Hi,
for the last couple of months, Wikinews and The World Forum
(www.theworldforum.org) have enjoyed a very productive cooperation. TWF
reposts Wikinews stories (allowing us to appear on the news.google.com
frontpage several times), and the editor, "Drog", has now also started
submitting his own stories to Wikinews as public domain.
I've given Drog the go-ahead to link to Wikinews using our logo on the
frontpage. I thought that given the recent discussions about logo
copyright & licensing, it might be a good idea to report this here.
(On a related note, I feel that David Vasquez has done an excellent job
refining the logo. It looks much more optimistic and welcoming than the
logos of most news sites.)
All best,
Erik
Quoting from a letter from the IRS:
Dear Applicant:
We are pleased to inform you that upon review of your application for
tax exempt status we have determined that you are exempt from Federal
income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Codfe.
Contributions to you are deductible under section 170 of the Code. You
are also qualified to receive tax deductible bequests, devises,
transfers or gifts under section 2055, 2106 or 2522 of the Code.
Because this letter could help resolve any questions regarding your
extempt status, you should keep it in your permanent records.
Organizations exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Code are further
classified as either public charities or private foundations. We
determined that you are a public charity under the Code section(s)
listen in the heading of this letter.
-----
Hooray! Finally!
The effective date of the exemption is June 20, 2003 (our founding
date), so this is fully retroactive.
--Jimbo
Since some of you participated to that project, I forward the answer to
you all.
Unfortunately, we are not in the list of funded projects. Well, we'll
try again next year :-)
Anthere
---- Message renvoyé par ifapprojects(a)unesco.org ----
Date:
De : ifapprojects(a)unesco.org
À: board(a)wikimedia.org
Copie :
Répondre à:
Sujet: [Ticket#: 118464-FW] UNESCO's Information for All P [...]
> Version française ci-dessous
>
> Dear project proponents,
>
> The UNESCO Secretariat has pleasure in informing you that the Bureau of
> the Intergovernmental Council for the Information for All Programme,
> which met for its eight meeting in Paris, from 4 to 6 April 2005, has
> granted financial assistance to twenty-four projects related to
> information literacy, preservation of information, and ethical
> implications of information and communication technology (ICT).
>
> The list of projects, for which funding was approved is at:
>
> http://www.unesco.org/webworld/ifapprojects/2005
>
> We shall shortly contact the proponents of projects which have been
> approved, for more details on the project implementation.
>
> The Bureau, chaired by Daniel Malbert (France), approved US$758,000 in
> funding for eight projects concerning Africa; five concerning Asia and
> Latin America/Caribbean, respectively; and two concerning Eastern Europe
> and the Arab region, respectively. The Bureau also approved funding two
> international projects.
>
> A total of 502 projects were submitted to the Bureau by organizations
> all over the world with a total of requested funds exceeding US$20
> million.
>
> We thank you for your interest in the UNESCO?s Information for All
> Programme.
>
> Axel Plathe
> UNESCO
> Information Society Division
> a.plathe(a)unesco.org
>
______________________________________________________________________________
>
> Bonjour
>
> Le Secrétariat de l?UNESCO a le plaisir de vous informer que le Bureau
> du Conseil intergouvernemental pour le programme «Information pour
> tous», qui a tenu sa huitième session à Paris du 4 au 6 avril 2005, a
> accordé une assistance financière à vingt-quatre projets liés à
> l?alphabétisation de l'information, la préservation de l?information, et
> les implications éthiques des technologies de l'information et de la
> communication.
>
> La liste de projets, pour lesquels des fonds ont été approuvés est à
> l?adresse suivante:
>
> http://www.unesco.org/webworld/ifapprojects/2005.
>
> Nous contacterons sous peu toux ceux dont les projets ont été
> approuvés, pour plus de détails quant à leur exécution.
>
> Le Bureau, présidé par Daniel Malbert (France), a approuvé EU $ 758,000
> pour le financement de huit projets concernant l?Afrique ; cinq projets
> concernant respectivement l?Asie et l?Amérique Latine et les Caraïbes,
> deux projets concernant respectivement l?Europe de l?Est et la Région
> Arabe. Le Bureau a également approuvé deux projets internationaux.
>
> Au total 502 projets ont été soumis au Bureau par des organismes partout
> dans le monde avec un total de fonds demandés excédant EU $ 20 millions.
>
> Nous vous remercions pour l?intérêt manifesté à l?égard du programme de
> l?UNESCO « Information pour tous ».
>
> Cordialement
>
> Axel Plathe
> UNESCO
> Division de la Société de l?information
> a.plathe(a)unesco.org
>
>
---- Fin du message retransmi ----
Greetings,
Since April 11, I'm in contact with FCCN <http://www.fccn.pt>, a gov-org,
that manages the DNS and backbone of Portugal. By e-mail I talked about the
projects and the foundation, and asked for some support (based on "Volunteer
Squid Sites <http://wp.wikidev.net/Volunteer_Squid_Sites>"), and the reply
of the person that I contacted was that it would be ok for them to support
Wikimedia, but that I should send by email a formal letter (in PDF) with
more details about the projects and about the kind of support (hosting) for
the FCCN board.
My question is, if the foundation is not against a possible partnership
between FCCN and Wikimedia.
Can I and other wikipedians write a letter in PDF (in portuguese), or should
it be the foundation to write and send one ?
Best of all,
Get_It
--
Edit this page @ http://pt.wikipedia.org
Craig Franklin <craig(a)halo-17.net> wrote:
Scr�obh Eric Moeller:
> There has now been a vote, organized by Formulax, among Chinese language
> Wikimedians on whether there should be a Chinese Wikinews.
I think it's interesting, but I hope that the board would withdraw support
for a Wikinews that would have as a central plank of policy, a rule which
conflicts with NPOV. Unfortunately, the Chinese government suppressing an
NPOV Chinese-language news site is a very real possibility. I think that no
zh.wikinews is still a better option than a zh.wikinews that panders to the
communist government.
--------------
Hello
I do not think any of us in the board would support a site which would not follow the neutrality rule.
If I had a couple of words to define what is in common with all of our projects, it would be
* libre
* gratis
* unbiaised
* community built
Any of these four failing would sign the failure of our project ihmo.
The first two ones are the only way we can insure that anyone can access the information. Libre information can circulate without restriction. It does not matter very much that some of the content is not free of charge on other websites or on cdroms... what matters is that there is at least one accessible gratis version somewhere, so that financial issues do not become a bottle neck in the access to information. We can be that gratis version.
The third one is somehow part of our mission statement. We are not activists (but for the point we all believe knowledge should be freely accessible), we do not support one religion or on political party or whatever. Staying neutral is the best choice for us to prosperate, the best choice for us to be able to work together without to get stuck on philosophical issues, the best choice for anyone reading us to make informed consent and make the best decisions. This might be the hardest point to respect, the hardest to understand, but we should not, ever, agree voluntarily to go on a path where it is so easy to get diverted already.
The fourth point... is not only about us all having fun together. The fourth is also a requirement for the number three to get respected. We need to be open and to work together, because it is the only way to get really fully neutral. As soon as we start to give more authority or more rights to a certain group, be it for political reasons, for expertise reasons, we fail in this that we accept a certain view of the world to have more weight than other views. For example, if we start "protecting us" by removing all the people who do not fit in a certain frame, we might very well end up eliminating any editor from african or asian countries, we might end up building a resource for them to use, we might impose them our resource instead of letting them built it.
This is why the chinese wikinews stuff is so tricky.
If we open it, we might end up either with a closed site, in particular full closing of all wikimedia projects => hence failing in our will to inform anyone
If we open it, we might end up with a site agreeing to self-censorship => hence failing in our will to be neutral
But if we do not open it, we end up not allowing chinese editors to build up their own resource, we force them to only rely on the english resource for example => hence failing in our will to inform anyone since not all of them understand english.
I might also suggest chinese editors to join the english speaking wikinews to ensure balance of views... but again... that requires fluency...
At that point, I think it is to the chinese community to decide, because I think they should balance the risk of self censorship to happen, the risk of full closing of project... with the benefit of having their view points better taken into account if they think they are not.
A tricky temporary solution might be (if enough chinese are good speaking), that more chinese editors participate to english wikinews, and that an independant website translate en.wikinews in chinese every day.
People might scream as I suggest this I suppose :-) But here is what *I* think. And what *I* fear a little bit...
Contrarywise to wikipedia, wikinews is much more "localized". The best proof of it is the number of editors who want to build a geographically localised portal page (such as scandinavian wikinews) to inform scandinavian editors. I fear that if we are not careful, wikinews slowly slip from being based on languages to being based on countries or ecoregions. The result of it might be possibly that more and more people focus on their local news... and of course report common local frame of mind.
It might be that ... a geographical bias or cultural systemic bias will be much much much stronger on wikinews than any other wikimedia projects. The opposite on the scale being wikicommons. This suggest to me that it could make sense to favor more a few languages where participants of many languages and countries and cultures participate, and then that articles are translated in other languages.
At the same time, this is so english-centric that it is scary :-)
Anthere
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Hi,
for those who need a distraction, I just discovered Raul654's very nice
list of free music files uploaded to the Commons so far (by himself,
OldakQuill, Whyameye, and a few others):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound/list
I made a playlist out of it which you can view at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound/list/playlist
Paste the URLs into a text file called "playlist.m3u" and load it with
your favorite MP3/OGG player - it should automatically stream them from
our servers if you have enough bandwidth. Lots of classical, but some
modern stuff as well.
This is not completely off-topic -- I'm working on a press release for
the 100,000th media file uploaded to the Commons (we're currently at
70,000). Of course we're going to point out our large collection of
songs, among other neat things. Help appreciated:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/100K
(English for now, call for translations will be separate.)
Enjoy,
Erik
Erik said
In the long term, I think having a standard logo *with* a text like this
would be useful for all Wikimedia projects -- then people can use e.g. a
"Powered by Wikipedia" logo on a CD or printout without there being a
misconception that it is a Wikimedia-approved endeavor. (Note that
"Powered by" has the problem that it is frequently used for software.)
I also think there *should* be a process for establishing real
partnerships that can be labeled as such, though I'm not sure whether
TWF is a candidate for that or not (they're not explicitly free content).
------------
This point is precisely why we started the juriwiki list. We are aware we need to start such a process and this is currently under discussion. Note that the need for this process was presented in this very list about 1 week ago when I annnounced the juriwiki list.
I think that absolutely *no one* should have the right to *unilaterally* decide who is a partner and who can use our logos on their website. It should be a community approved decision. Possibly an approval by a limited number of people to represent the community (we are not gonna vote for any logo use), but never a *one* person decision.
Anthere
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--- Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
> Hooray! Finally!
>
> The effective date of the exemption is June 20, 2003 (our founding
> date), so this is fully retroactive.
Spread the word. Time to email every one of our thousands of donors in the U.S.
Too bad we didn't know about this until *after* tax day. :(
-- mav
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