[Foundation-l] wikinews and other stuff

Sat Oct 16 05:29:00 UTC 2004

Delirium-
> I see Wikimedia Commons as being more of a repository, while Wikisource
> is more of a general text-document-oriented site that isn't merely a
> dumping ground for documents, but also organizes them, translates them,
> annotates them, and so on.  It's not clear how the proposed translation
> project would fit in at the Commons, for example.

This is a very logical distinction at the present time, because we haven't  
really put much effort into "wikifying" anything beyond text. There are a  
few things which can open up this horizon though:

* SVG support, which is currently in CVS, makes it relatively easy to  
create translations of vector graphics like maps and diagrames.

* The various extensions like timelines and Wikitex (not to be confused  
with the current math support) can also be openly edited.

* It is possible, with a helper application, to add support for arbitrary  
external applications to edit all media types and upload them back to the  
server. Zope has this already:
http://www.zope.org/Members/Caseman/ExternalEditor

* It is desirable to have an easy way to overlay bitmap images with  
textual explanations. Perhaps SVG can help here. Similarly, we will want  
to make it easy to create image maps.

Thus, the distinction between Wikisource and WikiCommons will erode  
further, as we will do many of the same things with images, sound and  
video that the Wikisource community is doing with text.

The other side is that we will also want to make it possible to transclude  
textual content in the Wikimedia projects, e.g., "show me the first  
paragraph of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the English  
version". This means that Wikisource will be used in a manner that is very  
similar to the Wikimedia Commons, i.e. to enrich other Wikimedia content.   
Given this overlap, I will launch a merge initiative when the time is  
right (unless someone else does).

That being said, we should absolutely, 100% launch a systematic effort to  
translate Wikisource materials. Free content translations are very hard to  
come by. Perhaps, through this, we can also entice people to put their  
content under a free license (provided the content is valuable to us).

Regards,

Erik