Wikimedia-l May 2004

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

40 participants
78 discussions

[Foundation-l] Fairness and the elections
by daniwo59＠aol.com 28 May '04

28 May '04

I want to clarify regarding the discussion on the length of the candidates' statements. There is NO discussion between Imran and myself about invalidating any candidate because of the length of their statements on the Candidate Page. NONE. One candidate simply pointed out that on that page, people were asked to limit their comments to 500 characters. Without getting into a discussion over whether that number includes spaces or not (and the issue has been raised), the purpose was to allow each candidate to provide a BRIEF summary of their positions on two questions. Much lengthier statements could (and were) be made on the candidates own pages. In fact, there was no limit to the amount of space that could be used there. People could write thousands of words, or they could provide succinct comments about what they believe and the which goals they hope to pursue. However, one candidate brought up the issue that certain candidates had exceeded the 500 word limit on the Candidates Page and there only. In fairness, and since that was a request by a candidate, I asked the candidates who had exceeded that amount to try and trim their statements. This was done via personal email precisely because I wanted to avoid this kind of ruckus. They were asked to cut out some words and redirect to their user pages. Nowhere was there any talk of disqualifying anyone. This is not an issue I intend to pursue any further. 15 words more or less on that page is not going to sway the election one way or another. 500 characters was a round figure, chosen arbitrarily, to provide an approximate size of a text that would ensure that the page was readable. I hope that no one intends to drop out of the race because of this request. I hope all the candidates understand my position on this and will not use this to contest the election, that has been proceeding smoothly so far. Thank you, Danny

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[Foundation-l] Fairness
by Erik Zachte 28 May '04

28 May '04

Erik Moeller wrote: "Just imagine a situation where this election wouldn't be done on a website, but orally, and each candidate would be given 5 minutes to introduce themselves." Erik, a bad analogy. This medium has its own rules, as you often like to point out yourself. On one of the talk pages you used unequal TV exposure as an comparison. Same answer. If a candidate is willing to take the risk that the reader turns away from his or her statement because it is more words than content, so be it. I'd rather be the judge of that myself as a reader. Your second argument, that this is a rule per se and all have to abide, makes me smile. Wikipedia convinced me that anarchism can work at times, and now petty fighting over silly rules takes hold. Let me suggest to the committee to exchange this rule for a smarter one: present candidacy statements in order of number of words. Shortest statement comes first. By the way - I propose all candidates apply for both positions, so as to make this a non-issue. We want two candidates that are capable and willing to handle all kinds of issues, and not be confined to vague role playing. With only three real wikipedians on the board there is no room for segmentation. Also, I sensed on several discussions that many do not see a clear distinction between the roles. - As for ex officio board members Michael and Tim. I would welcome it if they took the time to present themselves, or rather their views on WikiMedias future. Tim has a user page, but not much in it. Regards, Erik Zachte

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[Foundation-l] Re: w to properly use articles ...
by Anthere 28 May '04

28 May '04

Hi Tomos I do think this kind of discussion do not belong to the english mailing list. The issues you are raising are not only relevant to the english wikipedia. Articles could be copied from other languages than english to the japanese wikipedia, so that makes it at a minimum wikipedia-l issue, and since you are mentionning wiktionary, I guess it should go to foundation-l. There are more and more discussions about copyrights. They spread over several mailing lists. It would be nice that they are all at the same place, especially as Tomos wisely remind us "when someone translate a gfdl article from one language to another language, history from original authors is usually lost - unless the translator thinks of mentionning the origin of the content. Even when the origin of the article is mentionned, it is tough for a user to go to the original article and consult the original list of contributors as defined at the moment of the translation. In short, most of the time, when trade of content is done, we do not respect the gfdl requirements." Since translations happen quite often between all languages, I think any discussion of change of cp status or addition of new status or recommandation to have PD content rather than gfdl, should be project wide. Note : I would like to know whether all wikimedia projects are under gfdl, or if some are not, or if it is planned that some will not be Greetings Message: 5 Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 10:36:04 +0000 From: "Tomos at Wikipedia" Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: w to properly use articles from an outside GFDL source? To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed There is another solution to this problem in discussion at Japanese Wikipedia and Wiktionary. It is a bit easier than the migration to GNU Free Content License, though I would love to see it happen soon. We may introduce another license - so-called "intra-site public domain license" or "intra-wikimedia public domain license." What the license says is something like this: "by contributing to Wikipedia, you allow others to use your contributions within Wikipedia's projects as if they are in public domain." Copying and pasting of GFDL texts are against GFDL in a small way. And it happens in many contexts. (Moving Village Pump discussions to appropriate talk pages, dividing an article into two pieces, using a boilerplate texts, using {{subst:}}, etc.) It is a bigger concern in Japanese Wikipedia, partly because fair use usually have to include attribution according to the Japanese copyright law, and because we do not yet have solid evidence to think that substantial compliance in spirit is safe enough. In other words, if a troll says, "hey, you violated my copyright, because you copied and pasted my contribution into another page without following GFDL, and I am going to sue you," that's not something we can laugh at. The introduction of the PD license is also a way to reduce interlingual troubles - the required level of compliance at Japanese Wikipedia is a bit more strict/ literal than that suggested at en:Wikipedia:Copyright. But some English Wikipedians may not know about it, and bring an image or translate an article to English Wikipedia from ja. without fulfilling the requirement. That, again, is a violation of GFDL, and therefore likely a copyright violation. If we introduce the "intra-wikimedia public domain license," we don't have to worry about it. If English Wikipedia can also introduce similar license, that would make things more convenient. Also, just in case it matters, we would still promote the GFDL-compliant preservation of attribution, the purpose is just to reduce the risks from legal technicalities, not to trivialize the attribution altogether. Regards, Tomos --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger

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[Foundation-l] Legal issue: info un-freely available digitally, freely available non-digitally
by Gerrit 28 May '04

28 May '04

Hello, I am considering to add stub articles about municipalities in Switserland to Wikipedia (EN, NL, DE). The population per municipality is publicly available, as well as the canton it's located. I'm also able to include URI's to the homepage. Maps are available but may, unfortunately, not be reproduced. However, the map machine[1] offers more than maps. When one searches for, for example, Zernez, the postal code is given along with the map. Further, the URI of the referenced image contains geographical coordinates. The copyright [2] clearly states that information may not be redistributed, etc., etc. However, the postal code is freely available from other sources, though not in digital form. The geographical coordinates only state where the town is located: this information can also be retrieved without the map machine. Does the copyright statement apply to this information? Is it legal to retrieve postal codes and geographical coordinates from this map machine? I'd use the geographical coordinates to describe where the town is located (north, south, east, west, maybe "near Zurich"), all automated. regards, Gerrit Holl. [1] http://www.swissgeo.ch [2] http://www.swissgeo.ch/haut_int.php3?id_rubrique=6012&id_point_interet=2287… -- Weather in Twenthe, Netherlands 27/05 13:25: 13.0°C Few clouds overcast wind 2.2 m/s WNW (57 m above NAP) -- Ervaringen met het Syndroom van Asperger: http://topjaklont.student.utwente.nl Socialistische Partij: http://www.sp.nl/

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[Foundation-l] licence
by Anthere 28 May '04

28 May '04

I would like some help about licensing and association status. I remember that several months ago, when I tried to draft a mission statement, and mentionned gfdl would be the license of our content, Ec mentionned that some of our projects were not or would not be under gfdl. I would like more precision on the topic, for tax deductions. How would you describe generally the content of our projects, in terms of reusability/freedom so we could get tax deduction. Is there a general term/reference which could be used, or may we cite a list of licenses ? Who could help me here ? Eclecticology, what do you think ? ant __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/

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[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs
by Michael Snow 28 May '04

28 May '04

Jimmy Wales wrote: >I remember when, once upon a time, my mail was bouncing for a day, and >all the mailing lists automatically marked me as delivery disabled. I >re-enabled the major lists, but overlooked this one, which had at that >time almost no traffic I think. > >Then, I thought that discussion here had fizzled. > It had fizzled. It took a little bit of concerted effort to get sustained conversations going. >> But when we collectively, consciously or unconsciously, only discuss >> policy issues "in his presence", our behavior gives the impression >> of Jimbo as a MeatBall:GodKing. A number of people have criticized >> the way these mailing lists operate, and some object to >> participating as a result. >... >> I think the mailing lists are useful, but we need to be aware of >> appearances and not reinforce the image of a cabal. > >I do agree with this, but what should we do? The mailing lists are >wide open to the public, public archives, easy subscription, >unmoderated. If my participation causes people to say that the lists >are like a "King's Court", what do you recommend that I do about it? > > I don't have a recommendation for what you should do, because I think the problem is not with your participation, but with our collective behavior, as I indicated. "Our" including myself and everybody _except_ you. It's not just how you behave that determines whether you're a GodKing, it's how we behave toward you. (Though your disavowal of that status is helpful, and it is reassuring to know you have plans on how to transfer responsibilities to the community.) The thing that prompted my comments was the differences I could observe between this list, which you hadn't been reading, and the other lists where you clearly are reading and participating. I'm sure people have also observed how some threads take on a much greater importance simply because you're participating in the thread. Some of that, I believe, is that people fail to see the point in raising and discussing issues when you're not obviously part of the conversation. We need to be more willing to discuss (not necessarily decide) issues without your "presence" to assist us. It's the difference between being a community that deliberates over the issues, with a leader to assist in the decision-making process, and being a bunch of courtiers who jockey with each other in order to present their petitions to the king. You don't wish to be a GodKing. I don't wish to be part of a cabal. But wishing alone does not make it so - part of what determines these things is the perspectives of outsiders. I agree with you that the mailing lists are as accessible as we can make them, and that deciding not to participate can be counterproductive. Part of what makes us "elitist" is having people avoid joining us because we're supposedly elitist. But we still have to keep their perspective in mind, and do our best not to reinforce such views. The problem will not go away, we must learn to live with it. Anyway, this has become sort of a longish sermon, and unfortunately my solutions have more of sentiment than specificity, so I'll cut it off here. --Michael Snow

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Re: [Foundation-l] Re:Wikimedia Communs
by engelsAG＠t-online.de 28 May '04

28 May '04

"Anthere" <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> schrieb: > André. Pause réflexion. Un vrai leader évite de > perpétuellement marcher sur les pieds des autres. Il > leur laisse de la place pour s'exprimer, parfois même > il s'efface pour laisser les autres s'occuper d'un > projet qui leur tient à coeur. Il évite de créer des > rancoeurs :-) Enfin, juste ma triste opinion. ant You may be right, but I guess that all it shows is that I'm no 'vrai leader'. Apart from that, I would happily not only let Eloquence have his pet project, but even help him with it. But in exchange I would like to get mine. I want this, I have wanted it for many months. I have made proposals to implement it, and all I need is to get a wiki set up. Nothing. And then Eloquence comes with his proposal and I think "Yes! Now it's going to happen!" And then we get into discussion and I hear that we might be able to get this in 3 months when everyone helps. That's where I break. I don't know what I should do now. Part of me says that I should just keep quiet and come back when my help is needed. Part of me wants to keep bickering, hoping people agree. And part of me says to let people go to hell, and just hijack one of those unused Wikis on wikimedia and do my thing. Andre Engels

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[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs
by Michael Snow 27 May '04

27 May '04

Erik Moeller wrote: >Jimbo is subscribed to the list > Yes, but until today, every time I've looked at the list of subscribers, Jimbo's email was marked as having list delivery disabled. So as far as I know, he hasn't been reading the messages on this list for most or all of its existence. That's not necessarily a criticism of Jimbo, who has many things to attend to, and can't be everywhere at once. But when we collectively, consciously or unconsciously, only discuss policy issues "in his presence", our behavior gives the impression of Jimbo as a MeatBall:GodKing. A number of people have criticized the way these mailing lists operate, and some object to participating as a result. When you can observe differences between one mailing list and another for reasons like this, it unfortunately gives credence to the criticism that the mailing list is "like a king's court" (quoting someone else's phrase). I think the mailing lists are useful, but we need to be aware of appearances and not reinforce the image of a cabal. >but he started the thread on wikipedia-l, so I replied there. > Nothing wrong with that, and possibly Jimbo also started the thread there because you posted the original idea there (before this list ever existed). Another possible approach is to shift the discussion to the appropriate mailing list. Given that some people have equated this list with the defunct and rarely used wikilegal-l, I think it worthwhile to put a little extra effort into seeing that this list actually gets used for its intended purpose. >Is there any particular reason for this thread to be >in French? > Anthere wrote in French, so I replied in French. Since she preferred to use her native language, for whatever reasons, I considered it a small show of courtesy and good will to reply in the same language, since I'm able to. I would be happy to translate into English for anyone who asks. >foundation-l and wikipedia-l are multilingual to allow people to communicate who otherwise could not > Now that I look closely I see you added something similar to [[Wikipedia:Mailing lists]] a couple months ago, and apparently nobody objected. That seems like a pretty restrictive formulation to me, as if we're only allowing multilingual discussion as a sort of concession, and you _must_ use English unless you cannot. For an organization as diverse and multilingual as Wikimedia, I think we should take a more friendly attitude toward the use of other languages. After all, for many languages there are also various people using the list who can take a stab at translation. I would just as soon see a person post in their native language, and rely on someone else with good English skills to translate, than try and sort out from their broken English what they really meant. Basically, I think it would be more in keeping with the spirit of the project, if we allow people to post to project-wide mailing lists in whatever language they choose. Many will probably prefer to use English, but they don't need to be told to do so, and by not telling them we do less to intimidate those who feel less secure in their English. Well, I've raised my concerns, and we can discuss it further on the talk page. >not to have semi-private exchanges on a public list. > > I see discussions all the time on the mailing lists that are basically conversations involving a very small handful of people. I don't see anything wrong with that, any more than there's anything wrong with two people engaging in a conversation on a talk page, which is equally public. Whoever is interested can always join in, and I'm happy to shift between my limited selection of languages to accommodate other participants. --Michael Snow

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[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs
by Michael Snow 27 May '04

27 May '04

Erik Moeller wrote: >The point of language is to communicate. When we use language, we should >use the one which allows us to communicate best. > Yes, but which one is that, the language in which the writer (or speaker) can best express themselves, or the language that can best be understood by the audience? It's a judgment call in each instance, depending on the writer, the audience, and the subject matter. I'm content to trust participants on the mailing list to make those judgments for themselves. >If a plausible argument can be made that in this instance, and in others, French was a better way to communicate than English, then I'm open to hearing it. > Readily. In this instance, since posts in French are unusual, I think a reasonable case can be made that writing in French actually drew more attention than writing in English. That helped accomplish the two things my post addressed - promoting the use of foundation-l as the mailing list for Wikimedia-wide projects, and highlighting the fact that Jimbo wasn't receiving messages from this mailing list. I think both situations have significantly improved. >It seems to me that the much more realistic explanation is that some people prefer to switch to a language which they think other people won't understand when they want to make comments which they don't want other people to read. > Since, as has been pointed out several times, this is a public list, and various participants are able to provide translations or use machine translators, it seems foolish to me for anyone to think that you can make any comments here that some other person won't be able to read or understand. >I would appreciate it if we could all agree to make our conversations as open as possible. > Of course. That's why I'm willing to translate my statement (if anybody is still wondering what I said), and why I'm also willing to communicate in other languages. --Michael Snow

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[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs
by Michael Snow 27 May '04

27 May '04

Daniel Mayer wrote: >>--- Jean-Christophe Chazalette <jean-christophe.chazalette(a)laposte.net> wrote: >> >> >>>Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here. J'ai bien le droit aussi de parler à ceux qui parlent français sur une liste qui se dédie à une Fondation à objet planétaire et je jure d'utiliser Google ou BabelFish le jour où un wikipédien chinois écrira en chinois sur <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> ... et que je voudrais savoir de quoi il cause ... >>> >>> >>Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un wikipédien chinois, russe, ou japonais écrit en leur propre langue sur cette liste. >> Moi je préfère les interprètes humains. Mais si c'est nécessaire ... I look forward to seeing someone post on the mailing lists in Russian, or Swahili, or Greek, or Vietnamese, or any other language. (Just so long as they post something more than the Turkish for "first post".) --Michael Snow

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Wikimedia-l May 2004