This is a follow-up to the discussions about Google Translate and
Translator Toolkit.
One of the problems that quickly arises in discussions about it is
that this software is not Free-as-in-Freedom. The Translator Toolkit
website is not too complicated, so it's not very important whether
it's Free or not, but the stored translations belong to Google and are
used by Google to improve their non-Free services. I don't mind Google
making money out of my translation efforts, but i am less happy about
the fact that, unless i am missing something, the stored translated
strings can only be read by Google. Sometimes i will actually want to
give up on my privacy and publish the sentence pairs and make them
useful to researchers. (And if it is possible to enforce them to use
it only in Free software, all the better.)
Is there a Free competitor to the Google Translator Toolkit in terms
of online storage and sharing? I heard about OmegaT, but if i
understand correctly, it is a local application that doesn't offer
online storage and sharing - but correct me if i'm wrong. Are there
any other Free-minded translation memory services?
--
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
Job adverts? Really?. Site notice is for critical stuff (fund raising,
servers about to explode) even if you play with the notice to only
appear ~%10 of the time. Central notice even more so. For less
important stuff where you want to contact the community there is
[[MediaWiki:Watchlist-details]] which would have the additional
advantage of not putting English ads on the Italian (substitute almost
every non english wikipedia of your choice) wikipedia. The size is
also problematical. On my screen it takes up about twice the space of
the average image thumbnail something people who come to wikipedia
actualy want to see.
Incidentally:
"In one or two sentences, describe the process in which users are
approved to become administrators on English Wikipedia. "
Is this some kind of test to see if people know how to use semi colons?
--
geni
Hello all,
The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for volunteers who would like to
support the management of relationships between Wikimedia communities
and the broader communities of researchers who study Wikimedia
projects. We hope to create a committee with volunteers from both
groups with a rich combination of skills and backgrounds.
Here are some areas of work that this new Wikimedia Research
Committee, with help from the Wikimedia Foundation staff, is intended
to explore:
* developing policy around researcher permissions for non-public data
* supporting the development of subject recruitment processes
* reviewing research projects when conflicts-of-interest arise
* articulating and channeling requests for data and technical resources
* helping to formulate the key strategic research objectives of the
Wikimedia movement (see strategy.wikimedia.org)
* helping to formulate small tactical experiments related to
Wikimedia's strategic goals
* developing an open access policy as a requirement for significant
support from the Wikimedia Foundation
* helping create a "starter kit" for researchers to avoid duplication of effort
To date, many of these issues have been handled by the Wikimedia
Foundation on a case-by-case basis, with various points of contact and
unclear responsibilities. The research committee will act as a first
point of contact for many, if not most, of these requests, and help us
to formulate processes and policy beyond the boundaries of projects
and languages.
We are estimating the minimum time commitment for membership in this
committee to be 2-4 hours per week.
To be clear, we are also hiring additional research and engineering
staff. This committee is intended to work in close partnership with
Wikimedia Foundation staff.
If you are interested in joining this committee, please write an
off-list e-mail response to <erik at wikimedia dot org> with the
following information:
1) Your name and background;
2) Explanation of your role and interest in research projects and/or community;
3) Key areas of activity you'd like to focus on as a member of such a committee.
This will help us seed the committee with a diverse group of
individuals. The committee can later be expanded beyond the initial
membership, once internal processes for doing so are established
(similar to the chapters committee).
We look forward to hearing from you. :-) Please disseminate this
message further where relevant. We will aim to respond to applications
within two weeks.
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi all,
Just wanted to report back on the "Work at Wikimedia" banners that ran
on the site the last few days.
The idea behind them was to uncover talent for the community
department that doesn't necessarily haunt the "usual" places. We
specifically wanted to reach out to people who used the projects, that
had new, interesting, or well developed and thought-out ideas for the
community department. We knew the banner usage was a little unusual
but honestly believed that we'd cast a wider net and turn up some
interesting candidates for positions in the community department.
I'm pleased to say that we're thrilled with the results. After a few
days of running the banner at a relatively low display percentage, we
have more than 1500 submissions, many of which are very interesting.
It's obviously going to take us some time to look through them, but
from our perspective, the banners did what we wanted them to do.
With all that said, the comments about the "opportunity cost" of
running those banners on the world's fifth most-viewed web properties
is an important one. It's one that we explored and will continue to
explore. You may have noticed that we actually tried out two
different "sizes" of banners, as well. I don't have any numbers yet
to report as to whether the smaller size of the later banners made a
different in the number or quality of the applicants; it's just too
early to know.
While I'm about to turn off the banners, we want to continue to
encourage people to go to the application page ( http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:CommunityHiring
), since we're actually turning the banners off in advance of the
deadline that we set. However, we continue to look for talented
people, and the community hiring page will stay live for the immediate
future.
Thanks, everyone, for your feedback during this trial. Please look
for people that would be interested in sending us their information
for jobs in the community department.
Best,
Philippe
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Stewards had meeting during the Wikimania. One of the conclusions is
that we need Global arbitration committee as there are more and more
cases which just stewards are able to solve somehow. And we are not
elected to make decisions.
Please, add your ideas [1] and join the discussion [2]. Below is the
initial page.
[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Global_Arbitration_Comm…
[2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_comment/Global_Arbitration…
* * *
During Wikimania 2010 in Gdansk [[stewards]] had meeting. They've
concluded that there are more and more issues all around Wikimedia
projects in which they have to make urgent decisions, which is
according to the [[Steward policy]], but the number of needed
decisions is above the comfortable limits. At the other side, as
stewards are not able to make any non-urgent decision, conflicts
remain unsolved.
Thus, the conclusion is that we need the body which would have mandate
to make decisions in conflict resolution, mostly related to the
projects which don't have their own arbitration committees or if it is
about a dispute which involves at least one whole community (or
majority of it). This body will be called "Dispute-resolution
committee" or "DRC" below.
The other idea is that it would be good to have one global body which
would deal with complains on decisions of other arbitration
committees, including with complains on DRC's decisions. This body
will be called "Global arbitration committee" or "GAC" below.
Feel free to [[Talk:Requests for comment/Global Arbitration
Committee|discuss]] about it, as well as to edit this page by adding
your proposals.
== Committees ==
=== Dispute-resolution committee ===
==== Scope ====
This body would have next responsibilities:
* First level of dispute-resolution for the communities without
arbitration committees.
* First level of dispute-resolution which involves one or more
communities as whole (or as majority).
==== Choosing members ====
Possible methods for choosing members:
* Wikimedia-wide elections.
* A group of stewards who are willing to volunteer for this purpose.
(This is the suggestion of one of the Board members.)
* Appointing the group by some other body.
* Wikimedia-wide election for most of the members, and two or three
stewards elected from and by the stewards (for fact-finding, etc.)
* ...
=== Global arbitration committee ===
==== Scope ====
This body would have next responsibilities:
* Defining requirements for having an arbitration committee inside of
one project.
* Accepting and solving complains on decisions of project-specific
arbitration committees.
* Accepting and solving complains on decisions of DPR.
* Abuse and misuse of high-level access ([[checkuser]], [[oversight]],
[[steward]]-rights, taking over the job of the [[Ombudsman
commission]])
==== Choosing members ====
Possible methods for choosing members:
* Wikimedia-wide elections.
* Giving the authority to the [[Ombudsman commission]].
* Appointing the group by the community members of the [[Board]].
* ...
== Other ideas ==
[[Category:Requests for comments]]
"The study found that the nation's 50 top websites on average installed 64
pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors, usually with
no warning. A dozen sites each installed more than a hundred. The nonprofit
Wikipedia installed none."
--
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395073512989404.h…
--
Asaf Bartov <asaf.bartov(a)gmail.com>
Hi.
After becoming annoyed yet again at what I view as excessively large and
generally unnecessary global banners, I've started a Requests for comment at
Meta on the issue.[1] It's an attempt to gauge community consensus on the
use of these global banners. The specific focus is to what extent these
global banners should be used for non-fundraising-related reasons.
I've advertised the Requests for comment at the English wiki projects and
obviously I'm advertising it to foundation-l. Please feel free to advertise
it elsewhere, as you see fit.
MZMcBride
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Global_banners
Hello All,
Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the
translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias. The
foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not sure
whether any one is interested to consult the respective language community
to know their views.
As far as I know only Tamil, Bengali, and Swahili Wikipedians have raised
their concerns about Google's project. But, does this means that other
communities are happy about Google efforts? If there is no active community
in a wikipedia how can we expect response from communities? If there is no
response from a community, does that mean that Google can hire some native
speakers and use machine translation to create articles for that wikipedia?
Now let us go back to a basic question. Does WMF require a wiki community to
create wikipedia in any language? Or can they utilize the services of
companies like Google to create wikipedias in N number of languages?
One of the main point raised by the supporters of Google translation is
that, Google's project is good *for the online version of the language*.That
might be true. But no body is cared to verify whether it is good for
Wikipedia.
As pointed out by Ravi in his presentation in Wikimania, (
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs), the Google
translation of wikipedia articles:
- will affect the biological growth of a Wikipedia article
- will create copy of English wikipedia article in local wikis
- it is against some of the basic philosophies of wikipedia
The people outside wiki will definitely benefit from this tool, if Google
translation tool is developed for each language. I saw the working example
of this in Poland during Wikimania, when some people who are not good in
English used google translator to communicate with us. :)
Apart from the points raised by Ravi in his presentation, this will affect
the community growth.If there is no active wiki community, how can we expect
them to look after all these junk articles uploaded to wiki every day. When
all the important article links are already turned blue, how we can expect
any future potential editors. So according to me, Google's project is
killing the growth of an active wiki community.
Of course, Tamil Wikipedia is trying to use Google project effectively. But
only Tamil is doing that since they have an active wiki community*. Many
Wiki communities are not even aware that such a project is happening in
their wiki*.
I do not want to point out specific language wikipedas to prove my point.
But visit the wikipedias (especially wikipedias* that use non-latin scripts*)
to view the status of google translation project. Loads of junk articles
are uploaded to wiki every day. Most of the time the only edit in these
articles is the edit by its creator and the inter language wiki bots.
This effort will definitely affect community growth. Kindly see the points
raised by a Swahali
Wikipedian<http://muddybtz.blog.com/2010/07/16/what-happened-on-the-google-challenge-t…>.
Many Swahali users (and other language users) now expect a laptop or some
other monitory benefits to write in their wikipedia. That affects the
community growth.
So what is the solution for this? Can we take lessons from
Tamil/Bengali/Swahili wikipedias and find methods to use this service
effectively or continue with the current article creation process.
One last question. Is this tool that is developing by Google is an open
source tool? If not, we need to answer so many questions that may follow.
Regards
Shiju Alex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shijualex
