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
"If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every
word you post publicly."
german translation:
"Wenn Sie zu den Wikimedia-Projekten beitragen, veröffentlichen Sie
jedes Wort, das sie abschicken, öffentlich."
That's the second sentence of our privacy policy, to be found on
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
and inspires me to loose a few words on how policy writing should be
handled in a multilingual project:
* Decide on the core principles of the policy - the essential rules
* Create a nice, elaborate page in english which you place on the
Foundation wiki as the official policy
* Ask the community to create inofficial translations based on the
essential rules - they may want to phrase a few things differently, some
things may need longer or shorter explanations depending on culture,
country or project. They may translate the english version word by word
but are free to formulate the essential rules in their own words if they
prefer.
* Each translation should have a note on top that in doubt the english
version is the valid one.
In the case of the privacy policy, I decided to act on these principles.
The german privacy policy at
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Datenschutz tries to say the same
as the english one but in own words. Some paragraphs and sentences which
are not part of the core rules were shortened for the sake of clarity
and readability.
If you disagree with this you may want to find community members who
will create a literal translation. My feel for language and style
doesn't allow me to do so.
greetings,
elian
Dear Wikipedians in fundation,
We now in Chinese Wikipedia have some trademark issues that needs your help.
We have found an Chinese had registered "Wiki" and "維基" (in literly it
also means "Wiki" in Chinese) as his trademarks at 2005/11/23 in mainland
China. Since we now have WP and WN, there might be some trademark issues in
mainland China. Do you have any advice or suggestions that we can do?
Best regards,
Zh:User:HTChien
___________________________________________________ 最新版 Yahoo!奇摩即時通訊 7.0,免費網路電話任你打! http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/
On 26/09/06, James Hardy <wikimediauk(a)weeb.biz> wrote:
> Uploading the original PDFs to a publicly accessable website would most
> likely be a copyright violation, so we wouldn't want to do that anyway.
In the UK, not in the US.
> Another question is what to do about about diagrams (assuming that there are
> some), I would imagine that if the the RS claims copyright of the scans we
> can't just extract them and use them. Simple ones I imagine we can (and
> probably should) convert to SVG, but for more detailed ones, that could be
> tricky.
So no-one in the UK should do this, but someone in the US may say "you
claim you own a scan of a diagram from 1720 and no-one else can touch
it? O rly. Sue and be damned." This is something we would need to be
*quite* clear that we were or were not going to say ahead of time, of
course.
(Though put like that, it looks very like the National Portrait
Gallery issue. Have they ceased the vague attempts at legal
intimidation after Jimbo indicated Wikimedia's attitude would in fact
be "sue and be damned"?)
cc: to foundation-l on this issue.
- d.
To what extent is this true under US law?
The claim to ownership of a scan from 1665 is odious. Perhaps it's just me.
- d.
On 26/09/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Hurst, Phil" <Phil.Hurst(a)royalsoc.ac.uk>
> To: <jwales(a)wikia.com>
> Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 11:34:56 +0100
> Subject: Royal Society Digital Journal Archive
>
>
> Dear Jimmy
>
> It has come to our attention that there is some confusion regarding the
> copyright status of the Royal Society's digital journal archive.
>
> The entire digital archive is covered by copyright. This mean that
> systematic downloading and hosting by third parties is prohibited.
>
> Thank you for your attention.
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> Phil Hurst
> Publisher
>
> tel +44 (0)20 7451 2630
> fax +44 (0)20 7976 1837
> web http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk
>
> The Royal Society
> 6-9 Carlton House Terrace
> London SW1Y 5AG
>
> Registered Charity No 207043
> The Royal Society - excellence in science
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ******************************************************************************
> The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and may also be
> subject to legal privilege. It is intended only for the recipient(s) named
> above. If you are not named above as a recipient, you must not read, copy,
> disclose, forward or otherwise use the information contained in this e-mail.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK
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>
>
>
Brad Patrick wrote:
> Dear Community:
>
> The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on
> Wikipedia is overwhelming. At the office, we are receiving dozens of
> phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing
> edits which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but
> self-aggrandizing authors, to scream bloody murder. This is as it
> should be. However, I am issuing a call to arms to the community to
> act in a much more draconian fashion in response to corporate
> self-editing and vanity page creation. This is simply out of hand,
> and we need your help.
>
> We are the #14 website in the world. We are a big target. If we are
> to remain true to our encyclopedic mission, this kind of nonsense
> cannot be tolerated. This means the administrators and new page
> patrol need to be clear when they see new usernames and page creation
> which are blatantly commercial - shoot on sight. There should be no
> question that someone who claims to have a "famous movie studio" and
> has exactly 2 Google hits - both their Myspace page - they get nuked.
> Ban users who promulgate such garbage for a significant period of
> time. They need to be encouraged to avoid the temptation to recreate
> their article, thereby raising the level of damage and wasted time
> they incur.
>
> Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go. I am
> here to tell you it is not enough. We are losing the battle for
> encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia
> for their own memes. This scourge is a serious waste of time and
> energy. We must put a stop to this now.
> Thank you for your help.
>
> -Brad Patrick
> User:BradPatrick
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
The Wikimania jury has met and are pleased to announce that Wikimania
2007 will be held in Taipei, Taiwan. Taipei had the winning
combination of a dedicated and experienced bidding team, a great venue
with centralized accomodation and community areas, and strong
sponsorship opportunities. Taipei also provides the opportunity to
focus attention on the growing Asian language projects and the
international aspect of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as learning
about other free knowledge efforts and projects in the region.
This was a very difficult decision. Every one of the shortlisted bids
this year were outstanding. The Turin bid came in a close second; their
team made a great effort to procure two strong locations and extensive
government support, and gathered the Italian community together to
develop an outstanding bid. Alexandria deserves recognition for
bringing the Egyptian and Arabic-language community into the spotlight,
and for finding a remarkable venue partner in the Library of Alexandria.
London also produced a very strong bid, with a great venue, focus on
educational outreach, the diversity of London, and the strong Wikimedia
UK team.
Thank you to all of the bidders, including those who did not make
the shortlist, for your time and energy in developing these bids.
We hope this year's city teams will find ways to build on the contacts
and sponsors developed in the bid process for a 2008 bid or for hosting
a regional event.
We strongly encourage all who bid this year, and those of you wondering
whether your city could have done the same, to consider preparing city
bids for Wikimania in 2008 or 2009. Unofficial bids for 2008 should be
started now, as the decision on that city will be made this winter
(more details on 2008's bid process coming soon; watch
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids
for updates).
Now the work for the winners will begin, as they develop plans for the
conference next summer. We encourage the entire community to support
Taipei over the coming year in producing an outstanding conference.
With thanks,
The 2007 Wikimania bid jury
I have just deleted an article, [[Porchesia]]. Any admins are welcome to
read the history. It was created in November.
Problem is, there is no such place.
Hmmm.
Danny
2006/9/25, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com>:
>
>
> It was almost certain that a decent bid from Asia would be successful.
>
> We look forward to Wikimania 2007 and hope that Wikimania will swing
> back to Europe in 2008!
>
> Gordo
Then why did they open a WorldWide Contest?
They knew they were going to choose a city in Asia, then why
shortlisting 3 city out of Asia (and only one in it)?
That's ridicolous.
If "turnation" was that important, they would have told in a very
clear way by the begin: "We are gonna choose Asia, cities from Asia
can make a bid. Others not".
Gatto Nero
(that's what I talk about when I use the verb "be fooled")
> It was almost certain that a decent bid from Asia would be successful.
No it wasn't and I wish people didn't have this misconception.
All of the bids were considered against a range of criteria, not only
location. Amongst many other factors, Taipei offered the venue and
accommodation on a single site, and their organizing team had prior
experience from running the Chinese Wikimania this year. It's unfair
to them to suggest they only won because they're in Asia.
If Asia was a sure winner from the start, we wouldn't have needed a
meeting lasting more than 4 hours on Saturday to determine which city
would be successful. A few people seem to think that the others were
rejected purely for being in Europe, but that was not the case, and we
would have said from the start if we were only accepting bids from
other continents so as not to waste people's time.
Angela.