"If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every
word you post publicly."
german translation:
"Wenn Sie zu den Wikimedia-Projekten beitragen, veröffentlichen Sie
jedes Wort, das sie abschicken, öffentlich."
That's the second sentence of our privacy policy, to be found on
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
and inspires me to loose a few words on how policy writing should be
handled in a multilingual project:
* Decide on the core principles of the policy - the essential rules
* Create a nice, elaborate page in english which you place on the
Foundation wiki as the official policy
* Ask the community to create inofficial translations based on the
essential rules - they may want to phrase a few things differently, some
things may need longer or shorter explanations depending on culture,
country or project. They may translate the english version word by word
but are free to formulate the essential rules in their own words if they
prefer.
* Each translation should have a note on top that in doubt the english
version is the valid one.
In the case of the privacy policy, I decided to act on these principles.
The german privacy policy at
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Datenschutz tries to say the same
as the english one but in own words. Some paragraphs and sentences which
are not part of the core rules were shortened for the sake of clarity
and readability.
If you disagree with this you may want to find community members who
will create a literal translation. My feel for language and style
doesn't allow me to do so.
greetings,
elian
Hi,
the 1st sunrise period for .eu domain registration is going
to begin soon - 7 December 2005
only domain names which are registred EU community/national
trademarks will be registered.
I'm not sure about the status of Wikimedia trademarks, but
guess at least Wikipedia a Wikimedia are suitable. IMO
"we" should apply at least for wikipedia.eu and wikimedia.eu.
Because of trademark issues and eu regulations concernig
who can apply for .eu, I'm affraid it will be a bit
complicated. I hope someone from the foundation can take care
of it.
(If the process is allready going, sorry :-)
Jan Kulveit ([[USEr:Wikimol]])
Just FYI :-)
The German Verein has just received a legal opinion they ordered some
time ago, concerning various legal issues for wikipedia and German law.
It turns out that, according to the legal opinion, German law prohibits
the collection of quotes, or quotes as such, if they are not used in a
context.
That would mean the German wikiquote project's legal status is shaky at
best. (IANAL)
The German PDF with the legal opinion is at [1], and as wiki code at [2].
Magnus
[1] http://www.wikimedia.de/files/Rechtsfragen_Maerz_2005.pdf
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rechtsfragen_M%C3%A4rz_2005
Narrative vs. Selective bias - the analogy
Let's say I'm an author and I'm writing a novel. I choose a style of
storytelling in which the narrator is "neutral", i.e. the narrator does
not make judgments about or criticize the characters or scenarios in the
story. For example, the book will not feature statements like:
And then Eve, with her usual unbearable manner, replied "I think
you're just being ridiculous".
Instead:
And then Eve replied: "I think you're just being ridiculous".
In my book, the narrator is neutral, as the narrator is not involved in
interpreting the story. Therefore it may be correctly stated that the
book is written from a neutral point of view. However, me, the author,
is far from neutral, as I choose to show different aspects of the
characters and scenarios, but not others, that might have shown them in
a different light if I chose otherwise. Thus, me, the author, is
selectively biased.
-
This is a critical distinction between two completely different aspects
of unbiased writing. "Narrative bias" - bias that stems from how the
text is narrated, regardless of what facts are presented i.e. narrating
views. And "Selective bias" - bias that naturally stems from the
selection of facts - selecting views.
The current formulation of the Neutral point of view policy does not
make the above distinction clear, thus leading one to believe that
eliminating narrative bias (judgments about views) will make the article
itself unbiased.
To put it in another way, the policy suggests a journalist is unbiased
in his/her reports, just because they are not making any interpretations
of the facts they (consciously) choose to present.
On 1/30/06, Tim Starling <t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Some committees might benefit from the guidance of qualified outsiders,
> but the committees should still be dominated by volunteers, either
> selected by a transparent and fair process with Board oversight or, as
> Erik suggests, with open membership.
The processes by which committees select their members have not yet
been worked out. Although some committee organisers have devised lists
of potential committee members, details of how members are chosen, or
whether the membership will be open in any way, has been largely
overlooked.
This is something that needs to be considered before the Board hands
down actual authority to these committees since there is the danger we
will turn from having a partially elected and accountable Board making
decisions to decisions being made in a non-transparent process by the
new committees, which was never my intention when I voted for this new
structure.
Therefore, I would like to propose an IRC meeting be held, for all
committee organizers along with all community members who want to take
an interest in the future running of the Foundation. The aim will be
to find ways the committees can remain accountable, legally and
financially, but also accountable to the Board and community. The
meeting is also to discuss how open and transparent various aspects of
those committees can or should be, including their membership,
processes, and actions. I'm aware there are strongly opposing
viewpoints on this area, but I hope that having a planned discussion
will lead to some consensus on how the committees can be best
directed.
The meeting will be on Wednesday February 1 at 21:00 UTC (4pm New
York, see <http://tinyurl.com/dmdjo> for other timezones). The
#wikimedia-meeting channel is accessible on the web via
http://irc.wikicities.com/meeting/ for anyone who can not access IRC
in the normal way.
Angela.
In a message dated 1/29/2006 9:05:46 AM Eastern Standard Time,
t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au writes:
If Wikimedia needs qualified outside help, it's in operations, not
oversight. Only an elected board, accountable to the Wikimedia
community, can ensure that the principles that the community holds dear
are upheld.
Some committees might benefit from the guidance of qualified outsiders,
but the committees should still be dominated by volunteers, either
selected by a transparent and fair process with Board oversight or, as
Erik suggests, with open membership.
Actually, as Wikipedia grows it requires help in oversight no less than it
does in operations. A large organization entails legal and financial
responsibilities. If we are sued, for whatever reason, we cannot simply throw another
server at the person suing us.
As I understand it, serving on the Board or in some other official capacity,
such as officer, includes legal responsibility, including liability. It is
not just the ability to make decisions that comes with a position, but the
willingness to face the consequences. The issue is not who takes credit when
things go right, but rather, who takes the blame when something goes wrong.
This is not an indictment of volunteers. I believe that they are the
lifeblood of this organization. At our size, however, we are faced with enormous
responsibilities. All of these efforts at reorganization are attempts to channel
volunteer efforts effectively, so that they can continue doing what they do
best--fulfilling the Foundation's mission statement by creating and
distributing high quality free content resources--while limiting the repercussions
that the Foundation, and by extension, the volunteers, face when things do not
go right. This is something that requires professional legal and financial
knowhow.
Danny
Thanks for the update Presroi.
I forward it to the foundation list, whose readers may be interested by
the issue as well.
Ant
Mathias Schindler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> today there was a hearing at the Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, Berlin
> (municipal court) about the preliminary injunction against the German
> Verein. The injunction was prohibiting Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. to
> redirect wikipedia.de to the German Wikipedia as long as the full civil
> name of a dead hacker ([[en:Tron (hacker)]]) is shown at de.wikipedia.org.
>
> In the hearing, the judge gave more than just a hint that he does not
> agree with the argument from Tron's parents that telling a (already
> publicly known) civil name is violating the post-mortem
> Persönlichkeitsrecht (right of personality).
>
> The decision, whether the preliminary injunction is withdrawn will be
> announced on thursday at 9 a.m. (CET).
>
> Here are two reports from the court hearing:
>
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/69056 (the author was present at
> the hearing)
>
> http://www.golem.de/0601/43060.html (I am not sure if he was there)
>
>
> There is one question left and I would love to see some research from
> you. Ivo Floricic, the owner of the trademark "Tron" and father of Boris
> Floricic (aka. [[en:Tron (hacker)]] claims that he thinks that he is the
> only one with the name "Floricic" in Germany and these special
> circumstances would somehow violate his rights if wikipedia is
> mentioning the full name of Tron.
>
> Does anyone know any other person by the name of Floricic?
>
> According to Google, there is an artist "Alen Floricic" from Croatia who
> might be notable (if he is notable, it would be nice to consider taking
> the CV from certain sites and write an article about him). There is also
> a professor of linguistics, Franck Floricic from France.
>
> Greetings,
> Mathias
> _______________________________________________
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>
It seems a couple folks took over the abandoned announce-l mailing list a couple
months ago, sending community updates branded as "Wikizine" on it. The domain
name wikizine.org is being used to redirect to the list subscription page, and
some links & an email address at that domain are used.
http://wikizine.org/http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/announce-lhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine
Now, having some actual Wikimedia info on a mailing list is pretty cool. :) But
I've got a couple organizational questions I want to toss out to the broader
community:
* It looks like Walter Vermeir owns this wikizine.org domain himself. What's the
status of it? If Walter loses interest will it continue? Who'll be responsible
for renewing it?
* I received a request to make a mailing list for a Romanian-language Wikizine.
Are we going to add more such lists, and if so should we do so under the
'announce' name set or 'wikizine'?
* Some 'marketing' ;) This has been going on for two or three months and I never
noticed. Was I just asleep at the wheel, or are a lot of people missing out who
might be interested?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
en.Wikinews has completed the process of selecting its first Arbitration
Committee, and I'd like to take a moment to congratulate the 6 ArbCom
members:
Bawolff
Chiacomo
CSpurrier
Deprifry
Edbrown05
IlyaHaykinson
We have great hopes they've been elected to a sinecure with no duties or
tasks (or pay, so maybe not much of a sinecure), but kudos to them and
the other candidates!
Amgine
A new page has been created on the international Wikisource wiki for a
vote and a discussion on a new logo for Wikisource.
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:New_Wikisource_logo
Please leave any questions on the talk page.
--
Regards,
Datrio