Hi,
There is an oportunity - no: necessity - for active lobbying for Free
Knowledge in the European Union. The Proposed European Commission
Directive on European Spatial Data Infrastucture (INSPIRE) is
endangered to put more intellectual property rights on geographica data
in the European union.
See http://publicgeodata.org/WhatIsInspire and
http://space.frot.org/docs/inspire_directive.html
Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia chapters and Wikipedians obvoiously
should be interested in changing the European Directive to free
Geographic Data. In my point of view more than a petition or contacting
members of the parliament is needed (but of course these are basics). We
need creative ideas of lobbying[1], simple examples why geographic
data needs to be free etc. Wikipedia is known and loved so maybe we
could use it's popularity to advert free geographic data. Last but not
least ideas also have to be implemented - that's the worst problem: in
my experience Wikimedia project's community members are lazy and slow in
doing something that is not *directly* related to their everyday work in
Wikipedia and Wikimedia organisation's community members like me are
busy, busy, busy. Any suggestions? I'm still searching for an occasion
and easy example [2] to convince your grandma, get into the media etc.
The discussion can be held at the public foundation-l mailing list,
can't it?
Greetings,
Jakob
[1] for instance influencing the people at this conference
http://www.direktportalen.com/dynaweb/gavlekongress/index.asp?page=2748&chi…
[2] I'm sorry but the reasons given at
http://publicgeodata.org/WhySignThePetition and
http://space.frot.org/docs/uninspired.html and
http://space.frot.org/docs/why-free.html anre not very convincing - you
need something that influences Mr. average in his normal life. For
instance show Wikipedia (free, amazing, growing, flexible) and how
navigation systems could be with or won't be without free geographic
data. Well, there should be better examples...
I've been asked to bring this up here as a result of the discussion on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Image:St…
where a video was nominated for featured status, but several people
objected because they could not play Ogg Theora. We currently do not
allow other video formats.
I would suggest implementing the following policy on all Wikimedia wikis:
"It is allowed to upload files in patent-encumbered formats like MP3 or
the MPEG-4 codecs only provided that a version in a non-encumbered
format is also uploaded. Files which are only provided in
patent-encumbered formats should be deleted."
Thoughts, comments, objections? Ideally, the conversion could be done
automatically, but a soft policy might do the trick for now.
Thanks,
Erik
I've gone ahead and enabled the semi-protection level for all of our wikis.
A total of 16 had already explicitly requested it over the last couple months,
and I haven't heard from any site asking to keep the option on.
Unless it's actually used by the admins on a given site, there's no change in
behavior; it's just a middle-level option now available between unprotected and
sysops-only.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Look at the data:
http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/ongoing/index.php/2006-02/
Conclusions:
1. This notice is not an effective means at raising
funds.
2. Having this notice up outside of the fund drives
may have a serious negative impact on the fund drives.
The next time it says, "Wikimedia needs your help" the
new instinctive reaction is, "Oh, they're always
asking for money".
3. If the individuals who maintain this notice insist
on having it up all the time, then, again, just look
at this data:
http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/ongoing/index.php/2006-01/
The conclusion here is that Jimmy's personal appeal is
FAR FAR more effective at raising funds.
Therefore: if enough people are insisting on keeping
this notice up, AT LEAST change the link back to
Jimmy's personal appeal until we find something else
that is even more effective. Not doing so is only
going to have a negative impact on long term
fundraising for Wikimedia.
The personal appeal is well written, sincere, and
effective. The general fundraising page leaves a lot
to be desired. Also, we should set it up so that
people can sign up for ongoing monthly donations, e.g.
$10 taken out of my PayPal account or credit card each
month.
Also, the notice itself, stating, "Pleas read founder
Jimmy Wales personal appeal" is far more attractive to
the majority of nonregistered wikipedia users.
There is a comment on
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Anonnotice&action=histo…
by mav stating "(de-link month-old appeal as promised
and replace with 'Your [continued donations] keep
Wikipedia free!')"
I don't know where or to whom this was promised, and I
can assure you that the majority of nonregistered
users don't either.
-d
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
Hi -- I've made a new store for wikipedia, and come up with a few new
shirt designs. I posted this on WikiEN-L and was told to bring it
here, so I'll copy that message:
- - - - -
The wikimedia foundation makes comparatively little from selling
shirts, so I've put together a new store for them on Spreadshirt
(which has higher quality plot prints, not just digital prints -- and
which I am not in any way affiliated with, for the record) and come up
with a few new designs and a fashion-y logo-ish thing. (I'm not a
designer by trade, so I'm sure these could be improved on.)
The store is at https://www.spreadshirt.com/shop.php?sid=21410 -- let
me know what you think (though for god's sake don't buy anything from
it yet; nobody but the hosting/shirtmaking company will get any
money).
- - - - -
I didn't use any of the current logos, mostly because I couldn't see
myself wearing them; instead, threw together a new vector design (in
any case, wikipedia's logo is too detailed to be plot printed). I was
wondering where to go from here -- who to contact, whether the new
store should be Official or if I should run it on my own, and give
wikimedia some or all of the profits (and how to go about that).
I do also have some ideas for bumper stickers and such (spreadshirt
only does shirts); I was told Maveric runs the english-language
wikipedia cafepress store, but wasn't able to find a user of that
name.
Cheers
--
Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
I've changed how the Special:Undelete view works a little bit. The last deleted
page text is no longer displayed above the revisions list; it tended to be
rather annoying for big pages and could make things hard to deal with if the
page had hostile CSS (eg obscuring the buttons).
The revisions also now display the wiki source code by default, making it easier
to examine the code of a deleted page or copy-and-paste if necessary. Rendered
preview from there is optional.
Please copy this notification to whereever your wiki's curious sysops may be
hanging out.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060214/uktu013.html?.v=48http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-1…
OR YEHUDA, Israel, February 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Babylon Ltd., the leading
provider of single-click translation and information access software, and
Wikipedia the free-content, user edited encyclopedia, today announced the
launch of the Wikipedia as part of Babylon's solution.
[...]
"Our collaboration with Wikipedia is the first of its kind for Babylon".
said Alon Carmeli, VP Sales and Marketing, Babylon Ltd.
Dropping our name so as to imply a more active collaboration than
downloading a database dump ... that seems slightly questionable
behaviour. Unless, of course, there was an active collaboration with
Babylon Ltd?
- d.
Gregory Maxwell:
> I think that is a *terrible* idea, and I also believe that you're not
> telling the complete story about the complaints about this video: The
> uploader was trying to be helpful and put a note about using
> RealPlayer on the image description page (rather than the more
> carefully thought out text from our media help page). Most of the
> objections were to real player, it seems that the Windows version is
> perceived as carrying malware. Once it was pointed out that the video
> did not require real player and that it was no different from other
> videos the objections were mostly removed.
Yes, there were misunderstandings -- that doesn't change the facts: that
Windows does not support Ogg Theora natively, that Theora in particular
is Alpha software, that we've had many reports of problems with playback
of both Theora and Vorbis, and that I've been specifically asked by one
of the concerned users to bring this up. I'm a huge supporter of free
formats -- I bought an iRiver a while ago only because it supports
Vorbis, and I exclusively encode audio files in this format -- but we do
have to keep usability in mind.
Many PC users who access Wikipedia will not be able to follow complex
instructions to set up new video or audio codecs. When it comes down to
it, the question is whether some people will be able to view our content
or not. A dual format policy strikes me as a reasonable compromise.
> We already have had enough problems with Windows executibles being
> renamed .ogg and uploaded, we really shouldn't make it worse by
> actually permitting them.
I don't understand - what does my suggestion have to do with Windows
executables?
> So how long until the suggestion that our article text be distrubted
> in encrypted dupliation locked ebook format?
Neither MP3 nor MPEG-4 necessarily use DRM, and of course we wouldn't
use or allow DRM for these formats, so I fail to see the slippery slope.
We're talking about supporting the most widely used file formats for
audio and video compression. That does not strike me as a radical blow
against freedom.
Erik