My apologies if this has been suggested before.. but it seems like an
interesting concept..
The issues:
1) The Foundation needs a steady source of income to support it's
operation. Unobtrusive advertising could provide this sort of income, but
many people object to any sort of advertising on WMF wikis.
2) Wikipedia (particularly en.wp) is a prime target for both commercial
links and fancruft links, due to it's high ranking in search engines and the
amount of traffic a link on a Wikipedia page can generate for a linked
site.
While a portion of these links are clearly commercial spam or
self-promotion(coi), many are in a grey area with regard to both WP:SPAM
and WP:EL criteria and they were probably posted with benign or benevolent
intentions.
The concept:
1) Create a WMF controlled wiki, to be used only to host 'external links'.
(for the purpose of discussion, we'll call this 'linkswiki')
With this concept, the criteria defined in WP:SPAM and WP:EL still
apply, we may choose to relax certain aspects of the criteria a bit for
linkswiki based links, but we wouldn't start allowing everything that gets posted.
Then modify the link policy to something like "only 'official sites' and
references/sources allowed on the main wiki article pages" (or some
variation of more restrictive criteria that people can agree upon), all
other 'external links' would be either posted directly to linkswiki or
moved there via bot on a continuous basis. Each encyclopedia page
would have an 'external link' to a corresponding page on the linkswiki.
{insert a healthy amount of tech wizardry and creative thinking here to
maintain the linkswiki directory and make it more useful to our users, this
also requires a functioning SingleUserLogin to be practical. }
2) Enable a modest amount of unobtrusive Google ads (or similar) on
linkswiki.
If initial funding is needed to establish the infrastructure for linkswiki,
we could consider a partnership with a for-profit - they provide startup
funding in exchange for a percentage of the advertising income for a
specified period of time.
The end results: Users who click from the encyclopedia page to the
linkswiki directory get what they expect: links to related things - some
provided by users, others provided by advertising. There are far fewer
linkfarms on encyclopedia pages, and the Foundation gets a steady source of
income.
Obviously, this is a very raw concept.. but I'm interested in hearing what
folks think..
--
Best regards,
Versageek
Dear Wikipedia Foundation,
My apologies if this is inappropriate or considered spam.
I read today with great interest the story on providing the Wikipedia
most popular stories on a CD.
Sat-Ed provides connectivity to rural sites via satellite.
www.sat-ed.com
While we do use Internet at the sites, we are always trying to cache as
much content on site as possiblem, this is because we need to protect
the bandwidth as much as possible.
I would be very interested in placing the CD contents on our "Digital
Library" at our sites and school sites for evaluation.
While I assume the first ones are in English, our prime languages at the
moment are Thai, Malay and Vietnamese with Mandarin (for mainland China)
soon.
Can you please suggest the technical and marketing people we can talk
with to arrange this.
We only have a few sites at the moment, in Thailand, schools in Thailand
and test sites in Ghana, with Vietnam, Malaysia and PRC to follow very soon.
Your thoughts also on what we do and how we can improve greatly welcome.
Kind Regards
John Hawker
On 4/23/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info> wrote:
> What caused this is writing an article about someone who is not notable enough that the article would be read or watched. If it were not autobiographical, at least the creator of the article might have it on their watchlist. But as it is, who knew or cared? Our process depends on articles getting enough attention that errors are noticed.
>
> Fred
>
I agree with you, pointing out what I think you acknowledged but
wasn't made clear. She created this article on herself. Someone else
came along and vandalized it. Maybe it was someone else, anyway. I
don't think we can rule out the possibility that she did it herself to
create a news story.
It's sad that this stuff lasted so long. We desperately need a more
organized system for policing articles, especially ones about living
people. But I don't think Wikipedia or the foundation is to blame for
any of this.
We have enough eyes to catch this sort of thing much faster. Can we
please have some effort put into designing a system to utilize those
eyes efficiently? I'm not really talking about stable versions - a
simple system to list the "least examined edits" would be enough.
Defining which users count as valid "examiners" would be the hardest
part of the implementation, but *any* half-assed definition of who
qualifies would improve the system drastically.
C'mon, this could be implemented in a couple weeks by a single person
working a few hours a day. I'm forwarding this to foundation-l.
Anthony
This conversation went sideways a bit and then petered out over the
weekend while I was sick. I wanted to throw some suggestions in.
Easy suggestion:
Form another 501 C 3, "Wikipedia Foundation" (WPF) or somesuch.
Transfer it the trademark and ownership for the domain name. Have it
license those back to the Wikimedia Foundation for a notional $1/yr.
Have it have a minimal, trusted board, with no WMF overlap, and
charter to protect those assets.
It's safe; it's not actually doing anything, so it can't be sued. If
the WMF gets sued into oblivion, the domain and trademark don't go
with it, and the WPF can then license the assets to whichever
appropriate new free content organization springs up in the wake of
the debacle.
Alternately:
Spin Wikipedia off into a Wikipedia Foundation, taking the lawsuit
risks with it, and licensing the domain and trademark from WMF. This
allows the WMF to broaden its horizons a bit and become a long term
umbrella trust for open content in all its myriad forms, spawning new
project foundations as appropriate.
This might be easiest. Among other things, a spun-off WPF could even
be a not-for-profit company, not even having to be a 501 C 3 (with all
the years of paperwork and IRS foo-foo); I doubt that anyone would
seriously object if a not-for-profit WPF running the Wikipedias was
funded in part by donations from the 501 C 3 WMF, or that donations to
the WMF were partly directed on to a not-for-profit.
I don't believe there's anything illegal or unethical or fattening
about that. You just need to fully disclose any relationships to
donors and make sure that the not-for-profit Wikipedia Foundation
books are sufficiently open, and not being used as a tax dodge.
This all needs an appropriate corporate attorney review, probably
corporate attorney with tax and nonprofits experience.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
Well, I do agree about Wikis crossing the threshhold to get on the
page in the first place.
I mean, I suppose someone could write a script that monitors all of
the Wikipedias.
However, I do think that we should have something that automatically
lets somebody know if pages cross the other threshholds once they are
already on the page, for example sh: or scn: crossing 10K.
Mark
On 23/04/07, Casey Brown <cbrown1023(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> The page is http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_template and
> you could post a request on the talk page or [[Meta:Babel]]/[[Metapub]]...
>
> When Wikipedias cross the threshold, they should report it themselves like
> you are doing it right now... it is hard to monitor all those wikis.
>
> Whenever I add Inuktitut to the list, it does not seem to work. Can someone
> else try it?
>
> Cbrown1023
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Thomas
> Goldammer
> Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 7:34 PM
> To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] http://wikipedia.org
>
> Hello.
>
> I've heard that someone on this list is responsible for the content on
> http://wikipedia.org, is that right? If yes, I would like to have
> added the Inuktitut Wikipedia (abbrev. iu) in the 100+ list. It even
> reaches 200 articles soon (though many of them only have substub
> status yet). Maybe other wikis grew across the list boundaries as
> well. (hopefully :o) ) Someone could check that and actualize the "WP
> main entrance". If you are not responsible for that page, please send
> me a message (on my Meta talk page, or via email), who is.
>
> Thank you in advance,
> Thomas Goldammer.
> ----
> [[m:User:Thogo]]
> [[w:de:Benutzer:Thomas Goldammer]]
> [[wikt:de:Benutzer:Thogo]]
> [[w:iu:User:Thogo]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
--
Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
Since I have open sourced the wikix program, now anyone wanting the
images can download them directly from Wikipedia.
I am in process of restructuring the WikiGadugi site, so anyone wanting
the bittorrent downloads need to finish up this week,
as I will discontinue them shortly since folks now have the ability to
download them directly. The wikix program
is not very intensive on the main Wikimedia servers. The program is
setup to behave as several workstations, and it really
does not take that long to get the images.
To date, under ten folks have downloaded the entire image archive, so it
does not appear that there is that much interest.
Jeff
On 4/24/07, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w(a)public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > I think it's quite obvious that WP:OFFICE (at least in essence, if not
> > detail) applies to all Wikimedia projects, and as such should be on
> > meta and translated into all appropriate languages. What really is
> > there to discuss?
>
Agree. If someone could be suprised by it or upset by it, it should
be documented, and in a WMF-wide location (meta) not en-specific.
-george william herbert
george.herbert-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w(a)public.gmane.org
It was a logo, taggued public domain. Request received for a take down.
Legal analysis on it, and recommandation to indeed remove the logo.
The office action held less than 30 mn.
A new logo was uploaded (very very poor quality), taggued public domain,
and replaced on the page. No comment was added on the talk page.
Outcome: Office action rejected, with no comment.
Anthere
I think it's quite obvious that WP:OFFICE (at least in essence, if not
detail) applies to all Wikimedia projects, and as such should be on
meta and translated into all appropriate languages. What really is
there to discuss?
Casey Brown wrote:
>Just for the record, I love the office and would love to see it on meta...
>
>
What kind of situations does Meta have that would call for "office
actions" as they were practiced on the English Wikipedia?
With respect to the larger issue, the Wikimedia Foundation office must
have the authority to intervene on all projects when necessary for legal
reasons. It would be difficult to abdicate this. The details and process
might vary (the closure of the French Wikiquote was done rather
differently), and I wouldn't recommend referring everyone to the English
Wikipedia version as the blanket official policy, but the principle
remains the same.
--Michael Snow
So the problems that OFFICE is intended to resolve can only occur on the
English Wikipedia? Or alternately, so the office is only responsible for the
English Wikipedia?
To the best of my knowledge (and I was there), the policy was put into place
by Jimbo in his then capacity as Chair of the Board, with the support of
Brad, in his then capacity as ED. Both these titles were foundation-wide--i.e.,
Jimbo was chair of the board of the Wikimedia Foundation, not just the
English Wikipedia, and Brad was ED of the Wikimedia Foundation, not just the
English Wikipedia.
To me this seems like yet another attempt to isolate the office from the
other projects.
Danny
In a message dated 4/23/2007 6:10:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
cbrown1023(a)comcast.net writes:
For those who do not know,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Office_Actions.
This policy has been mislabeled "Wikimedia-wide" official policy until last
evening (EST) when Anthere and I (Cbrown1023) cleaned up the page and
brought it up to date. Currently, it is just "Wikimedia" official policy.
There is no doubt by any that the Office cannot do anything it wants
(basically what this policy states) but the part that needs to be clarified
is if it really is "Wikimedia-wide". Recently, we declined two requests on
Meta to move or transwiki the policy page to Meta because it is labeled as
"Wikimedia-wide official policy", but we denied it because it is not in use
on all of Wikimedia and it appears that it was not intended for use outside
of the English Wikipedia at its creation. The first statement that it was
used elsewhere was added by an anonymous editor
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Office_Actions
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Office_Actions&diff=935
35379&oldid=93466899> &diff=93535379&oldid=93466899), before that it had
said "official policy on the English Wikipedia". (Then it changed at least
twice more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Office_Actions
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Office_Actions&diff=994
58664&oldid=97871051> &diff=99458664&oldid=97871051 and
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Office_Actions
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Office_Actions&diff=995
30111&oldid=99458664> &diff=99530111&oldid=99458664).
Anthere and I deduced that it was not really official Wikimedia policy and
could be made to be one of it was approved by either the Board of Trustees
or the future Executive Director. I for one, would like clarification on
this policy and its stance in Wikimedia. Everything else, to our knowledge,
has been updated and clarified.
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
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