Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation
Wow. That was a long read. Some very interesting points, I hope you will forgive me if I ignore most. I do want to stress a few things. There is a difference between the Free Content Movement, the Group of People who Use Wiki's and the Wikimedia Movement. Within the Free Content Movement, which is indeed very old, Wikimedia is a leader. The Wikimedia movement is much more narrow. I would love to see some ideas to define the free content movement a bit better - I guess that is more or less what you were working to. I would not like us to confuse people even further by mixing up names (Wikipedia, Wikimedia, MediaWiki), so lets make that Wiki- and media-neutral. I think there are already works in that direction (I think something like Free Culture Defined), and it would probably make most sense to work in that direction - with them, dont re-invent the wheel. When it comes to Wiki's being used for good goals, I don't see Wiki's as special, sorry. Wiki's are a tool, not determining anything. I would be totally fine if Wikiversity would decide next month to start using Moodle instead of MediaWiki, and still be Wikimedia project. Maybe collaborative authoring is a shared thing, but not even that is something that is the same everywhere in Wikimedia, let alone in Free Culture/Content. I don't see much use for defining a movement along that criterium. Then finally, there is the very important question of how to stimulate innovation. I have been bothered by this as well the past few years, and I have as well been wondering why we are so extremely conservative. Why dont we like new and fresh ideas, why do we want to keep everything the same? Not only with software improvements, but also with new projects. Yes, I do agree here and I would love to see the incubator expand in a way - and also allow totally new content types to experiment. There is one disadvantage though: companies have developed around that already (like Wikia) and we don't currently have the infrastructure and support they can offer to new projects. We dont have the staff to help new communities form. Maybe we should, maybe we should leave it with those commercial parties. In any case the current way is bad for our movement in the long term. And I mean our movement in the narrow sense of the word. Best regards, Lodewijk Am 14. Juli 2011 19:06:47 UTC+2 schrieb Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com: Good :) I'm glad I am reading your ideas right. As for the name-- this looks like a job for experts. Perhaps - though with that said when I am programming it is often my only-slightly-technically minded work colleages who come up with ideas for the most effective solution. We could at least brainstorm some ideas? Tom ___ 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] Living Person Task Force: Phase Two
yes, that is what i was afraid for already :) only enwikipedia and meta, practically... 2010/4/10 Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com: On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 4:37 AM, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: ok, I pasted this in the Dutch village pump of wikipedia, because I dont have currently the feeling that this is really a subject that is living with wikipedians, although they would care about it. I would like to suggest that something similar is done in other VP's, considering the huge impact this might have on projects. Just foundation-l wouldn't give you the credibility that you will need to have enough support I think. Lodewijk Thanks, I posted to meta, the en.wp Village Pump, and wikien-l. If others could also help post in their native language wikis, that'd be tremendous. Much appreciated, Lodewijk. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Living Person Task Force: Phase Two
of course especially considering the TF members' home wiki's are only enwikipedia and dewikipedia, which are of course big wiki's but, doesn't help you spreading the message. Perhaps it would be helpful for the accepting of any outcomes if you tried more actively to reach out to other communities. For example, by asking the translation team to translate it, by posting your message yourself on the numerous village pumps and ask people there to translate it as well etc. It also might increase the number of ongoing discussions on the strategywiki, which is currently quite limited (the only related discussions I could find up to now are IRC-meetings and a few threads on talkpages not linked from the main project page directly?) anyway, I hope this can be turned around, and that after all more people with different angles can cooperate and for example help ensure that smaller wiki's wont perish from hard to make standards which might make sense for dewiki and enwiki. (I'm happy to see there's a SWMT-member though, but still better to involve more people I think) Best, Lodewijk 2010/4/11 effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com: yes, that is what i was afraid for already :) only enwikipedia and meta, practically... 2010/4/10 Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com: On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 4:37 AM, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: ok, I pasted this in the Dutch village pump of wikipedia, because I dont have currently the feeling that this is really a subject that is living with wikipedians, although they would care about it. I would like to suggest that something similar is done in other VP's, considering the huge impact this might have on projects. Just foundation-l wouldn't give you the credibility that you will need to have enough support I think. Lodewijk Thanks, I posted to meta, the en.wp Village Pump, and wikien-l. If others could also help post in their native language wikis, that'd be tremendous. Much appreciated, Lodewijk. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Wiktionary copyright?
I assume you are referring to the term trademarked rather than copyrighted. I suggest you contact Mike Godwin directly with this kind of questions, he is handling those. With kind regards, Lodewijk 2010/3/29 Andrew Turvey andrewrtur...@googlemail.com Is the term Wiktionary copyrighted? I only ask because the OpenDemocracy website has recently started a Dictionary of Ethical Politics wikitionary http://resurgence.opendemocracy.net/index.php/Main_Page If it is copyrighted, you may want to say something to them, or else it will end up like the hoover - a generic term usable by anyone. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building up the reserves
hm, wouldn't that be more a question that would suit more the board? It seems a rather strategic one. Lodewijk 2010/3/4 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com Veronique, what would be the maximum we'd want to go with a reserve fund. I know that with Army Emergency Relief for example, they get dinged by Charity Navigator for having massive reserves of money. What do you think the maximum would be for Wikimedia? From: Veronique Kessler vkess...@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: effeietsand...@gmail.com Sent: Wed, March 3, 2010 6:41:36 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Building up the reserves Hi, The question of what is the right reserve amount is a common one. I've hear of ranges from 0 to 3 months to 3 years. I agree that one year is a good measure and that could be increased or decreased depending on a variety of circumstances both internal and external. Many non-profits may have a smaller than optimal reserve because they simply don't have more funds to keep in a reserve. We are quite fortunate to have the amount of reserves that we do.As we have operated over the last few years with a single main fundraiser, our revenue tends to peak over a 4 month period while we have expenses all year. Right after a fundraiser, we have more reserves than we do right before the fundraiser begins because we have months of the year where there is little revenue but expenses are about the same. Veronique Andrew Gray wrote: On 3 March 2010 13:35, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: I assume you do realize that this 12.5M is /after/ the fundraiser, hence including the huge amount of donations that has been raised? ...as, indeed, was last December's glut. Looking at both mid-year and end-year reports, the cashflow status becomes clearer: Assets (cash) versus monthly running costs (estimated) mid-2007 - - - - - $1m end-2007 - - - - - $2.3m - - - - - $0.21m - - - - - 11 mos. mid-2008 - - - - - $3m - - - - - ($0.32m) - - - - - 9 mos. end-2008 - - - - - $6.7m - - - - - $0.43m - - - - - 15 mos. mid-2009 - - - - - $6.2m - - - - - ($0.54m) - - - - - 11 mos. end-2009 - - - - - $12.5m - - - - - $0.65m - - - - - 19 mos. Reserves jump dramatically each year-end report, but then idle until the next fundraiser - as running costs increase roughly linearly, though, the average number of months funding in reserve seesaws. I don't know what's considered a normal margin to have - I'd presume around a year or so is considered quite good - but hopefully someone more au fait with standard practice in the field could enlighten us. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Office Hour for Thursday, February 25
what about having (for once) office hour with one or two board members? Perhaps the community selected members? I can imagine it would be interesting to have a chat about what the board is currently doing and up to. -- Lodewijk 2010/2/25 Huib! abi...@forgotten-beauty.com Thomas Dalton schreef: On 25 February 2010 10:02, Huib! abi...@forgotten-beauty.com wrote: Hi, It could also be a idea to ask Danese Cooper to come by on IRC for a hour. But I would like it when Tim Starling would come by also... Yes he is always on IRC but almost always busy :) Give Danese a chance to settle in first! She hasn't had a chance to learn the answers yet. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Geen virus gevonden in het binnenkomende-bericht. Gecontroleerd door AVG - www.avg.com Versie: 9.0.733 / Virusdatabase: 271.1.1/2709 - datum van uitgifte: 02/25/10 08:34:00 Meeting the community is also a way to settle in. -- Huib Laurens Http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/user:Abigor ___ 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] 10th birthday edit drive?
I am not sure what the planning of the usability initiative is, but it would be an ideal moment to publicly launch a wysiwyg editor or something and indeed ask people to try again :) Wikipedia is entering it's second decade in style - come and join us, Wikipedia is now also editable by mortal human non-nerds! -- Lodewijk 2010/2/8 Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com Amazing idea, Philippe! Additionally to some big things (Hagia Sophia? the Red Square?): small Wikipedia logo stickers to put on a number of buildings etc. in your town. (On the other hand, some people could consider that a kind of environment unfriendly spamming.) The 10th anniversay will be a kind of looking back, also remembering those who have left us on the way. Some of them we are happy to be rid of, but others - maybe the anniversay is a good occasion to direct us to people who once tried to edit but were beaten away. Couldn't we ask them to give Wikipedia a second chance? Ziko 2010/2/8 Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org: Can you imagine, finding places that have WP articles and projecting the logo globe on them? That would be an amazing public visibility thing. In SF alone, for instance, Grace Cathedral, Coit Tower, the Transamerica Pyramid -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Status of 2009 Fundraiser Survey
I'm sorry, but at least in your e-mail you mainly make a lot of statements that I can imagine are worded in such a way that they don't really ask for a reply, and one rethorical question. So if you want information, I suggest you try to put your questions down a little more constructively and maybe consider asking the right people directly. eia 2009/12/9 Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com: Still no reply here, nor on the Meta Wikimedia page? It's Wednesday. That was Friday. Perhaps the official response is no comment, or maybe Rand Montoya is on vacation? Gregory Kohs On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: I am wondering if someone at the WMF (perhaps specifically Rand Montoya) could give us an update on the status of the 2009 Fundraiser Survey. I inquired about this at the appropriate Talk page, but over two weeks have passed without any reply: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Fundraising_2009/Surveydiff=1724334oldid=1585375 Personally, I applied about four or five hours of my time working on the sampling design and questionnaire content and construction for this effort. I realize that it is beyond hope that this will have fielded before most of this year's fundraising efforts have been executed (which is a shame, considering the hurry up timeline that was in place back in July 2009), but now I wonder -- will this ever be fielded? My impression is that an inordinate amount of time was dedicated to translating the survey into at least a handful of world languages, which I advised against, being that I knew it was a huge challenge to meet translation and proofreading needs before the annual fundraiser commenced. I hope it is realistic to at least field this survey in the Spring of 2010, so that its results may be analyzed and contribute to modifications (both tactical and strategic) for the 2010 fundraiser. Gregory Kohs ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees
could you perhaps point to that general WMF policy? Or do you mean you would like to see such a policy, but there is none yet? Lodewijk 2009/12/3 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: Although I can understand that there are genuine reasons why the anti organisational account rule is in place, can I mention that having an organisational account is one of the main things that GLAM institutions have asked from us. If a museum wants to upload their own photographs to Commons (something which I think we all would love to support) they have requested that they be able to upload those images under their own organisational username. This in itself doesn't necessarily mean we should change our policies, but it's just an example of a good outcome that changing our flat ban on organisational accounts would achieve. Then they should sign contracts with WMF. OR: They should send their identification to WMF staff and WMF should make clear that those accounts are exceptions from the general policy. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board meeting update
Hi Michael, thanks a lot for sharing this short overview with us. I look forward to more extensive minutes of course and hope they will be published not too long from now - especially considering the strategic process that is going on. You mentioned the nominating committee and their imput. I'm glad that this kind of things is constantly under review and consideration. Is this input public, or otherwise at least to the chapters? (who will need to get started with the chapter selected board seats in the next months as well) That way community members and chapters can think with the nominating committee and give perhaps some additional suggestions. With kind regards, Lodewijk 2009/11/30 Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net: With our last board meeting falling a little later in the year than usual, and coming close to holidays, I'm a little late in giving this brief report on what happened. As you know, the board approved the audited financial statements for the 2008-2009 fiscal year, and those were posted on the Wikimedia Foundation website a couple weeks ago. As the organization has gotten settled in San Francisco, this has become a smoother process than in years past. It's not just that we're on solid financial ground (that's good, though even in the past we haven't been in immediate danger financially), but also as we've established the necessary infrastructure, we're better at tracking our finances and addressing issues that may need to be resolved in the course of an audit. The stress level around the audit is low enough now that although I had to miss the audit committee conference call (where I normally participate as an observer), I still had confidence that Veronique and Stu and everyone else would bring it to a successful conclusion. (That's my personal stress level I speak of, I won't claim there's no stress involved for Veronique.) Thanks to Veronique and her team, as well as the auditors, for their work. Thanks also to the volunteers on the audit committee for their service. One other thing the board reviewed out of the committee's work was a risks analysis that is being put together of the top risks and mitigation strategies for addressing them, which will become part of the strategic planning process. Speaking of which, strategic planning was the biggest single item on our agenda, and tended to be a thread running throughout the rest of the meeting as well. With help from the Bridgespan team, we worked through some preliminary strategy questions to discuss priorities and setting goals. We don't have concrete results from that to share, in part because the overall process is still in an early stage, but it was a good exercise for us in thinking on a strategic level and preparing for the more challenging decisions ahead. One thing that did come out of it is that we reviewed the guidance that the nominating committee was given in the search to fill the one remaining vacancy on the board, and provided some additional input for them as a result. One note I would add is the valuable contributions of the newer members of the board in bringing a more complete set of views to the group. SJ and Arne many of you know, and their emphasis on the health and potential of the community and chapters was important. I also really appreciated what Matt Halprin had to offer, especially in two areas: One, his capacity for strategic thinking and helping to keep us focused on strategy issues instead of drifting off-track, and two, his experience with other nonprofit boards and their practices was a good perspective to add. Their strengths help compensate for the fact that Jimmy wasn't able to attend the meeting, and I anticipate they will make us a good working group through the strategic planning process. The board also conducted a sort of general review and evaluation, not just of the financial situation but the state of the organization and the work being done by Sue and the staff. We think Sue is great as our Executive Director and has done a terrific job getting the organization to this point, where we're healthy and have the space to develop our capacity for achievement in the years ahead. And I can't say enough about the work the staff are doing, so I'll just share this one anecdote. Since the board meeting overlapped with the first week of the fundraiser, it's fortunate that we have the new office where there's more than one meeting room, otherwise I don't know where the board would have met. That's because the fundraising team would spend all day working together in one of the larger meeting rooms. This would involve as many as 6-8 people, and you wouldn't know that they eat or take breaks from casual observation, although we did make sure they at least got the leftover pizza from our lunch at one point. They've worked hard to keep the fundraiser operational, not to mention considering a lot of feedback and making improvements. It's easier
Re: [Foundation-l] Minors and sexual explicit stuff
There are two possible discussions: 1) a discussion about the legal requirements - please leave this to the legal experts. I'm confident that Mike Godwin keeps an eye onto it, and if he doesn't you could solicit the advice of a legal expert, and bring that advice to him or the WMF ED/board. 2) a discussion on whether we want to make Wikimedia better accessible to people having significant problems with a category of content. - that discussion be held here, if the necessary data is found (as laid out in a previous email). best, eia 2009/11/18 Delirium delir...@hackish.org: George Herbert wrote: On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 9:27 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: So state it as much as you want. The WMF is a publisher. Under Section 230 of the CDA it most likely won't be treated as a publisher, but that doesn't mean it isn't a publisher. The section 230 that would seem to matter here? The WMF has all sorts of roles, depending on who you are, how you look at it, and what your perspective is (and what day of the month it is, etc). Referring to legal issues, one has to remain domain specific when using specific terms in a legal sense. It's also quite unsettled what Section 230 protections consist of to begin with. Some U.S. courts have applied them *extremely* broadly. One still-current Circuit Court precedent, which is binding in the distrct Wikimedia servers are located, is _Batzel v. Smith_ (9th Circuit, 2003), which holds that a blogger who reposts material emailed to him, even though he chooses which emails to republish, is entitled to Section 230 protection by virtue of the mere fact that the material he publishes originates ultimately with his users, and is not something he personally authored. It's hard to imagine any Wikimedia Foundation activity w.r.t. Wikipedia that doesn't meet at least the _Batzel_ standard, apart from Wikimedia Foundation employees literally inserting original content into Wikipedia articles while on the clock. If the ultimate source of the content is elsewhere, regardless of what editorial or publishing decisions are made in the middle, it's Section-230-protected under _Batzel_. Of course, _Batzel_ might be wrong and overturned in the future, which is the risk of relying too much on law in this as-yet-unsettled area... -Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minors and sexual explicit stuff
Even though I do agree to some extent with you, Andrew, I would like to make a remark. You correctly state that the cultural sensibilities differ over the world on this topic. However, this does not excuse for calling the sensibilities irrational and lacking in substance (inconsistent is fair enough). Clearly, you belong to the group of people who do not have a problem at all with these images, and PM belongs to the group of people that has huge problems with them. The mere fact that you two disagree should not lead to the conclusion we should not think about a way of taking away the problem for the people in side of the spectrum where PM is located. I think you could lay a comparison between people having significant problems with these images and therefore are not able (or less able) to access Wikipedia with people who have technical issues because they do not want to download a piece of propitiatory software. We care a lot about the latter group, why abolish even the idea of caring about the first? Because we do not belong to it? Some people do indeed think that ancient pornography should be hidden as well by the way, although I do get your point. Sometimes there is clearly an educational purpuse involved, and the images add value. Now let it be clear I do not vouch at all for getting rid of the images, or any free content. However, if that would suit a significant group of people, we could consider to make them a little less prominently accessible. Please speak up if the following procedure would make no sense at all to you: 0) think about whether we want (if it exists) to help reduce this group of people with siginificant problems in the first place. 1) research / find research on how large the group of people is that have significant problems with this issue (I define significant here as having the impact that because of this, they will visit Wikipedia less frequently or not at all) 2) consider which approaches would be possible 3) research which of these approached would be help to decrease the group of people having significant problems with this issue 4) consider whether this has any negative impact for the people not having these significant problems 5) balance these advantages/disadvantages lets not jump to 5) immediately. To get to the original question of PM, I am not sure actually whether the advisory board would have people on it who would be helpful on this specific topic. Angela, could you advise on this? Perhaps this topic could, however, better be approached through the often named Strategy Process. Philippe, do you have a suggestion how this can be incorporated? Thanks, Lodewijk 2009/11/17 Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org: On 16/11/2009, at 1:04 AM, private musings wrote: Hi all, On Wikipedia Review, 'tarantino' pointed out that on WMF projects, self-identified minors (in this case User:Juliancolton) are involved in routine maintenance stuff around sexually explicit images reasonably describable as porn (one example is 'Masturbating Amy.jpg'). http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=27358st=0p=204846#entry204846 I think this is wrong on a number of levels - and I'd like to see better governance from the foundation in this area - I really feel that we need to talk about some child protection measures in some way - they're overdue. I'd really like to see the advisory board take a look at this issue - is there a formal way of suggesting or requesting their thoughts, or could I just ask here for a board member or community member with the advisory board's ear to raise this with them. You just won't give up this topic, will you? I'm not sure where you get the idea that it's somehow inappropriate for minors to be viewing or working on images depicting human nudity and sexuality. Cultural sensibilities on this matter are inconsistent, irrational and entirely lacking in substance. I'm also unsure how you propose to define sexually explicit. The definitions under law are elaborate, attempting to make distinctions that would be irrelevant to any negative impact on children, if one existed. Are images of the statue of David, the Mannekin Pis or the Ecstacy of Theresa deserving of such restrictions? What about the detailed frescoes of sexual acts displayed in brothels and living rooms in ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum? How are those distinct from the image you've used as an example, and how is that distinction relevant to whatever supposed harm you are claiming to children? If it is truly inappropriate or harmful for children to be working on such images, then those children should be supervised in their internet access, or have gained the trust of their parents to use the internet within whatever limits those parents (or, indeed, the minor) believe is appropriate. It is absolutely not the job of the Wikimedia Foundation, nor the Wikimedia community, to supervise a child's internet access and/or usage, and certainly not
Re: [Foundation-l] Recent firing?
I think the community should be and is being treated as a majority shareholder, even better! Office IT support is a typical thing that the community is not affected by AT ALL. So I am not surprised no announcement is being given on foundation-l about this. If any public list would be relevant, it would be wikitech-l, but even there it would be doubtful. (not even to speak about privacy issues) We should get used to a situation where the foundation grows, and that more hirings/firings (or farewells for other reasons) are going to take place then up to now. It would simply not be practical to announce them all. I do expect the foundation to announce community-relevant positions such as the volunteer coordinator, CsomethingO's, board positions and other functions that relate to the community more directly. Financial controllers, office supports, personal assistants etc are just not relevant to the community, and a change on the relevant webpages and maybe a periodic (anonymized?) overview on monthly reports would make more sense. (2 hirings last month, and three people left the foundation for example) Lodewijk 2009/10/30 Nathan nawr...@gmail.com Why would you even ask that question, let alone expect an answer? Last I checked, no Wikimedian also carried the title of majority shareholder or anything close. You're not entitled to sordid details of personnel management. Try to remember that the Wikimedia Foundation is a business, and needs to operate with more professionalism than announce everything announce often. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Consensus on Meta for suspecting every volunteer of abuse ?
sure it would, and maybe it would be an improvement. But the mere fact that the log is there, I don't see as a problem. Also, realize that the average newbee will not even look at the contributions page... 2009/9/30 Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 17:22, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: Of course Google has this kind of logs. However, Google is just not transparant about it. Being transparent is nice and important, but being it is just as important to be nice. Filter log is just as correct and transparent as abuse log, but doesn't make a newbie feel that he's accused of abuse. -- אמיר אלישע אהרוני Amir Elisha Aharoni http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ 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] Office hours
I think having the thursday meeting one or two more hours later would work fine for Europe, so if that works also better for Australia... Not sure about the Friday one, although the next day is weekend. 2130 UTC sounds like a good time though. 2009/9/29 Angela bees...@gmail.com 1) Have the Friday office hours one hour earlier (from 21:30-22:30 UTC) 2) Have the Thursday office hours one hour later (from 17:00-18:00 UTC) 3) Keep two sets of office hours the same, we cannot please everyone possible! If you make the Friday one earlier, it becomes more inaccessible to people in Asia and Western Australia who will likely be sleeping through the Thursday one. What about making both of them a couple of hours later? Angela ___ 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] Office hours
on a friday? :S 2009/9/29 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com 2009/9/29 effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com: I think having the thursday meeting one or two more hours later would work fine for Europe, so if that works also better for Australia... Not sure about the Friday one, although the next day is weekend. 2130 UTC sounds like a good time though. 2130 UTC sounds a little late to me if we want Europeans there. We're on daylight saving time for another month (ish), so in Western Europe, that is 2330, finishing at 0030. That's pretty late. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] REMINDER: Wikimedia Staff office hours
Thanks for considering Europeans too. However, isn't something like 1800/1900 UTC not more convenient? (since at 1600 UTC, especially during winter, lots of people will be at work/school?) I guess that also works better for staff, with regards to getting up early ;-) Best, Lodewijk 2009/9/25 Cary Bass c...@wikimedia.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Just a reminder about today's office hours with Sue Gardner. Just as a note, we're planning alternating the Friday 22:30 UTC office hours with Thursday 16:00 UTC, which is much easier on our European participants. Cary - As a result of the success of the Strategy planning office hours and the recent meet the board presentation on the #wikimedia channel on IRC, we've decided to do regular office hours featuring a Wikimedia Foundation staff member. And to kick things off, this Friday, September 25, 2009, between 15:30 and 16:30 PDT (UTC 22:30 to 23:30), Sue Gardner, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director, will be online to answer your questions and talk about her role in the Foundation and plans for the future. The IRC channel that will be hosting Sue's conversation, and all future WMF staff office hours, will be #wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC client, you can always access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning. It's fine. - -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkq9ERgACgkQyQg4JSymDYk2WgCglG8tN6/MFEMRMDjTfeUN4CVi dWIAoMRnLCqxQsaPXVy+BQ93GaRS/ut0 =Lsrp -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009-
can someone kill this thread? Thanks. 2009/9/13 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com 2009/9/13 Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com: On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 9:41 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Wow, that's... pretty offensive, actually. If you are offended by statements of fact, that is your problem. I think it's fairly clear that I dispute the factualness of your statement. You take offence when people say something you deem to be mistaken? Or are you suggesting I knew what I said was untrue and said it to be intentionally malicious? Last time I checked, being a non-profit (and a charity if possible) *was* a requirement to be a Wikimedia chapter. The WMF does have experience of running a charity. I don't know when it was that you checked, because this has never been a requirement. In countries where there's some analog to what Americans and Brits would call a non-profit, that's generally the desired form, but different countries have different legal systems—WMF Inc., for instance, is not a charity in the American sense of the word—and we do now have chapters which are neither. I've looked it up, and I stand corrected - non-profit status is on the guideline page, not the requirements page. I knew I had seen it there somewhere. That's not even the point, however. WMF Inc. does not have experience running a non-profit in, say, Brunei. I couldn't tell you the exchange rate in Brunei, much less what it costs to organize an event there. It's preposterous to assume that we can step in and throw highly paid western consultants at a situation, with the poor, incompetent Bruneians bowing to our superior wisdom and experience. If the WMF doesn't know what is appropriate and the local chapter people can be trusted to know what is appropriate (in some cases the local chapter may have the necessary experience and the WMF can defer to their expertise, but that isn't always the case), then the WMF needs to do the necessary research. They are responsible for what money that people have given them is spent on, so it falls to them to find out what spending is and isn't appropriate. ___ 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] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009-
Why should all Wikimedians have the same culture and ideas and way of thinking as you? Why should Wikimedians who have a culture be excluded from setting up a chapter? Besides that I think you're paraphrasing way too much. The grant request only suggested that this kind of costs are just costs that have to be made to work efficiently. The chapter asked the Foundation to pay for it the first year, so that they could focus on useful stuff. I hope they will be able to generate these and other funds themselves from next year onwards. Lodewijk 2009/9/11 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com 2009/9/11 Jennifer Riggs jri...@wikimedia.org: However the word and concept of frugality differs significantly across cultures. In my experience with many non-Western cultures, asking people to bring lunch from home or spend their own money for it would not only exclude participation, it would insult people. If the purpose is to encourage participation and commitment to a newly forming organization, it seems it would be very important not to insult people. If we were talking about meetings with people from outside the Wikimedia movement, I would agree with you, but I really can't see how it can be insulting not to provide food at a meeting of Wikimedians when the people attending the meeting and the people organising the meeting are exactly the same people. If people are only willing to set up a chapter if the WMF buys them lunch once a month, I don't want those people setting up a chapter. ___ 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] Moderate this list
I think we're talking about two groups of people and thinking here: 1) a group of people who have the principle be bold in their coat of arms and love to say anything that comes to mind, no matter whether that might be rude or not. 2) the people who see discussion more as a social process which is helped by involving more people. At an IRL meeting, one of these two groups sets the atmosphere. Either the bold group can discuss loudly and the social people feel not at home and they leave. Either the social people are nice and are disturbed by the rude behaviour of the bold people, and tell them to be nice or shut up. I tend to prefer the second group, since I sincerely believe that it is important and even crucial to allow people to discuss, and allow many people to discuss. By telling that people who don't like the shouting even though they have a delete button, by saying that people should just grow a thick skin, you clearly say that you belong to the first group, and you are not interested enough in their opinion to change your behaviour, even though you don't even have a clou how big that group is and who's in it. I would even go as far as to say I find that quite asocial and rude, and strikes me in the same way as when I go to a cafe, people spit on me and shout at me, and if I complain about that, I'm just told that I should go home and not bother, because that is just the way they behave in that cafe... Lodewijk 2009/9/11 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com Fully agreed with Ray: If someone doesn't know how to use delete button, then such person is not quite competent to use mailing lists. It reminds me on criticism toward wikis: Ah, someone may change my edits! I don't want to use that system anymore! On 2009-09-11, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: This is effectively the only cross-project list at the moment. And it is the canonical place to raise certain important issues and announcements. It has become popular to disparage this list as a poor place to have serious discussions about the foundation -- and to do the disparaging in private, where it can't possible lead to consensus to change this. Let's please stop doing that, and instead fix the list and its norms, or devise replacements and alternatives, so that we can all agree on where to have open, welcoming discussions -- that are comfortable for almost everyone, including non-native English speakers; that draw input from the core audience (people who care about Foundation issues). Please don't view this as a problem that someone else must identify and cope with. If you are reading this list, you can help fix it. A reminder that there's ongoing discussion on meta about what to do. Please add to it! http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Improving_Foundation-l -- phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Sent from my mobile device ___ 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] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009-
the main question should be whether it is worth it in that case. I.e., will it improve the chances of the chapter becoming successful? And I believe you are just as I am not able to make that estimate without at least some understanding of Portuguese culture. Lodewijk 2009/9/11 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com 2009/9/11 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, Relevant is what our aim is. Our aim is to bring the total sum of knowledge to everyone. Now, that means that we have to be Portuguese in Portugal, Dutch in the Netherlands and I leave you to be British in Britain. In the end that is what we ask people to contribute to. You can't waste other people's money and then say That's our culture (and I note, nobody from Portugal seems to be making that argument). If you accept that, you have to accept anything. ___ 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] Moderate this list
The problem becomes more serious when several people tell me that they either unsubscribe from this list or do not dare any more to give input in discussions because of these people (not defining anybory, but more in general the group of people being harsh and posting a lot). That is currently the case and a complaint I have heard several times. To me, that means we crossed some lines which we should not have. I'm confident you have a thick skin and can handle it all, but please realize that not everybody is as experienced as you are, not everybody is as fluent in English and not everybody is as bold to speak up. Some people need a somewhat more stimulating and constructive environment for that. -- Lodewijk 2009/9/10 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:46:36 -0400 From: Anthony wikim...@inbox.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list There needs to be place for dozens of back-and-forth-over-minor-details discussion. Long detailed emails have their place, but after they are posted there needs to be room for a question and answer session. Limiting these QA sessions so that each person can merely make a single comment and then receive a single response severely limits the ability of people to engage in useful discussion, and forcing people to have any back and forth discussions off-list severely limits the usefulness of the list for brainstorming and for refining ideas. If you want a separate list for long, well-thought-out emails, I'm fine with that. But we need a place for brainstorming and refining ideas. We need a place for back-and-forth discussion. Am I in the minority in believing that? This issue of moderation comes up with great regularity, though not always about the same individuals. Anthony and Thomas have well-established credentials as pains in the ass ... so too has a shot of penicillin. I have frequently disagreed with them, but even when my personal opinion has been that they have reached their most idiotic I have never sought to throttle them. I have a much easier option: the delete key on my keyboard. To those who consider them trolls: Why are you feeding them with requests for moderation? Has that oft repeated simple advice never had any effect upon you? If you view them as part of the problem, must you too become a part of the problem by promoting an equally inane series of messages about moderation? The protection of free speech does not begin with laws on the matter, but with our own personal responses to what we regard as objectionable. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space?
Ok, not replying to anyone in particular, but please, can we stop this thread? If it has ever been useful, it has lost that little bit by now I guess. Thank you. -- eia 2009/9/6 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com 2009/9/6 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 8:06 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Too many people attribute to malice what is completely explained by fuckups. Perhaps you should rethink this analysis. You might be attributing accusations of the latter for accusations of the former. I think it's pretty clear in the case of the start of this particular idiot thread. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Thank you!
re: the errors, I assume you added those to the talkpage of the files on commons? That way someone could actually see if it can be fixed :) thanks! eia 2009/9/4 Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 9:31 PM, phoebe ayersphoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: - videos of all the talks As someone who is unlikely to be able to ever attend a Wikimania unless it comes to London I'd like to express my gratitude for all the effort that's gone into that. I've watched quite a few and intend to watch many more. There is, however, room for improvement on this front. So here's what I would like to see, in terms of video, from the next Wikimania: 1. Some of the videos have issues (eg, absent sound for part of the talk or audio track slowed down to the extent that people sound like orcs). It would be good if whoever uploads the video would view the content and try to solve such issues before making them available. If it's not possible to solve the issue it would be good if they could annotate the video (eg sound absent until 2:48) so people are forewarned and can fast forward to the watchable portion. 2. On many videos, if not most, it is impossible to see the content of the slides. Could videos be uploaded in higher resolution? Obvious downsides: larger file size, more bandwidth required. Or maybe all presenters could be encouraged to upload their presentation slides (I know some already do this) so people can view along as they listen to the audio of the talk. 3. On the videos with a QA segment the audience often doesn't have a microphone so the viewer can't hear the questions. Could more talks provide the audience with a microphone? And where this isn't possible, could speakers be encouraged to repeat or summarise the question for the benefit of the camera? 4. More of an observation than a recommendation: as I've watched the videos most of their respective talk pages have not yet been contributed to (they're red links). The same can be said for their entries in the Wikimania schedule. I thought more people would be wanting to discuss the content of the talks. Despite my various gripes it's really great to have so many videos, so thanks to everyone involved. ___ 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] [Wikimania-l] Thank you!
But could they be uploaded afterwards? (assuming the source files are still available?) Lodewijk 2009/9/4 Brion Vibber br...@wikimedia.org On 9/4/09 1:01 AM, Bod Notbod wrote: 2. On many videos, if not most, it is impossible to see the content of the slides. Could videos be uploaded in higher resolution? Obvious downsides: larger file size, more bandwidth required. Or maybe all presenters could be encouraged to upload their presentation slides (I know some already do this) so people can view along as they listen to the audio of the talk. Higher-res versions would be very nice, but would have been much harder to get done and uploaded as quickly. :) Maybe next year, when we've got more of the new video upload support in place! I would definitely encourage everybody to upload slides and link them with the video versions; PDF slides can be uploaded directly to Commons and can now be viewed inline as well as downloading them. 3. On the videos with a QA segment the audience often doesn't have a microphone so the viewer can't hear the questions. Could more talks provide the audience with a microphone? And where this isn't possible, could speakers be encouraged to repeat or summarise the question for the benefit of the camera? Moderators/assistants from the local team were usually pretty good about getting the microphones around or else reminding the speaker to repeat questions, but of course this gets forgotten sometimes. -- brion ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Commons reaches 5 million files
works fine here... 2009/9/2 Mathias Schindler mathias.schind...@gmail.com On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 2:53 PM, Hay (Husky)hus...@gmail.com wrote: Around 11:46 UTC we reached 5 million files on Commons! Not quite sure which file is the 5th million, but this is one of the candidates: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kj%C3%B8benhavnsposten_28_nov_1838_side_1.jpg Does anyone else get a broken image at that url? Mathias ___ 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] Wiktionary logo competition makes b3ta
arg, I did not lay that connection.. thanks for doing that and imprinting it in my head (NOT)... :( 2009/8/14 w...@versageek.com Lol, Goatse! - b. Friday, August 14, 2009, 12:08:01 PM, David Gerard wrote: DG Our logo competitions have landed us such excellent trademarks as the DG puzzle globe, the WMF logo and the MediaWiki flower. But most entries DG are an excellent demonstration of why graphic designers are paid DG money. DG This one did make the b3ta newsletter, though. Could be a very DG profitable bit of visual identity for us. DG http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikty_no_text_up.png ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Upcoming tech hiring: CTO position split
lolz 2009/8/8 Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.com Hi! And I have to assume that's primarily due to your efforts. Thanks Brion. Excellent work. Yes, thank you Brion! :) Domas ___ 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] Ombudsman commission
I hope those procedures are fixed with a high priority. Because privacy is a serious issue, and users are referred to the ombudsmen committee often, assuming that is fully functional if necessary. If it is not, that means a lot more responsibility for the WMF, the stewards etc. Are the current members still willing to perform their tasks, are they able to? I hope this gets fixed very fast. Thanks, Lodewijk 2009/7/27 Christophe Henner christophe.hen...@gmail.com 2009/7/27 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/7/26 effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com: Has this issue been resolved? I think it would be quite serious if the committee is not functioning, so would like to get some confirmation here. Thanks. Lodewijk Doesn't appear to be. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l I'm working on it for a few days. By the way, this isn't the first time the Ombudsman Commission is laggy. I would think that a mailing list isn't the best tool to work on cases. -- Christophe ___ 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] Ombudsman commission
Has this issue been resolved? I think it would be quite serious if the committee is not functioning, so would like to get some confirmation here. Thanks. Lodewijk 2009/7/18 Peter Jacobi pjacobi...@googlemail.com On dewiki there is a discussion whether the Ombudsman commission does fulfill its mission. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Diskussion:Checkuser/Anfragen#Ombudskommission Some months ago there was a checkuser action which was questioned by some users and the Ombudsman commission was asked to investigate the case. The only dewiki member of the Ombudsman commission did recuse himself from the case. The other members can't be reached or don't comment. Regards, Peter [[User:Pjacobi]] ___ 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] Donation Button Enhancement : Part 2
What about changing it every hour? Then you have sufficient randomness over time, and no flashy buttons. -- eia 2009/7/21 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org 2009/7/20 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com: Rotating them would seem like a more viable solution than randomised - We don't want the situation where every new page in WP someone reads there is a new/different coloured donation button where last week there was none at all - to go from nothing to that would be almost as bad as a flashing donate here, now! banner. Indeed, that's the reasoning behind the proposed approach. We don't want it to typically be changing constantly for an individual user. Yes, a sequential run does introduce various problematic biases. An IP-address based hack could work, but would need to take into account dynamic IP addresses and such, without introducing strange new biases of its own. We'll discuss a bit further - good ideas / algorithms welcome. :-) -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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] Some reflections about the governance of Commons
The interface is only part of the problems which were identified. Also the complicated procedures and the (sometimes considered hostile - although not even always intentional) community were part of the equation. However, I do agree that the interface is a huge problem, and fixing that would probably make the odds to encounter a hostile community member smaller etc. Lodewijk 2009/6/15 Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net That is more to do with the interface to Commons, as I understand it, rather than the governance of it. Flickr is seen as being much easier to use. I believe that was also the origin of Pikiwiki - essentially creating a better interface to Commons. BTW, to date I've never had a problem with Commons (after 2000 edits and 500 images uploaded). Mike On 15 Jun 2009, at 17:58, Gerard Meijssen wrote: Hoi, There is a project called Wiki loves art/nl In this project people make pictures of objects in museums in the Netherlands. The thing I have been wondering about is that the pictures are first published on Flickr and then are copied into Commons. This is a project of the Dutch WMF chapter and some other organisations. I read it as there are too many problems with posting on Commons directly. The reason why I bring this up is because it demonstrates how Commons is not thought of as the helpful project it should be and it is not only pikiwiki that has a problem. Thanks, GerardM 2009/6/12 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de Hello, I had started a discussion on the Village Pump of Commons. I think Commons is a very important project, and a very complicated project. With more and more projects initiated by our chapters to encourage other organizations or individuals to give their content free and upload them to Commons it also becomes a fassade project of the Foundation and its chapters. This and other reasons make me think that we should as broadly as possible to discuss a few issues on Commons. The discussion is here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ Commons:Village_pump#Some_reflections_about_the_governance_of_Common -- Ting Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not?
Hi Huib, yes, that seems to be an accurate description of the current situation. However, what would you /want/ it to be, and /why/ ? :) Thanks, eia 2009/6/16 Huib Laurens abi...@forgotten-beauty.com Hello, I want to start with thanking Effe iets anders, this is the most neutral email about Commons I have seen this week, and I like the fact that there is a new angle to work with. I think Commons is both a service projects and a independent project, Commons is a free file repository and can be used in all MediaWiki site from version 1.13 or higher (source:http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Instant_Commons ), so Commons is providing a service for more than 10.000 sites (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Sites_using_MediaWiki). Commons is also a service project for Newspapers, magazines, other sites or things that needs images under a free license. I don't think somebody on Commons would mind if you call it a service project in this context. All Wikimedia project sites are build in MediaWiki so Commons provides them the same hosting service as the do for other MediaWiki sites, only the big difference is that the Foundation own the servers that host Commons and that the Wikimedia Foundation the only organization is that can use Commons for hosting non free images. When we look inside Wikimedia we have Wikipedia, Wikibooks,Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversety . Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons. Those nine projects all have there own scope and can work independent from the other projects, all the projects have there own community, policies, rules and content. When the Foundation will stop the could sell those projects to nine different people and all projects can keep working, the don't need a other project to keep existing. So all those project can be seen independently within the Foundation. The projects that stay over like Wikimania, Incubator or meta can be seen as projects with the soul purpose to support the nine big projects within the Foundation, Incubator can not work without other projects, Meta needs other projects to keep working also. Commons can go on with his own community, so does Wikipedia or Wikinews ect ect. So we should see Commons as a inpendend project created for giving MediaWiki sites a free file repository, but optimized for giving extra service for Wikimedia projects. Best regards, Huib * http://www.wikipedia.org* ___ 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] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies #2
2009/6/5 Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com snip The stats (which have, by surprise, a dedicated domain under th hu wikipedia domain) runs on a dedicated server, with nothing else on it. Its sole purpose to gather and publish the stats. Basically nobody have permission to log in the servers but me, and I since I happen to be checkuser as well it wouldn't even be ntertaining to read it, even if it wasn't big enough making this useless. I happen to be the one who have created the Hungarian checkuser policy, which is, as far as I know, the strictest one in WMF projects, and it's no joke, and I intend to follow it. (And those who are unfamiliar with me, I happen to be the founder of huwp as well, apart from my job in computer security.) snip Just a remark on the checkuser argument. Checkuser actions and checks are logged, and can be double checked by other checkusers and stewards. This server can not. I can imagine that this would pose a problem. eia ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Third-party GFDL text irrevocably incompatible with Wikipedia as of August 1
2009/5/28 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: effe iets anders wrote: Which makes me wonder how a judge would rule on this btw. Because if the GFDL and CCBYSA are enough similar before the deadline to interchange, why wouldn't they be afterwards? Except for that line in the GFDL version, I don't see legal reasoning behind that... So just wondering how that would work out if someone boldly made the move /after/ the deadline and someone would bring it to a legal case. Is there any precendence on this is the US? I doubt it. I think there is very little precedent anywhere about the legal effect of these licences. Before a judge renders a decision the case has to get into court in the first place, and I find it difficult to imagine who would have the standing to start such a case. Ec That probably would be someone complaining about someone else relicensing their content :) Which is not likely, and definitely not us of course, but mainly a thought experiment. I'm just meaning to say, it is not too hard to put anything you like in any kind of agreement/license, but what is the actual value of it? I really don't know. Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Third-party GFDL text irrevocably incompatible with Wikipedia as of August 1
as long as they convert /before/ the deadline... lodewijk 2009/5/27 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/5/27 Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) newyorkb...@gmail.com: Thanks for circulating this. Not to create a self-fulfilling prophecy here, but I suspect that 90% or more of those affected by this issue will not care or will not understand the urgency, and they will not do anything, either on their own sites or on-wiki. What are the practical implications of this if nothing happens and little attention is paid by anyone? The only situation where there is going to be a problem is moving content from a wiki that doesn't convert to a Wikimedia wiki. Going the other way will be fine in most cases, most Wikimedia content will be dual licensed. If every Wikimedian that takes content off other wikis (how many of those are there?) goes to those wikis and recommends they convert, then we should be ok. ___ 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] Information about 2009 Board of Trustees election
Hm, that was also the information I got :) Besides that, I personally feel that one week in the middle of the vacation is somewhat short for an internet election. Is there an urgent reason not to have it for two weeks? And good luck to count and confirm the votes within two days time! :o I'd find it impressive if that works so well in that tight schedule. Best, Lodewijk 2009/5/27 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de: Hello Philippe, I thought this year three candidates would be elected. Ting philippe wrote: Information concerning the election rules, candidacy, and suffrage/ voting requirements for the 2009 election to the Board of Trustees is now posted at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/en. I have copied it below, but for the wiki-links to work, you will - of course - need to be on meta. For the election committee, Philippe The 2009 elections to the Board of Trustees will be held between August 3rd and August 10th 2009. Members of the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to elect one candidate to a two-year term which will expire in 2011. The Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons. The elections will be held securely on servers belonging to an independent third party (to be confirmed). Votes are secret and are only visible to the select few persons who audit and tally the election. Voters will submit ranked preferences by numbering candidates. The votes will be tallied using the Schulze methodto rank candidates based on the number of voters who prefer that candidate over other candidates. The Election Committee intends to announce the results on or before August 12th. Detailed results will be available. All times on this page are 00:00 (midnight) UTC. Contents [hide] 1 Information for voters 1.1 Requirements 1.2 How to vote 2 Information for candidates 2.1 Responsibilities as member of the Board 2.2 Prerequisites to candidacy 2.3 How to submit your candidacy 3 Organization 3.1 Time line 3.2 Translators [edit]Information for voters [edit]Requirements You may vote from any one registered account you own on a Wikimedia wiki (you may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you own). To qualify, this one account must: not be blocked; and not be a bot; and have made at least 600 edits before 01 June 2009 across across Wikimedia wikis (edits on several wikis can be combined if your accounts are unified into a global account); and have made at least 50 edits between 01 January and 1 July 2009. Special exceptions: the following may vote regardless of the above requirements: Wikimedia server administrators with shell access; paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation who started working at the office before 01 March 2009; current or former members of the Board of Trustees. [edit]How to vote If you are eligible to vote: Read the candidate presentations and decide which candidates you will support. Go to the wiki page Special:Securepoll on one wiki you qualify to vote from. For example, if you are most active on the wiki meta.wikimedia.org/, go to meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Securepoll. Follow the instructions on that page. [edit]Information for candidates A detailed description of the responsibilities of a member of the Board can be found at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_member. [edit]Responsibilities as member of the Board Being a Board member of a small organization like the Wikimedia Foundation, which faces immense challenges, can be time-consuming. The position is voluntary and unpaid. While board members are not expected to bring personal money to the organisation, they are welcome to help raise funds. Board members are expected to attend at least 3–4 meetings per year in person, attend Wikimania (our annual conference), and attend other scheduled online meetings and votes. The Board communicates intensively via e-mail, wiki, and IRC. Individual trustees sometimes participate in strategic meetings with other organizations and companies, relaying results back to Board and staff. Individual board members are expected to be involved in certain activities (such as fundraising, Wikimania, or auditing) and to help draft policies, charters and resolutions on such topics. Because Board members owe duties by virtue of their position, candidates who currently hold paid positions with the Wikimedia Foundation must resign from those position before they can be appointed to the Board of Trustees. This is to avoid potential conflicts of interests. [edit]Prerequisites to candidacy To be eligible as a candidate, you must: have made at least 600 edits before 01 March 2009 on any one registered account (edits on several wikis can be combined if your accounts are unified
Re: [Foundation-l] Third-party GFDL text irrevocably incompatible with Wikipedia as of August 1
2009/5/27 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com: Brad : the practical implications are that we will lose the ability to copy work from a set of familiar collaborative sites -- many of which chose their license specifically to facilitate long-term exchange with Wikipedia -- and they will slowly lose access to the latest WP updates over months or years. (we are also gaining direct access to new sites, but that happens regardless of how we approach this hurdle) Thomas Dalton writes: The only situation where there is going to be a problem is moving content from a wiki that doesn't convert to a Wikimedia wiki. Going the other way will be fine in most cases, most Wikimedia content will be dual licensed. Yes, wikipedia will continue to dual license for as long as this is possible. This will help GFDL-only projects dependent on Wikipedia benefit from future edits for as long as possible, but it will only last so long. Once CC-BY-SA content is merged into an article, future revisions of the article are BY-SA only. Within a couple of years, Wikipedia will be basically a BY-SA project (with a historical snapshot still available under GFDL). Third parties should not be fooled into thinking that this finesse is equivalent to being a dual-licensed project forever. If they don't switch now, they will not have the chance to do so in the future. geni writes: Not much. Not many active third party GFDL projects so it is unlikely that there will significant amounts of new GFDL content produced in future and most existing stuff of interest has long since been imported. A quick look at the recentchanges of the 18 large wikis listed on the outreach page will show you that it's not true that most existing stuff of relevance has long been imported -- these are active communities, each working in their own world; which sporadically draw from Wiki[p]edia and from which we slightly more sporadically draw in return. I am surprised you (of all people :) have such faith in the horde or importers. I was looking at the glorious media and high-res source text scans at wdl.org yesterday, and could not find a single piece of that public domain media that was already on Commons and used in the obvious Wikipedia article / on its own Wikisource page. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place... but that's a month after a global publicity blitz. On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:16 AM, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: as long as they convert /before/ the deadline... Exactly.And there are some energetic new projects such as Medpedia that are just getting off the ground, with enthusiastic new authors and a constellation of supporters... they'd probably love to convert, but need someone to explain this to them in time for them to work through their own red tape. SJ Which makes me wonder how a judge would rule on this btw. Because if the GFDL and CCBYSA are enough similar before the deadline to interchange, why wouldn't they be afterwards? Except for that line in the GFDL version, I don't see legal reasoning behind that... So just wondering how that would work out if someone boldly made the move /after/ the deadline and someone would bring it to a legal case. Is there any precendence on this is the US? Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Third-party GFDL text irrevocably incompatible with Wikipedia as of August 1
2009/5/27 Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) newyorkb...@gmail.com: The point I was making is that I expect people will continue importing and exporting as per past practice with no attention given to the issue and few people caring. From a legal point of view that's not optimal, but I think it's highly likely. Who set the August 1 deadline and who has the power to extend it if needed? Newyorkbrad The Free Software Foundation did, in the 1.3 version of the GFDL. -- Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Information about 2009 Board of Trustees election
2009/5/27 Angela bees...@gmail.com: On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 1:54 AM, philippe philippe.w...@gmail.com wrote: The reason not to have it in two weeks is that it generally takes longer than that to effectively translate both the policy pages and the candidate statements to allow as many people to participate in as many languages as possible. Two weeks would almost guarantee a primarily english-centric election. In the past we've had no problem getting the votes counted/confirmed in two days; we did it last year. I believe the suggestion is to have the vote lasting for 2 weeks, not starting in 2 weeks from now. Voting last for 3 weeks in past elections. Angela indeed, thanks for clarifying :) Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Information about 2009 Board of Trustees election
But last year was earlier :) Not in the very middle of the vacation. Lodewijk 2009/5/27 philippe philippe.w...@gmail.com: Ah, OK, sorry for my misunderstanding of the question. Indeed, we had that same discussion amongst the committee. In the end, the vote timing is driven by Wikimania and the need to purchase tickets for the new trustees-designate to get there (at a reasonable price, which usually requires a 14 day advance purchase), while also taking the time to get the translations done as completely as possible. In addition, it was our feeling that last year that the first week had - by far - the vast majority of the votes cast with relatively little movement afterwards. ___ philippe On May 27, 2009, at 11:03 AM, Angela wrote: On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 1:54 AM, philippe philippe.w...@gmail.com wrote: The reason not to have it in two weeks is that it generally takes longer than that to effectively translate both the policy pages and the candidate statements to allow as many people to participate in as many languages as possible. Two weeks would almost guarantee a primarily english-centric election. In the past we've had no problem getting the votes counted/confirmed in two days; we did it last year. I believe the suggestion is to have the vote lasting for 2 weeks, not starting in 2 weeks from now. Voting last for 3 weeks in past elections. Angela ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing resolution
also, Dutch Wikibooks made the switch for all new content after 15 April 2007 already for the dual license CC-BY-SA / GFDL, so nothing new here for them, except that old content will finally /all/ be dual licensed :) (no more exceptions on pages with older versions). A big notice in the general sitenotice for all visitors might be worth while btw to reach all re-users. best, lodewijk 2009/5/22 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com Congratulations to everyone involved in the effort to get this happening! It's been a long road - a longer road than many of us have seen. Just a quick point I'd like to raise about Wikinews in relation to the license change. Wikinews has never used GFDL or cc-by-sa, it uses cc-by. Therefore, this license change will not be affecting Wikinews. As a result I think it's important that we don't say in any of our public statements on this topic all Wikimedia projects are changing Instead I suggest that we use phrases like all GFDL content or All relevant Wikimedia projects or something like that. The board statement is ambiguous on this point. It says ...to relicense the Wikimedia sites... but the Wikimedia Foundation blog said the Wikimedia Foundation will proceed with the implementation of a CC-BY-SA/GFDL dual license system *on all of our project’s* content. [my emphasis]. The licensing update http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update page on Meta does specify that we are only talking about content which is currently GFDL: to make all content currently distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License (with “later version” clause) additionally available under CC-BY-SA 3.0, as explicitly allowed through the latest version of the GFDL; Once again, congratulations everyone on the hard work and diligent effort on this complicated issue. -Liam [[witty lama]] p.s. I suppose the same point goes for Wikimedia Commons which includes a whole variety of licenses including much in the Public Domain. wittylama.com/blog Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia ___ 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] Announcement: Chapter Selected Board Seats
Hi all, Thank you for announcing this, Jan-Bart. I'm just as happy that we have reached a conclusion. There were many discussions before we came to this conclusion, and I think we have an excellent set of board members here. Michael has served on the board already for quite a while, and brings in experience on that side besides his legal experience, and I'm glad he will remain on board. Arne has been involved with the growth of the German chapter, and brings in some organizational expertise on that side. I hope very much that the board in the new setting will proof to be indeed a successful one, now we are entering these exciting times of strategy setting. More even then before it is important to have strategic, experienced and motivated board members who can handle the task ahead. I have all faith in these people to do that. Best regards, Lodewijk 2009/5/22 James Forrester ja...@jdforrester.org 2009/5/22 Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org: [Snip] Please join me in welcoming Arne to the board and congratulating Michael on his re-appointment. On behalf of the board I would like to thank all those involved in facilitating the process and making these appointments possible. Absolutely, my congratulations both to Arne and to Michael. Yours, -- James D. Forrester jdforres...@wikimedia.org | jdforres...@gmail.com [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] ___ 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] Licensing update vote result
2009/5/22 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org Which way do neutral votes count on RfA? 1) at which project (and please dont use enwiki abbreviations) 2) does it matter? :) eia ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing update vote result
2009/5/22 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:12 PM, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/5/22 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org Which way do neutral votes count on RfA? 1) at which project (and please dont use enwiki abbreviations) The important one (and why not). Ah, meta? :) - seriously, i don't see why only to consider enwiki methods. Sure, most voters came from there, but this is an interwiki decision, where interwiki measures would make more sense. But well, not that it matters anyway, these things should be decided /beforehand/ not afterwards. 2) does it matter? :) Just wondering. I see from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_bureaucratship/Riana/Bureaucrat_discussionthat they seem to be excluded from the %. well, since those are about people, and this isn't, I dont see any relevance :P Usually the two categories are treated differently. -- eia ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not censored (was Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery
2009/5/18 Nathan nawr...@gmail.com I think if there was demand for this within the editing community, it would already exist. The problem, then, is not what to do for the editors who might like a safe option but for the readers who don't have an account and can't set preferences or add .js widgets. Maybe not right now, but I can see in the future shooting for a kids.wikipedia.org or safe.wikipedia.org - perhaps Simple Wikipedia, which has had some criticism for its mission, could be adapted for the purpose. Nathan https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l I'd prefer to take the OSM-approach here. Let others port our content and filter the relevant parts out if they wish to build a safe Wikipedia version, especially since there are (almost) unlimited possibilities to combine articles to suitability for usergroups. If someone wants to set up kiddopedia.org and mirror Wikipedia content there with the exception of sexual subjects, be my guest. It doesn't have to be Wikimedia who's doing that. We should limit ourselves somewhere in what we want to do, and what we would others to pick up if there is a need. Which is perfectly possible thanks to this wonderful license of ours. eia ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2007 Form 990 Now Posted
The affiliate question was mainly triggered by page 1, question H (and might be especially interesting in later files of 990 with US chapters on their way who might or might not be affiliates according to the IRS definition). I noted that question H(c) has not been filled in. I assume that this is because this was considered a follow up question on H(a)? Best, eia 2009/5/15 Veronique Kessler vkess...@wikimedia.org Hi, The donations in-kind refer to donated internet hosting costs and legal fees. In our 07-08 audit report, we discuss the volunteer contribution but did not attempt to quantify it in terms of a dollar value. We are investigating how best to reflect this in next year's audit report. I don't know much about Part III, question 1 so I look forward to hearing from the community. In terms of affiliates, can you please point me to the specific line/lines you are looking at so I am sure to answer the question correctly. Veronique effe iets anders wrote: Hi Veronique, thanks for posting this. In Part VI, question 82b, it is mentioned that 333,125 USD was donated in kind. Can you confirm that this does not include the volunteer contributions to Wikipedia? (assume not, or at least hope that it's not valued that low ;-) ) A more general question for anyone who knows: Part III, question 1 mentions whether the org. tried to influence politics. Does anyone know 1) what this includes (only US politics or also foreign, also mission related lobbying (free licenses for example) or only general R/D lobbying) and 2) whether answering Yes would make any difference to the tax status etc for the WMF? (just interested :) ) The document asks about affiliates. When, according to the IRS, is an organization an affiliate? Thanks! eia 2009/5/13 Veronique Kessler vkess...@wikimedia.org Dear All, Please note that the 2007 Form 990 which covers fiscal year July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008 has been posted to the Wikimedia Foundation website at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:WMF_2008_Form_990.pdf Also posted are questions and answers which can be found at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Form_2007_Questions_and_Answers Of course I am available to answer questions as well. Veronique ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Collecting or spreading information (was: Wikipedia is not the karma sutra)
Here we have an interesting discussion topic. So what /is/ the main focus of Wikimedia? Is it about collecting together free knowledge, or is it about spreading it? If it would only be about spreading, I think we have at least chosen the wrong shape, because a page full of links would then be more appropriate. But we're not just about collecting either, it seems, since we try to work on spreading the content through dumps (although not optimally), DVD's and printed versions. We do a lot of activities which are focussed on spreading the stuff we collected first. But which of the two is more important to us, and which takes preference? To think about that, we should take a few things into consideration: * Are we the only one able to perform a certain task? Are we the single (and therefore important) link in a chain from knowledge to receiver? * Is there an activity someone else could do more effectively? * Is there an activity we could do most effectively? * Is there a part that is connected directly to our identity, which we do not /want/ to let go? * What are the side effects to limiting/extending ourselves on one of the two? * How does the main public (also our main moneymaker) see us/expect us to act? This type of questions we should try to answer in a more general shape to find an answer on the specific question of the necklace article and specific photo's. I don't claim to know all the answers to these questions, nor do I think anyone does, actually. However, I hope we will alltogether try to address this type of questions, perhaps as part of the strategy process. I personally don't think we can see this specific group of articles as different as the other 12 million. There are many many categories, and there's a lot to say for deleting each single one of them. (insulting to some people, confusing, dangerous if people follow it, dangerous information for terrorists, distracting from the real information, you probably know all the possible reasons even better then I do). If we would ever exclude one set of topics, we should be very carefully considering where to draw the line exactly, to avoid that we will drift off to who-knows-where with the argument yeah, but if that gets deleted, this should be going too. That goes both for articles and images (even editors who are getting blocked). I think that Wikipedia is best in collecting information. That is the place what we are best in, that is what no other website is able to imitate on this scale. That is also what the general public expects from us. I feel that this is what Wikipedia's primary focus should be. However, that should not exclude any thoughts about restraining ourselves if that furthers the other goal, spreading. But also consider that the spreading to people who want to avoid sexual content, could also be done by others. It should not be too hard to build a filter to censor Wikipedia from that type of information and even images for example based on the categorization. Best regards, lodewijk Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net The image is an excellent illustration of its subject. However I would prefer a policy which excluded both it and the article in which it is used as an illustration. I'm not sure how the policy should be elaborated in our policy pages, but essentially this sort of material is incompatible with our core mission, to provide an accessible compendium of knowledge to the world. I was discussing Wikipedia with a Mohs surgeon the other day, he happened to be a Mormon. Other than the articles on dermatology and Mohs surgery, we talked about his 13 year old daughter who had been discouraged by her school from using Wikipedia. An article such as Pearl necklace (sexuality) adds little to a girl's knowledge base in comparison to the barrier it raises to her use of the encyclopedia. I suggest that Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not include Wikipedia is not a manual of sexual practices. It could be phrased Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2007 Form 990 Now Posted
Hi Veronique, thanks for posting this. In Part VI, question 82b, it is mentioned that 333,125 USD was donated in kind. Can you confirm that this does not include the volunteer contributions to Wikipedia? (assume not, or at least hope that it's not valued that low ;-) ) A more general question for anyone who knows: Part III, question 1 mentions whether the org. tried to influence politics. Does anyone know 1) what this includes (only US politics or also foreign, also mission related lobbying (free licenses for example) or only general R/D lobbying) and 2) whether answering Yes would make any difference to the tax status etc for the WMF? (just interested :) ) The document asks about affiliates. When, according to the IRS, is an organization an affiliate? Thanks! eia 2009/5/13 Veronique Kessler vkess...@wikimedia.org Dear All, Please note that the 2007 Form 990 which covers fiscal year July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008 has been posted to the Wikimedia Foundation website at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:WMF_2008_Form_990.pdf Also posted are questions and answers which can be found at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Form_2007_Questions_and_Answers Of course I am available to answer questions as well. Veronique ___ 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] Collecting or spreading information (was: Wikipedia is not the karma sutra)
2009/5/14 Ivan Lanin ivan.la...@wikimedia.or.id snip * Are we the only one able to perform a certain task? Are we the single (and therefore important) link in a chain from knowledge to receiver? No, we are not the one. The government should actually do that. But, we are an important alternative *collector* of information and therefore should also be able to spread it. snip What I actually meant here was: Are we irreplacable? ie, if our part of the chain breaks, does that mean the chain collapses? Because if that is so, then we should make sure that we don't break definitely :) Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Collecting or spreading information (was: Wikipedia is not the karma sutra)
You could spread someone else's knowledge, no problem. And conflicts there always are. If the collection of some content hinders the general spreading, such as with the sexual images might be the case (but that is just an example, you could just as well use images of the prophet Muhamed as example) then one should consider which is more important. It is all about priorities in the end. Not only when in conflict but also when facing limited resources. eia 2009/5/14 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com 2009/5/14 effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com: Here we have an interesting discussion topic. So what /is/ the main focus of Wikimedia? Is it about collecting together free knowledge, or is it about spreading it? I think it is clear that we need to do both. You can't spread information you don't have and there is no point collecting information if nobody uses it. I'm not convinced these two goals are in any real conflict. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Cross-wiki articles
2009/5/3 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de: My experience is that people outside of Wikipedia community (the pure users or people that only heard of Wikipedia) in Germany don't differentiate between the qualities of the language versions. I don't think that the quality of the German Wikipedia had the impact on the outreach to government or libraries. It is more the organization and professionalism of the chapter. Personally I don't think that take the classical encyclopedia as a measure is a good thing. The classical encyclopedia was restrained on the unpossibility of to print books in such big volumes. An electronic encyclopedia has far more possibilities and if we take an old fashioned measure as our measurement we artificially abondane some of the possibilities that the new technology offer us. -- Ting I think that if the public does /not/ differentiate, that is actually quite a compliment. That actually shows that the quality is better, because it corrects for the lower quantity and the assumptions that English must be better because more people. For example in the Netherlands, a lot of people still say well, yes, I use Wikipedia, but of course only the English, which is much better and extensive . This while the Dutch version is absolutely not small (500k articles) and imho not with a very low quality. So if people don't differentiate, that already tells something about the German version :) Best, Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] General Assembly and guided tour / Mitgliederversammlung und Führung (Swiss Nation al Library)
that gives a 404 2009/1/30 Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com The silently stripped PDF is at (English version) http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediach-l/attachments/20090130/8dc29ea1/attachment-0002.PDF Sorry about that! M. On 1/30/09, Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com wrote: Begin forwarded message: From: Michael Bimmler michael.bimm...@wikimedia.ch Date: 30 January 2009 16:38:29 GMT+01:00 To: memb...@wikimedia.ch, wikimediac...@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia CH Members] General Assembly and guided tour / Mitgliederversammlung und Führung (Swiss National Library) Dear members, dear friends of Wikimedia CH liebe Mitglieder, liebe Freunde von Wikimedia CH It is with great pleasure that I invite you to the General Assembly 2009 of Wikimedia CH, to be held on the 28th of March, in Berne. Please find the details attached as a PDF. Ich lade Sie herzlich zur Generalversammlung 2009 von Wikimedia CH ein, welche am 28. März in Bern stattfinden wird. Die detaillierte M itteilung finden Sie als angehängte PDF-Datei. Une version française de cette invitation sera fournie dès que possi ble. Best regards, freundliche Grüsse, Michael Bimmler -- Michael Bimmler President Wikimedia CH Association for the Advancement of Free Knowledge Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens 8008 Zürich Switzerland +41 44 912 20 18 (home) +41 79 864 88 18 (mobile) michael.bimm...@wikimedia.ch http://www.wikimedia.ch ___ Members mailing list memb...@wikimedia.ch http://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/members -- Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Agreement between WMF and O'Reilly Media about Wikipedia: The Missing Manual on Wikipedia?
Maybe a silly question, but nobody is stopping anyone to copy it to Wikibooks. The question is mainly, should it be deleted from Wikipedia. I agree there with Erik, that this is clearly a community decision. Why not just copy it and see where it flourishes best? Best regards, Lodewijk 2009/1/28 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com 2009/1/28 Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/1/28 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, You are out of your mind. The author of the book, a respected Wikipedian, can relicense it to anything he likes. Of course he can, but unless he relicenses it under CC-BY-SA (which I can't imagine him not doing, but still), it will need to be deleted. Did you consider asking him? No, we haven't even decided if we are going to switch yet. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Open Knowledge Foundation
They have Benjamin Mako Hill in their advisory board, who is also in the WMF AB. Other then that, I see nothing familiar. Best regards, Lodewijk 2009/1/26 Lennart Guldbrandsson wikihanni...@gmail.com Hello, I was recently made aware of this organization: http://www.okfn.org/ with their blog at http://blog.okfn.org/ Have any of you had anything to do with them? Best wishes, Lennart -- Lennart Guldbrandsson, chair of Wikimedia Sverige and press contact for Swedish Wikipedia // ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige och presskontakt för svenskspråkiga Wikipedia ___ 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] Steward-Wahl
Please note that stewards are not an electoral college. Although it is positive if there are stewards around that have an understanding of a project in case there is something complicated going on, there is absolutely no necessity to have stewards from specific angles. It is not like stewards come together and vote on something, there are no ratio's to be held. Lodewijk 2009/1/20 Casey Brown cbrown1023...@gmail.com 2009/1/20 Jan Luca j...@jans-seite.de: Aber, wenn kein Steward von einen der Wikiversity-Projekte kommt und auch keiner dort mitarbeitet, ist es schwer das Projekt zu beurteilen, da man keinen Live-Mitarbeiter hat. Ich weiß, dass Stewards global sind und auf alle Projekte zugreifen können. Yes, you are right -- it's best to have well-rounded candidates. But in the end, stewards don't decide so they are just people to do the actions of the community. However, if you really want to get a Wikiversity candidate, the only way to do it is to encourage them to nominate themselves! You have a few days left. :-) -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee
I don´t think this is very fair. You can call Gerard a lot, but not really agressive... He can be very enthusiast, committed, and very sure he is right, and trying to persuade others, but agressive? Anyway, I don't think a mailinglist (especially not this one) is a good place to discuss *people* rather then subjects. Have you tried to discuss your problems directly with Gerard, Muhammad and David? Sometimes that helps. Best regards, Lodewijk 2009/1/10 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com 2009/1/10 Muhammad Alsebaey shipmas...@gmail.com: - Gerard has been the *only* person from LangCom that I have seen reply to any of the issues, his replies are selective, he refuses to answer whatever he doesnt think is relevant to his argument and is in general very aggressive, If the guys at LangCom chose him as the public face, I would say they were looking to pick fights rather than communicate decisions. Seconded, particularly the aggression. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Don't know how linked we still are with wikia...
As far as I am aware (but someone staff should be able to clarify more in-depth), the only connection is Jimmy who has two hats on his head (director? at Wikia and board member at WMF), and no official ties. And Wikia sponsors (still?) Wikimania of course! But no offices are shared any more. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. There is enough bad reflection of our own if people really search, so don't worry :) Lodewijk 2009/1/3 Brock Weller brock.wel...@gmail.com On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:50 AM, Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 6:43 AM, Brock Weller brock.wel...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:41 AM, Brock Weller brock.wel...@gmail.com wrote: but this http://saveourrights.wikia.com/wiki/Overview ( http://saveourrights.wikia.com/wiki/Overview ) is disturbing. It's a conspiracy pit of nutjobs. There's full fledged copyright violations of entire articles from newspapers ( http://saveourrights.wikia.com/wiki/Nini_and_Nunu ) publishing of names, addresses and occasional phone numbers of private citizens who stand as electors ( http://saveourrights.wikia.com/wiki/New_York_Electors_(2008)http://saveourrights.wikia.com/wiki/New_York_Electors_%282008%29 http://saveourrights.wikia.com/wiki/New_York_Electors_%282008%29 http://saveourrights.wikia.com/wiki/New_York_Electors_%282008%29 http://saveourrights.wikia.com/wiki/New_York_Electors_%282008%29) and a cut and paste copy of an article on wikiquote ( http://saveourrights.wikia.com/wiki/William_Blackstone ). Theres also the issue that the what can I do to help? page uses SOVERIGN in all caps and quotes like that, which is a tax protestor myth, being if they use that in court documents they are soverign citizens and the judges dont have jurisdiction over them. Somebody might want to do something about this. -- -Brock Just to clarify a little, these are the obama is a british citizen and cant be president people. -- -Brock ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Other than a takedown notice for the copy+paste violation (which the original authors would have to do), this doesn't really involve the Foundation. You're better off contacting Wikia for this. -Chad I don't care if its up or down, i was just wondering if we're still connected to wikia in anyway (ie it reflect badly on us). If we're not, as it seems by your response, then I really don't care too much :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- -Brock ___ 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] Ombudsman commission
Hm, I always saw the ombudsman commission as a commission very different and seperate from the whole commission structure. If I recall correctly, it was mainly to fill a Real Gap, namely an option to file complaints for breach of privacy policy. I think this clearly defined mission is quite different from for instance communication committee, special projects committee and chapters committee, which are much more vaguely defined, no clear purposes and with vague membership and authority to the outer world. As I saw and see it, is the ombudsman commission a replacement for a real ombudsman, a place to file complaints without having to go to court. Therefore, I'd like to plea to remain this structure if there are no complaints about that as such, no matter what happens to the commission structure as a whole. Best regards, Lodewijk 2009/1/2 Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net Eia wrote: Hi all, A few days ago, the term for the ombudsman commission expired. Unfortunately, I missed an announcement about the commission for 2009. Could someone clarify who will be the 2009 members, and where the announcement (will be/is) made? We're currently reevaluating the ombudsman commission as part of a larger rethinking of the committee system that was established some years ago, before the foundation had much in the way of staff or structure. This will be a significant topic in our board meeting next week, and I hope we can provide more information after the meeting. In the meantime, if anyone would like to offer feedback, I would be very happy to hear it. In particular, ideas or suggestions on what our needs are and how best to satisfy them. I'm less interested in random complaints about this or that committee, I think we're already aware of most of the concerns that have been raised, although anyone who thinks they know of a problem nobody has ever mentioned before is welcome to contact me off-list. I'm more interested in analysis of how our committees work, what their strengths and limitations are, what can be reasonably expected of them, and how we should fill in the gaps. --Michael Snow ___ 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] which is the year's subject?
[[me]] 2008/12/30 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu [[Barack Obama]] [[Induced pluripotent stem cell]] Next years will be [[Large hadron collider]] :) On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 6:52 PM, Crazy Lover always_yours.fore...@yahoo.com wrote: What subject, can be consider the year's subject? C.m.l. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- You have successfully failed! ___ 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] Jimmy Wales donation appeal
Up to now, I kinda liked the fundraiser. Although they are very shouty for what I'm used to (I dislike the red button for instance and the somewhat agressive tone), I think this last change in message could use a *little* step back. Please use a slightly smaller font, an slightly less shouty text. To me it really reads like wow, now we're really desperate, PLEASE COME READ THIS ** APPEAL. I would really appreciate it if this last banner would be done a little less in a way that comes to me (justified or not) as typical American... As said, a slightly smaller font, and a grey color could do miracles here. Lodewijk 2008/12/23 Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Casey Brown cbrown1023...@gmail.com wrote: Some pretty nice comments mixed in there. ;-) They also do a good job explaining why we need money. [Jay: interesting to look at, might be nice to use some like their comments in the future] Some of it is just hopeless. Why can't they be self sufficient? is the sort of question that reflects a simple lack of consideration on the part of the asker. Had they considered that question more carefully they would likely have answered it themselves. I.e. that asking for money *is* a form of self-sufficiency no less than any other method other than spending no money at all (which has obvious problems). So then the question is why ask rather than run ads or let company X pay for the ability to control the content, etc... and many counter arguments to these sorts of alternatives are obvious even to people who know nothing of our internals. Although my own experience is that many Americans are a bit baffled that we don't run ads. They've often not even heard the multitude of arguments against pervasive/invasive advertising. I don't believe it's Wikimedia's place to argue against advertising, but there might be an opportunity for some of our community members to work with anti-consumerist groups like Adbusters to make a public argument as to why our current lack of advertisements is laudable from their perspective. On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:42 PM, Dan Collins en.wp.s...@gmail.com wrote: Wait. Is donating supposed to make the banner go away? Because it didn't... Why would it? You can collapse it even without donating. (Or log in and make it vanish entirely with the gadget— the reason for it to not vanish entirely on collapse is that a lot of people will collapse then decide they want to donate later…) Though I suppose that might not be a bad feature, but on the other hand… we're not trying to hold people for ransom. You shouldn't have to pay to dispel the notice, requiring that wouldn't reflect Wikimedia's or our communities values well. ___ 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] 2008 Annual Fundraiser - Going into Phas e 2
Hm, btw, where was again that list with all incoming donations? Lodewijk 2008/12/24 Przykuta przyk...@o2.pl So, Obama has won election in the USA, people are more happy (maybe not only part of people in USA) - they want to pay for that ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism Just simple behaviors :) http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics ~everyone wants to be Santa Claus ;) Jimbo's appeal is a good move. (yes we can? - a god meme to use in acknowledgement, yes, we can + be bold = ?) So, be bold during Christmas and all next days przykuta ___ 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] Question about status of access in mainland China
Hi, thanks, but could you please clarify? Is it again Blocked (and is not accassible) or is it UNblocked (so you can visit it right now)? Sorry, it's a little confusing :) Thanks, Lodewijk 2008/12/16 shi zhao shiz...@gmail.com BBC Chinese agian unblocked.. 2008/12/17 Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net I see that the BBC reports their Chinese language site is again blocked in China. They mention some other sites but nothing about Wikipedia. Could anyone summarize what the current situation is for accessing Wikipedia there? Especially zh.wikipedia.org, of course, but also other languages. --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/ My blog: http://talk.blogbus.com twitter: http://twitter.com/shizhao [[zh:User:Shizhao]] ___ 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] Report to the Board of Trustees: October 2008
Nice page. But could you perhaps also list the non-free software used there sometime, so that the community could suggest otherwise? :) 2008/12/15 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org 2008/12/14 effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com: But also have a small additional suggestion. Would it be nice to the chapters to have somewhere a list of all major software WMF is using? As a suggestion list? For example, GIMP for promotional images editing etc, so that the chapters have an easier time looking for free software on accounting etc. Would be great! I started a page for this purpose a while ago: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FLOSS-Exchange We have a mixed Mac/Linux office environment. We're not currently using open source software for accounting and for more complex design work. Most calendaring is done via Google right now. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] board minutes
From Sue's report, I understood that the current practice is to have board minutes approved only on the next board meeting. In practice that means a delay of several months. In a quickly changing world as ours, that is quite a long time span. Would it be possible to decrease this time span somehow, and approve the minutes on an earlier moment? In that way, the volunteers can be kept more up to date, the board would work more transparently and better ways to interact and react on decisions made. Because if minutes are published months afterwards, the motivation to read them and react on it is obviously much lower then when they actually still have a direct meaning and are more or less recent. Besides that, if the community has imput on the decisions made, they could give it, and it could be discussed in that next board meeting, and not only the one after that (delay 6 months). I sincerely hope the board will find a way to publish the minutes within, say, two weeks to a month :) Best regards, Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] board minutes
Hi all, Yes, I know that in large organizations it is uncommon to approve minutes by email. I however see no fundamental obstacles myself, but I'd love to hear from them if they are there. Please note that commonness is no argument to me in this case. I understand how we got to the current situation, but that is not what I want to discuss. I'd like to discuss a change in that situation :) It is about minutes, not about opinions. The only thing that should be judged while publishing is 1) whether they reflect the truth and 2) whether there is anything in there that should remain non-disclosed. Both can in principle perfectly be considered by email imho. A summary is something, but personally I prefer the real resolutions and minutes :) In general they are not too extensive anyway in this organization. And, as Thomas pointed out, this *is* an unusual organization. Not only are there many volunteers, but there are also a lot of chapters who are dependent in some way of these resolutions. These can influence their functioning quite a lot, and only recieve the minutes together with the general public. But of course, again, if there are heavy arguments not to do this, I'd love to hear of them :) Thank you Ting, for taking it to the board. I hope that in the future, the community and chapters can more actively participate in the movement :) Best regards, Lodewijk 2008/12/14 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de The chair of the board, Michael, had posted the topics before the meeting and a short report about resolutions and issues discussed after the meeting. Ting Anthony wrote: On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 5:49 AM, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.comwrote: From Sue's report, I understood that the current practice is to have board minutes approved only on the next board meeting. In practice that means a delay of several months. In a quickly changing world as ours, that is quite a long time span. That's a fairly standard practice. How would you approve the minutes without holding a meeting? (Sure, you could do it using a unanimous consent resolution, but that's certainly not typical.) Would it be possible to decrease this time span somehow, and approve the minutes on an earlier moment? In that way, the volunteers can be kept more up to date, the board would work more transparently and better ways to interact and react on decisions made. Because if minutes are published months afterwards, the motivation to read them and react on it is obviously much lower then when they actually still have a direct meaning and are more or less recent. Besides that, if the community has imput on the decisions made, they could give it, and it could be discussed in that next board meeting, and not only the one after that (delay 6 months). I sincerely hope the board will find a way to publish the minutes within, say, two weeks to a month :) Publishing a draft of the minutes (or an informal summary of the meeting) would be one thing. Approving the official minutes is quite another. Are the meetings considered confidential? If not, there's nothing stopping any board member from providing a summary at any time. If so, well, then why publish the minutes in the first place? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about our little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and support them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :) Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work of human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are living in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little material available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language! Even if it only contains 1000 articles, you can already learn a lot from it. You can improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the western world. It won't do miracles of course, but every tiny little bit helps. And now imagine that this goes for all languages. And not only encyclopediae, but also learning books, dictionaries and perhaps one day even other collections. Wikipedia *does* make a difference. (and I'd almost add: donate now ;-) ) Best regards, Lodewijk 2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Do we care that 80% of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian wikibooks (doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any readers. Let them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt and commons. CM _ See the most popular videos on the web http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/115454061/direct/01/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Trouble in Ireland
As Michael Bimmler suggested, I think too that wikien-l would be more appropriate. This is an English Wikipedia issue, not a Wikimedia issue. BR, Lodewijk 2008/11/26 Michael Everson [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 26 Nov 2008, at 13:27, Casey Brown wrote: There's a place on enwp called the administrators noticeboard, you can bring this up there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AN It's already there, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AN#Ireland_page_moves but most Admins seem to want to stay far away from this. Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] European Commission Green Paper - Copyright in the Knowledge Economy
nonsense. There are (small list): * Creative Commons, dozens of chapters * Wikimedia, several chapters * Free Knowledge institute * Open Office * Several Linux organisations * Actually *any* organisation that makes on a large scale freely licensed manuals etc * Open Streetmap * Several libraries (although not directly using, they are on our side often) * Free Software Foundation (Europe) * Several foundations on a more national level such as Vrijschrift and Stichting Copyright en Nieuwe Media in the Netherlands and many more... Lodewijk 2008/11/14 geni [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2008/11/14 teun spaans [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Agree. And perhaps other organizations working with copy left licenses could be informed? There is nothing in there of any real significance to free licenses. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] List Syndication Service reboot
who! 2008/11/16 phoebe ayers [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi ya'll, You may remember way that back in mid-2006 user:Improv started up the List Syndication Service: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS This was an ongoing weekly summary of the mailing lists, particularly Foundation-L. It was carried on for a good while by Improv and was then taken on by BirgetteSB, but was dropped in early 2007 and not picked back up. I always thought this was a great idea that should be continued. And so finally, I've taken a stab at recreating and rebooting LSS: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2008_November_2-15 This update covers from November 2-15 (two weeks, Sun. to Sat.) of Foundation-L. I've made some changes from previous summarizers: * summary by topic, not date; related threads grouped together * no attempt to read and distill the content of posts -- instead simply noting what topics were discussed. It was the heavy burden of reading and understanding all the (quite complex) threads on the lists that I believe led previous summarizers to burn out. For this summary, if you want to know more, you have to read the threads yourself. I hope that this will prove helpful in pointing out *what* was discussed, particularly for people who don't have time to read the whole list, even if the substance isn't there. I make no promises, but will attempt to keep up with foundation-l for a while. Suggestions, feedback, helpers, etc. all welcome. best, -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] European Commission Green Paper - Copyright in the Knowledge Economy
It doesn't really matter what was on their mind, even though I also disagree on what is on their mind. It matters that the discussion has been broken open, and that it will be on the agenda of the commission and after that the parliament. If it is on the agenda, it is time for a little lobby and try to push *our* points, and let not the discussion be focused on potential 70-90 issues. So there are two reasons even to be involved. To push positive points, and to prevent negative changes. Lodewijk 2008/11/15 geni [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2008/11/15 Gerard Meijssen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hoi, When the EU develops a law that deals with copyright and licensing, it will implicitly include Free licenses. EU backed laws have tended towards incidental hostility to free licenses. It is exactly for this reason that communities like ours who have at least an idea of what we consider to be the right way forward are asked to step on the plate. When we, as a community, do not engage in this request for comments, it is our own damn fault when the result is not to our liking. This green paper PROVES that they are actively involved in this area. Thanks, GerardM Nope the paper was written with youtube in mind not freely licensed media. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
