The name ombudsmen is used in the news industy. There is an organization of News Ombudsmen.
Link below gives a complete description from the organizations web site.
http://www.newsombudsmen.org/what.htm
This is the short version.
*What is a news ombudsman?
A news ombudsman receives and investigates complaints from newspaper readers or listeners or viewers of radio and television stations about accuracy, fairness, balance and good taste in news coverage. He or she recommends appropriate remedies or responses to correct or clarify news reports.*
I see a Foundation appointed person doing something similar. Looking at individual serious problems that exist because of fixable flaws in the system. This should keep these same type of problems from reoccuring.
Regards,
Sydney
So that it is clear that discussions do not always get buried and
forgotten :-)
Some time ago, we discussed the possibility to create an ombudsman
commission to deal with complaints related to abuse of the Foundation
privacy policy, associated to checkuser activity or not.
A resolution(*) has been written to describe the role of the commission
and the extent of its delegation. 3 members have been proposed.
Angela and I approved that resolution early july. The quorum for a
resolution to pass is 3 approval. We are waiting for another board
member to vote.
Anthere
(*) For those who wonder what this "resolution" stuff is and coming to
Wikimania in 2 weeks, I'll try to explain how the Foundation is
functionning (or not functionning) on sunday the 6th of august (open and
free ad)
Hello Wikiversity Opinion forums,
Please forgive me for showing up so very late in this very important
discussion about the Wikiversity project, just to give you my personal
opinion, but I've been very busy recovering from a very serious Central
Nervous System (CNS) disorder for the past 2-1/2 years, and I just started
getting the mental energy to put my mind and my life back together this past
spring.
I've been very impressed with everything that The Wikimedia Foundation has
been creating while I've been gone, and I consider myself very lucky to be
doing my stuff with the help of Angela and Sannse at Wikia.
I've placed an entry following Cormaggio's at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikiversity#Proposal_-_done.3F.
Please make me, and everyone else in the world who sincerely cares about
public learning and the excellent Wikiversity project, "joyful" about the
[[Wikiversity:Main_Page]] being implemented as soon as possible.
James, or Jimbo, I'd like to meet you too, someday. :)
Will someone please put this good thing on his desk today, so that he and
everyone else on the board can sign it off and get it done for the public
good.
Yes, I'm crazy. :)
Sincerely,
Eric
I think it should be changed. Too confusing.
Could someone write a nicely worded explanation about why it is going to be changed on a certain date?
Then do it. It will be over and done.
Regards,
Sydney
---- geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> > PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
> >
>
> The issue has been raised from time to time (I think it got a mention
> in the user's RFC). Since the user has refused to change there hasn't
> really been much that can be done.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hi everybody,
as the title suggests I would like to introduce a website to the
wikimedia community that offers books consisting of wikipedia articles
that areprinted on demand. The unique feature is that every user can
individually pick arbitrary articles from the wikipedia (currently only
from the english version) and add them to his book. Once the user is
satisfied with the book's content, he can download a pdf-preview and
check how the book will look like when printed. The last step is to
order the book and get a unique encyclopedia containing only selected
wikipedia articles.
The service is located at http://www.pediapress.com and has not yet been
publicly announced.
I would like to know the opinion of the wikimedia community about this
service, since I am aware of the fact that a couple of copyright and
also "moral" issues are related to selling wikipedia content.
Some of these issues are pointed out in the thread "Offering Wikibooks
content for sale"
(http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/63024).
I would like to give you some details about our efforts to comply with
the GFDL and also the spirit of the wikipedia content and community:
* on the pediapress.com website and in the printed books it is clearly
stated that all articles have their origin in the wikipedia project
* below each article a link (in case of the book the plain URL) to the
original wikipedia article is shown
* all principle authors are listed below an article in the book if possible
* pediapress does not generate any unnecessary traffic on wikipedia
since we use the wikipedia dumps
* we e-mailed with Angela Beesley (member of the Board of Trustees of
the Wikimedia Foundation) and Brad Patrick (general counsel to the
Wikimedia Foundation) who did not see anything problematic with our service
Last but not least I want to point out that the pediapress affiliate
program has the goal to generate donations to the wikimedia foundation:
after ordering a book, users have the option to publish and promote
their book. Thereby others are able to buy the published book. The
publisher receives a provision of 10% of the books price which he can
donate to the wikimedia foundation.Please note that pediapress is still
in a "beta" phase even though compiling, printing and ordering books is
perfectly possible. But since all processing and layouting is done
automatically there are still some shortcomings that will be fixed asap.
I don't want to deny that my company (brainbot technologies AG -
http://brainbot.com) and I hope that pediapress supports itself
financially. The main motivation nevertheless was to give something back
to the wikipedia community. Since me and my colleagues aren't exactly
good writers but heavy consumers of the wikipedia, we thought it would
be a better idea to try to promote the offline usage of the wikipedia by
building pediapress.
Thanks for your patience - I hope some of you check out pediapress and
post their opinions.
Volker Haas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-posting
Ilario
----Messaggio originale----
Da: oldakquill(a)gmail.com
Data: 18.07.06 14.46
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] ..
What is this "ToFU discussion"? The only tofu I know about is the
coagulated soy milk...
On 18/07/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> We could start a nice ToFU discussion...
>
It could be... nothing else to do?
Ilario
----Messaggio originale----
Da: messedrocker(a)gmail.com
Data: 17.07.2006 7.34
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] ..
It's incredible how much conversation there is sorrounding a blank
message.
On 7/17/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey(a)wolfmountaingroup.com>
wrote:
>