"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
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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]])
A friend of mine, Wayne Mackintosh of the Commonwealth of Learning
(col.org), is looking for a local wiki expert in Nigeria to help with
wiki skills development "to a group of folk with low technical
experience." The project "is aimed at developing free content for
health professionals." The wiki expert would be paid, of course.
Anyone know someone who might qualify, or someone who might know someone?
Thanks,
Erik
... have been posted here :
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions#July_2006
Resolution:election officials passed 20 July 2006
:drafted by the communication committee. Appointement of the election
committee for september elections.
Resolution ombudsperson checkuser passed 23 July 2006
:creation of the committee in charge of investigating privacy policy
abuse reports. Appointment of the original members.
The committee is free to organise its own rules and in particular to
define the tools it needs (such as checkuser status on meta to have
access to checkuser logs. Registration to checkuser list. Creation of
OTRS specific queue where such requests may be redirected etc...) Wegge,
please, can you contact the two other members and see what needs to be
done ?
Resolution:WiktionaryZ passed 23 July 2006
:from the special project committee. Agree to host the WiktionaryZ
project. Brion will see to this *after* Wikimania
Resolution:Hardware_Purchase_Jul-06 passed 24 July 2006
:upon proposition from the technical committee. Approximately $61,440
worth of hardware
ant
All-
I hereby propose for your consideration Wikicat, a
project to create an open, bibliographic catalog. The
purpose of Wikicat is to both lay the groundwork for a
scholarly apparatus to be used within Wikipedia as
well as create a unique and valuable information
resource in its own right. In particular, Wikicat
will:
* facilitate the process of citation by automatically
fetching bibliographic data based upon unique keys
such as ISBN, ISSN, and LCCN
* allow users to more easily navigate between
information resources by grouping them in a
functionally significant manner (in particular,
according to the principles of [[w:FRBR]]) so that,
for example, different editions, translations, etc.
are all joined together
* apply Wikipedia's collaborative content creation
model to bibliographic data, resulting in a catalog of
unprecedented detail
In terms of implementation, Wikicat will be defined
like any other [[m:Wikidata]] dataset and will
integrate with other datasets such as WiktionaryZ to
share common entities and perhaps someday support
something along the lines of a Semantic Mediawiki. As
Wikidata is currently not code complete, though,
Wikicat will be deployed in stages, during the first
of which it will exist as a read-only database that
populates itself on an as-needed/"as-cited" basis by
importing data from the open catalog servers of such
institutions as the Library of Congress, the
University of California library system, the U.S.
National Library of Medicine, etc.
Details about the project, in increasing technical
detail, are available on the following pages:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikicathttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicathttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicat_Technical_Design
Coding of the first stage of the project is nearly
complete and a list of its operational requirements
will soon be forthcoming. Here is a demo of Wikicat
integration with the Cite/<ref> extension:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikicat_Cite_screenshoot.png
Thank you for your time and I look forward to your
comments.
Jonathan Leybovich
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Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Citations and verifiability are absolutely essential
to the credibility
> of Wikipedia and its sister projects. Nevertheless,
a person
> undertaking to substantiate his contributions should
not need a
> professional librarianship background to do so. Any
manner of clearly
> identifying the source should be acceptable.
Absolutely. The catalog that is the subject of this
project proposal is distinct, though obviously
quite-interrelated with, the issue of citation.
Whatever will be of most convenience to actual editors
should be supported, though I suspect that ambiguous
citation styles where the user must take an extra step
to disambiguate the work/edition he actually meant
will not be all that popular in practice, in addition
to being more involved to implement within the
software. But again, we should support whatever is
most useful to users.
> There is also a need to begin referencing the
material that is
> relatively easy to access on line or in other
relatively inexpensive
> sources of public domain material, like CDs sold for
$5.00 each that can
> each easily contain 100 books or more. In the last
few years this
> material has been produced at a phenomenal rate.
These are available in
> image, ASCII plain Jane or more scholarly
annotatable formats. We could
> begin by including our own Wikisource material in
the catalogue.
Yes, all these types of items will eventually be
supported by the catalog. But this will not be
possible during the bootstrap/read-only phase of the
catalog, where the only data within it will be
imported from other catalogs like the Library of
Congress. Not only do certain technical pre-reqs need
to be met before Wikicat is made world editable (i.e.
the compeletion of Wikidata), but, as Lars pointed
out, soft pre-reqs need to be met as well,
particularly the creation of cataloging standards and
some sort of training/orientation regime for new editors.
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Hi All,
Some of you might find this article by David Brin (P,hd in Space Physics
& SciFi Author) interesting:
http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.html
He outlines a top down design to try to use the Internet as a
collaborative discussion and thinking tool.
It seems to me that the Wikimedia software and various projects
utilizing some simple rules (NPOV, only one 32K article per subject or
title, comprehensive history of revision, and the ever evolving
community guidelines) allowed solutions meeting his basic criteria and
goals to self organize.
As a publicity drive or stunt we might consider inviting him to evaluate
how well Wikipedia or some other Wikimedia project meets his proposed
requirements for useful Internet sites on his website for his fans.
Perhaps a good time (considering that Wikipedia hardly needs publicity
drives considering its current success and maturity) would be after a
few months of Wikiversity's authorized operation makes it clear that
good ideas or material tends to float or stay on the current page of
learning/study activities there; just like the best material and
presentations drift to the current article or definition on Wikipedia
and Wiktionary.
I would be very interested in reactions or opinions why or why not
Wikipedia currently meets or does not meet his stated goals or criteria
for a "Disputation Arena".
regards,
lazyquasar
A while ago I posted here about the Free Content Definition. Our goal
with this definition is to create a stable reference point by which we
can say that a particular work or license is considered "free" (to
use, modify, copy, modify ''and'' copy, etc.).
We're now moving closer towards a 1.0 release to this definition, and
I'd like to invite feedback from all interested parties on some recent
changes I have made to the "unstable" (openly editable) copy:
http://freecontentdefinition.org/index.php?title=Definition/Unstable&diff=2…
In line with discussions and feedback:
* I've tried to change the language so it can apply to physical works
like sculptures. For instance, the definition now refers to derivative
works instead of modified versions.
* I've sectioned the page clearly into defining separately what a free
license is and what a free work is. New conditions are now listed to
define free works. For instance, a computer program that is only
available in binary form under CC-BY would not be considered a free
work now.
* I've removed the term "Free Expression" -- it was largely negatively
received in our naming discussion -- and now refer to the definition
only as the Free Content Definition. To compensate, I've listed
several specific terms and specific definitions that can be used in
fields like knowledge, art and software.
* I've made a reference to DRM, and changed a few bits in the preamble.
Please leave comments and suggestions on the talk page.
In case you haven't seen, some volunteers have also started to create
a matrix of free content licenses that meet the definition:
http://freecontentdefinition.org/Licenses
For those who will be there, Mako Hill, the co-initator of the
definition, is going to give a presentation at Wikimania about it:
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:BMH1
When we release a 1.0, I hope that Wikimedia will be one of many
organizations which will use this definition as a reference point for
clarifying what they mean when they say "free content." :-)
Cheers,
Erik