Wikimedia-l March 2008

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167 participants
236 discussions

[Foundation-l] Photographer IDs
by Geoffrey Plourde 03 Apr '08

03 Apr '08

On the Commons list, there is a thread about creating IDs for photographers to help with admission to museums for photos. How would I get Foundation permission to use the WMF logo on the cards? --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for the Wikimania jury
by Geoffrey Plourde 02 Apr '08

02 Apr '08

Never say never ;) There is nothing barring Am-wiki. ----- Original Message ---- From: Jason Safoutin <jason.safoutin(a)wikinewsie.org> To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 12:57:02 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] A question for the Wikimania jury foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote: > If you're interested in establishing a more regular North American or > Europe-wide conference the for years when we don't have Wikimania in the > area, then great! We can certainly use more local organization of this > sort in the US, and at the Europe-wide level in addition to the numerous > country-wide groups there. > > - -- brion vibber > Well that would be nice but would WMF pay for all these conferences? Who would organize them other than one person? This isn't a task for one or two people much less someone with no experience in doing so. Last I heard the "Conference of The America's" is not happening. Why? Not too sure why but if I cannot afford a trip to Buenos Aires or Egypt I certainly cannot afford to make my own conference. Jason Safoutin (DragonFire1024) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ____________________________________________________________________________________ Like movies? Here's a limited-time offer: Blockbuster Total Access for one month at no cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text4.com

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[Foundation-l] Wikipedias by page views
by Robert Rohde 01 Apr '08

01 Apr '08

Inspired by the Wikimania thread, I decided to work out approximately how much traffic each language of Wikipedia gets. I totaled the top 1000 page views for February at http://stats.grok.se/ for each of the Wikipedia communities and arrived at the following list: Language Page views % of Total 1 English 929238291 50.32% 2 German 188053798 10.18% 3 Japanese 174055663 9.43% 4 Spanish 112874582 6.11% 5 French 76874066 4.16% 6 Italian 58002665 3.14% 7 Polish 54562647 2.95% 8 Portuguese 38395679 2.08% 9 Russian 26100952 1.41% 10 Dutch 25549308 1.38% 11 Turkish 19850823 1.08% 12 Swedish 15511077 0.84% 13 Finnish 13913585 0.75% 14 Norwegian 8896989 0.48% 15 Chinese 8863799 0.48% 16 Hebrew 8567314 0.46% 17 Czech 7820169 0.42% 18 Arabic 6692037 0.36% 19 Indonesian 5794989 0.31% 20 Hungarian 5619172 0.30% 21 th 5072842 0.27% 22 da 4398916 0.24% 23 ro 4133216 0.22% 24 ko 3396611 0.18% 25 bg 3173471 0.17% 26 vi 3032979 0.16% 27 fa 2690333 0.15% 28 ca 2453214 0.13% 29 lt 2410434 0.13% 30 hr 2391348 0.13% 31 el 2286062 0.12% 32 ms 2119487 0.11% 33 sk 1873386 0.10% 34 sl 1753346 0.09% 35 simple 1614145 0.09% 36 et 1423607 0.08% 37 sr 1199822 0.06% 38 uk 1110578 0.06% 39 tl 1069871 0.06% 40 gl 923308 0.05% 41 lv 876243 0.05% 42 bs 828707 0.04% 43 eo 731760 0.04% 44 sq 648370 0.04% 45 eu 593362 0.03% 46 mk 572943 0.03% 47 ka 547997 0.03% 48 nn 539562 0.03% 49 te 475333 0.03% 50 la 447362 0.02% 51 is 411988 0.02% 52 sh 393023 0.02% 53 hi 382151 0.02% 54 ta 334968 0.02% 55 lb 316817 0.02% 56 ast 306507 0.02% 57 az 305324 0.02% 58 ku 297680 0.02% 59 cy 294459 0.02% 60 nds 283217 0.02% 61 br 282351 0.02% 62 bn 268771 0.01% 63 scn 255165 0.01% 64 io 240010 0.01% 65 mr 237498 0.01% 66 oc 229580 0.01% 67 bpy 216187 0.01% 68 su 215629 0.01% 69 jv 214303 0.01% 70 ceb 191102 0.01% 71 vo 184129 0.01% 72 nap 175261 0.01% 73 ht 168348 0.01% 74 pms 138040 0.01% 75 new 117181 0.01% Assumming that the number of page views for the top 1000 pages is representative of the total count for all pages, it appears that English accounts for just over half all Wikipedia traffic at present. It also suggests that EN Wikipedia probably gets over 1 billion page views per month. ;-). It would be interesting to see pageviews per article if anyone wants to add in the article counts for each community. -Robert Rohde

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Re: [Foundation-l] Stroop report
by Durova 01 Apr '08

01 Apr '08

SlimVirgin wrote: > On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 5:42 PM, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: > >> This came up in the discussion, but since the German occupation during >> WW2 is considered illegitimate under international law, Polish law >> applies, even in areas where the de jure Polish government didn't have >> de facto control. The discussion is here: >> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Category:Stroop… >> > Does this mean that the images taken inside Auschwitz can be marked > PD, either as PD in Poland or PD in the U.S. because seized enemy > property? We've been told by several Wikipedians who specialize in > images that we could only claim fair use for them, which has meant the > images have been challenged quite a few times by people who say we > can't claim fair use unless we know the name of the copyright holder. > We've had several attempts to delete some of them on that basis. Fair use does not depend on knowing the name of the copyright holder, or even the original copyright holder since that person may be long dead. Any prosecution for copyright infringement would require the copyright holder to be identified, and in most cases to prove that he is the holder. That would not be easy I still prefer to avoid fair use if a stronger rationale is available. Ec ****** One hurdle is that Commons doesn't accept fair use rationales. Another is that Commons policy is to respect all relevant copyright laws. In the particular case of Stroop report photos, the discussion determined the following (as I understand it; please forgive any mistakes): 1. The photographs were taken in Poland. Its occupation status at the time isn't pertinent. What is pertinent is that Germany hadn't annexed Warsaw. 2. The photographer was anonymous. 3. The photographs were first published in Poland in 1947. 4. So under international law, German statues cannot apply to these photographs. 5. Under Polish law--the only applicable law--these images are public domain. Please bear in mind that this is a peculiar set of circumstances that apply to one group of photographs. Now I would really love if we returned to the main point of the post that inadvertently started this side discussion: that main point is that nonprofit organizations typically arrange a tasteful way to thank major donors without outright advertising. We ought to be looking into successful examples and seeing what might adapt well to Wikipedia. -Durova

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[Foundation-l] Building an academic network for Wikimedia
by Milos Rancic 01 Apr '08

01 Apr '08

After the third "experiment" on sr.wp, I have to say that cooperation between particular professors, their students and one of Wikimedia projects is working very well. The first project started with professors Cvetana Krstev and Dusko Vitas from Mathematical and Philological faculties in Belgrade. As I am not involved in that project (and I don't know for details), I will skip it. I only know that a number of students' works in computational linguistics were published on Serbian Wikipedia. The second was initiated by professor Slobdan Macura (a Wikipedian, too), who asked me to make a presentation of Wikipedia to students of the third and the fourth year of physical chemistry. This cooperation gave to us a number of very good articles about chemistry of proteins [1]. While half of them are translated from the English Wikipedia, the rest are original encyclopedic works made by students. For example, an article about Anfinsen's dogma is much better in Serbian [2] than in English [3]. When I started to finish my studies in linguistics (last September), I found that some of my professors are interested in adapting their own rules to contribution to Wikipedia. The best cooperation I made with my professor in sociolinguistics, Jelena Filipovic. Her students have to make three types of works: three short forms, usually what a student thinks about something, one longer form on what student thinks about one of specific texts and a seminar work, which should be the longest form. (By accident, at the same time Linguistlist called linguists to contribute articles in sociolinguistics.) Professor's and mine first target was to change three short forms to three articles. Almost a half of the students (something less than 20 of something more than 40) opted in to that change. And not only that: a couple of them opted to change their seminar work to one longer article. A week ago the first short forms were finished. Two students sent to me articles. Yesterday I started to analyze them in depth. And I have to say that articles are real success! I processed the first three articles and here is the report: - Dialect atlas (or "Linguistic map" -- two names for the same term). Article in Serbian [4] is much longer than article in English [5]. - Linguistic interview. Article in Serbian exists [6], while article in English doesn't exist. - Language variable (a fairly important linguistic term) now exists in Serbian [7], but doesn't exist in English. The main consequence of such work is that we are able to move our sum of knowledge at the next level. While a number of smaller Wikipedias have problems with very basic articles, which may be covered by high school students, thanks to such cooperation we are able to put into Wikipedia more specific knowledge. * * * However, the situation is not sustainable. While I am able and I am willing to work with some number of professors, I am not able cover even my faculty alone. While initiating cooperation is a time consuming task, it is a temporary task. I am willing to spend a couple of weeks or a couple of months in making a cooperation alive, but when an initiation of cooperation is finished, I may start do work on other one. However, if I have to take care separately about all groups all the time, I would be able to work with five or ten groups, but not much more. Instead of that kind of organization, I think that it would be much better to make some kind of a global "academic network for Wikimedia". For the first time it should be one network for sharing resources: to explain how to find priorities for writing articles, to make some comprehensive manuals for professors and students, to show to professors and students how to find an online help as well as how to find real-life help. Also, such network may be very useful for professors and students: While at the first time such network would be able to connect a linguist from Serbia with a biologist from Germany (which is not so useful), as time is passing, this network would be able to make connections between people who are working on the same topics. Actually, if people from Linguistlist (those who already made calls for contributing to Wikipedia) are interested in joining to such network, we will already make the first connections between linguists. * * * I am not sure was here a similar talk. However, I know that Wikimedian community has a number of university professors and other experts. And those professors and experts should be the front persons of such network. Of course, I am willing to help, but we need to make a group of relevant people who would attract other professors and experts to join the group (and groups in the future). * * * There is one anecdote about Stalin. Some of the persons in charge for foreign relations came to him: - An emissary from Vatican came. What should we do? - How many tanks do they have? - None. - Take them away! So, whenever someone came with an idea to add some number of articles to Serbian Wikipedia, I was making jokes which were beginning with "How many tanks do thay have?" -- in the sense of a number of articles, of course. While it is obvious that 10 good articles are much better than 100 bad, it is, also, obvious that we have to find a way how to make a "mass production" of good articles. When I say "mass production", I think about a systematic effort for improving quality of our project. And if there are three articles covered systematically by students on Serbian Wikipedia which are better than corresponding three articles on English Wikipedia (actually, two of them don't exist), then it is obvious that all Wikipedias need such systematic effort. I presented above my idea for making such systematic effort. It came to my mind yesterday, which means that it is far from a rounded idea. I didn't even thought about other possibilities. So, a question for discussion here is: Do you have some better idea? Does such thing exist? Do you think that this idea is good enough for implementation? If so, are there people (especially professors and experts) who are willing to participate? * * * [1] - The list of articles and students who made them is here: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BB:%D0%A4%D0… [2] - http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BD%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%… [3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfinsen%27s_dogma [4] - http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijalektolo%C5%A1ki_atlas [5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_atlas [6] - http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervju_(lingvistika) [7] - http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jezi%C4%8Dka_varijacija

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for the Wikimania jury
by Jason Safoutin 01 Apr '08

01 Apr '08

foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote: > If you're interested in establishing a more regular North American or > Europe-wide conference the for years when we don't have Wikimania in the > area, then great! We can certainly use more local organization of this > sort in the US, and at the Europe-wide level in addition to the numerous > country-wide groups there. > > - -- brion vibber > Well that would be nice but would WMF pay for all these conferences? Who would organize them other than one person? This isn't a task for one or two people much less someone with no experience in doing so. Last I heard the "Conference of The America's" is not happening. Why? Not too sure why but if I cannot afford a trip to Buenos Aires or Egypt I certainly cannot afford to make my own conference. Jason Safoutin (DragonFire1024)

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for the Wikimania jury
by Jason Safoutin 01 Apr '08

01 Apr '08

foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote: > Additionally, "we" (as in "the community") did not choose who made up the > jury. I don't know who chose it, why they were chosen, but for a group to > act on "our" behalf in such a big way (big in my view) it surely deserves > more accountability. Maybe something for another thread. > -- > Alex (Majorly) Good point. Who did choose the jury? If they are supposed to be working in "our" interests, then someone needs to tell them that they are not doing their job(s). Jason Safoutin (DragonFire1024)

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimania for everyone?
by Geoffrey Plourde 01 Apr '08

01 Apr '08

What if we had multiple events. For example; Wikimania: The World Wikimedia Conference Wikiconferences:The Chapter Convention thoughts? ----- Original Message ---- From: Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)verizon.net> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 10:57:53 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] A Wikimania for everyone? Every Wikimania bid has strengths and weaknesses. Once a bid is chosen, the ritual of criticizing the selection by focusing on some weakness seems to have become inevitable. I would be more impressed to reconsider the jury's selection if somebody presented a serious evaluation that reached a different result after weighing all the issues, instead of harping on only the one most favorable to the argument. Since that is not yet forthcoming, I'd like to refocus the discussion on the concept of Wikimania in general, since it seems to produce so much debate. As an idea, Wikimania is being pulled in too many directions, and it cannot be all things to all people. Supposing we have a consensus that in the most basic sense it's a good idea (do we have that?), what can we make of this idea? What kind of event should it be? What values do we prioritize - intimacy, mass appeal, accessibility, outreach, infrastructure, culture? Others that I haven't listed? If we care about diversity, what is that? When we consider costs, whose costs do we mean? How do we balance the competing considerations? Currently the conference is planned for roughly 400 people. So far I'm not aware of any location having difficulty attracting attendees. The argument for catering to the highest concentrations of contributors would be more appealing if coupled with the idea that it makes sense to accommodate more people. But expanding Wikimania would change other dynamics of accessibility - the type of facility used, individual costs and overall conference expenses, the character of the event. At least so far, nobody has been presenting this as a vision for Wikimania's future. Another consideration is that admission fees have consciously been kept low. Otherwise Wikimania doesn't make Wikimedia contributors a priority - at least, not the kind of contributors I gather everyone is referring to here. For any location most people already face costs related to attendance, it's simply impossible to physically bring Wikimania to everyone. Realistically, for any one person, Wikimania may be close enough for you to come at minimal cost once or twice in your lifetime. Some people may have to use a broad interpretation of "minimal" for even that. Geographic proximity only goes so far in any case. Talking about Europe and North America may sound as if that still leaves a vast range of options. In the first place, this would be more persuasive if we saw a larger number of cities bidding. When it's just one from each, the chances of producing a bid superior to a highly-motivated team from, say, South America are not exactly overwhelming. Furthermore, even if this was the very highest consideration, it's not exactly neutral between those. The varying population distributions and distances, especially for North America, would have obvious logical consequences. Basically, we should prefer any bid from the European core (defined by London on the west, Rome on the south, Berlin or Rome on the east, Berlin or Amsterdam on the north); the east coast of North America would be a secondary option (maybe we could disqualify Europe every third year); by comparison, the odds for the rest of North America would be decidedly inferior (after ten or so years, we might make it to Chicago or Los Angeles). Wikimania could be bigger or smaller, reach the developing world or only the already-developed, more expensive or less so, rotated widely or narrowly. Leaving aside the security concerns specific to Alexandria, the choice of options would have the following undesirable consequences, depending on which course is taken: *Complaints that the event is impersonal, lacks a sense of community, or is merely a stage-managed public relations show *After a cycle or two, it seems to be pretty much just the same group of people getting together every few years *Objections that the amount being spent is a poor use of foundation funds (depending on how it works out, this would be about either the size of the event or the travel costs incurred by the foundation itself, making distance from San Francisco a factor) *Inability to accommodate anyone beyond the local audience, thus being hardly different from a random meetup and failing to reflect the diverse character of Wikimedia participants *Rumors and misperceptions of unfairness in timing of when registration is opened or how tickets are allocated *Outrage over high admission charges, resembling more closely a "professional" conference I would like to understand what vision people have for Wikimania, and see how their vision would deal with all of these issues. So far I have heard only complaints and rebuttals, nobody offering their own vision (on this list, at least). I fear an end result of the fights over this would be to either abandon the idea of Wikimania, or simply to hold it in the Moscone Center every year like Macworld. Before we get there, let's hear some better alternatives. --Michael Snow _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ____________________________________________________________________________________ OMG, Sweet deal for Yahoo! users/friends:Get A Month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. W00t http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text2.com

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[Foundation-l] A question for the Wikimania jury
by David Gerard 31 Mar '08

31 Mar '08

Does the phrase "easily accessible" mean wheelchairs, etc., or does it mean "close to Europe and North America"? - d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for the Wikimania jury
by Geoffrey Plourde 31 Mar '08

31 Mar '08

So maybe we need two events? ----- Original Message ---- From: Aphaia <aphaia(a)gmail.com> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 12:03:26 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] A question for the Wikimania jury On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 3:48 AM, Brion Vibber <brion(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > Jason Safoutin wrote: > > Really we can do without the attacks of being "NATO-centric" Its not > > about that. Its about who can attend. And maybe if WM was in areas that > > people would be able to attend, people would go...at least more than > > from what I hear, 25% of the people not affiliated with WMF. > > That figure was quoted for Boston -- the "most accessible" location yet > for Americans. (Including, naturally enough, interested Americans who > aren't part of our community, but are curious about it.) Yes it was taken from Boston ... and in Boston we criticized the outsider ("mericans who > aren't part of our community, but are curious about it.") overwhelmed the conf and turned it into not community event. On the other hand, I got (not complaints!) friendly denial to attend from our fellow US Wikimedians, since they couldn't afford travel or just had no interest (one of them was in Boston but Wikimania was no interest for him). Having a conf in the largest user base per se doesn't make it a community event, our experience says. -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ____________________________________________________________________________________ Special deal for Yahoo! users & friends - No Cost. Get a month of Blockbuster Total Access now http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text3.com

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Wikimedia-l March 2008