Yes, my proposals tended to be convoluted. (Read Up the Organization by Robert Townsend, it brought me to the light) I will be helping with this one in the hopes that the bureaucracy can be stripped out.
----- Original Message ----
From: Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 7:47:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Community of the Wikimedian Projects
Hopelessly so. Wikimedia Foundation is a company with a specific purpose,
not an opportunity for governance experiments. Complicated political
structures have no real place, and most attempts to create them (including a
few of yours, Geoffrey) fail just out of the gate. Simple systems work and
we have problems enough with inertia without recreating the United Nations
(itself a model of bureaucratic ineffectiveness).
Nathan
On 4/26/08, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Forgive me if I am missing something... but isn't this kind of
> bureaucratic?
>
>
>
>
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I want to take an opportunity to say thanks for your hard work. Running an election of this magnitude wil not be easy.
----- Original Message ----
From: Philippe Beaudette <philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 3:02:19 PM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Official Election Notice
The 2008 Board election committee announces the 2008 election process. Wikimedians will have the opportunity to elect one candidate from the Wikimedia community to serve as a representative on the Board of Trustees. The successful candidate will serve a one-year term, ending in July 2009.
Candidates may nominate themselves for election between May 8 and May 22, and the voting will occur between 1 June and 21 June. For more information on the voting and candidate requirements, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008.
The voting system to be used in this election has not yet been confirmed, however voting will be by secret ballot, and confidentiality will be strictly maintained.
Votes will again be cast and counted on a server owned by an independent, neutral third party, Software in the Public Interest (SPI). SPI will hold cryptographic keys and be responsible for tallying the votes and providing final vote counts to the Election Committee. SPI provided excellent help during the 2007 elections.
Further information can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/en. Questions may be directed to the Election Committee at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2008/en. If you are interested in translating official election pages into your own language, please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Translation.
For the election committee,
Philippe Beaudette
[[m:User:Philippe]]
.
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Thankfully we have Jay to create contacts at said media outlets.
----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bimmler <mbimmler(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 9:51:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] WMF and the press
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
> I might buy that (the
> first part is pretty much incontrovertibly true), though I'd find it
> at odds with the whole concept of Wikimedia projects (that
> Wikimedians, on average, can find reliable sources, sort the wheat
> from the chaff, and get to the truth).
>
>
Well... the average Wikimedian does indeed (learn to) use reliable sources.
However,
a) there are many non-Wikimedians who might not be particularly used to this
idea
[discussion of various sources is often only done in 'grammar schools' or
universities, so quite a few people might miss this interesting branch of
science...]
b) much more importantly, often the newspaper they read is considered a
reliable source by them.
To give you an example, there are two highly reputable newspapers in
German-speaking Switzerland, one of them being traditionally more left-wing,
the other more right-wing. I usually trust both of them when it comes down
to individual facts (although I sometimes differ with their
conclusions/comments).
However, if my view of Wikipedia was only shaped by these newspapers, it
would be quite distorted indeed as they have several times reported facts
that are...just wrong.
Now, I know quite a few bright and intelligent people who know how to "sort
the wheat from the chaff" and who wouldn't rely on the average tabloid for
any information. Though, if they read a sentence like "Wikipedia will
introduce stable versions, which means that from now on, a small group of
staff editors controls which of the edits will actually go live on the site"
in their trusted newspaper, they believe it. They won't spend half an hour
reading Wikipedia policy proposals on "Stable versions" unless they have to
write a paper about it. So, if I see them on the next morning, the first
thing I hear is "Ah, you Wikipedians finally gave up on this principle of
'everyone can edit', eh?"
Michael
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com
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Out of curiosity, how many pages would it take to package the English Wikipedia?
----- Original Message ----
From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 10:03:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Bertelsmann publishes "Wikipedia Encyclopedia in One Volume"
On 23/04/2008, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet in this thread is that by
> taking only the introductions (which is indeed necessary to get
> anything close to 50,000 articles into 1000 pages), Bertelsmann in my
> feeling is removing most of the usefulness from Wikipedia. There will
> be articles where that's okay, but there will plenty of articles which
> are excellent in the current form, but become worse-than-trivial if
> reduced to one-paragraph stubs.
A well-formed English Wikipedia article - and evidently a German
Wikipedia one too - should have a lead summary section that
constitutes an informative short article in itself, and be written as
an inverted pyramid. The first sentence should be informative and
standalone, the first paragraph should be informative and standalone,
the intro as a unit should be informative and standalone. See
[[:en:WP:LEAD]].
So it's not as good as having the whole thing right there, but it
supplies more information than none for someone who wants the
ten-second summary. A book of those could be quite useful.
And it comes with a free website you can go to for expanded versions
once you know you want one ;-)
- d.
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As the previous proposal failed, I am able to make a different approach to
the issue related to the common body of Wikimedian projects. Proposal below
is at the Meta page [[Community of the Wikimedian
Projects<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_of_the_Wikimedian_projects>]].
Of course, it is a draft. According to my proposal, we have time until the
end of June to decide what to do with the proposal.
* * *
As the creation of Volunteer
Council<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil>(named as
Wikicouncil at the beginning) failed (Board
didn't want to create such
body<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-April/041917.html>),
there is a possibility for changing the approach for the creation of the
common body for the Wikimedian projects. Proposal on this page describes the
Community of the Wikimedian Projects (CWP).
In short, projects interested in coordination of their activities would
would be able to opt-in the body where they would be able to make decisions
related to all projects. Examples of such decisions may be granting bot
status at one place, increasing communication level between projects,
coordinating activities around particular WikiProjects and whatever else
which some or all projects from this group see as their common interes.
Coordination between projects is almost non-existing. While it works inside
of language boundaries, it is rare out of them. And we have a lot of tasks
which are common to all projects, especially if we are talking about the
same project types (like Wikipedia is). We are wasting a lot of resources
and efforts by doing one task a number of times. Instead of that, we should
start to work on the common goals together.
Opting in
Opting in CWP should be done by making a community decision inside of the
particular project. The process of the community decision is up to a
particular community and their own rules and customs. Sometimes it is simple
majority, sometimes it is 2/3 majority and sometimes it is consensus-lik 80%
majority. Before opting in, community of a particular project should
describe its own process for making decisions which affect the whole
project.
Community which opts in should make the next decisions at the time of opting
in:
-
To adopt all decisions already made by CWP. (If the project is opting
in at the time of CWP's creation, it should adopt only the initial
document.)
-
To delegate at least one person for coordination inside of the CWP.
-
To decide how it will make decisions: only on project-wide referendum,
by a special body which represents the projects, by a single representative
or a group of representatives; or in combination of all of them.
Full members and observers
Project with at least 10 very active contributors is qualified to become a
full member. Projects with less than 10 active contributors are able to make
project groups. Project group with at least 10 very active contributors is
qualified to become a full member.
Full member projects are able to vote in the decision making process, while
observing projects are not able. In all other cases rithgs of observing
projects are equal to the rights of full member projects.
Constituting the CWP
CWP will be constitued at the time when 10 projects (or groups of projects)
with the right to vote join the CWP.
CWP bodies
-
Decision-making body:
-
Council of the Wikimedian Projects is the body which is
consisted of the representatives or delegates of all full member projects.
-
Working bodies
-
The Secretariat is the main coordinating body. Its role is to
coordinate activities of CWP. The Secretariat is giving reports
to the CWP
quarterly.
-
Working groups are permanent or non-permanent CWP bodies made to
address a particular issue.
All members of CWP's bodies have to be Wikimedians, while they don't need to
be members of the project-member.
Decision making process
All of the decisions should be made with clearly support of all
project-members. Projects are able to decide how it would be made. They may
choose to make all of the decisions inside of their communities or to elect
one or more persons to represent their will. All proposals should consider
that fact and leave enough of time for decision.
Council of Wikimedian Projects may delegate to the working bodies power to
make a particular decision.
CWP's first tasks
-
Chosing the Secretariat of the CWP.
-
Addressing common issues, like centralized bot flags are.
-
Translating and analyzing rules made by communities.
-
Making a program for self-education of the community members according
to the projects needs.
Transitional notes
-
This proposal is on discussion until the June 30th, 2008. Until that
time the next tasks should be done:
-
The document should be finished in details.
-
Provisional Secretariat, a body which should made the rest of
the job should be formed by volunteers interested in this issue.
-
During another three months (until September 30th, 2008) the next
tasks should be done:
-
Provisional Secretariat should make an analysis statistics and
define which projects are egliable to be the full members and whichmay be
observing members (or need to make a group of projects to have
the right to
vote).
-
Provisional Secretariat should contact all Wikimedian projects
and present to them this proposal.
-
Projects should opt in.
-
If CWP wouldn't be constitued in that time, Provisional
Secretariat may give three months more grace period. If CWP wouldn't be
constitued in that time, Provisional Secretariat should declare that the
constitution of CWP didn't succeed.
End notes
-
The main idea behind CWP is to make a body which would be able to
address common issues on the existing projects. Its primary goal is not to
deal with non-existing projects or the global structure of Wikimedian
community.
-
CWP may decide to take care about the projects which don't have very
active contributors. However, it may be done only in coordination with the
Board of Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation.
-
As CWP is an opt-in body, until it doesn't represent the clear
majority of the Wikimedian community, it shouldn't be able to make decisions
related to make any meta decisions, including aproving or disaproving new
projects, stewards or any other global Wikimedian body. However, if the
project members of CWP decides so, it may be able to approve Arbitration
Committees or similar bodies inside of the member projects.
-
CWP may decide to act as an intermediate body between project members
communities and Wikimedia Foundation.
Volunteers willing to be members of the Provisional Secretariat
If you are willing to become a member of the Provisional Secreatirat, sign
here.
-
~~~
Dear community,
Next week (5-7 of april 2008), the board of Wikimedia Foundation will
hold its first board meeting in San Francisco.
This meeting will be first an opportunity for board members to meet with
all the new staff members (Véronique, Erica, Cheryl, Mary-Lou, Kul,
Jay), and to discover our new office.
We have planned formal meetings with the entire board, time for smaller
group discussions, informal lunches in the office, and dinners at
restaurant, to provide many opportunities for good conversation and
bonding between board and staff. The excellent news regarding the two
recent big donations should cheer us all :-)
The board meeting itself will take place during three days.
We plan to dedicate saturday to board development and governance. This
will include relationships and contractual agreement between board and
executive director, possible future council, next elections,
professionalization of board, etc...
The day will be facilitated by Pat Hughes.
Sunday will be dedicated to our treasurer search. We have planned to
meet at least three of our best candidates in the morning. The rest of
the day will be for us discussing and deciding further action.
Monday is likely to be more eclectic.
We will start by reviewing our personal conflict of interest
questionnaires, approve the previous board meeting minutes. There are
documents to review and possibly approve (eg, board member pledges, D&O
proof of purchase, 990 form etc...).
Morning will feature a report from the Executive Director to the board,
which will include a general update, future goals, and revenue plan.
The rest of the day will include several other topics, such as a data
retention policy, approval of an (old) resolution related to "board
membership and employement", Wikimania security assessment, and review
of the recent media mishaps.
All board members will leave SF on tuesday, which means most of us are
likely to be poorly available from friday 4th till wenesday 9th. I will
be travelling from the 2nd till the 9th, so please forgive delays in
answering requests :-)
If you have any questions on the program (or what is not on the program)
please do not hesitate to ask here :-)
Best
Florence
One important question: how do you manage GFDL on spoken text? To the
satisfaction of, e.g., querulous Commons admins who deal with
licensing stupidities all the time? (Geni, I'm looking at you ;-) )
Requiring a reading of the license on the end of all audios is
onerous. Our many spoken articles on English Wikipedia are
(presumably) not a violation as long as they're on Wikipedia, with the
license text a link away - but aren't really unencumbered for use
elsewhere.
Is the GFDL fundamentally discriminatory against the blind?
Kat Walsh has asked licensing(a)fsf.org, but they tend to act like a
Magic 8 Ball that says "read the license text and consult your
lawyer."
I asked about audio versions of GFDL text on the FSFE discussion list.
One useful suggestion (from M. J. Ray) was:
> Not in England if done to allow access by visually impaired people in
> certain circumstances (Copyright ... Act 1988 sections 31A-31F).
> There's probably other special cases too.
Is there such a provision in US law? I presume there is one in other
legal systems too.
This in itself IMO is a strong case for porting to CC-by-sa.
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Crochet <crochet.david(a)online.fr>
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 12:05 PM
Subject: Fwd: [Proposal] Foundation reservation link interwiki for chapters
To: foundation-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
//For transmission to the mailling list :
The national associations (chapter) grow more and more. And it might be
interesting to link the association, between themselves and with the
foundation, especially if it uses a wiki.
For this I propose that the foundation reserves the interwiki type:
[[Chapter##:]]
where ## is the country code ccTLD of the association concerned.
So, I let you discuss it.
Thank you for listening
--
Cordialement, David Crochet
http://motardsdefrance.online.fr (Site de rendez-vous des motards de France)
http://david.crochet.online.fr (Road-Book à moto)
http://crochet.david.online.fr (Cours de génie électrique et
d'électrotechnique)
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com
Marcus Buck wrote:
> By the way, if I didn't miss any posts in this lengthy threads regarding
> the language proposal policy, I still didn't get any answers to my
> proposal on <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Slomox/Languages>.
I like your rule requiring 1000 real speakers. You're probably right in arguing that it is better to have one rule without exceptions for special cases. So unless someone else in this discussion prefers my proposal to that of Marcus Buck, I retire my proposal and support Marcus' proposal. For me the most important thing at any rate is to get that silly "native" requirement out of the policy, and on that Marcus and me completely agree.
Marcos Cramer
--
Psst! Geheimtipp: Online Games kostenlos spielen bei den GMX Free Games!
http://games.entertainment.gmx.net/de/entertainment/games/free
