I think there are probably quite a few people on this list not
subscribed to WikimediaUK-l, which is why I'm posting here -
m:Wikimania 2008 says I can ;-).
The London bid is in need of volunteers. We have a coordination page
at meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids/London/Coordination
which lists things we've thought we need to do, and above the London
page has the template.
Please help if you can by updating those pages.
Kind regards,
--
Gary Kirk
I'm not sure how to reply here. I'm doing it the hard way. Anyway...
Yes, on a normal wiki there are a few steps of privileges, IP, user,
sysop and bureaucrat. On Betawiki there is an added Translator
privileges. It's the same as a user, except they can also edit the
MediaWiki namespace. It has been very easy to get these privileges
and users have only had to ask for them. It would also be possible to
simply allow all logged in users to be able to edit the MediaWiki
namespace, but personally, I like the current system used on Betawiki
and it's simple enough to add it into Incubator. I was kind of hoping
that the discussion would continue at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Meta:Betawiki_being_hosted_by_Wikimedia Would that be OK? I don't
think many non-foundation-users are joining in on this discussion here.
> Hoi,
> In a standard environment only admins can change the system
> messages. This
> restriction does not make sense in BetaWiki for new languages ..
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On 9/3/07, Eysteinn Gudni Gudnason <steinninn(a)steinninn.is> wrote:
>>
>> Platonides Wrote:
>>> Mohamed Magdy wrote:
>>>> Eysteinn Gudni Gudnason wrote:
>>>>> This has been brought up before, and I'm taking it into my own
>> hands
>>>>> on pushing it forward. The idea is to start hosting Betawiki on a
>>>>> Wikimedia site. On a new project or merge it into an excisting one
>>>>> (Incubator?). I've put up a site for discussion. Please take a
>>>>> look
>>>>> at it and consider it.
>>>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
>> Meta:Betawiki_being_hosted_by_Wikimedia
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> I think it is a good idea for the sustainability of the project.
>>>>
>>>> I'm also with making it on a separate wiki because people's
>> permissions
>>>> on betawiki are different from the incubator..and also may be let
>> the
>>>> betawiki run all the extensions to test its translations?
>>>
>>> Having it hosted by Wikimedia also means that it would have SUL :-)
>>>
>>
>> What's SUL?
>>
>> This was sent almost a year ago: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/
>> htdig/foundation-l/2006-December/026384.html
>>
>> Nikerabbit has long prepared for Betawiki to be exported into a
>> Wikimedia hosted site. But it seems that he lacks response from the
>> foundation.
>>
>> I'm not sure what Jon Harald S?by means. Everybody that asks for
>> translations differences gets them. So what permission differences
>> are we talking about?
Platonides Wrote:
>Mohamed Magdy wrote:
>> Eysteinn Gudni Gudnason wrote:
>>> This has been brought up before, and I'm taking it into my own
hands
>>> on pushing it forward. The idea is to start hosting Betawiki on a
>>> Wikimedia site. On a new project or merge it into an excisting one
>>> (Incubator?). I've put up a site for discussion. Please take a look
>>> at it and consider it.
>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Meta:Betawiki_being_hosted_by_Wikimedia
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I think it is a good idea for the sustainability of the project.
>>
>> I'm also with making it on a separate wiki because people's
permissions
>> on betawiki are different from the incubator..and also may be let
the
>> betawiki run all the extensions to test its translations?
>
>Having it hosted by Wikimedia also means that it would have SUL :-)
>
What's SUL?
This was sent almost a year ago: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/
htdig/foundation-l/2006-December/026384.html
Nikerabbit has long prepared for Betawiki to be exported into a
Wikimedia hosted site. But it seems that he lacks response from the
foundation.
I'm not sure what Jon Harald Søby means. Everybody that asks for
translations differences gets them. So what permission differences
are we talking about?
Hello,
In the past few months, the WMF has adopted officially a vision
(tagline) and clarified its mission statement.
The difference between the two is that the vision is the dream, what we
are trying to do, even if that seems impossible. This is the long long
long future.
The mission is the more practical path we decide to follow to reach our
vision.
Currently, you may find our vision
here:http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vision
and the mission there:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission
--------
A next step for a non-profit is to define its values. Values are the
driving force in a nonprofit.
Before you tell me "what's that boring stuff and why on earth would it
be useful for", let me explain :-)
Values represent the core priorities in the organization’s culture,
including what drives people's priorities and how they truly act in the
organization, etc.
I'd like that we establish four to six core values from which the WMF
would operate. These values would not only be the values glueing us all
together (such as free culture, commitment to diversity etc...), but
should also be the values YOU, as an editing community, want the WMF to
have toward the community, the readers, the staff, etc...
The more we expand the staff, the more chance there is that part of the
staff joins WMF with no single idea of our values. So the more it
becomes important for us to make sure the staff understand our values
and respect them. As such, writing down them will help.
Same for chapters. Until now, we consider that a chapter sharing most of
its mission statement with WMF one is a "like minded" organization. But
will it always be true in the future when we have 200 chapters ? How
will we identify and check that chapters are really on the same "foot" ?
Even without going as far, we might meet a problem sooner than we can
think of, if a big company just decide to create a BIG encyclopedia for
free, which, for whatever reasons, would get good ranks on some search
engines.... in this case, what would be important to us ?
Probably, it will be important that we explain to the world what is
truely important to us. What is truely important are values.
----------
I would like to ask you to have a look at the value page on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values
And add more suggestions there, or different phrasings. Values can be
expressed by keywords, or by sentences. Either are fine, as long as they
express what is important to us.
Or comment on some of the keywords already there.
Be careful to notice the difference between our preferred values and the
true values (those actually reflected by members behaviors). In this
case, just put a note (''we are not very good on this, but I think this
value would be very important to us to follow).
The current values were defined with the help of the advisory board
member, during the board retreat immediately before Wikimania.
More on this here: http://advisory.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meeting_August_2007
Thanks to all for your help.
Anthere
Hello all,
For the Wikimedia Conference Netherlands 2007 the registrations have
been opened. The conference on october 27 in Amsterdam will take one
day (9.30 - 18.00) and most of the program will be in Dutch. However,
a few lectures will be in English such as a lecture by Eliane Metni
from iEARN, Cormac Lawler and Florence Devouard. The theme of the
conference is Wiki's and Education.
I would like to welcome those who are interested to look for more
information on our website:
http://www.wikimediaconferentie.nl/english/ and at our registration
form: http://www.wikimediaconferentie.nl/registrations/ . I certainly
hope to meet a few of you on october 27!
Best regards,
Lodewijk Gelauff / Effeietsanders
Organisation of WCN 2007
Here are a few clarifications and responses to early questions regarding the
WikiCurriculum project:
There have been a few discussions along the lines of "doesn't this fit into
WikiBooks or WikiUniversity, or a semantic enhancement thereof". While I
have tried to discuss the differences within the project proposal, perhaps a
few more words should be said about the differences.
The primary difference is that the WikiCurriculum project has semantic
information at its heart, and the needs of (U.S.) school districts as its
motivation. While WikiBooks might attempt to write textbooks to address
standards (such as the A-level math textbooks already there), and
WikiUniversity (and the community college project) might come up with
curricula, the WikiCurriculum project would specifically contain the
information necessary to ensure the mathematical and pedagogical soundness
of textbooks and curricula in general (at least in 9-12 math).
In this way, the WikiCurriculum project could in fact facilitate the
creation of courses and textbooks, both by other Wiki projects, as well as
school districts (from which I have already heard a bit of interest).
The WikiCurriculum project would be designed with state and national
standards in mind. I have in mind the NCTM national standards, as well as
California and Massachusetts state standards. I am only mentioning U.S.
standards, simply because these are the standards with which I have
familiarity. I am also mentioning the states CA and MA, because I have some
familiarity with those state standards, and I also have contacts in
mathematics and math education in those states. Of course, I believe that
international standards should be addressed as well, eventually.
If anyone can think of a more apt name for the project, I would be
interested in hearing it. I certainly don't intend WikiCurriculum to be a
"curriculum upload" site.
I am very interested in more feedback - please continue to post, either on
the foundation list, or the WikiCurriculum talk site.
Thank you very much,
Marty Weissman
Hello,
Thanks to Gmaxwell, we have some interesting stats about language
preferences for registered users at Commons.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Registered_users_by_language_pref…
Here's a quick table of how the language codes of the top 14
Wikipedias (by # of articles - these are all the Wikipedias that have
over 100,000 articles).
WPrank LC Commonsrank W-C
1 en 1 0
2 de 4 (-2)
3 fr 3 0
4 pl 7 (-3)
5 ja 6 (-1)
6 it 8 (-2)
7 nl 9 (-2)
8 pt 5 3
9 es 2 7
10 sv 10 0
11 ru 14 (-3)
12 zh 11 1
13 fi 17 (-4)
14 no 12 2
"W-C" is the Wikipedia rank minus the Commons rank. Spanish and
Portugese have much higher Commons ranks than Wikipedia ranks, which
no doubt reflects those community's decisions to turn off local
uploads and only use Commons.
For some of the languages, I have a feeling the negative value
reflects the fact that those users use the English interface, rather
than choose not to use/aren't aware of Commons. e.g. German and
Polish. For others I think it does reflect a lack of
awareness/willingness to use Commons and subsequently, little
community at Commons, e.g. Italian and Russian.
Commons has started a page
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikimedia_Outreach_Project
which will try to improve the awareness and perception of Commons
among the rest of the Wikimedia community. For this, we need people
who are active in other Wikimedia communities to help spread the
message about the benefits (for the local community, *and* Commons) of
using Commons. If you would like to help, please take a look at this
page and feel free to start a subpage for the project(s) that you edit
at.
cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
A word about the perceived U.S. focus of the WikiCurriculum project:
I do not have an intention of making the WikiCurriculum project U.S.-centric.
In fact, I would prefer to integrate standards from countries around the
world. In this way, a user will be able to view a block of content, and see
which national/state standards (from around the world) are correlated.
My personal expertise is with U.S. national, California, and Massachusetts
standards. I would like others in the community to provide connections to
international standards as well as other U.S. states. This could be
especially useful for identifying gaps in standards, and narrowing the
achievement gap between countries. In addition, developing countries could
find templates of standards to follow, and design curricula accordingly.
In this way, I do not think that the WikiCurriculum project, by its nature,
suffers from the problem of being too U.S.-centric for the Wikimedia
mission. I have recently heard from the International Professors Project,
expressing interest in this project.
As for potential redundancy with WikiUniversity, I believe that more
discussion is warranted, and I hope to hear more!
Thank you very much,
Marty Weissman
I have posted a project proposal, WikiCurriculum, at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCurriculum.
Please let me know your thoughts about the viability of such a project. In
addition, please read the section of the project proposal on "distinction
from existing projects", before jumping to conclusions that this project
fits naturally within Wikiversity or Wikibooks.
In addition to your general thoughts, my project relies on some Semantic Web
technology. Will the Semantic Mediawiki extension be integrated into
Wikimedia projects? If not, perhaps I should consider using some
combination of Longwell/Fresnel or hosting elsewhere.
Thank you for your advice and consideration,
Marty Weissman