User talk:Verdy p/Archive1

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Welcome to the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic planning process. We appreciate your interest in taking part. You can start by reading our Community guidelines (en). Check out the links on the Main Page (en) and find an area that interests you. Please feel free to ask me any questions, or you may leave a message on the Village pump (en).

-- Philippe 21:05, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you!

I've seen the translations that you're doing tonight. Thank you - very much. It's appreciated so much. -- Philippe 06:00, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, I'd like to second that sentiment. You've done a lot of work in a very short time:). Gopher65_talk 01:26, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, you've possibly not seen some things that I did, before I created an account here, because I thought that this would not be necessary (but really there are much more things to do than what I expected initially). Thanks. Verdy p 02:00, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Number of language speakers

Hi Verdy, thanks so much for posting the really interesting table on articles per language speaker. I added a summary table that just highlights the top 11 most spoken languages. One thing that I noticed was that in the table you posted under the fifth column articles per speaker, you simply divided the column with a number of language speakers by the column number of articles. However, since the column with a number of language speakers is in the millions and the column with number of articles is in the thousands it is a little difficult to interpret. Therefore, in my table I divided the total number of language speakers by the total number of articles. I decided to do language speakers per article so we would be comparing whole numbers instead of the reverse in which we would be comparing small fractions since there are a lot more language speakers than there are articles. I hope that you think my table is a helpful addition Sarah476 23:25, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually I did not create this table and I am not the source of the data. Look at the history. I have just reformated it on order to make it really sortable and with figures properly aligned (using a custom template for numeric cells to help their formatting without having to type too much and to ease its update, I hope). Verdy p 15:10, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Also by moving the table within a subpage, with some translation facilities, this table does not need to be updated in each translation of the article that includes it, so it will need to be updated only once. Verdy p 15:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Anyway you're right, the metric "thousands articles/speakers" is probably not the best when it should really be "speakers/article", with a higher precision. I should recompute that column (I did not make this calculation, as the metric was already present this way in the parent article including this table...) Verdy p 15:25, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Most of the "Articles per speaker" numbers are flat wrong, assuming that the other numbers in the table are correct. For instance, Esperanto claims this: 2,000,000 speakers, with 170,000 articles, with 58,500 articles/speaker:P. Assuming that the first two numbers are correct, it would be 0.085 articles/speaker, not 58,500. I have no idea where that number came from. Not only that, but Wikipedia claims that 2 million is the *maximum* number of possible speakers, and that it may be as few as 100,000 fluent speakers.

Anyway, I see from what you said above that you didn't gather the data yourself. So you may want to use a different source (or something...). Gopher65_talk 16:18, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I note that the maximum number of possible Esperanto speakers is displayed, but the *minimum* number of possible English speakers, 500 million, is displayed — the maximum figure is 1.8 billion. So the table is 'mixing apples and oranges' so to speak. One language can't use maximum speakers while another uses minimum.

Would you like me to correct all the values to a standardized system manually from Wikipedia's numbers, or would you prefer to use a single single for the table so that you could more easily update it as you added more languages? Gopher65_talk 16:27, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Once again, I am not the source of this data, and I have not imported them here. A more accurate (and updated) source is in the CLDR data (more precise than even the data from The Ethnologue, which was first used in the CLDR but then updated after international reviews, including others sources recognized by United Nations agencies like the Unesco). Verdy p 17:51, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Note: the CLDR can't be complete for all languages (because not all languages are still supported or described with sufficient level to allow localization to start) and The Ethnologue may contain other info for the missing locales.

Anyway, this is the link to the data I'd like to see used as the best reference for now:

http://unicode.org/cldr/data/charts/supplemental/language_territory_information.html

Alternatively, the CLDR supplementary data is also available as downloadable XML data (from which the HTML charts were produced):

http://unicode.org/cldr/data/common/supplemental/supplementalData.xml

18:12, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The table says that there are 0.00003 million speakers. 0.00003*1000000 = 30. The table says that there are 120 thousand articles in that language. 120 *1000 = 120000. The table then has a column that says "articles per speaker", listed in thousands. 120000 articles divided by 30 = 4000. Since the column is in thousands already, you have to convert. 4000 divided by 1000 = 4. Not 4,000,000 thousand... the table currently says that there are 4 BILLION articles for every speaker of that language.

How are you coming to the conclusion that the table is in any way correct? Gopher65_talk 02:13, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

All figures are just computed by dividing one column by the other one. In reality these are currently figures given in articles per thousand speakers. The header is misleading.

Just compare the row in question with the next one: the order of magnitude is effectively correct in millions, not in unities (and also not in billions as you stated above). So the computation is just one column divided by the other (thousand articles)/(million speakers) = 120/0.00003 = 4,000,000 (articles/thousand speakers)... Verdy p 15:23, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, the value for Volapük is an extreme case: a lot of articles created by just very few users (if not only just one providing almost all entries), and nearly no actual speakers of the language (which is not really spoken but just written, and used only as an artificial communication tool, for a few passionates people spread far from each other in various countries but with no immediate neighbours in their own language, and not used in vernacular way in any location of the world). The figure (even if it makes non sense at firest reading) really exhibits this exceptional situation for an artificial language, and for this reason it is interesting to keep it as it is.

You could make any interpretation, or used a inverted metric, you would still obtain a very big difference in terms of magnitude with the other languages listed. That's also why I wanted the table to be fully sortable on any column, and properly aligned, to effectively better understand the metrics displayed (but apparently you've still not understood it, and you are changing the maths for just this language, ignoring how all other languages are computed).

Once again, I have NOT chosen the metric, and I did not compute any of these values. Look at the history in the main article that includes the table, that I have extracted into a subpage, only to ease the translation of the page, and allowing sharing the table content across translated articles, without having to maintain the table on all of them simultaneously (because I was already pretty sure that the figures data would need to be updated and sourced, and that important languages were also clearly missing in this table). Verdy p 15:36, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I changed the precision for the unity diesplyed in the header, as it was misleading: (thousandth) instead of (thousand). In other words, the table effectively says that there are 4,000,000 thousandths articles/speaker i.e. 4,000 articles per speaker. No figure was changed as they were all corectly computed from the two other columns.

This data really needs a more accurate source, because if we are speaking of speakers, there is probably no speaker at all of volapük, only readers/writers. The table should better say "locutors" rather than "speakers" (it does not matter if the language is written or spoken orally, or communicated in another form like gesture)

One problem, if we speak about Wikipedia articles, is that most of the content is only written or drawn, so we should be putting figures about readers/writers of the language, rather than speakers.

But this would require taking into account the litteracy level, and getting figures about that, and there currently does not exist any accurate data about that (the number of books published in a language is a very wrong indicator of the readers/writers of a language as it is a lot correlated to other facts like the developement of commerce, or of religion and the cultural value of books, or to the penetration of other communication ways including TV/radio and telephony, or to local political problems severely limiting the written communication in books or the publication of newspapers or freedom of speech and access to the Internet). Note that the CLDR data is also missing figures for the effective readers/writers of most languages, despite all the efforts made trying to measure this out at least in terms of order magnitude.

In addition, if our efforts in Wikimedia is to provide access to culture too all people speaking any language, we should not focus only on the readers/writers, but on all locutors of a language (often, educated people can quite easily read/write a language without even being able to speak it, and uneducated people can speak a native of vernacular language without being able to read/write it, or can just understand it as it is spoken by others, without being able to speak in that language).

We have quite good figures for locutors and the Wikimedia movement's goal is to focus all locutors of a language rather than just speakers or just readers/writers, by helping them with education and alternate means of accessing freely to our commons's culture. Wikipedia articles are just addressing a part of this goal, but there are other contents that can help increase the communication and eductation in that language, and help people in their education and promotion/adoption of litteracy (and this includes graphics, audio and video contents, localized for the target language audience of locutors). The CLDR data is quite good in measuring locutors, our effective target, to see if the efforts made in Wikipedia articles are worth the value, or underestimated and would need more efforts, or overestimated and does not need any kind of help (like volapük, which is much enough covered for our goal, and whose value is very low but just waiting for more adopters of the language):

This is exactly what the table attempts to say: most languages are insufficiently covered for our goals, and despite the fact that English is not in the top ten, it is not that far from the top, and does not suffer from lack of content or lack of speakers or readers/writers or lack of litteracy (so it can be effectively be more restricted in terms of increase of articles volume, and instead focusing quality (i.e. opening its audience to other means of access (for different kinds of publics: this is why the Simple English initiative is good, in my opinion, as well as the Wikijunior initiatives in wikibooks; and why the separation of goals in other projects like Wikinews or Wikiversity is a good thing; may be we'll have later a WikiRadio or WikiTV project, but the competition will be hard with Youtube and DailyMotion and cable/satellite/DSL TV bouquets providers).

Verdy p 16:19, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Next Steps

	Next steps!
	It's time to answer some questions! Would you check out the list of questions that were submitted by the community and others and try to answer some? -- Philippe 02:18, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Next steps (again)

Hi Verdy p,

Thanks for all of your contributions to the strategy wiki to date! The strategic planning process wouldn't be where it is today without all of your help. Your early and frequent support was invaluable, and I want you to know how much of a difference that you made. I hope you'll continue to work towards finishing the plan...

We're about to move into the third and final phase of the process, and in many ways, this will be the most challenging. I'm hoping you will continue to be an active presence in shaping the movement's five year strategic plan.

Here are some concrete suggestions as to how you can help moving forward:

• Add your name to Strategic Planning:Hosts. This just formalizes what I think has been true all along; that you care about this process, and that you're doing what you can to help it along moving forward.
• Help organize and improve this wiki! Starting next week (January 18, 2010), we're going to be encouraging many more people to come participate, and we want to make sure this wiki is as presentable as possible. A comprehensive list of things to do is at Strategic Planning:To-do list.
• Invite people to participate! Encourage volunteers to discuss Task force/Recommendations.
• Finally, we need to clearly describe what this final phase is going to look like. In particular, we could use feedback and discussion on Strategic Planning:Decision-Making.

Let me know what you think! Many, many thanks! ~Philippe 01:01, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The wiki work you're doing

Thank you!! ~Philippe 20:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I've been late since a couple of months, and saw that the structure had changed quite a bit. I'm trying to revive this wiki and helping its translation and structure for easier evolutions, notably for translations, where there's a lot to do.

Well, I will fix minor things in the english version, will add the necessary translation templates, and will refill the French version. Verdy p 20:38, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks. Much appreciated. --Eekim 21:02, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		Merci bien de votre assistance, pour l’ensemble de la traduction française. Avec tous mes remerciements. — Theo10011 21:12, 12 January 2010 (UTC) (trace)

Thanks a lot. Verdy p 21:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Templates

Just FYI - there's a great list of templates at Editing templates - I saw you've done some translations on a couple of them, and that's awesome. ~Philippe 21:17, 12 January 2010 (UTC)