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Gregory Maxwell | 23 Nov 16:57

Re: Signal languages Wikimedia projects

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 2:14 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen <at> gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Many people who are deaf have not learned to read and write in their own
> language.
[snip]
> It is true that many deaf people do not know how to write their own
> language.

I think the shifting definition of 'own language'. In discussions of
other languages which follow national borders 'own language' has been
defined to be the language spoken by a persons ancestors, regardless
of what a person prefers to use. Here we must be using some other
meaning since the overwhelming majority of deaf children are born to
hearing parents who do not speak sign language.

I know some deaf English readers/writers who would be very insulted if
you claimed English was not their language.

There are some deaf advocates who claim that deaf people should not
interact with the hearing world, not in person, not online. These are
a fringe minority, a vocal minority, but a fringe minority none the
less. There are people who argue that deafness is equivalent to
national, cultural, or racial identity and that attempting to cure
deafness is akin to attempting to cure blackness. (really!) We should
not allow these people to set our policy.

[snip]
> It is because of the lack of of a script that the Deaf communities
> have a problem retaining much of the vocabulary that goes out of fashion.
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Mark Williamson | 23 Nov 08:54

Re: Signal languages Wikimedia projects

The whole situation has some very interesting questions.

- Hasn't SW been copyrighted in the US?
- Many people claim that all deaf are literate in dominate languages
of their area, but while this is partially true (almost all deaf in,
say, the US are functionally literate), it's also true that many
people are much more proficient and understand their signed language
better than the written form of any spoken language. There's more to
that discussion, I think, though.
- There are many alternative methods for writing signed languages.
Most people who sign don't write it at all, however.
- How will the current trend of parents of deaf and HoH children
favoring cochlear implants affect the future of ASL? (This question is
interesting, but has little impact on an American Sign Language
Wikipedia in the short-term)

In general, I have a positive view of the request.

Mark

2008/11/23 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@...>:
> Hoi,
> SignWriting is a script. Consequently what it produces is as faithful a
> representation as other scripts like the Latin or the Cyrillic. The notion
> that you can compare it to a constructed language is false as a consequence.
> Many people who are deaf have not learned to read and write in their own
> language. They have learned to struggle with languages that are totally
> foreign to them as they are based on spoken language. There is an inherent
> inability to learn our sound based languages, this is exactly why deafness
> is considered to be a disability.
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Gregory Maxwell | 23 Nov 01:20

Re: Signal languages Wikimedia projects

On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 5:28 PM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
> Hoi,
> The proposal is for ASL to be written in SignWriting. This has the added
> benefit that whatever is actually written can also be edited in our wiki
> style. The problem with video  is that you cannot change it and consequently
> it is not really Wiki.
>
> Steve Slevinsky is working on an extension that will allow for the writing
> of any sign languages using SignWriting. I understand that he is even
> cosidering another skin.. This will allow for much of the user interface to
> be localised.

But SignWriting is not sign-language: Many people who are deaf and use
ASL (and, I presume, other forms of sign language) are unaware of and
have no interest in SignWriting as being deaf does not result in an
inherit inability to communicate using more common written languages.

As far as I am aware SignWriting characters do not occur in any
standard character see, further complicating use.  I have no
opposition to supporting SignWriting, but Wikis in SignWritten
signlanguage probably should be regarded as any other conlang projects
are, and certainly not regarded as an accessibility effort.

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Amir E. Aharoni | 22 Nov 15:01
Gravatar

Re: mo.wikipedia.org

2008/11/22 Cetateanu Moldovanu <cetateanumd@...>:
> I'm sorry to see you people to not understand at all the problem, this
> problem doesn't have anything in common with serbian-croatian or
> israelic-arabic issues.
> The problem is what we changed our script, and we want this to be reflected
> on your mo.wikipedia

"We" means you and who?

Think twice before you say "all the people of Moldova".

--

-- 
Amir Elisha Aharoni

heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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Sue Gardner | 22 Nov 02:26

Fwd: [Internal-l] Wikimedia Foundation's Audited Financial Statements on the Foundation Wiki

Forwarding this on Veronique's behalf :-)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Veronique Kessler <vkessler@...>
Date: 2008/11/21
Subject: [Internal-l] Wikimedia Foundation's Audited Financial Statements on
the Foundation Wiki
To: internal-l@...

I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's audited
financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2008 are available on
the Foundation wiki at:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report#Audited_financial_statements

In anticipation of any questions, we have also prepared a Question and
Answer sheet also posted on the Foundation wiki at:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2007-2008_Financial_Statements_Questions_and_Answers

I am happy to answer any questions you might have.

Regards,
Veronique Kessler
--
Veronique Kessler
Chief Financial and Operating Officer
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
vkessler@...
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Cary Bass | 21 Nov 20:11

Re: Fwd: [Wikizh-l] [Help] About Participate in Wikipedia - knowledge sharing


shi zhao wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Joanne
> <94356502 <at> nccu.edu.tw> Date: 2008/11/21 Subject: [Wikizh-l] [Help]
> About Participate in Wikipedia - knowledge sharing To:
> wikizh-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> Dear friends, We are conducting a study on the motivation of the
> knowledge sharing on Wikipedia. Your experience of the read from
> and write to Wikipedia is very important to the design and
> management of this knowledge platform. The survey will take about
> two minutes. We deeply appreciate your help on answering the
> following questions.
>
> After the survey is done, we will randomly select twenty persons
> and present them with *USB 2GB Flash Drives*. Besides, with each
> valid questionnaire, we will *donate US $1 dollar to the Wikimedia
> Foundation*. The result of this survey is analyzed in an anonymous
> way and is only regarded as the academic use. Please feel free to
> fill out the questionnaire. Thanks again for your time and valuable
> input.
>
> May happiness and health be with you everyday!
>
> ★     On-line Questionnaire:  http://140.119.19.152:8080/wiki/
>
> Shari S. C. Shang
>
> Eldon Y. Li
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Gerard Meijssen | 20 Nov 08:41

Re: mo.wikipedia.org

Hoi,
Removing the mo.wikipedia.org is something I would at this stage in the game
prefer.

There are languages with multiple scripts. There are even languages that
support multiple scripts in the User Interface. Accepting texts in mulitple
scripts is a great way of bringing a language community together. It is not
easy and MediaWIki does not support properly but it is done.

The issue with MediaWiki support is that when Cyrillic and Arabic script
texts are mixed in the text, the script should be properly supported in the
text box part of the article. When two scripts are mixed, it is possible to
indicate what script / orthography / dialect the text is in. Standard
MediaWiki does not support this. I understand that there is an extension
that DOES allow for this. It would be good for the projects involved to have
such support.
Thanks,
        Gerard

2008/11/19 phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@...>

> On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 4:18 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > All projects are started with consent of the board. I take it that the
> board
> > has the final say on blocking / removing projects.  I can imagine that
> the
> > WMF office / organisation takes this decision on there own accord. These
> are
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Ray Saintonge | 20 Nov 01:46

Re: wikipedia.de shut down

Marco Chiesa wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 8:03 PM, Ting Chen <wing.philopp@...> wrote:
>   
>> Heilmann complained through his lawyer at first by WikiMedia
>> Deutschland. The chapter answered him that it is not responsible for the
>> content on Wikipedia and they would do nothing. I agree with the first
>> part of the answer, but I disagree with the second part. I think someone
>> should have taken a glance at the complain. If that was done at that
>> time, the whole thing would not have happend. And I disagree with people
>> who are now happen about the surge in fundraising. This is not our way.
>> The case was not so black and white and on the long term it can backfire
>> on us.
>>     
> The point is that the chapter is NOT responsible for the content of
> Wikipedia. If as a chapter we receive a suggestion/complain about something
> in Wikipedia, we forward the email to OTRS, because that's the address
> that's dedicated to these things. If there is a lawsuit, as a chapter the
> best response is: "We have nothing to do with the contents of Wikipedia",
> which means, it's up to you to find out who you should sue (the individual
> author or the WMF). But I don't think we should facilitate their task.
>
>   
That sounds like stonewalling, and that is counterproductive because it 
gives the impression that you are trying to avoid accountability.  It 
makes the innocent look guilty. The firewall is legitimate but to the 
person who feels offended it doesn't look that way when he has just been 
told to go to hell.

There is a need to distinguish between legal responsibility which does 
not apply, and moral responsibility which does.  One fulfills moral
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Nathan | 19 Nov 20:08

Re: wikipedia.de shut down

The chapter refused to look at the complaint or take any action at all?
Unless there is some legal reason why they can't take responsibility (even
as individuals responding to an e-mail complaint), I find that difficult to
believe. There must be more to the story, no?

Nathan
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Leigh Babbage | 18 Nov 20:05

Why we should use the community draft of the language proposal policy


	
	
This is my argument (or rather, my
quickly hashed out rambling) as to why the community draft for the
language proposal policy should become our official policy, in place
of the current one. My argument is fairly long, but I hope that it
does not descend into irrelevance and that people will read it
through to the end.

The community draft language proposal
policy has the advantage of being, in the Wikimedia spirit, a more
collaborative work. The current language proposal policy was made by
a small group, but the community draft was, as its name suggests,
open to ideas from anyone who had any, and I think that it is a
better reflection of the feeling of Wikimedia users than the current
one.

I want to be very clear that I believe
the language proposal system we have now is far better than the one
we had before: it is fairer, quicker and more efficient. However,
although it is better than the last one, it is not as good as it
could be.

Some Wikimedia users (and I am
certainly part of this group) thought it unfair that, whilst
artificial languages such as Esperanto and Volupak were allowed by
this policy to have Wikipedias, classical languages such as Latin and
Ancient Greek were not, on the grounds that, since they have no
native speakers, they do not serve a community and are therefore at
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Dovi Jacobs | 18 Nov 07:51
Favicon

[Wikitech-l] FlaggedRevs status/news?

Gerard, thank you for your kind comments. I think the system you have set up at Betawiki is extraordinary,
and is a fantastic tool for helping people access "the sum of all knowledge" in their own languages.

The "qqq" messages are a fantastic idea (though I can't quite see where to find them of Betawiki...)

For Hebrew we would like the extension set up with due haste. We prefer translating the messages when we can
test their meanings in context and revise our translations accordingly. We also plan to make some
important local modifications to the interface that are Wikisource-specific (such as the parameters
for defining the quality of a page), but we cannot even begin to do so until the extension has been installed!

This last factor is a need that Betawiki, outstanding as it is, cannot provide for.

A good part of the interface has already been translated in any case. It would reflect good will on your part
if you clarified that while your suggestions are personal recommendations, you nonetheless understand
that the decisions of communities with other views should be honored and implemented.

I ask the developers to implement the decision of the Hebrew Wikisource community as found in Bug 14648,
along with the other languages that they have kindly implemented recently. We have been waiting for this
for quite a long time, and will provide a quality localization of the system messages. While Gerard's
views on localization-as-prerequisite-in-every-case are important to consider, he is not a member of
the community that has requested the extension.

Link: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14648

Dovi

      
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