Are there good unofficial sites with mirrors and dumps? Is anyone using a
live feed to generate same?
Here is one of those core project support tasks that only the Foundation can
do at the moment, that never seems to become a priority... but is
fundamental to supporting a broad network of people who are carrying out
their own Wikipedia and related initiatives.
Among the core ways that the projects' work gets out into the world is
through full dumps provided by the foundation in all languages. There
aren't many people with access to the databases to generate those dumps, and
it often requires scheduling machine processor and disk time from inside the
cluster to carry out regular dumps effectively.
Image dumps haven't worked reliably since sometime in 2005. I blogged about
this in mid-2006, at which point I believe there was a bittorrent option but
no other; the bittorrent option hasn't worked for over a year.
http://downloads.wikimedia.org/images/ used to offer a few 2006-era
dump links; those too are now gone.
Static versions of the site have also been available from time to time -- at
the moment, the links from download.wikimedia.org are broken:
http://static.wikipedia.org/
And html dumps of the projects have been generated from time to time; I
don't know why these are presented separately from the full dump-lists
(which generate xml dumps in many gratifying varieties), but the process
involved needs some upkeep. At the moment, one can only get wikipedia
dumps from february for languages aa to eml.
http://static.wikipedia.org/downloads/2008-02/
Cheers,
SJ
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Philippe Beaudette
<philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> The 2008 Board election committee announces the 2008 election process. Wikimedians will have the opportunity to elect one candidate from the Wikimedia community to serve as a representative on the Board of Trustees. The successful candidate will serve a one-year term, ending in July 2009.
Thanks Phillipe for the announcement and thanks to the election
committee for their work!
I have one concern about the new requirement that voters must have 50
edits between April 1->June 1 on their voting project, as well as the
old total edit requirement, in order to gain suffrage in this year's
election.
To quote the election information page:
"You may vote from any one registered account you own on a Wikimedia
wiki (you may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you
own). To qualify, this one account must:
* not be blocked, and
* not be a bot, and
* have made at least 600 edits before 01 March 2008 on that wiki
(edits on several wikis cannot be combined), and
* have made at least 50 edits between 01 April and 01 June 2008 on
that wiki."
I know several previously very active editors, people I would consider
core Wikimedians who know the projects as well as anyone, that happen
to be taking a wikibreak this spring -- and this new requirement would
disenfranchise them. I can't imagine this was your intent.
This problem is compounded by the fact that a) April is already almost
over, leaving people just a month to get their edits in; b) the
editors most affected by this may not be paying attention to these
early election notices (but will want to vote when the time comes); c)
since we have not had this requirement in previous elections, it is
unlikely that people will be expecting it.
I have two suggestions:
Either
a) drop this part of the requirement
or
b) start a site notice now for logged-in users on all projects,
reminding them of the candidacy cut-off date and suffrage requirements
for the election.
A site notice, if not already planned for, is probably useful anyway
as potential candidates may not read the mailing list or catch the
election posts to it.
thanks!
-- phoebe
Newyorkbrad writes:
> | As a matter of disclosure, although I have raised this concern in
> passing on
> | prior occasions, my attention has been focused (this is something
> of an
> | understatement) on it again by an ongoing and extremely unpleasant
> thread
> | concerning me on the Wikipedia Review site. I understand that my
> concerns
> | in this matter might be discounted for that reason.
They're not discounted by me. I think your concern is a valid one.
--Mike
Sam writes:
> Thank you for this reassurance. I am astonished that the Board
> would not
> anticipate this (widespread) interpretation of events, or recognize
> that
> this change would be regarded by many as a power grab by insiders.
I'm pretty sure the Board anticipated criticism.
Speaking as someone who, like Erik, is a staff member who was not part
of the vote on the restructuring, I figured that no matter what the
Board did or did not do, there would be a wave of criticism on
foundation-l. In my experience, that is the most common reaction of
the list.
I urge folks here to interpret the Board's actions as an attempt to
meet several goals -- greater integration of the chapters and the
community members who act through chapters, plus greater expertise.
Keep in mind that it was the Board you believe to be a "good" Board,
with a majority of members from the community, that determined this
was the best way to develop the Board further in support of the
projects. I don't see how this counts as a "power grab by insiders"
considering that, as pure power is normally assessed, being a Trustee
of the Wikimedia Foundation is not exactly the same as being a member
of Microsoft's or Apple's board.
--Mike
Organizing a swimming challenge in the North Sea starting from Holland
to Great Britain.
Who will arrive first and second will be board members, if there are
no winners the role will be assigned ad interim with another swimming
challenge.
Ilario
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 10:05 AM, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
> If there is no "inter-chapter structure", how
> will the Chapters vote on two people for the new
> positions?
>
>
> Gordo
>
Ray writes:
> I understand that the election process, as we know it, takes a lot of
> work, and that having elections for the three community members in
> alternate years would obviously ease that burden. Still we have the
> experience of Erik's resignation, which took place during the first
> year
> of a two-year term. In such circumstances there appears to be no
> means
> to fill that kind of vacancy for at least a whole year.
This is not a problem at all. The Board can hold a special election or
it can appoint someone from the community (maybe the next-highest vote-
getter in the previous election) to fill the seat.
--Mike
And while the people who were on the private group to
explore the setting up of the council have demanded
public explanations, they haven't themselves gone first
and revealed what they presented to the board, or how
their proposal was prepared, what conflicting views
were balanced and how.
Somehow the situation reminds me of a poker game with
both players asking the other guy to show their cards
first.
Yours
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
******
I suppose that's directed at least in part at me, since I wrote the petition
and was one of the names presented for PVC.
On 22 April I participated at the Wikipedia Weekly and answered questions
about my ideas for PVC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikipediaWeekly/Episode46
Also, on 27 April and 28 April I blogged about these matters.
http://durova.blogspot.com/
And I want to make this explicit, since apparently it wasn't
already suffiicently clear: the petition was undertaken on my own
initiative, without input from any other PVC person. I was hearing
discontent about the restructuring from other people who had nothing to do
with PVC, and I regard PVC as minimally relevant to the petition. And I was
peripheral to the PVC proposal.
It's always a danger with this sort of thing that someone will
interpolate dastardly motives where none exist.
-Durova
All the Board had to do is endorse the Provisional Council, which was in essence a working group.
My only issue with chapter seats is that we have no real way to fill them.
----- Original Message ----
From: Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 5:38:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring
2008/4/29 Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com>:
> First, the Board sent the ball on Wikicouncil back to the Community, then the Board made community elected seats a minority.
? It was not exactly clear that the Wikicouncil concept *as presented
to the Board at that time* was something that was supported by "the
Community" at large. They have expressed support for the concept, but
not that particular instantiation. I am sure that if they had accepted
it there would probably be *more* outrage! (possibly directed slightly
differently)
Secondly seats for community members are still a majority: 5 + Jimmy.
If a vote goes 5-5, it fails. So there is no "power bloc of
outsiders".
If you are really concerned that "the chapters" are going to somehow
choose the wrong people, then why not pipe up with suggestions about
what "the right way" would be.
> Because of our principles, we attract a lot of people who are suspicious of authoritarian structures. This move seems kind of authoritarian.
Yeah, so getting outraged by default - regardless of the merit of a
proposal - is definitely a good move!
Put it this way, throwing a hissy fit is not a good argument that the
community should have more input. We should demonstrate we deserve
more input by making that input reasoned and sensible.
Clearly, no one is too happy about surprises like this. Florence has
apologised, more input from the other Board members would be nice.
regards
Brianna
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
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I stand by my comment. Human nature says that when you give somebody the tools to write their own terms, they are more likely to use those tools for whatever is in their best interests.
----- Original Message ----
From: Casey Brown <cbrown1023.ml(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 12:39:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 12:52 PM, Kwan Ting Chan <ktc(a)ktchan.info> wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 09:36 -0700, Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
> > Unfortunately, we can't remove most of them. Maybe the Board should not have the power to modify bylaws.
>
> Erm, considering the Wikimedia Foundation does not have any members, can
> you tell me who you propose then that be given the rights to modify the
> Bylaws? The employees?
>
I was just about to say the same thing, KTC. Perhaps people should
re-read their comments before they post to the mailing list to see if
they *really* want them said and if they make sense.
--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
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