[Foundation-l] (no subject)
http://www.benchmarkcs.com/hello.php?html143 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian
Can you explain your statement more? Since only one or three seats are selected by the community out of nine(depending on your definition of community)? From: Guillaume Paumier gpaum...@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, October 20, 2010 9:05:11 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian Hi, I don't want to go further off-topic, but I'd like to make a small correction: Le mercredi 20 octobre 2010 à 08:58 -0400, Marc Riddell a écrit : Let's see what we've got here: A Board that appears answerable only to some god No. The Board is ultimately answerable to the community. -- Guillaume Paumier ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] chapter board seats (was: Greg Kohs and Peter Damian)
Phoebe, If concerned about equality, why not have two chapter seats and two community seats? From: phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, October 20, 2010 2:52:46 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] chapter board seats (was: Greg Kohs and Peter Damian) On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 October 2010 16:47, Muhammad Yahia shipmas...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: The board defines both community and chapter. I'm not sure that the board does ultimately answer to the community; there's nothing in the bylaws to indicate that. Section (G) states: Board Majority. A majority of the Board Trustee positions, other than the Community Founder Trustee position, shall be selected or appointed from the community and the chapters. I think this directly says that the board ultimately answers to the community. Now you may say that the definition of community is not as broad as you may like given that some seats go to the chapters , but that still means that our community -as organized in a certain form given the chapters are all community controlled AFAIK- holds power to elect the board majority. Three board positions (30% of the board) are elected by the community at large. They are the only members of the board who have a direct responsibility to the community, and there is no method for the community to revoke their representation. Two board members (20% of the board) are elected by a tiny number of representatives of chapters (the chapter representative election process is very opaque). I can't find any numbers that confirm exactly how many people belong to chapters, and whether or not all of their members would otherwise meet the definition of community member, but it is widely acknowledged that only a small percentage of Wikimedians (i.e., those who would meet the definition of community member) are members of chapters. I have a hard time understanding why people think chapters are representative of the community. They're representative of people who like to join chapters. Risker/Anne changing the subject line because I think we've ranged pretty far away from the original subject of moderation As the person who was selected via this process I feel the need to jump in :) I agree that the chapter selection process is not very transparent, or very clear (to the people inside as well as the people outside!) and could have been improved. However, this time around was also only the second time chapters have selected seats (by contrast, last year was our 6th community election) ... so I hope that we will continue to improve on that front and the next selection process, year after next, will be better. That's something we all want to see. Others can speak to this better than I can, but part of the rationale behind chapter-selected seats was to help even out representation -- to make sure that the elected seats on the board were not entirely dominated by candidates from those communities that have lots of voting editors, like the English Wikipedia. If you are from a smaller language project, or a smaller chapter, the chances of getting name recognition and a seat in the community elections is much harder. Additionally, the chapters *are* a part of the greater Wikimedia movement, and selecting seats via chapters helps ensure that those chapters get a place at the table. In the U.S. there has not been a chapter presence until WM-NYC was founded, but that's not true in other places -- Wikimedia Deutschland was of course founded before the WMF itself was founded, and many of the other chapters are well established too. Now, you could certainly ask, given all that, why in the world the chapters would have selected me -- yet another American English Wikipedian -- to be on the board. And that's a perfectly valid question! It's important to realize however that I am not a representative of the chapters. On the board itself, I am identified as a board member or sometimes as a community board member, but not as someone who is there specifically to advance chapter interests or be more involved with chapters than anyone else (there are currently three board members on the chapcom, for instance: one is chapter-selected, one is community-elected, and one is appointed). I am honored that the chapters thought that I would be a good board member *in general*, to work on all of the issues that the WMF faces -- and hopefully that is why they selected me :) As for community accountability, I certainly feel accountable to the community. I also feel accountable to the long-term survival and health of the Wikimedia projects, and will do my utmost to help make decisions that will both help ensure this survival and that also represent community interests and needs. I have been around for
Re: [Foundation-l] Your abuse of moderator status
Now if we were to get into a pissing contest over the top organizers of Wikiversity, I would say the persons most likely to be considered founders would be John Schmidt, Cormac Lawler, and Robert Horning. Ottava does have a point that he is one of the most senior active custodians, since not that many of the custodians are active. From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, June 27, 2010 5:55:48 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Your abuse of moderator status On 26 June 2010 14:44, Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Jeffrey Peters 17pet...@cardinalmail.cua.edu wrote: Austin, Maybe you didn't realize but I am the top organizer of Wikiversity. Wikiversity has a top organizer? What does that mean? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Offlist] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please!
Mike, The provisions of 2257 that I find concerning and potentially relevant in the present case are (h)(2)(a)(iii) and (f)(4). (h)(2)(a)(iii) defines producing as uploading a picture, which appears to mean that uploaders must keep records for their photographs. It also appears that the legislative intent was for the record statement to be affixed to the material in question, something that isn't currently happening. This is stressed in (f)(4), which makes it unlawful to use any material without the requisite notice affixed to it. I suspect that the Foundation isn't liable here in cases where it has not been made aware of potential violations. Section 230 probably applies up to the point where the Foundation refuses to take appropriate action. I'm not a lawyer though, so I might be wrong here. What do you think? Geoffrey Plourde From: Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, May 21, 2010 7:13:18 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please! Stillwater Rising writes: Hosting these images without 18 USC 2257(A) records, in my opinion, is a * no-win* situation for everyone involved. This raises the obvious question of how you interpret 18 USC 2257A(g), which refers back to 18 USC 2257(h) (including in particular 18 USC 2257(h)(2)(B)). I'll be interested in hearing your thoughts about the interaction and interpretation of these related statutes (as well as of the interaction between 18 USC 2257(h) generally and 47 USC 230 and 231, referenced within section 2257. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening
Wouldn't regulating content mean abdicating the role of webhost, which would call Section 230 into question? From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com To: susanpgard...@gmail.com; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, May 9, 2010 4:21:46 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening On 10 May 2010 00:04, Sue Gardner susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote: My view is that Jimmy and others have brought closure to the scope of Jimmy's authority question. In saying that, I don't mean to diminish the importance of that question -- I realize that many people are angry about what's happened over the past week, and it will take time for them to be less angry. Ting's statements on the role of the Board (that it should regulate project content) will also take some digesting. I doubt chapters outside the US put people forward for the Board thinking this would mean the Board supporting content removal to appease Fox News. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New project proposal: wiki-based troubleshooting
This is a interesting proposal, but I'd suggest taking the idea to Meta. There is already a Symptom checker at WebMD, but it could potentially upon a legal can of worms for WM to get involved in medical troubleshooting. From: Yao Ziyuan yaoziy...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, May 4, 2010 12:58:31 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal: wiki-based troubleshooting Possible names: WikiTroubleshooting/WikiWizard/WikiWiz/WikiSolve/WikiFix/... Motivation: Wikipedia provides factual knowledge (e.g. 7th-grade geometry) but not problem-solving capabilities (e.g. helping a visitor solve his geometry problem). Solution: A hypertext system like a wiki can implement a step-by-step wizard (as seen in Windows XP's Troubleshooter help system; screenshot: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/i/tr/cms/contentPics/multimon-e.gif) that lets a visitor incrementally select symptoms of his problem, and finally the wizard leads to a wiki page that shows possible causes for and solutions to his problem. Any problem in life can be included in this wiki. For example, the visitor can start at a Troubleshooting Your Health Problem portal, and the portal lets the visitor select a body part that feels uncomfortable, and subsequent wizard pages let him select more specific symptoms, until enough symptoms are specified so that a final wizard page can show possible diseases and their causes and solutions. Like Wikipedia, WikiTroubleshooting should cite credible references. Best Regards, Yao Ziyuan http://sites.google.com/site/yaoziyuan/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity
David and Erik, I must respectfully disagree with your belief that we need stronger global blocking. Each community should set its own behavior standards, not have them imposed from above. Just because we consider a person a troll on one project does not automatically make them a troll on other projects. I oppose the creation of the breaching experiment and usage of Wikiversity as a platform to break the rules of another project but that is a matter that must be handled at the local level. I am fully confident that the community of Wikiversity will be able to effectively handle this situation on their own. It was unnecessary for Jimbo to personally intervene, rather than simply file a complaint and follow the accepted process. Just because Jimbo is the founder does not mean that he is an unquestionable authority on every single project. Geoffrey From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, March 19, 2010 12:44:30 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity On 19/03/2010, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: It's heartbreaking to see how a small project can be disrupted by a tiny number of well-known problem users, and IMO a strong argument for using more global blocking processes. Small projects often think they need to give people fresh start opportunities because they're otherwise not going to grow, but that's a bad bargain - introducing toxic personalities into a fledgling community is a certain way to bring about its decline. Indeed. Note that the same sort of troll adoption nearly got en:wq taken out and shot last year. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How to kill a mailing list
I support the changes, its cleaned up my inbox and made the discussions I'm seeing more worthy of attention. The list is running better than ever. From: Benjamin Lees emufarm...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, March 16, 2010 9:43:22 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] How to kill a mailing list On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Anthony wrote: August 2009: 1030 September 2009: 791 October 2009: 326 November 2009: 513 December 2009: 234 January 2010: 207 February 2010: 213 March 2010: ??? And your point. Are you claiming credit? Or are you claiming to be the victim? The autopsy indicates that it was a suicide. Presumably he feels that the way the list has been managed has contributed to its decline. I don't disagree in that regard. On the other hand, raw message counts can be misleading: are 200-message threads a good thing? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building up the reserves
Veronique, what would be the maximum we'd want to go with a reserve fund. I know that with Army Emergency Relief for example, they get dinged by Charity Navigator for having massive reserves of money. What do you think the maximum would be for Wikimedia? From: Veronique Kessler vkess...@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: effeietsand...@gmail.com Sent: Wed, March 3, 2010 6:41:36 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Building up the reserves Hi, The question of what is the right reserve amount is a common one. I've hear of ranges from 0 to 3 months to 3 years. I agree that one year is a good measure and that could be increased or decreased depending on a variety of circumstances both internal and external. Many non-profits may have a smaller than optimal reserve because they simply don't have more funds to keep in a reserve. We are quite fortunate to have the amount of reserves that we do.As we have operated over the last few years with a single main fundraiser, our revenue tends to peak over a 4 month period while we have expenses all year. Right after a fundraiser, we have more reserves than we do right before the fundraiser begins because we have months of the year where there is little revenue but expenses are about the same. Veronique Andrew Gray wrote: On 3 March 2010 13:35, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: I assume you do realize that this 12.5M is /after/ the fundraiser, hence including the huge amount of donations that has been raised? ...as, indeed, was last December's glut. Looking at both mid-year and end-year reports, the cashflow status becomes clearer: Assets (cash) versus monthly running costs (estimated) mid-2007 - - - - - $1m end-2007 - - - - - $2.3m - - - - - $0.21m - - - - - 11 mos. mid-2008 - - - - - $3m - - - - - ($0.32m) - - - - - 9 mos. end-2008 - - - - - $6.7m - - - - - $0.43m - - - - - 15 mos. mid-2009 - - - - - $6.2m - - - - - ($0.54m) - - - - - 11 mos. end-2009 - - - - - $12.5m - - - - - $0.65m - - - - - 19 mos. Reserves jump dramatically each year-end report, but then idle until the next fundraiser - as running costs increase roughly linearly, though, the average number of months funding in reserve seesaws. I don't know what's considered a normal margin to have - I'd presume around a year or so is considered quite good - but hopefully someone more au fait with standard practice in the field could enlighten us. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Please HELP save Wikipedia history ! (urgent)
That sounds like a good idea, maybe make it a Wikiversity course? Or run training on IRC? From: Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, February 21, 2010 3:15:20 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Please HELP save Wikipedia history ! (urgent) On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 5:33 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Legal decision should be taken out from project's communities jurisdiction and given into hands of professional lawyers or at least people who had copyright law practical training. While I don't agree that we need to take this away from the community and hand it to a team of lawyers, I must say that the practical training caught my eye. Would it be possible for the Foundation to get Mike--and other people who actually know what they're talking about--to get a guide to handling copyright questions together? It would probably help a lot of people who are unclear on some points, as well as help remove some grey areas (like the scenario that brought us here now). This may be a terrible idea, but I'm just throwing it out there. -Chad ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] advertising craigslist
Can we kill this thread? It appears quite clear that the Foundation staff have decided to run the Craig ad, and nothing here will affect their decision. From: Waerth wae...@asianet.co.th To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, December 15, 2009 11:02:54 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] advertising craigslist If I were a rich and famous person that wanted to help out the WMF I would get shitscared by this list and wouldn't touch the foundation with a 10 foot pole W ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] open wikis for chapters....?
There are some pages that should legally be restricted, like the bylaws. i do believe that most pages should be open to public editing because of the risk of some non member Aussie thinking of a better way to do something and being stifled. From: private musings thepmacco...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Wikimedia-au wikimediaa...@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sat, December 12, 2009 12:40:06 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] open wikis for chapters? G'day all, over on the wikimedia au mailing list, we've been having a discussion about whether or not our 'official wiki' should be able to be edited by more than just the current financial members (I think we've got around 30 - 50 members at the mo) ( see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2009-December/002745.htmlfor the thread, and it sort of gets just a little bit heated) I thought I'd flick this list a note because the tensions between the foundation's aims and this more pragmatic decision have been discussed. What I'd like to ask this list's members is whether or not you agree that open editing is a good thing, and as many pages as possible on a chapter's wiki should be open to as many folk as possible? Obviously there are important factors to keep in mind in making these decisions, but I feel it would be useful for others not quite so connected to 'WMAU', but with a close connection to WMF in general, if they have a moment, to review our thread, and offer feedback and ideas as to whether we're doing it right, or (as I feel) we really should open up the wiki a bit more :-) best, Peter, PM. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment
The only reason the servers and internet access produce CO2 emissions is because of the defective and antiquated energy production systems we use across the world. As we move towards more efficient and cleaner means of energy production, the carbon footprint should decrease. Moving servers to Scandinavia would be interesting, but a unsound logistical idea. I agree that it would be a effective reuse of energy, but I am concerned about the access problem of relocating assets in one region. Now, placing new servers in Scandinavia on a grid so that the energy production can be reused is not a bad idea, but would be something for the chapters there to look at. With regards to Florida, if the servers are in an office building, one way to decrease costs might be to reconfigure the environmental systems to use the energy from the servers to heat/cool the building. Wikimedia would then be able to recoup part of the utility bills from surrounding tenants. However, engineering input would be most beneficial to considering these interesting proposals. Geoffrey From: Teofilo teofilow...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sat, December 12, 2009 8:32:12 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment You have probably heard about CO2 and the conference being held these days in Copenhagen (1). You have probably heard about the goal of carbon neutrality at the Wikimania conference in Gdansk in July 2010 (2). You may want to discuss the basic and perhaps naive wishes I have written down on the strategy wiki about paper consumption (3). Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ? How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country (Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such things as the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste heat (6). (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference_2009 (2) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2010/Bids/Gda%C5%84sk#Environmental_issues (3) http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Environmental_policy_for_paper_products (4) http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece (5) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers (6) http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/12/08/giant-data-center-heat-london-homes ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees
The spirit of the one person per account policy was to prevent people from disclaiming responsibility by claiming another person did it. I feel that allowing accounts for GLAMs would not violate the intent of the policy, but suggest that the account be required to verify, maintain a valid email and provide the Foundation with the identities of the authorized users. From: Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, December 9, 2009 4:16:54 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees I believe that a verified account system for GLAMs specifically doing encyclopedic work (not for businesses, etc) would not be too difficult to work out, and would be well worth any such effort. Such systems, though nothing is 100%, have worked quite well for many other websites. Thanks, Pharos On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When they are blocked like it happened with the Tropenmuseum, I will ask the person who did this to reconsider... There has to be a reason for a block and these organisations do what they do and they do it very well. The notion that a block on sight is always good is not reasonable. Thanks, GerardM 2009/12/5 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, I want to give you two different group / company accounts that I think are valuable.. Tropenmuseum... If you do not know about it, read the Tropenmuseum article on Commons Calcey - a company from Sri Lanka has adopted the localisation of the Sinhala language. We are really grateful for their work. There are more great examples of companies, groups that make a difference ... I would like to know more good examples.. You say that now, but what happens when they are blocked. Or maybe they say something that sounds like a legal threat; are they speaking for the company? -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Housekeeping: One user on moderation today
Ryan, You are correct. I apologize for the ambiguity of my suggestion. To restate, I was suggesting that users be restricted to a fixed or variable amount of posts per thread per day. It could also be done by percentages after a certain amount of time or posts, e.g. Post has 50 posts in a day, User X has made 26 of them. Geoffrey From: Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Mon, November 30, 2009 11:43:01 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Housekeeping: One user on moderation today On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.netwrote: Ryan Lomonaco wrote: On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 2:17 AM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote: Another possibility would be imposing a throttle on replies to threads, e.g. 5 per thread per day. That's something that I think might have merit, although it's one of those things that's tough to set as a hard-and-fast rule because of time zone differences. I think the better approach is what the moderators have occasionally done in the past, which is to kill a specific thread. And the rest of us can call out those threads as being worthless, as several people have done, or ignore them (Thomas Dalton is right about that at least). But I expect throttling threads would be counterproductive. The beneficial effect of the current moderation is that it creates space for a more inclusive discussion, by restraining post-early-and-often behavior. A per-thread throttle would create an incentive to encourage that behavior, by privileging those who are quickest to respond. --Michael Snow My reading of it was X replies per person per day in each thread. I agree with you that there should not be a set limit per thread as a whole. -- [[User:Ral315]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Housekeeping: One user on moderation today
Thats a great idea! The exchanges were the biggest clog previously, and this seems like a reasonable warning to use. From: William Pietri will...@scissor.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Mon, November 30, 2009 11:57:21 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Housekeeping: One user on moderation today Ryan Lomonaco wrote: My reading of it was X replies per person per day in each thread. I agree with you that there should not be a set limit per thread as a whole. It might be interesting to combine that with a throttled number of replies from one individual to another. At least for me, the lowest-value messages are often ones where two people are arguing with one another, apparently forgetting the interests of the broader audience. With either of those, before creating a firm limit, an interesting step might be notification. E.g.: Dear X: I notice that in the last 24 hours you've sent 5 messages on the topic Pedophilia and the non-discrimination policy, with 4 of them replying to person Y. That might be more than the average list subscriber wants to read. Before you reply again, you might consider taking a break, moving the discussion off-list, or asking list moderators how valualbe they're finding the discussion. Thanks, The Foundation-L Robot My theory here is that the problem may more be lack of awareness than intentional misbehavior, making feedback a reasonable substitute for control. William ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Follow up: Fan History joining the WMF family
'06 wikiversity From: Jon Davis w...@konsoletek.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, November 29, 2009 12:19:34 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Follow up: Fan History joining the WMF family Perhaps she mistook the meta proposals for strat. Where, by all accounts, a proposal with nothing going on for the last year are lively, considering there are proposals on there dated as far back as 2004, a number of them dated 2006. For those who aren't terribly active in our community, seeing something like that, can't blame em for thinking the process is dead. After all, when was the last time the WMF opened a _new_ project (not a new language, a completely new project). /me shrugs -Jon On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 11:53, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.orgwrote: On Nov 29, 2009, at 12:06 PM, Laura Hale wrote: There are proposals that have been there a year, that have no votes, with no comments on them. I'm sorry, this is incorrect. Strategy wiki wasn't even set up a year ago. It was created in July. Proposals weren't accepted until almost August. I'm willing to have this discussion, but let's do it honestly, and without hyperbole. ;) pb Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategy Project Wikimedia Foundation phili...@wikimedia.org mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454) Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Jon [[User:ShakataGaNai]] http://snowulf.com/ - Blog http://snowulf.imagekind.com/ - Pictures This has been a test of the emergency sig system. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy
Foundation level issue is whether or not a community have the right to exclude a specific class or category of users from editing based upon unsubstantiated claims of potential misbehavior? From: George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, November 29, 2009 2:45:15 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy Without picking on anyone in particular, I urge everyone to go back and reread Brad's comment earlier. This conversation is following the path that public discussions on this have repeatedly before. It is not clear that anyone has raised any issues which are appropriate or necessary for the Foundation to deal with. The English language Wikipedia policy, slightly codified as it is, has been stated and explained. If you want to discuss that further I would recommend taking it to Wikien-L, or start a policy discussion on-Wiki. If you have a specific claim that the Foundation has to or should intervene please state that, simply and concisely. Otherwise, in my opinion, this is going far afield from appropriate on Foundation-l. I am not a list mod and have no pretense that I can make the conversation go away. But - please consider if you're holding a productive conversation, and please consider if it's even vaguely in the right place. Thanks. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Housekeeping: One user on moderation today
I really hated the idea of posting limits at first, but must commend the list mods for implementing it. Now that there is a specific cost to replies, I have scaled back on the amount of emails I have sent and prioritized based on discussion. Another possibility would be imposing a throttle on replies to threads, e.g. 5 per thread per day. From: Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, November 29, 2009 9:57:12 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] Housekeeping: One user on moderation today Per the new posting limits http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-November/056032.html, each user is limited to 30 posts per month, after which they are put on moderation. Anthony has reached 30 posts. He has been placed on moderation for about the next 19 hours or so (until about Midnight UTC, or whenever one of us happens to be at a computer around that time). Continued input on these policies, either publicly or privately, is always welcome. Thanks, Ryan Lomonaco ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy
So you are taking a stance based on one particular class of criminal behavior? Following your reasoning, we should be blocking all self professed hackers/crackers too. They might do something illegal for jollies to disrupt the community, so lets block em! From: George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sat, November 28, 2009 1:37:55 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 1:16 PM, Jake Wartenberg j...@jakewartenberg.com wrote: I am not talking about pedophilia activism, but instances where the individual in question is not disruptively editing. There are a wide variety of reasons to permanently block people who were elsewhere identified (more commonly, self-identified) as pedophiles but edit here apparently harmlessly, including bringing the project into disrepute (Jimbo's wording, I think), the latent threat to underage editors, that they'd have to be watched continuously to make sure they did not start advocating or preying on underage users. The Foundation and en.wp community policies are generally to be excessively tolerant of personal opinion and political and religious beliefs, etc. We do not want to let one countries' social mores, political restrictions, civil rights restrictions limit who can participate and how. However, there's no country in the world where pedophilia is legal. It's poorly enforced in some, but there are laws against it even there. What it comes down to - the very presence of an editor who is known to be a pedophile or pedophilia advocate is disruptive to the community, and quite possibly damaging to it, inherently to them being who they are and them being open about it. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy
Thats baloney. It is a slippery slope. You are making a distinction based on what might happen, and prejudging a class of individuals. This doesn't help wiki, but sends a message that some people are less worthy than others.I don't like it is not a valid reason to disenfranchise people on suspect grounds. From: George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sat, November 28, 2009 4:28:03 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 3:57 PM, David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com wrote: This is the risk that we run when we begin banning editors because we dislike beliefs and behaviors unrelated to their participation in the wikis. We might avoid some negative attention that would accompany their involvement, but what sort of project are we left with? Certainly not the sort that I signed up for (and not one that will engender positive publicity as the open community that it's purported to be). We have one single class of editors who, as a class, for non-wiki-behavioral reasons, we ban. This class' participation is problematic both for our other users safety and for Wikipedia's reputation and integrity of content. There is no slippery slope. Nobody has seriously proposed expanding the list in any way. Nobody is in favor of banning Communists, Republicans, Gays, or Moslems. There is no question that other groups do not pose a risk, as a group, to our other users' safety or our reputation or integrity of content. Pedophiles have a near unity risk of reoffending. Even the ones who say they have never abused anyone and never intend to, according to surveys and psychologists, essentially always do. There is a reason they are, after conviction (in the US) not allowed anywhere near children in organized settings. Wikipedia is a large organized setting, with children present as editors. We owe them a duty to not let known pedophiles near them. We can't guarantee that unknown ones aren't out there - but if we do become aware, we must act. We also, to continue to be taken seriously by society at large, not allow ourselves to be a venue for their participation. Being known as pedophile-friendly leads to societal and press condemnation and governmental action, all of which would wreck the project. I understand that some do not agree. But the reasons for this policy are well founded. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Can you tell us about ... - An Idea to encourage more edits
We also might want to look into policy overhauls to reduce barriers to contribution. From: David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, November 24, 2009 5:53:35 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Can you tell us about ... - An Idea to encourage more edits I actually like this idea, a LOT. The main page basically poses Wikipedia as a warehouse of content, which is fine, it is that, but also does little to pose Wikipedia as a collaborative project. Yeah, new visitors can technically TRY to edit our main page articles now, but generally the stuff that makes it there is already so polished, or so intensely guarded, that neophyte editors have little to no chance of making meaningful edits on them. I've had a couple articles I created in the Did You Know space, so I can definitely say that they aren't the editor-magnets that Featured Articles or In the News are, but I think putting out there on our front page articles that need CONTRIBUTORS rather than just READERS (in an obvious way, I mean--of course all our articles need contributors) would be a very helpful, and very easy thing for us to do. FMF On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 8:38 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Hello folks, this is a suggestion to encourage more edits. It is both a topic for every of our projects but also of most of the foundation projects. So I post it here at first and will welcome everyone to carry it to the single projects. On the home page of our projects for example en-wp we have the column Did you know... where we feature the new created articles. The idea is to create a column where we put in articles that does not exist or that are stubs and should be improved. The column look like: Can you tell us about ... * the pianist [[Veryan Weston]] * the [[Kansas City Philamonics]] * the bird [[Black-eared Seedeater]] etc. The column should be at a prominant place so that every visitor can see it. The requested articles can be selected by multiple ways, the community can discuss the way and establish a procedure. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Veryan_Westonaction=editredlink=1 -- Ting Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
I see a lot of well meaning people responding here, but maybe its time to go back to the basics. No non free pictures, period. No more bureaucracy plus cost savings on not having to run the permissions systems. From: Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, November 22, 2009 3:05:02 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy 2009/11/22 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: Tomasz Ganicz wrote: The idea is to create a Staging Area - a wiki (or non-wiki) project which is not public and can be used for media and meta-data mass storage before sending the stuff to public projects. The idea is that all permissions and other legal stuff would be carefully solved before sending anything to Commons, so the mass contributors coming from outside organisation would not need to cope with OTRS system. It's hard to see how the problems of bureaucracy could be solved by establishing a meta-bureaucracy. Very simply. If an organisation is going to make a project it will get their own space on Staging Area and will upload their stuff there without any legal problems. Then, one or more editors must examine this stuff adding to it meta-data and resolve all legal problems before sending it to Commons or any other WIkimedia project. The formal agreements can be stored on Staging Area and be made visible for OTRS volunteers. So instead of sending houndres of E-mails from all contributors of the project there will be only one pointing to the meta-data stored on Staging Area. Anyway, if you organize a mass contributors project you must be sure that all contributors were informed how free licences work, that their contribiutions can be used for commercial purposes, that anyone can copy and modify it. -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Fan History joining the WMF family
At first glance, my inclination would be recycle bin the proposal, but after reading comments, I think there is some merit to the proposal. I would support bringing this in and expanding it to cover group dynamics (Wikitribes). This project could be valuable to sociology and psychology as it provides information on groups and their mindsets. Also, I would think that the information could be easily brought over to Wikipedia and used to beef up articles on notable fan groups. From: Jon Davis w...@konsoletek.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, November 18, 2009 11:58:24 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Fan History joining the WMF family While Laura kinda forgot it, for those that don't feel like scrolling and cant operate google. FanHistory can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/ As for my brief view of this, I think it is an idea that definitely has merit. The biggest concern I would have voiced was NPOV and while FH wasn't run under NPOV, they've done a fairly decent job of keeping it to a minimum or keeping to MPOV (from what Laura tells me). I think it is worth sticking the proposal on Meta, but I think if FH were to join the WMF, it should have an expanded focus. I'm not sure what that expansion should be, maybe all popculture, not just fandom itself. Lets look at what Wikipedia is not, that people want to post or do post (And gets removed) and see if we can be worked into FH. -Jon Disclaimer: I was an admin on FanHistory for a while. On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 10:53, Laura Hale la...@fanhistory.com wrote: Erik suggested I post this to the list for further discussion. Sincerely, Laura Hale *Introduction* Fan History Wiki is a project dedicated to documenting the history of fan communities, and to a lesser extent, documenting the history of online communities, popular culture and the tools that go to support these. The purpose of this document is to provide a general overview of Fan History, and to explain why this project would be a good fit for the Wikimedia Foundation. *Proposal* *About Fan History* Fan History is a wiki that runs on Mediawiki. It currently gets about 60,000 visitors a month, has over 820,000 articles, and a small but dedicated contributor base. Laura Hale created it in May 2006 as a means of centralizing existing information, and getting more people involved in the process of documenting the history of fandom. Current objectives for the project include: * Document the history of fan communities. * Preserve the history of fandom, especially in areas that are deemed at risk like Geocities. * Provide academics operating in fandom starting points for additional research and to provide academics with comprehensive data sets. * Provide members of fandom a resource to find links to communities in fandom, and explain parts of the culture in those communities to help them adapt to them. * Provide members of fandom a tool to promote their work, their projects, charity efforts by fans. * Provide members of fandom a platform to share stories about what happened in fandom so that important incidents won't be forgotten. * Provide a comprehensive directory for fandom that anyone can edit. This is necessary because of increased fragmentation in a web 2.0 world, and as members of fandom transition away from various services because of downtime, problems with policy, etc. It is also necessary because a lot of time in fandom trying to track down authors and artists who disappeared and in trying to locate fanworks that have disappeared. * Provide companies that deal with fandom a source to locate fandom communities, understand how fandom functions, identify current issues in certain fandoms, give examples of how certain issues were dealt with, etc. By knowing that information, they can better interact with and cater to fandom's specific needs. * Reasons why Fan History Wiki would be a good fit for WMF:* * WMF is trying to be more female friendly in terms of developing its contributor base. Fan History's primary contributor base and audience is female. * A largely female audience is a historical truth for popular culture fandom based around movies, and television. The audience around manga and anime is becoming increasingly female. In most areas, the academics entering the field are female. Major popular culture obsession items at the moment where there is a large female base include Twilight, Harry Potter, Star Trek. * Fan History’s inclusion amongst foundation projects can be a selling point for outreach in that area. If needing to point to a similar female dominated group doing similar work, the Organization for Transformative Works can be cited. * Our scope allows for more esoteric information that could not be included in Wikipedia, Wikiversity or Wikinews that would still help work
Re: [Foundation-l] Alphascript Publishing scam
Is 19.95 your cost? I'ver mentioned before that this is the best way to effectively put them out of business. From: Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, October 14, 2009 10:10:32 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Alphascript Publishing scam I wonder what Alphascript will think of this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/6130037589 Americans love a good bargain. Too bad I don't have the time to duplicate this effort the 5,000 times to keep up with them. Greg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The $1.7 million question
While I like the idea of bounties, this idea actually has merit. To make him work, I would give him the amount of money for childcare as a down payment, with the wages payable on delivery. Can someone from the Foundation look into this? We have quite a few talented mooks, who might be able to handle other miscellaneous projects, freeing up Brion and the crew both from tantrums about non completed requests and minor work. From: Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 7:12:48 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] The $1.7 million question So, let me just get this straight. Someone here bemoaned the fact that a full history dump of the English Wikipedia has been sought for 3 years, but is still forthcoming. That person mentioned, factually, that $1.7 million of budgeted money for technology was left unspent, with the suggestion that perhaps a portion of this money could have been directed to a contractor who would have been charged with crafting a successful full history dump. This budgetary fact was disdainfully questioned and the troll insult was whipped out with haste. The financial fact was then supported with a report from this very Foundation's Executive Director. The response then was that one could care less about what Sue Gardner has to say about budget. Then, the initial person offered that minimum wage plus $80 daily child care would buy his solution to a full history dump. Now, assuming this might mean 8 working weeks of labor for this guy, that would be ($400 child-care + $280 wage) x 8 weeks = $5,440. This sum is approximately three-tenths of ONE PERCENT of the budgeted money that was instead stored in the bank and set aside for some future staffing and technology needs. But the person(s) making the factual statements, backing them up with referenced sources, and offering a potential eight-week solution to a three-year-old problem, at a cost of 3/10th of 1% of the allocated budget to problems exactly like this... IS REWARDED WITH THE TROLL epithet? Do I have that correct? Because if I do, then I am beginning to see why so many people suggest that there is a serious freakin' PROBLEM with the tone of discourse on this mailing list. Let me recommend something. Pay Anthony Dipierro the sum of $5,500, give him server access, give him eight weeks, and if he doesn't produce a full history dump of the English Wikipedia, then perhaps his penance could be a one-year ban from Wikimedia mailing lists? That would make a lot of troll spotters here quite happy, I'm sure. What do you have to lose? (Other than three-tenths of one percent of the 2007 technology budget, that is.) -- Gregory Kohs ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Head of Communications position open?
We'll know tomorrow whats up. From: Sfmammamia sfmamma...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, September 7, 2009 10:27:57 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Head of Communications position open? No, the print ad definitely says Head of Communications -- in bold text, at the top of the ad. On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Sfmammamiasfmamma...@gmail.com wrote: A bit of a mystery -- in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, page E-8, there's an ad for the Wikimedia Foundation Head of Communications position. Are you sure it wasn't the Communications Officer position? http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Communications_Officer This position was just removed a few days ago because the application deadline passed, which is why it's no longer listed on foundationwiki: http://wikimediafoundation.org/?diff=40185 -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Commons Force
I agree, vigilantism is not necessary and counter productive. The Commons Force proposal represents a clear and present danger, both for whoever hosts it and participates in it. It is not for a third party to intervene in a contract between two people and only two people. If the Commons Force restricted itself to documenting potential copyvios and reporting them to the copyright owners, I could see some merit to the proposal. Otherwise it will do more harm than good. From: wiki-li...@phizz.demon.co.uk wiki-li...@phizz.demon.co.uk To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, September 7, 2009 11:42:46 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Commons Force Jovan Cormac wrote: wiki-li...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: Secondly, just because YOU think something is PD or licensed under Creative Commons does not mean that it is in reality so. For example many images on flickr have been lifted from the web and the account uploading them falsely applies a CC license to everything uploaded. If that was true, it would mean that any worrying about licensing on Commons is void as well, because after all, just because some Commons user thinks something is public domain doesn't mean it really is. Obviously, there *are* lots of cases where media files clearly are copyrighted, and cases where they are clearly in public domain. Those cases are the interesting ones, and the one we should focus on. I'll remind you of the case the other year where a ARR self portrait that a 14yo had taken, was used for the cover art of a porn video. Apparently they'd found it on a Public Domain site. Every organization that has ever wanted to use one of my CC'd images from flickr has asked. Anyone, bloggers notwithstanding, not doing so is an ass. There are far too many people out there that slap CC on images that they have found on the web under the mistaken impression that if its on the internet it is public domain. Most organizations make sure they have some paper trail of permission. You'll find my stuff on sites with a CC-NC license and you'll also find the same image on other sites without a CC license. How a site displays one of my images is between me and the site itself, the license I grant to one site maybe completely different to that given to another. Simply because YOU have seen the image with a CC license on one site does not mean that another site isn't also using the image correctly. The only person that can tell whether the work is being used correctly or not is me, and the only person that decide whether to complain about a incorrectly used image is also me. Quite frankly I'd be furious if someone took it upon themselves to interfere in any relationship I have with users of my images. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Commons Force
A CC violation is not everyone's business. If A infringes on B's CC copyright, and party C pokes A about it, A can tell C to bugger off. It's like filing a DMCA notice when you don't own the work. Licensing is an agreement between two entities, not the community. From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, September 7, 2009 3:12:11 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Commons Force 2009/9/7 Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com: On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Geoffrey Plourdegeo.p...@yahoo.com wrote: The Commons Force proposal represents a clear and present danger, both for whoever hosts it and participates in it. It is not for a third party to intervene in a contract between two people and only two people. This kind of attitude seems to me to be a byproduct of the fact that, despite being intended to help fix the flaws in the copyright system, Creative Commons and other free licenses are hacks that are built on top of copyright. The construction of CC licenses as contracts between copyright owner and user is part of the hack, but not necessarily ideal for promoting a robust creative commons (in the lower case, general sense). Indeed. Geoffrey fails to appreciate that a CC violation really is everyone's business. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Commons Force
It still isn't the place of a third party to police someone else's copyrights. From: Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, September 7, 2009 3:32:09 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Commons Force On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 6:10 PM, wiki-li...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: Sage Ross wrote: If a copyleft license is being violated, that is potentially of concern beyond the two legal parties, since properly using the license would mean that derivative works are also part of the commons and available for others to use and adapt. The problem is that YOU have no knowledge whether a copyleft license is being violated or not. It is a gross arrogance on your part presume that because it is CC-BY-SA in one context that all such uses must be CC-BY-SA. If someone write a piece of music and releases it under a CC-BY-SA license, they can also allow uses under other conditions. Now assume that you hear that music in some TV advert is the advert CC-BY-SA? Not if the creator of the music relicensed it to the advertizer minus the copyleft requirement. Being an outsider to the agreement between the two parties you simple do not know. In many cases it's very obvious. If an image credit says Sage Ross/Creative Commons (with no link or no indication of which CC license), it's clear that it's not being used properly. If the image credit says merely Wikipedia and you know that the version on Wikipedia is under a copyleft license, it's again clear. Yes, there are some situations where you can't know (without asking the creator) that an image wasn't separately licensed. But there are a lot of times when you can know. -Sage ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space?
Why not the Signposts, Wikizine, and the SF mailing list? No need for exclusives. From: geni geni...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, September 6, 2009 1:43:41 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space? 2009/9/6 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, It is not my business what they care to write about ... what I ment is that it is not a publication that is read by all our projects. At that Wikizine would be a better choice. :) Thanks. GerardM The signpost has versions in 19 languages. I think that can be said to provide a reasonable level of coverage. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space?
Its a serious charge that is difficult to prove. The publicly released financial statements are too general in nature to be useful. The only way to prove/disprove this allegation and head off others is for the Foundation to become more transparent. It is natural for people to come to assumptions when information is not available to them. The currently available financials are simply not transparent enough to prove what is going on. From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2009 7:54:49 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space? 2009/9/5 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/9/5 Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com: Which accusations do you speak of? That's curious, considering they had outgrown space in January 2009, such that they needed to shuttle Ruth and Frank Stanton's money over to Wikia's accounts receivable to expand their footprint. That is an accusation of illicit dealings for personal gain. It doesn't matter than you didn't explicitly accuse them, no reasonable person could interpret that sentence (in the context of your previous comments) as anything else. Perhaps, but that part hasn't been disproven. Nor has the existence of a teapot in orbit. We do not disprove accusation, we prove them or shut the hell up. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space?
The best way to end this in the future is to give the community a brief heads up along the line of Hey y'all, we will be moving to NEW ADDRESS effective DATE This lets us know beforehand that the business address is going to change, and allows the Foundation to leverage moving support from SF Wikimedians. From: geni geni...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2009 6:50:30 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space? 2009/9/5 Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com: I reported that the Wikimedia Foundation is seeking to sub-let space that it itself is renting. I have an e-mail from the property management firm confirming the Wikimedia sublease. Erik Moeller has confirmed that the Foundation is seeking to sub-let space. Which accusations do you speak of? Now, only eight months later, are we to understand that instead of having “outgrown” its office space on Stillman Street, the WMF is swimming in surplus floor space, that they need to hire Grubb Ellis to sub-let it out to someone else? WMF is swimming in surplus floor space? Why in the heck would I apologize for scooping the story that the Wikimedia Foundation is seeking to sub-let office space, if only the speculative intentions were a little off-base (I did not realize that the WMF does not intend to stay at Stillman Street a while longer, since the Foundation failed to communicate any significant We're Moving Soon! announcement to the community). Spectacularly off-base. You threw in a bunch of accusations and innuendo based on a complete misunderstanding of events. The foundation doesn't talk about the particulars of it's office much but descriptions and photos do exist and It wouldn't have taken much work to realize that the amount described was pretty much consistent with the foundation's entire office. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space?
Correct, I meant announcement not press release. Announcing this move by placing a blurb on the foundation site, asking for assistance on the sf list, and letting the signpost know all would have headed this discussion off From: geni geni...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2009 4:43:57 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space? 2009/9/6 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/9/6 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com: The plan may have been mentioned ages ago, but a press release about the move would have eliminated the opportunity for trolling. Why would the press be interested in the WMF putting the offices they are about to move out of on the market? The move itself will be newsworthy and I'm sure there will be a press release about it, but it hasn't happened yet. A plan to move isn't worthy of a press release - it would only cover a single sentence (The WMF has more staff than it has room for desks, so it is planning to move to new, larger offices.). I'm sure signpost would be interested. It usually is. Press release is probably the wrong term though. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Opt-out global sysop proposal
I think that swearing in a battalion of global sysops is both necessary and a better idea than electing more stewards. Vandalism looks bad and deters people from contributing. Lets face it, who wants to visit a library with all the books defaced in various shades of Crayons. Also, does anyone want to use reference books with the pages chopped out and replaced with adcruft? I strongly suspect the answer is no. It is necessary to provide a janitorial pool to maintain our mothball fleet, or otherwise it will become a liability and ecohazard like the US one in Suisun Bay. Despite the need for globally authorized sysops, electing more stewards is not the answer. We already had an election, and all those interested got an up or down vote. Also, our practice of electing once a year is orderly and minimizes stress. Elections for global sysops would definitely lead to a lot of drama.It would be better to have the stewards appoint people with clue to oversee set areas. From: Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 9:58:47 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Opt-out global sysop proposal Meanwhile, the stewards have had to combat an increasing amount of vandalism on the small wikis, and even though global rollbackers can help some, blocking vandals and deleting nonsense pages ultimately becomes the job of just a few of the active stewards. If global sysops is such a controversial idea, why don't we abandon it in favor of either: A) More stewards, possibly even with a special election on an emergency basis. B) Get a sysop recruitment drive going on those wikis which need sysops. Either drum up support from within these smaller communities or try and attract interest from older wikis that have plenty of sysops. Of course, the big barrier here might be language. Steven Walling On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 8:08 PM, Andrew Leung andrewcle...@hotmail.comwrote: I doubt it will generate enough interest this time around. Many of us are just tired of seeing this proposal (and its variants) dragging on and on, to the point that we just don't bother to show up and say no. Andrew Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up. From: nw.wikipe...@gmail.com Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:55:25 -0400 To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] Opt-out global sysop proposal Many of the list regulars might remember the global sysop proposal that had been brought up around May and June 2009. The idea ultimately fizzled, because there was simply not enough support to actually have a global, non-opt out sysop group. Since then, a new proposal has been drawn up, which is currently running, that allows communities to opt-in to a global sysop wikiset, which would allow users in the global sysop usergroup to act as sysops only on those wikis. However, the issue with this is that no project has actually bothered to opt-in, so the process has been dead for the better part of a year. Meanwhile, the stewards have had to combat an increasing amount of vandalism on the small wikis, and even though global rollbackers can help some, blocking vandals and deleting nonsense pages ultimately becomes the job of just a few of the active stewards. The situation could be easily remedied if there were a global sysop group; there are a good number of trustworthy global rollbackers who would be excellent global sysops. I drew up a proposal to automatically opt-in small wikis (as defined within the below proposal) into a global sysop wikiset. Global sysops would have full administrator tools on those wikis, but would use them only in response to blatant vandalism. Please take a look at the third link and give your opinions about the proposal on the talk page. 2008 Proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops_(2008_proposal) Current process (opt-in), inactive: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops Opt-out proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops/opt-out_proposal User:NuclearWarfare on all WMF wikis ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _ New! Faster Messenger access on the new MSN homepage http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9677406 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Well, I have never understood why the board is so involved. Generally in business, the Board hires and fires the CEO and that's it. I also consider expert seats a waste of space as that is why we have department heads. Then again, I suspect I am and always will be in the minority. From: Anthony wikim...@inbox.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 6:41:53 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 6:35 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that. Why isn't it? What's the difference? Is it just an ego thing? People are willing to commit to something if they can put board member on their resume, but not if they can put advisory board member on it? I also need not to mention that it is totally different to talk with someone from face to face or via e-mail and we cannot fly all advisory board members whose expertise are needed in to the board meeting. You could always get rid of the expertise seats and not replace them with community seats, then fly out the board plus those advisory board members who would have been regular board members if there had been advisory seats available for them. But if people aren't willing to make that commitment unless they have a vote, I guess that makes sense. Ideally most experts should be paid, not part of a board. But maybe the WMF can't afford that. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
There can only be one leader in a business. From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 1:26:22 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion 2009/8/27 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com: Well, I have never understood why the board is so involved. Generally in business, the Board hires and fires the CEO and that's it. I don't think that is the case. The board has a duty of oversight and is generally responsible for high level decisions about the direction of the company. The CEO is responsible for the day-to-day implementation of the board's decisions. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Alphascript Publishing: 1900+ copypasted books from Wikipedia
The single best way to kill them is to reprint the exact same books, then sell them at the low low price of cost + 10%. When people start snapping them up like fruitcakes, Alphascript will be finished. From: Peter Coombe thewub.w...@googlemail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 6:08:55 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Alphascript Publishing: 1900+ copypasted books from Wikipedia 2009/8/17 Jay Litwyn brewh...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca: Maybe there should be a [[:category:printed articles]]. It should ignore personal and educational use with a note at the top saying Alphascript Publishing used this article in whole or major part for a commercial printing of Wikipedia.. It would be nice of them to create the category and make it complete. Huh? The last thing we should be doing is advertising them like that, especially in the encyclopedia. Pete / the wub ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Upcoming tech hiring: CTO position split
High Priest of Mediawiki? From: Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, August 8, 2009 5:59:14 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Upcoming tech hiring: CTO position split Somehow I'm not disappointed that we're having a problem trying to find a title to describe how incredibly awesome Brion is. Congrats. -Dan On Aug 8, 2009, at 8:45 PM, Jim Redmond wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 19:32, Kat Walsh mindspill...@gmail.com wrote: Or you could have two sets of business cards. :-) And here I was going to suggest a slashed title: Senior Software Architect/Lead Hacker. (Maybe Senior Software Architect/ Sourceror if he's the eighth son of an eighth son.) Congratulations on doing the job of two, Brion. I hope we find a good CTO to handle the management side for you. -- Jim Redmond [[User:Jredmond]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board election spamming
Although I had already voted, I was not bothered by one tiny email reminding me that I was eligible to vote. Thanks guys, hopefully this will get people to the polls. From: Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, August 7, 2009 9:57:40 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board election spamming On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 12:40 AM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: I have just received an email telling me I am eligible to vote in the board elections when I have already voted. Please don't send untargetted mass emails - they are spam. telling me I am eligible and untargetted mass e-mails don't really make sense together, do they? Also, although you're only getting one e-mail once per year (will be every two years), you're free to opt-out (there are instructions in the e-mail you received). /me wonders why you wouldn't just hit reply to the e-mail and send this message to people who actually can do something about it, rather than foundation-l. On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 12:52 AM, Meno 25meno25w...@gmail.com wrote: and also please don't send e-mails to bot accounts. Yes, that's a good point. It seems this was an error this time around and they'll probably remember to leave those ones out next time. (Hopefully we'll have people writing up a how-to page for future years.) -- Casey Brown (who is not an election committee member, hence the third person) Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
Correct, we have built a system that does not value new users, but rather seeks to get rid of them. Its a pattern I have observed in some businesses as well. Subconsciously, people hate change. While they consciously want new users or wonder why the flow has stopped, their subconscious is busy erecting walls to stop new things/users. From: John at Darkstar vac...@jeb.no To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 2:49:15 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics Finally, we can not ignore the potential benefits of large scale contributions coming from specific communities, specially from educational institutions at all levels. The potential applications of Wikipedia to learning environments has been also a matter of research, and some authors have shown that direct contribution approaches may have negative consequences for both the quality of content and the willingness of young authors to continue to contribute if the get strictly negative responses to their first revisions. All the same, semi-controlled strategies like providing a final version of the contribution, may have better effects for both the quality of content and maintaining the implication of young contributors. In this regard, providing special tools for highlighting these contributions could facilitate the work of experienced Wikipedia authors, who could then provide more focused comments. How the new contributors are approached by the community is very important and it seems like they face a very hostile environment. How can we change this, both at a human level and with technical solutions? Is it somehow possible to let newcomers write articles together with oldtimers until they learn the most basic things? Perhaps it is possible to make personal sandboxes where they can get some guidance before the dogfight starts? John ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Dispute resolution mailing list
Well, if the list is for general dispute resolution technique, it could be valuable to all projects. From: Mike.lifeguard mikelifegu...@fastmail.fm To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 6:06:10 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Dispute resolution mailing list I'm sorry, this is really not something that needs discussion on foundation-l. This concerns English Wikipedia, and not the wider Wikimedia community or the Foundation itself. Please consider moving this discussion back to the project-specific mailing list or the project itself so to the community for that project can be consulted. Thanks, -Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Dispute resolution mailing list
Nothing prevents you from starting your own mailing list if Cary won't. As I am not a member of the wikien cesspool, what purpose are you thinking of? Geoffrey From: stevertigo stv...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 1:22:27 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Dispute resolution mailing list Cary Bass wrote: You have not gained any additional support. Open discussion is of course the first step in gaining support. We've been waiting for your participation, as you seem to be the functionary in charge of starting new lists. Now that you are participating in an open discussion, we can sort of resolve any issues people might have with it. If I see nothing more than this by July 27, I will close the bug as WONTDO Well, that gives us three full days. This after you had been non-responsive for almost a month. I understand that you are a functionary, and do things in a functionary way, but I would respectfully ask for more time. A whole week even. The appropriate thing for you to have done is to put a note on the bugzilla I filed the report on mediazilla. No response. What then would I have put a note on the bugzilla about, apart from my filing the request/bug? or advertised it on the wiki and asked people to make comments on the bug before you sent an email such as this to foundation-l. Hm. All I did was start a 100 message thread on wikien-l, and a request on mediazilla. If you could outline more appropriate methods for getting you to do something several of us expressed support for, then please state them. you've certainly placed me in a defensive position; and having to explain to you why your rather request has a lower priority than other things. Well I understand that you are very very busy. Again, if you had responded to the concept either in private, on mediazilla, or on wikien-l, and not just on a private mailing list, things would have gone a bit smoother. As you raised the issue of appropriateness, I don't believe anyone's private summary judgments are appropriate for an open project. Sorry to put you on the spot, Cary. I was simply asking for some open discussion. I do not understand what forces compel you to discuss an open project's matters through only private means, and I don't care, really. I was just asking for an open dispute resolution mailing list. -Steven ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 64, Issue 51
Digitizing isn't really that hard. You take a scanner, upload an image, label it, repeat. From: Durova nadezhda.dur...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 9:28:28 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 64, Issue 51 2009/7/18 Durova nadezhda.dur...@gmail.com: Put me in touch with instructors at art schools and I'll incorporate restoration into their curriculum. You'll be surprised how scaleable this is, particularly if we work out exhibition opportunities. -Durova Restoration isn't the problem for the most part. The English part of the National Monuments Record contains about 10 million items (mostly photos I think). Wales and Scotland ad few million more. That includes a fairly complete public domain aerial survey of the UK from the 1940s. We do not have the capacity to support digitalization on that scale. -- geni Are you talking about our capacity or their capacity? The Library of Congress has 14 million items and has been digitizing since 1994. It's an ongoing process; they've developed excellent protocols. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/about/techIn.html -Durova -- http://durova.blogspot.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A heads up
This is pictures right? I fail to see how pictures aren't useable to everyone, as they are universal. From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 12:23:36 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] A heads up Hoi, The current practice is to upload large collections with a category that is specific to the material it came from. New categories are matched to existing categories and they are merged. So uploading them as they are IS nothing new. The problem is that when material is included that is not English, it means that it originates from outside of the Anglo Saxon world and thereby helps address the existing bias towards the anglo saxon world. While material in Dutch does not help the English, the Spanish, the Japanese, it only means that people that only speak Spanish or Japanse will find that to them Commons does not provide any service, add any value. Thanks, GerardM 2009/7/15 Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Gerard Meijssengerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, How does it help to find material in Commons when you do not know English ?? Practically it is nice that we spend money on improving the upload facility of MediaWiki. In the end it makes no difference when you cannot find the images. Functionally Commons is useless as a consequence to all the people who do not speak English. When you reply PLEASE remember what the Wikimedia Foundation is there for.. Thanks, GerardM 2009/7/15 Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Gerard Meijssengerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, Why should the term base be translated ? Is it not more important to be gained by getting all this material in the public domain ?? I do however agree with you. All the material that is about Indonesia should be translated to Indonesian. For them it is very much the opening up of material that is part of their cultural history. Translating it into English does not make it easier for Indonesians to find this material. Thanks, GerardM 2009/7/15 John at Darkstar vac...@jeb.no At least the term base should be translated. John Gerard Meijssen wrote: Hoi, I have been in discussion with the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam about making their material available on Commons. The Tropenmuseum has an important collection on the colonial past of the Netherlands and contains a rich collection on Suriname and Indonesia. The initial talks are about 100.000 images. The annotations of this material is all in Dutch. It will come with unique identifiers back to the physical object in the Tropenmuseum and it will come with the termbase for the images; this termbase is as I understand it the equivalent of our categories. Some of the material has a partial translation in English and, this can be provided to us as well. The key issue I want to raise is that there are hundreds of museums in the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname all using Dutch there are more museums in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein who speak German While we aim to improve our front end to allow for easy uploads, we do not provide language support. Language support will help people find pictures in their language and will help the matching of categories into other languages. Thanks, GerardM ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l There is certainly a value to having things in English. It aids translation into more languages. It's a lot harder to find people who speak Dutch and Spanish, French and Russian or Greek and Japanese. You're more likely to find people who speak English in addition to their native tongue, which allows them to translate it. -Chad ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l And when something is uploaded in Dutch, how do you expect this to
Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the NationalPortrait Gallery ...
What an insult, Derrick only rates a solicitor From: Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2009 3:17:50 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the NationalPortrait Gallery ... On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Tom Maaswinkeltom.maaswin...@12wiki.eu wrote: [snip] They only thing that I don't understand is that they claim that no-one from the wikimedia foundation ever responded to this. Is there any reason for this? That isn't what they claimed. They claimed: Our client contacted the Wikimedia Foundation in April 2009 to request that the images be removed but the Wikimedia Foundation has refused to do so […] The initial complaint (OTRS #2009060110061897 for those with access) was made by a commercial partner (in the US) of the NPG, and was the typically legally uninformed nonsense that comes in often enough to have a boilerplate reply. They were given the standard Wikimedia and it's servers are based in the US. Under US law such images are public domain per Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. Therefore no permission is required to use them. response. Presumably the commercial vendor got the NPG to make the legal threat under UK law because we adequately expressed that there was clearly no copyright concern under US law. They also stated: However, to date, the Wikimedia Foundation has ignored our client’s attempts to negotiate this issue, preferring instead to take a more harsh approach that one would expect of a corporate entity. Please— allow me to translate: We're confused. We're used to dealing with organizations like YouTube who will roll over instantly even for the most obvious cases of CopyFraud. Why wont you play along with our effort to lock up and monetize the public domain? Thank you, Wikimedia Foundation, for not being yet another Web 2.0 get rich quick scheme. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the National Portrait Gallery ...
Lets finish up the press releases and drop this thread. NPG can read it too. Has a US press release been sent out? From: John at Darkstar vac...@jeb.no To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2009 10:12:14 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the National Portrait Gallery ... This is public and has been so since the first posting. The press release was just a reference of whats going on at Wikimedia Commons, the specific user page describing the case and this mailing list. It is sent out through the mailing list for Wikimedia Norway and it is not a statement on the behalf of Wikimedia Foundation or anybody else. If someone feel they should not be quoted on what they write on this mailing list they should probably not write it at all as this list is public. This seems to be a real problem as people tend to believe that they write something for me, myself and us two, while the rest of the world infact can read it at will. John David Gerard wrote: On 11/07/2009, John at Darkstar vac...@jeb.no wrote: I sent out a press release earlier today to newspapers in Norway. It was sent to around 200 recipients. Perhaps others could do the same thing. Before doing this, it may be an idea to run prospective press releases past Jay and Mike. (jwa...@wikimedia.org and mgod...@wikimedia.org). John, if you could forward Jay and Mike a copy of your press release, and possibly a translation into English, that would I think be of help to them :-) - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the National Portrait Gallery ...
First, I doubt that the FBI would investigate a barratry complaint (Counselors, does such a provision exist in the US Code?) If they did, the courts would be reluctant to actually hear such a case because the person being prosecuted would actually have to be present to answer to the charges. I highly suspect that the UK would snicker at any such extradition request. Second, IANAL but have never heard of someone being stopped for civil judgments at the airport. If they attempt to file a criminal case for copyright infringement, you would have a problem. From: George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 5:29:03 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the National Portrait Gallery ... On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/7/11 George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com: Technically, the user could just ignore this - a lawsuit in a UK court without relevant jurisdiction, under US law as applies, can be ignored. A default judgement against him might be entered, however, and that might make future travel to Europe difficult. Would they stop you at the airport to enforce a civil judgement? Criminal, certainly, but I'm not sure about civil. There has been significant discussion about this, relative to UK libel / slander claims / lawsuits against US authors or speakers. I don't know of anyone who was stopped, but some UK courts have asserted that they could and would if the defendant didn't show up. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the National Portrait Gallery ...
Dcoetzee cannot comply, as the deletions would result in the loss of his admin bit. From: Nathan nawr...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 7:32:39 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the National Portrait Gallery ... If Dcoetzee complies with the request made in the letter from the NPG, and some other user from the U.S. (having previously made copies of the images at issue) uploads them again, what recourse would the NPG have wrt its database rights and TOS claims? Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: A chapters-related question]
Do we really need so much stuff for these groups? I agree with a basic charter for each group, but all the regulation (yearly renewal, regular reporting) seems bureaucratic and pointless. It is not the wikimedian way to control but rather to nurture an organic community. Also, we should let these groups name themselves. From: Anders Wennersten anders.wenners...@bonetmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, July 6, 2009 12:03:53 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: A chapters-related question] I agree with you analysis, and that we need to come up with some definition of entities not being a chapter but in need of official recognition and having some rights being formally regulated . I would suggest we 1. come up with a name for these types of groups - Friends of.., Associates of ... or something like that. 2. start to look into in how to regulate the relation to these new entities and how to control them. Actually I think Mike Godwins proposal for a new Chapter agreement, while being overly controlling for a chapter, would be appropriate as a start for a contract with these new entities. Yearly renewal periods and regular reporting should be OK in these cases.. Anders Wennersten treasurer Wikimedia Sverige Member of ChapCom Aside from the new chapters, right now the Board of Trustees is looking at what kinds of related groups we want to have relationships with. (What prompts this directly is the case of Wikimedia Brazil, which was approved to become a chapter last year, but whose organizers have since decided they did not want to proceed as a formal entity at this time. However, I want to ask about the general principle, not the specific case.) The basic question is, what can or should we do to encourage grassroots groups that want to support our mission, but may not fit into the chapters framework? There are various possibilities here. One example is interest groups that aren't tied to geography, the way the chapters are. I always cite the idea of an Association of Blind Wikipedians, who might wish to organize to promote work on accessibility issues. As with the Brazilian situation, informal groups could also fit local conditions better sometimes, or serve as a proto-chapter stage of development. Maybe there's a benefit in having an association with some durability and continuation, but without going to the effort of incorporation and formal agreements on trademarks and such. It could also make sense to have an organization form for a specific project and then disband after it is completed, such as with Wikimania (somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand the Gdansk team is planning something like this as distinct from Wikimedia Polska). Anyway, I would like to invite ideas and discussion on this. Is this something we should do? What kinds of models are people interested in? How should we appropriately recognize and work with volunteer-organized groups? And in all of this, how would we make it both distinct from and compatible with the current structure of chapter organizations? --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ Internal-l mailing list interna...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/internal-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
For some reason, I am reminded of a Supreme Court case about the information in telephone directories. Maybe because of the insanity of trying to put public domain material under copyright. From: Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 11:47:28 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Falcorian alex.public.account+wikimediamailingl...@gmail.comalex.public.account%2bwikimediamailingl...@gmail.com wrote: So the bot just has to run at human speeds so it does not get banned, it still won't get tired or make unpredictable mistakes. And you can run it from different IPs to parallelize. --Falcorian On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Not likely. I've been banned from Google's regular search at least a dozen times during semi-frenetic search sprees in which I was identified as a bot. There is no doubt that if you try to automate it you will be quickly shot down. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Brian wrote: Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. There are roughly 2-3 million public domain books in Google Books. That's easy to fix :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
For Supreme Court cases, would it be possible to have a bot pull the audio decisions from Oyez, and convert them into text? From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 8:41:45 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/ Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
If a bot has a meaningful effect on server load (i.e. page requests), it falls under the category of malicious software, which is highly illegal. From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:35:52 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship Brian wrote: That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. How is violating Google's ToS against the law? Sites put all sorts of meaningless garbage into these documents, and users mostly ignore them. Of course Google's evil; it's about time that people noticed that. They use their deep pockets as a way to bully other sites ... with a smile. Fortunately the U.S. does not have database protection laws like the E.U. Ideally, every PD item they host should also be hosted on an alternative site, but that's a massive undertaking, ... and they know it. Nothing requires them to be nice to the competition, such as by making it easy to copy their material. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
A bot or bots calling up massive amounts of data at high speed can have a negative effect on a server. While I doubt the bot we use would have the power to take down a Google server, the speed of the requests and the constant number of requests will definitely be noticeable, possibly leading to unpleasant consequences. From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 5:07:44 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship Geoffrey Plourde wrote: If a bot has a meaningful effect on server load (i.e. page requests), it falls under the category of malicious software, which is highly illegal. Malicious software or overloading servers goes well beyond ignoring a ToS. Why should downloading whole books from Google have any greater effect on server load than downloading a whole book of similar length from Internet Archive? Ec From: Ray Saintonge Brian wrote: That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. How is violating Google's ToS against the law? Sites put all sorts of meaningless garbage into these documents, and users mostly ignore them. Of course Google's evil; it's about time that people noticed that. They use their deep pockets as a way to bully other sites ... with a smile. Fortunately the U.S. does not have database protection laws like the E.U. Ideally, every PD item they host should also be hosted on an alternative site, but that's a massive undertaking, ... and they know it. Nothing requires them to be nice to the competition, such as by making it easy to copy their material. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not?
Commons is an oddball project. Other projects produce work, but Commons stores it. Wikisource could be considered another oddball for the same reason. At this point in time, I would class Commons as a service project (and wikisource as well) because it provides a service to other projects and its only point is to provide a service to other projects. Unfortunately, I can not fathom any reason that Commons should be or is a independent project in its own right. It would be like making all the filing cabinets in an office their own division. From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 8:41:49 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not? OK, the question has popped up so many times, that I think it would only be fair to give it a separate topic on this list :) Now I'd like to have a discussion about this, and not just assumptions. Let's not be childish and say yes it is, no it's not (which some of the discussion comes down to) but lets play around a bit with arguments. This discussion is btw not new at all, I remember to have discussed over it several times, and I've had both opinions probably in time. Mostly this discussion comes up when a project (in the past at least several times this was the Dutch Wikipedia, as some might remember) felt that the commons community was damaging the content they uploaded there without them having a say over it. The even more important question is, however, when comes the moment when the two are in conflict? I doubt any project actually cares whether commons has out of scope images (well, a few might, but that is actually commons people then imho, not wikipedians/wikisourcians etc), not what the categorization is like. As long as it works, they can upload their stuff, it is safe, and they can use it. The problems often came when a few bad people (paraphrasing it as it was received by the Dutch Wikipedians at the time, no insult intended) were damaging their content (at the time, it was for example about Coat of Arms-png's being deleted) and they felt not heard or helped by others. I think that is currently a repeating pattern in some way. A smaller group, with all best intentions, decides to harm a collection of content, and people feel attacked by that, and react in a not-so-positive way. That is where the service project and the independent project clash. Were it merely service, the commons would abide the wish of the wikipedians (wikisourcians etc), were it independent, the Wikipedians would have bad luck and live with it. So now please share with me, in those conflict situations, which should it be, and, most importantly, why? I'll believe service project is great in ideal situations, as would be independent, as long as everything goes fine. But in these border cases? eia ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not?
Its only point=what is does=store images for other projects I was not referring to the cabinet makers, just the filing cabinets. It was the closest metaphor for Commons my caffeine deprived brain could think of. Following along it, a cabinet maker is one who makes cabinets. The cabinets themselves are repositories. On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.comwrote: Commons is an oddball project. Other projects produce work, but Commons stores it. Wikisource could be considered another oddball for the same reason. At this point in time, I would class Commons as a service project (and wikisource as well) because it provides a service to other projects and its only point is to provide a service to other projects. By other projects, do you mean other Wikimedia projects? And how are you determining what its only point is? All Wikimedia projects are service projects in a sense. Unfortunately, I can not fathom any reason that Commons should be or is a independent project in its own right. It would be like making all the filing cabinets in an office their own division. Most cabinet makers are independent from the office where those cabinets are used. I really don't see the dichotomy between independence and service. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not?
Just because people put things into a filing cabinet does not endow the filing cabinet with any special powers. I also am not disputing the relative importance of free content repositories. From: Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 11:13:55 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not? On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.comwrote: Commons is an oddball project. Other projects produce work, but Commons stores it. Wikisource could be considered another oddball for the same reason. At this point in time, I would class Commons as a service project (and wikisource as well) because it provides a service to other projects and its only point is to provide a service to other projects. You are ignoring the efforts of the photographers, graphic artists, restorationists and free image sleuths that consider building the archive at Commons as their primary goal. There is a great deal of content added and maintained in Commons that is uploaded with no particular WMF use in mind. An organizaed and well-documented free content repository -- for use by the wider world -- is valuable regardless of whether the works it contains happen to be used by the WMF. -Robert Rohde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not?
Just because several projects have decided to disable local uploads does not mean that Commons is ready to accept them. From: Pedro Sanchez pdsanc...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 11:41:51 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not? On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Huib Laurens abi...@forgotten-beauty.comwrote: effe iets anders schreef: Hi Huib, yes, that seems to be an accurate description of the current situation. However, what would you /want/ it to be, and /why/ ? :) Thanks, eia 2009/6/16 Huib Laurens abi...@forgotten-beauty.com 2 Commons is not ready to be a service project to replace local uploads, translations aren't good enough and there a not enough administrators to give enough service to all language projects. Several of the largest wikipedias have already disabled local uploads and rely completely on commons to provide freely-licensed only images. And we're not talking small wikis, but big wikipedias. So there's factual evidence that commons is ready to replace local uploads. 3 If we make Commons a service project we will end up with users getting blocked because the are blocked on other wiki's. A independent Commons can be a safe harbour for users blocked from other projects to make a fresh start. (It happened it the past). I believe if Commons is a service project we need to change a lot of things in a short time with a lot of people involved, A independent Commons still have to deal with the same problems, but the community can work on it without the need of extra interference. Huib ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposals re : sexual content on wikimedia
PM, while I respect your opinions, I must express my strong disagreement with most of them. Your first idea is restricting sexual content from userspace. This would encroach on personal freedom, because why shouldn't people be able to post whatever they want in their personal space? The second is a soft opt in. Why would we want to make another hoop for people to jump through? It would appear that such a system would hinder complete useability. Also, we don't follow UK or Australian law. When it comes to model releases, I have no objections whenever a person can be distinguished from the photograph. From: private musings thepmacco...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 7:50:09 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] Proposals re : sexual content on wikimedia Hi all, I saw this news item today; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8061979.stm and felt that it was tangentially related to the discussions on this list concerning sexual content on wikimedia - it's prompted me to make this reply anywhoo (both the story and the comments are worth reading, and I feel they deal with the 'baby' and 'bathwater' aspects reasonably well). In a bid to avoid Birgitte's ignore list (the ignominy ! ;-) I thought I'd respond to a few further comments and detail my proposals / reasoning for good ways forward; ( see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content for details on my proposals ) Firstly, the issue of whether or not Wikimedia should try and meet the needs of a market, for example schools, who prefer to not display images of sexual activity, for me is a somewhat moot - the issue is more that wikimedia's policies in this area are not the result of careful thought, we're really more just ended up in the status quo. It seems sensible to me to closely examine whether or not we like that status quo, and whether or not there are policies and practicies on various projects which should be improved. I think we're doing some things a bit wrong, and should want to improve, as oppose to inviting someone else to do them better. Perhaps my slightly dull, but canonical, example of this is that I don't think it's necessary for commons to host pictures of topless women, taken at the beach, without their permission - this sort of user genearted content is a net detriment to the project in my view. I'd be interested to hear if anyone disputes this specific asasertion. My 'proposal 1' is that sexual content be restricted from userspace - I concur with Jimbo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Walesdiff=prevoldid=284543731) that an image of shaven genitalia is inappropriate on a userpage My 'proposal 2' in the linked page is broadly synonymous with the technical implementation discussed by Brion previously - the addition of some sort of soft 'opt in' / age verification requirement seems a bit of a no-brainer to me - I had an interesting chat recently with someone who was insistent that the lack of such means Wikimedia is technically breaking UK and Australian law - I have no idea as to the veracity of this (or whether it matters!) - but am interested in the ideas and opinions of those more cluey in this area. My 'proposal 3' suggests that we need to apply more rigour in checking the model releases and licensing - basically we're just too easy to game at the moment, and various mischievous souls have delighted in leading various communities up garden paths in the past - what's interesting is some community's willingness to be somewhat complicit in this process (the 'we must assume good faith, so yeah - this image is clearly fine' problem - the burden of evidence is all wrong in my book). Those antipodeans who've heard be chat about this at Wiki Wed. here in Sydney may be interested to hear that there is some follow up interest in this topic in general, and I may be boring more folk on this subject with a nattily written post on a Fairfax blog - I'm particularly keen at the moment to try and discern whether or not it's possible to move forward in any way on this issue, or whether or not we're sort of stuck in the bed we've made to date all thoughts and ideas most welcome... :-) cheers, Peter PM. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The EFF appears to be somewhat upset by the foundation
Did you consider starting off with asking for a simple disclaimer? If they don't have it uploaded and one was sent, disregard previous statement. From: Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com To: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com Cc: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 11:53:51 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] The EFF appears to be somewhat upset by the foundation On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: The initial letter from Isenberg (isn't that where Saruman lived?) is almost entirely about trademarks, so you can understand why people would think that was your concern. Sure, that makes sense. But the Board's resolution had to do with implementing a trademark policy balancing the requirements of trademark law with the needs of the community and the chapters. So in that respect, at least, the Board's resolution did not touch on any matters of the sort that arose out of our interactions with Wikipedia Art. That is where my response would have differed from yours. I would have started by asking for a disclaimer, rather than asking them to hand over the domain. The disclaimer is a good solution, you seem to agree with that, and requesting the domain name comes across (however carefully you word your request) as an attempt to shut them down so it would have been good to completely avoid that potential for misinterpretation. If they had transferred the domain name over to us, we'd have paid all their expenses and forwarded requests for some period of time to any new domain name they chose to register. There are other alternatives we might have considered as well. But, take my word for it, we had no interest at all in shutting down their site (which, so far as I can tell, is a very low-traffic site in any case). At any rate, disagreements resolved through negotiations typically lead to compromises, and so it makes sense sometimes to make your strongest arguments first, so that you can fall back into a reasonable compromise. Personally, I find WR even more frustrating that foundation-l, so I avoid it, but I fully agree with everyone that it is legally and morally acceptable to use the Wikipedia trademark in such a way. I'm a bit perverse, but I enjoy the performance art of WR rather more than that of Wikipedia Art. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Compulsory policies for all Wikipedias
I think that the general principles are a perfectly acceptable policy and creating a compulsory policy is a bad idea. Each project needs the independence provided by the general principles. Due to the vast diversity of the Wikimedia family, we cannot make hard and fast rules and expect each prject to use them. Flexibility is a virtue. From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2009 11:00:32 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Compulsory policies for all Wikipedias I think the assumption is that any Wikipedia will adopt the general policies found on the English Wikipedia, but tailor them for local conditions. A project which wishes to significantly deviate from the general principles of everyone can edit, neutral point of view, and using reliable sources should probably be independent. Perhaps it is time a definite policy is drafted and published. Fred Bauder Hi! It is totally clear that all the Wikipedias must respect and follow some particular policies which are global for all the Wikipedias. The question is what are these policies? Each small Wikipedia doesn’t have all variety of policies and guidelines which major Wikipedias have, and—it’s obvious—some time or other they will need such a list of all-projects rules. What I found for now is http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:How_to_start_a_new_Wikipedia with the rules of copyright, license, NPOV and “What Wikipedia is not”, but this page “is obsolete or no longer maintained” (and there is even no rule of “Five pillars”). There is also page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Founding_principles exists, but it seems to be relevant for all Wikimedia projects, not only Wikipedias (“Five pillars”, “What Wikipedia is not” are missed). There are some other pages exist, but they all are not relevant here as well. So, does an all-Wikipedias rules list exist, or if not, what are there global rules which all the Wikipedias must follow? And one more question. What is the general practice of who and how can decide whether something meets the (all-project) rules or not? (This message was also posted to Wikimedia Forum on Meta). Thanks, zedlik ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Divergent Wiktionary logos
I agree with Austin. We cannot just force communities to adopt this new thing. Lets try for a clean start. From: Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 5:30:08 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Divergent Wiktionary logos On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Cary Bass c...@wikimedia.org wrote: I understand that there are complaints that new logo has elements too closely resembling Scrabble pieces, or are otherwise too cartooned to some. The new logo does maintain some visual identity as a project logo, while the classic logo isn't really a logo at all, and diverges wildly from project to project. Of the top ten Wiktionary projects, four of them use the new version, while 6 of them use some variation of the classic version: I agree 100% that there should be a common brand to all Wiktionary projects. I also understand why the majority of them haven't adopted the proposed logo. I'm glad that this has been brought to Foundation-l, and wholeheartedly support a reconsideration of this decision with a broader audience—after all, a project's logo affects the overall Wikimedia brand identity, not just those closely involved with that project. For my money, by the way, I think we should start over. Austin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language
1.3 allows for the transfer to CC by SA, please stop playing semantics
From: Anthony wikim...@inbox.org
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 9:49:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 11:25 AM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.comwrote:
You are wrong my friend. When you hit that little button, you agreed to
license your contributions under 1.2 or any later version.
Any later version published by the FSF.
Therefore if the Foundation moves to 1.3, the license transfers.
Interesting theory. What happens if the Foundation doesn't move to 1.3?
As 1.3 is a dual license, its dual licensed.
{{dubious}}
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
I have refrained from commenting in the interests of letting this play out but find myself in disagreement with our worthy colleague from Wikisource. The locus of this complaint, as I see it, is that he was unfairly removed from his position. I see no merit in his claims for the following reason and believe this thread should be killed for the following reasons. We have traditionally allowed each community to set up its own principles. Meta level intervention in a project, barring blatant illegality, is unprecedented and would indicate a significant departure from our bottom up ideology. As administrators are appointed/elected volunteers serving according to project rules, rather than formal employees, it is impossible for there to be any illegality in dismissal. There is therefore a considerable precedent not to interfere, which would be detrimental to our ideological foundation. Unlike Wikipedia, adminiship is held for terms of one year. Mr. Saintonge has not disputed the validity of this process, therefore I am not going to examine it. However, I do wish to commend the authors of the policy as it is a functional and easily readable document. Upon review of the Restricted Access Policy, I see the following statement, However, anyone is free to discuss. Therefore, the attempt to strike the comments by John and Pathoschild seem to be attempts at stifling criticism. Each user has the right and ability to present their concerns, no matter how oddball they are. I can only see evidence from Pathoschild, which clearly proves the allegations made. The allegations are without a reasonable doubt, true for pathoschild's case. Since the comments supporting dismissal referenced pathoschild's allegations, there is no reason to consider them misled. For these reasons, there were no errors in the proceeding. Finally the process is based on whether or not people trust Mr. Saintonge as an admin, not whether he desires to continue. It is readily apparent that there is no trust. For all the above, I move to kill this thread. From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:03:27 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource Birgitte SB wrote: Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS. I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of project autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who tries to impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource. Last summer, when another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly against allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's overly bad behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred with what happened based solely on events at wikisource. In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented. If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not a part of the apparent piling on? If the result of raising the issue here is a fairer discussion on wiki, I can't complain about that. There should always be a place for off-wiki safety valves. I see that you have asked a question on my talk page, so I will address more specific matters there shortly. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
Posting during breaks is a bad idea. I meant kill as in we should stop discussing this as there is no effective remedy, no mod kill intended. From: Nathan nawr...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 9:29:01 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource That people on this list can't necessarily interfere or overturn the de-adminship is a point separate from whether or not it can be discussed here. I'm not aware of any hard rules limiting topics of discussion to those issues which can readily be addressed by participants of this forum. Bringing it here may not be all that useful, and further discussion not all that helpful to anyone in particular, but that isn't a justification for killing the thread. I can't see Austin or Michael or whoever else actually killing a civil discussion in any case, so its a moot point really. Also, you may want to reconsider the logic of posting your interpretation and conclusion about events and *then* asking for the thread to be killed. Mods aren't here to provide you with the last word. Nathan On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.comwrote: I have refrained from commenting in the interests of letting this play out but find myself in disagreement with our worthy colleague from Wikisource. The locus of this complaint, as I see it, is that he was unfairly removed from his position. I see no merit in his claims for the following reason and believe this thread should be killed for the following reasons. We have traditionally allowed each community to set up its own principles. Meta level intervention in a project, barring blatant illegality, is unprecedented and would indicate a significant departure from our bottom up ideology. As administrators are appointed/elected volunteers serving according to project rules, rather than formal employees, it is impossible for there to be any illegality in dismissal. There is therefore a considerable precedent not to interfere, which would be detrimental to our ideological foundation. Unlike Wikipedia, adminiship is held for terms of one year. Mr. Saintonge has not disputed the validity of this process, therefore I am not going to examine it. However, I do wish to commend the authors of the policy as it is a functional and easily readable document. Upon review of the Restricted Access Policy, I see the following statement, However, anyone is free to discuss. Therefore, the attempt to strike the comments by John and Pathoschild seem to be attempts at stifling criticism. Each user has the right and ability to present their concerns, no matter how oddball they are. I can only see evidence from Pathoschild, which clearly proves the allegations made. The allegations are without a reasonable doubt, true for pathoschild's case. Since the comments supporting dismissal referenced pathoschild's allegations, there is no reason to consider them misled. For these reasons, there were no errors in the proceeding. Finally the process is based on whether or not people trust Mr. Saintonge as an admin, not whether he desires to continue. It is readily apparent that there is no trust. For all the above, I move to kill this thread. From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:03:27 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource Birgitte SB wrote: Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS. I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of project autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who tries to impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource. Last summer, when another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly against allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's overly bad behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred with what happened based solely on events at wikisource. In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented. If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer
Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
Biographies of living people bring up legal issues, this matter does not. From: Delirium delir...@hackish.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:05:14 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource Geoffrey Plourde wrote: We have traditionally allowed each community to set up its own principles. Meta level intervention in a project, barring blatant illegality, is unprecedented and would indicate a significant departure from our bottom up ideology. As administrators are appointed/elected volunteers serving according to project rules, rather than formal employees, it is impossible for there to be any illegality in dismissal. There is therefore a considerable precedent not to interfere, which would be detrimental to our ideological foundation. That's not really true at all--- *actual*, direct, overturning of local community decisions is rare, but meta- and foundation-level discussion of general principles and management issues, with a view towards encouraging change on specific wikis, is common and constitutes probably the majority of this list. For example, after the relicensing debate, probably the second-largest debate here is a lengthy meta level intervention in the English Wikipedia's handling of biographies of living people. -Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people
This line of reasoning will end now. I am sick of seeing rants, tirades, and personal attacks in my inbox. We have to improve our BLP policies, your sniping is not helping that. From: Anthony wikim...@inbox.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2009 7:48:42 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people I think we need to ban anyone with Gerard in their (first or last) name. I certainly wish it were possible to filter out such emails without deleting them completely. On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 9:36 AM, John at Darkstar vac...@jeb.no wrote: Please stop this. John Gerard Meijssen skrev: Hoi, My English is considered to be quite good. I have not learned any new words and I do not mind to have an occassional word. For me this was excessive and it stopped my reading and my interest. Thanks, Gerard PS David, what was you first language again ? 2009/3/5 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com 2009/3/5 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: It is not that I am not able to look up words in a dictionary.. When an excess of dificult word is used, the message is lost. None of these were excessively difficult, and now you know more English words. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution survey, first results
They wrote the damned thing, so they are most likely to understand it. From: geni geni...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, March 3, 2009 7:41:32 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution survey, first results 2009/3/4 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: 2009/3/3 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: Excellent. Getting some idea of community opinion is very important. However, has anyone carried out my suggestion of consulting with the CC lawyers? We've been in repeated conversations with CC about the possible attribution models. CC counsel has commented specifically that attribution-by-URL is a permissible attribution model that is consistent with the language and intent of CC-BY*. What is their line of reasoning on that? -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people
They have no recourse. We are not subject to Polish law. From: Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 6:24:09 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people 2009/3/2 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: 2009/3/2 Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com: Two recent examples from Polish Wikipedia: *A sportsmen had anitdoping case around 5 years ago, when he was 18. There is good source of this information (his own interwiev in sport's magazine in which he appologises for taking an illegal drug). Now the guy is saing that it was all forgotten by mainstream media, he was already punished for this (6 months break) but he is now trying to get new contract and Wikipedia entry on him may destroy the deal. Therefore he ask for removing this info or his entire bio... *A pop singer manager wants to remove the birthday of his starllet, because she is (probably) around 30 but her current image show her as almost teenager. The birhtday is sourced by Who is Who in Poland, paper eddtion - but it was removed from electronic version, and they also manged to remove it from all other web-pages. If those were answered any way other than no, go away (however politely phrased), then that's just wrong. Yes. They were answered in such a way. Bu it does not solve the problem from legal POV, and when you make such an answer you are - at least in Poland at some legal risk. In Poland there is a law that a person can always ask for removing his/her personal data from any electronic database (except govermental ones). In the second case the info about drugs is not personal data but in the first one is (birthday). In the first case we have just recieived a formal request from the starllet's solicitor to remove her birthday based on the personal data law. Although Wikipedia servers are fortunetally not in Poland, the database operator which in this case may mean the editor who added this birthday should remove this birthday or he/she is commiting a kind of minor crime. This is just a practical example how legal POV might be in some cases different than general BLP policy writen and voted by local project's communities. -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people
Would Polish police really expend the time to round up and charge every single Polish editor? I don't think so. The Foundation would most likely reject any demands for information, barring the successful prosecution of quite a few Polish editors. Also, convincing a judge not to throw the cases out would be problematic. When you add in all the bad publicity, it is highly unlikely that the Polish police will bother with this matter. From: Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 8:46:53 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote: They have no recourse. We are not subject to Polish law. Individual Polish editors are, however, likely to be and they might apparentely be in danger of prosecution. Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people
I have some experience with customer service and was willing to serve as OTRS volunteer, but was rejected. The number of rejections I have witnessed is really shooting OTRS in the foot. From: Aude audeviv...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 8:57:14 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people I normally spend my wikitime on writing articles, and generally avoid wikidrama. When I run into a BLP problem, if I'm uninvolved enough then I can deal with it myself. Sometimes, I am sufficiently involved and cannot be directly involved in resolving BLP problems and take admin actions myself. That said, I've been around Wikipedia for a long while, and know where to go to report a BLP problem and request assistance. For many many months, I was observing blatant BLP violations and other serious issues with the William Rodriguez article, but was not in a position to take admin actions nor cleanup the article myself. The article was reported numerous times on ANI, checkuser/sockpuppets pages, the BLP noticeboard, and arbcom enforcement, only for the reports to be mostly ignored until last week when more drastic attention grabbing steps were taken. Contacting arbcom via e-mail was also not helpful. The article is still in serious need of cleanup, to bring it in compliance with the BLP policy. Why are reports about BLP and other serious problems being ignored? Is this commonly the case that BLP reports and other serious problems are disregarded? I do see a fair bit of noise and drama on the admin noticeboards, but the number of admins effectively dealing with problems seems insufficient. My experience with OTRS is that they insufficiently deal with problems, perhaps also due to lack of manpower on the queues and shortage of people willing to take on tough cases. Dealing with BLP and other such serious problems can be very time consuming, yet is a thankless task. It's a task that I'm not well-suited for, nor have the time available to help with. I'm not sure how to get more admins and editors involved in dealing with BLP reports? Also, the Wikipedia community and the foundation needs to be more supportive of those admins/editors who do step up and do a good job in handling these problems. Anyway, the inaction of my BLP reports really frustrated me to the point where I was thinking of giving up on Wikipedia. I still don't have interest in doing much Wikipedia editing right now, though maybe after a few weeks (or maybe a month or two) of wikibreak, I will be back to editing more. -Aude -- Aude ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people
I care not about my application being killed. I am pointing out that it appears that you kill most of the applications, which may be the reason for a lack of manpower. Have you considered using IRC for interviews as part of the application package? From: Guillaume Paumier guillom@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 9:05:58 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people Hello, On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote: I have some experience with customer service and was willing to serve as OTRS volunteer, but was rejected. The number of rejections I have witnessed is really shooting OTRS in the foot. I can understand your bitterness, but I think it leads you to the wrong conclusion. I'd rather say that our high standards are one of the strengths of our response team. -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people
Not necessarily. You do them in bulk at a certain time each week or every two weeks. From: Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 9:22:19 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote: I care not about my application being killed. I am pointing out that it appears that you kill most of the applications, which may be the reason for a lack of manpower. Access to OTRS implies a high trust into the user from the part of the foundation. The main backlog is currently with permissions emails, where less stringent access standards (should) apply, because the information there is mostly not very sensitive. The second largest backlog is in the Quality subqueue of info-en, and this is the issue here...because access to info-en::Quality is a fairly high level access in the general OTRS system (I'm making this sound much more bureaucratic than it actually is) -- obviously, because there you'll find the high priority cases with a possibly high PR impact, so we need to make sure that we trust people who handle them. I've seen people attach copies of their ID or copies of their Criminal Records File in emails to that queue...so I hope you understand that I support being quite strict in giving access there. Have you considered using IRC for interviews as part of the application package? That would require a high amount of time for the OTRS admins. Mind you, it's not the foundation's HR department that does this but individual volunteers. Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Simple English Encyclopedia
I didn't know the language committee was empowered to decide on whether or not Simples were made. I thought your job was to determine valid languages. I absolutely cannot support the continued existence of this body due to these unknown powers and will make my voice known the next time someone offers to can it. From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:19:47 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Simple English Encyclopedia Hoi, Possibly. Now for some cold water. At this moment the policy is explicit. We do not accept any new Simple projects in any language. What I said was that it would be good when there are some good numbers that prove the value of a simple project. Once this is more clear, we may reconsider. Thanks, GerardM 2009/2/25 Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com I could be wrong, but I think you're misreading the point here. It's that we should Incubate more Simples in more languages, not that we need a Simple Incubator... -Chad On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, There is no room nor need for a simple Incubator. One suffices. Thanks. GerardM 2009/2/25 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com No, Absolutely not. Eh? No, Absolutely not. to what precisely? You say incubator should be a phase for projects? I said simple should incubate for even larger languages. Where is the No, Absolutely not. directed at? Gerard Meijssen wrote: No, Absolutely not. The Incubator is a vital resource that can easily accomadote any language any project. If anything I would make the Incubator compulsory for ANY project. The reason for this is obvious; the Incubator works. Thanks. GerardM 2009/2/25 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com Andrew Gray wrote: 2009/2/25 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, When the use case of the Simple Wikipedia is better understood, it may even make room for more simple projects as in simple projects in the biggest languages. This is quite an interesting thought. The language used by Simple English is (apparently) derived from two defined simplified versions of English which were deliberately designed - have there been projects to do the same for, say, French or Spanish, or would we have to do the heavy lifting ourselves? My attempt at a constructive contribution to this thread would be to suggest that every Simple Wikipedia language, no matter large or small, should start at a Simple Incubator. The incubator seems a proven concept (it has delivered live babies, yes?). To me it seems a no-brainer that Simple Communities in every language would only activate a sub-set of their languages community, and this implies to me that as such the community could do with bootstrapping in the fashion that incubators do. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] second-class wikis
Everything takes time. The techs will handle it when they get around to it. From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia developers wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, February 2, 2009 3:26:02 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] second-class wikis Hoi, Can someone please explain why this is ? Thanks, GerardM 2009/2/1 Marcus Buck w...@marcusbuck.org According to SiteMatrix we have 739 projects at the moment. There are three master partitions for the servers: s1 for enwiki only, s2 for 19 other projects and s3 for all the rest (that's 719 projects). My homewiki is one of those 719 projects. And I feel a bit neglected. Replication is halted since 34 days. LuceneSearch 2.1 is active on enwiki since October and on dewiki and some other big wikis since December. Most other wikis have still no access to the new features. Even the +incategory: feature which is active on enwiki since April 2008 is not active on most wikis as of February 2009. It seems, we are very low at the priority list. Marcus Buck ___ Wikitech-l mailing list wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Are model releases required for 'Free' content? (was: Sexual Content on Wikimedia)
Sam; I think that this is more of a Commons discussion. While I disagree with much of what you say, I agree that this class of image, by its very nature, requires more scrutiny. Serious thought should be given to a Nude Model Policy of requiring uploaders to answer about five questions under penalty of perjury. This would shift liability off of us in the event that someone uses Commons as a battleground and we get sued. From: Sam Johnston s...@samj.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 4:18:32 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Are model releases required for 'Free' content? (was: Sexual Content on Wikimedia) Should we take no steps to protect people who have no wish to have their photos published worldwide on a site owned by a charity devoted to knowledge? Or to put it another way, is an identifiable image of a person really free if that person has not given a model release (irrespective of whether the image is sexual)? Virgin found out down under that this is not necessarily the case after being sued for using a 'free' (CC) picture on Flickr[1] (also discussed here[2] and here[3]). Creative Commons simply excludes publicity rights from its scope[4], but perhaps this is a good way for Commons (at least) to differentiate itself from Flickr and other 'dumping grounds'. A good analogy would be having the rights to a specific recording without the rights to the song itself. I'm sure it's not the first time this subject has been raised, but now the French chapter has dragged us into the world of commercial publishing it's probably worth [re]considering. Perhaps it is enough initially to tag images lacking releases accordingly, with a view to having them released or replaced? I note that this would also dispense with many concerns about minors by requiring a minor release by parents or guardians[5]. Sam 1. http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/virgin-sued-for-using-teens-photo/2007/09/21/1189881735928.html 2. http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7680 3. http://lessig.org/blog/2007/09/on_the_texas_suit_against_virg.html 4. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#When_are_publicity_rights_relevant.3F 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Help-book made available in en Wikipedia against Licensing Policy
I don't think that either the Foundation or Mr. Broughton will be complaining. Drop it. From: Klaus Graf klausg...@googlemail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:59:15 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Help-book made available in en Wikipedia against Licensing Policy At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual/Title_Page_and_Licensing_Information we read: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Section being the Author and Publisher Information and no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License. This is clearly not compatible with the official policy at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights If you contribute material to Wikipedia, you thereby license it to the public under the GFDL (with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). On the same page there is a self-contradiction to these clear words: Under Wikipedia's current copyright conditions, and with the current facilities of the MediaWiki software, it is only possible to include in Wikipedia external GFDL materials that contain invariant sections or cover texts, if all of the following apply, You are the copyright holder of these external GFDL materials (or: you have the explicit, i.e. written, permission of the copyright holder to do what follows); The length and nature of these invariant sections and cover texts does not exceed what can be placed in an edit summary; You are satisfied that these invariant sections and cover texts are not listed elsewhere than in the page history of the page where these external materials are placed; You are satisfied that further copies of Wikipedia content are distributed under the standard GFDL application of with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts (in other words, for the copies derived from wikipedia, you agree that these parts of the text contributed by you will no longer be considered as invariant sections or cover texts in the GFDL sense); The original invariant sections and/or cover texts are contained in the edit summary of the edit with which you introduce the thus GFDLed materials in wikipedia (so, that if permanent deletion would be applied to that edit, both the thus GFDLed material and its invariant sections and cover texts are jointly deleted). Seen the stringent conditions above, it is very desirable to replace GFDL texts with invariant sections (or with cover texts) by original content without invariant sections (or cover texts) whenever possible. I cannot see that the quoted copyright notice fits these conditions. Klaus Graf ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture
While I advised that a similar matter be dropped earlier, this has some fundamental differences that I believe may have merit. Whereas the Missing Manual is uploaded by a known mutual agreement, these photos are not necessarily uploaded by mutual agreement. In theory, we are supposed to have permission, but this is not always the case. Selling prints of these photos might violate copyrights. It would be irresponsible of us to to implement a poster sale without laying down guidelines to prevent boo boos. That being said, I would be surprised if Wikimedia France doesn't have a procedure and method set up, especially when EU copright laws are considered. From: Sam Johnston s...@samj.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:12:34 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 3:08 AM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: 1. Upload high-resolution copyrighted image littered with trademarks as anonymous user. 2. Immediately order poster of said image. 3. File against WMF, its chapter(s) and the printer for good measure claiming [RI|MP]AA sized damages for copyright and trademark infringement, submitting said poster(s) and invoice(s) as evidence. 4. ??? 5. Profit! I find your scenario too conspiratorial to be believable. The first two steps are likely already done (actually step #2 is optional anyway if the file sharing lawsuits are any metric). All we need now is for a copyright/trademark holder (like Hanks Pediatric Eye Charts[1], concurrently listed for sale[2] and as a copyright violation for speedy deletion[3]) to get their nose out of joint and we're at #3 without any conspiring whatsoever. I'll put it another way for you: Can anyone guarantee that the French chapter are not offering copyrighted and/or trademarked material for sale, (indirectly) for profit? It's amazing that people are carrying on about relicensing work that authors intended to be free while turning a blind eye to commercial use of protected IP. Sam 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanks_Paediatric_Eye_Charts 2. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Paed07_C7.jpg 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Copyright_violations_for_speedy_deletion ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture
What he is pointing out is that the chapter set up the whole process, thus making them culpable. From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 12:14:45 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture Hoi, In your post the crucial bit is that a liability results as a consequence of an invoice from either the Wikimedia Foundation or from a WMF chapter. This will not happen because you buy a print from a printer. Our terms of service explicitly state that we do our utmost to ensure that our products are free to use but that we do not guarantee this. As to convincing me that there is a problem, first make plain what the problem is and when a little bit of analysis shows that you did not make it plain, you indeed have no chance in hell of convincing me. If you know anything at all of the WMF you would know the number of lawyers it employs. He is a busy man and I am sure that he knows when to keep his powder dry. Thanks, GerardM 2009/1/28 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net Gerard, I find your response (which fails to address the issues I have raised) abrasive bordering on offensive. I also note that this will not be the first time *today* that someone has requested that you tone it down. What is clear though is that we have a snowflake's chance in hell of convincing you there is a problem, so I'm going to add you to a large (and growing) list of trolls and ignore your 'contributions' from now on. Presumably WMF has lawyer(s) somewhere. What would be the process of getting them to take a look at this with a view to having the French chapter put into place the requisite disclaimers? Sam Lennart: Illegal content results in individuals being pursued, arrested and charged and snarky articles being written by old media, not outrageous (albeit largely unjustified) claims for damages (and leverage via commercial third parties): http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/01/statutory-damages-not-high-enough.ars On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote: Hoi, What WMF server allows anonymous uploads of images ? Do you know if this makes any difference any way ? Who do you think you get an invoice from? Not the WMF not its chapters. So please THINK Why bother us with such tripe that is irrelevant to the thread anyway ? Thanks, GerardM 2009/1/28 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: 2009/1/28 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: Material in the public domain or under a fully free licence does not require any kind of fair use consideration. I'm not talking about genuinely free material, I'm talking about protected (copyrighted/trademarked) material being uploaded by others - for example a periodic table of elements or medical charts which would normally be subject to deletion (except that they are currently immediately available for sale!). I'm a little confused - surely we would delete this stuff whether or not there's a buy a print now clickthrough button? I can't see anyone arguing to keep it because they want to run off a poster... (and to a degree this is rendered moot by that helpful lowest useful resolution requirement of the unfree material rules) 1. Upload high-resolution copyrighted image littered with trademarks as anonymous user. 2. Immediately order poster of said image. 3. File against WMF, its chapter(s) and the printer for good measure claiming [RI|MP]AA sized damages for copyright and trademark infringement, submitting said poster(s) and invoice(s) as evidence. 4. ??? 5. Profit! Note that these steps need not necessarily be completed by the same parties. I'm not sure that the courts would have much leeway here (as they might were the image not used commercially as was the case before this function was launched). Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
I think that in the future the office staff may need to look at preemptive press releases. That would have eliminated this thread quickly. From: David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 3:16:07 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF I wrote: To clarify, did Wikia match the lowest bid? Geoffrey Plourde replied: Mr. Levy; I respectfully believe that you are asking the wrong question. Rent is only a small part of cost. The whole cost should have been the arbiter in this matter, and I suspect it was from the posts by personnel. I'm certainly not implying that rent was the only valid consideration. I asked the question because there was confusion regarding this specific point (with many people under the incorrect impression that Wikia's bid tied the lowest). I personally agree with the decision to rent office space from Wikia, but I also agree that it's likely to come across as suspicious to many (and therefore warrants intense scrutiny). As others have noted, the mere appearance of impropriety (even where none exists) can be injurious to an organization's reputation. Thus far, I'm pleased with the forthright response from those involved in the decision. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
As a Board trustee, I don't believe that Jimmy would fall under the manager scheme. If this were the case, a Foundation could be barred from buying Apple computers from Apple, if Steve jobs were on their board. From: Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 12:53:51 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF Geoffrey Plourde said: Why should a taco stand use a dry cleaning shop when it can get another taco shop? Gregory Kohs responds: I might be able to give a better answer if you could tell us whether it is Taco Stand A or it is Taco Stand B in your analogy that is the non-profit charity, funded with tax-deductible dollars, whose donors probably fully expected that their money would NOT be used to pay rent to the other, decidedly *for-profit* taco stand. Geoffrey Plourde also said (twice) that he disagrees with my assertion of nepotism. Gregory Kohs responds: I have never said that this situation is nepotism, and in fact I corrected someone else that it was *not* nepotism. I am of the understanding that none of the members of the WMF Board or staff are related by blood or marriage to any of the owners or staff of Wikia, Inc. I did say (either here or elsewhere) that at one time 60% of the WMF Board were all employed by Wikia, Inc., but that's not a family thing, as far as I know. Let me just ask here... are any of the participants on this list expert in the legal statutes that surround the issue of self-dealing? For example, has anyone who has commented thus far actually read: 26 U.S.C.A. § 4941 (1969)? Self-dealing includes sale or exchange, or leasing, of property between a private foundation and a disqualified person; and a disqualified person may be a foundation manager or an owner of more than 20 percent of either (i) the total combined voting power of a corporation, or (ii) the profits interest of a partnership. I don't know whether Jimmy Wales retains 20% of the voting power or profits interest of Wikia, Inc., and I am not asking that, but he could certainly be considered a foundation manager, no? Please, in your rush to judgment about the character of my attacks here, take some time to actually explore and learn about United States law. The Foundation could be in serious trouble here, and you're spending an awful lot of energy railing against the messenger. Greg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
Mr Kohs; Some of your points have merit as there are many areas in which we can and should improve. However, I must respectfully note that your comments here serve only to divide a already fractured community even further. As a Californian, I disagree with your assertions of nepotism and favoritism most vehemently. Since you live in Pennsylvania, you may not be aware of this but rents in California tend to be fairly exorbitant. San Francisco is no exception. Office space has always been at a premium. When looking at bids, I assume that our hard working staff took many factors into consideration, as price is one out of many important items. One major factor would be the working dynamic and utilization. Wikia and Wikimedia, although different types of corporations, utilize the same software for similar purposes. This means that the Wikia office space would be usable by Foundation staff, as it would already be designed for those working with wikis. With another landlord, the Foundation might need to reconfigure the space, which costs time and money. Also, Wikia staff would be competent enough to assist with problems and capable of making changes. Another landlord might be difficult to reach or unable to work with staff to alleviate problems. Also they might not be able to understand what staff would need and be difficult to work with. The real cost is never just the sticker price, its all the hidden surprises. Renting from a similar organization eliminates these hidden surprises and makes for a smooth transition. You also make the assertion of nepotism and impropriety. I fail to see why this is improper. Big whoop, Jimbo owns Wikia. Everybody knows it and it has never been hidden. He isn't going to profit from a simple subletting deal. Wikia has bills too and I assume has to pay rent. This makes the transfer of money moot, as money goes into private coffers all the time to keep nonprofits going. There is nothing wrong with this agreement, and it in no way means that Wikia and Wikimedia are joined. My final point is that you have made these allegations without access to Board and staff documents. You therefore do not have the whole picture and have no standing to criticize those who do. This attempt to create division has no place and distracts us from the Foundation's goal. Sincerely; Geoffrey Plourde From: Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 11:37:37 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF I was very surprised to read on the Wikimedia blog a post from Naoko Komura, the WMF program manager heading up the Wikipedia Usability Initiative, funded by the Stanton Foundation. Post: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/01/21/a-note-on-the-wikipedia-usability-initiative/ To quote Komura, On the space front, we had outgrown our current space in the South of Market area of San Francisco, and we were in search of space specifically for this project. I am happy to announce that Wikia has agreed to sublease two of their conference rooms to the Wikimedia Foundation for the project duration (Jan'09-Mar'10). Daniel [Phelps] collected a dozen bids for the space in SOMA, and Wikia matched the best offer. I submitted a comment to the blog, but over seven hours later, it is still not published, and there is a history of my questions to that blog being ignored or censored. So, I'm going to ask here, and I'll also advise the list moderators that this message is being copied to members of the press. Could we have more detail, please, on the note that Wikia matched the best offer? Were the other ten higher bidders also given the opportunity to match the best offer? Why was Wikia chosen on a second and adjusted offer basis, rather than choosing the good-faith firm that submitted the lowest offer initially? Was the first low bidder given the chance to further discount their rate? If so, what was their response? If not, why not? I have to agree with Steven Walling's comment on the blog. He said, I find the idea of the Foundation working that closely with Wikia, literally and figuratively, discomforting. We already have enough people confused about the difference between the two organizations, and to be honest, this feels like nepotism. Actually, it's not nepotism. And, there are no uniform laws regarding nepotism. It's potentially worse. Self-dealing, which is what this really smacks of, is covered in case law, judicial opinions, and some statutes. I have been assured in countless places that Wikia and the Wikimedia Foundation are complete separate organizations and that there were no business relationships between the members of a past WMF Board that was 60% comprised of Wikia employees/owners. Considering the past Wikia/Wikipedia fiasco of Ryan Essjay Jordan, I would have thought the WMF would be hyper-sensitive to working in concert yet again with their neighbor
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
Wikia is a way to utilize MediaWiki for profit. The United States is a capitalist society, and this should be encouraged. Also Wikia hosts many fansites and I don't hear them complaining about people playing ball. From: Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 11:53:59 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF I'm glad someone is concerned about this issue. Wikia has always smacked of they wouldn't let us show ads on Wikipedia, so here is the for-profit branch of Wikipedia with ads. There are potential conflicts of interest at nearly every level of the Wikia/Wikipedia relationship. On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: I was very surprised to read on the Wikimedia blog a post from Naoko Komura, the WMF program manager heading up the Wikipedia Usability Initiative, funded by the Stanton Foundation. Post: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/01/21/a-note-on-the-wikipedia-usability-initiative/ To quote Komura, On the space front, we had outgrown our current space in the South of Market area of San Francisco, and we were in search of space specifically for this project. I am happy to announce that Wikia has agreed to sublease two of their conference rooms to the Wikimedia Foundation for the project duration (Jan'09-Mar'10). Daniel [Phelps] collected a dozen bids for the space in SOMA, and Wikia matched the best offer. I submitted a comment to the blog, but over seven hours later, it is still not published, and there is a history of my questions to that blog being ignored or censored. So, I'm going to ask here, and I'll also advise the list moderators that this message is being copied to members of the press. Could we have more detail, please, on the note that Wikia matched the best offer? Were the other ten higher bidders also given the opportunity to match the best offer? Why was Wikia chosen on a second and adjusted offer basis, rather than choosing the good-faith firm that submitted the lowest offer initially? Was the first low bidder given the chance to further discount their rate? If so, what was their response? If not, why not? I have to agree with Steven Walling's comment on the blog. He said, I find the idea of the Foundation working that closely with Wikia, literally and figuratively, discomforting. We already have enough people confused about the difference between the two organizations, and to be honest, this feels like nepotism. Actually, it's not nepotism. And, there are no uniform laws regarding nepotism. It's potentially worse. Self-dealing, which is what this really smacks of, is covered in case law, judicial opinions, and some statutes. I have been assured in countless places that Wikia and the Wikimedia Foundation are complete separate organizations and that there were no business relationships between the members of a past WMF Board that was 60% comprised of Wikia employees/owners. Considering the past Wikia/Wikipedia fiasco of Ryan Essjay Jordan, I would have thought the WMF would be hyper-sensitive to working in concert yet again with their neighbor down the street. In summary: We know Wikia was recently laying off workers in the economic downturn. Presumably, Wikia now has excess office space per employee. WMF gets a grant, presumably funded by tax-deductible dollars. Expending that grant on office space is served up to an ostensibly open and fair competitive search among 12 candidate landlords. A lowest bid is received. However, a bidder who happens to have strong personnel ties to the Board of WMF and the Advisory Board of WMF, is given the opportunity to match the lowest bid, which they do, since they have empty office space doing them no good empty. Net result: Tax-advantaged dollars will be transferred to a for-profit corporation with an inside track to the decision-making body of the non-profit organization. It strikes me as fishy, to use a gentle word. -- Gregory Kohs Cell: 302.463.1354 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
Mr Kohs; You are beating on a dead horse. Mr. Vibber has brought forth a list of perfectly valid reasons why this space was taken. LET ME REITERATE THE COST OF REWIRING/RECONFIGURING SPACE IN CALIFORNIA. Why should a taco stand use a dry cleaning shop when it can get another taco shop? From: Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 12:31:33 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF Wikia has been doing intensive work on the usability front and making the code available to public, so I look forward to collaborating with the Wikia technical and product teams to exchange ideas and learn from their work. There is a certain amount of logic in working with one of the biggest non-WMF MediaWiki users on this project. Bingo. -- brion It would appear that nobody is concerned about giving the landlord a leg up on ITS for-profit competitors by supplying them in particular with a ready feed of intellectual capital in the form of the friendly Stanton-funded developers? Lucky for Wikia, Inc.! I mean, assume good faith all you want, but if I were a biotech firm trying to develop a synthetic blood plasma, boy would I love to have the Red Cross' top research scientists parked in my meeting rooms every day. And PAYING me for the privilege, to boot? That's just gravy. It sounds to me that the (reasonable) criteria that ranked proximity to WMF and cognate activities as high as, or higher than, monthly rental rate rather wired this contract to Wikia, Inc. from the get-go. Kudos for putting on the dutiful show of obtaining 12 separate bids, but the outside world is seeing this for what it is -- a show of equanimity to gloss over a pre-determined outcome. As for Master Bimmler's concerns about the fear imposed by mention of the media watching, it's only natural for someone who has recently and historically been censored for asking pertinent questions, to want some sort of back up to assure him he is not living in a digital version of a Kafkaesque nightmare. If your team would stop censoring WP:BADTHOUGHTS, maybe there wouldn't be such a rush to the media? Gregory Kohs ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
Mr. Levy; I respectfully believe that you are asking the wrong question. Rent is only a small part of cost. The whole cost should have been the arbiter in this matter, and I suspect it was from the posts by personnel. From: David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 1:05:22 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF Erik Moeller wrote: [snip] * We've suggested to Wikia a fair market rate based on the average of the other options we obtained; * After some negotiation, Wikia accepted. Weighing other pros and cons of the space against other options, we decided to go with Wikia; To clarify, did Wikia match the lowest bid? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
Beating on a dead horse is not a valid point. From: George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 1:47:54 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Anders Wegge Keller we...@wegge.dk wrote: Delirium delir...@hackish.org writes: There's a reason organizations that depend on public goodwill try to avoid even the appearance of impropriety in this sort of respect, and auditors usually suggest avoiding those sorts of entanglements. Could you please keep the amount of crackpotish kookery at a minimum at this list? I'm somewhat confused - Delirium's comment here is reasonable, accurate, and a legitimate concern, as opposed to some of the rest of the thread. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
It is extraordinarily difficult to found a US chapter, because we are in essence a federation of 50 little nations. Every state has their own unique characteristics and their own unique laws. Also, we do not have interest for a national chapter. By empowering these state/city chapters, we provide the willing with an outreach organization while leaving it open for other regions. From: Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 7:44:55 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters) Thanks again for your explanations (I don't want to open a new mail for every bit). Some points: * Of the organizations Lars mentioned, only ISOC has chapters. I still find it not clear about whether the national organizations are independent or merely national agencies of the center (as it is the case with Greenpeace). * In this discussion, it is irrelevant how many people live in a sub national area, or how large the country is (there are chapters in small and in large countries already). * It is also irrelevant whether individuals choose to be member in a chapter that does not belong to the nation state they live in, like nationals of France living abroad (as Florence has explained well), or Belgians who go to the Dutch chapter as long as they don't have own of their own. * It is irrelevant whether the New Yorkers do a good job (I never doubted that). The Wikimedians of Cologne do a good job aswell, but they are no chapter. * If the Wikimedians in the USA did not manage to create a national chapter, it is not my fault. Why can't there be a Wikimedia US? I don't know the reason: Large and ethnically diverse countries have WM chapters, other movements have US chapters... * Hongkong and Taiwan are special cases; not nations or countries different to PR China, but different states or systems. * Sub national chapters in the US states make WMF the default Wikimedia US, dealing with American institutions and personalities in a way usually a chapter would. American Wikimedians have no reason to take effort for a WMUS if they see this and that they can have US states chapters. * The world is divided into countries, like it or not, and this has consequences for us. Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
The CC wrote this license and are likely to be considered authorities if there was ever a court case. If their lawyer says this is acceptable, its probably acceptable. From: geni geni...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 6:57:25 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal 2009/1/21 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i) and 4(c)(iii). 4(c)(iii) is irrelevant. The foundation not the licensor and the URL is on top of other attribution and copyright stuff. The only way attribution methods can be controlled through CC-BY-SA-3.0 is through 4(c)(i). Again lets go through that section you have two things you can attribute to: the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied However since you reject that we have to move onto the second half: if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution (Attribution Parties) in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties; So yes you can mess with the attribution requirements using that part of the clause but trying to define say http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canalaction=history; as an Attribution Party is somewhat unreasonable in the context of the paragraph and in the general legal use of the term party. Remember even if you do think you can somehow squeeze this though it still causes issues with wikipedia's habit of deleting things from time to time and prevent the import of CC-BY-SA 3.0 text from third parties. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
Thats why i said state/city. Even within states, business licenses have to be procured for each city/county From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 8:36:24 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters) 2009/1/21 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com: It is extraordinarily difficult to found a US chapter, because we are in essence a federation of 50 little nations. Every state has their own unique characteristics and their own unique laws. Also, we do not have interest for a national chapter. By empowering these state/city chapters, we provide the willing with an outreach organization while leaving it open for other regions. If the US sub-national chapters were clearly done along state lines, that argument would work, but that doesn't seem to be the case. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
How about we just close this thread. We do not need to rehash the debate, it is a dead horse. From: Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 9:59:39 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters) Florence and Gerard, Could you perhaps not insist on using the non-existent term sub-chapters? If we're going to rehash the ages old discussion on US chapters and what does a chapter do and Why does the US need this and other such dead horses, it'd be nice if we all used the proper terminology. Thanks. -Dan On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Cary Bass c...@wikimedia.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Florence Devouard wrote: Michael Snow wrote: Florence Devouard wrote: For example, on meta, Wikimedia NYC is listed as chapters, not subchapters. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City. And the name does not clarify the difference either (it could have been mandatory that names used be of the type Wikimedia + Country + blabla). It is a chapter. ... http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Approval_of_Wikimedia_New_York_City So... the resolution stating that The Board of Trustees officially recognizes Wikimedia NYC as a Sub-National Chapter should actually be read as The Board of Trustees officially recognizes Wikimedia NYC as a Chapter ? J I fail to see the distinction. A sub-national chapter and a national chapter are both still full chapters; as opposed to something which would be considered a sub-chapter--which would be completely different. I don't see how the Board has to rephrase anything. Cary -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFJdg2/yQg4JSymDYkRAlxGAKCQLW6F4DF3Bauer217fExL8y+mrgCgriCo THpeVBxX/ZUhlIfaAZYjX/c= =9WQb -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Dan Rosenthal ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Domains
domain: WIKIPEDIA.RU type: CORPORATE nserver:ns1.sedoparking.com. nserver:ns2.sedoparking.com. state: REGISTERED, DELEGATED org:MADVOL Ltd. phone: +7 095 1234567 e-mail: mad...@gmail.com registrar: RUCENTER-REG-RIPN created:2004.12.15 paid-till: 2009.12.15 source: TC-RIPN From: Jon scr...@datascreamer.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 11:16:18 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Domains -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Marcus Buck wrote: On November 4 2003 Jimbo Wales announced, that 200 EUR were donated to register European domain names (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-November/012981.html). Did this ever happen? I wonder, cause as far as I know, many domains are still not registered by people affiliated with Wikimedia (.ru, .es, .co.uk, .it [.it at least redirects to Wikipedia]). If the 200 EUR were spent for domains: Which ones? If they were not: we should make up that and spend the earmarked donation (plus additional money if needed) to obtain those domains (and ideally all wikipedia.xx domains). Marcus Buck ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l You should be able to do the WHOIS check. Will you do that and report back to us what *you* find? We can go from there. Jon -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAklyLncACgkQ6+ro8Pm1AtU/MgCgsMpGS+WTIuW5syiEIdrqwvui TY4An0pZi9ugA/2sHgRv+gWjHN173Pzc =ngSn -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Domains
Its probably an oversight with regards to Bomis I suspect Mr/Ms brooking is a wikipedian, if not its a simple changeover process. From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 12:15:52 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Domains 2009/1/17 Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org: On November 4 2003 Jimbo Wales announced, that 200 EUR were donated to register European domain names (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-November/012981.html). Did this ever happen? I wonder, cause as far as I know, many domains are still not registered by people affiliated with Wikimedia (.ru, .es, .co.uk, .it [.it at least redirects to Wikipedia]). If the 200 EUR were spent for domains: Which ones? If they were not: we should make up that and spend the earmarked donation (plus additional money if needed) to obtain those domains (and ideally all wikipedia.xx domains). wikipedia.co.uk is apparently owned by Bomis, which seems a little strange - wasn't everything transferred over to WMF? wikimedia.co.uk is owned by James Forrester, a Wikimedian wikipedia.org.uk is owned by Chris Brooking, a name I don't recognise (and the domain appears to be dead) wikimedia.org.uk is owned by James Forrester (and may be transferred to Wikimedia UK - I believe we're waiting for a response for James on that one) The .net.uk names are apparently both registered, but have no site attached to them and no name given. I haven't checked other European domains, or the domains for other projects, but it seems we aren't doing too badly in the UK. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Domains
It appears that Madvol, Ltd is a scam company that registers domain names for extortion. They have been used to register 3251 names. The email is identified with 120something domains. From: Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 12:13:56 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Domains domain:WIKIPEDIA.RU type: CORPORATE nserver:ns1.sedoparking.com. nserver:ns2.sedoparking.com. state: REGISTERED, DELEGATED org:MADVOL Ltd. phone: +7 095 1234567 e-mail:mad...@gmail.com registrar: RUCENTER-REG-RIPN created:2004.12.15 paid-till: 2009.12.15 source: TC-RIPN From: Jon scr...@datascreamer.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 11:16:18 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Domains -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Marcus Buck wrote: On November 4 2003 Jimbo Wales announced, that 200 EUR were donated to register European domain names (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-November/012981.html). Did this ever happen? I wonder, cause as far as I know, many domains are still not registered by people affiliated with Wikimedia (.ru, .es, .co.uk, .it [.it at least redirects to Wikipedia]). If the 200 EUR were spent for domains: Which ones? If they were not: we should make up that and spend the earmarked donation (plus additional money if needed) to obtain those domains (and ideally all wikipedia.xx domains). Marcus Buck ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l You should be able to do the WHOIS check. Will you do that and report back to us what *you* find? We can go from there. Jon -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAklyLncACgkQ6+ro8Pm1AtU/MgCgsMpGS+WTIuW5syiEIdrqwvui TY4An0pZi9ugA/2sHgRv+gWjHN173Pzc =ngSn -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename
Cetateanu; Brion and his staff are extremely busy individuals. Also, renaming a wiki takes quite a bit of time and if not done at the correct pace would be messy. I am sure he will handle the rename as soon as he can, but patience is key. Peace; Geoffrey Plourde From: Cetateanu Moldovanu cetatean...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org; br...@wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 7:44:47 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote: - The language is called Moldovan, but Moldovan is also spoken in Transnistria - In Transnistria they write Cyrillic perfect, then http://mo-cyrl.wikipedia.org/ is for them - In Transnistria the Moldovan constitution is not recognised Since when a country recognize a constition of another country ? If sir Brion Vibber could tell us what's the ETA of the renaming things, that would be wonderful. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename
Well if we want to decrease the backlog, we could suggest that people put up money for desired extensions I know its come up before and been rejecte, but it might attract people to develop stuff. From: Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 8:45:31 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename Geoffrey Plourde hett schreven: I am sure he will handle the rename as soon as he can, but patience is key. cough, please be patient! It's only been three years since mo.wikipedia was closed. The case will be handled as soon as one of our service team members becomes available. Marcus Buck We got 6 million bucks, ain't we? Perhaps we should extend our tech staff a little bit. (Looking at the Bugzilla backlog, looking at the many features we are waiting for since years [global preferences for example], etc.) I don't suggest that Brion and the tech staff do a bad job. I'm sure they are doing their best. But obviously they need more help. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename
I agree with you entirely. I believe that a decent portion of the backlog results from the fact that for its size, the Foundation has too few developers. One way to use funds would be to look into developing a Wikiversity course to train developers, to provide more volunteers to take the load off. By implementing a reward system for vanity extensions, it would make sure that people understand that there is a cost to make them, decrease such requests, and provide incentive to be a developer. From: Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 10:45:24 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename Geoffrey Plourde hett schreven: Well if we want to decrease the backlog, we could suggest that people put up money for desired extensions I know its come up before and been rejecte, but it might attract people to develop stuff. I'd support that. Absolutely. But on the other side I still think, that the tech department of the Foundation is understaffed. At the moment solutions already existing are often not implemented cause of backlogging. I requested an extension be activated on my home wiki in May and its still NEW on bugzilla and unresolved. And there was almost no support for the Interlanguage extension, although it would fundamentally improve the interwiki process. We would do much better, if the tech people had more time to care about things. Marcus Buck ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename
Well what I proposed encouraged people to prioritize. For example, if 100 people donate 5 dollars each for semantic mediawiki, it might encourage an outside developer to work on it, freeing up staff and saving money. From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 10:47:20 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename Hoi, If we want to decrease the backlog, we should not invest in more extensions. We should invest in capacity to assess the extensions that are waiting. We should invest in capacity to triage our problems, we should invest in fixing the problems that we know off. We have asked the public to help us, they gave us the 6 million dollar we asked for. We asked the Stanton Foundation and they gave us 890.000 dollar to improve the usability of the English language Wikipedia. There is software like Semantic MediaWiki, software to localise the Commons categories to name but two that are not considered at all because of a lack of capacity to assess what is out there. If anything we need developers that take care of THAT backlog. If anything we need senior developers who will assist in making the software mature enough so that it can be used on our production servers. When you consider that the Tool server tools are not localised, and when you realise that as a consequence these tools have only a limited use you will agree with me that we first of all need to strengthen the fundamentals before we put another floor on the existing building. Thanks, GerardM 2009/1/16 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com Well if we want to decrease the backlog, we could suggest that people put up money for desired extensions I know its come up before and been rejecte, but it might attract people to develop stuff. From: Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 8:45:31 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename Geoffrey Plourde hett schreven: I am sure he will handle the rename as soon as he can, but patience is key. cough, please be patient! It's only been three years since mo.wikipedia was closed. The case will be handled as soon as one of our service team members becomes available. Marcus Buck We got 6 million bucks, ain't we? Perhaps we should extend our tech staff a little bit. (Looking at the Bugzilla backlog, looking at the many features we are waiting for since years [global preferences for example], etc.) I don't suggest that Brion and the tech staff do a bad job. I'm sure they are doing their best. But obviously they need more help. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename
Maybe 500 was a bad example, but I meant that by having people offer rewards for extensions, we can have them developed/evaluated faster. From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 11:07:00 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename Hoi, You have no clue how much money has already been invested in Semantic MediaWiki. This is not where the problem is. The problem is in having capacity to evaluate what is there. The capacity to evaluate and integrate functionality is key. It is for this reason that I am so happy that a tool is being developed for the testing of extensions. This is intended to automate some of the work and thereby make it easier to adopt extensions. A scheme that I have been thinking of is: get us 50K$, split it between WMF and SMW, have the WMF evaluate and assess code with SMW as its priority and have SMW fix the issues that come up from the evaluation. NB Five hundred dollars does not cut it. A *really *good commercial programmer may bill you for this amount for a days work. Thanks, GerardM 2009/1/16 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com Well what I proposed encouraged people to prioritize. For example, if 100 people donate 5 dollars each for semantic mediawiki, it might encourage an outside developer to work on it, freeing up staff and saving money. From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 10:47:20 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename Hoi, If we want to decrease the backlog, we should not invest in more extensions. We should invest in capacity to assess the extensions that are waiting. We should invest in capacity to triage our problems, we should invest in fixing the problems that we know off. We have asked the public to help us, they gave us the 6 million dollar we asked for. We asked the Stanton Foundation and they gave us 890.000 dollar to improve the usability of the English language Wikipedia. There is software like Semantic MediaWiki, software to localise the Commons categories to name but two that are not considered at all because of a lack of capacity to assess what is out there. If anything we need developers that take care of THAT backlog. If anything we need senior developers who will assist in making the software mature enough so that it can be used on our production servers. When you consider that the Tool server tools are not localised, and when you realise that as a consequence these tools have only a limited use you will agree with me that we first of all need to strengthen the fundamentals before we put another floor on the existing building. Thanks, GerardM 2009/1/16 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com Well if we want to decrease the backlog, we could suggest that people put up money for desired extensions I know its come up before and been rejecte, but it might attract people to develop stuff. From: Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 8:45:31 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename Geoffrey Plourde hett schreven: I am sure he will handle the rename as soon as he can, but patience is key. cough, please be patient! It's only been three years since mo.wikipedia was closed. The case will be handled as soon as one of our service team members becomes available. Marcus Buck We got 6 million bucks, ain't we? Perhaps we should extend our tech staff a little bit. (Looking at the Bugzilla backlog, looking at the many features we are waiting for since years [global preferences for example], etc.) I don't suggest that Brion and the tech staff do a bad job. I'm sure they are doing their best. But obviously they need more help. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https
Re: [Foundation-l] New project proposal: Soviet Repressions Memorial
Well where will it stop? If we have a project, we should have a memorial project for all disasters. I echo Mr. Bimmler in his concerns about the motives behind this proposal. From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 2:12:25 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New project proposal: Soviet Repressions Memorial 2008/12/24 Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com: A project which is motivated in such a way cannot possibly be anything else than biased...and indeed, the very concept of memorials is biased: Why should we have a memorial of the victims of Soviet Repression, when we don't have a memorial of Nazi victims, victims of the Armenian Genocide, victim of the Rwandan Genocide, victims of various repression regimes in South-East Asia and China, victims in Darfur, Chad, the Central African Republic etc. etc. No one can sensibly suggest that we can have memorial sites for every repression (in lack of a better word) in history and thus, we had better none, in my opinion. (Yes, in other cases I argued and would argue that it is better to have something than nothing, but in this case, I'm afraid I am not convinced of the merits of the proposal at all and of the propriety of the motives behind it) Yes. However, it could be a valuable wiki to create privately. Generic hosting is (a) really cheap (b) often includes MediaWiki out the box. The wiki is unlikely to be vastly overloaded, so cheap hosting would do for a start. See http://www.sep11memories.org/wiki/In_Memoriam for a memorial project for victims of the World Trade Center attack, for example. Although started with a strong POV, such a project could nevertheless accumulate material of high quality historical and scholarly interest. - d. I support this project, and don't think it should get pushed off into some obscure corner of the internet. We should host it. We should host it because we stand against totalitarian repression; and reject the position that some knowledge, knowledge of the consequences of totalitarian repression, is to be repressed and not readily available. Fred Bauder ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
