There are a lot of unanswered questions and issues currently facing
the board, and I would appreciate your help with these.
If you have any thoughts on the following topics, please see
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions> and give
your answers and suggestions, either on that page, or by email to me
if you would prefer to reply privately.
1 Hosting
2 Trademarks
3 Membership
4 Money
5 Developers
6 Communication
If you feel there are further questions that need to be addressed,
please add those to the page.
Thank you.
Angela.
--
Angela Beesley
Not necessarily reflecting the views of the Wikimedia Foundation.
> What is the next step ?
Hoi,
I think, that when we DELETE the article and then copy back those parts
that are proper, we will only lose the history of the article. For
moderators and for legal reasons we will be still able to show what was
there. To the public there is nothing to be seen of the content that
should not be there. In my opinion this is an acceptable solution.
There could/should be some mention of this in the talkpage to explain
that/how this issue is resolved.
Thanks,
GerardM
Okay.
How do we do this when the comments are on the pump ?
And are now in ... say... 40 or more subsequent versions ?
Ant
---------------------------------
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Neil Harris wrote:
> The content belongs to its original copyright owners, and increasingly,
> the Wikimedia Foundation is their official copyright agent.
Please avoid statements like this, as they are potentially misleading.
While it is theoretically possible that at some point in the future, the
Foundation might take legal action against people who misuse content
taken from Wikimedia in violation of the licensing terms, contributors
do not assign their copyrights to the Foundation, and the Foundation
does not assume a duty to protect these rights. The sense in which the
Foundation is an official agent for copyright issues (actually the agent
is Jimbo personally) is with respect to third parties who have
complaints about their copyrighted material being infringed by use on
Wikimedia projects.
There is some language in [[en:Wikipedia:Submission Standards]] about
appointing the Foundation as an agent for downstream copyright
compliance issues. That page is a draft, most of it now more than a year
old, and has never been adopted as official policy. As things currently
stand, contributors have every right to enforce their own copyrights
against outside parties as they see fit, and don't need for the
Foundation to get involved.
--Michael Snow
Hmmmm.
Let's see.
I could cite you two examples which were recently discussed.
Early february, I was invited to a meeting in France, TIC21. Regular fee was a couple of hundred euros, nothing I was ready to pay by myself. Finally, one of the organiser invited me for free and told me my leaflets could be welcome on his booth. He considered us partners (his website and Wikipedia). I explained that we could not really be. First because being partner with wikipedia meant the community agrees with the partnership and second because his site, though giving free content, and though sharing some principles with us, is also a very biaised one (planetecologie.org).
Still, when I went to the meeting, I discovered wikipedia logo on its poster, and on its CD.
A bit as if, all organisations inviting Jimbo for a speech considered themselves partners with us from the moment they paid for him to come.
Still, the "partnership" is for now limited but for the fact there are attempts to push us to get involved in things I do not wish us to get involved to. No big deal.
Another example which was abundantly discussed on fr, is the issue of telebotanica, a network of botanists making a free and free site of botanical species. Several of us met his director (I did at TIC21 myself). Very straight guy. Goals exactly fitting ours. The perfect partner.
Still... the question left was "what is a partnership here", "what would it encompass" and "who should agree with it".
For example, some mentionned we could put his association logo on our main page. Hmmm, no, I do not think we can do this.
Also, there was some discussions to have an official contract (the idea was that the most general content could be worked on wikipedia, which would link, for each botanical article, to their specialised file). Still, why would an association have the authority to say "from now on, all botanical articles have a back link to botanica" ? There could be a declaration of intent such as "we share common goals, we share information, and we try to redirect to each other", but imposing to the community the content of the article on forcing a link, is just not an option.
>From this, I can just propose a collection of thoughts.
What is partnership, what does that exactly mean ? For each of us ?
This terms seem to be very much in use now, but I think it recovers different realities. I think that as soon as we are doing something with someone, we are partners with him. If I work with you on wikipedia, we both are partners (please, consider that with straight ideas... do not let this comment put you to wander in some strange areas).
A partnership may be a sort of moral agreement, each partner abilities being complementary of the other ones.
There is a difference between financial or technical partners. It may be privately owned firms, foundations, public or private organisations, governments...And professional partners may just create something different, depending on their implication (just bringing a little bit of immediate knowledge or help, or maybe much much more...)
It is certainly a bit strange that we should use the same word to define very different realities. I think Lost Oasis is a partner. A private firm giving funds for Wikimania will be a partner. Using google search right now, is a partnership. Us using MediaWiki is a partnership. People like JoiIto or Sunir Shah, are partners as well. Kennisnet might be a partnership. Telebotanica might be a partnership. And BBC doing things with Angela is also a partnership. Should we display all these logos ? How to measure value of each ? Often, it just mean : we share some values.
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Forgot...
We can not currently be "partners" with Telebotanica, because we do not share same license.
Some of their editors agree with ours, but others insist to stick to a non commercial one.
Ant
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Brion Vibber wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> http://www.podcastingnews.com/archives/2005/03/ourmedia_offers.html
>>
>> A story on the Podcasting News website describes Wikipedia as one of the
>> "partners in the effort" to launch the Ourmedia project. Is this true? I
>> realize that Angela is one of their advisors, but I hadn't heard that
>> there was any kind of official partnership. Is there some kind of
>> ongoing discussion that the community doesn't know about, or are people
>> just being sloppy about the nature of the connection?
>
> Well, I've never heard of them, but the ourmedia.org site has a little
> Wikipedia logo and link under 'Sponsors and partners' on every page of
> their site.
Ah, I didn't scroll down far enough to see that. I did check the story,
which was pretty obviously a regurgitated press release, against
Ourmedia's version, which didn't list Wikipedia as a partner, so I
couldn't figure out if Podcasting News was jumping to conclusions or if
Ourmedia was giving this impression themselves.
> It sounds more like 'some similarities in mission' than a 'partnership'
Yes, that's about how I would describe it.
Angela wrote:
>I did speak to Jimbo about this a few weeks ago
>when I first saw this on the Ourmedia site, since I wasn't sure if
>this should be seen as a problem. He said he didn't care for it, but
>when I suggested I could have it removed, he just said he had
>complained a bit (I don't know who to), and also said that it was not
>a ridiculous statement.
>
No, it's not ridiculous, just a little confusing.
Anthere wrote:
> The only thing I know... is that other associations started listing
> themselves as being partners with wikipedia. I raised the topic on the
> french mailing list about what could be a partner and how to decide
> who was a partner and who was not.
Oh, what other non-partner partners do we have?
In the particular case of Ourmedia, the similarities mean that it's not
something to get too worked up about. I don't mind if they want to do a
little name-dropping - it's nice that our name is worth dropping - but
it would be good to have an indication that the relationship basically
amounts to moral support and advice. If our fundraiser donors got the
mistaken impression that we're funneling money to outside projects,
rather than spending it to address our well-known needs, it would not be
a good situation. And we do need to be careful that people aren't
misrepresenting the position of Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, or
any other project of the Foundation.
--Michael Snow
Hi,
Here are the details for the participation of the foundation to the World
Summit on Information Society (WSIS). So in short, if the foundation wants to
have a booth in Tunis, application has to be sent soon.
Regards,
Yann
======================
The Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will
consist of two parts: the Summit that will take place from 16 to 18 November
2005 at the "Parc des expositions du Kram" in Tunis, and the Parallel events,
consisting of a series of meetings, discussions, workshops and exhibitions
that will also be held in the Kram Centre.
More information on the Format of the Summit and the Agenda are available at
http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/index.html .
Parallel events consist of an exhibition and a partnership area
events like meetings, discussions and workshops, etc. events of global nature
The exhibition will be open to the public. Exhibitors do not necessarily need
to be accredited to WSIS, but they should respect the non-profit character of
the parallel events. Requests for exhibition space can be made in electronic
format at http://www.expo.ict4all-tunis.org/ . The below mentioned deadline
does not apply to requests for exhibition space. The exhibiton will open on
15 November and will last till 19 November 2005.
Events in the Kram Centre can be organized by all accredited stakeholders,
between 14 and 19 November 2005. Limitations may apply due to room
availability. More information about parallel events is contained in the
"Guidelines for Organizers of Parallel events during the second phase of
WSIS", jointly established between the host country Tunisia and the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The document is available in English at
<http://www.smsitunis2005.tn/plateforme/docs/guidelines.doc>
and in French at
<http://www.smsitunis2005.tn/plateforme/docs/guidelines-fr.doc> .
Please note that the deadline for submissions of requests for the
organisation of events is 30 April 2005. Requests for rooms for meetings,
discussions and workshops have to be submitted using the form indicated in
the Guidelines
(<http://www.smsitunis2005.tn/plateforme/docs/formulaire.doc>) .
Sincerely yours
Charles Geiger
Executive Director WSIS
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
---- Forwarded message from Felix Pahl ----
> Just wondering whether you've heard of the Amazon Honor System
>
(http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/help/how-we-know.html/002-5703367…)
> and have considered whether it might be a useful way for Wikipedia to
> raise money.
>
> Greetings,
>
> felix.
>
>
---- End forwarded message ----
Hi,
situation today: a Wikipedian at a meetup shows me a collection of at
least 100 beautiful high-resolution photos from Ecuador. Unfortunately,
only a couple of them are on the German Wikipedia, and none are on the
Commons. He's perfectly willing to make them GFDL, though. I offered to
do the uploading for him, but it occurred to me that a more general
solution might be in order.
Hence, I've just launched an experimental file upload service for the
Wikimedia Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:File_upload_service
(please translate!)
The idea is that people who are not comfortable using the Commons
directly (such as non-Wikimedians), or who want to upload a large number
of files, can contact a registered helper who will batch-upload them.
I can obviously only handle a limited number of such requests, so I
encourage anyone familiar with handling an upload bot to add themselves
to the list of helpers. If you can't handle large email attachments, let
me know, and I can give you an account on my FTP space.
Note that this is really a workaround for the Commons not being as
user-friendly as it should be (no single login, no easy upload form, no
batch upload support, categorization requires wiki knowledge).
Eventually, I'd like this to become obsolete.
I'm posting this announcement to foundation-l, wikipedia-l, wikinews-l,
and commons-l, since all these projects are affected. Please
forward/translate the message for other affected projects.
All best,
Erik
Hiho,
Since we quite often receive more or less important requests for
wikipedia presentations, I am compiling a speakers' list on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations
I already added some people where I have reason to believe that they
will do this
Please
a) add yourself if you are willing and feel qualified to hold talks
about Wikipedia with
* your area of expertise (general, technical, scientific studies etc.)
* the languages in which you can speak
* your area
and
b) provide me with a contact address so that I can mail such requests around
It would be especially nice to have some of the developers there.
greetings,
elian