Mike & I have made some updates to the Q&A today:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Questions_and_Answers
Please let me know or edit the page if you feel further clarifications
and answers are needed. Otherwise I'll prepare a translation request,
probably on Friday.
Meanwhile, I'm also working on the actual re-licensing proposal, so
that we can discuss it with the Board this weekend. One question I'm
struggling with, and would appreciate input on, is what voting method
and process should be used to make the decision. I anticipate that it
will be a simple yes/no vote, possibly with an explicit abstain
option. I can see two approaches to implement the actual vote:
1) Use the BoardVote software. It's secure, well-tested and
well-understood. It's more burdensome to set up, the process for
counting votes is quite rigorous (accurate but burdensome), and it may
be overkill for this purpose. Votes are private.
2) Use a vote on Meta, like we did for e.g. the Wikinews and
Wikiversity project launch votes. It's easy, but suffers from edit
conflicts, and accurate vote counting is hard. Votes are public.
In the second case, the vote result would be less defensible - but
since it's not a legal necessity to run a vote at all, that might be
OK. It would be also easier to add comments, have detailed discussions
on the talk page, etc. Importantly, since this is a complex problem,
misunderstandings may be common, and in a public vote, they could be
more easily corrected. In the first case, we could add a prominent
link to the full proposal, the Q&A and all discussions to the voting
interface, but it would still be a less wiki-like way of doing things.
I'd appreciate thoughts & comments.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
So you want to run a top-10 web site? Now's your chance...
We're now hiring for a full-time system administrator to help monitor,
maintain, and document the 400+ Linux/Unix servers that operate
Wikipedia and its sister projects. This position will be based at our
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and volunteers.
Currently, system administration tasks are spread over our other tech
staff and volunteers, who have to split their time with software
development, data center management, and network planning. A full-time
system administrator will let us be more responsive to site issues when
they happen, and more importantly be more proactive about planning for
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We've got operating systems to upgrade, configurations to document,
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it, send us your CV by the end of January!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/System_Administrator
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
CTO, Wikimedia Foundation
The proxy servers of the China Channel Firefox Add-on seems to be out of
order.
An alternative way of testing can be found here:Website Test behind the
Great Firewall of
China<http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html>
Here are some results from the above web page.
Tested From: Shanghai, China
Resolved As: 208.80.152.2
Status: Empty reply from server
Response Time: 0.414 sec
Tested From: Beijing, China
Resolved As: 208.80.152.2
Status: Empty reply from server
Response Time: 3.595 sec
Tested From: Hong Kong, China
Resolved As: 208.80.152.2
Status: OK
Response Time: 2.696 sec
Tested From: Seattle, WA
Resolved As: 208.80.152.2
Status: OK
Response Time: 1.678 sec
----
[[zh:User:Bencmq]]
Hi
This is my first post to this list - I'm a thirtysomething newbie from
England. After using Wikipedia for years without getting involved, I
thought I should look more closely into how it all works - and
possibly even join the project! However, as a strong believer in the
importance of transparency to any organisation, I did a search of this
list of that term, and was a bit concerned by the following post in
December 2007 by Jimmy Wales, who I understand (from his userpage) is
the founder of Wikipedia:
"The Foundation is the most transparent organization that I know of,
to the point of pathology sometimes. Ironically, that transparency
breeds in some an expectation so high, that it is assumed that
everything has to be discussed openly. Someone suggested to me the
other day that internal-l and all private mailing lists should be
closed, and all business conducted openly on the wiki. This is beyond
nonsense, because it would push the Foundation to *less* transparency,
not *more*."
I found this post particularly surprising because I had earlier read,
and been excited by, the following 'statement of principles' on Mr
Wales' user page:
"Wikipedia's success to date is entirely a function of our open community."
"The mailing list will remain open, well-advertised, and will be
regarded as the place for meta-discussions about the nature of
Wikipedia."
I don't understand why discussing everything openly is 'beyond
nonsense' and would lead to less transparency. I mean, can someone
give me a hypothetical example of some aspect of the running of the
Foundation which would be better not discussed openly?
I also read somewhere that one of the founding principles of Wikipedia
was that there would be no hierarchy. I appreciate that Citizendium
has a hierarchy, but at least it's made very clear that this is the
case.
All best wishes
James
James Rigg writes:
> As a member of the Wikimedia staff, using sarcasm - in both the post
> title and contents - against another contributor to the list isn't
> very professional.
Please. I try to use my sarcasm professionally!
> People understand that freedom of speech does not mean that someone
> has the right to falsely shout 'fire' in a crowded cinema, but people
> also understand that calling an organisation transparent, when it is
> in fact semi-transparent, is misleading.
It's only misleading if one chooses to understand "transparency" in
the naive way that some might choose to understand "freedom of speech."
--Mike
Anthony writes:
>> I was under the impression that the WMF does hold a copyright over
>> the
>> entirety of a particular Wikipedia as they offer that collection for
>> download. And re-users often use these dumps as seeds for their
>> "illegal"
>> re-use.
>>
>> http://download.wikimedia.org
>
>
> The WMF doesn't hold a copyright over the dumps, they merely
> distribute it
> (in violation of copyright law, I might add).
Could you spell out your legal theory here, counselor?
--Mike
James Rigg writes:
> I'm not questioning here whether or not there are good reasons for
> sometimes being non-transparent and hierarchical, I'm just saying that
> it's interesting that, contrary to its founding ideals, and probably
> also to how many people think, or like to think, Wikipedia is run, it
> is not run in a fully transparent and non-hierarchical way.
Similarly, lots of people use the term "freedom of speech" but are
unwilling to allow other people the freedom to perjure themselves in
court proceedings, commit libel, or conspire to commit a crime. These
means those hypocrites are misusing the term "freedom of speech" of
course. Very dishonest or them, or at least disingenuous.
--Mike
Marc Riddell writes:
> The Foundation - and those who represent it - seem to have forgotten
> that
> people are at the heart of what they are there to do. And, without the
> heart, it cannot live.
This is really an insupportable assertion. The Foundation and those
who represent it are, if anything, hyperaware of the community on
whose volunteer efforts we depend. That awareness factors into
practically every decision we make. Anyone who tells you otherwise is
speaking out of ignorance.
To name only one example: Every time we discuss Flagged Revisions at
the Foundation, someone will express concern about how it might affect
community participation if current edits of a sighted version are not
visible (for some period of time, at least) to those who consult
Wikipedia without logging in. Sometimes the person expressing concern
is me -- I know from my own long-term experience in online communities
that keeping people motivated to contribute is central to a
community's success.
The idea that anyone at the Foundation ever forgets about the
dependence of the projects on the larger community of editors is just
nonsense, born out of the impulse, so common in online forums, to
Assume Bad Faith.
Erik's passing reference to a 23-person organization is, when read
properly, an *acknowledgement* of the larger community of volunteers
-- it is precisely because the size of our organization is so small
that we are so dependent on volunteers for our mission to succeed. In
fact, if you look again at Erik's actual words, that very passage
*stresses how essential volunteers are*. Here's the passage in
question: "As a 23-people organization, it's clear that our
communication efforts need to culminate in volunteer-driven efforts of
both a proactive and reactive nature. That's already the case to a
great degree (thanks to volunteers like yourself), and I hope that we
will continue to improve in that regard."
It take a lot of mental labor to read those sentences as *forgetting*
about volunteers, when in fact volunteers are *expressly mentioned and
given credit*,
Finally, it bears remembering that Erik's own role in the Foundation
derives from his own history as a volunteer editor -- Erik's record as
a contributor is exceptional by any standard, so it plainly makes no
sense to suppose that Erik might even theoretically have forgotten
about the importance of volunteers.
Try assuming good faith.
--Mike