Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
On 09/20/11 10:11 PM, とある白い猫 wrote: Certain projects are bound to loose active contributors. Projects like Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikispecies or even Wiktionary do not have the same growth curve as a general purpose encyclopedia. These tools have serious competition as well. Statistically looking at numbers is unwise unless you are going to look at it with a perspective. This is not to say these projects are without problem, but that doesn't mean the wikis are failures. This is all very true. The important thing is to keep focused on your own project. If you look at competing projects, rather than looking at their usage statistics, a better question is What are they failing to do that you could do better? Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
Usage statistics alone, I would agree with you. But stats can tell so much more than just what you get from usage stats. For instance: http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikinews/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm (be sure to scroll all the way to the right). ___ Philippe Beaudette Head of Reader Relations Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 415-839-6885, x 6643 phili...@wikimedia.org On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: On 09/20/11 10:11 PM, とある白い猫 wrote: Certain projects are bound to loose active contributors. Projects like Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikispecies or even Wiktionary do not have the same growth curve as a general purpose encyclopedia. These tools have serious competition as well. Statistically looking at numbers is unwise unless you are going to look at it with a perspective. This is not to say these projects are without problem, but that doesn't mean the wikis are failures. This is all very true. The important thing is to keep focused on your own project. If you look at competing projects, rather than looking at their usage statistics, a better question is What are they failing to do that you could do better? Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
On 09/13/11 6:11 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: I am not a Wictionary contributor but I was never able to understand why we have Wictionaries in different language, though a big part of those seem to be translations on other languages, and they overlap. Would it not be advantageous to have just one Wictionary (as we have just one Commons)? Sorry for the ignorant question, there might be obvious reasons why they should not be the same. The root concept for Wiktionary was indeed to include all words in all languages. The presence of Wiktionaries in each language was designed for the benefit of speakers of the host language who could have definitions and descriptions based on the cultural norms of that language. The primary function of a dictionary is to explain a language and its history to its own speakers. This includes tracing the usages of a word over an extended period of time. It is descriptive, and not prescriptive. Translation is a secondary objective. We can translate words, but we can rarely be certain that the result will truly convey the meaning of the source. This is especially true of literary works. A good translator will not depend solely on a translation dictionary; he translated the meaning and not just the word. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
In the discussion of the Wikinews fork (may they thrive), I picked up some comments predicting the death of Wiktionary and Wikiquote, referring to the low numbers of regular contributors. I don't think that means the projects are dying: I'm an infrequent contributor to both of those projects, and every time I go there, they're better. Wikiquote is continually improving in coverage and accuracy, and Wiktionary has recently gotten new features (e.g. a separate citations tab) and is also going forward. People are checking recent changes: last time I edited Wiktionary, I was adding citations to an article where the current list was in reverse chronological order, and I was too lazy to change it, thinking someone else can fix this. Before I got to the third citation, someone had fixed the sequence. The fact that progress is slowing isn't a sign of impending death. As long as the wikis don't stagnate to the extent that they start to get taken over by spammers and trolls, I'm not going to hold a wake. As for Wikiquote being one of our less useful projects, that's possibly true, but only because the other projects are so awesome! The web is awash with crap quotation websites of with the same misattributed quotes being incestuously copied around - Wikiquote is one beacon of sanity in that whole mess. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
2011/9/13 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: I don't think that means the projects are dying: I'm an infrequent contributor to both of those projects, and every time I go there, they're better. Absolutely true. In the last year or so i've been using English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Polish, Czech, Lithunian and Catalan Wiktionaries more and more and i find them really useful and reliable. What i would like to see, however, is two main things: * More collaboration and sharing of tools between different language versions of each project. For example, the citation tab and the Add translation gadget, which make the English Wiktionary so much better, should be available in all language versions. * More mentions of non-Wikipedia projects in all the online and real-life forums - mailing lists, meetups, Wikimania, hackathons, etc. It mostly depends on the people behind the projects - they should just speak up! (Personal example: I wanted to make a big presentation about Wikisource in Haifa, but was too busy organizing the actual event; I hope to do it in DC.) But it also depends on the leaders - Jimmy, Sue and the Board members could mention the other projects more in their talks ;-) -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
I am not a Wictionary contributor but I was never able to understand why we have Wictionaries in different language, though a big part of those seem to be translations on other languages, and they overlap. Would it not be advantageous to have just one Wictionary (as we have just one Commons)? Sorry for the ignorant question, there might be obvious reasons why they should not be the same. A valid question, and one I've asked myself. I'm not actually deep enough into the project to say for sure, but it would look a bit different from the way it currently looks if you wanted to make a Grand Unified Project: not only the user interface, but also the policies would have to be multilingual: if a fr-ca user logs in, she should see a project in her language. I don't think you can do this with the current setup. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
2011/9/13 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: I am not a Wictionary contributor but I was never able to understand why we have Wictionaries in different language, though a big part of those seem to be translations on other languages, and they overlap. Would it not be advantageous to have just one Wictionary (as we have just one Commons)? Sorry for the ignorant question, there might be obvious reasons why they should not be the same. A valid question, and one I've asked myself. I'm not actually deep enough into the project to say for sure, but it would look a bit different from the way it currently looks if you wanted to make a Grand Unified Project: not only the user interface, but also the policies would have to be multilingual: if a fr-ca user logs in, she should see a project in her language. I don't think you can do this with the current setup. It's possible. The interface part is even quite easy. The hard part is defining a data model to contain all the words in all languages, with definitions in all languages, with morphology tables, etc. Something like this is slowly being done at www.omegawiki.org and there are other projects, too. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
It's possible. The interface part is even quite easy. The hard part is defining a data model to contain all the words in all languages, with definitions in all languages, with morphology tables, etc. Something like this is slowly being done at www.omegawiki.org and there are other projects, too. OK, I didn't realize the depth of that problem. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
2011/9/13 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: It's possible. The interface part is even quite easy. The hard part is defining a data model to contain all the words in all languages, with definitions in all languages, with morphology tables, etc. Something like this is slowly being done at www.omegawiki.org and there are other projects, too. OK, I didn't realize the depth of that problem. What's the barriers to OmegaWiki joining WMF? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
I prefer WMF caring about the currently hosted sister projects, instead of adding more. 2011/9/13 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com 2011/9/13 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: It's possible. The interface part is even quite easy. The hard part is defining a data model to contain all the words in all languages, with definitions in all languages, with morphology tables, etc. Something like this is slowly being done at www.omegawiki.org and there are other projects, too. OK, I didn't realize the depth of that problem. What's the barriers to OmegaWiki joining WMF? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
In the discussion of the Wikinews fork (may they thrive), I picked up some comments predicting the death of Wiktionary and Wikiquote, referring to the low numbers of regular contributors. I don't think that means the projects are dying: I'm an infrequent contributor to both of those projects, and every time I go there, they're better. Wikiquote is continually improving in coverage and accuracy, and Wiktionary has recently gotten new features (e.g. a separate citations tab) and is also going forward. People are checking recent changes: last time I edited Wiktionary, I was adding citations to an article where the current list was in reverse chronological order, and I was too lazy to change it, thinking someone else can fix this. Before I got to the third citation, someone had fixed the sequence. The fact that progress is slowing isn't a sign of impending death. As long as the wikis don't stagnate to the extent that they start to get taken over by spammers and trolls, I'm not going to hold a wake. As for Wikiquote being one of our less useful projects, that's possibly true, but only because the other projects are so awesome! The web is awash with crap quotation websites of with the same misattributed quotes being incestuously copied around - Wikiquote is one beacon of sanity in that whole mess. -- David Richfield e^(ði)+1=0 The appropriate timeframe is decades, even centuries. Modibund projects, provided there is enough interest to control spam and vandalism are cheap in terms of bandwidth and database resources. If there is concern about their association with the Wikimedia brandname, a subsidiary could be created to host them. Fred ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
Wiktionary is useful; perhaps you're referring to my comments, which were not about Wiktionary at all. Wikiquote definitely does not belong as a sister project. Maybe it is a shining beacon in the cesspool of internet quote sites; well, there are lots of things the rest of the Internet does poorly, that doesn't mean it's automatically the WMF's job to create a project to do it better. 2011/9/13 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com In the discussion of the Wikinews fork (may they thrive), I picked up some comments predicting the death of Wiktionary and Wikiquote, referring to the low numbers of regular contributors. I don't think that means the projects are dying: I'm an infrequent contributor to both of those projects, and every time I go there, they're better. Wikiquote is continually improving in coverage and accuracy, and Wiktionary has recently gotten new features (e.g. a separate citations tab) and is also going forward. People are checking recent changes: last time I edited Wiktionary, I was adding citations to an article where the current list was in reverse chronological order, and I was too lazy to change it, thinking someone else can fix this. Before I got to the third citation, someone had fixed the sequence. The fact that progress is slowing isn't a sign of impending death. As long as the wikis don't stagnate to the extent that they start to get taken over by spammers and trolls, I'm not going to hold a wake. As for Wikiquote being one of our less useful projects, that's possibly true, but only because the other projects are so awesome! The web is awash with crap quotation websites of with the same misattributed quotes being incestuously copied around - Wikiquote is one beacon of sanity in that whole mess. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
Wiktionary is useful; perhaps you're referring to my comments, which were not about Wiktionary at all. Wikiquote definitely does not belong as a sister project. Maybe it is a shining beacon in the cesspool of internet quote sites; well, there are lots of things the rest of the Internet does poorly, that doesn't mean it's automatically the WMF's job to create a project to do it better. I think it is our mission to publish reference works. That is what we do. Reference works include Encyclopedias, dictionaries, collections of quotations, of images, and of texts. Wikinews is not a reference work, although it has archives. We could do a news aggregator which would be a reference work of a sort. It would be a record of what was in the news that day. It might be useful provided it was not full of dead links. Fred ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
