Hello,
The relicensing process is underway. This means we have only 2 months
to help GFDL wikis that want Wikipedia compatibility to follow suit.
The clause that allows GFDL wikis to be relicensed to CC-BY-SA 3
expires on August 1 of this year.
I am crossposting this from the licensing thread on foundation-l
because it is important and time sensitive.
While the intent behind the August 1 sunset clause provision was to
"offer[] all wiki maintainers ample time to make their decision", this
has not yet worked out in practice. Many GFDL-licensed wiki
maintainers haven't looked at GFDL 1.3, aren't fully aware of
Wikipedia's decision to relicense, and have no idea there are hard
deadlines involved; nor have they though through the implications for
their current contributions to / reuse of Wikipedia. (I myself had
plans to organize an import of Medpedia content into WP before
realizing that this is not possible unless they choose to relicense --
even though as of today both are GFDL wikis.)
Please help add to the list and contact those that you know:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GFDL_relicensing
A selection of large GFDL wikis that have not confirmed plans to
change their licenses:
Enciclopedia Libre
PlanetMath
Sourcewatch, congresspedia
the International Music Score Library Project
实用查询Wiki (ReferenceWiki, cn.18dao.net)
湖北百科 (wiki.027.cn)
WikiZnanie
Medpedia, WikiDoc
WikiTimeScale
Vikidia
I've seen a few short discussions on Wikia wikis, but nothing
conclusive... any updates there?
Smaller wikis are more likely to be unaware of the relicensing
decision or implications... and more likely to have been swayed by
"the license Wikipedia is using" when making their initial decision.
There are hundreds of them with great educational material, more than
the dozens listed on meta so far. In particular, I expect there are
many more Chinese, German, Japanese and Russian wikis out there... I
hope we can manage to reach most of them.
Recently Robert Rhode said:
> The migration is an incentive to other sites to also relicense.
> Given that, it behooves us to get moving early enough that other sites
> will also have time to react before the deadline. Seeing the changes
> we make will also give them a blueprint to what they may need to do.
> Incidentally, the news coverage of this event so far has been quite
> limited, which makes it more important that we have an outreach effort
> to communicate what is happening to other GFDL projects that may wish
> to change.
The second point makes sense. We do need more outreach; a long-term
sitenotice for anons would be appropriate -- with links to how to
relicense your own wiki, and what this means for reuse of Wikimedia
material / importing your own into an article.
Mainstream press coverage would be nice - perhaps after seeing which
other large wikis are planning to switch as well.
SJ
--
* to be precise, when the license switch takes effect in mid-June,
externally-sourced GFDL content will be made retroactively
incompatible with Wikimedia projects back to November 2008. We have
until August 1 to show partner sites how to relicense so that we
remain compatible.
Hoi,
We have been testing the LocalisationUpdate extension for some time now and,
we consider it quite good at the moment. We have been testing it in a test
environment and we would like to expand our testing to MediaWiki wikis that
do not run in English or any of the other languages that are already
completely localised. What we are looking for are Wikis that are/will be
running MediaWiki 1.15 and would like to experience that the localisation
for their Wiki gets updated with later localisations.
Obviously in order for this to work, there have to be people localising for
your language.
What we offer is help with the installation of the extension and support
with the running of the extension on your MediaWiki wiki. We are looking for
five wikis with five different languages. We can make this offer for wikis
where you are able to install new extensions and, where you can add a
chronjob.
Thanks,
GerardM
In light of the vote results announced regarding the proposed licensing
update, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has unanimously
passed the following resolution:
Resolved that:
Whereas the Wikimedia community, in a project-wide vote, has expressed
very strong support for changing the licensing terms of Wikimedia sites,
and whereas the Board of Trustees has previously adopted a license
update resolution requesting that such a change be made possible, the
Board hereby declares its intent to implement these changes.
Accordingly, the Wikimedia Foundation exercises its option under Version
1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License to relicense the Wikimedia
sites as Massive Multiauthor Collaborations under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, effective June 15, 2009. The Board
of Trustees hereby instructs the Executive Director to have all
Wikimedia licensing terms updated and terms of use implemented
consistent with the proposal at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update
--Michael Snow
Pregunta: Por qu� tantos dicen ADIOS!??? Que sucede queridos amigos?
Juan cesar martinez
---------------------------------------
Red Telematica de Salud - Cuba
CNICM - Infomed
Hi,
I hope this is the right list to post this email - otherwise I would
appreciate being directed to the right one.
Shortly, I would like to promote a project for opening the search box
to external entities. My main motivation would be shared by many
researchers in interactive information retrieval (IIR): In order to
run experiments about new techniques in IIR, it is necessary to
evaluate them, and hence to have enough users to try new approaches.
It is possible to simulate or to do low scale experiments, but to
validate such approaches necessitate much bigger databases.
My proposal would be to include a third option below the search box,
which would be to use an external search engine which would
communicate with wikipedia in order to provide search results - the
communication would allow wikipedia to control what is happening in
order to avoid problems (from latency to spam).
The search box would allow a user to use either a "random" search
engine, or to use one that could be set in the preferences.
I would suggest the randomness to be not so random, in the sense that
it should favour good search engines over bad one - hence the title
"Darwinian search". That would improve the special search box quality
over time, while stimulating research in my area.
I think it would also be beneficial for wikipedia, since
1) it distributes the search load to other back ends
2) it would improve search quality (and may change the way people use
wikipedia) and may be included as a default by wikipedia in the longer
term
3) it does not cost much - once the API and the main means to ensure
quality are set, the system will work by itself
I do not develop more here, since I first want to know if there is
some interest.
Best regards,
Benjamin Piwowarski (University of Glasgow, UK)
--- On Sat, 5/23/09, effe iets anders <effeietsanders(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> From: effe iets anders <effeietsanders(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing resolution
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Saturday, May 23, 2009, 4:00 AM
> 2009/5/23 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
>
> > 2009/5/23 Mike.lifeguard <mikelifeguard(a)fastmail.fm>:
> >
> > > I have been keeping an eye on what content got
> imported on English
> > > Wikibooks. If there has been anything imported
> from offsite GFDL-only
> > > sources I'm not aware of it. To be honest though,
> that's not saying much
> > > - we often have contributors bring us whole books
> they wrote elsewhere -
> > > but that's not a violation since they'd be the
> copyright holder and can
> > > relicense it however they want. I doubt there are
> any similar cases
> > > which do violate the terms, but I'd love some
> help checking that.
> >
> >
> > What are licensing requirements for Wikibooks and
> Wikisource? Did they
> > require GFDL or would any free license do, as is the
> case for Commons?
> >
>
> depends on the language you're talking about :)
>
en.WS is like commons. I imagine most WS are. The editors are not the copyright holders 95% of the time there, so the license is not up to them. The background stuff on the site and any notes written by editors to introduce the texts, will be relicensed I suppose.
Birgitte SB
Hello Everyone,
As you may recall the board was restructured last year around this
time. At that time we asked the chapters to select two board members
for the board. This would happen in the even-numbered years. The three
community seats would be elected in the odd-numbered years.
As was to be expected it took the chapters a while to come to a
procedure and selection the first time around. Unfortunately this
could have had the result that 2009 would have been the year in which
both the elected board members and the chapter selected board members
were changed/added to the board. In the interest of continuity the
board asked the chapters to consider selecting one current board
member for one of the two chapter selected seats this time around. I
am happy to inform you that not only did they agree to this, they have
also found an excellent addition to the board for the other seat.
The chapters have provided the board with the following statement and
the board has been happy to approve their selections.
“Chapters Statement
In April 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation gave the chapters a role in
the board member selection process, by asking them to select
candidates to fill two of the Trustees seats.
The Wikimedia chapters have selected Arne Klempert as a new candidate.
In agreement with the board, they have decided to propose Michael Snow
as their second candidate, with the intent of confirming his position
on the Board of Trustees as occupying one of the chapters selected
Board seats. The chapters are glad that both candidates have accepted
their selection and hope that the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation will be able to formalize this as soon as possible. The
selection of those candidates comes after many heated but fruitful
discussions and represents the chapters' will to introduce novelty and
ensure continuity in the board of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Arne Klempert is Head of Digital Communications at IFOK, a German
consulting firm. He is one of the founders of the German chapter. He
was involved in the development of Wikimedia Deutschland first as vice-
chair and then as Executive Director, until September 2008.
Michael Snow has served on the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation since
December 2007, and was chosen in July 2008 to be its chair. Michael is
a lawyer and has been involved in Wikimedia for many years as Head of
the Wikimedia Communications Committee and creator of the Wikipedia
Signpost, amongst other roles.
The chapters are confident that this selection brings quality,
diversity and stability to the board of the Wikimedia Foundation, and
that both candidates will capably handle the responsibilities of being
Trustees. Both candidates are selected to fill a term that ends in
July 2010.
”
Please join me in welcoming Arne to the board and congratulating
Michael on his re-appointment. On behalf of the board I would like to
thank all those involved in facilitating the process and making these
appointments possible.
Jan-Bart de Vreede
Vice Chair Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
--- On Thu, 5/21/09, private musings <thepmaccount(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
- I'm particularly
> keen at the moment
> to try and discern whether or not it's possible to move
> forward in any way
> on this issue, or whether or not we're sort of stuck in the
> bed we've made
> to date.... all thoughts and ideas most welcome... :-)
>
Your are not likely to move forward with the shotgun approach. What is the underlying issue that is most important to you? What is most common existing situation out there in practice that is exemplifies this issue?
Work on that. Study it. Get numbers on it. Be sure you understand exactly how and why the problem exists and where it's boundaries are. Then work up a proposal to deal with it. Ignore all the somewhat relevant but tangential issues. Put them in a file for later if you can't ignore them, but don't talk about them publicly. That is your best chance to actually move forward on anything. It still takes months, but you really don't have a hope of getting people to help you until focus on one thing of a manageable size.
Birgitte SB
My best guess for currently active editors, if active is defined as "a
registered user who has made more than five edits in the past month." is
somewhere between 70,000 and 90,000.
Feb 2009 roughly 50,000 editors on all Wikipedia's except English made 5 or
more edits in that month.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZZ.htm
Caveat: Please note that there will be Wikipedians that edit on several
language projects, and therefore are counted twice or more. With SUL it
should be possible to filter double counts. This has not happened yet.
Also this number includes bots which are not yet counted separately (they
will soon be). With hundreds of bots in existence, and 40-50 bots active on
100+ projects, roughly subtract 5,000-10,000 from the above figure.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/BotActivityMatrix.htm
Sep 2008 roughly 41,000 editors made 5 or more edits on the English
Wikipedia in that month.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_frequency
Again some of the editors on wp:en: will already have been counted in the
first figure.
The number of active editors on other Wikimedia projects does not change the
overall order of magnitude.
Right now Tomasz Finc is working on a special dump for the English
Wikipedia, without article contents but with all revision data, so that at
least we will have up to date edit(or) stats on wp:en: in the foreseeable
future.
Expect to see more granular and up to date edit(or) stats before Wikimania.
Erik Zachte