date:20120626

2012/6/26 Risker :
> On 25 June 2012 13:56, Steven Walling  wrote:
>> On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Risker  wrote:
>> > Excuse me. Just about a month ago, we had a discussion about spreading
>> out
>> > the times during which office hours would be hosted. Instead of increased
>> > diversity in times, it seems ALL office hours are now being scheduled
>> > during a very narrow window of time from roughly 1530 UTC to 1800 UTC.

> Now, it's entirely possible that the WMF staff and those of other projects
> using the "usual" timeslot have decided that their target audience is the
> people who are available during that timeslot (I don't think Wikidata's
> ever had an office hours outside of the same slot, for example).  However,

Since we have been named explicitly: our three English office hours
have so far been at 16:30 UTC (twice) and 12:00 UTC (once), so one out
of three was outside that narrow band you mentioned.

I have to admit that the next one was again scheduled for 16:30 UTC,
but in order to respond to the critique we will move it to 22:00 UTC
(which is, by the way, midnight for us. I hope that someone
appreciates that effort).

We will try to keep that in mind for further scheduling and to make it
more diverse, and if we do not, anyone is free to remind us. We're not
perfect :)

Thanks for pointing it out,
Cheers,
Denny

-- 
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Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] IRC office hours "The future of e-mail usage in Wikimedia projects" 2012-07-18 16:30 UTC

2012-06-26 Thread Federico Leva (Nemo)


Risker, 26/06/2012 03:55:

There are sometimes good reasons for holding office hours consistently at a
specific time, most particularly if there is a desire to draw in editors
from a certain geographic area, or if that is the time that a specific
language group finds most convenient. [...]


Don't forget the efficiency of calendarization [does this word even 
exist in English?]: it's way easier to organize yourself if the date and 
time is always the same. Of course this doesn't help if you're 
constantly busy at work or asleep at that time. ;)


Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Language links and double language links on the Wikipedias

Ziko,

it does not jeopardize the Wikidata goal -- the current language link
system won't be switched off, but can be further used. Everything that
is working currently will still be possible afterwards. Wikidata can
still be used to represent the 99.2% of language links that are simple
-- this would still be a huge improvement over the current state.

As soon as these are out of the way, we can think about if and how to
extend the system in order to deal with the rest.

Cheers,
Denny

2012/6/25 Ziko van Dijk :
> Hello,
>
> So may I guess that "double links" are usually the result of a
> Wikipedian who was not sure which language link to set, so in doubt,
> he simply put in the language links for two different articles?
>
> And in general, is it imagineable that different languages divide the
> knowledge in different ways, which could jeopardize the whole goal of
> Wikidata unifiying the language links?
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
> 2012/6/25 Delirium :
>> Thanks for this list. For the languages I know, I've started going through
>> and fixing ones that are clearly wrong. If a number of people do that, that
>> should improve the general quality/consistency of interwiki links. I second
>> the other comment that it'd be nice if the parsing could be re-run to
>> exclude commented-out links, but the list is still useful as is.
>>
>> There are some difficult cases, though, when languages make different
>> choices on how to group subjects, so the articles aren't actually in 1-to-1
>> correspondence. For example, the English article [[en: Móði and Magni]]
>> unsurprisingly has two outgoing interwiki links, when linking to languages
>> that split them, such as [[da:Magni]] and [[da:Modi]]. It's not clear what
>> to do about these cases.
>>
>> Best,
>> Mark
>>
>>
>> On 6/25/12 12:29 PM, Denny Vrandečić wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I ran some analysis last week, to get some numbers out of the
>>> Wikipedia language links. One type of reports that were generated was
>>> the list of all articles in the main namespaces of the Wikipedias that
>>> link to more than one article in another language edition of Wikipedia
>>> (so called double language links). There are not that many of them
>>> (about 19,000 in total), split by language, all available here:
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>> Double language links are not errors per se, but they contain a few
>>> nuisances
>>> * they lead to two links in the language links list that just look the
>>> same (you have to hover over them to see that they link to different
>>> languages), which is not really optimal from the user experience side
>>> * they are not saved in the langlinks table and thus are ignored in
>>> certain reports and also in the respective export
>>>
>>> I am not sure how to reach out to the respective Wikipedia
>>> communities, or if I should at all. Should I post to their respective
>>> version of the village pump? Remembering from the time I was active on
>>> the Croatian Wikipedia, I would have appreciated that list to check
>>> the entries. I reckoned the wikipedia-l list would be the right place,
>>> but that list looks rather dead.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Denny
>>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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>
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> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
> http://wmnederland.nl/
>
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> 3500 AD Utrecht
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Language links and double language links on the Wikipedias

Hi Bence,

yes, I am thinking about rerunning the script and removing comments
first. Didn't work out yesterday, I had a bug in my script, and
noticed that only in the morning when it was already almost finished.
Let's see when I have the time for the update. (Or if someone else
picks up the code and does it).

Thanks for the comments,
Cheers,
Denny

2012/6/25 Bence Damokos :
> Hi Denny,
>
> This is a really interesting list.
> Looking at the Hungarian list, I find that in many instances the duplicate
> interwiki link is actually commented out (in the form of " or ),
> and not real duplicate links. (In some cases there are indeed duplicate
> links, where one concept covers two concepts in other languages.)
>
> Maybe you could refine your search algorithm to exclude commented out
> links, and improve your listing page by including not only the second
> interwiki link found for a given language, but also the first one, so it is
> easier to assess without having to check the article pages or source codes?
>
> In any case, the village pumps might be a good place to post a link to the
> lists. The "Global message delivery" system might help you in that:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery
>
> Best regards,
> Bence
>
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Denny Vrandečić <
> denny.vrande...@wikimedia.de> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I ran some analysis last week, to get some numbers out of the
>> Wikipedia language links. One type of reports that were generated was
>> the list of all articles in the main namespaces of the Wikipedias that
>> link to more than one article in another language edition of Wikipedia
>> (so called double language links). There are not that many of them
>> (about 19,000 in total), split by language, all available here:
>>
>> 
>>
>> Double language links are not errors per se, but they contain a few
>> nuisances
>> * they lead to two links in the language links list that just look the
>> same (you have to hover over them to see that they link to different
>> languages), which is not really optimal from the user experience side
>> * they are not saved in the langlinks table and thus are ignored in
>> certain reports and also in the respective export
>>
>> I am not sure how to reach out to the respective Wikipedia
>> communities, or if I should at all. Should I post to their respective
>> version of the village pump? Remembering from the time I was active on
>> the Croatian Wikipedia, I would have appreciated that list to check
>> the entries. I reckoned the wikipedia-l list would be the right place,
>> but that list looks rather dead.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Denny
>>
>> --
>> Project director Wikidata
>> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
>> Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de
>>
>> Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
>> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
>> unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
>> Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
>>
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Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Language links and double language links on the Wikipedias

Amir,

thank you for the thoughtful reply!

Indeed our current plan is a kind of a staged deployment in the sense
that we will not automatically transfer the links but let the editor
community do it. On our test systems we already see bots being tried
out and rewritten, so we expect that as soon as Wikidata starts, we
will see that transition happening.

But the current language link system will continue to work, so no
article or Wikipedia is forced to switch to the Wikidata system.
Complex language links configurations can still be handled manually --
and maybe even easier so, since conflicts between bots and human
editors should be less likely to happen.

I hope that this is the right path to "profit" :)

Cheers,
Denny


2012/6/25 Amir E. Aharoni :
> Hi Denny,
>
> TL;DR: It's a very important question, but don't worry about it too
> much. Just do Wikidata well as it is currently planned.
>
> Now, the full reply.
>
> I wrote a bit of an essay about it in 2008:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tips_for_resolving_interwiki_conflicts
>
> I also started a page to coordinate the efforts to resolve such conflicts:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_synchronization
>
> It started out nicely, but didn't really scale, so I had no choice but
> to neglect it.
>
> There are two main reasons that it didn't scale:
> 1. Fixing interlanguage links conflicts is an exhausting manual
> process. The Interlanguage extension or Wikidata are supposed to make
> it centralized and easier.
>
> 2. Almost all Wikipedians are very, very reluctant about doing
> anything outside their home projects.
>
> So, Wikidata is supposed to resolve #1. Once it becomes active, #2
> will kick in again. At this stage, all I can say is our old motto: "Be
> Bold". There's a rumor about me, which says that I know a lot of
> languages. I don't; I'm just bold about trying to edit Wikipedias in
> languages that I don't know. Everybody can do it. Most of the time it
> turns out to be correct and people don't complain. Trying to talk to
> people about this on village pumps and using global message delivery
> is not very efficient. In many languages, even in some major ones, the
> village pumps are not as active as in English, and even when they are,
> people very often ignore messages in English.
>
> Anyway, my proposal is this:
> * As discussed at bug 15607 [1], the best strategy for rolling out
> centralized language links is to enable them in articles without
> conflicts and to leave articles with conflicts without any change at
> first.
> * After initial roll-out, a list of conflicts for every project should
> be created. That is, there should be one list of articles with
> conflicts in the English Wikipedia, another list for the Hebrew
> Wikipedia, another one for Croatian, etc. This will make it relatively
> more accessible for people, because it will look like a problem in
> their project. Most people like solving local problems more than
> global problems.[2]
> * Profit.
>
> I believe that this crowdsourcing model may work. It won't be
> immediately perfect or very fast. It's just a sensible start.
>
> [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15607
>
> [2] A technical implementation comment about the "list of pages with
> conflicts": it will be most efficient, if it will be implemented as a
> special page in each project. If updating it immediately is too
> burdensome in terms of performance, it can be updated in batches every
> week or so. The reason it should be a special page is that it will
> look like an integrated site feature and that it will be easy to
> localize its interface.
>
> 2012/6/25 Denny Vrandečić :
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I ran some analysis last week, to get some numbers out of the
>> Wikipedia language links. One type of reports that were generated was
>> the list of all articles in the main namespaces of the Wikipedias that
>> link to more than one article in another language edition of Wikipedia
>> (so called double language links). There are not that many of them
>> (about 19,000 in total), split by language, all available here:
>>
>> 
>>
>> Double language links are not errors per se, but they contain a few nuisances
>> * they lead to two links in the language links list that just look the
>> same (you have to hover over them to see that they link to different
>> languages), which is not really optimal from the user experience side
>> * they are not saved in the langlinks table and thus are ignored in
>> certain reports and also in the respective export
>>
>> I am not sure how to reach out to the respective Wikipedia
>> communities, or if I should at all. Should I post to their respective
>> version of the village pump? Remembering from the time I was active on
>> the Croatian Wikipedia, I would have appreciated that list to check
>> the entries. I reckoned the wikipedia-l list would be the right place,
>> but that list looks rather dead.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Denny
>>
>> --
>> Proje

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Language links and double language links on the Wikipedias

2012-06-26 Thread Martijn Hoekstra

This number, 99.2% was also mentioned on the Berlin Hackathon. It
sounds much higher than what my (very scientifically relevant,
obviously) gut feeling tells me. Could you indicate where this number
is coming from?

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Denny Vrandečić
 wrote:
> Ziko,
>
> it does not jeopardize the Wikidata goal -- the current language link
> system won't be switched off, but can be further used. Everything that
> is working currently will still be possible afterwards. Wikidata can
> still be used to represent the 99.2% of language links that are simple
> -- this would still be a huge improvement over the current state.
>
> As soon as these are out of the way, we can think about if and how to
> extend the system in order to deal with the rest.
>
> Cheers,
> Denny
>
> 2012/6/25 Ziko van Dijk :
>> Hello,
>>
>> So may I guess that "double links" are usually the result of a
>> Wikipedian who was not sure which language link to set, so in doubt,
>> he simply put in the language links for two different articles?
>>
>> And in general, is it imagineable that different languages divide the
>> knowledge in different ways, which could jeopardize the whole goal of
>> Wikidata unifiying the language links?
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Ziko
>>
>>
>> 2012/6/25 Delirium :
>>> Thanks for this list. For the languages I know, I've started going through
>>> and fixing ones that are clearly wrong. If a number of people do that, that
>>> should improve the general quality/consistency of interwiki links. I second
>>> the other comment that it'd be nice if the parsing could be re-run to
>>> exclude commented-out links, but the list is still useful as is.
>>>
>>> There are some difficult cases, though, when languages make different
>>> choices on how to group subjects, so the articles aren't actually in 1-to-1
>>> correspondence. For example, the English article [[en: Móði and Magni]]
>>> unsurprisingly has two outgoing interwiki links, when linking to languages
>>> that split them, such as [[da:Magni]] and [[da:Modi]]. It's not clear what
>>> to do about these cases.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Mark
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6/25/12 12:29 PM, Denny Vrandečić wrote:

 Hi all,

 I ran some analysis last week, to get some numbers out of the
 Wikipedia language links. One type of reports that were generated was
 the list of all articles in the main namespaces of the Wikipedias that
 link to more than one article in another language edition of Wikipedia
 (so called double language links). There are not that many of them
 (about 19,000 in total), split by language, all available here:

 

 Double language links are not errors per se, but they contain a few
 nuisances
 * they lead to two links in the language links list that just look the
 same (you have to hover over them to see that they link to different
 languages), which is not really optimal from the user experience side
 * they are not saved in the langlinks table and thus are ignored in
 certain reports and also in the respective export

 I am not sure how to reach out to the respective Wikipedia
 communities, or if I should at all. Should I post to their respective
 version of the village pump? Remembering from the time I was active on
 the Croatian Wikipedia, I would have appreciated that list to check
 the entries. I reckoned the wikipedia-l list would be the right place,
 but that list looks rather dead.

 Cheers,
 Denny

>>>
>>>
>>> ___
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> ---
>> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
>> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
>> http://wmnederland.nl/
>>
>> Wikimedia Nederland
>> Postbus 167
>> 3500 AD Utrecht
>> ---
>>
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
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>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
>
>
> --
> Project director Wikidata
> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
> Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
> unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
> Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Language links and double language links on the Wikipedias

I got the number from Brent Hecht, a researcher at Northwestern, who
has a number of great papers published on Wikipedia-related topics.

CC-ing him, so he knows I am blam.., er, referencing him :)

Cheers,
Denny



2012/6/26 Martijn Hoekstra :
> This number, 99.2% was also mentioned on the Berlin Hackathon. It
> sounds much higher than what my (very scientifically relevant,
> obviously) gut feeling tells me. Could you indicate where this number
> is coming from?
>
> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Denny Vrandečić
>  wrote:
>> Ziko,
>>
>> it does not jeopardize the Wikidata goal -- the current language link
>> system won't be switched off, but can be further used. Everything that
>> is working currently will still be possible afterwards. Wikidata can
>> still be used to represent the 99.2% of language links that are simple
>> -- this would still be a huge improvement over the current state.
>>
>> As soon as these are out of the way, we can think about if and how to
>> extend the system in order to deal with the rest.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Denny
>>
>> 2012/6/25 Ziko van Dijk :
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> So may I guess that "double links" are usually the result of a
>>> Wikipedian who was not sure which language link to set, so in doubt,
>>> he simply put in the language links for two different articles?
>>>
>>> And in general, is it imagineable that different languages divide the
>>> knowledge in different ways, which could jeopardize the whole goal of
>>> Wikidata unifiying the language links?
>>>
>>> Kind regards
>>> Ziko
>>>
>>>
>>> 2012/6/25 Delirium :
 Thanks for this list. For the languages I know, I've started going through
 and fixing ones that are clearly wrong. If a number of people do that, that
 should improve the general quality/consistency of interwiki links. I second
 the other comment that it'd be nice if the parsing could be re-run to
 exclude commented-out links, but the list is still useful as is.

 There are some difficult cases, though, when languages make different
 choices on how to group subjects, so the articles aren't actually in 1-to-1
 correspondence. For example, the English article [[en: Móði and Magni]]
 unsurprisingly has two outgoing interwiki links, when linking to languages
 that split them, such as [[da:Magni]] and [[da:Modi]]. It's not clear what
 to do about these cases.

 Best,
 Mark


 On 6/25/12 12:29 PM, Denny Vrandečić wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I ran some analysis last week, to get some numbers out of the
> Wikipedia language links. One type of reports that were generated was
> the list of all articles in the main namespaces of the Wikipedias that
> link to more than one article in another language edition of Wikipedia
> (so called double language links). There are not that many of them
> (about 19,000 in total), split by language, all available here:
>
> 
>
> Double language links are not errors per se, but they contain a few
> nuisances
> * they lead to two links in the language links list that just look the
> same (you have to hover over them to see that they link to different
> languages), which is not really optimal from the user experience side
> * they are not saved in the langlinks table and thus are ignored in
> certain reports and also in the respective export
>
> I am not sure how to reach out to the respective Wikipedia
> communities, or if I should at all. Should I post to their respective
> version of the village pump? Remembering from the time I was active on
> the Croatian Wikipedia, I would have appreciated that list to check
> the entries. I reckoned the wikipedia-l list would be the right place,
> but that list looks rather dead.
>
> Cheers,
> Denny
>


 ___
 Wikimedia-l mailing list
 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
>>> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
>>> http://wmnederland.nl/
>>>
>>> Wikimedia Nederland
>>> Postbus 167
>>> 3500 AD Utrecht
>>> ---
>>>
>>> ___
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Project director Wikidata
>> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
>> Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de
>>
>> Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
>> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
>> unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
>> Finanzamt für Körpersc

Re: [Wikimedia-l] IRC office hours "The future of e-mail usage in Wikimedia projects" 2012-07-18 16:30 UTC

2012-06-26 Thread Risker

On 26 June 2012 07:47, Denny Vrandečić  wrote:

> 2012/6/26 Risker :
> > On 25 June 2012 13:56, Steven Walling  wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Risker  wrote:
> >> > Excuse me. Just about a month ago, we had a discussion about spreading
> >> out
> >> > the times during which office hours would be hosted. Instead of
> increased
> >> > diversity in times, it seems ALL office hours are now being scheduled
> >> > during a very narrow window of time from roughly 1530 UTC to 1800 UTC.
>
> > Now, it's entirely possible that the WMF staff and those of other
> projects
> > using the "usual" timeslot have decided that their target audience is the
> > people who are available during that timeslot (I don't think Wikidata's
> > ever had an office hours outside of the same slot, for example).
>  However,
>
> Since we have been named explicitly: our three English office hours
> have so far been at 16:30 UTC (twice) and 12:00 UTC (once), so one out
> of three was outside that narrow band you mentioned.
>
> I have to admit that the next one was again scheduled for 16:30 UTC,
> but in order to respond to the critique we will move it to 22:00 UTC
> (which is, by the way, midnight for us. I hope that someone
> appreciates that effort).
>
> We will try to keep that in mind for further scheduling and to make it
> more diverse, and if we do not, anyone is free to remind us. We're not
> perfect :)
>
>
> Thanks for pointing it out,
> Cheers,
> Denny
>
> _
>

Denny - Thank you very much.  I for one will make every effort to attend.

Risker
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Language links and double language links on the Wikipedias

2012-06-26 Thread Deryck Chan

One major problem with double language links I've encountered before was
that they confuse interwiki bots and therefore break things. Several
articles on the Cantonese Wikipedia (zh-yue.wp) pertaining to local
political and cultural issues in the Cantonese-speaking world have
__NOBOT__ on them simply because they have topic splits that are
significantly different from other Wikipedias, and bot interwiki
manipulation need to be prevented to maintain topic correspondence between
languages.

In short: double language links are a possible idea, but only if we can
upgrade the interwiki bots first.

On 25 June 2012 11:29, Denny Vrandečić  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I ran some analysis last week, to get some numbers out of the
> Wikipedia language links. One type of reports that were generated was
> the list of all articles in the main namespaces of the Wikipedias that
> link to more than one article in another language edition of Wikipedia
> (so called double language links). There are not that many of them
> (about 19,000 in total), split by language, all available here:
>
> 
>
> Double language links are not errors per se, but they contain a few
> nuisances
> * they lead to two links in the language links list that just look the
> same (you have to hover over them to see that they link to different
> languages), which is not really optimal from the user experience side
> * they are not saved in the langlinks table and thus are ignored in
> certain reports and also in the respective export
>
> I am not sure how to reach out to the respective Wikipedia
> communities, or if I should at all. Should I post to their respective
> version of the village pump? Remembering from the time I was active on
> the Croatian Wikipedia, I would have appreciated that list to check
> the entries. I reckoned the wikipedia-l list would be the right place,
> but that list looks rather dead.
>
> Cheers,
> Denny
>
> --
> Project director Wikidata
> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
> Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
> unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
> Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Commons Picture of the Year 2011 - Results

2012-06-26 Thread Béria Lima

Dear Wikimedians,

If you didn't read yet in the
Signpost,
The 2011 Picture of the Year competition has now concluded and we are happy
to announce the results:

WINNER: *A view of the lake Bondhus in Norway. In the background a view of
the Bondhus Glacier as a part of the Folgefonna Glacier.* (Lake Bondhus
Norway 
2862.jpg)
by *Heinrich Pniok
(Alchemist-hp/
pse-mendelejew.de )*, with 143 votes in the
final round

RUNNER-UP: *Self portrait of Tracy Caldwell
Dysonin the Cupola
module  of the
International
Space Station 
observing
the Earth below during Expedition
24 .* (Tracy Caldwell Dyson in
Cupola 
ISS.jpg)
by *Tracy Caldwell Dyson (NASA )*, with
118 votes.

2ND RUNNER-UP: *Cueva de los
Verdes,
Canary Islands , Spain.
Reflection on water.* (Lanzarote 5 Luc
Viatour.jpg)
by *Luc Viatour (Lviatour )
*. 57 votes

In the first round, there were 1395 voters for the 599 images in the
competition. The top 36 made it to the final, where 1178 voters voted.
Congratulations to all the contributors who helped create these beautiful
works and make them available to the world as free content.

A complete list of the finalists is available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2011/Results .

Thanks to all the voters for participating.

Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2011
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[Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.


Wow, thank goodness we never had advertising. The TV-Tropes wiki has been 
forced to censor a
number of pages due to advertiser pressure.

http://www.themarysue.com/tv-tropes-rape-articles/

In the mean time, the discussed tropes *do* exist in our culture and in our 
movies. It
somehow feels soviet. :-/

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


-- 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 08:02:55PM +0200, Kim Bruning wrote:
> 
> Wow, thank goodness we never had advertising. The TV-Tropes wiki has been 
> forced to censor a
> number of pages due to advertiser pressure.

The wiki-community is apparantly working on it:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TheSecondGoogleIncident

TVTropes is not a WMF wiki, but it's still interesting to follow how
they go about solving their issues here.


sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Marc A. Pelletier


On 26/06/2012 2:02 PM, Kim Bruning wrote:

Wow, thank goodness we never had advertising. The TV-Tropes wiki has been 
forced to censor a
number of pages due to advertiser pressure.



And thus is the wisdom of eschewing advertizement and sponsorship 
highlighted for all too see.  I've always supported the model of yearly 
donation drives to avoid it -- occasionally creepy Jimmy pictures 
notwithstanding -- and this is the reason why.


We are, like it or not, in a society increasingly driven by marketeers 
and focus groups; being at the mercy of entities who care nothing for 
information or knowledge so long as their precious *image* is pristine 
is the norm, and Wikipedia remains a bastion of sanity in that sea of 
madness.


-- Coren / Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

As far as I can make out, the problem was that they could no longer keep up
with moderating these pages, and that the content turned creepier and
creepier.

---o0o---

@ Marq FJA

Eddie tends to be a little abrupt in his explanations.

The gist of it is that rape (much like sex and other similar topics) have
become difficult to moderate across such a huge wiki.

Banning rape is probably the way to go, at least given the current
situation and as a temporary solution, but the only real way to deal with
the underlying problem is to implement better rules, enlarge the mod team,
and have stricter moderation.

There are unfortunately very creepy users around the wiki, but give it half
a year or more of harsher-than-usual moderation, and the wiki will become
easier to handle in that aspect.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13337475620A51675000&page=17#410

---o0o---

These are generic problems, and Wikimedia is not free of them.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 7:09 PM, Kim Bruning  wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 08:02:55PM +0200, Kim Bruning wrote:
> >
> > Wow, thank goodness we never had advertising. The TV-Tropes wiki has
> been forced to censor a
> > number of pages due to advertiser pressure.
>
> The wiki-community is apparantly working on it:
>
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TheSecondGoogleIncident
>
> TVTropes is not a WMF wiki, but it's still interesting to follow how
> they go about solving their issues here.
>
>
> sincerely,
>Kim Bruning
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On 26 June 2012 19:02, Kim Bruning  wrote:
> In the mean time, the discussed tropes *do* exist in our culture and in our 
> movies. It
> somehow feels soviet. :-/

A significant chunk of them would probably fail [[WP:V]]. Actually for
the most part I just feel sorry for the people who are meant to
enforce the new rules. On the other hand I note that home made
explosive tropes are not affected.

-- 
geni

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On 26 June 2012 20:30, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> As far as I can make out, the problem was that they could no longer keep up
> with moderating these pages, and that the content turned creepier and
> creepier.

Its more complicated than that. Apart from anything else TVTropes have
been drifting in the direction  of being less lively and more
straitlaced for some time. Clearing out the adult stuff is just part
of the ongoing pattern.

-- 
geni

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Todd Allen

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
> On 26/06/2012 2:02 PM, Kim Bruning wrote:
>>
>> Wow, thank goodness we never had advertising. The TV-Tropes wiki has been
>> forced to censor a
>> number of pages due to advertiser pressure.
>>
>
> And thus is the wisdom of eschewing advertizement and sponsorship
> highlighted for all too see.  I've always supported the model of yearly
> donation drives to avoid it -- occasionally creepy Jimmy pictures
> notwithstanding -- and this is the reason why.
>
> We are, like it or not, in a society increasingly driven by marketeers and
> focus groups; being at the mercy of entities who care nothing for
> information or knowledge so long as their precious *image* is pristine is
> the norm, and Wikipedia remains a bastion of sanity in that sea of madness.
>
> -- Coren / Marc
>
>
>
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Perhaps the next time someone brings up the "WMF should accept ads!"
bit, we can point back to this thread to explain why when we respond
"That would be the end of neutrality," we are not exaggerating.

-- 
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Nathan

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Marc A. Pelletier 
> wrote:
> > On 26/06/2012 2:02 PM, Kim Bruning wrote:
> >>
> >> Wow, thank goodness we never had advertising. The TV-Tropes wiki has
> been
> >> forced to censor a
> >> number of pages due to advertiser pressure.
> >>
> >
> > And thus is the wisdom of eschewing advertizement and sponsorship
> > highlighted for all too see.  I've always supported the model of yearly
> > donation drives to avoid it -- occasionally creepy Jimmy pictures
> > notwithstanding -- and this is the reason why.
> >
> > We are, like it or not, in a society increasingly driven by marketeers
> and
> > focus groups; being at the mercy of entities who care nothing for
> > information or knowledge so long as their precious *image* is pristine is
> > the norm, and Wikipedia remains a bastion of sanity in that sea of
> madness.
> >
> > -- Coren / Marc
> >
> >
>
> Perhaps the next time someone brings up the "WMF should accept ads!"
> bit, we can point back to this thread to explain why when we respond
> "That would be the end of neutrality," we are not exaggerating.
>

Someone else will just cleverly point out the differences between Wikipedia
and TVTropes, which are many. Using a wiki platform does not make
comparisons between the two apples to apples.

~Nathan
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Marc A. Pelletier


On 26/06/2012 3:59 PM, Nathan wrote:
Someone else will just cleverly point out the differences between 
Wikipedia and TVTropes, which are many. Using a wiki platform does not 
make comparisons between the two apples to apples.


No, but that's besides the point.  The point is simple:  if you rely on 
advertisers to survive, they get a hammer to use against you if you 
deviate from their message -- whathever that message might be.


-- Coren / Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 8:48 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:

> Perhaps the next time someone brings up the "WMF should accept ads!"
> bit, we can point back to this thread to explain why when we respond
> "That would be the end of neutrality," we are not exaggerating.
>

I've always been against ads, but as far as I am concerned, the illusion of
an NPOV project ended with the SOPA strike, and Jimbo's current exploits
around O'Dwyer (who I agree should not be extradited, but doh, that is not
the point ...) just underscore that.

That's how the press see it, too -- even the supportive press -- referring
to "political interventions", and "setting the vaunted principle of
neutrality aside":

---o0o---

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has made a rare *political intervention* to
call on Theresa May to stop the extradition of British student Richard
O'Dwyer to the US for alleged copyright offences.

...

Wales was at the forefront of the campaign against the Sopa and Pipa bills
aimed at enforcing online copyright more vigorously, which many warned
would threaten sites at the core of the internet: Google, Wikipedia and
others. With other senior editors, Wales *set aside for the first time
Wikipedia's vaunted principle of neutrality*, blacking out the online
encyclopedia for a day as a warning of the consequences of too-strict
copyright enforcement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/24/wikipedia-founder-richard-odwyer-extradition-stopped?newsfeed=true

---o0o---

Besides, the ones putting pressure on TV Tropes, and who made them take the
pages down, are Google.

That is the same Google who are a major financial contributor to Wikimedia.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 08:41:04PM +0100, geni wrote:
> On 26 June 2012 19:02, Kim Bruning  wrote:
> > In the mean time, the discussed tropes *do* exist in our culture and in our 
> > movies. It
> > somehow feels soviet. :-/
> 
> A significant chunk of them would probably fail [[WP:V]]. Actually for
> the most part I just feel sorry for the people who are meant to
> enforce the new rules. On the other hand I note that home made
> explosive tropes are not affected.

TvTropes and en.wp have different foci, so that should not surprise
anyone. (else there wouldn't need to be 2 different wikis)

That said, a number of the expunged topics (eg. movies, books, etc) do
appear to overlap with articles on en.wp, where they are discussed in
our typical dry manner.

(This from a small sample, and they're still working at it, so
ymmv)


sincerely,
Kim Bruning



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Todd Allen

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 2:07 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 8:48 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
>
>> Perhaps the next time someone brings up the "WMF should accept ads!"
>> bit, we can point back to this thread to explain why when we respond
>> "That would be the end of neutrality," we are not exaggerating.
>>
>
>
> I've always been against ads, but as far as I am concerned, the illusion of
> an NPOV project ended with the SOPA strike, and Jimbo's current exploits
> around O'Dwyer (who I agree should not be extradited, but doh, that is not
> the point ...) just underscore that.

I've never understood why that was considered non-neutral. WMF, as an
entity, can have viewpoints, especially as relates to the organization
itself. The WMF, for example, is not neutral on the question of
whether or not people should make donations to the WMF, and utilizes
the project (through banners) to that end. However, they do not go put
into the article [[Wikimedia Foundation]] a line that says "Donating
to WMF is great, go do it!" Similarly, we never once advocated
abandoning neutrality on the [[SOPA]] article.

Similarly, Jimbo is allowed to say whatever the hell he wants on
behalf of whoever the hell he wants, just like any of us would be.
Being associated with Wikimedia doesn't mean he must personally remain
neutral on things, that's only required of him when he edits.

> That's how the press see it, too -- even the supportive press -- referring
> to "political interventions", and "setting the vaunted principle of
> neutrality aside":
>
> ---o0o---
>
> Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has made a rare *political intervention* to
> call on Theresa May to stop the extradition of British student Richard
> O'Dwyer to the US for alleged copyright offences.

NPOV does not and has never stated "Wikipedia contributors should be
neutral on everything at all times, whether on or off wiki." It
prohibits editors from editorializing in articles, but it's new to me
that it prohibits them from editing in the editorial section of the
newspaper. Jimmy has every right to contribute his opinion to a
political debate in an appropriate forum, and that's an appropriate
forum.

> Wales was at the forefront of the campaign against the Sopa and Pipa bills
> aimed at enforcing online copyright more vigorously, which many warned
> would threaten sites at the core of the internet: Google, Wikipedia and
> others. With other senior editors, Wales *set aside for the first time
> Wikipedia's vaunted principle of neutrality*, blacking out the online
> encyclopedia for a day as a warning of the consequences of too-strict
> copyright enforcement.

Poor journalism once again. NPOV never states that WMF must remain
neutral, or as above, the fundraising banners would've violated that
long ago, so nothing needed to be "set aside". It says -articles- must
remain neutral. Articles, not something else.

>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/24/wikipedia-founder-richard-odwyer-extradition-stopped?newsfeed=true
>
> ---o0o---
>
> Besides, the ones putting pressure on TV Tropes, and who made them take the
> pages down, are Google.
>
> That is the same Google who are a major financial contributor to Wikimedia.

True. But if Google told WMF "Change Foo and Bar or we'll pull our
donations," WMF would go straight to the media, get in triple what
Google contributes from sympathy/outrage donations, and Google would
be pilloried. And Google's not dumb--they know that. They also know
that Wikipedia significantly enhances their search results, and that
their donations to WMF are getting them a very good thing for very
little investment. The chances are very slim they'd jeopardize that.

It's unfortunate that TVTropes didn't do the same thing. I imagine, if
that hit the tech press, they would've found themselves getting a very
significant amount of support (both financial and moral), and again,
Google would've gotten pilloried and had to back off. But not taking
ads means we don't have to be dependent on the whims of advertisers,
or an ad provider.

-- 
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Andre Engels

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 9:22 PM, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
> On 26/06/2012 2:02 PM, Kim Bruning wrote:
>>
>> Wow, thank goodness we never had advertising. The TV-Tropes wiki has been
>> forced to censor a
>> number of pages due to advertiser pressure.
>>
>
> And thus is the wisdom of eschewing advertizement and sponsorship
> highlighted for all too see.  I've always supported the model of yearly
> donation drives to avoid it -- occasionally creepy Jimmy pictures
> notwithstanding -- and this is the reason why.

Wow! Indeed! Someone somewhere bowed for something to advertizers!
Of course, if we would have had advertizing, we would also have bowed
for them after they of course would have had similar demands. Is
Wikipedia also going to remove rape articles if people are saying they
will not donate if we do not? No way. Why can we tell that to donators
and not to advertizers?

-- 
André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 09:07:02PM +0100, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> 
> I've always been against ads, but as far as I am concerned, the illusion of
> an NPOV project ended with the SOPA strike, and Jimbo's current exploits
> around O'Dwyer (who I agree should not be extradited, but doh, that is not
> the point ...) just underscore that.

The SOPA strike was necessary for us to retain neutrality. (It's the old
freedom to swing your fists where you wish, versus limiting the arc to
avoid my nose discussion; aka BSD vs GPL; aka "do what you want", vs "do
unto others";  etc. (incidentally, is there a general term for this 100% freedom
vs -except not allowed to take away freedom- rule?))

It might be useful to try to correct newspapers if they state we set
aside our neutrality. It was precisely our neutrality that was at stake!

Of course if Jimmy wants to do other political things, he should be a
bit careful to either explain to everyone why it's necessary for the
foundation and/or explain that he's doing it independently and his views
do not nescessarily reflect the views of the board, etc etc. I hope he's
doing that consistently. Are you saying that maybe he hasn't?

> Besides, the ones putting pressure on TV Tropes, and who made them take the
> pages down, are Google.
> That is the same Google who are a major financial contributor to Wikimedia.

Hmmm. I think WMF talks with different departments at Google than TV
Tropes does. It might be useful to enquire?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 9:23 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:

> > Besides, the ones putting pressure on TV Tropes, and who made them take
> the
> > pages down, are Google.
> >
> > That is the same Google who are a major financial contributor to
> Wikimedia.
>
> True. But if Google told WMF "Change Foo and Bar or we'll pull our
> donations," WMF would go straight to the media, get in triple what
> Google contributes from sympathy/outrage donations, and Google would
> be pilloried. And Google's not dumb--they know that. They also know
> that Wikipedia significantly enhances their search results, and that
> their donations to WMF are getting them a very good thing for very
> little investment. The chances are very slim they'd jeopardize that.
>

Are you not being a bit naive here? Seriously, if Google wanted something,
and were willing to pay Wikimedia another half million dollars for it,
they'd talk to Jimbo and other WMF luminaries behind closed doors. And if
they agreed to whatever it is, then the press would just happen to report a
few weeks later that Brin has donated half a million to Wikipedia. And if
WMF refused whatever Google wanted, then there simply wouldn't be an
announcement of a Google donation to that amount at the next fundraiser.

No one in the press would "pillory" Google for not donating half a million
that year. After all, no one is obliged to donate to Wikimedia, including
Google.

> It's unfortunate that TVTropes didn't do the same thing. I imagine, if
> that hit the tech press, they would've found themselves getting a very
> significant amount of support (both financial and moral), and again,
> Google would've gotten pilloried and had to back off. But not taking
> ads means we don't have to be dependent on the whims of advertisers,
> or an ad provider.

Well, there is a slashdot report. Let's see how much Google get pilloried
for their actions with regard to TV Tropes. My prediction: not much.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, May 2012

2012-06-26 Thread ENWP Pine


Maryana, thank you.

For anyone else who's following this, my understanding that the wikistats 
fixes are complete, including 
http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors_target and 
http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors.



Pine 



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Nathan

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:

> I've never understood why that was considered non-neutral. WMF, as an
> entity, can have viewpoints, especially as relates to the organization
> itself. The WMF, for example, is not neutral on the question of
> whether or not people should make donations to the WMF, and utilizes
> the project (through banners) to that end. However, they do not go put
> into the article [[Wikimedia Foundation]] a line that says "Donating
> to WMF is great, go do it!" Similarly, we never once advocated
> abandoning neutrality on the [[SOPA]] article.

It's simple. The WMF didn't do anything. The English Wikipedia did. That
project effectively changed the content of the entire encyclopedia for
political reasons. That is the condicio sine qua non for abandoning
neutrality. You might say it was done for great reasons, and that it
doesn't corrupt the principle of neutrality generally or imperil the
reputation of the project, etc. But it's impossible to rationally argue
that the SOPA/PIPA protest didn't temporarily set aside neutrality.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Well, there is a slashdot report. Let's see how much Google get pilloried
> for their actions with regard to TV Tropes. My prediction: not much.
>

Oops, that slashdot report is from November 2010, and refers to the last
time Google put TV Tropes under pressure. My apologies. It doesn't look
like that 2010 slashdot story ever became mainstream news.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 9:46 PM, Nathan  wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
>
> > I've never understood why that was considered non-neutral. WMF, as an
> > entity, can have viewpoints, especially as relates to the organization
> > itself. The WMF, for example, is not neutral on the question of
> > whether or not people should make donations to the WMF, and utilizes
> > the project (through banners) to that end. However, they do not go put
> > into the article [[Wikimedia Foundation]] a line that says "Donating
> > to WMF is great, go do it!" Similarly, we never once advocated
> > abandoning neutrality on the [[SOPA]] article.
>
>
> It's simple. The WMF didn't do anything. The English Wikipedia did. That
> project effectively changed the content of the entire encyclopedia for
> political reasons. That is the condicio sine qua non for abandoning
> neutrality. You might say it was done for great reasons, and that it
> doesn't corrupt the principle of neutrality generally or imperil the
> reputation of the project, etc. But it's impossible to rationally argue
> that the SOPA/PIPA protest didn't temporarily set aside neutrality.




And I still don't understand where all those IPs and single-purpose
accounts voting for the blackout came from, or why administrators were
directed to let their votes stand, when we regularly exclude such votes
from far less important community discussions.
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[Wikimedia-l] WM-ES and Fundación ONCE signed agreement to promote accesibility of the projects

2012-06-26 Thread Lucien leGrey

Wikimedia España and Fundación ONCE have signed a collaborative agreement
aimed to promote the accesibility of the projects hosted by Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., including internationally famed Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia.

In a first phase of this agreement, reading access to content will be
studied, although it is also contemplated the possibility of people with
disabilities being able to edit Wikipedia.

A team composed of highly qualified personnel in accesibility by Fundación
ONCE and Grupo Fundosa company Technosite, and another in MediaWiki (the
software of Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia) put forward by
Wikimedia España will work coordinately to try to achieve the set purpose.

Even though both teams will initially focus their work in Spanish
Wikipedia, everything possible will be done so that results can be shared
and used in all language Wikipedias.


Wikimedia España

Wikimedia España is a non-profit Spanish association, officialy recognised
by Wikimedia Foundation Inc., as a Wikimedia Chapter in Spain. Its puepose
is to promote, directly or indirectly, all free content initiatives, such
as those hosted and supported by WMF. Wikimedia España promotes free
knowledge especially through the work of volunteers. Its commiment is to
work to achieve a world in which all human beings can access knowledge.



Fundación ONCE

ONCE,  in 1988, creates Fundación ONCE for the Cooperation and Social
Inclusion of People with Disabilities. It has as purpose the full inclusion
in society of this collective and the improvement of their quality of life,
through their incorporation to the work market and by doing activities that
support universal accesibility, the design of products and services for
everbody, and access to an independent life. Fundación ONCE has contributed
to create more than 69,000 jobs and has destined to accesibility projects
more than 500 million euros.


-- 
Jorge A. Sierra (aka Lucien leGrey)
Chair, Wikimedia España

¡Participa en Wikimedia España!: http://www.wikimedia.org.es/
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On 26 June 2012 21:38, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> Are you not being a bit naive here? Seriously, if Google wanted something,
> and were willing to pay Wikimedia another half million dollars for it,
> they'd talk to Jimbo and other WMF luminaries behind closed doors.

You've been hanging out on wikipedia critics forums too much. Like
most of them you don't appear to realise to what extent wikipedians
tend to be bloody minded individualists. Cutting a deal with "WMF
luminaries" or any other cabal you care to propose simply isn't a
viable approach.

-- 
geni

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Bjoern Hoehrmann

* Nathan wrote:
>It's simple. The WMF didn't do anything. The English Wikipedia did. That
>project effectively changed the content of the entire encyclopedia for
>political reasons. That is the condicio sine qua non for abandoning
>neutrality. You might say it was done for great reasons, and that it
>doesn't corrupt the principle of neutrality generally or imperil the
>reputation of the project, etc. But it's impossible to rationally argue
>that the SOPA/PIPA protest didn't temporarily set aside neutrality.

"Neutrality" is an "article" concept, not a "project" concept and the
protest did not change articles, it rendered them hard to access and
different content was rendered in their stead, and that fact was very
obvious. If the "project" was "neutral", in the sense the concept is
defined for articles, it would be defined be how it is seen by others.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjo...@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/ 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Nathan

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 5:45 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann  wrote:

> * Nathan wrote:
> >It's simple. The WMF didn't do anything. The English Wikipedia did. That
> >project effectively changed the content of the entire encyclopedia for
> >political reasons. That is the condicio sine qua non for abandoning
> >neutrality. You might say it was done for great reasons, and that it
> >doesn't corrupt the principle of neutrality generally or imperil the
> >reputation of the project, etc. But it's impossible to rationally argue
> >that the SOPA/PIPA protest didn't temporarily set aside neutrality.
>
> "Neutrality" is an "article" concept, not a "project" concept and the
> protest did not change articles, it rendered them hard to access and
> different content was rendered in their stead, and that fact was very
> obvious. If the "project" was "neutral", in the sense the concept is
> defined for articles, it would be defined be how it is seen by others.
>

I disagree - I think it is a content concept. Content being what people
looking for encyclopedic content will find; just as people have often
argued against advertising on the grounds that it becomes non-neutral
content that questions the impartiality of the encyclopedia, the same is
even more obviously true if all articles are replaced with a political
banner. There is a degree of cognitive dissonance for people who believe
both in neutrality and in protesting SOPA/PIPA, which understandably leads
to tortured arguments like "neutrality is an article concept" and not a
content concept... but such arguments are plainly not true. Anyway, this is
most definitely a sidetrack from the topic of this thread.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Language links and double language links on the Wikipedias

2012-06-26 Thread Brent Hecht

Hi All,

Brent Hecht here :-) This has been a really interesting discussion, and I
wanted to chime in with a few notes.

The 99.2% is based on a quick script I wrote that looked at reciprocity among a
sample of interlanguage links (ILLs) in 25 languages to address some questions
that Denny and I brainstormed. It did not consider commented links, redirects,
etc. However, in my lab’s published work that takes much more involved
approaches to this problem, we also find that complex interlanguage link
situations are the obvious minority, with simple 1:1 relationships being the
norm. For instance, only 1% of connected components of the ILL graph (groups of
articles linked together by ILLs) had more than one article per language
edition in our 25-language dataset.

There are some important details to note here. For instance, most connected
components contain only one article (most concepts are covered by only a single
language edition) and non-1:1 cases by definition involve more articles than
1:1 cases (all other things being equal). Also, general concepts of global
interest are likely disproportionately represented in the non-1:1 situations
(e.g. river, canal, high school, diplomacy).

That said, given our data, I also think Denny is spot on with the “let’s start
with the 1:1s” approach to building Wikidata, with solutions for more complex
situations coming later. These solutions could be fascinating and important,
but make sense as a second step, IMHO. Given that each language edition will be
able to pick and choose from statements (last I checked, at least), this might
provide additional flexibility as well, allowing greater variation to be
included in the 1:1 model.

If interested, I'd encourage folks to check out our CHI 2012 paper [1], as well
as some excellent work done by Gerard de Melo and Gerhard Weikum that preceded
us [3]. De Melo and Weikum establish an interesting taxonomy for causes of
non-1:1 links: conceptual drift, different granularities, and mistakes made by
editors.

In my view, perhaps a greater problem is the one of missing interlanguage
links, which I hope Wikidata’s popularity will help to solve. We’ve done some
work to show that missing links can be somewhat substantial between certain
language editions [2], although that was based on data from 2009.

It's important to note, too, that some of the differences in coverage of a
given concept across articles in different languages is addressed not with
ILLs, but simply by describing concepts differently in each language edition.
We call this "sub-concept diversity", and it can be substantial [2]. Our CHI
2012 paper describes a system we built, Omnipedia, that allows folks to browse
the content about a single concept in 25 language editions. We’re hoping to
launch the system sometime soon, but we have some practical considerations to
deal with first (funding, finishing my thesis, etc. :-)).

Lastly, I've been digging into the social science of this stuff a bit lately
and many folks believe that, as Ziko said, different languages "divide
knowledge in different ways" (even apart from any effects introduced in the
Wikipedia context specifically). For instance, the linguist Anna Wierzbicka
talks about the granularity differences as "cultural elaboration" and has all
sorts of fun examples in her book "Understanding Cultures Through Their
Keywords". You can also make arguments about this from a geographic perspective
(my social science roots), psycholinguistics, and I'm sure other fields as
well. This stuff perhaps explains some of the 1% of non-1:1 concepts, as well
as some of the sub-concept diversity, although I am still brainstorming.

In any case, hopefully this helps some! Happy to answer questions. Thanks again
for a great discussion.

- Brent

p.s. Don't forget to support Denny and crew in the Knight News Challenge
proposal :-) :
http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/25575917516/wikidata-as-a-central-free-repository-of-identifiers

Brent Hecht
Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science @ Northwestern University
Asst. Prof. of Comp. Sci @ Univ. Minnesota beginning 2013
w: http://www.brenthecht.com
e: br...@u.northwestern.edu
t: @bhecht

[1] Bao, P., Hecht, B., Carton, S., Quaderi, M., Horn, M. and Gergle, D.
2012. Omnipedia: Bridging the Wikipedia Language Gap. CHI ’12: 30th
International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2012).
[2] Hecht, B. and Gergle, D. 2010. The Tower of Babel Meets Web 2.0:
User-Generated Content and Its Applications in a Multilingual Context. CHI
’10: 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
(Atlanta, GA, 2010), 291–300.
[3] de Melo, G. and Weikum, G. 2010. Untangling the Cross-Lingual Link
Structure of Wikipedia. ACL ’10: 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for
Computational Linguistics (Uppsala, Sweden, 2010).

On Jun 26, 2012, at 7:56 AM, Denny Vrandečić wrote:

> I got the num

Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread MZMcBride

Kim Bruning wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 09:07:02PM +0100, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
>> I've always been against ads, but as far as I am concerned, the illusion of
>> an NPOV project ended with the SOPA strike, and Jimbo's current exploits
>> around O'Dwyer (who I agree should not be extradited, but doh, that is not
>> the point ...) just underscore that.
> 
> The SOPA strike was necessary for us to retain neutrality. (It's the old
> freedom to swing your fists where you wish, versus limiting the arc to avoid
> my nose discussion; aka BSD vs GPL; aka "do what you want", vs "do unto
> others";  etc. (incidentally, is there a general term for this 100% freedom vs
> -except not allowed to take away freedom- rule?))

Libertarianism.

Also, the SOPA strike wasn't necessary; it was disruptive and foolish.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Anthony

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Kim Bruning  wrote:
> The SOPA strike was necessary for us to retain neutrality.

Figuratively speaking, or do you think it actually made a whit of difference?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 10:24 PM, geni  wrote:

> On 26 June 2012 21:38, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> > Are you not being a bit naive here? Seriously, if Google wanted
> something,
> > and were willing to pay Wikimedia another half million dollars for it,
> > they'd talk to Jimbo and other WMF luminaries behind closed doors.
>
> You've been hanging out on wikipedia critics forums too much.

Perhaps so. :)) (But clearly, so have you.)

> Like most of them you don't appear to realise to what extent wikipedians
> tend to be bloody minded individualists. Cutting a deal with "WMF
> luminaries" or any other cabal you care to propose simply isn't a
> viable approach.

I was actually thinking of the board, or just Jimbo himself, rather than
any wider group of luminaries (or actual Wikipedia editors). If Google
wanted something, I am sure they would speak in person to the people they
have had personal contact with. I was struck by the following four-month
timeline the other day:

---o0o---

October 4 to October 6, 2011: Italian Wikipedia blackout, hailed as
successful in preventing Italian legislation.

November 18, 2011: Media announce that Google's Sergey Brin is donating
half a million dollars to Wikipedia.

December 10, 2011: Jimmy first raises the topic of an anti-SOPA Wikipedia
blackout on Wikipedia.

January 16, 2012: English Wikipedia is blacked out for a day, in an action
hailed as successful in preventing US legislation.

---o0o---

Frappant, n'est-ce pas? :)

The community vote on the blackout was fairly rushed, and unlike most other
important community votes was open to IPs and single-purpose accounts. They
came to vote in large numbers, and editors marking non-regulars' votes in
the usual way were told to stop.

And it's not as though there wasn't any contact between Jimmy and Brin in
the months before the blackout; their names, along with others, appear on a
joint Open Letter to the US government, opposing SOPA, that appeared in
mid-December.

So, seen from one perspective, all the value that volunteers had created in
the English Wikipedia over a decade was leveraged to support one view on
copyrights, which happened to coincide with Google's business interests.
And Google happened to donate half a million to Wikipedia just around that
time.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

2012-06-26 Thread Theo10011

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 9:45 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> I was actually thinking of the board, or just Jimbo himself, rather than
> any wider group of luminaries (or actual Wikipedia editors). If Google
> wanted something, I am sure they would speak in person to the people they
> have had personal contact with. I was struck by the following four-month
> timeline the other day:
>
> ---o0o---
>
> October 4 to October 6, 2011: Italian Wikipedia blackout, hailed as
> successful in preventing Italian legislation.
>
> November 18, 2011: Media announce that Google's Sergey Brin is donating
> half a million dollars to Wikipedia.
>
> December 10, 2011: Jimmy first raises the topic of an anti-SOPA Wikipedia
> blackout on Wikipedia.
>
> January 16, 2012: English Wikipedia is blacked out for a day, in an action
> hailed as successful in preventing US legislation.
>

So, a chain of events during a 4 month period can not be incidental. What
you neglect to mention that there was an annual fundraiser during the end
of the year, this was not the first grant Google made to Wikimedia, in
fact, it might not even be the second, they donated in the past fundraisers
as well, larger amounts I believe. I am thinking of the 2
Million received from Google in 2010.

Now, far be it for me to defend Jimmy, but the central assumption in your
polemic is, that jimmy is devoid of caring about any social issues, issues
that might even affect the identity he has created. He would have to be
paid in order to care, if not Google than someone else paying him off to
care, can't it just be that he believes in something? even if there is
a perceived threat? I know it might be hard to believe, but people have
been known to care about legislation and larger social issues from time to
time, and use the platform they have.

Your timeline seems clouded with conspiracy theories. Maybe geni is right,
and you have been hanging around the critics forum too much. I fail to see
the mass conspiracy being alluded to here.

As far as funding goes, I have been around WMF funding discussion more than
a lot of people. The last fundraiser was close to 30 Million USD, majority
of which was accumulated through small donations. Large grants aren't
something that's all that new, WMF has been receiving them for a few years
now, 2012, wasn't particularly that eventful in terms of large grants [1].
I fail to see your point about the "luminaries" being bought off. As a
non-profit, they have to legally declare large grants and mention the
sources of their revenue. I absolutely fail to understand why Jimmy or
anyone would jeopardize their standing now, raising money for an
organization that really has no trouble raising it at this point.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Grants
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.