It occurs to me that a good way to share experiences among chapters
community-to-community might be though a semi-formal "twin chapters" /
"sister chapters" program, analogous to the "twin towns" / "sister
cities" programs among world urban centers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_twinning
There appears to me to be a benefit to a deep conversation between two
chapters that can't be fully reached by a broader, shallower
conversation among all chapters simultaneously (such as takes place in
meta). Of course, the broader conversation still has a very important
place.
It would be great if we could boost the organization of more Wikipedia
Academy-type events in this way, for example, where one chapter can
copy another's successes and learn from its experiences.
Who wants to join up? As an organizer of the as-yet-unofficial
Wikimedia New York City, I'd look forward to seeing chapter-to-chapter
contacts blossom in this way, and hope others would wish to join us in
conversation.
Thanks,
Pharos
Delphine wrote:
>1) The slogan "Wikipedia is a non-profit" sounds weird to me...
Well, Wikipedia itself isn't a nonprofit, the Foundation is. But "is
nonprofit" and "is a nonprofit" are both acceptable in English (1st is
an adjective, 2nd is a noun) so I don't see an issue with those words.
>2) While I understand the necessity and the advantages of pushing
>Wikipedia over the other projects in terms of "return on investment",
>I really think it would make sense to find a slightly different
>wording/message for the notices on other projects. It doesn't mean
>that we shouldn't use Wikipedia's name, but if the Foundation is ever
>hoping to push other Wikimedia projects forward, it should probably
>start to include them more prominently in its own communications to
>start with.
I agree - Wikipedia has brand recognition, but the other projects need
to develop some - that means co-branding with Wikipedia and/or the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is one prominent example of an area where
Wikipedia's sister projects are notably absent. We should try to
emphasize on Wikipedia's notices that donations will help Wikipedia and
these other cool things. On other projects, something like "Wikibooks,
like Wikipedia, is a project of the WMF, and we need money" might make
more sense. I don't know whether we can currently do different notices
on different projects, but I think it will be very strange to have a
"Wikipedia needs money" at the top of a Wikibooks page. For projects
struggling to gain their own notoriety, some support from the Foundation
would be nice.
-Mike
--
Mike.lifeguard
mikelifeguard(a)fastmail.fm
I made a page at Meta [1] and its initial content is below the
message. For the introduction into the issue, see [2].
Here are a couple of points about this approach:
- The project has no explicit power, its task is to gather, categorize
and analyze problems, as well as to suggest possible solutions.
- All previous attempts to make a group which would deal with such
issues were not passed. I think that this group has potential to exist
exactly because it doesn't have any power, while it has a lot of tasks
to do.
- I understand that we need to have a number of persons highly
motivated to work on that: there are no prises, there is not explicit
authority.
Inputs from all Wikimedians at all phases of work are welcome.
And, at the end, please move discussion to wikimediameta list because
this list was introduced to cover community issues. For those who
don't know where to sign, go at the page [3].
[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Problems
[2] - http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046768.html
[3] - https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediameta-l
* * *
This page is about "the rest" of the problems related to [[Wikimedia
community]], [[Wikimedia projects]], [[WMF]] and [[Chapters]]. When an
issue comes to this place, it should mean that there is no other place
at all over [[Wikimedia]] where it may be solved. This place is built
to ''try'' to solve such problems, while it doesn't have power ''per
se'' to implement it. The main product of this place is a suggestion
what should be done at various levels toward the problem solution.
'''The project is still in development and you shouldn't use it for
particular problems! However, all Wikimedians are welcome to
participate in the project creation process.'''
== How to use this project ==
* If you think, let's say, that some project should be closed, the
right place for such proposal is the page [[Proposals for closing
projects]]. The process there is well established and there is no need
for talking about that at some other place. If you want to change the
process because you think that something with that process is not
going well, the right place for discussing this issue is [[Wikimedia
Forum]]. And just if you tried both steps and you still think that
something is wrong there, you should come here and explain the
problem.
* If you have some other problem in which wider community should be
introduced, the right place for asking the community is the page
[[Requests for comments]]. However, if the problem was not solved
there, you should come here and explain it.
* This project is about '''all''' aspects of Wikimedia community,
Wikimedia projects, Wikimedia Foundation and Chapters issues. This
means that you may present here any kind of Wikimedia-related problem;
not just problems related to the projects. Of course, you should be
sure that you tried to solve your problem at other possible ways. If
you are unsure, you may ask here for advice.
* ...
== Meta tasks ==
''This is the list of the tasks which should be done to make and keep
the project functional.''
=== Initial tasks ===
* List as many as possible existing not solved, usually systematic
problems, make the initial analysis and categorize them. The main page
for the list is [[/List of problems]]
* Make supporting pages for adding problems.
* Announce that this project is functional.
=== Permanent tasks ===
* Handle problems, analyze them, categorize them, try to solve them.
* Talk with Wikimedian communities around projects, WMF and chapters
about issues relevant to them and educated interested Wikimedians how
to increase their participation.
* Write documentation.
* Help in creation of the new Wikimedia institutions.
* Analyze periodically developments of Wikimedian community, suggest
global actions and report it to the community.
== Publicity of work ==
This project is public. As it handles public or very general problems,
there is no need for private communication channels, except personal
communication. Wikimedians interested in helping others may talk
personally with those who need help with the goal to find the right
wording for expressing sensitive data here. Solutions at this place
are general, while sensitive data should be handled by particular WMF
and community bodies.
The working list for this project is
[http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediameta-l
wikimediameta-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org].
== Members ==
Anyone is able to participate in the process on this project. However,
as the project has to make some conclusions and suggestions to the
wider community, membership should be defined.
Up to the end of November 2008 membership to the project is open to
all Wikimedians which have account on Meta at least for the last 6
months with the existing user page prior to the moment of publishing
this document. After the end of November 2008, new members may be
accepted according to the group rules. Default majority needed for
group decision is 80%. If the group doesn't have consensus about
conclusions or there are significant different views, all of them
should be included into the final document. Without prior information
that member wouldn't be able to participate for some specific time,
after inactivity for more than three months member will be removed
from the list; after which they should pass the same process for
becoming a member.
=== List of members ===
* [[User:Millosh|Millosh]]
[[Category:Collaboration]]
Hi,
A new mailing list, called chapters-reports_[at]_lists.wikimedia.org
has been created. It is meant to be an announce-only mailing list, for
those who wish to keep in touch with what the chapters around the
world are doing. It will receive regular updates from various chapters
about their activities.
The reason for an announce-only mailing list is that many people have
asked for a "quiet" list, where things would not get burried by
answers and comments but would allow them to keep in touch with the
activities of chapters.
You can subscribe by visiting the following page:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports
It's going to be a relatively low-traffic list (about maybe 20 mails/month).
Cheers,
Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost.
Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org
Those of you checking Meta may have noticed that there are a few
designs uploaded for feedback from translators:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/design_draftshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/benefactors
With the exception of the usual copyrights and trademarks on Wikimedia
logos & marks, these designs are CC-BY-SA. They are still prototypes
that we are hoping to implement using the existing skin/translation
system on wikimediafoundation.org.
Translation has also begun on the key messages of the campaign --
thanks to everyone who is helping. Rand Montoya is managing the
fundraiser this year, and will post more detailed updates as things
progress. Please do feel free to add first feedback to the above
pages.
We're currently planning to launch the fundraiser in early November,
and it will run until late January. The "Ask" of the fundraiser will
be a campaign goal of $6M, which matches the budgeted expenses for the
current fiscal year. It does not include the budgeted contingency,
which we hope to meet through other revenue streams (e.g. business
development). We will count gifts received or committed in this fiscal
year prior to the launch of the fundraiser as "leadership gifts". That
means that the fundraising thermometer will literally be filled up (at
current count by about $2M), and we hope to raise the remaining
difference.
We will also count any major gifts received during the fundraising
period against the thermometer. So, for campaign purposes, we will not
distinguish between small gifts and major gifts. We may special case
any significantly restricted grants received during the time period,
depending on the nature of the grant.
Some of the other important changes this year:
* The fundraiser is supported by our brand-spanking new open source
donation database, CiviCRM. We are also setting up the CiviMail
component to auto-confirm donations with an e-mail "Thank you" and to
email past and future donors.
* We have developed a fundraising agreement for chapters, which
commits us to mutual reporting obligations and commits chapters to
invest 50% of revenue from the online fundraiser in activities agreed
upon with WMF (e.g. hiring a developer, buying a server, obtaining a
legal study, sending us money).
* We are implementing a new version of the CentralNotice campaign
management system that supports scheduling & use of different banners.
We are also hoping to have tracking of where donors are coming from in
place (possibly not quite at launch) to do proper A/B testing on a
number of designs.
* As you can see on the above link, we'll have a bunch of sitenotices
ready to go, and will develop further variants and iterations during
the fundraiser. Other interesting updates (blog, quotes, etc.) are
hoped for and planned. Hopefully basic live reporting will be in place
from the start.
* We'll have neat banners & buttons for blogs ready to go, and we'll
encourage people to remix them.
* Jay & Frank are working on outreach and messaging. For example, we
hope to have some radio public service announcements this year, and
Frank is planning an international outreach event to support the
fundraiser.
* We will have continued major gifts solicitation, now with support of
Rebecca Handler, Head of Major Gifts. Sara Crouse is actively managing
relationships with foundations and ongoing grants development.
There will be no scrolling marquees this year, no third party logos in
the sitenotice, and the notice will continue to be collapsible for
signed in users. There will, as always, be a detailed Q&A, a draft
version of which we'll post publicly later this week. :-)
More soon,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
When translating the fundraiser 2008 announcement, I had again the
impression that Wikimedia announcements are suitable for the context of
English language, maybe a handful of other languages and their Wikipedia
communities, but not for lesser resourced languages like Latin, Swahili or
Dutch Low Saxon.
First, it is often a large amount of text that needs hours or longer to
translate. The workforce of small Wikipedia communities is limited, and the
result is often that announcements are not translated and distributed at
all. It is also a problem that e.g. the fundraising message referred to the
Annual Report of WMF, which exists only in English or a limited number of
languages.
Second, the contenct of the announcements is directed to speakers of a
language which is the main language of thoses speakers, or a language taught
at ordinary schools and universities etc.
Third, the Wikipedia/Wikimedia structure can differ, like the existence and
strengh of a Wikimedia chapter.
It might be considerable to have in future Wikimedia announcements in
various sizes, like L, M and S. Then, a Wikipedia language edition community
can choose which one to adopt.
Ziko van Dijk
--
Ziko van Dijk
NL-Silvolde
What about a tabulator?
________________________________
From: Kim Bruning <kim(a)bruning.xs4all.nl>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 8:01:26 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [offtopic] Lempel-Ziv Was: Freedom, standards, and file formats
On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 09:19:05PM -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> It's true that math is not itself patentable in the US. The way
> software patents are constructed is by saying: "We claim a computer
> system (a) consisting of transistors and all the usual computer
> trappings, which is loaded with software (b), which tranforms the
> computer into a device for performing computation (c; described in
> great detail), so that the resulting system a+b+c, is useful for
> performing task X", and that *is* patentable in the US, the patents
> usually go on to describe every application that they can think of, as
> well as the most obvious permutations of a,b, and c.
Would the patent still apply if I used a babbage difference engine,
or an optical computer?
My question is really: how specific are they in describing a computer?
--
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On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 8:55 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I am aware that I am dating myself there.
>
> As I recall it, (and my recollection is as ever fallible)
> there was a claim by some that a compression format
> was protected. And it was upheld. But the mathematical
> algorithm wasn't protected, so a totally equivalent
> format was created (and if I recall improved upon) later,
> and the original claimants for protection got their butts
> spanked, even though their claim held.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compress
LZW was patented. It was replaced, but not by a mathmatically
equivalent alternative, but instead by a superior non-identical
alternative. This is why .tar.gz files are common today, but tar.Z
files are usually not found.
(Likewise gif -> png, but the story was a bit different since it
wasn't realized that GIF had patent problems until very late, and it
was possible to make non-infringing GIFs by not applying the
compression)
It's true that math is not itself patentable in the US. The way
software patents are constructed is by saying: "We claim a computer
system (a) consisting of transistors and all the usual computer
trappings, which is loaded with software (b), which tranforms the
computer into a device for performing computation (c; described in
great detail), so that the resulting system a+b+c, is useful for
performing task X", and that *is* patentable in the US, the patents
usually go on to describe every application that they can think of, as
well as the most obvious permutations of a,b, and c.
This does have the effect of source code itself not infringing, but
that the infringement begins as soon as the source is combined with a
computer that can run it. The distinction is interesting to pedants
and lawyers, but the end result is nearly the same as if the
algorithm were patented.
There are some cases where someone patents a system using algorithm X
and it's possible to find some isomorphic Y which does different
computation but gets the same result without infringing on the patent,
but LZW was not one of those cases. I get the impression that such
examples are fairly uncommon.
The GFDL has specific attribution requirements that were designed for
software manuals. What's appropriate attribution for a wiki, where a
page can have thousands of authors, and a collection of pages is very
likely to? I would like to start a broad initial discussion on this
topic; it's likely that the issue will need to be raised more
specifically in the context of possible modifications to the GFDL or a
migration to CC-BY-SA.
The relevant GFDL clause states: "List on the Title Page, as authors,
one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the
modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of
the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors,
if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this
requirement."
Most people have chosen to ignore the "principal authors" requirement
and to try to attribute every author instead because there's no
obvious way to determine who the principal authors are. I remember a
few years back that Anthony tried a completely different approach,
where he created a full copy of Wikipedia (under the assumption that
it's a single GFDL work) and attributed it to five people on the
frontpage. Anthony, please correct me if my recollection is incorrect.
The community process that has developed with regard to GFDL
compliance on the web has generally tacitly favored a link to the
article and to its history as proper credit. But, for printed books,
publishers have generally wanted to be more in compliance with the
letter of the license. So, the Bertelsmann "Wikipedia in one volume"
includes a looong list of authors in a very tiny font.
Is that practical? How about Wikipedia articles on passenger
information systems (screens on subways, airplanes)? How about small
booklets where there isn't a lot of room for licensing information?
Should a good license for wikis make a distinction between print and
online uses?
I haven't heard anyone argue strongly for full inclusion of the
_license text_. But I'd like to hear opinions on the inclusion of
username lists.
My personal preference would be a system where we have a special
"credits" URL for each article, something like
http://en.wikipedia.org/credits/World_War_II
which would list authors and also provide full licensing information
for all media files. If we had a specific collection of articles, the
system could support this using collection IDs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/collection_credits/Bertelsmann_One_Volume_Encyclope…
(These URLs are completely made up and have no basis in reality.)
The advantage that I see of such an approach is that it would allow us
to standardize and continually refine the way we display authorship
information, and benefit the free sharing of content with a very
lightweight process. The disadvantage (if it is perceived as such) is
that if we would officially recommend such attribution in printed
books, individual contributors would be less likely to see their
username in print. But we might see more print uses because it would
make the attribution more manageable.
It's also conceivable to require full author attribution for printed
collections of a certain length or printed in certain quantity. (The
GFDL has "in quantity" rules, but they do not seem to apply in any way
to the authorship information.)
Aside from what the legal implications of any given approach are, the
first question I think that needs to be answered is what's desirable.
Thoughts?
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate