There's a private site using the Wikinews logo here:
http://wnn.fm8x.net/index.php/Main_Page
I understand that permission was "sought" in some way
from the board for this. I'd really like that
clarified, if possible.
Personally, I object strongly to the site using the
Wikinews logo. As you can see, the logo is rendered
very weirdly and the rest of the site is broken. With
the Wikinews "brand" gaining some measure of respect
at the moment I don't like seeing us being
"associated" with rubbish like this.
Dan
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Dear all,
Danny just published final results of Wikimedia Foundation board, so it finally close them...
So... first, I would like to thank all those who gave me their trust and hope I will not disappoint them :-)
Second, I'd like to thank our election officials plus Tim, who certainly spent a good deal of time organising all this and did it very well.
I think this year elections were fair to all languages, both for candidates and voters, and I am real glad of this. I hope candidates and editors will agree with me, if not, please add comments on the election meta pages, for any suggestions to improve next elections.
A few more words about the elections themselves.
I wish it had more been an opportunity to discuss big directions, but I guess this can be done any time; I dearly hope that Wikimania, in 2 weeks now, will offer one of these opportunities.
I am happily surprised to see participation is significantly higher than next year (about twice of last year figures)... but I am also a bit perplex that some projects show less participation than their size would have led us to expect. I do not really need to give figures, it is enough to look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_results_2005/statistics. It would be interesting to confront these values to the number of very active participants each time... but even without doing so, some participation rates, such as the japanese one are obviously very low. According to Britty, this might have deep cultural roots. Possibly.
Or languages such as it:, which already has a local chapter, could be thought to have more awareness than other languages to Foundation issues. Or possibly not.
I have been wondering if that matters.
On one hand, I wish that more people feel involved, feel they have a right to be informed, would like to give a hand... feel implicated.
But on the other hand, I suppose most people are perfectly happy not giving too many thoughts on the matter, and do what is most important, create free content, and do not feel concerned *as long as everything is working*.
Still, I think I will work on a small and very readable FAQ, to clarify what the foundation is about. From discussions here and there, I feel there is great confusion about what it is and great confusion about the differences and relationships between Foundation and local chapters. I hope some people will help me on that FAQ :-)
My next point will be about evolution.
Three huge differences between this year and a year ago are
* We are much bigger (which means more requests, more legal issues to deal with, more financial needs but also more offers of collaboration, more projects and more editors to take care of)
* Jimmy is much more busy outside than he was a year ago. It must be very tiring (and very exciting) for him, but it also means more delays to deal with some issues (in particular paperwork...)
* Angela and I had a lot to discover last year and I think we have found our place better this year.
I think we can try to deal with growth by several means, such as more organisation, dividing work much more between us and delegating much more. We already started, I am confident it will improve, with the officers and possibly with the wikicouncil (which I hope we can discuss at Wikimania). The main point I fear right now is related to communication. Within the board, with officers, with editors. I hope that anyone will feel free to make suggestions so that we can improve all this. Right now, we frequently observe information was not passed along, or was passed with so many intermediaries it was unfortunately distorted. Thus resulting in misunderstandings, upsets and just plain mistakes. Please help us find solutions if you want us to keep happy and efficient :-)
Yet another point. Most of the board or officers (or semi-officers, because some people just spend most of their time on Foundation issues, even if they have no title, let's not forget this), do work which is not visible. And these might be the most precious people.
Just as the communities on each projects, the Foundation community has its own rules, its own very friendly relationships and its own inimities (which might not be english... right, I mean some people just do not get along well). It is a small community but it has a separate existence (and boy, is it a lively group !).
Please do not confuse it with a set of people of different languages living near one another. These people constitute a group on its own, and as in many groups, there are those who do most of the silent work and those who make a lot of noise but little work and get all the cheers. Please try to see beneath the appareances so as to make it possible for the group to work in harmony.
Last point.
Given all the pressure around Wikimania, it is unlikely much will seem to be done on the Foundation side in the next few weeks. But if you come to Frankfurt, let us take the opportunity to talk all together.
All other issues will probably be in sleep till september. On the agenda are issues such as a fundraising (probably necessary soon), a policy on logo use, fixing the bylaws, trademarks, big update on the sponsors, new servers, starting a new Quarto etc...
We would also like to have several and frequent open board meetings to start the year. Please do not hesitate to suggest topics of discussion you think are necessary.
Greetings
Ant
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As previously announced, a Japanese language edition of Wikinews has now
been set up:
http://ja.wikinews.org/
I have announced this on the Japanese Chatsubo and will ask the editors
of the site to help with spreading the word further.
Good luck to this new member of the Wikimedia project family.
Best,
Erik
Today in my news paper "Het Nieuwsblad" on page 8.
"Oxford wil de wereld redden"
/Oxford wants to save the world/
subtitel;
"Geniale denkers brainstormen over lot van de wereld"
/Brilliant thinkers brainstorm over fate of the world/
It is about TED-Global. It is an highly exclusive conference for the most most
brilliant thinkers alive to think about the future.
There will be 45 persons present. From those 45 there are 6 persons selected in
the newspaper whit there picture and some info about what for people the are.
One of those is .... Jimmy Wales!
Whit the label "De allesweter" /the knowitall/
occupation: "internetspecialist uit Alabama" /internet specialist from Alabama/
Goal; "Iedereen moet gratis toegang tot kennis hebben" /Everybody must have
free access to knowledge/
http://www.ted.com/conference/flashpage.cfm?conferenceKey=TG2005
There have been some great efforts to discuss and specify what a
single-login implementatoin will look like in recent months. However,
the major disagreements form the last bout of specifications -- how to
deal with name conflicts -- have not yet been addressed.
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Single_login_specifications
and the article page itself for some of the current discussion.
The current proposal suggests that "the user under a given name with
the highest edit-count" will "Win" that name, and all other users with
that name will have a fixed period of time to find a new username.
The idea of arbitrarily forcing one user to change names seems bad and
anti-consensus to me -- if two active users have the same name, I
think they should work out something among themselves -- or be allowed
to forego the privileges of unified login. And the idea of using edit
counts to determine "winners" is particularly unappealing to me (how
about seniority? usefulness of edits? current activity?).
Please check out the current specification and comment. There will be
a lot of detailed discussion about this implementatoin at Wikimania in
August.
--
++SJ
Dear all,
I find myself in a rather similar situation than 4
months ago, though my hopes are that it will end up
well this time.
I had today a first ultrasound exam and it definitly
showed I hosted something alive (heartbeat being
proof), which has made it through the embronic stage
to be now called a foetus and seems to be fine. So,
though still a bit worried as I lost the last one just
at this stage, I am optimistic tonight.
Current consequences are basically the same than
last time. I have been quite tired in the past 2
months, actually pretty sick (still is) with much
nausea and frequent low blood pressure. This is why I
tried to spend more time sleeping that editing through
the night. And avoided any travel.
Another consequence is that tiredness and sickness
have impact on my mood and I noticed I had a very
low tolerance to comments I generally considered non
appropriate (in non politically correct language, low
tolerance to bullshit and jerks). I apology for this
and frequent short temper, mixed with drowsiness and
slow reactions :-)
And yes, of course, I'll come to Wikimania :-) I just
won't be able to share a beer.
ant
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Congratulations!
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--- On Fri 07/08, Anthere < anthere9(a)yahoo.com > wrote:
From: Anthere [mailto: anthere9(a)yahoo.com]
To: foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
Cc: wikifr-l(a)wikimedia.org
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 14:30:50 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Foundation-l] Personal info
Dear all,br><br>I had today a first ultrasound exam and it definitly<br>showed I hosted something alive (heartbeat being<br>proof), which has made it through the embronic stage<br>to be now called a foetus and seems to be fine. <br> <br>
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Bjarte Sørensen wrote:
>On that note, I would like to announce that the four Scandinavian
>language Wikipedias (sv, no/nb, da, and nn) combined have 150,000
>articles as of early July 2005, all of which are more or less
>intelligible for all who know one of the languages. The biggest
>contributor to this number is of course the Swedish Wikipedia
>currently with >86,000 articles, followed by Norwegian (bokmål) which
>are about to cross the 30,000 mark, Danish with >26,000 and the
>11-month old Norwegian (nynorsk) Wikipedia with >8,800 articles.
>
>
It would be interesting to know the number of unique articles across the
Scandinavian languages as a group. Presumably this could be calculated
based on interlanguage links.
--Michael Snow