Collaboration

It is the last day of the year and, it is a great moment to consider what to do in the New Year. For me the one thing that will typically make the difference is collaboration. What we aim to do with OmegaWiki will be a success when we aim to be inclusive. This will allow everyone to benefit from the mutual effort on the same data.

The economies of scale really will work to our advantage when the work on the data is shared. When people and organisations work together, tipping points will be reached that will enable the application of the data that would otherwise not be really possible.

Today I learned that it may be possible to collaborate with Logos. This would be really great; Logosdictionary is already relevant, it has a community that make the daily logosquote a rich reality. It has a children's dictionary, a conjugator and more. Truly the prospect of such a collaboration is significant, the challenge will be to make it happen.

2007 will be an interesting year .. :)

Thanks and "gelukkig nieuwjaar!"
GerardM

Statistics

The Marathi Wiktionary has 121 articles. OmegaWiki has 120 expressions in Marathi. I had a look at the recent changes of the Marathi Wiktionary, it was full of changes to the MediaWiki messages. Consider, the same work was probably already done on the Marathi Wikipedia. When these updates are done in this way, people will not be able to benefit on other projects that are of interest to people that read and write Marathi.

It is really relevant that the work done on languages like Marathi count. BetaWiki was a place that functioned well, however as it was not part of the MediaWiki projects, it was ignored by some of the developers. With the inclusion of the software written for BetaWiki in the Incubator, there will be a more obvious place for the localisation of MediaWiki. It will be a place that is easy to understand for translators. The work done there will benefit all the projects where people are able to use their language for their User interface.

Thanks,
GerardM

Playing a game

It is the festive season and families come together. Adults talk and kids play. The kids in my family play games, computer games. I was asked if they could use my computer to play a multi user game. I did not mind, I made them promise me that they would uninstall this game when they are done / before I am to leave.

The question; is this the type of thing that Industry considers illegal.. It must be because no money changed hands. If this is indeed illegal, where is the fun?

Thanks,
GerardM

Lies, damned lies and statistics

There was an e-mail on the Wiktionary mailing list where a comparison was made between the English language Wiktionary and OmegaWiki. It was based on an analysis by Zdenek Broz. It compares the number of translations between the two projects.

The numbers may be right, but there is so much more to the English Wiktionary that it should not be reduced to such a numerical comparison. There is the Wikisaurus, there is a lot of etymological information, frequency lists, rhymes and most relevantly there are a lot of people who make it a great project.

It will take a lot more work before OmegaWiki can include all the information that is in en.wiktionary and it will take even more work before this information will actually be in there. I think this may happen but we do not need a competition for that. Both projects have there stong points and when we are able and willing to learn from each other it will be awesome.

Thanks,
GerardM

A Christmas story about traditions

I really enjoyed this wonderful Christmas story. It is about centuries old traditions and about personal traditions and how they change.. I really enjoyed and want to share it with you ..
Thanks,
GerardM

Running in front of the pack

MediaWiki is the software used by the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. If there is one thing MediaWiki can boast about, it is the amount of localising that has been done. There are currently projects in 250 languages and, many have been localised somehow somewhere.

The Wikimedia Foundation has a big need for money. If ever there was an organisation that took care of the money it received it is the WMF. Wikipedia has according to Alexa the 12th traffic rank at the moment and the growth of their projects is something like doubling every four to six months.

The WMF has an ongoing funding drive, they created software to manage this in Drupal. The functionality is good for some languages but for others Drupal has not been localised. Some will say: it does a good job for my language but for most languages Drupal is just not up to the task. MediaWiki is far ahead of the pack when it comes to localisation and consequently there are no tools that will support the languages that are needed by the Wikimedia Foundation.

When Drupal gets more localisation done, it will find that in the same time frame the WMF will have added more languages. There is a moral question here as well. Is it acceptable to use tools that convey an important message that do not support the languages that you need..

Thanks,
GerardM

Glyphs, fonts and the need to support them

In OmegaWiki (formerly known as WiktionaryZ) we want to support all words of all languages. Some languages have scripts that are not supported by the Operating System that you use. This can be bad or it can be really bad. It is bad when you have to find and install a font. Where to get it, what does it cost. It is really bad when there is no font. It can also be extremely bad when there the glyphs have not been defined in UNICODE.

In the Wikimedia Foundation there are projects that do require another font. Khmer, Laotian come to mind. For the Ripuarian language the situation is extremely bad; there is an official orthography that defined characters that do not yet exist in UNICODE.

Today I learned about a really nice project called Dejavu. It is an open source project that works on the creation of fonts. They do good work but there is a long way to go before they will have tackled the Chinese and Indian languages.

For OmegaWiki projects like Dejavu are important because they will ease the use of those people who are interested in seeing all the information that it will contain. UNICODE and the work done by Michael Everson are as important because without the glyphs being defined they will not go into fonts and without fonts we can not have all words of all languages.

Thanks,
GerardM

A tribute to the creator of a language

Many people are not impressed when non natural languages are mentioned.. WiktionaryZ is by its very nature more inclusive. That is to say all artificial languages with sufficient recognition will be welcome. One class of languages that WiktionaryZ will not include are programming languages.

Because of my background, I am personally very much interested in these languages too. Today, I learned from an article on the BBC-website that Grace Hopper was born 100 years ago. Rear-admiral Hopper was one of the most influential people in the development of computing. She is certainly one of my heroes.

Thanks,
GerardM

Preparing for a conference

In two weeks on December 14 and 15 I will speak at a conference in Vienna. I was surprised when I was asked to speak at the Language Standards for Global Business. What is it that I can bring to the table. Yes, I proposed a Wiki for Standards at the Berlin conference and yes I am a member of the Wikimedia Foundation language sub committee and yes WiktionaryZ is a big user of standards. I am still shocked and awed that I was asked.

Now that I am getting used to the idea I find that standards were increasingly taking up my time. Standards are crucial for the projects I am involved in. When they fit a need, you do not need to explain and argue why individual choices were made, you refer to the standard. When you export data and you implement a Standard for the format like TBX, LMF or OWL, you hide the complexities of the database and you provide the export in a stable, mature way that allows people to build upon.

The problem with standards however is, that there are so many of them. Also many of the standards work cross purposes by focusing on single issues. This lead to separate standards for the Internet, for libraries all indicating languages.. This plethora of standards and requirements prevents interoperability. It also prevents the general adoption of these Standards.

As I learn more about Standards, I find myself with WiktionaryZ at the cutting edge. How to publish content for a language like Bangubangu ? As far as I know there is little or no content on the Internet at all. I am pleased now to have the Babel templates for Bangubangu. But as the content grows, how do we get the search engines to find it, it is here where appropriate Standards can make a difference.

In preparation for my presentation I have looked at other conferences and I find that many are very much driven by commercial needs. Needs that do not necessarily take into account what is in the long tail of the industry that is represented. The maturity that can be found in translations between the languages of economic power houses like America, Japan and Germany are worlds apart of the African court rooms where the defendant is lucky when he understands the judge or a witness. Here there is often no translation and the tools that are available in the translation industry are not available even for the translation of court papers.

My problem for the conference is that there is so much that I would like to address that I have to concentrate and make what I will say count. The good news is that http://wikiforstandards.org is open for business. When people interested in standards take an interest and collaborate we may address all issues and get a better understanding what all these Standards are there for and more importantly, how they interrelate.

The challenge will be to build a community that understands that it is only collaboration that will make their Standards relevant and integrated with other Standards that are not relevant to their business

Thanks,
GerardM

Another certificate but no tulip

In my living room I have a vase with tulips. Every one of these fabric tulips stands for a certificate that I earned in my computer career. To me it expresses that in order to remain up to date you have to work.

Last week I was invited to a lecture by Marshall B. Rosenberg in Rotterdam. Mr Rosenberg is credited with developing a method of communication called " non violent communication". I attended, and I got a certificate to prove it. It does not rate a tulip because there is no achievement for me yet.

In the hand out we got, there were list of feelings and needs. It was mentioned that the English language was not made to express feelings and needs, the Spanish language was mentioned as being much richer when you want to express either. When you think of it, it is not surprising when language can be intimidating. The choice and the appreciation of words makes all the difference. Like it was explained during the lecture, in order to change your language you have to be aware about what you say and how the effect is on the party that is on the receiving end of that language.

In this discussion about male domination that I mentioned in my previous post, the language used is a major contributing factor to the unease that is being felt. When people do not perceive that it is their very words that makes others feel uneasy, angry even discriminated it is very hard to come to an understanding. Yes, it may be that for some the English language is a second or even tertiary language, it does not negate the effects these words have; it is at best an explanation not an excuse. Bullets do kill, words do hurt.

Thanks,
GerardM

Wikichix

On the mailing list for the English Wikipedia there were some women who articulated that a sizeable group of women feel not comfortable in the en.wikipedia community of editors. To alleviate this issue, they decided to create a community of women called Wikichix.

Angela, who is one of the best around for creating communities, set up some infrastructure including a mailing list for those interested in joining. A lively discussion started about this. Many men denied that there is a need, and that it is appropriate to have such a self help group. Several of them expressed that they feel excluded and even discriminated against. Several women including Anthere, provided graphic evidence of how women are dealt with by some of the males that think nothing of making disparaging remarks qualifying them as "jokes".

Even though it was said time and time again that this was to engage more women to become part of the Wikipedia mainstream, some people could not accept that what is good for some does not need to be an affront to others. Sadly, Anthere has now asked for the mailing list not to make use of WMF infrastructure. :(

Personally I feel it as a loss. A loss because it does not help to engage more people. A loss because it may even prevent the engagement of people who are not part of the Wikipedia community and all this because of the boorish behaviour by some.

Thanks,
GerardM

A new language on the Internet ?

I received a mail that was forwarded to me by Martin Benjamin (the Kamusi project). The mail was by a gentleman who wants to promote his mother tongue, the Bangubangu language. This is the first time that written material in this language has been created. The first project is a book in English, French and Swahili called “Teach yourself the Kibangubangou”.

I am thrilled with initiatives like this. The book is there now what to do next. Do you print it with an organisation like Lulu? Do you advise to make it a Wikibook? To what extend are concepts like copyright and licenses relevant and understood ..

It would be great to make this project succeed and have kids learn their mother tongue. There are stumbling blocks. Google does support less languages then the Wikimedia Foundation; Google does some hundred and The WMF some two hundred and fifty. One of the problems is that there is not much material in any but the bigger languages and Google does good by already doing this much.

To make an impact, I think it is crucial for material in particularly the endangered languages, to be tagged correctly. This gives Google and the other search engines a fighting chance to function on little material. For the Bangubangu language, there is no proper tag yet. The question is if the IETF will consider to do something about it. They are religious in their belief that the ISO-639-3 is not approved yet and that the bnx code therefore is not to be used. At issue is that there is a need that presents itself for this language.

Thanks,
GerardM

Kanab Ambersnail

According to a heading on the English Wikipedia mainpage, the article about the Kanab Ambersnail was the 1.500.000th article. I think this is very spectacular. Personally I find it funny that I can write about it before I have read about it on slashdot :)

Congratulations to all who make Wikipedia so special.

Thanks,
GerardM

The I&I conference

Last Wednesday and Thursday I was at the annual I&I conference in Lunteren. This conference brings together many of the ICT (information & computer technology) coordinators of Dutch and also some Flemish schools. I have had the privilege to be for the second time. This year we had beautiful new Wikipedia folders, Marc Bergsma demonstrated a OLPC motherboard; it got a lot of interest particular when it was learned that a full system can be available for Dutch schools for the school year 2008/2009.

One great project I learned about is called TEEM. TEEM is a project where teachers evaluate educational websites and CD/DVD based resources for their use in classrooms. The way it is organised is such that I can understand why British teachers trust it as a resource. The way that it is funded however is one that creates a sad systemic bias. Reviews are paid for by publishers the consequence is that open content course ware will not be evaluated. This funding model also keeps out those publishers that do not pay for a review. This governmental political choice was to encourage innovation and competition. It is not unreasonable to suggest that it effectively costs the British schools more money as they do not learn about what is available for free.

Thanks,
GerardM

Whose language is it anyway ?

Much of Microsoft's software has been translated in the Mapuzugun or is it the Mapundugun language. They did this in consultation with the Chilean government.

The Mapuche people have gone to court because they disagree that Microsoft or the Chilean government had the right to do this. The language it is claimed is theirs, and the translation was done without consulting the Mapuche people.

Many people do not understand or know what is behind this. Why would people be opposed against becoming part of the digital world? To me, the key thing to appreciate in the reporting is the accusation of "violating their cultural and collective heritage". There are competing orthographies for this language and one is strongly favoured by the government.

So if I remember things well, this has everything to do about the involvement of the people that use the language. Mapundugun is spoken in both Argentina and Chile and here the government of a nation and the most powerful company of the world seem to be taken on because they do not represent the Mapuche people and are denied the right to decide for them.

In that light it makes perfect sense to go to court and insist that this is very much not wanted.

Thanks,
GerardM

To the winner go all the spoils

When changing you name makes you money, would you do it? Would you change your name for a pig or a goat ? Accepting such an offer could make me "Pig Meijssen", it would go well with my mascot. The name that the people changed their name to, "Hornsleth", is perfectly honourable. This "project" by the Danish artist Kristian Von Hornsleth is very much intended to demonstrate that international aid fails people. It fails people because it assumes that "the way of the donor" is best.

If you want to be helped you have to do this, that whatever. For me the great thing about Wikipedia is that it helps. It brings information to people. Its intention have always been to bring people information in their language. This means that culture, people and language are respected and that have people are enabled to help themselves.

For the western languages there is an abundance of great information. For many other languages, Wikipedia still has to take root. As the world becomes more wired, I expect Wikipedia will take root and become relevant for as a resource for both the culture, the people and the language.

When it is considered acceptable to bring information only in English, French, Arab, Chinese or whatever is considered a big language, the notion of Neutral Point of View that the Wikimedia Foundation offers is deminished. A NPOV exists because all points can be brought in the diversity that are the languages and cultures that are reflected in the 250 Wikipedias that currently exist.

It may be efficient to concentrate on the "important" languages.. but I do not want to consider the loss.

Thanks,
GerardM

The worth of MediaWiki

According to the dark art of economics, everything can be valued. Everything can be given a price tag. People may object to this, and do on principle, but sorry, they have done just this for MediaWiki.

MediaWiki has a worth of $3.810.127,- when you assume that a developer costs $55.000,- a year and some other stuff. It was "valued" per the first of January 2006 and as the year is almost gone, it will be worth a lot more.

Another economic truism is that money makes money. Because of the success of MediaWiki more people will start developing MediaWiki. I am not in a position to deny this. WiktionaryZ extends MediaWiki. With new functionality much more becomes possible.

There is one thing missing in this argument. What is wrong is that MediaWiki is a tool. A tool that produces something that is far more valuable. Wikipedia is not the only project that MediaWiki enabled. I am sure some people who understand this dark art of valuation will be able to come up with a better number.

Given that money makes money, it is possible to leverage the MediaWiki generated content. Much proprietary content is not really relevant because it does not get exposure. By making content available it can get exposure. Material was often created to get exposure. By keeping it proprietary, thereby hidden from view, it does not do all that it could do. By making it available under a free license new opportunities arise.

MediaWiki enabled among others Wikipedia. WiktionaryZ has potential. My hunch is that like MediaWiki it will enable the creation of content in a different way. I hope and expect that it will help us to negotiate the release of much content under a Free/Open license and allow us to collaborate with many organisations and people.

Thanks,
GerardM

Running the interwiki bot for Wiktionary

I run the interwiki functionality of pywikipedia bot on all the Wiktionaries. It is a thing that I started and it is the kind of public service that needs doing. It links all the words that are spelled the same by adding "interwiki" links. These are the things that you see at the left hand side where it is indicated that there is also information in another language.

I have done this now for over a year and what I just noticed is the amount of words that I do not understand is growing rapidly. On the one hand it is to be expected as it is in line with the rapid growth of projects like the Vietnamese wiktionary. What now starts to happen more is that multiple wiktionaries have words together. That is what I see when I watch the bot.

In a way it would be fun to have WiktionaryZ in there. Currently we have 159.004 Expressions and we have 10.557 DefinedMeanings. Based on the expressions we would be the fourth project in size, it would be more reasonable to use the DefinedMeaning for the comparison and this would have us as the 26th in size.

Comparing Wiktionary with WiktionaryZ is like apples and oranges. Where Wiktionary has each word only once, WiktionaryZ counts them as existing in a language. Where there can be many red-linked articles on a Wiktionary page, the WiktionaryZ expressions are implicitly there.

It makes better sense to appreciate what the implications are of the numbers. In lexicology size counts. Only when people have a good chance of finding the information they are looking for will they find a resource useful. It is one reason why it makes sense to concentrate on certain topics or domains. WiktionaryZ is rich in ecological terminology due to the information that we got by including the GEMET thesaurus. By working on the OLPC children's dictionary we get a lot of the basic stuff that is the bread and butter of dictionaries.

Some thoughts on Alexa

Alexa is a website that provides an indication of the popularity of websites on the Internet. What I do does not matter, as Alexa only measures the use of Internet Explorer which is statistically becoming a less brilliant idea. Given the amount of people using Firefox on WiktionaryZ, I am sure that they do not know where many of the alpha crowd hangs out.

We have had our downtime this week and, I have been looking at how this affects our standing at Alexa. Sure enough, after two days of downtime, we hit the 900.000th place. Now that we are back up, we rebound nicely and today we are already back at number 478,316 for the weekly average.

WiktionaryZ has its own statistics, here you will find that our daily average hits did take a pounding. Given no more downtime and given that the trend of continued interest continues, the numbers will improve but the average will be depressed. At this moment all this is not crucial. When we get people to rely on WiktionaryZ, our service level needs to be much improved.

In a conversation with a developer I said once, when you respect our users, you have to treat them as if they cost us $150,- an hour. The point is that with the realisation how valuable contributors are, you are more likely to give them with the respect that they are due. With professional people using wikis, there actually is money paid for the time spend editing wikis this makes it more plain but it does not make a difference. Editors are to be respected and it is important to make the most out of what they do for us.

Thanks,
GerardM

The semantic web to the rescue ?

The reporting on the Internet Governance Forum in Athens is mighty interesting. Yet another nice article on the BBC website with some thought provoking ideas.

I find it really interesting that spoken languages are considered. However, practically at this stage the Internet is very much oriented towards written languages and, given the amount of stumbling blocks that exist to integrate languages other than the ones using a Latin script, I am afraid this is just a red herring.

I was also amused to see that the semantic web was brought to the fore as one solution to the problem of linguistic diversity. Yes, it is intended to be understood by computers. Computers are used by people and the semantic web is decidedly English. This raises the question how this computer that apparently understands English communicates to its user who does not.

There are however some great things to be said about the semantic web; first of all the terms used should be unambiguous. This in turn means that it should be possible to translate it to other languages than English. This is a challenge that we face in WiktionaryZ. We are able to have semantic relations and our semantic relations do translate to the language of the User Interface. So when the terms have been translated, in WiktionaryZ relations can be understood not only but also by computers.

This is a good moment for a disclaimer; WiktionaryZ is pre-alpha software. Many of the issues that have been tackled in the development of the semantic web we have not considered let alone touched. We hope / expect that we will be allowed to stand on "the shoulders of giants".

Thanks,
GerardM