I have joined this mailing list in accordance with the recommended
procedure of proposing a new wikimedia foundation project. I have
proposed a collective of user-editable lists, known as wikilists. You
can see my project page at the meta here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilists
Thank you, I look forward to assisting the media wiki foundation as I can
Dear all,
The Wikimentary project, which started as the kernel of an idea at
Wikimania when the Globalvision documentary team was moved to see what
the community would do with their raw footage, is taking off. Rory
O'Connor at Globalvision has really been pushing to make this happen;
through some heroic efforts on his part we now have low-res copies of
all 25 tapes they shot, a high-res copy of one tape (#8), and a 'rough
cut' he edited together that PBS will be airing in January -- all
available via archive.org at the moment.
You can see a guest blog-post about this on the Frontline/World blog here :
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2005/11/its_a_wiki_wiki.html
The rough cut (be the first to write a review ;-):
http://www.archive.org/details/WIKIMANIA-ROUGH_CUT.mov
Transcripts:
http://www.archive.org/details/WIKIMANIA_TRANSCRIPTS
NEXT STEPS:
If you'd like to take part in the project, or work on your own short
wikimentary using this content, you can help in a few ways.
1. Download the transcripts (all of which are rough, have some
mistakes, and are currently Word files) and one of the low-res
'screener' files; listen to the screener while editing the transcript.
Upload the fixed transcript, as something other than a Word file, to
Wikisource :-)
2. Help others learn how to edit their own video. Add ot the
[[m:Video]] guide on meta; learn more about various editing platforms
(iMovie might work well as an interim step), help set up a
qt/wmv/other --> theora conversion tool (if there isn't already a good
service online). Some existing editing guides:
http://current.tv/studio/survivalguide/ (for tv-quality video production)
3. Update [[m:Wikimentary]] with notes and links. Discuss the
project on [[m:Talk:Wikimentary]].
4. Edit your own video from the raw footage! Right now only Tape #8
is available via archive.org in high-res, but for a test project you
could edit something together from the screeners.
More to come. Andy Carvin, a notorious podcaster and vlogger, is
interested in helping teach people to start editing their own video;
he's worked on a related project recently with some elementary shool
students in Atlantic City. And the resulting video is adorably
amazing:
http://www.starw.org/acrc/2005/11/witches-aliens-and-school-board.html
Rory's latest update is included below.
++SJ
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rory O'Connor <Roc(a)globalvision.org>
Date: Nov 16, 2005 11:45 PM
Subject: Re: Wikimentary latest
All,
I'm pleased to announce that files containing the following are all now
accessible at the URL below:
1. 'screeners' of all media shot by Globalvision at WikiMania;
2. transcripts in MS word of all screeners
3. a 'screener 'of the rough cut;
4. An 'editable' larger file of the rough cut;
5. a MS word file of the script for the rough cut
6. One 'editable' large file of one tape (008) of the media shot by
Globalvision in Frankfurt.
To see and download any or all, go to:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=wikimedia
EXPLANATORY NOTE: What we are calling 'screeners' are smaller, lower quality
files suitable for downloading and meant to be looked at in conjunction with
the word files of the matching transcription. In other words, 'screener 008'
is the low quality media version of the eighth tape we shot. It should be
matched by a MSW file of the transcription of tape 008. When looked at in
conjunction, one should be ready to them correct the extant transcription
and wiki-ize it to make it a perfect match.
In most cases the current transcripts are close--but few if any are perfect.
So there is initial work to be done just looking at the tapes and fixing the
transcripts.
One can also download the 'screener' of my rough cut, which should match
perfectly with the MSW script file of same. If it doesn't, please amend it.
The 'editable' file of the rough cut is also available for anyone who wants
to begin tearing it apart and improving it.
We continue to upload the larger 'editable' files of the other media as
well, and are working out several kinks and issues associated with that.
Thus far, only tape 008 is available in this form.
Also, for video newbies, here's a link to a fairly comprehensive video
production primer available online -- the VC2 Survival Guide -- courtesy of
Current.tv:
http://current.tv/studio/survivalguide/
Finally, if you haven't seen it yet, here's the URL for the 'Dispatch' I
recently posted about WikiMania and the wikimentary project at the web site
of the PBS program 'Frontline World"
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2005/11/its_a_wiki_wiki.html
I still need to see and sign and maybe post some sort of license for all the
above; a wiki to discuss if not work on this would be a good idea, if anyone
is so moved; and it might be nice if there were a mechanism to let everyone
who attended the conference to know about all this, no?
Hope to hear from some of you soon...
-Rory
On 11/5/05 4:50 PM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
> SJ wrote:
>> An easy way to get people involved is to have them finish up the
>> missing transcriptions; once we have the files in a suitable place
>> online.
>
> This is a very fine idea. I can help with this. In my previous email,
> I said that I don't know how to edit video, and that still holds true.
> I suppose I do know how to make or correct a transcript. I just
> download a video clip, I watch it, and while I'm watching it I type or
> else I edit/correct what someone else has typed.
>
>> Absolutely ! For the purposes of transcription, which seems the
>> fastest way to get people collaborating on the content, it would be
>> great to have audio streams separate from the video. Is there a
>> simple way to do this at the source? That content, at least, could be
>> uploaded to Wikimedia servers and played with immediately.
>
> Yes, absolutely. Getting the audio up somewhere quickly would be
> totally fine. :-)
>
--
++SJ
While I was cleaning up the feedback page for the Wikimedia site, I
isolated issues which are not directly bug fix up or translations
issues, but rather suggestions from various editors about fundraising.
I put these suggestions here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_idea_box
I thought that since we'll have a fundraiser soon, it might be the right
moment to suggest people to put there their ideas... or any suggestions
born from the last fundraiser.
Please do.
Ant
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Year: 2005 Week:46 Special edition
***************************************
An internal news bulletin for the
members of the Wikimedia community.
///////////////////////////////////////
== Announcement of Wikizine ==
I am pleased to announce the creation of Wikizine. A new internal news
bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community.
Wikizine is an weekly publication that will list the news of the Wikimedia
projects of the previous week. It will not be like Quatro that has full
articles. That is not the concept. The ideal Wikizine is short. Every news
listing contains of an one line summary and an url to some place where you
can find more information.
To subscribe go to;
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/announce-l
== Why ==
I, [[w:nl:gebruiker:Walter]], have found for many years that Wikipedia,
now Wikimedia, has a very serious internall communication problem. There
is to much information and it is highly fragmented between many wiki
pages, mailing lists and other places. Even if you try to read everything
you do not know all wikimedia news.
I have done proposals in the past to attempt to counter this problem but
nothing came from that. Also other attempts like "going-ons" and "Quatro"
do not seem to be a great success.
So I have decided to try to do it myself. Wikizine is an attempt in that
direction. Of it will be an success will be depend for an large part of
the readers and the feedback. I will try to discover all the news that
there is about Wikimedia and report the most relevant news of in Wikizine.
But I will fail to discover all the news. Wikizine needs to receive
reports of things that are going on somewhere in a strange, far away wiki.
Especially from the projects and languages from who you never hear.
== Who should read Wikizine? ==
Everybody who likes to do so may read it off course. But the target
audience is definitely; stewards, ambassadors, bureaucrats and sysops,
members of the board of one of the wikimedia foundations.
It is for the people who are doing the Wiki-management. The focus will be
on the technical aspect. News about changes in the way the wikisotware
works, new functions. Things that are broken. Other Wikimedia news will
also be included but the focus is technical news that has an impact for
the users and readers of the wiki.
The idea and hope is that some of those readers will report back
interesting news from there project and translate/communicate the news in
Wikizine to there own community.
Wikizine is distributed by the mailinglist Announce-l. This list is only
for the postings of Wikizine, not for discussion. So it is very low
traffic. Normally once a week.
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/announce-l
Please inform your local community about Wikizine and report news to
Wikizine.
wikizine(a)wikipedia.be
///////////////////////////////////////
Editor: [[w:nl:gebruiker:Walter]]
///////////////////////////////////////
Disclaimer: this message is not an
official publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine makes no guarantee of validity.
I've recently been in a discussion on the Wikisource website and I
would like some definitive answers about the licence that the text of
Wikisource is under and also about the policy with respect to fair use
on Wikisource. I've posted this question here as there is no dedicated
Wikisource mailing list that I can find.
The copyright issue has come up over the text of UN resolutions, many
of which are on the Wikisource website, and also with the British Act
of Parliament the Hunting Act 2004. The former are placed on the site
under "fair use" despite the fact that the copyright info page of
Wikisource says that fair use should not be resorted to for texts
except in exceptional circumstances, and then only for quotes. There
are hundreds of resolutions placed on the site, and the UN certainly
claims copyright over its works if their website copyright notice is
anything to go by. The British Act of Parliament is under Crown
copyright as it was passed in 2004. There is a waiver on copyright of
British statutes allowing them to be reproduced pretty freely, but it
does have conditions that are incompatible with the GFDL. On
Wikisource the rather dubious claim is also made that foreign statutes
and court decisions are not subject to copyright at all in the United
States. I agree with them that statute law in the US means federal
government works are not under copyright and that case law probably
means local and state government laws and decisions are not under
copyright, but that does not extend to foreign laws.
Given the above I have two main questions:
1. Is Wikisource subject to the same text licensing rules as
Wikipedia, ie GFDL, public domain or GFDL-compatible text?
2. What is the position on fair use at Wikisource?
David Newton
In a message dated 11/13/2005 10:13:39 PM Eastern Standard Time,
robert_horning(a)netzero.net writes:
That such proposals seemingly never get approval is a reason
why nobody wants to throw an idea into that dustpile of ideas and
instead try to sneak the projects through a back door like Wikijunior
has done.
Excuse me, but Wikijunior was never snuck through a back door. In fact, it
is probably one of the most relevant projects to Wikibooks in that it is
developing age-appropriate educational material. As I recall, that was the
objective of Wikibooks. Looking at it, it seems to have developed quite nicely.
Danny
Milos Rancic wrote:
> I see only two solutions: (1) To find enough
> linguists/anthropologists/sociologists who would check all exotic
> requests and articles or (2) not to be the formal part of the
> organization (this means as it is written "not formal part", this
> doesn't mean that we would stop to work on Wikimedian projects or
> that we don't want to have any relation with other local chapters and
> WMF).
On 1 september I sent the following email to the board:
[...]
| In the last open board meeting there was a discussion about having a
| seed wiki and a committee deciding policies for it.
| So, here a proposal how to deal with new language requests (not new
| projects)
| * community elects a committee of seven people on meta-wiki (one-year
term)
| * requests for new languages will be submitted to the committee on
meta-wiki
| * committee will create a catalogue of criterias over time
| * they examine the case (check if language or dialect, spread of
| language, number of the people willing to work on it, consult
| experts)
| * they decide, three sorts of decisions are possible: accept, reject
in general (because no real language etc.), reject in
| this case (not enough support) but can be later again proposed if
| conditions have changed
| * have a developer create the wiki if approved
|
| This way, we can maybe get rid of these pending requests:
| http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
[...]
| If the committee does its job well, it could later also get the
| competence to filter new project proposals.
| Add your suggestions and criticisms and say yes or no.
|
| I'd be willing to help with the election but I don't have the time
| for an extensive community debate and slow process on the
| mailinglists and wikis with no decision at all after months.
In the three answers I got, I was refered back to the community and told
that the problem will eventuall sort out by creation of the seed wiki.
Now I see that the situation hasn't become better but even worse.
> In other words: If Wikimedian community can't defend herself from
> people such as Mark, we don't want to be the formal part of it.
As officer of the Wikimedia Foundation I can't welcome your decision and
would question your competence to speak for the whole of the not yet
existing serbian Wikimedia chapter.
As wikipedian who dedicated myself to the creation of a high quality
free encyclopedia in as many languages as are _needed_ to make human
knowledge accessible to everybody, I can very well understand your feelings.
What shall I tell a journalist who asks the press officer about the
zlatiborian language wikipedia? "Eh yes, it's ridiculous, but you see, a
few people who don't even speak this city dialect pressured the
community into it. Cantonese? Oh yes, the same thing happened.
Wikiversity? Ah well, sorry, we're still looking for a concept. There's
rubbish on wikibooks like the "How to get a girl manual"? See, people
are working on the encyclopedia, there are not enough people to look
into the other projects and control them for quality. You found a
copyvio on suaheli wikiquote? Sorry, I don't speak suaheli - and the
three suaheli speakers in Wikimedia are busy with the encyclopedia. Why
are there so many corn field related news on german Wikinews while XY
isn't treated? Oh well, now this is a funny story...
Wikimedia has accomplished great things: An encyclopedia, written by
common people and volunteers, slowly getting better and better, to the
point of being a serious alternative to classical encyclopedias. There
are its established sister projects, slowly evolving and becoming useful
(btw, the category:philosophy on commons is a mess).
But to maintain and improve this standard of quality requires constant
work and attention. New contributors have to be welcomed and taught the
"way of the wiki", policy proposals which would result in deteriorating
the quality have to be turned down, conflicts between good authors have
to be mediated and last but not least over 3 million articles in over
150 languages need to be checked for vandalism and are waiting to be
improved and still a lot more are waiting to be written.
I came here in August 2002 to help creating a free encyclopedia. Later I
became involved in "meta" affairs - organizing wikipedia booths at
conferences, designing promotion material, joining global policy
discussions, coordinating cooperations with organisations and companies,
dealing with press requests, organizing Wikimania.
If someone wondered lately why there's almost no elian anymore around in
Wikimedia affairs, that's why.
I went back to the real thing, the encyclopedia in my language - which
is nor Bavarian, neither Münchnerisch although I am from this region and
city but german, a language almost everybody in Germany speaks and is
able to understand (except he's maybe turkish or serbian or arabic).
There's still a lot of work to do even if some newspapers rate us
already as better than brockhaus.
Tell me when you've stopped discussing and voting on genial new projects
and obscure dialects, when you've kicked the language fanatics from the
mailing lists, when you've closed the unwatched spam traps, when you've
settled on a checkuser and logo policy, when someone has had the guts to
introduce single login instead of just talking about it and when you are
serious about this human knowledge thing.
good bye,
elian
Wikijunior has only been registered in case all this squabbling ends, and a
static version of the Wikijunior line of Wikibooks can be posted at this
domain.
Had everybody waited around, Wikijunior's recognition as a name would have
increased, and commercial entities would have likely registered it and held
it hostage.
Simply put, your interpretation of it being bypassing standard procedures is
silly. Danny's original proposal to the Beck Foundation stated Wikijunior as
an encyclopedia, whose best articles would be published as "an extensive
series of topical pamphlets". Along the way, it got skewed a bit, away from
a kids Wikipedia that publishes books, into a Wikibooks project. Never has
it intended to be something radically different, inbetween the two.
Nick Moreau
"Zanimum"
On 11/14/05, foundation-l-request(a)wikimedia.org <
foundation-l-request(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> There is all this talk about how useful Wikijunior is. There is a domain
> for http://wikijunior.org (try it if you don't believe me).
A summary of the 13th November meeting in Zurich (main topic: discussion of
foundation of Wikimedia CH) may be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CH/Meeting_Zurich_13_November_2005…
in English, German and Alemannic.
Regards
Michael
--
An eternity is very, very long, especially towards the end
On 11/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
> As long as Wikijunior was only for producing age-appropriate textbooks
> for children it was probably fine in Wikibooks. Something, however,
> which specifically seeks the participation of children is something
> else. I think that the participation level may be easy to attain. A
> far more worrisome problem would be what kind of people are involved.
> If parents start to see it as a haven for predators the damage could be
> severe. Security standards need to be much higher than in the other
> projects.
>
> Ec
I thought that was the original idea of Wikijunior (creating
age-appropriate
books/encyclopedias/wikireaders/whateveryouwanttocallthem). That
said, now that I hear from Jimbo that Wikibooks is supposed to be only
for textbooks, and not any type of book, maybe junior.wikipedia.org
would have been a better place from the get-go.
Anyway, apparently that isn't the case any more. I haven't really followed.