These are some questions and answers the staff suggested on sub-national
chapters. As mentioned, these are more preliminary than definitive. The
observant will detect that they were prepared before the board met,
because it refers to Brazil as a large country without a chapter, but
the board approved a chapter for Brazil at its meeting.
Q What do chapters do?
A Currently, each chapter carries out a unique mix of activities as it
sees fit. Most chapters engage in the following program activities: 1.,
Public outreach, advocacy and media relations work on behalf of the
projects; 2., volunteer recruitment and coordination; 3., development
and execution of non-monetary partnerships designed to increase quality
(e.g., A TV program donates 100 interviews under a free license); 4.
technical work such as MediaWiki software development and provision of
dedicated hardware and software infrastructure which supports the local
community. In order to fund those activities, chapters generally aim to
bring in revenues, typically via some combination of fundraising, grant
seeking and business development.
Q Where do chapters exist today?
A Chapters exist in 17 countries. See
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Local_chapters for the complete list.
Q Is the main argument in favour of sub-national chapters geography
(meaning, the United States is so big that people from Florida and
California will never naturally work together)?
A Some very large countries have formed chapters (e.g., Russia,
Australia, Argentina) and some very large countries have not (e.g.,
China, Canada, the United States, Brazil, India): it's hard to separate
out the role that geographic size has played. However, anecdotally, we
do know that Canadian and American volunteers have cited geographic size
of their countries as inhibiting their ability to form a nation-based
chapter, which has led to their wanting to form sub-national chapters.
So it probably does play some role, for some countries.
Q Should countries be required to form a nation-based chapter before
sub-national chapters can be formed?
A No. Where sub-national chapters are formed, we shouldn't presuppose
that a nation-based chapter is necessary or even desirable.
Q Should we distinguish in any way among different types of sub-national
chapters, such as state-based versus city-based?
A No. All sub-national chapters should have the same status. There's no
compelling reason to differentiate between for example a Wikimedia
Banagalore (city) and a Wikimedia Karnataka (state).
Q Should the Wikimedia Foundation allow sub-national chapters to form
where geographic boundaries are disputed?
A Provided that the local community can form an organization with legal
standing, there is no reason not to form a sub-national chapter in
regions with disputed geographic boundaries. It's important to note that
Wikimedia does not take a point of view on contentious political issues,
so it should not be part of the purpose of any chapter to advocate for
or against resolution of a particular political dispute one way or another.
Q Aren't we setting up sub-national chapters to compete for funding with
nation-based chapters?
A Thus far, our experience suggests that lots of people and
organizations want to help fund Wikimedia. We have not had a challenge
finding potential funders – our challenges have centred around our lack
of capacity to cultivate and steward funders. In other words, more
organizations mandated to solicit funding would be a good thing for the
Wikimedia movement.
It's also true that every funder has different interests and
motivations. Many are constrained to a specific geographic area or a
specific field of interest. Sub-national chapters may be effective at
securing regional funding that a nation-based chapter could overlook or
be less suited to.
However, we shouldn't rule out the possibility that in the future
sub-national chapters may be in competition with nation-based chapters,
or even with the Wikimedia Foundation, for funds – resulting in a kind
of 'natural selection' process in which some entities thrive and others
do not. In our view, that is not a terrible outcome.
Q In the United States (and possibly other countries), it is possible to
take advantage of something called the “group exemption” - which allows
an existing non-profit to act as the parent organization for its
sub-groups, thereby allowing the sub-groups to exist as non-profits
without themselves needing to file the necessary paperwork. Should the
Wikimedia Foundation, or a Wikimedia U.S. organization, act as the
parent organization for U.S.-based sub-national chapters, enabling
sub-national chapters to take advantage of the group exemption?
A No, for a number of reasons.
It is true that the Wikimedia Foundation could serve as the parent
organization for any prospective U.S.-based sub-national chapters.
However, we feel that would be inadvisable for the following reasons:
*The chapters are intended to function independently from the Wikimedia
Foundation. However, the group exemption requires the affiliated
entities to be “subordinates” “under the control” of the parent
organization. This is inconsistent with how we view the relationship
between the Foundation and the chapters.
*The Wikimedia Foundation is an international organization based in the
United States. The experience of the U.S.-based sub-national chapters
should, as much as possible, be protected from distorting influences due
to the Wikimedia Foundation's presence in the same country. As much as
possible, we want the U.S.-based sub-national chapters to travel the
same path and have the same experiences as sub-national chapters
elsewhere. To do otherwise would be to risk unintended negative
consequences to both.
*There may be legal issues. We would not want to create legal exposure
for U.S.-based sub-national chapters, due to association with the
Wikimedia Foundation.
*It doesn't actually save that much paperwork. For example, under a
group exemption, each sub-national chapter must still file tax returns.
--Michael Snow
I wanted to give a report on our board meeting earlier this month. This
is not in place of the meeting minutes, which will be published when
they're ready and approved. But the discussion here was very helpful to
the meeting, and I'd like to share some of what we worked on, and
mention outcomes where there are any.
I'll start with policy business. We approved two updates to our official
policies. One is the revised privacy policy which has been discussed
here a few times previously. The other is an update to the gift policy,
which was no longer reflecting our organizational structure and needed
some more specific guidance. The updated policy is not a substantive
change in our philosophy, it simply clarifies some points. For example,
the foundation intends to convert gifts of securities into cash upon
receipt, rather than having them sit for long periods and be subject to
market fluctuations (in the past, we've both gained and lost money in
such circumstances, so it's pretty much a wash). Oh, and in case you
were wondering, the policy documents that we won't normally offer naming
opportunities. Well, we can name servers, but for some reason donors
haven't shown too much interest in that. Patti has put the new versions
of these policies up on the foundation website.
Stu updated us on the status of the audit, which is progressing
reasonably well, certainly more quickly than last year. The audited
financial statements should be ready for us to approve no later than the
next board meeting in November (on IRC).
Speaking of next board meetings, we also set the board's calendar for
the coming year. That should make it easier to plan our schedules and
make sure all trustees can attend (this was the first time we've had
everyone together since I joined the board). It may also be of interest
to people who are thinking of being candidates, either in next June's
elections or for the chapter-selected seats. In addition to the IRC
meeting November 3 this year, in 2009 we've set aside January 9-11 in
San Francisco, April 3-5 (location to be determined, possibly in
conjunction with a chapters meeting), August 27 in Buenos Aires (as
usual, a short meeting prior to Wikimania), and October 23-25 in San
Francisco again. More IRC meetings may be scheduled as necessary, but
those don't involve travel and are easier to plan.
Jan-Bart gave a presentation on open standards, which led into the
broader topic (including file formats) that I introduced earlier.
Jan-Bart feels that considering our commitment to these ideals - freely
licensed content, free software, web standards - our projects are not
doing nearly as much as they could on open standards in education. It's
an important aspect of our mission, the standards often exist already
and are in use in the educational community, and our impact in that
world would grow significantly by working towards them.
For the broader discussion, first of all, thanks to everyone who gave
their input here, it was tremendously valuable. As indicated earlier, we
didn't have this conversation to make an immediate decision at the
meeting. The board does want to maintain our commitment, as reflected in
both the foundation and the community, to free and open access to
knowledge. Along those lines, the earlier draft of a file format policy
will be revisited, and we may consider passing a revised version.
However, it's also not clear that this would be a good idea. One issue
would be if it inadvertently prohibits positive approaches in the
future, such as the uses for Flash that Brion mentioned. (At least,
nobody seemed to have a problem with those, please correct me if that's
not the case.) So I wonder if it might not be wiser to avoid attempting
something at the board level that requires us to pin down definitions
for file formats, platforms, and so on in ways that may have unintended
consequences. Further feedback and discussion is welcome.
Along with standards and file formats, the issues we spent the most time
on were the advisory board and chapters. As this message is already
rather long, I'll be more brief about those. We've realized that
advisory board members were originally appointed for one-year terms, so
most of them have been serving longer than anticipated. We discussed the
skills and qualities we want the advisory board to help with, and will
be inviting some of the existing group to continue on, while also adding
new appointments from time to time. Jan-Bart is working on a proposal
for handling this, so we can have less of an ad hoc approach. Finally,
I'll just save the chapter business for a separate email in the next day
or so.
--Michael Snow
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Angela wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 10:30 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Which leads me to another question. Who controls this definition?
>>> http://freedomdefined.org/History gives a bit of the history, but I couldn't
>>> find anything about the current situation.
>>>
>>
>> It's based on community consensus. See
>> http://freedomdefined.org/Authoring_process
>>
>> Angela
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
Sorry, Angela, but community consensus is one incredibly
silly way to describe your little coteries bit of will formation.
I am sorry, but the only appropriate response here is
out loud laughter. Please do not promote any freedomdefined
text on this mailing list as a "community" effort. That really
makes scotsmen blush. (And yes, that goes double for Erik too.)
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 1:39 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>> This code is according to the standard to be used by Tosk Albanian
>> while we use it for "Alsatian". This is not acceptable for what we
>> currently do, making it compulsory for future new projects is not
>> acceptable either. Projects like these should be renamed as they
>> are squatting ligitimate codes for ligitimate languages.
Chad answered:
> Asking people to change their URLs is not a good idea. Let's say the
> standards changed and EN was no longer English. Do you honestly
> think we'd move en.wiki just because some standards body says we're
> using the wrong code?
>
> While I agree that it's best practice to follow the standard,
> forcing a subdomain change on a project simply to follow a standard
> is absurd.
I cannot agree. We have standards to make the world a better place. In
ISO 639 and RFC 4646 we have worked hard to give the right support to
everybody. If Alsatian and Tosk are in conflict, that's got to be
taken seriously.
From: "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
> The standards did not change. The standard that gave the English
> language the code en has been around since 2002. People chose to
> ignore the standard and abused codes like als in stead of gsw, they
> ignored the fact that the best common practice states that you
> should not mix the codes with invented codes. Using codes that are
> absolutely wrong should not be used for any new projects. These
> projects should be renamed.
I'll agree.
> Renaming and leaving a redirect in place is indeed a great way to
> move forward.
And if you're Tosk?
M
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
>>
>>> Erik Moeller wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> If
>>>> WMF does not choose to re-license content on Wikimedia's sites to
>>>> CC-BY-SA, there are limitations in place in the current re-licensing
>>>> language to prevent others from doing so.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I am sorry, I know I am certainly the last person who
>>> would have a right to grumble...
>>>
>>> But seriously, I am simply failing to parse that sentence;
>>> and somehow I suspect there is something significant
>>> behind it. Could someone forego the flip responses, and
>>> rephrase it in a fashion that would clarify the thinking
>>> behind that sentence?
>>>
>>>
>> It means that the potential relicensing will be carefully circumscribed.
>> It won't simply allow anyone to relicense GFDL content under CC-BY-SA
>> anytime they want.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>>
>>
Thank you. This phrasing has the considerable virtue
of saying something isn't positively "allowed" rather than
claiming there are limitations which "prevent". And I can
easily understand that relicensing would not happen
"simply". That is quite defensible. Of course it would
be complex.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
If I recall correctly, we're talking about people who have licensed
their contributions under GDFL version something.something /or later/ -
the "or later" bit is what lets us do this kind of thing without the
insanity of tracking down each and every person and getting their
permission.
-Mike
On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:20:35 +0000,
foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org said:
On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 3:57 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> 2008/10/18 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com>:
>> Does this mean that no attention was given to the fact that some users
>> of the FDL find the terms of CC-By-SA 3.0 unacceptable and have
>> deliberately not licensed their works under that license?
>
> Which terms are you referring to here, Gregory?
Why debate the license terms here and now?
There have been a number of discussions on a number of occasions.
There are people who have explicitly rejected cc-by-sa-3.0 for their
own works for a multitude of reasons, for both personal and public
interest reasons. The FDL and CC-By-SA licenses are not precisely
isomorphic. There exist many images on commons explicitly noted that
they are only licensed under the terms of the FDL-1.2. I do not
believe these facts are in dispute.
Since there exist people who have consciously rejected the CC-By-SA
3.0, for whatever reason, the prospect of simply declaring their works
to be under license terms that have explicitly rejected would appear
to be both legally and ethically suspect. It does not sound like any
consideration has been given to this subject, which is most
disappointing considering the amount of time which has passed and the
number of times this concern has been raised.
--
Mike.lifeguard
mikelifeguard(a)fastmail.fm
I just want to make a quick post. I provided inaccurate data about my
liscesning terms / associations with GNU.org and wc3.org and i want o fully
appollogize for my lack of judgemet in posting that email to you before
fulling understanding it myself. Additaionally, my explanation on how the
software should be used was not correct in detail and I had no right to
explain what the software should be used for. I don't have those rights. I
only have usage rights. once again , I am sorry for that misprint.
However, I want to make it clear that I do have rights under those
liscenses and am a member of the mediawiki team. Additionally, Wikimedia
has been valuable tool for me in my project and I appreciate their
dedication to my needs.
Sincerely,
Patrick Warren
>From the European Court of Justice, a ruling on the much-disputed
database right.
http://www.out-law.com/page-9497
This may be of some interest, as:
a) it involves Directmedia, with whom I believe we've worked in the
past and it's interesting to see what they're up to now;
b) it helps explain a bit what the "database right" actually means for
reusers, such as ourselves.
The ruling is relating to a case where a German university created a
list of "significant poems" - an extensive academic work - and
Directmedia then reproduced almost the entirety of this selection as
part of a similar collection. Astute readers will no doubt spot that,
well, we often do pretty similar things.
The case doesn't go any further on defining what is or isn't a
database - the court didn't discuss the issue of whether the list
constituted one, and accepted it did - but it does help define what
constitutes *infringement* of the database right.
Basically - as I understand it - reproduction which puts a
"substantial part" of the original database into another medium is
held to be potentially infringing, even if it isn't an exact copy and
even if you've put in some editorial refinement.
(Note potentially - this was an appeal on a point of law and it's been
returned to the original court for a decision. This case may not be an
infringement, but other things in this general class of activity might
well be.)
Possibly not something we need to overly concern ourselves with, but
it's useful to know about these things.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
For those not on wikitech-l, please see this announcement from Brion
about two new additions to our staff. :-)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brion Vibber <brion(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 2008/10/15
Subject: [Wikitech-l] New Wikimedia staff developers: Trevor and Ariel
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hey you big ol' MediaWiki dev community --
Please join me in welcoming two of our new tech folks who started
yesterday in our San Francisco office, Trevor Parscal and Ariel Glenn.
Trevor (SVN username 'tparscal') has done various web development as
well as being involved in the D development community (neat!), and will
be poking around at MediaWiki stuff and misc scripting development.
Ariel (User:ArielGlenn, SVN username 'ariel') is a longtime Wikipedian
and Wiktionarian, and has been working on bot tools and some
experimental MediaWiki extensions in the past. Ariel will be doing
general MediaWiki/extension development as well as local IT support in
our San Francisco office.
- -- brion
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--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Wikipedia disclaimers : humorous, quasi-legal. rarely viewed.
touched by lawyers but also by many, many other editors. probably
ineffective even when viewed - I used Wikipedia as a backup lab manual
in auto-appendectomy class last week and totally forgot about the
medical disclaimer I had read a month previous. Luckily noone was
hurt.
1. How much should we care about encouraging people to understand the
pro/con aspects of Wikipedia's mutability?
2. Most disclaimers are CYA affairs, not intended to inform, merely
intended to make lawsuits harder. Is this what we care about? Are we
worried about legal liability from a weak disclaimer? Are we worried
more about making sure all readers understand the value and risks of
information they receive?
3. positively : We can use the time people spend visiting/viewing a
disclaimer to educate them a bit about disclaimers in all sorts of
knowledge everywhere. A disclaimer that provides background and
context for disclaimers in general and those used in reference works
in specific. Would that be ok? It would certainly be interesting and
empowering, rather than frightening and offensive, as some find the
current texts.
4. alternatively : groups that really worry about being sued tend to
have longer, even more frightening disclaimers than ours; is it worth
finding an eloquently conservative set of disclaimers that enumerates
hundreds of specific ways in which Wikipedia should not be used?
SJ