I think that this is a very valuable policy to have, especially in view of
the "implied obligations" that are mentioned. While the Foundation should seek
out major donors, it should be recognized that sometimes these come with a
cost. For example, if Bill Gates were to donate one billion dollars, there
might be implied pressure to incorporate Microsoft products or, alternately, to
give Mr. Gates a board seat as a result. In effect this resolution prevents
such undo influence from occurring.
I am especially happy with the option of channeling the funds toward an
endowment, as this ensures that such donations could have a longterm impact.
Well done,
Danny
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
Gregory Maxwell writes:
> In the future I would prefer it if you present your disagreement
> without copping out by calling the other side a bunch of fundies.
> It's effectively an ad-homnie, and it doesn't further the discourse.
If that's what you think I was doing, then I apologize. I thought I
was making a subtler point, but, then, maybe it was too subtle.
> Because you have taken the approach of casing my position as one of
> irrationality and not given me the courtesy of an actual counter
> argument I am unable to determine exactly where your views and mine
> differ.
That is not the approach I meant to be understood as taking.
> No religion is required. Only a willingness to value long term goals
> over short term convenience.
And here you assume that only those who believe as you believe value
long-term goals over short-term convenience. I should think it
apparent to pretty much everybody that the Kaltura collaboration is
not convenient in the short term. I should think it apparent to pretty
much everyone familiar with my work that I value long-term goals over
short-term convenience.
At this point, I was sufficiently upset by how you mischaracterized my
position, and because you used the word "nazi" in reference to me,
that I ceased to read further.
This is the first time in a long time that anyone has called me a
nazi. Not impossibly, your friends are comfortable being called nazis
in jest. I'm not, for I think obvious historical reasons, and for
reasons that I've written about.
I think I'll resign from this list for a while. I'll wait a year and
see if it gets better. See you in 2009.
Anyone who wishes to continue a discussion here with me can contact me
via private e-mail.
--Mike
Wider audience for commenting requested...
A proposal has started to allow established or trusted editors to edit via
Tor, or other anon proxy. This discussion is located at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_exemption_policy talk
page
The proposed policy in its "needs to be worked on" form is located at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_exemption_policy project
page
Best regards,
Merc
Postscript: I have also posted this to the foundation mailing list die to
the large interest in this type of change, I believe it may be of interest
to the foundation mailing list audience.
Post under a nicer and more appropriate title
--------
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> On 1/19/08, Gregory Maxwell
<gmaxwell-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w(a)public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> On Jan 19, 2008 12:25 AM, Mike Godwin
<mnemonic-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w(a)public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
>>> I should think it
>>> apparent to pretty much everybody that the Kaltura collaboration is
>>> not convenient in the short term.
>
>> The choice of a partner which fundamentally requires proprietary
>> technology, over alternative paths which use or create non-proprietary
>> technology (which may currently be less mature or less adopted), is
>> short term advantageous compared to other options.
>
> Personally I think the situation is more nuanced than either of you
present
> it as. The Wikimedia Foundation can be a influence for guiding towards
> what its mission is in many ways (and I regret our mission statement
still
> does not make it explicit that we are for non-proprietary formats;
</ceterum
> censeo> ).
>
> Some routes are more frayed than others, though, and one needs must
> make an evaluation of what the best/most effective use of resources/good
> will/authority etc. is. Erik has clearly made one which you, Greg do not
> wholly agree with. That, I think, is fine. We should still respect
the fact
> that evaluating that is what Erik is being paid for, and naturally Erik
> chooses whose opinion he relies upon, within the parameters set to him
> by the board (and here I remind the board, that it *does* have the
authority
> to guide its employees _as a body_, though clearly not as individual
trustees).
Since you mention it, I wanted to clarify that we have drafted a file
format policy. It has not yet been approved, some board member being
willing to further discuss it with other individuals.
I think it relevant to copy this draft here. Comments welcome for all of
you of course :-)
---------
Resolution:File format policy
Whereas an essential part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission is
encouraging the development of free-content educational resources that
may be created, used, and reused by a diverse community, without
restriction, and because we believe that this mission requires thriving
open formats and open standards on the web to allow the creation of
content not subject to restrictions on creation, use, and reuse, it is
resolved that all material, text , multimedia, or software, on Wikimedia
Foundation projects must be in a format that is:
1. Viewable or playable by existing free software tools
2. Able to be created or edited by existing free software tools.
3. Defined by an open standard, implementation, or specification not
under proprietary control
4. Not itself subject to material patent-related restrictions on use
that are incompatible with free software, nor only able to be authored
or viewed by software so restricted.
5. Not encrypted or otherwise subject to technical protection measures
incompatible with the permissions of free content licensing.
where "free software" is software under any licensing terms that meet
the Free Software Definition.
Where an independently-used subset of the format meets these criteria,
even if some files in that format do not (as with PDF and encrypted
PDF), files in that subset qualify as acceptable formats under the text
of this resolution.
Ant, your favorite sheep keeper
Hoi,
You announced that you would no longer post on the Foundation mailing list.
This is in my opinion un unmitigated disaster. This list is with Meta the
only way in which an ordinary user communicates with the Foundation. When
important Foundation people like yourself are no longer reading and/or
occasionally posting on this list, the openness of our organisation is
severely damaged.
When people consider a council, organisation mailing lists, they are
mechanisms intended to improve the relation between the organisation and the
projects, their people. Many people consider as extra layers of bureaucracy
and complexity. There are people who will consider this a waste of time and
money as they do not feel they are represented.
On the mailing list there are people who come from all kinds of background
and consequently people will be puzzled by the behaviour of others. When I
said for instance that I am not interested in the trash talking of the WMF
by a person that is said to be a vandal on another project I was told to
show good faith. I do not have the time for that... When people offend, they
offend intentional or unintentional. It can be because of a difference in
values, in judgment, in culture. In the end, we have to work together well
enough to be able to move forward and the least that we can do is continue
to converse.
When I do not post on this list, it makes little difference. When you decide
to boycot this list it makes a huge difference. It closes one of the few
public channels in which you can be reached. I ask you, please reconsider
and give your valued contributions to this list.
Thanks,
GerardM
Hello,
There is periodic interest on this mailing list about requests for new
languages and the doings of the language subcommittee, so I thought I
would provide a (relatively) quick update. I've been busy over the
last several weeks on some sweeping technical reforms aimed at
drastically improving processing times and effectiveness. If you're
interested, following is a description of the most important changes.
(As usual, note that the subcommittee never makes any public
announcements. This is a personal comment only.)
==Localization requirements==
The first change can actually be credited to GerardM.
After extensive internal discussion, we have overhauled the
localization requirements for all new wikis. This is very good news
for most requests, since first wikis in a language now only need to
translate the 496 most important interface messages, instead of all
1736 MediaWiki messages. Subsequent wikis in that language will need
to translate all MediaWiki messages as well as extensions used by the
Wikimedia Foundation, in order to provide a fully accessible editing
environment for editors. Fortunately, we expect many of these messages
to be translated over time by the first community, so that the second
wiki's community will not actually have much left to translate.
The result overall is that localization is of much higher quality, yet
the localization requirements are still generally much easier to
achieve.
==Test project analysis==
I've recoded the test project analysis script at <
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~pathoschild/ls-testanalysis/ > from the
ground up. The new script accesses the replicated database directly to
obtain every bit of information stored by MediaWiki. Analysis is now
performed in a single step (previously we had to generate a list of
pages, paste it to the relevant wiki, then process the
relatedchanges), is vastly more efficient, and is now open to public
usage (previously only I could run it, for performance reasons).
With the replicated database, the analysis script provides information
on the test project's entire history since the very first edit
(previously only the last 30 days were available for technical
reasons). In addition, the script newly provides:
* lists of editors and redirects;
* edit distribution by user per month;
* number of edits and minor edits per month;
* number of new pages per month;
* amount of content added or removed in bytes per month;
* number of editors per month;
* and overall statistics, including total number of non-redirect
pages, redirects, editors, and edits.
==Status pages==
"Status pages" are semi-official pages that display the precise
progression of a request towards approval, listing the exact
requirements they still need to meet and including links to relevant
information and tools. These pages are critical information both for
requesters (to direct their efforts) and subcommittee members (to make
a decision).
I've moved these status pages from the Incubator to Meta and almost
entirely automated them. They've been completely redesigned to provide
users with every documentation page and tool needed to track their own
progress, and integrated with the automated analysis tool above. These
changes were also intended to minimize the work required for
investigation, so that a thorough investigation of a project can now
be done in a matter of seconds instead of taking ten minutes or more.
You can see the difference yourself by comparing these two links:
* old format (manual):
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pathoschild/Status/wp-bcl?oldid=13…
* new format (semi-automatic): http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language
subcommittee/Status/wp/bcl
==Verification for eligibility==
In the approval process, "conditional approval" has been renamed to
"verified as eligible", to reflect the current practice of giving it
automatically to languages that meet the requirements for eligibility.
Conditional approval has been a source of confusion for a long time,
particularly given that our criteria can change over time.
There is no practical difference, since they mean exactly the same
thing, but this is much less confusing for requesters. It also
clarifies the distinction between criteria for eligibility and for
final approval in the policy.
==Pages renamed==
The language subcommittee pages have been renamed from "Special
projects committee/Languages" to "Language subcommittee", in order to
make subpage naming less awkward. This was already a problem with the
number of subpages we had, but made status pages very messy. (See a
list of subpages at <
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/Language_subcommittee
>.)
==Internal changes==
The archival script at < http://pathos.ca/tools/ls-archival > has been
greatly improved, which makes archival easier. I'll still be the only
archivist, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. :)
The documentation for subcommittee members at <
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language
subcommittee/Handbook_%28subcommittee%29 > has been completely
rewritten, expanded, and updated. It now covers the primary
subcommittee tasks in detail, from creating status pages to approving
a wiki. Combined with upcoming internal measures, I hope this will
encourage less active subcommittee members to participate more,
providing a moderating effect on the more active elements in the
subcommittee, reducing the workload per member, and decreasing
processing times.
If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to respond in this
thread, leave a message on the official subcommittee discussion page
at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Language_subcommittee >, or
leave a message on my talk page at <
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pathoschild >.
--
Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
Thank you for this, Florence,
With all seriousness I can say that it is very reassuring to see that you
are addressing these issues in the proper way, through the Board. I am very glad
to see this. It shows a genuine concern for the reservations expressed by
the community over the past couple of days.
Thanks,
Danny
PS. Thought you'd never hear this from me, eh?
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
나는 영어를 할 줄 모릅니다.
위키백과(한국어판)와 위키미디어(한국어판) 등
모든 위키 관련 사이트에서 회원탈퇴를 원합니다.
성명 : 마상호
비밀번호 : abcd1234
이메일 : george17(a)naver.com
빠른 조치를 바랍니다.
확인 메일을 나에게 보내 주시면 고맙겠습니다.
-----Original Message-----
From: "geni"<geniice(a)gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc:
Sent: 08-01-20(일) 09:23:28
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Response to message by thread breaking nazi.
On 19/01/2008, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
> On 19/01/2008, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
>
> > The thing that jumps out at me is the unqualified use of "must". This
> > policy would make it impossible to use content for which there are no
> > free formats (not that I can think of any examples of such content at
> > the moment). Is that intentional? A "where possible" could be added to
> > get around it if it's not intentional. (I'm undecided on whether it
> > would be good to completely ban such material or not.)
>
>
> Are there formats that *cannot* be transcoded into something free?
From time to time. Blu ray format would be rather hard to transcode at
the moment.
--
geni
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Simultaneous send to wikitech-l, foundation-l, and commons-l
Hi folks,
Yesterday the Wikimedia Foundation, Kaltura, and WikiEducator made a
combined announcement about our beta collaborative video project. You
can see the announcement here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Invites_Users_to_Take_Part_in…
The Foundation has set up a landing page here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Collaborative_Video
with more background and information. We'll keep it updated regularly.
WikiEducator has done the same here:
http://wikieducator.org/Help:Collaborative_video
with specific instructions on how to participate in the beta.
Through this project the parties will be able to explore the potential
for developing open-source, collaborative video or slideshows for the
Foundation's projects. Collaborative video is simply a collection of
images, video, and sound edited and combined by one or more collaborators.
The technology, which many of you may already be familiar with, will be
demonstrated on WikiEducator - which is not a WMF project. Those of us
involved in the Wikimedia Foundation projects will have a chance to
examine the software, test its limits, and ultimately improve our
ability to bring multi-media, free knowledge content to our users. We
recognize that Kaltura's software and interface are still not 100%
open-source, and as such the technology will not appear on any
Foundation projects until we've worked through some of the technical
challenges - which is where you come in.
Kaltura has released their code to the open-source community to help
this project along. It's available on SourceForge,
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kaltura .
We're excited that an innovative, private business has taken strong
initiative in embracing open-source development.
You're invited to examine the code, test the technology as it exists on
WikiEducator, and help us bring this functionality to the Wikimedia
Foundation projects over the coming months. You'll find a feedback
process on the WikiEducator landing page, and of course we fully welcome
discussion about the technology on the lists.
Thanks,
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.org
1 (415) 287-0680