Hello,
Today the World Esperanto Congress at Beurs WTC, Rotterdam, ended.
Following some notes about the Wikipedia activities:
- Everyone of the 1800 congress participants had a flyer about
Esperanto Wikipedia (and Wikimedia) in his or her congress materials.
- A session on Monday had been put into a room too small (for 50
people); because to that, a second session was given to Wikipedia at
Friday, with 70 attendants. We talked about the basics of Wikipedia
and Wikimedia, gave a practical impression, answered questions and
showed the Jimmy Wales fundraising video 2007 with Esperanto
subtitles.
- At Esperantology Conference, I lectured about Wikipedia in small or
weak languages.
- Other Wikipedians organizing our sessions were Yves Nevelsteen and
Beatrice Allée; I have met for about 10 active Esperanto Wikipedians I
know.
- Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) supported us in several ways.
- I caught some testimonials from people famous in the Esperanto
world, like former UEA president Humphrey Tonkin (Hartford), professor
of English renaissance literature, John Wells (UCL), professor of
phonetics, and the head of Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik, Detlev
Blanke (Humboldt-Universität Berlin).
Info (in Esperanto) and photographs:
http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedio:Vikipedio_en_UK
Kind regards,
Ziko van Dijk
--
Ziko van Dijk
NL-Silvolde
As the author of the paper in question, I thought I'd chime in my two
cents here...
> PLoS Biology is a recognized journal for biology research, but not for
> wiki research. Their statements about the usefulness in wikis
> of bot-generated stubs are not backed up by verifiable evidence.
Agreed, our intention was to create a resource for biologists, not to
make any broader statements about wikis as a whole. Apologies if anyone
felt we were overinterpreting our observations, but I felt all of our
conclusions were supported by our analyses. As for the statements not
being backed up by verifiable evidence, I (obviously) disagree. All of
our figures and conclusions were derived from publicly-available sources
(edit histories, page sources, etc.), and anyone who is interested would
be able to reproduce our results.
> Their statistic that 50% of edits landed in new articles doesn't
> indicate quality or usefulness. It only says that carpet bombing
> might sometimes hit a target.
Perhaps there is some misunderstanding here in what the article said?
The 50% of edits refers to edits *subsequent* to our bot effort, not the
bot effort itself. If there is still confusion, I'm happy to clarify in
more detail.
> Their work is interesting biology. But for wiki research, this
> paper is merely of anecdotal interest. Maybe they are writing a
> separate article focused on wikis? Are the authors coming to
> Wikimania?
Great, then we succeeded in our goal of doing interesting biology. No,
we have no plans to attend Wikimania or do another article on "wiki
research", but that's mostly because it's not our field. If anyone has
suggestions on how we might use our effort to comment on wiki research
and would like to collaborate, we're certainly open to hearing more.
... and in response to a comment on another thread, it is a bit
unfortunate that some headlines seem to indicate that this was a
foundation-sponsored activity. But, alas, we don't write the
headlines... (The title of the article we wrote is "A Gene Wiki for
Community Annotation of Gene Function".)
Regards,
Andrew
For those interested in the copyright status of works first published
in the U.S. (particularly in that murky period before copyright
renewal laws changed), the American Library Association has published
a website to help you figure it out:
http://librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/
Notable mostly for demonstrating just how complicated U.S. copyright law is.
-- phoebe
Google Knol is live. It launches with CC BY default.
Mike Linksvayer say, s prior to its launch Knol was often speculatively
compared to Wikipedia, it should be noted that the default Knol license (CC
BY) could permit using Knol content in Wikipedia (with attribution of
course), but knols under more restrictive options could not be incorporated
into Wikipedia. On the other hand Wikipedia content could not be
incorporated into knols (except in the case of fair use of course), even in
the case Wikipedia migrates to CC
BY-SA<http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8213>— Knol doesn't
offer a copyleft license.
see
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8506http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-07-23-n20.html
--
Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
My blog: http://talk.blogbus.com
[[zh:User:Shizhao]]
G'day folks,
...first time poster to the foundation list, I think - so be gentle! (and
nice to 'meet' you all!)
I noticed that the terms of a majority of the good folk on the Chapters
Committee have expired, and also understand that they're currently working
on extending these / confirming the lineup etc. - I just thought I'd state
formally on this list that this is an area I'm interested in helping out in,
and I think there's a good, clear, need for such a committee in this area...
I like to bang the drum of good communications wherever possible, and feel
that it's a rather important time for this committee, so I'd like to try and
help them getting up to date, and their message/s out there!
I've copied the committee's list because it's clearly relavent, but would
also like to ask other list members here about their appraisal of the
committee - and how folk see its role evolving....
cheers,
Peter
PM.
(link for ref: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee )
2008/7/24 Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com>:
>> http://knol.google.com/k/sheldon-rampton/-/8r9tdjdcsltq/2#
>
> Neat, you can hotlink images inline from the WMF servers here, to turn a
> profit on Knol.
>
> I wonder how much bandwidth money gets wasted on such inline images...
It's an interesting question. Copied to foundation-l...
Given the fact that the pageviews from our own projects are such an
immense demand, I doubt the secondary traffic would be all that
significant.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
Klaus Graf writes:
> For years there was no doubt that Bridgeman v. Corel was accepted on
> Commons. It is said that British courts would'nt accept Bridgeman v.
> Corel but there is no proof for this. It is true, in the contrary,
> that the NY US judge has diligently discussed UK law with the result
> that also according UK copyright law mere reproductions are NOT
> protected.
>
> Bridgeman vs. Corel is an essential point for Commons and for all
> Wikimedia projects. This is not an issue some Commons pseudo-experts
> could decide. Before 500+ pictures of PUBLIC DOMAIN PAINTINGS are to
> be deleted the board of the Foundation should decide if Moeller's
> quote above is still its position.
I think it's still the Foundation's position, Klaus. We've gotten the
occasional note from the National Portrait Gallery in the UK,
asserting copyrights in reproductions of very old paintings, but to my
knowledge we've never actually faced anything like legal action or a
DMCA takedown notice regarding such images. I think the National
Portrait Gallery may be afraid to put their claims to the test in
actual litigation, since doing so would be a straightforward assault
on the public domain, and could raise international enforcement issues
besides. While I respect the Commons community's engagement in the
issue of keeping Commons clear from copyright problems, it should be
stressed that it is unclear whether the Foundation currently has any
legal problems as a result of the public-domain paintings in question
appearing on Commons.
--Mike Godwin
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
Speaking only for myself, not the Board, and speaking only in my
traditional capacity, I can say that I very strongly support keeping
these images. Public domain paintings are public domain. This is not
about borderline cases around exact dates. This is OLD stuff.
I call on the National Portrait Gallery to release these images under a
free license. Barring that, I propose that we ignore any illegitimate
and unjust false claims to copyright in these things, unless and until
they are willing to take us to court.
Mike Godwin and the Wikimedia Foundation have the final say, of course,
and I respect that. But I hope we encourage courage in this area.
Michael Maggs has invented the actual Commons "policy" on painting
reproductions in 2007 by creating the following page:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD-Art_tag
In 2006 and earlyer there was no doubt that Wikimedia Commons is
accepting Bridgeman v. Corel like the English Wikipedia and the German
Wikipedia.
In February 2008 Maggs has reverted my quotation of Moeller's statement:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AWhen_to_use_the_PD…
In a discussion on this list in 2008 Mike Godwin has made clear that
he never "overruled" Moeller's statement which is until now the
official WMF position.
In May 2008 a German law expert H-stt called for revision of the "Maggs-Policy":
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:When_to_use_the_PD-Art_tag#U…
Maggs replied with a long biased discussion of UK citing a 2005 court
decision "Hyperion Records v Sawkin" which wasn't on reproductions of
paintings.
A few days later another user Kaldari wrote "According to these
guidelines, all National Portrait Gallery images must be deleted from
the Commons" and nominated the first set of National Portrait Gallery
pictures for deletion.
A lot of German Wikipedians is actually protesting against the "Maggs-Policy":
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/National_Portra…
Maggs and the other deletionists are trying to suppress these opinions
with the argument "this is not a vote".
A few moments ago I saw on the user page of a friend a deletion
nomination for a Commons copy of a Danish library reproduction of the
printed Flora Danica (XVIIIth century) because PD-art doesn't apply in
Danemark:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Fd2665.jpg
One might dispute that photographs of paintings are protected in some
countries but that isn't the case here. It is a mere reproduction like
a scan.
The Maggs-Policy means that Museum's Copyfraud is winning and Public
Domain is damaged. We cannot have any image of National Portrait
Gallery because Maggs is arguing that all photographs of the works are
UK photographs and thus protected by his self-invented Maggs-Policy.
He ignores that contractual bindings of the photographers aren't
relevant for the "country of origin". If an US photographer has made
such a photo legally "country of origin" is US and not UK.
If the Maggs-Policy wins at Commons we cannot host any UK Public
Domain painting aside of owner allowance. Nobody can go in the
National Portrait Gallery and can take photos. If NPG hasn't sent us a
take down notice we should keep this stuff on Commons and revise the
PD-art doctrine according the position of the WMF.
Klaus Graf
>From the NY Times Bits blog see:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/wikipedia-meet-knol/index.html?hp
cc'd to Foundation-l.
Nathan
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 4:05 PM, Keith Old <keithold(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> G'day fellow Wikipedians,
>
> Google has announced that Knol has gone live.
>
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/knol-is-open-to-everyone.html
>
> "A few months ago we
> announced<
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
> >that
> we were testing a new product called
> Knol <http://knol.google.com/>. Knols are authoritative articles about
> specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today,
> we're making Knol available to everyone.
>
> The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth
> knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in
> people's
> heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could
> benefit
> from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their
> knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.
> The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author
> (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their
> knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple
> knols on the same subject, and we think that is good."
>
> (More in link)
>
> The Knol website is live here.
>
> http://knol.google.com/k#
>
> The featured content ranges from How to backpack to Type 1 diabetes.
>
> Regards
>
>
> *Keith Old
> *
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
