Toby Bartels a �crit:
>>I very strongly urge an adoption of Instant Runoff
>>Voting-Single Transferable Vote (similar to the
method
>>used to elect the President of Ireland).
>
>
> If we're not careful, then we'll get into big
religious wars
> about what is the best method of voting in this
situation.
> Many people think that IRV is unnecessarily complex,
> while agreeing that FPTP is still indefensibly
simple.
>
> Although I'm personally a big fan of transferable
vote systems,
> if we really want to get a clear consensus to do
away with FPTP,
> then it may be best if all of the FPTP opponents
agree up front
> that any voting system chosen from instant runoff,
approval voting,
> and Condorcet (with any specified method for
resolving Condorcet ties)
> is an acceptable, consensus-building voting system,
while FPTP is not.
>
>
> -- Toby
The current voting system chosen has certainly the
benefit of simplicity.
However, I think it is a bad choice for several
reasons. In particular, it leads potential candidates
to decide not to participate, to avoid dividing votes
and to preserve chances of candidates they approve
themselves. I think it highly problematic.
I think many wikipedians regularly participate to
votes, which do not rely in fptp. Just thinking
quickly, I can't even see a topic where we vote with
fptp on Wikipedia. At a minimum, we spontaneously use
approval voting, because it naturally allow us to
express opposition.
Given that we will be voting for a "representant", I
think that the ability to express "opposition" is just
as important that ability to express "support". In
terms of representation, I would say that it is best
to have a final choice with which every one (or most)
feels confortable with, rather than a final choice
which half of wikimedia thinks absolutely great, while
the other half thinks absolutely disastrous.
fptp does not allow to express opposition. I think it
highly problematic.
Wikipedians are also used to sligtly more complicated
methods, and they do so, not thinking in terms of
voting methods. They just do it sponteneously. In
front of 4 propositions, they will often write :
option 1 : strong opposition, this is ugly !!!!
option 2 : well, that could do it
option 3 : same, acceptable
option 4 : yes, best, I love it !
Now, if you begin to ask participants "would you
prefer borda method or condorcet method or approval
voting or plain fptp" (in particular to non-english,
who will have to gather from english article what
these methods are), you won't have much success :-)
Ihmo, simple approval voting is not the best choice in
this case, because it does not allow to express
subtelty of positions. I do not think it best to have
to qualify people in terms of
1 (yes) : this candidate is good
0 (no) : this candidate is bad
No one is ever all white or all black. Just asking
people to qualify candidate this way is forcing them
to take/consider a extrem position, not suitable in
case the candidate is finally elected. It is never
good to push someone from a position of "I do not
really approve this person" to "I am plain opposed to
this person".
Il ne faut pas radicaliser les gens :-)
Any ranking method, or ranging method with more than 2
choices will be acceptable to me. I have some
preferences, but I can live with all choices.
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I am extremely concerned about the use of the
plurality first past the post system. Generally, such
systems encourage the establishment of two opposing
sides and the use of tactical voting, which is not in
the spirit of Wikipedian consensus building.
Considering the large number of well respected
candidates running, the vote will probably be narrowly
divided, and a small dedicated group of users or
sockpuppets could usurp this election.
I very strongly urge an adoption of Instant Runoff
Voting-Single Transferable Vote (similar to the method
used to elect the President of Ireland). Unlike First
Past the Post, IRV-STV will eliminate candidates that
lack a clear mandate and will favor consensus building
candidates.
--H. "Dick" Cheney
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This is a thought from two personal experience
feedback, as well as Mav and Erik experiences.
I several times contacted external people or
organisations, either for press release, or other PR
activity, or for trying to negociate content release.
Usually, I used my real name, though not always. Twice
at least, I think there was no consideration given to
my proposition, because I was just a community member
and in no way had an official position. I suppose
other editors trying to reach the outside met similar
situation.
When one contact an important media group, or a
charitable organisation to ask for donations, or a
legal entity, one is expected to show some
"credentials". In particular as soon as money is
involved :-)
I think this type of activity, with "external" contact
will become more and more frequent and required. And
though this will be a lot the work of the Fundation
itself, I somehow doubt 3 members can manage it all.
Some regular participants will necessarily become more
and more invested in Foundation activities, without
being Board members.
I would be happy that we begin thinking of how we
could "give" these "official titles" to participants,
so that they can fully help according to their
abilities and wilingness.
Basically, it requires 3 steps
-------
* setting up a list of "official titles", with
associated description of what this encompasses
Example : Wikimedia treasurer : someone to keep track
of donations or other funding, and keep track of how
money is spent
Example : Public relations : someone who organise
press releases, give interviews, etc. Trying to find
funding probably comes in here.
We should set this list all together. There is already
some stuff written about this on meta, but it was more
planned for a board. Since the board will be very
small, we should expand this to wikimedia (full) or
foundation (those who paid the fee) participants.
The list could be approved by the Board.
-------
* Enlisting people for each role.
Several if necessary.
We obviously need only one treasurer for now; But
definitly several public relation officials. Given
Wikipedia concept, I don't think we need a head for
PR, the community is the head, but we definitly do
need at least a dozen people as PR officials.
I view this as fairly loose. Let's have a page on
meta. People interested list themselves there. The
community then approve or does not approve to give
this "official" title. Finally, the board approve or
not.
------
* Last, on Wikimedia Foundation web site, we maintain
a list of these official representative. Something
very official looking, so that an "official
representative" can point a potential partner this
page to "prove" he is trusted by his peers for
negociation.
-------
What do you think ?
Anthere
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Hello Everyone,
We have launched the Election Campaign for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is an important step forward in our emergence as a
Foundation, and your participation is crucial.
The election is for two seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation:
1) Contributing Active Member Representative;
2) Volunteer User Representative.
I quote Jimbo in saying that:
"The role of the board is *not* generally to get involved in the day-to-day
operation of the website. The board is a legal entity entrusted with ultimate
decision making for the Foundation. Website governance is a different matter
altogether. I don't anticipate that
the board will be a difficult or demanding position."
In the future, only Members who have paid dues to the Wikimedia Foundation
will be eligible to run for the Contributing Active Member Representative. All
Users will be eligible to run for the Volunteer User Representative. However,
since the dues infrastructure is not yet in place, we have decided that all
Users who have been with the project for at least three months will be eligible
to vote and run for both seats on the Board. Candidates must be prepared to
identify themselves by name and geographic location in order to participate in
the election. Verification of their identities will be required to either of the
Co-Chairs of the Wikimedia Election Committee. Complete confidentiality is
ensured by us.
A FAQ regarding the roles of the Board of Trustees, electoral procedures, and
other information is forthcoming.
Elections are scheduled to be held from midnight (GMT), Saturday, 30 May 2004
to midnight (GMT), Saturday, 5 June 2004. All candidates must have been
registered by then. midnight (GMT), 29 May 2004. The 24-hour interval will allow us
the necessary time to verify the candidates' identities and make a final
determination whether they are eligible to run.
This is not a popularity contest. Please avoid adding comments to the List of
Candidates Page, such as "Great Contributor!" "Good choice!" "Troll" etc. All
such comments will be removed immediately.
We encourage the candidates to create pages where voters can ask them
questions.
It is important that participants in all languages and on all projects
participate in this election. If you speak a language other than English, please
translate the election notice that appears on the top of the English-language
"Recent Changes" page and post it in a prominent location on the respective
project. There is a link for you to follow in the notice to inform us that you have
done so. This way, we will make sure that projects in all languages have been
informed.
Apart from the translations, we ask that the Notices not be edited or changed
in any way except by or with the express permission of either [[User:Danny]]
or [[User:Imran]]. While this is exceptional for Wikipedia, it will ensure
that this election is conducted fairly. Please address all your questions and
concerns to the Talk Page of the Election FAQ, which is linked from the Notice.
Note that all election materials except for the notices and possibly the
candidates' information pages will be located on Meta. This is done so as not to
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flexibility with regard to other languages, but as for now, initial election
information will be posted in English.
More information is forthcoming, both on the Mailing Lists and on the
Respective Pages. This is the first time that such an election is being held, so
please bear with us.
May the best WikiCandidates win.
Imran and Danny
Co-Chairs, Wikimedia Election Committee
Michael Snow wrote:
>The filing fee for a trademark application is US $335 (I'm
>assuming we would start by registering in the US). We should
>at least consider registering trademarks for Wikimedia, Wikipedia,
>Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, and Wikibooks. Granted, with
>our current financial resources it may not be practical to try and
>register all of our trademarks in every country we reach. But US
>registration is an important start, and would facilitate international
>registrations later.
I agree with this completely - this should be something that the trustees take
care of soon after the election.
-- mav
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Anthere-
first, a note: please use foundation-l for project wide discussions.
> I personally do not think adding a "real name" field
I also think it is unnecessary, especially in light of the fact that many
thousands of edits are merely assigned to numbers.
Mostly I want to keep the sign-up form as simple as possible. But I have
no problem with Wikitravel activating it. Of course we must be wary of
"feature clutter".
> * instead of writing "will be down in a few minutes", writing something a
> bit more specific
That's of course desirable, but oftentimes specifics will not be
available, and sometimes shit happens without anyone expecting it. We seem
to be particularly unlucky when it comes to server stability.
However, it will be difficult to have both - informative *and*
internationalized messages. Because I don't think we can get someone to
translate "There are problems with the Squid proxy server on coronelli, a
new machine is being set up and will hopefully be installed by 20:00 UTC;
in the meantime, cached pages will remain available" into Maori within 5
minutes (just making up an example, don't know what the actual problem was
today).
> Recently, I looked at the bug report on fr:, and I saw an awful mess, that
> was going up to october 2002, where we were switched to phase III. There was
> no way to know what was still valid, and what was not (it has been cleaned
> now).
Not sure what you mean here, bugs are managed using the SourceForge bug
tracker and closed when fixed.
Regards,
Erik
Peter Gervai wrote:
>
> Please fix MediaWiki:All messages generator script as it links to
> wikipedia.org and not wiktionary.org.
Actually the script wasn't used to generate those pages, they were just
copied from the associated wikipedias.
> [about links from wikipedia to wiktionaries]
>
>
> How am I supposed to link from hu.wikipedia to hu.wiktionary? I'd say
> [[wiktionary:word]] but it links to http://wiktionary.org/..word instead.
>
> Additionally [[wiktionary:fi:kukkala]] should redirect to fi.wiktionary
> which it doesn't do yet.
>
All this is fixed now. The "Wiktionary:" prefix still links to the
English Wiktionary, but a new "wikt:" prefix has been introduced which
links laterally to the wiktionary of the same language. An extra feature
has been added to MediaWiki allowing "diagonal" linking, with the help
of redirects. A link reading [[wikt:fi:kukkala]] on the German Wikipedia
will link to http://de.wiktionary.org/fi:Kukkala, which will redirect to
http://fi.wiktionary.org/Kukkala .
> Which language.php does it use? It should be updated as well.
It uses the same language as the associated Wikipedia
> Which list shall I use for further questions?
It's probably more relevant to foundation-l.
Tomasz Sienicki wrote
> While it works on some wiktionaries, it doesn't on pl.wiktionary.org
>
> [[w:entry]] points to www.wikipedia.org (should be pl.wikipedia)
> [[de:entry]] points to de.wikipedia (should be de.wiktionary).
This was just a caching problem.
> [[Wikipedia:de:entry]] does not work at all
Fixed as noted above.
> Also, the updated lng file for the Polish Wiktionary was uploaded to
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageWiktionaryPL.php a month ago.
I'll look into that.
-- Tim Starling
Anthere wrote:
> * When a change is made in the purpose of donations,
> could it be mentionned on foundation-l (rather than
> only on en:) so that all projects could change the
> initial purposes given by Jimbo ?
Can you explain what you mean here? There has been no
change made in
the purpose of donations, and there is no change
planned.
--Jimbo
I mean this
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&diff=3428085&oldid=341…
which led to this
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Donations&action=histo…
-----
Now, I support paper edition entirely, but till now,
it was not written that donations would support making
paper edition. Some people also told me that paper
edition could be supported by publishers, not by
donations.
So, I would like that this is confirmed before we add
to main pages that donations will (for example) be
used for such a purpose.
For this reason, I removed the notes both from the
main page and the donation page.
-----
Whatever the use made of donations, it would be best
that all wikipedias display the same type of messages
(ie, that we do not have one wikipedia saying
donations are used for hardware, while another says
that donations are used to purchase domain names, and
a third that it is for print editions.
When I set the french page, I strictly translated the
information you gave by email. It is here
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ADonations#Objectifs_d'utilisation_%C3%A0_court_terme
Perhaps we need a central template for this; because
this is external information, one that is a display of
our professionalism and seriousness and reliability.
It is best that we show consistent information on all
wikipedias.
------
imho.
Sorry for having been upset this morning, but I am a
bit disappointed that we can't succeed to improve our
communication all together :-( I think this is
important. But right, I know, we are all volunteers
and we just try to do our best :-) Sorry for my bad mood.
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Toby Bartels wrote:
>Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>
>>Then (realizing YANAL) is there any risk in waiting until someone truly
>>pushes the issue to register?
>>
>>
>I don't believe that waiting weakens our claim, so long as it's true in fact
>that the name "Wikipedia" is associated with us and that we defend this.
>I mean that we would have to prove these facts regardless of whether we wait.
>
One potential risk in waiting is that we could be denied registration
because somebody else had already registered the trademark themselves.
The US Patent & Trademark Office generally will only check that there
are no conflicting registered marks. They will not investigate to make
sure that nobody else is using the mark. Instead, they provide "notice"
to the public by publishing applications, and if someone raises
legitimate objections, then the mark is not registered.
This may not be all that likely, but the possibility should at least be
considered. Hopefully anyone using the term "Wikipedia" in a way that
would conflict with our trademark will come to our attention pretty
quickly. And they would almost certainly not be using the term in good
faith. But if somebody did manage to register "Wikipedia" ahead of us,
while the registration might eventually be overturned, it would take a
lot more effort, including almost certainly a lawsuit.
And yes, I have checked for wiki-related trademarks. There are actually
several, mostly around the term "wiki wiki". Nothing I could find
conflicts with anything we could claim right now. The only
computer-related filing was "Wikipad" for software, and that seems to
have been abandoned without becoming registered.
--Michael Snow
I have created a more detailed proposal on the Wikimedia Commons (shared
media wiki):
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Commons
I have added a mock-up of a redesigned upload form which addresses the
copyright issue, IMHO in a smarter way than the simple multiline upload
form that is currently active on test.wikipedia.org.
The page also includes an implementation strategy for single sign-on. If
we implement the commons, that would also be the logical time to implement
SSO, as the requirements are related and the Commons would obviously
benefit from it.
I hope we can move forward with this, but I need volunteers:
* people who are willing to help with the implementation
* people who improve the proposal and related documents
* people who spread the word about this proposal and get other people
involved.
If you think you can do any of this, or anything else, please add your
name in the "Who wants to help?" section. If I have to do it alone I'll do
it, but in that case I won't do single sign-on and most of the advanced
stuff that is discussed on the page.
If we do this together, I suggest adding the relevant changes to the
MediaWiki roadmap for 1.4.
Regards,
Erik