> David Strauss wrote:
> The biggest error I see here is that people are trying to limit language
> versions of Wikipedia so that they comply with the laws of the country
> where the language is primarily spoken. But that's fruitless. The
> Italian Wikipedia (hosted in Florida) isn't under Italian law just
> because it's in Italian. Nor are Italian citizens liable for something
> on the Italian Wikipedia just because the page is in Italian.
I'm well aware of this. That's why basically I asked that WMF states clearly which kind of contents are allowed on Wikimedia projects. This should be uniform on all projects and should not be left to decision of the various communities.
And if NC's won't be allowed on the basis that everyone should be able to reuse commercially the content "as is", I'm telling you that this have to be true everywhere. And if this has to be true for everyone, everywere, fair use poses the same kind of problems as NC's.
Roberto (Snowdog)
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I don't know whether it has legal connotations or was written from a
manual of style or similar, but to me, 'Thank you to all those who
donated from the Wikimedia Foundation!' looks funny. I think 'The
Wikimedia Foundation thanks all those who donated [to us/to the
Wikimedia Foundation] during [the/our] fundraiser'.
Jm2p...
--
Gary Kirk
Hello,
During the board meeting in Rotterdam, it was decided that the audit
committee for the coming year would be made of
* Michael (treasurer)
* Oscar
* Dedalus
* myself (ex officio)
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Audit_Committee_Jan07
We will be working on an audit committee charter. The committee is
directed to take all steps necessary to prepare quarterly or semi-annual
reviews (next review is early february), and the next financial year
external audit. The committee will also work to help implementation of
some of the suggestions made by the audit firm in november 2006.
You'll notice that one of the audit committee members is Dedalus, who
contacted us last november when we published the audited financial
statement, and identified himself as an auditor. We met him last week in
Rotterdam. I am very happy we'll receive help from a professional, who
also happens to be a wikipedian.
Thank you
Florence Devouard
Chair of WMF
[copied to foundation-l and wikipedia-l; please note this when replying]
I was sure I'd seen this on the mailing lists before, but I couldn't
find it on a quick search (which is odd - I'm sure I heard a week ago)
It appears the Esperanto Wikipedia is on a stamp. Well, Esperanto is
on the stamp; a chunk of the text from [[eo:L. L. Zamenhof]] is used
as a sort of background illustration.
Colour image: http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/stamps/jrst0399.jpg
Detailed description: http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/stamps/jrst0399e.jpg
Brief discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29
This is quite a delightful discovery; it isn't clear why our text is
used, but it must be a good motive, and it's certainly a somewhat
unusual bit of recognition :-)
Congratulations to the eo.wp community - from a glance at their
discussion forums last night I didn't see any obvious keywords to
suggest they've noticed yet, so someone more competent than I may like
to make sure they know...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
Hello all,
I was too tired yesterday to keep my eyes open and my hands typing, to
announce the end of our fundraising :-)
Sorry about that (lack of sleep from Rotterdam, baby sick etc...)
So, in a very official fashion, let me announce that the fundrive is over.
The last day of our Fundraising was planned to be on Wikipedia Day (1).
Which was yesterday. Wikipedia is now starting its 7 year of existence.
Wikipedia Day also was a special milestone, since 1 million dollars
donation was exactly reached on that specific day. I promise we did not
tweak the system to make that happen.
The current site notice with the various links can now be removed. We
suggest a new site notice with a big thank you note to all of our
donators as well as a link to an updated FAQ. I just saw some updated
graphics from Jeremy (number of donations per day, total donations per
day per currency...), which I expect will be very interesting to you.
The FundCom is working on that.
What else ?
Maybe just a few words from the Rotterdam meeting. We worked a lot
there, but had cool moments as well (including a wikimeet). Not everyone
is back home yet. So, announcements et al will wait a little bit more.
I just wanted to mention that we discussed the fundraising and more
generally finances on friday morning.
To optimize our time, we somehow divided areas of interest between board
members and the members with a focus on the fundraising area are Jimmy,
Kat and Erik (for the technical side in particular). These three are in
charge of reporting on the last fundraising, and to suggest any changes
necessary. It is up to them to organise themselves, but I expect this
discussion to be largely public, either here, or on meta, or perhaps
during an irc meeting.
There were huge improvements with last times (in particular the
technical part), but also serious gaps in communication. We must
consider all ways we can improve that in the next time.
We also need to improve our strategy, so that we can raise more and more
quickly the next time.
Note that the "next fundraising date" has not been decided yet.
Meanwhile, fundraising over and thank you all for your help.
Florence/Anthere
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Day
In the past there was some effort put into grant writing, but I'm not
sure if any grant applications ever got submitted. In any case, it's
been quite a while since anything was done on Meta about grants:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants
There is a new NEH grant that looks like something appropriate for
Wikimedia (or at least for English Wikipedia, through Wikimedia):
http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html
>From the program description, they want:
"...proposals for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using
the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American
public, humanities scholarship, and the nation's cultural
institutions. These grants will support collaborations among
libraries, museums, archives, universities, and other cultural
organizations that may serve as models for the field. We encourage
projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret
humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new
uses and audiences for existing digital resources."
It almost looks like it was written with Wikipedia in mind. The grant
range is $50,000 to $350,000 over two years; not enormous, but it
seems worth the time of some Wikimedian grant writers.
With some creativity, there are probably some other NEH and possibly
NSF grants that Wikimedia might have a shot at as well.
-User:Ragesoss
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> So even though our non-profit status may allow us to use NC image, others who use our content for
> commercial purposes would need to constantly remove non-free images. And *that* makes it
> needlessly difficult for others to use and enjoy our work.
If I take the contents of the english Wikipedia and I want to reuse them commercially in Italy, I have to remove all fair use images. And *that* makes it needlessly difficult (?) for me to use and enjoy our work. So for me the use of fair use images goes against the spirit if not the letter of the FDL.
Also (IANAL too) GFDL allows me to create derivative works, I don't know if I can take an image that is fair use and modify it. I think it's not possible and if this is the case, this as well goes against the spirit if not the letter of the FDL.
And to state it clearly once again, I'm against fair use *AND * NC's.
But if the point is that only US subjects should not have the problem of removing the bits of content that are not in accord with thier laws, please state it clearly.
Roberto (Snowdog)
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Congrats, everybody! The fundraiser has made it over the $1,000,000
mark! And that happened (AFAIK) on the Wikipedia Day, even! Fantastic
news! Again, congrats to all, especially those who've been involved in
the work with the fundraiser and translations, etc.
--
Best regards,
Jon Harald Søby
Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby(a)gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby
> The argument that "NC" is the freest that you can get makes no
> difference really. It puts a restriction to the distribution to our
> content. Distribution of our content is what we aim to do.
Outside USA fair use images put a restriction to the distribution of our content! Is it so hard to understand?
Roberto (Snowdog)
------------------------------------------------------
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http://click.libero.it/infostrada15gen07
On Friday 15 Dec 2006 Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 12/15/06, luke brandt wrote:
>> From what I understand (but please someone correct me if I
>> misunderstood the reports) the Wikimedia Board didn't vote last time
>> these matters were raised because it prefers to allow autonomy.
> On issues such as whether we should allow NC images I, as member of
> the current Board, definitely don't think there should be any project
> level autonomy at all. If we want to keep our content compatible
> across languages and projects, we need to apply a consistent standard
> of freedom.
> I think this will have to be discussed with the current Board.
> Unfortunately we're very taken up by fundraising preparations and
> other critical planning issues at the moment; I do hope to bring it up
> at the next face-to-face meeting in Janaury.
> At this time, I would strongly, strongly ask anyone advocating the use
> of NC content in a project to reconsider. It would hurt Wikikimedia
> tremendously.
It seems to me that the opposition to NC is based on a most curious and
imperfect interpretation of the word 'free,' one that seeks to encompass
the freedom to make a profit from other people's efforts. I therefore
hope that the Foundation won't have any truck with the idea of diluting
its previous attitude to autonomy - luke
