Re: [Wikimedia-l] Project Grants program will fund 11 community-led projects

[James Hare]

What a great panel of funded projects! I feel like the project grant proposals 
get better every year.

Congratulations to our latest project grantees! You join (or re-join as the 
case may be) a group of distinguished individuals who have pioneered paths 
forward for the Wikimedia movement.


> On May 18, 2018, at 10:04 PM, Marti Johnson  wrote:
> 
> *Hi all,In the latest round of Project Grants, the committee has
> recommended 11 projects for a total of $354,654 in funding.  We received 24
> proposals for review.  Here’s what we’re funding. [1]Software: four
> projects funded - ScienceSource
> : Medical
> knowledge is accessed over 2 billion times a year on Wikimedia projects,
> but only a relatively small number of editors create and maintain it.
> ScienceSource seeks to build an algorithm that will model editor
> decision-making to identify reliable biomedical reference sources. By using
> machine automation to sift through large volumes of reference materials,
> ScienceSource will support volunteers to do their work faster and more
> effectively.  [2] - WikiProject X
> :
> WikiProject X seeks to create better tools for Wikipedian editors
> collaborating around common interest areas.  Previously funded
>  twice through
> Individual Engagement Grants, the project piloted new features for several
> WikiProjects, including Women in Red
> .  This
> grant will replace the multiple disparate modules of WikiProject X with a
> new extension, CollaborationKit.  This improvement will offer editors a
> more seamless, adaptable interface to for productive collaboration.
> [3][4][5]. - Timeless: Post-deployment support
> :
> Timeless is a new volunteer-developed skin designed for editors.  It was
> deployed across all Wikimedia projects in 2017, but lacked sufficient
> support to address bugs.  This grant will support general improvements to
> make Timeless into a more stable and user-friendly product. [6] -
> WikidataJS :
> This grant will enable the JavaScript developer community to produce fast,
> high quality tools so others can better access information on Wikidata. The
> project builds on Maxlath
> ’s previous
> creation of several Wikidata-related tools:  wikidata-sdk, wikidata-edit,
> wikidata-cli, wikidata-filter.  [7][8]Online organizing: two projects
> funded - Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2018 coordination
> :
> The international coordination team for Wiki Loves Monuments
>  (WLM)
> proposes to strengthen the foundation for healthy and sustainable WLM
> competitions across the world.  As the project celebrates its 10th
> anniversary, its leaders aim to critically rethink the structural framework
> of WLM.  This grant will support efforts to gather information from
> national leaders, collect and share best practices from across the
> community, facilitate the ongoing integration of WLM into Wikidata, and
> improve operational processes system-wide. [9][10] - Wikimedia CEE Spring
> 2018
> :
> This annual international article writing contest generates content from
> every country and region in Central and Eastern Europe on 30+ Wikipedias.
> CEE Spring’s remarkable community spirit plays a central role in fostering
> a thriving, collaborative volunteer base in the region. The grant will
> incentivize content creation focused on closing the gender gap, expanding
> minority language Wikipedias, and showcasing the cultural heritage of
> Central and Eastern Europe. [11]Offline outreach: five projects funded -
> BlackLunchTable/BLT 2018
> :
> As an organization, BlackLunchTable 
> seeks to create a more truthful and inclusive historical account by
> inviting people to write the histories of their own culture.  In this
> project, they will host a series of edit-a-thons with the aim of recruiting
> editors of color and women editors to write biographical articles about
> notable artists of the African diaspora.  The project will primarily focus
> on English Wikipedia. [12][13] - Wiki In Africa/Wiki Loves Women 2018
> :
> In 2016, Wiki Loves Women
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] Solve legal uncertainty of Wikidata

[Denny Vrandečić]

Thank you for your answer, Sebastian.

Publishing the Gutachten would be fantastic! That would be very helpful and
deeply appreciated.

Regarding the relicensing, I agree with you. You can just go and do that,
and given that you ask for attribution to DBpedia, and not to Wikipedia, I
would claim that's what you're doing. And I think that's fine.

Regarding attribution, commonly it is assumed that you have to respect it
transitively. That is one of the reasons a license that requires BY sucks
so hard for data: unlike with text, the attribution requirements grow very
quickly. It is the same as with modified images and collages: it is not
sufficient to attribute the last author, but all contributors have to be
attributed.

This is why I think that whoever wants to be part of a large federation of
data on the web, should publish under CC0.

That is very different from licensing texts or images. But for data
anything else is just weird and will bite is in the long run more than we
might ever benefit.

So, just to say it again: if the Gutachten you mentioned could be made
available, that would be very very awesome!

Thank you, Denny



On Thu, May 17, 2018, 23:06 Sebastian Hellmann <
hellm...@informatik.uni-leipzig.de> wrote:

> Hi Denny,
>
> On 18.05.2018 02:54, Denny Vrandečić wrote:
>
> Rob Speer wrote:
> > The result of this, by the way, is that commercial entities sell modified
> > versions of Wikidata with impunity. It undermines the terms of other
> > resources such as DBPedia, which also contains facts extracted from
> > Wikipedia and respects its Share-Alike terms. Why would anyone use
> DBPedia
> > and have to agree to share alike, when they can get similar data from
> > Wikidata which promises them it's CC-0?
>
> The comparison to DBpedia is interesting: the terms for DBpedia state
> "Attribution in this case means keep DBpedia URIs visible and active
> through at least one (preferably all) of @href, , or "Link:". If
> live links are impossible (e.g., when printed on paper), a textual
> blurb-based attribution is acceptable."
> http://wiki.dbpedia.org/terms-imprint
>
> So according to these terms, when someone displays data from DBpedia, it
> is entirely sufficient to attribute DBpedia.
>
> What that means is that DBpedia follows exactly the same theory as
> Wikidata: it is OK to extract data from Wikipedia and republish it as your
> own dataset under your own copyright without requiring attribution to the
> original source of the extraction.
>
> (A bit more problematic might be the fact that DBpedia also republishes
> whole paragraphs of Text under these terms, but that's another story)
>
>
> My understanding is that all that Wikidata has extracted from Wikipedia is
> non-copyrightable in the first place and thus republishing it under a
> different license (or, as in the case of DBpedia for simple triples, with a
> different attribution) is legally sound.
>
>
> In the SmartDataWeb project https://www.smartdataweb.de/ we hired lawyers
> to write a legal review about the extraction situation. Facts can be
> extracted and republished under CC-0 without problem as is the case of
> infoboxes.. Copying a whole database is a different because database rights
> hold. If you only extract ~ two sentences it falls under citation, which is
> also easy. If it is more than two sentence, then copyright applies.
>
> I can check whether it is ready and shareable. The legal review
> (Gutachten) is quite a big thing as it has some legal relevancy and can be
> cited in court.
>
> Hence we can switch to ODC-BY with facts as CC-0 and the text as
> share-alike. However the attribution mentioned in the imprint is still
> fine, since it is under database and not the content/facts.
> I am still uncertain about the attribution. If you remix and publish you
> need to cite the direct sources. But if somebody takes from you, does he
> only attribute to you or to everybody you used in a transitive way.
>
> Anyhow, we are sharpening the whole model towards technology, not
> data/content. So the databus will be a transparent layer and it is much
> easier to find the source like Wikipedia and Wikidata and do contributions
> there, which is actually one of the intentions of share-alike (getting work
> pushed back/upstream).
>
> All the best,
> Sebastian
>
>
> If there is disagreement with that, I would be interested which content
> exactly is considered to be under copyright and where license has not been
> followed on Wikidata.
>
> For completion: the discussion is going on in parallel on the Wikidata
> project chat and in Phabricator:
>
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4212728
>
> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#Wikipedia_and_other_Wikimedia_projects
>
>
> I would appreciate if we could keep the discussion in a single place.
>
> Gnom1 on Phabricator has offered to actually answer legal questions, but
> we need to come up with the questions that we want to ask. If it should be,
> for example, as Rob 

[Wikimedia-l] Project Grants program will fund 11 community-led projects

[Marti Johnson]

*Hi all,In the latest round of Project Grants, the committee has
recommended 11 projects for a total of $354,654 in funding.  We received 24
proposals for review.  Here’s what we’re funding. [1]Software: four
projects funded - ScienceSource
: Medical
knowledge is accessed over 2 billion times a year on Wikimedia projects,
but only a relatively small number of editors create and maintain it.
ScienceSource seeks to build an algorithm that will model editor
decision-making to identify reliable biomedical reference sources. By using
machine automation to sift through large volumes of reference materials,
ScienceSource will support volunteers to do their work faster and more
effectively.  [2] - WikiProject X
:
WikiProject X seeks to create better tools for Wikipedian editors
collaborating around common interest areas.  Previously funded
 twice through
Individual Engagement Grants, the project piloted new features for several
WikiProjects, including Women in Red
.  This
grant will replace the multiple disparate modules of WikiProject X with a
new extension, CollaborationKit.  This improvement will offer editors a
more seamless, adaptable interface to for productive collaboration.
[3][4][5]. - Timeless: Post-deployment support
:
 Timeless is a new volunteer-developed skin designed for editors.  It was
deployed across all Wikimedia projects in 2017, but lacked sufficient
support to address bugs.  This grant will support general improvements to
make Timeless into a more stable and user-friendly product. [6] -
WikidataJS :
 This grant will enable the JavaScript developer community to produce fast,
high quality tools so others can better access information on Wikidata. The
project builds on Maxlath
’s previous
creation of several Wikidata-related tools:  wikidata-sdk, wikidata-edit,
wikidata-cli, wikidata-filter.  [7][8]Online organizing: two projects
funded - Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2018 coordination
:
The international coordination team for Wiki Loves Monuments
 (WLM)
proposes to strengthen the foundation for healthy and sustainable WLM
competitions across the world.  As the project celebrates its 10th
anniversary, its leaders aim to critically rethink the structural framework
of WLM.  This grant will support efforts to gather information from
national leaders, collect and share best practices from across the
community, facilitate the ongoing integration of WLM into Wikidata, and
improve operational processes system-wide. [9][10] - Wikimedia CEE Spring
2018
:
This annual international article writing contest generates content from
every country and region in Central and Eastern Europe on 30+ Wikipedias.
CEE Spring’s remarkable community spirit plays a central role in fostering
a thriving, collaborative volunteer base in the region. The grant will
incentivize content creation focused on closing the gender gap, expanding
minority language Wikipedias, and showcasing the cultural heritage of
Central and Eastern Europe. [11]Offline outreach: five projects funded -
BlackLunchTable/BLT 2018
:
 As an organization, BlackLunchTable 
seeks to create a more truthful and inclusive historical account by
inviting people to write the histories of their own culture.  In this
project, they will host a series of edit-a-thons with the aim of recruiting
editors of color and women editors to write biographical articles about
notable artists of the African diaspora.  The project will primarily focus
on English Wikipedia. [12][13] - Wiki In Africa/Wiki Loves Women 2018
:
In 2016, Wiki Loves Women
 launched in
West Africa in an effort to address the content gap about women in Africa.
This project continues the Wiki Loves Women initiative and expands into two
new countries in East Africa -- Tanzania and Uganda.  The project seeks to
raise women’s visibility on Wikipedia, create structural supports for the
development of Wikimedia groups, and encourage women’s participation as
leaders, partners, and editors. [14][15] - New Zealand Wikipedian at Large

[Wikimedia-l] reason for happiness this week

[James Salsman]

The English Wikipedia has finally returned to economics topics:

-- Forwarded message --
From: Weeklypedia Digest 
Date: Fri, May 18, 2018 at 4:20 AM
Subject: Weeklypedia English #218

the WEEKLYPEDIA

Issue 218, May 18, 2018 (English Wikipedia edition)

Hello there! Welcome to our weekly digest of Wikipedia activity.

ARTICLES

This week, 112,696 authors made 823,694 changes to 396,351 different
articles. The top 20 articles for the week:

1. Corporate haven (766 changes by 4 authors)
2

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Board Recruitment: Updates

[Peter Southwood]

This does not seem unreasonable.
Cheers,
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Pine W
Sent: Friday, May 18, 2018 4:47 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Board Recruitment: Updates

I have a difference of perspective on this with Philippe and Seddon.

Records of personnel issues at many government agencies in the US are
public records, and many of those government agencies seem to do OK with
recruiting candidates. I have yet to hear any convincing reason why WMF
should be *less* transparent than government agencies.

From my perspective, one of the benefits of significant transparency for
contracts and severance agreements are that politicians and officials
cannot use government funds for "hush money" nearly as easily as they could
if severance agreements and other contracts were confidential. I don't want
the WMF Board and Executive Director to have the option to use WMF funds as
an incentive for someone to remain quiet about any problems that they might
know about at WMF. Realistically, prevention of every kind of problem is
impossible, but public documentation of severance agreements would be a
good step.

Also, as a taxpayer I think that I should have the right to know what
elected officials are doing with my money. Similarly, I think that donors
(and everyone) should have the right to know what WMF is doing with donated
funds. There may be some time restrictions (for example, if WMF is involved
in current or pending litigation, then the expenses for that might remain
confidential until after the matter is resolved) but in general I think
that WMF should publicly account for how it uses donated funds. That
includes the terms of employment contracts and severance agreements.

I will "practice what I preach" on this matter. If I ever do paid work for
WMF again (most likely in the form of a grant of some type; I am still
thinking about whether this would entangle me financially with WMF in ways
that I think would make me likely to be quiet when I have concerns), I will
publish the terms of the contract and any amendments to that contract if I
have WMF's permission to do so. I would redact only information that could
be used for fraud, my phone number, my address, etc.

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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