I have read the numerous comments on the fact that we should be
planning Wikimania well in advance, and I fully agree that choosing
the city for Wikimania 2008 sometime at the end of 2006 or beginning
of 2007 makes perfect sense, and we have started working on it.
Just for the record though, Wikimania 2006 was only the second
edition, and I wish people would remember that when planning 2006, we
did not even know whether it was going to happen at all. So please
keep that in perspective. There is room for improvement, and I believe
Wikimedia has done a good job in trying to keep everyting into
consideration for the next editions.
On the subject of size. I am personally not in favour of an
*international Wikimedia conference* (keywords international and
Wikimedia) that will hold more than 500 people, ever. The reason for
this were clear last year, but even clearer this year, ie. opening the
conference to 1000 people makes it, in my opinion, lose the
"Wikimedia" touch, by bringing many people in who have in the end
nothing to do with Wikimedia. Mind you, I find the interaction with
other organisations and people with different web, collaborative,
knowledge experiences very fruitful and interesting, but this year
showed a trend that I wish we did not facilitate too much. There were
many many local (as in US) people who had but a far fetched interest
in our projects, and thus did not pertain to the "Wikimedia Community"
or had no intention of ever pertaining to it.
My dream is that Wikimedia got their hands on enough money in due time
to provide scholarships to far away contributors wherever they may be
and make sure that the core attendance of the conference is filled
with Wikimedians.
Basically the real question is what do we want Wikimania to be? Is it
the ultimate wiki conference? Is it the Wikimedia conference? Is it a
free knowledge or access to knowledge conference? Is it an open source
conference? Is it all of that? Some of that?
In my opinion, and in an ideal world, Wikimania would probably almost
be booked solid before registration even happens, because we have
managed to bring in all the people that count in the Wikimedia
community.
I would hate to see Wikimania be taken away from the Wikimedians. I
would hate for it to be so big that you would not have a clue who this
or that person is, or worse, that some people would come to Wikimania
and ask "what is Wikipedia?".
I believe we have shown the world that we can put together interesting
programs and that we should use this opportunity to make sure we
provide different events, aiming at different publics. I would love to
see a Wikimedia Academic Conference, or a Wikimedia Wiki Practices
Conference. I would also love to see more regional Wikimedia
conferences, such as the Chinese and Dutch edition this year who would
bring together people who did not make it to the international
conference or who need to concentrate in a language or on specific
projects.
In short, I do not think that Wikimania would benefit from becoming a
huge thing that everyone would attend because they happened to be in
the neighborhood.
Delphine
--
~notafish
Hi,
Some wikis are plagued with vandalism, spams and non sense. Moldavan
Wikipedia seems the worst at this time, but there have been others too.
These projects do not bring any free knowledge to anybody, just a lot of
works for volunteers (hopefully there are great volunteers like Pill)
and stewards.
Regarding the Moldavan Wikipedia (http://mo.wikipedia.org), the
administrators election was already cancelled twice because of massive
attacks. Sincere editors have been discouraged and have left. So the
wiki is just a battle field for vandals, trolls and sockpuppets. There
is no expected improvement in the near future because the language
itself is in the middle of a political controversy.
I forsee the same situation for the Montenegrin Wikipedia if it is
created. These wikis only give a bad image of Wikimedia. I think that
the Foundation should take its responsibilities and take some decisions.
Regards,
Yann
--
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://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre
http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
I've tweaked this and filled it out a bit. It's hard writing about
legal issues in very simple grammar; I'd like juriwiki-l in particular
to look over this and check that I haven't oversimplified,
particularly in the "how to comply with this licence" sections.
The only section that hasn't been written yet is content under
GPL/LGPL - anyone think they can write two simple sentences on how to
comply with this licence?
It should probably also be merged with the similar page on meta.
- d.
I didn't realize Danny Mayer was a cofounder of Wikipedia. You learn
something new every day!
From: "Adriana Iwashko" <IwashkoA(a)newschool.edu>
To: < artdesignstudies(a)newsite.newschool.edu>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:04:36 -0500
Subject: Open Source- The Vera List Center for Art and Politics
Panel Discussion
"Open Source: On the Line"
Monday, December 4, 2006 - 6:30 p.m.
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
New York City
Admission: $8, free for all students, as well as members of
Rhizome.org<http://rhizome.org/>
and New School faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID
Panelists:
Cory Arcangel, artist
Joy Garnett, artist
Patrick May, Director of Technology, Rhizome.org <http://rhizome.org/>
Daniel Mayer, Co-founder, Wikipedia
Laura Quilter, Founder, Fair Use Network
Moderator:
Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, The Whitney Museum
of American Art
A panel on the aesthetic and political possibilities afforded by open
source systems, and related debates around copyright and intellectual
property.
The panelists will examine sites like Wikipedia and
Digg.com<http://digg.com/>as well as
p2p networks and social networking sites, and the practices and
challenges inherent to each. They will also explore artworks, arts
institutions, and businesses that have sought to adopt open source
models, and touch on current challenges to the continuation of this
ethos such as "net neutrality" legislation.
Organized by Rhizome, in association with the Vera List Center for Art
and Politics.
This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center's program
cycle on "The Public Domain," and on occasion of Rhizome's tenth
anniversary.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Friday, December 1, 2006 - 6:00 and 8:00 p.m.
"AIDS and the Politics of Science"
"Beyond Lament: AIDS and the Arts"
2 panels commemorating World AIDS Day, and the 25th anniversary of
epidemic's beginning, organized by the Wolfson Center for National
Affairs
Wednesday, December 6, - 7:00 p.m.
"Image Ownership and Usage in the Digital Age"
Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - 7:00 p.m.
With Michelle Bogre, Parsons The New School for Design
Richard Ellis, Senior Vice President, Getty Images
Barbara Hoffman, Arts and Intellectual Property Lawyer
Presented as part of the Aperture Foundation's series "Confounding
Expectations: Photography in Context."
This may be of interest:
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-651865,36-840113@51-837044,0.html
Google is apparently (I say apparently, because journalists are
notoriously incompetent at law) sued for copyright violation and
business parasitism, for allowing copies of some movie on its
videos.google.com site.
Their defense: they're a mere hosting provider, not an editor or
publisher; they do not select their contents and they are thus bound to
act only when told about a violation, not preemptively. (See LCEN law.)
If you had to cite organisations which share a lot with our, which
organisations would you cite ?
Key words here being
* rather young and still little organised
* very largely based on volunteer work
* with little money (not the pouring barrels some non profits get...)
We'd like to contact some "similar-like" organisations to share best
practices.
Do you have names to suggest (not necessarily limited to open source or
free software)
Ant
I keep getting email from people asking permission to use stuff. Is
there a simple permissions page on wikimediafoundation.org? I'm
thinking of something that can be linked from [[Contact us]] the way
[[Press room]] is.
(The request that provoked me to write this was a recent request for
logo use permission in a press article about Wikipedia. Which, as I
understand it, we allow fairly freely. But I can't find the page on
it.)
I'm thinking of something simpler than the reuse page I started on
Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reuse - possibly something
that just says:
* Content: almost all text and images on Wikimedia sites are ''not''
owned by Wikimedia. You can reuse them under the relevant free-content
licence, or by direct arrangement with the creator. See (link to above
commons page).
* Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos: see [[logo use policy]].
* ...
- d.