Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process
Hi, Le 5 avril 2012 05:04, Jürgen Fenn schneeschme...@googlemail.com a écrit : Am 3. April 2012 22:22 schrieb Samuel Klein sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu: Ziko: what would a WMF evaluation of Wikinews or Wikispecies say? Should we shut down such a project... cease to mention it on Wikipedia main pages... or invest money in promoting it? Good questions, subtle answers. Those are not the only options; we might help them merge with a similar project. For instance, wikieducator and wikiversity have almost identical missions, and might benefit from being merged; the question of 'who hosts the site' is relatively minor compared to the loss of splitting energy and focus across two wikis. I would like to add another option: Who not merge all projects into Wikipedia proper? The lack in participation in the sister projects is largely due to the fact that hardly anyone knows about them. Wikipedia is the only Wikimedia brand people know of. There is nothing you can do about it. If the sister projects were living in their own namespaces within Wikipedia this would be different. We would have, say, a Wikipedia dictionary. They would become part of Wikipedia and, hence, partaking in Wikipedia's popularity. Putting money in sister projects just means wasting funds. The future lies in integrating them into Wikipedia. Five years of experience is enough to tell. I beg to disagree on all this. Yes, people do not know about the sister projects, but you can do a lot about that. First, start by promoting them, instead of only promoting Wikipedia. There are very good reasons why these projects are separate: different scopes, different rules, etc. Merging them at this point would be the worst idea: they would sink in the sea of controversy. No, the future does not lie in making one for binding them all in the darkness. ;o) The future lies in diversity. Five years of indifference do not prove anything. Regards, Jürgen. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Canadian consultation on Trans Pacific
Hello, 2012/1/9 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com: On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 5:22 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 January 2012 18:19, James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the clarification. Yes we at Wikmedia Canada we had discussed starting a Wikisource north of the border due to the benefits of our copyright law. Any progress since https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Canada/Wikisource_Canada ? I will send this out to some of our members to see if anyone is interested in taking it on. http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Main_Page To elaborate on what David has pointed out, .. Yann *wants* to give wikilivres to WMCA, and Eclecticology (Ray Saintonge) has the 'wikisource.ca' domain already. Yes, and time is running short. I can't pay for the maintenance of Wikilivres any longer. -- John Vandenberg Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Public domain Mickey Mouse. At last.
2011/11/2 Dominic McDevitt-Parks mcdev...@gmail.com: On 2 November 2011 00:40, Yann Forget yan...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, Indeed, you are right. This is a great addition to Commons. I am going through it now, and I have questions. In some cases, I found that there are better quality images than the ones we have. Where do they come from? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joan_Baez_Bob_Dylan.jpg This version is of higher resolution than the original TIFF http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Civil_Rights_March_on_Washington,_D.C._(Entertainment-_closeup_view_of_vocalists_Joan_Baez_and_Bob_Dylan.),_08-28-1963.tif http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washakie.jpg This version is of much better quality, but lower resolution, than the original TIFF http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washakie_(Shoots-the-Buffalo-Running),_a_Shoshoni_chief,_half-length,_seated,_holding_pipe_-_NARA_-_530875.tif It seems that the TIFF is not directly available, or I am dumb http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=530875 Yes, in fact, in *all* cases the TIFFs being uploaded are better quality than the ones we have. :-) No. I just showed 2 examples of the opposite. As the Wikipedian in Residence, I have obtained the actual master files, which were never before made available to the public or on the online catalog. These are the files I am uploading, making Commons the only place you can find this NARA high-res content anywhere. I am also uploading a JPG version to go along with each TIFF. One consequence is that we'll need some help resolving the duplicates that this is generating, since there are thousands of the old scaled-down images on Commons and used in articles, but we can't replace them with superior quality versions until someone has gone through and made the matching edits (cropping, color correction, etc.) to the new ones that were made to the old ones. Most images need a restoration. But we can do that now that we have high resolution TIFF. Obviously it will take years to do all this. In cases of art work, we have black and white images, where the original was in color. Would it be possible to have a color version? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Pilate_Washing_Hands_and_Feet%22,_1964_-_NARA_-_558811.tif That is the way that series was scanned. It is unknown why (these are from the '90s), but it should be noted that these are merely scans of prints of the original artworks, in any case. This set is also a special case, where they were donated to the institution; while NARA has a lot of graphic works (like the war posters), most of it is not purely artistic in origin, since they are US federal records. OK. Dominic Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Public domain Mickey Mouse. At last.
Hello, 2011/10/24 Dominic McDevitt-Parks mcdev...@gmail.com: Hi all, Since it hasn't really been mentioned, I just wanted to point out that this image, never before available to the public in high resolution, was uploaded to Commons as a result of our ongoing cooperative efforts with the US National Archives (i.e., my residency). Its copyright status was listed as unrestricted in the National Archives' online catalog, where the scaled-down image has been displayed for several years without (apparently) any incident. Of course, these copyright statuses can often use a second look, and I am happy for it to get the extra scrutiny at Commons, especially one as complex as this. I don't have any extra insight to offer copyright-wise, and am interested to see the community's decision. However, I would also like to take the opportunity to talk about the broader effort here, which I think is more important than one image of Mickey Mouse from a war poster, as symbolic as that is. Beginning in July, I began an effort, in collaboration with NARA staff, to quite literally upload the entire National Archives library of digital content in high resolution. The National Archives—with billions of pages of records, tens of millions of photographs, and hundreds of thousands more sound recordings, videos, and artifacts—has hundreds of thousands of digital images in their catalog, nearly all of which is in the public domain. The 60,000 uploaded so far[1] include thousands more posters like the Mickey one from the WWII and WWI era; historically significant photography from Mathew Brady, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and other notable photographers; photos of Native Americans, of the Depression, of the national parks and the environment, of the Civil Rights Movement, of presidents and their activities, and of every US war from the Civil War to Vietnam, including incredible manufacturing and Japanese internment scenes from the home front in WWII; ultra high-res TIFFs (~150 MB) of the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents; other textual documents, including historical maps, laws, court records, census cards, and the letters of diverse personalities, from Susan B. Anthony to Albert Einstein to Winston Churchill to Elvis Presley; and even other oddities like an ancient Roman bust, a Remington statue, ancient Chinese terracotta soldiers, a Diego Rivera painting, bullets and other evidence from the JFK assassination, a First Lady's evening gown, and a ceremonial Beninese wooden headdress(!). This is a huge task, and it requires a community effort to help categorize images, to use them in Wikipedia articles, to transcribe them on Wikisource, and just generally show them some love. If finding Mickey Mouse in the National Archives means anything, hopefully it's that this is a diverse and significant, and sometimes surprising, collection that deserves more care and attention—especially since many cultural institutions, domestically and internationally, are following the project with interest. For more information, check out the partnerships page on Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:National_Archives_and_Records_Administration, and its sister WikiProjects on Wikipedia and Wikisource, linked in the tab header. Indeed, you are right. This is a great addition to Commons. I am going through it now, and I have questions. In some cases, I found that there are better quality images than the ones we have. Where do they come from? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joan_Baez_Bob_Dylan.jpg This version is of higher resolution than the original TIFF http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Civil_Rights_March_on_Washington,_D.C._(Entertainment-_closeup_view_of_vocalists_Joan_Baez_and_Bob_Dylan.),_08-28-1963.tif http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washakie.jpg This version is of much better quality, but lower resolution, than the original TIFF http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washakie_(Shoots-the-Buffalo-Running),_a_Shoshoni_chief,_half-length,_seated,_holding_pipe_-_NARA_-_530875.tif It seems that the TIFF is not directly available, or I am dumb http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=530875 In cases of art work, we have black and white images, where the original was in color. Would it be possible to have a color version? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Pilate_Washing_Hands_and_Feet%22,_1964_-_NARA_-_558811.tif Yes, always wanting more. ;o) Dominic [1] See the upload feed at http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFilesuser=US+National+Archives+bot Thanks for helping this getting to Commons. Best regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content
Hello, To me, this shows that the search engine is badly configured, or has a major problem. So fix it instead of creating a filter, which would have unwanted side effects. Having a good search engine would be within the WMF mission, creating a filter is not. Regards, Yann 2011/10/12 Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com: From: Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com Someone on Meta has pointed out that Commons seems to list sexual image results for search terms like cucumber, electric toothbrushes or pearl necklace way higher than a corresponding Google search. See http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-October/006290.html Andreas This might just be coincidence for special cases. I'm sure if you search long enough you will find opposite examples as well. Tobias, If you can find counterexamples, I'll gladly look at them. These were the only three we checked this afternoon, and the difference was striking. Here is another search, underwater: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearchsearch=underwaterfulltext=Search The third search result in Commons is a bondage image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Underwater_bondage.jpg On Google, with safe search off, the same image is the 58th result: http://www.google.co.uk/search?gcx=wq=underwater+site:commons.wikimedia.orgum=1ie=UTF-8hl=entbm=ischsource=ogsa=Ntab=wibiw=1095bih=638 But wouldn't it run against the intention of a search engine to rate down content by possibly offensive? If you search for a cucumber you should expect to find one. If the description is correct, you should find the most suitable images first. But that should be based on the rating algorithm that works on the description, not on the fact that content is/might be/could be controversial. Implementing such a restriction for a search engine (by default) would go against any principal and would be discrimination of content. We should not do this. You are not being realistic. If someone searches for cucumber, toothbrush or necklace on Commons, they will not generally be looking for sexual images, and it is no use saying, Well, you looked for a cucumber, and here you have one. Stuck up a woman's vagina. Similarly, users entering jumping ball in the search field are unlikely to be looking for this image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jumping_ball_01.jpg Yet that is the first one the Commons search for jumping ball displays: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearchsearch=jumping+ballfulltext=Search We are offering an image service, and the principle of least astonishment should apply. By having these images come at the top of our search results, we are alienating at least part of our readers who were simply looking for an image of a toothbrush, cucumber, or whatever. On the other hand, if these images don't show up among our top results, we are not alienating users who look for images of the penetrative use of cucumbers or toothbrushes, because they can easily narrow their search if that is the image they're after. Are you really saying that this is how Commons should work, bringing up sexual images for the most innocuous searches, and that this is how you would design the user experience for Commons users? Andreas ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter
2011/9/18 Oliver Koslowski o@t-online.de: Am 18.09.2011 13:56, schrieb Andre Engels: On itself the one who tags the image, but we happen to have a system for that in Wikimedia. It is called discussion and trying to reach consent. Who decides whether a page is in a category? Who decides whether a page has an image? Who decides whether something is decribed on a page? All the same. Our typical system of categories is designed to make it easier to /find/ (related) articles or media. Good luck trying that with a system that is designed to /hide/ things. And this doesn't seem like an awful waste of precious time to you? For a feature that is not all that likely to be popular on a global scale? +1 At the beginning, I was quite neutral about a filter: I had no idea how it would work, and I wouldn't use it, but what if somebody else wants it? But after reading nearly all comments on this list, I think that the arguments for a filter do not hold water. The pratical implemention would be a nightmare, and the purpose not really within Wikimedia mission. The thread above on how to create categories for a filter is full of irrational assumptions, impracticable propositions, and impossible solutions. It seems it is time to drop the whole idea... Regards, Oliver Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter
2011/9/18 Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com: On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 3:02 PM, Oliver Koslowski o@t-online.de wrote: Am 18.09.2011 13:56, schrieb Andre Engels: On itself the one who tags the image, but we happen to have a system for that in Wikimedia. It is called discussion and trying to reach consent. Who decides whether a page is in a category? Who decides whether a page has an image? Who decides whether something is decribed on a page? All the same. Our typical system of categories is designed to make it easier to /find/ (related) articles or media. Good luck trying that with a system that is designed to /hide/ things. I don't see a difference. I want to show images showing so-and-so, or I do not want to see them. It's all about saying whether images show so-and-so. Then we have a problem, because these are completely different things. And this doesn't seem like an awful waste of precious time to you? For a feature that is not all that likely to be popular on a global scale? It depends. If people want to do it, it is their choice how to use their volunteering time. If they don't, then bad luck to those using the feature. This seems at best to be written without a real thought on the practical thing. Take any controversial subject, being nudity or Muhammad. If people do not want to see the images, I doubt very much that they will review them to add categories. If people don't care about seeing the images, I also doubt that they will spend time adding catergories. Then who would add categories for the filter? Go figure... I do agree that there are dozens of things in Wikipedia/Wikimedia/Mediawiki that I'd rather see; I chose the secon-lowest rating in the referendum, and might well have chosen the lowest had I not expected that to be understood as I am against this. I do think there are many better things to do with our time and other means. -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems
2011/8/17 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: You say that we exclude significant material on the basis of notability? Notability is not an absolute criteria. There are thousands of subjects/articles which could be notable with different criterias. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
Hello, 2011/9/10 Philippe Beaudette phili...@wikimedia.org: As soon as I've got it to give and the comments have been anonymized, absolutely. I do not yet have a full feed that meets our needs for analysis beyond what's already done. We should have started by this before organizing a referendum. Regards, Yann Philippe Beaudette Head of Reader Relations Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
2011/9/7 Sydney Poore sydney.po...@gmail.com: The way that WMF collects and uses images is one of the biggest differences between us and other organizations that have a similar mission. Libraries, museums, universities, publishers of reference works, and other educationally minded organizations do not solicit for amateur images for their collections. Lack of peer review of our images prior to acquisition is at the heart of the problem and is large part of what is causing the disconnect between the people who do not approve of our controversial content and our editors who upload the images. Well, other educationally minded organizations do not either solicit amateurs for writing encyclopedic articles. But we do peer review images after they have been uploaded on Commons or Wikipedia. It seems that, 10 years after Wikipedia and its sisters have been created, you still do not understand that there are wikis. Sydney Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
2011/9/8 Sarah slimvir...@gmail.com: On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 05:35, Yann Forget yan...@gmail.com wrote: But we do peer review images after they have been uploaded on Commons or Wikipedia. It seems that, 10 years after Wikipedia and its sisters have been created, you still do not understand that there are wikis. Regards, Yann Yann, I yesterday looked at the Veganism article, only to find a photograph in the infobox, not of yummy tofu scramble as before, but a close-up of a woman's genitals, with a vibrator and what looked like a man's fingers. I clicked on it, and saw it was being hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, uploaded from Flickr by the Flickr upload bot. Actually we already have a list of objectionable images for blocking this kind of vandalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Bad_image_list I am not sure a new tool is needed for that, unless you find the image objectionable in itself, but this is another issue. Objecting to this isn't a question of being prudish or of censorship, or of being anti-wiki. But if we want to attract mature editors, women editors, editors from outside the majority cultures on Wikipedia, and serious readers, this kind of thing is obviously very off-putting. So we risk limiting our reach by not dealing with it. Sarah Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
2011/9/5 church.of.emacs.ml church.of.emacs...@googlemail.com: (Off-Topic post) On 09/04/2011 09:53 PM, Kim Bruning wrote: Also, de.wikipedia uses Commons 100% iirc. Commons also only hosts actual free (as in speech) images. Because -hey- that's their mission. That's almost correct :) There are some exceptions due to a relative low Threshold of originality for logos in German law. E.g. this is considered public domain by German law (but not internationally, so Commons doesn't have it): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Laufendes-Auge_2.jpg This image can certainly be covered by http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-EU-no_author_disclosure and therefore be used in Germany. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikisource: Trademark infrigment?
Hello, Trademark infrigment? http://fr.wikisource.7val.com/wiki/ Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Mediawiki and a standard template library
2011/8/20 Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoeks...@gmail.com:
On wikimedia projects that are not Wikipedia (Wikia in specific comes
to mind) I often find myself using templates that have not been
Wikia is not a Wikimedia project.
Regards,
Yann
defined on that installation. The English Wikipedia (which I am most
familiar with) has many very usefull templates, especially the
{{citeFoo}} templates, but numerous others as well. Trying to 'import'
one is a bit of a pain though. Many templates depend on other
templates, and it is not often very clear how (as a fun exercise for
the reader, try to import the {{convert}} template to a new wiki, and
see how easy it is!). I was wondering if it might be a good idea to
include a standard template library to Wikimedia installations,
containing a set of utility templates along with the Wikimedia
distribution. I'm cross-posting foudation, for possible discussion if
this is desirable, and wikitech, for possible discussion if this is
feasable.
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Re: [Foundation-l] They do make or break reputations
I agree 100% with this. Some people on Wikimedia want to enforce copyright much beyond what is reasonable. This is hurt us, and is outside of our mission. Yann 2011/7/13 Wjhonson wjhon...@aol.com: Links by themselves are not copyrightable, and are not unfree. So your argument, which you keep repeating is not germane to this point. The point is, the copyright police have taken a fear (of something which has never occurred in actual law), and made it a point of battle. We are arbiters of information content, should not be acting as the police and judge over what is on YouTube. We cannot know is something loaded is under copyright or not and should not be attempting to know. It's none of our business. Our business should be merely to decide what is useful for our project. The links themselves, I repeat, are free. The point of contention is whether a link by itself IS a copyright violation. And on the presumption that it MIGHT be (which is itself ridiculous) our project suffers immense harm by a handful of u persons. All that is beside the point, my point, which is that a link cannot be a copyright violation, and cannot be licensed. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email
Hello,
I also received one, with
{{GENDER:Yann|Cher|Chère|Cher/Chère}} Yann,
Well, is this an attempt to be politically correct for BTGL? ;o)
Regards,
Yann
2011/6/10 Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il:
Hallo,
I just received an email (see below) that invites me to participate in
the elections.
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[Foundation-l] Data Center Virginia
Hello, http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_Projects/Data_Center_Virginia This was not updated since February. Thanks, Yann ___ 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 85, Issue 52
Hello, 2011/4/26 MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com: wjhon...@aol.com wrote: It's my understanding that sweat of the brown does not create a copyright at all. That was the entire argument behind the claim that phonebooks had no copyright protection. Similarly pure indexes have no copyright protection since they exhibit no creativity at all. Bad news for indexers. It depends on the country (as Thomas said). This was the major issue behind the National Portrait Gallery drama in 2009. The UK and other European countries do count sweat of the brow labors as eligible for copyright while the U.S. does not. I don't know any other European country other than UK which count sweat of the brow labors as eligible for copyright. MZMcBride Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Message to community about community decline
Hello, 2011/3/29 wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk: On 28/03/2011 18:35, Nathan wrote: The bar for contributing is higher. Whether because editing is more technically challenging, or because the rules and standards are more complex, or simply because more of what people know is documented than it was 4 years ago... it's harder in a variety of ways for people to contribute significantly on a regular basis (i.e. become regular editors, as opposed to making several contributions and not returning). Ah there is the reason, the sum of all human knowledge is approaching completion. Well done to all. We are very far from that. All the issue is that of notability. If we apply the current criteria, which is mainly applied on Western subjects, to other parts of the world, we could have 10 times more articles (villages and towns, local customs and food, etc.). Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Message to community about community decline
2011/3/30 Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net: George Herbert wrote: There's a lot more content to get to. The community behavior problems in the way of getting to content annoy me a lot of days. I don't understand this comment. Which community behavior problems stop you from contributing content? MZMcBride Point of view editors who attempt to control the content of articles to advance their cause. Anything they put into the article is gospel. Anything you put in has a poor source or is original research. This is not a new problem. Establishing a minor point is the work of days. Fred I experienced the same as Fred, and I stopped working on French Wikipedia because of that. Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser
Hello, 2011/3/6 geni geni...@gmail.com: ... A skin targeted at users with limited bandwidth would probably help. That's a top priority for me. Something like printable=yes with the pics replaced by links (is there a way to detect low bandwidth connections and serve that automatically?) but I can't see that being a $3 million project. That's technically feasible as Gmail does it. Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] An agenda for the meeting of the language committee
Hello, 2011/2/24 M. Williamson node...@gmail.com: There are currently 13 members of the committee, all of them live in Europe, the US or Canada with the sole exception of Amir Aharoni, who currently lives in Jerusalem but lived in Russia until 1991 and whose native language is Russian. I find it hard to believe that the language committee has been actively recruiting Wikimedians or others in Asia, Latin America or Africa but faced constant rejection and lack of interest from all people in those places, which is the impression I got from what you said. I think the appropriate reaction to such a strong imbalance (and it is a very strong one) is not to say Well, we will be happy to have them if they ever want to join but to say We recognize that this is an issue and we will actively recruit people to try to rectify it. I agree with Mark here. This is also a common issue in many international organisations, and we need to take active steps to correct it for Wikimedia. Best regards, Yann 2011/2/24, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org: As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented regions to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know a good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them in touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least incorporate the knowledge. Best regards, Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Should we offer to host citizendium?
Hi Kim, 2010/12/13 Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl: On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 10:58:02PM +0100, Kim Bruning wrote: Ok, people wanting to run F/L/OSS/Wiki projects with me, send me a mail, and I'll sort things out. If citizendium wants to run on my system then I'll at least give it a try, depending on if their bandwidth requirements are as low as I think they are. Where is your system? I am looking for a host for Wikilivres (http://wikilivres.info/) in Canada. Any suggestions welcome. (wondering what I'm getting into ;-)) sincerely, Kim Bruning Best regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pieter Kuiper
Hello, I used to think that Peter adds an interesting point of view to Commons, but he went too far. I think that he should be blocked now once and for all. Regards, Yann 2010/12/7 Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com: It concerns me greatly that Commons seems unable to deal with a user who, at various times, has attacked a Jew with anti-semitic cartoons, has thrown racist abuse at a German theen harassed that user - and still has numbers of admins willing to unblock him, simply because he does supposedly good work on Deletion reviews. Diod I mention the Jew was blocked for several months for A SINGLE COMPLAINT ABOUT HIS BEHAVIOUR? Pieter has harassed numerous users away from contributing to Wikipedia. That he is still editing after all he's done is disgraceful. Commons' administration has clearly failed, and failed horribly. A list of evidence follows: The most recent incident was racist abuse against a German user, followed by harassment http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Martin_H.curid=11544309diff=46672583oldid=46672239 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Farrel.jpg and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Tiotio.jpg The report, which before I noticed and acted upon it was full of people claiming that racist abuse was fine, and that Pieter was being harassed by being called out on it, is here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems#Racist_personal_attacks_by_Pieter_Kuiper Pieter has a block log as long as your arm: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Logpage=User%3APieter+Kuipertype=block However, he also has an unblock log, where the same few admins constantly unblock him, without insisting on a change in the problematic behaviour. This is a user who gets serial warnings and second chances, all the time becoming bolder and bolder. A few past incidents will suffice: The Wall of Shame incident, and the Havang_nl harassment. Pieter's modus operandi has been to attempt to harass admins who do things he dislikes by scouring their image uploads to find something to request deletion on. The validity of these deletions varies in quality, and are often grasping at straws. Several of the blocks in the block log are for this. One of the clearest incidents was when he attempted to refight old battles where the DR had gone against him, attacking the admins who uploaded and the admins who closed the DRs as keep. Here's the wall of shame he created. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3APieter_Kuiperaction=historysubmitdiff=41686053oldid=41680497 The next few edits are him editwarring to keep the Wall of Shame up. He got blocked for this. He made an unblock, and Havang_nl denied it. So he promptly attacked Havang. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3APieter_Kuiperaction=historysubmitdiff=42357364oldid=42352174 I believe there were other incidents involving antisemitic cartoons being used to attack Mbz1, a Jew, but one can be found here, where he constantly insists on including a cartoon which he knows will upset said Jew. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Pieter_Kuiper/Archive2009diff=prevoldid=33056706#BTW_about_copyright http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Pieter_Kuiper/Archive2009diff=nextoldid=33056706 http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Pieter_Kuiper/Archive2009diff=nextoldid=33056769 this was followed by a WP:POINTy FPC nomination http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/File:Latuff_nazi_camp_2.png It's clear that Commons cannot handle him, and I beseech the Foundation to step in, investigate the matter, and deal with it. I also think that every administrator invoilved in defending him, and encouraging the harassment of other users, should lose their admin rights. ___ 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] What can we do? (was: Copyright terms, again)
Hello, 2010/11/11 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: snip I know that Yann Forget moved (or started?) his project wikilivres.info to Canada exactly because of that reason. However, this is not a systemic effort, but personal one. snip BTW, I am looking for financial support, or some free hosting solution. My idea was and still is that this project should be managed by a community, not by myself alone. I am open to any proposition. Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Five-year WMF targets exclude non-Wikipedia projects
Hello, 2010/10/12 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: On 10 October 2010 09:33, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Despite repeated assurances at Wikimania, on lists and on strategywiki, that the strategic plan was going to consider all Wikimedia projects as important, now at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Five-year_targets the second target, «Increase the amount of information we offer» considers only the number of Wikipedia articles. «We're aware of the challenges around bot-created articles, articles of low quality, etc., and the limited focus on Wikipedia, so this metric shouldn't be seen in isolation, but is an important indicator.» Yes, but a wrong one. I'm, very, very disappointed: I have to conclude that all the words on community participation etc. were only empty rhetoric. This was a concious decision and I believe it is explained in the FAQs or somewhere (Sue certainly mentioned it in at least one of the (many!) presentions I've seen her do about the plan - there are slides for those somewhere too). In summary (from memory), the reason was basically one of bang for your buck. The vast majority of our users are using Wikipedia and not the other projects, which means even a small improvement to Wikipedia is likely to have more impact than even a large improvement to one of the other projects. That's an unproven assumption. It might even be the opposite, i.e. reinforcing Wikipedia might only increase the gap between the projects. Sue was very clear that prioritising Wikipedia only applies to the WMF. That's a bad decision. The WMF should try to balance the projects, when the community has not done it alone. The community can, and should, continue to improve the other projects, the WMF just feels that its limited resources are better used where they will have more impact. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and...
Hello, 2010/10/25 Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net: The pro-scientific-point-of-view editors have rewritten NPOV to make it easier for them to exclude non-scholarly sources. They cite the UNDUE section, arguing that non-scholarly perspectives represent undue emphasis. Some of the same people are currently trying to change the sourcing policy, Verifiability, in the same direction. I think what is needed at some point quite soon is a wiki-wide discussion about whether as a project we still support the idea of protecting significant-minority POVs. I always saw that as the point of NPOV. Sarah They can argue, but if we keep our heads, they cannot overturn a founding principle. As in the Atorvastatin article when patients are running to their doctors, saying, My God, I can't think, and it is observable by medical practitioners that indeed they can't, it's a significant event. However, it does need to be put into proportion, serious effects to a few hundred people must be weighed against efficacious help for millions. http://www.theheart.org/article/843115.do Note the reference to a Wall Street Journal article. If our inclusion of this information in a Wikipedia article and placing undue emphasis on it results in thousands of deaths because people are afraid of the drug, then we need to look at the way it is handled, not just to a conclusion that there can be no negative information about useful drugs. Fred In case of the Chermobyl disaster, the World Health Organisation still officially claims 56 deaths, just to avoid counting the thousands of dead liquidators, and the other thousands very hill, among 800,000 people who have worked on the extinguishing of the fire and the cleaning of the site. These figures come medical doctors on the field, and are collected by liquidator organisations. In putting more emphasis on the official number, we are helping the nuclear industry to rewrite history. In less controversial figures in the Western world, what are the official figures for Human Rights violations in China, in Iran and in Burma? Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Russian police probe Wikipedia for extremism
Hello, 2010/10/19 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: For those who have forgotten it, we had a similar issue with http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Protocoles_des_Sages_de_Sion (I've never understood how it's concluded: it's so complicated!). Nemo There was never any formal request for deletion by any French authority, so we still have it. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
Hello, 2010/9/18 Peter Damian peter.dam...@btinternet.com: - Original Message - From: Nathan nawr...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2010 4:53 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005? What would you suggest the Wikimedia Foundation do to address the coverage problem in the humanities? Employ academic experts to add content? Delete ephemera to improve the balance of topics? There are always several steps to solving problems. The first is always to establish a consensus that there *is* a problem. Everyone, or at everyone who counts, needs to recognise that there is a serious problem and that it must be solved. Only until then can you progress to the next step, which is to consider methods of solving the problem. I agree with that. The first step is to acknowkedge that there is a problem. But most people I have read about this topic even deny that. So we can't go further until this is accepted. BTW this is also the case on the French Wikipedia, so the issue is not restricted to the English Wikipedia. Normally it is the first step that is the main difficulty. As it is in the present case: I don't see any consensus here (apart from a handful of other posts, such as Andreas above) that there is any problem. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
Hello, 2010/9/17 Peter Damian peter.dam...@btinternet.com: - Original Message - From: Wjhonson wjhon...@aol.com Quote: Then you are misunderstanding the meaning of the word 'educational' I think. Perhaps the word you want is academic. No I meant 'educational'. I'm actually quite shocked by some of the things being said in this thread, and that the people who have said them are running Wikipedia. Does anyone else, apart from these two, have any views on what they have said? The WMF goal is about collecting and developing educational content. Does that mean 'education' in the sense I have characterised it? I.e. bringing to the public subjects that are generally not ephemeral or trivial, and which are enduring and a monument to the human spirit, and generally noble and good, in a way that is interesting and accessible? I agree that the core content of Wikipedia should be educational, not trivia. I also agree that there is a strong unbalance against humanities, and social sciences, as you said Linguistics, economics, sociology and philosophy. I would add pedagogy and psychology among the areas with the poorest quality. I think that was OK in the beginning, and maybe still in 2005, and I have hoped it would correct itself over time, when the average contributor would shift away from geeks and free software activists (I am myself a geek and a free software/content activist, just to be clear). It worries me now than 10 years after the project started, we still have this strong unbalance. Of course, the quality of most articles has improved, but I would like to see some serious study about this unbalance, and what WMF intends to do to correct this. I would be interested in other people's views. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.
Hello, I generally agree with Peter here. I think that there is a general problem of quality on Wikipedia articles, especially on articles about humanities, social sciences, etc. I also agree that letting the usual process to care about articles quality is not sufficient. In nearly ten years, there was enough time to fix the issue, if it the current policies would be appropriate for dealing with this problem. This also does not affect the English Wikipedia alone. For what I know, it also affects the French Wikipedia. So this list is appropriate to discuss this issue. Regards, Yann 2010/9/1 Peter Damian peter.dam...@btinternet.com: - Original Message - From: Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net The post I was responding to was nothing but an assessment of a Citizendium article. It made no comparison, favorable or unfavorable, to an equivalent article on Wikipedia. At most it engaged in some speculation about what Wikipedia *might* have. It was explicitly contrasting how Wikipedia actually is, or tends to be like, as compared with the corresponding CZ article. I think the observations were accurate and reflect pretty well what controversial Wikipedia articles are like, namely festooned with supposedly reliable citations, and bearing obvious battlescars from years of edit-warring. The contrast was specifically prompted by a claim by Gerard that Wikipedia's relaxed attitude to 'expertise' leads to better articles. I don't think it does. If your intent is to discuss content issues in Wikipedia, then you need to actually explicitly discuss them. I don't want to discuss content as such. I want to discuss generic and systematic problems with the way Wikipedia is organised that lead to poor quality articles. There needs first to be some recognition there is a quality problem and that it is serious - I think there is an element of denial that is evident from some of the replies here, as well as elsewhere. Once the problem is recognised, there needs to be a careful examination of possible causes for this. And then a further examination of how policy and governance could be changed to address some or all of these causes. Does that sound reasonable? I might suggest that you should familiarize yourself with some of our other mailing lists and consider whether another list, like wikien-l, is better suited to have this conversation, since foundation-l exists for issues related to the Wikimedia Foundation and the overall movement surrounding its projects, not just Wikipedia.) I consider this is the best mailing list for the purpose. What do people here think? Peter ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] small Wikipedia projects - follow-up to Jimmy Wales' talk
Hello, I am also very interested by this topic, mainly about Hindi and Gujarati among other Indian languages. Please keep me in touch. Regards, Yann 2010/7/18 Oliver Keyes scire.fac...@gmail.com: There's an en-wiki project I'm getting involved in that is planning outreach to smaller wikis. Would you like me to give you a ping when we launch? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Recent Changes in Real Time
Hello,
I forward a mail from ThomasV.
This tool as a potential much beyond Wikisource.
Regards,
Yann
-- Forwarded message --
From: ThomasV thomasV1 @ gmx . de
Date: 2010/7/9
Subject: [Wikisource-l] Recent Changes in Real Time
To: discussion list for Wikisource, the free library
wikisourc...@lists.wikimedia.org
Firefox 4 and Chrome 6 have support for Websockets.
I wrote a websocket server that forwards Recent Changes to a web
browser, in order to visualize them dynamically.
Here is a list of pages using it:
*[http://toolserver.org/~thomasv/rcsound.html a page that plays a sound
everytime a page is proofread at the most active wikisources]
*[http://toolserver.org/~thomasv/wprc.html en.WP's recent changes] (it
scrolls kind of fast)
*[http://toolserver.org/~darkdadaah/wiktio/outils/rc/fr_wikt_rc_table.html
fr.wiktionary's RCs]
If you decide to write another page that uses this server, please add it
to the list.
It is possible to use this tool directly on any Wikimedia wiki ; here is
a script that turns the RC page of your wiki into a self-updating page:
importScriptURI('http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:DynamicRC.jsaction=rawctype=text/javascript');
I hope you enjoy it. If you decide to write a page that uses this tool,
please add it to this list :
https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/RC_Websocket_server
Thomas
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Re: [Foundation-l] Usability: page weight
Hello, 2010/6/15 Magnus Manske magnusman...@googlemail.com: I am now surfing most of time with a 3G key with a bandwidth of 16 KB/s maximum, and often less. My experience of Wikimedia sites compared with the other websites I am using regularly, GMail and Facebook, shows that these load much faster than Wikimedia pages, even if the page is mostly empty. It seems that these sites use some fancy caching for that. Page weight is a major hurdle for working on any Wikimedia sites affecting users who do not enjoy a broadband connection. And I believe that small wikis with non-European languages are more affected than others (a study would be interesting here). For improving outreach of Wikimedia outside of the Western world, improving the page weight should be a priority. What can be done? I notice that, when comparing logged-in to logged-out page loading times, the former is almost twice the latter. This appears to be true whether I refresh the browser cache or not (tested on Main Page). A light, JavaScript-free skin for low-bandwidth use might be an intermediate measure. Magnus It seems Gmail and Facebook use a lot of Javascript, isn't it? Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
Hello, Could someone please explain the following from this page: http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf 1. What does it mean that I consent to accept service of process from the party who submitted the take-down notice? 2. In the phrase Each of those works were removed in error and I believe my posting them does not infringe anyone else's rights. Does it mean does not infringe anyone else's rights _in USA_? or everywhere in the world? Thanks, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Archivage down?
Hello, http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-June/ Why is there no message after Thu Jun 3 06:59:53 UTC 2010? Thanks, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Hello, 2010/6/4 MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com: John Vandenberg wrote: While that is impossible (read: hard), a simple approximation is to display languages links for the 10 largest corresponding articles in other languages, and then show a more.. when there are more than 10. Another option is for contributors to specify which other interwiki links should be always visible; e.g. we would always want the FA's in other languages to be shown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Link_FA The KISS principle comes to mind here. Are there ways to improve the current language list in the future? Perhaps. But the best general solution (that's quickest to implement and doesn't rely on vaporware) is to simply fix the default. Personally, I see a sidebar with a lot of room and nothing else to fill it, so I don't really understand the current set of objections to showing the languages by default. A minimalist interface design is a nice goal, but it isn't always the best pragmatically. And in this case, pragmatism should beat out idealism. MZMcBride I fully agree with that. Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Hello, 2010/6/4 Platonides platoni...@gmail.com: James Alexander wrote: We have a couple threads on this issue but picking the most recent :). It appears that this has now been changed ( https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23497 ) and so once the next revision is pushed live the interwikis would be visible by default. James Alexander Spoke too soon. I fixed it (it's a one-line change), but Trevor reverted it: This goes against an intentional design decision. To discuss that decision further and submit proposals to change this design please contact Howie Fung hfung at wikimedia.org or visit http://usability.wikimedia.org This is bad. I think that interwiki links are an essential part of the Mediawiki interface. Hiding them in English Wikipedia will only reduce the accessibility of other languages, which is against our mission. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
Hello, 2010/6/5 Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com: Nathan writes: When the WMF makes a decision to intervene in the projects, full and informative communication isn't just a nice-if-you-can-get-it side benefit of dealing with a small company - it's essential to maintaining the fabric of a massively participatory and cooperative endeavor. I think if you look at what we did with regard to the Gallimard takedowns -- 1) Consulting with French legal experts before taking any action 2) Compelling Gallimard to narrow and specify their takedown demands 3) Enlisting community members to implement the takedowns Yes, but the community was only informed _after_ the texts were deleted. What's surprising to me, and most members of French Wikisource, is that some of the deleted pages are in the public domain in France (works by Jean de La Ville de Mirmont and Charles Péguy, who both died in 1914, so their works became public domain in October 2009). If actually you contacted the community _before_ deleting these pages, you could have informed Gallimard about that, and avoid deleting them. We still don't understand how the French lawyers made this mistake. Did you know that some of the deleted pages were in the public domain in France? Do you understand that is what led us to think that the decision was not well informed? (...) --Mike Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
2010/6/3 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: On 3 June 2010 16:14, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: If you can link in your notifications to a handy guide to contesting a DMCA takedown notice, that would probably answer the concerns in this thread. It's clear that people weren't sure if they could re-add things at all, ever, after a takedown notice, without express WMF permission. It's clear to you, but not to the non-lawyers who nevertheless know what a bogus claim copyright is. (And I know the WMF isn't their lawyer, but I'm sure high-quality guides to contesting takedown notices exist.) I understand it's possible WMF could be liable even for *alluding* to how to deal with these things in the notice. Because the DMCA is that messed up. So: the community needs to: 1. Put a suitable guide to dealing with DMCA takedown notices on meta. (Festoon with disclaimers.) 2. Link it from each occasion the community is notified of a takedown notice having been received. This will expressly not carry the Foundation's imprimatur in any way but it will help the present problem. Does that sound like it would deal with the problems? Yann? Yes, a detailed guide on how to deal with a take-down notice would greatly help. If possible, it should include the issues raised by Ray: under which jurisdiction, who can send a counter-notice, etc. Ray also wrote that the take-down notice needs to be public, which it was not in this case. - d. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
Hello, In the beginning of March 2010, a few hundreds files have been deleted on the French Wikisource following a request from Gallimard, a leading French publisher. [1] The Wikimedia Foundation received a request from Editions Gallimard to takedown content from the French Wikisource. This request is based on Editions Gallimard's claim that Wikisource content in the French language targets the French public, and therefore, under French conflict of laws principles, the copyright law of France applies to this content. They were deleted, according to Mike Godwin, following the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act [2]. These texts are from a dozen authors, and some are even in the public domain in France. In addition, I receive a personal letter, as the main editor of these texts, according to Gallimard. We didn't receive any information from the Wikimedia Foundation, and I know the details only because I have been personally involved. I understand that there is a 15 business days delay after which the material must be put back up (cf. Wikipedia) if Gallimard does not file a lawsuit. Now three months later, we didn't receive any information from the Foundation about this, and the texts are still deleted. Many contributors are obviously not very happy, and feel that the Foundation submitted to the pressure of a commercial publisher. Comparing with the National Portrait Gallery affair on Commons, it looks like a double standard was applied. Just a few days before these texts were deleted, I asked Cary what was the official opinion of Wikimedia Foundation about texts which are in the public domain in USA, but not in France. I was told that the community is entitled to decide by itself. Comments? Regards, Yann [1] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Demande_des_%C3%A9ditions_Gallimard_du_15_f%C3%A9vrier_2010 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
Hello, 2010/6/2 Eugene Zelenko eugene.zele...@gmail.com: Hi! On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 5:43 AM, Yann Forget yan...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, Just a few days before these texts were deleted, I asked Cary what was the official opinion of Wikimedia Foundation about texts which are in the public domain in USA, but not in France. I was told that the community is entitled to decide by itself. Comments? Regards, Yann I think it's reasonable to account country of origin copyrights laws too as Commons does, especially with Wikisource editions other then English, where majority of text most likely originated outside of USA. And majority of audience also likely to be outside of USA. Some even tend to interpret USA public domain that everything published before 1923 (regardless of fact of publication in USA or not) is public domain in USA. I would not oppose a decision that the country of origin copyrights laws has to be followed, but the issue is, who is going to take this decision? Many Wikisource, including the English Wikisource, include any text published before 1923 regardless of the country of origin. So if an English text copyrighted in UK can be published in Wikisource, why not a French text copyrighted in France? Why should we apply different rules for English and for French languages? (and any other languages for that matter). I think that such a decision has to be taken globally, i.e. by the Wikimedia Foundation. That is what I already requested a long time ago. Then there is a problem of information. We really need better communication between Wikimedia Foundation and the communities. Eugene. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
2010/6/2 Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com: Yann Forget writes: In addition, I receive a personal letter, as the main editor of these texts, according to Gallimard. We didn't receive any information from the Wikimedia Foundation, and I know the details only because I have been personally involved. Yann seems to be suggesting here that the Wikimedia Foundation did not notify him about the Gallimard takedown, but at the same time Yann acknowledges that he knew about the Gallimard takedown. It is precisely because we knew Yann knew about Gallimard's takedown demand (it wasn't a request) that we did not send him additional correspondence to inform him about something he already knew about. I still have in my email storage correspondence with Yann regarding this event from March of this year -- it seems odd to have Yann complaining that he didn't know enough about it. Furthermore, when we noted in the takedown who was demanding the takedown (Editions Gallimard) *and we further listed their contact information* so that francophone Wikimedians who disagreed with the takedown demand could make their feelings known to Gallimard. We did this at the very beginning of the takedown process, which we are obligated by international law to obey. Now three months later, we didn't receive any information from the Foundation about this, and the texts are still deleted. Yann seems here to say that some unnamed group did not know about the takedown. We posted the takedown information publicly. Yann in fact knew about it from the beginning. What's more, we listened to Yann's feedback, including claims that some of the material Gallimard demanded taken down was material they had no right to make such demands about. We narrowed Gallimard's takedown demand accordingly. Yann knows this. I didn't know you narrowed Gallimard's takedown demand. AFAIK you never informed me nor Wikisource about this. Yet there are works which are in public domain in France and which are still deleted in Wikisource following Gallimard's demand. In fact, you didn't inform Wikisource about the details of Gallimard's demand. I received Gallimard's letter only one month _after_ the works were deleted on Wikisource. I answered to Gallimard and I didn't receive any news from them. I don't expect to receive anything from Gallimard since their FUD tactic worked very well, and the works are not on-line any more on Wikisource. And I am not so foolish to ask Gallimard for objective information. In fact Gallimard has made at least two mistakes in their request: one of the author's date of death is false, and in one case, they miscalculated the duration of copyright, forgetting the 30 years extension for authors who died in action. Many contributors are obviously not very happy, and feel that the Foundation submitted to the pressure of a commercial publisher. Comparing with the National Portrait Gallery affair on Commons, it looks like a double standard was applied. I strongly suspect that any contributors who feel as Yann says they feel are relying on mistaken information and assumptions. We absolutely did resist the demands of Gallimard within the full extent that French law allows. We retained French counsel who represented us in discussions with Gallimard, and we forced Gallimard to make their demands both more specific and narrower. The pressure of a commercial publisher played no role. (A noncommercial entity making the same legal demand would be entitled to the same takedown, assuming that the formalities were met.) Happy to hear that. It would have been much better if you would have informed the Wikisource community about it. Comparing the National Portrait Gallery affair suggests lack of knowledge about the underlying copyright issues involved. The NPG dispute involved art works that unquestionably were no longer protected by copyright according to the law of most signatories of international copyright treaties. The NPG actually knows this, and did not press any legal challenge, likely because of uncertainty whether their anomalous theory of copyright protection for digitized centuries-old artworks would be upheld even by British courts. The Gallimard case is fundamentally different, since most of the works they demanded taken down were asserted to be modern works that are clearly within the period of French copyright protection. Partly false, misleading at the minimum. Some of the deleted works are in the public domain in France. At least half of them are in the public domain world wide, except in France. These are published on many web sites, including the National French Library. Just a few days before these texts were deleted, I asked Cary what was the official opinion of Wikimedia Foundation about texts which are in the public domain in USA, but not in France. I was told that the community is entitled to decide by itself. Cary is correct that the Wikimedia Foundation is not purporting
Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
Hello, 2010/6/3 Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Yann suggests that he (and the Wikisource community) did not know about the takedown in a timely manner; anyone not watching the files or the deletion logs might have missed it if the only note was in the deletion log. But of course, the deletion log was not the only notice. And Yann Forget knew about the deletions at the time they occurred. If you can't communicate certain facts during negotiations, why not do so afterwards? Sometimes you can. I just did. But of course sometimes you can't, for reasons I've already outlined. (There's nothing magical about the passage of time that eliminates the disincentive effect of disclosing negotiations.) There is some tension built into this general issue, though; Cary advises that the fr.wikisource project needs to make its own decisions about what content to allow, based on a local interpretation of applicable law -- and then the Foundation deletes content without (a) providing advice on what is acceptable and what isn't and (b) without referring to the local decisions the project was advised to take. I'm not sure what advice you think it is even theoretically possible that the Foundation could have offered. Are you suggesting that the Foundation is acting as the lawyer for everyone who posts content to Wikisource? There are obvious reasons that is not a sustainable or feasible model. You seem to have the impression that the Foundation staff directly deleted the content. Actually, I shared the list with Cary, who shared the list with community members who implemented the takedown. (I deleted no content myself.) So you can see why the whole notion that the takedown wasn't shared with the community seems flatly wrong to me. We absolutely engaged community members in implementing the takedown. That's not exactly true. The deletions were done by a steward which is not a contributor to French Wikisource. Yann seems to suggest that our actions have been some kind of big secret. The reality, however, is that we did nothing in secret, and that Yann in fact has known what we did for quite a while now. We even made it trivially easy to contact Gallimard and complain about the takedown. But I do understand that it is easier to complain about WMF than it is to pursue Gallimard directly, even though doing the latter might be a more effective choice. I'll note also that the real complaint, as I perceive it, isn't really that we didn't communicate what we were doing. The real complaint is that we actually complied with a formally correct takedown notice, consistent with longstanding policy. I don't know where you got that, but I have never said such a thing. Yes, what I am complaining about is merely communication. The only notice was the following, which I find a bit short and dry. The Wikimedia Foundation received a request from Editions Gallimard to takedown content from the French Wikisource. This request is based on Editions Gallimard's claim that Wikisource content in the French language targets the French public, and therefore, under French conflict of laws principles, the copyright law of France applies to this content. A short phrase mentioning that might be a temporary deletion done according to the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act might be enough for us to find what is going on. If you cannot, or do not want explain yourself this process, you could have ask someone else to do it. I can't accept your assertion that every contributor has to be an expert on US copyright law. There are two other assertions which are false: 1. That I didn't inform the Wikisource community about Gallimard demand. I have always informed the community about the information I got, either from Gallimard, or from you. 2. That I try to avoid litigation. In fact I make a point not to hide behind a pseudonym, and I would send them my address to Gallimard if they ask for it. And they probably target me only because I am the only contributor which they were able to find the real identity. Now I have a few questions which you should be able to answer: 1. Did Gallimard send a lawsuit? If yes, the Wikisource community, and probably many other contributors might be interested to know about it. If not, how long do we have to wait before restoring the deleted works? 2. Is there on-going negotiations with Gallimard? 3. I am not sure I understand the process you mention in another mail about reposting the content, compliant with applicable notice-and-takedown law. Someone else might also be able to explain that. --Mike Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
2010/6/3 Yann Forget yan...@gmail.com: 2. Is there on-going negotiations with Gallimard? Forget about that. I just read your mail after sending mine. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Filtering ourselves is pointless
Hello, 2010/5/10 Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com: On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:23 PM, David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com wrote: Instead, Jimbo has essentially announced to the world that Fox News was correct. And until we purge our servers of every graphic image, we knowingly retain our self-acknowledged state of indecency. Can you point me to major media entities that have accepted the notion that Fox News was correct? This statement strikes me as identifying a theoretical hazard rather than an actual outcome. --Mike Reading this http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:News_regarding_the_sexual_content_purge I think that you are wrong, and that David and others are right. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Spectrum of views (was Re: Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening)
Hi, 2010/5/11 Noein prono...@gmail.com: On 11/05/2010 12:44, Gregory Maxwell wrote: I would propose that the reason we are subject to such a _small_ amount of complaint about our content is that much of the world understands that what Wikipedia does is —in a sense— deeply subversive and not at all compatible with ideas which must be suppressed. This fact gets a lot of names, some call it a liberal bias though I don't think that is quite accurate. But there very much is a bias— a pro-flow-of-information bias. We don't always realize we have it, but I don't think we deny it when we do. And there is a general consensus here about those libertarian views? I'm impressed. Sorry to repetitively check the ethical temperature of the community, but I come from social horizons where it's not only not natural, but generates hatred. I never could talk about libertarian ideas outside of one or two family members and two or three friends. Here, it seems the norm, and I simply can't believe it. As I said before, Wikipedia acted like a magnet on me. I'm wondering if it's uniting all the (internet connected) libertarian of the world. In this case I'm surprised that it didn't receive more serious attacks from the establishment. I think that, world wide, people from conservative or traditional cultures don't have as much Internet access as people with libertarian views. This is specially true outside of the Western world. That may explain why there are not so much opposition to the libertarian position of Wikimedia. Internet access helps to get a larger view, better understanding of other cultures, and a more open opinion on sensitive subjects. Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
Hello Jimmy, 2010/5/8 Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com Much of the cleanup is done, although there was so much hardcore pornography on commons that there's still some left in nooks and crannies. Some deleted images are certainly not hardcore pornography. I'm taking the day off from deleting, both today and tomorrow, but I do encourage people to continue deleting the most extreme stuff. But as the immediate crisis has passed (successfully!) there is not nearly the time pressure that there was. I'm shifting into a slower mode. We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen. Now, the key is: let's continue to move forward with a responsible policy discussion. Jimmy Wales Some cleaning may be needed regarding sexual content, but the way you did it is hardly the good way to do it. Many contributors are pissed off and upset. This is certainly not the best way to start a meaningful discussion on a controversial topic. I think the Commons community is well suited to take a decision regarding sexual content. Your input on this subject would certainly have been regarded with the most careful consideration. But acting under external pressure is not a good think. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
Hi, 2010/5/8 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de: Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide repositories for the other WMF projects. Wikisource is the library of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikispecies. The volumes collected in it should be judged with the same principle as the media files in Commons. I beg to disagree about the educational value of WS and Commons. I think that historical documents, wheiher they are texts, images, videos or sounds, have an educational value in themselves, whatever happens on other projects. Ting Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
Hello, 2010/5/8 David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com: *I think that's fairly naive, actually. I'd rather suspect the story Fox (which seems to be your main concern) will go with is We were right all along, they *were* hosting kiddie porn! Just look, they deleted it all after we exposed their filthy secret. *What you're saying is that Fox News would have ran a negative story about us either way. And if that's really the case, I'm glad it was a negative story the community was actively doing something about, rather than a negative story we did nothing about. The fact that the actions are done following pressure from such a biased entity as Fox News is bad in itself, independently of the (wrong) way the deletions were done. FMF Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A Board member's perspective
Hello, 2010/5/9 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: Stu, Thank you for telling us your views. You have admitted that the way this was dealt with was messy. That such an approach would be messy should have been obvious to everyone involved, so do you think it would have been better to take a less messy approach? Perhaps the Board could have issued a statement saying that the current situation was unacceptable, explaining why, and that they would have to intervene to fix it if the community didn't sort it out by a certain deadline. Unfortunately, this looks to me like the board couldn't really agree on what to do so made a vague enough statement that those board members that didn't feel it was right to go in a delete everything wouldn't oppose it but that Jimmy could claim supported his view and legitimised him doing whatever the hell he pleased. The board needs to be stronger - when Jimmy does things like this it reflects badly on all of you, so you need to keep him under control. If you can't agree on what to do, you need to either defer to the community or come up with a genuine compromise rather than political manoeuvring to avoid being responsible for what happens. Also, it would help us choose board members if you were more public about your disagreements. You don't have to all present a united front behind Jimmy. +1 I can't express my view more clearly. Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] MMORPG and Wikimedia
Hello, 2010/5/7 Noein prono...@gmail.com: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Please stop any sarcasm. There are ideas worth the consideration, as with any newly available technological tool. We're aiming in this mailing list to shape the futur of the human knowledge through the foundation, right? So it is right to talk about the future, it's not an arrogance. Of course, any affirmation about the future must be considered an hypothesis, however convinced may seem his bearer, but also however unconvinced we are. Listen and think. Then answer so that our interlocutor listens and thinks too. Otherwise, all this mailing list is sheer struggle of prestige, power or noise. Now, one of the unsolved questions of the WMF is: how do we plan to communicate with analphabets? Thinking that analphabets would get encyclopedic knowledge through VR shows a big misunderstanding of how the cause of analphabetism. If people are analphabets is because they lack the resource to have a proper education, so they won't get any access to a computer, much less to Internet and VR worlds. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] MMORPG and Wikimedia
Hello, 2010/5/7 jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com: On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Yann Forget yan...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, 2010/5/7 Noein prono...@gmail.com: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Now, one of the unsolved questions of the WMF is: how do we plan to communicate with analphabets? Thinking that analphabets would get encyclopedic knowledge through VR shows a big misunderstanding of how the cause of analphabetism. If people are analphabets is because they lack the resource to have a proper education, so they won't get any access to a computer, much less to Internet and VR worlds. I can tell you of my experience with people from Kosovo who are not native english speakers, many of have a hard time reading anything longer than 140 characters. The dont like to read and books are very expensive, and the written language is very different than the spoken one. But they *will* watch videos, or listen to some talk, even in english or german or do something interactive. That is why we need videos of people (or computers) reading articles to them that they can pop into their dvd player or have share. more people have some form of ability to play dvds. The mit ocw distributes hdds of data to schools with no internet access, they include video lectures and alot of material. very good stuff. I can imagine, but may be wrong, that in most villages in world, even the poorest, where 99% of the people done have computers and such, at least one person or school in town will have some form of dvd player. In fact, you could distribute articles in image format for a normal dvd player as well. For a DVD player, you are a bit too optimist, for there is not even electricity everywhere. But many people have a mobile phone nowadays, so we could try making MP3 available with encyclopedic content. mike Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Vandalize wikipedia day on facebook
Hi, I reported the page. If enough people do so, it might be closed by FB. Regards, Yann 2010/5/3 Marco Chiesa chiesa.ma...@gmail.com: Hi, a friend of mine just pointed out this event on facebook, a vandalize wikipedia day http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=110813902286034ref=searchsid=674858731.794509965..1 I'm not sure if WMF is aware, or if there is the possibility to close the page. Cruccone ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board July 2009
Hello, Samuel Klein wrote: A friend of mine at the Library of Congress is interested in engaging local Wikipedians more in their efforts to contribute to Wikipedia. continuing a first contact with WMF from years ago It would be interesting if the LoC mentions the images which are restored by Wikimedians. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures/Historical Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities
Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann Original Message Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200 From: David Monniaux David . Monniaux @ free . fr To: common...@lists.wikimedia.org Since its foundation, the French chapter has attempted to reach out to French cultural institutions, such as museums, and incite them to either put their images under free licenses, either allow photographers that contribute freely licensed pictures to take photographs in good conditions. At first, to be frank, we got the cold shoulder. At the time, Wikipedia was demonized by the French media, calling it a cesspool of amateurism, plagiarism, a danger to the youth's intellect, and so on. In addition, certain members of the cultural establishment were at the time attacking Google and other big American sites, pushing their own solutions. Things might be changing though. In 2008, I represented Wikimedia France before a commission tasked with proposing new policies to the Minister of Culture regarding the reuse of public cultural works. The Ministry of Culture is in charge of most national museums and monuments (e.g. the Louvre, the Versailles Castle...) and its agencies have large collections of photographs - but these are copyrighted by the agencies and available under unfree licenses. Our position was as follows: unfree licenses may in the short term allow cash-strapped government agencies to earn some money from selling photographs to publishers, but in the long run they are counter-productive, because media, publishers and important sites such as Wikipedia, worldwide, prefer free and easy to obtain photographs to photographs that they need to purchase from unfamiliar foreign institutions, and thus French cultural institutions would lose visibility. We gave the example of aerospace activities on Wikipedia, which are overwhelmingly illustrated by US government pictures, which somehow convey the impression that countries outside the US do nothing in this field. We pointed out that museums such as the Smithsonian Institution were putting up content on FlickR, and that it was inevitable that publishers and other people that want an illustration from an artist would prefer getting one from FlickR rather than ordering one from the French museums. In contrast, if French museums would release pictures under a free license, they would get free publicity - imagine what it would cost them if they wanted to advertise their exhibitions on Wikipedia (if Wikipedia accepted advertisements), whereas they can get publicity for free simply by the attribution of the photographs! Note that it is not out of ill will that museums and other institutions refuse to release pictures under a free license. There are some legal difficulties involved - sometimes they do not own the rights to the pictures (only in 2006 it was established for sure that rights to works done by civil servants as part of their duties belonged to their employer; also, they sometimes employ private photographers), and besides, there are tricky issues with so-called moral rights that may render certain aspects of free content licenses illegal in France. Also, public institutions are pressured to make some money by themselves. I had written a memo, which I gave to the commission. http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/Wikimedia_France_Monniaux_oeuvres_publiques.pdf This August, I received the report from the commission, with an associated letter from the Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, stating that he endorsed the findings in the report. This report advocates many changes that we approve: * stop trying to make insignificant sums of money - instead release as free * cut the red tape - authorizations for reuse of content should be centralized to competent, professional services, rather than be decentralized to many institutions most of whom do not have the technical, legal and financial infrastructure to deal with them * collaborate with free content sites such as Wikipedia - more on this. http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture.pdf (scanned version) http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture_ocr.pdf (OCR version) The cultural services are reluctant to release pictures under free licenses. When I met them, they expected that it would be possible to negotiate with Wikipedia and get an exemption from this requirement. I explained to them that freedom was not negotiable. It was, I think, very surprising to them that Wikipedia, an amateurish organization, would dare say that to the Government! I proposed a way out: release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary. The suggestion has been retained by the commission - even though they still seem to toy with this idea of negotiation. In the meantime, the National Library of France
Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009-
Thomas Dalton wrote: While that is true, it is also important to remember that most people setting up a chapter have next to no experience of running a non-profit. They don't know what is and isn't appropriate to spend donations on, they don't necessarily know what needs to done and just because they know their culture in general doesn't mean they know how the charity sector works in their country. The Foundation could provide a lot of advice on those issues. While I don't doubt that the Portuguese Wikimedians are acting in good faith, trust requires two things - good faith and competence. They are almost certainly not competent since they haven't had an opportunity to develop that competence yet, so they should not be trusted to be making the right decisions. I think this is very rude. Why do you assume that people wanting to create a Wikimedia chapter are incompetent? You need to have a bit more trust for people you have never met and you don't know. Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Do we have a complete set of WMF projects?
Michael Peel wrote: [cut] ** A few of my favourite examples: WikiJournal, publishing scholarly works; These works are welcomed on Wikisource, if they are under a free license, of course. WikiReview, providing in-depth reviews of subjects; I think this can be hosted on Wikibooks or Wikiversity for the most part. WikiWrite, where fiction can be written collaboratively; etc. I don't think this fits very well in the Wikimedia mission. In the sum of all human knowledge, there are two projects which would be nice complement to the Wikimedia family: 1. A database of all books. This is actually what OpenLibrary tries to do, with mitigated success, IMO. As you said, if we try and fail, nothing would be lost, as the result could be imported to OpenLibrary. We wouldn't need to start from scratch as the content of OpenLibrary is available and free. 2. A database of all people, i.e. genealogy. There is one project which is IMO a great technical success in this field: Rodovid (http://rodovid.org/). I like very much how the trees are displayed: http://fr.rodovid.org/wk/Personne:29004 (Philippe the 3rd of France, 1245-1285). It show very well how the French and English monarchies are related to each other. You can see the complete tree, but it takes ages to load because of the size: more than 7000 people (http://fr.rodovid.org/wk/Special:Tree/29004) See also Elizabeth II: http://en.rodovid.org/wk/Special:Tree/29818 Complete tree: http://en.rodovid.org/wk/Special:Tree/29818 The Rodovid project has asked to be hosted by Wikimedia Foundation, although I don't know if it still does. It is based on an adapted version of Mediawiki, so it would be an easy integration with current projects. Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ 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?
Gregory Kohs wrote: Consider me a Leslie Stahl, circa 1972. We should stop feeding the troll, especially this particular species of novice self-made spy. Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Universal Library
David Goodman wrote:
I have read your proposal. I continue to be of the opinion that we are
not competent to do this. Since the proposal says, that this project
requires as much database management knowledge as librarian
knowledge, it confirms my opinion. You will never merge the data
properly if you do not understand it.
That's all the point that it needs to be join project: database gurus
with librarians. What I see is that OpenLibrary lacks some basic
features that Wikimedia projects have since a long time (in Internet
scale): easy redirects, interwikis, mergings, deletion process, etc.
Some of these are planned for the next version of their software, but I
still feel that sometimes they try to reinvent the wheel we already have.
OL claims to have 23 million book and author entries. However many
entries are duplicates of the same edition, not to mention the same
book, so the real number of unique entries is much lower. I also see
that Wikisource has data which are not included in their database (and
certainly also Wikipedia, but I didn't really check).
You suggest 3 practical steps
1. an extension for finding a book in OL is certainly doable--and it
has been done, see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources].
2. an OL field, link to WP -- as you say, this is already present.
3. An OL field, link to Wikisource. A very good project. It will be
they who need to do it.
Yes, but I think we should fo further than that. OpenLibrary has an API
which would allow any relevant wiki article to be dynamically linked to
their data, or that an entry could be created every time new relevant
data is added to a Wikipedia projects. This is all about avoiding
duplicate work between Wikimedia and OpenLibrary. It could also increase
accuracy by double checking facts (dates, name and title spelling, etc.)
between our projects.
Agreed we need translation information--I think this is a very
important priority. It's not that hard to do a list or to add links
that will be helpful, though not exact enough to be relied on in
further work. That's probably a reasonable project, but it is very
far from a database of all books ever published
But some of this is being done--see the frWP page for Moby Dick:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Dick
(though it omits a number of the translations listed in the French Union
Catalog,
http://corail.sudoc.abes.fr/xslt/DB=2.1/CMD?ACT=SRCHAIKT=8063SRT=RLVTRM=Moby+Dick]
I would however not warrant without seeing the items in hand, or
reading an authoritative review, that they are all complete
translations.
The English page on the novel lists no translations; perhaps we could
in practice assume that the interwiki links are sufficient. Perhaps
that could be assumed in Wiksource also?
That's another possible benefit: automatic list of
works/editions/translations in a Wikipedia article.
You could add {{OpenLibrary|author=Jules Verne|lang=English}} and you
have a list of English translations of Jules Verne's works directly
imported from their database. The problem is that, right now, Wikimedia
projects have often more accurate and more detailed information than
OpenLibrary.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
Regards,
Yann
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Re: [Foundation-l] Universal Library
Lars Aronsson wrote: Yann Forget wrote: I started a proposal on the Strategy Wiki: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Building_a_database_of_all_books_ever_published IMO this should be a join project between Openlibrary and Wikimedia. Again, I don't understand why. What exactly is missing in OpenLibrary? Why does it need to be a new, joint project? The page says There is currently no database of all books ever published freely available. But OpenLibrary is a project already working towards exactly that goal. It's not done yet, and its methods are not yet fully developed. But neither would your new joint project be, for a very long time. Wikipedia is also far from complete, far from containing the sum of all human knowledge. But that doesn't create a need to start entirely new encyclopedia projects. It only means more contributors are needed in the existing Wikipedia. You just give again the same arguments, to which I have answered. Did you read my answer? Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Universal Library
Hello, I have already answered some of these arguments earlier. David Goodman wrote: Not only can the OpenLibrary do it perfect well without us. considering our rather inconsistent standards, they can probably do it better without us. We will just get in the way. The issue is not if OpenLibrary is doing it perfect well without us, even if that were true. Currently what OpenLibrary does is not very useful for Wikimedia, and partly duplicate what we do. Wikimedia has also important assets which OL doesn't have, and therefore a collaboration seems obviously beneficial for both. There is sufficient missing material in every Wikipedia, sufficient lack of coverage of areas outside the primary language zone and in earlier periods, sufficient unsourced material; sufficient need for updating articles, sufficient potentially free media to add, sufficient needed imagery to get; that we have more than enough work for all the volunteers we are likely to get. To duplicate an existing project is particularly unproductive when the other project is doing it better than we are ever going to be able to. Yes, there are people here who could do it or learn to do it--but I think everyone here with that degree of bibliographic knowledge would be much better occupied in sourcing articles. It is clear that you didn't even read my proposal. Please do before emitting objections. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Building_a_database_of_all_books_ever_published I specifically wrote that my proposal is not necessarily starting a new project. I agree that working with Open Library is necessary for such project, but I also say if Wikimedia gets involved, it would be much more successful. What you say here is completely the opposite how Wikimedia projects work, i.e. openness, and that's just what is missing in Open Library. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Universal Library
Hello, I started a proposal on the Strategy Wiki: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Building_a_database_of_all_books_ever_published IMO this should be a join project between Openlibrary and Wikimedia. Both have an interest and a capacity to work on this. Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikisource-l] Open Library, Wikisource, and cleaning and translating OCR of Classics
Lars Aronsson wrote: Yann Forget wrote: As I already said, the first steps would be to import existing databases, and Wikimedians are very good at this job. Do you have a bibliographic database (library catalog) of French literature that you can upload? How many records? Convincing libraries to donate copies of their catalogs has been a bottleneck for OpenLibrary. No, I don't have such a database. There is a copyright on databases in Europe, which makes things complicated. Probably we need to start with libraries which are already collaborating with open content projects. There was a GLAM-wiki meeting in Australia recently: there might be a possibility with an Australian library? But even before that, if we could extract the data from Wikimedia projects, we could create a basic working frame. I have been collecting such data on Wikisource and Wikibooks, but the lack of a structured system is a bottleneck. Examples: 1. Comprehensive bibliography of Gandhi in French http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bibliographie_de_Gandhi 2. French translations of Russian authors: http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discussion_Auteur:L%C3%A9on_Tolsto%C3%AF http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discussion_Auteur:F%C3%A9dor_Mikha%C3%AFlovitch_Dosto%C3%AFevski Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikisource-l] Open Library, Wikisource, and cleaning and translating OCR of Classics
Joshua Gay wrote: David Strauss did a quick implementation (basically a demo) of an OpenLibrary extension for MediaWiki. In very little amount of code, he was able to easily search the OL (via AJAX) and when the user selected a given result, it poppulated a Citation template. What was nice is that when no results came up for a given search, there was an add to open library button that brought you to the OL site to add your bibliographic information. Interesting, I didn't know that. Is this demo available somewhere? Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New projects opened
Andre Engels wrote: On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Lars Aronssonl...@aronsson.se wrote: Of these 270 languages of Wikipedia, only 41 have more than 50,000 articles and only 69 had more than 1 million page views in July of 2009. The 69th most used Wikipedia is Swahili. This East African language has 50 million speakers, which is huge, but less than 13,000 Wikipedia articles. Can poverty and illiteracy alone explain why the Swahili Wikipedia is so far behind? Poverty, or better said, lack of internet access, is probably the main factor. Here in Europe and North America, we are used to having fast internet from the home 24/7. In those countries it may well be (I am not sure, never having been there) that dial-up speeds paid per minute at some internet cafe is the norm. That would considerably lessen people's interest in writing the material, and if it is not written, people will not read it either. But another issue could be a lack of expectancy of having material in the own language. I have heard this plays a role with the languages from India, and it may well have the same, or even stronger so, with the African ones: the daily language for speaking is the local language, but when one is writing or looking for something on the internet, one is more likely to use English (or in other parts of Africa, French). It may well be that many Swahili speakers use English when they are on the internet - either because that is the language they learned reading and writing in (although people for which that is true are probably not the generation using internet the most), or because they found that they can get so much more information (on the internet as a whole) in English than in Swahili, that it well outweighs the linguistic disadvantage. They come to the English Wikipedia, not the Swahili one, and when they find that here too there is much more in English, that's where they stick. This explains the situation very well. In the case of languages not using the Latin alphabet, there is one more obstacle: you need a localized computer, i.e. for reading, at least the proper fonts are needed, and for writing an adapted keyboard is also needed. For what I have seen, this is rarely the case in India. Every computer is sold with an English keyboard only, and the fonts must be installed by the user himself. In the case of Swahili there is yet another factor, namely that Swahili itself is rarely a mother tongue and much more often a second language. Because of that, the relative size of the disadvantage of using English is even smaller. Right. This is also the case for Hindi, the second or third language for more than 200 M speakers (native Assamese, Bengali, Bihari, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Marathi, Oriya or Punjabi speakers and more). Yann But Swahili is far from the worst. Swahili has twice as many speakers as the West African language Yoruba (50 vs 25 M, both are huge languages) and twice the number of articles (13 k vs 6.3 k), but the Swahili Wikipedia had 6 times as many page views (1.0 M vs 172 k). Somebody with knowledge of Africa should study this in more detail. For the speakers of these languages, in which proportions do they read (newspapers) or listen (to radio broadcasts) to get news and knowledge? Do they ever use (printed) encyclopedias? Taking a look at Wikipedia, I see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Nigeria and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Kenya. For Nigeria about 32 newspapers are given - from their titles, 80% seem to be in English. The 3 or 4 mentioned for Kenya are all in English, and although the articles mention some of the papers have Swahili sister publications, the English language newspapers seem to have by far the greatest market share. This I think confirms my hypothesis above, that another reason for African languages to do so poorly is that in the countries and regions where they are spoken, there is a large competition from the languages of the former colonizers - especially in the area of written communication. -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New projects opened
Andre Engels wrote: On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Lars Aronssonl...@aronsson.se wrote: Of these 270 languages of Wikipedia, only 41 have more than 50,000 articles and only 69 had more than 1 million page views in July of 2009. The 69th most used Wikipedia is Swahili. This East African language has 50 million speakers, which is huge, but less than 13,000 Wikipedia articles. Can poverty and illiteracy alone explain why the Swahili Wikipedia is so far behind? Poverty, or better said, lack of internet access, is probably the main factor. Here in Europe and North America, we are used to having fast internet from the home 24/7. In those countries it may well be (I am not sure, never having been there) that dial-up speeds paid per minute at some internet cafe is the norm. That would considerably lessen people's interest in writing the material, and if it is not written, people will not read it either. But another issue could be a lack of expectancy of having material in the own language. I have heard this plays a role with the languages from India, and it may well have the same, or even stronger so, with the African ones: the daily language for speaking is the local language, but when one is writing or looking for something on the internet, one is more likely to use English (or in other parts of Africa, French). It may well be that many Swahili speakers use English when they are on the internet - either because that is the language they learned reading and writing in (although people for which that is true are probably not the generation using internet the most), or because they found that they can get so much more information (on the internet as a whole) in English than in Swahili, that it well outweighs the linguistic disadvantage. They come to the English Wikipedia, not the Swahili one, and when they find that here too there is much more in English, that's where they stick. This explains the situation very well. In the case of languages not using the Latin alphabet, there is one more obstacle: you need a localized computer, i.e. for reading, at least the proper fonts are needed, and for writing an adapted keyboard is also needed. For what I have seen, this is rarely the case in India. Every computer is sold with an English keyboard only, and the fonts must be installed by the user himself. In the case of Swahili there is yet another factor, namely that Swahili itself is rarely a mother tongue and much more often a second language. Because of that, the relative size of the disadvantage of using English is even smaller. Right. This is also the case for Hindi, the second or third language for more than 200 M speakers (native Assamese, Bengali, Bihari, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Marathi, Oriya or Punjabi speakers and more). Yann But Swahili is far from the worst. Swahili has twice as many speakers as the West African language Yoruba (50 vs 25 M, both are huge languages) and twice the number of articles (13 k vs 6.3 k), but the Swahili Wikipedia had 6 times as many page views (1.0 M vs 172 k). Somebody with knowledge of Africa should study this in more detail. For the speakers of these languages, in which proportions do they read (newspapers) or listen (to radio broadcasts) to get news and knowledge? Do they ever use (printed) encyclopedias? Taking a look at Wikipedia, I see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Nigeria and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Kenya. For Nigeria about 32 newspapers are given - from their titles, 80% seem to be in English. The 3 or 4 mentioned for Kenya are all in English, and although the articles mention some of the papers have Swahili sister publications, the English language newspapers seem to have by far the greatest market share. This I think confirms my hypothesis above, that another reason for African languages to do so poorly is that in the countries and regions where they are spoken, there is a large competition from the languages of the former colonizers - especially in the area of written communication. -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikisource-l] Open Library, Wikisource, and cleaning and translating OCR of Classics
Hello, Lars Aronsson wrote: Yann Forget wrote: This discussion is very interesting. I would like to make a summary, so that we can go further. 1. A database of all books ever published is one of the thing still missing. No, no, no, this is *not* missing. This is exactly the scope of OpenLibrary. Just as Wikipedia is not yet a complete encyclopedia, or OpenStreetMap is not yet a complete map of the world, some books are still missing from OpenLibrary's database, but it is a project aiming to compile a database of every book ever published. At least Wikipedia can say that it has the most complete encyclopedia, and OpenStreetMap the most complete free maps that ever existed. AFAIK OpenLibrary is very very far to have anything comprensive, through I am curious to have the figures. As I already said, the first steps would be to import existing databases, and Wikimedians are very good at this job. Personally I don't find OL very practical. May be I am too much used too Mediawiki. ;oD And therefore, you would not try to improve OpenLibrary, but rather start an entirely new project based on MediaWiki? I'm afraid that this (not invented here) is a common sentiment, and a major reason that we will get nowhere. You are wrong here. I was delighted to see a project as OL and I inserted a few books and authors, but I have not been convinced. On books and authors, Wikimedia projects have already much more data than OL, and a lot of basic funtionalities are not available: tagging 2 entries as identical (redirect), multilinguism, links between related entries (interwiki), etc. I don't really care who would host this Universal Library, as long as it is freely available with a powerful search engine, and no restriction on reuse. What I say is that Mediawiki is really much better that anything else for any massive online cooperative work. The most important point for such a project is building a community. OpenLibrary has certainly done a good job, but I don't see _a community_. The tools and the social environment available on Wikimedia projects are missing. I believe the social environment is a consequence both of the software and the leadership. Once the community exists it may be self-sustaining if other conditions are met. OL lacks a good software as Mediawiki and a leader as Jimbo. Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Open Library, Wikisource, and cleaning and translating OCR of Classics
Hello, This discussion is very interesting. I would like to make a summary, so that we can go further. 1. A database of all books ever published is one of the thing still missing. 2. This needs massive collaboration by thousands of volunteers, so a wiki might be appropriate, however... 3. The data needs a structured web site, not a plain wiki like Mediawiki. 4. A big part of this data is already available, but scattered on various databases, in various languages, with various protocols, etc. So a big part of work needs as much database management knowledge as librarian knowledge. 5. What most missing in these existing databases (IMO) is information about translations: nowhere there are a general database of translated works, at least not in English and French. It is very difficult to find if a translation exists for a given work. Wikisource has some of this information with interwiki links between work and author pages, but for a (very) small number of works and authors. 6. It would be best not to duplicate work on several places. Personally I don't find OL very practical. May be I am too much used too Mediawiki. ;oD We still need to create something, attractive to contributors and readers alike. Yann Samuel Klein wrote: This thread started out with a discussion of why it is so hard to start new projects within the Wikimedia Foundation. My stance is that projects like OpenStreetMap.org and OpenLibrary.org are doing fine as they are, and there is no need to duplicate their effort within the WMF. The example you gave was this: I agree that there's no point in duplicating existing functionality. The best solution is probably for OL to include this explicitly in their scope and add the necessary functionality. I suggested this on the OL mailing list in March. http://mail.archive.org/pipermail/ol-discuss/2009-March/000391.html *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) To me, that sounds exactly as what OpenLibrary already does (or could be doing in the near time), so why even set up a new project that would collaborate with it? Later you added: However, this is not what OL or its wiki do now. And OL is not run by its community, the community helps support the work of a centrally directed group. So there is only so much I feel I can contribute to the project by making suggestions. The wiki built into the fiber of OL is intentionally not used for general discussion. I was talking about the metadata for all books ever published, including the Swedish translations of Mark Twain's works, which are part of Mark Twain's bibliography, of the translator's bibliography, of American literature, and of Swedish language literature. In OpenLibrary all of these are contained in one project. In Wikisource, they are split in one section for English and another section for Swedish. That division makes sense for the contents of the book, but not for the book metadata. This is a problem that Wikisource needs to address, regardless of where the OpenLibrary metadata goes. It is similar to the Wiktionary problem of wanting some content - the array of translations of a single definition - to exist in one place and be transcluded in each language. Now you write: However, the project I have in mind for OCR cleaning and translation needs to That is a change of subject. That sounds just like what Wikisource (or PGDP.net) is about. OCR cleaning is one thing, but it is an entirely different thing to set up a wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work. So which of these two project ideas are we talking about? They are closely related. There needs to be a global authority file for works -- a [set of] universal identifier[s] for a given work in order for wikisource (as it currently stands) to link the German translation of the English transcription of OCR of the 1998 photos of the 1572 Rotterdam Codex... to its metadata entry [or entries]. I would prefer for this authority file to be wiki-like, as the Wikipedia authority file is, so that it supports renames, merges, and splits with version history and minimal overhead; hence I wish to see a wiki for this sort of metadata. Currently OL does not quite provide this authority file, but it could. I do not know how easily. Every book ever published means more than 10 million records. (It probably means more than 100 million records.) OCR cleaning attracts hundreds or a few thousand volunteers, which is sufficient to take on thousands of books, but not millions. Focusing efforts on notable works with verifiable OCR, and using the sorts of helper tools that Greg's paper describes, I do not doubt that we could effectively clean and publish OCR for all primary sources that are actively used and
Re: [Foundation-l] National Portrait Gallery
geni wrote: 2009/7/18 John at Darkstar vac...@jeb.no: Sorry, I don't follow you on this one. If the existing business model don't work and it should be changed, then work with them to change it and make the alternate options viable. John We do not have the capacity to raise sufficient funds to make it a worthwhile business model. How do you know that? Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] National Portrait Gallery
geni wrote: 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. Well, who's your we? In the case of the NPG, it is quite clear that the cost of the digitalization is small compared with the potential benefit. There are people and organisations willing to pay to have a copy of these famous portraits. The issue is how to collect the funds without puting a copyright on the images. For this, we need a new business model. Think about how donations was raised to free up Blender.[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] National Portrait Gallery
geni wrote: 2009/7/18 Yann Forget y...@forget-me.net: In the case of the NPG, it is quite clear that the cost of the digitalization is small compared with the potential benefit. There are people and organisations willing to pay to have a copy of these famous portraits. The issue is how to collect the funds without puting a copyright on the images. For this, we need a new business model. Think about how donations was raised to free up Blender.[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History €100,000 is not a significant amount of money when dealing with trying to digitalize the various UK archives. Comparing the amount raised for a single (quite obscure) software with what could be raised to digitalize world-famous works of art does not make sense. Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] National Portrait Gallery
geni wrote: 2009/7/17 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: So: what would everyone here like to see in a compromise, that addresses the concerns of all sides? What makes the NPG happier and more secure, and will fly with WMF and with the Wikimedia community? Nothing. Wikimedia are not the only group that knows about Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. Some kind of joint fundraiser to pay for complete digitalization in return for the NPG dropping their copyright claims perhaps. That would be a great outcome, and I would put some money helping the digitalization of their work if the NPG dropps their copyright claims. But that simply leaves us with the same problem with say the national maritime museum. The release low res images as PD approach won't work in this case. We know the hi res stuff is PD in the US so have no real incentive not to use them (and if we don't others will). Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ 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 NationalPortrait Gallery ...
David Gerard wrote: 2009/7/11 John at Darkstar vac...@jeb.no: In the case of GalleriNOR several people uploaded images from the site without prior agreement with neither NB nor NF. After a while I get in touch with them and asked how we should handle the case, what people believed was the right thing to do from our side and what NB and NF wanted to do. First the stand was established as the images must be deleted and we don't want to delete them, then we said okey we will attempt to get them deleted through due process - but hey, how much of the traffic come from our site? Then things get a bit amusing. The thing is, about 60% of the traffic originates from Wikimedia Commons and with the additional internal traffic generated from this we probably generates over 80% of the traffic on the site. This isn't neglible amouths of traffic on a site, removing the images on Commons would pull the plug on the majority of the traffic. :-D We should ask the NPG about their website traffic ;-) Well, their site had a problem after the story has appeared on Slashdot. Do all NPG images have a link back? They should. Yes, they have a link with this template http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:SourceNPGLondon - d. Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)
geni wrote: 2009/5/31 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu: Given currently existing technology, and technology that we can reasonably assume to be available within the next decade, how can the WMF best achieve its goal of giving every person free access to our current best summary of all human knowledge? Dead tree technology. Wikipedia based encyclopedias in the most widely used languages. Select the 40K most important articles (that will be fun). 40K was 2002 encarta and most people I knew who used it felt that that was a fairly complete encyclopedia. There are a number of languages with less than 40K articles. The problem ones are: Bengali (19K) Hindi (32K) Punjabi (1.4K) Javanese (19K) Tamil (18K) Marathi (23K) Sindhi (.3K) very low I'm not sure there is a Berber language wikipedia. Can't find it nor a Tamazight one. Anyone know what's going on here? Oriya (.5K) again very low Kannada (6K) Azeri (20K) Sundanese (14K) Hausa (.1K) very low Pashto (1.3K) although you might have a hard time finding volunteers to distribute anything in those areas. Uzbek (7K) Yoruba (6K) Amharic (3K) I think Gujarati (6K) must be in this list. Strangely Telugu and Malayalam do break the 40K barrier. Not surprising: Malayalam is one of the Indian state with the best literacy rate. Telugu is the language of Andhra Pradesh, the 5th Indian state by population, and the South Indian language with largest speaking population. Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)
mike.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: On 2009-06-01 00:18, Anthony wrote: On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/5/31 Ray Saintongesainto...@telus.net: Assuming that I were somewhere in rural Africa, and perfectly functioning hardware with Wikipedia software loaded in dropped in front of me from the sky like a magic Coke bottle from the Gods, how much would I then be able to use that gift to get a better yield from my little patch of poor farm-land? Wikipedia could be *part* of a solution, it's never going to be a solution on its own. Wikipedia could be useful as part of an education system, but it can't be the whole thing. I just found another statistic. Mobile networks cover roughly 80-90% of the worlds population. For them, using that mobile network is probably the most cost effective solution. For the rest, giving them enough of an education to have the means to come live with the rest of us, is probably the most cost effective solution. You also found any statistics on what prices for internet access through mobile networks are? What proportion of the world's people can afford a internet connection in the first place, and how many can afford a connection which is useful to browse wikipedia? I'm just curious as I know someone - a westerner - working in Africa and finding internet access hideously expensive. (chat and email ok, but she tells that she avoids browsing the net as the cost is per downloaded MB) Last I asked, broadband Internet access in India was about INR 1500 (32 US$), which is at least a week day salary for an Indian worker. True, in theory, there are Internet cafes, but last I tried (in 2007) they can be really used for looking at Wikipedia (too slow). Anyway the priorities are very far from being able to access any online resources. Even when there is a phone, often it doesn't work because people can't pay the bill. Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)
Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/6/1 Yann Forget y...@forget-me.net: Last I asked, broadband Internet access in India was about INR 1500 (32 US$), which is at least a week day salary for an Indian worker. True, in theory, there are Internet cafes, but last I tried (in 2007) they can be really used for looking at Wikipedia (too slow). 1500 rupees for how long? And do you mean week's salary or day's salary? It can't be both! What is the point of these internet cafes if the connection is too slow to browse a predominantly text website? Sorry, INR 1500 for a month. Well, you can still send a few mail (think it is like a 56 K connection). But most people have TV, so broadcasting some content could reach a lot of people. Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Divergent Wiktionary logos
Elisabeth Anderl wrote: Hello all, this is a very old and often discussed issue, the problems raised with the logo were not yet addressed (such as copyright issues, which characters to use), and the new 'logo' is IMHO the most ugly thing I have ever seen. Btw.: from alexa.com: Where people go on Wiktionary.org: - en.wiktionary.org - 48.6% - old logo - de.wiktionary.org - 12.8% - old logo - fr.wiktionary.org - 9.7% - new logo - ru.wiktionary.org - 3.6% - old logo - es.wiktionary.org - 3.1% - old logo - ja.wiktionary.org - 2.9% - old logo - pl.wiktionary.org - 2.4% - old logo - pt.wiktionary.org - 2.3% - old logo - it.wiktionary.org - 1.6% - new logo - el.wiktionary.org - 1.5% - new logo Guess how many Wiktionarians apprently like the new logo... I didn't take part in the discussion and the vote, but this is a poor attempt to justify the old logo. People do not look at a web site like Wiktionary because of the logo. Best regards, E. Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Steward elections: summary, week one
geni wrote: 2009/2/9 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de: Surely is this a prejudice. Because there is no data that support such an assumption. In the eight years since the being of Wikipedia I don't know any such case happend on any Wikimedia project. Ting Prejudice? We know Iran's record on human rights and we know Iran's record of responding to speech they do not like (calling for the assassination the citizen of another country for example). The available evidence is that the Iranian government is a potential threat and unlike western governments don't have to worry about annoying laws and bad PR if they try anything. And how this relate to the status of stewarship? Would you accept that someone be rejected because he is Muslim or Jew? or because he is black or white? This is exactly the same to me, i.e. not acceptable. Such allegations should not be accept in any Wikimedia projects, and any user using these should be blocked. Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
