Wikimedia projets

[Martin Gardner]

I'm having trouble with all the Wikimedia projets in all the languages, i.e. click on a link and it says "Connection Interrupted - The document contains no data." Is anyone else having this problem (the Countdown Wiki works without any problems)? If it's just me, why?

[Charlie Reams]

Maybe Jimbo poured a beer into the router. (This is what happened at the new year's eve party I attended. Sounds funny until you realise the party was organised by geeks and therefore the music system was relayed through the router from a server in a cupboard. Hence no router = no music, and the rest of the party was conducted in silence. Okay, I guess it still sounds funny.)

Also I notice you wrote "projets". Bit of linguistic wire-crossing maybe?

[Martin Gardner]

Maybe Jimbo poured a beer into the router. (This is what happened at the new year's eve party I attended. Sounds funny until you realise the party was organised by geeks and therefore the music system was relayed through the router from a server in a cupboard. Hence no router = no music, and the rest of the party was conducted in silence. Okay, I guess it still sounds funny.)

Also I notice you wrote "projets". Bit of linguistic wire-crossing maybe?

Possibly the six cans of beer I drank last night.

[Jason Larsen]

Martin, did you mean to say Wikipedia?

And Charlie, you're very funny!

[Charlie Reams]

Martin, did you mean to say Wikipedia?

Wikimedia (i.e. The Wikimedia Foundation) is the charity that runs Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikicommons etc in all languages. Wikipedia is their flagship project. MediaWiki is their software, which is available for use by anyone and in particular is used by the Countdown Wiki.

[Jason Larsen]

Good luck, Martin!

Now, I see Charlie. By the way, will you please fix the link to my birthday podcast from last year? I don't get the feeling that everyone here realizes I am trying to develop a thick skin to match their own.

[Martin Gardner]

I thought now that I'm sober (2pm, you'd hope so!) I'd actually talk about this. Do people think that Wikipedia is a good idea? Is it really accurate or is it too open to false information and vandalism. Personally I'd like them to ban edits from IP addresses. But I do think it's a good idea, and it seems absolutely everyone at Leeds Uni uses it. YouTube is also popular with lecturers as well, as for example one used it to show us an Edith Piaf song.

The Wiktionary is my passion as an amateur linguist. However, it's probably not the best multilingual dictionary online, is it? Can anyone recommend one/some.

[Jason Larsen]

I've heard of people posting false information on Wikipedia, sure!

Then, that false information is changed into true information.

[Ian Volante]

I've heard of people posting false information on Wikipedia, sure!

A false statement I put on Wikipedida last October still survives to this day. Not a huge achievement I know, but given that the site is mentioned in the media relatively often, quite a big whopper surviving so long is pleasing. It's quite amusing too

[Junaid Mubeen]

I always check if whatever article I'm reading is well sourced. I am cautious when looking up political stuff as there's scope for bias, but I do find wiki extremely useful when checking out random Maths stuff (which is generally anything but political). There's some really specialised stuff on there which makes me wonder who the hell writes it all. It's usually quite accurate too. Is there one person who knows every bit of Mathematics and shares it to the world through wiki? Is my hero Leonhard Euler still alive? This is the most compelling evidence to date.

[Jason Larsen]

Very interesting, Ian!

[Martin Gardner]

I did have a question for Charlie (or indeed, anyone who wants to volunteer). I was thinking of putting the whole Scrabble dictionary on the French Wiktionary; not the definitions obviously because that's an obvious copyvio, but just as a list of words and on a sub-page of my personal page, just to see which ones come up as red links. Is this doable? As you know they'd have to be in the format *[[word]] with no capital letters at all.

[Charlie Reams]

Yeah, I'll do that next week sometime if I remember, and likewise for CSW on en:.

[Charlie Reams]

If anyone is interested in seeing the sort of thing Martin is talking about, see here. Putting the whole dictionary on one page seems too much of a strain for Wikipedia so I'm splitting it into per-letter pages. Martin, if you email me the French dictionary then I'll send you the relevant files and you can upload them at your leisure.

[Martin Gardner]

Just give me a couple of days; I think I know someone who can get the whole dictionary without any inflections (no conjugations, feminine forms or plurals). It's not particularly helpful to have both MAISON and MAISONS on there, is it?

[Martin Gardner]

I've now sent this, give me a shout if there's a problem, Charlie.

[Martin Gardner]

I've been thinking about this. The ODS doesn't put accents on it's word, whereas a real dictionary does. So the list would be completely useless. Importing the CSW onto the French Wiktionary would be more useful anyway, as there are comparatively few English words, compared to French (35 000 compared to 766 000).