This has caused me pain and suffering for some time, as some of you
know, but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere in public since the
dawn of logotime: The WMF logo is asymmetric. most notably the green
region, but also the blue (varying width, inner and outer rings not
quite parallel). As long as the newly revisited commons logo is
being considered
Can this be fixed? Should it be? Does this asymmetry cause just
enough subliminal disjuncture that it sticks in peoples mind? ...and
causes them to do crazy things? ...and causes them to run out and
snap free-content photos of celebrities?
==SJ
Sun Microsystems will make all the Java code they own available under the GPL:
http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/
This is a very major step. IMHO we should now make Java core part of
our own strategy, as it's one of the best ways to deliver interactive
content (high quality animations, learning tools, etc.). There are
large numbers of free applets that we can potentially use, esp. in
Wikipedia and Wikiversity.
My main question is: Are there security considerations with enabling
the upload and embedding of Java Applets? According to
http://java.sun.com/sfaq/
one of the capabilities of applets is to open a connection to the
originating host. Could this be used, e.g., to create auto-vandalism
applets and if so, can we somehow protect against it?
If security is a major issue, might it be feasible to maintain a
whitelist of certificates (to allow applets from trusted authority to
be uploaded directly), and to flag all other applets as
"non-embeddable" until a sysop flips a switch, so they can be reviewed
for security? We could add a big fat warning on the file description
page.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
Hello,
We had a small chat at Wiktionary fr: since a few days about moving /new/
edits made on Wiktionary fr (and others some other are interested) to dual
licensing GFDL - CC-by. After a small discussion with Anthere about whether
we could be allowed to do it and how, she advised me to come and talk with
you all.
So maybe a little explanation of the reasons and consequences would be
useful.
The main reason we have in mind for discussing it is to have a better
cooperation with the project WiktionaryZ, which is dual-licensed as
specified above. It basically means that we can take its content under GFDL
license, but that they can take only contents that are under GFDL and CC-by
at the same time. Which is not our case.
Some people thinks that helping WiktionaryZ reusing our content would make
them progress faster, and in return, that their progresses would help us
making progress in the future in several possible ways (software part, data
part...).
What would be the consequences about this license modification ?
* A site license somewhat more complex. Edits prior to the date of change
would have to remain GFDL only (unless specific agreement with users), new
edits would be dual-licensed. This is not awful: people can still reuse the
whole Wiktionary as if it was GFDL-only. CC-by is just a bonus.
* As this is not a CC-by-SA (incompatible with WiktionaryZ), Wiktionary
content could be taken, possibly modified and redistributed under any
compatible licence with CC-by, which is about all as long as you give
attribution, including non-free licenses (but of course, the original
remains free so it should not be a big deal).
* Import from Wikipedia and other GFDL-only projects will not be possible
without prior agreement with past contributors. These imports are not
insignificant but remain limited in amount and often in quality.
* If we have to negotiate importing external source, we would have to
request dual-licensing, as WiktionaryZ needs to, right now. CC-by is more
free (I know, it's paradoxical; see it as "there are less restrictions,
including the one to keep derivative free") than GFDL so it may be more
difficult, as it is possible that the original authors can't get the
enhancements made by someone else back in their own work due to a different
license choice.
So there are good points (better collaborative work with WiktionaryZ) and
bad points (probably more difficult reusing of some external sources -like
some other GFDL dictionaries- which brought a good amount of articles in the
past and of derivative works).
OK, I think that's the picture. What do you think about it? Should
Wiktionary users start a poll on their projects? On Meta? Or does that just
sound bad to you?
Thanks all,
Jerome Banal
On 14/11/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> (...and perhaps we can make the pertinent point, without whining too
> much, which led some people to consider this option: overwhelming
> copyvios and underwhelming supply of labour.)
I recall that when en:wp was having problems with vandalism of the
Main Page featured article image, Commons admins were remarkably
difficult to find. So some asked "could we have an admin on en: made
an admin on Commons for this reason?" and got back "well, why don't
you make all Commons admins admins on en: first."
Some people in the Commons community seem to want it both ways. Is
Commons an entirely independent project or does it, as a service
project, need to open itself up to administration by people from other
projects to keep up with its actual original purpose?
This discussion appears to demonstrate Commons simply isn't making
admins through its own processes anywhere near fast enough and its
processes need radical revision.
- d.
Sorry for posting it in another thread, I subscribed back to this list only
to post this message: since the early of 2005 the Portuguese wikis invites
to all users upload files *only* in Commons, because Portuguese wikis accept
*only* free images.
The Portuguese Wikipedia has disabled new uploads because the civil war
started (and maintaned) by some users up today don't have produced a new
vote to review the copyright policy to allow ou permanently disallow fair
use images, resulting in a project that accept only free images with only a
small amount of sysops verifying if a image have source or not, and a
largest amount of sysops don't do anything related to this (and some users
mixing up the newbies saying something like "the source of origin from a
image isn't necessary if fair use is accepted")
In any case, the bug 7742 [1] isn't fully filled. The Portuguese community
has voted to disable new upload *and* replace the upload link by the link to
a help page explaing what is the Wikimedia Commons and how to use it.
[1] http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7742
Hello everybody here an interestin intervieuw with the new Thai ICT
minister part of the "interim" government. He makes a number of strange
statements. Basically he admits he will lie to the foreign press, he
says open source is useless and he favours netcensorship! I will put
the quotes underneath here, for the whole article go to:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/15Nov2006_data001.php
I will keep a copy on my pc in case people can not open it.
The quotes:
/Lying to the foreign press:/
"I see no reason to put CAT or TOT in the stock market, but I'm saying
this to a group of Thai journalists. Tomorrow I will be talking to
foreign journalists and I will tell them that CAT and TOT will be put on
the market at a suitable time, which is not now,"
/Open source is useless:
/"On the subject of open source software, he said the current government
plan was a case of the blind leading the blind, as neither the people
who are in charge nor the people in industry seem to know the dangers of
open source software.
"With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it
and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from
it, there will be no development and open source software quickly
becomes outdated," he said."
<>"As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away?
Thailand can do good source code without open source, he said."
/Favouring netcensorship:/
<>"The new ICT Minister expressed his belief in censorship and said that
even the most avid freedom of speech advocate would change his mind if
he sees doctored pictures of his daughter's head on a naked body posted
on the Internet.
The ICT Ministry will soon put forward draft Acts to the National
Legislative Assembly on cybercrime and on web sites that are
pornographic or considered lese majeste, allowing officials to arrest,
fine and imprison offenders."
/
/
> Can Anyone suggest how to remove/disable the Move,Edit and History Tabs.Iam using Monobook skin...
Edit [[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]]
Add the code:
#ca-edit, #ca-history, #ca-move, #ca-viewsource
{
display: none
}
This will make the edit, history, move and view-source tabs always
invisible.
Why you wish to do this is a mystery, but that's one solution.
Last steward election was nearly a year ago. Since then, some stewards
resigned, some were removed, some became inactive. We need more stewards.
Please see here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006-2
The rules are basically the same than last year but for one thing.
Previous stewards will have to be reconfirmed. Inactive stewards will be
removed.
The rules for election are not yet fully finalized. Please comment on
them in the next few days. Currently, some people think dates may not be
best. Others are not certain previous stewards should be reconfirmed.
Ant
I just sent this to wikien-l asking for helpers. Presumably there are
tags, etc. for non-admin patrollers to tag suspect images. Something
like this posted to other language Wikipedias would be a good idea, I
suspect.
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
Date: 14-Nov-2006 20:12
Subject: Commons needs patrollers and future admins
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
Commons is currently suffering a problem of a metric shitload of
rubbish and copyvios, and not enough admins to do the cleanup work.
Can anyone here help?
Patrollers who speak multiple languages are particularly valuable in
this regard, but I expect anyone good would be reasonably welcome once
they can show a reasonable amount of work on Commons itself. Spanish
and Portuguese speakers are particularly encouraged at present,
because es: and pt: only allow image uploads directly to Commons.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators#Suggestions_for_ad…
(I whined enough about it on commons-l myself that I'll be diving into
shitwork on Commons soon as well ...)
- d.
There's a collaborative documentary on the open source / free culture
movement in the works:
http://www.digitaltippingpoint.com/
Interestingly enough, they're using CC-BY-SA (rather than the usual
NC/ND), and making their video footage available for remixing. What is
currently available can be found at:
http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=digitaltippingpoint
Specifically, the list of items:
http://www.archive.org/browse.php?field=/metadata/subject&mediatype=movies&…
Lots of good stuff there, some of which might also be useful to add to
Wikimedia projects directly. I hope they do make a documentary as
well -- an up-to-date resourcre for evangelism would be very useful.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.