Beta Wikiversity started a discussion about switching license from
GFDL to CC-BY (?) [1] [2]. This initiative brought to my focus a fact
that German Wikiversity is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5, which means
that Wikimedia projects are becoming intentionally incompatible. And
this incompatibility makes another question: What is Wikimedia? -- A
loosely related group of projects which are hosted by WMF servers or
we have something more in common? Is it possible that a group of
contributors decide to switch from one license to another on some
Wikimedian project? Do I have to think about license compatibility
whenever I want to copy or even translate (!) some content from one
project to another?
(BTW, I am not talking here about a fact that some projects need some
less restrictive license, like Wikinews and Wiktionary are. Also, I am
not talking here about Board's resolution.)
[1] - http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:IRC_meeting:New_licence_for_Wi…
[2] - http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikiversity-l/2008-February/000334.html
Hello,
The members of the board of trustees of Wikimedia Foundation have
recently agreed to add two new board members, both being members of our
community, for a term which will expire at next board elections
(june-july 2008).
The first is Michael Snow, long time editor of Wikipedia, and twice
candidate to the board. Rather than presenting him, I recommand that you
go read into detail his candidate statements, back in 2004
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2004/Candidates#Michael_Snow…),
or in 2007
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Candidates/en#User:Mich…).
Michael is a american lawyer, has been the founder of the SignPost and
is currently the Chair of the Commmunication Committee. He is noticeable
(somehow) for being very calm and wise.
The second is Domas Mituzas, long time developer in our tech team. He is
from Lithuania and works for MySQl. He has been a member of the core
tech team for... ever, and is the Foundation hardware volunteer officer.
User page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Midom
Recent email on foundation list:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-January/035729.html
He is noticeable for being a very friendly, cheerful, and tall individual.
I am delighted to welcome them both on board, and I hope the community
will generally agree it is a good choice. Their terms will unfortunately
be rather short, but I have no doubt they will bring good insight
nevertheless.
Thanks
Florence Devouard
Chair Wikimedia Foundation
This is a reminder that the Q&A pages for the 2009 Wikimania bids are
open here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids#Bids
If you have questions for the various bid teams (Toronto, Buenos
Aires, Brisbane and Karlsruhe) please post them as soon as possible.
The Q&A period is scheduled to end tomorrow. Questions from any
community member are welcome and encouraged.
Phoebe Ayers
Local Wikimedians in the New York City area have been organizing more
recently, and we've tried to reach out to other local pro-free culture
groups.
Members of the Students For Free Culture chapter at Columbia
University have expressed some interest in co-hosting a "content jam"
with us, a mass event for writing and improving Wikipedia articles.
The most relevant process would I think be the "Wikipedia Academy"
model, that has been held in several different countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academy
It would be great if we could find some 'adviser' on this process, who
has helped organize a "Wikipedia Academy" before, and could exchange
e-mails with us on how to coordinate and run such an event.
Thanks
What about just putting up a sitenotice?
(Also, a global sitenotice... one hosted on meta, for instance... would be nice for this sort of thing.)
~ Kylu
Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com
Andrew Whitworth wrote:
>Maybe I want to contribute in klingon, binary, whale song, bee dance,
>public key cryptography, pig Latin, semaphore, Egyptian heiroglyphs or
>Morse code. Maybe I want to contribute in English, but I demand to
>write everything backwards. Maybe I can find 100 friends who want to
>do the same. That doesn't make us a viable community, and the WMF
>doesnt need to respect us or welcome us or give us all a project, even
>if we make a complete localization and get an ISO code.
In this case I have a question: what makes us a viable community? What
makes the WMF respect us? Is it only a large readership who couldn't get
the information in any way other than via our project? Is this part of the WMF
mission statement, or of its philosophy?
If I can throw in my 5 cents: it would be good to make information available
to anyone in any language s/he might care to prefer. "You can use
another language" means giving people fewer choices. Perhaps even
klingon,
binary, whale song, pig Latin, Egyptian hieroglyphs... As long as it's done
by volunteers who are willing to do the job, as long as the
information is correct, accurate, and readable, and as long as its
cost is peanuts, I ask: why not?
What problem does this create? The bigger projects in the "bigger" languages
are still there and suffer nothing. Isn't it better to think in terms
of how actively
the project is generating content than in whether or not it's written
in a "good"
language with "enough" readers (assuming there are good,
not-purely-arbitrary criteria for these)?
It would seem that what's important is whether or not the project has
a good chance of having success. And if you managed to find 100
friends who do collaborate actively, then it seems to me the project
is well on its way to success. Even in klingon, Pig Latin or reversed
English.
-- Sérgio Meira
In a message dated 2/9/2008 1:26:05 PM Eastern Standard Time,
gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com writes:
Hoi.
When you speak multiple languages, there are things you can express really
well in one but not in another language. The notion that all languages are
equal is wrong. Consequently there are no "perfect" sub or supersets of
languages. When you state that "we should" I would prefer that you speak for
yourself because I do not feel included and I could not disagree with you
more.
I have to agree with Gerard here, and I say that as someone who is
completely bilingual, and who has translated for a living. There is a level of comfort
and familiarity you have with one languages that you do not have with
another., based on how and where you use the language. For instance, I can take
apart a rifle in Hebrew, but I have no idea what the same parts are in English.
Nor is this just anecdotal. Linguists and social anthropologists talk about
code-switching between languages, often mid-sentence, a phenomenon anyone who
grew up in a bilingual home is familiar with. I once did work on a study of
this among elderly Tunisian Jewish immigrant women in Israel--it was
interesting because they came to Israel speaking both French (in formal, communal
situations) and Arabic (in more casual, home-related situations), then added
Hebrew to the mix--what the researcher tried to do was to identify the language
shifts as the women gave oral histories of their immigration experience.
To quote from Wikipedia itself, "Even if someone is highly proficient in two
or more languages, his so-called communicative competence or ability may not
be as balanced." (see [[Multilingualism]]). Essentially, to identify
bilingualism with equivalent linguistic competence is simply not based in fact.
Danny
**************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.
(http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp0030000…
48)
Snipped long debate:
For all the comments about preserving languages, no--that is not the goal of
Wikipedia or any of the other WMF project. In other words, if there is one
Eyak speaker left, it is not the goal of the WMF to teach people Eyak so that
they can then write encyclopedias and other reference works in Eyak for
future generations of a vibrant Eyak community to be.
With reference to Upper, Lower, Middle, or Lost in Limbo Sorbian (or any
other such language), while I quote from memory, the foundation's goal is to
create reference works for people "in their own languages." In other words, as
long as there is a viable body of speakers, it would merit a wikipedia and
other projects. NB, that is not to say that we should put fundraising campaigns
on hold until the fundraising interface is translated into Sorbian, etc.
Danny
PS. Marie Smith Jones, the last native Eyak speaker, died less than a month
ago, on January 21, 2008, so the above example is moot. But, you get my point
... (See _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Smith_Jones_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Smith_Jones) )
**************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.
(http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp0030000…
48)
(from a thread on wikien-L)
http://rd.sales.overstock.com/cprOverstock/10000/cphostredirect.asp?sid=202…
---
" Wikipedia has become an instrument of mass mind-control.
I thought you'd want to know.
Respectfully,
Patrick M. Byrne
CEO, Overstock.com
PS Ask yourself, might there be other subjects, like Wall Street
corruption, where the same techniques are being employed?
(Incidentally, Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is a former
Chicago options trader. How odd.)
For the full picture, click here."
---
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com