[Repost because it is hidden deep inside a related thread]
-------- Originele bericht --------
Onderwerp: Election Committe and under 18's
Datum: Fri, 11 May 2007 18:37:06 +0200
Van: Jan-Bart de Vreede <wiki(a)devreede.net>
Nieuwsgroepen: gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation
Hello Everyone,
I am sorry it took so long to post on this issue.
The board feels we would like to allow everyone in the community to help
out where possible and that we should only limit functions to people who
are 18+ if there is no other way (for example, when there are legal reasons)
So volunteers for the election committee may be under 18. If in the
coming months we find that we cannot have a certain task performed by
someone under 18 for legal reasons we will find a way to solve this problem.
Please remember everyone, the deadline for submitting your applications
(see earlier mail for details) is the end of Sunday the 13th (UTC).
Jan-Bart de Vreede
Vice Chair Wikimedia Board of Trustees
Hello,
Casey Brown a écrit :
> I find it especially upsetting that you would spam this number by means of
> the subject header. Please do not even give the excuse that otherwise
> people would not know what you were talking about (or would know what you
> were talking about by posting the number in its entirety). If you wanted
> people to better understand what you were talking about, you could have just
> added the article title that you linked to the header instead of the number.
>
> Although it has already been stated, the number was added because it was
> spam. Nothing more needs to be said. However, the number may in fact stay
> there because it is an "illegal number"
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number).
Illegal number? Do you have any legal argument? There is none on this
page. At least quite a lot of people have understood that the rethoric
from the majors is completely baseless.
Publishing a number is spamming? Publising a number would be illegal?
This is a complete nonsense.
Wake up guys!
Yann
> Casey Brown
> Cbrown1023
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Yann Forget
> Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 8:52 PM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: [Foundation-l] 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
>
> Hello,
>
> I am quite surprised that this number has been added to the spam list.
> I don't understand how it is related to spam...
> This is more related to free speech. There are already several millions
> Internet web sites posting this number. Why not Wikimedia projects?
>
> Is Wikimedia starting to bend in front of Hollywood majors?
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>
> PS: For those who may not know what is this about:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD_encryption_key_controversy
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre
http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre
http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres
I think a tag line is difficult because of problems with translations across
languages. To be really good, it will likely be idiomatic. That said, I want
to suggest
"Get to know it"
Danny
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
I've been asked by a number of people to comment on our procedure for
closing projects, specifically the LangCom's policy proposal & the
issue of the Siberian Wikipedia.
As far as I can tell -
1) There is a functioning process at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects
Insofar as it is not currently the case, I believe stewards should
generally be the ones closing these discussions. Like deletion
discussions on Wikipedia, they should not strictly be regarded as
"votes", but as weighted arguments. (IMHO in the most controversial
cases, multiple stewards should work together in closing the
discussion.)
2) For closures that relate to the validity of a language, the
LangCom should make a recommendation as to whether the language should
be deleted (typically languages that were approved in the
pre-incubator days) or moved back to the incubator. This
recommendation ought to be taken into account by the steward(s)
finalizing the decision.
3) I do not see a need, at present, to give the LangCom any other
authority with regard to the closure of projects/languages.
"Developers" (server admins) should implement decisions based on the
stewards' requests.
4) The idea of a Meta-ArbCom is an interesting one, but it should be
explored separately from this issue.
5) The Siberian Wikipedia discussion should be closed by a group of
stewards, and take any recommendation of the LangCom on the matter
into account.
6) For the time being, the Board should receive notification (say 10
days) of any pending closure, but their approval is not needed. After
we have hired an ED, these notifications can go to the ED, and will be
escalated to the Board only when needed.
7) I have no personal opinion on the Siberian issue.
These are my personal, preliminary thoughts on the matter.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
[apologies to Anthony for the double mail]
On 11/05/07, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
> > What the law here is prohibiting - let us assume for a minute that the
> > law would stand in court, and that the interpretation of the key as
> > forming such a tool is valid - is possession of a tool intended to
> > bypass copy protection.
>
> No. You are very very wrong. That is not what the law is
> prohibiting. It prohibits trafficking "in any technology, product,
> service, device, component, or part thereof" ...
> It most certainly does not cover
> mere possession of a tool intended to bypass copy protection.
My apologies; that was an error left in from a previous draft, when
I'd been working on starting with analogies about the dubiousness of
possessing innocuous items in certain contexts. I did mean to say
something other than possession - perhaps supplying? Making available?
Disseminating? "Trafficking" is the term the statute uses, but I
confess to not being very fond of it - it does have overtones that
confuse matters a bit.
> The second part of that sentence is also very very incorrect. The
> chances of a random 128 bit string being the key is about one in
> 339,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
> (give or take a couple trillion...). A computer one million times
> faster than current computers could generate random data for 6
> thousand, trillion years before coming up with the number by accident.
Huh. I got something on a much lower order. (This is probably due to
something exceptionally stupid like having done the calculation
assuming digits were bits, and juggling numbers mentally... some days,
I am amazed I ever passed my exams)
> > ... because you're knowingly providing something which was produced
> > with the intent of circumvention.
>
> No you're not (IOW, you are once again very very very incorrect).
> You're knowingly providing something which was produced with the
> intent of encrypting and decrypting DVDs. You've actually stumbled
> upon what is probably the best argument so far that distribution of
> the HD DVD encryption key itself does not fall under the DMCA.
I'm not sold on the distinction here. Surely the key was released to
the world ('released' by the guy who studied the system, not by the
manufacturers) for the purposes of encrypting/decrypting *in order* to
circumvent the protection?
I disagree with Erik about changing the Foundation' name, but I was just
told something a tad moronic that makes me wonder how well the name WikiMEDIA is
known.
Apparently, the phone message has been changed, and it now says WIKIPEDIA
Foundation.
It's a sad day indeed when even the office staff doesn't know the name of
the organization they work for.
Danny
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
http://www.eol.org/home.html
"Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth,
available everywhere by single access on command. " --E.O. Wilson
They have an amazing number of sponsors, partner organisations, FUNDS, etc...
Want to be mega-impressed? Check out one of their demo pages:
http://www.eol.org/vision/rice_expert.html (although they list
Wikipedia as one of the sources, which is, um...)
Now that's a killer interface.
They don't have a statement about what the license will be, but they say this:
"A possible area of obstacles or dangers is intellectual property. The
Encyclopedia will be very generous with credit and recognition, and we
will soon be posting a general statement of principle about open and
accessible content, encouraging sharing, and so on. The world of the
Internet and software changes so fast, we know we need to be very
alert to what are considered good and prudent practices."
>From their FAQ:
==
6. What about Wikipedia?
Wikipedia inspired us. Wikipedia accumulated about 1.5 million entries
in English in its first four years. That gave us confidence that our
tasks are manageable with current technology and social behaviour,
although the expert community in a lot of the subjects for pages in
Encyclopedia of Life may be only a handful of people. Wikipedia has
also created some species pages, as have other groups. Encyclopedia of
Life will, we hope, unite all such efforts and increase their value.
The Wikimedia Foundation is a member of the Encyclopedia's
Institutional Council.
==
I'm not sure what an 'Institutional Council' does.
(BTW didn't we used to own http://www.wikispecies.org/ ? It seems to
have lapsed, if so.)
So... hm, what will success for Wikispecies look like?
regards
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: rob(a)robmyers.org <rob(a)robmyers.org>
Date: May 9, 2007 1:34 PM
Subject: [cc-licenses] The FSF On FDL Derivatives
To: cc-licenses(a)lists.ibiblio.org
(I'm posting this here because of the recent debate about photography.)
The FSF have blogged about their interpretation of the scope of the FDL:
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/2007-05-08-fdl-scope
They support the position that Ben Mako Hill described, where use of
an image to illustrate a text creates a derivative. It's well worth a
read.
I was particularly interested by this statement:
"In cases like these where the materials complement each other, we
believe that the end result is a derivative work."
This contains two useful distinctions. The materials have been chosen
to complement each other to form a unit of presumably increased value
or greater use rather than just being aggregated. And *the end result*
is the derivative work, not the text or the photo, so legal causality
isn't broken.
What I am curious about is what exactly this "end result" is
(collective work, new multimedia work, or ...?) and how far-reaching
this effect is (particularly with regard to e.g. contextual
advertising).
- Rob.
_______________________________________________
cc-licenses mailing list
cc-licenses(a)lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
Well stated. To me this whole idea of changing brands and renaming projects
is just flogging a dead horse. It ain't gonna happen. The fact is that there
is too much opposition.
Danny
In a message dated 5/9/2007 3:11:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
notafishz(a)gmail.com writes:
Back to the basics.
On 5/8/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> (Part of a "Rethinking" series.)
You keep asking for "rational reasons".
Many people on this thread have said it. Looking for rational
arguments might not be the way to go. David Gerard, however, has
given, in my opinion, the most striking of all in his last
intervention, I quote:
"If you don't understand that that is a rational reason, you don't
understand volunteer motivation."
But let's try and leave emotions aside. There is one thing that
strikes me in this whole conversation as missing.
You argue that renaming everything Wikipedia would bring the following:
> * Strength of Wikipedia brand directly reflects on other activities.
Indeed.
Wikipedia is a strong brand, I'll grant you that. Let's push the
reasoning a bit further. Is it a "positive brand"? ie. will it really
shed light on the other projects once they are called "Wikipedia
somethingorother"?
We can argue that yes, Wikipedia is a positive brand. I will argue
that it is a positive brand for what it is.
Wikipedia has something on everything.
Wikipedia is always up to date
Wikipedia is (almost) as good as Britannica
Wikipedia is free as in beer
Wikipedia is free as in speech
Wikipedia is user generated content and allows everyone to share their
knowledge
etc.
However, we also have:
Wikipedia is unreliable
(Hmmm. Not good for Wikipedia books -Wikibooks-, that)
Wikipedia has been banned as a source from X and Y news agency
(Not good for Wikipedia News -Wikinews- to ever be recognized as a
source of news)
Wikipedia cannot be quoted by students in universities
(So much for Wikipedia source -Wikisource- as a comprehensive source
of original works)
(So much for ever hoping Wikipedia learning -Wikiversity- is ever
going to be anything)
(So much for trying to slip Wikipedia books -Wikibooks- into schools)
etc.
In the end, I find that one of your "rational" (well, I suppose you
deem them rational) reason to undergo such a change is set on a strong
personal opinion that Wikipedia everything is the way to go, because
It Is Good (TM), because It Will Bring More Cash (TM) and because It
Is Better Known (TM). In the end, I find this hardly rational.
For the record, I agree with the fact that our brands are messy. I
even agree that we should try to rename some of the projects, but I
would do so in the hope of giving them a chance to escape the shadow
of Wikipedia.
But in the end, I agree with Yann that the target audiences are not
the same for all the projects, that they should not be, and that it
ensures that there is a place for all possible contributors and
readers.
I agree with Andreas and David Gerard that emotion is also a big part
of the rational reasons why we should not consider a change in the
"Wikipedia all" direction.
I agree with Kelly that we should be trying to shed more light on
other Wikimedia projects.
And I strongly disagree with your statement, which again is posed as a
rational reason, but which I believe is not, that the media pressure
is so big on the other Wikimedia projects that they all have to
achieve the success of Wikipedia. Where is it written that this is the
case? Have you polled the active communities in the other projects
about this? In any case, on this I agree with Brianna that hits in
Google are a lame unit to measure the success (or lack thereof) of a
project (and I agree with Brianna on millions of other things she
wrote).
Most of all, I am convinced that although Wikipedia may be the best
known of our projects, our true mission (distribute free knowledge and
even "free" the knowledge) will be achieved on a much greater scale
through our other projects. It's Wikibooks you'll find in schools.
It's free images from Commons you find in the newspaper everywhere,
it's Wikisource academics are pointed to to have access to documents
that are found nowhere else... Not Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is an amazing tool to bring everyone to the core of our
mission. As such, we should protect it, brand and all. I don't
believe, however, that Wikipedia is some magic wand that suddenly
unites the whole world. It may sound cool to be called "Wikipedia
somethingorother" but it does not reflect our diversity, which I
believe is our greatest strength.
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.