The name should be:
ᏗᎪᏪᎵ ᎦᏣᏄᎳ
(digoweli gatsanula)
"the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "
to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".
The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the
language, and was synthesized.
Just a suggestion...
Jeff
The urdu wikipedia has been changed to show a verse of the Quran in Sitenotice
http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
I don't belive that this kind of endorsement of a religion is
compatible with the mission of the wikimedia foundation.
--
geni
On 7/4/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
> It would also be nice
> to once and for all answer the question as to whether or not Wikimedia
> claims to be the "publisher" as the term is used in the GFDL.
This is the first time this has come to my attention, and I would also
appreciate a response on this issue. The GFDL explicitly requires the
"publisher" to be credited in the history of modified versions
(section 4.I), though not in the title (indeed, it explicitly states
that the new publisher should be credited instead). It does not
provide a definition for the term "publisher." It is not our current
practice to require publisher credit to the WMF, though it is also
somewhat unclear when section 2, "Verbatim Copying" and when section
4, "Modifications" would apply; "Verbatim Copying" only places minimal
requirements on third parties.
Does the WMF consider itself the publisher?
I think it would be quite important to have a legally authoritative
interpretation of the GFDL as it applies to Wikimedia Foundation
project content. So far we've been basically "playing it by ear" when
it comes to GFDL compliance. As the Wikibooks case demonstrates, this
can lead to serious problems when contributors try to do the right
thing, but end up doing the opposite of what we want.
I suggest that such an interpretation be undertaken after a community
consultation on Meta, so that as many people as possible can add their
questions about the GFDL (which does not necessarily mean that all of
them will be answered, of course).
Erik
Of all the books to come out of print-on-demand, this one is possibly the
most problematic. I am certainly not a lawyer but, as I see it, not only is it
using the name of the Foundation without the explicit permission of the
Foundation (and hence, in violation of our trademark), it is attributing the
content to the Foundation. This, in turn, could make us liable for any copyvios
in the book (text and images). Despite numerous requests from Print on Demand
publishers (including Lulu), the Foundation has consistently avoided such an
arrangement for precisely these reasons.
Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the
Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content. After considerable
discussions with them, we have made it clear that we intend to keep the books
online and not take them to print. This is precisely what we said we will
*not* do, and it is timed perfectly to coincide with negotiations to get a
considerably larger grant from that same foundation to expand the Wikijunior
project.
This is not commendable. It is the bad result of people acting unilaterally
on behalf of the Foundation without fully understanding the implications of
what they are doing.
Danny
I realize that mediawiki-l is a good list for reporting bugs in
mediawiki, however, this posting addresses organizational elements of
the 1.7 release
that I feel need to be taken seriously by the Wikimedia Foundation and
some changes made in your processes. The statements that follow are
the result of my 20+ years experience as a 1) CEO of high tech companies
2) Chief Scientist of high tech companies 3) Wikipedia developer
4) Wikigadugi Language Project leader. Wikimedia can take or leave the
comments -- they are for your benefit and consideration.
<WP:SOAP>
1. Great that MediaWiki 1.7.1 is released.
2. Has Dependencies on PHP 5.0.0 (5.1.4). php 5 is a bug infested
experimental release which does not have consistent installs on the
commerical
Linux distributions, including Red Hat ES 4, Suse 10, etc, crashes on
apache, is poorly documented, and has a slew of defects, is difficult to
install and configure.
3. Wikitext and MediaWiki has no dependencies for "wikitext" markup on
php versions, so requiring php upgrades is unnecessary and thoughtless,
and should be stopped. When you allow the developers of a technology to
operate in a vacuum without accountability to customers and end users,
the projects get driven by the community ego and not end goals to
promote the technology to the public.
4. The biggest failure of community driven programs and open source is
a lack of accountablity to end users and customers.
What should happen in the future:
1. MediaWiki needs to post releases against commercial Linux distros
and not a "roll your own" with a patchwork of patches and fixes. As it
stands,
MediaWiki 1.7.1 is not installable or usable on RedHat ES4 or FC5
without major patching and recompiling -- steps outside the skills of
most folks
who need to use Wikipedia content.
2. Wikimedia needs to enforce MediaWiki releases to allow seamless
importing and use of XML dumps and content.
My 2 cents.
I spend currently about 40% of my time getting around MediaWiki problems
with Wikipedia XML dumps, and 60% of my time actually working on Native
language translations. The Uto-Aztecan language is being added at
present as the Ute and Unita tribes have joined the WikiGadugi project.
It would be nice if the MediaWiki folks would give more thought to
ensuring their software works properly before posting releases, and the
Wikimedia Foundation needs to enforce compatibilty between its published
XML dumps and make certain they work properly with released MediaWiki
versions. As it stands, the current setup almost appears
anti-competitive by design to prevent folks from creating Wiki's of
Wikipedia content (though I do not believe this is intentional on the
part of Wikimedia).
The "we are community driven" excuse only works if the community is also
the customer and end consumer of Wikipedia content, which it is not.
Anything we can do to make all of our jobs easier and more pleasant is
appreciated.
</WP:SOAP>
Jeff
The Wikibooks community has decided to "publish" an annual report of the
activities of the project as a part of a formal report to the Wikimedia
community at large, and to the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees in
particular.
Yesterday (July 10th) was the 3-year anniversary since
http://textbooks.wikipedia.org/ was first started and the first content
was added to what is now the Wikibooks project. There have been some
signficant milestones which have been met, and some very interesting
projects that have been going on.
For the full report, please see:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:State_of_the_Project/2006
We tried to include other languages as best as we could, but the
communication between the various language Wikibooks projects is
unfortunately spotty at best.
Thanks to all of the participants who have helped make Wikibooks what it
is today.
--
Robert Scott Horning
At common's deletion discussion the question surfaced, whether the Wikimedia
visual identity guidelines apply only to the trademark or also to the
Wikipedia logo.
Especially concerning the ''The logo should not be turned around or
distorted'' part.
See:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_requests#Image:Bouncywi…
Regards,
Peter
The following languages are being added to the machine translator for
the following Native Language Variants. Native Speakers have been
enlisted and are assisting with the construction of the verb stem and
composition constructors for the Machine Translator. We will
be posting translations of the entire English Wikipedia into the
following Languages:
Northern and Southern Ute
Northern and Southern Shoshonean
Northern and Southern Piaute
Goshute
Uncompahgre Ute
Navajo (Dine)
Most of these variants rely on English phonetics for the output.
Several of the tribes have expressed the desire to map these translations
to the Sequoyah Syllabary. Initial translations will be published in
text phonetics with some of the translations into the sequoyah syllabary.
Jeff
Dear all,
Early registration for Wikimania ends today; after which the community
rate for the conference tickets will go up. The preliminary program
and proceedings are available from the conference site :
http://wm06reg.wikimedia.org/http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program
Scholarship applications are being reviewed and responded to over the
next two days.
Other notes related to the conference schedule : There will be some
outings on Thursday, before Wikimania begins. SIGGRAPH is taking
place in Boston before Wikimania, during Hacking Days (Tuesday through
Thursday); we're trying to arrange a tour of their exhibit floor. A
Citizen Journalism event in the same building on Monday, the day after
Wikimania ends :
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGGRAPH
Finally, don't forget the Wikimania awards -- a t-shirt contest, and
a media and writing contest. Nominations of great media (any free
format) and writing (any language) are wanted; more information to
come :
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_awards
Warmly,
SJ
