Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Travel Guide
I think I would consider it educational. Travel itself is an educational experience, and a fuller travel experience enabled by the sharing of Wikimedia-style free knowledge all the more so :) Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Patricio Molina patriciomol...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: I am not sure whether Wikitravel (or the content it provides) fit into the scope of Wikimedia. Is it really 'educational' content? Hum... I thought this project was adequate for Wikimedia, but now I'm having some doubts. Could you please define 'educational content'? What's the nature of projects like Wikinews? Regards, -- Patricio Molina http://twitter.com/patriciomolina ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] help.wikimedia.org - QA site
On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote: Some modifications and requested info has been added to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ask.wikimedia.org_(Q%26A_site) -greg aka varnent There have also been a couple of other proposals on meta along these same lines, and perhaps something useful could be merged from the other ones as well: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposed_projects_-_QA Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) On Apr 6, 2012, at 2:52 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Great! Could you two please revise the current dormant proposal at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAnswers And note that one of the active uses of the site would be a channel dedicated to QA about using the Wikimedia projects and MediaWiki? I think it is simpler and easier to say let's start a QA site, and focus on building a help channel there. As long as the site is up and maintained, you could answer other questions there as well. The WP:RefDesk has never been an ideal formal for answering questions or, more importantly, for aggregating and organizing answers over time so that it develops into a permanent reference resource. SJ On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote: I would be interested in helping with this project from a third-party wiki and MediaWiki developer perspective. -greg aka varnent On Apr 6, 2012, at 2:26 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 3:45 AM, Jan Kučera kozuc...@gmail.com wrote: Hi there, new projects suck, because there are (close to) none asked some time ago already with few positive replies bug was already filled at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923 is there someone who can help move on? It looks like a good idea to me. Do you have any experience running one of those sites? As with any new project, a set of people signed up to help administer it / be initial contributors and editosr would be useful. So I think it's still valuable to create a page about it on meta as a 'new project' even though we haven't cleaned up the new project process there recently. SJ ___ 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 -- Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 ___ 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] New Project Process
Indeed, I would expect for the 'Sister Projects Committee' to have both the options of project fission and project fusion within its toolbag. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Tarc Meridian t...@hotmail.com wrote: In some respects, that change would be quite good. My experience on Wikiquote has been unfavorable, to put it mildly, where the en.wiki concept of BLP is non-existent. Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 14:42:41 +1000 From: jay...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process The policies of each project are different for a very good reason. e.g. If English Wikiquote was merged into English Wikipedia, the vast majority of the quote pages would be deleted very quickly, for good or ill. I know I would be the first to get out the sickle. :P On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Carlos Felipe Antonorsi -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process
On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 10:28 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: I totally second SJ's poke for more new projects! Although our flagship project is highly successful, it would be good if we try to keep creating new communities. I have been sad for quite a while now that we don't create new projects any more. It would be great to see one new project every year :) I had suggested earlier that we might even run this as an annual thing, with a Wikimania-style bidding process for the new sister projects. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) No dia 4 de Abril de 2012 05:53, Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.comescreveu: On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Samuel Klein sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu wrote: On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 3:38 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 3 April 2012 07:47, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: We had started a stub table about this: https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_that_need_to_be_free This is brilliant! I've been after something like this for a while. Thanks for the reminder, Nemo. I was looking for this on Meta, but forgot to check the stratwiki. Embarrassing, since apparently I started the page... :) Liam: another reason to consider merging meta wikis. Ziko: what would a WMF evaluation of Wikinews or Wikispecies say? Should we shut down such a project... cease to mention it on Wikipedia main pages... or invest money in promoting it? Good questions, subtle answers. Those are not the only options; we might help them merge with a similar project. For instance, wikieducator and wikiversity have almost identical missions, and might benefit from being merged; the question of 'who hosts the site' is relatively minor compared to the loss of splitting energy and focus across two wikis. Liam (paraphrased): - project review : identify support each project expects from the WMF. - easy improvements with high value. Start with Wiktionary - rename Commons to WikiCommons? merge WikiSpecies w/ WikiData? - merge Outreach, Strategy and MetaWiki -- wikimedia.org - lower barriers b/t wikis: global userpages, talk, watchlists This whole class of brainstorming is important; making it less of a pain to travel between projects is good for all of them. Yaroslav: may be we could use the experience of langcom and appoint ten individuals who would recommend new proposals to the Board. That's not a bad idea. SJ Indeed, perhaps a 'Sister Projects Committee' could start looking into some of Liam's type of questions. (Of course, Wikipedia is a sister project too!) Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ 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] New Project Process
On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 2:47 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Samuel Klein, 03/04/2012 06:40: - a global list of areas needing free knowledge, and how far we are as a society towards reaching that goal We had started a stub table about this: https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_that_need_to_be_free The several topical subcategories of 'Proposed projects' that I've played with also give a good idea of the variety of areas of free knowledge (list-focused, citation-focused, DIY-focused, etc) that have been proposed on meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposed_projects Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process
On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Samuel Klein sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu wrote: On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 3:38 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 3 April 2012 07:47, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: We had started a stub table about this: https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_that_need_to_be_free This is brilliant! I've been after something like this for a while. Thanks for the reminder, Nemo. I was looking for this on Meta, but forgot to check the stratwiki. Embarrassing, since apparently I started the page... :) Liam: another reason to consider merging meta wikis. Ziko: what would a WMF evaluation of Wikinews or Wikispecies say? Should we shut down such a project... cease to mention it on Wikipedia main pages... or invest money in promoting it? Good questions, subtle answers. Those are not the only options; we might help them merge with a similar project. For instance, wikieducator and wikiversity have almost identical missions, and might benefit from being merged; the question of 'who hosts the site' is relatively minor compared to the loss of splitting energy and focus across two wikis. Liam (paraphrased): - project review : identify support each project expects from the WMF. - easy improvements with high value. Start with Wiktionary - rename Commons to WikiCommons? merge WikiSpecies w/ WikiData? - merge Outreach, Strategy and MetaWiki -- wikimedia.org - lower barriers b/t wikis: global userpages, talk, watchlists This whole class of brainstorming is important; making it less of a pain to travel between projects is good for all of them. Yaroslav: may be we could use the experience of langcom and appoint ten individuals who would recommend new proposals to the Board. That's not a bad idea. SJ Indeed, perhaps a 'Sister Projects Committee' could start looking into some of Liam's type of questions. (Of course, Wikipedia is a sister project too!) Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] WikiWorldDays and multi-events
Hi folks, I've started this page to help list the various themed multi-event campaigns that have been popping up around the Wikimedia universe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiWorldDays Not sure if it's the best name, I was also thinking WikiSpring, or WikiSeason, or WikiWhatnot. (yes, that page could maybe be on meta instead :P ) Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A discussion list for Wikimedia (not Foundation) matters
On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 7:14 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: That sounds reasonable. Most things discussed on this list are not specially relevant to the Foundation. OK. Any strong objections to changing the list name and scope (the latter being the description at https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ) to be all-encompassing for Wikimedia-wide issues? The rename would likely occur by unsubscribing current members from this list and re-subscribing them to the new one, to avoid breaking links or accidentally corrupting archives -- meaning that list archives pre-move would be accessible via a different URL, which could be prominently advertised in the list description. I do think many discussions can be moved from internal-l to this list; and on occasion people have suggested that foundation-l is a less suitable place for an otherwise public discussion simply because the name seems exclusive to the WMF. Agreed -- creating a forum that feels welcoming to everyone, regardless of their specific affiliations, is one of my strongest motivations here. Erik Yes, a rename to wikimedia-l certainly seems like a practical and focusing idea. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia's ebook and PDF creation feature doesn't support Chinese and Japanese
Side question: Does Chinese Wikipedia indeed have an elected or consensus leader or some sort? Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Yao Ziyuan yaoziy...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, I think you guys can all see how useful it would be if the Chinese Wikipedia also has the ebook/PDF creation feature as seen on other language Wikipedias. Some countries don't always let their people visit Wikipedia, so ebooks can be an alternative. We have tried to solve this bug that prevents the Chinese/Japanese Wikipedias from having this feature: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430 The relevant developers (PediaPress) have solved the bug to some extent, but Shi Zhao, leader of the Chinese Wikipedia, still doesn't think the resulting Chinese PDF files are good enough, so the Chinese Wikipedia has not yet upgraded to the latest MediaWiki software to get this feature. My two suggestions: (1) Persuade Shi Zhao to adopt the latest MediaWiki software, which can generate ebook/PDFs for the Chinese Wikipedia, although the page layout is not perfect. (2) Or find another organization than PediaPress to provide this feature, because PediaPress refuses to adopt a more Unicode-friendly PDF code library that provides better Chinese PDF rendering. Regards, Ziyuan Yao ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A fundraiser for editors
On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Przykuta przyk...@o2.pl wrote: I agree cities are probably better, but I don't think that's really the best place to start editing Wikipedia either, because it's an area where it's really easy for new users to mistakenly think that they should write content based on their personal experience rather than on sources. What do you think about libraries? ^^ FWIW, this was actually the focus of the Seattle Wikipedia Loves Libraries event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/seattleWLL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_libraries_in_Seattle Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A fundraiser for editors
I would pitch it as a simple appeal to edit the Wikipedia article on your hometown (or home neighborhood if you're from a big city). In my experience, something like this has been attractive to a very broad spectrum of people, and gives them a nice in as a place to get started. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 1:40 PM, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: Hello, In principle it is a nice idea. But it is extremely diffcult to edit (to make substantial contributions) so such an initiative should be accompanied by more than a simple appeal... Kind regards Ziko 2012/1/2 Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il: I tend to agree. At times of Fundraising, public interest grows noticeably. People have been asking me aobut the banners almost every day for the last few weeks. (A few times they even asked me whether they are going to see a personal appeal from Amir Aharoni soon.) I don't think that i ever saw a focused personal appeal + photo banner that asks people to edit instead of asking them for money. I did sometime see graphical banners in Wikipedias in various languages that invite people to edit or participate in writing contests. Something like this is happening in the Tamil Wikipedia now ( http://ta.wikipedia.org/ ). I don't know how effective it is - it's worth checking. 2012/1/2 James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com The fundraiser for money has been working exceedingly well with our number of donors increasing 10 fold since 2008. What we need now is a fundraiser for editors. I meet well educated professionals who use Wikipedia but have no ideas that they can edit it. We need to run a banner with the same energy we use to raise money to raise editor numbers. This idea has been trialed to a limited extent here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Invitation_to_edit but the effort did not have sufficient data crunching behind it to determine if it works. -- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian ___ 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 -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ 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] WikiKids - Vikidia: encyclopedia for children
Earlier this year, I helped organize and archive some of the past proposals for new Wikimedia projects on meta, and those with an education focus (including several for children's education) are collected here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposed_projects_-_education Perhaps these historical proposals might also be of some use. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 1:54 PM, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.netwrote: Hi all, I've tried to compile some of the old messages and discussions about this topic, which has been put in light time to time, notably (as far as I know) three times on this mailing list from 2005 to 2010 (see below). I am a French wikipedian, and would like to tell you about this pretty old project: a wiki encyclopedia designed for and partly maintained by children. The idea of a equivalent of Wikipedia for children was discussed in particular in 2005-2006 on this page : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids Although it had no continuation as a Wikimedia project, wikis with such a feature were launched first in Dutch: WikiKids http://wikikids.wiki.kennisnet.nl ; in french a few month later: Vikidia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikidia ( http://fr.vikidia.org/ ) and then in Spanish ( http://es.vikidia.org ) for 8-13 years old children. I opened Vikidia. WikiKids.nl and Vikidia in French are doing well and are quite alike in size and activity, they are both 5 years old now, whereas Vikidia in Spanish doesn't make it so well. (If you are Spanish speaker or if you know people that would be interested in it, please tell them about this wiki !) On Vikidia in French, we currently have a guest-book opened, and the comments left on it http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Livre_d%27or/Automne_2011 are quite encouraging (Google translation: http://bit.ly/vfPP4m ). Children say they appreciate the articles to be more readable for them than on Wikipedia, their main reserve being that some article are not developed enough, or that there isn't articles on every subject they would like to know about... They clearly expect (and claim) some substantial content, though it has to be easier than the Wikipedia's content. We have yet a bit more than 10,500 articles in Vikidia in French, and about 250,000 unique visitors a month. This Wikikids question was mentioned again in the Wikimedia scope one year ago firstly on this mailing list, and on the 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content there: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content:_Part_Two#Recommendations:_Controversial_Text : Recommendations: Controversial Text Because of the considerations outlined above, our recommendations surrounding text in WMF projects are the following: It is recommended: (...) 3. That, however, the Foundation investigate the creation of a “WikiJunior” version of the Wikipedias, aimed at children under the age of 12, either as a stand-alone project or in partnership with existing and appropriate educational institutions. Explanations: (...) Recommendations 2 and 3 (...) Much more successful, in our opinion, is a project specifically targeted to children, and to the quite different needs of children in different age groups. Some projects of this nature have already been begun in the WikiJunior section of WikiBooks, but it is our feeling that the scope of such a venture might necessitate the formation of partnerships with institutions who have experience and resources already devoted to this area. I of course agree, except on those points : * /a project specifically targeted to children, and to the quite different needs of children in different age groups/ I would warn against the idea of dividing the content for age group as restricted as each year of age, following the pattern of school class. That point could be expounded. * /the scope of such a venture might necessitate the formation of partnerships with institutions who have experience and resources already devoted to this area./ Thats quite a conservative point of view, kind of those that, if followed by Wikipedia, wouldn't have permit its developpment. I mean that in such a project, one should try to communicate with institutions, publicize what they do, share some points of view, competence and so on, but he shouldn't wait for those institutions as if they would have to approuve the project and its methods, as if only them could tell what is good for the project, since it deals with children. Another feature of WikiKids/Vikidia is of course that it let children be involved in building the content, and does not only aim to produce and offer content for children, for the same benefits that you can find in Wikipedia-editing workshops for students. There is both some
[Foundation-l] Hypothetical project rebranding Wikimedia
I thought folks might be interested in this, which was created by Moving Brands as a hypothetical project for rebnranding Wikimedia, and published in Viewpoint Magazine in the UK: http://www.movingbrands.com/?category_name=wikipedia-work Note the very elaborate work on this, and the particular role in representing all the sister Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Taxonomy of Free Culture Movements
I'd like to approach the Unnamed Movement idea from a slightly different perspective. What we really have emergent is a series of related movements, many of which are nested inside of each other. At the highest and most general level is the Free Culture Movement, which is a real and active movement for sharing-minded copyright and IP innovations in all forms. Below that, there is a division between the artistic side (Remix Art Movement) and the factual side (Open Knowledge Movement). The Open Knowledge Movement is itself divided between the side dominated by professional scholars (Open Access Movement) and the side dominated by info-hobbyists (Wiki Knowledge Movement or New Encyclopedist Movement or Unnamed Movement or whatever). (Of course, this doesn't mean that experts aren't deeply involved with Wikimedia-like sites, indeed they play a very important role, just more of a supporting than a dominating one.) It is only I think on the level of the last mentioned info-hobbyist movement (of whatever title) that Wikimedia can seem to be the clear industry leader and potential movement-definer. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation
Informally, and in my own mind, I tend to think of like-minded free culture wiki sites as part of a broader Wiki Knowledge movement. Of course, this is not meant to be an exclusivist or trademarked term :P Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: I had the same interpretation as Ziko. Affiliate sites, in Alec's language, want to indicate they share Wikimedian ideals. Few such sites would want to become a Wikimedia-hosted project. SJ On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 7:03 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: Hello, If I understand Alec right he wants a model wherein a project like WikiSomething can declare itself affiliated with Wikimedia: We need a name for self-identified project affiliation. External projects needs to be able to claim, on their own initiative, that they are part of something. Of course, WikiSomething can say on its website We like Wikimedia and share its goals, but the wording must not give the impression that there is an official link between both. The problem is that we don't want that anybody can decorate himself with the Wikimedia trademark and maybe abuse it. There must be an official recognition anyway from Wikimedia Foundation. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk 2011/7/13 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org: I am not sure if this is about the same thing. I read Alec's questions as being about content projects that want to affiliate themselves with Wikimedia - want to become the new Wikimedia project. I know that in the past this question has lived for example with OmegaWiki/WiktionaryZ . SJ, would you consider this to be similar to Wikimedian groups who want to have a slightly more formal relationship with the Movement? Lodewijk 2011/7/13 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com We're discussing setting up an Affiliation committee to oversee simple, low-overhead wikimedia affiliates and associations. These could be organizations 'under the umbrella' of free knowledge -- requiring just basic review of their work and standards to confirm they are in line with our basic principles. [1] Wikimedia Associations could be individual wikiprojects, clubs, or meetups run by one or more people that want to establish a lasting identity as part of the movement. Third-party wikis and larger groups could be Wikimedia Affiliates. Both could use web-badges and icons to identify them with the movement (derived from the WM community logo?). SJ [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_roles_project/New_group_models On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com wrote: Prompted by discussions in another thread, I ask a related question-- ;1-- A roadmap towards affiliation How should a currently-unaffiliated project go about becoming 'part of' Wikimedia? One easy step they could take would be to simply say, on their website, This site considers itself to be part of the Wikimedia Movement. (alternate text welcome ) Later, a self-identified affiliate could be formally designated as part of the Wikimedia Movement by the global community or the foundation or both. Such recognition would have lots of benefits for the new projects that share our values-- other WM projects would know to visibly link to them whenever they have relevant content (as we currently do across WMF projects). We could permit access to the unified login, we could allow template-sharing or image-sharing. We could set up interwiki-linking, and other interoperability functions. Such recognition would have even bigger benefits for us. We could get an affiliation with an established, successful project that shares our values. The kinds of project that we would build ourselves if someone else hadn't already built it. Their userbases and readership would see get to Wikimedia as something larger than just WP, and it would help cement public understanding that Wikimedia is a Movement, very big, very diverse, and very special. ; 2-- We need a name for self-identified project affiliation. External projects needs to be able to claim, on their own initiative, that they are part of something. That something should be a something that is connected to us. But self-identified affiliation has no gatekeeper, so whatever it is new projects can be part of, there could be lots that we don't approve of. I'm the founder of a project and I want signal my ideological affiliation to WM. I think my own project's values match the Wikimedia's values, in my opinion anyway. Recognizing that I may or may not be right-- what should I say I am a part of? We could just tell projects in this situation to say they are Part of the Wikimedia Movement, but perhaps that name is one we want to reserve just for officially recognized projects. If so, what name should such projects use instead? Note that they need
Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 2:40 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On 07/01/2011 11:52 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote: One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English it seems sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference. But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta. On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki? This would make it much easier when people create an article on wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages, watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation between editors across what are currently different projects if you had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now work across what are currently quite separate news, quote and pedia projects. Thanks for raising this issue. Previously discussed system of redirects and Incubator Extension [1] would help not just to the Incubator, but to the languages with smaller amount of speakers, as well as to Meta forks. So, instead of having numerous meta wikis, we could have just one (Meta), with separate namespaces, which would get redirects. Thus, namespace Strategy: could be strategy.wikimedia.org; namespace Research could be research.wikimedia.org etc. [1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/235020?page=last I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path forward to me. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com wrote: .. I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path forward to me. Or we could just leave the sister projects alone. That is also a viable option. [snip] Clarify: I mean new namespaces are the best way forward for our Meta-type content (Strategy:, Outreach:, Research:, etc). Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 2:49 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.rs wrote: Дана Sunday 10 April 2011 06:36:22 MZMcBride написа: featured article requirements or anything like that. They might be inundated with too many links in welcome messages (which I view as a largely separate issue from policy creep), but I don't think the vast majority of editors pay any mind to the details of policies and pages that even established users can't be bothered to keep up with. This is what some argue is the actual meaning behind ignore all rules. :-) I too loathe the wall of text displayed to new users and believe it is highly ineffective. Some possible solutions I thought of are: Perhaps each newbie could get a short welcome message from their experienced Wikipedian who will later mentor them with specific errors the newbie made. Perhaps it would be helpful if, when creating a new account, a user could write a short message about what would they like to do on Wikipedia (this would become their user page). It would give us an idea on what part of guidelines to present to the new user, and also very needed insight on why do people just create account and leave. This is the best actually-practical idea I've seen in a long, long time! ++to making user page info for new accounts a simple box to fill in at registration Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How many articles have you created?
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Samuel Klein sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu wrote: On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 8:37 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 April 2011 13:14, David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com wrote: For that matter, the contents of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikipedia_ads might be nice for the site notice. Yes, we should start doing this. Most wikiproject banners are fun for me to read as a (logged-in) user, and reader-focused banners can be made for everyone. This would be totally amazing on about 15 different levels- Im all for fun reader-focused outreach banners on the site notice :D Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2006-2011: Mexican, Argentinian, Brazilian governments distance themselves from freedomdefined 1.0
On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Translation is an important problem, and it is also key to making material available in less developed languages. Linked with moral rights it gives too much leeway to those who would claim that a given translation is defamatory. It makes me wonder whether big copyright holders would be willing to give free, translation specific licences into the less common languages. They would not want a situation where the free material ends up being translated back into the original language, but the laughable quality of that kind of effort may be enough to prevent it. This may not satisfy the purists, but it would move things in the right direction. Ray I believe this is actually the case in the People's Republic of China, where translations into national minority languages are explicitly allowed as an exception under the copyright law. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Making wikimediafoundation.org more open to contributions
On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Aaron Adrignola aaron.adrign...@gmail.com wrote: I agree that the edit restrictions on the WMF wiki are very unfortunate and there's still much more that can be done (perhaps one day leading toward www.wikimedia.org as a single information, collaboration and discussion hub, subsuming both WMF and Meta, and possibly other backstage wikis). -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Perhaps have Meta: Strategy:, Outreach: Usability:, Tech:, and Wikimania*: namespaces to replace the separated sites in existence today. The main space could cover wikimediafoundation.org content. Wikimedia: for meta-wiki discussion. Or any variation on that. At the least, there is no need to keep creating new wikis for Wikimania if you properly tag content for the year it applies to. -- Aaron Adrignola Here, here, for the namespace solution! There is a lot of flexibility in degrees of differentiation and control of namespaces that is really underused as a tool, and could help us get a really integrated and useful 'wiki to rule them all' for Wikimedia organizational purposes. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: [Wiki-research-l] Pew Research Report on Wikipedia]
There's a high correlation between broadband and income levels that probably has more to do with it. Thanks, Pharos On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Broadband use remains another predictor, as 59% of those with home broadband use the service, compared with 26% of those who connect to the internet through dial-up. Many images... Although a sophisticated user can turn them off or use lynx. Fred User:Fred Bauder --- Original Message Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Pew Research Report on Wikipedia From: phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com Date: Thu, January 13, 2011 1:53 pm To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-researc...@lists.wikimedia.org - As you all may have seen there is tons of media coverage coming out around Wikipedia's 10th anniversary (Jan 15, 2011). In the midst of this the Pew Internet Research Center released a new report today: Wikipedia, past and present http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Wikipedia.aspx -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list wiki-researc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-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] January 15 retro?
I actually tried to set up a geonotice to catch Wikipedian Antarcticans a while back, but unfortunately the convergence of the longitude lines kind of threw it off :P Thanks, Pharos On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 4:36 PM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: On 01/05/11 4:52 PM, David Gerard wrote: On 6 January 2011 00:45, Steven Wallingsteven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: The anniversary is not just about English Wikipedia. If this was just English Wikipedia's celebration, there certainly wouldn't be more than 100 events organized in dozens of countries and on every continent except Antarctica. And just WHY is there not one in Antarctica? Don't we have BORED SCIENTISTS in Antarctica? I THINK THIS ISSUE IS IN NEED OF IMMEDIATE RESOLUTION. There was some casual discussion in Taipei that there should be a Wikimania in Antarctica, but only after having one in Australia. Then too there was also talk about having one on a cruise ship, or perhaps in a plane on a round-the-world flight. The International Space Station isn't big enough ... yet. Ray ___ 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] Banners inviting people to edit.
It would also be great if we could have banners inviting people to participate in major local community events, like the many Wikipedia 10 celebrations planned for January. http://ten.wikipedia.org Thanks, Pharos On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Daniel ~ Leinad danny.lei...@gmail.com wrote: One of Polish banners has intent to invite people to edit: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Messages/Language/pl#Korzystasz_z_Wikipedii.3F -- Leinad ___ 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] Should we offer to host citizendium?
On 11/13/10, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 11:05 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 12 November 2010 17:34, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: These are all questions which would have to be answered before WMF should even consider getting involved. To cover itself legally it should have the agreement of Larry Sanger, the Tides Center, and at least a majority of the Management Counsel (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Management_Council). This would be WMF just providing ISP services for free, no more liable than Slicehost presently are. You know what would be kind of awesome? If there was a neutral hosting service -- by which I mean neutral hosting and technical support service -- for a whole variety of small free content projects that don't truly have the capacity to run independent technical organizations but are otherwise fairly stable. We've seen two such organizations brought up on Foundation-l just this year -- the fanhistory wiki and now Citizendium -- both of which need stable hosting, people who understand MediaWiki, and maybe even a bit of an organizational platform (like fundraising support) too. This platform could be a hosting service that was geared towards free and participatory projects, the upstart free content of the web. Such a hosting service would be a commons approach to this problem, with the costs and burden shared not just among the small projects but perhaps among the big ones too: I can see the big free culture organizations (us, Mozilla, Creative Commons, etc.) pitching in to such a thing in order to have a space to direct small projects to. This would be different from wiki hosting because perhaps all the projects wouldn't even be a wiki, as we understand them now; and there would be room for Citizendium's funky branch of MediaWiki and every other hack you can think of. And it would be neutral ground: not necessarily tied to the values of our Foundation or anyone else's. What do you think? Does such a thing exist already? Would it work? -- Phoebe Ourproject.org does something like this, but I think that something evolved with the help of the big free culture organizations and building on this model, could turn into even a much greater resource. http://ourproject.org/ Thanks, Pharos ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] LocalWiki project needs your support
LocalWiki looks like a great project. In a similar vein, Wikimedia NYC has been engaged with local free culture and community groups on our joint 'NYCwiki' initiative: http://nycwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page http://nycwiki.org/wiki/NYCwiki:Community_portal Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) Wikimedia NYC http://www.wikimedianyc.org On 9/7/10, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: This is spammy and OT -- but still may be of interest to people on this list. I can vouch for the awesomeness of the localwiki project, which is trying to make local and city wikis (like the amazing Davis Wiki, which serves my hometown) for the world. Free, local, open and nonprofit -- and they're raising money, and need to raise a bunch more in the next week to get their kickstarter grant funded. If this project is successful, they will help grow an essential part of the free content/collaborative landscape that Wikimedia by and large doesn't serve at all. -- phoebe -- Forwarded message -- From: Michael Ivanov miva...@gmail.com Date: Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 3:57 PM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] LocalWiki project needs your support To: wikipedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Hi folks, my name is Mike Ivanov, I am one of the co-founders of the Davis Wiki, currently the largest local community wiki in the world, where nearly every local resident uses the wiki and 1 in 7 contribute content. LocalWiki (http://localwiki.org) is our new non-profit project to create the next generation of wiki software designed specifically for local communities and promote the use of community wikis as a new kind of collaborative, community-owned local media. We want to apply the lessons we learned building the Davis Wiki to help as many communities as possible create the same kind of useful, engaging local resource. The technical costs of this project are covered by a grant from the Knight Foundation, but in order to reach more communities and have more of an impact, we are raising an additional $25,000 for community outreach and education. If you support this project, please make a pledge on our Kickstarter page at http://kck.st/a5vx43 and help us spread the word. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your donation is tax-deductible. Nearly 300 people have already donated over $17,000 as of today, and we only have 5 days left in this all-or-nothing pledge drive. We cannot do this without your support. You can read more about LocalWiki at http://www.localwiki.org (@localwiki on Twitter) or about the Knight Foundation grant at http://www.newschallenge.org/winner/2010/local-wiki and I would be happy to answer any questions or comments. Thank you, Mike ___ Wikipedia-l mailing list wikipedi...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l -- * 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] $20 TV-based en:wp reader
This is a pretty great embodiment of our copyleftism, that's for sure. BTW, here's the guy's website: http://humaneinfo.com/ Thanks, Pharos On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 6:07 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/humane-reader-wikipedia-console,news-7706.html Just a tiny gadget that hooks to your TV to display stuff and holds a copy of en:wp. Nice reuse :-) - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wiki-Conference NYC August 28-29
Our 2nd annual Wiki-Conference NYC will be held over the weekend of August 28-29 2010, hosted by ITP at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and also supported by Free Culture @ NYU and Wikimedia New York City. Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner will be giving a keynote, and we will also have a second keynote speaker TBA. There's still plenty of time to join a panel, or to propose a lightning talk or an open space session. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wiki-Conference Register for the Wiki-Conference here: http://bit.ly/wikinyc Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) Wikimedia New York City http://nyc.wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How many books are there in the world?
On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 10:19 PM, Tracy Poff tracy.p...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 8:18 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com wrote: in particular, I didn't know that multiple books (entirely unrelated books) have shared ISBNs. So, if nothing else, it might impact... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISBN AFAIK, this is a fairly uncommon problem; I've never run across it in 6+ years of working with lots of books library catalogs every day. It varies by publisher--for example, in my experience, Harlequin (a publisher of romance novels) seems to have used all of its ISBNs *at least* twice. It's a real problem, if you expect an ISBN to be a unique ID for a book, and worse if you wanted to it be unique to edition or so on. Well, it's a minor issue from out point of view, I guess. How would Mediawiki scale to 130 million articles? Gotta cover everything... The number of notable subjects covered in all those books is much much greater than 130 million. Thanks, Pharos ___ 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] Umberto Eco's interview
This is just wonderful. Bravo, Italian Wikinews! Thanks, Pharos On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:15 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Ilario Valdelli, 04/08/2010 10:37: A translation can be found here: http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco/Traduzione Yes, could someone publish it on en.news? Przykuta, 04/08/2010 11:04: Eco is known in science world as semiologist. Next time ask him about disambig system ;) There were 10 kB of suggested questions. :-p http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinotizie:Storie_in_preparazione/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco But actually there's a related answer: «In those cases where elements are more disperse, instead, the total and collective categorization is impossible.» http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco/Traduzione#_11 Nemo ___ 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] Umberto Eco's interview
I presume the interview with Jimbo was in English? This would probably be a good opportunity for collaboration with English Wikinews... Thanks, Pharos On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I'm the coordinator of w...@home in Wikimedia Italia. With this project we have already managed to interview a few notable[1] people. The questions are written collaboratively, opening a page on the italian Wikinews[2]. Then Wikimedia Italia takes contact with the potential interviewee and finds the reporter (usually a WMI member). I have also the recordings of an interview with Jimbo ... I have done it mny months ago, but I really can't find the time to transcribe it. I am really sorry about that and, in my opinion, this is a major problem with volunteer-driven interviews. Usually there are a lot of questions to ask and even if the interviewer make some (arbitrary) selection in my experience this results in long ( 1 h) interviews. We are used to report integrally what the interviewees have said (besides some style corrections to make the text readable), unlike newspapers we don't have problems of space and we think the best thing to do is to report things exactly as they have been said. So the main effort is the transcription and the editing of the interviews and for 1h/2h interviews this can take weeks. I really don't know if there is a solution for this. Cristian CristianCantoro Wikimedia Italia [1] i.e. people having an article about them on (at least the Italian version of) Wikipedia. [2] for Mr. Eco, the page was this http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinotizie:Storie_in_preparazione/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco ___ 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] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
What about wikipediajr.org ? And so we would have en.wikipediajr.org, fr.wikipediajr.org etc. Thanks, Pharos On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: Thanks for your very useful thoughts, Samuel. They lead us to these two key questions: - Create new Wikipedias, or a new project: What would make sense? If they were new Wikipedias, we would potentially double the list with interwiki links (in other languages). I prefer a new project. - Scope and name: Maybe it would practically make no big difference whether the project is called simple or for kids. Poor readers and adult beginning readers (natives or not) tend to read texts that are meant for children anyway. It could make a difference in promoting, though. A scope question can also be whether certain kinds of explicit images are allowed. Before beginning such a project, it may be good to have a more elaborate concept than there has been when the Wikipedias started. But even before that, the Foundation should tell whether such a project has any chance to be accepted, or will be banned for being essentially Wikipedia in already existing languages. Hey, I just googled and found that there is already a proposal at Meta. :-) Kind regards Ziko https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Wikikids 2010/6/24 Samuel J Klein s...@wikimedia.org: Hi Ziko, On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple German came up. This would be useful. As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia. To be more precise: the language committee was tasked with determining when to start new language projects. It was never asked to consider other sorts of new projects. So either simple German is a new language, or it's out of the current scope of the committee. Overall, we've never decided whether a simple or children's encyclopedia should be a separate project with its own root domain, or another set of 'languages' that show up as an interlanguage link or as FOO.wikipedia.org . The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it had been created before that policy of 2006. Simple English is quite useful, and used for groups developing their literacy skills at all ages, including many communities learning English as a Second Language. Presumably the same could be true of any other language. There are a number of ideas and initiatives to create online encyclopedias in simple language, in and outside the Wikimedia world. Wouldn't it be suitable to reconsider and try to give those initiatives a place? Who else is more capable to create and support such encyclopedias than we are? +1 My thoughts: * I would love to see similar projects in at least German, French, Spanish, and Dutch -- languages in which there are already communities working on encyclopedic knowledge in simplified language. * We should have a new process for requesting a simple-language version of a project. * We should resolve standard practice for naming them, and decide if this should be a new top-level Project (like wikikids) or a variation on the normal language code. Considering the historical role of the children's encyclopedia, we might consider rescoping simple as for children -- this could help to increase participation and use, and clarify the role of these projects. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ 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] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Aaron Adrignola aaron.adrign...@gmail.com wrote: It may be relevant to note that http://wikijunior.org currently redirects to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior . From what I've heard, Wikijunior was supposed to become its own separate project at some point. Now, that is Wikibooks-related and not Wikipedia-related, but if one were looking for a combined edition of all the projects in each language, for children, you've got the domain name there, owned by Wikimedia. -- Aaron Adrignola a combined edition of all the projects in each language, for children That's an interesting conception, right there. Thanks, Pharos ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
This is the best source of the zeroth law of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws#Laws_by_others I believe people have tried to track down the original coiner, but noone really knows. Thanks, Pharos 2010/6/17 Jon Harald Søby jhs...@gmail.com: Yes, it's communism that works in theory but not in practice. :-) 2010/6/17 Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com Isn't the quote backwards? The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory? -Dan On Jun 17, 2010, at 4:03 PM, Sue Gardner wrote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas, quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But neither of them, I think, originated it. Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote? (I'm using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.) Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Jon Harald Søby http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by ___ 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] Renaming Flagged Protections
On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: tbh, I'm very fond of Double check. It seems to imply exactly what we want: the edit isn't being accepted automatically, nor rejected, but simply getting a second look. It's fairly neutral in tone, and understandable to the average person. I agree. Simple words are good. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) Philippe (speaking in my capacity as a volunteer, and not as an employee of the Foundation) On May 23, 2010, at 9:14 AM, Still Waterising wrote: I think Pending Revisions is an excellent name. No need to look further. ___ 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] On Wikimania locations
I don't think I agree with Greg's idea, but let me make an alternate suggestion: That to avoid efforts being wasted on failed bids, we ask bidders to include plans for a downsized-budget version of each Wikimania proposal that could serve for a regional-scale Wikimedia conference. Then, worthy bids that do not win Wikimania could still be funded and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation as regional conferences. Thanks, Pharos On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 8:32 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: Wikimania 2011 has come, yet again another location in the middle-east. It seems to me that every major populated geographic region has a multitude of sites which could create viable wikimania candidacies— and this has certainly been supported by the past applications. A leading application takes an enormous amount of work, expenditure of political energy, etc. on the part of the proposing team— work that could perhaps be applied to advancing the Wikimedia mission in other ways for candidacies which are ultimately fruitless. I believe that if you were to take the best candidate from each region and compare among them you'd find them all to be excellent options and ultimately end up choosing based little details and preferences, often ones mostly outside of the control of the applicants. Accordingly I believe it would be better if we pre-announced a preferred geography for the candidacies each year. Effort could then be conserved for producing really excellent proposals in those years when a candidacy is most likely to be successful. This could also be expected to result in better applications. ___ 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] MMORPG and Wikimedia
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 3:08 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 May 2010 16:08, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: this statement surprises me. Why was the foundation involved in the localization of Freecol, a game with little or no historic information (compared with other historic games such as europa universalis)? translatewiki is not a WMF project, but it does have strong associations with Wikimedia in its inspiration and volunteer base. It does translations for a lot more projects than MediaWiki. I would maybe say that translatewiki is part of the wiki knowledge movement :) Thanks, Pharos ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] list o' image donations?
I believe this is the page that Phoebe is looking for: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Batch_uploading Thanks, Pharos On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote: Also see the 'content partnerships' page on the Wikimedia UK wiki that I've put together: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cultural_partnerships/Content_partnerships Additions are welcome. Thanks, Mike On 16 Mar 2010, at 23:33, Gerard Meijssen wrote: Hoi, They are not donations they are images shared as part of a partnership. The partnership part expresses that care is expected of us to handle this material. It is vital that we produce the wonderful statistics as created by Magnus Manske. We have to refer back to the GLAM not only as a courtesy but also to provide provenance for the material that we show. Check out the info it produces for the Tropenmuseum.. Actually we should provide such courtesy if they are our partner or not .. http://toolserver.org/%7Emagnus/glamorous.php?doit=1category=Images +from+the+Tropenmuseumuse_globalusage=1ns0=1 Thanks, GerardM On 16 March 2010 23:30, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: Hello, Thanks for the question, Phoebe. Indeed, maybe it is better to begin a new page like Commons:Donations and have there a list in chronological order. Kind regards Ziko 2010/3/16 phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com: On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 4:04 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Is there an list somewhere of major image donations/collections that have been uploaded to Commons in the last few years? E.g., the Bundesarchiv donation, Antweb, etc. It looks there's a list, but it's not updated. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Commons_partnerships (That's the category, also see the first page in it.) Thanks Casey. I wonder if partnerships is really the right all-encompassing term for that kind of large donation to Commons? Anyway, that's the kind of page I was looking for -- it just needs to be updated! Thanks. -- Phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ foundation-l -- 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 ___ 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] Chinese languages (was: Changes in Language committee practice: ancient and constructed languages)
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 7:56 AM, Aphaia aph...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:42 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 5:18 AM, Aphaia aph...@gmail.com wrote: I find here a wrong assupmtion. First wrong assumption is Written Chinese is not very different for millenniums, they aren't same, and consequently Edo period Japanese who were taught Classical Chinese already found difficulty to understand the contemporary which was similar to the modern one. Second wrong assumption is person who knows Classical Chinese has to know modern Chinese. In East Asia, Classical Chinese had been lingua franca of the literate for millenniums, and there are many written sources, the earliest of them are dated at mid 19th C. And it is still taught in some countries including Japan. I, as a highly educated Japanese, read Classical Chinese to some extent, but I don't understand modern Chinese beyond the tourist level. I know many people who can enjoy zh-classical-Wikipedia but cannot (modern) zhwiki. So I object your statement and it wouldn't be just a fork of ZhWS but preferable to be a multilingual project. Yes, we have problems with Chinese languages and it is not just about Classical Chinese. And if you have some good sinologist around, please connect me with him or her. The logic behind rejecting Classical Chinese Wikisource is: 1) Wikisource can have sources in various languages. It is useful not to duplicate efforts with living languages (and put Japanese text on French Wikisource), but, for example, the logical place for texts in Slavenoserbian [1] is Serbian Wikisource. Relation between Anglo-Saxon and English is similar. According to this premise, Classical Chinese should go to Chinese Wikisource. 2) Just those ancient languages which are significantly different structurally in *written form* (as Wikimedia projects are still about written language) should be considered for having a separate Wikisource. According to this, Slavenoserbian and Anglo-Saxon would get projects, while it will be problematic for Classical Chinese: it looks to me that native Chinese speakers treat Classical Chinese as not so different, while other East Asians treat it so. 3) Just those ancient languages which don't have modern language which speakers consist approximately a superset of those who know that classical language -- should be considered for having a separate project. Every single person who knows Slavoserbian knows Serbian, which is true for Anglo-Saxon, too. But, it is not true for Classical Chinese. 4) Just those ancient languages which had significant productions should be considered to have separate Wikisource. Anglo-Saxon had significant production, Slavoserbian had, and, of course, Classical Chinese had, too. 5) We need [default] interface in a living language. The most logical choice for Classical Chinese is modern Chinese written in Traditional Hanji. In conjunction with (1) and (2), it would create a subset-fork of Chinese Wikisource. BTW, we are in a wiki world. Everything is changeable, but we need good reasons for changes. I would like to hear answers/confirmations on the next questions/claims: a) For Chinese speakers: Do you consider Classical Chinese as a language different from your native one or you are fully able to read Classical Chinese texts? Probably, it is somewhere in the middle, but, please, explain it. b) I suppose that it is not so hard to make a link from Japanese Wikipedia to some text on Chinese Wikisource. Actually, it would be similar if it would be about a separate Classical Chinese Wikisource. c) Are Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean etc. Wikimedian are able to contribute to Chinese Wikisource. If not, what is the problem? Orthography is a big problem. I think you have known it already on Serbian language - two different scripts are used and what it evoked. We are in a similar situation. At this moment Classical Chinese sources are hosted on zhwikisource whose default is simplified Chinese. Formerly some of them were in traditional and then we at Japanese wikis had no problem, since it is quasi similar the orthography we were educated in. But with simplified we have a big problem. Couldn't the links from Japanese Wikipedia pages be configured to go directly to the traditional Chinese orthography versions? Thanks, Pharos Please note I don't talk about default I/F. I talk about the documents themselves. I am okay which zhwiki* choose for their default, but the written way of Classical Chinese should not be determined by Chinese native speakers ony I think - rather all concerned people should be invited. Other thoughs are welcome, as well. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoserbian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- KIZU
Re: [Foundation-l] The name Old Wikisource
On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:16 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 08:20, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: (Please, continue to discuss at foundation-l.) I think that the term Old Wikisource and wiki abbreviation oldwikisource is really bad for the purpose of Wikisource (hosting the rest of material). Something like Multilingual Wikisource would be better (or whatever). So, may I ask fold from Wikisource to find a better name, and fill the but at Bugzilla for changing the abbreviation? You are right. I just noticed this name a couple of days ago and i also think that it's unfortunate. Be bold: raise this issue at http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium and open the bug at bugzilla without waiting for too long. I agree, Multilingual Wikisource would be quite an improvement. Thanks, Pharos -- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי 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] I'm here to request a new Wikimedia project
On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Tyler programmer...@comcast.net wrote: I was just wondering, how would you like to start an almanac, guys? That would be neat, a wiki almanac. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects :-) Our friends at the allied project OpenStreetMap (The Free Wiki World Map) have gone a long way in this direction, and you probably want to check their project out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap http://www.openstreetmap.org/ Here's a great recent feature from the BBC about 'The volunteer mappers who helped Haiti': http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8517057.stm Thanks, Pharos -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] I'm here to request a new Wikimedia project
On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 5:42 PM, Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com wrote: I was just wondering, how would you like to start an almanac, guys? That would be neat, a wiki Our friends at the allied project OpenStreetMap (The Free Wiki World Map) have gone a long way in this direction, and you probably want to check their project out. You've baffled me there. What's the overlap between a map and an almanac? If one has just gotten up after oversleeping on a snowed-in Saturday morning, the distinction between atlas and almanac tends to get blurred :) Still, OpenStreetMap is a fantastic project, I wonder if they would like to join the Wikimedia family one day. Thanks, Pharos ___ 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] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wiktionary
OmegaWiki was originally intended to be a multilingual Wiktionary project... http://www.omegawiki.org Has there been any thought on bringing it back somehow into the Wikimedia fold? Thanks, Pharos On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they need wider discussion for concluding them. One of such requests is for multilingual Wiktionary [2]. Please, discuss here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to wiktionary-l to poke those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2]. [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages [2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wiktionary_multilingual ___ 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] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikibooks
A multilingual Wikibooks would be valuable to the extent that it would focus on smaller languages which don't have their own language project yet. This makes perhaps more sense with Wikibooks than other projects because each book is relatively autonomous and of significant educational value in its own right, and even if someone were to donate a textbook in a rather obscure language I don't think that we should turn such a gift away. Thanks, Pharos On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they need wider discussion for concluding them. One of such requests is for multilingual Wikibooks [2]. Please, discuss here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to textbook-l to poke those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2]. [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages [2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikibooks_Multilingual ___ 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] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikinews
The proposal in this instance seems to be for merging all of the Wikinews language editions into one mega-project, which seems to me an exceedingly radical and perhaps counterproductive step. Thanks, Pharos On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they need wider discussion for concluding them. One of such requests is for multilingual Wikinews [2]. Please, discuss here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to wikinews-l to poke those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2]. [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages [2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikinews_multilingual ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment
Might I suggest that we're getting a bit off-track here with these broad debates on climate change issues? I think if we're considering spending $20k/yr on environmental initiatives, then the most effective way for us and the path most in line with Wikimedia's core mission would be to spend that money directly on special efforts to increase high-quality free content about environmental topics on Wikipedia and the other projects. Thanks, Pharos On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: It's a big deal already, and by the time it becomes an even bigger deal, it will be too late to act. The global climate takes decades to respond to changes in forcing factors. Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions now, the earth would continue to warm for decades because the heat capacity of the ocean slows down the lower atmosphere's response to increased radiation. Then we agree that cutting greenhouse gases is not a very effective solution? The World Health Organisation disagrees: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2007/9789241595674_eng.pdf I said directly. Militaries kill people directly. Global warming kills people indirectly. You just sound gullible when you recycle such claims without showing any awareness the opposing viewpoint. I don't think I'm recycling claims. I have a fairly unusual view on global warming, actually. Like what? Nuclear fusion? Talk about pie in the sky. Or just more effective photovoltaic cells. Or, well, anything other than fossil fuels. Solar and wind power, for instance, are much more viable now than they were thirty years ago. Wikipedia says global photovoltaic power production was 500 kW in 1977. It's not a stretch to suppose that they or other energy sources will be much more viable thirty years from now. In fact, it would be very surprising if we didn't have much better alternatives to fossil fuels by then than we have now. And cause famine due to a reduction in tropical rainfall? http://edoc.mpg.de/376757 Sure, maybe. Maybe not. Everything has costs and benefits. Blocking sunlight is a scheme that can be deployed very quickly and cheaply, and could not just completely stop future warming, but reverse warming that's already occurred before deployment. Cutting CO2 is immensely more expensive, slower, and less effective. You were just telling me how cutting carbon will never stop warming, and many people will die to famine if warming doesn't stop. Doesn't that imply people will die of famine either way? The costs need to be weighed against the benefits. Of course, the experts at large-scale cost-benefit analysis are economists, not climatologists. One panel of economists that set out to systematically examine the issue based on data provided by climatologists is the Copenhagen Consensus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus http://fixtheclimate.com/ The Copenhagen Consensus' Climate Change Project asked a panel of five economists (three of them Nobel laureates) to consider the costs and benefits of various schemes to mitigate or prevent global warming. They took climatologists' predictions for granted, and all agreed that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. The number one solution was to reflect more sunlight (by cloud whitening). Seven of the fifteen schemes involved carbon-cutting; they placed at positions nine through fifteen. The Copenhagen Consensus was and is controversial, of course. But the issue is far from open-and-shut. Even if cutting GHG emission is part of the solution, it's not at all clear that it makes sense to spend money on it now, rather than invest in alternative energy so we can make larger-scale cuts later. Are you aware of any groups of experts that have done a systematic cost-benefit analysis on the various options, and reached opposite conclusions to the Copenhagen Consensus? Experts here means, say, economists, not climatologists. (And preferably not political appointees either.) Climatologists are experts at predicting climate outcomes, not evaluating the quality-of-life effects of those outcomes. They have no expertise in that. Economics is the discipline concerned with welfare assessment. By the way, you didn't actually address the point of my last post. If involuntarily releasing greenhouse gases creates a moral obligation to undo the harm caused by that, why doesn't involuntarily paying taxes create the same moral obligation? This is independent of whether cutting GHGs is actually effective (which isn't something I meant to get into, but oh well). ___ 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
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: Practically speaking, how would such a verification system work? Would it be a specific OTRS queue (similar to the way we get proof that a photo's copyright release is correct) or would it be an email to Cary at the WMF (similar to the way we make sure people with specific tools are over a certain age)? Or, would it be a different thing altogether (e.g. the verification process is via the local chapter who vouches for the GLAM)? -Liam [[witty lama]] Perhaps we could start out modestly with just a handful of GLAMs, run through a chapters vouching system, and move on from there. If Wikimedia Australia were able to take the initiative on this and start a pilot project, I personally think that would be fantastic. Thanks, Pharos wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.comwrote: The spirit of the one person per account policy was to prevent people from disclaiming responsibility by claiming another person did it. I feel that allowing accounts for GLAMs would not violate the intent of the policy, but suggest that the account be required to verify, maintain a valid email and provide the Foundation with the identities of the authorized users. From: Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, December 9, 2009 4:16:54 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees I believe that a verified account system for GLAMs specifically doing encyclopedic work (not for businesses, etc) would not be too difficult to work out, and would be well worth any such effort. Such systems, though nothing is 100%, have worked quite well for many other websites. Thanks, Pharos On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When they are blocked like it happened with the Tropenmuseum, I will ask the person who did this to reconsider... There has to be a reason for a block and these organisations do what they do and they do it very well. The notion that a block on sight is always good is not reasonable. Thanks, GerardM 2009/12/5 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, I want to give you two different group / company accounts that I think are valuable.. Tropenmuseum... If you do not know about it, read the Tropenmuseum article on Commons Calcey - a company from Sri Lanka has adopted the localisation of the Sinhala language. We are really grateful for their work. There are more great examples of companies, groups that make a difference ... I would like to know more good examples.. You say that now, but what happens when they are blocked. Or maybe they say something that sounds like a legal threat; are they speaking for the company? -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ 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
I believe that a verified account system for GLAMs specifically doing encyclopedic work (not for businesses, etc) would not be too difficult to work out, and would be well worth any such effort. Such systems, though nothing is 100%, have worked quite well for many other websites. Thanks, Pharos On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When they are blocked like it happened with the Tropenmuseum, I will ask the person who did this to reconsider... There has to be a reason for a block and these organisations do what they do and they do it very well. The notion that a block on sight is always good is not reasonable. Thanks, GerardM 2009/12/5 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, I want to give you two different group / company accounts that I think are valuable.. Tropenmuseum... If you do not know about it, read the Tropenmuseum article on Commons Calcey - a company from Sri Lanka has adopted the localisation of the Sinhala language. We are really grateful for their work. There are more great examples of companies, groups that make a difference ... I would like to know more good examples.. You say that now, but what happens when they are blocked. Or maybe they say something that sounds like a legal threat; are they speaking for the company? -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Follow up: Fan History joining the WMF family
On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:04 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Laura Hale la...@fanhistory.com wrote: This is a follow up to my proposal that Fan History Wiki join the wMF family, based on my experiences via e-mail, on the list and on strategy wiki. snip a lot of detail As some one who has proposed a new project for the WMF (which would really probably be an acquisition if it happened), some changes need to be made: 1) Clear procedure for what happens step by step in making such a proposal. Post proposal. Contact people who support your position to vote in favor of it using talk pages on Strategy wiki. After one hundred votes vast in favor with no more than half that total in opposition, project moves to development stages where WMF staff will be in contact with the person making the proposal. Something like that. 2) Clear timeline of what happens and when so that people can plan accordingly 3) Expectations regarding exclusivity of proposal to the WMF during the proposal process. Can people propose it elsewhere or seek acquisition by others while there is an open proposal on Strategy Wiki? snip Regardless of the merits of FanHistory itself -- and I agree with the criticisms others have brought forth for whether the project should join the WMF -- Laura's criticisms of process are legitimate. For all intents and purposes, there is no process for proposing new projects, whether home-grown or brought in from outside. Yes, Wikiversity was created in 2006; it was also pushed through by some extraordinarily dedicated editors (especially user:Cormaggio) who were willing to take part in meta-discussions for *years*. It was also created under the aegis of the Special Projects Committee ([[meta:SPC]] for those who don't remember), which worked with the Wikiversity editors and brought forth a proposal to the Board after much back-and-forth. The SPC doesn't exist anymore, and there's not really anything to take its place (such as it was) that I'm aware of. Even with an expanded Foundation staff, it's unclear what area such proposals would fall under: new projects aren't business development, and they're not really outreach either. High-level strategic development? But clearly not all proposals are created equal, and not all are of potential interest, and not all are fully developed. And it's not at all clear to me that this kind of discussion/decision should even go through the office or board, at least initially; it's really undefined what the community (whatever that means) wants in terms of WMF projects. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a good discussion on the topic of new projects in the community in a long while; I don't know if there has been in board or staff discussions. Questions that I'd like to see discussed on a large scale are: * Do we want any new projects? Right now? In the future? Ever? * If so, do we only want projects that follow traditional reference book models of organizing information? (e.g. Wikiquote, which follows the model of books of quotations) * or perhaps only educational projects? * do all projects have to follow NPOV? What about the other guidelines: NOR, V? * do we only want projects we start ourselves, or would we consider projects started by other organizations? And yes, this could go on the strategy wiki -- but I don't know of a good, unstructured place to have a discussion about such things there (that isn't a specific proposal or strategic objective or whatever). To that end, I'd like to try and revive this meta page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects/process which was started last summer then faded out. I find myself very much in agreement with Phoebe's call for a renewed look at developing a process for new WMF projects. I think that in considering future steps, one middle option that may be considered is the virtual wiki, the namespace-specific subproject that may be hosted at a larger project while still developing its own specific norms. Consider the Wikiversity and Wikijunior projects, both started as virtual wikis on Wikibooks. Wikiversity eventually took its own path, while Wikijunior after some discussion was still felt to be best as part of the mother wiki. I feel that this Wikiversity/Wikijunior model could prove valuable again in the development of new types of WMF reference works, whether they may be also hosted as subprojects of Wikibooks or perhaps of another project. Thanks, Pharos And yes, Laura, to your specific question: if you want to see anything happen with your project anytime soon, I wouldn't pick the WMF. Whether this is a failing of a disorganized, bureaucratic system, or a benefit of a deliberative, community-based system, I leave as an exercise to the reader. best, -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Fan History joining the WMF family
Why the heck not? My only concern would be that the topic of fan history might be a bit specialized by itself. Why not call it Wikitribes and extend the concept to other subcultures and microhistories of small communities? I know of someone working with the oral history of Philadelphia jazz musicians, for example, who would probably be quite interested in contributing to a wiki project such as this. I think for too long we have shunted off some of our more interesting proposals to Wikia, and a commercial environment that may not be appropriately conducive for these projects. Thanks, Pharos On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Laura Hale la...@fanhistory.com wrote: Erik suggested I post this to the list for further discussion. Sincerely, Laura Hale *Introduction* Fan History Wiki is a project dedicated to documenting the history of fan communities, and to a lesser extent, documenting the history of online communities, popular culture and the tools that go to support these. The purpose of this document is to provide a general overview of Fan History, and to explain why this project would be a good fit for the Wikimedia Foundation. *Proposal* *About Fan History* Fan History is a wiki that runs on Mediawiki. It currently gets about 60,000 visitors a month, has over 820,000 articles, and a small but dedicated contributor base. Laura Hale created it in May 2006 as a means of centralizing existing information, and getting more people involved in the process of documenting the history of fandom. Current objectives for the project include: * Document the history of fan communities. * Preserve the history of fandom, especially in areas that are deemed at risk like Geocities. * Provide academics operating in fandom starting points for additional research and to provide academics with comprehensive data sets. * Provide members of fandom a resource to find links to communities in fandom, and explain parts of the culture in those communities to help them adapt to them. * Provide members of fandom a tool to promote their work, their projects, charity efforts by fans. * Provide members of fandom a platform to share stories about what happened in fandom so that important incidents won't be forgotten. * Provide a comprehensive directory for fandom that anyone can edit. This is necessary because of increased fragmentation in a web 2.0 world, and as members of fandom transition away from various services because of downtime, problems with policy, etc. It is also necessary because a lot of time in fandom trying to track down authors and artists who disappeared and in trying to locate fanworks that have disappeared. * Provide companies that deal with fandom a source to locate fandom communities, understand how fandom functions, identify current issues in certain fandoms, give examples of how certain issues were dealt with, etc. By knowing that information, they can better interact with and cater to fandom's specific needs. * Reasons why Fan History Wiki would be a good fit for WMF:* * WMF is trying to be more female friendly in terms of developing its contributor base. Fan History's primary contributor base and audience is female. * A largely female audience is a historical truth for popular culture fandom based around movies, and television. The audience around manga and anime is becoming increasingly female. In most areas, the academics entering the field are female. Major popular culture obsession items at the moment where there is a large female base include Twilight, Harry Potter, Star Trek. * Fan History’s inclusion amongst foundation projects can be a selling point for outreach in that area. If needing to point to a similar female dominated group doing similar work, the Organization for Transformative Works can be cited. * Our scope allows for more esoteric information that could not be included in Wikipedia, Wikiversity or Wikinews that would still help work towards a greater good. * The WMF Foundation supports quality resources that anyone can edit. Fan History is primarily a cultural historical anthropology project dedicated to documenting the history of fandom. * People have tried to do such research on Wikipedia in the past but it frequently gets deleted because of the lack of research, it is original research or it isn’t notable. In terms of popular culture studies, Fan History provides a place to do that. * Fan History being part of the Foundation would allow closer relationships with the science fiction community, the academic community and others with a vested interest in the topic. * We’re already being used as an academic source in some places because the research we do on the wiki is not being done by anyone else. With more attention and increased awareness, this can be increased. That attention and use should reflect back on other WMF projects to justify
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [openmoko-announce] WikiReader
On a side note, this looks interesting: For Parents: WikiReader offers an easy way to protect your child from adult-oriented content. This is the first time I've heard of a adult filter designed for all of the 3 million+ articles, as opposed to a schools selection that only includes a small subset of pre-approved articles. Thanks, Pharos On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 11:33 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: -- Forwarded message -- From: Sean Moss-Pultz s...@openmoko.com Date: Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 1:51 AM Subject: [openmoko-announce] WikiReader To: annou...@lists.openmoko.org, List for Openmoko community discussion commun...@lists.openmoko.org Dear Community! Today, with the greatest of pleasure, I am ready to share with you the birth of our third product -- WikiReader. Three simple buttons put three million Wikipedia articles in the palm of your hand. Accessible immediately, anytime, anywhere without requiring an Internet connection. No strings attached. With WikiReader you'll be prepared for those unexpected moments when curiosity strikes. And once you have it, you'll realize how often you ask yourself questions during the day. WikiReader takes our original ideas of openness and accessibility to an even greater realm. WikiReader is so amazingly simple. There really is no interface. You turn it on and instantly become immersed in the rich world of reading specific topics or the serendipitous pleasure of discovering something by chance. It's perfect for all ages. From the Aha! moment when we held our first prototypes, to the last few months as we worked around the clock to polish every last detail, this product was a joy to make and even more fun to experience. We are head-over-heels in love with WikiReader. Never have I found so much fun in the little moments of curiosity life offers us. Try one and I'm sure you'll agree that we've delivered the essence of reading Wikipedia in an addictively simple form factor. Sales start today at http://thewikireader.com. Enjoy. Tell your friends. And let us know what you think! Sincerely Sean Moss-Pultz ___ 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] Do we have a complete set of WMF projects?
On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: John Vandenberg wrote: On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Brianbrian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: I propose expanding the notion of the Wikimedia Incubator to include entirely new projects that are very, very easy to create. They don't need to be approved by the WMF - they just need to demonstrate their value by attracting a community and creating great content. This would be more like the Apache Incubator, but even more open. This gives people an easy way to prototype their ideas for new projects, to advertise them, and over time will give an overview of what kinds of projects and approaches to projects are likely to succeed and likely to fail. Brilliant idea. Currently new projects proposed on meta have buckley's chance of ever starting. Wikiversity wasn't a new project - it was split from wikibooks. We would need a bit of infrastructure around new concepts before they land on the incubator, such as a detailed description of the purpose, and an experienced admin willing to monitor that area of the incubator. This sounds like a good idea to me. One difference is immediately obvious from the way the incubator works presently, though. Rather than having these projects move out of the incubator based on the decision of the language committee, that issue would have to be considered by the board directly in consultation with the broader community. --Michael Snow This is a brilliant and much-needed idea, on many many levels. I suggest that we start to work developing such a new system for the Incubator at the strategy wiki. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ 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!
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 3:54 AM, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote: On 14 Sep 2009, at 22:47, Tim Landscheidt wrote: At another conference, the video switched from the camera viewpoint to the slides back and forth (I do not know wheth- er that was done while recording or in post-production). Ob- viously, this requires more manpower but the result was worth it. Tim The easiest way to do this is to create images of the powerpoint slides, and add them into the recordings post-production. I believe that adding images into videos (with fading in/out) is fairly standard in video editing software. It's something that could be done by the community a) if they want, and b) if they have the software. Mike In an ideal world, it might be nice to have a video of the speaker and a slideshow of the presentation available side-by-side in the same window. Thanks, Pharos ___ 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
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 1:41 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/10 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org: Hi Thomas! Sorry to top-post, and to be late replying. I believe that all 26 proposals are up now on the meta page. Let me know if you can't find it, and I can post the link tonight when I'm back on my laptop. The proposals are up, but not the details of which were accepted and which weren't. It would be useful to have that information when considering what to request funding for in future. There are 21 accepted proposals listed on this page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/Reporting_Guidance Since 26 were accepted in total, I guess this list in not quite complete yet; but still it makes for very useful reading. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) Wikimedia NYC-personal view ___ 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
On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Cary Bassc...@wikimedia.org wrote: -Original Message- From: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Nikola Smolenski Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 6:33 AM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Commons reaches 5 million files Mathias Schindler wrote: From a PR perspective, taking this image as the 5millionth one is a desaster, the only positive aspect is that it is honest to take that one instead of a shiny picture. Perhaps not so much, as it happened to be a first page of the newspaper. And I guess it is still better than the 2millionth file ;) I would also like to note, this image is a shiny example of the new annotations feature! I agree, the scroll-over annotation and translation looks brilliant to my taste. Thanks, Pharos Cary ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the NationalPortrait Gallery ...
On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Sue Gardnersusanpgard...@gmail.com wrote: Sure. Actually the New York chapter probably sends some press releases to US media too; I'm not sure. FYI We have had a number of contacts with journalists, but so far we have not been in the habit of putting out formal press releases. This may change in future; it's just a question of the particulars of public relations management. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) Wikimedia NYC --Original Message-- From: Thomas Dalton To: susanpgard...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Sent: Jul 11, 2009 10:41 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] About that sue and be damned to the NationalPortrait Gallery ... 2009/7/11 Sue Gardner susanpgard...@gmail.com: Point of clarification -- the Wikimedia Foundation sends out press releases to international media, not just US media. We have no plans to send out a press release on this issue. Of course, what I meant was that only the WMF sends press releases to US media, not that the WMF only sends press releases to US media. ___ 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] Recommending a Browser for High Quality Ogg Theora Video Support
On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 12:41 AM, Gregory Maxwellgmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: geni geniice at gmail.com wrote: I assume you are pointing to the Downpreffed VLC because it crashes my browser all the damn time -- TS comment. Still another problem with recommending an option is well when this happens: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Videoscreengrab_of_Morris_C8_towing.ogv As you can see following the recommended course of action results in a far from idea experience. Now to be fair [[File:Morris C8 towing.ogv]] is known to cause problems when played but it does work on the VLC plugin with firefox 3.0 at least on my system. Mozilla is quite responsive. (I fixed quite a few video bugs prior to release) But in this case there doesn't appear to be any real firefox problem. You've got a 6mbit/sec Ogg/Theora file. The stalling is because firefox doesn't prebuffer and your connection isn't fast enough to get ahead of it. Once the file is transferred moving the playhead back to the start gives smooth video. Prebuffering can be achieved by setting the autobuffer parameter before playback begins. The current way video is launched by the site defeats that. Other playback methods will hold the initial playback until some buffer has filled, so they don't exhibit the same behavior. This situation can be improved by managing the buffering process using JS or simply making good use of autobuffer. But the real flaw here is expecting a 6mbit/sec file to stream… Unfortunately until we have some trans-coding infrastructure that will remain a problem. I was thinking about running a bot to take all uploaded videos shrink them to 480px (if larger) and encode at reasonable streaming friendly bitrates, then uploading back as filename_thumb480 and replacing them in articles. I'm not sure how people will feel about that but it will greatly improve video playability without encouraging people to upload at low qualities which are completely unsuitable for editing. I presume there's no way to thumbnail them in a way analogous to how images are thumbnailed? Thanks, Pharos ___ 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] GFDL-only + OTRS
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:57 AM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/6/24 Pedro Sanchez pdsanc...@gmail.com: With the license move... do we still accept GFDL-only material? I've seen OTRSer today accepting and tagging entries released as GFDL only. Is this images for Commons? I'd personally like to deprecate the GFDL, but if it's a Commons-accepted free content licence then there's no reason not to accept it. Of course, there are and always have been a wide range of free content licenses used for images on Commons, not just GFDL and CC. Thanks, Pharos - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wiki-Conference New York July 25-26
Hi folks, The 1st Wiki-Conference New York will be held over the weekend of July 25-26 2009 (confirmed!) at New York University, and hosted by Free Culture @ NYU and Wikimedia New York City. Jimmy Wales will be giving a keynote, and we'll also have several dedicated panel discussions to be organized on-wiki (Panels), open opportunities for short presentations to the whole assembly (Lightning Talks), and a good deal of totally open space (Open Space Technology). Oh yeah, and there's the Central Park picnic! Participants are encouraged to give your own ideas for topic sessions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wiki-Conference_2009 More details coming soon! And let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) Wikimedia NYC ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Open teaching materials in the Netherlands
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 10:40 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: Hello, snip The project manager of the organisation of Dutch high schools gave me a very striking reason against a license that allows commercial use: Most of the teachers want to teach with the help of ordinary school books, with additional material taken from the internet. They want to have something on paper. If the school book publishers are allowed to make print versions from open content, then the teachers want those print versions. They will put pressure on their head masters to buy them, and then the shift from print to digital will not occur, and the plan of the organisation to save 385 millions € will not become reality. So, the manager says, the better if the publishers cannot sell print versions. But no publisher will have an exclusive right to print such textbooks, so these textbooks would cost much less than existing alternatives, in fact just slightly above printing costs. This is an especially salient point if these headmasters really do value print versions so much; the alternative of using an obscure copyright mechanism to force them into all-digital does not make much sense to me. Thanks, Pharos Ziko van Dijk read more in German on http://groups.google.de/group/infobrief-wiki-welt/msg/21c9f6c00634d13c? -- 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] Wikipedia Invades La Plata Natural History Museum
On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 7:31 AM, Hay (Husky) hus...@gmail.com wrote: It's nice to see initatives like this spring up all over the world! Next month Wikimedia Nederland (together with Creative Commons NL) will organize a month-long 'wiki loves art' project in which 15 museums participate. -- Hay Hooray for Patricio and Wikimedia AR! Looks like everything went brilliantly, and that you had a very productive 'invasion'. Like Hay, I am very happy to see this cross-fertilization of ideas, and I very much look forward to future updates from everyone. Thanks, Pharos On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 12:51 PM, emijrp emi...@gmail.com wrote: Really nice Patricio. Keep up the good work and tell us about those future events! 2009/5/13 Patricio Lorente patricio.lore...@gmail.com 2009/5/1 Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com: I think this is a good idea too. You can make a pretty template for the images produced that both briefly explains the project and that also includes the Category:Wikipedia_Invades_La Plata_Natural_History_Museum. I can help you with this if you'd like. This event documentation category would be added -in addition- to the encyclopedically-oriented Category:Museo_de_La_Plata. Possibly in the future, with a growing archive of items in the museum's collection, you will even find the need for more specific topical categories, like Category:Dinosaurs_at_Museo_de_La_Plata. Sorry I didn't write any update since the invasion. It was a great experience, with many new volunteers, some of them professional photographers. Many pictures have been already uploaded to Commons, under the category Wikipedia invade el Museo de La Plata, but there are more to come. As you may see, there are photos of different quality, but many of them are really great. See for example, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diplodocus_Carnegii.jpg After this activity, we received many invitations from other museums, and people from the provinces are organizing their own hunts. Patricio -- Patricio Lorente Mensajería Instantánea: patricio_lore...@jabber.org Blog: http://www.patriciolorente.com.ar ___ 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] Wikipedia Invades La Plata Natural History Museum
I think this is a good idea too. You can make a pretty template for the images produced that both briefly explains the project and that also includes the Category:Wikipedia_Invades_La Plata_Natural_History_Museum. I can help you with this if you'd like. This event documentation category would be added -in addition- to the encyclopedically-oriented Category:Museo_de_La_Plata. Possibly in the future, with a growing archive of items in the museum's collection, you will even find the need for more specific topical categories, like Category:Dinosaurs_at_Museo_de_La_Plata. Thanks, Pharos On 4/28/09, emijrp emi...@gmail.com wrote: Category can be introduced with a beautiful template about the event. 2009/4/28 emijrp emi...@gmail.com Perhaps a subcategory Wikipedia Invades La Plata Natural History Museum ? It would be easier to follow activities like this. I think this is related with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_loves_art . It is only a suggestion :). 2009/4/28 Patricio Lorente patricio.lore...@gmail.com 2009/4/28 emijrp emi...@gmail.com: Please, can all these images be categorized in a common category? Thanks Existig photographs are in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Museo_de_La_Plata I think we should use that category. Patricio -- Patricio Lorente Mensajería Instantánea: patricio_lore...@jabber.org Blog: http://www.patriciolorente.com.ar ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of livingpeople
On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Sue Gardner susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote: I agree that the turnout was impressive, and I was also impressed that many of the wealthier chapters helped to fund travel for the less-wealthy. I was also amazed by the volunteer devs, many of whom travelled long distances on their own dime (e.g., Aude, and many others). I've spoken with Brion, and if it would help the devs to have some form of subsidy for their travel, or some form of other support, the Wikimedia Foundation would be happy to help next year. I would like to support this too. Devs like Aude can be be a real asset in jumpstarting chapters activities as well, as she has shown with her great organizing work in Washington DC. Thanks, Pharos It was all really great :-) Sue -Original Message- From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:12:11 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people 2009/4/30 Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.com: Thomas, I believe there were about 50 chapters people about about 100 devs. I'm not sure why the mean travel distance would be lower if you include everyone - there were people from all around the world there, many having travelled further than the average board member. Actually, I'd be happy if you were right (and you probably are!) - it shows, that lots of people had the motivation to come to this excursion. Every single chapter was represented by at least one person - I was extremely impressed by that. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Simple English Encyclopedia
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When the use case of the Simple Wikipedia is better understood, it may even make room for more simple projects as in simple projects in the biggest languages. Thanks., GerardM If anyone is interested, I believe the other language most suited to such a project would be French, because of its lingua franca status in large parts of the developing world. Thanks, Pharos 2009/2/25 Cary Bass c...@wikimedia.org Ray Saintonge wrote: Brian Salter-Duke wrote: However my central point that a discussion of something as important as closing one of our most important projects in a way that few know about it remains. The !vote is 42:102. We get more at en:WP on a RFA. A further argument against having this principally discussed on Meta is that those who are best served by Simple do not have the language skills to participate fully in a discussion where there is unlimited use of language. Ec In light of that, I understand that there is some kind of simple wikipedia usage among the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) distribution. Perhaps someone could clarify, but if this is the case, then that would make the likelihood that this already failing proposal would pass even more remote. Cary Bass ___ 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] Wikipedia Loves Art- photography contest at museums worldwide
Hi folks, I'd like to let you folks know about Wikipedia Loves Art, a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest project being organized at several museums worldwide in February. So far these museums are confirmed: Brooklyn Museum in New York City Victoria and Albert Museum in London Los Angeles County Museum of Art Inadianapolis Museum of Art But we're very interested in recruiting other institutions to join. There have been some rumblings in Australia, Hungary and Germany on that front, I think. Here are the main relevant links: http://www.flickr.com/groups/wikipedia_loves_art/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Loves_Art These links also cover some of our past photography projects in New York City (which this project is partly an evolution on): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan/Spring_2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/wikis-take-manhattan/ If anyone anywhere is interested in helping their local museum to participate in this project, please contact me and I'll help. Thanks, Pharos ___ 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
On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 8:59 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: 2008/12/23 effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com: 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... Within the last 24 hours, we've raised a total of $283,859. That's more than 10 times as much as we made during a typical weekday in the last few days of the fundraiser, and the single highest day on record for community gifts. We don't know yet how steep the inevitable drop-off will be, but it's obvious that the appeal is working beyond everyone's expectations. I think it's worth noting that this tenfold increase has been possible without the use of additional pixel real estate, without scrolling marquees, interstitials, or other serious interruptions of the Wikipedia reader/editor experience. All it took were less than 60 characters of text on each page in a highly visible font, linking to a personal appeal that makes our case in more detail. We should ask ourselves why it is that based on the previous sitenotices, 9 in 10 people who would be clearly willing to give to us, did not do so. There seem to be at least three principal reasons for that: * The previous messages were below the visibility threshold for most people: They considered them to be an unimportant part of the page that should be ignored. * The previous messages did not, clearly enough, make a case for giving. They appealed to people who instantly get the non-profit donation model, but not to those for whom Wikipedia is essentially the same as any other website. The appeal directly addresses this distinction, to the satisfaction of a great number of people. * Because it's a personal appeal, rather than an impersonal donation message, the letter seems more likely to resonate with people. This is really important. Even the fact there was a picture is helpful. It humanizes the process, and makes it much less anonymous. When this letter has reached its audience and we need a new donation banner, I would strongly suggest another personal appeal of this type, from a new person (maybe an educator). Thanks, Pharos Regardless of how the numbers will hold up, it's clear that these are important lessons to take away: The appeal, compared to some of our other site-notices, was trivial to implement. It's more important to communicate clearly and in a personal manner what we're trying to do than to focus on widgets designs. Yes, more so than before, this appeal communicates a sense of urgency. As it should: We still have a revenue gap of $1.75M to just cover our expenses for the fiscal year (let alone increase our reserve). We're in the middle of the worst financial crisis in our lifetime; companies are failing or laying off staff around us. If people's reaction is I don't want Wikipedia to go away - I better donate, that's not a bad thing. Obviously we should try to work out any remaining display glitches. And I'm sure over time we'll find a happy medium when it comes to aspects like font size, color, etc. But more importantly, we should try to translate this appeal into as many languages as possible, as it's currently just running in the English language wikis. -- 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 Ideas About Technical Stuff/Community Relations Improvements
Maybe we the technical side of WMF could get a communications advisor, some trusted volunteer from among the regular Wikimedians, like they've done at the Chapters Committee recently. Thanks, Pharoos On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Eugene Zelenko [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi! There are many signs of miscommunications between technical side of WMF operations and outside worlds (users, administrators, external projects): periodical rattling on Planet Wikimedia, frustrations on TranslateWiki, almost impermanently growing number of bug reports in Bugzilla. Typical example may include: 1) There is approved project X which still not created for Y days 2) Why new translations are not propagated to project X 3) Bug reports with opened years ago with several duplications Definitely technical stuff members are limited resource. And even trivial fixes or problems may took much more time then expected. Code changes reviewing require efforts. But outside world don't know what is going on and could only make uneducated guesses and in best case scenario perceive technical stuff as black box I think will be good idea to introduce some kind of technical stuff reporting and future planning (may be located on WMF site). It'll provide approximate answer for question 1; explain clearly situation with 2 (like rXYZ introduced database scheme changes, currently updating WMF servers). This will also highlight and communicate priorities to general public. This is not about control over developers but about development process transparency, which I believe, will improve understanding and appreciation of job done from outside. Think how CodeReview improve transparency of MediaWiki code base maintaining. Also development road map for next quarter/year may be considered. Possible solution for problem 3: * WMF may consider to allocate some part of development budget to outside developers. It may be in form of bug fixing bounties, gifts or sponsoring travel/accommodation for participation in Wikimania/MediaWiki developers conference. * Advertisement of Google Summer of Code jobs on WMF projects. Eugene. PS Disclaimers: I write weekly reports on work and don't think is most interesting part of it. I don't believe that reports are best reflection of working process. ___ 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] EN Wikipedia Editing Statistics
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Nathan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wow, someone had more than 10,000 edits in February of 2002. Does it look to anyone else like the first five months of 2007 and 2008 were very busy, followed by a drop for the rest of the year? If that is whats happened, any theories as to why? Nathan Summer break for students would be the obvious reason. Or just good weather, generally. You might find the inverse if you look only at Southern Hemisphere IPs. Thanks, Pharos On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 5:32 AM, Robert Rohde [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Because myself and others have been frustrated by the lack of good stats on the number of active editors on the English Wikipedia, I have compiled some stats on the editing frequency on enwiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_frequency I am going to forgo any extensive analysis for now. But I will say that these trends mostly mirror trends seen elsewhere, with a peak in early 2007 followed by a decline and then leveling out as we go towards the present. In September, 130,000 registered users and 525,000 anons made at least one edit to an article. If you define active editors as those making at least 20 article edits per month then 14000 registered users and 6000 anons met that threshold in September. -Robert Rohde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://www.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] 2008 Annual Fundraiser - Going into Phase 2
I think it's good that this started after the election. We would lose if we competed with Obama donations... As it is, I think some of the donors may be looking for new places to give. Thanks, Pharos On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Chad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 3:54 AM, Przykuta [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For those who haven't seen it yet: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics Very neat! Looking at tab 2 (Number of contributions): In 2007 from day 14 and onwards the number of gifts per day more than doubled. Is it known why that happened? Just curious. Erik Zachte 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 they can't pay to Obama and find other ways to pay for this (their) victory. If you are happy you are able to give more. Maybe :) In 2007 after 2 weeks banner has been changed. przykuta Great theory for 2008, except for the whole economy is screwed, high employment, mortgage foreclosure and general nobody has any money to spare thing. -Chad ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Signal languages Wikimedia projects
Greg, this has nothing to do with cochlear implants. The deaf activist community is not a monolith, and the SignWriting folks are not advocates of isolationism at all. They simply believe in bilingualism, and that attaining literacy in one's everyday language is valuable in itself, and should also be a great aid in improving literacy in English and other spoken languages. Several SignWriting studies have focused on its use as an educational tool that increases student's real literacy in spoken languages. Thanks, Pharos On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 10:57 AM, Gregory Maxwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 2:14 AM, Gerard Meijssen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] Many people who are deaf have not learned to read and write in their own language. [snip] It is true that many deaf people do not know how to write their own language. I think the shifting definition of 'own language'. In discussions of other languages which follow national borders 'own language' has been defined to be the language spoken by a persons ancestors, regardless of what a person prefers to use. Here we must be using some other meaning since the overwhelming majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents who do not speak sign language. I know some deaf English readers/writers who would be very insulted if you claimed English was not their language. There are some deaf advocates who claim that deaf people should not interact with the hearing world, not in person, not online. These are a fringe minority, a vocal minority, but a fringe minority none the less. There are people who argue that deafness is equivalent to national, cultural, or racial identity and that attempting to cure deafness is akin to attempting to cure blackness. (really!) We should not allow these people to set our policy. [snip] It is because of the lack of of a script that the Deaf communities have a problem retaining much of the vocabulary that goes out of fashion. I'm glad you admit that they lack a script. That was basically the core of my statement: They do not, effectively, have a script today. As such it is unreasonable for us to expect that we can do much to help real speakers of these languages today. We can help people who are working on creating a script for signed language by supporting it in a project. But we have no idea if and when whatever script we support will actually be useful to a significant number of speakers of these languages. Because script support is so wrapped up with pro-isolation advocacy (along with mandatory sign language education and forbidding cochlear implants, as they are all necessary components for isolation) it is a politically loaded area. There are also competing systems. I do not believe we can decide whether SignWriting or Stokoe's notation system is more desirable, though certainly the latter would present fewer technical limitations. It is because of this that their culture is to be given to the next generation by rote and consequently much is lost. I do not generally consider it to be beneficial to have groups of people who are unable to communicate fluently with most of the world. But I admit that there is merit to the claim that cultural things are lost when a pre-existing state adopts a world language. But in the case of the deaf? The world has enough isolation. On the Internet no one even needs to know that you are deaf… unless you have the misfortune of being raised in one of the few strongly pro-isolationist deaf communities and did not obtain fluency in a common written language. Wikimedia's mission is to promote knowledge, we believe we can do that best by supporting the many languages which people prefer to use, but Wikimedia projects should not be a tool for promoting isolation. Not nationalist isolation, not cultural isolation, and not the isolation of the deaf. Accomplishing the former without venturing into the latter requires careful action and careful consideration of who we allow to advise us. I don't really care to carry on an argument over this much further. My last real interaction with the 'deaf community' was almost 8 years ago, and I have too many other projects in progress to worry about how we might be contributing to the isolation of the deaf (or others). I simply do not want the participants here believing that creating a SignWriting Wikipedia would help the deaf *today* as it would not. In the near term it would help SignWriting advocates, just as Lojban wikipedia helps Lojban advocates. I do not think this is a reason to reject SignWriting Wikipedia, but we should be aware of what it actually is and not mistake it for an uncontroversial aid to the deaf. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation
