I don't know about other projects, but the English Wikipedia imported a large amount of text from an out of copyright encyclopaedia, the 1910 version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I'm sure much of that is still there, and while the writers of it will be long dead they probably weren't anyone's volunteers at the time, certainly not ours. We also incorporate lots of quotes, especially if they are out of copyright.
You can sort of shuffle round the spam problems that Kudpung mentions because they are mostly unwanted and not part of the design (though we are happy if someone with a conflict of interest posts a suggested extra paragraph on a talkpage and another editor makes it more neutral and adds it to the article.....).. But the out of copyright public domain bits, those are part of the design ‘All of the articles on Wikipedia are written by volunteers’ is not a statement that fully reflects our aims as a movement. Remember we are part of the open source movement, and much of our content especially the images but also some of the text is from other open sources. If we try to imply that we think of wikipedia as only feeding into the pool of open source material and not receiving and using openly licensed material from others then we undermine our role of being aggregators and editors as well as writers and photographers. That said if the video contains the phrase ‘All of the articles on Wikipedia are written by volunteers’ I managed to watch it twice and blink and miss it both times. I liked that video, thanks for doing it. If I was going to be pedantic about it I'd point out that people do come to Wikipedia every day trying to slant it or hide things, but we have a large community of volunteers who resist and usually revert that. Also it was great to see the confidence of people saying that everything was sourced, and of course if you add info and want it to stick you need to source it. However we are a long long way from moving from our policy of verifiable to one of verified, let alone of finding sources for the vast amount of unverified information that we already have. On 2 August 2017 at 18:48, Lodewijk <lodew...@effeietsanders.org> wrote: > Hey Kudpong, > > Those people are still volunteers from the perspective of Wikipedia - they > are not being paid by the Wikimedia Foundation. If true, it is a worrying > development, but perhaps not a reason for Victor to change his videos. > > Best, > Lodewijk > > On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 7:45 PM, cs <c...@edubkk.org> wrote: > >> ‘All of the articles on Wikipedia are written by volunteers’ >> >> You’ll need to correct that for your next video - if you knew the extent >> of paid editing, blackmail, and extortion we are discovering and trying to >> combat you’d fall off your chair or drop your camera. >> >> Kudpung >> >> On 3Aug, 2017, at 00:33, Victor Grigas <vgri...@wikimedia.org> wrote: >> >> Hello Wikimedians! >> >> My name is Victor Grigas, I’m a storyteller and video producer >> <https://www.youtube.com/user/WikimediaFoundation/videos> at the >> Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that supports Wikipedia. Many of you >> may already know me or my work. I'll be in Montreal at Wikimania from >> Thursday August 10th through Sunday August 13th and wanted to ask that if >> you *know someone *or *are someone* who has an inspiring story to share >> about how you use Wikimedia projects, then we'd like to hear it! >> >> If you are interested, please answer a few questions on this private >> Google form or share it with someone you know who will be attending >> Wikimania: >> >> https://goo.gl/forms/h6a9TWFyFMs4qgua2 >> (All answers are confidential and we will not publish your story without >> first getting your written permission.) >> >> We publish profiles of Wikimedians here regularly: >> https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/communications/profiles/ >> >> Then, in Montreal I can take your portrait photo >> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:VGrigas_(WMF)#A_few_Wikipedians> for >> free to publish on Wikimedia Commons. I’ll be there from Thursday August >> 10th through Sunday August 13th. I’ll only need a few minutes of your time >> to take your photo and we can co-ordinate by email. Once I'm there, I'll >> have a better idea of where I'll be for the best lighting setup. >> >> If you have any questions, feel free to email Victor Grigas - >> vgri...@wikimedia.org >> >> Thank you! >> >> -- >> >> *Victor Grigas* >> Video Production Manager >> and Storyteller >> Wikimedia Foundation <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ4ba28-oGs> >> vgri...@wikimedia.org >> https://donate.wikimedia.org/ >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimania-l mailing list >> Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimania-l mailing list >> Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimania-l mailing list > Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l > >
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