Dear members of the community,
As most of you know we will be holding elections for the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees in the near future. Your elected
representatives Erik Möller (Eloquence), Kat Walsh (Mindspillage) and
Oscar van Dillen (Oscar) all have terms that expire on July 1st 2007. We
will therefore hold elections for these three seats in the coming months.
As a nominated member of the Board of Trustees it has been decided that
I will be the person who will be the contact for these elections within
the Board. But the real process will be guided by an "election
committee". Amongst other things, the Election Committee will discuss
and explore::
1) revisions to the election method and process
2) limiting organizational access to ongoing election records
3) technological measures to improve voting security.
At this time I would like to ask any interested volunteers to submit a
brief summary of qualifications to volunteering(a)wikimedia.org. This
summary should consist of your username, list of active projects, real
name and a paragraph or two explaining the skills that you feel would
benefit the foundation in the elections process. The deadline for
applications is the end of Sunday the 13th of May (UTC).
There are only a few conditions to becoming a volunteer.
1) You are willing to spend the time in the next months working on the
elections
2) You cannot run in the election yourself
3) you have not been a vocal supporter of one of the (future)
candidates, and will not speak in support of any candidate
4) You may not vote in the election
Hopefully these elections will reflect the spirit within all Wikimedia
projects and show an even more active and stronger community than the
last time!
Jan-Bart de Vreede
Vice Chair Board of Trustees
Wikimedia Foundation
On 5/6/07, Yann Forget <yann(a)forget-me.net> wrote:
> Illegal number? Do you have any legal argument? There is none on this
> page.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c105:6:./temp/~c105ZX8srQ:e11559:
section 2
> At least quite a lot of people have understood that the rethoric
> from the majors is completely baseless.
It isn't baseless (unless you have some relevant case law that
everyone else has missed). How many of the people you are talking
about are lawyers?
> Publishing a number is spamming? Publising a number would be illegal?
> This is a complete nonsense.
It would appear to be the case that publishing certian numbers within
certain contexts would be illegal under US law. The exact contexts for
which this applies is a matter of some disspute.
> Wake up guys!
Hmm I though the 9/11 CTers had trademarked that phrase. They
certainly use it enough
--
geni
On 5/5/07, Casey Brown <cbrown1023(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> A relevant Wikipedia policy is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:POINT
/me stabs
No, this isn't what WP:POINT is about...
WP:POINT would be if someone who argued against us breaking the law by
hosting anti-circumvention devices on our site got tired of the
arguments and went around adding child porn, windows license keys, and
other contra-ban information to Wikipedia.
I.e. "I'll prove your point is wrong by showing you the logical conclusions"
I had a discussion over the phone with Mr. Brandt this evening, and he
has taken down his "outing" listing of Wikipedia editors and given me
his assurances it will remain down permanently out of respect to the
privacy rights of Wikipedia editors. He has also removed all of
the chat room materials as well, and given me his word it will not be
posted again. I have also has discussions
with SqueakBox on the English Wikipedia and I am going to attempt to
write a neutral article on Daniel, and the other editors seem to
be in agreement.
Daniel has also conceded the fact that he will have to get used to an
article about him being on Wikipedia. He is a very nice and polite
and very intelligent man and is very different in person than his
on-line persona seems to reflect. He has also given permission for
Wikipedia to use any of
the images on his site in support of a neutral article about him.
It appears this long running conflict is coming to an end. Daniel also
understands that until he formaly withdraws his legal threats from
the Foundation, he will remain banned. If and when he withdraws them,
I would recommend a 1 year ban and allowing him to
come back to the site provided he stays away from his bio (same terms I
am under).
With that, the conflict appears to be coming to a conclusion. I ask
everyone to help defuse the situation with Daniel and assist in getting
a throughly sourced and neutral article completed. He will continue
to run the Wikipedia Watch website and post general criticisms of
Wikipedia, which is his right, but he stated he would honor his promises
to us to observe and respect privacy laws and policies on Wikipedia
if we respect his. He has several other requests about his article
which I need to discuss with the other editors. I also think he needs to
apologize to Mr. Wales for his disruptive conduct at some point, but for
now, I think cooling off the situation is prudent. Daniel
has some great ideas and suggestions about improving Wikipedia, and if
folks can get past the personal issues, and really listen to what he has
to say, I think he could be a very positive force for improving the project.
Jeff
I imported the enwiki-20070402 dumps with MediaWiki 1.10rc2 along with
all images for this release. Issues identified:
1. Greatly improved performance on article rendering.
2. MIME detection in the default settings still does not detect .png
files correctly
3. alternate file -bi method works, but this utility has problems with
a lot of svg image files.
4. Rendering of xml+svg files is still broken. 1.9.3 actually had some
problems rendering svg images, but most of them worked. 1.10rc2
has severe breakage and they do not render at all on Fedora Core 5.
The site with 1.10rc with a fresh database import is located at:
http://test.wikigadugi.org
You are free to visit the site and inspect these issues. The
LocalSettings.php file is using these settings (with DB passwords removed):
<?php
# This file was automatically generated by the MediaWiki installer.
# If you make manual changes, please keep track in case you need to
# recreate them later.
#
# See includes/DefaultSettings.php for all configurable settings
# and their default values, but don't forget to make changes in _this_
# file, not there.
# If you customize your file layout, set $IP to the directory that contains
# the other MediaWiki files. It will be used as a base to locate files.
if( defined( 'MW_INSTALL_PATH' ) ) {
$IP = MW_INSTALL_PATH;
} else {
$IP = dirname( __FILE__ );
}
$path = array( $IP, "$IP/includes", "$IP/languages" );
set_include_path( implode( PATH_SEPARATOR, $path ) . PATH_SEPARATOR .
get_include_path() );
require_once( "includes/DefaultSettings.php" );
# If PHP's memory limit is very low, some operations may fail.
# ini_set( 'memory_limit', '20M' );
if ( $wgCommandLineMode ) {
if ( isset( $_SERVER ) && array_key_exists( 'REQUEST_METHOD',
$_SERVER ) ) {
die( "This script must be run from the command line\n" );
}
}
## Uncomment this to disable output compression
# $wgDisableOutputCompression = true;
#$wgReadOnly = true;
$wgUseTidy = true;
$wgTidyBin = '/usr/bin/tidy';
$wgTidyConf = $IP.'/extensions/tidy/tidy.conf';
$wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1";
$wgSitename = "WikiGadugi";
## The URL base path to the directory containing the wiki;
## defaults for all runtime URL paths are based off of this.
$wgScriptPath = "";
## For more information on customizing the URLs please see:
## http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL
$wgEnableEmail = true;
$wgEnableUserEmail = true;
$wgEmergencyContact = "root@localhost";
$wgPasswordSender = "root@localhost";
## For a detailed description of the following switches see
## http://meta.wikimedia.org/Enotif and http://meta.wikimedia.org/Eauthent
## There are many more options for fine tuning available see
## /includes/DefaultSettings.php
## UPO means: this is also a user preference option
$wgEnotifUserTalk = true; # UPO
$wgEnotifWatchlist = true; # UPO
$wgEmailAuthentication = true;
$wgDBtype = "mysql";
$wgDBserver = "localhost";
$wgDBname = "XXXXX";
$wgDBuser = "XXXXX";
$wgDBpassword = "XXXXX";
$wgDBport = "5432";
$wgDBprefix = "";
# MySQL table options to use during installation or update
$wgDBTableOptions = "TYPE=InnoDB";
# Schemas for Postgres
$wgDBmwschema = "mediawiki";
$wgDBts2schema = "public";
# Experimental charset support for MySQL 4.1/5.0.
$wgDBmysql5 = false;
## Shared memory settings
$wgMainCacheType = CACHE_NONE;
$wgMemCachedServers = array();
## To enable image uploads, make sure the 'images' directory
## is writable, then set this to true:
$wgEnableUploads = false;
$wgUseImageMagick = true;
$wgImageMagickConvertCommand = "/usr/bin/convert";
## If you want to use image uploads under safe mode,
## create the directories images/archive, images/thumb and
## images/temp, and make them all writable. Then uncomment
## this, if it's not already uncommented:
# $wgHashedUploadDirectory = false;
## If you have the appropriate support software installed
## you can enable inline LaTeX equations:
$wgUseTeX = false;
$wgLocalInterwiki = $wgSitename;
$wgLanguageCode = "en";
$wgProxyKey =
"bee7d337552387a49caaf5fe88e685d8aa20b84949d0f90c3e9b80bb138ef8c1";
## Default skin: you can change the default skin. Use the internal symbolic
## names, ie 'standard', 'nostalgia', 'cologneblue', 'monobook':
$wgDefaultSkin = 'monobook';
## For attaching licensing metadata to pages, and displaying an
## appropriate copyright notice / icon. GNU Free Documentation
## License and Creative Commons licenses are supported so far.
# $wgEnableCreativeCommonsRdf = true;
$wgRightsPage = ""; # Set to the title of a wiki page that describes
your license/copyright
$wgRightsUrl = "";
$wgRightsText = "";
$wgRightsIcon = "";
# $wgRightsCode = ""; # Not yet used
$wgDiff3 = "/usr/bin/diff3";
# When you make changes to this configuration file, this will make
# sure that cached pages are cleared.
$configdate = gmdate( 'YmdHis', @filemtime( __FILE__ ) );
$wgCacheEpoch = max( $wgCacheEpoch, $configdate );
$wgUseFileCache = true;
$wgFileCacheDirectory = "$IP/cache";
$wgShowIPinHeader = false;
$wgUseGzip = false;
$wgAntiLockFlags = ALF_NO_LINK_LOCK | ALF_NO_BLOCK_LOCK;
$wgShowExceptionDetails = true;
require_once( "$IP/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions.php" );
require_once( "$IP/extensions/Cite.php" );
require_once( "$IP/extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap.php" );
require_once( "$IP/extensions/wikihiero/wikihiero.php" );
require_once( "$IP/extensions/checkuser/CheckUser.php" );
$wgGroupPermissions['checkuser']['checkuser'] = true;
$wgCheckUserLog = false;
On 5/5/07, Yann Forget <yann(a)forget-me.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am quite surprised that this number has been added to the spam list.
I was quite surprised that huge numbers of people decided to add it to
countless numbers of inappropriate articles, and that dig voted up
articles imploring others to spam us.
> I don't understand how it is related to spam...
Because people were spamming the everlasting crap out of us using it.
Other people have already responded to the rest of your message.
How about using the old domain, wikipedia.com, as a site for stable
Wikipedia versions, with ads on? The ad money, as well as paying our
comparatively small hosting and staff costs, could go toward
educational programmes for those people who could benefit from our
hard work but *aren't* comfortable, well-fed first-world citizens.
(As far as I can tell, pretty much all opposition to ads on Wikimedia
comes from people who are in fact comfortable, well-fed first-world
citizens. I eagerly await news and demographics otherwise.)
- d.
--- Alexander Keely <alexander858(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I sent this message to a staff member at the foundation, but I haven't heard
> anything back. I hope these suggestions will aid the organization in its online
> fundraising. I look forward to your comments.
Hi Alexander. I apologize that your email was not answered. I was Wikimedia's CFO for two years
and now serve on the Foundation's fundraising committee. So rest assured, your suggestions are now
being heard. :)
> 1. Online Fundraising Suggestions
> a. Google Checkout - https://checkout.google.com/
>
> From the Wikimedia_2006_fs.pdf, in the Statement of Activities, there are
> $45,617 of Paypal fees noted. I'm not exactly sure what all of these fees are
> for as they could be transaction fees, or currency exchange fees, et cetera...
> However, if they are transaction fees, I believe you could save a lot of money
> by using Google Checkout. They are offering a free transactions until December
> 31, 2007. This would literally make all people's donations, 100%, going
> straight to the organization. Also a GREAT marketing point to offer to
> potential donors.
Boilerplate response:
There are a great many possible payment options available to us and we constantly get requests to
sign up with many of them. We understand that many different people have their preferred ways to
transfer money online, but adding any payment option has a cost associated with that.
Our current mix aims to catch as many potential donors as possible while minimizing the overhead
associated with having to maintain too many accounts.
The foundation does, however, periodically reevaluate some of the requests and will consider your
idea at that time.
My response:
Truth is, PayPal is still the big boy on the block in terms usage and they are available in a
growing list of languages and currencies. While not the cheapest, their fees are reasonable (about
4% of gross on average last time I checked) and being presented with too many options has been
proven to turn people away. MoneyBookers is the secondary online option we provide. Mostly due to
their lower fees, and larger list of accepted currencies. However, they are not nearly as easy to
use as PayPal.
> b. Change the ask - "Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!"
>
> People move their eyes in an S motion depending the location of the most
> significant starting point.
>
> Wikimedia Analysis
> All Wikimedia pages have their main titles at the top left, therefore people's
> eyes will move in a backwards S down the page. This makes the "Your continued
> donations...." text probably the least seen item on the page, especially since
> it is so very small, giving a feeling of being shy or timid in asking for a
> donation. After clicking on the featured article of the day which was also
> available in audio, it seems as though the ASK text (Your continued..) is
> interfering with the audio graphic and there is a lock there as well.
>
> Suggestion:
> 1) Move the ASK all the way over to the left or center.
> 2) Make the font bigger, possibly adding a little color or something to it.
Very good points on position. I would fix that myself by centering the message but will let
somebody who is more familiar with div syntax. Somebody more artistic than me should comment on
the other aspects of presentation you mention.
> A huge factor in donations is visibility. If people aren't asked to donate,
> most often they won't. That's why the position and style of the ask is so
> important.
Agreed. Another factor is keeping the message fresh. I've therefore started to list some ideas on
rotating through a list of different messages that will be displayed to anons.
See and please respond at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Anonnotice#Rotate_different_mes…
Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
__________________________________________________
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Hello,
We had our Members Assembly in Bialowieza, on 2 May, 2007, during
Wikimedia Polska Conference 2007.
There were 35 of 62 of our member present. During the Assembly two
members of our Board: Wulfstan and Datrio resigned due to the lack of
time to be active members of our Board. Also, Lzur (Leszek Żur) has
resigned from being a member of Revision Committee of our Board.
The new members of our Board are: Nova (Agnieszka Kwiecień) and Tomasz
Sienicki (tsca). Nova will be our new secretary.
The meeting in Bialowieza was quite successful. There were 101
participants. 10 lectures were provided by Wikipedians as well as
invited guests from various organizations and non-Wikimedia projects.
Also, 4 workshops, 4 excursions and one netball match "Polish
Wikimedia vs. Bialowieza's boys" (don't ask for the results :-) ) took
place during the conference.
I am actually really tired, as I was one of the organizers of this
conference, and has just came back home.
See the pictures fro the conference: (actually very few, as the people
just started uploading it):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Polish_Wikimedia_Meetup_-_Bia%C5…
Cheers,
--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerekhttp://www.poli.toya.net.plhttp://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html