Wikimedia-l August 2005

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

75 participants
81 discussions

[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikinews-l] Licensure straw poll
by Angela 01 Sep '05

01 Sep '05

I'm forwarding this to Wikipedia and Foundation-l since the poll could potentially make Wikinews incompatible with Wikipedia or any of our other projects. Currently, content from Wikinews can be used in Wikipedia (though not the other way around). CC-BY-SA is not compatible with the GNU FDL, so this would not longer be the case. Earlier polls and discussion are at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License_straw_poll and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License Angela. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Amgine <amgine(a)saewyc.net> Date: Aug 30, 2005 11:57 PM Subject: [Wikinews-l] Licensure straw poll To: Wikinews mailing list <wikinews-l(a)wikimedia.org> A poll is being held at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Licensure_Poll on whether or not to adopt the CC-by-sa 2.5 licensure for the Wikinews project. This licensure allows any use of the articles so long as attribution credit is given to the Wikinews project and any derivations or further developments are released under an identical licensure. The poll was suggested by jwales, and is short so the board may have an idea of how the community feels in time for their next meeting. Please visit the poll and vote; comment on the discussion page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikinews/Licensure_Poll). Amgine ___________

5 7

[Foundation-l] what is a board meeting ?
by Anthere 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_agenda#Organisation_of_meetings __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

1 0

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant brainstorming - a game with rules.
by James D. Forrester 30 Aug '05

30 Aug '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Delphine Ménard wrote: [Snip] > You will find below a grid of what we think needs to be included in a > five year plan for the Wikimedia Foundation. You may fill all parts, > or just some, as suits you. You may also give details on how to get > there, or not. You're free to say anything that goes through your > head. Your ideas should go on this list. [Snip] > *Board and management I imagine that by this time we will probably have a steering committee of some sorts as well as an executive committee, splitting the functions of the Board somewhat - the former is more what normally constitutes a "board", whereas the latter is normally accomplished by the executive officers who we now have begun to (ever-so-slightly) separate from the Board. The role of President is a semi-steering, semi-executive figure-head one, one which I feel Jimbo would like to fill, and would be involved in both the Board and the Executive Committee (for want of better terms), but would not be the lead in either. The Chair should be a separate, neutral figure (along the lines of European Chairs who are there almost as secretaries, guiding the discussions along and being in charge of their votes). As for membership, as well as the Chair and President (neither of whom would normally 'vote' per se), the Board should have three members directly elected by the general editor population, and a further three appointed there by the chapters collectively. It would have (at least) one paid secretary. > *Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not) The top level of staff would form the Executive Committee - as well as the President, there would be: * Executive Officer, The EO would work on general management and co-ordination, as well as major partnerships and co-operation (e.g. with the UN). Under the EO would be a few secretaries to just keep up with all the work they will have. * Finance Officer, The FO would be responsible for managing all aspects of the finances, both raising and expending. Under the FO would be the Grants Officer, the Fundraising Officer, and one (or more) professional accountants. * Internal Communications Officer, The ICO would be responsible for internal communications, making sure that the top and bottom of organisation all knew what the others were doing, including a massive continuous translation service. * External Communications Officer, The ECO would be responsible for external communications - press relations as well as public relations generally. * Legal Counsel The LC would deal with legal problems (which we will no doubt have lots of, opportunistic suits, etc. :-(), and would advise the ExCom and the Board. The LC would no doubt have a legal team working under them, possibly an externally contracted-in company like Delphine has suggested. * Operations Officer, The OO would be responsible for operations, including development. Under the OO would work the Development Officer and the Hardware Officer. * Chapter Officer The CO would co-ordinate with the local chapters. Not sure what this will involve just yet, so I don't know what more to say. * Research Co-ordination Officer The RCO would be responsible for helping research, by both internal and external parties, and would work in close partnership with the Operations Officer to effect this (for matters of development research, for example). Possibly would work under the OO instead of along-side, indeed. * Lobbying Officer The LO would help the Foundation lobby for freedom of information and press (e.g. against still-further extended copyright laws, or in favour of press freedom, etc.) > *Budget No idea. Quite possibly vast; a few million Euros a year, certainly. > *Fundraising scheme Twice-annually there would be a fundraising effort for personal donations, but a large amount of the funding would come from large philanthropic and governmental organisations. > *Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed The EO would work with outside agencies (printers, etc.) and distribution organisations to help accomplish our goals with giving the world all the information we can. > *Projects Hopefully Wikipedia will be recognised as a sub-project of Wikibooks. ;-) More seriously: maturing of the projects, especially Wikibooks if helped along by environmental improvements, into a much more "natural" project. I don't really see that there would be much scope for further front-end projects. On the back-end, however, I can foresee a great effort in data-driven projects - a Wikidata-based repository of direct facts that can be then woven into each of the front-end projects in a "live" way - as well as consolidation of our two rather disparate media efforts into one. > *Content objectives Not sure. We should see where the community takes us, really, and support that, rather than trying to push people towards something specific. Having said that, of course, a Wikipedia 1.0 would be very nice ("sifter"-based, naturally - leverage the power of the community, which is what makes us great, into the venture). > *Software objectives Broadening of MediaWiki into being not "merely" the best possible article wiki we could have, but also a data- and media- repository and sharing facility. > *Relationship between chapters and parent organisation The chapters would be involved in purely local matters, of course, but most of their efforts would be devoted to working on international projects organised and led by the Foundation. My view is of quite a centralised system, like the ICRCRC has. > *Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.) I imagine UNESCO will want to work slowly with us. Certainly, funding would be nice (absolute editorial independence would of course be a cast-iron requirement before any relations were entered into). Others include the EU and the Commonwealth, and I'm sure there are many more international and internationalist pro-education groups out there which would love to give us money, if only we could get to them. - ---- This is all probably both horribly naïve and unreachable goals, and tremendously unpopular with the rest of you. Ah well. :-) Yours sincerely, - -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james(a)jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester(a)hotmail.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDFJ1Ykn3kUxZyJx0RAiDaAJ9y6yFMUq2x3rbnJfapY51voP39rACfUT6O aXmR0ZRfmAMxMhHrmbmzC9A= =rzCi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

2 1

[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant brainstorming - a game with rules
by epzachte＠chello.nl 30 Aug '05

30 Aug '05

Anthere wrote: I am repeating myself "but no-one is allowed to criticize/comment on other people's 5-year plan on this list." I think I play by the rules by commenting on my own mail: Rereading it the next day I still can't find a deeper meaning. Honestly. Come to think of it, it is not really a plan anyway, so feel free to comment. ;-) Erik Zachte

1 0

[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant brainstorming - a game with rules
by Fruggo 30 Aug '05

30 Aug '05

Some thoughts: * Board and management Board consists of a president (Jimmy Wales, hard to imagine otherwise), a representative of the chapters, and 2 or 3 representatives for the volunteers. All non-paid. The board is supported by two (paid) secretaries (handling correspondence, phone, communication of board meetings etc to the community) * Staff The board members coördinate the chief officers. The chief officers are the head of their department (mostly local officers, for development and financial there is no need for locals). All non-paid (except for the members of the financial department - not the chief). Local members can be chapter representatives, but that is not necessary. Press: Contact for the press, coördination of press releases Grants: Coördination of grants and fundraising Legal: Go into action agains people who don't respect our license, taking care of legal claims against us, advising chapters and projects PR: Coördination of promotion of WMF in general (for example newsletters), and specific activities (for example the reaching of certain milestones, Wikimania, local congresses). Maybe also the organisation of Wikimania (with an ad hoc committee). Development: Taking care of software development Financial: Bookkeeping, budgetting Other departments??? *Fundraising scheme: More structural grants from (for example) United Nations and the European Union. * Chapters: The chapters in Europe have evolved into departments of the European Chapter. -Fruggo

1 0

[Foundation-l] Languages and Communities
by Sabine Cretella 30 Aug '05

30 Aug '05

I think there are still many questions open and that's why I write this mail also to the lists and do not only add it to the page on meta: **************** Languages and Communities Now I read a consideration about languages and communities in Ultimate Wiktionary that states that people who cannot speak English can't be part of the community. My answer to that is: no, that's not true and I will explain why below. Then there is that other statement that it is better to have separate language communities so that they can speak in their own language and everyone can participate. And of course that the aim is to have a lot of international co-operation in cross-languages and being more practical this is normally English. Well: this would be desirable, but it is not happening within the Wiktionary projects – most wiktionaries really don't know what the others do and besides very few ones there's not even much information coming through the wiktionary-l. Well, let's se how communication and communities work within UW. There will be beer parlours for every language people want to have one in. There will be people who care about communication issues (mainly Sysops I suppose, but also other people). Now there are those local communities talking about everyday issues and then a very important theme comes along and it is really important to have it in all the other beer parlours as well. So writing for example only in Italian what does this person do? He/she writes a message and below the title there's the message "please distribute to the other beer parlours". Normally people caring about communications read all in "their beer parlour" and so the one who knows both languages takes the message and transfers it for example to the English beer parlour and adds a link to the English message (really this can be done with the help of a template) and this way also all the others will know about this. Now what is different to the actual projects: these communications simply do not exist (or hardly do exist) – it is not an automatic procedure that can involve all the Wiktionary communities, but only for those who by chance read this/that post. Like in all huge networks also in Wiktionary we will have local groups and I suppose that there will be also groups that for example focus on certain themes (like etymology, pronunciation and soundfiles, pictures or whatever). And there will very likely the "translator-beer parlours" since they use UW for work, they have other requirements than most users – there will be discussions on terminology, on which term suits best in which context etc. just like it now happens in so many mailing lists. Many of these people are not too computer literate and so they will come over step by step and they will need quite a lot of more technical information. Of course anyone can contribute to any community in whatever language he/she likes. So it cannot be said that people who do not speak English cannot have their community – they will have it for sure, as it is the only way to go. English will like so often be a kind of a interface language as I suppose it is hard to find someone who can translate from Italian to Chinese directly or the other way round. So the Chinese beer parlour will receive its news very likely from the English one. For many minor languages where it actually does not make sense to open a whole wiktionary since the language speakers are just a few – maybe only 500 or even less can have their place as well. This is not even an option now – but within UW even this will be possible. Think about all that African languages where probably universities will be the first to co-operate. Well also considering the Logos contents: we can have material in very seldom languages from the very first beginning and so in particular this very small groups of native speakers will have something where they can start to work on, about which they can communicate and discuss – hopefully in their own language. It is much easier to integrate people for new languages if there is already something there where they can work on than having to start from scratch. So that about communities: no fear is needed that there aren't going to be local communities – they will surely be there, because people need it and interlanguage communication will be for sure better. I would even love to see local offline meetings where people that do not actually contribute to the Wikimedia projects are invited. ************ Ciao, Sabine ___________________________________ Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB http://mail.yahoo.it

1 0

[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant brainstorming - a game with rules.
by epzachte＠chello.nl 30 Aug '05

30 Aug '05

Five years from now: Finally animated versions of all board members are available, to read any mediawiki text to you aloud. New gestures coming soon. Whenever you whisper 'wikimedia' your favourite board member pops up, and asks you where you would have liked to go yesterday, if yesterday would have been today (a workaround, so long as a copyright infringement lawsuit is still pending). Out of sheer mockery the animated board member does his/hers best to impersonate a paperclip. A well-known software vendor also experiments with an animated text reader for its very multimediocre encyclopaedia. The character has a short beard, and sometimes stops in the middle of a sentence, turns his eyes towards the future and murmurs "Free Willy". A patch has been announced that changes this to "Free Mandela". Out of even sheerer mockery hackers replace the character with a semi-nude guy carrying a globe on his shoulder with all kinds of funny symbols on it. Erik Zachte

2 1

[Foundation-l] gnnnnaaaa
by Anthere 29 Aug '05

29 Aug '05

>On 8/29/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:>> gnaaaaaaaaa....>> >> I *knew* it :-(((((>errr, it says you're administrator of the list ;-). So let it through.>:P>Delphine Not from my job place. Well, since we are thinking of 5 years in the future, it can wait a couple of hours. But why is my yahoo sending raw mail from my home and html from my job place ? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

1 0

[Foundation-l] Fwd: Your message to foundation-l awaits moderator approval
by Anthere 29 Aug '05

29 Aug '05

gnaaaaaaaaa.... I *knew* it :-((((( foundation-l-bounces(a)wikimedia.org wrote: Subject: Your message to foundation-l awaits moderator approval From: foundation-l-bounces(a)wikimedia.org To: anthere9(a)yahoo.com Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 10:46:34 +0000 Your mail to 'foundation-l' with the subject Re: Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant brainstorming - a game with rules. Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. The reason it is being held: Message body is too big: 48826 bytes with a limit of 40 KB Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel this posting, please visit the following URL: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/confirm/foundation-l/60db2dd24b12bb8a6f81… __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

2 1

[Foundation-l] Macedonian name on English Wikipedia
by Milos Rancic 29 Aug '05

29 Aug '05

Please, look at articles such as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonians , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonian_Slavs , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonian_denar and similar. Greek nationalists, supported by one Bulgarian nationalist (just to say that Bulgarian Wikipedian community is not nationalist) are forcing naming (modern) Macedonians as "Macedonian Slavs". Even (some) people on English Wikipedia think that they can vote about the name of one ethicity/nation. This is a horror. I urge to all of you to stop that (Greek) nationalist orgy there! Wikipedia is not the place for nationalist propaganda.

1 0

← Newer
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Older →

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

Wikimedia-l August 2005