The Board resolutions from the last meeting are now all public on:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions
Perhaps the most interesting one from a community point of view is the
"Philip Greenspun illustrations project", about which a separate
announcement will be posted shortly.
Erik Möller
Executive Secretary
Wikimedia Foundation
An injunction was sought against WMF to force it to remove content from
the french wikipedia, that the plaintiffs deemed defamatory and
infringing on their privacy. The plaintiffs also sought 63,000 Euros in
damages, and requested from the WMF to provide contact information of
the anonymous editor responsible for the edit.
The court stated that the Foundation is a hosting provider in the sense
of article 6 of the LCEN ("Loi pour la confiance dans l'économie
numérique") and as such has no obligation to keep watch on the content
that it hosts and can not be held accountable for the content added by
contributors to the encyclopedia.
The same law states that hosting providers must remove illegal content
when notified it exists. In this case, the dispute centred largely
around when the Foundation was notified. The plaintiffs believed they
had notified the Foundation via e-mail, although the Foundation has no
record of the e-mails having been received. The court did not consider
e-mails sufficient notification.
Also, the court stated that when a hosting provider is notified about
libelous content, it only has to remove content that is obviously libelous.
In this case, the lawsuit was filed before the Foundation was officially
alerted. As soon as the Foundation received official notification, it
immediately removed the content in question.
The court also stated that once the Foundation was notified of the
problem, it acted swiftly and removed the content. As a result, WMF won
the lawsuit and will not have to pay for any damages. The request to
provide the contact information of the editor responsible for the edit
was also dismissed.
--------
This is very good news for the Foundation. We maintain that WMF is not
the publisher, owner or monitor on any of the Wikipedia projects (and
obviously not the WP FR). We are pleased to have our position upheld and
supported in a court of law.
In general, it is extremely important that we get used to quickly remove
any defamatory content, or privacy-invasive content, as soon as it is
brought to our attention. "We", in this case, mean "all of us". Editors
of Wikipedia, volunteers on OTRS, staff members. The more we care about
people requests of this type, the more we will be recognized as a
community caring about the truth and caring about the individual. Whilst
we must not fall into easy censorship and let ourselves be pressured to
remove information which should be available to humanship just because
it does not please a couple of people, it is also important to remember
that we are a top 10 website, widely read everywhere and that any
erroneous information on people may have huge consequences in their
private and professional lives.
Being available to answer readers concerns *is* important. There is no
gain for anyone to get in a court to solve such issues (except for
lawyers in fact). Most conflicts of that sort could be solved through
communication.
Whilst the current case was not strictly speaking a biography page, it
involved living people. So, my email is also a reminder that policies
such as the "biographies of living people" in the english wikipedia are
very helpful to both protect our projects and help making sure our
content is as reliable as possible.
Let us seek to avoid violence when violence can be avoided :-)
I suggest that every project get a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons
And consider building such policies in the near future.
A few links for more information
*
http://wikimedia.fr/index.php/Communiqués_de_presse/La_Wikimedia_Foundation…
(in french)
*
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Le_Bistro/2_novembre_2007#Proc.C3.A8…
(in french)
* http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy (in english)
Florence Devouard
The following firm represented the Foundation in this lawsuit:
HUGOT AVOCATS
www.hugot.fr
If Jan-Bart de Vreede and Jimmy Wales are reappointed, does that mean that the Board does not plan currently on finding anyone new to bring in to the board on an appointed basis?
Also, is there anything in the Foundation bylaws about how long a Board member can serve or can they be continually reappointed and/or re-elected? Similar question about whether or not there is anything about how long someone can serve as Chair, Vice-Chair, etc. or can those be indefinite as long as they are supported by the Board?
Finally, in the future, it would be helpful to have a listing of the actual names of the people who voted in favor (or against if that were the case). Historically, it would make the record of each vote more accurate. And/or some note regarding who was at the meeting linked to the resolution if someone wanted to go check.
Are there any minutes from the Oct. 6-7 meeting available?
Sue Anne
sreed1234(a)yahoo.com
----- Original Message ----
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, November 2, 2007 10:43:32 AM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Recent resolutions posted
The Board resolutions from the last meeting are now all public on:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions
Perhaps the most interesting one from a community point of view is the
"Philip Greenspun illustrations project", about which a separate
announcement will be posted shortly.
Erik Möller
Executive Secretary
Wikimedia Foundation
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foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
"We maintain that WMF is not the publisher, owner or monitor on any of the
Wikipedia projects (and obviously not the WP FR). We are pleased to have our
position upheld and supported in a court of law."
I guess that was one of the compelling reasons to put aside the claim. Has
the Board considered the implications on this policy from the moment the
Foundation starts paying for content, as foreseen in the Greenspan
illustration project?
Peter boelens
Cross posting to Commons-l and Foundation-l (forgive the duplication):
The Greenspan Illustration Project
What is it?
The Wikimedia Foundation has received a donation from Philip Greenspun
for the purpose of creating and improving illustrations on Wikimedia.
The Board has decided to accept his donation of $US20,000 for this
special purpose.
This is the first time the Foundation has been directly involved in
funded content creation, although the German chapter's experience in
winning a government grant to write articles on sustainable development
has helped pave the way. The Foundation wants a "hands-off" minimal
administration role with the bulk of the work of organizing the project
and creating the content to be completed by members of our community.
Since this is the first time we've done this, we're not sure how it will
go. This is a bit experimental and we ask for your patience and
enthusiasm to help make it a success.
Brianna Laugher (<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise>)
will be coordinating the project, with my help as the Foundation's
Volunteer Coordinator.
How will it run?
Since Philip's kind donation is a lot of money and we're planning to pay
around US$40 per illustration (with some lower and higher amounts, see
details to follow), we want to progress the project in stages. Starting
out with a small number of 50 requested illustrations, we'll look at our
results and modify and improve it for successive stages.
The project will flow along as follows:
* Create list of requested illustrations.
* Open illustration requests on issue tracking software
* Users will self-assign requests, signaling his or her intent to
create that illustration.
* On creation and approval, the user is paid the amount as set in
the original request.
Things to note:
* The list of requests will be approved by Brianna, in order that
balance exists among "things any decent reference work needs";
"things the Wikimedia community requests"; and "things we nearly
have, or have poor versions of".
* Approval: a review group will be formed in order to provide
assessment of submitted images. The main checks will be 1)
editor's original work and acceptable license, 2) correct
rendering on MediaWiki and 3) how well the image depicts the
requested item. No image will be accepted that do not pass all
three of these checks.
* Other checks will be recommended (e.g. language-neutral version).
* The payment system is not yet finalized.
How you can help
If you are interested in suggesting illustrations to be created, you
don't have long to wait: soon there will be some pages on Meta where you
can get involved. We will write to foundation-l when the pages are ready
for your input.
If you are interested in being part of the review group, please email
Brianna as follows:
brianna.laugher AT gmail DOT com
The benefits
This project can have two good outcomes. One, we get illustrations we
wouldn't otherwise have, or wouldn't otherwise have had so quickly.
Another benefit is that we can use this project as a way to encourage
and launch new people into the "illustrator community".
Creating high-quality SVGs is not a skill a lot of people have
immediately, but may be developed fairly quickly. While many people
might be vaguely interested in it but no more, a monetary incentive
might be enough to push them to act, and learn, and create. Some of the
image requests will be for smaller amounts (US$15) for relatively
simpler illustrations—these will be specifically targeted to newcomers
to encourage them to get involved. At the end of this project we might
have $20,000 worth of illustrations, but the value of the content
creating community will potentially be a lot higher. We expect a side
benefit to this project will be the creation/finding and maintenance of
good documentation for specific tasks using tools like Inkscape.
More details
See the project specifications at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/5/51/WMF_Greenspun_Illustr…
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Phone: 727.231.0101
Fax: 727.258.0207
E-Mail: cbass(a)wikimedia.org
Given that Google is the single largest contributor of traffic to all
Wikimedia projects, it seems that the simple act of signing up to Google
Webmaster Tools would provide a vast amount of data that Google is already
collecting on the projects for free. This data is extremely interesting, and
includes:
- The exact phrases used in external links to your site
- The top search queries used to access your site, in the following
csv format:
> Site Information,Location,Search Type,Top search queries,Top search
> query clicks
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, (India) google.co.in,Web
> Search,"[wikipedia:1][universal access to knowledge:6]["the world's best
> encyclopedia":6]"
- This includes the position of your site in the results for that
query
- The PageRank of all of your pages; the distribution of the PageRank
of all of your pages; your page with the highest PageRank
- The number of people who have subscribed to the rss feeds on your
site using Google products that allow this.
- Something akin to the inverse document frequency of the words in
your site and the words used in external links to your site, as computed by
GoogleBot
How this would work:
1. A Wikimedia representative creates a Google account for the
Foundation
2. Each language version of each project is added. This may be a one
time labor intensive process, or it might be more straightforward. I have no
way of testing this right now.
3. Click the "Download data for all sites" button.
4. Profit ;)
It seems that releasing this data does not violate the Foundation privacy
policy. The search query data is collected under an agreement between the
user and Google, before they ever enter the domain of a Foundation project.
That point aside, there are no unique identifiers that link one user to a
set of queries, only a relationship between a set of queries and a country.
There is no specific information on when a query was performed.
The community will no doubt come up with interesting visualizations and
applications of this data. Articles that are receiving a relatively high
amount of traffic but are of a relatively low level of quality can be
targeted for improvement, for example.
I would volunteer to automate as much of this as possible, including
downloading the data at certain intervals.
Please discuss! :)
/Brian
The "One Laptop Per Child" project has put up an interesting report
about a pilot deployment in Khairat, India:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khairat_Chronicle
--
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
The Foundation has http://donate.wikimedia.org/en/fundcore_browse for the
current fundraiser, http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/en/fundcore/list for
2006 and this year before the current drive, and the legacy system,
http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/legacy/ongoing/, for donations from early
2005 and overlapping part of 2006.
I would like to know if these are comparable in their comprehensiveness, or
are there variations in what was included over time?
Also, as of now, do all donations get included or are they strictly limited
to what gets processed online? (In other words, if someone sends the
Foundation a physical check, does that get added in?)
Thanks.
-Robert Rohde
I happen to agree with Gerard that the Wikimedia Foundation does indeed support languages through the very act of supporting Wikipedias. I also agree that the foundation should be more proud of this fact and announce it happily. If we are doing something so positive, why not let people know about it, and why not even include it as one of our goals? It may not be our primary goal, but it certainly plays a supporting role towards reaching that goal ("the sum of all knowledge"). It is yet another gem in the WMF's crown.
That being said, I don't really understand what, specifically, Gerard is asking for. In what specific ways does the foundation need to "adapt" in order to meet the needs of smaller languages? "Resources" and "investments" usually imply money, but in what specific ways does Gerard think money can be used to support smaller languages? Please elaborate.
Finally, Mark Williamson's comment:
>> I imagine it would be easier if those people would be allowed to get Wikipedias instead of having to wait for years.
This is as opposed to Gerard: "we insist on a good user experience so a localised user interface is a must."
Experience proves that Mark is right: Many of today's successful Wikipedia's began without much of a local interface at all. Instead, people just got to work, and the interface got translated bit-by-bit along the way by admins, in exactly the same way a Wikipedia gets built as a whole by editors.
Not allowing people to simply "get to work" on a Wikipedia, and requiring that there be "several hoops to jump through before a new language gets its own project" actually works against smaller languages.
Instead, just let people get started! If the project fails, simply freeze it until speakers of the language come along who want to try to build it again.
To conclude, if there are positive ways that money could be used to support smaller languages, then the foundation should consider doing so. But regardless of monetary issues, people should be allowed to get to work on smaller wikipedias without too many hurdles.
Dovi
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I don't mean to sound accusative or argumenative with this post, so I apologize in advance if that's the way it "sounds" over email.
In 2005 the Beck Foundation contributed a substantial sum of money ($10,000) in the form of a grant for the development and promotion of Wikijunior books. To the best of my knowledge, that money has never been properly accounted for. At the very least, what happened to that money and how it was used to help Wikijunior specifically has never been made public. Somehow I feel like it wasnt intended for that money to be rolled over into the "Wikipedia growth expenditures" portion of the budget, so I would hate to hear that it silently was. We could perhaps raise the bigger issue that finances have never been made as transparent or well-reported as they should be. That is a different topic for a different thread. I would be hesitant to pursue any additional forms of grant money for Wikijunior until there is some assurance that the money won't disappear into the abyss.
Also, like Randy mentioned, one of the books (Wikijunior Big Cats) was published on Lulu press, but Jimbo personally had that book removed from the website citing a vague series of "concerns" and asked for more discussion on the matter first. We asked for input from the board on several occasions, and received no helpful replies.
I'm not really going on any warpaths about this until the fundraiser is over (I know it's taking up a lot of our collective attention right now), So long as the issue of Wikijunior has been raised I do feel that these are a few points worth considering for future discussion. I would like to get Wikijunior in to a good place early next year so that we can push for it to be used during the following school year. The things that randy suggested, such as the read-only domain would be key to making this happen.
--Andrew Whitworth
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