Hello,
I am wondering if the foundation can help spread firefox ?
Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ) is a free and open
source internet browser which offer a good alternative to Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer has been barely updated for the last 2 years and is a
security risks. Moreover it is proprietary software.
The mozilla foundation is running a website / blog dedicated to
spreading firefox to as much people as possible:
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
They even opened a donation to buy a full page of advertisment in the
New York time newspapper.
I am wondering if we can get somewhere in the footer of the WikiMedia
websites a small "getfirefox" icon ? :o)
--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
I have just finished implementing, backporting, and enabling basic support
for transparently using content from the Wikimedia Commons on all
Wikimedia wikis.
An example for this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
=>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
=>
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
=>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
=>
http://ja.wikibooks.org/wiki/%E7%94%BB%E5%83%8F:Onopordum_bracteatum0.jpg
etc. etc.
Use a file from the Commons like you would any other, using [[Image:]] or
[[Media:]] links, with extended options or without. If the file does not
exist locally, we search the Commons. If it doesn't exist there either, we
show a "Missing image" notice.
You can edit Commons image pages, but this should only be done for the
purpose of describing the content. For licensing information, you can use
MediaWiki:Sharedupload to insert an automatic backlink to the Commons. See
the version on en: as an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sharedupload
This is not perfect yet. In the not so far future, the content of the
Commons description page should be directly transcluded on the using wiki.
It should also be possible to upload content directly to the Commons from
anywhere welse. In order to deal with issues like cross-wiki
authentication, and to have a shared database in place, I am waiting for
the single login transition before tackling this issue further.
And even these advanced features are just a mid term perspective. In the
long term, I would like it to be possible for any open content wiki using
our software to immediately start using Commons content (caching the
images, of course, and maybe even serving them as mirrors chosen in a
round-robin fashion).
In the meantime, please do start using the Commons, upload images and
sound files to it, and help organizing the growing number of them. Keep in
mind that the Commons is *only* for free content -- no fair use allowed.
Having to upload non-free images locally is a good disincentive, and helps
us to enforce individual wiki policies on non-free content.
All best,
Erik
Thanks again for all the help in getting
set up with a local install of MediaWiki.
I've just received word that one of the
sessions will have 72 people and the
other 38 for "Wiki Wiki Learning".
What do you think about approaching
Michael at the Linspire / Lindows Corp
and sharing the positive experience with
setting up MediaWiki? Could we suggest
he include the software in the Click-N-Run
Warehouse? Would this be possible and
would it be ok with the foundation and the
developers?
I'm so encouraged by the easy install and
the excellent setup that I'd be willing to
try it on an iMac... or the iBook, but only
after the conferences, the first of which
is in one more week.
With thanks to all who've responded to
my questions...
Sincerely,
Jay B.
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:31:26 +0000 (UTC),
wikitech-l-request(a)wikimedia.org <wikitech-l-request(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> 8. Success! Setting up MediaWiki for use in Presentation to
> Conferences (ilooy)
> Message: 9
> Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 23:04:57 +0300
> From: NSK <nsk2(a)wikinerds.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Success! Setting up MediaWiki for use in
> Presentation to Conferences
> To: ilooy <ilooy.gaon(a)gmail.com>, Wikimedia developers
> <wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <200410272304.57561.nsk2(a)wikinerds.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> On Wednesday 27 October 2004 22:50, ilooy wrote:
> > went very smoothly
>
> Good to hear that
>
> > http://localhost/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>
> It's the same as http://127.0.0.1/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>
> This is the IP address of your computer. There is nothing wrong with that.
>
> > http://linspiron/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>
> That's the domain name of your computer. You choose the "linspiron" part
> during GNU/Linux installation (can be changed later).
>
> It's your computer; there is nothing wrong with that address.
>
> > somehow the ¨index.php¨ part doesn´t seem
>
> It's right.
>
> MediaWiki uses "pretty URLs" so instead of ? it uses / to make the URL more
> beautiful.
>
> --
> NSK
> Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
> Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
> Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
>
Fred Bauder wrote:
>Selected, non-involved editors?
>
>If they were interested or competent with respect to the subject they would be involved.
>
>
This is hardly the case. Many contributors who are both interested and
competent with respect to particular subjects nevertheless do not edit
pages on those subjects, for a variety of reasons.
1) Based on liability or ethical concerns, professionals in various
fields (doctors, lawyers, etc.) might choose not to edit articles
related to their specialty, so as not to create any relationship with
the reader or potential for malpractice complaints.
2) Contributors who also make a living from their writing might avoid
covering the same subjects on Wikipedia that they cover professionally.
This is true whether they receive income from their writing directly
(why give something away when you can get paid for it?) or are paid by
an employer (in which case the employer might argue that what they write
on the subject is work for hire, and object to having it contributed to
Wikipedia or licensed under the GFDL).
3) People with a distaste for the intense disputes that rage over some
of our more controversial pages may consciously avoid those subjects,
regardless of how interested or competent they may be.
--Michael Snow
Hello,
The french association Wikim�dia France was officially
created today in Paris.
After a full day rererereading bylaws, changing
articles (again...) and correcting typos, and just
stopping for lunch, all fondators physically present
signed the final documents.
We were actually slower than expected, and we ended up
in an internet cafe to print final bylaws before
signing them, since we had to leave the meeting room
before being done :-)
The foundators are 20. Those not physically present
will sent proxy voting in the next few days to Ryo.
We had to refuse a few candidate foundators, as they
had not offered the necessary information in time
(name, adress etc...).
2 foundators (present on irc) also decided not to sign
the bylaws.
On monday the 25th, a meeting on irc of all foundators
will allow to elect a board of 5 to 9 people. 12
people are candidate.
On thursday, on irc again, all board members will
elect their president, secretary and treasurer.
------
All in all, though a tiring day, it was a very
interesting moment for all of us and a real pleasure
to meet new people and to see others again :-)
Anthere
_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com
There's currently a non-binding straw poll about the licensing of Wikinews
articles, should the project launch under the Wikimedia umbrella:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License_straw_poll
I'd like to know two things:
1) What is the position of the board on projects using a licensing option
other than the GFDL? Specifically, what is the opinion of the board on
dual-licensing GFDL and CC-BY, and possibly other licenses?
2) Would a real vote on the license, if the project launches, be
acceptable?
The reason this has come up is that some people feel that the GFDL does
not allow for large enough use of Wikinews articles, and that dual
licensing would address this. Personally, I'm not a big fan of dual (or
multi) licensing, but will accept whatever the community decides.
I point out, in case this isn't clear, that dual licensing would very
likely prevent the direct inclusion of materials from other Wikimedia
projects, although not the other way around.
So I'd like to know where the Foundation stands on this issue. I'm mostly
interested in moving forward on this point, not in any particular option
(my personal favorite, the public domain, has relatively little support).
Regards,
Erik
> Some of this same reasoning applies to wikinews. But for wikinews, a
> really *big deal* is compatibility with Wikipedia. (Or, am I wrong
> about that? How often will a news story really need to have content
> from wikipedia that exceeds ordinary fair use or quotation rights?)
> I don't know of any clever solution which gets us both advantages.
License stories which use Wikipedia content under the GFDL, and license
those that don't under CC-BY.
Anthony
> I point out, in case this isn't clear, that dual licensing would very
> likely prevent the direct inclusion of materials from other Wikimedia
> projects, although not the other way around.
However, this isn't the case if you use "Contributor licensing", which is
the seventh choice. Under this everything is licensed under the GFDL, but
articles can also be dual licensed as determined by the original
contributor.
> > You could allow every contributor to choose the license of his
> > choice. So, ever page would have a different license. That's what I
> > do in some of my projects.
> Would you please try to understand how and why wikis work - especially
> the most successful one - before annoying us with ideas from your
> recently started projects?
Is Wikinfo not a wiki? Not the most successful one, for sure, but the whole
point of Erik's comment is that we're considering doing something
*different* from the rest of our projects for Wikinews. And my point of
bringing up Wikinfo is that that's what they do (although it's restricted to
a set of licenses).
> > I am very interested in learning more about your reasoning on public
domain
> > and why it's your favourite.
> 1) It's compatible with everything.
That's why I support it as my first choice in this case. I believe in
copyleft, but for a collaborative project like Wikinews it's too much of a
headache. If I'm making a site by myself, I'm going to choose copyleft,
because if someone comes along and wants to negotiate a separate copyleft
with me it's really easy, there's one person to contact. Dual-licensing (or
really multiple licensing) can do this to some extent, for licenses already
created, but it doesn't help for licenses (as opposed to license versions)
not yet created. So you get into the real situation where just about no one
objects to Wikitravel including content from Wikipedia and vice-versa, but
it's illegal to do so without contacting every single contributor and asking
for permission.
This problem is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Wikinews articles are
likely to have far fewer contributors than Wikipedia articles. But that's
why I also support "contributor licensing", which is similar to "allow every
contributor to choose the license of his choice." But I've added the caveat
that there must be a single license which everyone can use for every
article, to facilitate mass redistribution. But maybe that isn't even
needed. Whatever, so far no one has voted for my idea, possibly because not
many people understand it, but no one has even commented on it or asked
about it.
It should also be noted that "compatibility" with public domain is only in
one direction. So while we can include parts of news stories in Wikipedia
(which seems unlikely to be very useful), we can't include parts of
Wikipedia in the news stories (which seems much more useful). That's why
when I proposed "contributor licensing" I chose the GFDL to be the standard
license that every article is licensed under. This way parts from Wikipedia
can be used in articles which don't add the option of others.
Anthony
Hi,
I noticed you were discussing about Wikinews some time ago. Because I do
something similar, I give you my experiences & ideas so that you can benefit
from them if you think they can/should be applied in your project (and BTW,
good luck with Wikinews!)
In one of my wikis I write news stories like this:
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/News2004:Mozparty or
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/News2004:Hans_Bakker_died (these are
the only links I include because I don't want my msgs to be misunderstood for
advertising)
There is a separate namespace for each year, so I have namespaces like
News2004: and News2005:
The separate namespace model allows the users of the wiki to limit their
search in specific years.
Each news story had one or two maintainers who find references, copyedit the
story, check for copyright violations etc.
News stories are mentioned in [[Current events]], sorted by date. the [[Main
Page]] also has a list of the most important stories (not just the most new),
by using a template [[Template:Newspicks]]. Most stories are also mentioned
in Wikinerds Portal, our Drupal installation which serves as the homepage of
the site. The Portal aggregates news stories and new article submissions,
together with announcements and its own stories from all projects of
Wikinerds. The Portal does not duplicate stories but just provides an
introduction and a link to the story in the wiki.
Many stories can lead to interesting discussions, so there is a web forum
based on phpBB. For most stories, I create a phpBB thread where anonymous
users can post their messages. Each news story in NerdyPC and in Wikinerds
Portal may have a "Discuss in Wikinerds Forum" link where directs the user to
that thread. Talk pages are not used for communication but we have renamed
them to Test pages and are used for developing articles or testing layout, et
cetera. The Discuss link is always the last so users can find it easily.
Articles like [[27 October]] or [[2004]] are our almanac where we can list
events happened on that date.
Every news story includes background information. When we refer to "GNU/Linux"
we don't expect the user to click on the link to find out what GNU is but we
explain it at the end of the article (See for example how most corporate
press releases are structured).
The initial author of each news story decides on the copyright terms of that
story and subsequent authors are expected to use the same license.
News stories always include external links in bullet format:
* link 1
* link 2
* link 3
etc
If the external links are too many, we categorise them. There is no limit on
how many links can be included in each story and we try to include links to
all Internet pages discussing relevant things.
News stories have this format:
[START]
{CYCLE:
=====URL======
----DATE-----
____TITLE____
(text)
* external links
REPEAT CYCLE AS NECESSARY}
(authors)
(license)
[END]
So, you see: A news story IS NOT attached to a specific date (only to a
specific year) and the URL is not the same as the story title.
This means we can have [[News2004:SCO vs. IBM]] and update that page every day
according to fresh news.
An example:
------------------------------
[[News2004:SCO vs. IBM]]
20 October 2004
SCO says that
blah-blah-blah
* ext link
18 October 2004
IBM says that
blah-blah-blah
*ext link
10 October 2004
...
Authors: NSK
License: CC
-----------------------------
That means the reader can read just one page and learn the news regarding a
single issue.
So, in [[News2004:MediaWiki 1.3.7]] for example, we can include there a new
bug or security issue if it gets spotted after the release. It's like
including two or more small stories in one bigger page. It's very convenient.
Every news story contains a link to [[Current events]] which has a list of all
current stories. We have a standard legal notice in template
[[Template:Legal]] which says things like "trademarks are property of their
owners" et cetera. The notice always goes at the bottom.
What I haven't found a good solution, is the archiving of [[Current events]].
I wonder whether I should just move its contents to pages like [[October
2004]] or create an [[Archive:]] namespace and have [[Archive:September
2004]]? What's the solution found in WP and how will you approach this
problem in Wikinews?
You could use a wiki-only solution or use a Drupal frontpage for the
publication of articles and a background wiki for the devlopment.
I hope the description of my approach to news was useful to you and of course
I welcome any suggestion you would have to make regarding my approach. I
think knowledge/ideas sharing among wiki communities is very important.
Oh, and BTW you can see my Wikinews coverage at
http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/75
I also performed a search for "wikinews" and I noticed many blogs and
newssites discussing your new project. I think this project must start soon
and I am sure it will be a success.
--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
The minutes of the last board meeting suggested that money was being
accepted to found a Wikijunior project. Now, while I can understand
that it wasn't entirely initiated by the board, being approached by an
outside foundation at all, it seems that once again, it's been decided
at a board-level, and there's going to be no discussion in the
community as to whether we actually should have a Wikijunior project
at all. If I remember correctly, this has been discussed many times
before - and has not generally received a good response. Yet now I
hear that it's going ahead anyway.
I just hope that this isn't going to be a repeat of the Wikispecies
saga. If we are going to fork the project, it is not that hard to
throw together a proposal, ala Wikinews - or at least publicly discuss
the darn thing first.
-- ambi
