Wikimedia-l May 2004

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

40 participants
78 discussions

[Foundation-l] MediaWiki 1.3
by Tim Starling 21 May '04

21 May '04

We're going to be upgrading the software on the live site to the current development version, over the next 24 hours or so. However, we won't be releasing a tarball just yet. Before we do that, we want to obtain translations for the new interface text, and also to fix a few user-friendliness issues with the installer. We'll probably upgrade the smaller wikis first, and do the English Wikipedia fairly late in the peace. There might be short periods of downtime during this process. A list of new features is at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_roadmap -- Tim Starling

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[Foundation-l] New Project Idea
by Maik Arnold 19 May '04

19 May '04

Dear all, while reading some article in the wikipedia, an idea for a new project came to my mind: There could be a wiki-page which collects field reports from missionaries around the world. How can I get help for starting a new project with wikimedia? ... and someone who is interested in developing the project? Maik Arnold

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[Foundation-l] Wiktionary, general thoughts
by Timwi 17 May '04

17 May '04

Hi. I meant to post this here a long time ago, but I didn't get around to it. It is my understanding that the aim of the English Wiktionary has always been and still is to define all words of all languages, as well as provide translations of all words into all other languages. Is that right? We would thus have hundreds of entries for, say, "five" in hundreds of languages, all of which say nothing else than "this means five" and the same list of translations into all other languages. Isn't this an incredible nightmare to keep in sync? Now we have Wiktionaries in loads of languages, and all the redundancy above is multiplied /again/ by the number of languages. We would be collecting the translations for the word "five" n² times, where n is the number of languages. I don't know how many languages there are on this planet, but even if it was only 1000 languages, this means 1000000 (one million!) times the same list of words. Am I the only one who thinks this is unbelievably redundant? Timwi

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[Foundation-l] Elections
by Anthere 17 May '04

17 May '04

Thanks Imran and Tim Additional comment by Villy Je ne parviens pas � trouver sur Media la r�gle de l'enregistrement depuis 3 mois au moins pour les votants. A supposer qu'elle s'y trouve, c'est bien la premi�re fois que je vois les conditions d'�lectorat plus dure que les conditions d'�ligibilit� : un candidat en effet annon�e sa pr�sence sur unprojet Wiki depuis mars 2004 : cela fait donc deux mois et il semble pouvoir �tre candidat au board. Il faudrait peut-�tre songer � harmoniser les conditions de wiki seniority. villy 16 mai 2004 � 19:34 (CEST) I can't find on Media, the registration rule requiring at least 3 months of presence for voters. If we suppose its existence, it is the first time I ever see voting conditions being more restrictive than eligibility restrictions : one candidate claims to be here since march 2004, which is only 2 months, and he appears to be eligeable for the board. It would be best to have both requirements in tone with each other. ----- I answered the 3 months seniority requirement for voters was on the notice, but I prefer to forward you the whole piece of comments, as it is not the first time the issue is mentionned. Villy is a judge in France. ant PS : Villy registered on the 16th of march, so by current rules, he may not vote. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/

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[Foundation-l] election ballot
by Anthere 17 May '04

17 May '04

Feedback from a french contributor, named coeur (c�ur) * he mentions the fact a user could be registered under different name on 30 wikipedias, hence vote 30 times -> my answer. This could happen. Some people do have different names, and a tiny few could do it on purpose and could cheat. However, the risk is limited, we trust people per default not to abuse the system, and likely it would be an artifact. We could limit the risk by setting a minimum of contribution, perhaps ? * he mentions the fact different users could have same name under different wikipedias, hence good votes would be discarded -> my answer. This will happen, we already know several cases. Checking and discarding will not be automatic but be human powered with control. I suppose I am correct :-) * he mentions he is *bound* to have different names on en and fr, as his name need utf8 encoding. -> my answer. I said we trusted him to be honest here. And he should have stick to a good old name with no weird caracters ;-) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/

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[Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?
by erik_moeller＠gmx.de 16 May '04

16 May '04

It has been brought to my attention that Cafepress, which we currently use to sell Wikimedia Merchandise at http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia , has some privacy issues. Specifically, they have a "web pixel clause": Pixels. Pixels, also called clear GIFs, are invisible files on Web pages that you visit. If you visit a page on the Site that contains a Pixel, the Pixel communicates with your computer to determine, among other things, whether you have been to that page before or viewed a particular advertisement. We may use Pixels to serve advertising, enhance email advertising and track usage of the Site. And a somewhat weak personal data disclosure policy: we may disclose your Personally Identifiable Information when we believe in good faith that it is required by any applicable law or legal process, or if we believe we need to disclose it to protect or enforce our rights *or the rights of our members, users, or other third parties.* http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/privacy.aspx I'd like to solicit feedback on - whether these privacy issues are acceptable from the point of view of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. - whether any alternatives exist (i.e. merchandise-on-demand of similar quality). My point of view, right now, is that if no alternatives exist, we should continue using Cafepress, and add a link to the Wikipedia article about them on the page, where the privacy issues can then discussed from a neutral point of view. However, I'd like to bring this out into the open first. (Incidentally, I'll probably have to start that article as it doesn't seem to exist yet.) Regards, Erik

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[Foundation-l] Board of Trustees/To do List
by Fantasy 16 May '04

16 May '04

Hi, I was looking on meta for a list of Problems the Fondation or Board of Trustees should solve. As I found no List, I just added this page: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/To_do_List If this is not the right page, please let me know where to put this open Problems. Thanks for help, Fantasy :-) Current open issues: Trademark-Problems * wikipedia.it is taken by Giacomo De Feo ROMA IT see whois.nic.it * wikimedia.com is taken by Paracelsuspraxis Daniela Rohrer CH see whois.org

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RE: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?
by Seth Ilys 14 May '04

14 May '04

Erik wrote: >It has been brought to my attention that Cafepress, which we currently use >to sell Wikimedia Merchandise at http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia , has >some privacy issues. These policies seem to me to be very much in line with what I'm used to seeing at most commercial websites, and they don't concern me much. However, it should of couse be made clear in the link to the CafePress shop that CafePress is a company entirely external to, independent, and not accountable to Wikipedia (assuming that isn't evident already). In the ISBN links, we have links to a variety of commercial sites with (no doubt) a variety of privacy and disclosure policies. If this is an serious issue with CafePress, those should be re-examined as well. This certainly doesn't sound as serious an issue as the Amazon.com commissions; if necessary, we can defuse this issue in a similar way. Furthermore, as a non-profit organization, aren't there disclosure requirements regarding our direct donors? -- Seth Ilys _________________________________________________________________ Check out the coupons and bargains on MSN Offers! http://youroffers.msn.com

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[Foundation-l] Important Election Notice
by daniwo59＠aol.com 14 May '04

14 May '04

Election Notice Given the response of many respected users, we have decided to adopt a new election system. Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as they see fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for each position, will be declared the winner. In the event of a tie, a run off election will be announced. We encourage everyone to vote only for the candidates you think would be best suited to serve on the board. Thank you, Danny Imran

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[Foundation-l] First Past the Post
by daniwo59＠aol.com 12 May '04

12 May '04

Imran and I have discussed this. It seems that most people who have spoken out are opposed to First Past the Post as our voting system. We selected this because it seemed the easiest for everyone to understand and implement, and with the understanding that there will be opposition. In fact, I believe that no matter what voting system is chosen, there will be opposition to it. On the other hand, we are willing to consider other methods. Imran will be posting on this later. Without having a huge vote on how we should vote, I would like to invite people on this list to propose alternative methods. I will also pose this same question to the candidates themselves. This is not a commitment to change the current system--only to examine other options. Your comments are welcome either here or at WikiElections(a)aol.com, where they will be accessible to Imran and me only. Thank you. Danny

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Wikimedia-l May 2004