After months of people asking me on IRC, in mail on my Talkpage etc. if
I would please please please contribute again to nl.wikipedia I decided
to give it a try and started redoing some Thai provinces. Since I had
stopped editting last year no-one had any interest in those articles.
The only edits besides mine are "pimp my article edits" like cats and
replacing the texts without any information adding! On average 50 edits
like this per article! And no knowledge added!
Within 2 hours I was mobbed by 3 users, with whom I have had conflicts
previously and who stalk me on talkpages, who feel that the appearance
of an article is more important than what is in it. I have a number of
fans on nl.wikipedia who take turns in following me everywhere, or do
groupattacks. This is why I decided to stop contributing knowledge in
october last year as it was of no use. These people are in no way
interested in the subjects I write about, but are more interested in
attacking and harassing me and stopping me from contributing. Sadly
enough I can only edit if I edit under another name. I have been
requested multiple times by users on IRC to start editing under another
wikinick. It is said that this has to be.
The conflict resulted in a block which saw one of those 3 blocked for 1
hour and me for 3 days. This was later adjusted to me for 6 hours which
was doubled again when I editted through TOR to protest the double
standards.
After this I was and still am so sickened by the way wikipedia and ALL
wikimedia projects have become that I decided to stop editting on April
10th.
Today I got an email from someone telling me I am now blocked for a
month! It seemed that while I was away a procedure against me was started.
I was not heard on anything, nor was I asked to give my view of anything
that had happened! If you try someone someone gets a chance to defend
themselves don't they?
And now comes worst.
I was "sentenced" to a monthlong block for editting through proxies. But
no one told me I was sentenced! Someone who disagreed with the block
mailed me. 2 weeks after THE BLOCK.
This is a really odd procedure.
You trial someone without giving him a DEFENCE
and you sentence him
but don't tell him of the sentence!
Waerth
Hi,
On 5/8/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Once rebranded, the projects could also be featured in different ways.
> > For instance, a list of projects could be shown in a navigation bar at
> > the top of every page:
> >
> > : Other Wikipedia Projects: Sources | Textbooks | Quotes | Dictionary
> > | Media | Species | News | Learning
>
> We don't need to wait for a rebranding to do something very similar to
> this, do we?
No, we don't. Actually, we are already working on a new design implementing
this navigation bar.
--
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have
imagined." Henry David Thoreau
>>Short quiz for all the Americans on this list: what do Bounty, Dawn,
>>Pringles, Duracell and Lacoste have in common? If you think those are
>>all strong brand names, then you're right. But how many would know
>>that they all belong to the same company (Procter & Gamble)? I would
>>venture a guess that not too many do. Or at
>>least, to most people, it really doesn't matter. They don't buy the
>>products because P&G makes them. <snip>
>
>But I believe that is the problem we currently have! That list of brands
>don't market to the same target audiences, and they demonstrate few
>synergies between them so thay have no need to target similar markets
>directly, however eachof our 'products' *do* target the same people, and
>that means (imho) that we do need a much clearer "umbrella" to be visible
>'out there'.
I would venture to say that the people who are eating pringles likely need
to use duracells and bounty on a daily basis too. The fact that the same
people are consuming multiple brands of different products does not mean
that those products should be marketed in the same way. Some of the people
who use Wikibooks or Wikisource are likely to be looking up things in
Wikipedia too. However, just because the same person may use multiple wikis
doesnt mean that they should be marketed the same way, or to the same target
audience. Microsoft doesnt call it's office software "Windows Office", even
though Windows is the stronger brand and the software only runs on that
platform. Two different products, even if they are used in conjunction and
made by the same company, are not generally well suited to being branded the
same.
>A further example; Answers.com runs "WikiAnswers". If we stick ad absurdam
>with our "Wiki...." convention then how many people will think that
>"WikiAnswers" is one of ours, when it isn't.
Or the way everything with an "i" prefix sounds like it's from Apple? Prefix
confusion is nothing new, but the fact that wikipedia is a wiki, and that
wikibooks is also a wiki means that they both should get to use that prefix.
The difference of course is that wikibooks is not a "-pedia" and trying to
apply it to wikibooks will only create additional confusion.
Wikipedia has a domineering culture, and because it was the first project,
many of the members there are in the habit of calling wikipedia simply
"wiki". Notice how people refer to en.wikibooks to describe the english
wikibooks, but nearly all wikimedians use the term "enwiki" to describe
wikipedia. Doesnt help that this ambiguity is embedded in the software. The
fact that the news media has picked up on wikipedian's jargon and refers to
it as simply "wiki" is not so much a surprise as an obvious result.
>We've lost the battle to call everything "Wiki...." and for the general
>internet population to realise which is 'ours' and which isn't. It will be
>a shame to lose some of the name recognition that the non-WP projects have
>gained - though it is clearly minimal so far
There was a time when the name recognition for wikipedia was minimal too.
Projects take time to grow, but as the statistics graphs each month show us,
the other projects are growing, and growing at a good rate. If Wikibooks
isn't as big as wikipedia right now, I am inclined to say it's just a
function of time. Wikibooks has seen adoption in small steps as individual
classrooms join the project, As adoption gets more common, I expect we will
see a time when entire universities are looking to wikibooks for texts.
Imagine if some of our elementary school texts are adopted by an entire
school district, or even by an entire US state? With the price of textbooks,
it's not hard to see a market among improverished inner-city schools for
free textbooks. I'm also inclined to say, assuming the OLPC project takes
off, that there are plenty of children in impoverished areas that would
benefit from downloading their textbooks from us for free.
If everything goes our way (and admittedly this dream is some ways off) It's
not hard to imagine Wikibooks growing like wildfire, but what we need is
more help, more marketing, and more recognition for the brand we already
have. Wikibooks is in a very important stage of growth right now, and
rebranding us now would be detrimental.
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________
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I just cannot see how Erik's proposal should help with his main issue
which I would rather describe as "Wikimedia" being the weakest of
names, especially since "Wikipedia" and "MediaWiki" are out there and
very, very well known.
To me, "Wikimedia" is the one name to be changed: something completely
new may be invented in its place, and pretty much nobody would
complain. Apart from some hardcore Wikipedians/Wikimedians and maybe a
couple of sponsors, I don't think anyone knows the name at all. And
those that know could most easily adopt a catchier name. Preferably
something nice and fluffy that could be put on a T-shirt and made into
a stuffed animal...
As to Erik's proposal, it reminds me of some of the marketing-driven
naming and renaming schemes that do not care too much about usability
and "catchiness". We might even end up with a mess like the following
(recommended reading if you want to be sure to get a headache within 2
minutes):
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps2237/products_qanda_item09…
In a recent message, Erik asked for "rational" arguments rather than
"emotional" ones. Here's one: IMHO "emotional success with the
contributing user" pretty much equals "success" in non-profit
grassroot communities like Wikimedia's projects.
Regards
- Andreas Praefcke
>On 5/8/07, Johannes Rohr <jorohr(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>Besides everything else which has been said already, I do not find
>>these names particularly appealing. "Wikibooks" is short and catchy,
>>"Wikipedia Textbooks" is long and clumsy and has a taste of
>>ugly marketspeak.
>
>Wikibooks is actually one of our most problematic names, as the focus
>is very much on textbook development. Short and catchy as it ma ybe,
>it is misleading. Fundamentally, I can see problems with the project's
>conception around a very specific type of knowledge representation (be
>it generally a book or specifically a textbook), but if that is how we
>define it, then we should at least be clear what _kind_ of books we
>are talking about.
The problem right now, at least with en.wikibooks, is that a substantial
number of our books are not what are considered traditional "textbooks".
There are plenty of books that are instructional or informative in nature
that really don't fit that classical definition. The solutions to this are
to either a) redefine the word "textbook" to mean what we want it to mean or
b) expand the definition of wikibooks to allow "textbooks, and other
instructional books". This second definition, while a little vague perhaps,
is much more fitting of the name "Wikibooks" then "Wikipedia textbooks".
Also, at en.wikibooks, we've had surprisingly little confusion about what is
and is not allowed. Every now and again we have to turn a book donation over
to wikisource, but I would say in general that there is no confusion as to
what "Wikibooks" is all about. Changing the name to "Wikipedia Textbooks"
would suddenly cause a crisis specifically because many of our books are not
"textbooks". Do we change our policy in that case, or do we need to spend
countless hours explaining that our name is simply not accurate?
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________
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Hi,
We (he.wiki community) have heard there is a problem with PD images which
were created after 1946.
According to Israeli law, pictures are released to public domain 50 years
from the day the picture was taken. This means that images that any picture
that was taken by an Israeli before 1957 is in PD in Isreal. I understand
that because of some sort of convention between Israel and the US, this rule
does not apply in the US (i.e. pictures that were taken between 1946 and
1957 are PD in Israel but not PD in the US.
Thus:
1) Is this true? Can a copyright expert with expertise in Israeli law and US
law confirm this?
2) If this is true, the commons template
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Israel should be fixed.
3) If this is true, I wonder why commons created PD templates for each
country, is the coutry that count is only the US. If an picture need to be
PD in US, what does it matter if it is PD in other coutries. And if it does
matter - than Template:PD-Israel should *not* be changed.
Thanks,
Yoni
>There is an alternative brand strategy: making use of the strongest
>brand (Wikipedia) to identify all activities of the Foundation.
As a wikibookian almost exclusively, i have some issues with this idea.
* Wikipedia is like the domineering older sister, and other WMF projects
have been trying long and hard to differentiate themselves from wikipedia. I
know at en.wikibooks we've spent considerable time explaining why we are not
wikipedia, and how it is that we differ from that project. Naming us
"wikipedia books" would simply blur the lines even further, and stamp out
our attempts at forming an independent, successful project. Wikibooks is
still small but it is growing steadily, and we hope (perhaps naively) that
we will be big and important some day just like wikipedia is now. Renaming
us to "Wikipedia books" is akin to saying "you will never be as important as
wikipedia".
* Along the lines of the above, many projects have very different policy
then wikipedia does. Naming all the sites "wikipedia" will raise confusion
because every project handles things differently. Users will be needlessly
confused by us saying "no, you can do that on the other wikipedia, but you
can't do that on this wikipedia", etc.
* Saying "Wikibooks is a sister project of Wikipedia" is far less confusing
then saying that "Wikipedia books is not quite the same as the regular
wikipedia, even though we have the same name."
* What would be the new URL? would it be something convoluted like
en.books.wikipedia.org? There are alot of links that would need to be
updated, on-wiki and elsewhere if our URL was changed.
* The WMF has some history of loving Wikipedia and ignoring the other
projects. For example, what percentage of WMF board members have an account
at en.wikibooks? any language wikibooks? Other then giving up on other
projects and focusing on wikipedia, you should be encouraging other projects
to grow independently. changing our name, while you may call it "rebranding"
seems alot to me like squashing our identity and our potential as an
independent WMF project.
* Since an encyclopedia and a dictionary are "books", it would really be
less confusing to rename wikipedia and wiktionary to "Encyclopedia Wikibook"
and "Dictionary Wikibook", respectively. Alternatively, since all of the
books at wikibooks are not encyclopedia's, it makes no sense to brand them
with the 'pedia suffix :)
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________
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>From: "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
>http://www.mazar.ca/2007/05/07/wikipedia-as-community-service/
>Much as lawyers have a certain pro bono obligation, so academics could as
>well.
>How to sell this one to academia?
en.wikibooks has had good success with attracting academia, even if only for
short-term projects. We have had several classroom projects on our site.
Typically, the professors give guidance while the students write the content
for a grade. Although, we have also had projects where professors and
graduate researchers have written books pro bono. Because many professors
are interested in instruction, Wikibooks is the perfect place for them to
contribute.
Regardless of the venue, we definately should push the angle that people who
know should feel some obligation to share that knowledge freely. A
modification on the "If something's wrong, you can fix it" mantra, such as
"your students are reading wikipedia/wikibooks, don't you owe it to them to
make sure what they read is correct?" would probably be persuasive.
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________
Now you can see trouble before he arrives
http://newlivehotmail.com/?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_viral_protection_0507
On 5/6/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/6/07, cohesion <cohesion(a)sleepyhead.org> wrote:
> > Yeah, this is a gray area.
>
> No it isn't. The logo is not under a free licence thus it can only be
> used where a fair use case can be made and only in the article name
> space.
I should say, the rules do not make this a gray area, but actual practice does.
>
> > I would like to see some policy saying that the logo can be used for
> > any reason as long as it falls within the functioning of wikipedia,
> > but as I am not the copyright holder... :)
>
> I fail to see any reason to encourage increased use of non free content.
Well, I personally think uses like the following templates should be
acceptable. They currently aren't (this is what I mean by gray area)
but I see no reason to limit their use on wikipedia for wikipedia
functions. If we want to take the stance of not using this material
anywhere we should strip it from the top left as well, or make it
GFDL. This is unacceptable to the foundation, so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Copyright_by_Wikimediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Interwikitmp-grp
I general I prefer rules to follow what people are actually doing.
Yes, the policy itself is clear, but everyone ignores this aspect of
it. Not to say that's good or bad, but there is a discrepancy.
Judson
[[:en:User:Cohesion]]