Re: [Wikimedia-l] About Facebook Linked in some of Wikimedia projects

[Erik Moeller]

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 11:32 AM, Strainu  wrote:

>> Personally, I'd love to see WMF or a chapter set up a public Mastodon
>> instance; the project has matured significantly since its first
>> release and is at least a viable free/open alternative to the
>> Twitter-ish forms of social networking. FB still has event management
>> functions that are difficult to substitute, however.

> Even if there would be an open-source alternative with all the
> Facebook functionality, installing, maintaining and promoting it would
> be a huge waste of money.

I would agree if we compared centralized service to centralized
service (e.g. Ello vs. Facebook), but the premise of services like
Mastodon is federation between servers (instances) using open
protocols like ActivityPub. This means that even small organizations
can credibly host "instances" of a social network like Mastodon while
participating in the larger federation of users (you can follow users
from other instances, reply to their statuses, etc.). Mastodon is the
first IMO fairly successful implementation of this approach; it has
more than 1M accounts of which about 10% show recent activity, and it
already is reaching subcultures beyond the usual suspects.

To give you an idea of the cost, you can run a mid-size instance with
a few thousand users, automated backups and monitoring for tens of
dollars a month (the main cost is in person-time, but most instances
like this are run by volunteers and supported by donations). So I do
think it would be very possible even for an interested volunteer to
set up an instance with reasonable uptime, backup and monitoring
characteristics for exploratory use. Certainly it would be possible at
reasonable cost for WMF or a chapter to do so, possibly with some
"active contributor on Wikimedia projects" requirement for creating an
account.

Once again, the crucial point here is that instances communicate with
each other, so even though your own instance may only have a few
thousand users, you are part of the larger "fediverse" which includes
software with completely different UIs implementing the same protocol.

A nice intro for the unfamiliar:
https://blog.rowan.website/2018/01/08/yet-another-explanation-of-mastodon/

Incidentally, the protocol used by Mastodon, ActivityPub, recently
became a W3C recommendation:
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

Of course, I'm not opposed to people using FB for organizing -- I
think it's a totally reasonable choice, for the reasons you say -- but
I do think it's worth keeping an eye on federated social networks in
general, and Mastodon in particular, as a potential alternative space
for Wikimedia to engage in, _including_ for outreach. The numbers are
obviously still a drop in the bucket compared with the mega-networks,
so pragmatic considerations may reasonably prevail in many
circumstances.

Erik

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] knowing English is a privilege (was Re: Paid translation)

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

I think this is à propos in this discussion about how authoritative can be
the Wiktionary... here a scientific article starts by using a definition
from the Wiktionary:
http://theconversation.com/de-facebook-au-developpement-des-plantes-quand-les-reseaux-sen-melent-90891

JP


On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 9:49 AM Amir E. Aharoni 
wrote:

> 2018-02-28 23:09 GMT+02:00 James Salsman :
> >
> > > building an authoritative dictionary is considerably
> > > harder than building a (de facto) authoritative encyclopedia.
> >
> > What reason is there to think that? My any measure of editor hours, or
> > the amount of money it would take to replicate the effort, or the
> > maintenance load going forward, I'm sure that even a three shelf foot
> > encyclopedia is harder than a 100,000 word dictionary.
>
> A couple of reasons:
> * For the particular case of Wikimedia, we are using the same software for
> Wiktionary as we do for Wikipedia. It's insane. MediaWiki wasn't made for
> that. It was made for Wikipedia.
> * An *authoritative* dictionary needs authority. It must be built by a team
> of trained and certified linguists. It needs a large and systematized
> collection of citations. It's just harder to do this for a dictionary than
> for an encyclopedia. Citations for an encyclopedia these days are often
> easily googlable, and the form of an encyclopedia article is freer than the
> form of a dictionary entry, which must be super-strict.
>
> The English Wiktionary community is overcoming both of these problem
> valiantly.
>
> It is overcoming the first problem by using lots of templates and gadgets,
> which kinda work in practice, but which are hard to learn and to replicate
> for other languages, and hard for software to process.
>
> It is overcoming the second problem by being more practically useful than
> authoritative, similarly to Wikipedia. Lexicographic citations in English
> are particularly easy to google up, given that:
> * English is the #1 language on the web
> * Google is a company based in an English-speaking country and (probably)
> getting most of its revenue from English-speaking customers
> * English has a simple morphology, for which it is particularly easy to
> build a well-working search engine for
>
> However, while it's easy to google up examples for English word usage, I
> strongly suspect that googling won't produce results that will be as
> systematized as a citation database of Merriam-Webster is.
>
> Wikipedia had proved long ago that it can compete—even if not necessarily
> win—with the authority of Britannica, but Wiktionary hasn't yet proven that
> it can compete with the authority of Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Houaiss,
> Duden, etc.
>
> (The English Wiktionary is not necessarily special; I also got to use the
> French, German, and Dutch Wiktionaries a bit, and they all do it at a level
> of quality that is comparable to the English one.)
>
> Is it desirable for Wiktionary to get better? Of course it is. Can
> Wiktionary get better? Yes, and path is quite clear. Wikidata's Lexeme
> project is progressing slowly, but its direction is right. It will finally
> build a technical platform that is actually good for a dictionary.
>
> At https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T186421 I've been writing my ideas
> about how Lexical Wikidata can actually be used by editors and readers. So
> I'm very much on board with the idea of better Wiktionary. (Before you jump
> to conclusions: These ideas were not solicited by Wikidata developers. They
> are totally mine, and they are not in any way "official". I'm just writing
> them down as a brain dump, in my personal volunteering capacity, hoping
> that they will be useful to Wikidata developers.)
>
> > > We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles.
> >
> > What is the difference between delivering the text of an encyclopedia
> > article and teaching it? Encyclopedias are not written to be
> > accompanied by a lecturer, tutor, or teacher. We even teach how to
> > write them, to students, in schools, and the students often if not
> > almost always get academic credit for their work:
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Education_program/Educators
>
> Exactly: As Wikimedians, we are actively teaching people to write in
> Wikipedia (and in other Wikimedia projects), but we are not teaching the
> *subjects* of the articles. Not as Wikimedians. Some Wikimedians are also
> teachers, and they use Wikipedia articles as handouts, but this is not
> really a Wikimedia activity.
>
> As Wikimedians we just make materials available, and we teach others *to
> make them available*.
>
> > > Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki
> articles.
> >
> > Why? We are already the best at that.
>
> We may be the best, and we are definitely the most popular, but we could be
> so, so much better. And we should be.
>
> As a simple high-level example, it's still not NEARLY as easy to become a
> Wikipedia editor 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Stewards elected

[Sam Oyeyele]

Congratulations to all the elected stewards!

Sam.
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] About Facebook Linked in some of Wikimedia projects

[Strainu]

2018-03-01 4:01 GMT+02:00 Erik Moeller :
>
> Personally, I'd love to see WMF or a chapter set up a public Mastodon
> instance; the project has matured significantly since its first
> release and is at least a viable free/open alternative to the
> Twitter-ish forms of social networking. FB still has event management
> functions that are difficult to substitute, however.

Even if there would be an open-source alternative with all the
Facebook functionality, installing, maintaining and promoting it would
be a huge waste of money. The Facebook pages are an *outreach* tool,
which implies getting out of our walled garden, not extending the
garden. Choosing Facebook is simply the smart thing to do ATM, since
all alternatives are smaller in size and engagement.

The more interesting thing is what you do once you have the page and
you have convinced your community to put it in a banner or sidebar. I
have experimented with small tasks that could be done by newcomers,
such as identifying images or correcting diacritics, with somewhat
mixed results (the more I go towards text editing, the lower the
impact). I am curious if other people have done similar experiments
and would be willing to share their experience.

Strainu



>
> Erik
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] About Facebook Linked in some of Wikimedia projects

[Minata Hatsune]

 I resent this for another people from Vietnamese community need to join
discussion, but subscribe the wikimedia-l just now.


2018-03-01 4:43 GMT+09:00 Asaf Bartov :

> Facebook is a de-facto major venue of communication for a great majority of
> Internet users.  Many communities, user groups, and chapters have some kind
> of formal presence on Facebook -- "groups" or "pages".  Directing visitors
> to your wiki to *your own wiki's* presence on this other major platform,
> i.e. a direct link to your group/page on Facebook, is absolutely fine.  It
> is *quite* different from, say, just linking to www.facebook.com or
> explicitly endorsing it as a platform ("Join Facebook! It's great!") in
> general.
>
> As you note, a number of communities have done or are doing this.
> Especially for smaller communities, the impact of such link placement can
> be a significant driver of traffic (i.e. readers!) to your community
> group/page on Facebook, which itself is important for outreach, awareness,
> and volunteer recruitment, and therefore is mission-aligned.
>
> Cheers,
>
>Asaf
>
> On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 11:06 AM Jimmy Wales 
> wrote:
>
> > Speaking only for myself, not as a member of the board, I don't know of
> > any legal or other reason why this should not be done.  I think we
> > should be very careful about links or appearance of endorsement
> > especially on article pages, but outreach to people in the world should
> > take place wherever we find a willing and useful audience.
> >
> >
> >
> > On 2/28/18 6:29 AM, Minata Hatsune wrote:
> > > I know it based on local consensus, but what I mean here is: those
> > > consensus valid for WMF Term of Use and others policies or not? Because
> > it
> > > same with Wikipedia have linked with 3rd party, which is a commerical
> > > website.
> > >
> > > Trần Nguyễn Minh Huy
> > > Vietnamese Wikimedian
> > >
> > > 2018-02-28 18:52 GMT+09:00 James Heilman :
> > >
> > >> IMO this is based on local community consensus. It is not a global
> > policy.
> > >>
> > >> James
> > >>
> > >> On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 9:14 AM, Minata Hatsune <
> > minatahats...@gmail.com>
> > >> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Hello, I have a question: is it legal and valid for Wikipedia
> > communities
> > >>> put promotion links to their Facebook pages on public space as Main
> > Page
> > >> or
> > >>> Sitenotice?
> > >>>
> > >>> I see many of Wikimedia projects doing this, as Indonesia Wikipedia,
> > >> Arabic
> > >>> Wikipedia, etc... Their Facebooks page also have blue checkmark of
> > >> Facebook
> > >>> as verified.
> > >>>
> > >>> All what I concern is: Facebook is a commerical website, we put a
> link
> > as
> > >>> "official" to them, will it same with Wikipedia biased for Facebook
> and
> > >>> violated the NPOV policy? And in finally: is it OK if other projects
> > can
> > >> do
> > >>> that? Vietnamese Wikipedia also have a discussion about sitenotice
> > >>> promotion to Facebook at <
> > >>> https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Th%E1%BA%A3o_lu%E1%
> > >>> BA%ADn/Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_b%C3%A1_trang_Facebook_%22Wikipedia_
> > >>> ti%E1%BA%BFng_Vi%E1%BB%87t%22
> >  . If this is OK, I think we have no reason to reject it.
> > >>>
> > >>> Thank you!
> > >>>
> > >>> Trần Nguyễn Minh Huy
> > >>> Vietnamese Wikimedian
> > >>> ___
> > >>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > >>> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > >>> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > >>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > >>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/
> mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > >>> 
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >> James Heilman
> > >> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
> > >> ___
> > >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > >> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > >> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > >> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> ,
> > >> 
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> > >
> >
> >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Yaroslav Blanter]

One idea which was spelled out many times but never took off is that of a
Wiki-compendium. If we are talking about a language which is let us say not
endangered, has a reasonably large number of speakers but not millions, and
only has a limited number of sources published in this language - the
Wiki-community is typically not large, may be a dozen or a couple of dozens
speakers. Yakut  (Sakha) is a good example of such language, Tatar would be
another one. They do not have resources to support Wikipedia, Wikisource,
and possibly even Wikibooks and Wiktionary at the same time, and they have
to concentrate on Wikipedia as the largest project. The idea was that for
such languages the traditional division between sister projects is not
really useful, but one project, which would comprise Wikipedia, Wikisource,
and possibly others would be much better so that the editors would just be
in one central place, and every speaker of this language would know what
the place is. The idea is old, at least as old as LangCom, and the fact it
never took off probably means that it is somehow flawed - I just do not
know how.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 3:59 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> 2018-02-28 16:03 GMT+02:00 Jean-Philippe Béland :
> >
> > The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have
> > Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity
> and
> > other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand
> what
> > you are saying.
>
> Paid translation of Wikipedia articles to underresourced languages is a
> project that I can easily imagine. What needs to be done is quite clear;
> the questions are how to get the resources for this, and how to make it not
> too biased for undesirable interests, neither Western nor local.
>
> Improving Wikiversity (or Wikibooks) is possibly a valid thing, but I just
> don't know how to do it. Of course, I'm not the only person in this
> movement; I'm just one of thousands of editors, and I also happen to be an
> analyst in the Foundation staff, and my decision-making capacities are
> very, very limited. If anybody has a *good* idea on how to improve them, it
> would be awesome.
>
> When I compare a project with a pretty easy-to-draft path, and an
> understandable goal (paid translation, growing a language's online
> presence), to a project the goal of which is finding ideas for how to
> improve Wikiversity, I'd bet my resources on paid translation (if it even
> was my decision to make). And I have to remind again, that I, in
> particular, am very biased about the topic of translation, so really, you
> don't have to agree with me ;)
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2018-02-28 16:03 GMT+02:00 Jean-Philippe Béland :
>
> The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have
> Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity and
> other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand
what
> you are saying.

Paid translation of Wikipedia articles to underresourced languages is a
project that I can easily imagine. What needs to be done is quite clear;
the questions are how to get the resources for this, and how to make it not
too biased for undesirable interests, neither Western nor local.

Improving Wikiversity (or Wikibooks) is possibly a valid thing, but I just
don't know how to do it. Of course, I'm not the only person in this
movement; I'm just one of thousands of editors, and I also happen to be an
analyst in the Foundation staff, and my decision-making capacities are
very, very limited. If anybody has a *good* idea on how to improve them, it
would be awesome.

When I compare a project with a pretty easy-to-draft path, and an
understandable goal (paid translation, growing a language's online
presence), to a project the goal of which is finding ideas for how to
improve Wikiversity, I'd bet my resources on paid translation (if it even
was my decision to make). And I have to remind again, that I, in
particular, am very biased about the topic of translation, so really, you
don't have to agree with me ;)

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

That would be a very good project! Exactly the kind of thing that would be
a good implementation of John Erling's suggestion in his opening email. I'd
support it.


--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

2018-03-01 12:39 GMT+02:00 Harald Haugland :

> This thread brought me to think of an article I wrote on Norwegian
> Wikipedia about a year ago. It was about the Allex Project   (African
> Languages Lexical Project), a project where universities in Oslo,
> Gothenburg and Harare cooperated in developing monolingual text corpus
> based dictionaries for shona and ndebele languages in Zimbabwe.
>
> The project resulted in a dictionary in shona, establishing a lexicographic
> institute at the university of Zimbabwe, African Languages Research
> Institute, 10 doctor degrees for zimbabwians and much more. Shona and
> ndbele were lifted from spoken language to university level and
> acknowledged as education language.
>
> There is a wikipedia in shona language. It has 3106 articles. If one could
> engage some of the people that worked in the Allex Project to do a paid
> translation job, it would benefit about 14 million speakers, shona is the
> most spoken Bantu language, Zulu is next to shona, spoken by 10 million,
> according to our articles.
>
> https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALLEX-prosjektet
>
> Greetings from frozen, sunny Norway
>
> Harald Haugland
>
>
>
>
> 2018-02-28 15:03 GMT+01:00 Jean-Philippe Béland :
>
> > The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have
> > Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity
> and
> > other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand
> what
> > you are saying.
> >
> > JP
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 2:32 AM Amir E. Aharoni <
> > amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> >
> > > 2018-02-28 1:25 GMT+02:00 James Salsman :
> > >
> > > > > I was not trying to say that everybody
> > > > > should learn English. The point I was
> > > > > trying to make there is that knowing
> > > > > English is a privilege and that it is easy
> > > > > to not notice it.
> > > >
> > > > I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative
> to
> > > > the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia
> > > > articles?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. We are making it possible
> to
> > > write them and to read them. It is not the same thing as teaching
> > subjects.
> > >
> > > Should we do teaching? Maybe, but since it's different from making it
> > > possible to write and read, I'm afraid it would be losing focus.
> > >
> > > Is there anything bad about teaching languages? Of course not. It's
> > great.
> > > I'm just not sure that it's the right thing for Wikimedia to do, when
> > > Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki
> > > articles.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > > ‪“We're living in pieces,
> > > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] knowing English is a privilege (was Re: Paid translation)

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2018-02-28 23:09 GMT+02:00 James Salsman :
>
> > building an authoritative dictionary is considerably
> > harder than building a (de facto) authoritative encyclopedia.
>
> What reason is there to think that? My any measure of editor hours, or
> the amount of money it would take to replicate the effort, or the
> maintenance load going forward, I'm sure that even a three shelf foot
> encyclopedia is harder than a 100,000 word dictionary.

A couple of reasons:
* For the particular case of Wikimedia, we are using the same software for
Wiktionary as we do for Wikipedia. It's insane. MediaWiki wasn't made for
that. It was made for Wikipedia.
* An *authoritative* dictionary needs authority. It must be built by a team
of trained and certified linguists. It needs a large and systematized
collection of citations. It's just harder to do this for a dictionary than
for an encyclopedia. Citations for an encyclopedia these days are often
easily googlable, and the form of an encyclopedia article is freer than the
form of a dictionary entry, which must be super-strict.

The English Wiktionary community is overcoming both of these problem
valiantly.

It is overcoming the first problem by using lots of templates and gadgets,
which kinda work in practice, but which are hard to learn and to replicate
for other languages, and hard for software to process.

It is overcoming the second problem by being more practically useful than
authoritative, similarly to Wikipedia. Lexicographic citations in English
are particularly easy to google up, given that:
* English is the #1 language on the web
* Google is a company based in an English-speaking country and (probably)
getting most of its revenue from English-speaking customers
* English has a simple morphology, for which it is particularly easy to
build a well-working search engine for

However, while it's easy to google up examples for English word usage, I
strongly suspect that googling won't produce results that will be as
systematized as a citation database of Merriam-Webster is.

Wikipedia had proved long ago that it can compete—even if not necessarily
win—with the authority of Britannica, but Wiktionary hasn't yet proven that
it can compete with the authority of Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Houaiss,
Duden, etc.

(The English Wiktionary is not necessarily special; I also got to use the
French, German, and Dutch Wiktionaries a bit, and they all do it at a level
of quality that is comparable to the English one.)

Is it desirable for Wiktionary to get better? Of course it is. Can
Wiktionary get better? Yes, and path is quite clear. Wikidata's Lexeme
project is progressing slowly, but its direction is right. It will finally
build a technical platform that is actually good for a dictionary.

At https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T186421 I've been writing my ideas
about how Lexical Wikidata can actually be used by editors and readers. So
I'm very much on board with the idea of better Wiktionary. (Before you jump
to conclusions: These ideas were not solicited by Wikidata developers. They
are totally mine, and they are not in any way "official". I'm just writing
them down as a brain dump, in my personal volunteering capacity, hoping
that they will be useful to Wikidata developers.)

> > We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles.
>
> What is the difference between delivering the text of an encyclopedia
> article and teaching it? Encyclopedias are not written to be
> accompanied by a lecturer, tutor, or teacher. We even teach how to
> write them, to students, in schools, and the students often if not
> almost always get academic credit for their work:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Education_program/Educators

Exactly: As Wikimedians, we are actively teaching people to write in
Wikipedia (and in other Wikimedia projects), but we are not teaching the
*subjects* of the articles. Not as Wikimedians. Some Wikimedians are also
teachers, and they use Wikipedia articles as handouts, but this is not
really a Wikimedia activity.

As Wikimedians we just make materials available, and we teach others *to
make them available*.

> > Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki
articles.
>
> Why? We are already the best at that.

We may be the best, and we are definitely the most popular, but we could be
so, so much better. And we should be.

As a simple high-level example, it's still not NEARLY as easy to become a
Wikipedia editor as it should be.

I often wish that Wikipedia had more substantial competitors, so it would
drive us to be faster at improving ourselves. Medium.com, Quora.com,
Genius.com, and some other web properties are occasionally mentioned as
Wikimedia's competitors, but none of them is doing quite the same thing as
Wikimedia does, and though each of them is quite popular, none is as
popular as Wikipedia is.

(I will readily admit, however, that Google is a competitor for providing
quick facts, and Facebook and Instagram are 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[John Erling Blad]

There are something similar to paid translations in what you may call
prioritized articles. That is articles that are so important for a language
that they should be written, no matter whether they exist in a larger
language.

For example in the Northern Sami Wikipedia there should be an article about
Sami border guides during WWII. The article at nowiki describes exclusively
border guides between Norway and Sweden, [1] which where a rather low
intensity border during WWII. The frontier between Norway and Russia was
much more hostile, and later in the war also the frontier between Norway
and Finland. The article at enwiki is similar. [2] There are a number of
good sources, and also some quite interesting articles.[3][4][5]

I wonder if such important articles can be prioritized on a list of paid
work by WMF, as they are extremly important to balance facts that otherwise
can go unnoticed by the community. We as a community tend to write about
our interests, and so reflects the interest of the larger society. That
society is not necessarily aware of some of the biases that is inherent in
our common knowledge.

[1] https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenselos
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_guide
[3]
https://forskning.no/andre-verdenskrig/2015/02/risikerte-livet-ble-fratatt-all-aere
[4] https://www.nrk.no/nordland/vil-ha-frem-samenes-krigsinnsats-1.11694527
[5]
https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/samiske-grenseloser-reddet-tusenvis-sa-ble-de-beskyldt-for-landssvik/60993886
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[John Erling Blad]

That is a very good example!

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 11:39 AM, Harald Haugland  wrote:

> This thread brought me to think of an article I wrote on Norwegian
> Wikipedia about a year ago. It was about the Allex Project   (African
> Languages Lexical Project), a project where universities in Oslo,
> Gothenburg and Harare cooperated in developing monolingual text corpus
> based dictionaries for shona and ndebele languages in Zimbabwe.
>
> The project resulted in a dictionary in shona, establishing a lexicographic
> institute at the university of Zimbabwe, African Languages Research
> Institute, 10 doctor degrees for zimbabwians and much more. Shona and
> ndbele were lifted from spoken language to university level and
> acknowledged as education language.
>
> There is a wikipedia in shona language. It has 3106 articles. If one could
> engage some of the people that worked in the Allex Project to do a paid
> translation job, it would benefit about 14 million speakers, shona is the
> most spoken Bantu language, Zulu is next to shona, spoken by 10 million,
> according to our articles.
>
> https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALLEX-prosjektet
>
> Greetings from frozen, sunny Norway
>
> Harald Haugland
>
>
>
>
> 2018-02-28 15:03 GMT+01:00 Jean-Philippe Béland :
>
> > The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have
> > Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity
> and
> > other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand
> what
> > you are saying.
> >
> > JP
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 2:32 AM Amir E. Aharoni <
> > amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> >
> > > 2018-02-28 1:25 GMT+02:00 James Salsman :
> > >
> > > > > I was not trying to say that everybody
> > > > > should learn English. The point I was
> > > > > trying to make there is that knowing
> > > > > English is a privilege and that it is easy
> > > > > to not notice it.
> > > >
> > > > I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative
> to
> > > > the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia
> > > > articles?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. We are making it possible
> to
> > > write them and to read them. It is not the same thing as teaching
> > subjects.
> > >
> > > Should we do teaching? Maybe, but since it's different from making it
> > > possible to write and read, I'm afraid it would be losing focus.
> > >
> > > Is there anything bad about teaching languages? Of course not. It's
> > great.
> > > I'm just not sure that it's the right thing for Wikimedia to do, when
> > > Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki
> > > articles.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > > ‪“We're living in pieces,
> > > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Harald Haugland]

This thread brought me to think of an article I wrote on Norwegian
Wikipedia about a year ago. It was about the Allex Project   (African
Languages Lexical Project), a project where universities in Oslo,
Gothenburg and Harare cooperated in developing monolingual text corpus
based dictionaries for shona and ndebele languages in Zimbabwe.

The project resulted in a dictionary in shona, establishing a lexicographic
institute at the university of Zimbabwe, African Languages Research
Institute, 10 doctor degrees for zimbabwians and much more. Shona and
ndbele were lifted from spoken language to university level and
acknowledged as education language.

There is a wikipedia in shona language. It has 3106 articles. If one could
engage some of the people that worked in the Allex Project to do a paid
translation job, it would benefit about 14 million speakers, shona is the
most spoken Bantu language, Zulu is next to shona, spoken by 10 million,
according to our articles.

https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALLEX-prosjektet

Greetings from frozen, sunny Norway

Harald Haugland




2018-02-28 15:03 GMT+01:00 Jean-Philippe Béland :

> The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have
> Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity and
> other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand what
> you are saying.
>
> JP
>
> On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 2:32 AM Amir E. Aharoni <
> amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>
> > 2018-02-28 1:25 GMT+02:00 James Salsman :
> >
> > > > I was not trying to say that everybody
> > > > should learn English. The point I was
> > > > trying to make there is that knowing
> > > > English is a privilege and that it is easy
> > > > to not notice it.
> > >
> > > I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative to
> > > the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia
> > > articles?
> > >
> > >
> > We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. We are making it possible to
> > write them and to read them. It is not the same thing as teaching
> subjects.
> >
> > Should we do teaching? Maybe, but since it's different from making it
> > possible to write and read, I'm afraid it would be losing focus.
> >
> > Is there anything bad about teaching languages? Of course not. It's
> great.
> > I'm just not sure that it's the right thing for Wikimedia to do, when
> > Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki
> > articles.
> >
> > --
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > ‪“We're living in pieces,
> > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Stewards elected

[Nurunnaby Hasive]

Congratulations!


Hasive

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 1:20 AM, Ruslan  wrote:

> Congratulations to our new colleagues!
>
> Ruslan
>
> 2018-03-01 0:14 GMT+03:00 Mardetanha :
>
> > Hey Wikimedia community
> > after a long election we finally have couple new stewards elected
> >
> >
> >1. علاء  D8%A1>
> > (
> >talk  > D8%A7%D8%A1>
> > · contribs
> > > D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%A1>
> >)
> >2. Green Giant 
> (talk
> > · contribs
> >)
> >3. Rxy  (talk
> > · contribs
> >)
> >4. -revi  (talk
> > · contribs
> >)
> >5. There'sNoTime  wiki/User:There%27sNoTime>
> > (
> >talk  ·
> >contribs
> > There%27sNoTime
> > >)
> >
> >
> > please join me in welcoming them for the new position and congratulating
> > them for gaining communities trust.
> >
> >
> >
> > Mardetanha
> > On behalf of election committee
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>



-- 
*Nurunnaby Chowdhury (Hasive) **:: **নুরুন্নবী চৌধুরী (হাছিব)*
User: Hasive  |
GSM/WhatsApp/Viber: +8801712754752
​
Administrator | Bengali Wikipedia 
Board Member | Wikimedia Bangladesh 
fb.com/Hasive  | @nhasive
 | www.nhasive.com
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] About Facebook Linked in some of Wikimedia projects

[Vi to]

The two cases some referred to
https://az.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice and
https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bản_mẫu:AdvancedSiteNotices

I don't like facebook at all but it's a de facto standard for
communication/outreaching. If "official" groups meet a series of
requisites. For example being managed by a sufficient number of trusted
users, respecting "something recalling" friendly space expectations, etc.

Vito

2018-03-01 3:01 GMT+01:00 Erik Moeller :

> On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 5:31 PM, James Heilman  wrote:
> > I am not seeing any link to Facebook here?
> >
> > https://az.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeniyetm%C9%99_(roman)
>
> It's part of a banner, not sure the banner is set to 100%. It says:
>
> "Azərbaycanca Vikipediya ilə daim əlaqədə olmaq üçün bizi "Facebook"da
> izləyin!"
>
> in small font at the top, with a link to:
>
> https://www.facebook.com/azvikipediya
>
> Personally, I'd love to see WMF or a chapter set up a public Mastodon
> instance; the project has matured significantly since its first
> release and is at least a viable free/open alternative to the
> Twitter-ish forms of social networking. FB still has event management
> functions that are difficult to substitute, however.
>
> Erik
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Stewards elected

[Ruslan]

Congratulations to our new colleagues!

Ruslan

2018-03-01 0:14 GMT+03:00 Mardetanha :

> Hey Wikimedia community
> after a long election we finally have couple new stewards elected
>
>
>1. علاء 
> (
>talk  D8%A7%D8%A1>
> · contribs
> D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%A1>
>)
>2. Green Giant  (talk
> · contribs
>)
>3. Rxy  (talk
> · contribs
>)
>4. -revi  (talk
> · contribs
>)
>5. There'sNoTime 
> (
>talk  ·
>contribs
> >)
>
>
> please join me in welcoming them for the new position and congratulating
> them for gaining communities trust.
>
>
>
> Mardetanha
> On behalf of election committee
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,