User:Dovi
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Wikimedia is cool!
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A brief hello. The possibilities in Wikipedia are endless, and I'm glad to be a part of it.
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[edit] Censorship
One thing I feel strongly about as a Wikimedian is that Wikimedia must not bow to government censorship. Wikimedia is committed to making information freely available in a neutral way. To hamper Wikimedia projects because of concerns about government censorship is not neutral, but a way of taking sides.
Therefore, congratulations on the creation of Chinese Wikinews! The Wikimedia Foundation is already an outstanding organization, and this makes it even better yet.
My prediction: The Chinese government will eventually stop blocking Wikimedia websites. Initially, this will be because blocking an open website, built by contributors, whose only "crime" is a committment to neutrality - will prove too embarrassing to them to continue blocking it. In the longer term, it will be because Wikimedia is simply too powerful an organization. Yes, powerful. Powerful not because of its armies and police (zero), but because it provides tools and products that are so important and useful - eventually, indispensible - that China will simply not be able to afford to do without it.
Instead, the government may try to influence Chinese Wikipedia, Wikinews, etc. by pushing its own views within the product itself. That in itself, of course, will be a victory, when the government will be forced to defend its positions by force of argument rather than force of arms.
- My personal collection of links relevant to Wikimedia projects in Chinese
- Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China
[edit] Musings on Wikipedia Languages
- Under 100 articles = future potential (because at least the wiki has been set up), but nothing worthwhile right now.
- Over 100 articles = Signs of life.
- Over 1000 articles = The community is small but now truly alive; the encyclopedia still has little current value. (As of 17.06.06 this is 54 languages.)
- Over 10,000 articles = Already a resource that has significant value; built and supported by a small but significant community. (As of 17.06.06 this is 34 languages.)
- Over 100,000 articles = A resource of great value, built and supported by a strong community. (As of 17.06.06 this is 9 languages.)
- Over 1,000,000 articles = A tremendous resource the likes of which the world has never before seen, built and supported by a truly vast community. (As of 17.06.06 this is just 1 language.)
My predictions for next summer (2007):
- There will be Wikipedias in 100 languages that have 10,000 or more articles (i.e. 100 different languages with significantly valuable content and communities).
- At least a few more languages (3 or 4) will have 100,000 or more articles (i.e. resources of great value with very strong communities behind them). The 10,000 to 100,000 jump is far bigger than the smaller ones, especially for smaller languages that will not be able to maintain a high exponential rate of growth forever.
By the end of 2007:
- However, by the end of 2007 there will be another 20-30 languages with over 100,000 articles, in addition to the current 10 languages (including English).
[edit] Major Software Changes
There are several major software changes that have been talked about for several years. Serious coding work has been done on all of them by dedicated programmers, and all of them are planned for the future. But most important, they spotlight the central technical needs of Wikimedia projects that have not yet been provided for.
As the programmers continue to make progress, the one-by-one implementation of these features will vastly increase the usefullness of all the Wikimedia projects:
- For coordination: Single log-in for all projects in all languages (Brion's current plans).
- For reliability:
- Stable versions of articles (& Wikipedia:Stable versions).
- Article validation (& Article validation feature [1]) which may be an aspect of stable versions (as it partially is already in the German Wikipedia esperiment)
- For versatility:
- Database features for pages (WiktionaryZ).
- My own suggestion for much greater versatility is Labeled section transclusion. This would allow designating any part of a page to be used in other contexts through transclusion (rather than just whole pages). It seems like an obvious "next step" given the current nature of the Mediawiki software and how it currently uses transclusion. Though initially conceived with Wikisource in mind, it could find myriad uses in all the projects. Having become a working extension, this feature even made the news at the Wikipedia Signpost.
[edit] Interests
The following was my first "hello" to Wikipedia:
For the time being I plan to contribute to articles on Judaism, but avoiding the ones that spark polemics. (That unfortunately is one of the disadvantages of Wikipedia.)
Would love to be in contact with others working on the same topics.Dovi 08:58, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
