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----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 10:07:11 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Arabic, a non native language
That's not true. Although the vast majority of Arabs are raised on a
local variety, there are a small number whose native language is
indeed Modern Standard Arabic. Imagine, perhaps, that their father is
a well-educated Moroccan and their mother is a well-educated Syrian,
and they were raised in Yemen.
Mark
>>>
You are supposing. in the example, It is more realistic that the children express in a vernacular form of one of his parents; or merge both vernacular; or express in yemen vernacular (example: it's reported, some children in USA, whose hispanic parents express every time in spanish at home, have as native language english, and are absolutely incompetent in spanish, adopt the vernacular language of the country when they raise). and finally standard arabic has arcaic grammar, is nearer to classic arabic than to the vernacular ones. It's neccesary to learn at school, as medieval europeans learn latin.
Hi all,
I am happy to announce that Round 1 of the Philip Greenspun
illustration project (PGIP) is now open. The request list is published
here: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Round_…>
It will run for two months. Then in conjunction with Cary and Erik we
will assess how Round 1 went, adjust as necessary and (with any luck
:)) carry on with Round 2.
In case you are wondering "What is PGIP?", it's a project that was
enabled by a donation of Philip Greenspun to the Wikimedia Foundation
for the purpose of creating illustrations. The original community
announcement by Cary was here
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-November/034531.html>
and the central place for all PGIP info has been on meta, here:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project>
So basically it's 1) collect requests for illustrations and 2) pay
people to make them.
If you are interested in the project and/or interested in creating
illustrations, please join the mailing list:
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/greenspun-illustrations>
and please also check out the information on meta.
If you are wondering why it took like ten months, I wrote a bit of an
explanation here.
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/R….>
I will probably have more to say over the next couple of weeks about
ways people can help. For now, I'd just like your help spreading the
word to any illustrators you know that might not have heard of this
project yet.
thanks,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
Hello,
Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
projects be a little more detailed. I suggest a few basic
recommendations become obligatory. For example, [[meta:Polls are evil]]
should become mandatory as a guideline to all projects. This article is
very important as it put into practice the NPOV principle as well as the
desicion-by-consensus and the differentiation between facts and views
principles. I suppose there are other recommendation of this kind that
should become mandatory guidelines. I am not suggesting a constitution
or a full rule book. I do suggest to carefully single out several basic
principles, since the projects' autonomy is a bit too wide, especially
as we want to promote cross-contributions between projects.
Dror
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Internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
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I am happy to report on our progress in filling out the Board of
Trustees with members who bring additional skills and expertise to help
the Wikimedia Foundation in its work. We have filled the membership of
the Nominating Committee and are ready to begin work. The committee will
consist of:
* Ting Chen, our newly elected board member
* Milos Rancic
* Birgitte SB
* Melissa Hagemann, from the Advisory Board
* Sue Gardner, our Executive Director
* and myself.
Thanks again to all those who expressed interest in helping with the
process.
Initially, once the committee has been briefed, it will work on
identifying the types of expertise that are most needed and developing
criteria to evaluate candidates. At that point, we will more actively
solicit suggestions for potential board members, including
recommendations from the community. But if you have input that would be
useful as we look to strengthen the board's skills, feel free to contact
us at any stage of the process.
--Michael Snow
Hello Dears,
Wikimania 2008 sessions are now available here:
http://www.bibalex.org/isis/Frontend/archive/Archive_Movie.aspx
Videos of 77 sessions are available in MPG format, this is mainly for
download; I am afraid no preview is available.
Enjoy:)
Thanks for your patience,
Moushira
Awesome! Wikimania attendees can now relive part of the experience and catch
up on missed presentations.
But much more importantly it allows those that could not attend to become
participants after all.
Moushira and others, many thanks! Erik Zachte
At Wikimania I gave a short lightening talk on some recently donated data from an audience measurement company called comScore. A few people suggested that I send around a summary so I put together a page on meta at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stu/comScore_data_on_Wikimedia. Here are some highlights of comScore's estimates for June 2008:
- over 250 million users accessed at least one of our projects (29% of all internet users!)
- combined, our projects are the #5 web "property" in the world
- we had the highest "reach" in Latin America, where 41% of internet users visited at least one of our projects
- we had the lowest reach in Asia (20%).
Jay Walsh on the staff is managing the comScore relationship overall, Erik Zachte is helping drive the statistical analysis, and a volunteer named Josh Holman has a lot of experience with comScore data. Feel free to reach out to any of us with questions.
-stu
=================
Stu West
stu(a)wikimedia.org
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stu
Would it be possible to set up a separate mailing list dedicated to the Volunteer Council?
----- Original Message ----
From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>
To: effeietsanders(a)gmail.com; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 3, 2008 8:32:34 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Volunteer Council - some thoughts after a discussion on Wikimania
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> effe iets anders wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> as some of you might have noticed, there was a discussion scheduled
>> during Wikimania about the volunteer council. The discussion was well
>> visited, with 40-50 attendees (all seats were taken and some people
>> standing in the back) I lead this discussion, and would like to give a
>> little follow up on it.
>>
>> First of all, I would like to shortly summarize what I think were the
>> most important conclusions from this discussion. Please note that when
>> I say agreed, I did not mean this was a formal decision, but a common
>> agreement between the attending people in that particular part of the
>> discussion. This has no binding status, but should be seen as a clear
>> indication of what might be consensus on a wider scale as well.
>>
Since you say below that you would like feed-back, I will give
as I am able.
Though you indicate that there is a plausible (how clear,
reasonable people may likely allowably disagree) possibility that
the discussion reflects even a wider community feeling, I do
hope that you will not limit your approach to the community
to this E-Mail to the foundation list (particularly if the effort
is to be one of grass-roots, it is good to make the approach
where the grass-roots are - and they are not on this mailing
list).
Even if voting will not be necessary for seeding a movement
that intends to grow and build; and justify itself through its
fruits and concrete effects... Even then, I hope you will not
be tardy in involving any people who view the direction of
the movement worthy of exploring.
>> Besides that, it was also agreed that it would not be workable to let
>> a small committee (council) do everything we would like it to do. It
>> is unlikely that a small group of people can maintain contact with a
>> large number of communities, and solve all the issues which might
>> require more specialized and dedicated working groups. It was
>> suggested to come up with several councils for all these tasks, but
>> after a while it was more or less widely agreed upon that it would
>> probably be most workable to have one council, which would appoint
>> working groups or committees (temporary or continuous) to take care of
>> specific issues.
>>
Personally I think that is the sane way to work, though with
the caveat that the experience of the Board of Trustees needs
to be learned from. Before deciding how the relationships
between working groups and committees are structured with
relation to the Council as a Whole, it should be well worthwhile
to study which approaches worked between the Board of Trustees
and its various appendant Committees, and which were not the
best successes there, and which their structures were, and the
relation between the chosen way to structure and act in concord,
and the success thereof.
>> Right now, I see little added value for a voting process. I would
>> appreciate some input on that though.
>> I believe that for the initial members, we don't need popular
>> wikipedians, we don't need icons, we need stable and available people,
>> who are willing to cooperate and compromise, who are willing to
>> coordinate and communicate, who are willing to share and listen to the
>> community. What we need is a wide variety of volunteers. Not per se in
>> gender and nationality, or even language, but more in opinions and
>> ways of thinking. We need some people who are active in the chapters,
>> but also who are not so active there, we need a technical volunteer,
>> we need someone involved with wiki approval policies perhaps, we need
>> someone who is active in the stewards corner, some people who are
>> speaking a non-english language and many other criteria. We will most
>> likely not be able to create a full variety, but my personal belief is
>> that we should try to work this out as much as possible.
>>
>> The next step would be, in my humble opinion, analog to the creation
>> of the enwiki arbcom, which was also initially appointed. Elections
>> every XX months for a part of the council. This would be up to the
>> council actually to decide upon probably, but I see unfortunately not
>> many other ways to keep the community directly involved in this
>> process. The exact details would have to be worked out later on of
>> course.
>>
>> For all this, we would need someone to guide these processes. We need
>> someone more or less neutral (not a candidate or staff member for
>> instance) to set up such a group, and help to work to a set of
>> definitions and goals. After that, it is up to the council to work
>> things out.
>>
>> Another option is to appoint the group of people I selected earlier on
>> for the Provisional Council resolution, and keep things moving of
>> course :)
>>
Here of course is the biggest hurdle you have to face. How
do you justify the status as a grass-roots movement and not
as a "cabal". This is something you will have to think long
and hard about. You won't have any easy answers. The
easy answers will be totally wrong, I guarantee you.
>> I would appreciate some input of course. However, please be aware that
>> this is a raw draft of what I think here, but that it has been built
>> upon the many many discussions that have been there.
>>
>> With kind regards,
>>
>> Lodewijk
>>
I hope you won't see anything in my views as a criticism, for
none is intended. Every word was just given in terms of
aiding you in your reflections.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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