I have read the numerous comments on the fact that we should be
planning Wikimania well in advance, and I fully agree that choosing
the city for Wikimania 2008 sometime at the end of 2006 or beginning
of 2007 makes perfect sense, and we have started working on it.
Just for the record though, Wikimania 2006 was only the second
edition, and I wish people would remember that when planning 2006, we
did not even know whether it was going to happen at all. So please
keep that in perspective. There is room for improvement, and I believe
Wikimedia has done a good job in trying to keep everyting into
consideration for the next editions.
On the subject of size. I am personally not in favour of an
*international Wikimedia conference* (keywords international and
Wikimedia) that will hold more than 500 people, ever. The reason for
this were clear last year, but even clearer this year, ie. opening the
conference to 1000 people makes it, in my opinion, lose the
"Wikimedia" touch, by bringing many people in who have in the end
nothing to do with Wikimedia. Mind you, I find the interaction with
other organisations and people with different web, collaborative,
knowledge experiences very fruitful and interesting, but this year
showed a trend that I wish we did not facilitate too much. There were
many many local (as in US) people who had but a far fetched interest
in our projects, and thus did not pertain to the "Wikimedia Community"
or had no intention of ever pertaining to it.
My dream is that Wikimedia got their hands on enough money in due time
to provide scholarships to far away contributors wherever they may be
and make sure that the core attendance of the conference is filled
with Wikimedians.
Basically the real question is what do we want Wikimania to be? Is it
the ultimate wiki conference? Is it the Wikimedia conference? Is it a
free knowledge or access to knowledge conference? Is it an open source
conference? Is it all of that? Some of that?
In my opinion, and in an ideal world, Wikimania would probably almost
be booked solid before registration even happens, because we have
managed to bring in all the people that count in the Wikimedia
community.
I would hate to see Wikimania be taken away from the Wikimedians. I
would hate for it to be so big that you would not have a clue who this
or that person is, or worse, that some people would come to Wikimania
and ask "what is Wikipedia?".
I believe we have shown the world that we can put together interesting
programs and that we should use this opportunity to make sure we
provide different events, aiming at different publics. I would love to
see a Wikimedia Academic Conference, or a Wikimedia Wiki Practices
Conference. I would also love to see more regional Wikimedia
conferences, such as the Chinese and Dutch edition this year who would
bring together people who did not make it to the international
conference or who need to concentrate in a language or on specific
projects.
In short, I do not think that Wikimania would benefit from becoming a
huge thing that everyone would attend because they happened to be in
the neighborhood.
Delphine
--
~notafish
I have been asked to announce this in my new formal officer role as
Executive Secretary:
The Wikimedia Board met in Frankfurt, Germany on October 22,
immediately following a planning retreat attended by the Board and
more than 20 members of the Wikimedia community. The Board voted
unanimously to elect Florence Devouard as the Chair of the Board, Tim
Shell as Vice-Chair, Erik Möller as Executive Secretary, and Michael
Davis as Treasurer. Jimmy Wales assumes the title of Chairman
Emeritus of the Foundation.
Jimmy Wales said: "I nominated Florence to be the chair of the
foundation in recognition of her outstanding service for the past few
years and her unsurpassed passion for our goals. Having such a
trusted community representative elected as our new chair demonstrates
the growth and strength of our organization."
- - - -
For reference, the resolution:
The Board resolved that, from the 21 of October and for a term of one
year at most, as defined in the bylaws:
Motion by Jimmy Wales, following discussion, the Board consensus
resulted in the following officers:
1. Florence Devouard shall be the chair of the board of trustees
2. Tim Shell shall be the vice-chair
3. Michael Davis shall be the treasurer
4. Erik Moeller shall be the executive secretary
Jimmy Wales shall assume the title of Chairman Emeritus of the Foundation.
Approved unanimously at the board meeting - 21 october 2006
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Officers_election_2006
The current legal responsibilities of the different officers of the
Board are defined in the bylaws:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"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
Dear Wikipedians in fundation,
We now in Chinese Wikipedia have some trademark issues that needs your help.
We have found an Chinese had registered "Wiki" and "維基" (in literly it
also means "Wiki" in Chinese) as his trademarks at 2005/11/23 in mainland
China. Since we now have WP and WN, there might be some trademark issues in
mainland China. Do you have any advice or suggestions that we can do?
Best regards,
Zh:User:HTChien
___________________________________________________ 最新版 Yahoo!奇摩即時通訊 7.0,免費網路電話任你打! http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/
geni wrote:
> On 10/29/06, daniwo59(a)aol.com <daniwo59(a)aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Actually, we have always had them. As a not fo profit in the United
>> States,
>> we are required to have a mission statement, because we are
>> accepting money.
>> People have a right to know what they are giving money to, and that
>> is laid
>> out in the mission statement.
>
> You can legally have informal ones (that is what Michael Snow's
> comments suggest exists at the moment)?
Legally, a nonprofit organization must have a purpose, and the purpose
has to be lawful and not for pecuniary profit. The law may require that
this purpose be set forth in the incorporating documents, and I assume
that's the sort of thing Danny is referring to. There's a statement of
purpose in the current Wikimedia Foundation bylaws. It has, however,
never really been meaningfully adopted by the community, which is why
I'm suggesting a referendum on the vision and mission statements.
Vision and mission statements aren't formal legal documents themselves,
although they can be incorporated into such documents. I think there's
general agreement that the bylaws are badly in need of updating, and
that issue was noted at the retreat as a high priority. In conjunction
with that, community-adopted vision and mission statements could help
provide guidance to the board (especially the elected representatives,
but also the others). Right now, I don't see much that would convey to
Florence or Erik what the community wants from them. They can pay
attention to various individual voices according to their own
preferences, of course, but otherwise they're divining the tea leaves of
consensus like the rest of us.
--Michael Snow
Hello everybody,
As you all know, Wikimania is only in one place in the world. And
well, lots of people are unable to attend. On #wikimedia , we had a
healthy discussion about the possibilities of side-events. Both
national as continental events had supporters, but the biggest contra
was that it could be a competitor for the WIkimania. That is why this
idea came up:
1) A annual world wide Wikimania, about august
2) Lots of national events, as far as countries or parts of countries
of groups of countries care to orginize them: about october, november
3) Continental Events, about march. Of cource as far as the
continents feel ok to orginize them. Only one event per continent of
this size.
The big advantage of this is of course that they will be as least as
possible competetors of eachother. People dont have to drop one
meeting to join the other one. Further it will be as much as possible
possible to share people in the organizations, so that more poeple
will get experience, but also that the people who have already
experience, will be able to help with the number of events.
That national events are wanted, is proven already numerous times by
Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Nederland and also in China, Poland
and other countires. People like to meet eachother, and have a good
conference in their own language. They can speak much more freely,
mostly about a smakker group of projects, and share thoughts more
easily.
The continental events could be like wikimania, so a conference mainly
for the active contributors, but could also get another character. The
orginizers should really think well about this. What kind of public do
you want to attrack, what kind of event do you want it to become. The
major pro for this event is that the travelcosts will be reletively
low, and people will go somewhere with somehow, minor or less, the
same culture.
The big Wikimania would mainly be for the world wide public, would be
for sharing thoughts such as "how do you guys do this, and you?".
People from all the communities could meet eachother, and a lot of
mixing of thoughts could happen. However, it is very well possible
that Wikimania would change it's identity over the years, as the
tradition is not that old. Time will learn.
Of course it is quite impossible to have a Euromania-like event
already in march, (name is already trademarked, btw) so this would
comply starting from august 07. I think this should not be a fixed
think of the foundation but more like an advice to the orginizing
parties. Try to plan your conferences a bit like this, that way we
won't be obstacles to eachother. We will be the least competitors this
way.
I think it would be very good to start thinking about a
Euromania/Asiamania for 2008 march (the european is already nicked as
Stroopwafelmania i heard, [[m:Talk:ASA]] ) but I think a lot of
chapters etc are thinking about setting up a national conference
already. We did in the Netherlands to my view successfully last
september 2nd, but one of the evaluationpoints was that there was
still too much competition with the Wikimania in Boston. I think this
proofs somehow that we should indeed think about spreading, and lean
from the experiences we had. at the dutch conference we had problems
with the organization, but also with the public and speakers, because
of Boston. People were busy with that too, and were unable ot less
able to spend time at Wikimedia Conference Netherlands.
Please, I'd like to invite everybody involved or willing to be
involved with events to discuss this, and maybe we can make some sense
out of this too long writing. (sorry Improv)
Hoping to hear mostly constuctive reactions,
Lodewijk Gelauff, Effeietsanders
(fellow-orginizer Wikimedia Conference Netherlands 2006)
I have run Wikitrans accross the XML dumps for the sep 11 wiki and added
the :en: interwiki links directly into the
XML dump to correct the XMl interwiki links back into wikipedia. I have
reimported and rebuilt the 911 memories
site with this modified dump and relocked the database. If anyone has
further changes please contact Erik Moeller
and I will unlock the database on the site for any further edits needed
to correct the site.
Jeff
Thanks to the amazing efforts of many volunteers -- Fang Ali,
Timichal, Timrem, Draicone, Lorenzarius, Ore4444, Trodel, Cool Cat,
and possibly others -- the Sep11Wiki has been pushed into a shape that
I think it can be published independently as a static website,
including a new logo. As I've mentioned before, Jeff Merkey has
volunteered to host it at sep11memories.org. Hopefully, the wiki will
be moved in the next few days; it is now again locked for editing.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
On 10/26/06, luke brandt <shojokid at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have mentioned this a couple of times, but as yet no one seems
interested.
> The idea is to coordinate Wikipedia policy over different languages as
much
> as possible, so it becomes easier to amalgamate, to the benefit of all,
with
> just translation needed. Then issues of formatting, layout, image policy
etc
> etc should already have been sorted. Comments?
Documenting practices on Meta -- possibly combined with subjective
analysis and commentary -- seems like a good idea to me. You don't
need to start a new project or ask for anyone's permission to do this;
just start writing and structuring your thoughts.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
I think it seems one of the strengths of the Project is its diversity, so -
going by the feedback - it's probably best to aim at coalescing around the
idea of a 'world compendium' rather than 'knocking heads' etc. Maybe in a
Wikia wiki we could suggest good articles from all parts of the globe for
inclusion. Because in most cases I bet we agree on what's good.
peace out
luke
Actually, we have always had them. As a not fo profit in the United States,
we are required to have a mission statement, because we are accepting money.
People have a right to know what they are giving money to, and that is laid
out in the mission statement.
For instance, Wikimedia cannot decide to spend 100,000 euros on sending food
to Darfur because--even though it is a worthy cause--it lies outside the
scope of our mission. This helps to ensure to our donors that the money they
give us us used specifically for the development and spread of free
content/knowledge.
Danny
In a message dated 10/29/2006 6:48:38 AM Eastern Standard Time,
geniice(a)gmail.com writes:
On 10/29/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 10/29/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> For example, we worked on drafting a formal
> >> vision and mission statement
> >
> > Why?
> >
>
> Because.
>
The problem is that that is what I'm rather worried the answer would
be. We appear to have got on okay without one and I tend to feel that
haveing one would risk giving rule lawyers more aminition.
--
geni
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