I hereby formally request the creation of Wikinews, in all major Wikimedia
languages, under the domain
wikinews.org
which I have registered and pointed to Wikimedia's nameservers.
The current Wikinews proposal ist at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews
According to that proposal, we can immediately start working on Wikinews
as soon as the site is set up. Some software changes will be useful in the
long term, but are not immediately needed.
The details of the proposed policies can be worked out on the live site as
they currently are on the Wikimedia Commons. The question right now is if
there is a rough consensus to start a Wikimedia project whose goal is
* to provide summaries of external news sources
* to do original, neutral reporting around the world.
If there are no serious objections, I'd like to start ASAP.
I believe this project has the potential to be as relevant as Wikipedia,
if not more so. I'd love it if we could prove to the world that, using
wiki principles, we can create a neutral, reliable news source for
everyone.
Regards,
Erik
A report from the last board meeting has now been published on the
Foundation wiki at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/October_9%2C_2004 and is
included below.
Please use http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Board_meetings
if you would like to give feedback on this report, or
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_agenda if there is anything
you would like raised at future meetings.
Board meeting, including the Chief Financial Officer,
#board.wikimedia, 9 October, 2004
Present: Angela Beesley, Michael Davis, Daniel Mayer, Florence
Nibart-Devouard, Tim Shell, Jimmy Wales.
The agenda for the meeting was published at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Board_agenda
Contents:
1 Financial report
2 Hardware budget
3 Bandwidth and hosting fees
4 Domain names
5 Travel expenses
6 Other costs
7 Donors
8 Merchandise
9 Convention 2005
10 Membership
11 Other matters arising
12 Date of next meeting
1 Financial report
* Wikimedia raised close to US$60,000 in the fundraising drive.
There is $47,675.54 USD in the PayPal account, $25k in the bank, and
€10,000 due from Ars Electronica, making approximately $85 overall.
Quarterly fundraising drives are planned.
2 Hardware budget
* Daniel presented a draft hardware budget at meta:Wikimedia
budget/Q4 Hardware and asked for policy direction on this.
* Daniel projected 85 percent growth by the end of the quarter,
thereby requiring $45,000 to be spent on hardware in this period.
Florence noted that the sites are still at the stage where one server
failing can have a large impact on speed. It was proposed that the
developers be given the choice to order what they need within the
constraints on the budget total. Tim Starling will be asked to report
on the proposed budget at the next meeting. A total hardware budget of
$50,000 was approved.
3 Bandwidth and hosting fees
* The Foundation has recently signed a bandwidth contract for
40Mbs, doubled from the previous 20Mbs commitment. Current activity
suggests this may need to be increased again within this quarter, and
at this point Jimmy would no longer maintain the 50% donation he
currently pledges. Approaching the colo about donating bandwidth in
exchange for a banner was felt to be unnecessary since the Foundation
has received hosting offers which will soon allow us to divert
bandwidth seamlessly. It was agreed that $20,000 should be budgeted
for bandwidth and hosting for this quarter.
4 Domain names
* Jason Richey is preparing a comprehensive report regarding
domain names, which will be discussed in more detail at the next
meeting. Jimmy noted briefly that the Foundation is paid up with
current domains. The Netherlands domain name is owned by Wikimedia
technically but the legal transfer can not take place for some more
days. Jason will be asked to inquire about this.
5 Travel expenses
* Agreed upon travel costs for this quarter were $3,000 for Jimmy,
and $1,000 each for Angela and Florence. These amounts are maximums,
and any unused money would remain in the general Wikimedia fund. The
Foundation will be sharing the cost of Tim Starling and Brion Vibber
attending the MediaWiki developers' conference in Berlin in December
with Wikimedia Germany. Travel for the conference will cost $2600.
Conference tickets may also need to be paid for. It was agreed that
outside of the developer conference, the Foundation ought to be
conservative about travel expenses.
6 Other costs
* Jimmy and Michael are to investigate and report back on
insurance costs, including liability insurance.
* $500 will be budgeted for an accountant at the end of the year.
7 Donors
* Letter of thanks will be sent to all donors above some threshold
at the end of this year, with consideration will be given to the fact
that we can not solicit donations outside of Florida.
* Daniel will explore the possibility of sending emails
acknowledging all donations made with PayPal.
* Jimmy will add the details of the hardware donation September
2004 to the benefactors page on the Foundation website.
* Angela asked for feedback regarding the proposed scales at
Talk:Benefactors to be given following the meeting.
8 Merchandise
* Whether or not a printed newsletter should be funded by the
Foundation was discussed. Florence agreed to publicise the
meta:newsletter poll more widely in order to gain additional feedback
on this. There was no opposition to printing locally on a small scale
but mass printing was not felt to be a viable option.
* For small ventures, such as the printing of flyers for an event,
approval of the entire Board was not deemed to be necessary.
* A report from the existing wikishop (http://shop.wikipedia.org/)
should be obtained before decisions are made about the Foundation
embarking on a similar venture.
9 Convention 2005
* Elian has been working on putting together the committee for
selecting the location of the Wikimedia Convention 2005. This will be
announced on October 10, along with a shortlist of cities. Volunteers
will be asked to present their city to the committee.
10 Membership
* Membership issues were postponed so that Angela, Florence and
Jimmy could discuss these in detail over the course of the next week.
Their conclusions will be discussed at the next meeting.
11 Other matters arising
* Tim requested that a public relations committee be added to the
agenda for the next meeting.
* Angela noted that boilerplate letters for OTRS
(http://ticket.wikimedia.org) were needed and Tim suggested that some
emails being received by the board ought to be going to our PR
department.
12 Date of next meeting
* Saturday 16, 2004. 22:00 UTC. Tim Starling will be invited to
this meeting.
Angela Beesley, on behalf on Wikimedia.
As a reminder, the meta main page proposes now a list of hot topic :
check out http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Also : the goings on have been refactored : please check out
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on
When you add news here; please try to be specific, so as to avoid
readers to have to go to the page so as to understand what the topic is
about. Provide a couple of lines to introduce the topic.
Also, just simply REMEMBER to add news there please.
-------
While we are thinking of providing the world with news, let us think of
also sharing information within our project first.
Jean-Christophe Chazalette wrote:
>I strongly support the Wikimedia License idea. GDFL is not that appropriate
>to Wikis for plenty of reasons. I'll tell them when there'll be a real issue
>here :) Suffice it to say that considering what wiki actually is,
>technically, and what kind of ambition Wfoundation actually has, a
>tailor-made license would be just *better*. Of course, I would join any
>thinktank about this topic and even would accept to draft the main lines -
>with the help of a decent French-English translator ... of course.
>villy
>
>
While I support efforts to improve the GFDL and make it more compatible
with other free licenses like some of those Creative Commons offers, I'm
not that enthusiastic about the idea of developing a new
Wikimedia-specific license. Both for our benefit in using material from
other sources, and to maintain good relations with the rest of the
free-content community, I think we should resist creating a new license
unless we can clearly articulate the justification and benefits of
creating yet another license.
Due to the nature of copyleft licenses, proliferating more of them only
makes it harder to interchange content between them, even though they're
supposed to be free. Ideally, I would like to have a system where you
can just identify something generically as copyleft and people will
understand what that means in the same way that they understand the
basic principle of copyright today. But approaching that by reconciling
different licensing systems is difficult, and this stage may be better
achieved with the help of legislation.
--Michael Snow
I dont'know if the subject has been already debated in the past, but we are going to publish on wikisource a thesis written by a fellow wikipedian who graduated last week in sociology. The nice thing about this is that the thesis is ON wikipedia (specifically the italian edition).
Since we haven't found any other thesis published on wikisource, we asked ourselves if a thesis can be published there.
On http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:What_is_Wikisource%3F is stated that "Original writings by a Wikipedia contributor are excluded" (but given the subject of the thesis we think everyone will close an eye).
Still a thesis is a document, that has a certain degree of academic recognition.
The question is: wouldn't be nice (and useful) if wikisource could work also as a repository for thesis?
Snowdog.
Hello everybody,
I'm a German student living in Paris for one year. I've learned Latin and
Ancient Greek at school, so occasionally, I like to glance into a bilingual
book. But sometimes it's impossible to find a bilingual version of a
particular work, say, some books of Seneca; or they are extremely expensive
or just badly translated. While I'm not good enough to translate an entire
Latin book, it'd be great fun to translate some parts, and I'd think that
many people who once learned ancient languages share this feeling. After
all, this way you could actually USE what you've learned. Fans and Texts of
ancient literature are hopelessly scattered through the Web, one text here
and part of a translation there.
Could it be possible to set up a Wiki containing some
Latin/Greek/Arabian/whatever philosophy (or other content) whose copyright
has expired for a long time - be it by typing in old editions or by taking
over some Gutenberg content - and displaying it one paragraph per page,
giving the viewer the possibility to translate it into his native language?
I guess some specific features would be helpful, such as allowing two
translations in the same language to coexist (call them "English version,
showing John's translations where possible" and the same thing for Jim), as
there will never be "the one correct version". In addition, it would be nice
to create a bilingual PDF for printing.
As I'm a student living in a small chamber with only two hours of Internet
access from Monday till Friday, it is impossible for me to create such a
thing. There will be lots of other ideas and feature requests; for me it
doesn't matter if this will be a new project or integrated into Wikibooks or
something completely different. I just wanted to present this idea; maybe
someone "mightier than me" likes it, too: using your knowledge of humanism
to actually exert humanism, translating some of the oldest and greatest
works of mankind to be accessible free of charge by nowadays' mankind.
Have a nice day,
Viktor.
--
GMX ProMail mit bestem Virenschutz http://www.gmx.net/de/go/mail
+++ Empfehlung der Redaktion +++ Internet Professionell 10/04 +++
After a futher look around wikiversity (something i probably should
have done before opening my big mouth), i think that the crucial
difference between wikiversity and wikibooks is that wikiversity has
feedback. I think that the idea behind the example module
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Translation_practice_course
is a great one. (simplified, the idea is that you translate a page
from the spanish wikipedia into the english wikipedia, and then people
provide peer review of you traslation, i guess you just archive the
old translations and comments...).
paz e amor,
the bellman
--
robin.shannon.id.au
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
Fred Bauder wrote:
>Being judgement proof is not an option, what will happen is that they will
>seize the servers and domain names and hold them hostage til we raise the
>money to pay.
>
>
What I'm trying to illustrate is that in a civil action for damages, by
the time a substantial judgment is issued, Wikimedia as a legal entity
would be effectively dead anyway. Thanks to the copyleft licensing, the
content would already have moved to the fork that would undoubtedly
start, and many of the contributors would follow. There wouldn't be much
of anyone left to demand the ransom from, and in any case after a
judgment you can seize assets but you can't generally require people to
raise new funds. And given the choice, who will the public at large
donate money to: the fork that is carrying on Wikimedia's work, or the
original Wikimedia that has to turn over anything it receives to the
plaintiff?
The actual seizure and "hostage-holding" hypothesized here would come at
the very end of the litigation process. It would be like picking up the
pieces of a corpse, while the phoenix springs up again in another
location. A painful experience to be sure, and one to be avoided if
possible. But given that this result probably does not benefit either
the plaintiff or the plaintiff's lawyer, it would take quite a
combination of incompetence, malice, and irrationality, both on our part
and theirs, to bring this nightmare scenario to pass. Publish a
retraction if it turns out the plaintiff is right, and let them know
that pursuing damages will not be lucrative.
I think seizure of property in the context of a criminal investigation
would be a bigger concern, since this can happen prior to judgment and
with little or no warning. In other words, the Indymedia situation. For
that problem, the answer has less to do with financial resources and
corporation shell games, and lies more with careful fact-checking and
pre-publication review.
--Michael Snow
Okay, first off sorry if i sounded negative, i wasn't trying to be, i
like the idea of the idea of both wikinews and wikiversity, i just
don't know if i like the idea itself yet (if that makes any sense to
anyone).
> It's not necessary to quote the GFDL inline with the text, you just have
> to have a short license note and a link. You don't see the full text of
> the GFDL in each of our articles on Wikipedia do you?
>
> A printed version would presumably have to have the full license attached.
Thanks for clearing that up for me. i think it will be a real
impediment to recognition by the mainstream press, since most of that
has a printed version, and it is unreasonable to expect that any press
group will waste expensive space with the gfdl.
How does the gfdl apply to photos and video? how could you include a
video clip from wiki news on TV? does anyone know? i don't think the
gfdl was really written with this purpose in mind.
as for creating a wikimedia license as has been suggested, wouldn't it
be impossible to move all the old gfdl articles to wfdl (or what ever
the name is) IANAL so i dunno, thats just what i would seem like to
me.
> The major difference is that Wikicommons is for images and Wikisource is
> for text.
again thank you for the reply, but correct me if I'm wrong a) people
have been talking on this list (or maybe en.wikipedia, the two lists
get all mixed up in my mind) putting text in commons. b) the two
different projects seem like useless repetition c) I'm doing the
typical thing of not knowing all the history, and presuming i have the
right to go throwing my weight around
> Whose bright idea was it? Rephrase your question please. MediaWiki was
> written by volunteers in their spare time for the benefit of people like
> you. Be thankful there is a wiki at all.
>
Yes perhaps my question was a little blunt, but the point stands, and
so does my question, was it a limitation in the software, a decision
by the board, or did no one think about it and its just too late now?
> It's spelt "parentheses".
>
to some ppl perhaps, to others like myself, spelling is as dynamic as a wiki
> It can't offer pracs and class discussions, the proponents were very
> clear on this. There's no need to be so negative about it.
>
again sorry if i sounded negative, but i dont see the difference
between the two projects and i would like clarification. i think that
it would be interesting to try and create a real sense of community,
and have proper classes that go thru a year together just like in real
uni, but i don't know if a wiki would be the appropriate forum
> >sixthly, there is no sixthly.
there remains no sixthly for obvious reasons
> A method for easy translation has already been implemented in EmacsWiki, see
> http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/community/MultilingualExperiment
>
> The author of that feature (Mattis Manzel) has promoted potential
> applications for Wikimedia, especially on meta.
>
sounds good, i hope it will get in there
> Don't bother with the RFC, just post PHP.
the gauntlet has been thrown down, so i will now try to pick it up.
>
> -- Tim Starling
paz e amor,
the bellman
--
robin.shannon.id.au
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
whoops i forgot to include seventhly
seventhly point one, re: the latin traslation, could this be included
as class work in wikiversity?
seventhly point two, i think that mediawiki should have some built in
thingo to make translation and peer-review of translation easier for
things such as trasnlatin between different language wikipedias ect.
There are lots of people who might be able to roughly translate
something (ie, fluent in one language, and half decent in another),
but not up to the standard required for addition into wikipedia,
however if collaborative traslation was allowed then this might be
overcome. i dont know exactly how this would work, just an idea
seventhly point three, re: the idea of footnotes raised for latin
translation, i think this could apply to lots of other things (and i
know that footnotes have been debated before) but i would like to add
to this debate by saying that these footnotes should act as another
meta-page, like discussion, page history etc. if people are interested
in this idea, ill post a more detailed RFC.
paz e amor,
the bellman