[Wikimedia-l] Creative Commons Global Summit: April 13-15 in Toronto

[Jennie Rose Halperin]

Hi Wikimedians!

Hoping to see you there in April! Thanks for your attention.

Jennie


The Creative Commons annual Global Summit is from April 13-15 in Toronto.
Planned Wikimedia-related events include a keynote by Katherine Maher and
several discussions and sessions on how Wikimedia and Creative Commons
works together. We'd love to have a strong Wikimedia presence at the summit
– join us in April! Register here: https://summit.creativec
ommons.org/register2018/

The annual Global Summit brings together an international community of
leading technologists, legal experts, academics, activists, and community
members who work to promote the power of open and future of the Commons
worldwide.

The Summit provides leaders, stakeholders, and the broader open web
community an opportunity to drive the open movement forward,
cross-pollinate ideas and expertise, and expand our impact.

Our 2018 Global Summit will take place in Toronto, Canada from April 13-15,
2018, at the Delta Toronto Hotel. See you there!
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
I have been involved in a translation project with professional translators
translating featured articles of the English Wikipedia. The choice for
featured articles was done because we expected that the content would not
be in dispute. We found different. Several of the translated articles were
not accepted.. one of them was about World War II.

I have also toyed with the idea of content that is not available in the
language of a Wikipedia (including English). Translation is one solution an
other solution is generating basic information from the data available at
Wikidata. The benefit is not only to our readers; they will at least be
informed up to a point and another benefit will be the quality of the
Wikipedia involved. One problem that will be fixed is the one of false
friends, when red links are linked to Wikidata, the information provided
will always be implicitly correct. Another possibility is to provide the
text of a sister Wikipedia.

We can do a better job by providing the sum of all knowledge that is
available to us.
Thanks,
  GerardM

On 25 February 2018 at 15:16, John Erling Blad  wrote:

> Sorry, but this does not make sense. The core articles apply globally.
> There will although be articles in additions to a list of core articles,
> but I don't try to advocate any of those lists as the one and only list.
> Actually I have toyed with an idea of automatically create a list of core
> articles, and that would identify important articles no matter if they are
> from a big western language or a minority language.
>
> The main problem is NOT that minority languages should have articles about
> the major cities and important philosophers, *the main problem is that
> minor languages can't get started because they lack content*!
>
> On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 2:41 AM, Vi to  wrote:
>
> > Cultural appropriation is something different, by "forcing" the contents
> in
> > a minority language we would actually be at risk of implementing a form
> of
> > "cultural colonialism" which is the opposite of a cultural appropriation.
> >
> > NOTE: I refer to "the Western" in both cultural and "Wikipedian" sense: I
> > mean cultures with a strong presence on the web plus developed and
> > flourishing Wikipedia communities.
> >
> > Helping minority languages with funds/workforce is not bad in my opinion,
> > but I think a bottom-up process must be followed, with the "bottom" being
> > as closer as possible to relevant linguistic/cultural communities. A
> > Wikipedia full of "what the Westerns think is important" in a minority
> > non-Western language would definitely fail project scopes.
> >
> > This kind of problem almost does not arise with minority language
> > associated to Western cultures since they share the same cultural
> > backgrounds: back to my previous example the cultural background of
> > Sicilian is substantially equal to Italian one. Still, as I already
> wrote,
> > wikis in minority languages should focus on a certain aspect of wiki
> scope:
> > Wiki has roughly two main scopes: 1) sharing knowledge in a certain
> > language 2) also preserving the cultural heritage associated with
> different
> > languages. For languages mainly spoken as first language the "sharing
> > knowledge" aspect is predominant, while the second should take precedence
> > in languages whose speakers are native speakers of a "bigger" language.
> >
> > Vito
> >
> > 2018-02-24 22:58 GMT+01:00 John Erling Blad :
> >
> > > Seems like this is mostly about cultural ownership and appropriation.
> Not
> > > sure if it is possible to agree on this.
> > >
> > > On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 6:08 PM, Vi to  wrote:
> > >
> > > > I'll reply to the most recent email just for laziness.
> > > >
> > > > I'm doubtful for a series of reasons, most of were already expressed
> > in a
> > > > better way by others:
> > > > *a remuneration in terms of quantity will weaken the quality of
> > > > translations unless there's a strong mechanism of quality
> verification
> > > > requiring a quantity of resources comparable to translations
> > themselves;
> > > > *articles are the result of a long process which reflects cultural
> > > identity
> > > > of different communities, I'm not confident with transferring them
> to a
> > > > different "weaker" cultures. My usage of "weaker" adjective only
> > focuses
> > > > about the strength of a cultural presence on the Internet;
> > > > *articles to be translated are at high risk of reflecting the
> cultural
> > > > identity (and biases) of the Western culture;
> > > > *finally I think paid translators would hardly turn into stable
> > > > Wikipedians.
> > > >
> > > > IMHO some paid editing may be better exploited in order to digitalise
> > > texts
> > > > of unrepresented cultures (wikisource) or preserving their
> vocabularies
> > > > (wiktionary).
> > > >
> > > > Also those languages which are secondary for all their 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[James Salsman]

> wonder if creating dynamic articles from Wikidata is better
> than creating static articles

Not for years to decades.

https://twitter.com/AustenAllred/status/967842020151603200



On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 3:02 AM, John Erling Blad  wrote:
> I wonder if creating dynamic articles from Wikidata is better than creating
> static articles. Because we lack tools for this, it is easier to do this
> offline, and as a consequence we get the static bot-articles.
>
> Den søn. 25. feb. 2018, 16.26 skrev Gabriel Thullen :
>
>> I should have joined in this discussion a little earlier. I work a lot with
>> the French Wikipedia, and we do not just translate articles from English (6
>> million articles) to French (only 2 million articles). The French community
>> is large and active, and provide a unique local perspective on the
>> different articles that are written. And when I say local, I mean that
>> things are seen differently in France than in the French speaking part of
>> Switzerland or Belgium.
>>
>> I think that we are ignoring something very important here: putting it
>> simply, Wikipedia contributors do two things. They add information to the
>> encyclopedia by improving articles or writing new ones, and they curate or
>> check the existing articles. All this talk about machine translation does
>> not address the second aspect of what the volunteer contributors do.
>> This means that we could have hundreds of thousands of articles in a
>> language with  very few active contributors. Will that small community be
>> able to oversee so many articles ?
>>
>> For example, have a look at the list of Wikipedias ordered by number of
>> articles:
>> 1. English - 5,578,081 articles - 138,479 active users - 1,230 admins
>> 2. Cebuano - 5,383,108 articles - 162 active users - 5 admins
>> 3. Swedish - 3,784,331 articles - 2,929 active users - 65 admins
>> 4. German - 2,157,495 articles - 20, 085 active users - 194 admins
>>
>> When I have some time, I will look into different ratios like number or
>> articles/active users or number of articles/number of native language
>> speakers... Now I am not saying that our Swedish friends have abused
>> machine translation of articles, but I definetly that something is not
>> quite right about the Cebuano wiki...
>> Gabe
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 4:06 PM, Anders Wennersten <
>> m...@anderswennersten.se
>> > wrote:
>>
>> > I am very happy to follow this thread as I believe it is addressing a
>> very
>> > relevant issue.
>> >
>> > In my mind we can divide up the different language version into 5
>> > categories:
>> >
>> > 1.Enwp,
>> >
>> > 2.the next 6-7 (de,fr, es,jp,pt,ru..)
>> >
>> > 3.the next 20 or so, where the basic workprocesses are applied
>> >
>> > 4.the next 40-50 which are struggling to generate more input then what is
>> > vandalised
>> >
>> > 5.the rest which in reality is no viable online encyclopedias
>> >
>> > And for me no 1 priority is to accept that there are these categories,
>> and
>> > that what is applicable for cat 1 and 2 is not so for 4 and 5.
>> >
>> > I believe the grant model could easily make room for subsiding good
>> > initiatives addressing the problem for cat 4 and 5 (and perhaps 3).
>> >
>> > And I think it is very presumptuous to start talking of what technique to
>> > use and things like translation. If we open up for creative brainstorming
>> > (among the ones having the need) I think very many other ways can turn
>> up.
>> > Myself I am deeply impressed what you can create using Wikidata as a base
>> > source of info, and being from a version of type 3 I see how much my
>> > homeversion improve content with wikidata created infoboxes
>> >
>> > Anders
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Den 2018-02-24 kl. 13:51, skrev John Erling Blad:
>> >
>> >> This discussion is going to be fun! =D
>> >>
>> >> A little more than seventy Wikipedia-projects has more than 65k
>> articles,
>> >> the remaining two hundred or so are pretty small.
>> >>
>> >> What if a base set of articles were opened for paid translators? There
>> are
>> >> several lists of such base sets. We have both the thousand articles from
>> >> "List of articles every Wikipedia should have"[1] and and the ten
>> thousand
>> >> articles from the expanded list[2].
>> >>
>> >> Lets say verified good translators was paid about $0.01 per word (about
>> $1
>> >> for a 1k-article) for translating one of those articles into another
>> >> language, with perhaps a higher pay for contributors in high-cost
>> >> countries. The pay would also have to be higher for languages that lacks
>> >> good translation tools.
>> >>
>> >> I believe this would be an _enabling_ activity for the communities, as
>> >> without a base set of articles it won't be possible to build a community
>> >> at
>> >> all. By not paying for new articles, and only translating
>> well-referenced
>> >> articles, some of the disputes in the communities could be avoided.
>> >> Perhaps
>> >> we should also 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fake news ‘vaccine’: online game may ‘inoculate’ by simulating propaganda tactics

[James Salsman]

Here is a tweet describing a problem with social media recommendation systems:

"The algorithm I worked on at Google recommended Alex Jones' videos
more than 15,000,000,000 times, to some of the most vulnerable people
in the nation." - @gchaslot

What should the penalty for that be? A fine? Enough for the Foundation
to hire all my Google Summer of Code students to add pronunciation
remediation to Wiktionary?

If you think that's bad, most of the recommendation system damage is
from the vanity of fame instead of political schemers. Almost all of
the post-Myspace social media had a bias towards usually undeserved
fame. Luckily, the damage is merely memetic and can be repaired with
literature. But the schemers turn into fraud cases, so they get more
attention than they should relative to the larger, general problem.

Best regards,
Jim

On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 11:27 PM, James Salsman  wrote:
> Here is a good example of instructional software to solve a systemic
> communication issue:
>
> https://www.getbadnews.com/
>
> Ref.: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180220093555.htm
>
> How can we sustain progress towards resolution of the issues?
>
> Also, does the date by which Titan is likely to be colonized correlate
> with the extent to which progress has been achieved? This is not the
> first time I have asked this question here, and I hope the answer is
> as clear to everyone else as it is to me: it correlates inversely.
>
> I wonder if the Foundation could afford to have David Attenborough
> narrate the interaction between Cambridge Analytica and Cambridge
> University. They would if they'd start investing in unskimmable
> endowment funds. Make donors' money work hard, with a screening for
> sustainability.
>
> Bring back the regular email to donors suggesting other organizations
> worthy of their money, and tell them how to avoid being skimmed by
> high frequency traders, too, please.
>
> Best regards,
> Jim

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[John Erling Blad]

I wonder if creating dynamic articles from Wikidata is better than creating
static articles. Because we lack tools for this, it is easier to do this
offline, and as a consequence we get the static bot-articles.

Den søn. 25. feb. 2018, 16.26 skrev Gabriel Thullen :

> I should have joined in this discussion a little earlier. I work a lot with
> the French Wikipedia, and we do not just translate articles from English (6
> million articles) to French (only 2 million articles). The French community
> is large and active, and provide a unique local perspective on the
> different articles that are written. And when I say local, I mean that
> things are seen differently in France than in the French speaking part of
> Switzerland or Belgium.
>
> I think that we are ignoring something very important here: putting it
> simply, Wikipedia contributors do two things. They add information to the
> encyclopedia by improving articles or writing new ones, and they curate or
> check the existing articles. All this talk about machine translation does
> not address the second aspect of what the volunteer contributors do.
> This means that we could have hundreds of thousands of articles in a
> language with  very few active contributors. Will that small community be
> able to oversee so many articles ?
>
> For example, have a look at the list of Wikipedias ordered by number of
> articles:
> 1. English - 5,578,081 articles - 138,479 active users - 1,230 admins
> 2. Cebuano - 5,383,108 articles - 162 active users - 5 admins
> 3. Swedish - 3,784,331 articles - 2,929 active users - 65 admins
> 4. German - 2,157,495 articles - 20, 085 active users - 194 admins
>
> When I have some time, I will look into different ratios like number or
> articles/active users or number of articles/number of native language
> speakers... Now I am not saying that our Swedish friends have abused
> machine translation of articles, but I definetly that something is not
> quite right about the Cebuano wiki...
> Gabe
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 4:06 PM, Anders Wennersten <
> m...@anderswennersten.se
> > wrote:
>
> > I am very happy to follow this thread as I believe it is addressing a
> very
> > relevant issue.
> >
> > In my mind we can divide up the different language version into 5
> > categories:
> >
> > 1.Enwp,
> >
> > 2.the next 6-7 (de,fr, es,jp,pt,ru..)
> >
> > 3.the next 20 or so, where the basic workprocesses are applied
> >
> > 4.the next 40-50 which are struggling to generate more input then what is
> > vandalised
> >
> > 5.the rest which in reality is no viable online encyclopedias
> >
> > And for me no 1 priority is to accept that there are these categories,
> and
> > that what is applicable for cat 1 and 2 is not so for 4 and 5.
> >
> > I believe the grant model could easily make room for subsiding good
> > initiatives addressing the problem for cat 4 and 5 (and perhaps 3).
> >
> > And I think it is very presumptuous to start talking of what technique to
> > use and things like translation. If we open up for creative brainstorming
> > (among the ones having the need) I think very many other ways can turn
> up.
> > Myself I am deeply impressed what you can create using Wikidata as a base
> > source of info, and being from a version of type 3 I see how much my
> > homeversion improve content with wikidata created infoboxes
> >
> > Anders
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Den 2018-02-24 kl. 13:51, skrev John Erling Blad:
> >
> >> This discussion is going to be fun! =D
> >>
> >> A little more than seventy Wikipedia-projects has more than 65k
> articles,
> >> the remaining two hundred or so are pretty small.
> >>
> >> What if a base set of articles were opened for paid translators? There
> are
> >> several lists of such base sets. We have both the thousand articles from
> >> "List of articles every Wikipedia should have"[1] and and the ten
> thousand
> >> articles from the expanded list[2].
> >>
> >> Lets say verified good translators was paid about $0.01 per word (about
> $1
> >> for a 1k-article) for translating one of those articles into another
> >> language, with perhaps a higher pay for contributors in high-cost
> >> countries. The pay would also have to be higher for languages that lacks
> >> good translation tools.
> >>
> >> I believe this would be an _enabling_ activity for the communities, as
> >> without a base set of articles it won't be possible to build a community
> >> at
> >> all. By not paying for new articles, and only translating
> well-referenced
> >> articles, some of the disputes in the communities could be avoided.
> >> Perhaps
> >> we should also identify good source articles, that would be a help.
> >> Translated articles should be above some minimum size, but they does not
> >> have to be full translations of the source article.
> >>
> >> A real problem is that our existing lists of good articles other
> projects
> >> should have is pretty much biased towards Western World, so they need a
> >> lot
> >> of 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] ¿Qué te hace feliz esta semana? / What's making you happy this week? (Week of 25 February 2018)

[Natacha Rault]

Quelle belle idée de transcender les barrières linguistiques!

Ich finde dass wirklich wichtig dass wir zusammen in verschiedenen Sprachen 
zusammen reden.

я тоже  мненочко по руски гаварю

I’m sure I made mistakes in the last one, but it was fun trying. Thanks Pine 
for this idea! This made me happy  

Nattes à chat 

> Le 26 févr. 2018 à 06:41, Pine W  a écrit :
> 
> (Hello, I am trying something new this week by writing in Spanish. I am
> hoping to encourage people to contribute to this conversation in their
> preferred languages.)
> 
> Hola, estoy intentando algo nuevo esta semana escribiendo en español. Espero
> animar a las personas a contribuir a esta conversación en sus idiomas
> preferidos.
> 
> Algo que me hace feliz esta semana es la disponibilidad de "diffs visuales"
> como se describe en el Blog de la Fundación Wikimedia:
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/20/visual-diffs/.
> 
> ¿Qué te hace feliz esta semana?
> 
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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> 

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