There is a remarkable victory for the Copyfraud lobby at Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Images_from_Dar…
The discussion was opened at February 2 and closed with the decision
to delete on February 5. I think there is absolutely no reason for the
Wikimedia Foundation not to accept Bridgeman v. Corel (an US decision
which has diligently discussed UK law with the same result that mere
reproductions are not copyrightable) for all projects. Scans from
printed Public Domain books cannot be protected. Lord Oliver said "But
copying, per se, however much skill and labour may be devoted to the
process cannot make an original work".
Typographical protection in the UK expires after 25 years. But much
older reproductions can be protected for 70 years pma when some
Indians do some Photoshop work on scans?
On Copyfraud see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud
Klaus Graf
Our IT manager, Rob Halsell, came over to San Francisco this weekend
to set up the phones in the new Wikimedia Foundation offices. We're
switching to an open source telephony solution based on Asterisk.
Obviously, every phone system needs "on hold" music.
So far, we are using "The RfA Candidate's Song" by User:Bucketsofg. If
you want to shoot to international fame by having your own
Wikipedia-related song used while people are waiting for someone to
answer their call, this is your chance. ;-)
Feel free to add new free content songs to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Song
(Meta would also be a good place to organize this.)
And no, this post is not indicative of our current priorities. :-)
Things have been quite hectic and busy as we're setting up and
starting to use our new space. We'll continue to update
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation/offices with
pictures, and a detailed report of recent Foundation activities will
be forthcoming shortly.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hello,
I want to point out a question about the "Thanks to all contributors" page,
since it reports 2006 data instead of the latest fundraising data.
Yesterday I was asked by Casey (Cbrown) to translate this page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WMF/Wikimedia_thanks_al…
The translation on meta was requested by Aphaia, who copied this page:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_thanks_all_contributors
created by Eloquence.
Now, if you read that page you'll notice that the data comes from the 2006
fundraising, and seems to be no information about the last fundraiser.
So, I don't think that keeping such a page would be a good thing because now
that page is actually misleading.
So, what to do?
I think that a new thanks page should be created, but I don't know who should
care about that.
Best regards,
Massimiliano
On 01/02/2008, Sue Gardner <HYPERLINK
"http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l"sgardner at
wikimedia.org> wrote:
> You may know that I send regular reports to the Wikimedia board.
> Starting this month, I'm going to experiment with sending them here as
> well.
Thanks for the report Sue.
I’m noting * We announced a partnership with the Collaborative Creativity
Group at
UNU-MERIT to conduct the first-ever comprehensive Wikimedia survey”.
That the survey site was up. HYPERLINK
"http://wikipediasurvey.org/"http://wikipediasurvey.org/
And that the unu’s collaborative creative group “examine the mechanisms that
enable people and companies to innovate together”
HYPERLINK "http://ccg.merit.unu.edu/"http://ccg.merit.unu.edu/
.
You will be aware that the UNU is one member of the Open CourseWare
consortia, which has the same aims as the WMF, without the global approach.
Each member does their own thing, and hosts their own free courses on their
own free site. They have a short list of the OCW sites they know about on
their OCW site. HYPERLINK "http://ocw.unu.edu/"http://ocw.unu.edu/. My
friends at the UK’s Open Uni will be disappointed.
I’m mentioning this now as you’ve just become one of the first CEO’s of an
OCW-type initiative to lead here by “just doing it”. I always like to note
where the seeds (of a new interactive culture) are planted. Would you, while
you’re herding cats in San Fran, give some consideration to what may happen
if WMF was to share a project and forum with the ccg and its OCWC members?
The ccg and its peers have got a problem you see. “UNU-MERIT has pioneered
the use of surveys and other tools to understand the behaviour of Free/Open
Source Software such as Linux and Firefox”. They want to understand “the
behaviour of software”. Whereas many of us unwashed want to understand what
may happen if OCWC members begin to gain an understanding of WMF’s
communities’ aspirations. And for that to happen they’ll just have to start
a new WMF project. Perhaps you might encourage them might start a small one
at Wikiversity. You’ll be aware there are research teams down there who are
looking for their peers. HYPERLINK
"http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Getting_involved"http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Getting_involved
Regards, simonfj
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10:10 AM
I thought it may be useful to bring up this old article as it seems to cover
many of the problems we are experiencing due to the success of WMF projects.
In it, Larry makes the point that “The whole purpose of peer review is
quality-assurance”
He goes on to note, “In Lead Review, the reviewer and author engage in a
discussion about the article, via a web forum interface, that leads to the
improvement of the article. Then, in the Open Review step, a public peer
review of the article occurs; this can only be compared to the give-and-take
of the Q&A portion of a conference presentation”.
In light of Sue’s interest in improving an article’s quality, Erik’s work on
Liquid threads, and this discussion last month on the wikitech thread
HYPERLINK
"http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/117895"http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/117895
could we give some consideration to the idea that ALL WMF articles suffer
from a common problem - the lack of a forum, which relates one (or a number
of related) article(s) to its discussion threads in a suitably classified
forum; One that keeps it’s relative position as time passes.
Some of the WMF’s Project sites, particularly, Wikipedia, are quite mature
now. For their quality to improve, it will require the engagement of peers,
most of whom are only engaged in the old publishing process, and the old
conferencing process. Convergence of virtual libraries and virtual
classrooms is changing all that, although a virtual librarian will tend only
to look at implementing functions that can handle higher bandwidth content,
whereas a virtual teacher will tend to look at doing the same with higher
bandwidth (real time) communication tools.
I’ll note the interest in kaltura in this domain (and wikieducator) and
compare it UK’s Open Uni’s Labspace’s tools. HYPERLINK
"http://labspace.open.ac.uk/"http://labspace.open.ac.uk/
The problem we do have is that the designs of a global information network,
and that of a global communications network, require such different
approaches, even though, eventually, one must be made capable of
complementing the other. The common point of coalescence is that every
domain is comprised of global GROUPS. In this domain they range from the WMF
Advisory Board through to the smallest wiki’s peer group.
If they were made more obvious a volunteer would know where to go to find
the one which relates to their interests. A directory to them off the meta
(and others) front page, which would include the Communications Projects
Group, is one obvious suggestion.
Knowledge, we all know, is not something that is delivered. It’s not just
about content. It’s about understanding its meaning, which (as Larry says)
revolves around the give-and-take of a Q&A. The hard part for a wiki
designer is in believing that the Q&A needs to be kept tabbed next to an
article. Enough. If there’s any interest here, would you let me know?
Regards, simon.
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5:49 PM
All -
I've completed a report on our most recent fundraiser:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/Report
Thanks to everyone who contributed, directly or indirectly. If you
spot errors or misinterpretations, please do correct them or leave a
note on the talk page. I'll also try to answer any questions you may
have.
Best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Dear all,
I am a member of "then you win" documentary film project about
non-violence movements in India. We aim to release it with the rights to
copy, modify and distribute under Creative Commons licence, we need
everybody’s help to achieve that goal.
We appreciate for your reading this e-mail so far, and invite you to
take a look at the project website:
http://thenyouwin.yooook.org
Thank you very much for your participation.
Best regards,
Pachinee Buathong
-----------------------------
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi.
You may know that I send regular reports to the Wikimedia board.
Starting this month, I'm going to experiment with sending them here as
well.
Why am I doing this? I generally want the work of the staff to be
visible & transparent to anyone who's interested. I don't see a really
compelling reason _not_ to send the reports to foundation-l, and I'm
assuming people here will appreciate being kept in the loop.
The arguments against it: It means I'll need to strip out from the
reports anything confidential - but this would mostly just be
information related to individuals, so I don't expect it to be much
work. I am a little leery it will stimulate long time-consuming
conversations with members of the staff, so I'd ask you to try to
respect that the staff needs to spend the majority of its time working,
rather than talking about its work :-) And, I won't be customizing or
reworking the content of the report - which means, for example, that
some links may not be accessible to everyone (e.g., on the office wiki).
I'd like to try this out for a couple of months and see what happens.
Let me know if you find it helpful :-)
Thanks,
Sue
Weeks of: December 23 – January 29, 2008
Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director
Prepared for: Wikimedia Board of Trustees
Current priorities:
1. Establishing the new SF headquarters, including orientation of new staff
2. Planning major donor dinner & Wikimedia welcome party (both early March)
3. Financial reporting and audit wrap-up
4. Bits and pieces (Kennisnet, further hires, partnerships, etc.)
Starting soon:
1. Davos follow-up
Recent weeks
New San Francisco headquarters:
Although it is still very much a work in progress, the San Francisco
office has been up and running since Wednesday, January 23. Most
furniture has been delivered and set up, and the new VOIP phone system
is working, with calls now going to San Francisco rather than St.
Petersburg.
Our mailing address:
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
P.O. Box 78350,
San Francisco, CA
94107-8350
Our phone number:
415 839 6885
We are planning a welcome-to-San Francisco party for ourselves, likely
at the beginning of March. (The date is not yet locked down.)
Invitations will be sent to board and advisory board members, in case
anyone happens to be in the Bay Area, as well as to the Wikimedia San
Francisco mailing list, our friends at like-minded organizations, etc.
If you have people you would like to see invited, please e-mail me or
add them here http://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Welcome_Party.
Staffing:
* Veronique Kessler will be our new CFOO, starting February 4. Veronique
joins us from the non-profit Jewish Community Center of San Francisco,
where she was Director of Finance and, before that, Controller. Prior to
JCCSF, she has 15 years of managerial/financial experience with a wide
variety of organizations, including Stanford University, brokerage firm
Charles Schwab, the venture capital and investment firm Berkeley
International Capital Corporation, the Walden International Investment
Group, The Fremont Group, Wells Fargo bank, and Deloitte & Touche. She
is a CPA (certified public accountant) with lots of international
experience, who speaks and writes French. Veronique is just returning
from maternity leave and is spending this week wrapping up some work at
the JCCSF: for most of February, she will be with us only three days per
week. Her top priorities, in the beginning, will likely include: 1.,
hiring the fundraiser and the accountant, 2., ensuring the relocation
basics are okay (e.g., payroll is undisrupted, bank accounts set up,
etc.), and 3., getting to know her direct reports, Kul, Cheryl, Erica
and Oleta, and the areas they are responsible for.
* The Foundation has begun advertising to hire a software developer / IT
support person
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Software_Developer_/_IT_Su….
This is a relatively-junior position, based in the San Francisco office.
The advertisement has been sent to various mailing lists, and will
remain open until February 15. Please feel free to send it around.
* We plan to announce the head of development in February, and the new
accountant in March. For the time being, the position of head of
partnerships is on hold. (You may recall: this is partly a financial
decision and partly a “letting the team shake out before filling the
final position” decision.)
* Recapping the rest of us: Mike Godwin begins work in the San Francisco
office January 30. Jay Walsh, the new head of communications, started
January 10. Kul Takanao Wadhwa, the new head of business development,
started January 3. Erik Möller, deputy director, started December 31.
Erica Ortega and Cheryl Owens (formerly Steffen) have been on the job
as, respectively, office manager and PA, since December 10. Brion Vibber
(CTO) and Cary Bass (Volunteer Coordinator) arrived from St Petersburg
in December. Delphine Menard, Mark Bergsma and Tim Starling continue to
work normally from, respectively, Frankfurt, Eindhoven and Sydney. We
expect to be fully staffed by the end of March.
* We will be having a two-day staff orientation event with facilitator
Pat Hughes, February 11 and 12. You can see the agenda in development,
here
http://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planner/February_2008_Orientation_Meeting.
Fundraiser:
We've created a postmortem/summary report covering the 2007 fundraiser,
which ran from October 23 to January 3. In total, the fundraiser brought
the Wikimedia Foundation more than 45,000 donations totaling USD
2,112,251.73 (unaudited figures). This includes a contribution of USD
500,000, stock valued at USD 49,768, and a donation of USD 10,000.
The amount raised in the 07-08 fundraiser, compared with 06-07 which
raised just over USD 1 million, overperforms the traffic increase of
that same period. This is likely because the 07-08 fundraiser ran
significantly longer, initially picking up more slowly, but sustaining
donation growth better than the 06-07 fundraiser.
In addition, this fundraiser saw the most significant participation thus
far from the Wikimedia chapters, with active participation from Germany,
Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and Poland. Wikimedia Germany's
participation enabled it to purchase 15 servers for the Amsterdam
cluster: in the end, the German chapter will contribute to the
Foundation a total of approximately EUR 70K worth of goods and services
(the chapter will retain ownership of any purchased equipment). Also,
the Swiss chapter has made a contribution of CHF 5K. Many thanks to the
chapters :-)
The report makes a series of recommendations for the next fundraiser,
including: 1., Change the sitenotice regularly to avoid 'banner
blindness'; 2., continuing to refine the Media-Wiki-based landing page;
3., improve donor thanking; 4., improve reporting and data capture; 5.,
enable recurring donations; 6., encourage community fundraising efforts
with network effects; 7., begin planning earlier. The full report is
here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/Notes.
Major donor dinner:
As you know, we've been on a tour of potential major donors. We continue
to follow up individually, and are also beginning to plan a dinner,
which will likely take place in early March. It won't be extravagant –
we just want to bring together ten or so interesting philanthropists to
the San Francisco office, to talk about Wikimedia's goals and plans.
Audit:
The audited 2006-07 financial statements have been released by the audit
committee to the board. Once they are approved, we will release them
publicly. We owe a huge debt of thanks to the staff, particularly Oleta
McHenry, who worked long hours to get the audit completed.
Also:
* We announced a partnership with the Collaborative Creativity Group at
UNU-MERIT to conduct the first-ever comprehensive Wikimedia survey.
* We announced a beta program with Kaltura and WikiEducator to allow
users to collaboratively edit video and other forms of rich media.
* We signed the contract launching the PediaPress wiki-to-print project.
* We deployed new parser code that makes wiki syntax more consistent and
scalable.
* We established peering arrangements with several new networks to
reduce the cost of traffic.
In coming weeks:
* The audited 2006-07 financial statements will be released publicly
once approved by the board.
* The board is also expected to approve the credit card usage policy
January 31. The final two “check cards” were retired last week, and
Foundation credit cards have arrived and are in use by a few staffers.
* As planned, 2007-08 financial statements will be released to the board
February 1. This will include a statement of cash flow, balance sheet,
income statement, overall comparison of budget-to-actuals plus some
detail, and a cash flow projection for the remainder of FY 2007-08. This
package will also include a text summary of the year so far.
* The head of development will be announced in February, and the
accountant in March. We will also soon begin interviewing software
developers.
* There will be a two-day staff orientation February 11 and 12.
* We continue to explore consortium options in Amsterdam and have
rescheduled our meeting with Kennisnet for end of February.
* There will be a welcome-to-SF party, and a major donor dinner, in
early March.
The St Petersburg office will shut down Thursday, January 31, and at
that point, we will say goodbye to Barbara Brown (office manager), Sandy
Ordonez (head of communications) and Vishal Patel (business
development). Our accountant Oleta McHenry will be with us until the end
of March, and Rob Halsell will remain as server tech out of Tampa. I
want to convey the organization's deep gratitude to the entire staff who
worked for us in St. Petersburg: Barbara, Sandy, Vishal, Oleta, Rob,
Cary and Brion. It was not an easy year: thank you for sticking it out.
We owe you, and we know it :-)
Mark (Markie) HYPERLINK
"mailto:foundation-l%40lists.wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BFoundation-l%5D%20%5BF
wd%3A%20Public%20meetings%20dated%20February%203%2C%202008%5D&In-Reply-To=6h
fqa5%242oi461%40smtp05.syd.iprimus.net.au"newsmarkie at googlemail.com
On Sat Feb 2 20:17:41 UTC 2008
Said,
“please dont plug accessgrid any more, you have suggested this on many
emails
and i know it may be in good faith but we have spent lots of time on various
different lists discussing this. the meeting will take place on irc, most
probably #wikimania2008 or #wikimania2009 (not yet decided). for people not
used to irc this can be accessed by going to
HYPERLINK
"http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC"http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.
org/wiki/IRC and choosing wikimania planning
channel”.
Thanks Mark (and Majorly),
Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that WMF’s communities’ world would change
tomorrow.
I’m just looking at ‘Sandbdox’ initiatives like this HYPERLINK
"http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Sandbox_Server"http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Sandbox_Server
And what Steve has introduced with the Wikback forum,
And then wondered about how long it might take Head Office to use tools
which might be more inclusive.
I only use the accessgrid as it’s the unis top end of this kind of research,
which starts with IRC (or Jabber). If the Foundation’s mission is to help
its communities to share global knowledge, then sooner or later AG’s
communities will need to be involved, or more reasonably, vice versa.
They’ve got the global comms infrastructure but are country centric. WMF’s
communities have proved they have riveting global content but embryonic
comms. A marriage made in heaven from my perspective.
Just reading through this reflector and noting the number of views we get
for posts on this elist.
It ain’t many. HYPERLINK
"http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/"http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/
Missed the meetings. Could you point me at their archive? Thanks so much,
simon
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1:50 PM
Dear all,
Currently there is no real oversight policy. Stewards are currently
just following checkuser policy for oversight as well, and personally
I don't feel very happy about this situation. I would like to invite
the broad WIkimedia Community to join the writing process of the
oversight policy. I have based this mainly on the current situation,
the checkuser policy, and adapted it where required. Possible Major
changes to the policy, I'd like to propose to wait with until we have
at least a stable version to work from.
Best regards,
Eia
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Rewriting/Oversight_policy