What is the current status of the Chinese Wikinews proposal? I feel quite
strongly about this, and want to see one set up as soon as possible. More
than enough people have expressed interest, why has one not been set up yet?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ce_garcon
Hello everyone -
The fourth quarter fund drive for the Wikimedia Foundation will start on 00:00 UTC Friday 16
December and last until 00:00 UTC Friday 6 January. There is no specific goal for this drive but
we would like to at least cover all next quarter's spending along with the rest of this quarter.
That will require well over $500,000. A draft budget is on meta and will be open for public
comment soon (announcement will be on foundation-l and metas Goings On page).
Wikimedia needs your help to make sure this drive is a success. Some other charities spend up to
80% of donations on fundraising costs. With your continued help our only fundraising costs are
PayPal and bank fees. This means that over 95% of donations made to us go toward running the
foundation and its projects.
Here is what needs to be done:
1) make sure your language's translation of the fund drive documents are completed. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4_planning/Translations
2) get somebody who can edit the foundation wiki to place a copy of your translation there
3) Put your translated fund drive notice on your wiki's [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] page soon after
the drive starts.
Everything else will be taken care of by myself and the Wikimedia team.
Sincerely,
Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO
__________________________________________________
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Hello everyone -
The fourth quarter fund drive for the Wikimedia Foundation will start on 00:00 UTC Friday 16
December and last until 00:00 UTC Friday 6 January. There is no specific goal for this drive but
we would like to at least cover all next quarter's spending along with the rest of this quarter.
That will require well over $500,000. A draft budget is on meta and will be open for public
comment soon (announcement will be on foundation-l and metas Goings On page).
Wikimedia needs your help to make sure this drive is a success. Some other charities spend up to
80% of donations on fundraising costs. With your continued help our only fundraising costs are
PayPal and bank fees. This means that over 95% of donations made to us go toward running the
foundation and its projects.
Here is what needs to be done:
1) make sure your language's translation of the fund drive documents are completed. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4_planning/Translations
2) get somebody who can edit the foundation wiki to place a copy of your translation there
3) Put your translated fund drive notice on your wiki's [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] page soon after
the drive starts.
Everything else will be taken care of by myself and the Wikimedia team.
Sincerely,
Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
Jimbo recently confessed his fantasy on #wikimedia: to set aside January
15th as Wikipedia Day. This would at least involve turning off all new
account creation and anonymous editing, and just spending the day "cleaning
up" in all senses of the phrase. Others suggested setting aside an entire
month for this, or doing it one day out of every month.
So, can we make some form of this fantasy come true?
brian0918
This situation is being addressed on Juriwiki-L for legal reasons.
Thank you for bringing it to the list's attention.
-Brad
Bradford A. Patrick, Esq.
Fowler White Boggs Banker
501 E. Kennedy Blvd.
Suite 1700
Tampa, FL 33602-5239
(813) 228-7411 main
(813) 222-3336 direct
(813) 229-8313 fax
bpatrick(a)fowlerwhite.com
-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces(a)wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces@wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dori
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 6:43 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: [Foundation-l] Trademark violation
Is this a trademark violation? http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/
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hello everybody,
We now have a free encyclopedia. We now have a free library. We now have
free pictures. Now we have to *free the music*
(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Presentation-JW1
) and make it available for everyone. But with the preservation of the
wiki-idea: publishing music with a free license, or publishing music in the
Public Domain.
Let's make a WikiMusic. A Wiki with:
- *both score and text* of a free piece of music
- the *music itself* in a playable music file (in different versions,
for example one version with trumpet, one with a whole orchestra, not MIDI)
- the *sheet music* in a wiki-text format
- *information about* the piece of music.
The WikiMusic has to be *user-friendly* as well. So NO WikiMusic just for
expert musicians, but also for people who are just looking for a nice work
of Beethoven. There has to be a system to *search* in this Wiki in a
user-friendly way, too. Maybe the so-called Parsons
code<http://www.musipedia.org/pcnop.0.html>(
http://www.musipedia.org/pcnop.0.html) can be used?
The WikiMusic wiki has to *allow for growth*. Not just for experts, but
rather also for people with little knowledge of the software.
Lilypond<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_LilyPond>is at the moment
still too difficult, too technical, for this purpose. Maybe
there are possibilities to make it easier to enter scores into a Wiki. Maybe
it is possible to integrate some kind of keyboard (java applet) in the
software, and have the software rewrite it into Lilypond-like formats.
Perhaps a (java) applet to drag and drop the notes into the score can be
developed, so a full score can be reproduced in a Wiki. And that such will
be transcribed into the Lilypond format automatically is our dream.
The Wikimusic has to be *editable*. So not just the creation of new scores
has to be easy, but also their editing. Maybe some way can be found to
change the rather complex format of lilypond into a drag-and-drop idea, so
the sheet can be altered easily. Later the sheet can be transcribed into the
standard format again.
WikiMusic must, last but not least, be *able to survive*. Not only with its
envisioned community, but also with a protection from vandals. It may prove
to be be hard to maintain the usual wiki-way here. Some brainstorming about
this issue needs to be done. How can vandals be checked best, by a mere
possibility of *listening to the differences* perhaps?
You can help with this! Today a proposal is posted on meta (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikimusic_II and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimusic_II), and there are still a lot of
technical issues to be solved. Plese add your comment, and get the project
on it's way. Every bit of help and comment is welcome. I hope to see you
there.
Effeietsanders (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/gebruiker:Effeietsanders
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Effeietsanders
)
Hello everyone,
There has been a bit of discussion recently about Non Profit Foundations
and their organisation. Michael Davis has been discussing a lot in the
past few days with a lawyer we are working with, and amongst various
conclusions, it was recommanded that we try to anticipate the best we
could our growth curve and to get a strong legal framework in place
asap. Which seems to involve good functioning structure... and sticking
a bit more to traditional board governance procedures, with some
evolution in the way we handle agendas, minutes, bylaws, resolution,
board manual, insurance and so on.
We are currently working on all this very much. Each according to its
own ability.
Some of this can only be done by board members proper, other tasks can
also be supported by officers, and some can involve anyone who is
serious and supportive.
Amongst the tasks I will try to take care of in the next few weeks (or
months...) is documentation, such as typically board manual. Michael has
provided us with some documentation (such as
http://www.boardsource.org/FullAnswer.asp?ID=98) and I gathered some
more as well. Most of what is typically required on a board manual, we
already have, but it is dispersed on at least 3 different wikis and
poorly organised. This is unfortunate.
Board governance is not something new and there is no reason for us to
reinvent the wheel. When I looked at some of these pages, I recognised
areas where we have indeed tried to reinvent the wheel... other areas we
have never explored at all, areas where we found our own balance and
areas which are still a mess :-)
I invite you to join and help the way you can if you have such a desire.
Either help to organise the structure of the future document (and more
generally Foundation website), help to gather what already exist, help
write what does *not* exist, help fix poor english, help translate (much
later) some of the pages.
If you are interested, please, let's talk about this on meta or by irc.
I presume this will be very boring for most editors here, so it will
probably rarely be mentionned on the list, but if you wish to help,
please jump in any time.
thanks
Ant
I want to outline my position here, so that there is no misunderstanding, as
there seems to be.
1. I am NOT saying that every fact in Wikipedia must be sourced or removed.
2. I am saying that every fact in Wikipedia should be SOURCEABLE.
3. I am not saying that everyone must give their sources whenever they edit.
4. I am saying that we can encourage people to work on a project to find
sources for each fact, just like we have encouraged people to fix commas or
categorize stubs.
5. I am not saying that people who cannot source should be discouraged from
editing.
6. I am saying that we should encourage people to find sources, for their
own work and for other's work as well.
7. I am saying that there are many different types of sources, and we should
find ways of including them. (BTW, in a previous job I worked extensively
with oral histories, which are a wonderful source of information, even if they
must always be verified).
7. Finally, I am saying that high quality is NOT something we can compromise.
Danny