Wikimedia-l January 2006

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72 participants
79 discussions

[Foundation-l] Weekly digest from Wikimedia SCG
by Jovana Milicevic 29 Jan '06

29 Jan '06

January 24th: Jovana Milicevic and Goran Obradovic talked in tv show Mozaik(3rd channel of National television). January 25th: IT magazine COM&GSM published an article about Wikipedia and Wikimedia Serbia and Montenegro. January 26th: Weekly newspaper Vreme published article about serbian Wikipedia. January 27th: Jovana Milicevic speaked in the programe at radio B92 about Wikipedia. January 28th: In Youth center Dom omladine Belgrade Wikimedia Serbia and Montenegro, FSN (Free Softver Network), LUG (Linux User Group) organized projection of the movie Revolution OS (J.T.S. Moore), and there were almost 200 visitors. Jovana Milicevic Wikimedia Serbia&Montenegro

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[Foundation-l] CafePres shop change
by Daniel Mayer 29 Jan '06

29 Jan '06

This morning I updated the CafePress shop for Wikimedia products. http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia/464182 If you have any other design ideas, then please add them to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas/Cafe_Press Thank you. :) -- mav __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] "(image) quotation policy" proposed in Korean Wikipedia and Commons
by Jean-Baptiste Soufron 28 Jan '06

28 Jan '06

Actually, being a lawyer and a PhD candidate in copyright law, I think do have "legal mind" :-) And there are some others on juriwiki-l too :-) Is copyright.or.kr a governement institution? Anyway, I know some legal scholars in Korea, and I can contact them to obtain more precise information. But it will take some time. I'll follow the link and I forward this to juriwiki-l Best, Jean-Baptiste Soufron Puzzlet Chung wrote: > User:WonYong, who insisted that the contents of Wikipedia should be > restricted by National Security Law weeks ago ( > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-January/043321.html > ), claims that copyrighted images can be uploaded to Korean Wikipedia > and Wikimedia Commons, through "quotation policy." > > Some months ago, WonYong wanted to upload image files from South > Korean government, but found that they are copyrighted and not allowed > to be uploaded. Now he came up with a new (proposed) policy that > allows uploading almost any image files. His point is that even > copyrighted images can be _quoted_ in Wikipedia articles, just like > citations in academic articles. He says that he won't no longer need > fair use, which he had proposed in Korean Wikipedia before. > > South Korean copyright law states that publicized materials may be > quoted for report, research, or educational purposes, within a > reasonable scope. A bulletin board in the Copyright Discussion and > Arbitration Committee website (http://copyright.or.kr/) answered that > this "quotation" article of the bill is not suitable for writing > encyclopedias. > > The problem is that he pushes his policy in not only Korean Wikipedia > but Wikimedia Commons. He says he distrusts copyright.or.kr, and > doubts that other Wikipedians and those in Commons do have "legal > mind." > > Ongoing discussion in Wikimedia Commons is here: > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#ALLOW_COPYRIGHTED_IM… > > And the diff is here: > http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AVillage_pump&diff=… > > Puzzlet Chung > _______________________________________________ > Wikipedia-l mailing list > Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l > >

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[Foundation-l] Re: "(image) quotation policy" proposed in Korean Wikipedia and Commons
by Puzzlet Chung 28 Jan '06

28 Jan '06

See also: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-January/043439.html On 1/24/06, Puzzlet Chung <puzzlet(a)gmail.com> wrote: > User:WonYong, who insisted that the contents of Wikipedia should be > restricted by National Security Law weeks ago ( > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-January/043321.html > ), claims that copyrighted images can be uploaded to Korean Wikipedia > and Wikimedia Commons, through "quotation policy."

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[Foundation-l] Stewards policy proposal
by Mihai Floran 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

As the stewards community got larger and not so many things to do right now I think we should have a larger policy about stewards, their status and functions. First of all I think that if we want to have neutral stewards they should not be members of staff in local projects (sysop, bureaucrat) because this can influence their decision. The current stewards should have a period to think about the issue and consider if they want to leave their local status or the steward status. Another urgent issue is checkuser policy regarding stewards. We don't have one and I think is immediatly subject. Any other ideas?

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[Foundation-l] Re: Stewards policy proposal
by Mihai Floran 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

> > Yes > > <subliminal message> > > Local bureaucrats should be the ones to give bot status on local > projects. It makes little sense that stewards do it. > > </end of subliminal message> > > :-) Agree without conditions!And if there is installed the stewards interface to bureaucrats (of course simplified) they will have the possibility to give also rollback rights and in this case I think we should reconsider reintroducing this permission.M

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Committees: general concerns
by Erik Moeller 26 Jan '06

26 Jan '06

As announced in my previous response, here are some general concerns about the various committees created through: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions === Openness === The secret to our project-level success has been that we allow ordinary people to do extraordinary things. This distinguishes Wikimedia from other organizations. It is essential that we preserve this principle in our organizational work. There has been a committee before these new committees; it is the Wikimedia Research Network which I started while I was CRO. This committee is open. Anyone can join, it has public meetings anyone can participate in, and public IRC logs and reports. I hope that we can make these new committees (except for the Executive Committee) similarly open. That does not mean that every member has to have the same rights and privileges. There can be leaders, a trusted (elected or appointed) core group, and a larger open membership group surrounding the core. There may be meetings which are open to all members, and those which are only open to the core group. But I hope we all agree that an approach which maximizes openness and participation is desirable. I would very much like to see open meetings about the formation of these committees, open discussions about their purpose, and open reports about their activities. I would appreciate some Board-level oversight to ensure that this openness is preserved. Are there still documents on the internal wiki or relevant messages on the internal mailing list which have not yet been, but can be publicized? If so, I would appreciate it if this was done. === Multiple languages === I do not find anything in the resolutions about languages. In fact, as far as I know, all the committee organizers speak English. This is to be expected and perfectly alright. However, as a community which strives to bring knowledge to people in their language, I find it highly important that people are enabled to participate in their language on an international level. (We do enable local participation through the projects and chapters.) This is a tricky problem, but I believe there are reasonable ways to deal with it. For example, every committee can agree on its most commonly spoken language - in almost all cases, this will be English. Beyond that, it can form language-specific subcommittees that meet separately, and that relay the results of their work through someone who speaks the common language. This may seem like overkill, but do keep in mind that if we aim for open committees with different levels of authority, we will also end up with fairly large groups, so this will become a real issue. I certainly hope that it will! :-) === Multiple projects === Among the resolutions, there is a "Special projects" committee which, at the moment, has no definition. I'm not sure if I would call Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, Wikinews and Wikimedia Commons "special projects". (Wikispecies is perhaps one because of its relation to a grant.) Yet, all of these projects have very specific needs. For example, there have been ideas floating around for Wikinews to work together with journalism schools and radio stations. There's been talk about collaboration between Wikisource and Project Gutenberg / Distributed Proofreaders. And there are about a hundred different possible collaborations actively being explored around Wiktionary and its potential successor, from the European Union's terminology databases to Swahili dictionaries. It is clear that these partnerships need to be pursued by people close to the projects, who understand their needs and who are in touch with the right people, some of them because of their personal background, others because of their passion. In all these cases, it would greatly help to have a workgroup that is authorized and tasked with pursuing these partnerships, and that can act in the name of the Wikimedia Foundation, together with the Executive Committee (more on this below). Wikimedia is much more than just Wikipedia. Therfore, I think it is absolutely necessary to think about forming project-specific committees for each Wikimedia project. I understand "special projects" to be something separate from this - things like grants work, new project proposals like Wikiversity, and other meta collaborations. What do the organizers of the special project committee think about its role? In line with my earlier comments about the Executive Committee, if we end up with project-specific committees, their leaders could be elected by their communities, legitimizing them and at the same time ensuring their participation on the ExecCom. === Clear definitions === At the moment, none of these proposed committees has a clear scope or clear definition. There is a communication committee, for example. Communication cannot be compartmentalized; every single committee needs to be able to communicate with the inside and outside world. My concern is that as these definitions are made, there will inevitably be scope conflicts between the committees. This reinforces my earlier point about the need for openness. Perhaps an open meeting with all committee organizers and interested parties could be organized soon to hammer out the basic definitions, in order to avoid overlap. Angela, Anthere and Jimmy, would you be willing to organize something like this in the near future? Best, Erik

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[Foundation-l] GFDL Version issue: Can simply syncing GFDL Licence document solve GFDL version imcompatibility?
by PiaCarrot 26 Jan '06

26 Jan '06

Each article on most editions on wikipedia are licenced under "GFDL 1.2 or later", but articles on ja.wp are currently licenced under "GFDL 1.1 or later". But, some images and some articles on ja.wp are duplicated from other language edition of wikipedia, it seems GFDL violation because GFDL version imcompatibility. ("Permission is granted to use under GFDL 1.2 or later" can be read "Permission isn't granted under GFDL 1.1 or prior") If licence on ja.wp shifted to "GFDL 1.2 or later" simply, can their "Duplicated articles and images" be relieved from GFDL version imcompatibility because article 9 of GFDL licence? (Can article 9 of GFDL licence used to relieve them from GFDL version imcompatibility?) ---- PiaCarrot at ja/en/ja.wiktionary E-Mail:nao-yuki a-t beige.plala.or.jp

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[Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff
by Tomasz Ganicz 26 Jan '06

26 Jan '06

Hello, There is a problem of potential copyright violation of putting to the Wikisources and other Wikimedia projects encyclis and other documents signed by Pope. According to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html and several other newspapers all these documents are copyrighted, and Vatical officials are currently trying impose strict copyright. We have quite a lot of this stuff in Wikisources. See for example: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_Encyclicals and http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Kategoria:Religia What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican, asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete all these documents? -- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html

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[Foundation-l] Thoughts on admin-only IRC channels and RC patrol
by Chris Jenkinson 25 Jan '06

25 Jan '06

Hi all, My decision to found the admin IRC channel has meant that I've had to take a lot of flak from some of my friends which has been quite upsetting. I thought I would write this email to the list to explain what I see its purpose as. This also serves to highlight the importance of RC patrol. I started the channel following Danny's suggestion that there should be a private place for discussion of confidential issues which we don't want the public (and by extension, the media) to know about. Such issues include complaints to the Foundation about libel in articles. Everyone should know this is one of Wikipedia's greatest problems, that anyone can say nasty things about someone else and quite often this isn't picked up on RC patrol. Danny's suggestion for a private method of communication between "trusted users" given the issues we face was an excellent one in my opinion and I thought that an IRC channel is an ideal medium for this type of discussion to occur. Admins form a pretty diverse group of trustworthy users (all admins have the best interests of their project at heart) so for simplicity I created the channel for admins only. The suggestion of a "trusted user" group is an interesting idea but unfortunately very selective. Who is responsible for choosing who is a trusted user? Whoever it was, there would be a large number of people who would be missed off even though they are perfectly trustworthy. Also, think of the consequences if someone found out if they weren't considered trustworthy as they weren't given channel access - it would be quite demoralising for one. Rationally, there may be perfectly solid reasons why they weren't given access but emotionally it is still demoralising. That's why I went by the simple, easily-defined standard of admins on the English-language Wikipedia. Later Danny and I talked about the scope of the channel and raised the point that people who work the OTRS lists should be given access, since they get the bulk of the libel complaints and are best placed to notify people of potential issues. This is an entirely sensible argument. Some people have raised concerns about backroom decisions, cliques and the lack of transparency this channel will create. These are fair comments to raise but I believe they are unfounded. Firstly, the channel's purpose is not a decision-making one. Unrelated chit-chatter and non-confidential discussions are pointed out as inappropriate for the channel and go on to take place in #wikipedia. Some admins have refused to join because they think the channel is closed and hidden. I think a better action for them to take would be to join, and self-regulate what the channel discusses. If it's not appropriate, ask the people discussing to talk in a different channel. On a related note, the entire reason this channel exists is due to the problem we face from libel. This is why we must be grateful for the existing work people who work RC patrol do, and we should do everything we can to help them out. Problems which are ending up in OTRS and the admin channel are due to edits slipping through RC patrol. What we need to do is make their job easier. Admins who help out on RC patrol know the huge difference admin rollback makes, compared to having to do it manually. This is why we should either make the majority of RC patrollers admins, or give them access to rollback. Because of the rising standards for becoming an admin on the English language Wikipedia, the former is becoming more hard. Arguments of "adminship is no big deal" have now become "adminship should be no big deal". We have to recognise that this shift has taken place - and those who hold this principle should take part in RFA more, supporting more candidates. Another - and better - solution, however, is to grant the rollback privilege to good contributors who are not admins. This would make the jobs of RC patrollers much easier - and will have the knock-on effect of lowering the amount of complaints the Foundation gets. The Foundation agrees that this is a great solution to the big problem we face. There is a poll to gauge community consensus on the issue: --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_rollback_privileges/Poll Chris (Talrias) -- Chris Jenkinson chris(a)starglade.org "Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Wikimedia-l January 2006