Comments on: Jimmy Wales keynote at Wikimania http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2006/08/04/jimmy-wales-keynote-at-wikimania/ EthanZ's musings on Africa, media and international development Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:45:31 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: rexblog.com: Rex Hammock’s weblog » Blog Archive » Inconvenient Truths http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2006/08/04/jimmy-wales-keynote-at-wikimania/comment-page-1/#comment-196473 rexblog.com: Rex Hammock’s weblog » Blog Archive » Inconvenient Truths Thu, 29 Mar 2007 02:51:42 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=922#comment-196473 [...] Something about Kathy Sierra’s post the other day regarding the harassment and threats she’d received and my reaction to it has made me think of John Seigenthaler, Sr. I live in Nashville and have admired John Seignethaler for three decades, I felt sickened when I learned from a now-famous editorial he wrote in USA Today in December, 2005, that someone had maliciously libeled him in an entry on Wikipedia. Shortly after that editorial was published, I lamented such an attack on the character of a noble individual like him. Yet I thought then — and have said in several public places since — if Seigenthaler had not amplified the libel, it would have been seen by a dozen or so people, tops. Because he chose to make it a cause, it will go down as one of the most famous wikipedia entries of all time — and one day will be an unfortunate lead item in his obituary despite a career of great journalism and public service. For rather than raise the concern of people with the downside of Wikipedia, Seigenthaler raised the awareness of Wikipedia. Indeed, last August, I heard Jimmy Wales claim the Seignethaler controversy increased the traffic to Wikipedia three-fold. Sometimes, you just have to learn how to ignore the bozos of the world. (Again, I am in no way suggesting Seigenthaler’s decision to use whatever means he had to defend his honor was wrong — I can’t say I would have followed my own counsel to ignore the crap on Wikpedia.) [...] [...] Something about Kathy Sierra’s post the other day regarding the harassment and threats she’d received and my reaction to it has made me think of John Seigenthaler, Sr. I live in Nashville and have admired John Seignethaler for three decades, I felt sickened when I learned from a now-famous editorial he wrote in USA Today in December, 2005, that someone had maliciously libeled him in an entry on Wikipedia. Shortly after that editorial was published, I lamented such an attack on the character of a noble individual like him. Yet I thought then — and have said in several public places since — if Seigenthaler had not amplified the libel, it would have been seen by a dozen or so people, tops. Because he chose to make it a cause, it will go down as one of the most famous wikipedia entries of all time — and one day will be an unfortunate lead item in his obituary despite a career of great journalism and public service. For rather than raise the concern of people with the downside of Wikipedia, Seigenthaler raised the awareness of Wikipedia. Indeed, last August, I heard Jimmy Wales claim the Seignethaler controversy increased the traffic to Wikipedia three-fold. Sometimes, you just have to learn how to ignore the bozos of the world. (Again, I am in no way suggesting Seigenthaler’s decision to use whatever means he had to defend his honor was wrong — I can’t say I would have followed my own counsel to ignore the crap on Wikpedia.) [...]

]]> By: Influence http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2006/08/04/jimmy-wales-keynote-at-wikimania/comment-page-1/#comment-53622 Influence Mon, 14 Aug 2006 07:11:44 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=922#comment-53622 <strong>de.wikipedia.org</strong> We're on vacation in Germany, and had a fun talk with friend Thomas Maier, a journalist with Deutche Presse-Agenture, about the German Wikipedia community. Thomas related how enthusiastic and active is the Wikipedia community in Germany - saying somet... de.wikipedia.org

We’re on vacation in Germany, and had a fun talk with friend Thomas Maier, a journalist with Deutche Presse-Agenture, about the German Wikipedia community. Thomas related how enthusiastic and active is the Wikipedia community in Germany – saying somet…

]]> By: Kate http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2006/08/04/jimmy-wales-keynote-at-wikimania/comment-page-1/#comment-49960 Kate Sat, 05 Aug 2006 01:22:19 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=922#comment-49960 <i> WiktionaryZ, a software project designed to build a true multilingual dictionary. </i> Does that mean you could look up a word or phrase and get a set of words or phrases that translate to it in many languages at once, with translations of them to explain the nuances? That is, say you could look up 'to speak' in Mexxican Spanish or Maori or Russian and get a list of verbs that indicated kinds of speech — as in English you might get "to call", "to profess,", "to mutter" and so on. And for each word, you could get an English translation, so that you understood how they differed. Given infinite space and memory, you could then get verbs for "to speak" from as many different languages as the dictionary covered. We've already got onling dictionaries, translating dictionaries, dictionaries of words that don't exist in English, languiage dictionaries anyone can edit (you know about the Swahili dictionary Yale was working on?) and dictionaries of slang in all kinds of languages... but a database that could compare and contrast them and could include shrinking languages or languages that only exist on paper now... <i>Geeks who aren't computer geeks</i>? I don't know what you're talking about. ;-) I just want to know which words in Mohican are animate and which are inanimate. Distinguishing not by gender or number or position in time but by soul is such a tremendous thought. WiktionaryZ, a software project designed to build a true multilingual dictionary.

Does that mean you could look up a word or phrase and get a set of words or phrases that translate to it in many languages at once, with translations of them to explain the nuances?

That is, say you could look up ‘to speak’ in Mexxican Spanish or Maori or Russian and get a list of verbs that indicated kinds of speech — as in English you might get “to call”, “to profess,”, “to mutter” and so on. And for each word, you could get an English translation, so that you understood how they differed. Given infinite space and memory, you could then get verbs for “to speak” from as many different languages as the dictionary covered.

We’ve already got onling dictionaries, translating dictionaries, dictionaries of words that don’t exist in English, languiage dictionaries anyone can edit (you know about the Swahili dictionary Yale was working on?) and dictionaries of slang in all kinds of languages… but a database that could compare and contrast them and could include shrinking languages or languages that only exist on paper now…

Geeks who aren’t computer geeks? I don’t know what you’re talking about. ;-) I just want to know which words in Mohican are animate and which are inanimate. Distinguishing not by gender or number or position in time but by soul is such a tremendous thought.

]]> By: WikiAngela » Wikimania 2006 begins http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2006/08/04/jimmy-wales-keynote-at-wikimania/comment-page-1/#comment-49825 WikiAngela » Wikimania 2006 begins Fri, 04 Aug 2006 15:58:19 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=922#comment-49825 [...] Jimmy Wales opened the conference with a presentation on the past, present, and future of wikis. His talk included two announcements - The One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC) will make Wikipedia part of their content repository, and the Wikiversity project has gained Board approval to be launched this month. See Ethan Zuckerman’s post for full details of this talk. [...] [...] Jimmy Wales opened the conference with a presentation on the past, present, and future of wikis. His talk included two announcements – The One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC) will make Wikipedia part of their content repository, and the Wikiversity project has gained Board approval to be launched this month. See Ethan Zuckerman’s post for full details of this talk. [...]

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