For a while we experimented with a bulletin-board discussion site
(running on phpBB) at http://boards.wikimedia.org/ This hasn't been
used since August as far as I can see.
A serious security vulnerability has been announced in phpBB recently;
rather than add to our maintenance burden for an unused site I'm taking
the boards offline. If there's a sudden demand for it, we could upgrade
it and put it back online.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
As a reminder, please participate or comment the future privacy policy :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
I think it would be nice that we adopt this policy beginning of 2005 for
all wikimedia projects.
We could plan to link it to our preferences page as well.
Since the preference page would be modified, we could modify it as well
to welcome information about joining the foundation or local association
as members, or agreeing to our gfdl policy.
That could make an over 32k page if we are fully informative ;-)
------
In particular, I think the paragraph about retrieval of user information
(comparison of ips, user password and email address) requires more
input than there is now, to clarify who is allowed to do this; upon
whose request; and whether user should be information of such a check.
Anthere
With a softer opinion of Indymedia than Jimbo, I would
however say that I support him here. I do not think we
should develop particular strong relationship and
collaboration with Indymedia.
Indymedia is clearly biaised. It does not matter that
many of us appreciate Indymedia, or even that some of
us participate to it.
What is important is that we are different, and we
must stay different, not only in concept but in our
readers view.
We both occupy the same ecological niche in the news
ecosystem, but we do not have the same roles. Both
roles are important and must be preserved separate.
Our role will be to offer neutral news.
Their role is much more to counter balance other
biaised news network, which will keep on existing (and
which MUST keep on existing).
In a diverse world, neutral and biais is important.
However, not only do we want to be neutral, but we
want to be **seen** neutral by our readers. It is even
more important for a wikinews project, where news will
be published in 4 hours.
I deeply believe neutrality is a goal which can only
be approached after hundreds of careful contributions
by many many editors. Neutrality needs time to happen.
In wikinews, articles will be published in less than a
day. Most are likely to be written by a limited number
of editors. This is why, it is even MORE critical for
wikinews, to appear INDEPENDANT and UNBIAISED.
If we want to be seen neutral by our readers, we must
NOT show in any way that we are linked or
collaborating with a biaised news network. It is very
very important.
And I say this not implying that I do not like
Indymedia. This is just a question of principle and of
public perception. We should not make collaboration
with our pet websites, just because many of use
approve them.
Anthere
Sorry if I appear harsh.
As many here may be aware, I did not support the
creation of wikinews as an individual editor. I chose
not to oppose though on the board level because
wikinews was largely supported by the community.
However, I think there are several risks in the
wikinews project, which might hurt our global project.
I see official collaboration between Indymedia and
Wikinews as one of these risks, as it could decrease
the public perception of us as a neutral source of
information.
jeff a �crit:
> Chuck0 wrote:
>
>>Jama Poulsen wrote:
>>
>>>On Sun, Nov 14, 2004 at 07:05:46PM -0800, Jimmy
(Jimbo)
>>
> Wales wrote:
>
>>>>http://demo.wikinews.org/
>>>
>>>Has anyone been thinking about how Wikinews could
cooperate
>>>with the Independent Media Center (IMC) project
>>>(http://www.indymedia.org)?
>>
>>I'm skeptical about this idea. What is the political
>>orientation of Wikinews?
>
>
> My guess is that it would have the "Neutral Point of
View". I've
> been impressed at how well wikipedia has been able
to maintain
> this goal on controversial subjects.
>
>
>>Indymedia exists as an alternative
>>media space for the political left (broadly
defined). Is
>>Wikinews apolitical, left-leaning, or friendly
towards
>>neo-fascists?
>
>
> That's a bit harsh. Can you point to a single
wikipedia article
> that has been friendly to neo-fascists?
>
> Indymedia is "left-leaning" but could certainly be
an
> automated/semi-automated contributor to wikinews
even if there
> are viewpoints on there that are generally not on
Indymedia.
> Wikinews could have both, like news.google. Wikinews
is
> probably more sympathetic to Indymedia than google
as well.
> See the wikipedia entry on Indymedia--it's current &
good:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indymedia
>
> Or take a look at their entry on Anarchism (which
nicely links
> to Chuck's infoshop.org):
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
>
>
>>I've been told that Wikipedia is run by right
>>wing libertarians, so hwo do we know that the
volunteer work
>>put into a joint project won't be exploited by
venture
>>capitalists when they try to turn Wikipedia into an
IPO?
>
>
> wikipedia is a non-profit and the articles are under
the GFDL. I
> doubt it will ever go IPO... For more info, see:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Overview_FAQ#Who_owns_Wikipedia.3F
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
>
> If it ever does turn commercial, you can download
the /entire/
> database and set up your own wikipedia and do
whatever you want
> with the articles as long as you comply with the
GFDL. See:
> http://download.wikimedia.org/
>
> I wish Indymedia database dumps were publicly
available!
>
>
>>I'm opposed to this partnership until it can be
determined
>>how Indymedia would benefit from any partnership
with a newly
>>launched project.
>
>
> It could benefit by wider distribution of Indymedia
content.
> Wikipedia has a huge audience, and deservedly so. In
general,
> I'm in favor of collaboration between wikinews &
indymedia.
>
> Chuck, stop dissing one of my favorite Internet
projects. ;)
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Jeff
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com
Hi,
there's been some movement forward on the Single User Login (SUL) issue. I
ask the Board to review this mail carefully as this has significant long-
term implications and we need Board input to go ahead. I also ask other
developers to correct me if I misrepresent anything.
There are currently three competing strategies. Before I describe these
strategies, let me point out that one important consideration for any
system is scalability. That is, single login will be used on all existing
and future Wikimedia projects, and potentially even on non-Wikimedia sites
which we allow to participate in our system.
The three strategies are:
1) GLOBAL NAMESPACE, IMMEDIATE CONFLICT RESOLUTION
We try to move towards a single global user namespace for all Wikimedia
wikis. If a name is already taken in the global namespace, you have to
find one which isn't.
For the migration, any names which clearly belong to the same user are
combined into one. If passwords and email addresses are different, the
user can manually link together any accounts which belong to him by
providing the passwords.
For cases of true name conflicts between the existing wikis, there is a
resolution phase, where factors like seniority, use on multiple wikis vs.
a single one, etc., are weighed in - the "loser" has to choose a new
account name.
After the manual resolution phase, any remaining accounts are converted to
the new system automatically by making them unique, e.g. by adding a
number to the username. The transition is now complete. The old system no
longer exists.
2) GLOBAL NAMESPACE COEXISTING WITH LOCAL ONES, DEFERRED CONFLICT
RESOLUTION
As in 1), we migrate all existing accounts to the new global namespace
automatically if possible. New accounts are created in the global
namespace.
Where there are people sharing the same name, the accounts will not be
migrated to the global namespace but will stay in the local ones, which
will continue to coexist. These people can keep using their local IDs, or
create a new, different global identity.
The idea here is that resolving name conflicts is so complicated that we
simply defer the issue for now.
3) GLOBAL COMPUTER-READABLE ID, LOCAL HUMAN-READABLE NAMES
Every user has a global, numeric ID which is unique. But for each wiki,
they can have a different username. As in strategy 1), any clearly
identical accounts will be linked to a single GUID automatically, others
can be hooked up by providing the passwords.
Naming conflicts are not an issue in this system. Let's say I am Eloquence
on en: and de:, and there is another Eloquence on fr:. I get the global ID
1233, the fr: user gets the ID 28387. When I go to fr: and try to edit a
page, I get a prompt:
The username you have chosen is already in use on this wiki.
Please specify a new name:
____________________________________
If this is your account and it has not been linked to your
global ID yet, please provide the password:
___________________________________
If I go to another wiki with no user named Eloquence on it, however, the
local username "Eloquence" will be reserved for me the moment I edit it or
set my local prefs. This is because the system knows that "Eloquence" is
my preferred username, and will automatically try to create it for me when
I need it. I can change the name later, if I want, and use different
names on different wikis.
- - - - -
The differences:
1) is very complex, and we may not find someone willing to deal with the
name conflict resolution issue and take the blame from annoyed users at
the same time. Naming conflicts will always be an issue in this scheme, as
e.g. all common first names will be taken, and any small wiki hooking up
with our SUL system would feel this impact. People can mutate these
usernames relatively easily to make them unique - Erik333 - and the system
can offer such mutations, but it's still a bit annoying.
2) is easiest to implement by avoiding the conflict issue. Brion has
expressed interest in coding this. It will annoy some people who can
choose between using their local name and keeping their attributions, or a
global one, and losing their attributions, at least until things like
linking up local accounts to a global one are implemented. It leads to
some ugliness in the system because we are in an "in-between" state for
now.
3) does not have the naming conflict problem. Both Jamesday and Kate have
expressed interest in implementing it. Jamesday also wants to write a more
detailed proposal on Meta about it. For the user, it is fairly straight-
forward -- existing accounts can be hooked up easily to the single login,
new names are picked only when necessary. It is somewhat vulnerable to
trolling, as someone could e.g. register the name Eloquence on a wiki
where I am not active, and use it for nefarious purposes. The system could
however make it fairly easy to find out that this is not the same person
(on the user page: "This user is active on the following wikis: .. under
these names: ..").
In any case, we want username changes to be a cheap operation, so that
anti-trolling policies should be easily enforcable.
The question for the Board is: Given that we have at least two, and
possibly three, implementations where there are volunteers, which one
should we choose? To me, this seems to be a matter that could be decided
by the Board; others have said that a poll will be necessary first. Either
way is fine with me - what does the Board say?
Regards,
Erik
A logo less english centric is a good idea and I am
happy some editors are taking interest in this :-)
I would highly recommand that all wiktionaries have
the same logo, as it is an important mark to identify
one common project. We are not a collection of
different projects, but one project in different
languages.
This indeed suggest an approval at least at the whole
wiktionary project.
Recently, a debate took place as well with regards the
wikicommons logo.
This debate suggests to me that any logo change should
be accompanied by a formal poll at the global
wiktionary level, as well as with mention to the
global mailing lists.
Incidently, the logo should be owned by the foundation
so as to protect it. So, how the logo should look is
entirely debatable, but the license of the logo itself
is not really debatable. Before any logo contest, it
should be made clear that the logo will not be
copyrighted by its author.
I sent this mail in copy to foundation.
Anthere
On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 13:14:27 +0100, Tomasz Sienicki
<tsca-Vn+BvHwdNC8(a)public.gmane.org> wrote:
The problem is that
* the original logo is English-centric and difficult
to make local
(translate)
* it's a nice design, but not really a logo, it does
not contain
a recognisable sign (that is clear among others on
main pages
of several projects where miniatures of 'sister
projects' logos
are shown)
Agreed.
That's why we've come up with an alternative logo
(containing a sign,
easy to translate). You can see it here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Tsca_wiktionary_logo2.png
Now, the questions are:
* should we launch an inter-Wiktionary debate on a
new logo?
or
* do we allow some Wiktionaries to use an alternative
logo?
The former. It would be good to have a graphic in the
logo along with
the translatable title, just like the other wikimedia
wikis.
*Muke!
--
website: http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/
FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net
/
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
http://demo.wikinews.org/
After the successful wikinews vote
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Vote
the board has discussed and decided to move forward with this project!
In order to continue to work towards as broad a community consensus as
possible, we are launching this at http://demo.wikinews.org/ and
invite all interested parties (particularly the "no" voters) to come
and help work on the site.
We will be keeping the site demo-only until November 22 at least, and
at that point evaluating the next step. (Probably to launch
en.wikinews.org)
The demo has not yet been publicised widely, and my hope is that an
extended demo might convince those who voted against the project to
change their views, or to come and influence the project now in a
direction that overcomes or alleviates the legitimate objections that
have been raised.
This will also give people more of a chance to discuss the proposed
policies before the site goes live.
The one thing I want to personally stress right now: this is at this
point a pure wiki. We can make of it what we wish. All of the
proposed policies are just that: proposed policies, and we should
strive to organically create policies that solve actual problems as
they arise, rather than trying to a priori make a lot of rules that
could constrain us in the early days. This formula worked well for
wikipedia: common sense and flexibility.
Be Bold.
--Jimbo
--
"La nèfle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org
Hello,
There are a lot of project proposals floating around on Meta-Wiki, most
only short descriptions of an idea someone had. Some months ago, I
collected all this stuff and moved it to a central page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proposals_for_new_projects
More can be found in:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposed_projects
Since many people complained to me about Meta being an unusable
labyrinth, I'd like to do a little bit of cleanup and wondered if we
could just move this list to wikicities (jimbo's pet project where
people can set up wikis on their own) and direct new entries on meta of
the type "oh there is no wiki on ... what about ...?" to wikicities:
http://www.wikicities.com/index.php/Proposed_wikis
We will be busy the next time with building up Commons and Wikinews, the
two big new projects and for most proposals on this page I either don't
see a future as a Wikimedia project (at least not in this state) or they
could be done within the framework of an existing project.
What do you think?
greetings,
elian
Hi folks,
as part of my master thesis I developed a wiki based product catalogue /
marketplace. Using it you can build a browsable and searchable catalogue
of goods and services, make comments on them, sell stuff and so on.
Source code is available under the GPL and the wiki database under the FDL.
Now I am looking for all kinds of people who want to participate -
developers, product describers, dealers and consumers. Also I would like
to discuss possible cooperation with the wikipedia project. All of you
may contact me for any concern.
At that time, the market place is available at:
http://market.prag053.server4you.de
for some sample products, please go to "Browse - Page 2 -
Telecommunication - Mobile - Siemens".
Have fun using it,
Marcus
Kate Turner has written a tool that makes it possible to follow the recent
changes of any Wikimedia project in real-time, in a web browser:
http://kohl.wikimedia.org/cgi-bin/rcdumper?d=enwiki
See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Realtime_recent_changes
for information on how to get it for different wikis and in different
interface languages.
The tool is currently in BETA. As I understand it, the autoscrolling only
works in Mozilla. But it's already very nice to look at and will be an
excellent tool both for vandalism patrol and for presenting Wikimedia.
It's also very useful on smaller wikis like Meta, where you can keep it
running in the background and go back later to see what's happened.
I'd like to thank Kate again for writing this tool. I'd also like to ask
all of you to add a link to it to your local [[<Project>:Recentchanges]]
(for some reason this page is not in the MediaWiki namespace yet). - It's
mature enough already to do that. But please point out that it is still in
BETA.
Kate has also written a few other useful tools, which can be found here:
http://kate.wikimedia.org/kates-tools/index.action
* Count edits of a user
* "Six degrees of separation" between two pages
* Check for existence of a username on different wikis
* Unified watchlist for all wikis you work on
Note that you'll have to create an account and "hook up" your existing
Wikimedia usernames for the unified watchlist to work.
I never cease to be amazed by the creativity of Wikimedia users and
developers.
All best,
Erik
I was somewhat surprised to see that the conference city and date was
chosen 1-2 weeks ago, a name vote held ("Wikimania"), and numerous other
things gone on without any announcement on the foundation mailing list.
In case anybody else missed it, the information is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania:Main_Page
-Mark
