Monday, July 30, 2007

Seagulls ....

Well, due to a lack of time, or better time for doing things alone without needig to take the kids with me, I started to go to te beach around six o'clock in the morning ... it's just great: hardly anybody around, just some pigeons and seagulls (btw. the linked picture is just any seagull ... didn't find the kind we have here on the coast), a fisher boat here or there ... but: nobody swimming ... you don't have to care about your direction and you just can go ahead ... and ahead ... and ahead ... well, some here in town probably think I am crazy, because even if we are in the middle of the summer and the water is really nicely warm, when you get out there is still the wind coming from the mountains and that is quite fresh ... that is people here would say: be aware, you get a cold ... well up to now I did not and I will not :-)

But to the seagulls ... this morning I had a real funny situation ... I was in the water swimming and a seagull came flying over the water, just above me, looking down at me ... uhm I thought ... well, it went away in a wide circle, but a second one came along and did the same ... it looked down from the sky to what I was doing there ... then the first one came back - the same again ... it went ahead like this for some minutes ... the way they looked at me made me very much remember my parrot, when he looked at something all too interesting, eventually food ... so did these two consider me to be seagull food ;-) well ... looking at myself I'd say: uhmmm ... the'd need some grappa afterwards :-P

Let's see if they will be there tomorrow morning ...

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Citazione ...

La vera amicizia è una pianta che cresce lentamente e deve passare attraverso i traumi delle avversità perché la si possa chiamare tale. (George Washington)

Friday, July 20, 2007

Articles with stable version for nap.wikipedia

Well, again this theme is on my mind ... stable versions ... on the Neapolitan wikipedia we have a very particular situation: only very few people are really able to write well and the others write "as they speak" often adopting the spelling of the Italian writing rules to Neapolitan or if they are Neapolitans who grew up in the states and are eventually of second or third generation you could even find some very particular words coined in the States (and well yes, that is still Neapolitan, just a different dialect of it), which of course does not work well. Even being many of them native speakers we have problems when it comes to written versions. Yes, there are rules, but Neapolitan is not taught at school nor you can easily find courses around where you can learn the language. Also when I write I always have to ask for proof reading by Carmine, well for me it is not even my mothertongue ... some people are frightened to write since they know they are not able to write correctly, but eventually they would write and start to contribute if they knew that the issue of having spelling errors in the end is not soooo big - this is something that can be sorted out.

What would be really helpful is a "stable version" function so that people can find proofread examples where they can rely on. This will help them to contribute on nap.wikipedia. For us it is not so much about having long pages with loads of contents - for us it is still on "getting people to write" in their native language.

Templates, the problem with the double quote and all that is too wiki specific is still too much for many ... I am also considering in not adding templates for cities etc. for the moment (for new pages) - it is confusing to people. I note that more and more when I talk with people who could become valid authors on nap.wikipedia. Most of those who write Neapolitan properly are of my generation or older and there are only few of them who really can dig into wiki syntax etc.

This means: we have to give them a really low entry level ... and we have to assure people who edit: there is a stable version where you cannot do any harm to, you can write, even if not 100% correct ... and you can then learn from the stable versions and the corrections made in your writings.


It is indeed a long process to get through all these problems ... and for now I don't see an end to it.

Khalil Gibran über die Musik

Die Musik wirkt wie die Sonne, die alle Blumen des Feldes mit ihrem Strahlen zum Leben erweckt. ( Khalil Gibran ) Image by Pete Linforth fr...