yes if enough users support it.
----- Original Message ----
From: Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) <pathoschild(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2008 2:10:20 PM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Allow new wikis in extinct languages?
Hello,
The language subcommittee only allows languages that have a living
native community (except Wikisource, due to its archivist nature).
This is based on an interpretation of the Wikimedia Foundation mission
to "provide the sum of human knowledge to every human being". Thus,
the overriding purpose of allowing a wiki in a new language is to make
it accessible to more human beings. If a language has no native users,
allowing a wiki in that language does not fit our mission because it
does not make that project accessible to more human beings. Instead, a
wiki in their native languages should be requested if it doesn't
already exist.
Typically, the users requesting a wiki in an extinct language don't
want to provide educational material to more people at all, but only
want to promote or revive the language. While these are noble goals,
they are not those of the Wikimedia Foundation, so that a wiki should
not be created simply to fulfill them.
But that is my opinion. What do you think; should wikis be allowed in
every extinct language?
--
Yours cordially,
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
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Hi all,
Happy to announce that I just sent the following press release out detailing our
10 millionth article... which was a new article in the Hungarian Wikipedia. More
details below.
Thanks!
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609
---
Wikipedia breaks the ten million article mark across all languages
Ten million articles in under seven years
San Francisco, California March 24, 2008 – Earlier this week the Wikimedia
Foundation reached a significant new milestone: on Thursday, March 27, at 00:07
UTC the official article count for all Wikipedias combined reached 10 million.
The ten millionth article, a short biography of 16th century painter Nicholas
Hilliard was created in the Hungarian Wikipedia user Pataki Márta.
Wikipedia now boasts articles in over 250 languages, with the highest article
counts in the top ten Wikipedias: English, German, French, Polish, Japanese,
Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. We are also experiencing rapid
growth in many young Wikipedias, including Marathi, Tagalog, and Cantonese.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation remarked on the
occasion of this milestone, "It's incredible to think that we've grown from one
Wikipedia in English to over 150 active language Wikipedias. Ten million articles
is something we could never have imagined happening so fast when we embarked on
Wikipedia in 2001. This is a testament to the incredible dedication of our
volunteers from all corners of the planet."
In December 2007, the German magazine Stern announced in an independent study of
50 articles that the German Wikipedia was more accurate, complete and up-to-date
than the longstanding print encyclopedia Brockhaus. In March 2007, a study
conducted by the Hewlett Packard Information Dynamics Laboratory found that the
best articles on the English Wikipedia are those that have been edited the most
frequently, by the largest number of people. It concluded that the correlation
between article quality and the number of edits validates Wikipedia as a
successful collaborative effort.
Similar studies around the world continue to point to the increasing accuracy and
quality of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that is written, edited and maintained
by a global community of thousands of volunteers.
Wikipedia is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, a charitable, non-profit
organization based in San Francisco, California.
About Wikipedia <http://wikipedia.org>
The goal of the Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in history, is to create free
encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Anyone with Internet access is free
to contribute by writing new articles and editing existing articles. Wikipedia is
consistently ranked one of the top ten most visited websites in the world by
Alexa, serving billions of page views every month.
Wikipedia started in January 2001, and currently offers over ten million articles
in over 250 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in English, with more than 2.2
million articles; followed by the German and French editions, each of which
contain more than six million articles. Nine other language editions contain
200,000+ articles, and more than 150 other languages contain 1,000+ articles.
Wikipedia is entirely created and maintained by a community of active volunteers.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
<http://wikimediafoundation.org>
The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to
encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual
content, and to providing the full content of its wiki-based projects to the
public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited
reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10
most-visited websites.
For a full list of projects, visit http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects
All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by
volunteers using the MediaWiki software. Their content may be freely used, freely
edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that
license.
More information Wikipedia's 10 Millionth article (via Wikipedia Hungary),
<http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Hilliard> An English version of the article
can be found at, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Hilliard> Wikipedia
Statistics, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics>
Press inquiries:
jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org
+1 415-839-6885
Wikipedia Hungary press contact:
Peter Gervai
press(a)wikipedia.hu
Regional press contacts in other languages can be found at
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room#Official_chapters>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rob Myers <rob(a)robmyers.org>
Date: 28 Mar 2008 19:21
Subject: [ORG-discuss] Introducing Fair Use Where It Did Not Previously Apply
To: Open Rights Group open discussion list
<org-discuss(a)lists.openrightsgroup.org>
Interesting article that mentions examples of countries introducing
US-style Fair Use where it didn't previously apply:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206446110027&pagename=JPost%2FJ…
(Via: http://blogs.fairusenetwork.org/?p=38 )
The article concerns Israel adopting Fair Use, and also mentions that:
"Singapore recently adopted a US-style fair use provision to replace its
narrower and more rigid "fair dealing" provision based on UK law, as did
Hong Kong (before the turnover to China) and the Philippines.
- Rob.
_______________________________________________
ORG-discuss mailing list
ORG-discuss(a)lists.openrightsgroup.org
http://lists.openrightsgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/org-discuss
All,
We are pleased to announce that Buenos Aires has been selected as the
location for Wikimania 2009.
The jury was particularly excited by a few parts of the Buenos Aires bid:
* A strong, organized team, with division of labor already underway
and support from Wikimedia Argentina. Many people contributed to the
bid, with obvious enthusiasm for organizing the conference and quick
responses to inquiries.
* A detailed budget proposal and planning schedule. Many major
expenses are being covered by the provider. The total budget is
similar to Wikimania 2007's, including a larger travel scholarship
fund, and they have provided detailed charts ahead of time.
* A significant number of sponsors already lined up, with some already
confirmed. They hope to cover half the accommodation and $60k in
travel scholarships, which will help to ease travel costs for
participants from far away.
* A solid venue : as with Toronto, this was situated within a
well-maintained cultural center in a major international city, near an
airline hub; culturally open, and an international melting pot.
* Relaxed visa rules, and easy entry from South American countries.
* Good Spanish-language media contacts, with the promise of outreach
to and the opportunity to work with the Spanish-language Wikimedia
communities.
Toronto, the runner up, also provided a great bid. The jury was
especially excited by:
* Strong English-language press in the area, and media experience
among the bid team
* A very accessible venue, especially for US/European attendees.
* An excellent venue : a university campus, with dorms directly at the
venue. As with Buenos Aires, it was situated within a well-maintained
cultural center in a major international city, near an airline hub;
culturally open, and an international melting pot.
* Extensive budget accommodation in the dorms; with many options for
casual social space.
* A dedicated bid team, with the hope of Wikimedia Canada being formed
in time to help coordinate.
However, the jury felt that Buenos Aires' bid showed stronger
organization overall. Additionally, much of the information in the
Toronto bid was carried over from previous bids, and it was unclear
how much of a commitment for the University of Toronto facilities
there was specifically for 2009.
Brisbane and Karlsruhe also provided good bids. Brisbane in particular
had an enthusiastic bid team and a strong proposal, with particularly
good local sponsorship opportunities; though this was offset by the
high travel costs for out-of-country attendees. The jury felt both
bids needed more detail (including specifics about accommodation
options, and more detailed budget information) to be compelling.
As in previous years, the relative accessibility of locations was
extensively discussed. The jury believes that it's important for
Wikimania to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible,
particularly to members of the Wikimedia community; the relatively
high cost of travel to South America from Europe and North America was
one of the most significant drawbacks we identified in the Buenos
Aires bid—especially coming on the heels of Taipei and Alexandria.
Having said that, the jury believes that the Buenos Aires bid overcame
this drawback with its numerous advantages, among those the
opportunity to hold the conference in a Spanish-speaking locale, on a
new continent. We hope to receive strong bids from easily accessible
locations for 2010.
Congratulations to the Buenos Aires team! Wikimania 2009 promises to
be an exciting and successful conference.
-- Phoebe Ayers, Cary Bass, James Forrester (non-voting jury
moderators), on behalf of the Wikimania 2009 Jury
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Jury
More good news! Again, please join us in celebration :-)
Jay has either just put this out as a press release, or he will shortly.
------- Original Message --------
Subject: Khosla presser
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:55:18 -0400
From: Jay Walsh <jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org
Organization: Wikimedia Foundation
To: Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>
*Wikimedia Foundation Receives $500K Donation*
Vinod and Neeru Khosla, innovators in educational outreach, provide
financial support to the Wikimedia Foundation.
San Francisco, CA - March 24, 2008 – The Wikimedia Foundation, the
non-profit organization behind Wikipedia, is delighted to announce it
has received a $500,000 donation from philanthropists Vinod and Neeru
Khosla.
"We are thrilled and very grateful," said Sue Gardner, Executive
Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "Vinod and Neeru share the
Wikimedia Foundation's vision: a world in which every single human being
can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Today, they have moved us
closer to making that vision a reality."
"Vinod and I are proud to help Wikipedia, a valuable global educational
resource," said Neeru Khosla, co-founder and chair of CK12, a non-profit
organization supporting the worldwide creation of "flexbooks,"
collaborative, open-source textbooks. "Wikipedia proves that mass
collaboration works, and that small investments can reap extraordinary
returns. We are happy to be a part of it."
The gift comes at a critical time in the history of Wikimedia, which has
just relocated to San Francisco to be closer to Bay Area technical
talent, like-minded non-profit organizations, and educational and
research institutions.
"Moving to San Francisco was an essential step in the maturing of the
organization," said Gardner. "Now that we are here, and have built a
great team of smart people, we're well-positioned to make significant
progress."
Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia and one of the 10 most
popular websites world-wide, is written, edited and maintained entirely
by a global community of thousands of volunteers. It was founded in 2001
by Jimmy Wales. The Wikimedia Foundation, founded in 2003, has a staff
of 15, and provides organizational support for Wikipedia and eight other
collaboratively-created
information projects.
In coming years, the Wikimedia Foundation plans to launch outreach
projects designed to encourage contributions to Wikipedia from targeted
groups such as academics, speakers of small languages, people in
developing nations and older people. It also plans to increase the
distribution of material from Wikipedia and its other projects in
non-web-based formats such as DVDs and books, to provide information for
people who are not online.
About the Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org
The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization
dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of
free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of its
wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. It operates some of
the largest
collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including
Wikipedia, one of the world's 10
most-visited websites.
For a full list of projects, visit
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects
All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed
by volunteers using the MediaWiki software. Their content may be freely
used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to
the restrictions of that license.
More information
* CK12, Flex Books for every student <http://www.ck12.org/>
* Wikimania 2008 <http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org>
* Wikipedia Academies in South Africa, an example for Wikimedia outreach
events <http://icommons.org/academies>
Press inquiries:
jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org
+1 415-839-6885
Regional press contacts in other languages can be found at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room#Official_chapters
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.org
The Foundation really should start thinking for the future. I noticed that a couple people were talking about an endowment. For the WMF, what would a endowment require?
____________________________________________________________________________________
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Florence wrote:
> Hello Sfammmamia
>
> Welcome to the list :-)
> Which project are you the most active with ?
>
> cheers
>
> Ant
Thank you for the welcome!
Sorry if my replies are not threading correctly, I'm responding from archive
-- will have to switch my prefs.
For the moment, I'm most active on English Wikipedia. I've been on the
project about a year, and I'm just starting to dip my toes in on the meta
level (an ocean in and of itself!)
Best,
Sfmammamia
Hi all, my first post to Foundation-l:
Yes Mary was hired recently as an accountant, and she reports to Veronique
Kessler, who was hired at the end of January as chief financial and
operating officer.
Have you seen the range of Veronique's experience? Looks like an expert to
me!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_Releases/Jan2008_Staff_Release
Sfmammamia
Chad wrote
> In this field, the Foundation just hired an accountant a few
> days ago. As far as a financial adviser, I can't speak on Mary's
> qualifications, as I do not know her personally or professionally.
> However, before such a decision on this would be made, the
> Foundation would need to seek out the advice of a trained
> financial adviser who specializes in long-term investments for
> non-profits.
>
> If Mary has anything she'd like to add, I'd love to hear it :-)
> (Also, I encourage all the new staff members to join foundation-l,
> if no other reason than to keep abreast of all the goings-on)
>
> -Chad
Hi folks,
I’m delighted to tell you that yesterday, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation board of directors voted to award the Wikimedia Foundation USD 1 million annually for the coming three years. A total of USD 3 million, spread over three years.
This is what Sloan characterizes as "institutional funding" - meaning, a form of grant designed to help us work towards our general goals – in our case, financial and operational sustainability, increasing quality, increasing and broadening participation, and distributing our material beyond the wiki environment. As you know, we’ve recently expanded the staff from 10 to 15, and we still have a few more positions to fill: this funding will offset those increased costs.
This is _fabulous_ news. Sloan is high-profile and widely-respected: this donation is financially significant for us, and it also signals that Sloan sees our work as important and our organization as trustworthy.
I’d like to take a moment to thank Erik Moeller, who developed our first contact with Sloan through his work representing Wikimedia on the Encyclopedia of Life's institutional council. (Sloan is an EOL funder.) Based on that initial relationship, in January Sloan invited Erik to present to them about Wikimedia, after which they asked us for a formal request for funding. Without Erik, this would not have happened. Yay, Erik :-)
We will be sending out a press release in a few hours, and I will also send this note to foundation-l soon. Meanwhile, please join the staff and board of the Wikimedia Foundation in celebrating this terrific news!
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director,
Wikimedia Foundation