With regards to the discussion I prompted on Video formats, might I
suggest those people interested have a look at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_policy
To my knowledge, however, nobody has yet tried to actually add video to the
Wikipedia.
As far as all the charges of excessive idealism at work here in the
existing choice of Ogg Vorbis for sound and (prospectively) Theora
for video, might I just repeat the key point I made on that page:
there are no other open, unencumbered video formats available.
The choice is Theora or nothing.
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel
robert.merkel(a)benambra.org
http://benambra.org
"...the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an
environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more
serious than those raised by sex" -- Peter Singer
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roozbeh Pournader" <roozbeh(a)gmail.com>
To: <wikipedia-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 10:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] zh.wikipedia.org - having a single unified portal
> I don't want to get into the debate, but just FYI, such a convertor is
> considered impossible by many experts. By impossible, I mean
> impossible in the level of a perfect German to English to German
> machine translation software. Refer to Unicode mailing list and its
> archives for more details.
>
> roozbeh
There are some unsolvable problems if one wish to automatically convert an
unknown text from simplified to full forms, because there are some
exceptions (simplified form of F1 and F2 could be the same S, for instance),
but it is surely not as far as English to German "conversion". I guess that
in the case of Wikipedia, such exceptions could be handled by special
markups inside the text. If a simplified sentence is S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 and S3
conversion is not obvious, one could write something like S1 S2 S3
<!--#Full=F3--> S4 S5, what would help the conversion tool. As most of the
simplification is "bijective" (one and only one S <-> one and only one F),
this markup would not be that annoying to add, and robots could look for the
relatively few problematic characters and display a list of articles to be
checked.
(gbog)
Hi all,
It seems Breton Wikipedia was lost during the big crash (few weeks ago).
If I didn't misunderstand, a version may be on a hard disk backup (80Go) but
it's would be long and hard to try to retrieve it.
My questions are:
1) Does someone have a local backup of Breton Wikipedia?
2) Does someone know how many pages there were on this Wikipedia?
If there were only few pages it's perhaps faster to set a new Wikipedia
rather than try to retrieve old one.
Thanks for help.
Aoineko
On Slashdot today...
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/15/2250215
What this means is that, while development continues on the Ogg Theora
video format, any video encoded with the existing encoder will be
playable into the future.
I think we are now in a position to go ahead and start adding Theora
videos to Wikipedia, if anybody has suitable video to add!
Given this, also, http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_policy becomes
a much more relevant discussion.
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel
robert.merkel(a)benambra.org
http://benambra.org
Littering is dumb.
-- Ronald Macdonald
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, as I was editing around in zh.wikipedia.org and having talked to some
people, I've come to realize that it's in the best interest of the China,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc communities to share one portal as it's important to
share knowledge and views with each other to better understand each other.
Just as China itself is wide and varied in culture and customs, the
simplified script unifies the nation.
Also, from what I've been told, some people are currently working on some
kind of conversion tool that will enable the automatic interchangeable
conversion between Simplified vs Traditional script. Because of this I have
decided to stop or try to engage as little as possible in updating articles
as until the implementation of the conversion tool is in effect on
zh.wikipedia.org
I was also told not to create seperate articles in Traditional chinese as
two versions of the same article is not in the interest of the community,
but rather having one version of an article that can be accessed and edited
by anyone in either Simplified or Traditional script. The conversion tool
will then do the work to display the script on the end user's screen
according to their preference of either script.
In response to:
----------
Message: 8
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 19:07:48 +0800
From: Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] zh-tw.wikipedia.org
To: wikipedia-l(a)wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <2ed171fb04061804075dfddfa2(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Please, no. We've discussed this in several places recently, but:
1) The ZH community has kept it consolidated to keep critical mass together
2) Doing so will make a future technical solution easier to implement
3) It's not a good time anyway, since the ZH accessibility is in flux
from the PRC
-Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)
On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 10:48:29 +0000, Ian Mackinnon
<ianm2000uk(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>I don't know how to reply to the list thread but I really like Mark's idea
>about splitting zh.wikipedia.org into zh-cn.wikipedia.org and
>zh-tw.wikipedia.org. This would really solve the problem of navigation
>conflicts. I wasn't suggesting this for political reasons but for practical
>reasons since the writing scripts conflict with each other.
>
>Whoever is able to split the portal into 2 categories, please do so.
>
>Thanks!
>- Ian
>
>-----
>Mark's comment:
>Interlanguage links are already done with [[zh-tw:]] and [[zh-cn:]], so
>perhaps we could simply split zh.wikipedia.org into zh-cn.wikipedia.org
>and zh-tw.wikipedia.org, with zh.wikipedia.org being a disambiguating
>portal? Of course, this is more up to Chinese-speakers than it is to
>myself; just a suggestion that would be consistent with our current
>usage. Having separate interlanguage links going to one encyclopedia
>that is effectively written in a mixture of two writing systems that are
>often not mutually intelligible is more than a little bit odd.
>
>-Mark
_________________________________________________________________
It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today!
http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger
I like templates, for sure about that. And a lot of us do. But I
still have two complaints about them (both of which I've placed a
request in sourceforge). I'd like to hear a few peer opinions about my
two complaints:
1. The way that pipes work in templates, but that's an oft-requested
feature/bugfix.
2. The lack of default template parameters. A lot of those "incumbent
series" navigation links could be done with templates if there were
only default template parameters to cover the first and last articles
in the series. For example, a simplified incumbent template might have
{{{prev}}} | Team captains of the Calgary Flames | {{{next}}}
and another would be
{{{prev}}} | National Pokédex | {{{next}}}
Of course, if you specified something in [[Template:Prev]] or
[[Template:Next]], you could get default template parameters, but what
would you put in either page? Surely you can't put something in either
page without making it irrelevant for one purpose ("First Captain",
"First Pokédex Entry") or diluting its meaning ("First"). (There is
also the issue of the third pair of brackets, but we'll leave it aside)
What I'd like to see is subpages fulfilling that purpose. Given
[[Template:foo]] with contents {{{bar}}}, What I'd like to see is for
MediaWiki to, when instantiated without specifying what {{{bar}}}
should be:
- first check if [[Template:foo/bar]] exists (yes, this would mean that
forward slashes can't be part of a template name...) and replace
{{{bar}}} with the contents if it does
- if it doesn't, replace {{{bar}}} with the contents of
[[Template:Bar]] with a set of brackets around it (like it is done now)
Is this idea a good one...?
Need help! I am looking for information on railway systems from Poznan,
Poland to Antwerp, Belgium by train. My Grandfather traveled one of these routes in
1892 when he was 21 years old. He went by boat, SS Pennsylvania, on to
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I do not believe he had any connection through the
Benelux countries, but I am not sure? Thanx. K. Johnson.
After we had sent the application to our government, today my ISP told me that
the IP address 207.142.131.235, 207.142.131.236, 207.142.131.245, 207.142.131.246,
207.142.131.247, 207.142.131.248 can be access from Mainland China now.
I try it later, and I found that: all Wikipedia project except Chinese Wikipedia
can be access on my computer now, all Wiktionay project still can't be access on
my computer. Because China is so big a country, the ban policy may vary from one
place to another place. Some other Wikipedian had told me that they could access
Chinese Wikipedia now. So far it is not clear whether Chinese Wikipedia is still
blocked. It seems that the ban policy is a temporary one.
>From e.p.zachte at chello.nl Tue Jun 1 08:36:49 2004
>From: e.p.zachte at chello.nl (Erik Zachte)
>Date: Tue Jun 1 08:36:57 2004
>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] MBTI
>Message-ID: <NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNIEJECIAA.e.p.zachte(a)chello.nl>
>Anthere wrote:
>>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
>>
>>How do you explain the current majority of NTs ?
>>
>Could it be that NTs are more willing than others to fill in a questionary
>in order to categorize themselves, without a job selector looking over their
>shoulders?
>I did complete the questionaire and put my name on the list, but still I'm
>rather skeptical, or should I be according to my type? :)
>For fun try to convince yourself that you scored any other type than you did
>and read the description, part of it will still seem to describe you, at
>least that was my experience. Just like with astrology charts, people tend
>to agree with all niceties written about them.
>
>Erik Zachte
It is my WAG that Wikipedians are predominantly NT, and specifically
INTJ, because they love facts and they love citations. INTJs are your
classic intellectuals and enjoy a statistical majority in college /
graduate school despite being a statistical minority (Did I mention
Rhodes scholars?). Looking at the numbers, you would also find it
quite strange that INTP's, another of the rarest types, would be so
bountiful on Wikipedia. They, however, are your classic computer
nerds :)
I also want to point out that the Wikipedia article on the MBTI is not
neutral and it is inherently skewed. I keep meaning to go in there
and redo it. There are not different ways of interpreting the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - there is only one way and that is
prescribed by Consulting Psychologists Press, the Myers & Briggs
Foundation, and the Center for Applications of Psychological Type.
Note that you will never see Keirsey's name associated with any of
these. If someone were to use "Jung-like methods" they would sit
someone down in their office and start asking them questions lol.
Jung didn't have a test, and further, it's not even a test - its an
indicator of preferences! Keirsey also has his own indicator, built
off of Jung's writings, called the Keirsey Temperament. It is
completely separate from the MBTI.
I will try to redo that article soon. If anyone wants to help me that
would be cool - I haven't created a Wikipedia account yet.
One last thing, I noticed that on this page
(http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type) there is a
link to an "Online Myers-Briggs test". I would like to include a
cite directly from the 2004 CAPT catalog (on my desk):
"Qualified users of the MBTI instrument must meet two basic
requirements: Have a four-year college degree from an accredited
college or university /and either/ Have passed a college course in
psychological educational tests and measurements and have acquired a
basic understanding of the theory and uses of the MBTI instrument /or/
have successfully completed a recognized qualifying program, such as
the one offered by CAPT.
Hence, you cannot take the MBTI on the Internet! If someone put a
test on the Internet and called it the SAT, and it looked like the SAT
and smelled like the SAT, but wasn't endorsed y The College Board,
would it still be the SAT? Nope!
postscriptum: I am an ISTP =)
Brian
>From ts4294967296 at hotmail.com Tue Jun 1 05:40:19 2004
>From: ts4294967296 at hotmail.com (Tim Starling)
>Date: Tue Jun 1 05:40:35 2004
>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MBTI
>References: <20040531125858.23258.qmail(a)web41803.mail.yahoo.com>
>Message-ID: <40BC16C3.5090406(a)hotmail.com>
>Anthere wrote:
>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
>>
>> How do you explain the current majority of NTs ?
>>
>MBTI is pseudoscience. I don't know why people bother with it.
>http://skepdic.com/myersb.html
>-- Tim Starling
Tim I am a big fan of that Skeptic's Dictionary article because it
does a good job of bringing awareness to both sides of type, however,
nowhere in that article does it state that the MBTI is pseudoscience
(though admittantly there are inferences). The system of preferences
as it was when Jung invented it was indeed pseudoscience because he
was akin to guessing peoples types and was
not a fan of statistics. The MBTI didn't come around until afterwards, though.
The MBTI as it is today is backed by statistics, something not
mentioned in that article. Of course he didn't know this because you
have to be qualified to administer the test before you have access to
purchasing the statistics, a prerequisite thereof being having a BA.
See capt.org for more information on that.
Brian