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
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
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
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.
__________________________________
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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 ;-)
__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price.
http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/
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
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
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
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
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