Wrongfully Accused in Belarusian Wikipedia

Posted on February 3, 2011 by wizardist

To avoid any misunderstanding, Belarusian Wikipedia (bewiki) in this post refers to be.wikipedia.org, and Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia (be-x-oldwiki) for be-x-old.wikipedia.org.

On February 1, Kazimier Lachnovič, a user contributing mostly to Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, was blocked in Belarusian Wikipedia. It’s seems to be the most terrible thing that happened for all my Wikipedia experience. It’s not block which is terrible, but its so-called “reason”.

You can read the whole story with diff links, source citations, people, etc. in Belarusian (Google Translate speaks Belarusian, if you do not) at http://mrul.livejournal.com/1358.html. That’s only Kazimier Lachnovič’s point of view and it’s a bit rude. Anyway, sad but true.

I can definitely state this incident would not happen if Belarusian Wikipedia had at least that copyrights respect culture which Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia had. The story broke out with an argue on Zelva article copyright status. Author of that article, Maksim L. (and administrator btw), stated article being his own compilation of several sources, so copyrights should be OK. Indeed, Kazimier investigated that the article is a machine-translated piece of copyrighted text and, according to rules and 5 pillars, it has to be deleted.

A veiled insult to be-x-oldwiki (“Let’s not point out which wiki make ‘chronologies’ out of source texts to fit copyright rules”, orig. Не будзем паказваць пальцам дзе, з тэкстаў робяць «храналогіі», каб выкруціцца з-пад аўтарскага права.) preceded this talk. So, it seems that administrators (at least two of them) think it’s better to place a copyrighted text in Wikipedia instead of compiling and retelling it. It’s a non-sense, but it’s true.

Then a comment (with veiled offending) by Kazimier followed, which pushed a strange administrator Yuri Tarasievič (who lobbied division of Belarusian Wikipedia in two wikis in 2007) to block Kazimier permanently, has been published:

To be honest, I’d be indifferent to such behaviour in a false-“academic” Belarusian Wikipedia, if users’ work harassment didn’t take place, as those users at least tried to transform source texts, not just machine-translating them. [some gentle hints go here]

I hope this post to show up in Wikimedia Planet, so I ask: what should Wikipedia community do if there are some users and administrators in a project who totally ignore copyright rules set by Wikimedia through 5 pillars? Is there some procedure to stop this?

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Connectivity in Wikipedia

Posted on January 20, 2011 by wizardist

I’ve posted some info about my works on Connectivity in Wikipedia recently. So, Connectivity Project was started to connect all articles in Wikipedia. XKCD comics illustrates this in almost ideal fashion.

 

The Problem with Wikipedia, XKCD comics, © Randall Munroe, CC-BY-NC 2.5

 

Continue reading →

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Examinations over

Posted on January 18, 2011 by wizardist

So my examinations are done. Some guys from the group are still gonna have an exam on Programing, and some have a retake on Math, so poor. Anyway, I have 3 weeks of holidays from now.

I have started to code a bot for Wikipedia Connectivity Project (monitoring of connectivity between Wikipedia articles). The templates for stats have been set with AWB since the project start. Now I’m gonna write a tool in bash/C/PHP (C or PHP may be thrown away if non-effective). Perhaps, some weeks are gonna be quite funny.

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Linux, as seen from my laptop meadow

Posted on January 12, 2011 by wizardist

You know, this night is actually the first intercourse between me and Linux kernel on my HP laptop. It ain’t painful at all as it was some years ago, although I have finally got the most drastic difference between desktops and laptops.

While configuring the kernel, you have to select whether to include a module into the kernel or not. For instance, 1.5 years ago I was configuring Linux kernel, like this time, and found some Winbond chips support feature. I’ve remembered that I have something on my motherboard, looked at the motherboard (I keep the computer box opened) and found it here.

And what do you think I have now? Almost nothing. All I have is lsusb and lspci output plus some debug messages from /var/log/ files. I have no idea of my SATA chipset, or internal webcam model and manufacturer. I’ve already been compiling the kernel on my dual-core 2.3GHz 3GB laptop for 30 minutes and still ain’t done. On my desktop, I used to compile the kernel in 20 minutes, and it was just a 1.8GHz 512Mb trash system of 2004.

Hope I won’t have to reconfigure and rebuild the kernel several times after this one fails, if only.

P.S. Just got an idea to disassemble the notebook one more time and list all on-board chips for future.

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Despaired desperado

Posted on January 11, 2011 by wizardist

Yeah, I’m going through the next exam in Economics and still haven’t opened my notes on it. Although, I’m not really scared about it. Failing in it isn’t going to be a big deal.

By the way, I’ve finally cleaned my notebook so it doesn’t overheat at all. I suffered from sudden shutdowns caused by overheating so I couldn’t play neither new [Prototype] game, nor the NFS: Most Wanted oldie. Moreover, I was not able to install… Debian. The damned book was just shutting down in the middle of the installation process so I had to take it outdoors (-2°C something) and, yeah, it succeed in. So I’m gonna compile a vanilla kernel with Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers included as a module ’cause I’m tired of my parents’ buzzing of me stealing their Ethernet cable.

…Still having  hope of looking through the Economics notes…

P.S. Just tested the Open GPS Tracker on my U8230 Android phone to track the all-new road over Sluch. Here it is on OSM.org via Osmarender (Mapnik should re-render the tiles after a while).

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It’s Math Exam tomorrow and what am I doing, huh?

Posted on January 5, 2011 by wizardist

Tomorrow (today for real) I have an exam in Math. Long way to refresh the topics, you know. Although, I decided to chill out for my last.

I, along with a friend of mine, went to a pizza-restaurant to have some, huh, pizza and drinks, you know. There were some talks on education, future, some politics (ah them, yes).

Then I noticed that a drink was served for a table next to us. No, that wasn’t just a drink. It was The Drink. Coca-Cola, quite a general drink you can think about. But just listen IT WAS IN GLASS BOTTLES. I used to think it was deprecated but it wasn’t.

A 0.25 Coke… what can be better? So we ordered some for us. And it tasted, yeah, like I’ve been tasting it for the first time!

Here’s a short Coke Opening Ceremony pictured. 🙂

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Happy? New? Year?

Posted on January 2, 2011 by wizardist

Good news everyone. This New Year Eve was the most boring event of 2010. It was full of apathy as well.  Post-election events in Belarus made me just unsettled. I can’t even think about a kind of party or somewhat.

Still good news. Wikimedia has opened registration procedure for scholarship applicants (like me) for Wikimania 2011. According to my calculations it needs me 600USD+ if I don’t receive the scholarship: 325EUR for the flight from Minsk to Tel-Aviv, 100USD for dorms, 20USD for visa and 45-75USD for registration at the conference. God is the only one who knows where should I get the money.

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Logic Test Fail

Posted on December 24, 2010 by wizardist

Oh, God! Finally I reached the first test fail during my examination session. It’s really pity to realize that you’re the only student from the group to fail a test in Logic. Furthermore, this fuck-up heated my smoking (I’m a non-smoking guy in most cases, yeah).

Thanks the lecturer, I have a chance to retake this test on Monday. But the problem is that I have another test in Descriptive geometry and a test in English (which I’m likely to pass).

Giving myself hope I’ll win.

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Ode to MicroSD Cards

Posted on December 18, 2010 by wizardist

Oh my MicroSD,
Here’s the ode from my imaginary lea.

Give me as more music
As I can hear.
Keep all my photos
Being matrix-noise-free.

And some other shitty stuff. Yeah, I finally bought an SD card a week ago so now I can listen to my favourite music where I want and as loud as I want. My notebook “speakers” can’t express all frequencies so the sound lacks some feeling, drama effect, etc.

Winamp + Last.fm are a goddamn good pair working together on Android.

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All Your Pork Rind Are Belong To Us

Posted on December 12, 2010 by wizardist

Some pork rinds on a frying pan

Working at Wikipedia is a really enjoyable waste of time. The 30k’th article of Belarusian Wikipedia became ‘Скварка‘ (skvarka, pork rind).  Pork rind is a good tasty meal in most Slavic cuisines. It’s roasted and then served with other meals as well. Although, I eat them just with bread.

The problem was that we lacked some images about Belarusian pork rinds. All Wikimedia Commons had were just images of some Czech unattractive stuff. Anyway, today, Renessaince, a user from Belarus, has made some sexy shots of pork rinds.

Enjoy. 🙂

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