Wikimedia-l September 2006

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

120 participants
168 discussions

[Foundation-l] Can a wikimedia-b list be setup
by Pat Gunn 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Jeff, I appreciate your explaining your perspective -- it does enlighten us with regards to the framework with which you work. I still disagree with it, and feel business dealings should be kept on a short leash in as open and public a view as possible, but I am more comfortable "agreeing to disagree" on this point now. I do believe that creation of wikimedia-b as you describe would be a bad idea. Take care. (reentering lurk mode) --- Pat Gunn mod: csna, bmcm, bmco, cooa, cona, clpd, coom http://dachte.org There are few things in life that arn't made better with liberal application of mustard, or worse with liberal application of ketchup. -- Pat Gunn

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[Foundation-l] Wikipedia 20060817 XML dump support for MediaWiki 1.7.1
by Jeffrey V. Merkey 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

I experienced problems importing the 20060817 enwiki dumps using MediaWiki 1.7.1 with the machine translation project, so I put together a bzip2 package with MediaWiki 1.7.1 with all the extensions and PHP fixes necessary to use the Wikipedia enwiki dumps which also includes all the support extensions for Native Cherokee and other Machine translation projects. The updated bzip2 package may be useful to others since the released MediaWiki 1.7.1 does not run with the XML dumps currently published by the Wikimedia Foundation without all these fixes and extensions included and configured. ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/MediaWiki/mediawiki-1.7.1.WG-20060904.tar.gz.… Jeff

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[Foundation-l] Can a wikimedia-b list be setup
by Pat Gunn 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Jeff V. Merkey wrote: >You know, I did not want to address this on this list, but it appears I >will have to in order >for folks to get it. I believe this is a poor line of reasoning for a bad idea. The foundation has certain goals, and these are not always realised by the community at large, nor must they all deal with the responsibility, fine details, or the work involved in making sure the project stays afloat. By and large, the goals of the community and those of the foundation coincide though, helped by the transparency and (certain amounts of) openness. I am very concerned at your implication (in point 9) that nondisruptive efforts to suggest that some arrangements are not acceptable to the community should be easily overruled by the business interests of the foundation. The "Explosive growth" you say should be our goal is dangerous in the same way that cancer is -- it can easily become a perversion of our hopes and structure in the name of size. We must be careful about growth and absolutely insistent on as much openness and inclusiveness as possible, even when it costs us business opportunities. I am similarly very disturbed at your point 11, which suggests that off-list lobbying against proposed business ventures is something that we should consider verboten or dangerous. --- Pat Gunn mod: csna, bmcm, bmco, cooa, cona, clpd, coom http://dachte.org

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[Foundation-l] Translation of "A Wikimedia project" and "Powered by MediaWiki" images
by Guillaume Paumier 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Hello, Some French-language Wikipedians would like to translate the text of the two images at the bottom of each page: "A Wikimedia project" and "Powered by MediaWiki". To answer them I would like to know: * if it is technically possible; * what people from the Foundation think about it. Thanks for your answers. g. -- Guillaume Paumier Disciplus Simplex http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile — You will be assimilated.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Edits by project and country of origin
by daniwo59＠aol.com 05 Sep '06

05 Sep '06

What I find especially interesting is not the native Asutralian languages, which have a handful of speakers only, but the fact that in India, over 99 percent of people prefer to edit in English than in their native languages. It would be interesting to see the results once native languages are included in the sample. Danny

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[Foundation-l] Survey of Open Content Projects in Non-Western Countries
by Erik Moeller 05 Sep '06

05 Sep '06

FYI - lots of good links for projects and initiatives to partner with. Survey of Open Content Projects in Non-Western Countries ----------------------------------------------------------- http://oc.openflows.org Vienna, 04.9.2006. Openflows.org releases today a survey of open content projects in five non-western regions: Arab countries, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Brazil and South East and Eastern Europe. The aim of the study is to assess the potential of the open content production process for areas and fields which are under served by the commercial players. While we cannot claim completeness, we believe that the range of projects allows insight into the complex ways in which these projects interact with their particular contexts and the vast differences this creates. Main Findings Open content projects are extremely sensitive to local conditions. For their constituencies (producers and users of the project) the practical value of the material tends to be far more important than abstract layer of licensing. Hence, very few projects view themselves as 'open content', in contrast to 'open source' software projects, where the sense of community across projects is much stronger. Open content projects rely on at least a kernel of a civil society, comprised of dedicated individuals, NGOs, educational institutions and initiatives, and others who value open cooperation (i.e. where contributions are encouraged from people who are not formerly known). If that does not exist, be it that social tensions are too strong, or that economic situation is too harsh, open content projects cannot flourish. For the majority to larger projects, some form of institutional support for basic intrastructure is necessary, because of the long-term nature of the projects. In Brazil, for example, this is provided by public institutions (educational and governmental), in collaboration with NGOs and other independent actors. Thus a number large, structured open content projects are developing strongly, particularly in the field of music and education. Where such institutional support is missing, for example in India, such projects have a hard time reaching critical mass. The situation is different for smaller open content projects, such a blogging. These can run on globally available commercial infrastructures (Web2.0 companies) and are hence in all areas growing strongly. Their social and political impact, though, depends highly on local conditions. Political blogs in Egypt, for example, are subject to entirely different dynamics than those in India. Outlook Apart from well-known project based in highly-developed countries (Wikipedia, MIT's Open Course Ware, Web2.0 companies) the field of open content is still nascent. Without support, the uphill battle to reach critical mass (when the project becomes self-sustainable) will be very steep for most larger open content projects. The growth of a globally available infrastructure for collaboration, provided by Web2.0 companies, on the other hand, might help to unlock some of the creative potential currently held-back by the lack of stable, scalable platforms. As of mid 2006, the snapshot provided by this survey, it's too early to say where and in which form this will happen. And without a general strengthening of civil society in these regions, it might well remain stunted for a longer time than necessary. Principal researcher and contact: Felix Stalder Essential research partners: Branka Curcic, Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro; Alaa Abd El Fattah, Cairo, Egypt; Tori Holmes and Tati Wells, Rio de Janerio, Brasil; Kerryn McKay and Heather Ford, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Lawrence Liang, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India Support: The research was made possible by a generous grant from the Open Society Institute's Information Program (Very Franz) http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information login or register to post comments -- Peace & Love, Erik

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[Foundation-l] Multimedia: planning a meeting
by Florence Devouard 05 Sep '06

05 Sep '06

Hello, During the last spc meeting, there was a suggestion to hold a meeting to strategize how to best incorporate multimedia in wmf projects. This committee would include reps from sp comm and the tech comm, as well as any person interested working along those lines. More information may be found here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia. It is a rather old page, but seems to fit what some of the interested people had in mind. Poeple involved in the discussion where in particular NullC (Greg) and Xirzon (Eloquence). I suggest we use the talk page of that meta page to set up a meeting date, time and hopefully agenda. Cheers ant

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[Foundation-l] Some news from Wikiversity Beta
by Guillaume Paumier 04 Sep '06

04 Sep '06

[ crossposting on foundation-l, wikiversity-l & translators-l ] Hello, Wikiversity Beta is now 10 days old and I think the time has come to give some news. I have decided to organize it as a list of FAQ. Feel free to ask questions I have not thought about. This page is available in English at http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Help:FAQ/En and will be available in French soon. * What is Wikiversity? --- Wikiversity is a new Wikimedia project [1] exploring ways to use the power of wiki to support online learning. This new project will be in beta phase during the first six months [2]. * What is Wikiversity Beta? --- Wikiversity Beta is a global platform aiming at coordinating Wikiversity projects in several languages [3]. This multilingual coordination intends to deal with Wikiversity's mission and general guidelines of the project's scope (for example, about original research). Wikiversity Beta is also a place where Wikiversity projects which don't have a subdomain yet can develop. --- In a nutshell, Wikiversity is both a meta-wiki and an incubator for Wikiversity projects. * How is it possible to have so many languages coexisting on Beta without it becoming a mess? --- Wikiversity Beta intends to take advantage of the input of its many members (not only English-speakers). Multilingual discussions should not only coexist, but live in symbiosis. A multilingual discussion system has been proposed to manage them [4] so non-English speakers can take part in discussions. Moreover, Beta is using the Language select feature [5] developped on Meta, which allows users to hide foreign languages on multilingual pages. * What about separate Wikiversity projects which already have their own subdomain? --- Those separate projects [6] are growing their way. However, their participants are strongly encouraged to take part into discussions about general guidelines that will apply to all Wikiversity projects. Moreover, they are encouraged to post reports [7] about their projects to let everybody know about how it grows. * What's next? --- Now we need people to take part in the discussions on Wikiversity Beta. People from existing separate projects and people willing to contribute to a future separate project should join the discussions and work together. People who do not speak English are encouraged to take part in discussions but we also need volunteer translators to translate the talk summaries [4]. * Your multilingual system will never work. It requires too many translators. --- If people really sum up their discussions, not only this will help them to focus on important things but it will not take much time to translate them. Ten days after Beta opening, its main page is already available in five languages. --- By the way, it is just a proposal. Hey, if everybody speaks english, very well, we won't have anything to translate. If the system does not work, at least we can say we tried. * For a coordination project, it would be much more practical if a single language of discussion is chosen. --- Of course it would be more practical; the question is: should we manage Beta the way that is easier for us English speakers or should we manage it the way everybody can take part in discussions about guidelines that will apply to all projects? * Wikiversity Beta Motto? --- The shorter, the better. If you want your ideas to reach people speaking other languages, write short and understandable summaries. Please feel free to ask questions and to make constructive comments. I would also like to thank Sebmol & JWSchmidt for their help. g. [1] Board resolution: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Wikiversity [2] Anthere's mail about Wikiversity: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-August/009074.html [3] Wikiversity Beta URL: http://beta.wikiversity.org [4] Multilingual discussion proposal: http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Multilingualism [5] Language selection system: http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Language_select [6] List of separate Wikiversity projects: http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Separate_projects [7] Reports from separate projects: http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Reports -- Guillaume Paumier Disciplus Simplex http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile — You will be assimilated.

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[Foundation-l] Edits by project and country of origin
by Kelly Martin 04 Sep '06

04 Sep '06

Some interesting demographic data for main space edits to our largest Wikipedia projects may be found at http://meta.wkimedia.org/wiki/Edits_by_project_and_country_of_origin. My thanks to Greg Maxwell for his invaluable assistance generating this data. Some observations * NL and BE are language sluts. * ptwiki gets quite a bit more edits from BR than from PT, although almost 75% of edits from PT are to ptwiki. * MX has a depressingly low participation in eswiki. Not reported in the data on the page, but possibly of interest: US accounts for 27.61% of edits to the projects sampled, followed by DE at 10.01% and GB at 8.15%. Kelly

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of origin
by daniwo59＠aol.com 04 Sep '06

04 Sep '06

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Wikimedia-l September 2006