Wikimedia-l March 2008

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167 participants
236 discussions

Re: [Foundation-l] Allow new wikis in extinct languages?
by Geoffrey Plourde 29 Mar '08

29 Mar '08

yes if enough users support it. ----- Original Message ---- From: Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) <pathoschild(a)gmail.com> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2008 2:10:20 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] Allow new wikis in extinct languages? Hello, The language subcommittee only allows languages that have a living native community (except Wikisource, due to its archivist nature). This is based on an interpretation of the Wikimedia Foundation mission to "provide the sum of human knowledge to every human being". Thus, the overriding purpose of allowing a wiki in a new language is to make it accessible to more human beings. If a language has no native users, allowing a wiki in that language does not fit our mission because it does not make that project accessible to more human beings. Instead, a wiki in their native languages should be requested if it doesn't already exist. Typically, the users requesting a wiki in an extinct language don't want to provide educational material to more people at all, but only want to promote or revive the language. While these are noble goals, they are not those of the Wikimedia Foundation, so that a wiki should not be created simply to fulfill them. But that is my opinion. What do you think; should wikis be allowed in every extinct language? -- Yours cordially, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild) _______________________________________________ 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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Re: [Foundation-l] Announcement: Wikimania *2009*
by Nicholas Moreau 29 Mar '08

29 Mar '08

Congratulations to Buenos Aires on their win; looking forward to the event! Nick Moreau (Zanimum) Wikimedia Toronto bid team

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[Foundation-l] 10M articles in all Wikipedias...
by Jay Walsh 28 Mar '08

28 Mar '08

Hi all, Happy to announce that I just sent the following press release out detailing our 10 millionth article... which was a new article in the Hungarian Wikipedia. More details below. Thanks! -- Jay Walsh Head of Communications WikimediaFoundation.org +1 (415) 839 6885 x 609 --- Wikipedia breaks the ten million article mark across all languages Ten million articles in under seven years San Francisco, California March 24, 2008 – Earlier this week the Wikimedia Foundation reached a significant new milestone: on Thursday, March 27, at 00:07 UTC the official article count for all Wikipedias combined reached 10 million. The ten millionth article, a short biography of 16th century painter Nicholas Hilliard was created in the Hungarian Wikipedia user Pataki Márta. Wikipedia now boasts articles in over 250 languages, with the highest article counts in the top ten Wikipedias: English, German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. We are also experiencing rapid growth in many young Wikipedias, including Marathi, Tagalog, and Cantonese. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation remarked on the occasion of this milestone, "It's incredible to think that we've grown from one Wikipedia in English to over 150 active language Wikipedias. Ten million articles is something we could never have imagined happening so fast when we embarked on Wikipedia in 2001. This is a testament to the incredible dedication of our volunteers from all corners of the planet." In December 2007, the German magazine Stern announced in an independent study of 50 articles that the German Wikipedia was more accurate, complete and up-to-date than the longstanding print encyclopedia Brockhaus. In March 2007, a study conducted by the Hewlett Packard Information Dynamics Laboratory found that the best articles on the English Wikipedia are those that have been edited the most frequently, by the largest number of people. It concluded that the correlation between article quality and the number of edits validates Wikipedia as a successful collaborative effort. Similar studies around the world continue to point to the increasing accuracy and quality of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that is written, edited and maintained by a global community of thousands of volunteers. Wikipedia is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, a charitable, non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California. About Wikipedia <http://wikipedia.org> The goal of the Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in history, is to create free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Anyone with Internet access is free to contribute by writing new articles and editing existing articles. Wikipedia is consistently ranked one of the top ten most visited websites in the world by Alexa, serving billions of page views every month. Wikipedia started in January 2001, and currently offers over ten million articles in over 250 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in English, with more than 2.2 million articles; followed by the German and French editions, each of which contain more than six million articles. Nine other language editions contain 200,000+ articles, and more than 150 other languages contain 1,000+ articles. Wikipedia is entirely created and maintained by a community of active volunteers. About the Wikimedia Foundation <http://wikimediafoundation.org> The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of its wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites. For a full list of projects, visit http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by volunteers using the MediaWiki software. Their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license. More information Wikipedia's 10 Millionth article (via Wikipedia Hungary), <http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Hilliard> An English version of the article can be found at, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Hilliard> Wikipedia Statistics, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics> Press inquiries: jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org +1 415-839-6885 Wikipedia Hungary press contact: Peter Gervai press(a)wikipedia.hu Regional press contacts in other languages can be found at <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room#Official_chapters>

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: [ORG-discuss] Introducing Fair Use Where It Did Not Previously Apply
by David Gerard 28 Mar '08

28 Mar '08

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rob Myers <rob(a)robmyers.org> Date: 28 Mar 2008 19:21 Subject: [ORG-discuss] Introducing Fair Use Where It Did Not Previously Apply To: Open Rights Group open discussion list <org-discuss(a)lists.openrightsgroup.org> Interesting article that mentions examples of countries introducing US-style Fair Use where it didn't previously apply: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206446110027&pagename=JPost%2FJ… (Via: http://blogs.fairusenetwork.org/?p=38 ) The article concerns Israel adopting Fair Use, and also mentions that: "Singapore recently adopted a US-style fair use provision to replace its narrower and more rigid "fair dealing" provision based on UK law, as did Hong Kong (before the turnover to China) and the Philippines. - Rob. _______________________________________________ ORG-discuss mailing list ORG-discuss(a)lists.openrightsgroup.org http://lists.openrightsgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/org-discuss

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[Foundation-l] Announcement: Wikimania 2008
by phoebe ayers 28 Mar '08

28 Mar '08

All, We are pleased to announce that Buenos Aires has been selected as the location for Wikimania 2009. The jury was particularly excited by a few parts of the Buenos Aires bid: * A strong, organized team, with division of labor already underway and support from Wikimedia Argentina. Many people contributed to the bid, with obvious enthusiasm for organizing the conference and quick responses to inquiries. * A detailed budget proposal and planning schedule. Many major expenses are being covered by the provider. The total budget is similar to Wikimania 2007's, including a larger travel scholarship fund, and they have provided detailed charts ahead of time. * A significant number of sponsors already lined up, with some already confirmed. They hope to cover half the accommodation and $60k in travel scholarships, which will help to ease travel costs for participants from far away. * A solid venue : as with Toronto, this was situated within a well-maintained cultural center in a major international city, near an airline hub; culturally open, and an international melting pot. * Relaxed visa rules, and easy entry from South American countries. * Good Spanish-language media contacts, with the promise of outreach to and the opportunity to work with the Spanish-language Wikimedia communities. Toronto, the runner up, also provided a great bid. The jury was especially excited by: * Strong English-language press in the area, and media experience among the bid team * A very accessible venue, especially for US/European attendees. * An excellent venue : a university campus, with dorms directly at the venue. As with Buenos Aires, it was situated within a well-maintained cultural center in a major international city, near an airline hub; culturally open, and an international melting pot. * Extensive budget accommodation in the dorms; with many options for casual social space. * A dedicated bid team, with the hope of Wikimedia Canada being formed in time to help coordinate. However, the jury felt that Buenos Aires' bid showed stronger organization overall. Additionally, much of the information in the Toronto bid was carried over from previous bids, and it was unclear how much of a commitment for the University of Toronto facilities there was specifically for 2009. Brisbane and Karlsruhe also provided good bids. Brisbane in particular had an enthusiastic bid team and a strong proposal, with particularly good local sponsorship opportunities; though this was offset by the high travel costs for out-of-country attendees. The jury felt both bids needed more detail (including specifics about accommodation options, and more detailed budget information) to be compelling. As in previous years, the relative accessibility of locations was extensively discussed. The jury believes that it's important for Wikimania to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible, particularly to members of the Wikimedia community; the relatively high cost of travel to South America from Europe and North America was one of the most significant drawbacks we identified in the Buenos Aires bid—especially coming on the heels of Taipei and Alexandria. Having said that, the jury believes that the Buenos Aires bid overcame this drawback with its numerous advantages, among those the opportunity to hold the conference in a Spanish-speaking locale, on a new continent. We hope to receive strong bids from easily accessible locations for 2010. Congratulations to the Buenos Aires team! Wikimania 2009 promises to be an exciting and successful conference. -- Phoebe Ayers, Cary Bass, James Forrester (non-voting jury moderators), on behalf of the Wikimania 2009 Jury http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Jury

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[Foundation-l] [Announcement] Wikimedia Foundation Receives $500K Donation
by Sue Gardner 28 Mar '08

28 Mar '08

More good news! Again, please join us in celebration :-) Jay has either just put this out as a press release, or he will shortly. ------- Original Message -------- Subject: Khosla presser Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:55:18 -0400 From: Jay Walsh <jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org> Reply-To: jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org Organization: Wikimedia Foundation To: Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org> *Wikimedia Foundation Receives $500K Donation* Vinod and Neeru Khosla, innovators in educational outreach, provide financial support to the Wikimedia Foundation. San Francisco, CA - March 24, 2008 – The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia, is delighted to announce it has received a $500,000 donation from philanthropists Vinod and Neeru Khosla. "We are thrilled and very grateful," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "Vinod and Neeru share the Wikimedia Foundation's vision: a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Today, they have moved us closer to making that vision a reality." "Vinod and I are proud to help Wikipedia, a valuable global educational resource," said Neeru Khosla, co-founder and chair of CK12, a non-profit organization supporting the worldwide creation of "flexbooks," collaborative, open-source textbooks. "Wikipedia proves that mass collaboration works, and that small investments can reap extraordinary returns. We are happy to be a part of it." The gift comes at a critical time in the history of Wikimedia, which has just relocated to San Francisco to be closer to Bay Area technical talent, like-minded non-profit organizations, and educational and research institutions. "Moving to San Francisco was an essential step in the maturing of the organization," said Gardner. "Now that we are here, and have built a great team of smart people, we're well-positioned to make significant progress." Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia and one of the 10 most popular websites world-wide, is written, edited and maintained entirely by a global community of thousands of volunteers. It was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales. The Wikimedia Foundation, founded in 2003, has a staff of 15, and provides organizational support for Wikipedia and eight other collaboratively-created information projects. In coming years, the Wikimedia Foundation plans to launch outreach projects designed to encourage contributions to Wikipedia from targeted groups such as academics, speakers of small languages, people in developing nations and older people. It also plans to increase the distribution of material from Wikipedia and its other projects in non-web-based formats such as DVDs and books, to provide information for people who are not online. About the Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of its wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites. For a full list of projects, visit http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by volunteers using the MediaWiki software. Their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license. More information * CK12, Flex Books for every student <http://www.ck12.org/> * Wikimania 2008 <http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org> * Wikipedia Academies in South Africa, an example for Wikimedia outreach events <http://icommons.org/academies> Press inquiries: jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org +1 415-839-6885 Regional press contacts in other languages can be found at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room#Official_chapters -- Jay Walsh Head of Communications WikimediaFoundation.org

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[Foundation-l] Thinking for the Future
by Geoffrey Plourde 27 Mar '08

27 Mar '08

The Foundation really should start thinking for the future. I noticed that a couple people were talking about an endowment. For the WMF, what would a endowment require? ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

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Re: [Foundation-l] Thinking for the Future
by Sfmammamia 27 Mar '08

27 Mar '08

Florence wrote: > Hello Sfammmamia > > Welcome to the list :-) > Which project are you the most active with ? > > cheers > > Ant Thank you for the welcome! Sorry if my replies are not threading correctly, I'm responding from archive -- will have to switch my prefs. For the moment, I'm most active on English Wikipedia. I've been on the project about a year, and I'm just starting to dip my toes in on the meta level (an ocean in and of itself!) Best, Sfmammamia

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Re: [Foundation-l] Thinking for the Future
by Sfmammamia 27 Mar '08

27 Mar '08

Hi all, my first post to Foundation-l: Yes Mary was hired recently as an accountant, and she reports to Veronique Kessler, who was hired at the end of January as chief financial and operating officer. Have you seen the range of Veronique's experience? Looks like an expert to me! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_Releases/Jan2008_Staff_Release Sfmammamia Chad wrote > In this field, the Foundation just hired an accountant a few > days ago. As far as a financial adviser, I can't speak on Mary's > qualifications, as I do not know her personally or professionally. > However, before such a decision on this would be made, the > Foundation would need to seek out the advice of a trained > financial adviser who specializes in long-term investments for > non-profits. > > If Mary has anything she'd like to add, I'd love to hear it :-) > (Also, I encourage all the new staff members to join foundation-l, > if no other reason than to keep abreast of all the goings-on) > > -Chad

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[Foundation-l] [Announcement] Sloan awards Wikimedia USD 1m annually for three years
by Sue Gardner 27 Mar '08

27 Mar '08

Hi folks, I’m delighted to tell you that yesterday, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation board of directors voted to award the Wikimedia Foundation USD 1 million annually for the coming three years. A total of USD 3 million, spread over three years. This is what Sloan characterizes as "institutional funding" - meaning, a form of grant designed to help us work towards our general goals – in our case, financial and operational sustainability, increasing quality, increasing and broadening participation, and distributing our material beyond the wiki environment. As you know, we’ve recently expanded the staff from 10 to 15, and we still have a few more positions to fill: this funding will offset those increased costs. This is _fabulous_ news. Sloan is high-profile and widely-respected: this donation is financially significant for us, and it also signals that Sloan sees our work as important and our organization as trustworthy. I’d like to take a moment to thank Erik Moeller, who developed our first contact with Sloan through his work representing Wikimedia on the Encyclopedia of Life's institutional council. (Sloan is an EOL funder.) Based on that initial relationship, in January Sloan invited Erik to present to them about Wikimedia, after which they asked us for a formal request for funding. Without Erik, this would not have happened. Yay, Erik :-) We will be sending out a press release in a few hours, and I will also send this note to foundation-l soon. Meanwhile, please join the staff and board of the Wikimedia Foundation in celebrating this terrific news! Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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Wikimedia-l March 2008