Hello,
What do you consider the aims of Commons to be?
What kinds of things should we be trying to do? How will we know when
they're done?
I have written up some thoughts about this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Aims_and_goals
Explicitly, I think our aims are these:
1. Support the Wikimedia Foundation project websites by striving to
assist editors, in their native languages, in providing, finding and
using free content media
2. Collect and provide free content media for all possible
educational* purposes
3. Manage and evaluate said content by volunteer community
4. Encourage and communicate the ideas of copyleft and "free
content", and highlight the alternatives to the current "All rights
reserved" over-copyrighted culture
note that "educational" refers to the intention of the media, not any
restrictions on use of the media. Any of our media may be used for any
purpose, educational or not. But on the other hand, some content will
never be appropriate here, regardless of how free the license terms
are.
note that "multilingual" and "wiki are not ends in themselves, but
just means we use to achieve these aims.
maybe some people will think 1 does not belong, and maybe some people
will think 4 does not belong. in fact some people may think 2 is the
single only purpose. Well, I consider in the volunteer-driven projects
of WMF, "content" (2) and "community" (3) and two sides of the same
coin. For me 4 is important because we want people to use our work,
not just gather a nice dusty unknown archive. And 1 is a pragmatic
statement of our situation today. No other WMF project is as
integrated with all the others as Commons is. And the more that use
increases, the more obvious it makes our usefulness to the whole
world.
On the page linked above, I wrote some examples of explicit goals we
could set towards each of these aims.
Many of the goals I set are almost purely technological. There is
simply a lot of functionality that we need, and don't have, at the
moment, and there is basically no way to replace it. I have come to
the conclusion that several core MW functionalities need to be majorly
adapted for Commons, ie not an easy toolserver-based fix.
Perhaps if we can present such united aims to the Foundation with
solid community support, we can get a promise of more developer
support from them in turn. Perhaps. :)
Comments on wiki or mailing list are always welcome.
cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
For the record, I am not against or for ads altogether, I think good
points were raised in the thread and I do believe that we need to be
creative in the way we look for money.
I am catching up, and maybe I just missed it in the previous thread,
but there is one thing I *did not* see in the reactions to David
Gerard's proposal.
There is one thing that I experience every day in the work I do for
the Foundation, or in the work that I see the chapters do.
"No ads" is, today, our best and biggest selling point. Not to the
casual reader maybe, not even to the editors, but to the people who
give (or can and could give) money.
On one hand, I am pretty sure that it is why we are the most
successful online fundraising organisation out there towards
individual donors. But this would probably warrant a poll in the wider
readership to confirm.
On the other hand, and I experience this on a daily basis, to the
companies (small or big) who are willing to work with us, we are some
kind of an alien in this internet world.
- We're not looking for more traffic or exposure as such. We're
looking to make the content available in more and more places, but to
anyone who calls in and says "well, we're proposing you a link on our
portal [1] and it's going cost you nothing but we're bringing traffic
to your website", we answer "well... we don't really need exposure or
traffic. What we need is money to keep the site running. What are
*you* going to give Wikimedia for putting a link on your portal?"
Frankly, this is like coming from the moon to them.
The last I heard from such a potential partner was "this is, to say
the least, highly disconcerting".
Having ads, in my opinion, calls for traffic to make the ads
worthwhile, and makes us a little bit less free to say such crazy
things to potential partners and makes us fall in the "usual".
For example, that same potential partner said, "ok, I am going to look
at what we can come up with to help you" (developing time, contacts to
the biggest foundations out there, specific projects etc.)
-To those who don't know anything about Wikipedia and its content
being free, the same kind of incredulity arises when we say "well, the
content is free, you don't really need us to get it, but here are the
things you can do to make sure you have access to it and keep the
sites running". And it works.
- To those sponsors out there who know us a little better, and know
that we have no ads, and carry some themselves, we are not a threat or
a competitor, ie. we provide content that they don't have the
means/time/will to produce themselves and they know how important it
is for them to keep Wikipedia running. And frankly, although it might
not come as fast as we would want too, they also are coming up with
tons of excellent ideas to help us go on. Shared revenues on the ads
*they* are carrying, renewed donations to the Foundation or chapters,
etc.
All in all, I believe we have to be very careful about ads anywhere,
at least at this stage, because we would be losing much of what makes
us special and what prompts people to give to us (apart from the fact
that we are offering a service that people love).
In short, we may have no business model as such, but I see one
emerging everyday that goes along the lines of "Make sure that people
out there are convinced that they have to pay to keep Wikipedia
running, because it is special". It might not look like much, but I am
firmly convinced that it can bring tons and help us achieve
sustainability.
Delphine
[1] and here, be assured that I am *not* talking about the usual
spammers, but big renowned companies who really have something to
offer in terms of exposure and access to our content.
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.
Hello, everyone! Many of you have already received personal invitations
to attend RecentChangesCamp Montreal; for those of you who we've missed,
I wanted to send this broadcast message.
RecentChangesCamp is a world-wide "unconference" for wiki technologists,
wiki users and wiki admins. Also invited are people from related
technology and community practises, as we look for common ground on
community, collaboration, and self-organizing behaviour. The event is
free of charge for all participants. The previous two RecentChangesCamp
events in Portland have been extremely fun and interesting for
participants.
http://www.recentchangescamp.org/
RecentChangesCamp Montreal ("RoCoCoCamp") will be held in Montreal,
Quebec from 18-20 May 2007. It will be a three-day conference with the
agenda set by the participants, using [[Open Space Technology]].
http://www.rocococamp.info/
No keynotes, no hours-long slide presentations, no conference tracks:
the emphasis of RecentChangesCamp is on bringing together smart,
talented people for productive, peer-to-peer talks.
People involved with or concerned about the Wikimedia Foundation are
strongly encouraged to attend. Not only will there be opportunities to
talk about and work on Foundation issues with other WMF participants,
but there will also be participants from other non-profit and for-profit
wiki organizations as well. It's a great opportunity for sharing WMF
experiences and for gathering information about the rest of the wiki
world.
If you would like to attend, please sign up on our wiki:
http://www.rocococamp.info/Participants
We're arranging lodging for a variety of budgets (from couch-surfing to
the Hyatt). Travel to Montreal can be quite inexpensive; North Americans
can find reasonable flights, and rail travel from the East Coast is both
accessible and affordable. Europeans are especially encouraged to look
at discount Transatlantic flyer Zoom Airlines.
Please check out our wiki if you have any questions; also feel free to
contact anyone in our all-volunteer organizing group. You can write to
me directly or call my cell phone (+1-514-554-3826).
Thanks,
-Evan
________________________________________________________________________
Evan Prodromou <evan(a)prodromou.name>
http://evan.prodromou.name/
Here is some more feedback on this issue from Peter Suber, a member of
our advisory board.
Angela
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Suber <peters(a)earlham.edu>
Date: Apr 22, 2007 5:10 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Advisory Board] What do we do in the event the
Foundation fails?
To: advisory(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Dear Angela,
I don't have any suggestions on the trademark problem. But I like Ethan's
ideas (esp. about LOCKSS and the Internet Archive) on the
protection/preservation problem. Here are a few others:
BioMed Central is a publisher of open-access science journals and finds
itself in a similar predicament.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/
It wants to guarantee its authors and readers that its published articles
will remain OA forever, even if the company should fail or be bought
out. It has two strategies for this:
First, it deposits all its articles in multiple OA repositories independent
of the company, including PubMed Central (hosted by the U.S. National
Institutes of Health), the National Library of the Netherlands, the Potsdam
University library, and the library of France's Institut de l'Information
Scientifique et Technique.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/libraries/archive
It also lets any user download a zipped copy of the entire corpus at any
time, primarily for text-mining but incidentally for LOCKSS-like preservation.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/datamining/
Second, it adopted an Open Access Charter to deal with the risks arising
from a change of ownership. The charter requires the board of trustees to
evaluate any proposed change of ownership; requires the board to disapprove
any change of ownership that cannot guarantee continued OA; and requires
board approval for any change in the board's membership.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/charter
Like BMC, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is OA and faces the same
set of problems.
http://plato.stanford.edu/
It uses one of the strategies mentioned by Ethan: it archives a snapshot
of the encyclopedia every quarter. Of course each snapshot is itself
OA. This not only helps assure the survival of the content, but documents
its evolution.
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
Peter
Hi all,
# Assistance
I am [[meta:user:Walter ]], the one making Wikizine, my little
newsletter. Until now Wikizine is nearly completely created by myself.
I have assistance in copyediting, what is very useful and needed. It
improves the quality of the newsletter. But does not make a newsletter.
It becomes harder and harder to keep it up to make every week a new
Wikizine alone and keep an acceptable level of quality.
Because of that I am looking for someone who can become a new core
editor who is capable and willing to construct Wikizine on a long time
basis. Someone who can actually help to write wikizine. That is finding
the relevant news and writing a short item about it in accordance with
the concept and style of Wikizine.
Helping out by writing stuff for the "Did you know" or "Was ist das?"
items that are not related with the current events of reporting news
from your home wiki is also useful. But a core staff member is what is
really needed.
# Publicity
More readers are always welcome. I hope to get especially exposure to
smaller language projects. If there are more readers then this would
also increase the change that someone will come at the idea to report
news or volunteer to help out with Wikizine.
To subscribe;
mailto:request@wikizine.org?subject=subscribe
Banners to put on a page;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/banners
# Wikizine Auf Deutsch
There is new but fragile German translation project. This is also one
person now who does that. Help with this translation, or maybe write
original content for DE Wikizine, would also be helpful.
Contact mailto:info-de@wikizine.org
Abonnieren;
mailto:dewikizine-request@wikizine.org?subject=subscribe
That is all. Thanks for reading this.
Greetings,
Walter Vermeir
http://www.wikizine.org
--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community
Wikix has been open sourced under the GNU Public License. This program
will read any XML dump from the foundation and create
paralell processes which will download all images for a given Wikimedia
Project. The program also contains full UTF8 detection
and conversion if enabled.
For all the folks wondering how to get the images, download the code,
build it, and run it from linux or Windows and 36 hours
later, Commons, or any Wikimedia project images will be downloaded.
This one is free. The other tools cost money. :-)
Download link:
ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/MediaWiki/wikix.tar.gz.bz2
Enjoy.
Jeff
Based on the definition [1] promoted by WMF, I am
wondering if free content exists in France where moral
rights are inalienable, perpetual and inviolable.
Birgitte SB
[1] http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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Stephen Bain wrote:
> [1] The French law seems to suggest that the moral rights can actually
> be devised, rather than merely subsisting in the estate, but that goes
> at odds with the idea that they're inalienable.
If I understand the French law correctly, I believe it indicates that
the authority to enforce the rights can be passed to a designee, but
that the rights would presumably remain with the estate itself. For
example, there are several agencies set up to watch over the licensing
rights of various artists' estates, and I imagine some might have been
specifically authorized to handle moral rights issues as well.
The result could be that a designee would file the lawsuit to protect
the wishes of the deceased artist, but that any damages would go to the
actual heirs. But I'll defer to any French lawyer who understands the
interpretation better.
--Michael Snow
Sorry, but that just doesnt cut it. I know all these things, I know a lot
got done, and I know how long it took to do it. In fact, I participated in many
of them in one way or another. What it boils down to is that the primary
responsibility of the Board is fiduciary. Risk management falls under that
category. Saying "we were busy" does not release anyone from responsibility.
I am reminded of the Board and Chapter meeting in Frankfurt this past
autumn, especially when Mitch asked, "Who is willing to take responsibility?" No
one raised their hands then, and no one seems to be raising their hands now.
Danny
In a message dated 4/18/2007 7:24:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
erik(a)wikimedia.org writes:
As you know, Legal Counsel and Interim ED were one and the same person
from June 2006 - January 2007. Before then, the WMF did not employ a
Legal Counsel _or_ an Executive Director. A lot of work _did_ get done
in this time period, including but not limited to:
- Bylaws reform and Board expansion
- Mission & Vision statement of WMF developed
- Largest fundraiser of WMF to date
- Audited financial statements released
- Hardware purchases and renegotiated contracts
- Identifying a Search Committee to work with on the ED Search
- Hiring several new key staff members
- Progress on international chapter setup and trademark agreements
Then there was the media crisis of the day, legal threats, conflicts
between staff members, the usual stuff -- but it culminated in your
and Brad's resignation for different reasons. I agree that
investigating and implementing a risk management strategy is a very
high priority. It is not necessarily the highest, and in my opinion
will be the result of a process over several months that should
involve chapter representatives and some of the best cyberlaw experts
we can find.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
In a message dated 4/19/2007 4:01:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
wiki(a)devreede.net writes:
The sudden departure Danny without a
proper transfer of knowledge, combined with the start of new employees
and a lot of new things happening make this an especially trying time
for them.
I do not feel it would be right to answer this entire email, though I do
find it questionable whether a board member should single out one person, by
name or insinuation, as somehow ineligible to run for the board. I am hoping I
misunderstood your email.
On the other hand, I want to be clear about this allegation. After my
departure, I appeared in the office on several occasions and sat with Carolyn to
relay any information that I had. I went through all of the information on my
whiteboard, and I gave her each of my files, explaining to her what they
contained. She was always and is always free to call me with questions. As Carolyn
will surely agree, I considered her a friend more than just a colleague, and
will continue to do so. Note that my Rolodex is also in the office with all
my important phone numbers.
Just this morning, long before you sent your email, Carolyn called me asking
for access to my old work email, which is on Mark Bergsma's personal server.
I had asked Mark for this in the past, but he was reluctant because of
privacy concerns. When Carolyn asked, I immediately sent an email to Mark (at
4/19/2007 9:06:34 AM Eastern Daylight Time) releasing all my emails to Carolyn
(only).
As for fundraising for Wikimania, I agreed to speak with the intern who is
currently working on it and cleared an entire afternoon to pass on information
to him. I found it unfortunate that when we met, he told me he had only
twenty minutes so "make it quick." I have been working at this and similar
professions since before that intern was born, and found it insulting both to me
and to the foundation that hired me for my expertise to think that this
experience could be condensed into a twenty-minute cheat sheet. However, as I
explained to Carolyn later that day, I am always available to answer questions and
share ideas.
I regret that you feel this was inadequate and can only hope that other
employees acted in the same way, with the same sense of responsibility, when they
left.
Danny
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.