Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread doc
Ian Woollard wrote: On 30/03/2009, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: And then someone will come up with a better way of delivering information than a wiki... Probably, but I think people, if they still live, will still be talking about the wikipedia in a thousand years, like they still

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Carcharoth
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 9:31 AM, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: snip Further, I'm no historian of technology. Read up on it - it is fascinating. But the lesson surely is that not much lasts for long. Some technologies endure, but just change. Telecommunications, for example. People

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Peter Coombe
2009/3/31 David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com:  Britannica in its various incarnations and Encarta were excellent and useful reference works. Britannica remains useful.  Encarta I think could have remained useful also. I really regret that we had a role in killing it.  Why should we be pleased?

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread WJhonson
By plastic records do you mean vinyl ? Vinyl is what they are made from. They are still making new vinyl. You need to *not* go to some uptown shop and instead shop at the hard-code music stores. I have no idea why full price shops aren't selling vinyl anymore, but new vinyl is still coming

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Michel Vuijlsteke
2009/3/31 doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com Today's unassailable phenomena, which no one can see anyone displacing, is tomorrow's footnote. BASIC anyone? Sinclair? Plastic records? [[Visual Basic .NET]]! ___ WikiEN-l mailing list

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Nathan
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:45 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: Agreed. Though is it annoying when you see people working on things to address this, and then see critics, who inspired some people, carry on criticising the meta-processes, instead of supporting efforts made to

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Carcharoth
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:45 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: Agreed. Though is it annoying when you see people working on things to address this, and then see critics, who inspired some people, carry on

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Charles Matthews
Carcharoth wrote: On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 9:31 AM, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: snip The community hasn't really woken up to the fact that Wikipedia is no longer only an open shelf needing to be stacked, but it is a depository of a huge wealth of material that needs to be protected,

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Nathan wrote: On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:45 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: Agreed. Though is it annoying when you see people working on things to address this, and then see critics, who inspired some people, carry on criticising the meta-processes, instead of supporting

[WikiEN-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia

2009-03-31 Thread Håkon Wium Lie
In the quest to simplify and improve Wikipedia's HTML code, the turn has come to footnotes. Here is a proposal that describes how the number of elements needed to represent footnotes can be halved: http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/ref/ Some of the proposed changes seems to

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Ian Woollard
On 31/03/2009, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: The Library of Alexandria was with us for between 350 and a thousand years (depending on which history book you read), Wikipedia has been with us for a total of 8. Yes, and it's been ranked about 8 on the entire freaking internet for a lot

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia

2009-03-31 Thread Michel Vuijlsteke
+1 2009/3/31 Håkon Wium Lie howc...@opera.com In the quest to simplify and improve Wikipedia's HTML code, the turn has come to footnotes. Here is a proposal that describes how the number of elements needed to represent footnotes can be halved:

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread David Gerard
2009/3/31 Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com: On 31/03/2009, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: The Library of Alexandria was with us for between 350 and a thousand years (depending on which history book you read), Wikipedia has been with us for a total of 8. Yes, and it's been ranked

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Carcharoth
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:57 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: snip (In image search, Google and all other search engines still suck. Here's to tagging coming to Commons.) Isn't that because people don't label, keyword or otherwise tag images properly? If they did, then Google would

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread David Gerard
2009/3/31 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:57 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: (In image search, Google and all other search engines still suck. Here's to tagging coming to Commons.) Isn't that because people don't label, keyword or otherwise tag

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread WJhonson
In a message dated 3/31/2009 9:58:16 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, dger...@gmail.com writes: (In image search, Google and all other search engines still suck. Here's to tagging coming to Commons.) Somewhere in my hazy memory I remember two projects I'd read about. There was a guy or a bunch of

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread WJhonson
In a message dated 3/31/2009 10:58:17 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, dger...@gmail.com writes: The plumbing of templates is horrible, but the actual template interface is simple. Presumably WYSIWYG editing tools can be tweaked to make it a fill-in form more accessibly. This would be the BOMB,

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread FT2
On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:45 PM, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: You realise, someday the announcement will read: Wikipedia has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional wiki encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread David Gerard
2009/3/31 wjhon...@aol.com: In a message dated 3/31/2009 10:58:17 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, dger...@gmail.com writes: The  plumbing of templates is horrible, but the actual template interface is  simple. Presumably WYSIWYG editing tools can be tweaked to make it a  fill-in form more

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread George Herbert
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 9:57 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/3/31 Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com: On 31/03/2009, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: The Library of Alexandria was with us for between 350 and a thousand years (depending on which history book you read),

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread WJhonson
The thing that sucked me away from Yahoo and over to Google was that Google actually crawled the net themselves. They did not rely on people submitting or knowing how to submit their pages. So if you just wait long enough, your page shows up. At least in theory. Remember when we used to

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Fred Bauder
The thing that sucked me away from Yahoo and over to Google was that Google actually crawled the net themselves. They did not rely on people submitting or knowing how to submit their pages. So if you just wait long enough, your page shows up. At least in theory. Remember when we used to

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread geni
2009/3/31 Peter Coombe thewub.w...@googlemail.com: I think the challenge now is for Wikipedia to try and fill the gap it has made. Wikipedia for schools is the best effort in that area. Wikipedia has never been very good at internally selecting subsections of wikipedia for best ofs and the

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread geni
2009/3/31 wjhon...@aol.com: In a message dated 3/31/2009 9:58:16 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, dger...@gmail.com writes: (In image search, Google and all other search engines still suck. Here's to tagging coming to Commons.) Somewhere in my hazy memory I remember two projects I'd read

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread geni
2009/3/31 FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com: I'm fine with that - it's inevitable, and so far as I can think, only has three flavors- - Wikipedia subsumes into whatever may come in future, - Wikipedia becomes whatever may come in future (or specializes into some niche), - or Wikipedia is

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Fred Bauder
2009/3/31 FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com: I'm fine with that - it's inevitable, and so far as I can think, only has three flavors- - Wikipedia subsumes into whatever may come in future, - Wikipedia becomes whatever may come in future (or specializes into some niche), - or Wikipedia is

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread geni
2009/3/31 Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net: Yeh, you would. It is not that good. It is inconsistent and fails to adequately define many terms because Wikipedia is not a dictionary and fails to provide appropriate external links because Wikipedia is not a web directory. Those are not

Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2

2009-03-31 Thread Nathan
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Andrew Turvey andrewrtur...@googlemail.com wrote: And yet this poll seems to have significantly more support across the board than any other proposal that has been put forward. If there's another way of taking it forward that would have sufficient support,

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Ian Woollard
On 31/03/2009, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Yeh, you would. It is not that good. It is inconsistent and fails to adequately define many terms because Wikipedia is not a dictionary All encyclopedia articles are supposed to define their topic; they're just not supposed to define

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread David Goodman
I would very much liketo take Wps redirect and disam system and rationalize it. the first step would be to change the policy so the full form of the name, including middle names, are always used when available. The second is to add geographic designators for all local events and places and

Re: [WikiEN-l] [[Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll]]

2009-03-31 Thread wjhonson
-Original Message- From: Ryan Postlethwaite ryanpostlethwa...@hotmail.com To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 3:50 pm Subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll]] Hello everyone, This is just a quick email to remind you that [[Wikipedia

Re: [WikiEN-l] [[Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll]]

2009-03-31 Thread Ryan Postlethwaite
I messed up the link (I posted the talk link) - it's actually http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Date_formatting_and_linking_poll Sorry! Ryan Postlethwaite From: ryanpostlethwa...@hotmail.com To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [[Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll]]

[WikiEN-l] [[Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll]]

2009-03-31 Thread Ryan Postlethwaite
Hello everyone, This is just a quick email to remind you that [[Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll]] is now open and the community is invited to participate. If you have time, it would be great to hear your opinions - the greater the turnout the better! Many thanks, Ryan

Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2

2009-03-31 Thread Philip Sandifer
On Mar 31, 2009, at 8:50 PM, Nathan wrote: Well, the poll was closed with 80% support. It probably should have been extended, if for no other reasons than that votes continued to come in at a pretty good clip and there is no pressing reason to close it on deadline. If I were a

Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

2009-03-31 Thread Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:51 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: I think this casts a new interesting perspective on the decision by Microsoft to buy out powerset.com. I will be watching with interest, how they will develop that product, and whether they intend to