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Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz | 7 Nov 2001 08:33
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rybox@...

----- Forwarded message from Rybo <rybox@...> -----

From: "Rybo" <rybox@...>
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 21:16:51 +0100
To: "Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz"
Subject: AW: Questions about de.wikipedia.com
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0

Hallo Krzysztof !
Greetings to you !

I will try to answer your questions

> 1. what is the most important thing from the start
>From my point of view a critical point is to have to start in a way that
others have fun to participate.
What I did do on de.wikipedia.com to serve this:

* Put text in
** From your own
** Translate pages from int. WP (Copyrights are clear)
** Make some starting pages/points for the various interest people have.

* Let others do their job
** Do not correct others too much (Nobody wants perfection)

* Advertise in Usenet or to persons directly
** I have sent direct mail about 10 times to other people inviting them to
join one way or another.
But I cannot tell how much respond that fed into the project.
(Continue reading)

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Theodora Kemper | 8 Nov 2001 02:44
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[Intlwiki-l] Intlwiki-l digest, Vol 1 #19 - 1 msg

Hi Rybo, Thanks for your suggestions. I recognize the one about not
correcting and perfecting too much, especially in the case of newbies. 
Being quite a perfectionist myself I am sure I've made that mistake already
on the nl.wikipedia and that may have had a negative effect. Regrets won't
help people to come back, but it will help me avoid the trap from now on.
By the way I hate that wiki-thing that snatches away former mentions of
edits in the RecentChanges list! I wonder whether it is possible to change
that feature. 
I think you're also right that the many scientific titles may keep
non-scientific newcomers away, fearing they have nothing to add. We have
put one or two typical Dutch subjects on the Homepage. I am going to think
about other ways to make the HomePage look a bit more inviting in that
sense. But I do not want to chase away scientists either. Guess it's a
matter of balance and wording. --Thea Kemper
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Kurt Jansson | 14 Nov 2001 02:38
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[Intlwiki-l] Open Publication License compatible to Wiki's GNU Free Documentation License

Hello everybody!

I don't know if this problem has been discussed before:

I wrote to the maintainers of a German Hardware-FAQ, which is
distributed under the Open Publication License, if we could use some of
their definitions. But there are two problems:

1. Is the Open Publication License compatible to the GNU Free
Documentation License which is used by Wikipedia?

2. The Open Publication License says that in the modified version the
original author has to be named and the modifications have to be dated.
I think at the moment this is not the case at Wikipedia.
Maybe it would be an idea to keep the original article on a subpage!?

And maybe there are other problems that I don't think of at the moment.

What do the license experts say about this?

You can see the answer of the FAQ maintainers further down.

Bye,
Kurt

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Simon Paquet <simon@...>
An: <hardware@...>
Cc: Kurt Jansson <kurt@...>
Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. November 2001 19:27
(Continue reading)

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Larry Sanger | 24 Nov 2001 03:32

[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] confession of a science believing man

Hi Kurt,

This is a perfect topic for intlwiki-l--that's why the list was set up.

I think it would be a good idea to translate parts of the [[neutral point
of view]] article, or to write such an article yourself based on that, auf
Deutsch.  There are many philosophical objections to such a policy, but as
far as I can tell, they are all based on misunderstandings or pointless
semantic quibbling about the policy.  In any case, as a pragmatic matter,
it certainly does make it easier for people of radically different
viewpoints to work together.  It also makes the task of writing an
encyclopedia article *considerably* clearer and more focused than it would
be otherwise.

We haven't yet really discussed what sort of general policies we can
expect non-English Wikipedias to follow.  It's not even *completely*
obvious to me that anybody ought to try to make sure that they follow a
nonbias policy; but, of course, I do think they *should* follow such a
policy, self-consciously.  That is, I distinguish between policies I think
the non-English Wikipedias should self-consciously adopt, and policies
that I think we ought, somehow, actually to try to enforce.  The latter is
likely to be a subset of the former.

I obviously haven't caught up with my recent mail to the point where I can
comment on the suggestion that we find some sort of "editors" for the
non-English Wikipedias...that would be relevant here...

Larry

On Sat, 24 Nov 2001, Kurt Jansson wrote:
(Continue reading)

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Lars Aronsson | 25 Nov 2001 15:22
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[Intlwiki-l] Biography as a discipline

I just added a note at the end of the article about Danish author
[[Hans Christian Andersen]] about the Danish use of initials in
personal names.  In Denmark, this author is called H. C. Andersen.
Even if these initials are short for Hans Christian, the full name is
almost never used in Denmark.  This is as common in Denmark as the
U.S. use of a middle initial (e.g. George W. Bush), but all English,
French, and German sources that I have found use the full name Hans
Christian.  Since Wikipedia is in English, it is just fine that it
follows the established English convention.

This makes it just like a translation.  The Danish words "smørrebrød",
"København", and "H. C. Andersen" are translated into English
"sandwich", "Copenhagen", and "Hans Christian Andersen".  We are used
to translating nouns and city names, but this is a case where also
personal names are in fact translated.  I find that fascinating.

This sort of knowledge should be written down somewhere, but where?
Is there a science, school or discipline that teaches how to document
a person's name or life?  Shouldn't there be?  I know we discussed
this in May in [[Biography/Talk]].  I stated that biography is a
scholarly discipline, which Larry doubted, and I had no hard evidence.
I think I wish that it were a scholarly discipline, and I would like
to establish biography as a discipline, in fact a subdiscipline of
creating an encyclopedia.  (This could lead to a discussion of whether
disciplines are static or how they can be established.)

I have observed that books titled "biographic dictionary" never list
people that are still alive.  Is this a rule or just a coincidence?
Has the rule been documented?  Where?  If such a work contains entries
on people who are still alive, does it have to change its title?
(Continue reading)

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Lars Aronsson | 26 Nov 2001 15:26
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[Intlwiki-l] links between wikipedias

I just wrote a short entry for "England" in the German Wikipedia, and
thought it would be appropriate to include a link to the article in
the English Wikipedia.  Is there any easy way to do this?  Now I wrote

   Siehe auch [http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/England England]
   in die Englische Wikipedia.

That is not an easy way to have to write the entire URL every time.

In my own Swedish wiki website (susning.nu), I have modified the wiki
script, so that I only have to write

   (engelska: England) (franska: Angleterre) (italienska: Inghilterra)

The wiki script than creates a whole lot of useful links, for each
language.  For the Wikipedias of size (English, German), I link the
translated word itself directly to the right entry.  I then also add
links to various (non-free) encyclopedias that are openly available on
the Internet.

You can see the results on http://susning.nu/England

Is there any chance that Bomis programmers can make a similar change
to the international Wikipedias?  Are they listening on this list?

--

-- 
  Lars Aronsson
  <lars@...>
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se
(Continue reading)

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Magnus Manske | 26 Nov 2001 15:51
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RE: [Intlwiki-l] links between wikipedias

As the author of the coming new wikipedia software (see
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml), I assure you that
something similar is planned. The change of the English wikipedia will take
place in late December or early January, if everything goes as planned. Once
it runs smoothly in every-day-usage, and the other wikipedias are changes to
the same software, I plan to implement a system similar to the one you use,
except it will (hopefully!) automatically update links between the wikis. If
an "England" article is available in English, German and French, and, for
example, the German links to the English one, and the French links to the
English one as well, it will make
a) Backlinks  : English->German, English->French
b) Crosslinks : German->French, French->German
These could be updated every day, week, month or so.

So, no need for the UseModWiki to be adapted. For the time being, manual
links should do fine, especially as non-English wikipedias are still in the
early beginning...

Magnus

> -----Original Message-----
> From: intlwiki-l-admin@...
> [mailto:intlwiki-l-admin@...]On Behalf Of Lars Aronsson
> Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 3:26 PM
> To: intlwiki-l@...
> Subject: [Intlwiki-l] links between wikipedias
>
>
>
> I just wrote a short entry for "England" in the German Wikipedia, and
(Continue reading)

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Larry Sanger | 26 Nov 2001 20:45

Re: [Intlwiki-l] Open Publication License compatible to Wiki's GNU Free Documentation License

On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Hello everybody!

Gruess Dich Kurt!

> I don't know if this problem has been discussed before:
>
> I wrote to the maintainers of a German Hardware-FAQ, which is
> distributed under the Open Publication License, if we could use some of
> their definitions. But there are two problems:
>
> 1. Is the Open Publication License compatible to the GNU Free
> Documentation License which is used by Wikipedia?

We'd need a lawyer to give us a credible legal analysis of that, I think,
before we started importing stuff.

Besides, if they really are just *definitions* (which would go in a
Woerterbuch) rather than *articles* (which would go in an Enzyklopaedie),

> 2. The Open Publication License says that in the modified version the
> original author has to be named and the modifications have to be dated.
> I think at the moment this is not the case at Wikipedia.
> Maybe it would be an idea to keep the original article on a subpage!?
>
> And maybe there are other problems that I don't think of at the moment.
>
> What do the license experts say about this?
(Continue reading)

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Larry Sanger | 27 Nov 2001 02:29

[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: another copyright issue

From: "Lars Aronsson" <lars@...>
> Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> > On the English Wikipedia we play by the "better safe than sorry"
> > rule: if an article appears to be a copyright violation, we remove
it.
>
> Who are "we"?  A non-formal group of core contributors, or Bomis
staff?
> Is there a similar "we" for the non-English language Wikipediae?

"We" in this case has been me as well as a lot of other people who
understand that the presence of copyrighted material in the Wikipedia
database puts the project at some legal risk.  We do our best to remove
obvious violations of copyright while, in uncertain cases, giving people
a chance to explain themselves.

> It appears to me that Bomis actively "runs" the English Wikipedia, and
> almost don't care about the other languages.

Well, this is inaccurate.  We care very much about the other languages.
But, not knowing other languages that I do know (with the possible
exception of German) well enough to participate in the wikis in those
other languages, we have left them to develop on their own.  Recently, I
set up the Intlwiki-L mailing list (cc'd) as a forum where issues shared
by all the Wikipedias could be hashed out.

We've tried (with limited success so far) to accommodate the people
working on a Polish wiki encyclopedia project (they have called
themselves the "Polish Wikipedia"), and they might still move.  (The
last I know about that is that I've tried to send them an e-mail, which
(Continue reading)

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João Mário Miranda | 27 Nov 2001 04:47

Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: another copyright issue

> as ,
> as well as on intlwiki-l and Nupedia's interpret-l, add something to the
> effect that we strongly encourage particularly well-qualified people to
> get to work on the non-English wikis and try to speak as a voice of
> reason and authority (both, hopefully :-) ) on the wiki.  Then, perhaps,
> we can identify and have a list of any of the de facto "leadership" of
> the Wikipedias, and make it official.
> 

The problem of the international wikipedias is not the need for a
leader. Is the need for people. As you can see in Google Zeitgeist 
the proportion of portuguese searches to english searches is 1 to 64.
That means that there 1 portuguese speaker for every 64 english
speakers in the net. So, the portuguese wikipedia should have
16000/64=250 articles, and that's what we have.

But, there 170 milions of portuguese speakers in the world, but 
they are not online. Thats why the portuguese 

--

-- 
joão
http://www.nonio.com
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