FYI - just posted this to my blog ... so don't be astonished to see some
repetitive message on user pages
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Many of you eventually know that I am dealing with the Fundraiser 2007
of the Wikimedia Foundation ... well ... there is one thing I feel a bit
strange about: it seems as if general messages in village pumps and
mailing lists where we ask for help simply don't go through ... or
people simply don't read ... now there is a last attempt to be made and
this is contact people one by one ... that is going through the projects
and ask active people for help. In some way it makes me feel like
spamming around and I don't feel actually comfortable with that, but on
the other hand it seems to be the only chance we have ... uhmmm ... will
go and do that now ... don't know if this translation of a saying is
correct in English: when the prophet does not come to the mountain, take
the mountain to the prophet ... have a great Sunday!
p.s. and yes, I already added a fundraiser button to my blog ;-)
--
Posted By Sabine Cretella to words & more
<http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2007/09/fundraiser-2007-responsiveness-o…>
at 9/16/2007 03:26:00 PM
I want to throw my two cents in and hope that the Foundation does consider locations outside of San Francisco itself. The Bay Area is so diverse that there are many different options to choose from. I've lived in the Bay Area most of my life, and most recently the past 10 years, and avoid going into the City at all costs.
If they do go into the City, having a location near public transportation is an absolute must.
Sue Anne
sreed1234(a)yahoo.com
> Earlier: "...I have been put under
> moderation months ago. I request
> to be unmoderated...Waerth..."
There are 418 responses to a search for "Waerth" at
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/mmsearch/foundation-l
It is my understanding that moderated posts merely await moderator
approval, and if Waerth has sent in anything that is not spam, not
vandalism(?) and not off-topic (though meta-topic discussions like this
one - discussions about our discussions - are a presumed function for
any group), then all the current moderator has to do is to approve that
post. I also presume that any moderator who "feels" that a
contributor's posts are consistently in accordance with
no-spam/no-vandalism/no-off-topic policy, then they can change the
poster's membership to unmoderated, then the posts will go through
without delay. Correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks.
--- Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I wanted to let you know that later this year, the Wikimedia Foundation
> will be relocating its headquarters to the San Francisco Bay area.
Great news! I've been suggesting a move to a world-class city for years now but have been
repeatedly shouted down on that point for what I saw as some bizarre reasons. I'm glad that the
foundation has finally realized that to more easily accomplish its mission it needs to be near
like-minded organizations. That proximity allows for more opportunities to collaborate and build
relationships with the people and organizations that we need to work with.
The SF Bay area is also a great place to live and work - a very vital and forward looking place.
Best wishes on your move. Just dont put the servers or office on the Hayward Fault Zone or too
close to the San Andreas Fault. :) As a matter of fact, it might be best to keep the servers and
office in separate locations.
-- mav
____________________________________________________________________________________
Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games.
http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow
Hi folks,
I wanted to let you know that later this year, the Wikimedia Foundation
will be relocating its headquarters to the San Francisco Bay area.
You may know that we’re currently in St. Petersburg, Florida. This was
an accident rather than a deliberate choice; when Jimmy started the
Foundation in 2003, he happened to be living here. And in the years
since then, Florida has been a very good home for us.
But it’s time to move. We need to be in a larger city that is more
suited to our work.
In making this decision, we assessed five major cities: Boston, London,
New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC - as well as St. Petersburg
itself. The upshot: after a fairly detailed analysis, I recommended to
the board that the Foundation relocate to San Francisco, and the board
accepted that recommendation.
Why San Francisco? It’s the centre of high-tech in the United States.
It’s home to plenty of like-minded organizations and possible partners,
top-tier universities like Stanford and UC Berkeley, world-class support
services, and major media. And it will be more convenient - and cheaper
- than St. Petersburg for international travel.
There are also arguments for staying where we are. Moving will be
expensive, and may be disruptive for the community. And St. Petersburg
is less expensive than the Bay Area.
But in the long run, San Francisco will suit us well, and will give the
Foundation a solid base from which to grow.
Here is what’s planned at this point:
- The new office will open sometime this winter. We’ll probably start
out in downtown San Francisco, until we get our bearings and choose a
permanent location.
- The St. Petersburg office will close late this winter, probably at the
end of January.
- We know that many people's personal circumstances will make it
impossible for them to move, but we are hoping that some of the current
staff will be able to come with us.
- The servers will remain in Tampa indefinitely. If we do choose to move
them, that would be a separate, subsequent decision. At this point, it's
not under active consideration.
The board members have asked me, in this note, to thank the St.
Petersburg staff for their hard work and dedication. And I want to add
my thanks as well. It’s a great group of committed, hard-working people,
and those who can't move with the office will be missed.
I know many of you will have questions about the staff. Most of them I
probably can't answer, because, in general, individual staff issues are
confidential. But I will say that I take very seriously the
organization's obligation to its employees, and I am committed to
ensuring everyone is treated fairly and with care. The staff has been
informed and consulted throughout this process, and has made a good
contribution to it.
In the coming months, the Foundation will be relying on the staff's
patience and cooperation, and on yours – we will need lots of support in
order for this transition to go smoothly.
Please feel free to forward this note to anyone who might be interested,
and to contact me directly if you have any questions, or want to offer
help. We will probably put out a press release sometime next week, but wanted to let you all know first.
Thanks,
Sue
[Please translate this announcement into other languages.]
Wikipedia's roots in the more conservative Nupedia project are reflected by
many in-depth discussions we've had over the years about quality assurance,
filtering, and labeling.
In her "4 wishes for the year 2007" [1], Wikimedia Foundation Chair
Florence Devouard also identified "reliability" as a key goal for the
Wikimedia Foundation. Today we're taking two small steps towards that
goal:
* the launch of http://quality.wikimedia.org/ as a portal targeting
readers and volunteers to summarize key information about current
quality initiatives, combined with
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiquality as a more in-depth
description of our plans,
* the opening of wikiquality-l as a mailing list for related discussions:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiquality-l
Notably, these pages describe our current plans with regard to the
"FlaggedRevs" extension, a MediaWiki extension developed by Aaron
Schulz and Jörg Baach (with financial support from Wikimedia
Deutschland e.V.) which makes it possible to identify revisions of
articles that are known to be of a certain quality, and to change the
default view based on that information.
The public beta of this feature (initially on dummy websites, i.e. not
production environments) will begin as soon as a security review of
the current code has been completed (expected later this month). In
the meantime, please give your feedback on the quality.wikimedia.org
portal, add translations, and subscribe to wikiquality-l to join
future discussions about the specifics of any particular initiative.
[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/4_wishes_for_year_2007
Sincerely,
Erik Möller
Board member, Wikimedia Foundation
> > That's a good point. Nevertheless, it's still a short term
> > consideration - purchasing power and exchange rates will converge over
> > time (and then diverge again, of course, but there's no way to know
> > which direction they'll go in next time).
> That's not a given. It depends on getting the economic fundamentals
> right at the national level, like not depending on debt to fuel
> spending. It will work as a short term tactic, but cannot be sustained
> as a long term strategy. Exchange rates merely reflect purchasing
> power, and that in turn is a composite of a number of factors. Some
> countries have gone bankrupt in the past, and the old currency became
> worthless.
The modern world economy is based almost 100% on debt. Pretty much
every unit of currency in existence exists because someone lent it to
someone else (ie. all money is in the form of an IOU and is not backed
by anything - the gold standard went the way of the dodo years ago).
There is nothing wrong with debt, it's just unserviceable debt that's
a problem. The current economic difficulties were caused by banks in
the US giving mortgages to people that couldn't afford to pay them
back. If they'd been able to pay them back, there wouldn't have been a
problem.
All,
This is just a reminder that there will be a public meeting on
Freenode IRC in #wikimania2008 at 15:00 UTC today (that is, in just
under 5 hours' time) between the Jury and the Bids' teams.
Hope to see you all there.
On behalf of the Jury.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)wikimedia.org | jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
Andrew Gray writes:
As discussed interminably on some other list this very week, British
defamation law is voracious and enthusiastic. Having WMF operating in
a British jurisdiction, or keeping assets there, is pretty much an
invitation for someone to sue us in a UK court - a situation where we
might win but we would certainly suffer.
I made this point in our internal discussions as well. (Note: I was not myself part of the Board's deliberations.)
In response to an earlier argument -- that BLP policy would have to change -- I note that since defamation law has been more or less the same among American states since the Supreme Court's decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), and since the most applicable statutory immunity in defamation cases (Section 230, passed in 1996) is federal law, the move won't affect BLP to any noticeable degree.
--Mike Godwin
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
--
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The second edition of Godwin's book, CYBER RIGHTS, can be ordered at
http://www.panix.com/~mnemonic .
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