Milos Rancic wrote:
> So, this is the issue of scientific competency of
> Wikimedian projects.
> [...]
> I don't want to be the part of scientific
> non-relevant project. This is not the issue of
> Zlatiborian.
Well, I can understand your grudge here to some
degree, because I've experienced similar situations at
Wikipedia before, were a majority (which is not even
the case with Zlatiborian, btw) was supporting some
standpoint that was utter nonsense from a scientific
perspective. And I thought (note: thought!): "How can
anyone be that ignorant?"
However, it is an essential feature of all Wikimedia
projects that they are not closed circles for some
academics but open projects were everybody is free to
participate as long as they obey certain rules. Of
course, that doesn't mean that we don't strive for the
highest possible degree of scientific accuracy but it
necessarily implies that discussions sometimes take a
slightly different course than they would within a
scientific community. I think everybody who has been
participating here for a while is aware of that - and
the good news is: in the long run, "the truth" almost
always prevails. No need to question the project
altogether, I think.
Arbeo
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Milos Rancic wrote:
>There is no sense to tolerate insults from
>you and similar people.
I can't help but think you're exaggerating a little
bit here. Personal expressions of opion by individual
participants in a discussion (we're talking about
nothing more than merely an ongoing debate here!) must
not be mistaken for insults.
On top of that, I don't think there will be a
Zlatiborian Wikipedia, so why worry this much?
Arbeo
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As an outsider, I don't really have any interest as to
what way is chosen with the Serbo-Croatian language/s,
but I think it's very important we settle on *one*
way.
Having Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian Wikipedias, and
then having a Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, is not only a
doubling of efforts, but nonsensical. I think we
should decide now, while it's still fairly early,
whether we will either have a single Serbo-Croatian
Wikipedia (or, as Node says, a single database which
features automatic conversion), or whether we will
continue having Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian
Wikipedias. In the latter case, the Serbo-Croatian
Wikipedia should be closed down.
I know it's hard to say to people who believe in the
Serbo-Croatian language that they should contribute to
either Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian, but it will have
to be done. Even though the languages are nearly
identical, they have been recognised as separate by
the various nations, and politically they are
recognised separately. That is why it is better to
have separate Wikipedias, and abolish the sh.wiki.
If, however, the conversion project continues, then a
unified sh.wiki must be proclaimed, either with bs, hr
and sr being closed down, or them using the same
database. This is a good idea, though I don't know how
it will work in practice.
In any case, it's important to decide now, before it's
too late.
The other thing I'd like to bring up is the case of
the Zlatiborian Wikipedia. There is a proposal over at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
to form a Wikipedia in Zlatiborian. Until now,
however, Zlatiborian has either been declared as a
hoax or as a language too similar to Serbian. I have
talked to various Zlatiborian speakers at meta, and
they have convinced me that indeed this is a separate
language. There is, however, one weak spot - there is
*no* Internet coverage of this language, so
technically there is nothing to prove that it isn't a
hoax... What is the policy towards these proposals?
Thanks,
Ronline
http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilizator:Ronline
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Hi all,
As most people who are veterans of this list will know very well by
now, I am strongly against the "locking" of inactive Wikipedias.
However, due to a recent increase in vandalism on inactive Wikipedias,
I have decided to suggest a few more minor technical sanctions:
1) Not allowing people to add links to external URLs to pages without
first logging in. If they tried to, it would be removed when they
clicked "submit", and they would get a warning message.
2) Not allowing people to add #REDIRECT ... to pages without first
logging in. If they tried to, they'd get a "preview" window and a
warning message.
3) Not allowing people to replace, say, 30kb of text with two words,
without first logging in. If they tried to, they'd get a warning
message and woudln't be able to submit it.
4) Not allowing ANYBODY to have one or more external URLs as the sole
contents of a page, except perhaps stewards or admins
5) Not allowing anybody to add words like "motherf*cker", "c*nt",
"as*hole", "sh*t", that-medicine-that-starts-with-v,
that-medicine-that-starts-with-c (including replacing the "a" with an
@ sign), "pha ... ceu ... cals", or strings such as "is gay", "is so
gay", etc. While allowing such things may be needed on larger
Wikipedias, on _inactive_ Wikipedias it would prevent probably 50% of
vandalism.
Of course, these sanctions would only be applied to inactive
Wikipedias, which are a definite list.
People like myself, Chamdarae, and others, notice when inactive
Wikipedias become active, and we would be able to ask once every month
or two for the newly active WPs to be removed from that list.
Please note that this would NOT have any effect on ACTIVE Wikipedias,
including ones as small as Yiddish or Udmurt, or as large as English
and German, or anywhere in between. (thus, any WP with perhaps at
least 2-3 edits a week, over 500 articles, would not have such
things).
I am curious to see the reactions of others on this.
It solves many of the problems caused by inactive WPs:
1) Vandalism, spamming.
2) The first proposed solution to problem #1 is to lock all inactive
Wikis against edits. This would prohibit any development unless
somebody requested them to be opened, which most people would be too
unknowledgable or shy to do.
3) The second proposed solution to problem #1 is to _monitor_ inactive
Wikis. This solution is currently implemented, but some of the basic
vandalisms and spammings would be so easily preventable by such a
technical solution, and would save loads of work for myself,
Chamdarae, Angela, Wouter, Mxn, and whoever else checks inactive
Wikipedias.
Thoughts?
--
"Take away their language and you are taking away their souls." -- Stalin
>Well, Elephantus apparently hasn't been monitoring the growth of the
>Serbocroatian WP.
>The top contributors recently are:
>OC Ripper,
>Dejvid,
>Myself,
>Pokrajac,
>Belirac,
>anonymous user.
>Now, of all these people, the ONLY ONE who is not a native speaker is ME.
[[sh:User:Dejvid]] is also not a native speaker and his main activity
was also copy/pasting articles from the other three Wikipedias.
So two out of the top three contributors aren't native speakers and
what they're doing is basically making an internal fork.
>From the standpoint of the Croatian Wikipedia, there are two main
problems about Serbo-Croatian Wiki:
1. User confusion. Nontechnical, casual passers-by who stumble
upon Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia and, in many cases, automatically assume
that there is no Croatian (or Serbian, for that matter) Wikipedia.
I tried to make a partial fix for this by adding a banner
to the top of the S-C Main Page pointing people to the other 3
Wikis, but you and Pokrajac removed this.
2. Fragmentation of user base. The people who consider their
language to be Serbo-Croatian form a small minority, with political
views which are usually at the left end of the political spectrum.
By providing these people with their own Wiki you're possibly
depriving the three of small, but potentially valuable
contributions and a diversity of opinion necessary for a successful
Wiki. If we were to create, say, a German-Marxist Wikipedia, would
that be welcomed by the majority of contributors to the German
Wiki?
As for the politics of the issue, I don't really care one
way or the other. I cooperate well with the folks
on the Serbian Wikipedia who don't try to convince me that
I'm wrong and they're right. But I really think that you should
respect the will of a great majority of the three peoples
and not try to force a common identity or language upon us.
Proclaiming the many contributors to the three Wikipedias
and other ordinary folks "nationalists" because they decided
to go their separate ways shows a certain lack of respect or
detailed and nuanced knowledge about things. It's not
a simple copy/paste/merge operation, as shown in the past
90 years or so. Sorry.
Elephantus (from Croatian Wikipedia)
--
Odaberite XXLadsl i iskoristite 60 dana neograničenog surfanja za samo 1 kn!
Uz svaki XXLadsl poklanjamo Iskonov glazbeni CD. http://www.iskon.biz/xxladsl
What is the policy on other Wikipedias concerning unblocking users. In
particular, does a sysop have the right to unblock an IP another sysop
blocked, if he thinks the block was unreasonably long?
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
The Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia was reopened in June
after a request from a single user of the Serbian
Wikipedia - [[sr:User:Покрајац|Pokrajac]]. This was
not announced beforehand in any way on the three Wikipedias that
are most affected by this issue – Serbian,
Croatian and Bosnian, there was no public discussion or
a vote. The idea was supported here by people
who weren't part of the growing communities of the
three Wikipedias.
The "phenomenal growth" (1,019 articles) of the Serbo-Croatian
is mostly a result of people (some of them with little or no
knowledge of the three languages)
copy-pasting articles from Serbian (converting those to Latin
alphabet), Croatian or Bosnian Wikipedias. The sole
exception has been an anonymous user 213.202.x.x who wrote
several longer articles in almost perfect Croatian and
posted them to the Serbo-Croatian wiki.
My question is this: Why aren't Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian
Wikipedias provided the same treatment as e.g. Danish and
Bokmal (Norwegian) which are also mutually intelligible
in the written form? There is no common Dano-Bokmal
Wikipedia with well-wishing but mostly misguided non-native-
speakers copying articles to it.
Serbo-Croatian has been dead as a political collection of
standard languages for 15 years now (30 years in Croatia),
it is slowly disappearing, except as a historical footnote,
even in international linguistic circles because the name
itself is insulting to most Bosniaks and Croats and not
used by most Serbs (who prefer the term Serbian).
I'd like to propose a relocking of this Wikipedia or at least a
name change (Serbian - Latin, as a temporary bridge to
the Latin conversion system now being tested for the Serbian
Wikipedia).
Elephantus (from Croatian Wikipedia, 10.042 articles
and growing!) :-)
--
Odaberite XXLadsl i iskoristite 60 dana neograničenog surfanja za samo 1 kn!
Uz svaki XXLadsl poklanjamo Iskonov glazbeni CD. http://www.iskon.biz/xxladsl
2005/11/3, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net>:
> In theory that might be true that bureaucrats don't have to be admins
> but in practice I have never heard of one that wasn't already an admin.
On Wikipedia, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs.
- d.
Dear all,
On my meta user pages I received a request from a frustrated
wikipedian for assistance in a dispute on the Spanish Wikipedia
regarding (among other things) uncommented deletions of his (?her)
contributions. It seems like the user doesn't feel he is getting
anywhere through negotiation with the other parts. The other parts are
administrators, and he has now been blocked from editing, something
which he of course finds frustrating and he feels that they abused
their power.
I would love to mediate in this dispute as it would also be a certain
booster for my Spanish knowledge, however I have my final exams these
days and feel pressed for time.
Can anyone help direct me to somebody who may be able to help? Please
find the request and my response on my meta user pages (in Spanish):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:BjarteSorensen#Petici.C3.B3n_de_ay…
On this note, I would also like to ask a broader question to the
community: How different do you think are the cultures of the
different languages' wikipedias? In particular I'm interested in
inclusivist/deletionist matters, dispute resolution, administrator
"powers" and I suppose general feeling of welcome. And, not
specifically with Spanish Wikipedia in mind, how well do we monitor
aberrance from our common goal of wikilove and NPOV on the more
"peripheral" wikipedias?
Cheers,
Bjarte Sorensen