos connaissances, vos opinions et vos expériences. Cliquez ici<http://fr.rd.yahoo.com/evt=42054/*http://fr.answers.yahoo.com>. -- Guillaume Paumier Disciplus Simplex http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile — You will be assimilated.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Idea for New Wikimedia Project, possible adjunct to Wikiversity
by No Spam 29 Aug '06

29 Aug '06

<Virgil Ierubino Wrote:> > I already have a live version of this in use, at Cambridge University, so > I've already very thoroughly thought about the problems it could face, and > worked out (I believe) viable ways around them. For now I'd like to just > discuss the basic idea. The idea is clearer with a university example: Virgil, In your current implementation, at Cambridge, are you witnessing any change in behavior from note takers? I envision a moral hazard, or a kind-of prisoner's dilemma, manifested in lazy students waiting for others to post notes. Then, eventually, note-takers catch on and stop posting... How's that playing out in your prototype setting? Al

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[Foundation-l] Swahili Machine Translation in Process - Estimated Compeltion of Total Swahili Translation - 4 hours from now ....
by Jeff V. Merkey 29 Aug '06

29 Aug '06

I have obtained Martin's lexicons and several others from the web and have already build the lexicon hiearchy. I very kind contributor is also sending me a grammar reference for this language. Estimated time for complettion of full machine translation of Wikipedia into Swahili is four hours. First pass is phrase and word by word machine translation with no conjungation, verb stem decompositon, or inference engine restructuring. The full site will be active four hours from now. If Martin will take 20 or so articles and correct any teensing and conjugation issues and return these changes, I will feed them through the inference engine and run a second pass to reorder the translations. Jeff

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[Foundation-l] African Languages Wikipedia Bashing on Slashdot
by Martin Benjamin 28 Aug '06

28 Aug '06

Regarding Jeffrey Merkey's earlier post, with all respect, the issue of machine translation is not one that can be addressed in a few weeks with a couple of native speakers. This isn't the forum to discuss the nitty-gritty of machine translation issues, however, other than to say that the quality of Wikipedia entries is much more important than the quantity, and the only real path to quality Wikipedia entries in African languages is through real human labor. The Slashdot discussion is interesting, mostly in what it reveals about the state of knowledge (or lack thereof) in the tech world about most things African. Many /.ers write with the attitude that, because African languages don't matter to them, they don't matter. These are my comments following on the Slashdot riffs on the article. The recurring theme of the /. conversation is, why should people waste their time creating African language Wikipedias if the languages have low literacy and few computer users? However, the original NYT article was written about a discussion that has moved well beyond that level. The questions that the people working on African language Wikipedias (who have a new discussion list, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis ) are asking are more like these: * Can some of Africa's entrenched economic difficulties relate to the fact that many of her people do not have access to literacy in the languages they speak and use on a daily basis? * How much of the lack of literacy in many languages is related to the lack of a systematic effort to produce written materials in those languages? * If a critical mass of written materials were produced for a given language, would it create the necessary foundation for widespread literacy in that language among speakers of that language? * If speakers of a given language were to develop literacy in that language, rather than having to learn an entirely different language (such as English or Arabic) in order to engage in written communications (send emails, write blogs, read newspapers, get commodity market and weather reports relevant to the crops they grow, apply for jobs, evaluate the truth claims of politicians, etc), might that literacy be a key to overcoming the continent's persistent economic difficulties? * Given the certified failure of print publishers and government agencies (colonial and post-colonial) to produce literacy materials in most African languages during the past 150 years, and the rapid success of the Wikipedia model in producing vast amounts of knowledge material quickly, might the resources of the Wikipedia world be a way to address the issues of creating literacy materials for those languages? * If One Laptop Per Child is indeed a foreseeable reality, and if Wikipedia is going to come prebundled, and if having literacy materials in the language a child speaks is a key to the ultimate success and usefulness of OLPC, isn't creating a good Wikipedia in that child's language an issue of somewhat immediate concern? * If any or all of the above, but also given the slow pace of African language Wikipedias to date, what have the barriers been thus far, and how can those barriers be overcome in a timely and systematic way?

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[Foundation-l] New Project Proposal: Wikinotes - Discussion
by Virgil Ierubino 28 Aug '06

28 Aug '06

See original mailing list proposal: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-August/009520.html In reply to Eric: I agree that interaction with real-world institutions would be a very good addition to the existing, new Wikiversity. Hence I think this project proposal works best as a direct adjunct to it, either at a seperate domain or as a subsection. However what I'm suggesting is a) not Wikiversity and b) a very good way to achieve that aim, it's the bridge between the institutions, the students, and Wikiversity. In reply to AI: The "moral" problem raised doesn't and shouldn't really exist, if it is understood that the purpose of the site is for writing, and 1% for reading. The way students benefit is by typing up their notes (which helps ingrain the knowledge, etc), typsetting them, structuring and organising them (builds a mental map). Very little is gained from reading someone else's notes; if a student "gets lazy" then s/he won't get very far anyway. The site can obviously also remind them of this. As Ray wrote, "the act of note-taking is a part of the learning process. Reading notes does not have the same effect on the mind as actually writing them down where students will benefit from the notes even if they never review them again in the future." So the sharing is beneficial, yes, but the largest gain is from actually working on, and writing the notes oneself. Just like editing a Wikipedia article a lot makes you really take in its content more than reading it. The shared notes is a main facet, but could not usefully be the only facet for a visiting student. In reply to Andrew: As for problems of plagiarism, sharing notes is not, and never has been plagiarism. Obviously, plagiarism, like non-free images on Wikipedia, is against Wikinotes policy; plagiarism could occur if a student uploaded a portion of his/her essay to the site, was giving direct answers to exam questions, etc. All of these would be strictly against policy. However I think you'll find that in practise no one is likely to upload a whole essay. More to the point, the collaborative writing of notes is in no way plagiarism; learning institutions encourage their students to work together in such a way. Yes, there would be hundreds and hundreds of categories, and yes the students will have to identify three things (in current implementation) - their University (or institution), their Course (or class) and the Course Part (or other identifier). These three things form a category: [[Category:University Course Part]], e.g. [[Category:Cambridge Philosophy 1A]]. This will always be enough to single out any class. The categories are heirarchical. [[Category:Cambridge Philosophy 1A]] is a subcategory of [[Category:Cambridge Philosophy]] (which also holds [[Category:Cambridge Philosophy 1B]], etc), which is a subcategoy of [[Category:Cambridge]] (which also holds a category for every other subject at the institution, e.g. [[Category:Cambridge Engineering]]). The subcategorisation process *could* be automated by bots. In my current version, it relies on a student at some point clicking on a red link within the categories box at the bottom of their page, which brings up a edit box preceded by instructions to subcategorise. Also note that this heirarchy is not essential to the functioning of the wiki, but does streamline it. If bots are impossible, subcategorisation would be an on-going task of the wiki (like CSD, orphaned pages, etc, at Wikipedia) - although after a short time a complete category heirarchy will emerge with little need for any further changes. Lots of boilerplate text may be needed, much of which makes it easier to perform the above categorisations. This poses an initial "setting up" problem, but not a damning problem. It would just require work. I've already done most of this work at my implementation anyway. *Forcing* the students to typeset their notes would yes, be more useful to them, but you need to remember what kind of site this is. Instead of forcing this on them (which would reduce the userbase to about 1%), they can just know that what they put in is what they take out. The site highly encourages them to structure, organise and typset their notes as this is very beneficial, and is a work ethic the wiki embraces. But they don't *have* to.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: NYTimes.com: African Languages Grow as a Wikipedia Pr...
by daniwo59＠aol.com 28 Aug '06

28 Aug '06

In a message dated 8/27/2006 6:17:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time, gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com writes: It is imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not that simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African settings. Actually, the article cited doesnt mention WiktionaryZ, which was the bulk of your email. I am talking in principle, when we refer to projects that need a nudge, let's not just focus on African languages because it happens to be in vogue. There are plenty of other important languages out there that also need a gentle push so that they can reach their full potential. Danny

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[Foundation-l] Approved requests for new languages: Siberian
by Александр Сигачёв 28 Aug '06

28 Aug '06

It's interesting. Siberian language is in list of approved requests for new languages. It has more then 1000 articles in Incubator. http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-WP/chal Siberian language does not have an ISO code. Where are no article or any references to the language in English Wikipedia. >From official site of the language: "It is project of language based on old north dialects of Russian language". >From http://wikiznanie.ru "Siberian language was created in 2005." I can not find discussion about this language in archive of "Requests for new languages". Where were 30 (or more) votes "oppose" in August 8, but where are only 15 votes "oppose" in summary about the language in the approved list. See list of "support" votes in history of the discussion. http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_new_languages&oldi… They are mostly anonymous. So, was this language really approved? -- Alexander Sigachov http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/user/ajvol

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Wikimedia-l August 2006