Some random musings:
It seems to me that supporting the creation a single chapter for these
independent countries and cultures, solely on the basis of them having once been
part of a single state, might be considered offensive to the people involved.
No one is proposing that Austria and Hungary merge their potential chapters,
nor is anyone suggesting that the UK, Canada, and Australia set up a single
chapter, though the cultural differences there may be even less distinct and
they still share a single crown, language, etc.
If Yugoslavia was a fiction that the constituent peoples rejected, let's
respect that, rather than suggesting that they "join together" again, for the
purposes of Wikimedia. I am sure that differing legal and tax requirements in
each country would support such a distinction. As for bringing the peoples of
different countries involved in Wikimedia together, that would be the role of
the Foundation umbrella. Right now, I think the Chapters Committee is doing
an excellent job at that.
Danny
After talking today I realized that the info talked about is very
sensitive, but I need to talk with some people very soon. Is it possible
to create a temporary closed readership list to discuss some things? On
which the readership would be: The board, 1 or 2 of our lawyers,
Delphine, Oscar, 2 members of the special projects committee (the 2
considered to be the wisest, most culturally open people?) and last but
not least Danny.
Like I said the issues that came up are very sensitive. Basically
everything they proposed is doable I think and could be discussed in a
very open way. It is just one issue that needs to be talked about
pivately before we can go on the path to the rest of the ideas.
Waerth/Walter
...for a fundraiser?
Admittedly, I don't know the current state of finances, though I get
people asking me about it. But I assume money is still needed, and
recently encountering what seemed like server load difficulties reminds
me of it. There are of course other needs like staffing (not least
someone to manage the day-to-day financial things, which might allow for
better reporting on the subject as well).
Anyway, it's been more than five months since we started the last one.
By the time we're ready to kick off, it might be six. We've contemplated
quarterly fundraisers before, and certainly twice a year should hardly
qualify as much of an inconvenience for people.
--Michael Snow
http://www.semapedia.org/
Great idea, horrible trademark/copyright infringement: "Semapedia: The
Physical Wikipedia"
I'm cc'ing the Semapedia contact email -- they need to change their tag line
to not include the word Wikipedia and put a comment that "Wikipedia is a
registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation".
Unless they want to become an official project of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Hi, Friends,
There are some people proposing a policy for administrator's term of service
in Chinese Wikipedia. In the proposing policy, when the term of service is
over, administrators shall get their administrative power through a
re-election. I want to know that is there any Wikimedia project with this
kind of policy? In my own opinion, this is quite weird. I want to know what
will other language editions do when facing this kind of proposal. Thanks.
THD
It's recently become clear to us, having met with chapter organizers
and talked with various members of the community, that the role of the
newly formed Chapters Committee is still not well-understood (or
well-known). Here's an overview:
The Chapters Committee [1] is a Wikimedia committee [2] created on 15
January 2006 to coordinate Wikimedia Foundation efforts regarding
local chapters. Its duties include:
* Facilitating the creation of Wikimedia chapters [3], acting in an
advisory capacity and responsible for granting final approval of
bylaws, etc.
* Acting as the Foundation's point of contact for chapters, and the
line of communication with chapters from within the Foundation.
* Negotiating agreements between the Foundation and chapters, as for
fundraising, sponsorship, and trademark use.
* Coordinating interchapter communication.
* Generally acting on behalf of the Foundation to serve its interests
in chapter matters.
A more complete overview of the work of the Chapters committee can be
found here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee/Scope_and_area_of_delegat…
The committee consists of five members:
* Nathan Carter (m:User:Cartman02au)
* Łukasz Garczewski (m:User:TOR)
* Austin Hair (m:User:Austin) - vice chair
* Delphine Ménard (m:User:Notafish) - chair
* Hari Prasad Nadig (en:User:HPN)
And two advisers:
* Arne Klempert (m:User:Akl)
* Andrew Lih (en:User:Fuzheado)
In a word or in a hundred, if you don't know what a chapter is, if you
want to create a chapter, if you wonder what a chapter can do, if you
want to get in touch with a chapter, do not hesitate to contact us,
either on IRC in #wikimedia-chapters or by mailing chaptercommittee-l
AT wikimedia PUNTO org. English is preferred, so that all of us
understand, but we get by in Spanish, French, German, Polish, Kannada,
Italian, Hindi, Sanskrit, Chinese...and I think that's it.
Thank you,
Delphine
for the Chapters Committee
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_committees
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
PS. Could the translator-l addressees translate/forward this message
to their language list? Thank you!
This night at 23 hours I was called by a Thai organisation which is
doing in Thailand approximately the same as Kennisnet to talk with them
tomorrow about some ideas they have for co-operation with the Foundation.
As I have been totally purged by the foundation of all my
"responsibilities" like presscontact for Asia and steward because I am
to critical of the way things go not because I ever abused them!
Although those are the rumours that are floating. I want to know if the
foundation has any "trust" in me to go talk with these people? It would
be nice to have an answer ASAP.
I am still disappointed in the way people get purged if they are to
critical even if they never abuse the responsabilities they have been
trusted with and the board never answers why one "clerk": Dannyisme can
take someone's stewardship away under the notion of temporarity and then
never has to respond in public to requests to restore it. Also I do not
understand why I was taken of the list of the presscontacts. I have
always defended wikimedia in radiointerviews and done quite a good job
with it, no one in the Dutch community can deny that. I stayed up late
for those things I never did say anything wrong and this is how you are
treated like you are a piece of garbage.
Waerth/Walter
Hi to everyone.
Since around one year ago in meta was requested a new Catalan version
for WikiNews. Our lingual community of Catalan-speaker wikimedians is
little but enough persistent and active as to maintain several
projects in Wikimedia.
The requested translations to do on templates listed in a prelaunch
page ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch ) is all
done. A personalized logo for Catalan WikiNews is also done (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikinews-logo-ca-small.png )
and available to use in the front-end webpage of WikiNews in Catalan.
We would like to see Catalan WikiNews launched already as soon as
possible, please. We also want to change the namespace of "Wikinews"
to "Viquinotícies". I suppose that some of the request I'm writing
here maybe should to be sent to bugzilla instead to the list, but I'm
writting to the foundation list because in the Wikinews prelaunch page
there's recommending to do it.
Cheers,
Wikimedian user: Joanot Martorell
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Martorell
Delirium wrote:
> Patrick, Brad wrote:
>
>> Don't assume anything. If you are speaking as a person interested in
>> Wikipedia, great. I'm sure you have good things to say about Wikipedia
>> in Thailand. Good for you. All I am saying is that you do *not* have
>> the authority to speak on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> I'm not sure if you're new here or what, but this isn't how we do
> things at the Wikimedia Foundation. We discuss politely, if sometimes
> heatedly, on the mailing list, not brusquely and dictatorially.
>
> Waerth asked if the Foundation had confidence in him to discuss with
> this organization; not if he legally has the authority to enter into
> commitments on behalf of the foundation, which is quite a different
> matter. In short, his question did not call for a legal opinion, and
> offering one unsolicited was unhelpful, misrepresenting the matter,
> and impolite.
This criticism is totally misplaced. Note that Brad addressed whether
Waerth could *speak* on behalf of the Foundation, responding directly to
Waerth's question. The issue is not limited to whether Waerth is
authorized to act as an agent of the Foundation to enter into agreements.
Lawyers are not restricted to giving legal opinions and nothing else,
sometimes they need to represent their clients in communicating with
third parties, as Brad did here. Brad's intervention was helpful
(because it got across his client's position), misrepresented nothing,
and if it wasn't as polite as suits your tastes, it's because more
polite ways of communicating this hadn't yet gotten the message across.
--Michael Snow
