I get
" TRANSACTION NOT ALLOWED
Wrong merchant email address!"
when clicking on the Moneybookers button on
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
Note that this happens when JavaScript is enabled. Without JS, I get a
form, but no "submit" button.
Magnus
Hi,
Thanks for waking me up this morning with a honking great
flashy scrolling monstrosity at the top of every page. The
marquee tag was a nice flashback to 1997.
And how much opportunity for feedback were users given on
this? Not an awful lot. The SVN commit logs show that the
marquee thingy was committed just minutes before appearing
project-wide, for example. I still almost managed to file a
bugzilla request before it showed up.
Now, the way I see things, the Wikimedia Foundation has two
options:
(1) Actually ask for feedback from the community before
making such dramatically visible, or at least allow more
than a few minutes for feedback to present itself.
(2) Make an official announcement that the opinion of the
community does not matter, rather than pretending that it
does.
The choice is yours. (1) would of course be preferable, but
(2) would make an excellent argument for a fork, so feel
free to go ahead and do it.
-Gurch
AskMeNow is now commencing the planned alpha test of the AskWiki search site
of Wikipedia content under their agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation.
AskWiki is a preliminary integration of a semantic search engine that seeks
to provide specific answers to questions using information from Wikipedia
articles. Whatever the question - Why is the Sky Blue? What is quantum
physics? - just ask and get the answer.
The site is still in early stage development and has been designed to foster
community involvement to help improve the search service and interface over
the development period. Like Wikipedia, AskWiki is built on MediaWiki and
gives individual contributors the ability to improve search results by
editing and updating answer articles. This makes it a great complementary
tool for Wikipedia and will continue to reside on an off-site portal. If the
test period is successful, we will develop AskWiki into a mobile search tool
that will allow users to access Wikipedia through an easy mobile service.
However, since the project is still an in-development test, we are asking
the Wikimedia Community to try it out and help us improve it.
Please visit www.askwiki.com, and help us make search results smarter.
Thanks,
The AskWiki Team
Subtitle of the message subject: HELP
We need help for translation of the major pages related to fundraising.
You can help.
Here is the page where translation needed are listed
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007#Pages_to_be_translated
Please help translate the pages mentionned in bold. This is urgent.
Also, please distribute this message around in your projects, in the
various languages, and on the pumps.
Thanks
Ant
Franz Liszt writes in his Myspace weblog:
"A great blow has been dealt against the world of music and of our
common cultural heritage.
The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) was a wonderful
site for sharing public domain music scores. They had an encyclopaedic
collection of scores which anyone could download as a .pdf file. The
site was entirely free and run by people dedicated to the art of
music.
Unfortunately the music publishers Universal Edition has threatened
the site's creator with legal action if he does not "cease and desist"
the site's activities. This has now happened. UE's threats appear to
be based on rather spurious copyright grounds. The intention is not to
protect artists' rights, but to stop people from accessing public
domain materials.
Most artists have struggled terribly in life and die broke and young.
Having ignored the artists during their lifetimes, publishers are then
able to exploit their genius posthumously. Take poor old Franz
Schubert, for instance.
UE's legal threat is a direct attack on our common musical heritage as
well as on culture in general. I believe that these public domain
works should be freely available to the public. For the most part,
IMSLP made available sores by all the greats (including my humble
self), most of whom have been long dead and are out of copyright.
There is a current trend for all our common cultural heritage to be
"privatized" and exploited by private corporations for the sole
purpose of making money. The idea that the works of Shakespeare,
Beethoven and Leonardo da Vinci (et al) should "belong" to anyone
except the people of this planet (and beyond) is outrageous.
Sadly, this trend is not restricted only to great works of art.
Ancient buildings, national parks, libraries, museums, images of works
art, and many aspects of our cultural heritage are all being devoured
by private corporations in order to fuel the interests of a small
minority of greedy individuals.
Be that as it may, I do urge you to go to the IMSLP forum, register.
learn the facts and offer support (if only by adding your voice). This
is important because this is about freedom, our common cutural
heritage - and about music! [...]
The address is http://imslpforums.org "
Source:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=113684180&b…
The cease and desist letter mentions EU-protected composers but also
composers like Gustav Mahler who is dead since 1911.
There are two questions:
First: Can WMF help to re-activate IMSLP by hosting e.g. Wikiscore (or so)?
It is already possible to uload PD scores on Wikimedia Commons. See
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sheet_music
Second: Are there implications for WMF copyright policies?
The CaD-letter mentions the fact that "that under Canadian law a
judgement rendered in Europe is enforceable in Canada". If a Canadian
user uploads works on Commons from an US server like Internet Archive
(pre-1923-rule) which are PD in Canada (50 y pma) then this is allowed
by the (inappropriate) rule of Commons.
I have to quote the rule:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing#Interaction_of_United_S…
"If material that has been saved from a third-party website is
uploaded to Commons, the copyright laws of the US, the country of
residence of the uploader, and the country of location of the
webservers of the website apply."
It clearly lacks the COUNTRY OF ORIGIN in this (inappropriate) rule.
If this country is a EU country the 70 year pma rule is in effect.
Take a Bela Bartok score published before 1923 (or 1909). Bartok died
in 1945, his works are protected in all EU countries until December
31, 2015. The score is PD in the US and Canada but the Canadian
uploader can be sued by a Canadian lawyer because the work is not free
in Europe.
WMF cannot be sued for an US court in this case because the work is PD
in the US.
But should'nt we protect the uploader when he is uploading according our rules?
Klaus Graf
I believe you are going to find that the scrolling marquee is going to
reduce donations. I understand the good intentions behind it, however, if
you are a native speaker of one language, and a banner advertisement is
scrolling text at you in another language, the first thing that is going to
happen is that you are going to be confused. First impressions are
everything - you want that first impression to lead to the action of
clicking on the banner, not moving the mouse as far away from it as
possible. When's the last time you clicked on a banner ad in a language you
don't speak?
I also suggest removing those crazy closeups of Jimbo's eyeballs from the
video. Creepy!!!
Cheers,
Brian
I asked Howard for further information.
--------------------------------------------------------
If the Chair wants to know what's going on, contact some of the Webcomic
"reporters" (columnists who write about webcomics.) The foremost authorities
of late are probably Gary Tyrell of Fleen.com, and Xav Xerexes of
Comixtalk.com.
Gary can be reached at gary(a)fleen.com
Xav can be reached at xerexes(a)gmail.com
You can also look at my own take on this in blog entries from earlier this
year:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/02/05/webcomics-wikiwatc
h/
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/02/06/wikiwatch-round-ii
/
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/02/06/wikiwatch-the-madn
ess-continues/
Note that my own mini-crusade on these matters was never about my own
article (which I have tweaked on occasion), and barely scratches the surface
of the problem.
--------------------------------------------------------
I read the first blog entry, he asserts Evil Inc. had its article deleted
despite being web & print.
Brian.